The article speaks mostly of Macroeconomic forces such as increasing the money supply. The problems with the economy are mostly caused by microeconomic issues.

The article speaks mostly of Macroeconomic forces such as increasing the money supply. The problems with the economy are mostly caused by microeconomic issues. Politically induced scarcity ("economic rents") that results in higher prices, externalities, and asymmetric information. A very, very large problem is the use of zoning laws which reduce density and overuse of historic landmark status which artificially increases land value and hence the cost of renting apartments and buying houses. This results in a transfer of income and wealth from people renting apartments and buying houses to landlords. Income that should be going towards purchasing goods and services and thus stimulating the economy goes towards landlords instead. Removing the politically induced artificial restriction on zoning would lower the cost of housing and stimulate a housing boom. This is the reason for the high cost of housing in NYC, SF, LA, Boston, Washington DC and other cities. In NYC, there is a limit of 13,000 taxi medallions which resulted in a medallion market value of $1.2 million. After Uber/Lyft came along the value dropped to $700,000 and not surprisingly the cost of taking Uber/Lyft has decreased compared to taking a taxi. This makes it so that New Yorkers can spend less income on taxis and taxi-like vehicles and more on goods and services. Of course course, the "taxi medallion landlords" have lost big time, because the political scarcity of medallions has been undermined. Many occupations have unnecessary licenses or unreasonable licensing requirements in order to create scarcity in that occupation creating artificially high prices while keeping others who would like to work out of the market. Stop the "rent-seeking" of "economic rents" through Federal Laws and we'll make sure the markets are more efficient a huge growth to the economy. What is baffling, and perhaps others can comment is why the NYTimes is writing economics columns without addressing the microeconomic inefficiencies which includes "economic rents." Can't they find someone with a basic understanding of economics to write an appropriate column?