Readers frequently offer advice on my columns, with a common theme of helping me be more persuasive. I appreciate the comments, but I should make clear that these columns are not designed to be persuasive.

Neither economics professors nor economic columnists are in the mind-changing business, at least, not through the arts of persuasive rhetoric. I respect my students and readers too much to try to change their minds in a lecture or 750-word column.

As an economics professor, my job is to equip students with the tools of the trade and show how to use them. The conclusions they draw are their own.

Consider the minimum wage, a topic of fierce debate.

I teach students to analyze the topic by building a simple labor market model. We start with how workers and businesses make decisions, assuming both are rational actors pursuing their own interests.

This creates a supply-and-demand model that determines wages and jobs. A minimum wage interferes with these market decisions. Our model shows who wins (workers earning more) and who loses (businesses paying more and some workers losing jobs).

Then we test this against real data. What actually happens? Job losses? Wage gains? More automation? Higher prices? Sometimes even more people entering the job market.

As a professor, my job is to do research that accurately predicts these changes and teach students to understand the models (mathematics) and empirics (statistical work) that draw these conclusions. The point is to highlight trade-offs of differing policy choices.

However, that doesn’t mean I’m expecting a particular opinion.

A long body of research on the minimum wage suggests it has very little effect in hurting business or helping workers. Some students will understand it doesn't really affect businesses, but still oppose a minimum wage increase because they're philosophically opposed to government intervention in free markets. Other students will accept that a minimum wage may leave some workers worse off, even unemployed, but still support a minimum wage increase. Both are perfectly defensible positions.

My job as a professor is to arm students with intellectual tools to solve those problems, while taking seriously differing views on the actual policy. My goal is to have students who can pass the ideological Turing Test, which means they can learn to defend any side of an issue so well that no one can discern their actual opinion (see https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/2019/10/14142634/The-Ideological-Turing-Test.pdf).

I do the same thing in my columns. People who read newspaper columns are intelligent and interested in learning. They are also generous with their time. I have too much respect for that to be merely persuasive.

My goal in these columns is to make accurate predictions of policy effects and explain briefly how those predictions are made. Most are built from years of my own research and decades of work by those who went before me. If you change your mind because of what I write, it should be as a consequence of my being right, not my being rhetorically persuasive.

Many of my columns appeal to considerations beyond dollars and cents because economics isn’t about money. Economics is the study of people in market exchange, and the foundational institutions, like our Constitution, are economic documents as much as they are political philosophy.

I do criticize policies, sometimes quite harshly. But, I don’t criticize policies because I disagree with them. Nobody, and I mean nobody, should care about my opinion. I criticize policies because they do not, or cannot, achieve their goals.

Tariffs are a good example. One (of several) stated goal of President Trump’s tariffs is to return manufacturing production and employment; however, U.S. manufacturing output peaked in 2024. Tariffs have already reduced factory production and will continue to keep it lower than it would have been.

These tariffs won’t increase factory employment, but instead reduce it. Faced with bizarre uncertainty and higher costs on imported inputs, American factories are cutting domestic employment. It is the surest way to remain competitive.

There are literally hundreds of examples of these outcomes, here and worldwide for a century or longer. Folks who trust the president on tariffs won’t be dissuaded by my rhetoric—these are folks who have proven to be wholly innocent of economic ideas. But, some of them will lose jobs, know people who lose jobs, experience higher prices and learn that I was right.

If I change anyone’s mind, that is how it’ll happen.

Of course, that is why Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. Data is going to change a lot of minds in the year ahead, and so too will personal experience.

One thing I find funny is the critique that I am partisan in my assessments. I do criticize those in power more than those who are not, but that is because the folks in power are the ones who change policy. When you win elections and change policy, you should expect praise and criticism—depending on the policy.

Recently, Democrats haven’t been good at winning elections, so they face fewer critiques. At the same time, Republicans have been awfully bad at governing—earning far more criticism than space allows. If you think that’s a partisan assessment, that’s fine. I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m trying to do something much more challenging. I am trying to be right on the facts and analysis.