We care about freedom from hunger, unemployment and poverty — and, as FDR emphasized, freedom from fear. People with just enough to get by don’t have freedom — they do what they must to survive. And we need to focus on giving more people the freedom to live up to their potential, to flourish and to be creative. An agenda that would increase the number of children growing up in poverty or parents worrying about how they are going to pay for health care — necessary for the most basic freedom, the freedom to live — is not a freedom agenda.
Champions of the neoliberal order, moreover, too often fail to recognize that one person’s freedom is another’s unfreedom — or, as Isaiah Berlin put it, freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep. Freedom to carry a gun may mean death to those who are gunned down in the mass killings that have become an almost daily occurrence in the United States. Freedom not to be vaccinated or wear masks may mean others lose the freedom to live.
There are trade-offs, and trade-offs are the bread and butter of economics. The climate crisis shows that we have not gone far enough in regulating pollution; giving more freedom to corporations to pollute reduces the freedom of the rest of us to live a healthy life — and in the case of those with asthma, even the freedom to live. Freeing bankers from what they claimed to be excessively burdensome regulations put the rest of us at risk of a downturn potentially as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s when the banking system imploded in 2008.
More capitalism to save us from capitalism
Well of course! The only possible discourse we can have about the topic is if we assume capitalism is the best and only political economic model we can have.
The bureaucracy is expanding to deal with the needs of the expanding bureaucracy
I would lay quite good odds most of the problems you’re laying at the feet of capitalism are caused by GOP socialism, like the article’s discussion of when the GOP just handed the banks gobs of tax dollars in welfare.
To be clear, I’m attacking the GOP here, not socialism itself. I’m just also tired of people complaining about capitalism while decrying problems caused by corporate welfare.
Nah, capitalism is my problem, the thing that automatically segues into dystopia
I’m listening to the article now.
TL;DR, the author argues that capitalism went wrong starting with the Reagan administration. Laissez-faire capitalism is clearly a mistake, and they argue that we should push back and establish a more progressive form of capitalism.
As a socialist, I would be thrilled if this became the mainstream view. We need to start taking steps toward a more progressive society. Starting by taxing the rich, getting money out of politics, and stricter regulations on business and wealth.
It’s just kind of a funny thing to say “progressive capitalism”. Capitalism itself is a regressive system… but the ideas presented here are indeed good. I like seeing this in WaPo.
Like the 25% billionaire tax, 21% minimum tax on corporations, increasing stock buyback tax from 1% to 4%, denying corporate deductions for employee compensation that exceeds $1M, and lowering taxes for low and middle class that’s part of Biden’s tax plan?
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2169
It goes into effect when Trump’s tax plan skewed for the wealthy expire at the end of this year. Trump’s tax cuts for low and middle class expired in 2022. Tax plan balance has to be verified as fiscally feasible by the IRS, and Trump’s plan couldn’t afford to continue tax cuts for everyone through 2024, so he kept them for the wealthy and screwed the rest of us.
That is a fantastic start, yes, exactly. I still think we can do better than this, like a 75% billionaire tax, but I’m okay with walking, not running, to the desired goal.
The choices at the polls will take us in two opposite directions. Neither is ideal, but Trump clearly favors billionaires at the expense of the workers.
Trust me, I know. I criticize Biden because unlike Trump, he actually listens to criticism. It’s good advocacy. Of course I will be voting for him, in spite of the genocide he’s enabling.
Agreed. It’s horrible to have to pick the “less genocide supporting” option. I deeply hope the investigations and munitions pause are the beginnings of change.
Idk, “new, progressive capitalism” just sounds like a fancy term for neoliberalism
Exactly. “Capitalism could use a new coat of paint.”
Progressive capitalism? The fuuuu?
No Human Rights, No America
No, Human! Rights: NO! America!
I say to thee, I’m mad as hell, and I can’t take it any more.
We’ve now had four decades of the neoliberal “experiment,” beginning with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The results are clear. Neoliberalism expanded the freedom of corporations and billionaires to do as they will and amass huge fortunes, but it also exacted a steep price: the well-being and freedom of the rest of society.
Friedman and his acolytes failed to understand an essential feature of freedom: that there are two kinds, positive and negative; freedom to do and freedom from harm. “Free markets” alone fail to provide economic stability or security against the economic vagaries they create, let alone allow large fractions of the population to live up to their potential.
The road to authoritarianism is not paved by government doing too much but too little.
We care about freedom from hunger, unemployment and poverty — and, as FDR emphasized, freedom from fear. People with just enough to get by don’t have freedom
A lot of good criticisms in here but not a lot in terms of proposals. The proposals are a little vague.
I could also go for a “no capitalism” approach, but I’ll take what I can get.
Let’s try a new progressive and democratic version of socialism and just see how we like it. Give it a real good try.
Democracy requires Socialism.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Joseph Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University and winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.
His newest book is “The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.”
Amid another election season, our impulse to debate American democracy through a single political lens is understandable.
But we’d be better served considering a second closely related question too: Which economic system serves the most people?
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