Benjamin Friedman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Your argument in your book on economic growth about the moral benefits of growth — how much is it a levels effect versus a rates-of-growth effect? The hypothesis that I offered in that book very importantly was about the rate-of-growth effect. It’s about people realizing that they are living better than their parents lived. It’s about people realizing that the opportunities for their children are better than the opportunities that they had. It’s very much a rate-of-growth effect. The reason I say that’s important — now going back to the argument I made in that earlier book — the reason it’s important is twofold. One, it was a warning against our being complacent. It’s a warning that no matter how rich our society is, if we get into a situation in which large numbers of people feel that they no longer have a sense of forward progress in their material lives, and they don’t see that turning around anytime soon, and they don’t have optimism either that their children will face a better economic future, that’s the circumstance under which people turn away from these small-l liberal, small-d democratic values, like tolerance and respect for diversity, generosity, openness of opportunity, even respect for democratic political institutions. So, an important aspect of the rate-of-growth aspect of the argument — as opposed to the level aspect — is a warning about our potentially being complacent when we shouldn’t. My former colleague, Alexander Gerschenkron, had this marvelous phrase about a democracy without democrats. Well, he was referring to Weimar Germany, but I think it’s a warning for us very much today in the United States when so many people’s incomes are stagnating. Then, at the same time, the second implication of the fact that it’s a rate-of-growth argument is some optimism that countries around the world, where income levels are far below ours, don’t have to wait until they reach our level of income before they can develop into liberal democracies. Now, as I was saying a minute ago, 20 years ago when I wrote that book, the data gave me much more reason to be optimistic than I am — at least for the short run — now about low-income countries’ democratic prospects. But I still believe in the hypothesis in the long run. Aren’t there some reasons to be more optimistic? If we look at Taiwan, where median income has not really gone up since 1989 in real terms — they seem much more tolerant, much more democratic than they used to be. Japanese economic growth has slowed down. They’re certainly no less democratic, probably more democratic, definitely more tolerant. Haven’t we seen a fairly large number of countries with much slower growth, and whatever their problems or flaws, they seem to be more tolerant — gay rights, rights of women, many different issues?…

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