The Art of Manliness - #283： The Complacent Class

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.420 If you grow up in America, you hear a lot of narratives about our country that speak

00:00:22.500 to our shared sense of character. For example, we're a nation of restless pioneers always

00:00:27.020 striking out for greener pastures or that we have a risk-taking entrepreneurial spirit

00:00:31.240 that spurs innovation and economic growth. Well, my guest today argues that while these

00:00:35.920 narratives may have been true at one point in American history, the statistics show that

00:00:39.980 in recent decades, Americans have lost some of that pioneering entrepreneurial get-up-and-go

00:00:44.060 attitude. Instead, we've become pretty complacent. His name is Tyler Cowen. He's an economist at

00:00:49.960 George Mason University, writer at his blog Marginal Revolution, and the author of several

00:00:54.540 books. His latest is called The Complacent Class, The Self-Defeating Quest for the American 0.64

00:00:58.880 Dream. And today on the show, Tyler and I discuss the statistics that indicate Americans are

00:01:03.660 losing their dynamism, that we're moving less and starting fewer businesses, as well as the

00:01:08.600 effect this trend is having on our economy and culture. Tyler also provides some insight

00:01:12.260 on what's causing this complacency, what to do to overcome it, and how it's likely leading

00:01:16.340 us to an era of severe disruption. If you enjoyed my podcast with Neil Howe about the generational

00:01:21.440 theory of history, you're going to love this episode. Tyler's ideas dovetail nicely with

00:01:25.660 Howe's cyclical view of history. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:29.060 aom.is slash complacent, where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper

00:01:33.140 into this topic.

00:01:39.620 Tyler Cowen, welcome to the show.

00:01:41.600 Thank you.

00:01:43.080 Long been a fan of your work. You got a new book out, The Complacent Class, The Self-Defeating

00:01:47.680 Quest for the American Dream. And it's all about how you make the case that America sort of lost

00:01:55.040 its dynamism. We're not as dynamic as we once were. But before we get into that, what do you

00:02:02.860 mean by dynamism? Because oftentimes when we hear that word, we think of it as in positive terms,

00:02:07.640 like everything's just fantastic and wonderful. But as I read your book, I kind of got the idea

00:02:12.640 that that wasn't necessarily the case. Well, our rate of economic growth has been slower.

00:02:18.080 We move across the country at much lower rates than in decades past. We're much more paranoid

00:02:23.280 with our children. We won't let them play outside nearly as much. We take more medications to relieve

00:02:29.500 our anxiety. If you look at each and every different sphere of American life, we even until recently protest

00:02:36.240 much less against politics we don't like. We see that people are trying to dig in and play it safe

00:02:42.640 and simply take fewer chances.

00:02:44.640 Okay. And you argue that we've become a complacent class and that this complacent class is composed

00:02:50.160 of different groups. It's not just middle class people or upper class or just poor. It cuts across

00:02:57.220 the boards. But I'm curious, how does the complacent class manifest itself differently amongst these

00:03:03.440 different socioeconomic groups? Well, I identify three different groups. There are people who are

00:03:08.140 really quite well off the top 1% or 3%. And they, in a sense, have everything in life. And ultimately,

00:03:15.800 their main interest is in preserving the status quo. And for all their intellectual talk about things

00:03:22.160 being different in America, the actual urgency they feel in that regard has not been very high,

00:03:28.520 perhaps at least until the last election. There's then the middle class, which is increasingly

00:03:34.920 uncomfortable. But their main strategy has been to dig themselves in to make sure that no benefits are

00:03:41.100 taken away from them, to make sure that no one builds a cheaper house next to theirs, just to try to

00:03:47.020 cement in their lives. And they have a less dynamic perspective than middle class Americans might have 0.58

00:03:52.660 had in the 50s or 60s. And then there are lower income groups, you might think, well, how could

00:03:58.000 they possibly be complacent? But if you compare those individuals, say, to the 1960s, and how people

00:04:04.320 behaved in terms of protest, and simply not putting up with what the system was giving them, again,

00:04:10.240 it's actually much more passive. So this is occurring across different socioeconomic classes.

00:04:15.720 Okay. So what are some of the big factors, like big picture factors that have led to the rise of this

00:04:22.760 complacent class that you've identified?

00:04:24.760 I think it's ultimately a historical story that we had really a great deal of dynamism in the 1960s and the

00:04:31.780 early part of the 1970s. It was a very active America taking a lot of chances, putting a man on the moon

00:04:38.180 in seven years. But the funny thing is, people don't actually like that. People very much want security.

