Angrynomics
While statistics tell us that the vast majority of people are getting steadily richer, the world most of us experience day in and day out feels increasingly uncertain, unfair, and ever more expensive. Angrynomics explore the rising tide of anger, sometimes righteous and useful, sometimes destructive and ill-targeted, and propose radical new solutions for an increasingly polarized and confusing world. Angrynomics is for anyone wondering, where the hell do we go from here?
Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth have written a book for anyone anxious, worried – or angry – about the mismatch between how they experience the world with the increasing day to day pressures they face and the model used by economic elites and politicians to explain and justify it.
In a powerful and passionately argued analysis, the authors bring their critical insight and expertise to bear on the nature of angrynomics.
They offer a set of radical and innovative policies that cut across tired party political lines — and that if implemented might just help the world to be a less angry place.
Table of Contents
Introduction: From Economics to Angrynomics
Dialogue 1: Public Anger and the Energy of Tribes
Dialogue 2: The Moral Mobs and Their Handlers
Dialogue 3: Macroangrynomics: Capitalism as Hardware, with Crashes and Resets
Dialogue 4: Microangrynomics: Private Stressors, Uncertainty and Risk
Dialogue 5: Calming the Anger; From Angrynomics to an Economist that Works for Everyone
Postscript: Angrynomics in a Pandemic
Conclusions
"This book is that rare pre-Covid-19 manuscript that has been made fortuitously more relevant by the virus ... Angrynomics is a rebuke to that ‘failure of the mind’."
—Ed Luce, Financial Times
"This book, built around lively dialogues between the two authors, explains why that should not be surprising, given what has happened over the last few decades."
"A compelling, challenging and incredibly timely book – needs to be read."
—Matthew Goodwin, Sunday Times
"Blyth and Lonergan call their book Angrynomics because it is the individual’s lived economic experience that drives the anger."
—Philip Aldrick, The Times
"Beautifully simple, logical and absolutely doable ideas zip off the pages of a new book by two of the most thoughtful economists in the game ... they are a formidable combination."
—Irish Times
"In a series of brilliant Socratic dialogues peppered with a score of real-world stories Lonergan and Blyth explain the roots of our current anger – anger over austerity policies, job losses, stagnant wages, million-dollar salaries for the few, broken health systems for the many."
—Branko Milanovic, Graduate Center, City University of New York
"An excellent, thought-provoking book that should be read by anyone with an interest in economics or politics. Angrynomics is a new term to me but one that should be at the heart of political debate."
—Philip Coggan, Medium