Economics of prosperity part 10
You feel it. A vague, persistent disquiet. It’s in the glance at a retirement statement that seems disconnected from reality, in the pang of doubt when told a “strong” economy is one where two incomes can barely afford a small home and a single child. It’s in the unspoken calculation of whether to bring a new life into a world that feels financially punitive and culturally hostile to the very project of family. It’s the quiet dread that the future is being hollowed out before it arrives. This feeling is not anxiety. It is your moral and economic intuition recognizing a system operating in reverse. You are witnessing the slow-motion consequences of a single, foundational inversion: the transformation of the state from a fiduciary trustee into a proprietary owner. For centuries, Western political thought rested on the principle that government is a trust. Its powers are delegated, temporary, and singular in purpose: to secure the lives, liberties, and properties of the living citizens wh...