Articles written by the author
The Incredible Shrinking Trump Boom
So far, President Donald Trump has passed only one significant piece of legislation: the 2017 tax cut. It was, to be fair, a pretty big deal: corporations, the principal beneficiaries, have saved more than $150 billion, and over the course of a decade the tax cut will probably increase the budget deficit by more than $2 trillion.Holy Voodoo, Batman!
The 2019 Economic Report of the President is out, and everyone is having fun with the bit at the end that acknowledges the help of student interns — a list that includes Peter Parker, Aunt May, Bruce Wayne, and Jabba the Hutt.Don't Blame Robots for Low Wages
The other day I found myself, as I often do, at a conference discussing lagging wages and soaring inequality. There was a lot of interesting discussion. But one thing that struck me was how many of the participants just assumed that robots are a big part of the problem — that machines are taking away the good jobs, or even jobs in general. For the most part this wasn’t even presented as a hypothesis, just as part of what everyone knows.Trump's Secret Foreign Aid Program
Donald Trump often complains that the media don’t give him credit for his achievements. And I can think of at least one case where that’s true. As far I can tell, almost nobody is reporting that he has presided over a huge — but hidden — increase in foreign aid, the money America gives to foreigners. In fact, the hidden Trump program, running around $40 billion a year, is probably the biggest giveaway to other nations since the Marshall Plan.Biden and Sanders, Behaving Badly
Health care was a key factor in Democrats’ victory in the 2018 midterm elections, and it should be a big plus in 2020 as well. The shared Democratic position — that every legal resident should have access to affordable care, regardless of income or health status — is immensely popular. The de facto Republican position — that we should go back to a situation in which those whose jobs don’t come with health benefits, or who suffer from preexisting medical conditions, can’t get insurance — is so...Deficit Man and the 2020 Election
I’ve seen a number of people suggest that the 2020 election will be a sort of test: Can a sufficiently terrible president lose an election despite a good economy? And that is, in fact, the test we’d be running if the election were tomorrow.The Sabotage Years
Do you remember the great inflation scare of 2010-2011? The U.S. economy remained deeply depressed from the aftereffects of the burst housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis. Unemployment was still above 9 percent; wage growth had slowed to a crawl, and measures of underlying inflation were well below the Federal Reserve’s targets. So the Fed was doing what it could to boost the economy — keeping short-term interest rates as low as possible, and buying long-term bonds in the hope of gett...The Trouble With Joe and Bernie
It’s still very early, but Joe Biden has emerged as the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Bernie Sanders is in second place, although he appears to be fairly far behind, and one poll shows him in a statistical tie with Elizabeth Warren. So what should we think about the men currently leading the field?Survival of the Wrongest
Evidence has a well-known liberal bias. And that, presumably, is why conservatives prefer “experts” who not only consistently get things wrong, but refuse to admit or learn from their mistakes.Bernie Sanders and the Myth of the 1 Percent
A peculiar chapter in the 2020 presidential race ended Monday, when Sen. Bernie Sanders, after months of foot-dragging, finally released his tax returns. The odd thing was that the returns appear to be perfectly innocuous. So what was all that about?Purity vs. Pragmatism, Environment vs. Health
Right now there are two big progressive ideas out there: the Green New Deal on climate change and “Medicare for all” on health reform. Both would move U.S. policy significantly to the left. Each is sponsored by a self-proclaimed socialist: the Green New Deal by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Medicare for all by Bernie Sanders. (Of course, neither of them is a socialist in the traditional sense.) Both ideas horrify not just conservatives, but also many self-proclaimed centrists.Donald Trump Is Trying to Kill You
There’s a lot we don’t know about the legacy Donald Trump will leave behind. And it is, of course, hugely important what happens in the 2020 election. But one thing seems sure: Even if he’s a one-term president, Trump will have caused, directly or indirectly, the premature deaths of a large number of Americans.America the Cowardly Bully
This is the way the trade war ends. Not with a bang but with empty bombast.How Goes the Trade War?
Say this for Donald Trump: He’s provided us with many iconic quotations, which will surely be repeated in histories and textbooks for decades if not generations to come. Unfortunately, they’ll be repeated because they are extremely clear examples of bad ideas.Donald and the Deflationists
U.S. political discussion has been dominated by the issue of Donald Trump’s wall — an issue on which Trump’s irrationality keeps surprising even his critics. So I don’t imagine that many people have heard about Trump’s nomination of David Malpass, currently an undersecretary at the Treasury Department, to lead the World Bank. But it’s a story worth following.What's Wrong With Functional Finance?
Well, it looks as if policy debates over the next couple of years will be at least somewhat affected by the doctrine of Modern Monetary Theory, which some progressives appear to believe means that they don’t need to worry about how to pay for their initiatives. That’s actually wrong even if you set aside concerns about MMT analysis, which is something I’ll write about in a companion piece. But first it seems to me that I need to set out what’s right and what’s wrong about MMT.The Venezuela Calumny
Alas, Michael Bloomberg. You aren’t the man I thought you were.The Real Governments of Blue America
Officially, a big part of the federal government shut down late last month. In important ways, however, America’s government went AWOL almost two years earlier, when Donald Trump was inaugurated.Elizabeth Warren and Her Party of Ideas
Almost 40 years have passed since Daniel Patrick Moynihan — a serious intellectual turned influential politician — made waves by declaring, “Of a sudden, Republicans have become a party of ideas.” He didn’t say that they were <em xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">good</em> ideas; but the GOP seemed to him to be open to new thinking in a way Democrats weren’t.The Economics of Soaking the Rich
I have no idea how well Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will perform as a member of Congress. But her election is already serving a valuable purpose. You see, the mere thought of having a young, articulate, telegenic nonwhite woman serve is driving many on the right mad — and in their madness they’re inadvertently revealing their true selves.
