Steven Teles — Restrain Regressive Rent-Seeking

America today faces three great challenges. Inequality, driven in particular by a spike in incomes at the very highest end, is threatening the public’s belief in the justice of our economic system. Innovation in products and services that actually add to human flourishing and produce meaningful employment, driven by new firm formation, appears to be stagnating. Finally, Americans both on the right and left increasingly believe that our political system is rigged to benefit organized insiders, while critical public problems remain unaddressed.… 

The standard image of how our economy works, and where the wealth of a good chunk of the 1 percent comes from, is wrong. The really important question, if we want to put our economy on a trajectory of greater productive innovation, less inequality, and more political legitimacy, is what explains this explosion of upward redistributing rent? How did this happen at a time that all of the political conversation was about the wonders of markets? How, if at all, might we actually restructure our politics to make it possible to claw back these rents, thereby liquidating unjust politically-protected fortunes, creating space for greater economic opportunity, and unleashing greater innovation?

Cato Institute
Restrain Regressive Rent-Seeking

Steven Teles | associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University

h/t Brad DeLong