Noah Smith, who writes the Noahpinion Substack blog, joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast to discuss his article, “Let us pause to appreciate the remarkable U.S. economy.”
Smith has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan, where he studied behavioral finance, an economic theory that attempts to explain irrational financial behavior. He was a professor of finance at Stonybrook University before growing weary of academia. Eventually, he got into blog writing and his Substack blog has taken off.
When it comes to labor unions, Smith believes they need to change how they organize. Instead of the current shop-to-shop approach, which remains a legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, he believes a transition should be made to Australia's sectoral unionization. This broad system operates at the sector level and the whole city. He believes if this was implemented in the U.S., it would would usher in a big wave of unionization.
Smith also spoke about the need to upgrade infrastructure at U.S. ports to bring railcars onto the docks. He compared the inefficiency of U.S. ports to ports in other countries.
On the topic of the economy, Smith discussed how raising interest rates caused two major recessions in the early 1980s. Now, he said the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, inflation decreased and the employment rate is holding. Inflation, he added, has been over for at least one year, if not two years.
Outside of the unsustainable U.S. debt, which he believes can only be solved by making spending cuts and raising taxes, he sees no other cracks in the U.S. economy.
To hear more about Smith’s Noahpionion blog, listen to the episode above.