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The lead refers to Reich as a "political economist." ("Political economy" is an older term for what we now call "economics".) In fact Reich's academic background is in the Law. He has no advanced degree in economics, and I can't find that he even claims to be an economist (or a political economist).
As the article correctly reports, Reich's major academic training is in the Law. He has "a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1973 to 1974 he served as law clerk to Judge Frank M. Coffin, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and from 1974 to 1976 was Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, Robert Bork." That started a distinguished career in government and academia. It's clear he's focused on labor throughout his career, and has written and opined on economic subjects, as we all do.
But his only education in economics, as far as I can tell, was his stint as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (alongside Bill Clinton), where he was in the "Philosophy, Politics and Economics" program, a distinguished undergraduate/post-graduate program that sounds fascinating, but is more comparable to a liberal arts major or perhaps a triple major. He does not have a degree of any sort in economics.
Moreover I have not been able to find any place where Reich himself refers to himself as an economist or a political economist.
Here is his bio on robertreich.org:
One might argue that his participation in the Oxford program made him a "political economist." This might likely be an attempt to distinguish a political economist from an economist. This is a novel definition of the former term (although I see it has crept into our article on that subject).
FWIW, here's a Google ngram on "political economy" vs. "economics": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=political+economy%2Ceconomics%2C+political+economics&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpolitical%20economy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ceconomics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpolitical%20economics%3B%2Cc0
...and here's an ngram on "political economist" vs "economist":
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=economist%2C+political+economist&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ceconomist%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpolitical%20economist%3B%2Cc0
As you can see, "political economist" tracks with "political economy", and both track downward as the simpler "economist" and "economics" took their place.
Thus we probably shouldn't call Reich an economist unless he has a degree in the subject or at least calls himself an economist. And we shouldn't call him a "political economist" unless we adopt a new definition of that term that hasn't shown up on Google ngrams yet. (And that, I believe, would amount to original research.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frappyjohn ( talk • contribs) 01:45, January 24, 2016 (UTC)
Please find: A. Academic Work B. Being called an economist by economists https://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm This should provide all we need to set aside this issue. Robert Reich is not simply an economist, but he literally doesn't understand anything about economics (comparative advantage, Ricardian model of international trade as an example). BasedMises Mont Pelerin 23:09, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The lead sentence should describe the person as they are commonly described in reliable sources." Please see the links above to almost a dozen major publications using the descriptor "economist". – wallyfromdilbert ( talk) 23:16, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Robert Reich/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Comment(s) | Press [show] to view → |
---|---|
It is obvious if you watch Robert Reich's entire testimony or read a transcript, rather than taking the quote out of context, that he was talking about equal opportunity, as opposed to saying something racist. Here is the full quote in context:
"Now let me say something about infrastructure. It seems to me that infrastructure spending is a very important and good way of stimulating the economy. The challenge will be to do it quickly, to find projects that can be done that have a high social return that also can be done with the greatest speed possible. I am concerned, as I'm sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professions or to white male construction workers. I have nothing against white male construction workers. I'm just saying that there are a lot of other people who have needs as well. And therefore, in my remarks I have suggested to you, and I'm certainly happy to talk about it more, ways in which the money can be -- criteria can be set so that they money does go to others: the long term unemployed, minorities, women, people who are not necessarily construction workers or high-skilled professionals." hardly controversial. Moreover: (1) these remarks were made on Jan. 9, over a month prior to the passage of the stimulus legislation; and (2) nothing in the legislation proposed by President Obama or in the legislation ultimately passed by Congress contains a race-based restriction (see full bill here: http://www.recovery.gov/). Accordingly, this testimony should be removed from the "controversial remarks" section. Thubb421 ( talk) 20:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC) |
Last edited at 20:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 04:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
The following para:
"In February 2017, Reich published a conspiracy theory purporting that left-wing violence at UC Berkeley against Donald Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos was a right-wing false flag for Trump to strip universities of federal funding. This idea was described as "phantasmagorical" by The Washington Post.[34]"
Has been added repeatedly by a user, User_talk:Valentina Cardoso. The statement is (1) a bad-faith reading of Mr. Reich's claim, (2) in hideous violation of NPOV, (3) not a notable event in Mr. Reich's career. If the article wasn't protected I would correct it myself (as other anon IP readers have tried to do).
Looking at the user's contribution history, they are bent on editing conservative viewpoints into Wikipedia, and not actually providing any encyclopedic information. Wikipedia is not your soapbox.
