Angus Deaton, pofesor s Princetona, ki je leta 2015 dobil Nobelovo nagrado za prispevek k raziskavam na področju revščine in blaginje, je zaslovel šele kasneje. In sicer s knjigo “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” (2020), v kateri sta z ženo Anne Case analizirala katastrofalni socialni položaj ameriškega srednjega razreda, ki se brez redne službe iz obupa opija, drogira in umira. V svoji najnovejši knjigi “Economics in America” pa se je med drugim lotil tudi svojih kolegov ekonomistov, zaverovancev v neoklasične teorije, pa čeprav empirično dokazano napačne, ki so pozabili, kaj je bil osnovni namen ekonomske vede – to je pomoč pri izboljševanju blaginje ljudi. Kot pravilno pravi, ekonomija je zašla pri merjenju blaginje ljudi zgolj v monetarnih enotah. Blaginja ni samo dohodek, pač pa osebno dostojanstvo, ki izhaja iz tega, da imajo solidno plačano službo, da živijo v funkcionalnem okolju in da so sposobni nahraniti svojo družino. In če ljudem vzameš službo, si jih opropal osnovnega človeškega dostojanstva.

Prejšnji teden je Deaton na konferenci presenetil kolege s predstavitvijo nove raziskave, v kateri kaže socialne posledice neenakih možnosti glede izobraževanja v ZDA. Pokazal je, da Američani brez višje izobrazbe umirajo mlajši in da se je ta razlika v zadnjem desetletju kar potrojila.

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It’s anything but. What Deaton calls his mea culpa is a broadside on his profession and some of its most celebrated figures. Economists and their relentless focus on markets and efficiency, as well as their dogmatic attachment to theories (even after they’ve been disproven), have had life-or-death consequences for millions, he argues. The book, coming out on Oct. 3, has already triggered a debate that has him facing off with at least one other high-profile colleague.

Deaton’s primary complaint isn’t with Summers. It’s that the profession has become intoxicated with markets and money, losing sight of its primary mission as set out in its earliest days by Adam Smith, John Locke and others who came to economics via philosophy and other fields, rather than commerce. “The discipline has become unmoored from its proper basis, which is the study of human welfare,” Deaton writes in his book.

In Deaton’s mind this is a life-or-death matter. Because nothing to him exemplifies how economics has gone awry more than the epidemic of deaths from alcoholism, opioid overdoses and suicide that has hit the American working class in recent decades. He believes one primary cause of that surge was economists’ enthusiasm for globalization, with its emphasis on the unfettered movement of goods, capital and jobs. “You can’t think about trade policy and think about money entirely,” Deaton says. “It’s people’s souls and their communities and their churches” and their lives that are at stake when jobs are dislocated.

Case, who is also a Princeton economist, and Deaton, first documented the plague in a research paper in 2015, the same year he won the Nobel. Case came up with the term deaths of despair, which became the title for their 2020 book on the subject. That their work surfaced just as Donald Trump’s populism was finding support in blue-collar America meant that “deaths of despair” quickly entered the Trump-explainer lexicon alongside “left-behind” communities.

Those deaths are also why Deaton is allergic to what to him feels like a misplaced “triumphalism” in the US about its rapid economic recovery from the pandemic recession of 2020 and what that means for its future in the world. To him America’s rapid recovery is yet more evidence of economics run amok. Pundits “are all writing this stuff these days about how America’s triumphing. It’s growing. Europe is stagnating,” Deaton says. “And yet, you know, life expectancy in America is tumbling and people are killing themselves. It’s not happening in Europe.”

In a new paper published Sept. 28, Case and Deaton document a life-expectancy divide between college graduates and the rest of the population that has only grown with the pandemic. In 1992 college graduates on average lived 2.6 years longer than those without a bachelor’s degree. By 2019 the gap had more than doubled, to 6.3 years. In 2021 it hit 8.5 years.

Deaton does see some changes in the US economic landscape that give him cause for optimism. He is encouraged by the rebirth of the American labor movement since the onset of the pandemic. The United Auto Workers strike now underway is a good thing, he says, pointing to a fight for the sorts of better jobs and pay that are badly needed in many parts of the US, as well as a union leadership intent on restoring its purpose.

A surge in manufacturing investment fueled in part by the Biden administration’s industrial policy may eventually help reverse the dreadful trend he and Case have documented. “But that will take a long time,” Deaton says. He also is frank in saying he doesn’t have the answers, partly because he believes the easy solutions prescribed by economists often hurt more than they help.

Compensation programs, such as those for people who lose their jobs when factories move offshore, have never really worked and amount only to a “pious mouthing of words that makes people feel better,” Deaton says.

What’s known as the “credibility revolution” in economics in recent decades has seen a focus on real-world studies that have brought a flood of new data and ought to be helping find solutions. But Deaton thinks it has led the profession away from pondering the big questions to focusing on easily quantifiable ones. “You’re finding out very credible results about things you’re not very interested in,” Deaton says.

The big questions these days, he writes in his book, should all be focused on how to prevent economic distress before it happens. Which to Deaton means considering heretical ideas like controlling immigration or using tariffs to help preserve jobs or reconfiguring the measures of human success.

It doesn’t help that the current debate over economic policy is driven by ideology. Whether it’s over the minimum wage, poverty data, health care, the need for fiscal stimulus in response to a crisis or other issues, Deaton argues economists on both sides of politics are too often partisan warriors. “Economics is like Darwinian evolution, where people’s beliefs are well predicted by their political ideology,” he writes in the new book.

But to Deaton the fundamental problem with economics is bipartisan: Whether conservatives or progressives, most economists measure human well-being in monetary terms. And that misses all the other things that matter, from the confidence and meaning people derive from jobs to the dignity of living in a functioning community in a democratic society. To account for those things, Deaton concludes, economists “need to abandon our sole fixation on money as a measure of human well-being.”

Vir: Bloomberg