00:04:44.400 So we made a conscious decision as a nation to do anything possible to lower our crime rate,

00:04:50.300 including putting a lot more people in jail. We made a conscious decision to make our cities nicer

00:04:56.160 over time, even if that would mean they would grow less. We made a conscious decision our children

00:05:01.760 would encounter essentially no risk, even if that means they wouldn't learn the same number of valuable

00:05:07.340 lessons growing up. So I think it's a fundamental imperfection in human nature that people most of

00:05:14.160 all want security, not liberty or dynamism. There are some exceptions to that, but for the most part,

00:05:20.060 that's us.

00:05:20.940 Sure. So let's talk about some of these ways that you've seen the complacent class manifest itself.

00:05:26.480 One of the more interesting aspects that I liked in your book, you talk about how the decline in

00:05:30.560 America mobility. America has this sort of idea of itself as being a nation of pioneers,

00:05:36.280 constantly on the move. But you argue that we're not moving around as much. So can you give us an

00:05:42.220 idea of how much geographic mobility has declined in the past few decades?

00:05:46.180 Well, if you look at people crossing state lines and moving, that's fallen by about 50%

00:05:52.100 since the peak of American mobility in the 1970s and the 1980s. So the old vision was, you know,

00:05:59.160 maybe you lived in Mississippi and you would move up to Detroit to take a job in an automobile plant.

00:06:05.160 Or if that plant closed down, you might move to Houston to, you know, work on an oil rig.

00:06:10.200 And that's not the case anymore. We're much more a service sector economy. Geographically,

00:06:15.600 different parts of this country, they look more alike. And the notion that a dentist will say,

00:06:20.640 leave Columbus, Ohio for Denver, Colorado, because people there, you know, need more of their teeth

00:06:25.260 fixing. That's just not a significant reason to move. So people find where they want to live

00:06:29.940 and then they stay there. And I mean, why, why is this such a bad thing? I mean,

00:06:35.840 couldn't that mean that people are suddenly down and establishing roots and deeply connected

00:06:40.500 communities? That's all true. But here's a very important point. I think it's rational for each

00:06:45.540 and every individual. But when everyone does that at the societal level, our labor markets adjust

00:06:52.060 much more slowly when there's a recession. And we saw that during the last recession.

00:06:57.360 It's harder to start a new business because the influx of new labor to any one area is not that

00:07:03.400 strong. It's harder for failing regions to adjust and move on. And we saw this, you know, in the rust

00:07:10.440 belt right before the last election. So there's this overall decline of dynamism at the social level

00:07:16.360 that hurts people. But of course, for every person, myself included, most of us live somewhere we like

00:07:22.120 and we don't want to leave and moving is a big disruption. But there's something socially valuable

00:07:26.980 about having a people who are somewhat more willing to move.

00:07:30.280 Yeah. And this kind of connects to that idea of matching that you talk about too in the book that

00:07:34.840 we've become better at matching our personal preferences to everything in life, communities as

00:07:41.880 well. But what are some other ways that matching, like this increased ability to match our preferences,

00:07:48.680 how has that decreased dynamism in America?

00:07:53.560 Well, two areas would be music and then mating. So look at music. Whatever song I want to hear

00:07:59.640 on YouTube or on Spotify, I can hear it right now in an instant for free. It sounds wonderful as a

00:08:06.360 listener. It is wonderful. But it also means for the first time in history, people are paying much

00:08:12.260 more attention to the back catalog of past music than to current music. So in my view, current musical

00:08:18.380 creativity is declining. The audience interest isn't there. You're listening, you know, to the Beatles or

00:08:23.520 the Rolling Stones or Bon Jovi or whatever. So again, it's a kind of behavior that in the moment for

00:08:29.340 the individual is rational. But for society as a whole has some bad long run consequences.

00:08:35.640 If you look at marriage, dating and mating, it's much easier today to find someone of exactly your

00:08:42.460 interests, your social class, your desired income level and meet, date and marry them. And again,

00:08:48.820 that's led arguably to happier marriages. But it's also worsened the issue of income inequality

00:08:54.940 because you now have, say, two law partners marrying each other. The resulting family is

00:09:01.200 extremely wealthy. The children typically do very well. But that's also a barrier to upward

00:09:06.560 mobility. Yeah. So like in the past, the lawyer might marry his secretary.

