Brad DeLong is one of the most well-respected economists in America today, and these are his picks for the economic thinkers who will be remembered in the future.

He seems like an optimist.

In our own time, the destruction of caste and caste privilege is taking another step forward. The period of white males’ political dominion in Western democracies is coming to an end. And it is coming to an end at a time when economic populism is replacing technocratic management, often with white males turning to nativism in response to the destruction of their jobs and livelihoods by the impersonal forces of globalization.