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Episode 418: Mere Economics · Words & Numbers

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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is words and numbers.
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This week, Art Cardin joins us. Art is the Margaret Gage Bush
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Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Brock School of
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Business at Samford University in Alabama.
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Art has co-authored the book with Caleb Fuller, Mere
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Economics, which is what we'll be talking about today.
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I've known Art for many years and thoroughly enjoy his company
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and I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
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I have to tell you, I'll start off here with a little bit of
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background. This book now Art you teach at a
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Christian School? Yes, Stanford University.
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I do, yes. This book Attack, I shouldn't
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say attacks it, it discusses economics, but through the eyes
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of religion or specifically Christian religion.
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I've got to tell you, I've danced around that intersection
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of religion, economics several times in my career, you know,
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depending on who the audience is.
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And you have just done a yeoman's job here of drawing
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linkages. I think it's just beautiful.
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Well, thank you. I really appreciate that.
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So let me start you off with my first question.
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Look, OK, you've written this book aimed at what I would
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describe as conservative Christians who in my experience
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are pretty much free market economic thinkers to begin with.
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Are you preaching to the choir here?
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Yeah, that's a really good question.
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And I wonder if maybe in some sense we are, but I think the
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last, let's say, the last decade has shown that a lot of rhetoric
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about free markets does not actually mean that people
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understand and truly support free markets.
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So just the last presidential election, there was an awful lot
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of discussion of regulation and an awful lot of discussion of
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getting the government off our backs.
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But it's OK for the government to get on people's backs if
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they're buying stuff from foreigners, if they're hiring
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foreigners to do jobs. There's first a real tension
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there. And then second, with the
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national conservatism movement, they're being, I think, pretty
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explicit in some cases about rejecting laissez faire liberal
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capitalism. So I suspect we have a lot of
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sympathetic readers, a lot maybe who don't know that they aren't
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in fact as free market as they would like to be or as they
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would like us to think they are. And also, I think too, people
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who think that there's a tension between economics and faith and
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economics and Christian faith specifically.
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I think we, I think we do a reasonable job of showing that
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no, the two aren't actually intention.
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You have to set aside the economic way of thinking when
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you go to church, and you don't have to set aside your faith
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when you enter an economics classroom or an economic
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discussion. In that, in my experience of
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talking about the intersection of faith and economics, I found
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the audience's eyes are open because people seem, at least
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Americans seem so used to kind of the default position that,
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well, if you care about the poor, then you must be in favour
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of socialistic policies. Yeah, that's something I know
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we've all heard, usually from the left, but claims that Jesus
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was a socialist, or the early church practiced socialism, or
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some variation on socialism just means sharing, or socialism just
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means caring about other people. Or Tim Waltz said in the run up
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to the last election that, you know, one person's socialism is
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another person's neighborliness, that being a socialist just
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means being a good neighbor. It means just wanting good
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things. Obviously you and I would agree
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that's not the case, that socialism is something too much
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deeper. But also, one of my missions in
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life is I kind of want people to stop giving themselves credit
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for meaning Well. And of course, at a Christian
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university, there are a lot of people who mean very, very,
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very, very well. And it's not always clear that
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our good intentions translate into good results.
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Let me back up for a moment. I've jumped over the title near
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economics, but I've got a note here.
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I wanted to ask you to speak to that a little bit.
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When you say mirror economics, you don't mean mirror in a
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denigrating sense. No, no, not at all.
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So a little bit of back story on the book.
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So I've been telling people for years I wanted to write a book
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called Mirror Economics. And several years ago I was
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doing AI think a podcast or a webinar for Liberty Fund and
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just happened to casually mention someday I want to write
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a book called Mere Economics. And then I got an e-mail from
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Caleb Fuller saying that he too also had been saying for a long
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time he wanted to write a book called Mere Economics.
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And it turned out we were completely on the same page.
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We wanted to write the same book.
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So we said, all right, it's fine, OK, you want to write
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this? I want to write it.
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We're of 1 accord in this whole endeavour, so let's give it a
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shot. And this was the result.
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And when we say Mere Economics, it's not in any sort of sense of
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denigrating anything. It is a play on CF Lewis with
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Mere Christianity. And we describe the book
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sometimes with what would happen if you threw Mere Christianity
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into a blender with Thomas sold Basic economics.
