 This is Jeff Deist, and you're listening to the Human Action Podcast. All right, hello. Okay. Thank you. All right, thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It's nice to have a live audience for the Human Action Podcast this week. We're in Auburn at the tail end of Mises University, and it's great to have a live audience in front of us. And it's also great to have a good friend of ours, Dr. Liliana Stern. She teaches just across the street at Auburn University, both macro and money and banking. She actually obtained her master's degree in economics in her native country of Ukraine in Kiev before coming to the US to study at Indiana University where she obtained her PhD, and Auburn University hired her in the faculty here. She has also done some work with the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank as a consultant, again in her native Ukraine. She has a very interesting story, and although the Human Action Podcast, normally we focus on, we're not afraid of economic theory in this podcast, which I think sets us apart. My goal is to try to be the liaison between the academics and the lay audience, and to try to help a lay audience understand some of these economic concepts and simplify them and demystify them. So we get into theory and history, we get into all kinds of things, but this week we're going to get into some real talk about economics as a profession, economics as an undergraduate major, which some of you may already be, or be considering whether a PhD in economics is worth your time and effort and youth and some other great subjects. So let's give a big round of applause to our guest. Thank you, thank you. And Dr. Stern has some students here from her class, so it's good to see some Auburn faces in the crowd. I'm not surprised by that. Is that extra credit? I guess, yeah, well, they're not students anymore, but I'm glad that they came, even though they can't get any extra credit from me. Well, they get psychic credit for that. Well, you know, Peter Klein and I had a conversation a few months back, and I want to open with a very broad question, I'll get your take on that. Give us your view of the state of the profession of economics, both professional and academic. I mean, there's a lot of people at the Mises student and economics is not in very good shape. Well, from my background, as Jeff told you, that I have quite unusual background because I grew up in a Soviet Union, so that's what all my students tell me, that I'm quite an unusual economics professor in a way that I have the other side of the story and I have firsthand experience growing up in socialist and communist economy, while other people who, you know, favors this type of economic system usually just write about it. So I think this kind of makes me stand apart from these people because I think it's very different when you write about something when you experience it and you have real life examples. So, and my take on the economic profession is that I think what I see is that unfortunately a lot of places becoming very one-sided and the way it's taught in American colleges it's usually just very one-sided and it's usually a Keynesian type of economics which is very pro-government. So, and I try to stay away from that so even though, you know, I use textbooks that have Keynesian economic model but always when I teach my class, I give, I start discussion with students and I, you know, I give them, like, different perspectives on things. So I try to discuss different, you know, directions and economics and have different school of economics thought would view certain issue and so on. But again, going back to Jeff's question is that I think, and it's kind of upsetting to me to see that in a lot of American colleges it's usually the way economics is taught is very one-sided. So students are not exposed to different views of the same issue and they are not, you know, they are not encouraged to discuss and express their opinion and maybe disagree with things and so on. Well, it's interesting if you talk to college professors in the sociology department in the social sciences, certainly law faculties, intersectional studies, they consider economics departments right-wing. They think that relative to other disciplines econ professors are at least center-right and do you think they're wrong? Yes, I think they are wrong. So that's not my observation. So I think that may be true for some schools but majority of schools, I mean, you know, any principles, I think majority of principles of economics, textbooks used in American colleges are just Keynesian economic model which is government everything. So, and this is obviously, you know, and very little role for markets. You mentioned textbooks. I think Peter Klein pointed out the other day that Paul Samuelsen textbook which went through several editions made him a very rich man was at one point the most assigned textbook in America and so when you say you use Keynesian textbooks, is this coming from the administration or is this generally what's available? That's generally what's available. So majority of economic textbook. But again, even though I use this as my main textbook but, you know, I make my students aware of different viewpoints and I try to discuss and I kind of emphasize this is how this type of economist uses issues but there are other views on things and, you know, and even when we discuss, even my students maybe can chime in. So when we discuss adjustment and, you know, business cycle, I always talk about, you know, the usual Keynesian views that government has to do stuff but what I say is I always stress the self-adjustment and the market adjustment. So I use this as a like base framework because if they go on to take other econ classes, they need to know that because other people will use the Keynesian framework but I make them aware of other, you know, viewpoints on this issue. Well, apart from viewpoints or particular schools of thought, let's just ask this. Are theory and history even being taught much? In other words, is everything applied economics even at the undergraduate level? Is theory dead? I don't see much economic history in terms of different school of