What Went Wrong with Capitalism

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Title: What Went Wrong with Capitalism
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Release Date: June 11, 2024
Pages: 384
ISBN13: 9781668008263

 
Overview

A century of expanding government has distorted financial markets, stoked massive inequality, and soaked America in debt.

Capitalism didn’t fail, it was ruined...

What went wrong with capitalism? Ruchir Sharma’s account is not like any you will have heard before. He says progressives are right, in part, when they mock modern capitalism as “socialism for the rich.” For a century, governments have expanded in just about every measurable dimension, from spending to regulation and the scale of financial rescues when the economy wobbles. The result is expensive state guarantees for everyone—bailouts for the rich, entitlements for the middle class, welfare for the poor.

Taking you back to the 19th century, Sharma shows how completely the reflexes of government have changed: from hands-off to hands-on, from doing too little to help anyone in hard times to today trying to prevent anyone suffering any economic pain, ever. Trading sins of omission and indifference for excesses of spending and meddling, governments from the United States to Europe and Japan have pumped so much money into their economies that financial markets can no longer invest all that capital efficiently.

Inadvertently, they have fueled the rise of monopolies, “zombie” firms, and billionaires. They have made capitalism less fair and less efficient, which is slowing economic growth and fueling popular anger. The first step to a cure is a correct diagnose of the problem. Capitalism has been badly distorted by constant government intervention and the relentless spread of a bailout culture. Building an even bigger state will only double down on what ruined capitalism in the first place.

Reviews

“Ruchir Sharma is unparalleled! He uses a wealth of facts, data, and history to put forward brilliant, thought-provoking commentary.”
—Fareed Zakaria, CNN host

“This book will reshape how you think about the world. It is bound to provoke people on both the left and the right.”
—Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury

“Ruchir Sharma stands apart because he is not ideologically driven. This fresh and accessible analysis of the issues confronting capitalism should be read by all sides.”
—Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury and chairman of Citigroup

“A blunt broadside against the welfare state of finance. It will make the right kind of enemies.”
—James Grant, founder and editor, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer

“In his timely and consequential book, Ruchir Sharma chronicles the government bailouts, interventions, and machinations that have brought America to this hinge point in history. His message to policymakers: Try capitalism, the real kind.”
—Kevin Warsh, former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors

“I was delighted to read Ruchir Sharma’s What Went Wrong With Capitalism. A plea for fiscal sanity, for true competition, and against crony capitalism, it is exactly the message our world needs to hear. I am not sure there will be a more correct book this year.”
—Tyler Cowen, the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog

“At a moment at which democracy and free markets are under intense challenge all over the world, we are lucky that the brilliant and incomparable Ruchir Sharma has brought us a characteristically original and provocative book that tells us how to understand the ways that capitalism is falling badly short. Everyone should read, absorb and debate Sharma’s wise arguments.”
—Michael Beschloss, historian and author of the New York Times’s bestsellers Presidents of War and Presidential Courage