Reich, Robert Bernard [key], 1946–, American political economist and government official, b. Scranton, Pa. He attended Dartmouth, Oxford (where he and Bill Clinton were Rhodes scholars), and Yale Law School. After graduation in 1973 he entered government service, becoming assistant solicitor general in the Dept. of Justice (1974–76) and director of policy planning at the Federal Trade Commission (1976–81). He then taught at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (1981–92). As secretary of labor (1993–96) in the first Clinton administration, Reich, a neoliberal, supported the development of high-tech industries, economic flexibility, labor-management cooperation, limited government intervention in labor disputes, and the education of a technologically adept workforce. From 1997 to 2005 he was a professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis Univ. Since 2006 he has been a professor of public policy at the Univ. of California, Berkeley. In the 21st cent., Reich has been critical of the increased influence of corporations and the wealthy on government, and has called for a reaffirmation of the shared values that he sees as characteristic of American society. His books include The Next American Frontier (1983), The Work of Nations (1991), Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America (2004), Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (2007), Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future (2010), Saving Capitalism for the Many, Not the Few (2015), The Common Good (2018), and The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It (2020).
See his memoir Locked in the Cabinet (1997).
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