Progress-focused

I a recent Youtube video, Robert Reich gave an explanation for Trump’s victory. He pointed to systematic problems in American society, such as economic inequality, and said that Trump “gave voice to the anger” of the American people. I agree with many things that Reich said, as I generally do. But to say that Trump gave voice to the anger of the people while the Democrats failed to do that, may not be accurate, or at least not complete. Let me explain.

Some time ago I wrote about economist Richard Wolff's book Democracy at work. A cure for capitalism in which he argued that capitalism is inherently threatening to democracy and that a fundamental change is needed in the direction of Worker Self-Directed Enterprises (WSDEs) which would be an alternative to capitalism ( read my explanation of this argument here ). While I found the book interesting, I wasn't convinced that capitalism should be replaced. Now, there is a book by another economist, also one who is very critical about current day capitalism and concerned for the protection of the democracy, Robert Reich . The book is called Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and it argues not for the replacement of capitalism but for its rescue.

Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century Until 2010, I did not know much about the consequences of economic inequality. Then I came across the book The Spirit Level in which the authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett presented their research results which showed that high levels of inequality in societies is harmful for everyone within them. Their research showed that (1) the more developed a country is, the less important further economic growth is for certain objectively measurable outcomes, like life expectancy ( see graph ), (2) in a study of 23 of the richest countries there was a strong relationship between health and social problems and the level of income inequality ( see graph ), (3) in a study of the 50 American States this same relationship was found ( see graph ).