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Staring down a big shelf of big Trump books, Im beginning to wonder if when it comes to helping us understand the full import of what happened during his four years in the White House less may very well be more. The 400-page catalogs of ruthless betrayals, nasty insults and erratic tweets add to our store of knowledge mainly by compounding whats already there; a slender volume of political theory, on the other hand, can prompt us to rethink our assumptions, raising central questions that we never properly asked before.

Thats only when its done right which Democracy Rules, a lively new book by Jan-Werner Mller, generally is. Mller teaches at Princeton, and is the author of a number of books about political ideas, including What Is Populism?, which happened to be published in the fall of 2016, three months after the referendum on Brexit and two months before the election of Donald Trump.

Populists, Mller argues in that book as well as this one, like to present themselves as champions of democracy, but their notion of the people is cramped and exclusionary; critics, political rivals and immigrants are banished to a realm beyond the circle of concern.

It should be said that Mllers concept of populism as something thats inherently opposed to pluralism and ultimately democracy is pejorative and not uncontroversial, especially among those on the left who want to reclaim the word. But his definition also offers the benefit of a clarifying specificity. Viktor Orban of Hungary, Narendra Modi of India and Nicols Maduro of Venezuela are all populists in Mllers cosmology; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are decidedly not.

Mller begins by acknowledging the widespread fear that democracy is in crisis before pointing out that few people who arent political philosophers have given any sustained thought to what democracy actually is. He doesnt want us to fixate so much on democratic norms those informal rules that beguile and bedevil political scientists as he wants to talk about the democratic principles that animate those norms in the first place.

In other words, if were fretting about the degradation of democracy, what exactly is it that we think were in danger of losing?

Mller says that losing is, in fact, a central part of it: In addition to the more familiar principles of liberty and equality, he encourages us to see uncertainty including the possibility that an incumbent may lose as essential to any truly democratic system. Winners cannot be enshrined, and losers cannot be destroyed. When the libertarian venture capitalist (and Trump supporter) Peter Thiel praised monopolies by declaring that competition is for losers, Mller says that Thiel was inadvertently right. Its the kind of sly reversal that Mller clearly delights in; this is one of those rare books about a pressing subject that reads less like a forced march than an inviting stroll.

Preserving uncertainty means that democracy is inherently dynamic and fluid. Individuals remain at liberty to decide what matters to them most, Mller writes, but holding onto democratic commitments also means that freedom has to be contained by what he identifies as two hard borders. People cannot undermine the political standing of their fellow citizens (the growing spate of voting restrictions is a glaring case in point); and people cannot refuse to be constrained by what we can plausibly call facts.

Mller takes care to situate the United States in an international context, using examples from other countries to illuminating effect. Right-wing populists like to rail against neoliberalism, but Orban has been so accommodating of the German car industry clamping down on unions and protests as zealously as any neoliberal shill that critics have started calling Hungary an Audi-cracy. Political parties are an essential part of democratic infrastructure, but parties that are too homogeneous and intolerant of dissent are themselves problematic. Geert Wilderss far-right party in the Netherlands contains a total of two members: Geert Wilders, along with a foundation whose only member happens to be Geert Wilders. What Mller calls intraparty autocracy tends to be a red flag, signaling a profound aversion to the idea that the other side could possibly be right, for no other side is admitted to begin with.

Writing about political institutions in a way that makes them sound vital is a challenge for any writer, and Mllers method is to leaven abstract ideas with concrete examples of bad behavior even if, as he himself says early on, we have a tendency to get caught up in outrageous stories about individuals instead of training our gaze on the less spectacular mechanisms of the system itself.

One of the hallmarks of the Trump years was that the president constantly said things that were startlingly bizarre or blatantly untrue flooding the zone with what Mller (in a polite paraphrase of Steve Bannon) calls info-feces. The incessant clowning made it increasingly hard to draw distinctions between antics that were merely ludicrous and antics that were truly sinister; telling Americans they might consider injecting disinfectant into their veins may have caused terrible harm, but unlike the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, lying about Lysol, Mller writes, wasnt about to kill the system.

Democracy Rules is hopeful, though its author cautions that hes not particularly optimistic. Optimism is about a constellation of probabilities; hope entails active effort. This is a book that encourages thinking, observation and discernment as a prelude to action; Mller, who says that democracy is based on the notion that no one is politically irredeemable and that anyone can change their mind, holds out the possibility of persuasion.

