Corporate concentration has reached levels that are incompatible with democracy.

“The status quo for the majority is entirely unbearable,” while extreme inequality and corporate concentration has reached levels “simply incompatible with democracy” worldwide. This is exacerbated by a climate crisis that “generates massive windfall profits” for big business as the “ecological foundations of our lives disintegrate”. All the while the far right is making hay. This analysis echoes much mainstream liberal and left-leaning thinking. But Isabella Weber is concerned that her peers in the economic establishment act as if they are oblivious. “What’s common sense to most people is not to economists,” she says, and as such our economic system has “promised but not delivered”. She reels off disturbing statistics that highlight the growing disparities between haves and have nots. “As economists, we should do better. People’s dignity, and democracy, is at stake.” Weber is calling on fellow economists to “abandon ideology” and develop a “big tent economic policy” that can counter an ascendant far right. Their gains, she argues, are not the result of a particularly compelling offer, but a direct consequence of traditional political parties refusing to acknowledge the endemic hardship facing their constituents, and the absence of a coherent economic vision from progressives, liberals and the centre right. “Currently, only the extreme right is willing to say yes, something is broken, and a different present and future is possible,” Weber says. “We can’t leave an alternative to this dystopia to them.” https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/16/isabella-weber-anti-fascist-economics?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

'“The status quo for the majority is entirely unbearable,” while extreme inequality and corporate concentration has reached levels “simply incompatible with democracy” worldwide. This is exacerbated by a climate crisis that “generates massive windfall profits” for big business as the “ecological foundations of our lives disintegrate”. All the while the far right is making hay.' https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/16/isabella-weber-anti-fascist-economics