Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Most of Eastern Europe is depopulating and will never catch up
“Parts of the world, such as Eastern Europe you know, Poland maybe is catching up to the West, but most of it is being depopulated and emptying out. And it basically will never catch up.”
Insight
Cowen: Giving someone a book as a gift is slightly cruel
“If you give a book away, the danger is a person will read it just because it's a gift. Unless you think it's the book they should be reading. It's actually a slightly cruel act to give someone a book.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Automation will widen income inequality while boosting consumption for the poor
“So the world will be a lot more productive because of automation and smart software, and this will give us a lot of consumer goods for free. So we'll have this super sharp divide between the rich and the poor in terms of income, but in terms of actual consumpt…”
Insight
Cowen: Rational individual choices for safety make society collectively worse off
“So a lot of these decisions to settle in and be safe and comfortable, they're individually rational. Like, it's good to be safe, right? Stress is, is, is a bad thing. But when our society collectively makes this decision, there are ways in which we're all wors…”
Insight
Cowen: America exhausted the low-hanging fruit of early industrial technologies
“We exhausted a lot of the low-hanging fruit from combining fossil fuels with powerful machines and electricity and communications, and that, that's all to the better, but we've now entered a world where people find it hard to imagine a future very different fr…”
Insight
Tyler Cowen: Complacent societies cannot survive indefinitely without restoring economic dynamism
“But that said, a country cannot remain complacent forever. And I argue that eventually, you know, something has to give, you need a way to pay the bills, you need dynamism again, and you start seeing disruptions in your complacent life.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Autonomous vehicles could worsen road traffic congestion via errand trips
“Self-driving cars could make the problem worse, you know, because you'll send out your car or your vehicle on all kinds of errands. Oh, go to Whole Foods and pick me up some smoked salmon. I'm hungry. And there may be fewer people on the road, but the people t…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Millennials face a high risk of impoverished retirements
“It's much harder for millennials to save, and I fear they will have impoverished retirements. Especially since the fiscal budget on the federal side is problematic as well.”
Opinion
Cowen: Minimum wage increases put people out of work
“Minimum wage increases put people out of work. Sometimes it's a small number of people. Sometimes it's a large number of people, but I think jobs are very important, and I would look for different ways to raise wages, which we do need to do.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Minimum wage hikes raise food prices and dissipate initial gains
“So if you raise minimum wages, say that raises food prices, there's good evidence for this, and other poor people have to pay more for their food, And a lot of those apparent first round gains get given back and they dissipate.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Bitcoin is a legitimate, enduring asset and not a bubble
“I think it's a perfectly legitimate asset that will endure and have a high value. I'm not sure its value is going to go up any at this point but it's for real, and it's not a bubble.”
Opinion
Cowen: Online education is one of humanity's greatest achievements
“Online education, as we have it, is one of the world's greatest achievements ever, and we've put almost all of it in place in, say, 15 years.”
Insight
Cowen: Parents should expose teenagers to high-quality adult role models
“Expose your child in teen years to as many of your friends who might be possible role models as possible. Like at some margin, they're just not going to listen to you anymore. They're not going to watch your behavior anymore. They know what you're about. They'…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Computers will not replace sales, marketing, or management anytime soon
“So there's always room for sales, for marketing, for management, including in the distant future. Computers will not be doing that for us anytime soon.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Regional economic divergence rather than convergence will continue
“I think countries and also regions within countries we won't see so much convergence. We'll see a lot of divergence. So it used to be in America, in the post-war era, America's poorer cities were essentially catching up to the wealthier cities. But nowadays, s…”
Insight
Cowen: Simple, boring digital habits beat ambitious tech as killer apps
“I think my intuition is people like simple, boring things, ah, much more than you might imagine. I mean, people just love spending time on Facebook and sending back and forth short, silly, or not very informative messages. And that's been the killer app for so…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Most newspapers will become ventures owned or supported by the wealthy
“I don't think you can fund most papers by ads. I think they will end up as ventures owned or supported by the very wealthy.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: Local reporting will shift to blogs and expose scandals
“There'll be a lot of local reporting on blogs or blog-like entities, and if you want to find it will be there. So if you uncover a scandal about some local official, the world will find out.”
Assertion Partly supported
Cowen: US cities are more racially segregated, but suburbs are not
“If you mean racially segregated, cities are more racially segregated. Suburbs are not. So that's a mixed story.”
Opinion
Cowen: The world is in a G-Zero order beyond US control
“So we now live in a GZERO world. America cannot dictate world affairs.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: The US is returning to 19th-century polarization and dynamism
“Maybe in some ways we're going back to the America of the late 19th century. With a polarized politics screwy media you know, in some ways, higher levels of violence, and more dynamism, too.”
Opinion
Cowen: The US must adopt congestion pricing like London and Singapore
“So London has applied a congestion charge going into the central city. It has worked. Singapore has congestion charges for its roads. They have worked. In this country, we need to do the same thing.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cowen: AI will soon outmatch human consumer decision-making
“Artificial intelligence will tell you what to buy and how to buy it, and at what price. People who think they can beat the algorithms will make a lot more mistakes, so know when you should defer.”
Insight
Cowen: Epistemic modesty delivers higher returns than high IQ
“Having good judgment there is becoming more important than just being like the smartest person or having the highest IQ. So a kind of epistemic modesty, I think, is showing much higher returns than it used to.”
Tyler Cowen