Justin Wolfers

go one step deeper, Ben, I want to challenge you and literally everyone in the media to think a little harder about what economic things we should be looking at.

Here's what I mean.

Don't think about next quarter.

Don't think about next year and even look through a recession.

Ask the much deeper question, what are the foundations of prosperity, economic prosperity, shared prosperity, equitable growth?

Look across countries and ask yourself, why is the United States rich and the country of my birth, Papua New Guinea, poor?

And we have economists who ask this question and they load all sorts of numbers into their computers and they run very complicated analyses or they do case studies and historical analyses.

And the answer turns out to be what we call institutions, the rules of the game, the rules of economic and political life, the fact that we respect the rule of law,

that we have contestable elections, that we have contracts that we respect, that the government plays a limited and predictable role in economic life and on and on the list goes.

And the thing is, those are the things the president is undermining.

He's attempting to take away the independence of the Federal Reserve.

He's tried to undermine how much federal economic statistics reflect reality.

He's tried to overturn an election.

He's snatching people up off the streets.

He is calling CEOs and telling them what to do.

This is the most interventionist government of my lifetime.

It's the least conservative government of my lifetime.

When you are the richest country in the world,

Maybe you're not the ones who should be thinking about ripping down your existing institutions.

It's those who are somewhat behind, but that's what the president's doing.