Terrible problems afflict Western societies. Productivity growth has slowed to virtually nothing. Decarbonisation will impose massive costs and, however bad the alternatives might be, make everyone poorer. Fiscal situations are out of control. Most institutions have been captured by cultural Marxists, and an establishment formed of bureaucrats, quangocrats, academics and corporate bosses exercises unaccountable and gleefully anti-democratic rule.
Asset-price bubbles have created enormous inequality of wealth unjustified by contributions to productive potential. And sky-high housing prices have alienated the young. Popular support for free markets has collapsed and Big Government is very much in vogue. Capitalism is reviled. But free markets, capitalism and democracy go together. All are in danger. Classical Marxist predictions seem to be coming true, with capitalism said to be about to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
In my book You Always Hurt the One I argue that Western economies have, for a generation or more, indeed been marked by contradictions that have contributed to the series of plagues we can all see. But those contradictions are not inherent in capitalism; instead, they have been introduced, albeit inadvertently, by central banks.
