Editorial
Face it, then fix it
Let’s ditch fatalism in 2018
Tom Clark
Truly, this is the bleak midwinter—and not only literally. The world’s biggest brains despair at intractable conflict, climate catastrophe and raging nationalism. Meanwhile the economics profession, as it emerges blinking from a decade of stagnation it failed to see coming, is split. Half is preoccupied with wizardly robots that will destroy jobs and livelihoods, while—somewhat incongruously— the other half frets that growth is grinding to a halt because we’re running out of big ideas.