Paul Krugman: Economics of Innovation, Automation, Safety Nets & Universal Basic Income
政治与社会技术与编程历史与文明商业与创业音乐与艺术
📋 章节目录
暂无章节信息
🔑 关键词
dongoinggovernmenttradesocietypoliticaleconomicseconomystuffworkshealthcareideascountriesdoesnhealthjobsappinsurancechinatrying
💬 精彩语录
"States actually probably pays a price. We're harsh, we're cruel, and we actually make ourselves poorer"
各国实际上可能付出了代价。我们很严厉，我们很残酷，我们实际上让自己变得更穷
— Paul Krugman （15:40.240）
"actually lead people to get lazy? I have a pretty strong view that the evidence points to conclusions"
真的会让人变懒吗？我坚信证据可以得出结论
— Paul Krugman （09:34.720）
"of these things. And there's a lot of evidence now that lacking those basics is actually destructive,"
这些事情。现在有很多证据表明缺乏这些基础知识实际上是具有破坏性的，
— Paul Krugman （15:20.960）
"about extreme? People who have like radical views, you think they're not grounded in any kind of data,"
关于极端？那些拥有激进观点的人，你认为他们没有任何数据基础，
— Paul Krugman （41:22.000）
"and economics, which places him in the middle of the tense, divisive, modern day political discourse."
和经济学，这使他处于紧张、分裂的现代政治话语之中。
— Paul Krugman （00:22.400）
🎙️ 完整对话（551 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in economics,
以下是与诺贝尔经济学奖获得者保罗·克鲁格曼的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:04.880)
professor at CUNY, and columnist at the New York Times. His academic work centers around
纽约市立大学教授、《纽约时报》专栏作家。他的学术工作围绕
Lex Fridman (00:10.560)
international economics, economic geography, liquidity traps, and currency crises. But he
国际经济、经济地理、流动性陷阱和货币危机。但他
Lex Fridman (00:16.880)
also is an outspoken writer and commentator on the intersection of modern day politics
也是一位直言不讳的作家和评论家，探讨现代政治的交叉点
Lex Fridman (00:22.400)
and economics, which places him in the middle of the tense, divisive, modern day political discourse.
和经济学，这使他处于紧张、分裂的现代政治话语之中。
Paul Krugman (00:30.080)
If you have clicked dislike on this video and started writing a comment of derision before
如果您在此视频上点过“不喜欢”并开始写嘲笑评论
Paul Krugman (00:34.560)
listening to the conversation, I humbly ask that you please unsubscribe from this channel
听着谈话，我恳请您退订此频道
Lex Fridman (00:39.840)
and from this podcast. Not because you're conservative, a libertarian, a liberal,
以及来自这个播客。不是因为你是保守派、自由主义者、自由主义者，
Paul Krugman (00:44.560)
a socialist, an anarchist, but because you're not open to new ideas, at least in this case,
社会主义者、无政府主义者，但因为你不接受新想法，至少在这种情况下，
Paul Krugman (00:49.680)
especially at its most difficult, from people with whom you largely disagree.
尤其是在最困难的时候，来自那些你基本上不同意的人。
Paul Krugman (00:55.520)
I do my best to stay away from politics of the day because political discourse is filled
我尽力远离当今的政治，因为政治话语充满了
Paul Krugman (01:00.720)
with a degree of emotion and self assured certainty that to me is not conducive to exploring
带有一定程度的情感和自信，这对我来说不利于探索
Paul Krugman (01:07.120)
questions that nobody knows the definitive right answer to. The role of government,
没有人知道确切正确答案的问题。政府的作用，
Paul Krugman (01:13.440)
the impact of automation, the regulation of tech, the medical system, guns, war, trade,
自动化的影响、技术监管、医疗系统、枪支、战争、贸易、
Paul Krugman (01:19.840)
foreign policy, are not easy topics and have no clear answers, despite the certainty of the so
外交政策这些问题都不是简单的话题，也没有明确的答案，尽管如此
Paul Krugman (01:26.480)
called experts, the pundits, the trolls, the media personalities, and the conspiracy theorists.
被称为专家、专家、巨魔、媒体人物和阴谋论者。
Paul Krugman (01:33.520)
Please listen, empathize, and allow yourself to explore ideas with curiosity and without judgment
请倾听、感同身受，并让自己带着好奇心而不带评判地探索想法
Lex Fridman (01:40.960)
and without derision. I will speak with many more economists and political thinkers, trying to stay
并且没有嘲笑。我将与更多的经济学家和政治思想家交谈，试图留下来
Paul Krugman (01:47.440)
away from the political battles of the day and instead look at the long arc of history
远离当今的政治斗争，而是着眼于历史的长河
Lex Fridman (01:52.400)
and the lessons it reveals. In this, I appreciate your patience and support.
以及它所揭示的教训。在此，我感谢您的耐心和支持。
Paul Krugman (02:30.400)
This show is presented by Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store.
Paul Krugman (02:35.120)
Cash App lets you send money to friends, buy bitcoin, and invest in the stock market with
Paul Krugman (02:40.080)
fractional share trading, allowing you to buy one dollars worth of a stock no matter what the stock
Paul Krugman (02:45.280)
price is. Broker services are provided by Cash App Investing, a subsidiary of Square and member SIPC.
Paul Krugman (02:52.960)
Get Cash App from the App Store and Google Play and use the code LEXPODCAST. You'll get ten dollars
Lex Fridman (02:59.760)
and Cash App will also donate ten dollars to FIRST, one of my favorite organizations that is helping
Paul Krugman (03:04.960)
to advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. Since Cash App does
Paul Krugman (03:11.520)
fractional share trading, let me say that to me, it's a fascinating concept. The order execution
Paul Krugman (03:17.840)
algorithm that works behind the scenes to create the abstraction of fractional orders for the
Paul Krugman (03:22.880)
investor is an algorithmic marvel, so big props to the Cash App engineers for that. I like it when
Paul Krugman (03:29.360)
tech teams solve complicated problems to provide, in the end, a simple, effortless interface that
Paul Krugman (03:34.960)
abstracts away all the details of the underlying algorithm. And now, here's my conversation with
Lex Fridman (03:41.440)
Paul Krugman. What does a perfect world, a utopia, from an economics perspective look like?
Paul Krugman (03:50.000)
Wow, I don't really, I don't believe in perfection. I mean, somebody once once said
Paul Krugman (03:56.400)
that his ideal was slightly imaginary Sweden. I mean, I like an economy that has a really high
Paul Krugman (04:06.400)
safety net for people, good environmental regulation, and something that's kind of like
Paul Krugman (04:16.080)
some of the better run countries in the world, but with fixing all of the smaller things that
Paul Krugman (04:22.240)
are wrong with them. What about wealth distribution? Well, obviously, you know, total equality is
Paul Krugman (04:28.720)
neither possible nor, I think, especially desirable, but I think you want one where,
Paul Krugman (04:33.360)
basically one where nobody is hurting and where everybody lives in the same material universe.
Paul Krugman (04:41.120)
Everybody is basically living in the same society, so I think it's a bad thing to have
Paul Krugman (04:47.040)
people who are so wealthy that they're really not in the same world as the rest of us.
Lex Fridman (04:50.240)
What about competition? Do you see the value of competition? What may be its limits?
Paul Krugman (04:57.200)
Oh, competition is great when it can work. I mean, I remember, I'm old enough to remember
Paul Krugman (05:04.000)
when there was only one phone company and there was really limited choice, and I think the
Paul Krugman (05:09.920)
arrival of multiple phone carriers and all that has actually, you know, it's been a really good
Paul Krugman (05:17.760)
thing, and that's true across many areas, but not every industry is, not every activity is suitable
Paul Krugman (05:25.680)
for competition. So, there are some things like healthcare where competition actually
Lex Fridman (05:30.400)
doesn't work, and so it's not one size fits all.
