Supply-Side Nation

The typical post-boomer career path—at virtually every level of the income ladder—is more like a maze than a straight line. Just so, the economy at large is more Google than Microsoft—distributed, constantly evolving, thriving on chaos, open rather than proprietary, allergic to order. As such, it is far more difficult to model, to predict and to navigate than the 1.0 version. Forecasting, difficult in ordinary times, is a near impossibility today. Find me the economist, who, six years ago, would have projected the following set of events for 2008: oil near $100 per barrel, the United States approaching recession but the globe booming, Persian Gulf countries importing Western universities and museums, and vast sovereign wealth funds taking stakes in U.S. banks.

It's common to think of post-boomer politicians as post-ideological. In the 1970s and into the 1980s, notes Jeffrey Liebman, professor of economics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, macroeconomics was presented as a battle between Keynesians and monetarists. But post-boomer economists have forged a consensus around issues like deregulation and the primacy of monetary policy. Debate over demand control is over. The markets rule. "Even liberal economists are interested in studying the ways government policies are affecting behavior in a way that wasn't done in 1980," says Liebman. We're all supply-siders now.

© 2008