Rethinking the Economy

Economists are slippery bunch. In public fights over policy, many folks claim economic theory proves that markets are paragons of efficiency and that the government should mostly butt out – and economists often aid and abet this line of attack. Exhibit A: the efforts under President Clinton to loosen banking regulations, which made the 2008 [...]

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Recently, I’ve had conversations with two different friends where I wanted to bring up the theory work I’m doing. They aren’t folks who read Brad DeLong, Dean Baker, or Kevin Drum for fun, and they aren’t lefty activists. They’re just good folks who think what’s going on in our country is messed up and want [...]

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I’ve been doing a little thinking about how to talk about values and choice. For the hell of it, I decided to see how Republican Party websites do it. Most of them were cookie-cutter, negative, and pretty boring — cut taxes, cut government regulations, and cut wasteful spending. The Texas Republican Party put a little [...]

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[Part 2 of the Promoting Broad Prosperity review]
Topos’ Promoting Broad Prosperity framework avoids a major problem with my approach. For the past few months, I’ve been focused on understanding how the nuts and bolts of the economy’s engine works. I think I’ve started to figure it out. But I haven’t yet figured out [...]

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A few months ago, I read a smart research brief Topos wrote for Demos called Promoting Broad Prosperity. Topos has done a ton of surveys, focus groups, etc. to figure out how most Americans think about the government’s role in creating a good economy. They’ve come up with a very interesting approach [...]

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Two interesting clips from Rachel Maddow’s show last week on talking about government.
From an attack ad by Republican Sue Lowden, who’s trying to unseat Harry Reid:
Harry Reid‘s big government health care plan will raise taxes, put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor, weaken Medicare, kill jobs, push us further into debt. [...]

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