Bryan Caplan - Discrimination, Poverty, & Mental Illness

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:05)
Okay, today, I'm speaking with my good friend Bryan Caplan, and this will actually be the second time we talk. This is the first time we talked, was the first episode of this podcast. So, yeah, I'm really excited about this.

**Bryan Caplan** (0:15)
Oh, it's fantastic to be back here, Dwarkesh. Great to see how well you've been doing for yourself. And now it is my privilege to get to speak to you.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:23)
Excellent, okay. So today we're talking about your book, Labor Econ Versus the World, and it's a collection of your essays throughout the years, and I highly recommend it.
Okay, so here's my first question. What percentage of the working age population is zero or negative productivity?

**Bryan Caplan** (0:39)
Hmm, it's a good question. So this is working age population, not actual, though not the ones that are in fact currently working.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

**Bryan Caplan** (0:50)
Yeah, hmm, let's see.
Well, I'd be inclined to say probably something like 3%, although of course it's much higher if you just make someone do a job that they're not suited for. So again, whenever people talk about zero productivity workers, I often want to say the fact that someone has zero productivity or negative productivity at the job they're doing doesn't show that they are a zero or negative productivity person. Could just be that they are mismatched to the job, a common misunderstanding actually. So yeah, I think it is very low for the working age population for any job at all. One of the things that labor markets do of course is fire you from jobs where you have really low productivity, which encourages you to search around for something where you are actually productive.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (1:34)
So then what's the explanation for why labor force participation is like 60% or something? So there's like a gap of about like, you know, like the 37% or something of people who could be contributing but are not.

**Bryan Caplan** (1:46)
Well, I mean, the biggest explanation is working mom, or not working moms, rather moms of especially young kids who don't want a job because they are busy taking care of their kids. So I say that is the first and foremost one is family responsibilities.
There's a small share of people that are rich enough and there isn't any job that they like doing. So that's, I think that's only maybe a couple percent of the population. Then you've got a larger percentage of the population where government redistribution means that they really don't have that much of a gain from working, at least in the short run. So I think often it would still in fact be better for them in the long run just to get a job, even if they don't make as much money when they're receiving redistribution because you get training and connections. So in the long run, it is a better strategy. There's another chunk of people's parents are just either really nice or suckers, depending upon how you see it, who will just take care of them. There's of course spouses, even when you don't have kids or romantic partners who will take care of you, even though you are not working.
And then finally, this category does overlap with the others, but then there are guys who just really don't want to go and conform.
Most often what they're doing is they work sporadically and they have a job and then they are difficult, they get fired, and then they are unemployed for a while, then they find another job. They say, there's one of my favorite books on poverty, which is Promises I Can Keep, talks about the problems of single moms. And one of the main things that it talks about is they're not happy with the fathers of their kids. And then the question comes up, what's the problem? They can't find jobs. And they say, no, no, no, he finds jobs all the time. Problems keeping jobs. So I think that's another part of it. So of course, if you officially say that you're still looking for work, but you just don't find a job, then you'll be counted as unemployed. But if sometimes you just say screw it, I'm not even looking, and then they record that in the stats, then that will come out as saying that you aren't even trying.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (3:51)
I'm glad you brought up poverty. So you emphasize in the book the success sequence. So this is the idea that if you get married, if you have kids, you get a high school diploma and you work full-time, then you're virtually guaranteed to not be in poverty.