What Happens When Capitalism Devours a Society? America Does.

How You End Up With a Rich Nation of the Poor, a Powerful Nation of the Powerless, and a Wealthy Nation of Paupers

There are three great lessons from the 20th century which we are only just beginning to learn, in the difficult and tumultuous adolescence of the 21st. The first is that stagnation brings with it authoritarianism, the second that social democracy is the greatest lever of prosperity yet discovered by humankind. In this essay, I want to discuss the third, which is America’s lesson: capitalism will devour a society so completely, so savagely, so relentlessly, so insatiably — that weird, gruesome, seemingly impossible paradoxes result. How do you end up with an affluent nation of the broke, a rich nation of crowdfunding paupers, a powerful nation of the powerless?

Americans are struggling these days, I think, to connect the dots of a strange, bizarre, unfamiliar kind of social collapse. How could the world’s most powerful country end up with an aspiring cartoon dictator for President? Why, in one of the world’s richest countries, did people end up having to choose between medicine or food a roof over their heads? Why do Americans endure mass shootings, at schools and hospitals and bars, day after day? How did all these weird…