And other cogent observations from thoughtful libertarian Tyler Cowen on the mistakes made by lefty and righty economists. Some left-wing mistakes:

5. Significantly overestimating the quality of the political economy of an America with more powerful labor unions and underestimating the history of labor unions as racist, corrupt, protectionist, and obstructions to positive change.

11. Use of a strong moral argument for universal health care coverage, combined with a fairly practical, hard-headed approach to the scope of the mandate, and not realizing the tension between the two. Failure to indicate where the "bleeding heart" argument actually should stop and at what margins we should (and will) let non-elderly people die, if only stochastically.

And some right-wing errors:

3. Lower taxes don't spur economic development as much as it is often claimed, at least not below the "fifty percent or less of gdp" range.

6. There is already considerable health care cost control embedded in the ACA, most of all for Medicare, and this is not admitted with sufficient frequency.

Both sides downplay the problems of climate change, for different reasons, Cowen says. As usual all his observations are fair-minded and thought-provoking.