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Ezra Klein Profile picture
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Feb 10 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
3 is particularly important here.

Assuming those pushing the corporate greed story also believe corporations were greedy in 2017, is the idea that something about the pandemic gave corporations way more pricing power with which to deploy their greed?
Or if it's that corporations got more greedy post-pandemic, why are they also raising wages?
And why would automobile companies have become so particularly greedy?
To be clear, I am not saying there isn't a lot of greed in the economy. I just think it's a pretty constant amount, and if this was all just profiteering, it's playing out in weirdly specific and contradictory ways.

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More from @ezraklein

Ezra Klein Profile picture
Feb 11
Pfizer's submitted data says 2 doses works for very young kids.

FDA pushing Pfizer to test three doses to get a stronger response for older kids suggest safety isn't the issue.

So why not let parents who want to vaccinate their children, start vaccinating their children?
This is what an emergency authorization is supposed to be, as I understand it.

It's not full authorization.

But because there's no alternative treatment, and the safety data is sound and efficacy data promising, you can get one, if you want one.
Who's the "we" here? It's not that FDA can't proceed forward with its process. They are!

It's that parents can't proceed forward. And what's maddening is 2 doses work for very young kids, and they clearly think 3 will work for older kids!

statnews.com/2022/02/11/pfi… Image
Read 7 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
Feb 10
One problem that feels irresolvable to me is that we need to talk about the groups doing things but those groups are rarely well coordinated, and often not even groups.
I feel like the best retort now to anything I write is: Who do you mean by Democrats/Republican/the left/the right/the media/the public health community/VCs etc
Parties and traditional media are a lot weaker than they once were. A lot of narrativizing comes from scans of social media sentiment, where you can identify the faction pushing a view, but that faction may not represent the broader group, or be internally organized
Read 5 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
Feb 8
So a lot of mainstream economists want to defend their honor on coming to a different view of deficits without MMT, and I don't disagree!

But what I said was MMTers focused attention on real resource constraints, which is different.
We just had decades of arguments over sustainable debt-to-GDP levels. They were thought to be lower in the Aughts.

Then, as Jason is saying, there was a move towards thinking they could be higher. But the spending constraint was always some debt-to-GDP ratio.
A lot of the folks associated with MMT made the argument, loudly, that the constraint is real resources: We can afford to do what we can actually do.

I now hear a lot of Keynesians say that's true. What I'm saying is they didn't talk as if it was true till pressed.
Read 7 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
Feb 7
So I'm not enough of a macroeconomist to know if it's true that what MMT says that's new isn't true, and what it says that's true isn't new.

But I'll say that MMT has absolutely changed the things that MMT's critics will say are true.
I'll give an example: MMTers really like the Keynes quote "anything we can actually do, we can afford."

Their critics say: It's a Keynes quote! So it's something the Keynesians knew.

But in years of reporting with Keynesian economists, it is definitely not how they talked.
There was *far* more discussion in the 2010s of debt-to-GDP ratios and Reinhart/Rogoff than of the real productive limits of the economy, and where we were in relation to them.
Read 11 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
Feb 7
I’m going to back a few days in Discourse Time, and say something I think has been missed the Joe Rogan/Covid mess (I realize there are now other messes).

Once you’re here, all the answers are bad. They’re all bad because they all harm the thing you’re trying to protect: Trust.
Having one of the most popular podcasters in the world become a platform for vaccine misinformation?

That’s bad, for obvious reasons.
But bringing more attention to that misinformation, and making those sympathetic to him feel persecuted and censored?

Also bad! You’re alienating and angering the exact people you need to reach.

It’s a Kobayashi Maru.
Read 22 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
Feb 6
And to add: which way does the causality point?

The research and example I use suggest high levels of trust in institutions lead to better outcomes. That probably leads to more trust! It can be a positive feedback loop.

Or it can go the other way, and in America, it has.
But I'm also not convinced the relationship between trust and institutions is solely or mainly mediated by institutional quality or performance.
The "Revolt of the Public" argument is partially that digital communication does a lot to reveal elite failures that always existed, but did less to erode trust back when elites had more control over information flows. That seems right to me.
Read 6 tweets

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