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We really want to keep our eye on the ball and focus on the
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most essential points of an economics that a lot of people,
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including perhaps a lot of economists are confused on.
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Or, you know, the WH Hut, the great economist would say woolly
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in terms of how they think about it.
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We say in the book that if you like American football
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metaphors, this is about blocking and tackling.
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We'll leave like the complicated offensive and defensive schemes,
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who, you know, the upper level electives and the graduate
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classes and things like that. This is an exercise in blocking
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and tackling and I hope kind of resetting how we understand the
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sources of prosperity. And I have to say, I think
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you've done an excellent job of attacking economics like we did
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in our book, in a way that is both interesting to someone who
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understands the economics and enlightening to someone, and
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certainly readable to someone with no background in economics.
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The goal of the book we said are very, very high bar that
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socialists would embrace pre market capitalism, non
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economists would become economists and atheists would
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become Christians. And I think maybe we're you
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know, one out of three, two out of three is the possibility.
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It is something that I hope anyone who reads it can take
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something that they didn't know or didn't understand before,
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whether it be about Christian faith or about the economic way
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of thinking or just about practical ways to live.
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Now you're speaking to specifically a, well, the
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American Christian audience. Being a Catholic, I was
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surprised. No mention of John Paul the
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Second, who's written several encyclicals.
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Of course, he came from behind the Iron Curtain, but several
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encyclicals, to my reading, read as if he's promoting free market
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economics. And in fact, at one point in I
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think it's Sentesimus Anus, he says, yeah, if free market means
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that basically property rights are respected and people are
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free to make choices provided they aren't harming others.
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And yeah, he's all for that. In fact, he's got a great quote
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to the effect of, yeah, absolutely the employer should
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not exploit the worker, which of course you read that the
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socialists are cheering. And then he goes right on and
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says, but the worker should not exploit the employer.
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Right. Yeah.
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So there were a lot of hard choices that needed to be made
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as we're preparing the book because we wanted to keep it
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short enough that people would actually read it.
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So therefore we had to leave a lot of really great stuff out.
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We actually have a longer document in Google Drive called
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More Economics, which might be to follow up or someday.
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We were talking about writing a book called Summa Economica.
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I don't really we talked about John Paul the 2nd and anything
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that we left on the cutting room floor.
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But this is a very good and very important point that for John
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Paul the second. Especially like you mentioned,
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coming from behind the Iron Curtain, how society self
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organized is first of all more than just an academic discussion
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because you got to see communism up close and personal.
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And then second, there is a lot of commonality between what
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little I understand about Catholicism, quad Catholicism,
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and pre market ideas and what I do understand about the
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Protestant side of the aisle. All right, so James, I'm going
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to go to you here in a second, but I want to jump in and push
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back on you a little bit. Sure.
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You have a chapter in which you talk about the poor, and you
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make the argument, as I've made as well, James has made as well,
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that private charity is much better at taking care of the
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poor than the government could ever hope to be.
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And as I'm reading that, I'm writing down a note here of what
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happens when voluntary giving isn't enough.
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And sure enough, I come to later in the chapter, you say, yeah,
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and you know, voluntary giving might not be enough.
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But the answer to that is, and I perceive just a bunch of hand
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waving, frankly, of. Well, we we need to be better at
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voluntary giving. Yeah.
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So there's a lot there. So when I think about voluntary
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giving and the sufficiency of it, one of the questions that we
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have to answer is to what extent is is giving of any kind really
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necessary? In an extremely wealthy society?
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The card that we probably pull out of our sleep would be the
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economic growth card. So if you redistribute less, at
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least get rid of some of the pathological incentives that are
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embedded in the welfare state, you get more economic growth and
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that lessens the need for charity of just about any kind.
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Tell my students this. If we're going to have a
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government and if they're going to redistribute, then simple
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taxes and transfers would be something I'm not ready to go to
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the barricades over. But I also think there's the
9:56
strong argument to be made that we would be able to take care of
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the real, serious and genuine needs.
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And I hate using that word needs.
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All economists should hate using the word needs.
