Diane Coyle on the Economics of Enough

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

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

4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2011

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Diane Coyle, author of The Economics of Enough, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the future and the ideas in her book. Coyle argues that the financial crisis, the entitlement crisis, and climate change all reflect a failure to deal with the future appropriately. The conversation ranges across a wide range of issues including debt, the financial sector, and the demographic challenges of an aging population that is promised generous retirement and health benefits. Coyle argues for better measurement of the government budget and suggests ways that the political process might be made more effective.

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	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is March 11, 2011, and my guest is Diane Coil. Her latest book is The Economics of
0:45.5	Enough, How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters. Diane, welcome back to Econ Talk.
0:51.3	It's great to be here talking to you. Hi.
0:54.3	Your book discusses the major challenges facing the world right now. They're economic and
0:59.5	some not so economic, but they all involve economics. What are those challenges? Then we'll
1:05.7	talk about what we might do about them.
1:08.3	The trigger for writing the book, as so many books recently, was actually the financial crisis,
1:14.2	which was a real shock to me as to many other people. The moment when I was most appalled
1:20.5	by what was going on with when I listened to the news about the interbank market drying
1:25.4	up, and I thought, you know, what payment system might stop working to us? The bank's
1:29.3	been entrusted to each other. I'd better go and get out. All the cash I possibly can.
1:33.7	And for economists who got that point, that was a pretty serious crisis. But I've had
1:40.0	a great start on that. I thought, you know, there are some other pretty serious crises
1:43.3	too. We have the issue of climate change, and the science there is contested, but I think
1:51.6	it's a side of the contested opinion, so it's a pretty serious problem, but not for
1:55.4	disagreeing about what to do about it. There are crises related to our societies as
2:02.0	well, particularly in the United States, the United Kingdom, in equality, with a lot of
	...

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.