Review
"This extremely well-written book explains how President Trump and his staff are dismantling special interest favors. My career would be ruined if the leaders in my industry knew how I was part of that team."
--Former White House official who asked to remain anonymous
"In this enjoyable and easy to read book, Casey Mulligan, former chief White House economist, explains the unconventional wisdom of the president, the achievements in rolling back ruling class rules that harmed middle and lower-income families, the success and limits of taking on special interests, the bias of the media, the instinct of government officials to shun information that their programs cause harm, the role of politics in shaping policy, and much more."
--Brian Blase, Former Special Assistant to President Trump for Economic Policy
"'The smartest guy in the White House. His numbers can always be trusted...' that is how Casey Mulligan was described to me when I first met him. And now he has written an insightful, honest, book about working in the Trump White House, free from score settling and self promotion. A MUST READ for anyone -- regardless of political affiliation -- interested in President Trump or the workings of the White House. Destined to be read and studied as a classic."
--Joseph Grogan, Former Assistant to President Trump for Domestic Policy
"The book is replete with wonderful policy analysis ... but [also] the description of the players in Washington is so unusual for a book of this type and that makes the book a good read in and of itself."
--Bob Zadek, entrepreneur and longtime radio host
"Profound, important, entertaining, economically solid, and easy to read. It will be one of the most important books of 2020."
--David R. Henderson, Hoover Institution and the Naval Postgraduate School
From the Author
Some of the FAQ about the book:
Q1. What are some features of the book that make it enjoyable to read?
A1. Readers have at parts choked on their coffee (unanticipated hilarity; they survived). The final chapter is SAD.
As one reader explains, "what you will learn in the book is SO different than what you learn from mainstream media ... it is compelling and riveting."
Love him, hate him, or anywhere in between, President Trump is a fascinating character. Yet there are few careful, firsthand, candid observations about this president. As the same reader told me, "you didn't have an agenda you were just sharing what you had learned with the reading public and you do so quite beautifully if not brilliantly."
Q2. Does the book evade the topic of Trump's tariffs and immigration policy?
A2. No! Two chapters are dedicated to tariffs and a third chapter to immigration policy. They include what inside (the White House) economists cannot say and what outside economists do not know (although they should).
Q3. Does the book reveal who wrote the Anonymous oped and book?
A3. Pretty close. Chapter 5's detailed comparison of the accounts of Mr./Ms. Anonymous and what Mulligan saw with his own eyes in the Trump White House goes a long way toward identifying the author of those accounts. The author, for example, has some undergraduate training in history but no training in scholarship. For many more details about Mr./Ms. Anonymous, please read Chapter 5.
Q4. What is "populism"?
A4. Helen Dale's review of A Hillbilly Elegy describes how a "high-handed [policy-making] process relieves [policymakers] of the burden of thinking about what our rules will do to individuals on the receiving end. ...when people rebel at the ballot box, we are shocked." Populism is conflict between everyday Americans and a small, unelected, and insulated ruling class. The latter often claims that there is no real substance to populism and that the former have retreated into a primitive "us versus them mentality."
You're Hired! shows how the ruling class failed to fully appreciate the concerns of the rest of the country and is rarely accountable to them, which created political opportunities grasped by candidate Trump. The ruling class does not understand the costs of forcing people to buy health insurance. It struggles to remember that more people might see reversing the opioid epidemic as more urgent than reversing climate change. And, even while lacking many dimensions of wisdom, the ruling class will sometimes mock those that they rule.
Understanding populism, and not just from the ruling class perspective, is essential to understanding candidate and President Donald Trump.
Q5. You refer to a "ruling class" but haven't government officials, journalists and academic commentators earned their positions on the basis of their skills and achievements? Hasn't there been a "Triumph of the Technocrats"?
A5. The technocrats have certainly triumphed in that their pens/keyboards write the regulations and statutes. But systematic examinations of those rules (including, but not limited to, the findings of Mulligan and Patrick McLaughlin) reveals that the analysis of the technocrats borders on the absurd and is readily manipulated by special interests. Complementing the systematic examinations are the specific episodes described in the book.
Moreover, what is above is a charitable response to Q4. The book also shows how technocrats sometimes become invested in failed policies, make no effort to discover the failures, and sometimes actively attempt to hide evidence of them. The ongoing opioid epidemic is replete with significant examples (Chapter 4).
About the Author
The Wall Street Journal calls him “The economist who exposed Obamacare.” Casey B. Mulligan, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1993. Mulligan has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Clemson University, and the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies. He served as Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during 2018 and 2019.
Casey has received awards and fellowships from the Manhattan Institute, Wolfram Research, the National Tax Association, the Fraser Institute for Public Policy, and various foundations supporting economic research. His research covers capital and labor taxation, the gender wage gap, health economics, regulation, Social Security, voting and the economics of aging.
Mulligan has written widely on discrepancies between economic analysis and conventional wisdom. Before You’re Hired!, he wrote Chicago Price Theory (with Jaffe, Minton, and Murphy), Side Effects and Complications, The Redistribution Recession, and Parental Priorities and Economic Inequality. He has also written numerous opeds and blog entries for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other blogs and periodicals. Follow @caseybmulligan on Twitter.
