Posted on 03/09/2008 2:50:37 PM PDT by JerseyHighlander
Thomas Sowell of Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his new book, Economic Facts and Fallacies. He discusses the misleading nature of measured income inequality, CEO pay, why nations grow or stay poor, the role of intellectuals and experts in designing public policy, and immigration.
(Excerpt) Read more at econtalk.org ...
| Time |
Podcast Highlights
HIDE HIGHLIGHTS
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|---|---|
| 0:36 | Intro. Economic Facts and Fallacies: Income distribution. |
| 5:26 | Critics: Well, sure, incomes are higher but they struggle to get by; the problem is that our incomes just aren't high enough to meet our needs. I need a digital Hasselblad and my income is insufficient. Should taxpayer be forced by buy me a digital Hasselblad? Where are the ends supposed to meet? Historically even children had to work to pay for things. |
| 8:28 | "Distribution of income" as a phrase is misleading. Most income isn't distributed. The phrase allows people to act as if society is in the act of distributing income and if you don't like it, you should just have society distribute it differently. First, there is nobody named "society." |
| 11:38 | High levels of CEO pay gets a lot of political attention. "I've never paid a CEO, so I have no way of knowing." Inconsistent argument. Average CEO of a Standard and Poor 500 level company is a little over 8 million dollars a year, 1/3 of what Alex Rodriguez gets for playing for the Yankees, about 1/80th of what Oprah Winfrey, Why no uproar about Rodriguez or Winfrey? The people who know what a CEO is worth is the people who own the company. |
| 16:48 | Inequality, race, sex inequality. |
| 25:18 | Discrimination, one of a number of factors which can explain differences, but analysis has to be for that particular case. Can't just assume it's discrimination behind a difference. |
| 35:37 | Global issues, European colonialism is often blamed for leaving people poor as a cause of world poverty. Triumph of ideology over facts. Factual assessment makes this argument collapse like a house of cards. Poorest places are the ones the West has paid almost no attention to. Lenin, Imperialism: the argument was that the West industrialized countries maintained by exploiting the poorer countries. Meretricious diagram, entire Western hemisphere, height of British empire. U.S. is still the country in which most countries invest their money, but by grouping together the entire Western hemisphere, it looks like the investments are in smaller South American countries. More than just an intellectual problem, poor places like Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea did it by opening up investment to the West. |
| 45:56 | Over-population, overcrowding, cities, poverty worldwide. Not supported by the facts. People don't even look at the facts. Malthusian population theory wasn't even true in his time and Malthus was forced into all kinds of redefinitions in order to maintain the semblance of its being correct. Name me a country whose prosperity was greater when their population was half of what it is today. No countries. Role of natural resources, colonialism story, the West stripped them of their wealth. Venezuela, Uruguay, natural resources per capita is higher than Japan or Switzerland. Saudi Arabia, per capita income is roughly half of that in Singapore, which is so lacking in natural resources that they have to import their drinking water. Saudi Arabia is small country, unequal income distribution, but low per capita income. |
Where can I download this podcast?
at the site listed : econtalk.org
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Thanks for the post and ping. Great stuff, I’m listening to it now.
Thanks!
I’m currently reading this book right now. I’ll have to bookmark this after I finish.
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