One of the clearest illustrations of the economic notion of a “market failure” is the market for academic economists — a market so captured by the dominant neoliberal narrative, that it has proven nearly impervious to competition from empirical facts.

The wealthy have used a considerable portion of their wealth to remind us all that they only have our best interest in mind, and it has worked amazingly well considering that it is the exact opposite of reality. America’s story is a long history of class warfare with very few instances of the wealthy losing any battles.

The main weapon deployed against the unwashed masses in this war is the ignorance of the masses themselves and their basic disdain for anyone who reminds them of their ignorance by actually being smart, or educated. Since the masses get their paychecks from a relatively wealthy employer and pay taxes to their government it was quite easy to provide validation for the lie of employers being the “source” of all money via commerce and the duly elected government as a parasitic “user” of money that it must extract from the economy via taxation, or borrow from the wealthy via Treasury debt which detracts from the ability of the wealthy as benefactors.

This misconception of our economic reality causes the masses to support their own misery and celebrate the luxury afforded the wealthy, which they view as a tradeoff for their own meager support, even though they are abandoned at the slightest hint of cheaper labor elsewhere. Should the masses ever discover that their government is the sole unlimited net source of money, and the wealthy are just “users” of the money, as they are, it might get a bit ugly.