By Dan Kervick
In a recent interview in The Straddler, James K. Galbraith discusses some of the points he developed in his recent book, Inequality and Instability. One of the most important of those points is that inequality leads to a stop-and-go crisis economy of credit-fueled asset bubbles. This economy delivers large rewards to a few fortunate predators, but delivers a lot of instability, stagnation and insecurity to the rest of us.
But, Galbraith also makes some striking and important points in the interview about what he sees as mistaken places of emphasis in contemporary progressive political rhetoric. One problem is the tendency to lose sight of the most vital systemic constituents of postwar American middle class prosperity – and also the expectations and aspirations that constituted the middle class outlook. Continue reading