Lex Fridman (05:35.760)
That's interesting. Why does competition not work in healthcare?
Paul Krugman (05:41.520)
Oh, there's a long list. I mean, there's a famous paper by Kenneth Arrow from 1963,
Paul Krugman (05:46.320)
which still holds up very well, where he kind of runs down the list of things you need for
Paul Krugman (05:50.160)
competition to work well. Basically, both sides to every transaction being well informed,
Paul Krugman (05:56.480)
having the ability to make intelligent decisions, understanding what's going on,
Lex Fridman (06:02.880)
and healthcare fails on every dimension.
Paul Krugman (06:06.560)
Healthcare, so not health insurance, healthcare.
Paul Krugman (06:08.480)
Well, both healthcare and health insurance, health insurance being part of it, but no,
Paul Krugman (06:12.240)
health insurance is really the idea that there's effective competition between health insurers is
Paul Krugman (06:18.800)
wrong, and healthcare, I mean, the idea that you can comparison shop for major surgery is just,
Paul Krugman (06:25.280)
you know, when people say things like that, you wonder, are you living in the same world I'm
Lex Fridman (06:32.160)
living in?
Paul Krugman (06:33.520)
You know, that piece of well informed, that was always an interesting piece for me,
Paul Krugman (06:38.160)
just observing as an outsider, because so much beautiful, such a beautiful world is
Paul Krugman (06:44.880)
possible when everybody's well informed. My question for you is, how hard is it to be
Paul Krugman (06:49.440)
well informed about anything, whether it's healthcare, or any kind of purchasing decisions,
Lex Fridman (06:54.560)
or just life in general in this world?
Paul Krugman (06:57.520)
Oh, information, you know, it varies hugely. I mean, there's more information at your
Paul Krugman (07:03.760)
fingertips than ever before in history. The trouble is, first of all, that some of that
Paul Krugman (07:10.880)
information isn't true. So it's really hard. And then some of it is just too hard to understand.
Lex Fridman (07:18.000)
So if I'm buying a car, I can actually probably do a pretty good job of looking up, you know,
Paul Krugman (07:24.960)
going to consumer reports, reviews, you can get a pretty good idea of what you're getting
Paul Krugman (07:28.960)
when you get a car. If I'm going in for surgery, first of all, you know, fairly often it happens
Paul Krugman (07:39.120)
without your being able to plan it. But also, there's a, you know, medical school takes
Paul Krugman (07:44.880)
many, many years, and going on the internet for some advice is not usually a very good
Lex Fridman (07:50.560)
substitute.
Lex Fridman (07:52.400)
So speaking about news and not being able to trust certain sources of information,
Lex Fridman (07:57.440)
how much disagreement is there about, I mentioned utopia, perfection in the beginning, but how much
Paul Krugman (08:02.800)
disagreement is there about what utopia looks like? Or is most of the disagreement simply about the
Lex Fridman (08:09.440)
path to get there?
Paul Krugman (08:11.760)
Oh, I think there's two levels of disagreement. One, maybe not utopia, but justice. You know,
Lex Fridman (08:20.320)
what is a just society? And that's, there are different views. I mean, I teach my students
Paul Krugman (08:25.760)
that there are, you know, broadly speaking, two views of justice. One focuses on outcomes.
Paul Krugman (08:34.880)
You ask yourself, a just society is the one you would choose if you were trying to,
Paul Krugman (08:41.520)
the one that you would choose to live in if you didn't know who you were going to be,
Paul Krugman (08:45.840)
that's kind of John Rawls. And the other focuses on process, that a just society is one in which
Paul Krugman (08:52.320)
there is no coercion except where absolutely necessary. And there's no objective way to choose
Paul Krugman (09:00.320)
between those. I'm pretty much a Rawlsian, and I think many people are. But anyway, so there's a
Paul Krugman (09:06.240)
legitimate dispute about what we mean by a just society anyway. But then there's also a lot of
Paul Krugman (09:13.280)
a lot of dispute about what actually works. There's a range of legitimate dispute. I mean, any
Paul Krugman (09:22.800)
card carrying economist will say that incentives matter, but how much do they matter? How much does
Paul Krugman (09:28.560)
a higher tax rate actually deter people from working? How much does a stronger safety net
Paul Krugman (09:34.720)
actually lead people to get lazy? I have a pretty strong view that the evidence points to conclusions
Paul Krugman (09:46.000)
that are considerably to the left of where most of our politicians are. But there is legitimate
Paul Krugman (09:53.280)
room for disagreement on those things. So you've mentioned outcomes. What are some metrics you
Paul Krugman (10:01.440)
think about that you keep in mind, like the Gini coefficient, but really anything that measures
Lex Fridman (10:07.200)
how good we're doing, whatever we're trying to do? What are the metrics you keep an eye on?
Paul Krugman (10:12.560)
Well, I'm actually I'm not a fan of the Gini coefficient, not because what is the Gini
Paul Krugman (10:17.840)
coefficient? Yeah, the Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality, and it is commonly used
Paul Krugman (10:23.600)
because it's a single number. It usually tracks with other measures, but the trouble is there's
Paul Krugman (10:29.600)
no sort of natural interpretation of it. If you ask me what does a society with a Gini of 0.45
Paul Krugman (10:40.400)
look like as opposed to a society with a Gini of 0.25? And I can kind of tell you, you know,
Paul Krugman (10:46.720)
when 0.25 is Denmark and 0.45 is Brazil, but there's no sort of easy way to do that mapping.
Paul Krugman (10:56.000)
I mean, I look at things like what is, first of all, things like what is the income of the
Paul Krugman (11:04.880)
median family? What is the income of the top 1%? How many people are in poverty by
Paul Krugman (11:12.720)
various measures of poverty? And then I think you want to look at questions like
Lex Fridman (11:18.720)
how healthy are people? How is life expectancy doing? And how satisfied are people with their
Paul Krugman (11:30.080)
lives? Because there is that sounds like a squishy number, not so much happiness. It
Paul Krugman (11:35.200)
turns out that life satisfaction is a better measure than happiness. But life satisfaction,
Paul Krugman (11:40.160)
that varies quite a lot. And I think it's meaningful, if not too rigorous to say, look,
Paul Krugman (11:49.120)
according to polling, people in Denmark are pretty satisfied with their lives and
Paul Krugman (11:56.560)
people in the United States, not so much so. And of course, Sweden wins every time.
Paul Krugman (12:01.840)
No, actually Denmark wins these days. Denmark and Norway tend to win these days. Sweden doesn't do
Paul Krugman (12:06.720)
badly. None of these are perfect. But look, I think by and large, there's a bit of a
Paul Krugman (12:18.000)
pornography test. How do you know a decent society? Well, you kind of know it when you see it.
Lex Fridman (12:23.520)
Right. Where does America stand on that?
Paul Krugman (12:26.160)
We have a remarkable... There are a lot of virtues to America, but there's a level of harshness,
Paul Krugman (12:35.120)
brutality, an ability for somebody who just has bad luck to fall off the edge, that is really,
Paul Krugman (12:46.320)
shouldn't be happening in a country as rich as ours. So we have somehow managed to produce a
Lex Fridman (12:52.560)
a crueller society than almost any other wealthy country for no good reason.
