Angrynomics

Why does it feel like the world is constantly seething with frustration? Why are politicians, protestors, and commentators all tapping into our collective fury? In Angrynomics, economist Eric Lonergan and political economist Mark Blyth argue that anger has become the dominant emotion of our economic age—and it’s not simply personal discontent gone viral. They contend that our economic system, riddled with inequality, uncertainty, and institutional decay, has created what they call an “angrynomics world.” Understanding this anger, they argue, is the first step to transforming it from a destructive force into a catalyst for reform.

At its heart, the book weaves together the fields of economics, psychology, and politics to answer a pressing question: why are we so angry when societies are wealthier than ever? Through vivid stories—from Iceland’s “Panama Papers” protests to the Yellow Jackets in France and Trump rallies in the U.S.—Lonergan and Blyth show that our anger isn’t random or irrational. It’s a predictable reaction when ordinary people feel unheard, unprotected, and deceived by institutions that once promised fairness.

Two Faces of Public Anger

The authors divide anger into two broad types: public and private. Public anger includes what they call moral outrage—the righteous indignation of citizens confronting corruption or injustice—and tribal anger, the “us vs. them” venom that fuels populism. Private anger, by contrast, manifests as personal stress, fear, and frustration in response to instability, economic insecurity, and technological change. Both forms feed into one another, shaping elections, markets, and the emotional fabric of daily life.

Lonergan and Blyth urge readers to resist dismissing anger as irrational. Public anger can inspire revolutions for fairness—from Iceland’s protests after its banks collapsed to youth-led climate movements. Yet, when cynically manipulated by elites or media, that same fury mutates into tribal rage—dangerous, divisive, and mobilized for political power rather than justice.

From Economics to Angrynomics

Traditional economics assumes people are rational agents maximizing utility. But as Lonergan and Blyth show, this abstraction ignores emotion, uncertainty, and moral judgment—the forces that define real economic life. Modern capitalism, they say, is operating on software that no longer matches the hardware of our global systems. The authors frame capitalism like a computer that periodically “crashes”—1870–1930, 1945–1975, and the 2008 financial crisis being major examples. Each crash exposes the bugs: inequality, wage stagnation, and loss of faith in elites. After each, the system resets with new “software”—Keynesianism post-Depression, neoliberalism after the 1970s—and new political alignments. But today, the patchwork fixes no longer work. The machine is overheating with anger.

Their central argument is that the 2008 crisis didn’t just cause a financial breakdown; it ruptured public trust in governments and institutions. Bailouts for banks, austerity for citizens, and hollow promises of globalization all combined to breed moral outrage. For many, this morphed into tribal rage, giving rise to populists who exploit resentment but offer no real fixes. When citizens feel voiceless and economies feel rigged, “angrynomics” becomes the defining mode of political and economic life.

Why Anger Matters Now

Angrynomics matters because it reframes anger not as an obstacle to progress but as an indicator—a diagnostic tool. If economics is the study of what’s supposed to happen in markets, angrynomics examines what we actually experience: wage stagnation despite growth, unstable jobs despite record employment, climate anxiety amid technological progress. These contradictions explain why even prosperous societies feel insecure and resentful.

Lonergan and Blyth ask: how do we channel anger productively? Their answer requires reimagining economic policy itself. From national wealth funds that spread ownership beyond the elite, to “helicopter money” and dual interest rates that end recessions without austerity, they outline a bold agenda to rebuild systems of collective trust. Anger, they insist, can be a constructive energy—if we direct it toward fairness and shared prosperity, not fear and exclusion.

“We want to listen to legitimate anger—but we must ignore the tribal manipulation of it.”

Over the following key ideas, we’ll unpack how moral outrage and tribal rage differ, how capitalism’s periodic “software crashes” generate angry politics, how private stressors like technology and aging fuel personal anger, and how innovative policy ideas—from national wealth funds to a “data dividend”—might calm a world on edge. Beneath it all runs a hopeful thread: if we can understand the anatomy of anger, we can rewrite the code for an economics that actually works for everyone.

