Giridharadas Attacks Ronald Reagan’s ‘Fourth Reich Tax Cuts’

EXCERPT:

GIRDHARADAS: “For 40 years there's been an ideology that we have been fed in this country that was maybe originally on the right, but frankly infected the left half of this country and its political elites, which was essentially that markets are where the action is now, markets of where change is made now. Business is where the drama is at. Business is how you make the world better. You see that in Ronald Reagan’s Fourth Reich tax cuts deregulation, but you also see it when Bill Clinton says the era of big government is over, as a Democrat, traditional workers party, cuts welfare and those kinds of things. That consensus has been strong and it has affected every aspect of our culture. When I go to campuses, you ask young people, 21, 22, deciding what to do with their lives, so many of them who want to change the world, make a difference, fight for social justice, inspired by some of the issues you just raised, what are they going to do? 'I am going to start an app in Silicon Valley to enhance justice. I am going to work at JP Morgan for three years so I can make spreadsheets to help people in Africa.' They never end up making it to Africa, they always stay at JP Morgan. And what I think is ending therefore, it is not just about the Mueller investigation and Trump sputtering out. I sometimes feel like this entire pretension of rich people to be able to make things better simply by being rich and swerving into everybody’s else's lane and deciding what public school should be like and health should be like, I feel like that whole thing is crashing.”