Thread by @chrislhayes

Everyone who called for austerity got it wrong and caused harm
Everyone who scaremongered about the deficit got it wrong and caused harm
Everyone who wrote about the "skills gap" got it wrong and caused harm
Everyone who kept warning about inflation got it wrong and caused harm

Lots of regular people - critics, bloggers, gadflies, etc were able to see this but the commanding heights of the econ/policy/political worlds either could not or would not.

Or, an even less charitable interpretation: they didn't get it wrong at all. They didn't want full employment, they didn't want wage growth and empowered workers and they certainly didn't want that happening under a Democratic president.

I mean, years of the titans of industry whining about the skills mismatch, how they can't find good workers, and chin-stroking conferences about labor force participation, and columns about how it was workers' own fault, on and on and on, all just garbage.

I wrote this paper as a 30 year old with a BA and access to google and it was more right than the Fed was newamerica.org/economic-growt…

In terms or the got it wrong vs intenational sabotage, I'll say this: Republicans sure seem to understand how running large deficits can boost an economy when they're in power, but risked an unprecedented US default under Obama to impose austerity.

On the got it wrong side, what's even the point of the very concept of NAIRU if no one knows where it is and/or systematically gets it wrong? How is it at all a useful tool for policy-making, modeling or understanding?

The worst part? The most maddening part is that this will all happen again, and everyone will either forget or pretend to forget how wrong they were.