, Columnist
What Economic Policies Do Americans Need? Just Ask Them
It's not complicated. The poor want more money. The middle class worries about health care. The rich fret over retirement.
Guess what these two are thinking about.
Photographer: Geraldine Wilkins/Los Angeles Times/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Usually, when economists think about how to improve the lives of people, they rely on introspection and theoretical assumptions. Many an econ paper buries itself in abstract calculations of utility and welfare, deploying pages of equations to derive optimal rules of policy. But there’s a simpler, alternate approach to figuring out what kind of policies people want and need: Just ask them.
The Federal Reserve Board does this every year, in its Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households. Last year’s report just came out, and it has a lot to tell us about what kind of things the U.S. government could do to improve people’s lives.