The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
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2NC -- InequalityCap causes systemic inequalities Roger W. Ferguson Jr., 2022 (Ferguson is a Steven A. Tananbaum distinguished fellow for international economics at CFR. He also has a PhD, JD and BA in economics. “Academic Webinar: The Future of Capitalism” Council on Foreign Relations, Feb. 23, 2022. https://www.cfr.org/event/academic-webinar-future-capitalism///MF) Roger W. Ferguson Jr., Steven A. Tananbaum distinguished fellow for international economics at CFR, leads a conversation on the future of capitalism. FASKIANOS: Welcome to today’s Winter/Spring 2022 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We’re delighted to have Roger Ferguson Jr. with us to talk about the future of capitalism. Roger Ferguson is CFR’s Steven A. Tananbaum distinguished fellow for international economics. Previously, he served as president and CEO of TIAA, and before that he was head of financial services for Swiss Re and chairman of Swiss Re America Holding Corporation. He is the former vice chairman of the board of governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, and he currently serves on the board of several corporations and organizations, as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is an advisor with various private fintech companies. So, Dr. Ferguson, thank you very much for being with us today to talk about the future of capitalism, and it is kind of astonishing that we are talking about the future of capitalism. Can you talk about this area and what you see the strengths are and weaknesses as well? FERGUSON: So thank you very much, and I’m going to actually start with a quote. I think this is a quote from 1938 that roughly captures why we are talking about the future of capitalism. So this was from FDR, a famous U.S. president. In 1938, he said, “Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy”—or you might say capitalism—“but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership in government.” Now, that is a strong statement. It is not exactly where we are today. But there are a few points here that are relevant and resonant with where we are today. So the reason that we’re looking at and talking about this question of the future of capitalism is that there are many surveys that suggest that young people, in particular, are not sure that capitalism is the system that they want to use to organize their economic life. We know that capitalism has been very successful in many ways. It has brought, literally, hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people around the world out of abject poverty. It has created some of the most iconic and successful companies that the world has ever known. We’ve seen dramatic transformations in our lives in terms of our ability to do everyday tasks using smart phones, and they’ve only been around twenty years or so. All these things are the outcome of a capitalist system that is very robust, that has created new entities, that has allowed other things to grow—business, et cetera. Having said that, for many people, capitalism is still a bit of an enigma. They look around and they observe, at least here in the United States, that income has been gradually rising and inequality, starting, roughly, in the mid-1970s. They’ve seen very unexpected crises here in the U.S. and in other countries emanating from mysterious and misunderstood financial tools such as subprime mortgages. They see longer-term challenges for many people around health inequities, which became very clear during the COVID-19 crisis that is still with us in some ways. And, obviously, there are for many people, the ongoing challenge of climate change with very extreme weather, and we’ve experienced that as well. And so while capitalism is, I think, really recognized as the organizing force that has brought many people out of poverty, allowed new tools, new capabilities, a very comfortable lifestyle for many, it’s also seen as, perhaps, not doing everything it’s supposed to if you have increasing income inequality, increasing wealth inequality, and you look and see health inequalities and different outcomes, that they guess maybe the system should be somewhat better. The second point I’d make is, for me, it’s really quite ironic because I grew up at a time when there was conflict between capitalism and communism, and then in late 1980s, early 1990s, communism disappeared. The Soviet Union fell apart. And since that time, capitalism is the way that almost all societies have organized themselves. In the United States, we have capitalism that is regulated market capitalism, and Europe tends to be the kind of capitalism that leans a bit more towards social democratic norms. In Japan, there’s a kind of collective capitalism. Even China, sometimes called communist China—when I was growing up called Red China—under Deng Xiaoping. He had this famous phrase, “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches a mouse,” and people took that to be a dramatic move towards a capitalist kind of system, even in communist China. And so capitalism, for a period of time, was and still is the dominant way of organizing all—almost all of the major economies of the world. There are a few outliers. But the major economies have different versions of capitalism. There are five or six versions of capitalism. And now, suddenly, here we are in 2020, 2021, 2022, and we had an election in the United States when some of the candidates were talking about socialism. We see in China a reversion back to some skepticism about the kind of capitalism they had and the great wealth inequality that resulted. We see other surveys that suggest people around the world are less enamored of capitalism. So it would seem to me a very important topic to say, well, what is the future capitalism? The system that was the dominant system in the world for, roughly, thirty years is under question in almost every location and why is that? And so, that is what we’re looking at. Now, I know that we sent out some readings to the individuals who are joining us here—the academics, the students from around the country—and if you look at those readings you’ll see that we don’t really know the answers yet. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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