Just want to say thank you for another episode!

So glad to have visited this episode now. The two minutes from minute 11:00 are already eye opening. Awesome episode

I think most of his suggestions would cause a huge recession, but I really enjoyed his perspective on life and luck!

@Nedumgottil

Жыл бұрын

Just curious, why do you think so? Maybe it is his Ph.D. in Econ, but I would have thought that he would consider the recession risk.

@TheSteinbitt

Жыл бұрын

@@Nedumgottil He says it himself, that some of the measures could be used to stimulate economy when needed by easing off again. By implementing those changes, you’d remove enormous amounts of money from the markets and economy, making the government the main player in all fields, and his suggestion is infrastructure and smooth roads, but there’s very little ROI in smoother roads vs decent roads. It would cause massive misallocation of resources, like we see in Chinese infrastructure projects. Always remember, in governments, nobody owns the money, and nobody knows or cares if projects yield returns.

@borkug1566

Жыл бұрын

​@@Nedumgottil Why would you ever want to tax consumption progressively? You want those who have more money to spend MORE and inject their money back into the economy (jobs). And you want this to be supported by free markets, not central planning which we know leads to mismanagement with terrible consequences.

Great episode. What about UAE as an example of a low tax world? I assume they are happy enough to enjoy their nice infrastructure as well.

This might just be the best episode so far! (I have listened to all 230 :) ) The more I have studied economics, the more I have come to believe that inequality is the biggest problem for humanity today. It is too bad most people are unaware of the extent of this issue and extremely polarized in their views...

@borkug1566

Жыл бұрын

Central planning is never the solution. Just look how it failed everywhere it was attempted. People always end up suffering way more than with free markets. These ideas expressed by this Professor are actually pretty dangerous.

@ElektrikaCo

Жыл бұрын

@@borkug1566 I agree. Some kind of direct democratic system, where everybody gets to vote on how the government money is spent would be much better. I personally believe that the less power the government has the better, but I don't think that income and wealth inequality would just reverse on its own...

The "better schools are in zones more expensive housing thing" is more of an American phenomenon. In most European countries the differences between schools aren't that drastic. Of course children from wealthier families do better in school, this is well documented, but location isn't the main driver of this unlike that state of affairs across the pond.

@TheSteinbitt

Жыл бұрын

It’s quite drastic in the bigger cities in Norway at least.

@jonathankr

Жыл бұрын

@@TheSteinbitt same in Toronto Canada. No school is terrible, but rich neighborhoods have slightly Better public schools. Private schools are not necessarily better, except for the connections

Subtitles off?

Luck plays a role but the thing is what luck seems to be defined here is lack of micro analysis. Prof mentions "The winner did hard work but so the others", but did they do the same type of hard work? Did they were focused at the same level, spent the same exact amount of hours, reached out to the same exact people, ate the same exact food? Of course not, and they should probably have different outcomes even if they did due to factors outside their control, some might have been better doing different things that could be best for their particular situation, but that's the thing, it is extremely hard to measure all of that to the micro level (and we can add up layer after layer until infinity) That's where I don't buy the luck argument 100%, I do think chaos, non equilibrium/uncertainty principle is real, but some of the arguments sound more like lack of resources to do micro level analysis, which is a totally valid argument, but not luck in all scenarios. Empirical proof of this is social media AI's, where previously it was hard to predict social sentiment due to lack of technology to measure data, now it is a real thing and a threat the more data models are being fed.

42:50 seems like a flawed argument. (distribution of human capital) The relative productivity of a few has increased more than 40 years ago. There are some people who can write a website which can affect Millions. There was no such thing pre-internet. Scalability has changed salary

@harryteja7488

Жыл бұрын

He does recognize that technology has enabled worldwide monopolies and contributed to growing income inequality. However, it would be a stretch to say that the rise in productivity due to technology alone is the reason for growing income inequality. Things like email and cloud computing have boosted the productivity of engineers and CEOs equally but the salaries. Firstly most ultra-wealthy people are not working in the tech sector. Secondly, their rise in productivity is probably on par with the rise in productivity of some of their employees.

