"Princeton economics professor emeritus and Nobel laureate Angus Deaton has been running around making an extraordinary claim: “Being really poor in America is in some ways worse than being really poor in India or Africa," he recently told the National Association for Business Economics. Asked about those comments in an interview with the Atlantic, Deaton doubled down: "If you had to choose between living in a poor village in India and living in the Mississippi Delta or in a suburb of Milwaukee in a trailer park, I'm not sure who would have the better life."
...To her credit, the Atlantic's Annie Lowrey asked him just that: "Have you spent a lot of time in Kentucky or West Virginia or rural Nebraska?"
Deaton's reply is priceless: "No, but I spent five weeks every summer in Montana. And that's been an eye-opener."
Yes, nothing introduces you to the desperate lives of impoverished Americans like high-season fly-fishing in Big Sky Country....
And if you're still confused about how Donald Trump got elected, the patronizing ignorance of Ivy League professors about life between the coasts offers a clue."
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