Preview

The biggest story in America right now is inflation. How did it get so high? Why do I see random empty shelves when I go to the grocery store or pharmacy? Why is this happening?

For the past few months, the Prospect has been looking into this. And we discovered the reason: bad policy.

For 50 years, neoliberal policymakers and economists have sung from the same songbook, with a few key gospels. Scour the globe to find the cheapest labor to produce your product; allow companies to merge and take over markets in the name of efficiency; transport everything from the factory to the storefront just in time, with no reserve inventory; deregulate all the key industries that ship those goods to drive down costs; and let Wall Street enforce these gospels in the name of corporate profits.

This system evolved into what we call the supply chain, a word you’ve probably heard entirely too much these days. The supply chain problems creating all these shortages and high prices all stem from this badly designed, outsourced, monopolistic, deregulated, financialized, fragile system. We broke the supply chain so corporations could add to their profit margins. We were told we’d get low prices in return. And now even that’s not working out.

We thought it was important enough to shine a bright spotlight on the supply chain mess, how it was caused, and how it can be fixed. We turned our findings into an entire special issue of the Prospect. And we wanted you to be the first to know about it.

For the next two weeks, we’re releasing all of our stories from our special issue, “How We Broke the Supply Chain.” Our first story, from me and Rakeen Mabud from Groundwork Collaborative, our partners on this project, introduces you to how we spent a half-century allowing business executives and financiers to take control of our supply chain, making it supremely ill-equipped to handle any disruptions, and facilitating corporate profits at the expense of all of us.

I’m so excited to show you this issue over the next two weeks. I think it’s the best thing I’ve done in my tenure at the Prospect, and it shows the unique value of this magazine: to go behind the headlines and spin, explaining how power works and what it means to your everyday life. Understanding this mess and how to fix it is critical to our future prosperity and security.