The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Martin Wolf

One review I read called this bleak yet oddly comforting, and I have to agree with that mixed emotion. To me, an avowed avoider of all things related to economics, politics, and money, this is the sequel to Thomas Picketty's Capital In The Twenty First Century. In other words: 1) I know nothing about this subject and 2) these are books that make cogent and understandable presentations of what the problem is with the flow of money and power today. The book's review of recent history is sobering. Governments of all sorts have become less accountable to the public. Authoritarian states have grown more oppressive; some strong democracies have wobbled; weaker ones have crumbled. And the opportunism of strongmen is far from the only cause. Data published in 2020 show that, among the roughly 1.9bn residents of democracies, less than a quarter live in countries where most voters are satisfied with that system of government. This loss of faith—and the accompanying retreat from democracy—are rooted in decades of economic failure. On its face, that seems a very reasonable argument. Since the early 1980s, income and wealth inequality have risen dramatically in many countries; in America, for instance, the share of pre-tax income earned by the top 1% has nearly doubled by some counts, from about 10% to 19%. In rich economies growth in productivity and in the inflation-adjusted incomes of the typical household has been disappointing. Deindustrialization has left many working-class cities permanently depressed. We have seen all of this in the United States, where we are hurdling toward La Belle Epoque, with the rich getting much richer and the middle class sliding downward into near poverty. The glimmers of hope are that when women's rights were stripped away from them in the Dodd decision, essentially making them unequal citizens who no longer have autonomy over their own bodies, the ground shifted. Despite a dismal economy, Democrats out performed Republicans in the 2022 election, and the trend is continuing in early 2023. Vote, keep voting, urge others to vote and support voters world wide.