The Populist Attempt to Rewrite Stylized Facts

Economic populists are trying to discredit accepted stylized facts in economics while introducing newer and dumber stylized facts.

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Even in these polarized times, a lot of American politics consists of rhetorical battles over stylized facts — statements that are deemed sufficiently uncontroversial to be taken as given in political debates. If a group can change or subvert a previously accepted stylized fact, they can make significant political headway. Consider, for example, the unsuccessful conservative attempt to retcon the George Floyd murder or the semi-successful attempt to convince Americans that the George Floyd protests went “too far.” Similarly, when MAGA folks like Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts or Senator J.D. Vance refuse to accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, for example, they are attempting to challenge a stylized fact to the point where the mainstream media cannot assert it as given.

Republicans contesting the 2020 election is a particularly egregious example of this phenomenon. But as the United States enters a post-neoliberal era, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has noted economic populists on both sides of the aisle trying to destroy extant stylized facts and propose new ones about the American political economy.

If I had to summarize the key stylized facts about the U.S. political economy over the past two centuries, they would boil down to something like the following five statements:

1. In the 19th century the U.S. economy thrived despite high import tariffs — in no small part because of very low barriers to foreign direct investment and inward migration.

2. The United States bore significant responsibility for the global economic instability of the interwar period.

3. The protectionism of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff was partially responsible for turning a financial shock into a decade-long economic depression.

4. The U.S.-created liberal economic order during the Cold War was vastly superior to the economic arrangements of the communist bloc.

5. The globalization of the Washington Consensus era benefited the U.S. economy in the aggregate but had serious distributional consequences.

If you want to challenge those stylized facts, hey, go to town, but you better come armed with data.

In recent years, economic populists have focused a lot of their intellectual firepower on challenging some of those stylized facts — with varying degrees of success.