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The article discusses the discrepancy between mainstream economic indicators and the perceptions of American voters regarding the state of the U.S. economy, questioning the relevance of traditional economic metrics in capturing human welfare. Topics include the changing dynamics of unemployment, the disconnect between inflation measures and household incomes, the erosion of job security, the impact of interest rates on households, the evolving meaning of GDP growth.

Hence, starting with the original Maastricht Treaty and the various binding treaties of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) that ensued, according to Alain, this constraining structure imposed on national governments a "market" discipline that would destroy the "real" economy. Like Marx, Alain saw the state in its predatory role in favouring the private wealth accumulation of the economically powerful, and like Keynes he also saw the state in its role as a potential source of stability in reducing social anxiety and predation by promoting genuine social progress. Alain, on the contrary, fully embraced a theory of endogenous money, and as Lavoie ([4], p. 13) suggests, Alain was close to the horizontalist view of money as defended by Basil Moore ([5]). We have lost a truly special friend, Alain Parguez, who passed away peacefully on 5 April 2022, in Paris, at the age of 81. [Extracted from the article]