When Was That Golden Age?

I thought Fareed Zakaria’s most recent Washington Post column was full of unintended comedy. The claim of the column is that “politics is trumping economics” as though it were a recent phenomenon:

As we watch inflation spike to a pace not seen since the 1980s, experts are debating whether this phenomenon is worrying and long-term or benign and transitory. I’m not an economist, but as a student of history, I do wonder whether the return of inflation is part of a larger shift that has taken place across the world. To put it simply, for decades in country after country, economics trumped politics. But now, from China to Turkey to the United States, politics is trumping economics.

I simply had to laugh. What was that golden age when economics was not “trumped by” politics? Certainly not during my lifetime.

There is a reason that Aristotle characterized politics as the “master science”, dominating all branches of human activity.