Apart from the tribal outburst in your last paragraph there, that’s the kind of reasonable, balanced assessment I’d expect from a graduate economics student. Congratulations on passing that test.

Where the rubber meets the road, though, is the issue of whether democracy is strong enough to function alongside capitalism in the long run. Who imposes the structure on the market, the voters or the billionaire class with its army of lobbyists, captured demagogues, and virtual veto power in Congress?

Again, I’d suggest that if economists on the whole are opposed to free-market ideology, they could voice their opposition much more loudly and humiliate both the Democrats and the Republicans who trumpet that rhetoric.

The fact that society never hears from the economics profession the way it hears, say, from climate scientists is suspicious. Either economics is more riven with partisan disagreements or their consensus isn’t so squarely opposed to the plutocratic, free-market agenda after all. Or perhaps economists don’t have such strong feelings about the relation between capitalism and democracy because the data aren’t so clear (because economics isn’t so close to being a pure science).