My thoughts after listening to interesting interview with Robert Reich on KQED Forum

Interesting interview on KQED Forum with a former U.S. secretary of labor under the Obama Administration. He talks about the decline in the feeling of common good. Rise in cynicism I guess. He basically blames greed, corporations and mostly right wing politics, but while I was listening, I thought about some problems on the left as well.

Here's the blurb from KQED web site.

As economic inequality has surged over the past half century, trust in government, corporations and democracy in general has dwindled among Americans. In "The Common Good" Robert Reich argues that to save democratic institutions, America must restore its morality and rise above spreading individualism. He joins us to discuss how this transformation can happen amid such political divisiveness.

Some of my thoughts about labor unions and so forth below.

Rising cynicism from things that are often thought of as from the left as well. Maybe the right is worse, in my opinion, but the left has its share also.

Here's an example. Idealism of the Great Society led to construction of large housing projects for low income people. Urban renewal. Much of this became crime infested places that, in some cases, had to be torn down. Today's planners realize that those big housing projects, which concentrated lots of poor people into big buildings in one part of town, were a bad idea. It's better to mix variety of income levels into smaller, more human scale structures.

Reigh talked about the value of unions. They have their good points, but problems as well. Seems like back in the 1970s some union workers made very good salaries but the unions didn't care that much about the people who were outside their union. It was hard to get into those good paying jobs. Apprenticeships were hard to get and so forth. The unions shot themselves in the foot politically as outsiders outnumbered union members. Now practically no one is in a union, but the few who are left do seem to care more about the general welfare of workers. Modern unions do care about minimum wage, universal healthcare and so forth beyond just looking out for their own members.

Another problem with unions was the rigid contracts and work schedules. Today's workers and economics call for more flexibility of work hours.

Gentrification is pretty rampant in left leaning cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and even Bellingham where the rising cost of housing is a problem. Also there's the problem of nimby-ism as well as the issue of hippies turned to yuppies.

I can go on, but those are just some thoughts that entered my mind listening to the podcast during my custodial shift.