Edward Conard on Innovation, Income Inequality, and High-Skilled Immigration

Conversations with Bill Kristol

Government, News, Politics, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2018

⏱️ 81 minutes

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Summary

Edward Conard is a former Managing Director of Bain Capital and bestselling author. In this Conversation, Conard shares his perspective on why innovation is the key to America’s long-term economic vitality and how we can go about fostering it. To address what he describes as a shortage of properly-trained talent and risk-bearing capital, Conard calls for increasing high-skilled immigration and other public policies that match talent with opportunities. Conard and Kristol also reflect on the inequalities that are inherent in a technology-driven economy and consider what can be done now to benefit lower-skilled workers in the years to come.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by
0:19.4	Ed Connard, a long time businessman and investor, a partner at Bain Capital, and other places I guess,
0:25.1	a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute now, but who has written two very interesting books,
0:31.5	books I found fascinating, which I want to ask you about
0:35.4	why you had to write these books to save economics from the economists or explain economics
0:41.5	better than the economists do.
0:42.6	But the two books were in 2012 unintended consequences.
0:46.3	And then in 2016, the upside of inequality,
0:50.0	how good intentions undermine the middle class,
0:52.2	both of which I recommend,
0:53.3	and I'm trying to boost your royalties here.
0:56.1	Yeah, anytime, right?
0:58.0	No, but you draw on your, obviously,
1:00.6	you went to business school, you know economics,
1:01.8	but you draw on your actual experience as an investor and a businessman, and I...
1:05.0	But anyway, what made you think that we couldn't learn what we needed to learn from all the fine Harvard economists writing about economics.
1:14.0	I think it was a combination of two things.
1:16.3	One is I was under enormous responsibilities at Bank Capital.
1:20.6	I had already made a lot of money and wanted to spend more time with my family.
1:25.0	Needed a way to get into heaven because I felt a moral responsibility to keep making
1:29.4	contributions. I thought I'd write the book and nobody would read it and I'd lawyer my way into heaven and everything would be fine but MIT got through the primaries and so my book ended up with a lot of attention.
1:40.8	Yeah, we should say it's that you were a partner and good friend of the Rommties in the book, the
	...

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