The political demand for crackpot economics

There’s a raging debate among The Atlantic‘s bloggers about crackpot versions of supply-side economics and to what extent GOP politicians embrace them (the contemporary Democrat version of this, by the way, is that a protectionist approach towards China will be a net benefit to the U.S. economy and U.S. employment). Alex Tabarrok weighs in with ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

There's a raging debate among The Atlantic's bloggers about crackpot versions of supply-side economics and to what extent GOP politicians embrace them (the contemporary Democrat version of this, by the way, is that a protectionist approach towards China will be a net benefit to the U.S. economy and U.S. employment). Alex Tabarrok weighs in with the following question: [A] more fruitful question which I'd like to see Yglesias, Chait and others grapple with is why discredited, crackpot ideas can become central elements of a winning political party in the world's most important democracy. Explain the demand side and give us your policy prescriptions.I don't really have an answer to this question that can be fit into a blog post, but I can link to this disquisition by Alan Blinder.

There’s a raging debate among The Atlantic‘s bloggers about crackpot versions of supply-side economics and to what extent GOP politicians embrace them (the contemporary Democrat version of this, by the way, is that a protectionist approach towards China will be a net benefit to the U.S. economy and U.S. employment). Alex Tabarrok weighs in with the following question:

[A] more fruitful question which I’d like to see Yglesias, Chait and others grapple with is why discredited, crackpot ideas can become central elements of a winning political party in the world’s most important democracy. Explain the demand side and give us your policy prescriptions.

I don’t really have an answer to this question that can be fit into a blog post, but I can link to this disquisition by Alan Blinder.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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