BREAKING NEWS! Gerard Baker, ex Editor in Chief and now Editor at Large of the Wall Street Journal, in a recent Opinion piece in that paper*, has concluded that the current workings of the American financial and governing system are rigged in favor of wealthy citizens and institutions!

Duh-uh!

Throughout known history, starting even before the days of kings and empires, the vast majority of governments have had one overriding purpose: to preserve the power and wealth of their rulers.

From its founding, the USA was intended to be profoundly different: a representatively-democratic republic whose government would serve the interests of all its people. Today, after more than two centuries of striving, stumbling and revising toward that goal, it is clear to most observers that our economic and electoral systems – and especially the current administration’s twisted vision for them – have been perverted to a degree which threatens the very survival of our nation and legacy. The only thing newsworthy about Mr. Baker’s opinion is that it comes from such an entrenched member of the financial elite as himself.

For decades, people like Mr. Baker and institutions like the WSJ have decried progressive policies as governmental ‘transfers of wealth’ even as the record of income and asset distribution shows their prolonged application of ‘supply side’ and ‘market driven’ policies have been relentlessly transferring a vast portion of the nation’s wealth (and thus its power) away from the masses who live paycheck to paycheck and into the hands of the most wealthy few, the owners of corporate and property assets.

Tardy as Mr. Baker’s conversion is, it can yet serve a useful purpose by reminding us all that from now through November Third – and thereafter, at least through the crucial election of 2028 – thoughtful voters must support candidates who will work to dilute the power of corporations, proto-monopolies, venture capital, hedge funds and the ultra-wealthy. We must stop electing legislators who will promote anti-worker and anti-household policies in spite of the repeated and continuing failure of those policies to achieve their stated objectives.

(Remember: the real reason supply/market policies are perennially pushed and enacted by the power brokers is that they are actually achieving their unstated objectives: to ensure and increase the wealth and power of the already wealthy and powerful.)

P. S. – To explore a different way in which our current ‘winner take all’ politics may play out and just how extensive the resulting damage would be, read E Unum Pluribus. This new speculative fiction is offered as a cautionary tale, while there is still time to avoid anything like the events it imagines. E Unum Pluribus is currently being serialized online and anyone can read it, at no cost, by navigating to the the home page of this website and selecting E Unum Pluribus from the top menu, or via this link: https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/01/e-unum-pluribus/

*Link to Mr. Baker’s piece: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-to-cure-what-ails-american-capitalism-52d97161?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

**Special thanks to Robert Reich, without whose Substack I’d be unaware of Mr. Baker’s sudden conversion, seeing as how I am not normally a WSJ reader. See robertreich@substack.com, 2026-08-20, ‘Corporate America EXPOSED! (In the most unlikely place)’

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