You start by arguing against “market fundamentalism,” “neoliberalism,” and “extreme libertarianism,” and you end by arguing against economics. Vice President JD Vance is the latest postliberal to embrace what is now, for all intents and purposes, an anti-growth position.

In his latest book, Communion, Vance inveighs against those perennial straw men, the GDP-obsessed economists. We keep hearing about these mysterious figures, cold-hearted calculators who believe that GDP is the only measure that counts. Oddly, despite having spent my life around free-marketeers and despite now running the world’s oldest classical liberal think tank, I have yet to meet one.