The Unassuming Economist

Source: Project Syndicate

In a recent column, John H. Cochrane of the Hoover Institution and Jon Hartley of Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity write about the US’ long-ignored issue of supply-chain bottlenecks contributing to raging inflation today.

“The return of inflation is an economic cold shower”

They write how sclerotic growth in the country is not so much due to the “secular stagnation” of demand-side factors, but more due to clogging of the economy’s productive capacity. “The United States needs infrastructure. The problem is not money. The problem is that building anything in America has become almost impossible, owing to the thicket of regulations and lawsuits that will stop or drive up the costs of any project.” Barriers such as rocketing housing costs, deteriorating quality of public education, restrictive labor laws, trade protectionism, and other things all add to the problem. The authors also discuss some solutions to systematically eliminate such challenges.