71.114.37.58 ( talk) 17:49, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Does anybody have an issue that Reich or his employer is editing this article? Valentina Cardoso ( talk) 17:57, 13 March 2017 (UTC) [1]
[2] "Which raises the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Brietbart were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding...Hmmm. Connect these dots: [six points]...I don’t want to add to the conspiratorial musings of so many about this very conspiratorial administration, but it strikes me there may be something worrying going on here. I wouldn’t bet against it".
Yeah, so after he spoke to the local news, and Breitbart reacted, he wrote (i.e. published) an article in which he didn't change his opinion. Stop painting it as an off-the-cuff remark in the heat of the moment that was spun into oblivion by Breitbart Valentina Cardoso ( talk) 18:22, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
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Multiple sources list Robert Reich's height (4 ft 10). For example: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1049185/ This is relevant information for this article, and yet it is removed every time someone attempts to add it. Why is that? 45.62.219.78 ( talk) 04:31, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
Just to point out, you are currently using the same pic twice - in the infobox and then, almost immediately below, in the early life section. Pincrete ( talk) 18:31, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
I've restored (again) the quote from Reich's letter to the Landmarks Commission in Berkeley opposing redevelopment of a local house; it's illustrative to contrast his language in the letter ("character of the neighborhood") with that in the interview. grendel| khan 16:27, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Robert Reich isn't an economist. If this is even a debate, we have crossed the grounds from p to n statements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BasedMises ( talk • contribs) 22:36, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
I am aware of WP:RS, but I honestly don't know how a (opinion) piece on a new Netflix series (not academic at all) suffices this criteria. I have posted a source for it under Krugman's Princeton website. Please refrain from vandalism in the future. Secondly, an off-hand reference in a NYT article about a Netflix series isn't enough to push a policy opportunist and lawyer by trade into the "economist" position. BasedMises Mont Pelerin 22:59, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The current lede reads like a promotional self-bio and, indeed, the quoted paragraph from just such a bio in the topic about how Reich isn't an economist appears to be what much of the content of the lede was taken from. The current lede does not appear to even resemble a neutral point-of-view and instead reads more like an advertisement for books or speaking/consulting gigs from Mr. Reich. This is Wikipedia, not LinkedIn. Vbscript2 ( talk) 04:31, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page. |
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The lead refers to Reich as a "political economist." ("Political economy" is an older term for what we now call "economics".) In fact Reich's academic background is in the Law. He has no advanced degree in economics, and I can't find that he even claims to be an economist (or a political economist).
As the article correctly reports, Reich's major academic training is in the Law. He has "a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. From 1973 to 1974 he served as law clerk to Judge Frank M. Coffin, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and from 1974 to 1976 was Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, Robert Bork." That started a distinguished career in government and academia. It's clear he's focused on labor throughout his career, and has written and opined on economic subjects, as we all do.
But his only education in economics, as far as I can tell, was his stint as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (alongside Bill Clinton), where he was in the "Philosophy, Politics and Economics" program, a distinguished undergraduate/post-graduate program that sounds fascinating, but is more comparable to a liberal arts major or perhaps a triple major. He does not have a degree of any sort in economics.
Moreover I have not been able to find any place where Reich himself refers to himself as an economist or a political economist.
Here is his bio on robertreich.org:
One might argue that his participation in the Oxford program made him a "political economist." This might likely be an attempt to distinguish a political economist from an economist. This is a novel definition of the former term (although I see it has crept into our article on that subject).
FWIW, here's a Google ngram on "political economy" vs. "economics": https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=political+economy%2Ceconomics%2C+political+economics&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpolitical%20economy%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ceconomics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpolitical%20economics%3B%2Cc0
...and here's an ngram on "political economist" vs "economist":
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=economist%2C+political+economist&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ceconomist%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpolitical%20economist%3B%2Cc0
As you can see, "political economist" tracks with "political economy", and both track downward as the simpler "economist" and "economics" took their place.
