On the most recent episode of Econception, my podcast with the American Institute for Economic Research, I talked to Samuel Gregg about industrial policy. (At Capital Matters, we ran an excerpt on that subject from his book The Next American Economy in 2022.) We discuss some of the common arguments for industrial policy and why, in Gregg’s view, they come up short.
I then go on to talk about Scott Lincicome’s recent newsletter for the Dispatch about what the economic literature actually says about the “China shock.” It’s probably different from the versions of it you may have heard from politicians or pundits.
Since it’s Tax Day, I also talk about how the media cover claims about whether the rich pay their “fair share” in taxes. It turns out that years of misleading statements from politicians and activists have probably warped Americans’ view of how progressive the federal income tax really is.
For the Paper of the Episode, Gregg picked a recent paper by two NR contributors, Bryan Cutsinger and Alexander William Salter, from the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University. It’s about the role of price theory in economics. Read it here.
And listen to Econception wherever you get your podcasts. An easy link to several different platforms is here.