Supply-side trickle-down economics — also known as neoliberalism — has failed to deliver prosperity for western workers.
Instead, the western middle class is angry. Free market ideology has driven a rabid nationalism that threatens to plunge the world into the type of crisis last seen before World War II, which ended in the deaths of more than 50 million people.
Nobel laureate and economist Dr. Joseph Stiglitz has asserted that a new economic and social thinking can save the day. And at the heart is a return to a more equitable economic model driven by public spending and big government.
The progressive capitalism is advocated by Dr. Stiglitz to bring the world back from the brink. It is a hearkening back to the 1960s and 70s and the era of John Maynard Keynes and his stimulus economic model.
Progressive capitalism sees the consumer as the most important factor in social and economic prosperity. What is good for the least of the population is good for the society as a whole.
Progressive capitalism drives human welfare through scientific inquiry. Science has as its core purpose the common good. The function of the market is simply to facilitate society and not become an end in itself.
The progressive capitalism model drives prosperity through equity and rule of law, whereas the free market neoliberalism that has held sway for more than 40 years views non-intervention in the market as the panacea for economic growth.
However, neoliberalism has brought the world today to the edge of the social and political precipice through the massive wealth inequality it has generated, with 0.001 percent of the world’s population owning half of global wealth.