Lonergan and Blyth begin by dissecting the twin engines of public anger—moral outrage and tribal rage. Through vivid stories, they show how group identity, belonging, and perceived injustice drive people to protest or lash out. Public anger, they argue, is collective energy. It can be constructive, as in civic protest, or destructive, as in nationalism and violence. The difference lies in direction—who channels it and to what ends.

Moral Outrage vs. Tribal Rage

In Reykjavik’s 2017 “Panama Papers” protests, ordinary Icelanders who had lived through financial collapse discovered their prime minister was hiding offshore wealth. Their outrage—righteous, civic, collective—was the productive kind. Similarly, France’s Yellow Jackets began as fairness protests against regressive fuel taxes before being hijacked by political opportunists. In both cases, outrage began as a demand for justice but risked devolving into tribal anger.

Tribal rage, by contrast, transcends ethics. It binds groups together by aggression against an “other.” It’s the psychology of sports hooligans and political extremists alike. The authors call tribal anger a “functional minority”: small but loud, fiercely loyal, policing the boundaries of their tribe and attacking outsiders. Politicians can weaponize this emotion by stoking fears about immigrants, elites, or rival nations—a pattern visible from Brexit to Trump's rallies, from Orban’s Hungary to Modi’s India.

Manipulated Anger and Media Symbiosis

Blyth and Lonergan argue that modern media and politics have formed what they call a “destructive symbiosis.” Traditional media, losing revenue to digital platforms, discovered that fear and outrage drive clicks. Politicians, facing fractured electorates, learned that angry voters are loyal voters. Together, they built an industry around tribal anger. CNN thrived on Trump’s chaos; tabloids profited from migrant panic. Social media, with its algorithmic amplifiers, turbocharged emotion, creating echo chambers that reward outrage over nuance (mirroring the dynamics described in Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism).

Loss of Political Identity

Why has tribalism flared so strongly now? The authors trace it to the collapse of postwar class-based political identities. During the Cold War, politics organized around economic ideologies—capital vs. labor, left vs. right. After globalization and neoliberalism blurred those lines, politics became hollow. Parties no longer represented workers or business; instead, they courted a mythic “median voter.” The result was what Peter Mair (in Ruling the Void) called the hollowing-out of democracy. Tribalism filled that vacuum because it’s emotionally vivid and easily mobilized. Nationalism, the authors note, often serves as the “emergency backup identity” when everything else fails.

Seen this way, today’s angry polarization isn’t new—it’s the reactivation of primal energies suppressed during decades of political comfort. The challenge, write Lonergan and Blyth, is to recognize when anger is the moral signal of an ignored injustice—and when it’s a manipulated reflex serving the powerful.

In their second dialogue, Lonergan and Blyth analyze legitimate anger—the moral outrage that arises when people who play by the rules are betrayed by those in power. They open with the story of the Garcia family in Spain, an ordinary couple crushed by austerity. Pedro, a bank worker, and his teacher wife, Valeria, lost their house and jobs after the 2008 crisis, even though they had done everything right. Their anger, the authors argue, wasn’t ignorance—it was reasoned moral rebuke.

Drawing on philosopher Martha Nussbaum and psychologist Carol Tavris, Lonergan notes that moral anger responds to specific violations of fairness and recognition. It’s the voice that says, “Listen to us—we matter.” What enrages citizens, he writes, is not only injustice but invisibility: being dismissed, unheard, or treated as expendable.

When Voice Disappears

Neoliberal centrist politics promised technocratic competence but drained democracy of meaning. Lonergan and Blyth show how the “there is no alternative” mindset, especially in Europe’s austerity regimes, silenced dissent. Matteo Renzi’s failed 2016 constitutional referendum in Italy, the Brexit vote, and Trump’s election were, in essence, screams for voice. People weren’t necessarily demanding specific policies—they were demanding recognition. Anger became the currency of belonging when representation vanished.

