Many middle-class folks will tell you they have not made significant investments in the last decade.
Yet they can see people who seem to be operating in another economy thriving.
Economic strategy has been all the rage over the past few weeks, as politicians fumbled in an attempt to explain what they mean by their current slogans. As an economist and elected leader, I can afford to tell you what I think of those slogans.
In the 90s and 2000s, conventional wisdom was that as you increased democratic space, the state would become less extractive – there would be no more free lunch for the political elite – and the economies would naturally get better, leading to improved living standards. But this soon emerged as a mirage in many countries, leading to the rapid rise of populism.
