Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Short-Term Thinking Distorts Economic Policy

Higher taxes could reduce inequality quickly, but not as effectively as patiently increasing productivity.

January 4, 2018 at 10:00 AM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Global poverty has been falling for 50 years.
Photographer: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

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One of the most important things to happen in 2017 was the continued reduction in global poverty. Indeed, 2017 probably saw the lowest poverty rate on record. Over the past five decades, global poverty has plunged. This remarkable achievement has been driven by the spread of the free enterprise system and growing economies in the developing world.

It's useful and bracing to think about 50-year economic trends like that one. Policy debates tend instead to focus intensely on what's likely to happen next month or next year. That's natural enough, but it also makes it too easy to miss important things that really matter.