> Serious question: If not the economy, then what? That's a very good question, however you ask it. A problem when you go looking for the root cause of things

> Serious question: If not the economy, then what? That's a very good question, however you ask it. A problem when you go looking for the root cause of things, if you can bear to ask "why?" more than five times, is that you can go around in circles or start seeing things that aren't there. That's definitely going to happen if you go looking for the end of rainbow like "The Economy" [0]. Other nebulous categories like "mental health" or "immigration" don't add much to the conversation. but kick the can into someone else's camp. It also a difficult question because in a sense it's a void question in world where we reduce _everything_ to "economics" - all human affairs, structures and processes - to the point where it seems there's nothing left that lies outside the realm of economics. (Maybe that tells us "economics" has lost its power as a concept word and pursuit, if we have problems that seem to lie outside of it.) So when I hear someone say "It's not about 'The Economy'" what I'm really hearing isn't "it has nothing to do with economics" (because everything does), but "I don't think economists can understand and fix this". And that's a valid observation - that people who think as economists have a serious blind-spot and defecit of real power. [0] If there isn't already there should be a South Park episode where "The Economy" is kept in a glass box at the City Hall and Eric steals it to sell at school.