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We should be able to take care of those with voluntary
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mechanisms, in part because we would have greater economic
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growth. Second, need, and I'm making air
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quotes here for people who are listening.
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Need is endogenous, as economists are fond of saying.
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Needs are, in a lot of cases, the response to people's
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incentives. So I wonder how many needs would
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manifest themselves or how many needs would appear if more
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people were responsible for their own care.
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And that might sound harsh, but I think specifically back to the
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examples of the original settlement of the American
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colony and some of the settlers, they had a kind of quasi
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socialist experiment, everybody starving to death.
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And then finally they say we're going to abandon this.
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Everyone gets their own private plot and you're responsible for
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treating yourself and your family.
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Then all of a sudden, a lot of people who had these
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intractable, incurable ailments suddenly started feeling better
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when they could produce their own sustenance for themselves
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and their loved ones. To shorten the answer, I'd say
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one, that there's always going to be need.
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We're always going to be able to find something we can call a
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need. And 2nd need emerges in part as
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a response to the incentives that are in place.
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So I think we get rid of the incentives, we reduce the need,
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we get rid of the bad incentives, we increase economic
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growth, we reduce the need. And private sector charity I
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think is is more than sufficient to cover the really hard edge
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cases. It's OK.
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I want to follow up on that a little bit.
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I'm going to start by saying I just don't think I have to offer
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my anti government bona fides here.
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I think everybody kind of knows that to whatever degree you and
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I might disagree on this, it's a disagreement of degree, not of
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kind. But you know, in my former life,
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I used to work in mental institutions.
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And I can tell you I, I've seen people who cannot take care of
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themselves. And it's always seemed to me,
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you know, when we think about the Christian perspective, when
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Jesus said the poor will always be among you, I think at this
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point we could say the disabled will always be among you.
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And that's maybe a better thing to say, right?
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It captures more of the truth of the matter because in a lot of
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ways we don't suffer from biting poverty as we once did.
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And I think the admonition to think about needs a little
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differently is well advised. But I've met people, lots and
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lots of people who in no way could care for themselves.
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And I know there's a lot more out there than I've ever met.
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And my deepest concern comes when we think about private
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charity. And I ask the question, but what
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happens when it's not enough? And you start to see the state
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as the insurer of last resort, right?
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The thing that can, the only thing that can provide that last
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bit of coverage when you think about it in those terms.
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And I'm wondering, do you think we can ever actually get away
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from that? So that's an interesting
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question because there are sort of two ways the conversation
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would have to proceed Where one is here, I'm borrowing from Mike
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Munger, the directional versus the destinational.
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On one hand, we can talk about the destination.
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OK, what is Libertopia actually look like?
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You know, is there a government? How big is the government?
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What does it do? That again, is, I think, a very
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interesting and largely academic discussion.
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My former colleague John Murray has written a fantastic book
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published in 2007 called Origins of American Health Insurance,
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where he makes a very strong and I think convincing argument that
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the reason we didn't get a European style welfare state in
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the United States was largely because friendly societies and
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the institutions of civil society.
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We're doing a very, very good job from a directional
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perspective. We want to sort of step back and
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start from where we are and say in what direction do we want to
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go? Like if your only hang up is
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roads and mental institutions, then that's great.
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OK, fine, we'll have government mental institutions.
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We'll let the government build the roads.
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And then after we've gotten rid of all the other stuff that we
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can all sort of agree is wasteful, then we can start to
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talk about, OK, do we really, truly, positively, absolutely
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need government run mental institutions or government
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created roads? And again, like I said, a
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specific phrasing I use with my students is we got rid of the
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welfare state as we currently know it and just replaced it
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with a much more generous earned income tax credit.
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I would sleep very, very well at night.
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I would call that a win if we got rid of most of the
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pathological income redistribution and welfare
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programs we have that create benefit cliffs and all the other
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stuff that the economist Casey Mulligan is constantly talking
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about. I'm not going to lose all of the
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sleep and I'm not going to go to the barricades to shut down the
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state funded mental institutions.
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At that point, it's a confrontation we can have,
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certainly, and and one where I think that the libertarian free
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market paradise would provide enough or more than enough to
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care for those who truly cannot care for themselves.
