Why You Haven't Heard From Me

What difference do policy ideas make?

Hi Friends,

It’s been a while since you’ve heard anything from me. Writing twice per week just turned out to be a bit too demanding on my time. I work a full time job, and volunteer in various capacities with church, athletics, local government, consulting, and continue to do external empirical research—the kind that can’t be done while using my phone during a bathroom break. Writing each post takes a minimum of 3 or 4 hours, mostly making sure all the facts are completely accurate, and making sure I am not leaving out relevant information.

While I was writing twice a week I started to fall a bit behind on other things in life, and needed to just take a break to catch up. I had planned on picking writing back up and just sending things out less frequently, but I haven’t done this yet because I realized something while I was taking a break.

Nothing has actually changed.

Nearly everything in the policy and public economics landscape is exactly the same as it was when I took my break. Not only is it the same, which may be expected because government typically moves slowly, but what new policy or economic ideas are even being discussed? I can’t think of any unless I wanted to make this entirely about culture wars…and I don’t because I’m no particular expert in the MAGA v Wokeness fights.

Then, last night, it really hit me why nothing has changed. It’s because nothing can change. Last night CNN held a town hall for Donald Trump. I don’t know if you saw this or not, but the audience of likely Republican Primary voters broke out in audible laughter when Trump’s sexual assault was brought up. These people thought it was hil-MAGA-arious that a jury of Donald Trump’s peers concluded he had sexually abused E. Jean Carroll. He had the crowd going like sexual predation was a freakin’ stand up comedy routine.

Every one of these audience members has a mother, wife, sister, or daughter—half of them were themselves women (something I’m told matters a lot to this crowd). They were unable to see through their team’s colors and realize, “hey, what if this guy had raped my wife or my daughter? Would that be funny?”

This is why nothing can change. These are the people who vote in primary elections. These are the people who pick the candidates for every Republican office. If they are willing to overlook a jury concluding their guy was a sexual predator, then how much do things like tax rates, monopolization, public goods extraction, or trade policy actually matter? More importantly, why would any Republican in office spend any time working on these issues? The best possible outcome for a Republican is that they get a bill passed and none of their voters know about it. But there is serious risk that NewsMax might get ahold of this bill—especially if, God forbid, they are working with a Democrat—and turn it into a hot button issue that could kill the Republican’s chance in the next primary election. Any rational Republican is now correct to ignore all issues that matter, and just focus on getting their voters as angry as possible. Because that is all they care about now. They will vote for whichever candidate is able to stoke their rage to the hottest temperature.

One would think party “leaders”, like Mitch McConnell would have used this intensifying MAGA phenomenon to strengthen their hand and convince the reasonable Republicans that still existed in 2017 to pass laws that eliminate partisan Gerrymandering so that reasonable Republicans could continue to be elected. It would have hurt the party short term, but Trump did that damage anyway. The difference is that now that party may also be severely damaged in the long term.

So, long story short, this is why I haven’t gotten back to writing. There isn’t anything new to write. I still enjoy writing, and plan to do so when there is something new to write, but I just don’t know how often that will be. I wanted to write some stuff about the banking struggles, but that was a busy couple of weeks, and I missed the boat there. Maybe I still will in the near future.

But, the vaccine definitely didn’t kill me. I just disappeared for other reasons. Hopefully we can get back to where economic issues actually matter, and if we do, you’ll hear from me a lot more often.