Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, September 9, 2022

Bidenomics

 Yglesias actually interviews someone important, Janet Yellin, who has some interesting things to say about Biden's economic policy.

What's interesting about Yellin's frame of "modern supply side" economics is how it acknowledges that the supply side of the equation is important, but also that the "invisible hand" is just very clumsy. 

The long running falsehood that markets are always efficient has underpinned some really bad and damaging policy choices, especially among Republicans who tend to believe it as an article of faith. It's tempting for someone like Yglesias and others to blame skyrocketing housing costs on public policy (NIMBY) but in many ways, all that's happening is the market is making places like San Francisco and NYC exorbitantly expensive. It's not that policy created this dynamic, but rather that it didn't shape it better.

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