The authors cite economist Dani Rodrik’s political trilemma: you can have democracy, globalization, or national sovereignty—but not all three at once. By prioritizing free capital flows and “rules-based globalization,” elites weakened the democratic power of nation-states. Voters sensed that their governments no longer had real control—and their anger was justified.

The Moral Economy of Inequality

Beyond lost voice, moral outrage stems from inequality perceived as deliberate rigging. The authors note staggering numbers: in the U.S., the top one percent owns nearly half of income, while half the country has less wealth than ten billionaires. Across Europe, local austerity cut budgets by up to 30%. Meanwhile, bankers got bailouts and bonuses. This, they write, is not just about economics—it’s about violated norms of justice. The working classes once granted elites legitimacy in exchange for stability and fairness. That bargain is broken.

The authors emphasize perception: even when average incomes rise, if people feel the gain is unfair or insecure, the emotional effect is resentment. Inequality, they conclude, may not mathematically cause anger, but its social meaning—humiliation, loss of dignity, marginalization—does. Hence, angry politics thrives in relatively rich societies where expectations of fairness are betrayed.

To explain why anger erupts cyclically, Lonergan and Blyth present one of the book’s most fascinating frameworks: capitalism as a computer that periodically crashes. Each version of capitalism—what they call versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0—runs on specific “software” (ideas about markets and government) and “hardware” (institutions like banks, unions, and welfare states). When the software no longer fits the hardware, the system crashes, producing economic crisis and public anger. Each repair cycle redefines politics.

Version 1.0: Liberal Capitalism and the Great Depression

Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, the authors describe how nineteenth-century liberalism commodified labor, land, and money—the “fictitious commodities.” Treating people like market goods provoked backlash during the 1930s. Labor revolts, fascism, and communism were all reactions to the cruelty of “labor as commodity.” John Maynard Keynes then offered new code: state intervention to sustain demand and employment.

Version 2.0: The Keynesian Golden Age

Post-World War II capitalism (1945–1975) ran on software focused on full employment, strong unions, welfare states, and capital controls. It was the era of shared prosperity—the “thirty glorious years.” But Polish economist Michał Kalecki predicted the bug: sustained full employment would empower labor, pushing wages and prices up in an inflationary spiral. Stagflation in the 1970s crashed this version.

Version 3.0: Neoliberal Globalization

From Reagan and Thatcher onward, governments rewrote the code for deregulation, privatization, and independent central banks. The goal shifted from full employment to price stability. The new system crushed unions, liberalized finance, and globalized production. Capital prospered, wages stagnated, and asset bubbles replaced shared growth. The bugs—inequality, wage stagnation, and high leverage—exploded in 2008, the next crash.

After 2008: The Unfinished Reboot

Instead of resetting the system, policymakers patched it. Central banks bailed out finance while austerity punished taxpayers. As in the interwar years, failing to fix the bug produced populism and disillusionment. The system still “works” technically, but its emotional software—trust, legitimacy, fairness—has crashed. Anger is the operating signal demanding a full reboot.

Public rage may dominate headlines, but Lonergan and Blyth show that private anger—the stress simmering inside us—is equally central to angrynomics. They link everyday frustration to psychological strain under rapid economic and technological change. Using the story of Francesca Salvo, a lonely 78-year-old academic overwhelmed by life’s pace, they illustrate how uncertainty exhausts individuals, especially as institutions withdraw protection.

The Cognitive Cost of Change

Human beings crave stability. Routine reduces cognitive effort; we rely on habits and familiar patterns. But in modern economies, everything—from technology to jobs—changes constantly. When your local bank closes or your profession automates, every adaptation consumes mental energy, breeding fatigue and irritability. Angry people, Lonergan writes, are often just people exhausted by uncertainty.

Micro-Stressors of Modern Life

The authors identify four major stressors fueling private anger: intensified competition, fear of automation, aging populations, and immigration. Deregulation and digital platforms have created cutthroat markets where firms and workers alike feel precarious. He uses examples like Amazon’s disruption of retail or the rise of gig work to show how both capital and labor have become insecure. Everyone is chasing thinner margins and shorter contracts, feeding constant low-level anxiety.