economics. Again, as I said, it's mainly just one. That's kind of being, you know, everywhere, at least at the principles level. So students are not aware in most classes that there are different schools of thought in economics. So maybe it depends on a professor like I do that but I know that most other instructors who teach principles they just, you know, this is economic theory. So students are not even aware that there are other schools of thought, you know, and that this is not the only way that government has to do this and this is an intervene and, you know, whenever we have an economic recession, government has to step in or there will be the end of the world. So this is how most people teach that. So I think that students are unfortunately given only like just a very one sided story and this is what upsetting to me because I think the main goal in teaching economics should be make young people, you know, help them to think critically and being able to analyze but if you just provide one way of thinking, I mean there is not much room left for any analysis of critical thinking. If you just, you know, you're just throwing, okay, this is what's going on and you make people believe that this is the only way and this is the absolute truth, this theory. So you don't leave much room for discussion or for critical thinking and that's not how I teach. So I teach economics, I tell my students that my main goal is to make you to help you think critically after this class. I don't expect you all to be economics professors or anything like that but I want you to be able to think and analyze things and don't take everything you hear on the news, you read about as an absolute truth. I want you to be able to analyze things and, you know, look at them differently. Well of course if you go to Auburn you might have the misfortune to take a class on economic history with our own Dr. Mark Thornton and they use a textbook in that class that was written by Bobby Abert who was at Auburn and also our own Bob Eklund who was at Auburn and it's an absolutely phenomenal textbook. If you look it up we have some copies here, it's an expensive book but it's an absolutely beautiful survey of the history of economic thought. It's almost like a reference book you can keep at your desk and so, you know, there is, that is still being taught but it's being taught sporadically and here and there. You know, when you talk about only one perspective being presented, you know, when you hear left progressives today talk about economics, there's some kind of celebratory and economists like Paul Krugman and Noah Smith who runs a Twitter feed called No Opinion, you might know that. You know, my sense is that a lot of people on the left in the West today, they don't really think economics is a legitimate discipline, in other words, they don't think there's such thing as economic laws and that economics is secondary to government and the state can just sort of literally command the economy and there really is no such thing as economic law, it's just what we pass as a policy matter. A funny story about Paul Krugman once, as I asked all the time to review principal tax for, you know, for economics classes, so they sent me Krugman's book and I wrote such a bad review that the chief editor called me and he said, wow, your review was so negative and I said, well, you guys forgot to do a background check on me. I said, you know, I grew up in Soviet Union, why are you sending me this book by, you know, every single example is about government intervention I said every single example in his book, I said, I wish just being honest, they never send me any Krugman's book for review but he was like, well, thank you for your honesty. I said, well, whoever works for you, you know, didn't do their job because they obviously should have predicted that I would not like this tax book because I grew up in that system and this guy is just, you know, treats government as God and solution to all problems and I said, I wish just being honest and this is what I do with every economic tax, you know, I do my job and I review and I give them honest review but that book is just really got under my skin so like they called me and they, so it's like, well, that was very honest but yes, so I agree, to me, especially Paul Krugman, he just thinks that I actually don't know how a person with economic education can believe in that, that government, you know, is essentially like a savior and government should be everywhere so it's just hard for me to understand how people with PhD in economics, you know, could favor government intervention to that degree so, but... So, a lot of our students here are undergraduate econ majors or considering it. Talk about, give us your thoughts on that, is it, would you recommend it as a major in general? Do you think without going any further in school that economics graduates are getting jobs? Economics, of course, I will say that, some people may say that I am biased because I'm an economics professor but again, it depends where you go to school to study economics but hopefully, you know, the places you go, you'll be lucky to have professors with different backgrounds and not just like get this one-sided story that I talked about before but in general, I just think that economics prepares you for life really well and it's a very broad major that can, you know, you can get jobs in various fields if you have an economics undergraduate degree and especially our majors, we have a very small department so we have in total like maybe 120 majors across all years so it's very small by open standards but our students, the placement has been outstanding so a lot of our students, I would say probably like 50% of our students go on to law schools so this year, we had Penn, we had Harvard, we have three students currently in Harvard Law School, we had Chicago Law School so our program definitely prepares them well for law schools and I think that component of, you know, critical thinking helps a lot when it prepares you well for law school and then also we have law and economics class that we offer and that's very valuable so again, our students are doing great and continue