Phil Magness’s letter in today’s Wall Street Journal is superb:
Mark Skousen’s op-ed “The American Economic Association Snubs Hayek” (Sept. 16) calls attention to political bias at the American Economic Association’s annual conference. While I have not seen Mr. Skousen’s rejected proposal on economist F.A. Hayek, several accepted proposals on the AEA’s program point to a leftward drift in the organization.
The coming conference will feature seven papers on Karl Marx and Marxian economics, a fringe school that almost all professional economists reject. Loaded political jargon similarly populates the program. It features six papers on the critical-race-theory concept of “intersectionality” and 16 papers on “neoliberalism,” a pejorative term used by left-wing activists to attack free-market thinkers. The far-left Union for Radical Political Economics has 16 dedicated panels and lectures on the program. Progressive economist John Maynard Keynes appears to be the dominant lens at the conference, with 32 abstracts mentioning Keynes and various Keynesian schools of thought.
By contrast, free-market perspectives are rare at the AEA. Only two accepted papers mention Hayek, with another two mentioning Milton Friedman. The monetarist school appears twice, and the public-choice tradition appears only once. I make no claim of knowing the optimal balance between these competing perspectives, but the AEA’s current ideological filter is proving to be a poor mechanism for rationing scarce conference space.
Phillip W. Magness
The Independent Institute
Oakland, Calif.
It’s hard to be sanguine about a second term of Trumponomics. The good, conventional policies seem likely to be outweighed by a load of bad.
For a start, if this election campaign is a guide, the former president’s proposals might actually better be thought of as “Oprahnomics.” His plan for an economy that is at or near full employment and generating a fiscal deficit close to 7% of GDP—the kind of fiscal incontinence we have only ever tolerated in times of war or depression—is to channel Ms. Winfrey and say to voters: “And you get a tax cut. And you get a tax credit. And you get a tax deduction.”
He proposes not simply to extend the 2017 tax cuts—due to expire next year—in their entirety. He wants to go much further: Tax-free tips; tax-free overtime pay, deeper corporate tax reductions. Last week he added, off the cuff, a promise to increase the state and local tax deduction, which he and his fellow Republicans reduced drastically in his first term. While his SALT deduction cap made a lot of us in high-tax states worse off, it was sound policy. High-tax states shouldn’t have their profligacy subsidized by taxpayers everywhere else.
These are risky proposals in a bleak fiscal environment. Mr. Trump also wants to double down on the other side of the ledger with bad regulations and higher taxes. Rules he would like to impose, such as capping interest rates payable on credit-card debt, are as foolish and counterproductive as Kamala Harris’s “price gouging” penalties.
Worse, he plans a universal tariff of 10%, double that for key import sectors, and 60% on Chinese goods. He seems to think the revenue generated will fund all kinds of new spending, make up for any other revenue shortfalls and reduce the deficit. It’s simple arithmetic—may I call it “Bakermath”?—that if the tariffs are going to generate that much revenue, they are also going to be devastating for the economy, raising prices for both imported and domestically produced goods and significantly reducing real incomes.
On the recommendation of Arnold Kling, I just ordered Michael Huemer’s new book, Progressive Myths.
Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley recommends Matt Walsh’s new movie, Am I Racist? A slice:
Robin DiAngelo, author of the bestselling “White Fragility” and a leading authority on diversity, equity and inclusion, doesn’t want you to see “Am I Racist?,” a new documentary about the DEI industry. If you see it anyway, which I strongly recommend, you’ll understand her objections. You’ll also laugh a lot.
Before the film’s theatrical release last week, Ms. DiAngelo posted a statement on her website that accused the star, Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh, of promoting racism. But my guess is that her real objection to the movie is that it’s bad for business. Ms. DiAngelo has made a good living charging schools, government agencies and Fortune 500 companies tens of thousands of dollars to give speeches and host workshops on “antiracism.”
In “Am I Racist?,” Mr. Walsh poses as a liberal activist who is earnestly and hilariously seeking the counsel of unsuspecting DEI experts. He reveals how much they charge for their services—Ms. DiAngelo received $15,000 for about two hours of her time—and the kind of gobbledygook advice clients get in return. To his credit, Mr. Walsh’s approach isn’t mean-spirited or adversarial. He poses straightforward questions and lets his interlocutors discredit themselves. Along the way, the DEI industry is revealed to be something of a racket, and such proponents as Ms. DiAngelo look like highbrow grifters.
The objections of Ms. DiAngelo notwithstanding, however, Mr. Walsh’s movie is performing a public service. Of late, more companies have been willing to jettison their DEI policies, and more states are moving to restrict such initiatives at public colleges and universities. “Am I Racist?” could encourage those trends, which would be a good thing because there is little evidence that making racial differences more salient on campus, in the workplace or anywhere else helps anyone other than people who earn a living as DEI advocates.
Also recommending Matt Walsh’s new movie is Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle. A slice:
[Robin] DiAngelo and [Saira] Rao and a number of others gained money and fame during the “Great Awokening” because decent people, genuinely concerned about America’s racial divides, were too polite to point out that they sounded like lunatics. Those well-intentioned Americans had their social instincts hacked, the machinery diverted into a continuous loop of unproductive navel-gazing, instead of the racial justice they were trying to achieve. That’s what left them vulnerable when Matt Walsh showed up to exploit the same bug.
Edward Pinto describes “the Kamala Harris plan for more housing shortages.” A slice:
Ms. Harris also proposes a $40 billion fund for local governments to explore “innovative” housing solutions. The Housing and Urban Development Department would likely channel this money into programs laden with self-defeating government-mandated affordability requirements, which markets abhor.
History offers a cautionary tale against such federal interference in the housing market: From the 1930s to 2008, at least 43 housing, urban-renewal and community-development programs were signed into law. Despite these laws’ lofty goals, these initiatives consistently failed to make housing more affordable.
First, somebody who is running on nuking the filibuster should not be trusted as a guardian of norms. Second, if the filibuster is gone, Republicans would have little means by which to block the radical elements of her agenda.
