Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few Hardcover – Deckle Edge, September 29, 2015

The book is extremely rich on both the details of inequality in the USA and the legislative enactments that have made it possible.When it comes to what to do about it, Reich speaks of countervailing power (within a capitalist framework, as the title makes clear). He believes that different enactments could indeed reduce inequality without the need to get into left-right arguments about the appropriate size of government or even any debate about a possible shift towards socialism. For example, he says in Chapter 17 ('The Threat to Capitalism') that 'Americans have always tended to choose pragmatism over ideology'... {that} whenever capitalism has before reached points of crisis, we have not opted for communism or fascism or any other grand scheme. Again and again we have saved capitalism from its own excesses by making necessary corrections'.For a book published in 2015, Chapter 19 ('Restoring Countervailing Power') is very percipient, reading ahead of time the populism that propelled Trump to the Presidency in 2016. He is clear that the countervailing power will not come from the Democratic Party until it re-invents itself, reminding us that during the election campaign big business very much favoured Clinton over the anti-establishment stance of most Republican front-runners (including Trump of course).Whether the protests that started the day after Trump's inauguration signal the new beginnings of an effective countervailing power remain to be seen. Quite appropriately, those protests were triggered by Trump's misogynist views. But will these and future broader-based protests be enough to push capitalism back into (???) a progressive populist direction? Or will the clash lead to a bigger government role and an adoption of socialist practice that Reich seems to believe could not be democratic (for reasons that he does not discuss in this book despite his strong support for Bernie Sanders)?Reich provides us a wealth of invaluable information but doesn't help us to identify the (within capitalism) that will change the thirty-year drift towards ever greater inequality and now with Trump, the rush towards fascism.

Excellent read! It's a must if you want to understand the causes of rising inequality... In my opinion robots (the rise of the robots by Martin Ford is another must read) are certainly part of the cause, but an important cause is democracy, and balance of power. It boils down to democracy, and the lack of it! Inequality of income is caused by inequality in political power.This book points out that it's not about "big government" versus "Free market"...There is no such a thing as free market, the market is ruled by laws, the "rules of the game", and laws must exist for the market to work. But the rules of the game today are written in such a way that they create an "upward predistribution", from the poor to the rich. They are making the rich richer at the disadvantage of the poor. Taxes should re-balance things by distributing downward, but not enough!The very basic principle of democracy is that every citizen of the US should have equal political representation regardless of their economic power. The Walmart employee should have the same political power as the Walmart CEO. And that is true when it comes to voting right: they both get one vote. But we know very well that as a practical matter it's not! And this books shows in how many ways that is not true. The vote is a tiny representation of power. Washington lobby money is what really matters when it comes to power.I like this number: the Walmart family is worth as much as the bottom 42% of Americans! That's an enormous unbalance of wealth. Now 51% of the bottom poorest Americans, in theory, in a democracy, is a majority. 51% of people, if they happen to get together and agree, could represent a majority and they could pass any proposition into law, yes that's power! In theory that 51% of Americans could pass a law that for example would redistribute 90% of the money from the top 1% wealthiest Americans to the bottom 51% of Americans.That's easy! I know that's just theoretical, but it's a sign that some sort of civil revolution, more or less aggressive and violent, could happen very soon, if things keep going in the same direction.