Lex Fridman (12:59.760)
What do you think is lacking in the safety net that the United States provides? You said
Paul Krugman (13:04.080)
there's a harshness to it. And what are the benefits and maybe limits of a safety net
Paul Krugman (13:11.600)
in a country like ours? Well, every other advanced country has some
Paul Krugman (13:16.320)
universal guarantee of adequate healthcare. The United States is the only place where
Paul Krugman (13:21.680)
citizens can actually fail to get basic healthcare because they can't afford it.
Paul Krugman (13:27.440)
It's not hard to do. Everybody else does it, but we don't. We've gotten a little bit better at it
Paul Krugman (13:34.400)
than we were, but still, that's a big deal. We have remarkably weak support for children.
Paul Krugman (13:45.680)
Most countries have substantial safety... Parents of young children get much more support elsewhere.
Paul Krugman (13:53.280)
They get often nothing in the US. We have limited care for people. Long term care for the elderly
Paul Krugman (14:04.720)
is a very hit and miss thing. But I think that the really big issues are that we don't take care of
Paul Krugman (14:14.400)
children who make the mistake of having the wrong parents, and we don't take care of people who make
Paul Krugman (14:20.000)
the mistake of getting sick. And those are things that a rich country should be doing.
Paul Krugman (14:26.320)
Sorry for sort of a difficult question, but what you just said kind of feels like the right thing
Paul Krugman (14:32.240)
to do in terms of a just society. But is it also good for the economic health of society to take
Lex Fridman (14:40.160)
care of the people who are the unfortunate members of society?
Paul Krugman (14:44.880)
By and large, it looks like doing the right thing in terms of justice is also the right thing in
Paul Krugman (14:52.000)
terms of economics. If we're talking about a society that has extremely high tax rates that
Paul Krugman (14:58.960)
deter, remove all incentives to provide a safety net that is so generous that why bother working
Paul Krugman (15:07.680)
or striving, that could be a problem. But I don't actually know any society that looks like that.
Paul Krugman (15:13.440)
Even in European countries with very generous safety nets, people work and innovate and do all
Paul Krugman (15:20.960)
of these things. And there's a lot of evidence now that lacking those basics is actually destructive,
Paul Krugman (15:28.480)
that children who grow up without adequate health care, without adequate nutrition,
Paul Krugman (15:34.640)
are developmentally challenged. They don't live up to their potential as adults. So the United
Paul Krugman (15:40.240)
States actually probably pays a price. We're harsh, we're cruel, and we actually make ourselves poorer
Paul Krugman (15:46.960)
as a society, not just the individuals, by being so harsh and cruel.
Paul Krugman (15:52.400)
Okay, so Invisible Hand, Smith, where does that fit in? The power of just people acting selfishly
Lex Fridman (16:00.000)
and somehow everything taking care of itself to where the economy grows,
Paul Krugman (16:06.960)
nobody, there's no cruelty, no injustice, that the markets regulate themselves. Is there power
Paul Krugman (16:14.640)
to that idea and what are its limits? There's a lot of power to that. I mean, there's a reason why
Paul Krugman (16:23.120)
I don't think sensible people want the government running steel mills or they want the government
Paul Krugman (16:29.360)
to own the farms, right? The markets are a pretty effective way of getting incentives aligned,
Paul Krugman (16:40.960)
of inducing people to do stuff that works. And the Invisible Hand is saying that farmers aren't
Paul Krugman (16:46.720)
growing crops because they want to feed people, they're growing crops because they can make money
Lex Fridman (16:51.120)
by it, but it actually turns out to be a pretty good way of getting an agrarian
Paul Krugman (16:56.960)
of getting agricultural products grown. So the Invisible Hand is an important part,
Lex Fridman (17:04.560)
but there's nothing mystical about it. It's a mechanism, it's a way to organize economic
Paul Krugman (17:10.400)
activity, which works well given a bunch of preconditions, which means that it actually
Paul Krugman (17:15.840)
works well for agriculture, it works well for manufacturing, it works well for many services,
Paul Krugman (17:22.880)
it doesn't work well for healthcare, it doesn't work well for education. So having a society
Paul Krugman (17:30.400)
which is kind of three quarters Invisible Hand and one quarter Visible Hand, something on that
Paul Krugman (17:39.200)
order seems to be the balance that works best. You don't want to romanticize or make something
Paul Krugman (17:47.920)
mystical out of it. This is one way to organize stuff that happens to have broad but not universal
Paul Krugman (17:54.880)
application. So then forgive me for romanticizing it, but it does seem pretty magical. I kind of
Paul Krugman (18:02.800)
have an intuitive understanding of what happens when you have like five, ten, maybe even a hundred
Paul Krugman (18:06.880)
people together, the dynamics of that. But the fact that these large society of people for the
Paul Krugman (18:12.640)
most part acting in a self interested way and maybe electing representatives for themselves,
Paul Krugman (18:17.440)
that it all kind of seems to work, it's pretty magical. The fact that right now there's a wide
Paul Krugman (18:28.480)
assortment of fresh fruit and vegetables in the local markets up and down the street, who's
Paul Krugman (18:39.200)
planning that? And the answer is nobody. That's the Invisible Hand at work and that's great.
Lex Fridman (18:43.920)
And that's a lesson that Adam Smith figured out more than 200 years ago and it continues to apply.
Lex Fridman (18:56.160)
But even Adam Smith has a section in his book about why it's important to regulate banks.
Lex Fridman (19:02.480)
So the Invisible Hand has its limits. And that example is actually a powerful one in terms of
Paul Krugman (19:07.680)
the supermarket and fruit. That was my experience coming from Russia from the Soviet Union is when
Paul Krugman (19:13.280)
I first entered a supermarket and just seeing the assortment of fruit, bananas. I don't think I've
Paul Krugman (19:20.000)
seen bananas before, first of all, but just the selection of fresh fruit was just mind blowing.
Paul Krugman (19:27.120)
Beyond words and the fact that, like you said, I don't know what made that happen.
Paul Krugman (19:32.480)
Well, there is some magic to the market. As showing my age, but the old movie quote,
Paul Krugman (19:40.400)
sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't. And you have to have some idea of when
Paul Krugman (19:43.520)
it doesn't. So how do you get regulation? What can government at its best do? Government,
Paul Krugman (19:52.400)
strangely enough in this country today, seems to get a bad rap. Everybody's against the government.
Lex Fridman (1:00:01.600)
So I don't usually get, in fact, if I don't get a wave of hate mail after a column, then
Lex Fridman (1:00:07.520)
I've probably wasted that day.
Lex Fridman (1:00:10.480)
So what do you make of that as a person who's putting ideas out there? If you look at the
Paul Krugman (1:00:16.240)
history of ideas, the way it works is you write about ideas, you put them out there. But now
Paul Krugman (1:00:22.400)
when there's so much hate mail, so much division, what advice do you have for yourself and for
Lex Fridman (1:00:29.120)
others trying to have a discussion about ideas, difficult ideas?
Paul Krugman (1:00:33.200)
Well, I don't know about advice for others. I mean, for most economists, you know, just
Lex Fridman (1:00:40.720)
do your research. We can't all be public intellectuals and we shouldn't try to be.
Lex Fridman (1:00:46.880)
And in fact, I'm glad that I didn't get into this business until I was in my late 40s. I mean,
Paul Krugman (1:00:55.360)
this is probably best to spend your decades of greatest intellectual flexibility addressing
Paul Krugman (1:01:03.840)
deep questions, not confronting Twitter mobs. And as for the rest, I think when you're writing
Paul Krugman (1:01:12.880)
about stuff, the answers like no one's watching, write like nobody's reading. Write what you think
Paul Krugman (1:01:23.280)
is right. Trying to make it, obviously, trying to make it comprehensible and persuasive. But
Paul Krugman (1:01:29.840)
don't let yourself get intimidated by the fact that some people are going to say nasty things.
