Hardly Working with Brent Orrell

Joe Fuller, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at AEI and Professor at Harvard Business School, discusses two new reports, Delivering on Degrees and The Partnership Imperative. The first examines the effectiveness of programs that facilitate the transition from postsecondary education to employment and finds programs such as career coaching and experiential coursework can improve persistence in training and employment outcomes. The second report explores how partnerships between community colleges and employers can help address the skills gap.

Mentioned in the Episode

Joseph B. Fuller AEI Profile

Joseph B. Fuller HBS Profile

Managing the Future of Work Project at Harvard Business School

Delivering on Degrees Report Workforce Futures Initiative

Prof. Raj Chetty’s Work on Economic Mobility

Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard V. Reeves

The Partnership Imperative: Community Colleges, Employers, and America’s Chronic Skills Gap

Wake Tech Community College

San Jacinto College

Monroe Community College

Valencia

College Partnership with Walt Disney World Resort

Disney Aspire - Disney’s Education Benefit Program

The Republican Party has been the main political vehicle for American conservatism over the past 100 years. Periods of tension between the intellectual/elite faction and the grassroots faction have defined the party’s history. Matt Continetti, senior fellow at AEI, has spent his career studying the Republican Party and the American conservative movement in the 20th century, in particular the tug-of-war between the party’s factions and how this has shaped national politics.

Mentioned in the Episode

The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism

Plato’s Republic

The Politics of Rage: Why do They Hate Us?

The Washington Free Beacon

George Wallace 1968 Presidential Campaign

Trump: “I love the poorly educated.”

House Passes Debt Limit Bill

CHIPS Subsidies Come with Lots of Strings

Roe v. Wade

What is Compassionate Conservatism?

Responses to the sudden emergence of widely available artificial intelligence tend to swing between those who believe these technologies will deliver a utopia of unlimited growth and opportunity or inflict a robot-dominated dystopia of human obsolescence. In the space between those two polls, some are engaged in serious ethical reflection that attempts to weigh out the possible impacts of AI in light of the preexisting social trends.

One of the more thoughtful, and fair-minded critics of emerging technologies is Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology. In his research, Dr. Selinger asks how technology has affected our personal obscurity in society (the right not to be known), and how mass surveillance and optimization affects human work. 

Mentioned in the Episode

Don Ihde

Patrick Grim

Woodrow Hertzog

Social obscurity paper

Digital doubles – in production and manufacturing

Reengineering Humanity

Taylorism

Frederick Winslow Taylor

Brett Frischmann

Scott Lincicome is the Vice President of General Economics and Trade at the CATO Institute, where he works to keep the economy open to innovation and change while preserving safety and opportunity for families, communities and the economy. In this episode, we discuss the intra-conservative debate over how to balance the need for stability in the market with openness to the innovation and change that have been the hallmarks of American development and prosperity throughout the nation’s history. Lincicome discusses these and other themes as they are laid out in his recent edited volume, “Empowering the New American Worker”.

Mentioned in the Episode

Empowering the New American Worker

CATO Institute – Scott Lincicome

University of Virginia Law School

Libertarianism

Liya Palagashvili interview

CATO Trade Policy Bracket Challenge

Scott Lincicome Atlantic column on the Jones Act

Scott Lincicome Dispatch column – egg prices

Scott Lincicome Twitter

In this episode of Hardly Working, I speak with Liya Palagashvili, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University as she walks us through her professional journey and research into nontraditional workers. Also known as independent workers, nontraditional workers can be defined as workers who make income outside of traditional employment and who are legally classified as independent contractors or self-employed. She describes different aspects of this rapidly expanding sector of the economy and what its future could be. Our conversation also explores what Palagashvili calls the two policy buckets often used to address challenges for independent workers and their possible repercussions.

Mentioned in the Episode

The Rise of the Creative Class

The Gig Economy

Form 1099-MISC

Etsy

AB-5 Worker status: employees and independent contractors

California Proposition 22

Department of Labor regulatory guidance on worker classification rules

Employee Classification Tests.

Utah Portable Benefit Plan

The Nixon administration is renowned for their surprising consideration of differing social and welfare policies and the internal conflict and debate that this created within the Republican party it led.

