The Capitalist Economy and its Prosthetics

Prosthetics are the brother of deficient employment generating spending in capitalism. But the sources of their financing are drying out.

Notwithstanding its ruthless dynamics, the capitalist economy has the flaw of deficient employment-generating spending. This leads to unemployment of non-owners, individual suffering, social unrest and it undermines military strength. To deal with these issues, states use prosthetic policies, artificial transfers to the productive economy and to non-owners. But the funding of such prosthetic policies through violent wealth appropriation abroad, protectionism, war, domestic expropriation and taxation, debt and money creation is caught in dilemmas, while politicians are caught between non-solutions. According to Gerhard H. Wächter, the history of capitalist society is largely the history of this dilemmatic brotherhood.

Besprochen in: Journal of Economic Literature, 62/4 (2024)