Why Trump Could Use More Economists

Better, Mick Mulvaney said, for opponents of legislation to supply their studies and advocates to supply their own. “And if it works, they would get re-elected and if it doesn’t, they don’t.”

 Mr. Mulvaney’s critique would be more convincing if the administration had in fact put forth its own estimates of the economic effects of its proposals. It hasn’t. Its failure to account for the trade-offs of tax cuts (bigger deficits) or reduced subsidies for health care (more uninsured) are one reason Mr. Trump’s agenda is moving so slowly.
.. Forecasts will be wrong more often than right. But they provide a benchmark against which to test proposals based on theory and evidence rather than instinct or unproven ideological priors.
..That discipline has been lacking in Mr. Trump’s administration. When Mr. Trump announced last week he was pulling out of the Paris climate accord, he cited not internal research on the economic harms of the deal, but a private study commissioned by two groups critical of greenhouse gas regulation. His budget two weeks ago was noteworthy for both forecasting 3% growth, much faster than what independent analysts think plausible, and the absence of any detailed analysis of how it will be achieved. Administration officials then contradicted each other on whether tax cuts would be financed with other tax increases.
.. This may reflect the absence of economists in its hallways, a result of Mr. Trump’s apparent early disdain for experts in general.
.. “I sleep better knowing James Mattis is defense secretary and I will sleep better if Kevin Hassett is confirmed as CEA chair.”

America’s Epidemic of Infallibility

This administration operates under the doctrine of Trumpal infallibility: Nothing the president says is wrong, whether it’s his false claim that he won the popular vote or his assertion that the historically low murder rate is at a record high. No error is ever admitted. And there is never anything to apologize for.

.. American politics — at least on one side of the aisle — is suffering from an epidemic of infallibility, of powerful people who never, ever admit to making a mistake.

.. More than a decade ago I wrote that the Bush administration was suffering from a “mensch gap.” (A mensch is an upstanding person who takes responsibility for his actions.) Nobody in that administration ever seemed willing to accept responsibility for policy failures, whether it was the bungled occupation of Iraq or the botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

.. Later, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, a similar inability to admit error was on display among many economic commentators.

.. the open letter a who’s who of conservatives sent to Ben Bernanke in 2010, warning that his policies could lead to “currency debasement and inflation.” They didn’t. But four years later, when Bloomberg News contacted many of the letter’s signatories, not one was willing to admit having been wrong.

.. one of those signatories, Kevin Hassett — co-author of the 1999 book “Dow 36,000” — will be nominated as chairman of Mr. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers. Another, David Malpass — the former chief economist at Bear Stearns, who declared on the eve of the financial crisis that “the economy is sturdy” — has been nominated as undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs.

.. less to do with ideology than with fragile egos

.. inability to engage in reflection and self-criticism is the mark of a tiny, shriveled soul

.. Many Americans no longer seem to understand what a leader is supposed to sound like, mistaking bombast and belligerence for real toughness.

.. we can at least hope that watching Mr. Trump in action will be a learning experience — not for him, because he never learns anything, but for the body politic.