Voices of Freedom - Interview with Anne Bradley

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

The ubiquitous smartphones that are a staple of modern life provide access to nearly every good or service that one could possibly imagine. We can have food delivered within minutes, book our next vacation, pay a bill, and order our children’s hot lunch all with a swipe of our fingers. We often don’t consider that our numerous digital transactions, saving time and energy, are possible because of free enterprise. The same is true of the countless innovations that make our lives easier. Instead, many today are apt to criticize economic freedom, believing it causes inequity. Our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Anne Bradley. Through research, education and teaching, Anne brings the marvels of free markets to life, with the goal of ensuring that the next generation is prepared to preserve an economic system that creates opportunity and vastly improves lives.     Topics discussed by Anne Bradley and Rick Graber, President and CEO, The Bradley Foundation, include: Finding the economic angle in everything from income inequality to the political economy of terrorism. Teaching economic concepts in a way that’s relatable and accessible.   The link between markets and morality; why the free-market system is the most humane economic system. Markets and the acceleration of materialism. The myth that economic freedom creates and exacerbates income inequality. Industrial policy’s consequences. Where to turn for thoughtful, accurate economic analysis and commentary.  Anne Bradley is the George and Sally Mayer Fellow for Economic Education and vice president of academic affairs at The Fund for American Studies, where she enhances the impact and reach of economic education programs, oversees the development of economics curriculum and teaches economics courses. She is the author of several books on the intersection of theology and economics and is working on a book about the political economy of terrorism.  

Hello and welcome to Voices of Freedom, a Bradley Foundation podcast. I'm Rick Graber, President and CEO of the Bradley Foundation. On the podcast, we'll explore issues that affect our freedoms with a focus on free enterprise, free speech, and educational freedom. So let's get started. Many of the criticisms of the free market system center around morality and perceptions about the ways markets actually work. Some argue that it cultivates a materialistic society, leading people astray

from deeper priorities and core values. It widens the gap between rich and poor, squeezing the middle out. And some claim it leaves too many behind, especially the most disadvantaged. On the other hand, free market advocates argue that it has led to the greatest advances in human history, lifting people out of poverty, improving mortality, fueling innovation. I can think of two brothers from Milwaukee, Lynde and Harry Bradley, who would wholeheartedly agree theyished free markets and limited government and would attribute their success to them. With us to discuss all the complexities and benefits of economic freedom is Dr. Anne Bradley. By the way, Anne is not related to the Bradley brothers. She is the George and Sally

Meyer Fellow for Economic Education and Vice President of Academic Affairs at the Fund for American Studies, or TFAS, a truly outstanding organization. At TFAS, she works to enhance the impact and reach of economic education programs. She oversees the development of economic curricula and teaches economics courses. She's the author of several books on the intersection of theology and economics and is currently working on a book about the political economy of terrorism. Anne, it is great to have you. Welcome. I look forward to our conversation. Rick, thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to be here. My pleasure. Well, Anne, let's jump in. Your background in economics covers a lot of ground. You handle curriculum development, as I mentioned at the top, and you evaluate economics courses. You've authored several books. And your academic work ranges from question of income inequality

to the political economy of terrorism. It sure seems like you see an economic angle in just about everything. Am I right? You are right. You are right. All right. I do think that that's what makes economics so exciting to study. And when I'm in the classroom, I really focus on that with students. I think that we can view economics as just kind of know, kind of mathematical macroeconomic kind of stuff that doesn't feel like it relates to our lives. There's nothing wrong with those things, by the way, but I don't think that's how you get excited about economics. So for me, the way you do that and the way we inspire people to ask the questions that you led with, right? There are people who are very worried about the growth of market economies, they believe that it has exploited people, left people behind, created

lots of inequalities. And then there's the other side, right? Which is, you know, kind of free market capitalism is the world's most amazing and miraculous anti poverty program, that has actually brought egalitarian consumption to, you know, ordinary people like you and me. So that fight wages on. And I think to wade into that debate, which is a debate of ideas, we have to get students and just anyone really excited about what economics is. And so if you start, my joke is that I live outside of Washington, D.C., and so there's lots of cocktail parties in D.C. where people kind of talk about all sorts of wonky stuff. And the best way to get somebody to leave your presence at a cocktail party is to joke on about GDP, right? Because nobody cares. You know, people don't lose sleep over this, but people do care about their

livelihoods, about their kids. How am I going to take care of my parents? Can I afford to send my kids to college? Am I going to get a job that's a good job? These are the decisions of our lives. And I think economics, my professor Pete Becky in graduate school always told us they provided the glasses by which we could clearly see the world. And that does a couple of things for us. It allows us to ask different questions, perhaps, than we would before. I also think it injects intellectual humility

into the solutions that we offer for the world. And so that's fun, right? That's exciting. And I think when we distill economics down to the fundamentals, which is about human beings, how they make decisions and their quest both to improve their own lives, but also most of us want to live in peace and harmony with other people, right? And so those are mutual wants of everyone. And I think if you start there, it becomes much more humanitarian, which I think it is, and much more interesting. Well, let's drill down on that just a little bit. And truly your main area of focus at TFAS is economics education.