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But again, that's not all I'm going to die on.
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At least right now we're talking about how big the government
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should be. My wish is that we do actually
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die on that hill at some point in the future.
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At some point, yeah. So so Ronald Post, someone once
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asked him how big should the government be?
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And he replied, you know, when a £300 man walks past you and you
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ask how much should that man weigh, the answer is less.
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So I think that's that's, I say kind of a cozy and approach to
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the how big should the government be question.
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I want to change gears for a minute.
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You mentioned taxes. You have an entire chapter
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devoted to this and you talk about, I don't think you use the
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word syntax specifically, but you do talk about taxes on
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things that that might be good for people to consume less of.
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And I'm very interested in reading this to see what your
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punchline is. Perhaps you did this
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deliberately, but you went off in talking about the negatives
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of such taxes. You went off and talked about
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the unintended consequences, which absolutely I agree with
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you 100%. I was left wanting for the more
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theologically based argument against syntaxes that you're on
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the one hand from a policy perspective.
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If you're. Using the government to enforce
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a moral code, you're giving the government power that's going to
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allow the people who you disagree with to then enforce
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whatever code they think that you might not find so moral.
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Secondly, it implies somehow that morality is perhaps
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relative in that it's up for a vote.
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And it's on this piece where if there's one thing in which I
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have found I clash with conservative Christian
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audiences, it's on that topic of does the government have a role
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in enforcing morality? So there in our chapter on the
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economic sustaining prohibition, we're trying to do a few things,
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and the most important one is just to make people think about
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the unintended consequences, saying it is bad or immoral or
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wrong for someone to use this product.
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Therefore we're going to ban it. Again, we have to be clear, we
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have to be mindful of the unintended consequences.
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That's the economist way of thinking about it.
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That by and large isn't easy. But here's all the stuff we
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disapprove of. We at least have to acknowledge
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that we might make things much worse by banning this or banning
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that or banning the other thing. So I use pornography.
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Here's an example. No one is flourishing when
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they're secretly scrolling Pornhub at 2:00 in the morning,
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you know, hidden from everybody. I just don't think that's
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particularly healthy way to live.
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Banning it, I think, is the wrong route for two reasons.
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One, practical, just unintended consequences.
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Like I said, that's the easy lift.
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Second, I think that if people do in fact bear the image of
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God, that puts some very, very sharp constraints on what we can
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and cannot force them to do. So an important part I think of
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respecting the dignity of the individual and again I say the
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dignity of the individual who in my view does in fact reflect the
18:46
image of God, is allowing them. Well, not allowing.
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I don't think allowing is the right word.
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Respecting their right to make decisions even if we don't like
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them specifically the right to make self-destructive decision.
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I don't think that we fully respect the image of God or just
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the inherent dignity of the human person in somebody when we
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try to force them into our particular mold or our
19:13
particular understanding of what a good life looks like.
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We can try to persuade all we want.
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We can use web blockers and things like that that will
19:20
restrict our access to pornography.
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We can talk with the people around us about, OK, we think
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this is degrading and we think this is bad for you for the
19:28
whole instead of reason. But I think ultimately God
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respects people right to choose, to coin a phrase.
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And we see this in the creation narrative that God was not going
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to force Adam and Eve to bend to his will always and all the
19:45
time. They had a choice and it had to
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be a choice in order I think for it to for it to matter to have
19:51
any weight. So my two reasons for opposing
19:55
prohibition or the 1st is purely consequential.
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I think the cure is worsened the disease.
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And then the second is, I don't think that we're respecting the
20:02
image of God in people, particularly grown men and
20:05
women, if we are treating them like incompetent children.
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Can't remember if we put this in the book or this is one of the
20:11
things that ended up on the cutting room floor like we were
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talking about before we started talking.
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Obviously like someone who is feeding, clothing and diapering
20:20
his one year old is that's everybody expects that.
20:24
Someone who's spoon feeding and diapering a teenager, that's
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something a little bit more monstrous.
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And I think we're in the second category when we are not
20:32
allowing people to make self-destructive decisions.
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Let me ask you a follow up on that art.
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How far down the road of self destruction are you comfortable
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going? That's a good question and
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that's one that I struggle with. When self destruction becomes
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other destruction, then I think that's when it's time to say,
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yeah, no, you can't hurt somebody else.
