The TU community is invited to participate in the TU Political Economy Project’s Spring Speakers Series, which features three talks about various economic issues. A week before each guest speaker’s talk, interested attendees are invited to gather for a pre-talk discussion on the topic to come up with questions prior to the talk.
Talk 1: The Myth of Middle-Class Stagnation
March 10, 5-6:16 p.m., CLA 1201
Speaker: Don Boudreaux, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, George Mason University
Description: For twenty years now, many professors, pundits, and politicians have asserted that middle-class Americans have been “treading water” – not enjoying any improvement in their living standards – since the mid-1970s. There are indeed data and statistics that support this stagnation story. But those data and statistics, and the stagnation story they tell, are fundamentally misleading. Middle-class Americans, at least up until the 2008 financial crisis, have continued to enjoy substantial improvements in their economic well-being since the 1970s.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE
Pre-talk group discussion: Tues. March 3, 5-6:15 p.m., Stephens Hall, room 207
Talk 2: Slavery and American Capitalism: Partners or Antagonists?
April 7, 5-6:15 p.m., CLA 1201
Speaker: Phil Magness, Ph.D., Policy historian and Academic Program Director at the Institute for Humane Studies
Description: The complex relationship between slavery and the history of American capitalism has proven a subject of recurring interest for historians, with many recent scholarly works suggesting that the two emerged interdependently. In its more extreme form, the moral stain of slavery is said to be a feature or product of a capitalist economic system. This presentation will explore the neglected antislavery roots of market capitalism, arguing instead that historical slavery in the United States is better understood as a product of an aggressive and violent enforcement state, a politically entrenched slaveholder class, and an accompanying anti-market ideology.
Short Readings:
- The Secret History of the Dismal Science – David Levy and Sandra Peart http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/LevyPeartdismal.html
- The Other Adam Smith (Part III) – George H. Smith http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/excursions/other-adam-smith-part-3
- Slavery and Capitalism – Sven Beckert http://chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787
Pre-talk group discussion: Tues. March 31, 5-6:15 p.m., Stephens Hall, room 207
Talk 3: The Right to Earn a Living—Fact or Farce?
April 28, 5-6:15 p.m., CLA 1201
Speaker: Clark Neily, Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
Description: We often ask children what they want to be when they grow up, but for many people the real question is what will the government allow you to be when you grow up? Over the past half-century, there has been an explosion in occupational licensing laws and other government-imposed restrictions on people’s ability to earn an honest living. And while courts recognize that right in theory, in practice they have rendered it essentially meaningless by rubber-stamping even the most preposterous regulations, including Louisiana’s licensing of florists and Florida’s requirement that interior designers have a college degree and complete a two-year apprenticeship. We will consider the importance of the right to earn a living, why legislatures are so prone to interfere with it, and the judiciary’s feckless response.
Short reading: Neily, “Bureaucrats v. The American Dream” http://www.ij.org/bureaucrats-vs-the-american-dream
Video: Institute for Justice: “Why Can’t Chuck Get His Business Off the Ground?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQscE3Xed64
Pre-talk group discussion: Tues. April 21, 5-6:15 p.m., Stephens Hall, room 207
