Capitalism And Democracy Are Ending- Says the Economist Who Foresaw Brexit and Trump's Rise Decades Ago

Capitalism and Western democracy are nearing their last days, and the next few decades will be marked by great uncertainty. The gloom-and-doom forecast is hard to dismiss because it comes from German economist Wolfgang Streeck who foresaw other cataclysmic, world-shaping events decades ago, at a time when nobody was inclined to listen.

Among the game-changers he saw was the gradual breakup of member nations like the United Kingdom from the European Union, and the rise to power of popular demagogues or authoritarian leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The Guardian says that Streeck is in the news again because of two things.

First, his latest book is out on the shelves, brick-and-mortar or online. Appropriately titled 'How Will Capitalism End?', it heralds the coming of a new 'dark ages' which will show the ordinary man on the street that capitalism can no longer work. One might as well anticipate mass protests that make the recent taking of Wall Street look like a school picnic.

The second reason is that his warnings of long ago are being remembered, in light of the declaration of the Bank of International Settlements that the global economy would find it difficult to return to a position of growth and sustainability. The Bank of International Settlements is the international central bank that communicates with all the central banks all over the world.

Back in 2015, Streeck anticipated that the global elite or the so-called one percent (1%) will continue to amass riches for themselves and widen the divide between the wealthy, the middle-class, and the struggling poor. Discontent will fester among the masses who will look to populist leaders who will promise to guarantee their security. A citizenry who becomes resentful of their affluent brothers will want to be protected against threats like immigrants who might take their jobs away. As the Guardian puts it, their choice will be a government that looks 'less Hillary than Donald.'

Can anything be done to stop the dawn of new dark ages? In his interview with Truth Out, Streeck gives a list of the factors that are unleashing the worst effects of capitalism on the common man. Among them are '...the privatization of public services ... the under-taxation of the rich ... distortion of the public discourse by oligopolistic, profit-oriented media concerns ... [and] private ownership of social infrastructures by global corporations like Facebook and Google..."

Removing them just might level the economic playing field for everyone. And that might take a very long time.