Hello classmates and welcome to Thinking Class. Today I'm speaking with Garrett Jones. Garrett lives in Washington D.C. and is Associate Professor of Economics and BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at George Mason University. Garrett's research spans macroeconomics, political economy, and the foundations of economic growth.
Along with many scholarly articles, Dr. Jones is the author of three books, his Singapore Trilogy, all published with the Stanford University Press. Which are The Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own, 10 percent Less Democracy, and The Culture Transplant, How Migrants Make The Economies They Move To A Lot Like The Ones They Left. Each book in the trilogy offers an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations.
In this episode, Garett and I talk about how the West became rich and stayed rich, how the economic prosperity of nations is linked to its culture and its institutions, and increasingly the culture of immigrants, the success of Chinese diaspora and why they should be favoured in immigration policies, the long term implications of unselected mass immigration for countries like the UK, France, the US and Italy, and the unsettling notion that economic prosperity is boosted by fewer family ties and that welfare dependency is linked to strong family values and bonds. We also talk about the benefits, costs, and conflicts that arise from ethnic and cultural diversity, and why it's important to care about the world's seven most innovative economies if the rest of us want to live comfortable lives, and much, much more.
Garett is a lot of fun to talk to, and as you would expect, his findings on the link between economic prosperity and culture and the long-term cultural impact of immigrants on host nations don't exactly make him popular within the typically left-leaning academical circles, and nor would I expect to find his proposed immigration policies to be particularly acceptable to those more conservatively inclined.
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#034 - Garett Jones - We Should Choose Our Immigrants Carefully Because They Make Our Countries Like The Ones They Left