Cato Podcast

Kidneys, surrogacy, prostitution, gambling, price gouging, assisted dying: some transactions make people recoil, even when all parties consent. Cato's Ryan Bourne talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin Roth about his new book, Moral Economics, what makes markets “repugnant,” what economists can add to moral debates, and why banning exchange rarely makes scarcity, exploitation, or hard trade-offs disappear. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Supreme Court's Callais decision signals that drawing districts with race in mind is now legally hazardous, whether the goal is minority representation or not. Cato's Thomas A. Berry and Walter Olson unpack the ruling, the collision between the 14th and 15th Amendments, and why a simple compactness rule could solve most of this if Congress had the will. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

California’s $20 fast-food minimum wage cut employment by roughly 18,000 jobs and pushed up restaurant prices. Cato’s Ryan Bourne talks to UC San Diego economist Jeff Clemens about California’s wage-floor experiment—and the broader lessons for state and federal minimum wage policy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asylum entries are down 99.9%. Student visas, family visas, and H-1B applications have all cratered. Ryan Bourne is joined by Cato's David Bier to examine how President Trump's executive actions have blocked far more legal immigrants than illegal ones, and why the president's stated support for legal immigration doesn't match his policy record. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Federal farm subsidies have kept growing from occasional disaster relief into a sprawling system of commodity supports, crop insurance, sugar protection, and bailouts. With the backdrop of the Farm Bill, Cato’s Ryan Bourne, Chris Edwards, and Clark Packard discuss who really benefits, why reform never sticks, and how tariffs hurt farmers that Congress then subsidize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The United States has left the World Health Organization, but infectious diseases remain one of the clearest cases for cross-border cooperation. Cato’s Ryan Bourne is joined by Roger Bate of the International Center for Law & Economics to discuss how the WHO suffered from damaging mission creep, why it failed so badly during Covid, and what a narrower, more accountable global health institution might look like. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Medicaid spending on autism therapy jumped from $300 million to $2 billion in just eight states over seven years. Cato's Ryan Bourne, Jeff Singer, and Adam Omary argue the cause isn't an epidemic; it's distorted incentives and a diagnostic manual that keeps expanding. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Consumer prices are up 28% in six years and inflation is accelerating again. Cato's Ryan Bourne, Jai Kedia, Colin Grabow, and Stephen Slivinski unpack Cato's new Handbook on Affordability and the macroeconomic and supply-side reforms that could actually help. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary this week to campaign for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, hailing him as a defender of Western civilization. Cato's Ryan Bourne sits down with Johan Norberg to discuss Orbán’s actual record in government: weakened checks and balances, crony capitalism, and social policies that have fallen short of Orbán’s ambitions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve Davies’s new book, The Great Realignment, argues that the key political divide of the past century — markets versus state control — is being displaced by a new aligning issue: nationalism, sovereignty, and collective identity versus cosmopolitanism and globalism. Cato’s Ryan Bourne talks with Davies about why today’s biggest political fights seem less about tax and spending and more about borders, culture, and who governs, how these non-economic conflicts still have deep economic roots, and what this new alignment persisting would mean for libertarians and economic policy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Massachusetts is weighing a ballot initiative that would cap rent increases at the rate of inflation with no vacancy decontrol, one of the most stringent rent control regimes proposed in the country. Cato's Ryan Bourne and Jeff Miron walk through why economists are nearly unanimous in opposing rent control: it shrinks rental supply, degrades housing quality, and tends to benefit longer-term, higher-income tenants rather than the low-income renters it claims to help. As Cambridge's own history shows, the policy doesn't just fail to solve the affordability problem; it actively makes it worse.We want to hear from you! Please share your thoughts in a 3-minute anonymous survey to help us refine our programming at Cato.org/PodcastSurvey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cato’s new media fellow, Rikki Schlott, joins Ryan Bourne to talk Gen Z: how social media shaped them, why online life has made young people both more anxious and more persuadable, and how the socialist left and the alt-right have each found fertile ground. They discuss the strange incentives of the attention economy, what Mamdani and other online political entrepreneurs get right, and whether libertarian ideas can be made to resonate with a generation raised on algorithms.We want to hear from you! Please share your thoughts in a 3-minute anonymous survey to help us refine our programming at Cato.org/PodcastSurvey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.