The short answer is no. We haven’t been capitalist by the classical definition since August 15, 1971. That was the day the Richard Nixon killed the final connection between the dollar and gold. Piketty’s r > g problem existed, and wealth inequality was still driven by higher returns on concentrated assets.

From that moment on, 97% of all new money in America has been created as interest-bearing debt by private banks. That is not classical capitalism. That is Fiatism: unlimited private money creation backed by public coercion. Capitalism requires scarce, commodity backed money. Gold had to be mined from the ground or real factories had to be built to expand credit.

Fiatism has no such limit. The only limitation became how much debt and, in turn, debt service (interest) citizens were willing to pay through taxation.

The result?

• Debt exploded from $400 billion to $38 trillion in five decades
• Banks collect the interest on money they typed into existence
• Wages stagnate while asset prices soar
• The word “capitalism” becomes the perfect alibi for a cartel that turned your future into their perpetual revenue stream

Once the money printer became private property, capitalism took its last breath in our country. Everything since has been debt serfdom wearing a “free market” mask. Money creation through debt allowed Piketty’s r > g to shift to near exponential movement of money to the wealthy. Each debt round led to more capital for the wealthy. That sought out more assets to purchase. And subsequently more debt was created to service the previous round… for 50+ years.

This reframes the understanding the inflation of the 1970s as the new owners were figuring out how to perfect the system. By the 1980s under Reagan, Trickle Down Economics and the Laffer Curve were the new reality. The racket was perfected through deregulation and creating the need for a debt fueled economy through the degradation of labor conditions.

This is, in my belief, is the cause of our generational divide both financially and politically. However that is a topic for another discussion.

For now, here is a list of legislative and policy changes to reconsider under this lens:

• Trickle Down, obviously
• Introduction of and passage of NAFTA
• Glass-Steagall repeal
• 2008 bank bailouts
• Citizens United and Speechnow.org vs. FEC rulings equating money to speech
• Subsidy (debt) dependent ACA rather than Universal Healthcare
• Carried Interest loopholes

Every one of these policies looked insane under capitalism. They make perfect sense under Fiatism.

As a bonus, feel free to read their own words on the topic in this from a publically available 2005 citigroup memo describing Plutonomy: