Goodbye Friedman and Hayek, Hello Biden

Free markets are out, industrial policy is in. Free trade is out, managed trade is in. Fossil fuels are out, a green economy is in. Globalization is out, re-shoring and de-risking are in. A properly funded military is out, an expanded welfare state is in.

Today’s American economy is not your grandparent’s American economy, it is not even your parents’ economy and, if you are of a certain age, it is not the economy in which you earned your bread or the one you studied in school. The American economy has been reconstructed to suit those on the left end of the political spectrum. What was a steady drift to the left has become a lurch, with government bureaucrats replacing the market as the dominant force determining the allocation of the nation’s resources.