Attention Economy


Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Crisis/Crises Ahead?

I surrender. A major economic and social crisis seems inevitable.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/02/crisis-looms-united-states/
Mitch Daniels:
Paradoxically, these ominous projections can help worrywarts like me move through what might be called the stages of political grief. A decade ago, an optimist could tell himself that a democratically mature people could summon the will or the leaders to stop plundering its children’s futures, and to reconcile or at least agree to tolerate sincerely held cultural disagreements.
For a while after that, it seemed plausible to hope for incremental reforms that would enable the keeping of most of our safety-net promises, and for a cooling or exhaustion of our poisonous polarization.
Now, I’m grudgingly ready to surrender and accept that the cliché must be true: Washington will not face up to its duty except in a genuine crisis. Then and only then will we, as some would say, focus on the existential threats to our iconic institutions.