If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis.
Tyler CowenPeople feel better because Donald Trump says all kinds of things no one else would say and we get certain tendencies out of our system. So if attacking immigrants, say, is a substitute for doing something worse, there's at least a scenario under which that's a better alternative than something else that might have happened.
Tyler CowenFood is a product of supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative, and the demanders are informed.
Tyler CowenHere's the positive scenario: that something has been going wrong in American society. You see it in wage growth, opioid abuse, many other social indicators, as you know. Sometimes it's better to get the bad reaction to that over with quickly while your civil society still is strong and you can react and respond and protest, and you know, four or eight years from now, make another decision, and maybe it's better to have that happen in 2017 than 20 years later when some of our problems are worse and our national mood is worse.
Tyler CowenI sometimes call Donald Trump the placebo president. He will talk a big game, but for domestic policy I think change remarkably little.
Tyler Cowen