I'm writing from New Zealand - a country that decided from the beginning that the War was wrong, and chose not to participate in Iraq War.

For the United States, our political system is clearly distorted. We have gerrymandering so that there is a situation where a million more voters who vote for Democrats, yet the House is controlled by the Republicans. So clearly, the way our Congress operates is important. The other big issue is the influence of money in politics. It's not only campaign contributions. People like Trump - either you become very dependent on your benefactors or you are very rich.

Countries were told they had no incentives because of social ownership. The solution was privatization and profit, profit, profit. Privatization would replace inefficient state ownership, and the profit system plus the huge defense cutbacks would let them take existing resources and an increase in consumption. Worries about distribution and competition or even concerns about democratic processes being undermined by excessive concentration of wealth could be addressed later.

When you think of policies that are going to address inequality of wealth, you have to be very thoughtful about what economists call "incidence of taxes." If most of the savings is being done by capitalists, and you tax the return on capital, then they will have less to invest. That would mean, over the long run, that the rate of interest would go up. That would therefore undo some of the intent to lower the income of capitalists.

Capital market liberalization includes freeing up deposit and lending rates, opening up the market to foreign banks, and removing restrictions on capital account transactions and bank lending. The focus is on deregulation, not on finding the right regulatory structure.

Moreover, because we chose to finance the way by borrowing, our deficits and debt has soared, and this means we have less room for maneuver, less money available to stimulate the eocnomy in the way needed.

This Iraq war has been the most "privatized" war in America's history. It has seen the most extensive use of contractors. The contractors have increased the costs; but they have been necessary - the military simply could not have done it on their own. we would have had to increase the size of the military. But the George W. Bush Administration wanted America to believe that it could have a war, essentially for free, without raising taxes, without increasing the size of the armed forces.