And for a lot of young people, in fact, I'll go beyond that. I'd say for most people, it can be really tough to grasp economic concepts. And you alluded to that. How can it be taught in a way that's accessible, relatable, understandable? I think we all struggle with that. We do. Maybe you don't, but a lot of people do. Yes. And I think that sometimes when students come into the classroom, they're checking a box with the economics class that, you know, as undergraduates, they may say, I have to take

this class. I just want to get through it. And I understand that because the perception, again, is that economics is just obtuse and not relevant. And so what we talk about as the economic way of thinking, right, which is just kind of what are the basic principles that are that are true, that can inform how we ask questions. So students also it's exciting to watch their energy because they do want to talk about how to make the world better. They do want to talk about inequality. And, you know And for example, is the minimum wage a good idea? And economics provides a non-ideological framework to have the conversations. And that's what I love about it. It's interesting. Whether you're on the far left or the far right, and we get everybody in our classrooms, if they perceive you as advancing an ideology, they won't listen to you.

They won't learn from you. And they won't, most importantly, learn how to think like an economist. But if they view us as humble students of the world that have the same questions they do, but we've studied economics enough to say, we have some frameworks to help you think about wading through these tough issues,

that's how we get them excited. And so the first week or two, regardless of the class I teach, master's level, undergraduate, and regardless of the type of course, if it's econ, I'm going to start with human nature. Because we are talking about how human beings make decisions under conditions of scarcity and uncertainty. And so what are the truths of human nature that are always true across all people, all times in history, race, gender, et cetera? And so that to them is also, I think, exciting

because that's personal, right? And then we talk about what are the economic realities that you have to obey? So it's, and I always give the example, you know, it's like, I can reject gravity, I cannot understand the math behind gravity. But if I walk off the top of a tall building, gravity gets me every time. It's a real constraint I have to face. And so economics, even though it's a social science, which means we're looking at how humans behave, we face laws of

economics, right? Scarcity, incentives matter, costs matter, constraints matter. And so when we can walk students through those, which are, I think, largely intuitive ideas, and they start to grasp them, then economics becomes really fun and really exciting for them. And that is my goal. That I think should be our goal as economic educators, not help them check the box, but help them realize, I didn't know this was so important and so fun. I wish you had been my instructor many, many years ago. It sounds fantastic. Let me ask you a core question, and that is, why do you think economic freedom is more

humane than any other economic system that anyone can think of? Yeah, this is such a great and important question. And I think economic freedom, when I use, and I think when you use that phrase, we mean capitalized economic freedom, right? We have a lot of data that, and we have the Economic Freedom of the World Index and the Economic Freedom of the World Report. Many nonprofit organizations, including the Fraser Institute, publish this data every year. And so why do I think it's powerful? Because I actually think what Milton Friedman's idea was in the 70s was we talk about this word prosperity and everybody can hear that word and say, that sounds pretty good, right? That means I'm going to have choice.

I'm going to have stability. I might have some income mobility. I might have a happy life. So we kind of know vaguely what it means. But I think what the genius of Friedman was, let's try to measure it. Because if we can measure it, then we can understand in our own country what's going well, what's not going well, maybe at all. And then we can understand the marginal improvements that one can make

to try to get more economic freedom, right, which just means more protection of your private property rights, higher standards. So we connect economic freedom to this quest for human flourishing. I think that's a really important thing to do. And then I have, you know, kind of I try to have my students and that hurts the poor the most because they can't hire, for example, high powered attorneys to lobby for them at their state capital. That again, that goes back to the humanitarian element. They understand that that seems wrong, that's unfair, and that the regulations are often creating winners and losers. And so then we can have a conversation of how could you change these regulations. But I do think it helps us understand we can't change everything that's

wrong in our country or the world overnight. We can't make 180 degree shifts. But I think what we can do is use data like the economic freedom data, and it helps us to make marginal improvements to ask different types of questions. And I think, you know, if we can all understand the benefits of economic freedom, we can go from there. So I think there's a couple steps to getting there for most people. So it's hard to get people excited about data too, but we try because it's really important to say, let's just not talk vaguely about these concepts, but let's really put some meat on them so we can understand, you know, again, a country like Venezuela, economic freedom helps us understand exactly what happened there,

