If you haven’t read Paul Krugman’s column today, why not? I really don’t think I need to remind you do so. In Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity, Krugman takes the Mann-Ornstein theory which we have discussed here and here and takes it one step further – to income inequality.
For the past century, political polarization has closely tracked income inequality, and there’s every reason to believe that the relationship is causal. Specifically, money buys power, and the increasing wealth of a tiny minority has effectively bought the allegiance of one of our two major political parties, in the process destroying any prospect for cooperation.
And the takeover of half our political spectrum by the 0.01 percent is, I’d argue, also responsible for the degradation of our economic discourse, which has made any sensible discussion of what we should be doing impossible.