Greg Tirico

May 25, 2020

Episode #293: Second Interview with Professor Deirdre McCloskey

Greg Tirico

May 25, 2020

Deirdre McCloskey is a “literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive-Episcopalian, ex-Marxist, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man.” She is also AN AMAZING GUEST!

A bit more about Deirdre McCloskey
Deirdre McCloskey is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Economics and of History, and Professor Emerita of English and of Communication, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Trained at Harvard in the 1960s as an economist, she has written twenty books and some four hundred academic articles on economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, statistical theory, feminism, ethics, and law. She taught for twelve years at the University of Chicago in the Economics Department in its glory days, but now describes herself as a “literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive-Episcopalian, ex-Marxist, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not ‘conservative’! I’m a Christian classical liberal.” Her most recent popular books, for example, are Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All, and with Art Carden Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: The Bourgeois Deal.

Here are Ron’s questions from the interview…

Professor, Welcome back to TSOE! You were our first guest, Episode #6, August 2014. Your work continues to blow, and change, our minds!
In your recent book, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All, (October 2019), you wrote:

“The point here is to convert you to a ‘humane true liberalism.’ Capitalism” (innovism) has raised the real income per person of the poorest since 1800 not by 10 percent or 100 percent, but by over 3,000 percent, or a 2,900 percent increase over the base, stunning Great Enrichment, well beyond the classic Industrial Revolution of 1760–1860, which had merely doubled income per head.”

This is the greatest untold story of the world. How did it happen, Professor?

Yours is such a powerful argument because we continue to all these materialist explanations (for the Great Enrichment), and yet you take them down one by one. You point out in the old days, especially around Europe, the only way to get honor was being a soldier or being a priest. These ideas started to change, we started to accept creative destruction, we no longer looked at innovation as a sin or a heresy, wasn’t it?
And freedom is an attitudinal, ideological change. What role did religion play role in helping to change those attitudes?
I was listening to Tyler Cowen’s podcast the other day, and he had on Paul Romer [former student of Professor McCloskey]. Tyler asked Romer why China didn’t develop the Industrial Revolution, and Romer cited a paper by Justin Lind, because China didn’t invent the social system we call science. You don’t buy that theory, do you?
One of the things your trilogy of books taught me is how many inventions came out of China [and believed by The California School], and then you wonder why it stopped.
In your book, Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All, you have a few chapters on Thomas Piketty and his work [especially his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century]. You point out for all his data fetish, he doesn't include human capital in his inequality statistics. To me that’s just a glaring error. How can you draw any conclusions from his book? [The World Bank Estimates that about 80% of developed nation’s wealth].
Are you worried if Jeff Bezos becomes the world’s first trillionaire?
As the Nobel (2018) economist William Nordhaus estimates, inventors in the United States since World War II have kept only 2 percent of the social value of the betterment they produce.
What was your position on Brexit?
You discuss economists Robert Gordon of Northwestern, Tyler Cowen, and John Maynard Keynes who all believe we’ll lose jobs because of technology. Why all this talk about the “winners” compensating the “losers”? You quote Stephen Landsburg, “Suppose, after years of buying shampoo at your local pharmacy, you discover you can order the same shampoo for less money online. Do you have an obligation to compensate your pharmacist?
You quote essayist T. B. Macaulay who wrote in 1830, “On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” That pessimism just bleeds through some of the recent economic work. Are you optimistic or pessimistic with respect to liberty?

…and here are Ed’s questions:

