The federal government is spending way more money now than it was before the pandemic, even though many of the pandemic-related programs have ended, and far in excess of population growth. I talked to Matthew Dickerson of the Economic Policy Innovation Center about this issue on the latest episode of Econception, my American Institute for Economic Research podcast. We talked about how the scope of government has permanently expanded following the pandemic, and how next year will present perhaps the biggest budgetary challenge in U.S. history.
I also talk about how tariffs can hurt the people they are supposed to help. One argument for tariffs is that their dispersed harm to consumers is worthwhile to create concentrated benefits for manufacturing workers. But if manufacturing workers are harmed too, as they were with the truck chassis tariffs, then the argument doesn’t even work on its own terms.
Is Canada poor? I talk about a new study from the Fraser Institute that finds that every Canadian province has lower median earnings than every U.S. state. Ten years ago, commentators wanted Americans to think Canada had middle-class economics figured out. Reality intervened.
The Paper of the Episode is Dickerson’s award-winning paper on how to reform the congressional budget process. You want specific ideas? He has 37.
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