Paul Krugman (1:01:40.400)
You can't do your job if you are worried about criticism.
Paul Krugman (1:01:48.000)
Well, I think I speak for a lot of people in saying that I hope that you keep dancing like
Paul Krugman (1:01:52.320)
nobody's watching on Twitter and New York Times and books. So Paul, it's been an honor. Thank you
Lex Fridman (1:01:58.960)
so much for talking to me. Great. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Paul Krugman.
Lex Fridman (1:02:03.920)
And thank you to our presenting sponsor Cash App. Download it and use code LexPodcast.
Paul Krugman (1:02:09.840)
You'll get $10 and $10 will go to FIRST, an organization that inspires and educates young minds
Paul Krugman (1:02:15.920)
to become science and technology innovators of tomorrow. If you enjoy this podcast,
Paul Krugman (1:02:21.040)
subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,
Paul Krugman (1:02:26.720)
or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman. And now, let me leave you with some words
Paul Krugman (1:02:33.280)
from Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, one of the most influential philosophers and economists
Paul Krugman (1:02:39.840)
in our history. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we
Paul Krugman (1:02:45.280)
expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their
Paul Krugman (1:02:51.280)
humanity, but to their self love and never talk to them of our necessities, but of their advantages.
Lex Fridman (1:02:59.040)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Paul Krugman (20:01.120)
Yeah. Well, a lot of money has been spent on making people hate the government.
Lex Fridman (20:04.640)
But the reality is government does some things pretty well. I mean, government does health
Paul Krugman (20:12.160)
insurance pretty well. So much so, I mean, given our anti government bias, it really is true that
Paul Krugman (20:17.760)
there are people out there saying, don't let the government get its hands on Medicare. So
Paul Krugman (20:24.560)
people actually love the government health insurance program far more than they love
Paul Krugman (20:28.800)
private health insurance. Basic education. It turns out that your local public high school
Paul Krugman (20:38.800)
is the right place to have students trained and private for, certainly for profit education is
Paul Krugman (20:46.800)
by and large a nightmare of rip offs and grift and people not getting what they thought they
Paul Krugman (20:56.720)
were paying for. It's a judgment case. And it's funny, there are things, I mean, everybody talks
Paul Krugman (21:05.520)
about the DMV as being, do you want the economy? Actually, my experience is that the DMV have
Paul Krugman (21:11.840)
always been positive. Maybe I'm just going to the right DMVs, but in fact, a lot of government works
Paul Krugman (21:17.920)
pretty well. So to some extent, you can do these things on a priori grounds. You can talk about the
Paul Krugman (21:26.000)
logic of why healthcare is not going to be handled well by the market, but partly it's just experience.
Paul Krugman (21:30.800)
We tried, or at least some countries have tried nationalizing their steel industries,
Paul Krugman (21:34.800)
that didn't go well. But we've tried privatizing education and that didn't go well. So you find
Lex Fridman (21:40.640)
out what works. What about this new world of tech? How do you see, what do you think works for tech?
Paul Krugman (21:49.120)
Is it more regulation or less regulation? There are some things that need more regulation. I mean,
Paul Krugman (21:56.320)
we're finding out that the world of social media is one in which competitive forces aren't working
Paul Krugman (22:07.840)
very well and trusting the companies to regulate themselves isn't working very well. But I'm on the
Paul Krugman (22:14.000)
whole a tech skeptic, not in the sense that I think the tech doesn't work and it doesn't do stuff,
Lex Fridman (22:19.440)
but the idea that we're living through greater technological change than ever before
Lex Fridman (22:24.400)
is really an illusion. Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution,
Paul Krugman (22:30.640)
we've had a series of epical shifts in the nature of work and in the kinds of jobs that are available.
Lex Fridman (22:38.400)
And it's not at all clear that what's happening now is any bigger or faster or harder to cope
Paul Krugman (22:46.720)
with than past shocks. It is a popular notion in today's sort of public discourse that automation
Paul Krugman (22:54.560)
is going to have a huge impact on the job market now. There is something transformational happening
Paul Krugman (23:01.920)
now. Can you talk about that, maybe elaborate a little bit more? Do you not see the software
Paul Krugman (23:10.800)
revolutions happening now with machine learning, availability of data, that kind of automation,
Paul Krugman (23:18.320)
being able to sort of process, clean, find patterns in data, and you don't see that
Paul Krugman (23:25.360)
disrupting any one sector to a point where there's a huge loss of jobs? There may be some things. I
Paul Krugman (23:32.880)
mean, actually, you know, translators, there's really reduced demand for translators because
Paul Krugman (23:38.560)
machine translation ain't perfect, but it ain't bad. There are some kinds of things that are
Paul Krugman (23:45.200)
changed, but overall productivity growth has actually been slow in recent years. It's been much
Paul Krugman (23:56.800)
slower than in some past periods. So the idea that automation is taking away all the jobs,
Paul Krugman (24:02.480)
the counterpart would be that we would be able to produce stuff with many fewer workers than before,
Lex Fridman (24:07.840)
and that's not happening. There are a few isolated sectors. There are some kinds of jobs that are
Paul Krugman (24:14.400)
going away, but that keeps on happening. I mean, New York City used to have thousands and thousands
Paul Krugman (24:20.480)
of longshoremen taking stuff off ships and putting them on ships. They're almost all gone now. Now
Paul Krugman (24:29.760)
you have the giant cranes taking containers on and off ships in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Paul Krugman (24:36.560)
That's not robots. It doesn't sound high tech, but it actually pretty much destroyed an
Paul Krugman (24:44.000)
occupation. Well, you know, it wasn't fun for the longshoremen, to say the least. But it's not,
Paul Krugman (24:52.560)
we coped, we moved on, and that sort of thing happens all the time. You mean farmers.
Paul Krugman (25:00.640)
We used to be a nation which was mostly farmers. There are now very few farmers left. And the
Paul Krugman (25:07.520)
reason is not that we've stopped eating, it's that farming has become so efficient that we don't need
Paul Krugman (25:14.000)
a lot of farmers, and we coped with that too. So the idea that there's something qualitatively
Paul Krugman (25:19.920)
different about what's happening now so far isn't true. So your intuition is there is going to be
Paul Krugman (25:26.880)
lots of jobs, but it's just the thing that just continues. There's nothing qualitatively different
Paul Krugman (25:32.320)
about this moment. Some jobs will be lost, others will be created, as has always been the case so
Paul Krugman (25:36.720)
far. I mean, maybe there's a singularity. Maybe there's a moment when the machines get smarter
Paul Krugman (25:42.880)
than we are, and sky tech kills us all or something, right? But that's not visible in
Paul Krugman (25:48.800)
anything we're seeing now. You mentioned the metric of productivity. Could you explain that
Paul Krugman (25:53.600)
a little bit? Because it's a really interesting one. I've heard you mention that before in
Paul Krugman (25:58.080)
connection with automation. So what is that metric? And if there is something qualitatively
Paul Krugman (26:03.760)
different, what should we see in that metric? Well, okay, productivity. First of all, production.
Paul Krugman (26:09.520)
We do have a measure of the economy's total production, you know, real GDP, which is
Paul Krugman (26:16.320)
itself, it's a little bit of a construct because it's quite literally, it's adding apples and
Paul Krugman (26:21.280)
oranges. So we have to add together various things, which we basically do by using market prices,
Lex Fridman (26:27.600)
but we try to adjust for inflation. But it's kind of, it's a reasonable measure of how much
Paul Krugman (26:32.800)
the economy is producing. Sorry to interrupt. Is it goods and services? It's goods and services.
Paul Krugman (26:37.040)
It's everything. Okay. Productivity is, you divide that total output by the number of hours worked.
Lex Fridman (26:45.200)
So we're basically asking how much stuff does the average worker produce in an hour of work.
Lex Fridman (26:52.320)
And if you're seeing really rapid technological progress, then you'd expect to see productivity
Paul Krugman (26:57.920)
rising at a rapid clip, which we did, you know, for the generation after World War II, productivity
Paul Krugman (27:05.040)
rose, you know, 2% a year on a sustained basis. Then it dropped down for a while. Then there was
Paul Krugman (27:12.240)
a kind of a decade of fairly rapid growth from the mid nineties to the mid two thousands.
Lex Fridman (27:18.240)
And then it's, it dropped off again and it's not, it's not impressive right now. So
Paul Krugman (27:22.880)
you're just not seeing an epical shift in, in, in the economy. So let me then ask you about
Paul Krugman (27:29.680)
the psychology of blaming automation. A few months ago, you wrote in the New York Times,
Paul Krugman (27:34.720)
quote, the other day I found myself, as I often do at a conference, discussing lagging wages and
Paul Krugman (27:39.840)
soaring inequality. There was a lot of interesting discussion, but one thing that struck me was how
Paul Krugman (27:45.360)
many of the participants just assumed that robots are a big part of the problem, that machines are
Paul Krugman (27:50.880)
taking away the good jobs or even jobs in general. For the most part, this wasn't even presented as
Paul Krugman (27:56.400)
a hypothesis, just as part of what everyone knows. So why is, maybe can you psychoanalyze our,
Paul Krugman (28:05.840)
the public intellectuals or economists or us actually in the general public, why this is
Paul Krugman (28:12.480)
happening? Why this assumption has just infiltrated public discourse? There's a couple of things.
Paul Krugman (28:19.440)
One is that the particular technologies that are advancing now are ones that are a lot more visible
Paul Krugman (28:26.480)
to the chattering class. When containerization did away with the jobs of longshoremen, well,
Paul Krugman (28:37.120)
not a whole lot of college professors are close friends with longshoremen. And so we see this one.
Paul Krugman (28:43.280)
Then there's a second thing, which is, we just went through a severe financial crisis
Lex Fridman (28:49.920)
and a period of very high unemployment. It's finally come down. There's really no question
Paul Krugman (28:56.880)
that that high unemployment was about macroeconomics. It was about a failure of demand.
Lex Fridman (29:02.160)
But macroeconomics is really not intuitive. I mean, people just have a hard time wrapping
Paul Krugman (29:07.760)
their minds around it. And among other things, people have a hard time believing that something
Paul Krugman (29:11.360)
as trivial as, well, people who just aren't spending enough can lead to the kind of mass
Paul Krugman (29:16.160)
misery that we saw in the 1930s or the not quite so severe, but still serious misery that we saw
Paul Krugman (29:22.320)
after 2008. And there's always a tendency to say it must be something big. It must be technological
Paul Krugman (29:28.480)
change. That means we don't need workers anymore. There was a lot of that in the 30s. And that same
Paul Krugman (29:33.600)
thing happened after 2008, the assumption that it has to be some deep cause, not something as trivial
Paul Krugman (29:40.480)
as a failure of investor confidence and inadequate monetary and fiscal response.
Lex Fridman (29:47.840)
And the last thing on wages. A lot of what's happened on wages is at some level political.
Paul Krugman (29:57.280)
It's the collapse of the union movement. It's policies that have squeezed workers bargaining
Paul Krugman (30:02.320)
power. And for kind of obvious reasons, there are a lot of influential people who don't want to hear
Paul Krugman (30:08.880)
that story. They want it to be an inevitable force of nature. Technology has made it impossible to
Paul Krugman (30:14.880)
have people earn middle class wages. And so they don't like the story that says,
Paul Krugman (30:23.440)
actually, no, it's kind of the political decisions that we made that have caused this income
Lex Fridman (30:28.240)
stagnation. And so they're a receptive audience for technological determinism.
Paul Krugman (30:34.000)
LW. So what comes first in your view, the economy or politics in terms of what has impact on the
Lex Fridman (30:40.640)
other?
Paul Krugman (30:41.360)
RL. Oh, look, everything interacts. That's one of the rules that I was taught in economics.
Paul Krugman (30:48.800)
Everything affects everything else in at least two ways. I mean, clearly the economy drives a
Paul Krugman (30:57.440)
lot of political stuff. But also clearly politics has a huge impact on the economy. We look at the
Paul Krugman (31:08.480)
decline of unions in America and say, well, the world has changed and unions don't have a role.
Lex Fridman (31:15.040)
But two thirds of workers in Denmark are unionized. And Denmark has the same technology
Lex Fridman (31:21.520)
and faces the same global economy that we do. It's just a difference in political choices that leads
Paul Krugman (31:26.640)
to that difference. So I actually teach a course here at CUNY called Economics of the Welfare
Paul Krugman (31:33.760)
State, which is about things like healthcare and retirement and to some extent wage policy and so
Paul Krugman (31:38.800)
on. And the message I keep on trying to drive home is that, look, all advanced countries have
Paul Krugman (31:46.000)
got roughly equal competence. We all have the same technology, but we make very different choices.
Paul Krugman (31:51.840)
Not that America always makes the wrong choices. We do some things pretty well. Our retirement
Paul Krugman (31:56.000)
system is one of the better ones. But the point is that there's a huge amount of political choice
Paul Krugman (32:03.120)
involved in the shape of the economy. What is a welfare state? Well, welfare state is the old
Paul Krugman (32:10.720)
term, but it basically refers to all the programs that are there to mitigate, if you like, the
Paul Krugman (32:19.680)
risks and injustices of the market economy. So in the US, the welfare state is Social Security,
Paul Krugman (32:25.200)
Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wages, food stamps. When you say welfare state, my first sort of
Paul Krugman (32:32.240)
feeling is a negative one. Even though I like all, I probably generally, at least theoretically,
Paul Krugman (32:39.840)
like all the welfare programs. Well, it's been demonized. And to some extent, I'm doing a little
Paul Krugman (32:46.480)
bit of thumbing my nose at all of that by just using the term welfare state. Although it's not.
Paul Krugman (32:53.520)
I see. Yeah, I got you. But everybody, every advanced country actually has a lot of welfare
Paul Krugman (32:59.600)
state, even the US. I mean, that's a fundamental part of the fabric of our society. Social Security,
Paul Krugman (33:07.200)
Medicare, Medicaid are just things we take for granted as part of the scene. There's a lot of
Paul Krugman (33:17.840)
there's people on the right wing who are saying, oh, it's all socialism. And well,
Paul Krugman (33:25.040)
words, I guess, mean what you want them to mean. And just today, I told my class about the
Paul Krugman (33:36.160)
record that Ronald Reagan made in 1961, warning that Medicare would destroy American freedom.
Lex Fridman (33:41.840)
And but that sort of didn't happen on the topic of welfare state. What are your thoughts on
Lex Fridman (33:50.000)
universal basic income? And that's sort of a not a generic, but a universal safety net of this kind?
Paul Krugman (33:58.800)
There's always a trade off when we talk about social safety net programs. There's always a
Paul Krugman (34:04.320)
trade off between universality, which is clean, but means that you're giving a lot of money to
Paul Krugman (34:12.400)
people who don't necessarily need it and some kind of targeting, which makes it easier to
Paul Krugman (34:20.720)
get to deal with the crucial problems with limited resources. But both has incentive
Paul Krugman (34:27.520)
problems and kind of political and I would say even psychological issues. So the great thing
Paul Krugman (34:36.480)
about Social Security and Medicare is no questions asked. You don't have to prove that you need them.
Paul Krugman (34:45.280)
It just comes. I'm on Medicare, allegedly. I mean, it's run through my New York Times health
Paul Krugman (34:54.800)
insurance, but I didn't have to file an application with the Medicare office to prove that I needed it.
Paul Krugman (35:02.160)
It just happened when I turned 65. That's good for dignity and it's also good for
Paul Krugman (35:08.800)
the political support because everybody gets Medicare. On the other hand, if you
Lex Fridman (35:15.360)
and we can do that with health care to give everybody a guarantee of an income that's
Paul Krugman (35:24.640)
enough to live on comfortably. That's a lot of money. What about enough income to carry you over
Paul Krugman (35:34.240)
through difficult periods, like if you lose a job or that kind of? Well, we have unemployment
Paul Krugman (35:38.000)
insurance and I think our unemployment insurance is too short lived and too stingy. It would be
Paul Krugman (35:44.080)
better to have a more comprehensive unemployment insurance benefit. But the trouble with something
Paul Krugman (35:51.840)
like universal basic income is that either the bar is too low, so it's really not something you
Paul Krugman (35:58.720)
can live on, or it's an enormously expensive program. And so at this point, I think that
Paul Krugman (36:05.680)
we can do far better by building on the kinds of safety net programs we have. I mean, food stamps,
Lex Fridman (36:12.000)
earned income tax credit. We should have a lot more family support policies.
Paul Krugman (36:17.280)
Those things can do a lot more to really diminish the amount of misery in this country.
Paul Krugman (36:24.240)
UBI is something that is being... I mean, it goes kind of hand in hand with this belief that
Paul Krugman (36:33.120)
the robots are going to take all of our jobs. And if that was really happening, then I might
Paul Krugman (36:37.440)
reconsider my views on UPI, but I don't see that happening. So are you happy with discourse that's
Paul Krugman (36:45.840)
going on now in terms of politics? So you mentioned a few political candidates. Is the kind of thing
Paul Krugman (36:52.160)
going on both on Twitter and debates and the media through the written word, through the spoken word,
Lex Fridman (37:00.240)
how do you assess the public discourse now in terms of politics? We're in a fragmented world.
Lex Fridman (37:05.120)
More so than before.
Paul Krugman (37:07.680)
More so than ever before. So at this point, the public discourse that you see if Fox News is your
Paul Krugman (37:20.560)
principal news source is very different from the one you get if you read the New York Times.
Paul Krugman (37:26.160)
On the whole, my sense is that mainstream political reporting, policy reporting is a,
Paul Krugman (37:33.840)
not too great, but b, better than it's ever been. Because when I first got into the pundit business,
Paul Krugman (37:41.440)
it was just awful. Lots of things just never got covered. And if things did get covered,
Paul Krugman (37:46.640)
it was always both sides. It's the line that comes back from me writing during the 2000
Paul Krugman (37:53.680)
campaign was that if one of the candidates said that the earth was flat, the headline would
Paul Krugman (38:00.320)
be views differ on shape of planet. I mean, that's less true. There's still a fair bit of
Paul Krugman (38:06.560)
that out there, but it's less true than there used to be. And there are more people reporting,
Paul Krugman (38:12.240)
writing on policy issues who actually understand them than ever before. So though that's good.
Lex Fridman (38:18.880)
But still, how much the typical voter is actually informed is unclear. I mean, the Democratic
Paul Krugman (38:34.640)
debates, I'm hoping that we finally get down to not having 27 people on the stage or whatever it
Paul Krugman (38:44.560)
is they have, but they're reasonably substantive, certainly better than before. And while there's
Paul Krugman (38:52.880)
a lot of still theater criticism instead of actual analysis and the reporting, it's not as totally
Paul Krugman (39:00.560)
dominant as in the past. Can I ask maybe a dumb question, but from an open minded perspective,
Paul Krugman (39:09.200)
when people on the left and people on the right, I think view the others as sometimes complete
Paul Krugman (39:21.920)
idiots. What do we do with that? Is it possible that the people on the right are correct about
Paul Krugman (39:32.560)
their what they currently believe? Is that kind of open mindedness helpful or is this division
Lex Fridman (39:43.280)
long term productive for us to sort of have this food fight?
Paul Krugman (39:48.480)
Well, the trouble you have to confront is that there's a lot of stuff that just is false out
Paul Krugman (39:55.680)
there but commands extensive political allegiance. So the idea, well, both sides need to listen to
Paul Krugman (40:02.160)
each other respectfully. I'm happy to do that when there's a view that is worthy of respect,
Lex Fridman (40:09.840)
but a lot of stuff is not. And so take economics is something where I think I know something,
Lex Fridman (40:18.560)
and I'm not sure that I'm always right. In fact, I know I've been wrong plenty of times. But I
Paul Krugman (40:24.800)
think that there is a difference between economic views that are within the realm of we can actually
Paul Krugman (40:33.280)
have an interesting discussion and those that are just crank doctrines or things that are purely
Paul Krugman (40:42.560)
being disseminated because people are being paid to disseminate them. So there are plenty of good,
Paul Krugman (40:47.920)
serious center right economists that I'm happy to talk to. None of those center right economists
Paul Krugman (40:54.800)
has any role in the Trump administration. The Trump administration and by and large Republicans
Paul Krugman (40:59.280)
in Congress only want to listen to people who are cranks. And so I think it's being dishonest with
Paul Krugman (41:07.680)
my readers to pretend otherwise. There's no way I can reach out to people who think that
Lex Fridman (41:12.400)
reading Ayn Rand novels is how you learn about monetary economics.
Paul Krugman (41:17.200)
Let me linger on that point. So if you look at Ayn Rand, okay, so you said center right. What
Paul Krugman (41:22.000)
about extreme? People who have like radical views, you think they're not grounded in any kind of data,
Paul Krugman (41:31.600)
in any kind of reality. I'm just sort of curious about how open we should be
Paul Krugman (41:37.920)
to ideas that seem radical. Oh, radical ideas is fine, but then you have to ask, is there some
Paul Krugman (41:44.320)
basis for the radicalism? And if it's something that is not grounded in anything,
Paul Krugman (41:55.440)
then, and particularly, by the way, if it's something that's been refuted by evidence again
Lex Fridman (41:59.840)
and again, and the people just keep saying it, if it's a zombie, if it's a
Paul Krugman (42:03.440)
zombie idea, and there's a lot of those out there, then there comes a point when it's not worth
Paul Krugman (42:09.600)
trying to fake respect for it. I see. So there's a, through the scientific process,
Paul Krugman (42:14.560)
you've shown that this idea does not hold water, but I like the idea of zombie ideas,
Lex Fridman (42:19.760)
but they live on through, it's like the idea that the earth is flat, for example,
Lex Fridman (42:26.160)
has been for the most part, disproven. Yeah.
Lex Fridman (42:28.880)
But it lives on, actually, and growing in popularity currently. Yeah. And there's a lot
Paul Krugman (42:34.480)
of that out there, and you can't wish it away, and you're not being fair to either yourself,
Paul Krugman (42:41.520)
or if you're somebody who writes for the public, you're not being fair to your readers to pretend
Paul Krugman (42:46.160)
otherwise. So quantum mechanics is a strange theory, but it's testable, and so while being
Paul Krugman (42:53.920)
strange, it's widely accepted amongst physicists. How robust and testable are economics theories
Paul Krugman (43:01.440)
if we compare them to quantum mechanics and physics and so on? Okay, economics, look, it's a
Paul Krugman (43:08.160)
complex system, and it's also one in which, by and large, you don't get to do experiments,
Lex Fridman (43:14.480)
and so economics is never going to be like quantum mechanics.