I just wanted to thank you for being our first guest. You were incredibly gracious. If you weren’t as gracious as you were, I don’t know if we would have had a second guest.
On COVID-19, Steven Landsburg [also a student of Professor McCloskey’s], wrote on his blog the other day [This is What a Pandemic Looks Like] that nobody considered locking down the economy in 1969 during the Hong Kong flu, because they couldn’t afford to given their relative poverty, they preferred to spend their wealth on other things. Today’s lockdown is widely supported because it’s a luxury we’ve grown rich enough to afford. In other words, a lockdown is yet another triumph of capitalism!
The word that’s thrown around so often is “unprecedented,” but as an economic historian are there some precedents that we can put into practice for what we’ve done to the economy—one economist calls it “The Great Suppression”?
We’re facing here an 18% unemployment, 38 million people, which is Great Depression era levels. You said at the end of our last show that Keynesianism works in the case of mass unemployment. Is it still the case we can spend our way out of this current one, or no?
With all of the spending we’ve done, is this a situation where if we don’t have a significant inflation in six months to a year, we have to rethink what causes inflation? Because I would think this “helicopter money,” this would be it?
There was a question from one of our listeners, Bo, a friend of mine and a delegate to the Libertarian Party convention tonight, asks: “Psychologists keep telling us that rationales come last, so how do we know that the changing attitudes weren’t a trailing indicator of the changing situation on the ground?”
What are your thoughts on the New York Times 1619 Project?
Have you seen Hamilton, and if so, what did you think of that?
This July on Disney+ they are releasing the Hamilton movie?
Do you have a half-baked or fully-baked Constitutional Amendment you’d like to make?
- [1. Get rid of the Electoral College; 2. Pass the Equal Rights Amendment; and 3. Remove the two-term limitation on the president].

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Greg Tirico

May 18, 2020

Episode #292: Interview with Connor Boyack

Greg Tirico

May 18, 2020

Connor Boyack is nothing short of prolific, most notably as the author of The Tuttle Twins books. They (the twins) teach young children the important values that schools won't—economics, civics, philosophy, and more!

A Bit More About Connor Boyack

Connor Boyack is president of Libertas Institute, a free-market think tank in Utah. He is the author of over a dozen books on politics, education, and culture, along with hundreds of columns and articles championing individual liberty. He is also president of The Association for Teaching Kids Economics, a national non-profit helping K-8 students learn free-market ideas. A California native and Brigham Young University graduate, Connor currently resides in Lehi, Utah, with his wife and two children.

Here are Ed’s questions from the interview:

How are you and your family doing during the Great Suppression?
Ed told Connor how he was first introduced to his work. A book one of Ed’s brought home from school was The Rainbow Fish, the only banned book in the Kless household. As an antidote to that book, I came across another book, The Big Orange Splot, the most anti-homeowner association book ever written. Then, Amazon recommended one of your books, the first was The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law, which is about Frédéric Bastiat’s work (see our Episode #125) and you bring it down to a K-8 level. I was thrilled to buy it, and even more amazed when I read it. Tell us how you got to writing children’s books that promote free market ideas.
I have five of your books, and perhaps two or three others. I don’t have the complete set. I was told by my son to tell you that his favorite book of yours is The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law, and my daughter’s favorite is The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil.
I’ve read a couple of them to my kid’s classes. Because of what’s going on with COVID-19, we almost need a reverse I, Pencil essay, to try to explain to people what we are doing by hitting the pause button on the economy.
The rhetoric we’re hearing about how this economic pause is a market failure is maddening.
The word unprecedented is thrown around a lot, but we truly never have had the snooze button hit on the economy.
Connor, I want to bring it up to a more adult level conversation, though many of things you write about in your blog are related back to your books. Shelly Luther, the salon owner in Dallas, who engaged in civil disobedience violating the Governor’s order, and a county judge’s order, was arrested and put in jail for seven day for opening her salon during the lock down. Governor Abbott then changed his mind about not wanting people to go to jail, you wrote in a blog post called “Are All Laws Inherently Violent?” Could you unpack that for us?
Usually when I ask this question it is with irony in mind, but I am genuinely curious now, do you think taxation is theft?
I’ve often thought the best type of taxation would be on transactions, like a use tax. But that leads to the creature from Jekyll island, which is using the Federal Reserve currency. But I wanted to ask you, at the end of The Tuttle Twins and the Creature from Jekyll Island, you mention Bitcoin. What are your thoughts on alternative currencies, the gold standard, or would you rather see a system of privatized currencies that people use.
I’ve been a fan of the Brave browser for over a year, and anticipate making money from surfing the Internet. Another essay you recently wrote, in light of what’s happening with the Great Suppression—what do you think will happen with regard to homeschooling? Are we going to have a pick uptick in that, or will there be a backlash the other way?

