Robert Solow: Ninety-Eight Years of Economic Wisdom | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 108

Robert Solow is 98 years old and a giant among economists. He tells Steve about cracking German codes in World War II, why it’s so hard to reduce inequality, and how his field lost its way.
This episode was originally published June 23, 2023.
For a full transcript, resources, and more, visit: freak.ws/46kx2kS
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[@Rahul-lr1bj]

Rest in Peace Dr. Solow 🙏

[@gordonericwinston4420]

Dr. Solow is 98 and can instill teach, wow

[@EtruscanRecords]

I know nothing about economics, as a matter of fact I don’t even have a degree but I enjoyed this interview so much, thank you😊

[@bennguyen1313]

Regarding how economic growth is fueled by consuming natural resources.. on the recent TRIGGERnometry, Eric Weinstein suggests that that we've outgrown the idea of continuous economic growth started after WW2 (1945), and that a new model is needed, yet everyone is still talking capitalism vs communism. (BTW, Robin Hanson and Holden Karnofsky suggest that assuming continual economic growth of ~2 percent a year would (in 1000 years) require every atom within 10,000 light years to produce an economic output of 10^60.. trillions of times the economic output of the world today). On the Freakonomics podcast (#429), it's mentioned that once a country attains a certain level of wealth, using GDP as the metric to track is counter-productive. Similar to how using using money as a proxy for individual happiness doesn't work once you've reached a certain level of income. Using GDP leads to detrimental environmental impacts outside of its boundaries and causes a country to lose focus on areas where improvements can actually be made. Would love to hear a roundtable discussion with Robert Solow, Eric Weinstein, Tyler Cowen (channeling Ken Arrow), Larry Summers, and of course, Slavoj Zizek.. who has been warning about capitalism for the last 30 years! Finally, some people like David Graeber / Daniel Markovits / Luke Smith suggest that many jobs today, are at best, busy-work and unnecessary and at worst, a burden to society. Perhaps now is the time to think what people will do, once full-time work is obsolete for a large percentage of the public.

[@schmetterling4477]

Continuous economic growth (with spurts of regression) has been the fact of life for at least 8000 years. It hasn't stopped, either, which should be obvious to everybody who has set foot into a store that sells televisions and smart phones lately. Western countries are simply growing very slowly in terms of GDP and GDP per person, but they are still growing extremely quickly in terms of quality of life. Much faster, actually, than at any other time in history, probably. Economists who don't account for that simply don't know what they are talking about.