Dear listeners,
Everyone loves to talk about affordability these days, or more specifically, they love to complain about unaffordability. But what are they actually complaining about? At least four things, we think: inflation, interest rates, real incomes, and income distribution — or, basically, the whole economy.
We invited Natasha Sarin, a professor at Yale Law School who co-directs The Budget Lab there, and who previously served as an economic official at the Treasury Department under President Biden, to join us for this conversation. We discuss how the Biden team let the affordability problem sneak up on them, in the form of excessive inflation, and about what public policies would actually cause voters to feel that things were getting more affordable — and what to do about the fact that some voters appear to be waiting for prices to go back to 2019 levels, which is never going to happen.
We also talk about interest rates, and what might happen to them if President Trump gets his way on monetary policy. (In short, not what he thinks would happen.) We grade Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh on a curve, giving him a gentleman’s C which, we will remind you, is a passing grade. (I wrote on that theme last week, if you didn’t see it.)
And finally, as a way of addressing the allegation that the “affordability crisis” is just young people whining about DoorDash prices, we look into the alleged phenomenon of “white people tacos,” which Briahna Joy Gray says contain black olives. Ben and Megan say this is made up, but I say we all know what Gray is talking about here — haven’t you seen canned black olives in a taco salad? — and the terminology doesn’t mean that all white people make bad tacos.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
