The Future of Capitalism

Bill Gates's Five Books for Summer Reading 2019. From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a frank assessment of capitalism's failures and a pragmatic vision for how it can be repaired. Deep fissures are tearing apart the fabric of the US and other Western societies: thriving cities versus rural counties, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these rifts deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that were crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these fractures have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the political instability seen in Trump, Brexit, and the return of the far-right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now.