right? Versus saying, I don't know, was it an accident? Did they just make some, you know, no, this was clear policy mistakes that lead to economic downfall and rising authoritarianism. It's a really clear example. I mean, you've given some thought to the relationship between economics and theology, and we live in an age of consumerism. And we've all heard this argument that free market is responsible for accelerating materialism, making people more attached to goods than family and friends. Is there any truth in that? Is there data that supports that? Right. I guess I would say that I think we've always lived in an age of consumerism. So when people say that, they often say they're thinking about

kind of life in the 21st century. And certainly, I'm talking to you digitally right now, and I can see your face. That's an amazing advancement in technology. So we have a lot of stuff. But I think you can go back to it just in the economics tradition. You can look at what Adam Smith said about all this. Right. It's kind of warnings about materialism. But, you know, you can also go back theologically and look at scripture and see the warnings of materialism. So I really think that materialism is just part of kind of this human desire for instant happiness.

And that was just as relevant in ancient history as it is today. I think the difference today is that we have a lot of cheap stuff. And so we can use those to try to kind of quell our desires, right? If I buy more cars, or if I have a bigger house, or if I have all this stuff, then I'm going to be happier. But I think we all know that at the end of the day, you know, dying with the most toys doesn't mean that you win. So I do think those is kind of the spiritual needs that people have that go beyond what just raw, you know, kind of income can give you. But I don't want to understate the importance of income growth. I mean, one thing that it gives us from a human

flourishing perspective is the ability to live longer lives. And that's not just about having more cars in your driveway, right? Like most people with 90, they do not care how many cars are in the driveway, they're happy to be alive, happy to see grandchildren, that type of thing. As an example of this, I have a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old, and I dropped my 13-year-old son off to get his haircut. He's like a teenager now, so he doesn't need me to scan the hair. So I was wasting time. Yeah, I was wasting time. And I went into a Hallmark store, just walking around. And in the Hallmark store, there was a pick, there was a hundred, happy hundredth birthday card. And I took a picture of it. And I now talk about it obsessively because it's like the greedy capitalists, right? Are selling hundredth

birthday cards. But Adam Smith taught us that the sole purpose of production is consumption. So the greedy capitalists, if that's what you want to call them, are only selling 100th birthday cards because people are buying them. That's what people care about, right? Long, happy, fulfilling lives. And I think just having extra cars in the driveway doesn't get you there. But if you throw out income growth, you throw out all the other things that come with it, right? So you throw out long lives, you throw out the battle we have with cancer, the battle we've had with heart disease. You can't fight those battles successfully without income growth, innovation, entrepreneurship, and all the rest. So I think it's much bigger than just stuff. Very true. Let's talk a little bit about a debate that frankly is raging within the center right now. And that, I mean, there about a debate that, frankly, is raging within the center right right now.

I mean, there's a perception that the free market system has left people behind, and that's animating some on the right, unfortunately, in my perspective, but it's happening, who have recently been pushing for more government intervention in the economy. And a great example of that is the passage last year, the CHIPS Act, which provided $39 billion in direct aid to chip makers. And it did receive significant Republican support. Yet we've seen time and time again that when the government gets involved, it almost always comes with some strings attached. Companies who want to receive eight almost inevitably have to comply with social policies. And frankly, DEI comes quickly to mind. Talk to us about your perceptions of industrial policy. Good thing, bad thing. You know, I'm foreshadowing my own opinion on this, but

I tend to think it's misguided. Am I wrong? I don't think that you are. I do not think that you are. And I think the reason you and I would come to that perspective kind of almost on an intuitive level is something that has come up a little bit in our conversation already, which is, you know, just kind of thinking about, I mentioned it with regulatory reform, thinking about who are going to be the winners and who are going to be the losers. And here's the thing that you can't get away from ever. Whenever you have economic growth, you are going to displace the old way of doing things and replace it with the new way of doing things, right? So I just, I remember being in graduate school and buying my first, I mean, I'm, you know,

