Arthur Brooks: evaluation

Transcript context

…If we had to compare your political views to those of Oprah Winfrey, and you tried to boil down the difference to as small a number of dimensions as possible, what accounts for the difference? You and she get on great, you respect each other, admire each other, you’ve worked together. Why haven’t you converted her, or she converted you? I think that we probably haven’t tried to convert each other because when we talk to each other, we’re talking about things that are more important to us, like our religious faith because of our desire to actually lift people up in these bonds of happiness and love. We haven’t really talked very much about politics. It’s not because we’ve been avoiding it. It’s the same thing when I talk to my older brother, whom I love. We differ completely on politics because we were raised in Seattle, and he stayed. I went to AEI, and we had different lives for sure, but we never really talk about politics because there are so many more important things than politics. The reason that we haven’t converted each other is probably because we haven’t tried. What do we both care an awful lot about? We really do care about a just society and how to get it. We probably differ in the extent to which government can instantiate that, can actually achieve that. I think we’re pretty close to each other on market economics, as a matter of fact. She’s one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time, as a matter of fact. We both agree that the priority of our capitalist system should be to create equal opportunity. No, not just equal opportunity, the greatest opportunity possible for people at the margins of society. Now she probably has more faith than me in the ability of government to actually achieve that. I have more faith in trying to bring as much market impulse as possible, as much freedom to the poor as we possibly can, but we have the same moral goals, which is one of the reasons that we love each other. Put aside Zelenskyy because I know you honored him when you were running AEI. Who’s a political leader you admire today?…

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