Jon Hartley
Economist specializing in macroeconomics, finance, and labor economics; Assistant Professor of Economics at UT Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, cofounder of GenerativeAI Research, and host of Hoover’s Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century podcast.
Tax Pledges Aim to Prevent Deficit Deals From Raising Revenue
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, argues that federal deficits are a spending problem, not a case for higher taxes. He says tax-and-spending bargains repeatedly deliver permanent revenue increases while promised cuts disappear, making written anti-tax pledges a necessary constraint on lawmakers. His program pairs resistance to new federal revenue with lower taxes on investment, while relying on state spending caps and phased tax cuts to limit government growth.
Chile’s Market Reforms Succeeded, but Success Did Not Defend Itself
Sebastian Edwards, the UCLA economist and author of The Chile Project, argues that Chile’s market reforms were a radical dismantling of state control, not a marginal liberalization, and that their success was later obscured by slower growth and political complacency. In a Hoover Institution conversation with Jon Hartley, Edwards makes the case that Latin America’s growth failures are rooted in institutions, policy choices, and recurring hostility to economic freedom, while pointing to deregulation and renewed market reform in countries such as Argentina and Chile as the region’s clearest path back to faster growth.
Economic Freedom, Not Managed Equality, Drives Growth
Former US senator Phil Gramm, in a Hoover Institution conversation with economist Jon Hartley, argues that America’s debates over inequality, poverty, deficits and financial crises are distorted by measures and narratives that leave out central facts. Drawing on his books and legislative career, Gramm makes the case that economic freedom, not directed investment or redistribution, has been the main source of US growth and mobility. He contends that official inequality statistics undercount transfers and taxes, that the 2008 crisis stemmed from housing policy rather than Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and that efforts to substitute government judgment for markets reliably fail.