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And I want to take a sort of like a very, very strict view of
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that. Making me feel sad is not
21:03
necessarily hurting me in a legal sense, but when you start
21:08
to violate the person and property of others, that's when
21:10
being self-destructive is something that can be
21:12
punishable. And in that case, it's not the
21:13
self destruction that that's being punished, it's the
21:15
violation of others rights. Well, let's maybe not think
21:19
about punishment, but let's think about intervention for a
21:22
second. And would you be willing to
21:24
allow somebody to wither away due to a heroin addiction as
21:30
long as it never touched the rights of others?
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That's the tough one. And there I think there's they,
21:39
this gets back to the destination versus direction
21:42
thing. Yeah, sure.
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Like if we get to the point where the state is small enough
21:45
that all it's doing is running mental institutions and, you
21:48
know, providing space for heroin addict, like hardcore heroin
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addicts in there, OK, then sure. That that might be something
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that is acceptable. Directionally though, I think
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we're a long, long, long way from that.
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And here I think about a lot of the type of self-destructive
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behavior that I see from everybody, college students,
22:08
adults, children, the elderly. A lot of these, unfortunately, I
22:14
think we enable by just letting go off the hook again and again
22:18
and again and again and again for their poor choices and their
22:21
bad behavior. There's a large extent to which
22:24
local knowledge I think is really important too, because
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here we all have experience with loved ones who have suffered the
22:32
result of substance abuse. I can know a lot more about my
22:37
own local situation and what is appropriate for it, and also the
22:41
back story on how these sort of substance abuse issues have
22:45
emerged. I can't know that necessarily
22:48
about people that I don't know about people that have passed
22:51
sleeping in the park. I struggle with the fact that
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for a lot of the homeless I encounter, say, in Birmingham,
22:56
this is obviously a lifestyle choice.
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Maybe it's driven it perhaps by substance abuse, it's driven
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perhaps by serious mental illness, but at some point I
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can't believe that me handing a sandwich to someone who's
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sleeping in the park, even though they're surrounded by
23:12
social service agencies, is really serving them.
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Let me ask you the most difficult question that we tend
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to ask people, and it's one that Ant and I have wrestled with
23:26
over years of talking to each other.
23:29
What do we owe each other? And Ant and I have decided, to
23:34
whatever degree we have decided this, that the answer to that
23:37
question is never nothing. But the answer to that question
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might not be a whole hell of a lot either.
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Right. So where do you land on that one
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and why? More importantly.
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That's a good question. I think more than anything, we
23:53
owe one another respect, and we owe one another specifically the
24:00
recognition of their dignity, and that includes the perils
24:05
that come with poor choices having negative consequences.
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I think the closer people get to each other morally.
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So I think, for example, like I owe my kids a lot more than I
24:14
owe either of you. I owe my dad a lot more than I
24:18
owe complete strangers. We owe the most of the people
24:24
who are closest to us, in part because we have a lot of local
24:27
knowledge and we know the detailed backstories.
24:31
The farther we get from each other morally, the less we can
24:33
know and the less efficiently and effectively we can monitor.
24:37
So we owe less to people the farther they get away from us,
24:41
or it becomes more important relatively for us to respect
24:44
their negative liberties than for us to sort of satisfy their
24:48
positive rights. For listeners, what Art just
24:52
said is we owe to leave them alone.
24:54
That's the negative rights, as opposed to actively give them
24:58
something which is a positive right.
25:00
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
25:01
My obligations to my kids, obviously that's food, clothing,
25:04
shelter. My obligation to a complete
25:07
stranger on the other side of the world is much more in the
25:10
leave them alone camp than it is anything else.
25:14
And of course, obviously you're not take advantage of them by
25:17
force or fraud. In the book, I was so delighted
25:23
you talked about this, because I've never heard an economist
25:26
talk about this. But I've heard plenty of
25:27
theologians and it's something I, I think is really important
25:31
and it would be fruitful for economists to talk about.
