Chrystia Freeland

Especially among journalists, politics is not a pursuit that's held in high esteem. We tend to be cynical about it - but I actually believe in democracy. ”

Plutocrats were the chief beneficiaries of so-called neoliberalism and the suite of political changes it brought beginning in the late 1970s - deregulation, weaker protection for unions, the shareholder value movement, and the subsequent inflation of executive compensation. ”

If you believe in democracy, the overreach of leaders is a good reminder that vigorous public debate and time-consuming due process are not only more fair and more just, but that over the long term they usually produce better government, too. ”

It's public knowledge that there have been efforts - as U.S. intelligence sources have said - by Russia to destabilize the U.S. political system. I think that Canadians and, indeed, other Western countries should be prepared for similar efforts to be directed at us. ”

Companies and capital operate internationally, often beyond the economic reach of any particular nation-state. People are pretty global, too, living lives that freely cross national borders. ”

Income inequality is one thing, but a permanent division into the haves and have-nots is an entirely different thing - and much less acceptable. ”

The triumph of economic liberalization has coincided with a sharp increase in income inequality. ”

Individual nations have offered their own contributions to income inequality - financial deregulation and upper-bracket tax cuts in the United States; insider privatization in Russia; rent-seeking in regulated industries in India and Mexico. ”

One of the most important political and economic facts of this young century is that capital has been slipping the traces of the nation-state. Business is global; government is national. ”

The hollowing out of the middle class. That's not just about capitalism or the structure of taxation. That is also about the fundamental truth that machines can do a lot of things better than humans used to do. A lot of those people are being pushed down to do less value-adding jobs, so they get paid less money. ”