{"id":243569,"date":"2023-09-04T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=243569"},"modified":"2023-09-03T10:20:59","modified_gmt":"2023-09-03T09:20:59","slug":"inequality-and-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/09\/inequality-and-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Inequality and Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

31 Aug 2023 – With the right political reforms, democracies can become more inclusive, more responsive to citizens, and less responsive to the corporations and rich individuals who currently hold the purse strings. But salvaging democratic politics also will require far-reaching economic reforms.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Project Syndicate<\/p><\/div>\n

There has been much handwringing about the retreat of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism in recent years \u2013 and for good reason. From Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n to former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and former US President Donald Trump, we have a growing list of authoritarians and would-be autocrats who channel a curious form of right-wing populism. Though they promise to protect ordinary citizens and preserve longstanding national values, they pursue policies that protect the powerful and trash longstanding norms \u2013 and leave the rest of us trying to explain their appeal.<\/p>\n

While there are many explanations, one that stands out is the growth of inequality, a problem stemming from modern neoliberal capitalism, which can also be linked in many ways to the erosion of democracy. Economic inequality inevitably leads to political inequality, albeit to varying degrees across countries. In a country like the United States, which has virtually no constraints on campaign contributions, \u201cone person, one vote\u201d has morphed into \u201cone dollar, one vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

This political inequality is self-reinforcing, leading to policies that further entrench economic inequality. Tax policies favor the rich, the education system favors the already privileged, and inadequately designed and enforced antitrust regulation tends to give corporations free rein to amass and exploit market power. Moreover, since the media is dominated by private companies owned by plutocrats like Rupert Murdoch, much of the mainstream discourse tends to entrench the same trends. News consumers thus have long been told that taxing the rich harms economic growth, that inheritance taxes are levies on death, and so forth.<\/p>\n

More recently, traditional media controlled by the super-rich have been joined by social-media companies controlled by the super-rich, except that the latter are even less constrained in spreading misinformation. Thanks to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, US-based companies cannot be held liable for third-party content hosted on their platforms \u2013 or for most of the other social harms they cause (not least to teenage girls<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In this context of capitalism without accountability, should we be surprised that so many people view the growing concentration of wealth with suspicion, or that they believe the system is rigged? The pervasive feeling that democracy has delivered unfair outcomes has undermined confidence in democracy and led some to conclude that alternative systems might produce better results.<\/p>\n

This is an old debate. Seventy-five years ago, many wondered whether democracies could grow as fast as authoritarian regimes. Now, many are asking the same question about which system \u201cdelivers\u201d greater fairness. Yet this debate is unfolding in a world where the very wealthy have the tools to shape national and global thinking, sometimes with outright lies (\u201cThe election was stolen!\u201d \u201cThe voting machines were rigged!\u201d \u2013 a falsehood that cost Fox News $787 million<\/a>).<\/p>\n

One of the results has been deepening polarization, which hampers the functioning of democracy \u2013 especially in countries like the US, with its winner-take-all elections. By the time Trump was elected in 2016 with a minority of the popular vote, American politics, which once favored problem-solving through compromise, had become a bald-faced partisan power struggle, a wrestling match where at least one side seems to believe there should be no rules.<\/p>\n

When polarization becomes so excessive, it will often seem as though the stakes are too high to concede anything. Rather than looking for common ground, those in power will use the means at their disposal to entrench their own positions \u2013 as the Republicans have done openly through gerrymandering and measures to suppress voter turnout.<\/p>\n

Democracies work best when the perceived stakes are neither too low nor too high (if they are too low, people will feel little need to participate in the democratic process at all). There are design choices that democracies can make to improve the chances of hitting this happy medium. Parliamentary systems, for example, encourage coalition building and often give power to centrists, rather than extremists. Mandatory and ranked-choice voting also have been shown to help in this respect, as does the presence of a committed, protected civil service.<\/p>\n

The US has long held itself up as a democratic beacon. Though there has always been hypocrisy \u2013 from Ronald Reagan cozying up to Augusto Pinochet, to Joe Biden failing to distance himself from Saudi Arabia or denounce the anti-Muslim bigotry of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s government \u2013 America at least embodied a shared set of political values.<\/p>\n

But now, economic and political inequality have grown so extreme that many are rejecting democracy. This is fertile ground for authoritarianism, especially for the kind of right-wing populism that Trump, Bolsonaro, and the rest represent. But such leaders have shown that they have none of the answers that discontented voters are seeking. On the contrary, the policies they enact when given power only make matters worse.<\/p>\n

Rather than looking elsewhere for alternatives, we need to look inward, at our own system. With the right reforms, democracies can become more inclusive, more responsive to citizens, and less responsive to the corporations and rich individuals who currently hold the purse strings. But salvaging our politics also will require equally dramatic economic reforms. We can begin to enhance the well-being of all citizens fairly \u2013 and take the wind out of populists\u2019 sails \u2013 only when we leave neoliberal capitalism behind and do a much better job at creating the shared prosperity that we acclaim.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls “free market fundamentalists”), and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Stiglitz is the author of <\/em>The Price of Inequality and <\/em>most recently of<\/em> People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – project-syndicate.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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