25:33
And that is the dignity of work. Yes, the dignity of work I think
25:40
is really important. There's an element of
25:43
consumption value about work, and obviously some people enjoy
25:48
their jobs to a certain extent. Economists can capture this a
25:51
little bit in models of compensating differentials and
25:55
things like that. But when we talk about the
25:57
dignity of work, I think we're talking about something that is
26:02
fundamentally is most capital H human about us.
26:06
Through my perspective as a Christian, it's that we get to
26:09
be Co creators with God or sub creators with God however you
26:13
choose to define it or whichever phrase you want to use.
26:16
We are very much like God when we are exercising our creative
26:21
faculties. When we're not creating
26:24
something out of nothing, but taking the something around us
26:27
and making something new, making something better, making
26:30
something beautiful, Making something that makes it possible
26:34
for the strangers that we talked about a minute ago.
26:37
People in the other side of the world that we may never see, we
26:39
may never get to know. We may not even like them if we
26:41
met them. But to make it possible for them
26:43
to take care of their loved ones and the people in the causes
26:46
that matter to them the most. I think that's an important
26:49
element of work. One that economics, I don't
26:52
think is particularly well equipped to speak to.
26:55
Economists might be well equipped to speak to it, but I
26:57
think economics as such, he's going to be kind of limited in
27:00
his ability to really talk about work at the dignified
27:03
enterprise. But the thing that really
27:04
strikes me is people who support the welfare state, even free
27:09
marketers to an extent, regard work as a negative thing rather
27:14
than a humanizing thing. The most beautiful examples I
27:17
can think of are the piece meal laws that, to my knowledge, were
27:22
designed specifically for people who have developmental
27:26
disabilities. They can't hold down real jobs,
27:29
and so they're paid literally for assembling pieces of
27:33
something. You work for a business and paid
27:36
far below the minimum wage. But the point isn't isn't the
27:41
work, it isn't that the company turn a profit, it's that the
27:44
person have some meaning in their life.
27:45
I get up, I go and I do this thing.
27:49
Yeah, so I remember the movie Dave.
27:51
I don't know if you guys remember this term from the
27:52
90's, the guy who looked exactly like the president and was hired
27:56
to imitate the president. Then the president died and he
27:58
started acting presidential. Something that's always stuck
28:01
with me has been him talking about make it the government's
28:04
job to find a job for everyone in America.
28:06
Now I look back at it and say, OK, maybe that's not such a hot
28:09
idea, But he talked about how there's really no better feeling
28:14
than looking yourself in the mirror and saying that you're
28:16
going to do something important, you're going to rate something,
28:19
you're going to work that, you're going to improve your own
28:22
life and the lives of the people around you.
28:24
There's an element of that in everything.
28:28
And in the case of the heat meal work that you're talking about,
28:31
even the most limited among us can contribute something.
28:36
And I think there's a lot of dignity of that.
28:39
There's a lot of honor to that, and there's a lot of very deep
28:43
human meaning that comes from knowing that you're a
28:46
contributor. So I do know that one of the
28:49
things that surrounded a little bit of the debate over universal
28:52
basic incomes and things like that has been the fact that
28:55
people are realizing they're not getting existential satisfaction
28:58
for mere material consumption. Phrase that I use pretty
29:01
regularly. And I think it might be in the
29:03
book. Again, like we were saying,
29:04
there's some stuff that there's a lot that ended up on the
29:06
cutting room floor and sometimes I forget what's there and what's
29:08
not. You're looking for the meaning
29:11
of life, and to satisfy all of your questions about human
29:14
meaning and the stat food aisle at Walmart, then you're looking
29:18
in the wrong place. There's much more to life than
29:20
consumption. The production element of it is
29:24
one aspect of what it means to participate in God's creation
29:30
that probably doesn't get as much attention as it could or as
29:33
it deserves. Or used a couple of words that
29:36
really tickled me. Dignity and honor, two things
29:40
that I think we've really lost sight of in my lifetime.
29:44
And coupling that with the other discussion on the work, I think
29:49
it's largely a matter of understanding that you're useful
29:53
and valuable, that you have something to contribute, right?
29:56
And most people don't feel useful anymore.
30:01
Therefore dignity and honour are foreign concepts to them.
