«Democracy has proven unable to reign in capitalism. China executes or life imprisons billionaires who break the law, we bail them out and immunize them from their crimes by fining their companies, but not them, leaving them still rich.
It all adds up to a horrid indictment of our system, and people are not going to put up with it forever. Liberal capitalism and liberal democracy, and perhaps democracy almost entirely, will be replaced by Party systems throughout the world over the next couple generations, starting, I’d guess, in about 15 years or so.
Failure, greed and incompetence have consequences, and the [sic] democracy will [be] one of the casualties of our elites depravity.»
As someone in my 60s, who was able to, without especially great effort on my part, do reasonably well in my life, it is still shocking to encounter sentiments like this. But I've been reading Welsh's articles for probably a year or more now, and I find I can't dismiss his basic arguments. Will the "death of democracy" come to pass? I don't know and neither does Welsh, but the rise of extreme inequality, the consequent capture of our institutions and governments by the wealthy few, and the collapse of opportunity for those foolish enough not be born when those things were at least less true cannot bode well for our political institutions.