the point of convergence is where anti-statism and egalitarianism meet

That is from their new book, The Captured Economy. They discuss four areas in which public policy exacerbates inequality: housing finance subsidies, intellectual property protection, occupational licensing, and urban land-use regulation. Thus, these are four areas in which a libertarian preference for less government and a progressive preference for less inequality can be served by the same policy changes–hence the “convergence.”

I found much to like in the book, particularly the discussion of the financial crisis, which puts more of the blame where I think it belongs and less on the places where I think it does not belong. In fact, I found the discussion so congenial that I did a search for “Kling” to see if I was in the footnotes somewhere, but I wasn’t.

I quibble when they write,

Of the four case studies we examined, only with respect to financial regulation do we see the usual left-right debate of bigger versus smaller government.

As an anecdote, early in the Trump Administration I attended a three-hour session on financial regulation at the Treasury Department, with about 50 economists in the room, predominantly on the right of course. At one point, the official running the session asked for a show of hands on the question of whether banks were required to hold too much capital, not enough capital, or the right amount. Overwhelmingly, our hands went up for “not enough capital.” So I think that Teles and Lindsey are wrong to imply that the reason that we are stuck with the financial policy we have is that the left and the right cannot agree.

Among economists, left and right agree that it would be good policy to require banks to be less levered. Just as we agree that it would be good policy to build more housing in high-income cities.

Lindsey and Teles are quite aware that on these issues where economists mostly agree, there are public-choice problems. That is what they mean by the title “captured economy.” In the latter part of the book, they talk about ways of getting around these public-choice problems. They reject both the libertarian solution (shrink government) and the progressive solution (regulate campaign finance).

I would describe their suggested alternative political approaches as scenarios rather than as solutions. I am not very optimistic that their scenarios can be realized.