Robert Kuttner - Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?

ALSO BY ROBERT KUTTNER

Debtors Prison:

The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility

A Presidency in Peril:

The Inside Story of Obamas Promise, Wall Streets Power, and the Struggle to Control Our Economic Future

Obamas Challenge:

Americas Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency

The Squandering of America:

How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity

Family Reunion:

Reconnecting Parents and Children in Adulthood (with Sharland Trotter)

Everything for Sale:

The Virtues and Limits of Markets

The End of Laissez-Faire:

National Purpose and the Global Economy after the Cold War

The Life of the Party:

Democratic Prospects in 1988 and Beyond

The Economic Illusion:

False Choices Between Prosperity and Social Justice

Revolt of the Haves:

Tax Rebellions and Hard Times

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Kuttner is cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect magazine, and the Ida and Meyer Kirstein chair at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He was a founder of the Economic Policy Institute, and serves on its executive committee.

Kuttner is the author of eleven books, including the 2008 New York Times best seller Obamas Challenge. His other writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harpers Magazine, New York Review of Books, New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Dissent, New Statesman, Harvard Business Review, Columbia Journalism Review, Political Science Quarterly, and the New York Times Magazine and New York Times Book Review. He has contributed major articles for the New England Journal of Medicine as a national policy correspondent. He is a weekly columnist for HuffPost.

He previously served as a national staff writer on the Washington Post, chief investigator of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, economics editor of New Republic, and was a longtime columnist for Business Week and for the Boston Globe, syndicated by the Washington Post. He is the two-time winner of the Sidney Hillman Journalism Award. He is the recipient of the John Hancock Award for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism, the Jack London Award for Labor Writing, and the Paul G. Hoffman Award of the United Nations Development Program for his lifetime work on economic efficiency and social justice. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, German Marshall Fund Fellow, and John F. Kennedy Fellow.

Educated at Oberlin College, The London School of Economics, and the University of California at Berkeley, Kuttner is the recipient of honorary degrees from Swarthmore College and Oberlin. In addition to Brandeis, he has also taught at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Oregon, Boston University, and Harvards Institute of Politics. He lives in Boston with his wife, Joan Fitzgerald, a professor of public policy at Northeastern. He is the father of two grown children and has six grandchildren.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Kuttner

All rights reserved
First Edition

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Kuttner, Robert, author.
Title: Can democracy survive global capitalism? / by Robert Kuttner.
Description: First Edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017053895 | ISBN 9780393609936 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Economic policy. | Democracy. | Corporate state.
| Taxation.| Globalization.
Classification: LCC HD87 .K88 2018 | DDC 320.9182/1dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017053895

ISBN 978-0-393-60996-7 (e-book)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
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For Gabriel, Jessica, and Shelly

Misery generates hate.

CHARLOTTE BRONT

A polity with extremes of wealth and poverty is a city not of free persons but of slaves and masters, the ones consumed by envy, the others by contempt.

ARISTOTLE

The victory of fascism was made practically unavoidable by the liberals obstruction of any reform involving planning, regulation, or control.

KARL POLANYI

Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travelthese are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be primarily national.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible.

DANI RODRIK

CAN
DEMOCRACY
SURVIVE
GLOBAL
CAPITALISM?

Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your devices search function to locate particular terms in the text.

Acheson, Dean, 50

Adenauer, Konrad, 55

Affluence and Influence (Gilens), 19

Affluent Society, The (Galbraith), 215

Affordable Care Act (2010), 25, 100, 109, 15152, 27879, 281

Africa, 8, 125, 207, 209

African Americans, 8, 910, 3537

Akerlof, George, 102

Alaska Permanent Fund, 302

Amano, Yukiya, 257

Amazon, 226, 278, 301

American Express, 194, 195

American system, 18687, 190

anger, popular, xv, xvii, 25

see also populism, right-wing

anti-Semitism, 277

anti-sweatshop movement, 24648

Appelbaum, Eileen, 111, 112

Apple Computer, 105, 224, 22829, 301

Arendt, Hannah, 263

associations, political, 1618

Attlee, Clement, 7879, 8182, 155, 287

austerity policies, 75, 76, 7778, 83, 141, 154

as EU doctrine, 84, 121, 122, 125, 141, 14344, 145, 14647

Autor, David, 11617, 19293, 205

Bair, Sheila, 171

Bangladesh, 24748

Banking on Basel (Tarullo), 92

bankruptcy, 11011, 144, 288

banks, banking, see finance, private

Bannon, Stephen, xviii, 1314, 280

Barber, Benjamin, xvxvi

Basel Accords, 9294, 196

Batt, Rosemary, 111, 112

Baucus, Max, 293

Bernstein, Jared, 154n, 171

Between the World and Me (Coates), 10

Beveridge, William, 61, 119, 155, 159

Bezos, Jeff, 278, 284

Bill of Rights (British; 1689), 259

Bill of Rights (US), 259

binding treaties, 25455

Bismarck, Otto von, 29

Blair, Tony, xv, 155, 15763, 167, 17073, 171, 173, 176, 233, 249, 307

Blix, Hans, 257

Blumenthal, Sidney, 157

Bocos, Rolando, 305

Bolkestein directive, 128

Born, Brooksley, 86, 171

Bowles-Simpson Commission, 219

Brady, Henry E., 1718

Breitbart News, xviii, 13

Bretton Woods system, xxii, 4448, 50, 51, 57, 60, 6364, 7172, 75, 7980,143, 184, 242, 256, 3078

post-1973 collapse of, 6667, 68, 69, 86, 215

Brexit, xiii, xv, 56, 78, 125, 149, 16162, 307