Paul Krugman: Economics of Innovation, Automation, Safety Nets & UBI | Lex Fridman Podcast #67

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

January 21, 2020

Duration

1h 3m

Channel

Lex Fridman Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner in economics, professor at CUNY, and columnist at the New York Times. His academic work centers around international economics, economic geography, liquidity traps, and currency crises. This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it & use code "LexPodcast": Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 EPISODE LINKS: Paul Twitter: https://twitter.com/paulkrugman NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/column/paul-krugman Arguing with Zombies (book): https://amzn.to/2RBZoSb OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 3:44 - Utopia from an economics perspective 4:51 - Competition 6:33 - Well-informed citizen 7:52 - Disagreements in economics 9:57 - Metrics of outcomes 13:00 - Safety nets 15:54 - Invisible hand of the market 21:43 - Regulation of tech sector 22:48 - Automation 25:51 - Metric of productivity 30:35 - Interaction of the economy and politics 33:48 - Universal basic income 36:40 - Divisiveness of political discourse 42:53 - Economic theories 52:25 - Starting a system on Mars from scratch 55:11 - International trade 59:08 - Writing in a time of radicalization and Twitter mobs CONNECT:

• Subscribe to this YouTube channel
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LexFridmanPage
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman
• Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman
• Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Lex Fridman

  host

• Paul Krugman

  guest

• Narrator

  other

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lex Fridman Podcast, featuring Lex Fridman and Paul Krugman, Paul Krugman: Economics of Innovation, Automation, Safety Nets & UBI | Lex Fridman Podcast #67 explores paul Krugman Dissects Markets, Safety Nets, Robots, and Justice Paul Krugman and Lex Fridman explore what a just, functional economic system looks like, emphasizing strong social safety nets, universal healthcare, and broadly shared prosperity rather than perfect equality. Krugman argues markets and the ‘invisible hand’ work brilliantly in many domains but fail in areas like healthcare, education, and some tech sectors where information and incentives are distorted. He is skeptical of current alarmism about automation and universal basic income, stressing that recent technological change isn’t historically exceptional and that politics, not robots, largely explains wage stagnation and inequality. Throughout, they connect economics to political choices, media fragmentation, public discourse, and the moral questions underlying welfare states, trade, and regulation.

🔗 RELATED EPISODES

Keoki Jackson: Lockheed Martin | Lex Fridman Podcast #33

Elon Musk: Neuralink, AI, Autopilot, and the Pale Blue Dot | Lex Fridman Podcast #49

Grant Sanderson: 3Blue1Brown and the Beauty of Mathematics | Lex Fridman Podcast #64

Rohit Prasad: Amazon Alexa and Conversational AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #57

Gary Marcus: Toward a Hybrid of Deep Learning and Symbolic AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #43

Christof Koch: Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #2