Lex Fridman Podcast: Paul Krugman: Economics of Innovation, Automation, Safety Nets & Universal Basic Income

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 conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.

This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it (App Store, Google Play), use code “LexPodcast”. 

Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

00:00 – Introduction

03:44 – Utopia from an economics perspective

04:51 – Competition

06:33 – Well-informed citizen

07:52 – Disagreements in economics

09:57 – 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