Tyler Cowen on Immigration, DOGE, and 'The Great Forgetting'
"Bad ideas have been making a comeback," the host of Conversations with Tyler tells Reason.
Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University, chairman and faculty director of the Mercatus Center, and host of the podcast Conversations with Tyler, regularly invokes what he calls "The Great Forgetting." This collective amnesia, he says, doesn't apply only to ancient history but also to hard lessons learned only a few decades ago. In January, Cowen joined Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe on the Reason podcast Just Asking Questions to discuss what we are forgetting and what he predicts for Donald Trump's second term.
Q: What exactly is The Great Forgetting?
A: One example would be a lot of individuals today—some of them even economists—think rent control is maybe a decent idea. Several decades ago, virtually everyone would have realized that rent control creates shortages, quality problems, corruption. But bad ideas have been making a comeback. The use of excess inflation to try to stimulate the economy. Or the notion that high crime is not so bad for your city's economy. We learned that lesson, but we seem to be forgetting that again.
Q: A MAGA civil war has broken out over issues like high-skilled immigration and antitrust. Any intuitions about how that will play out?
A: I think the MAGA movement is held together by Trump. As he, over time, becomes a lame duck, it will more and more splinter; decisions and outcomes will be more and more random. I think in the first year, there's a good chance for many good things to happen. I'm hoping they do. I'm not convinced they will.
The way you initiate social change is to have a fair number of cadres of people working on something for long periods of time. They're in government, they infiltrate institutions. The Democratic Party has done that wonderfully. The Republican Party, far less well. Libertarians, almost not at all.
Q: So much of the debate in the past has been about the low-skilled immigration coming over the southern border, and now there's a fracture growing because so much of Silicon Valley was openly backing Trump in a way they weren't last time. But there's disagreement about the H-1B visas that are important for their labor market. Were you surprised to see the discourse shift to debating high-skilled immigration?
A: I'm not surprised at all. I've been predicting this for some while. Once you get people riled up with nationalistic feelings, it's hard to control those feelings. And they spread to being anti-foreigner.
I prefer a world where people want more legal immigration of both kinds. I know that's not what we're about to get. There are these fights going on, and the first round, the pro-immigration people actually won it. I wouldn't say I'm hopeful, but it would have been worse if they had lost it.
Q: You've noted that MAGA is better at tapping into what you call negative contagion than progressives have been. But this time it does feel a little different, mostly because of the Silicon Valley techno-optimism that's been infused. Is this the shift from malaise into hopefulness that Americans have been waiting for?
A: I hope so, but I wouldn't predict it. My fear is that after year one, the best Silicon Valley people will be some mix of fed up, burnt out, kicked out, have better things to do, and will move on. But on the energy front, AI front, let's try to get done what we can while we can because there is some momentum in those directions. But it's hard for me to see that as the ruling principle for another four years of Trump.
Q: Are you bullish or bearish on DOGE?
A: I don't know. The original plans were badly misguided—great ideas that I agreed with, but the people involved didn't at all seem to know what they were doing. Do they currently have a workable plan? I'm not sure. If they get done a 10th of what they say, it's much better than nothing. I suppose that's my prediction.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
