The end of the year is always a rare time for me to pause and consider what I’ve been doing, and what I should be doing. I’ve also been spending time thinking generally about media and journalism and where it falls short, both in communicating bad news (just watched ‘Don’t Look Up’ on Netflix!) and also
Your third piece on rental vouchers made me think about a meta-policy story that I wish I understood more of how it happened.
When I was in school, which wasn’t that long ago(!), things like direct cash transfers with few strings attached were taught to be a favorite strategy of *conservative* economists, while more intentional subsidies with more direct purposes were said to be more popular with *liberal* economists.
Looking back, it wasn’t that this was mis-taught necessarily, but I think the role of politics was elided by the professor (and missed by the students). Directed subsidies aren’t necessarily a good policy, but a political policy that was necessary to get the votes of an influential centrist faction that is liberal enough to support welfare but conservative enough to believe that all poor people are irresponsible moochers etc. Direct cash subsidies were never on the table because the conservatives in congress were more animated by a hatred of the poor than an ideology of everyone succeeding with maximally efficient markets. Of course, at the extreme left, you also have highly directed command and control economies as well.
But it does still seem to me that there has been a genuine shift among Democrats away from paternalistic policy and more towards a more classically economic view that people are the best judge of their own needs and that they should be just given money and allowed to sort out where it goes. I don’t really know how and why this shift took place, even if I welcome it.
my 2021 in review
Great work, Rachel. What times we live in!! Thank you for your clear insights.
Your third piece on rental vouchers made me think about a meta-policy story that I wish I understood more of how it happened.
When I was in school, which wasn’t that long ago(!), things like direct cash transfers with few strings attached were taught to be a favorite strategy of *conservative* economists, while more intentional subsidies with more direct purposes were said to be more popular with *liberal* economists.
Looking back, it wasn’t that this was mis-taught necessarily, but I think the role of politics was elided by the professor (and missed by the students). Directed subsidies aren’t necessarily a good policy, but a political policy that was necessary to get the votes of an influential centrist faction that is liberal enough to support welfare but conservative enough to believe that all poor people are irresponsible moochers etc. Direct cash subsidies were never on the table because the conservatives in congress were more animated by a hatred of the poor than an ideology of everyone succeeding with maximally efficient markets. Of course, at the extreme left, you also have highly directed command and control economies as well.
But it does still seem to me that there has been a genuine shift among Democrats away from paternalistic policy and more towards a more classically economic view that people are the best judge of their own needs and that they should be just given money and allowed to sort out where it goes. I don’t really know how and why this shift took place, even if I welcome it.