30 Issues in 30 Days is our election year series on the important issues facing the country this election year. Today: How the victims of the Great Recession are coping and what the government can do to help them. Visit the 30 Issue home page for all of the conversations.

Former labor secretary and professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, Robert Reich discusses the role of private equity - such as Bain Capital - in our economic system, and other news of the day.

Robert Reich explains why an increasing share of income and wealth is going to the top and argues that income inequality has hobbled jobs and growth and undermines our democracy. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, and in Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong with our Economy and our Democracy, and How to Fix It, he provides ideas for solving the problems income inequality is creating.

Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business, and Robert Reich, public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, give their takes on the claim that a tax on the wealthy is a tax on small business.

Local Robert Reich Appearances 
Tuesday September 21, 2010 7:00pm at Barnes and Noble, 150 East 86th Street, New York, NY
Thursday, September 23 7:00pm at The Strand, , 828 Broadway, New York, NY

President Obama spent his Labor Day in Milwaukee, announcing big plans for the nation's infrastructure. The plan begins with an initial investment of $50 billion of taxpayer money, followed by increased spending over the next six years. It aims to build or repair 150,000 miles of roads; 4,000 miles of rail and 150 miles of airplane runways.

Former labor secretary under President Clinton, Robert Reich, says the Obama administration should take over BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the oil well is plugged, comparing it to the government’s takeover of the carmaker GM last year. In a blog post on his website, he writes that this would ensure that “the firm would unambiguously be working in the public’s interest."

Robert Reich, University of California at Berkeley professor of Public Policy, author of Super Capitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life and blogger, discusses health care reform, the state of the economy and other news of today.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich joins us for a far reaching discussion on everything from what the Obama Administration’s pursuit of tax havens might mean for healthcare reform, to the bank stress tests, to the Employee Free Choice Act and the role unions are playing in the restructuring of ...

Robert Reich, author, professor of public policy at University of California at Berkeley, and former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, discusses his new book on business and democracy and breaks down this year's presidential race.

SuperCapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life is available ...