But if this notion is what makes democracy such an appealing idea in theory, its also what makes it so difficult to sustain in practice especially if theres a motivated cohort that doesnt care about Mllers hard border of facts. He points to the right-wing media ecosystem that offered an alternative reality of the 2020 election, in which it was simply unthinkable that Donald Trump hadnt won. At least some of the people who voted for Trump in 2020 hadnt voted for him four years before. Persuasion, like uncertainty, can go any which way.

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Democracy Is for Losers (and Why Thats a Good Thing) - The New York Times

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state of Arizona had the right to adopt laws, disqualifying votes cast in the wrong precinct and prohibiting organizations from bringing ballots from voters to polling places, that were transparently designed to place hurdles in the path of Democrats seeking to vote. Since most of the United States Republican-dominated states have already passed or are now seeking to pass similar or yet more restrictive rules, the United States may soon become the worlds only established democracy where members of one party have managed to make it much harder for members of the other party to cast a ballot. Republicans do not want democracy to operate; its possible theyll succeed.

When it comes to electoral rules, the United States is an outlier among democracies. Freedom House ranks countries on a scale of 1 to 4 on three electoral metrics: whether elections for heads of state are free and fair, whether legislative elections are free and fair, and whether electoral laws are fairly and impartially administered. Almost all major democracies, and many minor oneslike Jamaica and Romaniaget a perfect 12. The United States gets a 10, which puts it in company with Poland, a country that barely qualifies as democratic at all.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state of Arizona had the right to adopt laws, disqualifying votes cast in the wrong precinct and prohibiting organizations from bringing ballots from voters to polling places, that were transparently designed to place hurdles in the path of Democrats seeking to vote. Since most of the United States Republican-dominated states have already passed or are now seeking to pass similar or yet more restrictive rules, the United States may soon become the worlds only established democracy where members of one party have managed to make it much harder for members of the other party to cast a ballot. Republicans do not want democracy to operate; its possible theyll succeed.

When it comes to electoral rules, the United States is an outlier among democracies. Freedom House ranks countries on a scale of 1 to 4 on three electoral metrics: whether elections for heads of state are free and fair, whether legislative elections are free and fair, and whether electoral laws are fairly and impartially administered. Almost all major democracies, and many minor oneslike Jamaica and Romaniaget a perfect 12. The United States gets a 10, which puts it in company with Poland, a country that barely qualifies as democratic at all.

U.S. President Joe Biden has castigated the new raft of state laws as Jim Crow in the 21st century. The laws will certainly haveand are designed to havethe same effect of suppressing Black turnout as did the poll tax and literacy test of yore, but it is probably fair to say that todays Republicans, unlike yesterdays southern Democrats, would be quite content to let Black people vote if only they would vote Republican. Racial discrimination has become a means rather than an end.

It is absolutely true that the legacy of slavery and legalized racism makes the United States different from virtually every other democracy in the world. Yet it is the gross politicization of the U.S. electoral process that allows parties at the state and federal level to reshape the rules to their own benefit. What one might call the United States negative exceptionalism arises not only from the role of race but from constitutional designor rather from abuses made possible by that design.

Delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention barely discussed electoral rules and would have had very little precedent from other countries to draw on. Nor did they give thought to the role of parties, which most considered invidious. Preoccupied as many were with checking rather than enabling federal power, they left virtually all electoral rules to the states and provided no federal election oversight.

Modern constitution drafters, by contrast, had abundant experience of democratic dysfunction to draw on. The Constitution of India, drawn up in 1949, established a commission to oversee the preparation and conduct of all elections, both at the Union and state level, and stipulated that its members are to be appointed by the president, a nonpartisan figure. The constitution even prohibits the judiciary from changing the allotment of seats or boundary lines, which are to be fixed by Indias Parliament. Indias elections are wild free-for-alls where winners sometimes switch parties for cash; but Indias Election Commission has powers, including intervening to stop abusive or corrupt practices, that would be unthinkable for the United States feeble and hopelessly deadlocked Federal Election Commission.