00:09:11.500 Correct. Right. You know, he or she might be a very smart person, but wouldn't have that same

00:09:16.580 income multiplier effect as what we're seeing today.

00:09:19.460 I think connected to this decrease in mobility, you argue that this decrease in mobility

00:09:24.520 has counterintuitively helped the reemergence of segregation in America. So why is segregation

00:09:35.420 on the rise again?

00:09:36.820 Well, let's keep in mind first, there are several different kinds of segregation. The one that's

00:09:40.680 gone up the most by far is what is called income segregation. That is, it used to be that

00:09:45.360 well-off and poor people lived quite close to each other. And that was very good for the mobility 0.99

00:09:51.060 of poor Americans. There's a lot of evidence toward that conclusion. Now it's more likely 0.99

00:09:56.580 the case that wealthy people live in Manhattan or San Francisco and poorer people live much

00:10:02.160 further away. So there's less mixing. I think it makes us less dynamic and it makes American

00:10:07.580 mobility more static. Now, racial segregation commands a lot of attention. That's a more complicated

00:10:13.540 story. There are some notable ways in which racial segregation is going down. So suburbs are more

00:10:19.220 mixed race than before. That's mostly a good thing. But if you look at American schools, 1.00

00:10:24.480 very often they're more racially segregated. And if you look at the worst off areas, they too tend

00:10:31.720 to be more rather than less racially segregated. So I would say on that metric, we're not seeing this

00:10:38.240 kind of ongoing progress we had hoped for from the civil rights movement. It's pretty much stuck or in

00:10:43.840 some ways even going in reverse. But so I mean, civil rights laws prohibit explicit discrimination

00:10:49.360 and segregation. So how is that happening? I don't think it's explicit for the most part. It's

00:10:54.940 happening through price and income. So people who have more money matched to the more expensive

00:11:00.740 neighborhoods, those neighborhoods then limit the amount of high density residential construction,

00:11:06.220 which makes it harder for people to rent cheaper apartments.

00:11:10.060 And you have the most productive, wealthiest parts of America, such as the Bay Area,

00:11:16.540 just become, you know, impossibly expensive and difficult to afford. And other people live further

00:11:21.860 away. They either have terrible commutes, or they're simply locked out of that economic dynamism.

00:11:27.320 And besides income and race, I mean, another way that we're seeing segregation happening on a

00:11:33.160 geographic level is even with politics, right?

00:11:36.500 Oh, that's correct. And this is why you have Donald Trump, you know, losing the popular vote,

00:11:42.660 really by a fair amount, but winning the electoral college by also not a landslide, as he sometimes

00:11:49.440 claims. But, you know, he won the electoral college. And it's because Democrats are so clustered,

00:11:56.840 say, in a relatively small number of densely populated states, New York, California, Hillary Clinton

00:12:03.200 wins by large margins. And then you have less populated states, but a lot of them that tend to be

00:12:09.700 more conservative or Trumpian or whatever you would call it. And that's a result of more political

00:12:15.260 segregation. And I don't mean this as a comment on any one candidate, but overall, I think it's

00:12:20.660 unhealthy. It's a better America when you have more Republicans and Democrats living right next door to

00:12:26.300 each other. And you see it also across marriage. Democrats and Republicans don't want to marry each other

00:12:31.780 anymore. That kind of segues to the other idea that you argue that we've become complacent in our

00:12:36.720 politics as well. And perhaps this geographic segregation along political ideologies is contributing to

00:12:43.140 that gridlock that we've seen in our government in the past few decades.

00:12:47.040 Absolutely. So Congress doesn't get problems solved. Americans online, they're nastier to each other than

00:12:53.660 they used to be. The sense of a common purpose is weakened. And the idea that either Hillary Clinton,

00:12:59.760 Donald Trump, was somehow, you know, a fundamentally illegitimate force, to me, those are unhealthy

00:13:06.000 developments, no matter what you think of the particular candidates. More and more Americans think the

00:13:11.200 people who disagree with them are immoral.

00:13:14.600 We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show.

00:13:19.500 And how else has our political system become complacent, where we emphasize safety, security,

00:13:25.920 over volatility and dynamism?

00:13:29.060 Well, the most static part of the budget is what we spend on entitlements, social security,

00:13:33.840 Medicare, Medicaid. And I'm not trying to make an argument that those are necessarily bad expenditures.

00:13:39.920 But over time, they take up a higher and higher percentage of the federal budget,

00:13:44.520 because we're aging and because healthcare costs are going up.

