Notes for Robert Reich Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life


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INTRODUCTION: The Paradox

Role of democracy to determine how slices of economic pie enlarged by capitalism are divided among private and public goods.

(4) Capitalism’s role is to enlarge the economic pie. How the slices are divided and whether they are applied to private goods like personal computers or public goods like clean air is up to society to decide. This is the role we assign to democracy.
(4) Democracy, in my view, is a system for accomplishing what can only be achieved by citizens joining together with other citizens—to determine the rules of the game whose outcomes express the common good.

Inequality has widened while means to temper it have eroded.

(4) As inequality has widened, the means America once used to temper it—progressive income taxes, good public schools, trade unions that bargain for higher wages—have eroded.



Reich, Robert. Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life. New York: Vintage Books, 2007. Print.