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.
State television, from which a significant number of Poles get their news, consistently smears, in aggressive and defamatory language, the political opposition and anyone who thinks differently from the ruling party.
The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.
Although socialism is widely held by the establishment to be outdated, the things that are most popular in British society today are little pockets of socialism, where areas of life have been excluded from the crude operation of market forces and are protected for the benefit of the community
Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight.
If there were Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, it makes it certain there would be a reprisal attack against the United States at some point.
American government did not originate in any abstract theories about liberty and equality, but in the actual experience gained by generation after generation of English colonists in managing their own political affairs. The Revolution did not make a breach in the continuity of their institutional life.
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