Economic Elitism Hamstringing Davos Leaders

Arguments for failed economic policies that begin with “Globally” or “Historically” won’t resonate with voters who can’t pay their bills.

Photo by Andre Taissin on Unsplash.

“We shouldn’t normalize Trump,” argued former Assistant Defense Secretary Graham Allison told the audience during a panel discussion at Davos this year. “Trump has done something no person in the world has ever done before. A dead man, a dead politician, has risen.”

“Someone who, four years ago at Davos, was politically buried and dead, politically, has returned,” marveled Mr. Allison. “This is the greatest comeback in political history for a politician, and therefore he thinks he can do anything. There’s a supreme confidence now about that.”

“Lo and behold, this is a phenomenon we shouldn’t try to understand only in the terms we traditionally accept,” he told fellow panelists. “We should say something strange, new, and amazing is happening here, and we should study it.”

Not all the panelists were as eager for a round of self-reflection and study.

“I think a lot of economists are shaking their heads at this narrative that neoliberalism failed,” observed his fellow panelist Allison Shrager. “From their perspective, the world got a lot richer, and even in richer countries, quality of life has improved significantly.”