Trump's victory clearly appears to stem from a sense of economic powerlessness, or a fear of losing power, among his supporters. To them, his simple slogan, 'Make America great again,' sounds like 'Make You great again': economic power will be given to the multitudes without taking anything away from the already successful.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the feelings of economic insecurity among Trump's supporters, who see his slogan as a promise of empowerment without sacrifice.
Robert J. Shiller's quote reflects on the underlying sentiments that contributed to Donald Trump's political rise. It suggests that many of his supporters felt economically powerless, believing that Trump's message of 'Make America great again' resonated with their desire for personal empowerment and success. This slogan, interpreted by them as a promise of restoring their own greatness and economic opportunity, speaks to a broader collective fear of losing status amidst economic change, conveying the notion that such promises can appeal to the masses without demanding sacrifices from those who are already successful.
In practice
In a political debate, to illustrate how economic fear can drive voter sentiment.
Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.
Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.
That's the world we live in: when it comes to economics, people have emotions; it's not like chemistry or physics.
Money management has been a profession involving a lot of fakery - people saying they can beat the market, and they really can't.
We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.
If we wait until income inequality is much more severe, we will have a whole class of new superrich who will probably feel entitled to their wealth and will have the means to defend their interest. That's already gone far enough. We shouldn't let it become more extreme.
The danger to the country, to Europe, to her vast Empire, which is involved in having all these great interests entrusted to the shaking hand of an old, wild, and incomprehensible man of 82, is very great!
We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism
Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative institutions or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated with US government support. The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor in foreign policy.
A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all the people and all of none of the people. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.
Dr Urbino did not agree: in his opinion a Liberal president was exactly the same as a Conservative president, but not as well dressed.
There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.
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