I'm a lot older than my students, so they've had a phone in their hands forever. But when I bought my first phone, it was a Nokia brick and I kind of wish I would have kept it because it's just now an ancient artifact of old phone technology. I was so happy with that phone. And, you know, it didn't really do very much compared to today's phones. But that phone has been replaced through the process of what we would call creative destruction, right? And it's consumers demanding more out of their phones, and the phone company or the phone makers giving that to us and competing with each other, right? You don't get that unless Nokia competes with Samsung and Apple and all these companies. And so I think that people worry about that. And that's reasonable to worry. It's reasonable to worry that as you trade with more countries, some of the things that we used to do here, we are not going to do anymore. But what economics

teaches us is that that is actually a good thing for Americans. As we start to trade with more people across the world, right? Adam Smith talked about widening the circles of exchange, which means you trade with more people. It means that you're going to change what you produce, but it's also related directly to increasing your own productivity and increasing your own productivity is how you grow rich and how your nation goes grows rich so you and i kind of understand i think that premise and thus we see modern industrial policy as the government intervening into a market and necessarily creating winners and losers. Now, some people might say, I don't

care. That's fine, right? I'm pro-American. And so I want American manufacturing. So there's a lot of arguments on the right, the new right, which you're referring to, which is we've hollowed out the middle class, we've destroyed small towns, we've gutted the manufacturing sector, all these kinds of things. And I think sometimes what I'm, what I wish we would do is just pay more attention to the data that are available to us. If you look at the U.S. Manufacturing Center, the United States is still a manufacturing powerhouse, an absolute powerhouse, but we've replaced lots of what used to be done by people in manufacturing plants with machines. The good news about that, or let's do the bad news first. The bad news is if you used to be done by people in manufacturing plants with machines. The good news about that,

or let's do the bad news first. The bad news is if you used to be one of those workers, you have to find other work. That's clearly true. There's temporary displacement. I don't think we should just pretend that that's not a problem for people. But the good news is that as Americans, and they have shown this, become more productive over the 20th century, which they have, including manufacturing workers. They're far more productive than they were 70 years ago, which means you don't need as many manufacturing workers because those as a pie because that makes it sound fixed. And I think that's what's behind lots of advocacy for industrial policy is they view it as, you know, if we outsource to China, for example, that means we have job loss. Yes. But in the longer run, we have more jobs and they're better jobs.

So, you know, Americans still need lower skilled labor work. That's the beauty of a free market economy, too. You need all types of labor. And so what I don't like about industrial policy is it A, assumes that the market has failed. And you hear this on the left and the new right. So the market is failing and doing all these things that we don't like. And then the second assumption is that the government can come in in kind of a benign way and fix market distortions as if the markets aren't already distorted. And that's a kind of muddled narrative that I think we need to just really be repetitive

and clear and winsome on why that's not the narrative, right? So first of all, in many cases, these are not free markets in the first place. They already have distortions. And so you're asking the government to come in and they're going to distort the distortions further. And in the process, we're going to create sanctioned winners and sanctioned losers. And what usually happens as a result is you lose innovation. And, you know, you raise prices for consumers. And how is that a pro American attitude, right? If we care about American well-being, we want them to have more job access, more productive jobs, and lower cost goods and services. So I think it's just, we have to, but look, that just took a long time. And, you know, this is a short- Oh, it was a great answer. Great answer. I mean, do you think those of us on the right who are

advocates for markets, just, do you think we just have to do a better job of communicating a message that I'm not sure we've been winning on? I agree. I agree that I'm not sure we've been winning on it either. I think that if, so to answer your question, if I look at the conversations that happen on Twitter, for example, or excuse me, right, I don't don't, very productive, because it's just kind of people that are yelling at each other. And you don't have a lot of characters to make a long argument. And so I think we probably need to, in some ways, do less of that. People might disagree with me. But I think, you know, I think we need to recognize that markets always mean transition. And that means some people are going to lose their jobs. And so I think part of what we have to do for the emotional appeal is say,

that's real. We can't pretend it's not real. But then I think we need people to stay along with us so that we can demonstrate to them how that doesn't mean that we're just going to gut the entire American economy or something. And by the way, the middle class isn't getting gutted. The middle class is shrinking because people are getting richer. You only hear the first part of that sentence, the middle class is shrinking, comma, because the upper income quintile is getting bigger. That's exciting, but I think we just need to show that to people. So sometimes when I share that, people are like, I have never heard that before. So part of it is being winsome, but part of it is being both theoretical and empirical.

If we can do those three things, we can make a lot of traction. Really important point. Related topic. And I guess it's a topic of the day, so-called Bidenomics. And the administration is saying that there are three pillars to Bidenomics, whatever that means. First of all, making smart investments in America. And again, what does that mean? Empowering and educating workers to grow the middle class. You just addressed that.

