By: Sat Parashar, PhD

The US Presidential elections are due in 2024. The two presumptive candidates are Joe Biden (The 46th President) and Donald Trump (the 45th President) . They had their first debate of the season on June 27th.

But did you see, on June 25, before the first debate itself,

“Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists signed a letter on Tuesday warning that the U.S. and world economy will suffer if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November.”

Are they really “worthless out of touch economists” as Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Newsweek on June 27th …”

Not really, it is called echo system, which inexperienced politician like Trump underestimate. Experienced politicians spend lots of time and money in building and supporting those echo systems.

Kashmir Files

Sometime back, the world saw one Indian movie, Kashmir Files.

It has a  very famous dialogue: Sarkar kisi ki bhi ho, system to hamara hai, meaning government may be of any party, system is ours (of those who ruled for the most part since Independence in 1947).

Trump in his 2016 election had brought two terms  to the common man’s dictionary in USA,  ‘fake news’ and ‘deep state’.

India concluded its national elections recently. People saw the echo system of Congress and Samajwadi parties in action. While BJP talked of stalling reservations on religious basis, as per the Constitution of India, the echo system of Congress and Samajwadi parties pedaled it as changing the Constitution of India and  ending reservation for SC, ST, and OBCs by BJP, if BJP wins more than 400 seats.

Echo System in Panchtantra.

Panchtantra is an Indian classic book which was written around about 1200 BC. It is a book where a teacher undertakes to train dimwit sons of a king about the art and craft of administration.

In one of the stories related by the teacher, a brahmin is given a gift of a small little  goat whom he puts on his shoulders and starts walking towards his home. On way, he is met by a person (liar)  who tells him that you are a brahmin and how come you are carrying a dog on your shoulders?

Brahmin ignores him and continues towards his home. After some distance and time, another person (liar) tells him that you are a brahmin and how come you are carrying a dog on your shoulders?

Brahmin now gets confused but continues his walk towards home.

As per the design of three liars, again after some distance and time, the third person (liar)  stops brahmin and tells him that you are a brahmin and how come you are carrying a dog on your shoulders?

Now the brahmin is convinced that if all three persons are telling him that he is carrying  a dog. They must be right and throw away that goat from his shoulders.

The three liars make a good meal out of that goat.

I hope you see the power of the echo system. A lie consistently repeated makes it appear as truth. In the Panchatantra story, it required three liars echoing each other. That was a physical world. Today, in a digital world, it is so easy to repeat through various communication channels. Just google and find out how many times the story got repeated “Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists signed a letter on Tuesday warning that the U.S. and world economy will suffer if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November.”

Those communication channels have access to our bedroom and they try to control our brains. We have to learn to use our discretion.

Inflation During Trump Years

Let’s now turn to some facts about inflation during Trump years, 2017-2020 (and Joe Biden years, 2021-2024). The source of graphs shown below is https://fred.stlouisfed.org/

Clearly, the inflation during Joe Biden years have been higher than during Trump years. The shaded area highlights recession period that had, as a black swan event,  badly disrupted trump years.

So when, “Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists signed a letter on Tuesday warning that the U.S. and world economy will suffer if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November” were they out of touch?

 

The 10 year expected inflation, as per graph below, equally hardly supports fear expressed by those great brains.

Fear Psychosis

The two most powerful emotions to which human beings respond are fear and greed.

We have seen echo systems playing on fear, both, in USA (and India), the oldest and (the biggest) democracy, respectively, of the World. Greed is also a sort of fear. It is the fear of loss what would have been yours otherwise.

DISCLAIMER: The author is solely responsible for the views expressed in this article. The author carries the responsibility for citing and/or licensing of images utilized within the text.