Randy Wray — Prospects for the State of the Union: More Risk-Taking, More Crime, and More Crises

I don’t know what President Obama is going to say in his State of the Union address. He’s been trying to “rally the troops”, to press Americans to nudge their elected representatives to govern rather than to simply throw roadblocks in the way. Yet, the President continues to come up short on concrete proposals. It would be too much to say that he panders to the population—I think he’s doing a better job than most politicians in trying to appeal to higher motives. Yet public discourse today suffers by comparison with that of our nation’s past. Keep the following Presidential address in mind as President Obama delivers his. While we like to think that we are evolving—as a species and as a nation—it might be pretty hard to tell.

Economonitor | Great Leap Forward
Prospects for the State of the Union: More Risk-Taking, More Crime, and More Crises
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, UMKC