Politicians hooked on 'lazy' policy craze that keeps backfiring: columnist

Both Republicans and Democrats are rallying behind economic fixes that poll well but collapse catastrophically once they hit the real world, a columnist warned.

In a Thursday column, Catherine Rampell argued that the country has entered "the era of FAFO economics." She described the era as a cycle in which politicians push ideas that sound good in the abstract until voters live through the consequences.

Rampell's prime exhibit is price controls. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans want the government to cap how much companies can raise prices, with a majority of Republicans, about 54 percent, on board. She described the policies as "lazy, poorly researched" fixes that voters sour on once they arrive.

Price controls have a long record of failure, Rampell noted. She pointed to shortages and black markets from the Soviet Union to 1970s America. Support tends to crater once the policies take effect, which is a pattern strategists bank on even as voters turn against the results, Rampell added.

"Politicians have gone all-in on lazy, poorly researched policies that sound terrific in the abstract — until people experience them and live to regret how terrible they are," Rampell wrote.

She pointed to tariffs that came as the "FAFO" cycle had already completed. Broadly popular after President Donald Trump's 2024 win, they have since cratered, with even protectionist Democrats like former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) now running ads against them.

Rampell reserved her sharpest criticism for the operatives she says have displaced actual economists in both parties.

"The experts have been ejected by both parties, often replaced with political operatives masquerading as scholars," she wrote. "Their job seems to be to reverse-engineer fake scholarship 'proving' the wisdom of whatever policy already polls well."

She quoted Heatmap's Matt Zeitlin on the limits of favorable polling. "All the polls in the world can't help you if people are also mad when they get implemented," Zeitlin wrote.

The result is "a sort of economic policymaking race to the bottom" in which both parties "compete to see who can FA harder," Rampell warned.