What is the great economic challenge of our times? Is it inflation? Rising inequality? Artificially low interest rates? Economist David Bahnsen joins Josh to discuss why excessive government debt and our slow-growth or no-growth economy risks the Japanification of the United States. While some warn of a financial apocalypse, David argues that a more realistic threat is continued lack of productive output and increasing discontents if we don’t reverse course. Also discussed are how supply side economists can respond to the Left’s critiques of the free market in the wake of the Great Recession and how Edmund Burke best represents American conservatism.

About David Bahnsen

From David’s website:

David L. Bahnsen is the founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of The Bahnsen Group, a bi-coastal private wealth management firm with offices in Newport Beach, CA, New York City, Minneapolis, and Nashville managing over $3.5 billion in client assets. David is consistently named as one of the top financial advisors in America by Barron’s, Forbes, and the Financial Times. He is a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business and is a regular contributor to National Review and Forbes. He has written his own political viewpoint blog for over a decade.

David serves on the Board of Directors for the National Review Institute and was the Vice-President of the Lincoln Club of Orange County for eight years. He is a committed donor and activist across all spectrums of national, state, and local politics, and views the cause of Buckley and Reagan as the need of the hour.

David is passionate about opposition to crony capitalism, and has lectured and written for years about the need for pro-growth economic policy. Every part of his political worldview stems from a desire to see greater freedom as a catalyst to greater human flourishing.

He is the author of the book, Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It and his most recent book, There’s No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths.

His ultimate passions are his lovely wife of 18+ years, Joleen, their gorgeous and brilliant children, sons Mitchell and Graham, and daughter Sadie, and the life they’ve created together in Newport Beach, California.

Listener Mail

At the end of the episode, Josh responds to a listener’s question about book recommendations for those interested in conservatism. Below are the books included in his response:

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot by Russell Kirk

How to be a Conservative by Roger Scruton

What Is Conservatism? by Frank Meyer

Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea by Irving Kristol

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 by George Nash

The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism by Matthew Continetti

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke

The Great Debate by Yuval Levin

Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered by Russell Kirk

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

The Fatal Conceit by F.A. Hayek

I, Pencil by Leonard Read

Suicide of the West by Jonah Goldberg

Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell

A Conflict of Vision by Thomas Sowell

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left by Roger Scruton

Them by Ben Sasse

A Time to Build by Yuval Levin