Why The World Is Getting Angrier, And What Says About The Economy

Tracy Alloway (0:11)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:16)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

So Joe, do you think it's fair to say that people are angry?

Joe Weisenthal (0:22)

Yes, for many reasons, I would say that is a fair characterization of how a lot of people feel these days.

Tracy Alloway (0:29)

Yeah, and obviously, people are angry about a wide variety of different things. But I gotta say, both you and I live a lot of our lives on social media, and I always feel like you can sense public anger by some of the replies on platforms like Twitter.

People just get, I don't know, much more responsive and much more outspoken and angrier. That's the only word for it.

Joe Weisenthal (0:56)

Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of very legitimate reasons to be angry. I'll just say, and it's not going to take care of, it's not gonna eliminate anger, but I just keep thinking, boy, it would be really good for people if we could get a vaccine for this virus and people could get it outside and a chance to return to something resembling normal life. Because I think the combination of everything that's going on these days, the economic destruction, anger at police violence, the frustration that people have of being inside, people need a break.

And it's clearly not a good moment right now for a lot of people.

Tracy Alloway (1:39)

Yeah, I think a lot of people are sitting at home with nothing else to do except sort of see with anger. And a lot of that is coming out now. But even before the coronavirus crisis, I think it's fair to say that people were getting angrier or at least, whenever we had a populist politician suddenly voted into office, people would explain that through anger.

Well, everyone's angry, so of course this is gonna happen. After the 2008 financial crisis, lots of people were angry at the financial system and the bankers. So it feels like this general trend of public anger has been building up for a long time. And maybe 2020 is sort of the year when it tipped over into, well, when it tipped into the public in a very obvious way.

Joe Weisenthal (2:30)

I think that's fair. I mean, I think like post great financial crisis and maybe you could arguably trace it to the aftermath of the Iraq War in the US. Those two things, the slow recovery, weak wage growth, polarizing impacts of media.

It feels like that's a trend that has been with us for a while. And it feels like if anything, the only real effect on that from this current crisis, it's just been an accelerant.

Tracy Alloway (3:00)

Exactly. But people get angry about different things, but rarely do you hear people take a step back to consider why that anger exists or what are the overarching trends that are driving that anger. So we know people are upset about inequality, they're upset about racism, they're upset about corruption, things like that. Those are individual things to be upset about, but what are the trends driving those overall dynamics?

Joe Weisenthal (3:34)

Right, and what are the consequences of them long-term? Because one of the things that we've been talking about on some recent episodes is could this crisis create a policy shift, like meaningful changes from the way economic policy was conducted pre-crisis to post-crisis.

And a lot of that, look, politicians, they're responsive to the public mood and one of the interesting questions to my mind is whether the changing public mood means that it's hard to go back to the status quo or do we just find a way to just sort of return to normal? I think it's a huge question. And again, one that has a lot of implications for the economy and asset prices and markets. So I think even something as nebulous as public anger is a pretty important thing to wrap our head around, even if you're just sort of looking at this from a pure sort of dollars and cents standpoint.

Tracy Alloway (4:29)

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I'm glad you brought up the policy angle because I think weirdly people seem to forget that the whole point of economics, aside from explaining the way the economy works, is actually to boost prosperity and wellbeing of people.

And funnily enough, you don't often see that said explicitly in economics. So today we are going to be talking about what economics can teach us about why people are so angry at the moment. And well, there's your clue for our guest. We're going to bring on Eric Lonergan. He's the co-author of a book appropriately titled, Angrynomics. So Eric, thanks so much for coming on the podcast again.