56 min listen
What’s Happening to Our Economy Is Like a Natural Disaster
What’s Happening to Our Economy Is Like a Natural Disaster
ratings:
Length:
69 minutes
Released:
Jan 29, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
The Biden administration’s first legislative priority is a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package. It’s the kind of mega-package where the individual policies contained inside it — a $15 minimum wage, $1,400 checks, a huge child tax credit expansion, a $50 billion virus testing infrastructure — would be big deals on their own. But together, this would be one of the most consequential packages ever passed.So there’s a lot to talk about here. And who better to talk about it with than my now-colleague Paul Krugman? We dig into the details of the plan and then spiral off into some other topics I wanted to run by the nearest Nobel laureate: the major rethinking of debt and deficits among left-of-center economists, the differences between Keynesians and Modern Monetary Theorists, how Krugman made a bunch of money off Bitcoin (it’s not how you’d think!), why progressives need a better theory of technological change, Krugman’s favorite indie bands of the mid-2000s, and more.Mentioned in this episode: “Notes on the Coronacoma (Wonkish)” by Paul Krugman“Why Markets Boomed in a Year of Human Misery” by Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai“Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits?” By Jason Furman and Lawrence Summers“Public Debt: Fiscal and Welfare Costs in a Time of Low Interest Rates” by Olivier Blanchard“America’s anti-democratic Senate, in one number” by Ian MillhiserBook Recommendations: “Laundry Files” series by Charlie Stross“Merchant Princes” series by Charlie Stross“The Price of Peace” by Zachary CarterBand Recommendations: The Be Good TanyasLarkin PoeReina del CidYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.
Released:
Jan 29, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Should We Dim the Sun? Will We Even Have a Choice?: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” Stewart Brand famously wrote in “The Whole Earth Catalogue.” Human beings act upon nature at fantastic scale, altering whole ecosystems, terraforming the world to our purposes, breeding new species into existence and driving countless more into extinction. The power we wield is awesome. But Brand was overly optimistic. We did not get good at it. We are terrible at it, and the consequences surround us. That’s the central theme of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.” And yet, there is no going back. We will not return to a prelapsarian period where humans let nature alone. Indeed, as Kolbert shows, there is no natural nature left — we live in the world (and in particular, a climate) we altered, and are altering. The awful knowledge that our interventions have gone awry again and again must be paire by The Ezra Klein Show