 Much of Binyaz's argument about the supposed connection between bad outcomes and the free market is based on conjecture. But he does make one attempt to demonstrate that his argument is not merely conjectural, which I want to take seriously. His very specific claim about the pattern of slowed economic growth over the period he covers. His argument is that free market ideology began to dominate by the late 1960s to the 1970s, and that as a result, economic growth slowed in each of the decades that followed. I'll show how his factual claim does not quite withstand scrutiny. In a podcast interview, Binyaz made due allowance for the difficulty of explaining why economic growth slows. Quote, Our understanding of growth, he stated, is highly incomplete, and we are to some extent talking about things we don't fully understand, unquote. But despite conceding a limited grasp of the factors that cause economic growth to slow, he still claims to find a trend that lights up the road, quote. But it is a fact, he goes on to say, that average growth declined in every decade from the 1960s through the aughts in the United States adjusted for population. And it is a fact that during that period, we saw a fundamental shift in our approach to managing the economy, unquote. The fundamental shift he refers to is, of course, the alleged, ever-tightening grip of free market ideology. He continues, quote. If we think that that approach promoting free market ideology was consequential, it's not unreasonable at least to wonder about how it might have affected that trend, unquote. To emphasize the importance he places on that trend, let me also quote this from his book, quote. The market revolution went too far. Growth slowed in each successive decade during the half century described in this book adjusting for population and inflation, unquote. Notice he emphasizes that each successive decade suffered a slowdown from the previous decade. By adjusting for inflation, he means real or inflation-adjusted growth in gross domestic product. And by adjusting for population, he means growth of real GDP per capita. As mentioned, the best evidence is that progressive ideology, not free market ideology, has become increasingly dominant. But Binya is also mistaken about the pattern of slowed growth, which leaves a major flaw in his core argument. Here are the numbers provided in his book on growth of real GDP per capita, which span 10-year periods and which purport to show a slowdown in each successive decade with each of his 10-year periods ending in the ninth year of each decade. Let's start reading those numbers from top to bottom. It's clear that growth slowed from the 60s to the 70s, from 3.13 percent to 2.160 percent. Now look at the next step. Growth slowed from the 70s to the 80s, from 2.160 percent to 2.156 percent. But was this really slowed growth, 2.160 to 2.156? Binya had to take these numbers to three decimal places to get his desired decline. Round each of these figures to two decimal places and you get 2.16 percent in each case, which comes to a flat trend. This inspires the old joke that if you torture numbers long enough, they'll confess to anything. And Binya's three decimal point torture clearly indicates how much the pattern matters to him. From the next step, from the 80s to the 90s, from 2.156 percent to 1.98 percent, looks a little suspect, a slowdown of less than two-tenths of a percentage point. I put each of these annual numbers on a spreadsheet, grouped them in rolling 10-year periods and found the pattern is sensitive to which years you choose. While there is a slowdown from the 60s to the 70s and from the 90s to the aughts, the middle decades show no real pattern but a relatively flat trend. As one way of illustrating this, I'll show how easy it is to get the reverse patterns from Binyas in the middle decades by tracking 10-year periods that differ by only two years from his. Since the updated numbers go through 2021, the most recent year available, I worked backwards from there. So each of my 10-year periods ends in the first year of the following decade. I got this as a result, also taken to three decimal places to stay consistent with Binyas method. Let's also read these numbers from top to bottom. We see a similar decline from the 60s to the 70s, from 3.070 percent to 2.040 percent. But from the 70s to the 1990s, we get a slight acceleration instead of Binyas slight deceleration. 2.040 percent in the 70s, 2.046 in the 80s, and 2.329 in the 90s. The 90s to the aughts show a similar slowdown from 2.356 percent to 0.926. The aughts to the teens do show a pick up, but the 1.488 percent rate in the teens is still pretty dismal. The point is that the middle decades deprive Binyas of the linchpin of his argument. That growth slowed in each successive decade over the period under review. He wants us to believe that the grip of free market ideology placed a gradual chokehold on growth. Now we are forced to believe the alleged impact was felt only twice. So much prematurely from the 60s to the 1970s, since by Binyas own account, free market ideology was beginning to wield only beginning to wield destructive influence in the 70s. We then find zero impact in causing a slowdown in growth from the 1970s to 1980s, which included the presidency of free market ideologue Ronald Reagan, and zero impact from the 80s to the 90s. Instead, we had to wait nearly 30 years until the aughts for the impact to be felt a second time. The corrected trend must send Binyas back to the drawing board to devise some other attempt at a coherent narrative. Given the relative incoherence of his current narrative, his initial disclaimer