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   Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:36:28 JST Madeleine Morris

   I was brought up to believe that the larger the picture you can take in, the more fully informed you'll be. It's not a bad strategy for looking at the world, but, especially now, it has its downside.

   And while the media will sometimes seek to tell a big story through a close-up view of one person's life (and this is a powerful narrative approach), it usually opts for generalities.

   The same is true for economics, and the impact of all these DOGE firings 1/

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:36:25 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     My hypothesis is that, for most people, we've lived through the longest economic depression in history. That 2008 was the start, and we are still in it. And nothing most economists use to report on national or international economics reflects this very basic reality: no one today believes their children will be more prosperous than they are.

     If I could pick a single event that contributed the most to the rise in the Right we're seeing now, it's that. 4/

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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:36:26 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     I'm going to choose the 2008 financial crisis. I choose it because, unlike 9/11, no hostile force from outside did this to us. We did it to ourselves. It was a moment we should have pulled the emergency cord and demanded a serious restructuring of our financial systems.

     While there were some policy gestures to address the circumstances that led to it, they've been pathetic.

     Our biggest sin of all was a failure to reform the way we measure economies. 3/

     Adrianna Tan repeated this.
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     Madeleine Morris (remittancegirl@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:36:27 JST Madeleine Morris

     in reply to

     One thing I've been mulling over for a while is what I've perceived as dramatic decline in trust in public institutions. It's hard to make an effort to defend institutions you don't trust. And because they're usually faceless, when people lose trust in one public institution, it's curiously viral. We begin to look at all public institutions with the same wary, jaded eye.

     It's almost futile to pick a single date for the decline. It's somewhat arbitrary.
     2/

     RamenCatholic 🐢 🌈 repeated this.