Changing boundary lines to rig an election in your favor is, of course, a venerable U.S. tradition that goes by the name gerrymandering. Two features of the U.S. system make this form of backroom conniving possible: the delegation of authority to the states and the weakness of checks on party power at the state level. In A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective, author Steven A. Taylor noted that although a few other countries with federal systems, like Germany, give provincial governments power over local elections, only in the United States do states also set the rules for all federal elections. And politicians exercise virtually total control over electoral rules at the state level.

Even before former U.S. President Donald Trump hypnotized his party to believe Democrats were colluding with the deep state to steal elections from him, Americans held furious debates over issues that just dont arise elsewhere in the democratic world. According to Sarah Repucci, head of research at Freedom House, gerrymandering is a practice almost exclusive to electoral autocracies like Jordan (and Hungary, now deemed partly free). European political leaders have not sought to put obstacles in the way of registering to or actually voting. Money matters much less. The United States is highly unusual in regarding political contributions as protected speech and in treating companies and other entities like natural persons in terms of those speech rights.

It is troubling enough that in the United States, as elsewhere in the world, faith in democracy is yielding to the wish for a strongman who will put things right or restore an imaginary golden age. What is distinctive about the United States is the way in which a localized, politicized, market-based political culture, abetted both by intense polarization and racism, has enabled anti-democratic forces to reduce the vote of the other side and thus win elections even when they constitute a minority. In a 2004 essaylong before TrumpThomas Mann of the Brookings Institution summed up what then seemed to be the most salient features of the U.S. electoral system: a suspicion of authority, political control of bureaucrats, decentralization, parochialism, and a highly contentious and political judicial process.

Other democracies have found ways of reforming dysfunctional elements of their system of voting and representation. After several elections in which numerical minorities elected parliamentary majorities, New Zealands government appointed a commission that recommended the country switch to a system of proportional representation that would more accurately embody voter preferences and enhance the status of minority parties (a system used in much of the democratic world). The government accepted the findings, a referendum in 1992 and 1993 endorsed the changeand New Zealand switched systems to general and lasting acclaim.

The U.S. electoral system can be reformed only by a forcible imposition of national rules on a localized system. Democrats are hoping to do just that: The House bill known as H.R. 1 would, among other things, make registration automatic, prohibit gerrymandering, sharply restrict campaign spending, strengthen the Federal Election Commission, extend absentee and early voting, and prohibit the disenfranchisement of ex-felons. Such a bill, if made law, would align the United States with its democratic peers. It is, however, a dead letter in the Senate; having exploited the system to tilt elections in their favor at the state level, Republicans are not about to let Democrats scotch their move in Washington. They have seized on the Senates own anti-democratic rule that 60 members must vote to end a filibuster in order to prevent debate on any effort to overturn anti-democratic measures by the states. The question of the moment is whether even the most modest legislation now envisioned, which would reestablish federal oversight of jurisdictions systematically suppressing the vote, could pass in the Senate. The answer is almost certainly no.

In the course of his visit to the United States almost two centuries ago, French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville found nothing he admired quite so much as the United States culture of local politicsthe proliferation of elective offices that taught citizens the arts of self-government and gave them a stake in their national democracy. That culture still exists in many older parts of the country. But the spirit of polarization has so thoroughly poisoned the United States grassroots that decentralization has become a fearsome tool in the hands of anti-democrats. Here the analogy with Jim Crow is all too apt, for Southern racists long took shelter in the constitutional protection of states rights.

Im a believer in Biden; he has responded boldly to the great economic and public health crisis of our time. But curing what ails U.S. democracy, as he hopes to do, may be beyond his powers. If thats true, his achievements may prove to be short lived.

Excerpt from:
US Democracy Is One of the World's Worst - Foreign Policy

It has become common to argue that most Africans are not that committed to democracy. Commentators often suggest that Africans care more about development than democracy, and that voters especially those in rural areas dont really understand democracy. They would thus happily trade away their political rights for a strong man who can get things done.

This narrative has proved to be durable despite being wrong.

In our new journal article for the Keywords series of the African Studies Review, we investigated three issues. First, is there support for democracy in Africa? Second, what kind of democracy do people want? Third, why are the desires of African citizens so often silenced?

Drawing on survey data collected by the Afrobarometer between 2016 and 2018, we show that strong majorities think that democracy is the best political system for their country.

