Don’t miss the latest edition of “Conversations with Bill Kristol,” in which The Weekly Standard’s editor at large engages economist and TWS contributing editor Irwin Stelzer in a far-ranging discussion on politics, culture, and, as one might expect, economics.
Stelzer is skeptical of modern mathematical economics: “I snuck out of graduate school before the wave of mathematics,” he says of his days at Cornell University.
His remarks on climate change are particularly refreshing and suggest a way of thinking about the question that is more practical than what one is likely to get from the true believers: “They think they are right, they know they’re right. I think I am right, but I am not sure I am right,” Stelzer says. “So then the question is, what policy is appropriate that will do the least damage if I am wrong?”
Stelzer takes note of the growing societal problems of income inequality and limited upward mobility. But not being a doom and gloom man, Stelzer reminds us, “This is the greatest economic system ever invented. Not because of the goods and services it produces, but because of the freedom that it has produced that is associated with it.”
Watch the whole interview online at ConversationswithBillKristol.org.
