As I said in the beginning of this talk with economist Paul Krugman, I find it frustrating that so much of modern economic discussion is so hard to follow. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, everyone assumed that economics and politics went hand-in-hand, and politicians, newspaper editors, and everyday people had ongoing discussions about how different policies would affect people’s lives and the health of the economy.
From my observation, that process seemed to change pretty dramatically after World War II, when politicians often described their economic policies as doing something very different than what they actually did, or tucked economic policies like tax cuts into other measures, making the logic behind different acts unclear. It seemed to become harder and harder for everyday people to figure out the relationship between politics and the economy.
Talking with Paul gives us the opportunity to untangle some of the big-picture changes behind the slew of policy news.
Here’s our first conversation. Looking forward to more.
This post has been syndicated from Letters from an American, where it was published under this address.