brettworks

“The legitimacy of any system always depends on performance. In the end, people will cease to trust a system that does not work for them.”

“The rise of demagogic nationalism and authoritarianism in high-income democracies—the core of today’s political crisis—can be attributed in significant part to…economic failures. The problem is not just the economic failures themselves, but that they undermined people’s understanding of the future they and their children could aspire to and of how they were valued by the societies to which they belonged. Particularly significant was the huge increase in the inequality of people’s condition. Beyond a certain point, this erodes the ability of the mass of citizens to feel part of a shared political project—a democracy. What has been happening demonstrates to them the opposite—the contempt of elites toward ordinary people, who increasingly feel humiliated. It is ironic that the response to this has been to shift toward leaders who are as irresponsible, not to mention malignant, as Trump or Johnson. Malevolent political forces can so easily transform humiliation into anger. But that is hardly a novel discovery.”