Broken Capitalism: This Is How We Fix It

We live in a time of great economic inequality. The wealthiest Americans own a disproportionate amount of the country’s money, even taking into account that they are indeed the richest and, logically, have the most. Is this necessarily the end result of our capitalistic society? Have the golden days of America run their course? Is our country entering its final decline?

Not necessarily.

These words of hope come from Ferris Eanfar, a man whose life has given him more than enough experience to know what he’s talking about. He has lived on both sides of the economic divide and has seen the legal measures that caused the divide to become so sharp when it was once far more reasonable. In his book Broken Capitalism, he illustrates those measures and shows exactly how our economic system came to be so broken, but he also explains how to fix it.

You may say that “not necessarily” are not exactly words that would inspire hope, and you would be right. This is not exactly a hopeful book. The first half, after all, is an explanation of how everything in America has gone wrong, and it’s pretty bleak stuff. (Pretty challenging, too, at points.) It does seem as though the only solution is to just scrap the whole plan and start over, if not from scratch, then at least with a sobering reminder of just how bad we let things get and that we must never let it get that bad again. Eanfar uses the second half of the book to insist that all is not lost, however. There are ways to fix capitalism, and it is imperative that we take action.

I found this book compelling, although I will admit that I had two major qualms about it. The first I have already mentioned: the initial half of the book is pretty challenging. While I wasn’t entirely lost and will freely admit that I am perhaps the ultimate layperson when it comes to economics, I would advise you to have Wikipedia handy just in case a term comes up that you aren’t familiar with or Eanfar brings up something you were too young to pay attention to. It’ll make that first part easier reading. The second qualm I had regards his suggestions about the minimum wage and how that would be set up in his ideal economy. This, however, is simply a danger in writing a book about any hot-button issue, of which the minimum wage is certainly one: people will disagree with you. I would not advise any readers to take this book as a perfect picture of what the future will or even should be, but I do think it is important for opening a dialogue, and that is why I would recommend it so highly.