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This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich opens his new memoir

with something unusual for a public figure. An apology. An apology on behalf of his generation,

the baby boomers, for failing, as he puts it, to build a decent,

sustainable, and just society. Reich was born in 1946 the same year as President's Trump,

Bush, and Clinton, sons of the greatest generation, who came of age in a time of post-war optimism,

when prosperity and possibility seemed endless.

But as Reich tells it, those promises have morphed into widening inequality, bitter political

division, an unchecked rise of corporate power. His new book, Coming Up Short, A Memoir of My America,

argues that the choices his generation and

others have made helped pave the way to today's fractured democracy and economic disparity.

Depressing stuff, but Reich also points to the progress that was made and makes a case for

reviving what he calls community and democratic capitalism rooted in America's founding ideals.

Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy Emeritus at UC Berkeley,

has served in three presidential administrations and has written 18 books,

including The Work of Nations, Saving Capitalism, and the Common Good.

He's also the subject of a new documentary called The Last Class.

Robert Reich, welcome back to fresh air.

Well, thank you, Tanya.

Before we get to your book, I want to ask you about some news.

President Trump recently nominated E.J. Antony from the Heritage

Foundation as the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that was after firing the former head

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