In this episode of Hardly Working, I am joined by John Roy Price, special assistant to President Nixon during the contentious time period of 1969-71 and author of “The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider’s Perspective on Nixon’s Surprising Social Policy.” We discuss, joined by Robert Doar (President of AEI) and Scott Winship (Director of the AEI Center for Opportunity and Mobility) perspectives on the Nixon Administration, social and welfare policy, the history of the Republican party, and learn a little more about John Doar, Robert’s esteemed father.

Mentioned in the Episode

The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider’s Perspective on Nixon’s Surprising Social Policy

John Roy Price

Robert Doar

Scott Winship

John Doar

Donald Rumsfeld

Richard Nixon

Pat Buchanan

Arthur Burns

Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan

Negative Income Tax

Workforce preparation is a crucial task that all community institutions – from families, to schools, to civic organizations – contribute to. It takes a village to make a good employee. However, few organizations, educational institutions, and nonprofits have adopted as well-rounded of an approach as the Urban Assembly, a nonprofit that equips schools to deliver social-emotional learning to students.

In this episode of Hardly Working, I speak with David Adams, CEO of Urban Assembly as he explains his journey of moral and vocational formation, including how it sparked his passion for the social-emotional and educational success of students. In doing so, he describes some of the unique initiatives that have made Urban Assembly successful, despite the numerous challenges public education experiences today. Our conversation also illuminates policy options for improving opportunity and equity across racial and socioeconomic divides.

Mentioned in the Episode

David Adams

Social and Emotional Learning – The Urban Assembly

Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

Urban Assembly

White House Recognizes International Social Emotional Learning Day

SELday – Social Emotional Learning Day

Urban Assembly School for Collaborative Healthcare

Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Hillbilly Elegy

William Julius Wilson solving Black inner-city poverty

Brown v. Board of Education

Neil Postman

Economic mobility has been a trademark of the American Dream since its inception, but over time generations have found that social and economic mobility in the pursuit of such a Dream has gradually become more difficult. For writer and non-profit leader Alissa Quart, the problem of mobility is worthy of attention, as are the individual’s stories who are in pursuit of that American Dream. She has written numerous books and articles on the subject through the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, or EHRP.

In this episode of Hardly Working, I talk to Alissa about her views on current state of the workforce, the struggles of economic mobility in America, the future of automation in journalism, and her upcoming book Bootstrapped.

Mentioned in the episode:

Alissa Quart

EHRP

CUNY System

Raj Chetty

Squeezed

Uberfication

Bootstrapped

The Social Workplace Report

Barbra Ehrenreich

SNAP

Syracuse Veterans Center

Bobbi Dempsey

Sector Based Training

The Middle Precariat

The Great Resignation

Every day, thousands of decisions alter the course of our economy and the world. Economists are responsible for tracking these decisions analyzing them. Many endure long educational pathways to gain expertise to comment on economic affairs, but this expertise isn’t always necessary to gain a following or disseminate valuable information. For Joseph Politano, recent graduate of George Washington University and author behind the Apricitas.io Substack, has made the most of his undergraduate education to build a following of loyal subscribers.

In this episode of Hardly Working, I talk with Joseph about his nascent career in Economics, building a following as an independent journalist, and his views on the most pressing issues facing our labor market.

Mentioned in the Episode

The George Washington University - Economics

Apricitas

Peace Corps Agribusiness

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Employment and Training Administration Department of Labor

Dopamine

Nick Bunker

BuzzFeed Article on Laid-Off Tech Workers

As President of Burning Glass Institute and former CEO of Emsi Burning Glass (now Lightcast), Matt Sigelman is a leading expert in real-time labor market information. This makes him particularly able to speak to workers preparing for an uncertain future with the skills required to rise in the modern economy. In this episode, Sigelman provides insight from his career in data and business, as well as findings from Burning Glass’ new American Opportunity Index to give workers a realistic picture of what they can do to advance in their careers.

Mentioned in the episode

Matt Sigelman

Princeton

Microsoft Access

Water cooler effect

The Social Workplace study

American Opportunity Index

Lightcast

Emsi/Burning Glass merger

Burning Glass Institute

Technical vs. Non-cognitive skills

German educational model

Joe Fuller Harvard Business School