We tell the story in the book, Susan Peterson had been a guest on the show shark tank, the ratio. She had a business making this stylish baby moccasins were kids to wear. She started with the talent because she didnt have any money. What she did as asked her brother who had a window business as she got follow him around the summer and keep the discarded window frame. She is bringing out the class and tuned in for 200 thats how she started her business and now its successful. If the last that she any opportunities . Just in the abstract, you would think she doesnt have any money paid but because she set a goal and took the responsibility for achieving it, she was able to see some in there was an opportunity a potential opportunity to turn it into success or thats what you want to say full text presenting other peoples opportunities and look around at the once open to you. The mac but the highlight, the reason you cant have the government promote one persons opportunities is the only way you can do it is that other peoples expense. Number one thing i would like to see is the government stop taking away peoples opportunity which it does way too much a beard hopefully we will talk more about this. If you take things like minimum wage, they will hike up to 15 an hour over the next two years. Occupation occupational licensing laws, an Education System that leaves them in their kids, or americans that a good education. These are the Things Holding back a bit of them that they havent gotten big enough handouts. They got handicapped by Government Intervention. Host with these increases in the minimum wage, people cannot get any job at all. It is troubling us is spreading across the country. New york state to be the next in the name of getting rid of inequality. Guest so there is a big debate in the literature about one side says the minimum wage creates unemployment. The other sites as we look at the studies. We can think about this in a much more simple way, which is that i cant find somebody willing to offer me 15 billion an hour to work, the minimum wage that its illegal for me to work. I have this book an issue for the perspective of philosophy. One of the things philosophy is concerned with is justice. Even if it were true that 99 of the people get a higher wage of only 1 of the people get stopped from working by Something Like the minimum wage, that is unjust. You cant prop up some people by obliterating the futures of other people who are unable to take that first step on the road to success. Host academic economists conclude that its just the young and unskilled that are hurt by these increases in the minimum wage. Its really those we are preventing him from getting their foot on the first run of the career ladder. So it is very troubling that in california and perhaps new york teenagers arent going to be able to get jobs. Guest no, it is really sad and really tragic and ignores the main thing that people need to succeed here this is really the story of American History as an open road. An open road to success. Go back before we have a welfare state, before the government was doing anything to let things out. Here is out. Heres a time when human beings only have economic progress for a relatively short amount of time. Yet people were able to come here and build successful life for themselves because here as opposed to their home countries, nobody was kind of stop you from doing what you judge best for your life. The same thing is true here. The more that we open the road to project of the treatment and stop putting blockades and barriers in the way of that, that is what really will about everybody regardless to have the maximum opportunity to achieve success and happiness. Host yes, yes. You say in your book, quote, no one can exploit you with monetary trade. There are always charlatans who prey on the uninformed. Look at the diesel cars, for example, without they were buying low emissions vehicles. Is there a notable for the government such as the trade mission to make sure that what people are saying is true, or do you think theres any role for laws that say children under some age, such as 15 or 12 shouldnt be allowed to work to avoid exploitation . Guest so i think the essence of a moral society, when it comes down to it is that it is voluntary. We interact voluntarily. We reach a mutual agreement or we are free to go our separate ways. But nobody can do something to us without our consent. And so, the question is in cases where somebody sells to a product that is different than what they promise you, that is exactly where we need a government to step in and say that is not the person can send it to. When he had agreed to pay 20,000 for the car it would operate a certain way. I dont think you need regulatory bodies. You just need laws against fraud and so on. What regulatory bodies do was basically they dont prescribe criminal behavior. They prescribe in postcard project that behavior. They dictate how people produce and decide what kind of deal can we arrive . It is not regulation to tell carmakers when he saw somebody something it better be what you told them it was. It is a regulation when they say your car has to get this kind of gas mileage and it has to have this many seat belts and has to do xyz rather than leaving that up to the mutual choice of buyers and sellers. As far as children they have a right or responsibility to the rights of children. I dont think that applies in socalled child labor laws, which i think are on the whole pretty damaging. Im the one hand they are necessary when you are concerned. We are so rich now that parents are going to send their kids to a coal mine. The first thing they do and achieve a certain level of economic success of economic successes they send their kids to school and that is why you saw child labor going away before they were ever laws against child labor. He was on its way out because of economic progress. The laws make it much harder for kids instead of playing nintendo or whatever the video game system is, they would love to have a job or they can earn money come again responsibility. You know who suffers most from those laws . The poor kids. One of my best friends he was basically thrown into the foster care system at a pretty