Best of BS Opinion: To understand MAGAnomics, one must go beyond economics

Today's columns encompass economics, politics, and cultural phenomena to bring you a rich mix of reading material.

Hello, and welcome to BS Views, the best of Business Standard opinions.  

 

Today, we have a stellar line-up of reading material for you. For your economics and political fix, we have a dissection of Trump’s economic ideas, along with the likely power-play between Delhi’s lieutenant governor and the incoming new government. On the culture side, our writers mull the legacy of ‘delebrities’, or dead celebrities, and the overlay of words and loss. Happy reading!  

 

For our lead column today, Antara Haldar ponders the logic and reasoning behind so-called MAGAnomics, and notes that while Trump may have promised to cut inflation, his other actions are all potentially inflationary. Calling it an 'intellectual grab bag', she points out its contradictory impulses, being both pro-business and pro-worker at the same time, a mosaic of ideas corralled under a large nationalist tent. Perhaps MAGAnomics is best viewed outside of economic thought: of a people waiting for the American Dream, but pushed aside by various other groups, and turning to grievance and victimhood.  

 

Delhi’s lieutenant governor has, over time, gained the upper hand in the administration of this most curious city-state which also doubles as the capital of the country, says Aditi Phadnis. This, naturally, led to much acrimony between the LG and the Aam Aadmi Party-led government. But now, with a BJP government set to take charge, it remains to be seen how the LG's powers will stack up against what a government that will have a much closer affinity to its older, more powerful, ideological sibling at the Centre. 

 

Are celebrity artists worth more dead than alive? Sandeep Goyal argues that it would certainly seem so, if one were to look at prices of art by painters who have crossed over into the Elysian Fields, or works of musicians and singers who were once global icons. But ethical issues remain, especially the use of a digitally resurrected John Lennon for a car ad. But one thing, besides death and taxes, is certain: dead celebrities, or delebrities, have a way of bouncing back into the public consciousness.   

 

Ranjita Ganesan comes away from the Sundance film festival wondering about the power of words to traverse the valleys of grief and loss. A simple 'Are you okay?" can evoke more empathy and emotion than one would imagine, and this is a theme that threads many of the films at the festival. And given that everyone must face loss at some time or the other, she argues that may be we should approach it as a shared experience instead of one that leaves us alone.