on as lawyers and a lot of them, we had a couple of students who went on to and got a joint PhD in economics and a law degree so I think Vanderbilt and what is Georgetown or I don't know which school in DC has this joint program and one school in Florida so I know three schools in the United States that offer that and several of our students went on to those and actually in seven years you got a double PhD so you become a lawyer and you also have PhD in econ and this is probably a great option for those who want to do corporate law also our students, but our students not just going to law schools but they're getting jobs in corporate world so we have one of my former students work at Ford Motor Company the research department a lot of students work in commercial banks so I have former students he's like Vice President of Regions Banks just different, different fields and I think, you know, because economics is such a general field and just you know, teaches you how to think and analyze things so it prepares you for a lot of, you know potential careers that you may want to choose later in your life so definitely I would, you know if you're interested in economics I would encourage you to pursue you know, degree in economics and because it prepares you well and you can get jobs in different fields and I tell our students that it essentially replaces all business school degrees because a lot of students come and they have this kind of wrong perception of economics and I don't know, I didn't obviously go to high school in this country but that's what people tell me that the way economics is taught in this country in high schools, public high schools it just gives students very wrong perception of the field of economics because it's usually taught by a teacher or a coach something and essentially what they teach them again, this is just taking words from my American husband, I didn't go to high school here, but what they teach them is like, you know your checkbook balancing something like that, so they think that's what economics is about when they come from high school and they think or they think that, you know it's just a very dry science and it's going to be this an old overweight man teaching some dried up science but this is not at all what economics is about and should be about and I tell a lot of students so when they come usually if they take my macro class I get a lot of kids interested in the field of economics and they come talk to me and I ask them what's your major right now, they tell me it's business finance or accounting we get a lot of engineers and they usually have no idea what they can do with economics degree later in life or they will get the many jobs so I have to you know tell them what options available and I tell them, especially with business degree, I tell them that economics essentially replaces all business degrees and I said if you look at the job advertisement it will be like, you know, requirements for some job, it will say finance degree or economics, it will be management or economics, marketing degree or economics, accounting degree so it's just a very broad degree that you know encompasses a lot of different fields because I think of this critical thinking that I'm trying to teach my students and hopefully other professors. So do you think the economics department belongs in business schools at universities or do you think it belongs in the College of Liberal Arts? Well statistically it's a 50-50 split I think about that in the United States and some of you probably know our department has been in business school for many years and then due to some political fights which I don't know much about we were moved to liberal arts I feel like we kind of fit in better with liberal arts folks but again you know if you're looking at statistics around the United States it's a 50-50 but personally I think that it belongs you know with liberal arts because it's a social science, it's about human behavior so that's my personal opinion that we just fit in better with liberal arts College of Liberal Arts. Well let's talk about people who are thinking about perhaps getting a PhD in economics. Now I can speak anecdotally because at the Mises Institute obviously we know a lot of PhDs we know a lot of university professors, we know a lot of students so anecdotally I think econ PhDs like undergraduate are a relative bright spot in terms of employment prospects but maybe we can start by just I'm not sure people really and truly understand how mathy things have become in other words a lot of what you do in your coursework to get a PhD in economics is high level math. Very high and math and you know when I first came to Indiana so most graduate programs start with a math boot camp so before you start taking classes in end of August they tell you to arrive two weeks earlier and you have to do the math boot camp. Doesn't that sound like fun guys in August a little math boot camp? And I remember when I arrived in Indiana in 2000 it was like August 8th of 2000 so a long time ago almost 20 years ago and I started the boot camp so they gave me the math books I thought that maybe I'm in the wrong classroom somehow you know I wandered around into like a math PhD hallway or something but yeah so it's very very mathematical a lot of math and a lot of statistic and unfortunately and this is I was lucky enough to have professors that recognize that and they also told that I remember my professor who became my advisor later on he said that you have to see economics behind every equation writing down a crazy equation it's not enough like you have to tell me what does it mean and this is and that's what I teach my students okay you've wrote down this equation but what does it mean what implications what policy implications or what so and this is unfortunately I think kind of becoming a problem with economics because it's becoming so technical that people forget about economics I don't know this is how you feel about it but this is how I feel that it uses high-end math but sometimes people just you know they don't go beyond the math the mathematical equations they don't try to understand the economics behind all of that and