TALKING POLITICS

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Talking Politics Guide to ... Economic Well-being Dec 23, 2018

Show notes

David talks to Diane Coyle about how we measure whether the state of the economy is actually doing us any good. Why is it so hard to capture well-being in economic statistics and what impact has the digital revolution had on our quality of life?

Talking Points:

What does it mean when there is a disconnect between conventional economic measures and life as it is experienced?

Consider the United States: economic indicators such as GDP and unemployment statistics look good, but the social indicators are terrible. Life expectancy is falling due to an epidemic of drug overdoses and suicide. Politics are practically deranged.

What are the conventional economic measures missing?

There are lots of things going on that GDP doesn’t pick up, especially in the household.
Technology is rapidly changing work patterns, and data collection hasn’t yet caught up.
Life in cities looks very different than life elsewhere. Due to forces of agglomeration, people in big cities have more access to public services.
We need better data that takes into account factors such as wealth, the state of infrastructure, geographic distribution, and human capital.
Disjunction leads to distrust. Better measurement might help build trust between experts and citizens.

The 2008 Crash left deep scars, but the problems we see today go further back than that.

After deindustrialization in the 1980s and 1990s, there was no meaningful policy response to the loss of jobs.
This created a vicious cycle of unemployment, declining schools, and poor health.
With automation on the horizon, we need better policies.
We aren’t asking the right questions around automation: What kind of skills will be needed and can people acquire them? What will the adjustment costs look like?

Interconnectivity is a key challenge going forward.

Societies adjust to technological changes all the time, but today, rapid changes are also interacting with trade wars and geopolitical disturbances such as Brexit.

Mentioned in this Episode:

The United States is experiencing the longest sustained decline in life expectancy in a century
A brief summary of Thomas Piketty’s Capital
And check out Talking Politics in conversation with Piketty
The Bennett Institute, which is trying to collect better data on some of these issues

Further Learning:

If you’re interested in reading more of Diane’s work, check out her website.
Diane in the FT on how we can get better at measuring economic realities
And from our archives, Diane talks with David, Chris, and Helen about what’s wrong with GDP
Anand Menon on the Brexit GDP heckler (“That’s your GDP, not mine”)
The Cincinnati Enquirer’s
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talking Politics Guide to ... the US Constitution Dec 20, 2018

Show notes

David talks to Gary Gerstle about the history of the United States Constitution and its current role in American political life. Is it still fit for purpose in the twenty-first century and what could be done to change it?

“American democracy is stuck, but because of the Constitution it also has a history of getting stuck.”

Talking Points:

The Constitution not only divided power between the federal government and the states; it also gave each level of governance a different theory of power.

The Constitution strengthened the power of the central state—this was necessary for the fledgling country to take on larger challenges.
But Americans were wary about centralized power. Their solution was the enumeration of powers: the federal government would only have those powers explicitly stated in the Constitution.
Non-enumerated powers remained in the hands of the states, which have, historically, legislated far more intrusively than the federal government.

The biggest changes to the Constitution are not through amendments but through interpretation and practice.

Amending the Constitution is extremely difficult.
Commentators often identify the Civil War as a constitutional inflection point. After the war, the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery (13th amendment) and protect the rights of citizens (14th and 15th amendments).
But in the years that followed, the states successfully clawed back many of the powers they had been forced to relinquish. As a result, the force of the civil rights amendments was not felt until the 1960s when the Warren Court effectively imposed the Bill of Rights on the states.

The 1960s saw a split between those who believed in originalism versus the living constitution.

The Democrats say that the Constitution only works in a radically changing society if you interpret it liberally, in a living sense, for every generation.
The conservatives say that the Constitution must be interpreted according to what the founding fathers intended.
The root of the conflict between Democrats and Republicans is over the proper use of federal power.

Today, federal paralysis means that there is a resurgence of activity on the state level.

With a conservative court, the states could even become the vanguard of the progressive movement.
In the post-Civil War, post-Warren court era, federalism may be able to work in a way that it never could before.

Further Learning:

Gary Gerstle’s fascinating book about American governance
Gary and the panel recap the 2018 U.S. midterm elections
How did the U.S. Supreme Court get so polarized?
More on the Warren Court and where it stood on the issues

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

Set your alarm clocks… next week, Diane Coyle talks to David about economic well-being. What do the statistics miss and how has the digital revolution affected our quality of life?