Allow me to start off what is intended as an economic musing by referring to a favorite comic of mine, Patton Oswalt. He has a fairly new bit in which he explains the Trump phenomenon as a totally understandable response to the Obama presidency.

The political pendulum in America, deep in the throes of the financial crisis, had swung so far that the United States elected its first black President, and a rather progressive one. After eight years of that, the “mirrored” response was to elect a political novice known principally as the billionaire star of a reality television show.