Wealth & Money Quote by Susan George

Treating “the economy” as a free-floating machine is one of modern politics’ most convenient fictions, and Susan George is puncturing it with a single, ominous sentence. Her phrasing matters: “disembodied” isn’t just “disconnected.” It’s anatomical, even ghostly, suggesting an economy turned into an abstract spirit - spreadsheets, indices, investor sentiment - drifting away from the flesh-and-blood lives it is supposed to organize. The warning lands because it targets a habit of speech that doubles as a habit of governance: leaders invoke “the economy” the way priests invoke weather, as if it’s a force with its own needs that ordinary people must appease.

George’s intent, shaped by decades of activism against debt regimes, austerity, and corporate power, is to reverse that moral hierarchy. Society isn’t an accessory to economic growth; economic activity is a tool embedded in social contracts, institutions, and obligations. The subtext is an indictment of technocracy and market fundamentalism: once policy treats human costs as “externalities” - precarious work, hollowed public services, ecological ruin - disaster isn’t an accident. It’s the bill coming due.

Contextually, the line reads like a response to the late-20th-century turn toward deregulation and globalization, when “competitiveness” became a trump card against labor protections and welfare states. It also anticipates the post-2008 pattern: finance rescued, households disciplined. “Disaster” is deliberately non-poetic; it’s the blunt outcome of an economy that forgets it has a body.