this is what I try to avoid when I teach especially my intermediate class you know if you write down some model I always ask my students how Jason can confirm what does this mean like you got this result now tell me what does this mean so I don't want them just to see these numbers I want them able to you know be able to understand the economics behind these numbers but unfortunately that's not how everybody is teaching and especially at the level like PhD sometimes we see that just they just ask you okay prove that this equals to that but where is the economics so a lot of you know a lot of people forget about economics behind that they just so involved into this high-end mathematical equation or statistical equations but I guess that one point here is realistically if you're going to consider a PhD from an American program you're probably going to have to be to have your chops in math I mean that's would you agree you just you're just going to have to have that aptitude so it's something to think about so we have our our department actually have two undergraduate tracks and one of them is called quantitative econ so it's preparing students for graduate career and those students have to take high-level math classes like real analysis and other classes from the math department because we want them to succeed if they decide you know to get master's degree or PhD we don't want them to feel like lost and not be able to do that math but yeah that's correct like if you you know if you're not too good with math like you can it's just you cannot do well in the PhD program it's already you know high-level mathematics and statistical analysis as well what's interesting that Dr. Stern mentions saying to her students okay you've got this equation what does it mean because in a sense we've come full circle because writers like Mises were derided as so-called literary economists because if you look at Mises there's no charts and graphs and equations in any of his work and then you know fast forward to the well you know the latter half of the 20th century we had economics reaching the point where a lot of people literally thought any economic proposition ought to be able to be expressed as an equation almost almost a pure mathematical model and now we find you know now we discover that sometimes getting the math right doesn't give you the understanding behind it well it's just how I am doing that and I said like a few professors doing but a lot of people especially like young generation economists they they just mathematicians in my opinion you know they write down the models they don't really understand I had friends like that they were just so technical and if you ask them like what are the implications of this result what you know what will happen can you predict what will happen with the economy they don't know I was like I don't know this is I proved that this equal to that but they don't understand and and again and I think the whole field is becoming more and more technical and this is kind of I think that maybe I don't want to say dangerous but I just I just hope that it's not it's not the new trend that the economists are so involved in this you know high level math and statistics that they forgot about that they forget about economics and to be fair all that math didn't help us much in 2008 nothing could predict anything yeah so I want to ask you this you know a criticism that a lot of us have of the profession is that academic publishing seems to be a racket in other words advancement in that field just like almost all academic fields is oftentimes based on publishing so people write obscure articles and obscure journals and this is the path to advancement in their career rather than being dedicated to teaching so give us your thoughts on publishing yeah I think I agree with that point and I think that the kind of teaching had been the emphasize at a lot of places and again this is very upsetting to me because I'm very dedicated teacher hopefully my students like this but I spend a lot of time and effort preparing for my classes and even at my department especially the newest hire that we have they completely devalue teaching and the emphasize they think that their job is just to sit and you know just write their papers and they don't think teaching is important like to me being a professor teaching is the most important part like if you want to advance a field of economics and this should be the most important part but not I mean research should be important as well but what I see at a lot of places that you know teaching is being completely devalued and people just you know teach the same stuff for 20 years like they spend five minutes preparing for their classes you know use lecture notes you know when things change and evolve every day they are talking about some models or some stuff that was going on 10 years but this is all obsolete you can't talk you can't use this textbook that was relevant 20 years ago today because things are changing every day and I've been teaching principles of macro class and I joined the economics department in 2006 but every semester I changed my lecture notes and every class before I go teach I updated with the newest data available I think this is you have to make it relevant because what's the point of teaching economics if I talk about what was going on in the 70s and 80s but I cannot give my students and discuss you know a recession of 1970s and not discuss what's going on today but a lot of people because they think teaching is not important they just I think don't put enough effort and don't emphasize teaching that much so they think like I should spend 80% of my time doing my own research rather than you know preparing lecture notes and updating all the data well let's not forget a lot of these people are paid by taxpayers to do this and this isn't just economics this is all academia I think a lot of us in this room we get the perception that for academic students are almost a nuisance even the university that funds them is almost a nuisance they exist to be this brilliant academic who's just supported financially however but I mean honestly I think that's reached the endless