We need to take a different turn. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet offer splendid examples of great, capitalist fortunes put to social use, making the capitalism they exemplify more palatable. When modern corporations do this, we call it corporate social responsibility. More of this will clearly have to be done.
But we also need to respond to the steady erosion of the American myth of mobility. Today, after nearly a quarter century of wage stagnation, and growing evidence that educational access for the poor has also declined, that myth is in a disastrous decline.
We have to respond by improving education and by relieving anxiety through reforms that make health care part of a basic provision for the poor. These reforms strengthen capitalism. Without them, the economic populists will enjoy a success that they do not deserve.
Jagdish Bhagwati is University Professor and Senior Fellow in International Economics at Columbia University. He is the author of In Defense of Globalization (Oxford, 2004) and Termites in the Trading System: How Preferential Agreements Undermine Free Trade (Oxford, 2009).
Feeble Critiques: Capitalism’s Petty Detractors
Jagdish Bhagwati
Saving Capitalism
We need to take a different turn. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet offer splendid examples of great, capitalist fortunes put to social use, making the capitalism they exemplify more palatable. When modern corporations do this, we call it corporate social responsibility. More of this will clearly have to be done.
But we also need to respond to the steady erosion of the American myth of mobility. Today, after nearly a quarter century of wage stagnation, and growing evidence that educational access for the poor has also declined, that myth is in a disastrous decline.
We have to respond by improving education and by relieving anxiety through reforms that make health care part of a basic provision for the poor. These reforms strengthen capitalism. Without them, the economic populists will enjoy a success that they do not deserve.
Jagdish Bhagwati is University Professor and Senior Fellow in International Economics at Columbia University. He is the author of In Defense of Globalization (Oxford, 2004) and Termites in the Trading System: How Preferential Agreements Undermine Free Trade (Oxford, 2009).
Feeble Critiques: Capitalism’s Petty Detractors
Jagdish Bhagwati