The Real Villain Behind Our New Gilded Age
*In the past two decades, growth rates in the United States have fallen to half of what they were in the middle of the 20th century. The share of income accruing to the top 1 percent has nearly doubled since the 1970s, while the share of income going to all workers has fallen by nearly 10 percent.
These are the marks of our new Gilded Age. It’s tempting to blame impersonal market forces such as globalization and automation for widening inequality. But the true villain would be familiar to anyone who lived through the previous one: market (that is, monopoly) power. . .
The era of “supply-side economics” championed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher — which called for tax cuts, deregulation and narrow antitrust enforcement — explains a lot of our current predicament. The key assumption of that era was that markets work best when the government focuses exclusively on enforcing contract and property rights.
This theory turned out to be wrong — not because it celebrates the market but because it misunderstands it. Two centuries earlier, Adam Smith pointed out that the easiest way for businesses to earn profits is not by slashing costs and innovating but by agreeing among themselves not to compete — to exert market power to raise prices or lower wages.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/opinion/monopoly-power-new-gilded-age.html?
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Reagan was the beginning of the policies that started destroying the middle class and moving the country’s wealth to the top few. I remember that presidency well, and I still have a book that I should probably reread (as if I don’t have enough to make me angry these days 😠
, The Politics of Rich and Poor, Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath, by Kevin Phillips and published in 1990. Reagan did a lot of damage, especially to the poor, and subsequent Republican presidents have kept up the onslaught. I’ve always thought Reagan was a closet racist, but Nixon carried racist policies even further with the Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs. Every Republican presidential candidate to date has carried the Reagan torch and pushed the same old disasterous economic policies. But so far Republicans have won the social/culture war. That’s what keeps getting them elected.