Thus we probably shouldn't call Reich an economist unless he has a degree in the subject or at least calls himself an economist. And we shouldn't call him a "political economist" unless we adopt a new definition of that term that hasn't shown up on Google ngrams yet. (And that, I believe, would amount to original research.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frappyjohn ( talk • contribs) 01:45, January 24, 2016 (UTC)
Please find: A. Academic Work B. Being called an economist by economists https://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm This should provide all we need to set aside this issue. Robert Reich is not simply an economist, but he literally doesn't understand anything about economics (comparative advantage, Ricardian model of international trade as an example). BasedMises Mont Pelerin 23:09, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The lead sentence should describe the person as they are commonly described in reliable sources." Please see the links above to almost a dozen major publications using the descriptor "economist". – wallyfromdilbert ( talk) 23:16, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Robert Reich/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Comment(s) | Press [show] to view → |
---|---|
It is obvious if you watch Robert Reich's entire testimony or read a transcript, rather than taking the quote out of context, that he was talking about equal opportunity, as opposed to saying something racist. Here is the full quote in context:
"Now let me say something about infrastructure. It seems to me that infrastructure spending is a very important and good way of stimulating the economy. The challenge will be to do it quickly, to find projects that can be done that have a high social return that also can be done with the greatest speed possible. I am concerned, as I'm sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professions or to white male construction workers. I have nothing against white male construction workers. I'm just saying that there are a lot of other people who have needs as well. And therefore, in my remarks I have suggested to you, and I'm certainly happy to talk about it more, ways in which the money can be -- criteria can be set so that they money does go to others: the long term unemployed, minorities, women, people who are not necessarily construction workers or high-skilled professionals." hardly controversial. Moreover: (1) these remarks were made on Jan. 9, over a month prior to the passage of the stimulus legislation; and (2) nothing in the legislation proposed by President Obama or in the legislation ultimately passed by Congress contains a race-based restriction (see full bill here: http://www.recovery.gov/). Accordingly, this testimony should be removed from the "controversial remarks" section. Thubb421 ( talk) 20:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC) |
Last edited at 20:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 04:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
The following para:
"In February 2017, Reich published a conspiracy theory purporting that left-wing violence at UC Berkeley against Donald Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos was a right-wing false flag for Trump to strip universities of federal funding. This idea was described as "phantasmagorical" by The Washington Post.[34]"
Has been added repeatedly by a user, User_talk:Valentina Cardoso. The statement is (1) a bad-faith reading of Mr. Reich's claim, (2) in hideous violation of NPOV, (3) not a notable event in Mr. Reich's career. If the article wasn't protected I would correct it myself (as other anon IP readers have tried to do).
Looking at the user's contribution history, they are bent on editing conservative viewpoints into Wikipedia, and not actually providing any encyclopedic information. Wikipedia is not your soapbox.
71.114.37.58 ( talk) 17:49, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
Does anybody have an issue that Reich or his employer is editing this article? Valentina Cardoso ( talk) 17:57, 13 March 2017 (UTC) [1]
[2] "Which raises the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Brietbart were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding...Hmmm. Connect these dots: [six points]...I don’t want to add to the conspiratorial musings of so many about this very conspiratorial administration, but it strikes me there may be something worrying going on here. I wouldn’t bet against it".
Yeah, so after he spoke to the local news, and Breitbart reacted, he wrote (i.e. published) an article in which he didn't change his opinion. Stop painting it as an off-the-cuff remark in the heat of the moment that was spun into oblivion by Breitbart Valentina Cardoso ( talk) 18:22, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Robert Reich. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
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source check}}
(last update: 18 January 2022).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 02:41, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Multiple sources list Robert Reich's height (4 ft 10). For example: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1049185/ This is relevant information for this article, and yet it is removed every time someone attempts to add it. Why is that? 45.62.219.78 ( talk) 04:31, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
Just to point out, you are currently using the same pic twice - in the infobox and then, almost immediately below, in the early life section. Pincrete ( talk) 18:31, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
I've restored (again) the quote from Reich's letter to the Landmarks Commission in Berkeley opposing redevelopment of a local house; it's illustrative to contrast his language in the letter ("character of the neighborhood") with that in the interview. grendel| khan 16:27, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
Robert Reich isn't an economist. If this is even a debate, we have crossed the grounds from p to n statements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BasedMises ( talk • contribs) 22:36, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
I am aware of WP:RS, but I honestly don't know how a (opinion) piece on a new Netflix series (not academic at all) suffices this criteria. I have posted a source for it under Krugman's Princeton website. Please refrain from vandalism in the future. Secondly, an off-hand reference in a NYT article about a Netflix series isn't enough to push a policy opportunist and lawyer by trade into the "economist" position. BasedMises Mont Pelerin 22:59, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
The current lede reads like a promotional self-bio and, indeed, the quoted paragraph from just such a bio in the topic about how Reich isn't an economist appears to be what much of the content of the lede was taken from. The current lede does not appear to even resemble a neutral point-of-view and instead reads more like an advertisement for books or speaking/consulting gigs from Mr. Reich. This is Wikipedia, not LinkedIn. Vbscript2 ( talk) 04:31, 31 July 2022 (UTC)