Class 1: “What’s Happened to Income & Wealth” by UC Berkeley Professor Reich

Welcome to my undergraduate course on Wealth and Poverty. This is the first of fourteen classes. The questions we’ll focus on today: Is some inequality both inevitable and necessary? At what point, if ever, does it become a problem? What’s the difference between income and wealth inequality, and which is more important? How do income and wealth inequalities overlap with race and gender? And the real puzzle: why did these inequalities begin to widen so dramatically starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and continue widening since then? Even though this isn’t a real classroom and I’m not with you in person, I hope you find this both enjoyable and challenging. Don’t expect to learn by just watching and listening, though. I want you to be an active learner — which means answering questions I pose and putting various puzzle pieces together. I’m not going to tell you what to think. I’m going to try to provoke you into thinking harder and more deeply. If you wish, I’ve shared some select readings from the syllabus for you. They’re available at: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/fi... Class Outline ------------------------- 00:00 - Introduction 14:35 - The paradox 42:11 - Economic inequality by race 52:39 - Mobility 59:59 - Should we care? 01:12:00 - The $1000 experiment 01:20:17 - Public values and social change