Michael Strain is the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Previously, Michael worked in the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau and in the Macroeconomics Research Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He joins the show today to talk about recent developments in U.S. economic policy and some of his work on that topic. David and Michael also discuss the consequences of rising populism, MMT's impact on tax policy, and the issues Americans should be most worried about. Transcript for the episode: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/03042019/populism-mmt-and-billionaires Michael's Twitter: @MichaelRStrain Michael's AEI profile: https://www.aei.org/scholar/michael-r-strain/ Related Links: *Economic Shocks and Clinging* by Michael Strain and Stan Veuger https://ideas.repec.org/p/aei/rpaper/1004842.html *Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data* by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf *Going to Extremes, Politics After Financial Crisis: 1870-2014* by Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2688897 *Modern Monetary Theory is a Joke That's Not Funny* by Michael Strain https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-17/modern-monetary-theory-would-sink-u-s-in-debt David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.