Noel King

There have always been jokes about economists, things like these are people who can be wrong half the time and still keep their jobs.

Like the skepticism is nothing new.

And in a lot of ways that, you know, fair points have been made about what economists actually bring to the table.

But here we are in 2025, and we've got a crisis of affordability.

We've got interest rates that are a lot higher than most people would like.

We've got inflation that's higher than a lot of people would like.

Do you think what this year and this time is proving is that the economists actually were the ones holding us back from the brink in some sense?

That was Vox's Andrew Prokop.

Miles Bryan and Dustin DeSoto produced today's show.

Jolie Myers is our editor.

Laura Bullard checked the facts and Patrick Boyd engineered.

The rest of our team, Hadi Mouagdi, Amina El-Sadi, Danielle Hewitt, Kelly Wessinger, Ariana Espudo, David Tatasciore, Peter Balanon-Rosen, Avishai Artsy, Miranda Kennedy, Ested Herndon, and Sean Ramosferm.

We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder.

I'm Noelle King.

Today Explained is distributed by WNYC.

The show is a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, podcast.voxmedia.com.

You can listen ad-free by joining our membership program, vox.com slash members to join.

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