The New Bazaar

• The Licensing Racket

  Nearly 30 million workers, or roughly one in five workers throughout the country, are required to have a professional license before they can do their jobs.That’s more than twice the number of workers who belong to unions. And it’s almost ten times the number who earn the minimum wage. But in comparison to those other economic arrangements, curiously little attention is given to the process that governs licensing, the perverse outcomes it so often leads to, and the vulnerable workers who are affected by it. Cardiff’s guest on this episode is Vanderbilt law professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth, author of “The Licensing Racket: How we decide who is allowed to work, and Why it goes wrong.” Among Cardiff’s picks for the economics book of the year, it is the product of not just a scholarly understanding of the topic, but of years and years of painstaking reporting, interviewing hundreds of people, and unearthing a variety of frankly shocking anecdotes. She and Cardiff discuss: The legal and institutional design behind the boards that oversee licensing in each stateHow the desire to protect the already licensed leads board to impose outrageous requirements for new licensesThe ludicrous rationalizations of so many licensing boards for erecting obstacles to new workers entering their professions The shocking failure of licensing boards, especially within medicine, to actually fulfill the mission they are set up to pursue: protect public safetyHow the ratcheting up of licensing requirements led to a standoff between nurses and doctorsHow licensing hurts dynamism and entrepreneurshipThe more substantive tradeoffs involved in licensing, including the pride and validation that existing practitioners feel in having a licenseWhich jobs shouldn’t require a license, and for those that do, a better way forward All throughout, Rebecca shares with Cardiff the tales of the workers, board members, and the others she interviewed.Related links: The Licensing Racket, by Rebecca Haw AllensworthRebecca Haw Allensworth page at Vanderbilt Law School Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• The surprising economics of the world’s most valuable asset

  Mike Bird, the Wall Street editor of The Economist, joins Cardiff to discuss his new book, The Land Trap: A New History of the World’s Oldest Asset.By one estimate, the value of land makes up roughly a third of all the wealth in the entire world. Add the houses and commercial buildings on top of the land and the total value is almost two-thirds. And according to Mike, land “defies some of the usual laws of capitalism that apply to other goods and assets.” Its supply is fixed, it is immobile, and it neither decays nor depreciates. These special qualities have given land its fascinating history. They’re also the reason that so many economies end up in what Mike refers to as the land trap.Mike and Cardiff discuss: The definition of a land trapWhy booming land values are a problem while they’re rising and not just because they often set the stage for a bustHow land affects older, established companies differently than newer, innovative businesses — and why that matters for the economy The perverse incentives that rising land values can have on a nation’s economyThe land histories of America, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore Land reform and the development of low-income countries The lessons of Singapore And more! Related links: The Land Trap, A New History of the World's Oldest AssetHousing booms, reallocation and productivity, by Sebastian Doerr, BIS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Lessons of the Rare Earths Showdown

  How can the United States make its economy more resilient not just to future economic shocks but the threat of such shocks from its geopolitical rivals? Arnab Datta has spent years working on this very question. In the immediate aftermath of the recent rare earths showdown between America and China, Datta and his colleagues at the Institute for Progress and Employ America published a new analysis titled How to Implement an Operation Warp Speed for Rare Earths.China’s global dominance in rare earths, acquired over decades, allows it to “gain leverage in trade negotiations, retaliate against American restrictions, degrade American and allied technological capabilities, and potentially even to entrench its dominance in downstream rare earth-dependent manufacturing supply chains,” write Datta, Saif Khan, Tim Hwang, and Tim Fist. The scope of the report extends well beyond the specific threat of a shock to America’s supply of rare earths. It speaks to the very nature of the ongoing geopolitical dispute with China itself — and more broadly, to the question of how best to respond when a single country has taken steps for decades to distort the global market of a product that the entire world depends on.Why did the United States fail to spot the emerging threat? How should it respond now — and in such a way that embraces core American economic values like competition and innovation? Related links: How to Implement an Operation Warp Speed for Rare EarthsArnab’s work at Employ AmericaArnab’s work at the Institute for Progress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Housing and the Politics of Place

  What accounts for the astonishing streak of YIMBY wins this year — and which concessions, if any, should they consider offering to the NIMBYs? Should the center-left Abundance faction be trying to persuade conservatives and not just progressives? Do struggling places need more market-based solutions (high-skilled immigration, tax incentives for investing in low-income communities) or more straightforward redistribution and pubic investment (in infrastructure, job training, internet access)? Are liberals ceding too much ground to anti-immigrant sentiment? And should the most famous museums in the world stop hoarding their artwork? Live on stage at the Economic Innovation Group’s annual Power of Place Conference in Washington, DC, Cardiff spoke with Slow Boring author Matt Yglesias about these topics and more. Matt also reflects on how things have changed since his two books, The Rent is Too Damn High and One Billion Americans, were released. They close with their respective picks for best movie of 2025 and the likely winner of the NBA Finals. Related links: Slow Boring The Rent is Too Damn HighOne Billion Americans Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Attention and the Possibility of Persuasion

  Jerusalem Demsas is one of Cardiff’s favorite econ and housing journalists, a previous New Bazaar guest, and now the founder and editor of The Argument, a new magazine dedicated to making “a positive, combative case for liberalism through sharp, well-argued opinion pieces, original reporting, and multimedia content that confronts the illiberal drift in our politics.” Jerusalem and Cardiff discuss: Her meaning of liberalismHow (if?) persuasion works The politics of immigration and why it matters for the economy Drawing lines vs reaching across themIf Twitter really is “acid on community” How to societally deal with short-form video addiction…… and how Jerusalem broke her own TikTok problemWhy asking if something is cringe is itself the most cringe Finally, Jerusalem makes Cardiff look and feel super old when his reference to Reality Bites flies right by her. They close by reflecting on a hopeful trend. Related links: The ArgumentOn the Housing Crisis (Jerusalem’s book of essays)Ezra Klein’s podcast interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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