…and here are Ron’s questions:

I have such respect for what you do because I’ve written nonfiction books, but children’s books are completely different. You probably know this, William F. Buckley, Jr. who wrote 50-plus books over his career, and one children’s book. He said it was, without a doubt, the hardest to write. Rush Limbaugh also writes children’s books. I’m curious, did you find it harder, easier, what you expected?
The reason I could never write a children’s book, I can tell stories in a nonfiction book, but you only have to deal with what people think. But you have to plot—deal with what people do—which I think is really, really hard.
To prepare for this show, I went back and listened to some of your earlier interviews with Tom Woods and you had quoted Frederick Douglas (you think apocryphally): “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Was that the driver behind these books? Because that’s a profound line.
To concretize this, how do you, for example, teach the non-aggression principle to children (5-10 years of age, or at a Congressman’s level, as you say)?
Not only did you take on Frederick Bastiat in The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law (April 2014), you’ve taken on Frederick Hayek in The Tuttle Twins and the Road to Surfdom (2017), and The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil (Dec 2014), which I wish I would have read when I was a kid because I think it’s one of the most mind-blowing essays to read. You mentioned to Ed that The Tuttle Twins and the Creature from Jekyll Island is the most popular book, but I would imagine The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil was really popular as well.
Have you ever run across a book called The Toaster Project? It’s about a UK design student who tries to build a toaster from scratch. He spends a ton of money, it takes him well over a year, and in the end it doesn’t work. It’s I, Pencil on steroids. A great story of how ridiculously complex it is to build something we can buy for $8.
Maybe I’ll ask you when we come back, you wrote The Tuttle Twins and the Search for Atlas (2017), which is about Ayn Rand’s ideas. What was the reaction to that book?
Connor, you take on so many great topics. Have you ever tackled the subjective vs. labor theory of value?
Another possible topic I wish I had known as a kid is negative vs. positive rights.
What’s your take on the Universal Basic Income? And have you ever thought about doing a book on that topic?
Tell us about your book Passion-Driven Education: How to Use Your Child’s Interests to Ignite a Lifelong Love of Learning (2016)?
It’s sort of like the motto of the Unschooling movement isn’t it?
And tell us about your book, Skip College (July 2019)?
Thank you so much, Connor, it’s been a pleasure to get to know you. Keep up the good work because it is vitally important!

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Here are a few topics discussed from the most recent bonus episode:

Greg Tirico

May 11, 2020

Episode #291: The Passion Economy — Adam Davidson

Greg Tirico

May 11, 2020

From Adam’s new book, The Passion Economy, we have rule #6: TECHNOLOGY SHOULD ALWAYS SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS, NOT DRIVE IT.

We talk about this rule plus several others in the show. But first let’s learn more about Adam…

A Bit More About Adam Davidson

Adam Davidson has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2016. He founded, hosted, and ran NPR’s Planet Money from 2008 to 2013. He then became an economics writer and columnist for The New York Times Magazine. He has won the Peabody, Polk, and duPont-Columbia Awards. He hosts the Passion Economy podcast, based on the ideas in this book, for Luminary Media and cofounded Three Uncanny Four, a podcast company. Davidson was the technical adviser for the film The Big Short, working closely with its writer and director, Adam McKay. He and McKay were executive producers of the Amazon television program This Giant Beast That Is the Global Economy, starring Kal Penn. Davidson is married to the journalist and novelist Jen Banbury; they live with their son in Brooklyn, New York. You can listen to our first interview with Adam at Episode #26.