Contrary to claims that Western style democracy is unAfrican, we find widespread support for a form of consensual democracy, which combines a strong commitment to political accountability and civil liberties with a concern for unity and stability.

Democracy in Africa has come under considerable pressure over the last decade. Satisfaction with the way that democracy is performing has fallen. This is in part due to a decline in public confidence in the quality of elections how free, fair and credible they are.

We argue that this has only had a modest impact on support for the principle of democratic government, in part because African citizens continue to view authoritarian rule as a worse option. Of the 35 countries surveyed, the proportion of citizens who suggested that non-democratic political systems might be preferable only exceeded 20% in eSwatini and Malawi.

This figure is now likely to have declined in both countries. Malawians faith in democracy was revived by a peaceful transfer of power in 2020. And the people of eSwatini have been protesting against a failing authoritarian regime.

Even in states in which the reintroduction of multiparty politics has been associated with political controversy and conflict, such as Cote dIvoire, Togo and Uganda, more than three quarters of citizens say that democracy is preferable.

It is, therefore, time to stop doubting that African citizens want democracy, and start asking what kind of democracy people want. We argue that there is widespread demand for a form of consensual democracy, in which a desire for elections and checks and balances on those in power goes hand in hand with a concern to maintain national unity.

Consensual democracy has four main features:

Multiparty elections

We show that the vast majority of Africans support selecting their government through multi-party elections. Three-quarters of those surveyed agreed that

We should choose our leaders in this country through regular, open and honest elections.

Almost 65% also agreed that many political parties are needed to make sure that (the people) have real choices in who governs them. Most rejected the idea of one-party rule.

Political accountability

Our article also shows that most Africans want political accountability and the rule of law. Over three quarters of respondents agreed that

The constitution should limit the president to serving a maximum of two terms in office.

Only 34% agreed that the government getting things done was more important than being accountable to citizens.

Civil liberties and political rights

Respondents also wanted to be able to express their own opinions and engage in political activities. Over three quarters (76%) agreed that a citizens freedom to criticise the government was important or essential for a society to be called democratic.

This extends to the right of association, with over 60% of individuals believing they should be able to join any organisation, whether or not the government approves.

Consensual politics

Strong support for rights, elections and accountability goes hand-in-hand with a concern to prevent excessive freedom and competition, lest they lead to disunity and instability. Many citizens worry about violence around elections; they want parties to put aside their differences and work for the common good.

Most respondents were therefore against the use of street protests to settle disputes, even though they often sympathised with protesters aims.

There are of course variations in how people feel about these issues, both across the continent and within countries.

Respondents in eSwatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique were less committed to elections, but only in Lesotho did this drop below 50%.

Namibians and South Africans were more willing to trade accountability off against efficiency perhaps because of majority support for the ruling party.

Yet, what is striking is the consistency of support for the four pillars of consensual democracy across the continent. What does this mean for African politics? Why is this reality not more accepted?

Our article outlines three key episodes in which support for democratic government has been silenced. We also identify vulnerabilities that authoritarian leaders could exploit.

Leaders who can persuade citizens that their country faces a grave risk of violence and instability may be able to legitimise backsliding on democracy whether or not the risk actually exists. This is a cause for concern because supporters of democracy in Africa dont always reject all authoritarian alternatives.

Yet, as our study shows, the overwhelming majority of Africans support consensual democracy.

The argument that multi-party politics is incompatible with African ways of life stretches back to racist colonial officials. It was also used by nationalist leaders to justify creating one-party states after independence. But it is not true, and has become a lazy excuse for authoritarian regimes that are neither popular nor legitimate.

In a decade in which activists have risked their lives to advance democratic causes in Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, eSwatini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, it is time to recognise that most Africans do not want authoritarian rule.

It is both misleading and patronising to suggest that democracy has somehow been imposed by the international community against the wishes of ordinary people. Instead, it has been demanded and fought for from below.

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Africans want consensual democracy why is that reality so hard to accept? - The Conversation Africa

Interpreters play an essential role in making critical interactions possible every single day, whether the venue is a courtroom, a doctors office, or the United Nationsand sometimes they even facilitate the functioning of democracyitself.

Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS)ProfessorLeire Carbonell Aguero, a 2003 graduate of theMA in Conference Interpretation program,called it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when she was recruited by fellow alumna Maureen Sweeney MPA 94 to lead a team providing interpretation support for the Biden-Harris presidentialcampaign.