@treyshaffer

Жыл бұрын

The overall rise in productivity is nearly 300% in the economy on a per capita basis over the past half century, which can be largely attributed to the digitalization of capital. But, the real median wage has been essentially flat over this period, which doesn't make sense considering workers are far more educated and specialized than ever before.

@borkug1566

Жыл бұрын

Let's be honest, all his arguments are flawed with over simplification and ignoring human nature.

This prof is the anti-Thomas Sowell.

why no subs!!??

It's a shame that Prof. Frank thinks they live in Toronto rather than Ontario. I appreciate Ben and Cameron being polite, but it would be a useful correction given the quantity of mentions in the episode.

@rationalreminder

Жыл бұрын

Toronto is in Ontario. We live in Ottawa which is also in Ontario, a few hours by car from Toronto. Close enough!

1:00:00 the professor is forgetting or ignoring the fact that the people who are extremely wealthy, are, by many measures sociopathic and ultra competitive. They do not care about the road, they care about having something others do not, even to their detriment.

@DeathEater93

Жыл бұрын

And you know that how exactly?

@davec3974

Жыл бұрын

It's interesting that the people least in need of greater personal wealth, and who would benefit most from increased public spending (relative to having more personal spending power), go to great lengths to have policies enacted that work against their own best interests. I wonder whether it relates back to the competitive environment in which humans evolved.

@jonathankr

Жыл бұрын

@@DeathEater93 based on human resources analysis and salary. After pub co salaries were forced to be disclosed, salaries rose dramatically. C class salaries started to leverage other pub co salaries to their benefit to get more money. They were already, by any measure, part of the 1 percent, but were not happy knowing others earned more. Keeping up with the jones' phenomena is well Documented, and it is irrational to want more in itself. The 0.1 percent want more not for the money, but to be the best, it's a score card. It is ultra competitive, irrationally so. If society measured wealth by another measure, lets call it y, the 1 percent c class would pursue that. But since money is fungible, it can be that y and money. So money is their measure.

@isaacongzy

Жыл бұрын

If you compare yourself with all the people in the world, including 3rd world countries, you're in the top decile of income relative to the world. You probably didn't care using a smart phone built by low wage workers, wearing a shirt sown by a sweat shop worker. So let's be real. How much did you care about the roads in their countries. I dont blame you for that. It's human nature and wealth inequality isn't a simple problem to solve. The only thing I can fault is your hypocrisy.

@davec3974

Жыл бұрын

@@isaacongzy is that a valid comparison? I'm not sure the average American/European enjoys having a house, car or iPhone more because many people in poor counties don't have these things. And nobody directly benefits from public spending in a country that's not their own and they won't visit.

Most of the arguments being made by this Professor oversimplify the problem they try to solve, and dangerously ignore human nature. Communism and other terrible ideas were born from this same brand of idealism.

This professor is terrible why does he hate capitalism? We already know communists, socialist, dictatorship are not as good as capitalism

@luggeee

Жыл бұрын

You clearly do not understand what he is saying

@ElektrikaCo

Жыл бұрын

He does not hate capitalism. He explains how capitalism "got broken" around the 1970 and it no longer works as intended.

@Nedumgottil

Жыл бұрын

I didn't get the feeling he hated capitalism while listening to this, can you explain how you got to this conclusion?

@borkug1566

Жыл бұрын

@@luggeee Everything he advocates for is based on more central planning. We know for a fact this kind of policy comes with a lot of inefficiency and is prone to corruption. Downright dangerous ideas.

@richardpearce4988

Жыл бұрын

I'm pretty sure he's advocating a mixed economy of private wealth and public utility (and contribution to same), which for example pretty much all Northern and Western European countries work under, and is not communism, socialism, or dictatorship