In a PR effort that aptly illustrates his approach to governance, President Obama has revealed that he is meeting with a “wide variety of economists” to try to figure out what economic policies he should follow. “Obama Seeks Advice From Wide Variety of Economists.”
Obama is already well into the lame duck phase of his presidency, so this is simply a PR exercise. The message Obama wants to send is the same one he has sounded throughout his presidency. He is open to economic views from the parts of the political spectrum that range from the hard right to the mild left.New Economic Perspectives
Obama is not open to hearing the economic views of anyone who got the crisis correct or anyone his advisors consider to the left of Paul Krugman (who is mildly left in economic terms). James Galbraith captured the first point brilliantly in an essay about a Krugman column. Krugman was making the correct point that conservative economists had gotten the crisis wrong and, in passing, mentioned less than a handful of economists he considered to have gotten it right. Galbraith stressed Krugman’s lack of interest in what economists got the crisis right and Krugman’s failure to list the economists who had actually gotten it right and had theoretical explanations for the causes of the crisis that had proved accurate in multiple crises.
Obama Consults a “Wide Variety of Economists” – Just Not Those Who Got it Right
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC
The one economist I noted on the list who specifically researches inequality is Melissa Kearney. She is from Brookings and the Hamilton Project, which puts her right in Obama's wheelhouse. As far as I can tell, she is of the Larry Summers school of thought who believes the main reason for inequality is a human capital matter: some people are just more talented and awesome than others and thus contribute more value to the economy; and it is both economically natural and morally appropriate that people should be rewarded according to their degree of awesomeness. Thus the only thing that can be done about inequality is to try to use education and other forms of human investment to shrink the differences in cultural and educational opportunity between people.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm all for investing in our people and their capacities. But I think the idea that the rewards people receive should go according to their marginal products is immoral and economically backward, and that distributional pattern can and should be addressed independently of any long-term efforts to equalize cultural and educational opportunity.