It is not at all amazing to claim that August Wilson is one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. This fact is as interesting as the fact that it rains a lot in Seattle, Wilson’s third and last city. (His first was Pittsburg, his next was Minneapolis—he died in Seattle in 2005.) The more amazing thing to say about Wilson is this: He was the greatest black American economist of the 20th century.
Some might first think this to be a bit of a stretch. Wilson did not study economics, and the profession is never mentioned in his plays. Fair enough. But Wilson also never officially studied theater. He learned his art pretty much on his own. So if you can claim he was a playwright, despite having no formal training in this discipline, I can just as fairly claim he was an economist.
Indeed, Wilson’s first play, Jitney, which was completed in 1979 and is set in 1971, is not only a masterpiece of 1970s economics, it also predicted the rideshare economy of our times.