Here are Ron’s questions from the interview:

How are you, personally, holding up during this COVID crisis, the lockdown, lack of travel?
Adam, why did you write this book, which came out this year, and why did you write it now? [The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century].
You start out the book with a story that I absolutely love—the conflict between two Stanleys. Can you explain that?
I was heartened to read what you wrote: “Simply pursuing one’s passion is not enough. We must pay close attention to the marketplace.” We’ve had Rabbi Daniel Lapin on the show a few times, and he believes the whole “follow your passion” that you get at commencement addresses is bad advice. He says, you have to do something that serves other people, something that they value, and then you learn to love it over time. Because if you just follow your passion, it can sink into narcissism. React to that.
Your passions can change, can’t they?
I get this question a lot from young people, “I haven’t found my passion. How do I find my passion?” How do you answer that to a high school or college student?
You were talking with Ed about your Rule #6 about technology, the most fascinating profiles in the book was Pioneer, the Amish company. What did you learn from them, since they aren’t known for being on the technological edge?
I love that story. You also spent some time at a winery, and I always say that wineries are farmers, but they are also incredible marketers, different price points, target markets, etc. But folks you’ll have to read the book to get some of these great profiles.

…and here are Ed’s questions:

You talk about the rules for the passion economy. The first one I found particularly interesting, because at first glance it appears that might be contradictory, and I hope you can unpack it for us: RULE #1: PURSUE INTIMACY AT SCALE.
I want to jump to your RULE #4: FEWER PASSIONATE CUSTOMERS ARE BETTER THAN A LOT OF INDIFFERENT ONES.
What’s interesting about that is, sure Mark Zuckerberg goes for the scale of the world, yet it’s his platform that allows us to get very specific with regards to our targeted ads.
And your RULE #6, this is really important because the folks I work with, especially in accounting: TECHNOLOGY SHOULD ALWAYS SUPPORT YOUR BUSINESS, NOT DRIVE IT. I think that’s been one of the big mistakes people have fallen for. They think technology is the business, and it’s not, it’s a supporter, a tool. Take that apart a bit more.
And RULE #8, which I also love, it is similar to number one because it sounds like an apparent contradiction, but I know it’s not. In fact, Ron and I have done at least one entire show on this topic [Episode #28]: NEVER BE IN THE COMMODITY BUSINESS, EVEN IF YOU SELL WHAT OTHER PEOPLE CONSIDER A COMMODITY.
Our favorite example of this is giveashare.com, which sells one share of stock, the very definition of a commodity.
Adam, I wanted to ask you about something that I notice that you repeat over and over in the book, and it’s certainly in the chapter about Jason Blumer with Ron and Tim Williams. At one point, you write that when Ron said “prices justify costs” this confounded Jason. And I’m going to ask you a question: were you also talking about yourself? Was that a discovery that you made in conversations with Ron as well?
I love that you’re a word guy, the word “transaction” itself has this notion that means “beyond the action” of an exchange of goods, there’s something beyond that, it’s deeper. You write “I happen to be an unobservant Jew and spend little time thinking about God or spiritual things. I found that the closer I adhere to a Passion Economy approach to my work, the more meaningful my work becomes.” Ron talked about Rabbi Lapin earlier, and something he says that the Hebrew word for work and worship are the same word. How incredibly profound that is, and it seems you’ve gotten to the essence of that without even knowing it?
What are your thoughts on The Passion Economy in the age of COVID-19?
Several pharmaceutical companies, some bitter rivals, are cooperating to come up with a vaccine. For COVID-19 and the technology that enables them to do that. I’ll let you react to that in the last 30 seconds.

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Greg Tirico

May 4, 2020

Episode #290: Interview with economist Dan Mitchell

Greg Tirico

May 4, 2020

Dan Mitchell fights for more freedom and less government (which is purposefully redundant).

A Bit More About Dan Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on tax reform and supply-side tax policy. In addition to tax policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security privatization – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts. Dr. Mitchell’s by-line can be found in such national publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Investor’s Business Daily. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from the University of Georgia. Mitchell was a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation, and an economist for Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee.

Ed and Ron were honored to have the chance to interview economist Dan Mitchell. As former Presidential candidate Steve Forbes said of Mitchell’s 1996 book, The Flat Tax: Freedom, Fairness, Jobs, and Growth, “Mitchell marvelously demonstrates how the flat tax will rip away the principal source of political pollution in Washington.” He also is the nation’s leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations. His September 2000 analysis of the OECD’s “harmful tax competition” initiative was the opening salvo in a campaign that ended with the United States announcing it could no longer support international proposals to persecute low-tax jurisdictions. He has now turned his attention to the EU’s infamous “Savings Tax Directive” and a UN proposal to undermine the sovereign right of nations to determine their own tax policy.