And promoting competition to lower costs. Help entrepreneurs thrive and so forth. I mean, are they capable of delivering what they're promising in the way that they're trying to deliver it? I bet you it might. I'll let you go. No, we might agree on this, right? Which is to say that the presumption behind those three things

is that the government knows not only what the problems are, but how to implement the solutions in a benign way without creating market distortions, without creating cronyism, without creating winners and losers. I think that's a very tall set of assumptions. And history is not on the side of that argument that governments can, even in the American government, right? We cannot do that well. We have not done that well. Seems like a bad idea to me. Absolutely. Well, I mean, to bring this full circle, to really start where we began, there's a lot of misconception around various economic policies. And I think it's due in large part to a lack of understanding about economic principles, certainly as reflected in the media's

reporting, or I would argue, non-reporting on economic issues. There just isn't much. Where do people turn to get an accurate account of economic policy? And clearly something, and you've made the case, that affects them every single day. But where does the average guy go? Yeah, this is, Rick, a great question, an important question. I'm going to first answer your question with saying where I think they should not go. Yes. Which is, I just think we need to turn off our TVs, at least turn off the news. You can watch whatever you want, right? But turn off the news. I think this is a prop to the 24 hour highly polarized kind of modern media that we have today is just kind of people talking into echo chambers and working up the base. I think that's true both

on the right and the left. So in our family, we've made a decision kind of from day one, we just do not watch the news, we read the news, we stay informed. But I think without being able to, you know, without listening to it and watching people, it kind of takes the tone down a little bit. So I would say people just feel free to turn it off, free yourself from that. Cause I think we feel like we get in, you know, you feel like a slave to it over time.

So that's kind of maybe what not to do or what, and I'm not saying get off Twitter. I think, you know, I get a lot of good information. I learn what, you know, smart people are working on, and I learn their opinions, I think that's valuable. But I also think that there's really solid research oriented organizations, I think Cato is amazing in terms of a lot of their work they're doing, particularly on China, globalization, free trade. And that gets back to a question that you asked me moments ago, which is, you know, the right is walking away from free trade.

That is very concerning. It's not the first time they've done it. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised. But if we lose free trade, we're losing a lot. And so I think that there's a lot at stake in this debate. And so I think Cato and the lot at stake in this debate. And so I think Cato, the Fraser Institute, which I mentioned earlier, they're doing work on economic freedom. That's where I stay informed about what's going on. I think there's a lot of kind of Mercatus Center

at George Mason University. Also, they're putting out... Outstanding work there, yes. Yes. So I think it's thinking about serious scholars who are taking on serious issues and writing thoughtfully about them. That's where I try to go. So if it's trade, you know, I kind of kind of think of who, who I would ask a question of. And I kind of go and see, have they written anything about this? Because none of us know everything. We all need to be learning from each other. And I think, you know, again, social media provides an amazing way for us to do that. I think podcasts like this are very helpful, right? Because you can, instead of turning on the, in your car, turning on the news, turn on this. TFAS has one, right? Russ Roberts has an amazing EconTalk podcast. So there's so many amazing podcasts out there where maybe you're not getting up-to-date moment-to-moment news, but we're talking about the ideas. And talking deeply about the ideas helps you filter the news you're getting. And that's essential. Well, I think that's a good idea. And there are a lot of people, maybe most people that don't have the patience to sit down

and read a long white paper from a Cato or someone like that. So podcasts, something where you can get it in shorter bites, I think can be helpful, is being helpful. Last question, Anne. We've talked about a lot of topics today. What's the one thing you'd like our audience to take away from our conversation today? Economics is not dry, boring, unrelated to your life. It is about really making the world a better place. And I do think we all care about that. So I would hope that what people would take away from is that it can be very inspiring. It can give you hope. So bad news is so popular right now. Bad news sells. Deirdre McCloskey said one time, I'll never forget it, in a talk she was giving, she said, I should write

books with kind of bad news titles because the people buy those books, right? But if you write a book saying everything's getting better or lots of things are getting better, people just kind of dismiss that. So we have this kind of tendency towards the negative. I think economics gives you a real reason to be optimistic, not Pollyanna, but optimistic about our ability to continue to make improvements. And also, again, it provides those glasses by which we can ask lots of really interesting questions. As you mentioned, my research is all over the place because I'm really interested in just different kind of elements of social change. So I can apply it to terrorism. I have a friend who works on the economics of dating. You can look at the economics of cartels and prison gangs. I have a friend who does that.

So it's just there's nothing off the table in some ways. And I think that's exciting for people. And at the end of the day, we're all so fortunate to live in a country where you truly can make a difference. You can chart a path in whatever direction you want. And that simply is not true in a lot of places in the world. Amen. And it's due to a great economy that continues to present opportunity for everyone. Absolutely. Anne Bradley, thanks so much for spending time with us today. Thanks for your outstanding work at TFES, a great, great organization that our foundation has supported for many, many years. We really do appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

And as always thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of Voices of Freedom