30:04
And I'm wondering how we might be able to bring these things
30:07
back into focus. That's a really good question
30:10
from a policy perspective. When I tell audiences, when they
30:13
ask, well, what do we do? I'm a big fan of Brian Kaplan
30:16
and his work on immigration, his work on on housing.
30:19
If we work to get rid of barrier to entry into different jobs,
30:23
different professions, get rid of Labor market transaction
30:26
costs, make it easier to build housing and things like that,
30:29
then we're inviting people in to this dignity and this honor.
30:33
That comes with being a contributor, that comes with
30:36
being a creator, that comes with being able to look at yourself
30:38
in the mirror and say I did a thing that helped other people.
30:43
I think that would be a big step in the right direction.
30:47
I'm bullish on regulation under the second Trump administration,
30:52
in part because of the appointment of Casey Mulligan.
30:55
It's a Small Business Administration.
30:56
He's done a lot of really good work on the cost and burdens of
31:00
regulation. And while I don't expect the
31:03
regulatory leviathan to disappear between now and 2028,
31:07
I expect it to at least be shackled a little bit.
31:12
That would be from a policy perspective to say, let's get
31:14
rid of all the stuff that's getting in the way of people
31:16
working to kind of continue that just a TV a little bit.
31:20
My older son, who's 16 right now, has tried to no avail to
31:24
get a job previously. And it's been really
31:27
enlightening to see the rules that govern you if you're under
31:30
16 and want to work, like want to work an actual job, you have
31:34
to have permission from your school, for example.
31:37
So if I were in a position to hire, I would say 16 and up
31:40
only. And in fact, a lot of places
31:42
have said that now that he's 16, he's working on some other
31:45
stuff. I'm not sure if he's going to
31:47
try to go back into the labor force again.
31:49
It might be a little bit easier this time around.
31:52
But I think getting rid of a lot of those restrictions that keep,
31:56
you know, able bodied teenagers out of paid employment, it would
32:01
be another thing that we could kind of laser focus on.
32:04
I've had teenage sons, they need something to do.
32:08
They do, yes. In fact, actually I spend a lot
32:10
of time coming up with stuff for them to do.
32:13
He actually helps me with a lot of projects and his name.
32:16
Maybe not in this book, but a handful of other things I've
32:18
done. Thanking my son for research
32:20
assistance and good conversation in the household too.
32:25
I think we can expect a lot more out of our kids.
32:27
And I'd like to hope that one of the reasons that our kids are
32:32
decent, upstanding people at the ages of 1214 and 16 is that
32:37
they've been contributor to the functioning of the household for
32:41
you pretty much since they were old enough to walk.
32:43
The obviously we weren't sending them out in the factories or
32:46
anything like that, but at some point you're big enough to put
32:49
away the silverware. And I think we can recapture a
32:53
lot of the dignity of contribution by expecting a
32:56
little bit more out of our kids. Over the weekend, I actually
33:00
paid our oldest to replace the bulb in one of the turn signals
33:03
on my car because I don't want to do this.
33:06
My time's to be valuable. It was me because he was clearly
33:09
very proud of himself for having figured it out and gone to the
33:11
auto parts place and done all the work he needed to do it.
33:14
And the money I paid him was nice, but it seemed like that
33:18
was almost secondary to the joy that came from productive work.
33:26
Art, this has been wonderful, thank you.
33:28
Take a minute and tell our listeners where they can get a
33:30
copy of your book. Yeah, so you can pre-order it
33:35
right now anywhere fine books are sold, Amazon.com, various
33:38
other places. The book will appear on April
33:40
1st and you can go to the website neareconomics.com.
33:46
Do you find or you can order the book to find out some more about
33:48
Caleb and myself and to find a seer at the blog post we're
33:52
writing to accompany the book. And in fact, I'm hoping that
33:54
might speak to some of the questions you guys had here and
33:57
that will maybe make their way into the second edition.
33:59
So go to mereeconomics.com. You can find out more about this
34:02
book, find out more about the other things we've written, and
34:05
you can join the conversations. And that's all the time we've
34:08
got this week on words and numbers.
34:10
Until next time, send us. E-mail
34:12
wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com. Try to be nice to one person who
34:16
doesn't deserve it till next week.
34:18
Can't take it easy. See you next week, James.