The latest episode of my American Institute for Economic Research podcast is about the national accounting system, which my guest, Bill Beach, believes is one of the most underrated inventions in history. Beach was the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and he knows the ins and outs of national economic statistics better than just about anyone. We talk about how the process is protected from politicians and how it can be improved.
Naturally, we also talk about the most recent news on the BLS, the downward revision in jobs growth that Donald Trump called a “massive scandal.” It really wasn’t, and Beach explains what actually happened. I also go through some points from my article for NR on why the scandal narrative doesn’t make sense.
I talk about what it means to say that “complexity is a subsidy.” I heard it most recently from historian Tevi Troy at a recent event at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It’s a true insight that complex government regulation, regardless of its specific contents, benefits large companies relative to small ones and politically well-connected companies relative to less-connected ones. That’s because they can hire the lawyers and accountants necessary to understand and exploit the rules and the lobbyists to influence how they are written in the first place.
For the Paper of the Episode, Beach talked about a paper he wrote for the Economic Policy Innovation Center, “Is Inflation the Result of Excessive Deficit Spending?” Spoiler alert: A lot of it is.
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