San Souci
Diamond Member
- Feb 4, 2020
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Clue--the USA was NEVER a Democracy. It is a Representative Republic.https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/fil...-_is_capitalism_compatible_with_democracy.pdf
"Capitalism and democracy follow different logics: unequally distributed property rights on the one hand, equal civic and political rights on the other; profit oriented trade within capitalism in contrast to the search for the common good within democracy; debate, compromise and majority decision-making within democratic politics versus hierarchical decision-making by managers and capital owners.
"Capitalism is not democratic, democracy not capitalist.
"During the first postwar decades, tensions between the two were moderated through the socio-political embedding of capitalism by an interventionist tax and welfare state.
"Yet, the financialization of capitalism since the 1980s has broken the precarious capitalist-democratic compromise."
Reagan's tax cuts facilitated low interest rates and financial bubbles to promote US financial expansion by making real estate speculation and junk-bond corporate takeovers effectively exempt from income taxation.
This set in motion a chain-reaction of asset price inflation that is still polarizing this economy today.
The primary mode of accumulation has become financial, enabling investment bankers to replace government planners.