America’s Broken Politics Is Breaking Economics, Too
Disputes over economic policy are no longer between right and left, but between populist and centrist.
Sign of the times.
Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
The political realignment has come for economics. At least since the days of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes in the last century, the divide in economic thinking roughly corresponded political split. In the mainstream, everyone was a capitalist and saw some role for government. The right/left divide was mostly over exactly how big that role should be.
Now, in economics as in politics, it is no longer left versus right; it is moderates versus populists. The question isn’t so much the optimal size of government in a global market-based economy, it is whether the economy is positive or zero-sum and how it entrenches power.