DEMOCRATS thought they knew the boundaries of acceptable economic discourse. Then came Donald Trump, who trashed them, yet won the presidency. He upended Republican positions on trade, and exposed the vulnerability of the Democratic Party on its home economic turf: the well-being of American workers. He also seems to have liberated the left to think big ideas—and confront hard questions.
Since 1992 Democratic economic policy has been rooted in technocratic centrism, meant to smooth the rough edges of the market. “We reject both the do-nothing government of the last 12 years and the big-government theory that says we can hamstring business and tax and spend our way to prosperity,” read the party platform in 1992. “Instead we offer a third way.” This was a desperate effort to escape the political wilderness. Yet it also reflected intellectual trends in economics. Inflation and falling productivity in the 1970s seemed to bear out the views of economists such as Milton Friedman, that...Continue reading
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