Between the years 2015 and 2020, legacy journalism was in a state of constant outrage for Donald Trump’s manhandling of the press.

A few weeks ago, in Hanover, Germany, dance critic Wiebke Huber found herself face to face with an angry choreographer. It seems that Huber had just that morning published a scathing review of the choreographer’s latest work, and the choreographer, Marco Goecke, had showed up to settle the score.

Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, so ebbing ones sink them closer to the rocks. Economies are the same. When they weaken and recede, everyone afloat on them — savers, wage earners, businesses, banks — gets closer to danger. A few boats, moored unwisely, are smashed to matchwood.

Closely adapted from Ikiru, Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece, Living owes a secondhand debt to the 19th-century novella from which the Japanese auteur drew inspiration.

You have to give the people involved with making and selling Chartreuse their props. The consumers of that peculiar, vegetal French liqueur have been wigging out at the news that the monks who make the stuff have decided to make less. Bartenders and drinks geeks alike, for whom the use of Chartreuse provides instant bar cred, have been running from liquor store to liquor store in hopes of finding the odd bottle. The monks remain serene.

How a political economy so favorable to the consulting industry came into being is a complicated story.

Liberals write as if no reasonable person could possibly think otherwise. The result is complacency: principles that should be scrutinized get taken for granted.