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real-life societies and economies are the result of all kinds of fights and negotiations and feelings and choices about the rules of the game, what’s fair, what’s not, what to maximize, how to optimize for the majority instead of maximizing only for some powerful minority.
All games have rules, but unlike other games, the rules by which an economy operates only seem like they’re handed down by a godlike game designer—whereas in fact, they’re amended and sometimes dramatically rewritten by the players over time.
Two ascendant countercultures, the hippies and the economic libertarians, shared a brazen prime directive: If it feels good do it, follow your bliss, find your own truth.
Modern liberals prided ourselves on not being ideologues, on entertaining all sorts of disparate policy ideas for improving the world, whereas the economic right really has one big, simple idea—do everything possible to let the rich stay rich and get richer.
These days, if you grow up poor in America, you have less than a one-in-four shot of becoming even solidly middle class—one in three if you’re white, one in ten if you’re black.
Forty years ago, a typical high school graduate working full time could earn an income of twice the poverty level, the equivalent of $56,000, enough to support a spouse and two children. Today the four in ten adults who have no more than a high school diploma and work full time earn a median salary of $39,000.
