During the last few weeks, ARI’s executive director, Yaron Brook, has been touring Europe giving talks on a wide variety of topics. He has spoken in the U.K., Norway, Germany, Poland, Serbia and in the Netherlands on topics such as the morality of capitalism, the immorality of the welfare state, the virtue of selfishness, and economic inequality.
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In past interviews, we have talked to experts on the research concerning inequality. In this episode, I interview statistician Phil Birnbaum on how to interpret the economic inequality statistics we hear reported in the news each day.
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Max Borders, editor of The Freeman and author of Superwealth, on entrepreneurship and inequality.
You may have heard about “inversions,” which have become a hot topic of debate in the wake of Burger King’s acquisition of Tim Hortons. Megan McArdle provides some much-needed context for that debate (although my jaw dropped when I got to her line about “what you owe the government that raised you”). Cato Institute scholar and Debt Dialogues guest Dan Mitchell has more.
In Free Market Fairness, Brown University political science professor John Tomasi seeks to defend free markets on a Rawlsian “social justice” foundation. In laying the groundwork for his argument, Tomasi thinks it is notable that even most free-market thinkers appeal to “social justice” concerns, i.e., that they almost all — from Adam Smith to Herbert Spencer to Milton Friedman — stress that free markets are good for “the poor.”
From Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia: Often people who do not wish to bear risks feel entitlement to rewards from those who do win; yet these same people do not feel obligated to help out by sharing the losses of those who bear risks and lose. [p. 257] This made me think of the people who argue that Walmart has an obligation to pay its workers more rather than allow the profits to go to the owners.
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Manhattan Institute fellow Scott Winship on economic inequality, mobility, and the American Dream.
The S&P recently came out with a report on how inequality is allegedly dampening economic growth. If you’re following the debate over Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, don’t miss this analysis from the Tax Foundation or this article from Don Boudreaux.
