"The reason rent is unbearable and homelessness shapes our lives now is because the same small, self-reinforcing circle of elite thinkers has had a monopoly on "serious economic ideas" for forty years. It's a closed ecosystem where columnists, policymakers, think-tank economists, and university insiders circulate one another's arguments until they harden into consensus. That consensus, Crimson-coded, always tilts toward market solutions, property-owner interests, and fiscal austerity - not because it works, but because it preserves institutions from the threat of change."
"When gatekeepers all come from the same schools, the same networks, and the same worldview, they reproduce the same policies: deregulation that helps landlords and developers, hostility to public spending, and an obsession with deficits that justifies cuts to the very services ordinary people rely on. That's how we end up in a country where rent rises faster than wages and austerity feels like a natural law"
A small, self-reinforcing circle of elite thinkers has monopolized "serious economic ideas" for forty years, creating a closed ecosystem of columnists, policymakers, think-tank economists, and university insiders. Those actors circulate one another's arguments until they harden into a consensus that favors market solutions, property owners, and fiscal austerity. Gatekeepers drawn from the same schools and networks reproduce policies like deregulation, cuts to public spending, and deficit-focused governance, insulating institutions from structural change. The result is rising rents, stagnant wages, normalized austerity, and widespread suffering that remains irrelevant to an insulated managerial class that uses prestige to defend inequality.
Read at Portland Mercury
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