Dani Rodrik is a professor at Harvard University. He argues that the task for policymakers is to boost the productivity of the jobs that are actually growing in the economy—particularly in health-care support and personal care—rather than trying to bring back manufacturing employment, perhaps through the adoption of AI.
In a 1991 paper Rodrik showed how uncertainty about the longevity of reforms can deter investment even when policies look sound on paper. The decisive factor in whether a political rupture leads to economic recovery is whether it convinces households and firms that the economic rules they face have genuinely changed—and will endure. Chile after 1990 illustrates the point: democracy returned, but the new centre-left government preserved the economic framework it inherited, maintaining fiscal discipline, open markets and property rights, and confidence held.
Football is a game designed to keep coalminers off the streets.