It’s pretty typical human behavior for people to try to make sure the rules work to their benefit. That’s why the U.S. is based on the idea of a robust legal system and constraints on the excesses of anybody, especially concentrated wealth. And yet we’re at this moment where concentrated wealth has begun to turn into concentrated power. More than begun. It’s well underway. The thing that makes capitalism capitalism is competition. But as you have more and more corporate agglomerations of power, you’re going to see less and less competition.
I think it’s a vicious cycle. This didn’t just happen. The economy is not some creature that just lumbers along on its own. It’s an interaction between private sector and public sector. And public sector policies, for basically as long as I’ve been alive, have been skewed in a direction that’s increasing inequality.
And a lot of this is the consequence of what you might call the Reagan consensus. There was a period where even Democrats seemed to operate in this framework that assumes that the only thing you’d ever do with a tax is cut it. That those tax cuts were assumed to pay for themselves. The empirical collapse of that supply side consensus, I think, is one of the defining moments of this period that we’re living through.
Sure, it’s lifted so many out of poverty. And by the way, there are ways that it can work for us at home, too. But again, we’re seeing a concentration of wealth and power that skews things in the opposite direction.
The fundamental truth is, it turns out a rising tide does not lift all boats. Not on its own. Especially if some of the boats are sort of tethered to the ocean floor. And that’s the kind of pattern that we’ve been on.
