Markets Out in Front

In two posts Greg Mankiw discusses why Milton Friedman felt economists should ignore political realities and why Milton's son David believes that they must not.

Irrespective of political reality markets, I say, must be out in the front of the policy discussion. The truth of politics is if no good solutions to a perceieved problem are offered bad ones will be excepted. You can't be something with nothing. You have to be responsive to the concerns of the electorate and that means proposing market based solutions to the problems they face.

Whether its widening inequality, global climate change or the dismal performance of our K12 system failure to offer solutions grounded in economics only empowers the command and control set.