Book Review: People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Here is government policy ready-made for implementation. Through solid argument and historical example, Joseph E. Stiglitz demonstrates that the solution is Keynesian—government unapologetically has an indispensable role in the well-being of everyone, including the rich in a fair relationship.
Stiglitz shreds the tired old demagogy of free market ideology (both intellectual and popular), with articulate and well researched refutation of its failed trickle-down theory and conservative folklore about freeloaders. Here you will find effective detox from the Chicago school of economics supply side snake oil that has been artificially injected into policy and public opinion for the past 40 years—the author offers a well deserved shout out to Nancy MacLean for her book, “Democracy in Chains” (an insightful work that has struck a nerve about the deliberate suppression of public will, and about which there has been a telling amount of gaslighting from the libertarian right wing).
Government, democracy, and public opinion must be freed from their current capture by wealthy corporate forces in finance and other sectors. This will be difficult to achieve, but it is possible with sufficient public awareness and pressure.
Along with protecting people from economic fluctuations outside of their control, the economy will grow only when extractive practices that merely transfer wealth from poor to rich cease to operate. That means minimizing the current regime of rent seeking in financial markets and elsewhere, and incentivizing technological innovations that create true wealth—this is not happening under the dominant religion of short term profits and grossly distorted patent system.
This book addresses technical economic issues, but it is easily followed by those without training in economics. The unfair rigging of past and current economic policy is depressing. But the realism of the solutions proposed in this book are cause for hope—let’s make it happen.
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