Paul Krugman (43:18.480)
That said, you get natural experiments, you get tests of rival doctrines. In the immediate
Paul Krugman (43:26.160)
aftermath of the financial crisis, there was one style, one basic theory of macroeconomics, which
Paul Krugman (43:36.560)
ultimately goes back to John Maynard Keynes that made a few predictions. It said, under these
Paul Krugman (43:40.960)
circumstances, the economy is going to collapse. It's going to collapse. It's going to collapse.
Paul Krugman (43:48.080)
Printing money will not be inflationary. Running big budget deficits will not cause a rise in
Paul Krugman (43:54.800)
interest rates. Slashing government spending austerity policies will lead to depressions if
Paul Krugman (44:02.240)
tried. Other people had exactly the opposite predictions, and we got a fairly robust test,
Lex Fridman (44:11.120)
and one theory won. Interest rates stayed low. Inflation stayed low. Austerity, countries that
Paul Krugman (44:17.600)
implemented harsh austerity policies suffered severe economic downturns. You don't get much,
Lex Fridman (44:24.400)
you know, that's pretty clear, and that's not going to be true on everything,
Lex Fridman (44:29.440)
but there's a lot of empirical. I mean, the younger economists these days are very heavily
Lex Fridman (44:36.560)
data based, and that's great, and I think that's the way to go.
Lex Fridman (44:42.000)
Trey Lockerbie What theories of economics are there? Is there currently a lot of disagreement about, would you say?
Paul Krugman (44:47.440)
John Ligato Oh, first of all, there's just a lot less disagreement, really, among serious
Paul Krugman (44:54.560)
researchers in economics than people imagine. We actually, we can track that. The Chicago Booth
Paul Krugman (45:00.800)
School has a panel, an ideologically diverse panel, and they pose regularly posed questions,
Lex Fridman (45:07.520)
and on most things, there's a huge, there's remarkable consensus. There's a lot of things
Paul Krugman (45:16.160)
where people imagine that there's dispute, but the illusion of dispute is something that's
Paul Krugman (45:22.240)
basically being fed by political forces, and there isn't really. I mean, there are, I think,
Paul Krugman (45:28.960)
questions about what are effective ways to regulate technology industries. We really don't know
Paul Krugman (45:41.520)
the answers there. There's a, or, look, I don't follow every part. Minimum wages. I think there's
Paul Krugman (45:50.560)
pretty overwhelming evidence that a modest increase in the minimum wage from current levels
Paul Krugman (45:57.280)
would be, would not have any noticeable adverse effect on jobs. But if you ask, how high could it
Paul Krugman (46:06.960)
go? $12 seems pretty safe, given what we know. Is $15 okay? There's some legitimate disagreement
Paul Krugman (46:17.040)
there, I think probably, but people have a point. $20, where is the line at which it starts to
Paul Krugman (46:24.880)
become a problem, and the answer is, truly, we don't know. It's fascinating to try to,
Paul Krugman (46:30.080)
such a cool, economics is cool in that sense, because you're trying to predict something that
Paul Krugman (46:35.120)
hasn't been done before, the impact, the effects of something that hasn't been done before.
Paul Krugman (46:40.160)
Yeah, you're trying, you're going out of sample, and we have good reason to believe that there are,
Paul Krugman (46:46.560)
you know, that it's nonlinear, that there comes a point at which it doesn't work the way it has
Paul Krugman (46:49.840)
in the past. So, as an economist, how do you see science and technological innovation? When I
Paul Krugman (46:56.560)
took various economics courses in college, technological innovation seemed like a
Paul Krugman (47:02.160)
no brainer way of growing an economy, and we should invest in it aggressively. I may be biased,
Lex Fridman (47:09.280)
but it seemed like the various ways to grow an economy, it seems like the easiest way,
Lex Fridman (47:14.720)
especially long term. Is that correct? And if so, why aren't we doing it more?
Paul Krugman (47:20.560)
Well, that's, okay, the first question is, yeah, I mean, all, it's pretty much overwhelming.
Paul Krugman (47:27.920)
We think we can more or less measure this, although there are some assumptions involved,
Lex Fridman (47:31.520)
but it's something like 70 to 80% of the growth in per capita income is basically the advance
Paul Krugman (47:38.480)
of knowledge. It's not just, it's not just the crude accumulation of capital. It is the fact
Paul Krugman (47:43.520)
that we get smarter. A lot of that, by the way, is more prosaic kinds of technology. So, you know,
Paul Krugman (47:52.960)
I like to talk about things like containerization, or, you know, in an earlier period,
Paul Krugman (48:01.280)
the invention of the flat pack cardboard box. That had to be invented, and now all of your
Paul Krugman (48:10.000)
deliveries from Amazon are made possible by the existence of that technology. The web stuff is
Lex Fridman (48:15.760)
important too, but what would we do without cardboard boxes?
Lex Fridman (48:20.400)
But all of that stuff is really important in driving economic progress. Well, why don't we
Paul Krugman (48:26.160)
invest more? Why don't we invest more in, again, more prosaic stuff? Why haven't we built another
Paul Krugman (48:36.560)
goddamn rail tunnel under the Hudson River, for which the need is so totally overwhelmingly
Paul Krugman (48:44.320)
obvious? How do you think about, first of all, I don't even know what the word prosaic means,
Lex Fridman (48:48.000)
but I inferred it, but how do you think about prosaic? Is it the really most basic, dumb
Paul Krugman (48:54.320)
technology innovation, or is it just like the lowest hanging fruit of where benefit can be
Paul Krugman (49:02.800)
gained? When I say prosaic, I mean stuff that is not sexy and fancy and high tech. It's building
Paul Krugman (49:11.760)
bridges and tunnels, inventing the cardboard box, or the, I don't know, where do we put
Paul Krugman (49:24.400)
EasyPass in there? It is actually using some modern technology and all that, but it's not
Paul Krugman (49:34.800)
going to have, I don't think we're going to make a movie about the guy, whoever it was that invented
Paul Krugman (49:41.120)
EasyPass, but it's actually a pretty significant productivity booster. To me, it always seemed like
Paul Krugman (49:47.680)
it's something that everybody should be able to agree on and just invest. So in the same way,
Paul Krugman (49:56.160)
the investment in the military and the DOD is huge. So everyone kind of, not everyone, but
Paul Krugman (50:05.440)
there's an agreement amongst people that somehow that a large defense is important. It always
Paul Krugman (50:15.280)
seemed to me like that should be shifted towards, if you want to grow prosperity of the nation,
Paul Krugman (50:22.720)
you should be investing in knowledge. Yes, prosaic stuff, investing in infrastructure and so on.
Lex Fridman (50:29.200)
I mean, sorry to linger on it, but do you have any intuition? Do you have a hope that that changes?
Lex Fridman (50:35.040)
Do you have intuition why it's not changing? It's unclear.
