Why does the economy suck for most Americans even as economists and economic journalists paint a rosy picture?

Rich people don’t care all that much about chemistry, astronomy or archeology but they damn sure care about economics and political science, because political/economy is ultimately what determines the power structure of a society. Like I’ve stated repeatedly, ideas and ideologies matter, and the dominant economic idea for my adult lifetime has been neoliberalism. And neoliberalism has been very, very good to the wealthy who own America.

Unlike astronomy, neoliberalism affects the very foundations of the social and economic structure. It is the science of the ways and means by which the wealthy have come to their estate and how they go about enlarging it by corrupting the way in which we view the world. Any science that deals with the source of plutocrat power is going to be one that they really want to influence. Why are all the business schools funded by billionaires?

The bought and paid for economists and economic journalists praise neoliberalism and describe a best of times because for their benefactors it is. The concentration of wealth allows the ultra-wealthy and large corporations to pour immense resources into lobbying and political campaigns, giving them outsized influence over policy decisions.

Is the bifurcated economy the reason most Americans are so miserable? Indeed, elite calls for trust and appeals to shared values no longer resonates with a populace who has come to regard our economy as a vast looting operation for the insider billionaires, who are poised to become vastly richer under the hopelessly corrupt Trump Administration.

And this brings up an uncomfortable dilemma–the wealthy have little incentives to change US economic policies, especially since they control the economics departments, corporate media and government itself.

I would think that there might be a political angle here but, then again, I’m a dirty-hippy, anti-imperial, Hudsonist, who has never been caught.

Update: The push to implement AI offers a unvarnished view of the new economy, as the current AI development trajectory leads to an oligarchic concentration of power, where technology serves to optimize for capital accumulation rather than a broader social good.