00:13:48.000 So in terms of investing money for research and development, or new projects, or revitalizing

00:13:53.640 infrastructure, or the current day equivalent of sending a man to the moon, there's basically

00:13:59.080 no money for those things. And I find it worrying that in percentage terms, we're spending more and

00:14:05.300 more on being safe, and less and less on being dynamic. That's a kind of fiscal lock-in.

00:14:10.640 Right, right. So again, neither Republicans or Democrats will touch social security or Medicaid or

00:14:15.860 those things.

00:14:16.660 That's correct. And the only question is how much more will we spend. And even under President Obama,

00:14:23.060 the projected budgets for discretionary spending were basically slated to be going down over time.

00:14:29.380 So let's turn our attention to business. In America, we again, we have this idea that we're

00:14:35.380 entrepreneurial, we're, you know, businesses are always starting up. And we have this idea, I mean,

00:14:40.780 we're always hearing about these tech disruptors that are coming out of Silicon Valley. So

00:14:45.060 there's an impression that we still have that entrepreneurial dynamism. But you make the case

00:14:50.460 that we're not. So what are some of the statistics out there about declining entrepreneurship in

00:14:54.920 America?

00:14:55.260 Well, I would stress first, we do have some of the dynamism. And the main place you see it is in

00:15:00.380 Silicon Valley. That has been a very productive sector. It's changed our lives in some significant

00:15:06.020 ways. And that's great. The problem is that most of the American economy isn't like that.

00:15:11.460 So if you look at most of the service sector economy, which is about 80% of GDP, in most of

00:15:18.100 it, measured rates of productivity growth are barely above zero. You look at healthcare, you

00:15:23.440 look at education, you look at the efficiency of our government. Those are hard to measure,

00:15:28.200 but it doesn't seem they're making big gains. In some regards, they're going backwards.

00:15:32.600 They're becoming more and more expensive. And we're at best getting these modest gains.

00:15:38.940 Most of life is not like Moore's law and the iPhone. That's America's dynamic sector.

00:15:44.740 Our long run hope is that tech seeps into everything and brings back a new glory time of

00:15:50.540 economic growth of 4%. But that's pretty far away. Three out of our last four decades,

00:15:56.120 you know, we haven't managed productivity growth of much beyond something like 1% per year.

00:16:02.040 And why are Americans starting fewer and fewer businesses? Is it just more expensive or harder

00:16:06.880 to succeed? What's going on there?

00:16:08.680 I think it's a number of reasons all at once. So startups, for all the publicity they receive,

00:16:14.160 as a percentage of overall business, that has been going down in this country since the 1980s,

00:16:19.440 every single decade going down. I think some of it is in a lot of sectors, you have a winner-take-all

00:16:25.660 effect where, say, in retail, there are fewer, you know, small, cute, little niche businesses

00:16:31.620 and chains are more significant. That's part of it. Part of it is the burden of regulation

00:16:37.380 on businesses higher and large businesses can cope with that better than small businesses.

00:16:43.640 And then I think another part is this ineffable psychological loss in America that we are more

00:16:48.980 complacent and less dynamic. So all three of those at once, you end up with a business climate

00:16:55.180 that is outside of the Bay Area, for the most part, pretty static.

00:16:59.500 Yeah. And you also argue that, you know, when people do start businesses in America, they're not

00:17:03.600 that ambitious with them. Like, you're just seeing a lot of, you know, app companies or lifestyle

00:17:09.480 companies. You're not seeing people trying to, you know, invent the next light bulb. So, I mean,

00:17:15.680 why have American entrepreneurs lost that desire to create, you know, life-changing businesses?

00:17:21.000 Well, it's hard to do, of course. And again, we have had some life-changing businesses,

00:17:26.460 but oddly, some of them make us more complacent. So if you look at Silicon Valley, you look at

00:17:31.640 something like Facebook, well, we're better connected to friends. It's improving how we

00:17:37.320 use our leisure time. I mean, that is something that's wonderful, but it's not feeding into the

00:17:42.420 rest of the real economy the way the Industrial Revolution or the mechanical revolutions of the first

00:17:48.980 part of the 20th century did, where you have just a complete onslaught of everything changing at

00:17:54.280 once. If you compare American life in, say, 1900 to 1950, everything has changed. Electricity,

00:18:01.360 running water, radio, the automobile, everything's different. If you compare our last 50 years,

00:18:08.240 which I've witnessed personally, other than computers, you know, most of the stuff is the same.

