Saving Capitalism: For The Many, Not The Few

by Robert B. Reich

Many are also struggling with a financial system whose rules are crafted and enforced by the biggest banks on Wall Street, which have grown bigger after the bailout: small-business owners, who are paying substantially higher interest rates on loans, if they can get loans at all; former students buried under student loan debts; homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Others are up against an intellectual property system whose entry barriers are impossibly high: individual inventors trying to bring their ideas to life, lone entrepreneurs trying to start companies, creative artists seeking audiences for their works, consumers merely wanting to share designs or images. Or they are paying through the nose for access to platforms and networks that are costly solely because their corporate owners have created a standard that everyone has to use because so many others are using it—and the corporate owners have been able to hold antitrust enforcers at bay.