I believe that growth can benefit all Americans, yet while our GDP has tripled in size from 1975 to 2015, average wages have barely risen. The response from both political parties has been to double down on policies that have failed to address this reality Maybe they’re missing something crucial in their economic calculations. A focus on work. Author and scholar Oren Cass explains on my new podcast. www.cgtv.us
It’s long seemed obvious that if we want to truly fix education, actually make it work for the 21st century, we need to kill a stockyard full of our sacred cows. And we had just the man for the job on The Bill Walton Show this week. Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University and author of “The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is Waste of Time and Money,” described the findings in his book and provided some stark recommendations based on them. First, he said, we need to understand what we’re doing in school. There is the romantic version, he said – you go, learn skills employers are interested in, then get jobs with those employers performing those skills. More likely is what he calls the “signaling school of education.” You mostly go to school to get certification, “a bunch of seals of approval saying, ‘Grade A worker’ or ‘Grade B worker.’” But, regardless of the grade, you need a seal.
Every day, we’re confronted by headlines that reveal the ever-widening chasm between left and right in America. What’s driving this hyper-polarization? And are there any solutions? Thanks to a stimulating conversation with National Affairs Editor Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and independent scholar and economist Arnold Kling, I’m learning that there are some pretty fundamental cultural trends that we need to understand if we want to get at the roots of our frustrations. In part, they lie in what Yuval calls the “politics of nostalgia.” For Arnold, the author of The Three Languages of Politics, our speech is exacerbating America’s political divide.
John discusses his new book, The End of Work, and the importance of finding a vocation you love.