David Cay Johnston: The antidote to economic anxiety is better government

The stock market will recover. Whether jobs and pay will come back for most people is less certain

Sharp recent drops in the U.S., Chinese and European stock markets and the large crowds drawn by two very different men seeking to be president, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, point to the same issue: widespread economic anxiety.

Government policies — and to some degree, technological changes — are creating tectonic shifts in the global economy, in which we can observe a few gigantic winners while most strivers get little for their labor. Social unrest is on the rise in China and Europe because of wage cuts and job instability. That induces continual anxiety, occasional fear and, at the moment, outright panic among heavily leveraged hedge funds and other stock traders.