Stephanomics

We usually don't think about economics as a life-or-death subject. But for white Americans without a college degree, there's no other way to describe it. With job opportunities limited and an opioid epidemic in full throttle, death rates among this group are skyrocketing, an issue that probably helped elect Donald Trump as president. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the married academic couple who brought this issue to the forefront, have just issued a followup paper to their groundbreaking 2015 study on the subject. Case returns to Benchmark to discuss the latest findings with Dan and Scott -- and offers her ominous take on what it portends for the future of the nation.

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Post-industrial Midwestern America helped propel Donald Trump to the nation's top job. You've heard that a hundred times. But did you hear about St Louis? A wave of Bosnian refugees, many of them Muslim, arrive in the city, starting in the mid-1990s. The result: a surge in business and job creation, revitalization of the community and help in the transition from a manufacturing to a service economy. Sadik Kukic tells Dan and Michelle about his journey from Balkan concentration camps to a pillar of the local community: He's now president of the Bosnian Chamber of Commerce. What could be more American?

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Who says economics has to be all about numbers? Take a trip back in time with the Benchmark crew to the early 1980s, when double-digit inflation was such a scourge that it inspired a lyric in the hip-hop classic "The Message." Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher, who wrote most of the song, joins Scott and Dan to talk about those lyrics -- and a whole lot more. Then Alice Rivlin, a former Fed vice chair, gives perspective on inflation from her decades in the economic-policy world.

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Americans like to think of themselves as great risk takers, rolling back frontiers and imbued since birth with a spirit of entrepreneurship. But what if the technological revolutions spawned in Silicon Valley were, ironically, symptoms of a risk-averse country? Underneath the latest app for sex or music, we are becoming older and more comfortable with stasis and statism, according to guest Tyler Cowen. Dan and Scott ask him why we've become more like Europe and poster children for sclerosis: France, Germany and Italy.

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Forget Vladimir Putin. If Donald Trump and the Republicans want to stay in power, they could do well to emulate the approach of Poland's Law and Justice Party. After sweeping to victory in 2015, the conservative party has mixed nationalist rhetoric, populist economic policies and social conservatism to maintain a healthy lead in polls while driving liberals and the media crazy. So what's in the secret sauce, besides an unpronounceable brand of beer? Scott and Dan are joined by two Polish colleagues who can answer that question: Wojciech Moskwa, Bloomberg's Warsaw bureau chief, and Kasia Klimasinska, a Bloomberg reporter in Washington.

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Widening inequality is a blight on the modern economy and will ultimately undermine growth. But wait. Let's not hurry to fix it because history shows it can only really be addressed by total war, total revolution, state collapse or Black Death-like pandemics. That's the conclusion of Stanford professor Walter Scheidel, who joins Dan and Scott. Scheidel takes us on a tour-de-force of the rise and fall of inequality from cave societies through the bubonic plague to the two World Wars. He's not an optimist.

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Donald Trump has had plenty to say about the smash hit musical "Hamilton": "Highly overrated," for one. But if we focus instead on Hamilton's economic policy, the president might find something to applaud. The first U.S. Treasury secretary wanted to protect industry. Hamilton also sought to roll back globalization and replace foreign-made goods with domestically produced ones. Sound familiar? Bloomberg's Rich Miller joins Dan and Scott to explain.

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The nation's leader takes a sudden action that only a handful of people know about beforehand. His populist base loves it, even if it could disrupt the economy. Donald Trump's executive order on immigration? No, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's move to invalidate more than 80 percent of currency in circulation, a bid to stamp out corruption. Three months later, do the benefits outweigh the costs? Or will the hit to the economy be felt for years to come? Cornell University professor Eswar Prasad and Bloomberg reporter Sho Chandra join Scott to share their recent firsthand experiences from India and help explain why the action might just end up working.

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Even in Deep Red America, the cosmopolitan world of Chardonnay and dual passport-holders is alive and well. Right alongside is a middle class enmeshed in that same world -- yet infuriated by it, a rage that opened the door to Donald Trump. Sure, this alternate universe may be shrinking, but it's still kicking up a lot of dust. Such are the revelations from a series of coast-to-coast road trips by bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan. Driving between New York and San Diego, Kaplan marvels at the strength of America's geography and its ability to project global political and economic leadership -- if only the middle class still wants it.

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"Make America Great Again," Donald Trump's campaign slogan, became the government's guiding policy when he was sworn in last week as the 45th U.S. president. But how will we know just how great America is becoming? Forget GDP or unemployment: we'll tell you all about five Trumpian economic indicators you need to follow, including the share of workers with full-time jobs, the pace of business creation and how many prime-age Americans are in the labor force. Bloomberg Intelligence chief U.S. economist Carl Riccadonna and Bloomberg News economy editor Vince Golle join Scott to give you the rundown.

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