Evidence from academic institutions and international organizations shows dramatic improvements in human well-being. These improvements are especially striking in the developing world.Unfortunately, there is often a wide gap between the reality and public perception, including that of many policymakers, scholars in unrelated fields, and intelligent lay persons. To make matters worse, the media emphasizes bad news, while ignoring many positive long-term trends.To help correct popular misperceptio...
Jun 01, 2016•41 min
The Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives is pleased to announce another installment of its “live” edition of EconTalk . Join Russ Roberts as he interviews David Beckworth, the author of Boom and Bust Banking: The Causes and Cures of the Great Recession and of the widely read Market Monetarist blog, Macro and Other Market Musings , on the part that the Federal Reserve and other central banks played (and the part they ought to have played) in the Great Recession. Hosted ...
May 19, 2016•1 hr 30 min
Shatz and Shapiro are co-authors of the forthcoming, Foundations of the Islamic State: Management, Money, and Terror in Iraq, 2005-2010 (RAND).Please join us for a discussion by two experts on one of the most important and consequential issues the United States faces today. In 2014, a militant group calling itself the Islamic State, or ISIL, but more generally known as ISIS, attracted widespread attention with several military victories in Iraq and Syria — particularly the takeover of Iraq’s sec...
May 18, 2016•1 hr 27 min
In discussions with his advisers, President Obama has been heard to worry about "leaving a loaded weapon lying around" for future presidents, Newsweek reported just before the 2012 election, in an article titled "Obama's Executive Power Grab. Yet in his second term, boasting that "I've got a pen and a phone," he's increasingly governed by unilateral directive, in areas ranging from education policy, immigration, and environmental regulation at home to military action abroad — ensuring that his s...
May 18, 2016•38 min
Three economists with new books discuss how to revive economic growth. Mark Skousen has long advocated a new measure of the economy called Gross Output (GO) as a more comprehensive measure of the economy than GDP, a valuable tool in analyzing the business cycle, and a better picture of what drives the economy, and now the federal government has begun publishing that statistic. Steve Forbes calls for patient-centered health care, a flat tax, and sound money as the keys to reform. George Gilder pr...
May 13, 2016•1 hr 18 min
Entrepreneurship and innovation are key drivers of economic growth. For decades economic dynamism and creative destruction powered U.S. economic growth. Now, however, there is evidence that American innovation is declining. The ratio of new firms to all firms has declined from 15 percent in 1978 to 8 percent in 2011, and since 2008 the number of business failures has exceeded new business starts. Prominent economists have linked declining entrepreneurship to slower growth rates, and have argued ...
May 10, 2016•45 min
A “ruling class” has emerged in America against the hopes and designs of our Founding Fathers. Over the last hundred years, members of that class have rejected the Constitution and expanded their own power, slowly at first and now rapidly. These people believe their actions are justified because they think they are smarter than the rest of us—so smart they can run our lives better than we can.But for all the power and resources at their command, they have failed. Miserably. Society has become in...
May 06, 2016•1 hr 20 min
Overdoses from heroin and prescription painkillers have killed an alarming number of Americans in recent years. Last month, President Obama announced a $1.1 billion package to combat opiod abuse. Some analysts say the federal government is not doing enough to attack heroin production in Mexico and Afghanistan. Others argue that drug interdiction and police crackdowns have failed and call for deregulation and legalization. Please join us for a wide-ranging debate about the heroin problem and what...
Apr 29, 2016•1 hr 23 min
After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958–1962, Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge China of its bourgeoisie and remaining capitalists. The Cultural Revolution soon resulted in street fighting between rival factions. As China descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning the country in...
Apr 25, 2016•1 hr 24 min
As a young man, David Coltart was urged by Robert Mugabe to return from South Africa to Zimbabwe, where Coltart rose to become senator and education minister. But, as Mugabe became increasingly dictatorial, Coltart became one of Mugabe’s favorite targets of vilification. Coltart was branded a traitor to the state and worthy of remaining in Zimbabwe only as a resident of one of its prisons. For three decades, Coltart has kept detailed notes and records of all his work, including a meticulous diar...
Apr 25, 2016•1 hr 19 min
The Constitution begins with the words “We the People.” But from our earliest days there have been two competing notions of “the People,” leading to two very different constitutional visions. Those who view “We the People” collectively think popular sovereignty resides in the people as a group, which leads them to favor a democratic constitution that allows the will of the people to be expressed by majority rule. In contrast, those who think popular sovereignty resides in the people as individua...
Apr 21, 2016•1 hr 28 min
Please join us as Michael Mandelbaum—prominent columnist and author, and a leading foreign-policy thinker—discusses his new book, Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post–Cold War Era . In this definitive work, Mandelbaum critically assesses American military interventions since the end of the Cold War and the deeply flawed post–Cold War efforts to promote American values and American institutions throughout the world. Each intervention was designed to transform local economic and poli...