00:18:13.620 My car is a little safer, a little nicer. I'm still driving a car. I'm still cooking,

00:18:19.540 you know, basically in a 1950s kitchen. The physical stuff of my personal universe,

00:18:25.300 computers aside, has not changed much in 50 years.

00:18:29.280 Right. And going back to the idea that these new Silicon Valley startups, they increase complacency,

00:18:34.180 like a lot of the technology that they're developing is just increasing matching, like

00:18:38.720 matching preferences better, right? Talking about Spotify.

00:18:44.360 That's right. So I can buy a better antiques collection because of eBay, for instance,

00:18:48.560 or match to my high school friends better because of Facebook. And again, those are real gains,

00:18:53.460 but it's mostly about leisure time and not making our whole economy more productive in a broad-based way.

00:18:59.640 Not yet, at least.

00:19:00.460 Right. So the complacent class, we were putting a premium on safety, stability, and comfort,

00:19:05.200 but why is that bad in the long run?

00:19:09.020 Well, here's the thing. In the long run, someone has to pay the bills. Personally,

00:19:13.180 a lot of us have debts. Our government socially has significant debt and pension liabilities,

00:19:18.580 unfunded liabilities. And the way we're going to pay all that off is by being dynamic. And if we're

00:19:25.340 not sufficiently dynamic, a crunch will come and there will be a societal crisis and people will speak

00:19:32.400 up because they're not seeing enough gains. They're not expecting to be better off than their

00:19:36.360 parents. And I think we're essentially at this point already where people have realized what we're

00:19:42.960 doing isn't working. We've maybe made some hasty decisions in terms of how we might try to fix that.

00:19:51.200 But you can't just stay on a track of no change for your whole life, either individually or socially.

00:19:56.740 It's asking for trouble. You'll end up getting bigger changes that you can't control at all.

00:20:01.720 Right, right. So it's good to have a bit of instability all the time instead of

00:20:07.180 a lot of instability all at once due to your trying to control volatility.

00:20:12.640 That's right. The greater wisdom is in realizing you cannot control all risk

00:20:16.560 and accepting some and learning how to manage it rather than pushing all of it out the door.

00:20:20.900 So you think you're seeing signs of the age of complacency coming to an end. I mean,

00:20:26.580 what are some of those signs that you're seeing?

00:20:28.680 Well, if you look at the few weeks right after the inauguration of Trump, we saw a level of public

00:20:34.460 protest in this country. We basically had not seen since the early 1970s. I think that's the

00:20:41.300 single biggest indicator. And again, it's not a question of whether you're for or against,

00:20:45.460 simply that the response and the urgency of it was so strong and so immediate. And I think now in

00:20:52.840 this country, there is a realization we cannot stay on our previous track. The wealth won't be

00:20:58.380 there forever. Mentally, psychologically, I think in the last two years, people have very much flipped.

00:21:03.980 And I think we're in for a new age of turmoil, a bit like parts of the 1960s. It will be painful.

00:21:09.560 We'll hate it. But ultimately, I think in the longer run, it will regenerate our vitality.

00:21:14.480 And so I mean, what's your hunch? And it seems at the end of the book, you kind of you argue for

00:21:17.500 this sort of generational or cyclical idea of history. So go through these bouts of stability,

00:21:23.880 and then there's instability. I mean, what's your hunch of what the next 20 or 30 years are going

00:21:30.280 to be like? I think there'll be in some ways quite a bit like the 1960s and early 70s, a lot of turmoil,

00:21:37.880 possibly a foreign war that becomes unpopular, very high amounts of protest and polarization,

00:21:43.900 racial and segregation issues reemerging, except we're going to run that experiment over with

00:21:50.600 information technology, which makes response times much quicker, the news cycle more accelerated.

00:21:56.300 And that to me is dangerous, because last time we did this in the 60s and 70s, we came out of it

00:22:01.380 fine. The 80s and 90s are a great era of American revitalization. And I do think we'll see that again.

00:22:07.420 But we're running a higher risk, because with Twitter and Facebook, you know, fake news is

00:22:12.200 accelerated very quickly. There's a lot more propaganda, there's a lot more surveillance.

00:22:17.400 So we'll see how it goes this time around.

00:22:19.560 We'll see how it goes. And do you think we're doomed to just repeat this cycle over and over?

00:22:23.740 Say we go through this next crisis, and we get back on, you know, to a road of stability?

00:22:29.180 Are we just going to sow the seeds for another era of, you know, great turmoil?

