Much of the 2024 election has been extraordinary. One thing has not, and that’s the quality of the debate about America’s economic future. Beyond the vibes — both the angry ones and the joyful ones — there’s been little to help Americans decide who better can steward the $29 trillion economy.
Here at Times Opinion, we thought we would try to fill the void. What follows is a back-and-forth between two top experts on the center left and two on the center right, discussing topics including housing, taxes, debt and, at one point, washing machines. Representing the left are the University of Michigan economics professors Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. And on the right, Jay Clayton, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission under Donald Trump, and Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs and head of the National Economic Council in the Trump White House. This conversation has been edited.
Economic PrioritiesTimes Opinion: If you were advising the next president, what should be his or her top priorities?
Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, center-left economists: People are angry about the economy. Whether they blame educated elites, billionaires or immigrants, their anger comes from the same place: The system feels rigged.
Football without refs is just a rumble, and so is an economy without rules. Capitalism works partly because it turbocharges greed, but it also fails because it turbocharges greed. The profit motive gave us the iPhone, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles, but it’s also given us online hucksters, corporations that prefer to merge rather than compete and online subscriptions that take a moment to click and hours to cancel. Smart regulation creates more of the former and less of the latter.
Our tax code is a Rube Goldberg machine built by an army of lobbyists. The next president should eliminate loopholes that stack the deck in favor of the have-plenty. (Hint: Start with the “carried interest” loophole.) Fund an Internal Revenue Service that ensures everyone plays by the rules. Congress largely ignores the nearly $2 trillion given away every year through breaks, loopholes and inefficiencies in the tax code. That’s where the unfairness and bloat live. Get rid of those and you can make progress on the deficit.
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