The Economy Is at a Hinge Moment
About this episode
Jason Furman argues the economy has reached a 'hinge moment': inflation is over as an economic problem after the Fed's rate cuts, but high prices keep it alive politically, shifting the fight to affordability — housing, child care, health care. He praises Harris's housing rhetoric and $40 billion zoning-reform grants but calls her homebuyer tax credit potentially counterproductive and the plans overcomplicated, while dismissing Trump's immigration-based housing theory as a red herring and warning his deficits would raise mortgage rates. Furman defends trade — the deficit doesn't kill jobs, tariffs won't restore manufacturing — and remains unapologetic about the China shock, noting inequality rose before 2000 and imports most helped low-income households. He diagnoses a liberal vice of denying trade-offs ('everything-bagel liberalism') and a conservative vice of infinite magnitudes, urging honest cost-benefit analysis.