Apr 20, 2016•1 hr 26 min
We are witnessing the dawn of a robotics revolution. In the future, robots will undergo exponential growth in terms of their ability and application. What does that mean for human employment and productivity growth? What about incomes, leisure time, and the overall standard of living? Randy Bateman believes that, as was the case in the Industrial Revolution, robots will initially assist rather than displace human workers. Afterwards, however, there will be a great economic upheaval and a realign...
Apr 20, 2016•1 hr 21 min
As the Cold War wound down, the United States initiated a new conflict—a war for the greater Middle East. From the Balkans and East Africa to the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, U.S. forces embarked upon a series of campaigns across the Islamic world with no end in sight. In his aptly titled new book, America’s War for the Greater Middle East , Andrew Bacevich connects the dots of a sweeping narrative from episodes as varied as the Beirut bombing of 1983, the Mogadishu firefight of 1993, the inva...
Apr 13, 2016•1 hr 25 min
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected fro...
Apr 12, 2016•40 min
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected fro...
Apr 12, 2016•59 min
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected fro...
Apr 12, 2016•58 min
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected fro...
Apr 12, 2016•39 min
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected fro...
Apr 12, 2016•1 hr 8 min
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected fro...
Apr 12, 2016•30 min
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected fro...
Apr 12, 2016•1 hr 1 min
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way we think about government currency monopolies, transferring money across the globe, maintaining financial privacy and security, and verifying ownership of money or potentially everything. Their place in society and the financial system is rapidly expanding and with it a host of hopes, questions, and risks. Will they provide financial security outside of government systems, or will consumers be unprotected fro...
Apr 12, 2016•25 min
The global poverty aid industry is big business, with the West spending more than a trillion dollars in the past decade on programs to promote development. Filmed in 20 countries, Poverty, Inc. unearths the uncomfortable side of international charity, finding that much of it hurts the world’s poor more than it helps them. Join us for a screening of the documentary that explores how perverse incentives, lack of local knowledge, and weak institutional environments combine with altruism and cynicis...
Apr 04, 2016•28 min
Since 2001 the United States has created or restructured more than two counterterrorism organizations for every apprehension it has made of Islamists apparently planning to commit terrorism within the country. Central to this massive enterprise are the efforts of police and intelligence agencies to follow up on over ten million tips, the vast majority of which lead nowhere. In their new book, Chasing Ghosts , John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart try to answer a few simple, yet rarely asked questions...
Apr 04, 2016•1 hr 26 min
There is, perhaps, no bigger name in American education than John Dewey, and he wrote, arguably, nothing more influential than Democracy and Education , which turns 100 years old this year. How has the book held up over the century, with its prescription for schools to use children's natural inclinations to both educate them and unite diverse people? How educationally and socially effective have those ideas been, and how lasting their influence? Join us as we reflect on 100 years of this seminal...
Mar 31, 2016•1 hr 34 min
Colombia’s half-century war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and remains Latin America’s longest armed conflict. After more than three years of talks, the Colombian government and the guerrillas are nearing a self-imposed deadline for the completion of peace negotiations. Despite the support that the peace process enjoys outside Colombia, key provisions already agreed to are leading many to reject the agreement. José Mig...
Mar 30, 2016•1 hr 31 min
Supporters claim the dependent-coverage mandate is one of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act. This provision requires employer-based insurance plans that offer dependent coverage to cover dependents up to age 26. Scholars are just beginning to measure the benefits and costs of this mandate. In a forthcoming study, Stanford University economist Jay Bhattacharya examines the effect of this mandate on wages, finding it has reduced cash compensation by $1,200 per covered worker. ...
Mar 30, 2016•1 hr 28 min
In 2015 Japan passed landmark reforms of its national security laws, including a reinterpretation of its constitutional prohibition against collective security activities. Now Japan can legally cooperate with the United States in defensive military operations, leading many observers to declare that Japan has abandoned its post–World War II “pacifist principles.”Are such pronouncements correct? Or are the national security reforms simply the most recent recalibration of Japan’s postwar grand stra...
Mar 29, 2016•1 hr 26 min
Every year, federal, state, and local governments spend nearly $1 trillion to fight poverty, yet millions of Americans remain trapped in poverty with little hope for the future. Could the welfare system itself be part of the problem? Phil Harvey and Lisa Conyers make the case that our current welfare system has failed the poor, hurting the very people it is supposed to help. They suggest that good intentions are not enough and that if we truly want to reduce poverty, we need to understand the li...
Mar 28, 2016•1 hr 4 min
Domestic minerals and metals are a cornerstone of the U.S. economy, but data just published by the Energy Information Agency (EIA) show that investment in U.S. mining and exploration declined an incredible 35 percent last year—from $135 billion in 2014 to $88 billion in 2015—representing the second largest decline since 1948. The withdrawal of federal lands, often with permanent restrictions on mining force manufacturers to look elsewhere, and the permitting process is long and drawn out. Federa...
Mar 24, 2016•43 min
