Kelly’s premise is that we all see the world through an invisible lens of capital bias. As with gender and racial bias, which were once seen as normal and unremarkable, even divinely ordained, we can’t see capital bias unless we name it. 

But once we see it and name it, we are no longer beholden to it. We can see our economy for what it is: not a great wealth creator, in which wealth “trickles down,” but a giant sucking machine that takes from the many and gives to the few.  Today, Kelly writes, “Instead of having an economy designed to produce more value in the real world, for regular people, the economy’s machinery has been rejiggered to produce higher asset valuations. These financial assets have become a burden, a giant sucking action squeezing consumer pocketbooks, creating unemployment, pushing housing prices to unreachable heights, creating monopolies that hobble family businesses, blocking our ability to tackle climate change, destabilizing the economy with stock market booms and busts. And enabling billionaires to capture democracy.”

In a democratic society founded on the truth that all persons are created equal, we have permitted an economic system based on the contrary principle that wealthy persons matter more than others: possess greater rights, greater voice. And claim a limitless right to extract from the rest of us. Bias is the DNA of our economy.