Old Socialist comments.

Headline: The Power of American Capitalism

The window dressing of this essay/propaganda is of interest

Pay attention to the Framing. Mr. Brooks shamelessly appropriates Mark Twain.

The mighty Mississippi rolls on.

The mighty rolling river sweeps up new generations.The mighty rolling river sweeps up new generations.

But American capitalism rolls on.

Here is a sample of the Brooks’ argument:

The mighty Mississippi rolls on. If you don’t live near it, you might never think of that wide, powerful river. You may associate it with old Mark Twain stories. But every day, 24/7, it rolls on.

American capitalism is kind of like that. You can invent fables about how America is in economic decline. You can rail against “neoliberalism.” But the American economy doesn’t care. It just keeps rolling on.

The Economist magazine published a report on American economic performance over the last three decades. Using an avalanche of evidence and data, the main thrust of the article is that far from declining, American capitalism is dominant and accelerating.

Back in 1990, for example, America’s gross domestic product per capita was nearly neck and neck with that of Europe and Japan. But by 2022 the U.S. had raced ahead

…

Brooks is a modern day Babbitt. Should The Reader even be surprised? at who the villain is, in this would be polemic?

In 2013, Thomas Piketty published a much discussed book called “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” arguing that widening inequality is an inherent feature of modern capitalism. The problem is that right around the publication of his book, inequality stopped widening, the economist Noah Smith notes, and it now appears to be slightly decreasing.

The American model of capitalism is under assault from the left, which rails against the supposed horrors of neoliberalism and globalization, and from Tucker Carlson-style populists, who often treat American capitalism as a great betrayal. But it has proved superior to all real world alternatives.

In fact, I’m kind of amazed. We’ve lived through a wretched political era. The social fabric is fraying in a thousand ways. But American capitalism rolls on.

Bloomberg offers some Sobering News:

Old Socialist