It would be good if the economists and economic hawks would take this epochal moment to reflect on why such a large portion of the population is so alienated from the idea of "the economy" that they see it in opposition to "humanity" or "society" rather than as intrinsic to those

Because quite a lot of people have quite a lot of good reasons for feeling that way and no amount of calling them dumb dumbs is going to change the fact that to get this economy going again, you're going to need to bring them with you rather than leaving them behind again

Anyway just to head off the whataboutists, for more than a decade I have been urging the left to honestly grapple with why the word "socialism" is political poison and to contemplate how they can articulate these ideas without conjuring the gulag in peoples' minds. So yeah

Bernie may yet prove me wrong. But at times like this everyone should reflect honestly on why their most cherished ideas and terms of art are so misunderstood, whether they're worth a damn any more, and whether there is any sense in continuing to pretend they're still useful