There is a neo-populist movement afoot in the US right how. No one is sure exactly what to call it. Analogies with the original Populist party break down over issues of tariffs and xenophobia. The later "Progressive" movement, which is credited with creating the first round of government regulatory agencies, doesn't fit well either. It didn't have the broad-based working class foundation that is meant when one talks about populism.

These days when critics accuse liberals of engaging in "class warfare" they mean the the working classes are looking to rein in the excesses of the super wealthy. Since this group is tiny, the appeal to defending the rights of Paris Hilton doesn't work well, so they try to include the top 20% as well.

There are a number of new books out which try to show that more democratic countries have a higher level of economic equality and also a higher level sustained economic growth. There is some question as to whether equality leads to growth or vice versa, but the issue I'd like to discuss is how to measure democracy.

There are many studies and organizations which aim to rate states on an authoritarian - democracy scale, but many also add in civil liberties as well. I have something slightly different in mind.

A dictionary definition.

Democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

The problem is that such textbook definitions don't take into account the many ways democracy can be imperfect. I'm aiming at a more realistic measure.

Citizenship

One of the key axioms of the "Washington Consensus" is that international trade is good for both parties and is the only viable road to development in the third world. They have been promoting this vision, in one form or another, for 50 years.

There are many critics of this view who illustrate their objections with a large number of case studies. These generally fall into two categories. In the first are the examples of states which have been the object of much international advice and intervention and still haven't done well. Much of Africa falls into this category. The second are those states which have done well, but have ignored most of the policy prescriptions promoted by entities such as the World Bank and IMF. Examples include South Korea and China.

Frequently when prices get too high in some sector governments are called upon to provide subsidies to those who can't afford to pay.

In the US there are a large number of these. Heating fuel subsidies, food stamps, housing rental assistance and Medicaid (not Medicare) are aimed at necessities. There are also government subsidies such as Pell Grants to help pay college tuition. With the sudden downturn in the housing market there are proposals to subsidize existing mortgages. So these actions work?

I'm going to keep this brief and not overload the discussion with lots of statistics, so just take this as a working hypothesis. If you are especially interested in one program or another, or in experiences elsewhere, then please feel free to contribute data.

seem to recall that at one time it was illegal for corporations to own other corporations. I think this grew out of the abuses where A owned part of B and B owned part of A.

I think the two Phillips Electronics firms were involved in this type of trick.

If corporations were prohibited from owning other firms and if firms could not set up subsidiaries in other countries, perhaps the incentives to bad behavior would be reduced.

The most obvious present difficulty has to do with tax avoidance. Firms incorporate in tax havens and shift profits to these subsidiaries, many of which are nothing more than mailboxes.

One of the current problems in the developed world is that there is too little work to go around. As the two biggest areas of traditional enterprise (manufacturing and agriculture) have become increasingly mechanized, the number of people needed has declined.

In much of the industrialized world agriculture now requires under 5% of the workforce. Many industrial firms typically run at 70-80% of capacity. Societies have adapted in two ways, the most commonly considered is the rise of services, the other is the creation of new products of marginal utility. Even these steps have not solved the problem, the unemployment rate is kept at a modest level, but the percentage of people employed continues to decline. The two numbers don't track because official reporting agencies exclude various categories of the non-working from the labor force.