“Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?” is a new book by Robert Kuttner, a journalist, writer, co-founder and current co-editor of The American Prospect, and one of five 1986 co-founders of the Economic Policy Institute.
Kuttner joined with New Yorker financial writer John Cassidy to discuss how global capitalism is responsible for the harm to workers’ prospects in the past few decades, rather than the usual suspects of trade, immigration and technological change - and how the backlash against the results is destroying democracy. To reverse this cycle, Kuttner argues for more democracy and less capitalism.
By limiting workers’ rights, liberating bankers, allowing corporations to evade taxation, and preventing nations from ensuring economic security, raw capitalism strikes at the very foundation of a healthy democracy. Kuttner’s book outlines how a progressive economic politics and program can repair democracy and fill this vacuum.
“Kuttner brilliantly brings together two strands of thought: explaining both the economics and politics of global capitalism and how our society has abandoned core principles of fairness and equality. The rise of inequality helped pave the way for Donald Trump—a figure out of step with basic American values. Kuttner reminds us of the urgency with which we need to get back to a more just society.” -- Joseph E. Stiglitz
The event was sponsored by The New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA) with special thanks to Demos, W.W. Norton and Co., Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Russell Sage for their support.