Meanwhile, media narratives about AI and “robots taking jobs” amplify this anxiety despite weak evidence. History shows technology creates more jobs than it destroys, but the expectation of obsolescence is itself stressful. Add aging societies—where young workers inherit debt while retirees hold assets—and resentment grows between generations. Millennials paying student loans watch older boomers live comfortably off inflated assets. The result is intergenerational angrynomics.

Immigration and Perceived Threats

Finally, immigration has become a lightning rod for private frustration. Blyth notes how supporters of Brexit and Germany’s AfD often lived in places with few immigrants but long-term economic decline. Immigration thus symbolizes broader insecurities—a narrative reinforced by media and populists. For elites, open borders mean cheap labor and rich culture. For struggling citizens, they seem to mean fewer jobs and competition for services. The authors stress that the fear is real even if the economics aren’t.

Private angrynomics, then, isn’t about rage mobs but about the quiet stress that comes from living in a system where everything feels unstable and uncertain, and help feels unavailable. The challenge is not to suppress this anger but to rebuild collective security so individuals no longer face uncertainty alone.

In their final dialogue, Lonergan and Blyth shift from diagnosis to prescription. The question becomes: how do we calm angrynomics without dulling legitimate anger? Their answer is bold yet practical: upgrade capitalism’s “software.” Instead of austerity and tribalism, they propose policies that reduce economic insecurity, expand asset ownership, and restore public faith. Their toolkit centers on three innovations—national wealth funds, direct cash transfers, and dual interest rates—that together rewrite the economic rules.

1. National Wealth Fund: Everyone an Owner

Why should ownership be limited to the elite? The authors propose government-run sovereign wealth funds like Norway’s or Singapore’s, but used domestically to distribute assets. Governments can borrow at near-zero or negative real interest rates—essentially being paid to borrow—then invest in global stocks and infrastructure. Over time, those gains create a national inheritance distributed to the 80% with no assets, funding education, healthcare, or housing. It’s capitalism for everyone, not just the rich. (They compare it to Thomas Piketty’s call for wealth redistribution but achieved through ownership rather than taxation.)

2. Direct Money for Households

To end recessions, they want central banks to bypass banks and give money straight to people—what Milton Friedman dubbed “helicopter money” but which they call “direct support for consumption.” When economies stall, instead of lowering interest rates (which barely helps) or enriching asset-holders via quantitative easing, trigger automatic cash payments to citizens until employment and inflation stabilize. The Czech central bank has studied this approach, and even Fed officials like Stan Fischer have endorsed versions of it. As Blyth quips, “Don’t flood the house to fill the kettle—just pour in what’s needed.”

3. Dual Interest Rates and a Green Boom

Building on their monetary innovations, the authors advocate dual interest rates: one for savers, another for borrowers. Banks could borrow from the central bank at negative rates on the condition they lend to businesses investing in clean energy, infrastructure, or regional projects. This “green QE” would turn low rates—often seen as a curse—into an engine for decarbonization and jobs. It’s both climate policy and economic stimulus, flipping fear into opportunity.

4. A Data Dividend and New Fiscal Rules

They also tackle Big Tech’s inequality. Companies like Facebook and Amazon profit from our personal data; Lonergan and Blyth propose licensing it. Citizens could receive a “data dividend”—a royalty for granting access—either as cash or equity in the firms that use their data. Combined with flexible fiscal rules (governments can borrow freely when growth exceeds borrowing costs), this model democratizes wealth and future-proofs economies.

“The opposite of anger is play.” – Aristotle

Lonergan and Blyth end on a surprisingly hopeful note. Anger, they argue, is legitimate—it signals care. But only when citizens believe they have a stake, and governments prove capable of fairness, can that anger cool into creativity. Their vision isn’t anti-capitalist; it’s post-tribal. Nationalism, they suggest, can even become constructive if nations compete to innovate, not exclude. The real fix isn’t to suppress anger, but to give it better tools—and build an economics that finally deserves our trust.