“Most Americans don’t like change very much,” writes economist and “Marginal Revolution” blogger Tyler Cowen, “unless it is on terms they manage and control.” That’s just one of many provocative sentences you can mine from the riches threaded through his new book The Complacent Class.

“Don’t like change” cuts against most Americans’ self-image. Don’t voters almost always demand and sometimes vote for change? Isn’t that what they were doing when they voted for an untested backbench senator in 2008 or a reality TV show/real estate billionaire in 2016?