According to2019 Census data, 22 percent of voting-age Americans speak a language other than English at home, with about two-thirds of those speaking Spanish. As a result, without interpreting support, a significant portion of the electorate would be shut out of full participation in the democraticprocess.

Members of the Biden campaign reached out to our team atTiller Language Services, says Sweeney of the firm she co-leads with business partner Todd Dennett, after learning about our live and remote interpreting services for other high-level clients. Sweeney then connected with colleagues at MIIS.

It was the beginning of summer 2020 when Maureen and Todd contacted me with the opportunity to be the chief interpreter of the Spanish booth for the Biden campaign, says Carbonell. From that moment on, I worked to put together a core team of five interpreters to cover weekly assignments for the campaign. Four of these five were Middlebury Institutegraduates; two were Carbonells classmates, one was a former student of hers, and the other was fellow professor Cas Shulman-Mora MATI95.

It was a true privilege for me to put together such an amazing and talented team, says Carbonell. Together, we covered more than 40 assignments for the Biden campaign from August through Election Day. In addition, I helped assemble a team of 44 interpreters for the pre-watch parties for the presidential debate. Im very happy to report that, out of those 44 interpreters, 29 were MIIS graduates, including a few of my currentstudents!

In total, Sweeney and Dennetts firm provided interpretation for more than 135 campaign-related events in languages including Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. The majority of our interpreters for this project were graduates of the Institute, says Sweeney, who later this month will serve as deputy chief of the interpreting corps for the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, with fellow MIIS alum Alexandre Ponomarev MACI 00 serving as chief. We were thrilled to work with so many highly qualified language services professionalsand believe this project goes to show the value of high-level interpretation to the successful functioning of democraticinstitutions.

Carbonell describes it as the highest honor of hercareerto be asked to interpret President Joe Bidens inaugural remarks for Spanish-language media. For the Spain-born Carbonell, though, the stakes were personal as well asprofessional.

The inauguration happened in the same year that I became an American citizen, she says. I came to the U.S. in 2001 for an MA in Conference Interpretation at MIIS. To be part of facilitating conversations that are so important to the functioning of democracy in the U.S. was something I could have never imagined when I arrived here. Thanks to our interpretation, key information was accessible to people who only speak Spanish, who are part of our country and have the right to participate in the political process. Every time I interpreted for the campaign, I felt that, in a way, it was my own story that I was telling. I felt that I was closing the circle and giving back to my new country, a country that has given me somuch.

The opportunity was both unique and uniquely meaningful for Carbonell. I will always treasure it. Paraphrasing Amanda Gormans words in her inaugural poem for the country, I came out of this experience knowing that together, we will continue to climb the hill, in all languages, cultures, andcolors!

Originally posted here:
Facilitating Democracy: Alumnae Led Interpreting Team for Presidential Campaign and Inauguration - Middlebury College News and Events

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Project Syndicate)With the annual inflation rate in the United States reaching 5% in May,economistsandinvestorsare right to beapprehensiveabout deficit spending, public debt, and the risk of sustained price growthwhich is higher now than it has been for almost four decades. But it would be a mistake to respond to these concerns by pumping the brakes on the economy.

No, the government cannot borrow and spend as much as it likes without paying any costs, as some progressives wouldhave us believe. But nor can those worried about inflation ignore the deeper problem afflicting the U.S.: deep political polarization, accompanied by an erosion of trust in government. A rapid economic recovery, spearheaded by public policies that encourage employment and wage growth, is the best chance the U.S. has to restore trust in governmentand in democracy.

The first step to reversing Americas political dysfunction is to show that both the economy and the government can work for all.

The real risk stemming from inflation is that it will distract us from this fundamental issue.

Joseph Stiglitz: The fear of inflation is a red herring designed to distract us from the need for policies to reduce inequality

To be sure, there is no silver bullet against political dysfunction. Some commentators are understandably worried that the U.S. has already reached a point of no return. After all, amajorityof Republicans cling to the false belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and by some estimates, 15% of the U.S. population areadherentsof the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory. These figures point to a difficult road ahead.

But we should remember that people tend to trust democracy more when it delivers on its promises of stability, shared prosperity, and effective measures to fight poverty.