00:22:32.620 Absolutely. We'll dig in again and want to be safe. I would say today, in terms of age,

00:22:37.940 there are so many Americans who basically, as mature adults, only saw the 80s, 90s, and what

00:22:43.660 came after that. And they expect things are always going to be nice. The 80s and 90s were mostly great

00:22:49.300 decades for America. But if you look at the longer run of American history, whether it's the age of

00:22:54.580 Andrew Jackson, or the Civil War, or the fights over civil rights, or the problems of the 1930s,

00:23:01.400 or, you know, the protests and riots of the 60s, that's not what this country is.

00:23:06.500 There are periodic times of calm, and different forms of chaos have always reemerged. And the

00:23:11.880 people who grew up just seeing 80s and 90s, I don't think they've internalized that they see it in the

00:23:17.260 history books, they don't yet get that it's real, and they're starting to see it. And for a lot of

00:23:22.400 them, it's very scary.

00:23:23.860 Definitely. So someone who's listening to this, they're, they're thinking, okay,

00:23:27.720 America is becoming more, more complacent, I don't want to be complacent.

00:23:32.060 How can people thrive in the age of complacency?

00:23:35.280 Well, one thing you can do is just look at your immediate friends, spouse, and neighborhood,

00:23:40.540 and ask yourself, who am I surrounding myself with? Are they just people who are like I am?

00:23:46.860 Or am I doing something, you know, in an environment with truly diverse peers? And I don't just mean

00:23:51.620 ethnically or racially diverse, but people who are really different from you. And just ask yourself

00:23:56.820 that hard question. And you know, the answers will vary for different people. But see what you

00:24:01.280 might do to change that. Talk more to people you disagree with. You know, think more, what chances

00:24:06.880 might you take? I think most of us have a kind of status quo bias in life. There's one experiment that

00:24:12.580 was run, where people came to the researchers with big decisions. And the researchers flipped a coin for

00:24:18.840 people. And half of them were told to make a change. And actually, most of the people who made the change

00:24:23.480 were happy afterwards, but they might not have done it on their own. So think more like that,

00:24:28.300 overcome your own status quo bias.

00:24:30.440 Right. And is this where some of your ideas you laid out in Average is Over come in as well?

00:24:36.200 Yes. You know, my book Average is Over, it talks about automation and the new age of smart machines

00:24:40.900 and how it's changing American jobs. I think that's showing, you know, why it was the older system was

00:24:47.260 slowing down for so many people. But unless you're really good at working with computers in some way,

00:24:51.980 it's harder and harder to make a good living and see your wage increase over time. And unfortunately,

00:24:57.480 I don't think any more than 15 or 20 percent of this country is really good at working with

00:25:02.460 computers. So we've seen a lot of real wage stagnation for many groups.

00:25:06.240 Yeah, I saw there's an article that's been going around lately about making the push for coding being

00:25:12.280 the new blue collar job. I thought was interesting.

00:25:15.680 I mean, that's fine. But, you know, not that many people can code. And over time,

00:25:19.560 machines will code on their own. Encoding is relatively easily outsourced to foreigners. 1.00

00:25:25.460 So, you know, the really good jobs are for people who integrate the information world

00:25:29.860 and the physical world and the world of the people they work with. And that requires a lot

00:25:34.660 of different skills. It's not that easy.

00:25:36.780 Yeah, a lot of different soft skills.

00:25:38.500 And hard skills. You need to bring them together.

00:25:40.680 Well, Tyler, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:25:44.040 and your work?

00:25:44.600 Well, they can just Google my name, Tyler Cowen, Complacent Class. They can buy the book

00:25:49.760 at Barnes & Noble on Amazon. I'm on Twitter. My handle is at Tyler Cowen. I write a blog called

00:25:56.340 Marginal Revolution. But just start with Google, my name and the phrase Complacent Class.

00:26:02.300 Fantastic. Well, Tyler Cowen, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:26:05.100 My pleasure. Thank you.

00:26:06.220 My guest today was Tyler Cowen. He is the author of the book, The Complacent Class. It's available

00:26:10.440 on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out more information about Tyler

00:26:14.580 's work at marginalrevolution.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is

00:26:19.960 slash complacent where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this

00:26:23.500 topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips

00:26:32.580 and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you

00:26:36.540 enjoy this show, I'd appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. That helps us out a

00:26:39.940 lot. As always, I thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling

00:26:44.160 you to stay manly.

00:26:45.820 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - March 03, 2017

#283： The Complacent Class

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