The ‘crisis of capitalism’ is not the one Europeans think it is | Branko Milanović

It may feel like capitalism isn't working because western wages should be higher. But really it has a vice-like grip

An avalanche of recent books and articles about the "crisis of capitalism" is predicting its demise or di(C)passement. For those who remember the 1990s, there is a strange similarity between this and the literature of the time, which argued that the Hegelian "end of history" had arrived. That theory was proved to be wrong. The former, I believe, is also factually wrong and misdiagnoses the problem.

The facts show capitalism to be not in crisis at all. It is stronger than ever, both in terms of its geographical coverage and expansion to areas (such as leisure time, or social media) where it has created entirely new markets and commodified things that were never historically objects of transaction.

While politics as entrepreneurship was often seen to afflict only less developed countries, it has now spread to Europe

Related: The WeWork debacle should be an indictment of modern finance | Nesrine Malik