Brink Lindsey on the Age of Abundance

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Books, History, Science, Philosophy, Courses, Interviews, Business, Economics, Ethics, Education

4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2009

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brink Lindsey, of the Cato Institute and author of The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the interaction between culture and politics and prosperity. Lindsey outlines the nature of prosperity in America in the 20th century, then focuses on the last half of the century when cultural change was perhaps as dramatic as economic change. The conversation concludes with a discussion of Lindsey's essay, "Paul Krugman's Nostalgianomics," a look at the longing for a return of the economic policy of the 1950's. Lindsey argues that the policies that led to a more egalitarian distribution of income in the 1950s had other much less attractive characteristics.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you. Before introducing this week's guest, I want to announce our upcoming
0:42.0	book club, reading The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. Dan Klein and I are going to do a
0:48.4	series of podcasts on the book and you can read along and listen and share your reactions,
0:52.8	comments and questions. The first episode of the book club will be our regular Monday release next week,
0:57.9	April 6th. Dan and I will discuss the significance and key insights of the book using some key passages
1:04.3	as an introduction. After that, we'll read through the book and subsequent podcasts will be released midweek as a
1:10.4	bonus in addition to our regular schedule, if you're interested, listen in whether you're reading a
1:15.4	long or not. We've created a page for the book club, www.econtalk.org slash book club.html. And you can
1:26.3	also get there by going to the econtalk homepage and up in the left hand corner you'll see a link to the
1:32.1	econtalk book club page. On the book club page, you'll find a link to the entire book that you can
1:37.9	read online at no charge. It's part of the Library of Economics and Liberty, the website that econtalk is
1:43.3	part of. You'll also find additional readings and links to our podcasts as we post them. If you want to get
1:49.1	a head start on your reading, our second podcast on the book will be on part one and will be released around April 15th.
1:55.8	Each podcast will have its own page where you can comment and react as it's released. These comments will serve as a
2:01.6	discussion board that Dan and I will drop into from time to time to respond to your reactions. It's a work in
2:07.6	progress. I'm not sure the exact schedule yet of readings down the road, but we'll try to keep you posted at
2:12.6	book club page and in the podcast themselves. I'm sure I'll learn a lot from reading the theory of
2:17.7	moral sentiments with Dan Klein as my guide and hope you will too. Now on to this week's guest.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.