Here are Ed’s questions from the interview:

First, Dan, how are you doing in these crazy times before we get into tax policy?
What is your overall evaluation of the federal government’s reaction to the COVID-19 crisis? The spending seems to be a crazy mish-mosh of stuff, isn’t it?
The first stimulus was $2.1 trillion and the second was $2.3 Trillion, there was no conversation about all this spending.
You refuted a claim by Dana Milbank at the Washington Post, who wrote: “Our response to the Corona virus was hampered because our government is too small.”
And yet the states themselves, which are the smaller governments, their fiscal burdens run the gamut in terms of debt and unfunded liabilities. [Ed quotes from Dan’s blog post, “Coronavirus and the States: Spending Restraint, Bailouts, Default, or Bankruptcy?” May 1, 2020]. Can you unpack that, there’s a lot there?
On the unfunded liabilities, a lot of those were caused by guaranteed pension plans that the state employees got, is that correct?
Then the question becomes, are the good people of Texas willing to bail out the good people of New Jersey, that’s the challenge.
Dan, I wanted to ask you one more corona virus related questions, and then move on to some other random topics. What would have been better: assuming we had to do something, what should have been done. Would have been direct deposits to individuals, or what, I’ll let you go from there?
To steal a phrase, is it really the spending stupid? Does it ultimately come down to the size and scope of government that’s the problem, and then taxation just becomes the result of that?
One way that has been proposed by some Libertarians, such as Charles Murray’s idea of a Universal Basic Income, along with a Constitutional Amendment to remove all other spending programs. What are your thoughts on UBI?
On the subject of not trusting politicians, what are your thoughts on Justin Amash potentially declaring for the LP candidate for president?

…and here are Ron’s questions:

I’d like to talk with you about tax policy, one of your areas of expertise. When you look at all the different type of tax systems we could have, such as a VAT, National Sales Tax, Consumption Tax, Flat Tax, if you were king for a day—knowing you’d probably turn down that role—what tax system do you favor?
Look at the history of the VAT in Europe, which started fairly low, and now look at their rates, on top of their confiscatory income tax rates.
Dan, is it true from a technical economic point of view, no matter what you call the tax, aren’t all taxes at the end of day income taxes because that is how most people have control over resources?
What would you do with the corporate and capital gains taxes?
The corporate tax incidence debate, I remember reading Kevin Hasset, who I’m sure you know, he believes nearly all the corporate tax burden is actually paid by the workers. What’s your take on that? How much do the workers versus the shareholders versus the consumers pay of the corporate tax burden?
I wish more people understood exactly what you just said. It seems there’s a feeling out there that we can keep taxing the corporation, and it’s no, only people pay taxes.
I used to be really young and naïve back when Newt Gingrich took back the House in 1994, I really thought we were going to see major tax reform. What is your assessment of real tax reform. Do you think we’ll ever live long enough to see it?
I think you’re exactly right on that. It took me about a decade to learn that.
Dan, I know you have a worldwide grasp on tax policy, and I’d love your opinion how this country should we go about privatizing Social Security. Which model works? Is it Chile’s, Singapore’s, Great Britain’s? How should we deal with the Social Security Crisis?
So you’re saying you’ll be the Yankee’s pitcher before we even attempt to fix Social Security or Medicare?
Yes, Clinton could have got it done because he was a Democrat, rather than when George W. Bush tried it.
I know you’re a big opponent of the tax harmonization schemes of the EU and the UN, and this oxymoronic notion of “harmful tax competition,” where do you stand on the EU in general, and this ties into Brexit, too. I would imagine you were for Brexit, is that safe to say?
I’m just such a pessimist with respect to the EU, it’s just a meta-mess, with their regulations, I just can’t imagine a country like Great Britain transferring its sovereignty to the EU.
Dan, should we be worried about inequality or poverty?