In a 2019 interview with the New York Times, Sanders said, "I don't think that billionaires should exist". In his new book, the two-time presidential hopeful recalls Mark Zuckerberg conceding that "at some level no one deserves to have that much money", but what struck Sanders most was that people thought he was kidding. He wasn't: "The very existence of a rapidly expanding billionaire class in the United States is a manifestation of an unjust system that promotes massive income and wealth inequality."

It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism is not merely a critique of modern American society, but a "blueprint for progressive change - both economic and political". It just takes Sanders a little while to unfurl that blueprint. The first third of the book reads more like a political memoir than a clarion call to the 99 per cent. Sanders writes proudly of the grassroots movement his campaigns mobilised, and he talks about how he rallied that movement behind his friend Joe Biden in order to defeat Donald Trump at the 2020 election. By the time he gets to the passing of the American Rescue Act, Sanders is ready to engage with central theme of his book, which is that capitalism is deeply flawed and that our unwillingness to address the inherent problems with the system constitutes a grave moral failure.

To support his thesis, Sanders details numerous examples of this catastrophic letdown, citing, among other things, the fact that 500,000 Americans are homeless and 18 million spend half their earnings on housing; the strangulating effects of the combined economic might of BlackRock, Vangaurd and State Street, three firms that control assets equal to the GDP of the United States; and "one of the most rapid redistributions of wealth upward in global history", which further enriched America's billionaires while ordinary citizens were dealing with the layoffs and lockdowns brought about by the pandemic.

Nowhere are the gross injustices unleashed by capitalism more apparent than in the area of healthcare, a term Americans employ without the slightest irony. Sanders thinks it's shameful that the world's largest economy can't find a way to extend basic healthcare to its citizens but thinks nothing of a Moderna executive netting a $926 million "golden parachute". Any reasonable person would agree. Numerous factors contribute to the maintenance of this appalling and deadly status quo, one of which is America's bizarre, employer-based healthcare system, which Sanders critiques with characteristic gusto. Among its many flaws, Sanders observes that employer-based care often provides inadequate coverage, is almost always too expensive for minimum-wage earners, and is rarely transferable to another job, which conspires to trap workers in jobs they aren't suited to and don't enjoy.

If you think Bernie Sanders is a raving socialist whose ideas about capitalism aren't worth the price of a pair of hand-knitted mittens, can I interest you in an investment banker's perspective? In 2016, a group of Goldman Sachs analysts raised eyebrows by questioning capitalism's capacity to regulate corporate profit margins, which at the time were alarmingly and historically high. They wrote: "We are always wary of guiding for mean reversion. But, if we are wrong and high margins manage to endure for the next few years (particularly when global demand growth is below trend), there are broader questions to be asked about the efficacy of capitalism."

If the Goldman report was the canary in the coalmine, no one seemed to notice. In fact, corporate profit margins have continued to climb to eye-watering levels. Last August, Bloomberg reported that US corporate profits had reached their highest levels since 1950 due, in large part, to price-gouging. One only has to look at Qantas, CommBank, Woolworths and other Australian companies to see exactly the same thing happening Down Under. Nice work, corporate Australia.

Where we go from here is anyone's guess. But at a time when claims about the self-regulating nature of capitalism are sounding ever more perfidious, real wage growth is going backwards, and interest rate hikes aren't putting the brakes on inflation so much as contributing to the banks' increasingly obscene profits, it might be time to listen to what a socialist senator from Vermont has to say about this mess. As that old saying goes, if the best time to address the problems with capitalism was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.