Political Constituencies and Everything Bagel Liberalism

Wanted to offer a few additional thoughts on the everything bagel liberalism piece from Ezra... https://t.co/YaUUBsZbnp

— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) April 3, 2023

Secretary Raimondo made this argument: "Every one of the requirements — or they’re not really requirements — nudges are for criteria or factors we think relate directly to the effectiveness of the project"

— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) April 3, 2023

Even if they believe this of some things, you simply cannot defend Buy American provisions on these terms. So you have to acknowledge serving political constituencies was clearly part of the calculus here.

— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) April 3, 2023

Another test is that if the policies at hand are actually in the best interest of the success of the project, then should they be implemented economy-wide? If you are making the case for a generalized market failure, you need to bite the bullet on that. Seems implausible.

— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) April 3, 2023

Lastly, I have seen some suggestion we can do everything bagel liberalism but we need to just get things done faster. Sorry but the costs of protectionism, to take one example are not only about speed but massive inefficient cost raising.

— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) April 3, 2023

Here's some good examples from Alon Levy. Overspending on domestically produced trains cost about a million dollars per $40k job created. Doing this faster wouldn't really solve the problems we face. https://t.co/Bb4xv5Tmj1

— Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior) April 3, 2023