Robert Reich: We Can Either Have Billionaires or a Democracy, But We Can’t Have Both

EXCERPT:

REICH: “The latest data I’ve seen said that Elon Musk contributed something in the order of $277 million to getting Trump elected. And he has made, since the Trump election, in terms of his actual net worth, he’s increased his net worth by $170 billion since the Trump election. Now, that’s pretty good return on investment. And the reason that is such a high return on investment and a high return for many of the other billionaires and multimillionaires in the Trump Administration is that they’re no longer, and the markets assume they’re no longer going to have to be worried about as many regulations, as many lawsuits, they’ll have a tax cuts, an extension of the Trump tax cuts, they’ll have, in other words, all the things they wanted and they bargained for when they put money into the Trump campaign. That’s the problem. And as Lewis Brandeis, the great jurist in America, said years ago at the end of the last gilded age, he was reputed for what he said: America has a choice, we can have a great wealth in the hands of few people or we could have a democracy, but we can’t have both."