No other advanced nation denies healthcare and work protections, or loosens lockdown while fatalities mount

No other nation has endured as much death from Covid-19 nor nearly as a high a death rate as has the United States.

Related: Donald Trump's four-step plan to reopen the US economy – and why it will be lethal | Robert Reich

Around the world, governments are providing generous income support. Not in the US

American workers are far less unionized than workers in other advanced economies

Related: Mothers will be hardest hit if the economy reopens too fast | Jessica Zucker

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US

Chris Hedges speaks the truth about American politics while Robert Reich shows that he is still an establishment Democrat after all, like Bernie Sanders. Continue reading →

"Well, reducing the election to personalities is kind of infantile at this point. The fact is, we live in a system that Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism. It’s a system where corporate power has seized all of the levers of control. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil or Raytheon." Continue reading →

Well-publicized philanthropy shows how afraid the super-rich are of a larger social safety net – and higher taxes

As millions of jobless Americans line up for food or risk their lives delivering essential services, the nation’s billionaires are making conspicuous donations – $100m from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for food banks, billions from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for a coronavirus vaccine, thousands of ventilators and N95 masks from Elon Musk, $25m from the Walton family and its Walmart foundation. The list goes on.

Related: Call for super-rich to donate more to tackle coronavirus pandemic

Why should we believe that Gates or any other billionaire’s 'boldness' necessarily reflects society’s values and needs?

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US