Amidst the texture of the day, hard to be provocative. Things are being said in mainstream press and by public intellectuals that would have been held back until now. Complaints about the US, from slavery to indigenous americans – fake wars (almost all since ww2 and those before WW1, about the political leadership of both paties, about economics.

What is clear – that always was but not spoken so much – is that the state of society is a product of economy. The plight of poverty – inequality, racism – redlining and poorer education ,  rents ,   military budget keynesianism – 

The task for  us is to integrate social understanding into economics, to make economists into historians, artists, sociologists, philosophers and sensate human beings. I have been wtching the Metropolitan Opera steaming most nights for a few weeks. All operas involve love affairs torn apart by social class differences.   The state of lived lives should be the baseline for judging economic thinking and the performance of the economy. Things like “per capita GDP” are instruments for serious lying. The rising cost of college education, with the dependency of the colleges on forign students to meet college budgets,  is a crime – did we not see it?

We must do better.

The task for  us is to integrate social understanding into economics, to make economists into historians, artists, sociologists, philosophers and sensate human beings. I have been wtching the Metropolitan Opera steaming most nights for a few weeks. All operas involve love affairs torn apart by social class differences.   The state of lived lives should be the baseline for judging economic thinking and the performance of the economy. Things like “per capita GDP” are instruments for serious lying. The rising cost of college education, with the dependency of the colleges on forign students to meet college budgets,  is a crime – did we not see it?

We must do better.