Robert Reich and Life of "Pie"

AFL-CIO: "The rich keep getting a bigger share of the economic pie while everyone else’s share keeps shrinking. What should be done to reverse this trend?"

Sandwichman: "Stop growing "the pie." Restore the commons instead."

Bob Reich: "They go together. Economic growth doesn't have to result in more consumption of material goods. It can also result in a better environment, better public health, better education. All growth does is create the economic capacity to do these things. How we use growth -- either for more consumer goods of for more public goods (the commons) is a political choice."

Sandwichman: "There is a very large literature that disagrees with that assumption, Bob. A good place to start would be with Jonathan Rowe's "Our Common Wealth" or the 1995 Atlantic Magazine article on the GDP Jonathan co-authored. Also the commons is not just another term for public goods. See Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize winning work on the commons."