The Summer of Shortages - with Scott Lincicome

Air travel this summer seems broken. On some days, major airlines have been canceling 10 percent of their flights. In normal times, it’s something like one in a hundred that are canceled. How did this happen? Is there an explanation beyond just the obvious – which is the turbocharged rebound from the past two years of pandemic-induced turmoil in the airline industry? Today’s guest thinks there’s something else going on that the post-covid travel summer has simply revealed. It’s a structural problem that predated the pandemic, and he also sees similar forces at work in other industries, including the baby formula crisis. It’s the structural roots of crises of scarcity that we get at today, with Scott Lincicome. Scott is at the CATO Institute, a Washington think tank, where’s he’s the director of General Economics & Trade Policy Studies. He’s also a visiting lecturer at Duke University Law School, and spent two decades as a trade law negotiator, advising some of the largest multinationals. He also writes a Substack called “Capitolism”. And he’s with The Dispatch news & analysis site.