Innovation + Equality with Dr Andrew Leigh MP

<p>Australian economist and federal Member of Parliament Dr Andrew Leigh is interviewed about his new book with co-author Professor Joshua Gans <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/innovation-equality" target="_blank">Innovation + Equality: How to Create a Future that is More Star Trek than Terminator</a>, published by MIT Press in 2019. This wide-ranging conversation covers a range of issues, including labour market impacts of digital disruption, universal basic income, and how to improve teacher effectiveness, among other issues.</p><p>Use these timestamps to jump right to the highlights:</p><ul><li>4:20 – impact of AI and automation on jobs</li><li>9:50 – criticisms of Universal Basic Income – fiscal critique and the fact work brings meaning – in which Andrew mentions Blanchflower and Oswald study <a href="https://www.dartmouth.edu/~blnchflr/papers/jpube.pdf">Wellbeing over time in Britain and the USA</a></li><li>11:05 – Andrew advises young people not to over-specialise</li><li>15:20 – innovation is generally good for the economy and society, so Andrew rejects Bill Gates’s robot tax idea (see this <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-robot-tax-brighter-future-2017-3?IR=T">Business Insider article</a>)</li><li>19.05 – Gene asks Andrew about Nicholas Gruen’s idea about public private partnerships for digital public goods (e.g. listen to <a href="https://economics-explained.simplecast.com/episodes/innovation-digital-public-goods-with-nicholas-gruen">Economics Explained episode 7</a>)</li><li>24:00 – Andrew tells us how we can connect with him, including by listening to his <a href="https://goodlifepodcast.podbean.com/">Good Life podcast</a></li><li>24:40 – discussion of how to improve teach effectiveness, in which Gene asks about teachers’ unions and performance-based/teacher merit pay; check out Andrew’s 2012 paper <a href="http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/PerformancePay.pdf">The economics and politics of teacher merit pay</a> (NB Gene mangled the end of his question, but Andrew got the gist of it,