This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 28th, 2003.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What caused the great enrichment?

The hockey stick of prosperity, the dramatic and sustained growth in human well-being since around 1800.

Land, labor, and to a lesser extent capital have always been with us,

and so many of the theories to explain the great

enrichment have some problems. Kader's Deirdre McClosky argues that liberty is

the secret sauce and if we value the wealth we enjoy today, coercion in society should be viewed as a great threat.

There continue to be many theories about what is known as the Great Enrichment.

Yeah.

And a lot of those theories are unsatisfying?

Yeah.

Would you say that even yours is a little bit unsatisfying?

Well, you know, it's my baby, so I love it.

But the fundamental scientific problem

is that the great enrichment since around 1800, or if you want to pick a more amusing

symbolic date 1776 has been so great it's a factor of 30 in increasing income per head. In real terms, this isn't about money

or inflation or prices since then. That is to say to do fourth grade arithmetic 3,000 percent, 3,000 percent.

And the trouble is that the other explanations, aside from mine, my

ideational one or something like that

haven't got the oomph to make 3,000%.

If you're talking about investment,

...