young age. The main thing that he didnt have was his own money so that he could actually be himself so that he could gain a foothold in their building a resume and achieving success and this is one of the barriers. And so you had some arbitrary team by the government, you are about to go and waste your life or hang out on the Street Corner or do any kind of unproductive thing you want. The one thing you cant do is be there. I think that is unfair to young people. Host dont you think there should be a law saying children under a certain age have to be in school . What if i know that its not very common, but what if there were parents who would say look, i am going to send my children out to wash cars all day because our family needs the money or Something Like that. Should not be prohibited . Guest i think you need to have the government define what you consider actual abuse of children. It has to be up to the parents judgment. That brings you down a dangerous road but the basic one is not the government gets to decide what qualifies as an education. I think that is one of the worst things you can do. We are so worried about putting the government charge of health care decisions, which i read as a scary thing. Putting them in charge of the ideas and ideas that children are taught, weve taken for granted for 100 plus years. The biggest risk is not that a handful of parents will send their kids to school. The biggest risk is that schools are taken over by bureaucracy rather than open up or choice, for parents be free to decide what ideas their children should be taught in our innovators to come in and find exciting ways to educate children. Particularly those who are not in the poorest areas. One of the topics on those peoples radars the president ial election. Its been really interesting to see how much support Bernie Sanders has with his talk of inequality and it has really driven his numbers much higher than they would have been otherwise. Can you talk about why that is . Guest yeah, back it as to what is going on in todays debate. Isnt that Bernie Sanders has tons of charisma and sex appeal or is it that he has ideas that have a lot of power. It really is the power of the idea and it really comes from two things. Is he standing up for a moral ideal, the ideal of economic equality. This second he has on his side what you can call it a moral narrative that tells us when you abide by my ideal, you flourish and when you abandon the ideal, you find her. You have no doubt heard the idea that america really reached the zenith, its golden age in the postwar era when the government supposedly thought income inequality and we all did better. What happened in the 70s, which is usually blaming reagan. What happened is we abandon that a deal. 1 took over, started rigging the game. They got all the games and we all stagnated to providing a quality things are great. And then inequality things are bad. Host its been getting a lot of traction. They should go up 80 , 90 of College Students poker hand. They feel the bern. Guest when you have a reality on your side and when you appear to have a moral ideal that is inspiring to young people. They think is coming from his heart. They see them as authentic. How do we site. Message . Guest i think what is going on as two aspects. One he has this moral ideal. All hes going to help out people, but it also appeals to greed for the unearned. The message that a lot of these kids take away is also maybe ill get out of this college loans. When you combine greed for the unearned ideal, people will crusade for some pain and the only way to oppose that his challenge the ideal so long as you grant that free college makes you a good person, then they can come out and take a strong stand for it. If all they do this cannot unfair want a bailout for a handout, you will not see that crusading spirit. The thing that is tragic about the whole discussion is that the critics of the critics of inequality, people who dont want to see the government expanding how much wealth it takes for people, the people support Free Enterprise. Theres not much to say in this issue. When we start writing our book, you know how many books do left had put out . Probably four or five a year. They inequality put out at that time. And all of the issues theres been two books. Monday canadian professor not too many people have heard of unfortunately, even though his book was quite good and another by thomas seoul, which was had some good elements that would only address the small subcomponent of the debate. It didnt address the whole thing. It focuses on challenging statistics we agree we should minimize inequality, but if your member ram paul during the president ial debates, republicans will reduce inequality better than democrats. The trouble is both of those conceived economical quality is an ideal armor problem is that economic equality as an ideal, we are in trouble because Economic Freedom is immoral. We talk about my wife a free market leads to nothing resembling economic inequality. That leads to progress for everybody, but very different progress. We have a lot of work to do. We have to challenge there a deal, their narrative was an account right an account great deal and narrative enough so we do in the book. Host yes, yes. I suddenly buried certainly very much enjoyed reading it. It is worth everyone picking up and adding it today. What seems to concern Many Americans isnt inequality per se, but mobility. We talk about people who start off slow and just want to get interop and that seems to be more important than economic inequality. What do you say about that . Guest i definitely think that is true. A lot of our concern comes to fairness is not that gap. Are people able to rise by merit . Are they able to rise by their own efforts even if they start out without a lot of wild, without all of the things that people on them would have. I think theres a couple things that are important to keep in mind about mobility. First of all, mobility is not declined here to mold even as economic inequality has probably been rising, we do have a mobility problem. The danger is thinking about ability in purely financial terms to a lot of times you will see these charts. How many people move up from