proportions in the U.S. the bad teaching I find my students very often very surprised that I have an open door policy and I'm always there to help them give advice and sometimes just not even related to my class but about their future career and they all tell me you're so nice and so helpful I said that's my job you guys are paying me for that but then I figure that not all people like that they like you said they find students irritating and like you're disrupting their day if you come by to ask a question or ask for help with the homework and this is what I also find upsetting and I don't understand why is it this way and when things changed like was it recently or was it 20 years ago that or is it some diversity's policies that kind of the emphasize teaching and put more stress on research I don't know where it all happened but this is not how I view my job so I think my main goal is to teach classes and that's why I put a lot of effort into preparing for my classes well it sounds like a system that's right for disruption I'm sure a lot of people in this room have read Brian Kaplan's book on the subject but I want to touch on a related topic which is tenure I think a lot of us understand conceptually the idea of tenure is a good one in other words people in academic posts should be able to pursue research or truth or writing and write whatever they believe to be true without fear of losing their income as a result of it but the flip side of that is you get arrogance and laziness so tenure I don't know how many of you guys are aware of the tenure system and what that means so tenure essentially means you know lifetime employment so once you usually most schools they give you 7 years and you have certain requirements depends on department and university so you get a certain number of papers you have to publish they look at your teaching I get teaching evaluations and then you either pass or you fail and then you get if you get your tenure it means lifetime employment and this is what you usually have that you know people get lazy and they don't change their lecture notes for 30 years and today they will be talking about what was going on in the 80s without discussing current economic policy and what's going on in the world so it has so this is a big flip side of that that people are just not motivated unless they are like personally motivated like for me of course I'm getting paycheck from Auburn University for teaching my classes but I really enjoy teaching though this brings me joy to work with young people and you know be asked questions and then have discussions with young people and listen to different opinions I really enjoy that so I am a tenured professor but I still you know I believe I still put the same effort into teaching my classes as I did before I had tenure but not all people like that have the big negative side of tenure in academic profession so talk about your students themselves do you feel that they come out of high school prepared to do undergraduate economics as I mentioned before most students come with a very wrong perception of what economics is as a field because it's taught by a baseball coach or football coach and they were just do you think that is the case that economics is sort of shunted off to the side in high school and it's just it's not given very serious I mean that's my perception that again I don't know it's just I don't have a first-hand experience but that's what I hear more and more because I was like trying to get down to the you know where does this problem why do they think economics is this way it's completely wrong and then I think just the way it's taught at high schools so they come to my class most of them just very discouraged and unmotivated so they expect you know economics class to be very boring and something for most of them like all business majors had to take my principles of macro class so they just think okay I'll sign up for this huge lecture you know lecture hall class which mine is and just disappear in the crowd you know I'll I'll sit through class and shop on internet or play video games and get my C or my B and be done with it and it's just you know it's so boring and a lot of people think that it's hard they probably heard that we use math in economics and math is usually the scary word or graphs even scarier so a lot of students intimidated by that so I get these two but usually the perception of economics is very negative that's my experience so when I come to my class and when I start lecturing in that big class and louder here which is usually have 260 290 students they're usually very surprised when I start walking between the aisles and ask questions and they're like what does she want she's just supposed to read of power points and we all sleep and go home but then they kind of get interested I think and start participating so I usually have the front those people more motivated and they start asking questions but then even in the middle of the room some people perk up and like oh this is something cool she's talking about or she's asking for our opinion but at the beginning the perception is very negative I think of economics as a field but by the end of the semester I have I would like to think that I have a lot of people that I change their perception of economics and they get a lot more interested and I see a lot of students from that principle class taking my intermediate class because they want to know more and I always have at least a handful of students switching major to economics after they take my principles of macro class because they're like oh that's actually something very cool it can be very useful if you understand it it's something that we can apply to everyday life in teachers that have to make decisions and so on so your principles class is more than 200 students yes that's that's pretty challenging that's pretty daunting I would say for both the students usually 260 between 260 and 290 wow that's a huge class and so how does that work I mean you're going to have a you're going to have a range of interest in that class you're going to have a range of aptitude a range of effort do you view it as you you reach who you can reach in