Isabella Weber: Why We Must Make Life’s Essentials Affordable

Economist Isabella Weber believes that her professional peers should adopt a more pragmatic approach to their work, drawing a parallel to the role of a dentist. Just as a patient in severe pain demands relief rather than ideological theorizing, society currently faces a dire economic reality that requires practical solutions rather than abstract dogma. Weber, a 38-year-old associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an associate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center, argues that the current status quo has become unbearable for most, with extreme inequality and corporate concentration reaching levels that are fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Regardless of society’s symptoms. Dentists have no such pretensions – patients have little patience for dogma when in insufferable pain, they obsess over ideological purity and are inflexible when searching for solutions. This analysis echoes much mainstream liberal and left-leaning thinking.

As she details in her new book, Anti-Fascist Economics, the global economic system has failed to deliver on its promises. This systemic collapse is further intensified by a climate crisis that sees the disintegration of our ecological foundations while simultaneously generating massive windfall profits for major corporations. Weber warns that fascism is currently emerging from a profound frustration rooted in a crisis of livelihoods. To combat this, she proposes that governments must act to reclaim and stabilize the price of life’s essentials—including housing, transport, food, water, energy, and healthcare—to ensure they remain affordable for all. Making the essentials affordable is a complex policy challenge, while it is a simple slogan. According to as Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor outline in their new book, End Times Fascism, powerful populists are embracing environmental destruction. “When these people say climate change is of no concern, they know it’s not true,”, Weber, “but they allow the planet to burn because they benefit from the fallout.

In progressive circles, Weber has become a significant voice, advising policymakers across the United States, Europe, and Latin America. She is known for popularizing the term greedflation to describe the profiteering observed during recent cost-of-living crises. Her influence is already being felt in political spheres, with UK officials and US leaders like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders consulting her on economic strategy. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently echoed her sentiments, noting that homes have been broken up and sold off, leading to diminished economic control.

Weber’s journey has not been without controversy. When she first proposed in in December 2021 that price controls could stabilize essential goods, she faced a hysterical backlash from contemporary economists, who compared her to a physicist ignoring the laws of gravity. She was famously dubbed the most hated woman in economics, and even Nobel laureate Paul Krugman initially labeled her arguments as truly stupid, though he later issued an apology. Reflecting on that period, Weber describes it as a difficult time, but one where her core arguments are increasingly being validated by current events. John Maynard Keynes, Weber clarifies in the canteen of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Study), was the first to draw this dental comparison – and she is running with it. In progressive circles, Weber, 38, is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after economists of her generation. Keynes made this case a century ago.

Her approach to stabilization involves pulling multiple levers, acknowledging that each sector requires unique interventions. For instance, in the global grain market, where four multinationals control between 70% and 90% of trading, she suggests that governments must identify specific points for intervention to curb volatility-driven profits. She has advised the South African government on pooling regional buying power to secure better procurement terms and advocates for policies like those in Mexico, where a voluntary price cap on a basket of essential goods is paired with tax relief and tariff benefits. We should do better, she reels off disturbing statistics that highlight the growing disparities between haves and have nots. “As economists. And functions differently from place to place, each sector has unique properties. She is urging governments to identify and implement interventions to keep prices down, at every stage of the value chain from source to table. So Weber champions an orthodontist’s approach, a global public option would be a diplomatic nightmare. At the other end of the chain is retail. Through which retailers voluntarily cap the total price of a basket of two-dozen essential goods, weber cites the Mexican government’s canasta básica policy. In return, the government offers advantageous tariff rates and tax relief, “and at a weekly press conference lauds those who do a good job and calls out those who don’t”. The governing Morena party increased its vote share from 55% to 61%, in Mexico’s 2024 presidential election. Significant parts of the global population will be sacrificed.”, if we don’t start acting effectively.

Central to her thesis is the idea that economic policy must be tethered to climate goals. She argues that keeping essential services reliant on fossil fuels exposes ordinary people to volatile oil and gas prices, which creates the economic insecurity that authoritarian politics exploit. She calls for a basic allowance of fossil fuels to ensure stability for individuals, provided this transition is supported by significant public investment in green infrastructure. This is particularly urgent given that in 2022, major publicly listed oil and gas companies accumulated $916 billion in profits. The New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, outlined how Weber’s work, which he had followed for years, had informed his affordability agenda in the city: free buses, universal childcare, rent caps, public groceries, at a meeting of city mayors last month. Not with the goal of maximising profits, but stabilising prices to protect producers and consumers, create public buffer stock systems – publicly owned entities that can buy and sell grain into its market. According to in 2022, publicly listed oil and gas companies raked in $916bn in global net income. “In research we conducted on the United, We showed 50% of those profits go to the top 1% of households. The bottom 50% of households only got a 1% share.”. According to “People can’t afford things, see the rich get rich, and become angry,”, Weber.

Weber points to the recent electoral success of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt as a textbook example of how the far right gains traction. She argues these parties succeed not because their platform is compelling, but because traditional political parties have failed to acknowledge the endemic hardship of their constituents or offer a coherent economic vision. By focusing on the material foundations of society, Weber believes economists can help rehabilitate democracy, insisting that while economic patterns are fixed, the way we shape and steer them is ultimately a political choice. Then economics is key to averting the catastrophes in front of us.”, as she writes: “If we understand economics as the study of the material foundations of society. Weber is calling on fellow economists to “abandon ideology” and develop a “big tent economic policy” that can counter an ascendant far right. In economics, we tend to have these overarching models and an inclination for silver bullets.