Ed Conard recently joined Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield to discuss his Oxford University Press chapter, “The Economics of Inequality in High-Wage Economies,” at Harvard University’s Program on Constitutional Government. The video, audio, and text of his speech and the Q&A session are available below.
Opening Speech
AUDIO
Q&A PART 1
AUDIO
Q&A PART 2
AUDIO
14 Questions for Ed Conard
Tom Palmer (Snr. Fellow, Cato Institute): Do we have the ability to recruit high-skilled labor from around the world? Can we identify and restrict immigration only to them? What happens to the rest of the world if the U.S. recruits their best and brightest?
Jeff Bristol (Snr. Partner, Parrish Associates): Is a return to a 1960s economy a viable alternative to your proposed policies i.e. close the borders, build a wall, and reindustrialize our low-skilled workers? Would reindustrializing low-skilled labor allow them to eventually become high-skilled labor?
David Epstein: What about the demand-side view of productivity growth and income/wealth inequality? Does income/wealth inequality slow growth because there isn’t enough consumption to demand goods and services?
Bernhardt Trout (Prof. Chemical Engineering, MIT): Your proposal could lead to further working-class decline. How would you help the working class? Secondarily, how does your proposal for recruiting high-skilled labor consider U.S. security, political impact, and cultural systems since many immigrants won’t necessarily share our values?
Harvey Mansfield (Prof. Government, Harvard University): What is the driving force that your argument relies on? Isn’t it culture, as opposed to purely economics?
Peter Hansen: What are the synergies between MBAs and engineers? What do the MBAs bring to productivity that engineers and entrepreneurs can’t?
Eileen McDonagh (Prof. Political Science, Northeastern University): America’s founding myth is rebellion and mistrust of centralized government. Does that impede society and government cooperation to solve our biggest challenges?
Avi Nelson (Entrepreneur + fmr. Radio Host): Do you see resentment of wealth and income inequality as the driver of Trump or was it political correctness and the denigration of America by the left? Is economic resentment really the issue?
Andy Zwick (Exec. Director of Harvard’s Program on Constitutional Gov’t): How does technology affect lower-skill workers, i.e. worker training vs software that allows lower-skilled workers to serve functions with less formal training? Is there an opportunity for software to improve lower-skill workers’ productivity?
Anna Schmidt: Should there be government incentives to encourage people to study computer engineering and software development? Is the future very big companies occupying multiple niches, like Amazon? What is your view of universal basic income (UBI)?
Avi Nelson (Entrepreneur + fmr. Radio Host): Is there any country that utilizes its talented workers as well as U.S.? If not, why has the U.S. been so uniquely successful? Is there a formula others could follow to replicate U.S. success?
David Epstein: Who benefits most from a high-skill worker optimizing the productivity of a low-skill worker? Does increased low-skilled productivity translate into higher low-skilled wages?
Jeff Bristol (Snr. Partner, Parrish Associates): Is another answer to inequality and redistribution something akin to workers guilds?
Paul Peterson (Prof. of Government, Harvard Kennedy School): What impact has the COVID-19 pandemic had on the economy? It looks to me like the largest upward redistribution of wealth in history.