Noah Smith, Columnist

Five Unpopular Policies the U.S. Should Adopt

Most of the time the public gets it right, but here are a few exceptions.

October 10, 2019 at 12:30 PM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

Losing by winning.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images North America

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Not every good policy is going to be popular. Sometimes either the public, activists or the commentariat – or all three – just get something wrong. This can happen for ideological reasons, or simply because of a lack of information. I’m more optimistic than most pundits, in that I think the public usually gets at least the outlines broadly right. But there are a few issues where the tide of opinion simply seems to be against me. Here are a few:

No. 1. The Trans-Pacific Partnership