Our political economy on trial this election, with Trump playing executioner
If Trump wins, I will know who to blame. Not the people who vote for him, the downtrodden victims of his charismatic authoritarian personality, but economists and politicians who enable each other to shape our lives with disregard for human dignity. Those who have been treating human beings as mere variables, who, like any other variable, exist only within equations where productivity is the goal. In economic practice, these variables do not become human again until increased productivity is mathematically guaranteed. This is a mistake. Observe this Capuchin monkey reacting angrily to inequitable treatment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg Now imagine millions of much smarter and stronger primates slowly coming to terms with the scale of economic inequality in America today. This should be a primary, not secondary, concern of economists and especially politicians. The belief that human beings are capable of withstanding unlimited indignities and hardships, of adap...