I've used this blog to riff on the 2016 Presidential Election.  I though it was no contest, that Ms Clinton would win by 45 to 48 states.  It never entered my mind that there were people out there who, by force of circumstance, could not take it so lightly.

The critical circumstance is that inequality in income and wealth has expanded more in the last 8 years than in any other decade in our history:  the rich are getting richer, the poor are unable to find jobs with living wages.  I did not believe that this would be addressed.  I was more concerned about the dangers of racism, misogyny, and nationalism.

I was wrong.  The election was about the very rich taking it all, and the ordinary people not waiting any longer for crumbs to fall from their tables.  

I have no faith that Mr Trump can provide our deplorable classes with meaningful jobs and the dignity of work.  But if he fails, we will all fail.

Our economy is fragile.  Keeping it from the brink will largely be a matter of chance.

This will be my last posting on this Brave New World Notes Blog.  It is humbling to realize that all my previous posts were irrelevant to what really mattered.

  

M

Global optimization is a branch of applied mathematics and numerical analysis that deals with the global optimization of a function or a set of functions according to some criteria.  As you might imagine, I know nothing more than that.