Paul Krugman (50:38.240)
More than intuition, I have a theory. I'm reasonably certain that I understand why
Paul Krugman (50:42.240)
we don't do it. And it's because we have a real values dispute about the welfare state,
Paul Krugman (50:55.680)
about how much the government should do to help the unfortunate. And politicians believe,
Paul Krugman (51:04.320)
probably rightly, that there's a kind of halo effect that surrounds any kind of government
Paul Krugman (51:09.200)
intervention. That even though providing people with enhanced social security benefits is really
Paul Krugman (51:17.600)
very different from building a tunnel under the Hudson River, politicians of both parties seem
Paul Krugman (51:23.520)
to believe that if the government is seen to be successful at doing one kind of thing,
Paul Krugman (51:28.240)
it will make people think more favorably on doing other kinds of things. And so we have
Paul Krugman (51:33.120)
conservatives tend to be opposed to any kind of increase in government spending, except military,
Paul Krugman (51:39.680)
no matter how obviously a good idea it is, because they fear that it's the thin end of
Paul Krugman (51:46.720)
the wedge for bigger government in general. And to some extent, liberals tend to favor
Paul Krugman (51:53.040)
spending on these things, partly because they see it as a way of proving that government can
Paul Krugman (51:59.760)
do things well, and therefore it can turn to broader social goals. What you might have thought
Paul Krugman (52:11.360)
would be a technocratic discussion about government investment, both in research and
Paul Krugman (52:15.440)
in infrastructure, is contaminated by the fact that government is government and people link it
Paul Krugman (52:21.520)
to other government actions. Perhaps a silly question, but as a species, we're currently
Paul Krugman (52:28.560)
working on venturing out into space, one day colonizing Mars. So when we start a society
Lex Fridman (52:35.040)
on Mars from scratch, what political and economic system should it operate under?
Paul Krugman (52:41.920)
Oh, I'm a big believer in... First of all, I don't think we're actually going to do that,
Lex Fridman (52:45.760)
but let's hypothesize that we colonize Mars or something. Look, representative democracy
Paul Krugman (52:54.000)
versus pure democracy. Well, yeah, pure democracy where people vote directly on everything is really
Paul Krugman (53:06.960)
problematic, because people don't have time to try and master every issue. I mean, we can see
Lex Fridman (53:16.000)
what government by referendum looks like. There's a lot of that in California, and it doesn't work
Lex Fridman (53:21.920)
so good because it's hard to explain to people that the various things they vote for may conflict.
Lex Fridman (53:26.800)
So representative democracy, it's got lots of problems. And kind of the Winston Churchill thing,
Paul Krugman (53:37.520)
right? It's the worst system we know, except for all the others. So yeah, sticking with the
Paul Krugman (53:43.760)
representative and basically the American system of regulation and markets and the economy we have
Paul Krugman (53:52.240)
going on is a pretty good one for Mars. If you start from scratch. If you're gonna start from
Paul Krugman (53:57.760)
scratch, you wouldn't want a Senate where 16% of the population has half the seats.
Paul Krugman (54:06.160)
You probably would want one which is actually more representative than what we have.
Lex Fridman (54:11.360)
And the details, it's unclear. When times are good, all of the various representative
Paul Krugman (54:22.080)
democracy systems, whether it's parliamentary democracies or a US style system, whether you
Paul Krugman (54:30.480)
have a prime minister or the head of state as an elected president, they all kind of work well,
Paul Krugman (54:36.080)
when times are good, and they all have different modes of breakdown. So I'm not sure I know what
Paul Krugman (54:40.240)
the answer is. But something like that is given what we've seen through history, it's the least
Paul Krugman (54:49.760)
bad system out there. I'm a big fan of the TV series The Expanse, and it's kind of gratifying
Paul Krugman (55:02.240)
that out there, it's the Martian Congressional Republic. In a brief sense, so amongst many things,
Paul Krugman (55:13.600)
you're also an expert at international trade. What do you make of the complexity? So I can
Paul Krugman (55:24.000)
understand trade between two people, say two neighboring farmers. It seems pretty straightforward
Paul Krugman (55:30.560)
to me. But internationally, we need to start talking about nations and nations trading seems
Paul Krugman (55:35.280)
to be very complicated. So from a high level, why is it so complicated? What are all the different
Paul Krugman (55:42.080)
factors that weigh the objectives that need to be considered in international trade? And maybe
Paul Krugman (55:48.720)
feeding that into a question of, do you have concerns about the two giants right now of the
Paul Krugman (55:55.680)
U.S. and China, and the tension that's going on with the international trade there with the trade
Paul Krugman (56:01.520)
war? Well, first of all, international trade is not really that different from trade among
Paul Krugman (56:05.680)
individuals. It's vastly more complex, and there are many more players. But in the end, the reasons
Lex Fridman (56:15.200)
why countries trade are pretty much the same as the reasons why individuals trade. Countries trade
Paul Krugman (56:19.280)
because they're different, and they can derive mutual advantage from concentrating on the things
Paul Krugman (56:25.120)
they do relatively well. And also, there are economies of scale. Individuals have to decide
Paul Krugman (56:36.320)
whether to be a surgeon or an accountant. It's probably not a good idea to try and be both,
Lex Fridman (56:42.160)
and countries benefit from specializing just because of the inherent advantages of specialization.
Paul Krugman (56:48.400)
Now, the fact that it's a big world, and we're talking about millions of products being traded,
Lex Fridman (56:56.160)
and in today's world, often trade involves many stages. So that made in China iPhone is actually
Paul Krugman (57:05.840)
assembled from components that are made all over the world. But it doesn't really change the
Paul Krugman (57:11.520)
fundamentals all that much. There's a recurrent... I mean, the dirty little secret of international
Paul Krugman (57:22.080)
trade conflict is that actually it's not... Conflicts among countries are really not that
Paul Krugman (57:27.840)
important. Most trade is beneficial to both sides and to both countries, but it has big impacts on
Paul Krugman (57:37.440)
the distribution of income within countries. So the growth of US trade with China has made both
Paul Krugman (57:44.720)
US and China richer, but it's been pretty bad for people who were employed in the North Carolina
Paul Krugman (57:52.320)
furniture industry, who did find that their jobs were displaced by a wave of imports from China.
Lex Fridman (57:58.480)
And so that's where the complexity comes in. Not at all clear to me. We have some real problems
Paul Krugman (58:08.000)
with China, although they don't really involve trade so much as things like respect for intellectual
Paul Krugman (58:14.480)
property. Not clear that those real problems that we do have with China have anything to do with the
Paul Krugman (58:22.080)
current trade war. The current trade war seems to be driven instead by a fundamentally wrong notion
Paul Krugman (58:28.960)
that when we sell goods to China, that's good, and when we buy goods from China, that's bad. And
Lex Fridman (58:33.680)
that's misunderstanding the whole point. Is trade with China in both directions a good thing?
Paul Krugman (58:40.480)
Yeah, we would be poorer if it wasn't for it. But there are downsides, as there are for any economic
Paul Krugman (58:46.720)
change. It's like any new technology makes us richer, but often hurts some people. Trade with
Paul Krugman (58:53.520)
China makes us richer, but hurts some people. And I wouldn't undo what has happened, but I wish we
Paul Krugman (59:01.680)
had had a better policy for supporting and compensating the losers from that growth.
Lex Fridman (59:09.200)
So we live in a time of radicalization of political ideas, Twitter mobs, and so on.
Lex Fridman (59:14.880)
And yet here you are in the midst of it, both tweeting and writing in the New York Times articles
Paul Krugman (59:21.600)
with strong opinions, riding this chaotic wave of public discourse. Do you ever hesitate or feel
Lex Fridman (59:29.040)
a tinge of fear for exploring your ideas publicly and unapologetically?
Paul Krugman (59:34.160)
Oh, I feel fear all the time. It's not too hard to imagine scenarios in which this is going to,
Paul Krugman (59:40.640)
you know, I might personally find myself kind of in the crosshairs. And I mean, I am the
Lex Fridman (59:49.360)
king of hate mail. I get amazing correspondence. Does it affect you?
Lex Fridman (59:55.600)
It did. It did when it started. These days I've developed a very thick skin.
🔗 相关节目