What to Know about Today’s Inflation

What’s Causing Today’s Inflation

Is today’s inflation the result of excessive aggregate demand, or of overlapping sectoral supply side shifts and shocks?

The latter, Roosevelt’s Joseph Stiglitz and Ira Regmi argue in a wide-ranging new report.

“Breaking down inflation by sector reveals that it is tied to the obvious shocks and supply chain interruptions the economy has experienced, from high food and energy prices to the shortage of microchips for automobiles,” they write.

“[I]ncreases in interest rates will not substantially lower inflation unless they induce a major contraction in the economy, which is a cure worse than the disease.”

Read more in The Causes of and Responses to Today’s Inflation.

Good Policy, Good Politics

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is known as the plan-wielding policy wonk of the progressive movement. But underlying those plans is a simple idea: We are the government.

“Government is the vehicle for letting us do together what none of us can do alone,” Sen. Warren tells co-hosts Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky on the season finale of How to Save a Country. “We all contribute and it expands opportunity for all of us, and I feel like that’s what’s really been missing as we’ve become a post–New Deal nation.”

In this episode, Sen. Warren discusses how we can recapture that all-for-one ethos and build a stronger country: by investing in people and recognizing that democracy and freedom are inextricable.

Naturally, there’s plenty of policy to discuss as well. Sen. Warren talks with Wong and Tomasky about the big wins of the last two years—from the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act to student debt cancellation—and how they shaped the midterms.

“Good policy is good politics. When you do things that people want and care about and that touch their lives, that’s both.”

And later, Sen. Warren explains how her “personnel is policy” philosophy is reflected in antitrust and why abortion is a kitchen-table issue.

Hear more from Sen. Warren, and stay tuned in the coming weeks for bonus episodes of How to Save a Country.

What We’re Reading

Representative Democracy Got Us Into This Mess. Participatory Democracy Can Get Us Out. – The New Republic

Biden Is Right to Question Big Oil’s Stock Buybacks – Washington Post

10 Years Ago They Were Fast Food Workers Making Roughly $8 an Hour. ‘Fight for 15’ Changed Their Lives. – Business Insider

New York Times Journalists in Mass Strike for First Time in 40 Years – The Guardian