Plan
By James K. Galbraith
Can Capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.
—Joseph Schumpeter, 1942
James K. Galbraith is the author of The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. This article is his contribution to the How to Save Capitalism Forum that appears in the November 2008 Harper’s Magazine.
The problem is not how to save capitalism but how to save the unique and successful mixed economy built in the United States over the eighty-five years since the New Deal. Our system is not capitalism. Our economy has a large public sector, which at its best was competently concerned with research, defense, financial stability, environmental safety, social security, and large measures of education, health care, and housing. Today, after thirty years of attack on government, all these functions are damaged and in peril.
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/11/0082254