The Economists' Hour with Binyamin Appelbaum
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger
Audacy
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2019
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Before the 1960s, American politicians had never paid much attention to economists. But as the post-World War II boom began to sputter, economists gained influence and power.
In The Economists' Hour, Binyamin Appelbaum traces the rise of the economists, first in the United States and then around the globe, as their ideas reshaped the modern world, curbing government, unleashing corporations and hastening globalization.
Some leading figures are relatively well-known, such as Milton Friedman, the elfin libertarian who had a greater influence on American life than any other economist of his generation, and Arthur Laffer, who sketched a curve on a cocktail napkin that helped to make tax cuts a staple of conservative economic policy.
Others stayed out of the limelight, but left a lasting impact on modern life: Walter Oi, a blind economist who dictated to his wife and assistants some of the calculations that persuaded President Nixon to end military conscription; Alfred Kahn, who deregulated air travel and rejoiced in the crowded cabins on commercial flights as the proof of his success; and Thomas Schelling, who put a dollar value on human life.
Their fundamental belief? That government should stop trying to manage the economy.
Their guiding principle? That markets would deliver steady growth, and ensure that all Americans shared in the benefits.
But the Economists' Hour failed to deliver on its promise of broad prosperity. And the single-minded embrace of markets has come at the expense of economic equality, the health of liberal democracy, and future generations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Jill Schlesinger on this episode of Jill on Money. |
| 0:06.7 | We're talking about why you need to care about income and asset inequality. |
| 0:13.2 | Most of the people who are likely to read this book |
| 0:15.6 | are from the portion of the American population that's doing fine. |
| 0:19.2 | And it's really important for them to get the message |
| 0:22.1 | that a huge chunk of the American population is not. |
| 0:25.6 | And it's getting worse. |
| 0:27.0 | We the people is falling apart because we share less in common. |
| 0:30.6 | And that's something we all ought to be acutely concerned about. |
| 0:34.0 | Welcome to the Jill on Money Podcast. |
| 0:36.0 | We are presented by Marcus by Goldman Sachs. |
| 0:39.0 | Sometimes when we have guests on the program, |
| 0:41.0 | they're a little wonky, and I become the translator. |
| 0:46.0 | In this case, our guest, bin Yamin Applebaum, |
| 0:49.6 | you might have seen his byline in the New York Times, |
| 0:52.4 | because he's been writing about economics |
| 0:54.2 | and business for the editorial page for almost a decade. He was also a Washington |
| 0:59.4 | correspondent covering economic policy after the 2008 crisis. |
| 1:04.1 | But he's written a new book. |
| 1:05.3 | It's called The Economist Hour. |
| 1:07.9 | And in this book, he tells the story |
| 1:11.5 | of how economists essentially didn't have a lot of sway in this country before |
... |
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