'We are at a tipping point': an interview with Robert Reich.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Interview

Robert Reich is a rock star. The soft-spoken professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and former Secretary of Labor has been touring the country, spreading his message about the dangers of the rigged economy and the fictional "free market" to large and appreciative audiences.

Reich frequently makes points using self-deprecating humor, cracking jokes about his own height (four feet eleven inches).

"Shaquille O'Neal and I have an average height of six feet, two inches," he said in a speech in Madison, Wisconsin, in late October. He was explaining why statistics showing rising average income can be deceiving. "You want to look at the median," he explained. "The median has not done well in this recovery ... yet the economy is so much better. Where did all the money go?" (Answer: to the top l percent.)

The crowd, hanging on Reich's every word, overflowed the available space and packed an adjacent screening room at the downtown Madison Public Library. His message could not be more in tune with the current mood in the country, judging by the outpouring for him, for Elizabeth Warren, for Bernie Sanders, and even for rightwing populists in the Republican presidential field.

Reich's credits include fourteen books and the award-winning documentary Inequality for All. The last time I interviewed him for The Progressive, in May 2001, his funny and insightful book Locked in the Cabinet was on the bestseller list, describing in sometimes maddening, sometimes hilarious detail how he struggled to get economic inequality on the agenda in the Clinton Administration in the go-go 1990s. Inequality is now Topic A in the 2016 presidential campaigns. "I can't tell you how delighted I am," he told me.

In his new book, Saving Capitalism (For the Many, Not the Few), Reich writes about the inevitable reshuffling of American politics, and the rise of anti-establishment candidates. "I didn't expect that my prediction would come true so quickly!" he said.

We chatted for an hour in the library director's office, before Reich went out to address the crowd. Funny, warm, and, despite the dire economic news he writes about, fundamentally optimistic, Reich is as engaging up close as he is in public.

Q: One of the most poignant scenes in your * book is when a minimum-wage worker says he is not worth as much as a wealthy CEO. It's really profound how people have internalized this.

Robert Reich: Many people who are working class and poor blame themselves for not doing better. They don't understand that the system has made it almost impossible for them. It's not that they lack brains, as that particular worker said of himself. It's that they lack organization.

A lot people still believe we're in a...