<p>I put Jonathan Levy, <i>Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States</i> (Random House, 2021) in context by showing its similarities to the approach in institutional economics pioneered by John R. Commons in his studies on labor history. I also discuss ideas from Alain Supiot, James Kwak, Elizabeth Anderson, Karen Orren, Thomas Piketty, Philip Mirowski and Edward Nin-Khah, Jake Rosenfeld, Dani Rodrik and Douglass North to add to the richness of institutional economics, especially relating to labor conditions and labor discipline. I conclude by discussing the populist reaction to the corporate economy in late 19th century America, and how their approach to economics can have relevance for present-day America. A major emphasis that I make is that neoclassical economics, that in the early part of the 20th century was criticized by institutional economists, including Thorstein Veblen, for producing unrealistic models of individuals maximizing hedonism through the marketplace and consumer goods, without actually proving this actually occurs other than in approximate fashion, eventually became based on models of markets that provided information that is superior to individual decision-making. The result is an emphasis similar to Social Darwinism, a belief in creative destruction so that certain individuals follow the signals of the marketplace better than others, and so should reap the economic fruits of their economic superiority. In the process they often put on a pedestal mathematically-based cost-benefit analyses that discount any importance to any qualitative social values that should determine what is worth measuring, other than in some cases merely increasing profits, or increasing productivity that then increases profits, as if other issues are nonexistent. The result is a definition of efficiency that can be quite inhumane.</p>