Tonight I’m debating for Intelligence Squared in New York City. The resolution: “Let Anyone Take a Job Anywhere.” Vivek Wadhwa and I are arguing for the affirmative case; Ron Unz and Kathleen Newland are arguing the negative case.
The entire debate will be live-streamed starting at 6:45 EST, and eventually be available on NPR and Youtube.
Oct 31 2013
The Intelligence Squared debate results are in. I performed near the peak of my ability, but my very best was not good enough for the live audience. Not by a long shot: Our side actually lost 4 percentage-points, and the other side gained 28 percentage-points, for a net difference of 32 percentage-points. My chief...
Oct 30 2013
A student sent me a link to this article claiming that we would be better off with a thirty-hour as opposed to forty-hour workweek. I'm sympathetic to the argument: I think a lot of us are on the wrong side of the effort-outcome Laffer Curve, and we probably would do better if we followed the old adage and worked "smar...
Oct 30 2013
Tonight I'm debating for Intelligence Squared in New York City. The resolution: "Let Anyone Take a Job Anywhere." Vivek Wadhwa and I are arguing for the affirmative case; Ron Unz and Kathleen Newland are arguing the negative case. The entire debate will be live-streamed starting at 6:45 EST, and event...
READER COMMENTS
Geoffrey
Oct 30 2013 at 11:07am
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George
Oct 30 2013 at 8:02pm
The additional women to the workforce question from Bryan was excellent!
Jason Malloy
Oct 30 2013 at 8:52pm
Summary: A solid 46% plurality of the audience agreed with Caplan and Wadhwa’s position before the debate started, but Unz and Newland converted many of their supporters, captured the undecideds, and won the debate 49% to 21%.
Audience Member
Oct 30 2013 at 9:48pm
The thrust of the argument of those opposed was very much “it would be bad for your average American, so oppose it.” I thought this didn’t really respond appropriately to the prompt, which I thought should be tackled from a global, multinational perspective from behind the veil of ignorance, not from a perspective that just looks at the auto worker in Detroit. For some reason the audience did not appear to grasp this distinction.
Jason Malloy
Oct 30 2013 at 11:01pm
Now that they’ve put the results up, I see I was mistaken about the 21%:
Pre-debate Poll Results
46% for | 21% against | 33% undecided
Post-debate Poll Results
42% for | 49% against | 9% undecided
George
Oct 30 2013 at 11:51pm
Honestly, I didn’t think Unz and Newland were that convincing. I think that what happened here was that people took their minimum wage is too low bias to the table and used it to justify their “no” position. So they rationalized against open jobs since on it’s face to many people it required more legislating to work thereby giving the Unz camp the sneaky win since they didn’t oppose Bryan and Vivek. Instead, they modified their position.
Ted Levy
Oct 31 2013 at 1:39am
With all respect to Mr. Wadhwa, I wonder how the team of Caplan/Huemer might have done.
Pajser
Oct 31 2013 at 2:16am
But its even worse from multinational perspective. What happens to Tanzanians if their medical doctor emigrate to USA?
Comments are closed.