America Is Rich Enough To Make Every American a Winner

The U.S. economic system is a hellish Squid Game — why do we keep playing?

Why are more Americans watching a South Korean TV series than any other show on Netflix, a series that looks to become the most popular show on Netflix ever?

Maybe because “Squid Game,” a fable of cruel hyper-capitalist brutality and selfishness, strikes a chord in our own hyper-capitalist country of extreme economic inequality and insecurity — extreme compared to the rest of the rich world (including South Korea) and extreme compared to our system when I was young, before it got reengineered to let the rich and powerful get much, much richer and more powerful.

Between the end of World War II and 1980, U.S. economic output, our GDP per person, doubled — and as it did, the incomes of American families at every level doubled too, because the New Deal (progressive tax code, empowered unions, overtime pay, minimum wage, Social Security) had just made our system a lot more fair and decent.

Since 1980, our GDP per person doubled again — but this time, as a result of radical policy changes, only the incomes of the rich doubled (and for the very rich, tripled and quadrupled), while the median household income grew by barely a third, a fraction of one percent…