Jeffrey Sachs does a very good job of pointing out the problems within our economic and democratic systems in his 2011 book The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity in the first half of this work. I agree with his assessment of the current conditions and his view that democracy in the United States fell to “corporatocracy”.

If one follows the money, then it seems undeniable that the political rank and file of our government is greatly influenced by vast amounts of money offered by big oil, big pharmaceutical, big banking and big corporations that then receive favorable policies for conducting business that focuses on short-term profits.

The only plans for sustainability in the current political/economic process are those of continuing the closed-loop flow of money from the economic side to the political side and back again.

The second half of the book details the authors plan to return our corporatocracy back into a democracy and to put a few plans in place to ensure prosperity into the future.