still applies. Quote, our understanding of growth is highly incomplete and we are to some extent talking about things we don't fully understand. Unquote. I could elaborate on a totally different explanation for the slowdown in growth since 2000 that I regard as more plausible, having to do with the decline in the economic freedom index since 2000, which reveals the declining influence of the free market. But I want to use the time remaining to make two more general points. I'm about to quote from a passage in Binyas book that betrays a certain mindset about the free market. He writes the following about the state of poverty in the early 1960s. Quote, about a fifth of the American population then lived in destitution with little prospect of betterment. Both liberal and conservative administrations had taken the view that poverty was best treated by pursuing broad economic growth. But by the early 1960s, scholars and journalists were focusing public attention on the inadequacy of this strategy. Unquote. So if his Binyas writes there was quote, little prospect of betterment among those in poverty, we can only assume that things hadn't been getting better for quite a while. And if the scholars involved were focusing public attention on the inadequacy of the strategy, we must assume this was based on their scholarly research. And we further assume this scholarly research lent support to the federal government's announcement of its war on poverty in 1964. Binyas cites no data in this account, but now try a very different narrative that does cite relevant data from social scientist Charles Murray. Quote, in 1949, 41% of Americans were below the poverty line. When LBJ announced the war on poverty in 1964, that proportion had dropped to 19%. In just the 15 years between 1949 and 1964, the American poverty rate had dropped by 22 percentage points. What had the government done to help? By the definition of the 1960s and thereafter, nothing. The federal government was missing in action in the real war against poverty, and yet somehow America cut poverty by more than half over this period. While the trend Murray cites was well known when Binyas wrote his mistaken account. I suggest that this reveals a certain bias, despite Binyas occasional nods to the benefits of the free market. In areas that include such trends as the decline in poverty, the decline in the rate of auto accidents, and the increase decrease in injuries in the workplace, the progressive assumption is that government regulation is required to fix the problem, since the free market has done virtually nothing to fix it. These misdependent part are ignoring the evidence that trends like these were noticeably improving before government got involved. It's a short step from there, when considering any bad outcome to regard the free market as guilty until proven innocent and government innocent until proven guilty. Finally, I can't avoid mentioning something else in Binyas' book that falls into major error. He places great significance on the trend displayed in this chart, the long term down trend in all wages and salaries as a percentage of gross domestic product. But in constructing this chart, he ignored the advice of his source, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, or BEA, in two basic ways. First, the BEA tracks not just wages and salaries, but the growing category that covers benefits, including pension and health benefits, benefits that are no doubt important to Binyas as a New York Times employee. Second, the BEA tracks not just gross domestic product, but net domestic product. Net domestic product is simply gross domestic product minus the depreciation of capital. And the BEA instruction clearly conveys the point that use of net domestic product is more accurate in calculating this kind of percentage. I quote this from the BEA handbook. Net domestic product is a measure of how much of the nation's output is available for consumption or for adding to the nation's wealth. Unquote. Well, here is Binyas chart through the second quarter of this year, which takes wages and salaries as a percentage of gross domestic product. Now here is the same chart with the corrections I take from the BEA. Labor compensation, which includes wages, salaries, and benefits as a percentage of net domestic product. Notice that Binyas downtrend disappears in this corrected chart. Properly measured, it turns out to be a relatively flat trend and not as Binyas has written a smaller share of the pie. So I encourage him to go back to the drawing board on all these issues. Thanks. Thank you, Gene Epstein. We've got five minutes of rebuttal, Binyas. Do you want to, you can use the handheld mic. Either way you can sit or stand. We believe in choice here. So there's a lot there. Thank you, Gene, for your close engagement with my work. I appreciate it. I didn't mention the data that Gene spent most of his time talking about because I don't think it's the most important indicator of the problems in the American economy. It's an interesting data point. It's stylized. You can take it or leave it. I think there has been a downward trend. It is possible to cut the data in ways that make it a little bit bumpy or a little smoother. I concede that point, but I don't think it's the most important point. As I said at the outset, by many measures, the American economy and aggregate has done quite well. Where we are faltering is in the distribution of prosperity, not in the creation of prosperity. That is our particular challenge. And that's why that was not one of the points that I actually made at the beginning of my talk. So you can take that for what it's worth.