Without a dramatic change of course, America is well down the road to blowing apart, according to NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He describes a time-worn path that no longer works when we need it most; one that could lead away from the brink of mayhem by extending economic and social mobility through supporting diversity […]
Read More
Adam Smith was a moral philosopher. Two centuries ago he asked and answered questions about “right action;” about how moral individuals ought to act and what moral societies ought to do. Mick Mulvaney? Well, he’s a Republican politician who represented South Carolina in Congress, then served in Donald Trump’s cabinet and as acting Chief of […]
Read More
What’s the link between Utah and capitalismincrisis.org? I’ll explain. Consider a sign posted on the Boston Common, put there to dissuade messy picnickers five decades ago. Don’t Litter or We’ll Send You to Utah, it threatened humorously. It’s an illustration of why for some, Utah was and perhaps still is, a four-letter word. (Some consider […]
Read More
Was I a stupid kid or what? Sometimes I wonder. I think of myself then as a responsible kid who usually did the right thing. But I remember being conflicted by the usual adolescent urges when I was 16. An attractive Payson High School coed yelled “Don’t Look!” as she burst into the only available […]
Read More
The Great Recession has also become the Great Divider, not unlike the Civil War. Now as then, America’s new great divide splits along a fault line pitting big losers against big winners, politically and economically. Such is the root cause of America’s cultural warfare. Tragically, many who call themselves winners are what capitalismincrisis.org names as […]
Read More
By The Editorial Board The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom. The Crisis of the Republican Party The G.O.P. will not be able to postpone a reckoning on Donald Trump’s presidency for much longer. In the summer of […]
Read More
They’re protected by God and Guns. See what Blues need to know about the Republican “base” in Donald Trump’s world. Check out this plaintive, reactionary message from Christian country singer Josh Thompson. Economic numbers speak for themselves. In ex-urban and rural congressional districts, workers are older, whiter, less educated and more male than in Blue […]
Read More
According to political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, for a political party to accept losing and continue to support America’s political system as-is in the face of uncertainty about the party’s future, two conditions must hold. One, its supporters must feel secure about losing today; that ruinous consequences will not be unleashed tomorrow; and […]
Read More
Republicans fear by sticking to conventional political rules, they’ll lose even more. Economically, they’ve already lost much. According to Levitsky and Ziblatt, authors of Why Democracies Die, this sort of “do or die” strategy is a threat to democratic stability. How so? Economics provides the underlying clue. Their congressional voting districts, rural and ex-urban, are […]
Read More
The Great Recession defined a tipping point, politically and economically. Brookings notes that between 2008 and 2018, the economic performance of congressional districts labeled “Blue” diverged at a breathtaking pace from those labeled “Red,” given America’s fast-paced “winner-take-most” society. Intuitively, one expects economic scarcity to drive working-class voters in the direction of social and economic […]
Read More