Seven Fixes for American Capitalism
Ideas from the Right, the Left, and across the Atlantic to mend what’s broken in our economy.
For the past few decades there’s been a rough consensus about how to run a modern capitalist economy. Trade should be free. The gold standard is archaic. Antitrust should protect consumers rather than punish bigness. Tax rates should be (modestly) higher for the rich. Government should run big deficits during recessions to support growth but get frugal during good times to reduce debt. Republicans and Democrats didn’t agree on everything, but the economists in their respective brain trusts shared a general understanding of how to build prosperity.
That centrist consensus is losing its power. Republicans are being drawn toward the protectionism of President Trump, Democrats toward the socialism of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman congresswoman from New York City. Trust in the establishment is low, leaving people open to alternatives “whether they come from the Left or the Right,” says Patrick Egan, a New York University political scientist. “People are open to change and new ideas in a pretty substantial way.”