The American Millennial Attraction to Socialism: Comparing the Economies of Chinese Communism, Crony Corporate Capitalism, European Crony Socialism, and the American Free Enterprise Entrepreneurial Economy

Abstract

Much of the academic analysis of American crony corporate capitalist economy addresses the micro economic effect on how individual firms use political influence to skew financial benefits to themselves.

The more damaging economic effect of crony capitalism is on the functioning of the national macro economy that has resulted in a bifurcated economic structure, comprised of large global firms who promote and benefit from global trade, and smaller regional firms located in 350 metro regions, who are not economically integrated into the globalist networks.

Paul Aligica and Vlad Tarko describe the difference between the global macro crony capitalism and the more conventional micro economic cronyism.

They state,

“(Micro economic cronyism) refers to insiders and businesses securing narrow tax, spending, and regulatory advantages. Cronyism is one cause of wealth inequality…Crony exchanges are based on trust, loyalty, family and long-standing social networks.

(Macro economic cronysism) refers to changes of laws at the top (Congressional) level as a result of lobbying and crony relations. The (change in laws) affects the entire industry, whereas bribery (in micro economic cronysism) tends to be firm-specific and with much smaller spillover effects on reducing competition.” (Paul Aligicia and Vlad Tarko, Crony Capitalism: Rent Seeking, Institutions and Ideology, Kyklos, May, 2014).