When It Naively Trashes Inequality, the New York Times Channels Donald Trump

Originally Published in RealClearMarkets on 8/22/17.

Completed in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge took fourteen years to build. This engineering marvel brought a still distant world even closer together.

What’s important about the Brooklyn Bridge in a bigger, historical sense is what it signals about mankind: as humans we’re in relentless pursuit of closeness with our fellow man around the world, with trade top of mind. Seemingly every technological advance of major consequence (the telephone, the car, the airplane, the computer, etc.) has been about shrinking the world in a figurative sense, and reaching more people with goods and services in a literal sense.