David Dayen (@ddayen): We produced our supply chain special issue because we thought there was a more accurate story about inflation that went beyond "government spending" or "price gouging." In fact the problem lies in how the entire system has been designed for 50 years. http://prospect.org/supplychain
David Dayen (@ddayen): I'm getting really tired of self-righteous economists, even ones I respect, playing dumb about the effects of 50 years of outsourcing, rampant disinvestment, deregulation, and a just-in-time system putting pressure on supply systems. They know better. https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1492264105511567360/photo/1
David Dayen (@ddayen): Either that or they are playing the economist game of retreating to models when the answer lies in the real and physical world. Shipping oligopolies raised prices 10-fold. Ports are decaying, trucking & rail have been cutting capacity for years. What did you think would happen?
David Dayen (@ddayen): I keep going back to @alex_sammon's piece. The Federal Maritime Commission wrote in 2015 that the ports would be swamped after just a small increase in demand (in that case from the TPP). The writing was on the wall, it still is, everyone ignores it. https://prospect.org/economy/we-were-warned-about-the-ports/
David Dayen (@ddayen): Economists don't want to be hacks for their party, but they have no problem being myopic rubes ignoring the evidence smacking them in the face. That's largely because they championed the policies that created the mess. That's why we had to tell the story. https://prospect.org/economy/re-engineering-our-supply-chains/
David Dayen (@ddayen): It occurs to me I used the wrong blockquote upthread, I wasn't meaning to subtweet, this is exactly who and what I am talking about: https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1492266808274874369/photo/1
David Dayen (@ddayen): Like I just read this long EPI post and you wouldn't know from it that there are companies that transport goods from one place to another and this nation is completely reliant on them. Literally never mentions the supply chain. What is this mass ignorance? https://www.epi.org/blog/profits-wages-and-inflation-whats-really-going-on/