The Commons
Making Sense of Conservative Economics
Trump’s anti-bureaucracy energy should be directed at regulation as well as waste
It isn’t just about criminal punishments and presidential pardons
The old GOP dictated Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. His new coalition should shape its future.
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Oren speaks on a panel about economic policy in Trump’s second term and more with Jason Furman, Richard Burkhauser, and Kimberly Clausing.
Our Latest
When it comes to the economy, the Biden administration will have to focus on three things: COVID, a recovery package, and China. Everyone understands we have to get vaccines in the arms of as many Americans as possible as soon as possible. And hopefully the Senate can agree on an economic recovery package.
“Unity is the path forward.” That was the leitmotif of Joe Biden inaugural address. It’s easy to be skeptical about such appeals, given how divided our country has become. And easier still to be cynical, given the flurry of executive orders immediately after his inauguration, many of which intensified rather than moderated battles over morality and culture.
Count Germany as the latest country to abandon the market fundamentalism that has characterized economic policymaking in the West for the past 40 years.
Immigration expansionists face a difficult challenge: they support high levels of immigration—including many more less-skilled immigrants—for a variety of legitimate reasons, but the less-skilled immigration has detrimental economic effects on vulnerable American workers, including earlier generations of immigrants already in the country. That tradeoff is one the expansionists would make, but it is understandably unpopular. Read more…
We watched the Inauguration on a laptop at our kitchen table while two toddlers nibbled chicken quesadillas and the baby fussed intermittently.

