Saving Capitalism: For The Many, Not The Few

by Robert B. Reich

the bottom 90 percent of Americans—regardless of whether they are owners of small businesses or working poor, entrepreneurs or student debtors, small investors or homeowners, white or black or Latino, men or women—have far more in common, economically, than they do with the top executives of large corporations, the Wall Street crowd, or America’s wealthy. The bottom 90 percent are losing ground in large part because of upward pre-distributions embedded inside “free market” rules over which those at the top have great influence. If the smaller players understood this dynamic, presumably they would seek to gain greater influence by allying themselves. This alliance, or set of alliances, would form the new countervailing power.