the bottom and tile into the top quintile or until the middle. I think that is the wrong way to think about it. The goal of life is not to move up to a particular quintile. It is to find a career you are happy at and build for yourself a really fulfilling life. I mention my friend, jeremiah. Heres a guy who starts at the bottom and is now a teacher. I dont know how much money he makes, but i imagine most dont make enough to get into the top 10 or top 20 of earners. But is not a full success . Should we regret he didnt he come an investment banker because that might have gotten him to the top. Theres people to say we need to pay teachers more and the level they are given back to society doesnt really square with the amount that we are paying them, that we should be paying teachers more. They have proposals that teachers would get paid more in exchange for giving up tenure. Guest thats funny. That is quite revealing of the union. Now, teachers should be paid as much economic value as they can generate on the market. The problem is we dont have a market for Education Today and its not clear what teachers should be paid the sense of how much economic value are they really adding. But the basic question is then how should we think about mobility if we shouldnt think about it by looking at these mobility tables. The way you think about it is hard their barriers preventing a person from rising . I think what that really comes down to at the end of the day is government intervening in the economy and the way that prevents a person from rising by his achievement, from rising by productive merit. Host there are so many. Preoccupational licensing which you discuss in your book. Guest let me give one example. There are millions of examples and maybe some not particularly annoy you. Here is one that annoys me. Lets say you cant find anybody to employ me and so im going to go out on my own and teacher perform hairraising because it is a skill im really good at. Lets say i know a bunch of people who want to pay me to do it. Many states cant do that. Its illegal until i get a license from the state. Im sure we could do it. But as a job, as a trade i have to go and spend hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars getting thousands of dollars. Who are the people most likely to become hair braiders and who are the people least likely to be able to afford to go through a process like that . It is precisely the poorest people who need every ounce of freedom to really get that up on the road to success. That is just one of many, many examples. Host they were even closing down childrens lemonade stands. Guest absolutely. A lot of the lemonade stands about teaching the lessons of lunch premiership. That teaches them a month and today, which is that you need permission from the government to do almost anything. It really is outrageous. Theyre out barriers with the minimum wage. Heres one more area. Everything the government does that drives up cost for the things we buy is a huge bear in opera to shun. I have to work that much harder to make a living. When the Government Funds unaffordable housing per se, a lot of what it is doing is driving up the cost of housing and more people are demanding housing. A lot of the restrictions that we see by the epa on energy production, such as all ethanol scandal such as that is, they dress up the cost of energy. Who are the people most affected by that . Do people that dont have that big a budget and cant afford the energy cost. Host the bottom 25 on energy and gasoline and motor oil in the top than 4 . Guest a fourth of a tight budget has a really big deal. There are all these subtle ways in which rising is becoming harder. So if we are really concerned with peoples ability to rise by merit, your first obligation is to stop making it harder for them. Poster would you say to people who say we need more renewable energy, solar and wind, even though it drives up the cost of energy because that helps the planet. Dont join. Dont you want to help the planet . Guest this is a big question that i would say what i want to do is help human beings. I want to help you minimize. The way you do that fundamentally does leave people free to use the best energy for their own lives. But then decide whether it is oil, natural gas, nuclear. Host natural gas is achieved. Other people will come and say this is polluting. This is increasing Greenhouse Gas emissions. This is causing Global Warming or climate change. Would you say to that . Guest had we summed that up if you send this . If we actually look at the big picture, pluses and minuses of the use of fossil fuels, it is without question are not hugely beneficial to human beings. If we want to understand how human beings went from 30 until a. D. , its precisely because weve had cheap affordable abundant energy. I dont think the arguments we aheargainst fossil fuels actually a hold of. I dont think the idea we run out of bed i would need the government to get us hooked on Something Else is true. I think they can certainly cause pollution and thats why you need laws to protect us from pollution. You dont need to outlaw the fuel that more than 80 of the time is making possible industrial civilization. Climate change is a more complex issue. I dont think there is evidence we are headed for a climate catastrophe. The planet has been warming and i think on that, what fossil fuels do is give us the ability to cope with any climate. To circle and connect this to the whole inequality debate, one of the major things we are told is that we need to expand the power of government in order to equalize people economically and to expand the power of government to prevent us from destroying the planet for fossil fuels. The matter what it is, it is always take away freedom and wealth from individuals and give more power to the government and these have really become the two major arguments. The environmental and inequality for expanding government today. We are tackling inequality argument here. I should just add a close friend of mine wrote a book tackling environmental moral case for fossil fuels. Lets see. I would say weve got the problem solved. Two books, one on each issue. That is the hard part. Host yeah. A lot of people talk ab