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PROJECT SYNDICATE

Trump's most worrisome legacy
Kirstjen Nielsen's forced resignation as US Secretary of Homeland Security is no reason to celebrate. Yes, she presided over the forced separation of families at the US
border, notoriously housing young children in wire cages. But Nielsen's departure is not likely to bring any improvement, as President Donald Trump wants to replace her with someone who will carry out his anti-immigrant policies even more ruthlessly.
Trump's immigration policies are appalling in almost every aspect And yet they may not be the worst feature of his administration. Indeed, identifying its foulest aspects has become a popular American parlour game. Yes, he has called immigrants criminals, rapists, and animals. But what about his deep misogyny or his boundless vulgarity and cruelty? Or his winking support of white supremacists? Or his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty? And, of course, there is his war on the environment, on healthcare, and on the rules-based international system.
This morbid game never ends, of course, because new contenders for the title emerge almost daily. Trump is a disrupting personality, and after he's gone, we may well reflect on how such a deranged and morally challenged person could have been elected president of the world's most powerful country in the first place
But what concerns me most is Trump's disruption of the institutions that are necessary for the functioning of society. Trump's "MAGA" (Make America Great Again) agenda is, of course not about estoring the moral leadership of the United ■fates. It embodies and celebrates unbridled elfishness and self-absorption. MAGA is ibout economics. But that forces us to ask Vhat is the basis of America's wealth?
Adam Smith tried to provide an answer n his classic 1776 book The Wealth of •Jations. For centuries, Smith noted, tandards of living had been stagnant; then, oward the end of the eighteenth century, ncomes start to soar. Why?
Smith himself was a leading light of the ;reat intellectual movement known as the ■cottish Enlightenment. The questioning of :stablished authority that followed the earlier Reformation in Europe forced
ociety to ask: How do we know the truth? low can we learn about the world around is? And how can and should we organise >ur society?
From the search for answers to these luestions arose a new epistemology, based >n the empiricism and scepticism of cience, which came to prevail over the brces of religion, tradition, and uperstition. Over time, universities and >ther research institutions were established o help us judge truth and discover the rature of our world. Much of what we take dr granted today—from electricity, ransistors, and computers to lasers, modern medicine, and smartphones—is the result of this new disposition, undergirded by basic scientific research (most of it financed by government).
The absence of royal or ecclesiastical authority to dictate how society should be organised to ensure that things worked out well, or as well as they could, meant that society had to figure it out for itself. But devising the institutions that would ensure society's wellbeing was a more complicated matter than discovering the truths of nature. In general, one couldn't conduct controlled experiments.
A close study of past experience could, however, be informative One had to rely
on reasoning and discourse—recognising that no individual had a monopoly on our understandings of social organisation. Out of this process emerged an appreciation that governance institutions based on the rule of law, due process, and checks and balances, and supported by foundational values like individual liberty and justice for all, are more likely to produce good and fair decisions. These institutions may not be perfect, but they have been designed so that it is more likely that flaws will be uncovered and eventually corrected.
That process of experimentation, learning, and adaptation, however, requires a commitment to ascertaining the truth. Americans owe much of their economic success to a rich set of truth-telling, truthdiscovering, and truth-verifying institutions. Central among them are freedom of expression and independent media. Like all people, journalists are fallible; but, as part of a robust system of checks and balances on those in positions of power, they have traditionally provided an essential public good.
Since Smith's day, it has been shown that a nation's wealth depends on the creativity and productivity of its people, which can be advanced only by embracing the spirit of scientific discovery and technological innovation. And it depends on steady improvements in social, political, and economic organisation, discovered through reasoned public discourse.
The attack by Trump and his administration on every one of the pillars of American society—and his especially aggressive vilification of the country's truthseeking institutions—jeopardises its continued prosperity and very ability to function as a democracy. Nor do there appear to be checks on corporate giants' efforts to capture the institutions—the courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies, and major media outlets—that are supposed to prevent them from exploiting workers and consumers. A dystopia previously imagined only by science fiction writers is emerging before our eyes. It should give us chills to think of who "wins" in this world, and who or what we might become, just in the struggle to survive.
Joseph E Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University and the 2001 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. His new book, People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent, will be published this month by WW Norton and Allen Lane.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2019.
www.project-syndicate.org
(Exclusive to The Daily Star)