American democracy is in trouble, and a robust, inclusive government-led recovery may offer the last best chance of putting it on a sounder footing.

For example, those who grow up in stable democracies where there is rapid economic growth and adequate public servicesare much more likelyto oppose autocrats and unaccountable technocrats. By the same token, periods of economic stagnation and soaring inequality tend to fuel polarization and a loss of public trust, as has happened in the U.S. and many other countries around the world in recent decades.

The U.S. economy used to create good jobswith decent pay, reasonable levels of security, and career-building opportunitiesfor workers from all kinds of backgrounds and with all kinds of skills. For 35 years after World War II, workers at both the bottom and the top of the income distribution benefited from robust employment growth and rapidwage increases.

But this era came to an end in the 1980s, when median wages stagnated and inequality began to creep up. Rather than enjoying wage gains, men without a college degree started experiencingsharp declinesin job options and real (inflation-adjusted) earnings.

The Americans who have been experiencing wage declines and dwindling opportunitiesare overrepresentedamong those moving to the extremist fringes of U.S. politics. If you think the economy isnt working and cannot work for you, it is understandable that you might be sympathetic to opportunist politicians and media figures calling for a rigged system to be dismantled.

Getting the economy working again offers the best chance to rescue American democracy. The risk of a little higher inflation is no reason to squander the opportunity.

Of course, economic problems are not solely responsible for the sorry state of U.S. politics. The Republican Party, too, has played an outsize role in the dysfunction. Starting with Richard Nixons Southern strategywhich sought to capitalize on white backlash against the Democrats 1960s civil-rights agendathe GOP decided that polarization was good politics.

The more the Republican Party has shifted to representing white, non-college-educated voters (a shrinking share of the population), the more it has had to rely on voter suppression and other anti-democratic tactics to maintain its position, a trend that has peaked with Trump.

But the Democratic Party is not blameless. The Wall Street bankers who caused the 2008 financial crisis were rescued not just by George W. Bush but also by Barack Obama. It was the Obama administration that ultimately decided to help the banks and the bankers at all costs, and which later chose not to prosecute any of the guilty parties.

Voters suspicions about a too-cozy relationship between government and finance were confirmed, accelerating the loss of trust in institutions and supplying plenty of ammunition to those already inclined to regard government as the problem, not the solution.

If this diagnosis is correct, the first step to reversing Americas political dysfunction is to show that both the economy and the government can work for all. Generating jobs and wage growth for Americans of all backgrounds and skills should be a top priority. While we could focus simply on expanding the size of the overall economic pie and then redistributing it, that strategy is unlikely to leave voters feeling invested in the system. Enabling people to contribute meaningfully to the economy and society is a much better way to get them on board.

If infrastructure spending, expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, safety-net enhancements, job-generating investments, and other official measures are seen to be part of a robust recovery, that will further support the idea that government still works. Trust in state institutions cannot be restored simply by extolling their virtues in the abstract. Citizens must see and experience the benefits that come from institutions functioning effectively.

Can American democracy be rescued through a well-crafted economic recovery? There is no guarantee. The U.S. economy has neglected workers without college degrees (and increasingly workers with college degrees, too) and catered to the needs of large corporations for so long that it may be too late to change course now. With corporate Americafunneling investmentinto technologies to automate jobs, surveil workers, and push down wages, the plight of the average American worker may continue to deepen.

It also might be too late to reverse the toxic polarization that has sundered American society. Most die-hard Trump supporters have already shown that they will not change their minds under any circumstances.

All the same, getting the economy working again offers the best chance to rescue American democracy. The risk of a little higher inflation is no reason to squander the opportunity.

Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at MIT, is co-author (with James A. Robinson)ofWhy Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty and The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty.

This commentary was published with permission of Project Syndicate The Real Inflation Risk

Menzie Chinn: Heres how to tell if this spurt of inflation is here to stay

Stephen Roach: The ghost of Arthur Burns haunts a complacent Federal Reserve thats pouring fuel on the fires of inflation

James K. Galbraith: Bidens economic rescue plan is bold enough to actually work

Michael Boskin: Beware Americas soaring public debt

Originally posted here:
Our fragile democracy depends on a robust economic recovery for all, so this is no time to slam on the brakes out of inflationary fears - MarketWatch