Maya MacGuineas: Capitalism's Addiction Problem

Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and runs its program Capitalism, Technology, and the Economy. She recently wrote an article for The Atlantic, an excerpt of which is below.

An entire generation is losing faith in American capitalism. Widening inequality and declining mobility have led to an erosion of trust in the system. In a 2018 Gallup survey, only 45 percent of young adults said they supported capitalism. Fifty-one percent supported socialism.

These numbers are stark, and so are the failures that underlie them, but history suggests that the failures can be addressed. Inequality has been high before, and American society found ways to reduce it; opportunity, too, can be widened by smart public choices. Fixing the system will not be easy, but we have the tools we need, if we can find the political will to use them.

Read the entire piece here.