the class yes I usually just you know the the front half of the room are the one who range probably from quite interested to a little bit interested somewhat interested and the back of the room I just ignore them but I see people moving to the front from the back of the room you know so it's like okay I've done my job I see that person is trying to move closer you know and they start asking me questions but in a big class like that you said you know you have a whole range of of interest and like some people it doesn't matter what I do what I talk about they're just not interested you know they're not interested in anything they're probably just you know interested in the next party they're going to but that changes as they mature and I had some students that would take my principle class and like barely got a C and then I see them in my intermediate class I had one kid like that he was a strong B and then he take advanced macro class he was an A and then he wanted to get master's degree and he was the best student so I just was very happy to see him mature and so he went from like no interest whatsoever you know just got a passing grade to becoming this outstanding outstanding student and this is this is like what makes me very happy if I see this kid who just they're because you know their academic advisor told them that's a required class so they have to be there but then I see them like genuinely being interested in a subject that that's when I feel you know I feel like I've done my job they're not just doing this for a grade or for their degree but they want to know more they're curious about the field that they want to learn how do you think we might go about getting more Austrian content into curriculum curricula how we might go about getting more Austrian or Austrian friendly profs into academia because it seems like it honestly it seems like we do better with lay audiences and getting people to read Mises or Hayek or Rothbard are on their own which is something we've all done outside of the you know the assigned coursework but how do we you know you say there's basically a Keynesian perspective taught how should we go about ameliorating this I think probably one way would be if someone writes a book which you know principle that includes like this different school you know of economic thoughts including Austrian so it's not all just Keynesian and then just write your own textbook yeah and then like you know let people adopt it and I think it would be it would be quite popular it should be again not very challenging and very intuitive so you always have to think about the level of your audience right so you can have something like very complicated but just a basic economic textbook that just has these different perspectives not just Keynesian including Austrian you know so that students could learn about you know this is Keynesian economics is not the only the only type of economics this is what they call economics usually means Keynesian you can have a whole other show about the publishing textbook publishing racket so we have time for one last question I want to ask about the S word socialism which seems to be looming in our country in some senses generally speaking Auburn kids are considered maybe slightly more conservative than kids at some universities but give us your thoughts on this are young people and your students in particular are they gullible about socialism do they understand it what are their thoughts yeah probably compared to other schools like I don't know Duke or Harvard or Berkeley Auburn students a little bit more conservative but I still see a lot of students in my class that are very pro socialism and usually those students are very brainwashed so they don't really understand what socialism is so because when I ask you know when I kind of initiate discussion and when I see hear their arguments like why do they favor socialism they don't know much and I was like you cannot be in favor of something if you don't even know what that is so this is what I find but I actually had a lot of students that you know very very pro socialism in my class and I was happy to see that by the end of the semester in my intermediate class a lot of them changed their minds or at least they are not so like stuck on the idea so it's just like this ideology and they don't they don't understand what it is but they think that it's better than market economy and I was like no you cannot favor something without knowing what it is or providing argument why this is better than market economy or any other kind of economy so at least and I've been able to convince at least a handful students that socialism is not such a such a great idea maybe providing my personal examples you know growing up in Soviet Union and just initiating discussions in my class but in most cases what I find the student they just it's kind of I don't know it's like they have religion they don't understand what it is and usually they are very aggressive and they don't really want and they are very defensive or they don't even want to discuss it they'll just say it's better and when I ask them why is it better can you tell me why is it better they can't say anything so they usually start attacking me on something else you know like I was talking about and I was just discussing something in my intermediate class about normal good and inferior good and I was just giving example just random example about inferior good that you know change from being inferior to normal so inferior good is something that you can see more when your income when your income goes down so for example used car is an inferior good so I was talking about breastfeeding and I said that's a very interesting research and I said I'm a mother I have three children so I gave them and I guess they were already young so they can relate to that but some girl immediately started attacking me and I said so what I was telling them about is that breastfeeding became a normal good it used to be inferior in the 70s so young so poor women used to breastfeed children because formula was expensive now it's all changed mothers who have advanced graduate degrees PhDs and masters 90% of mothers breastfeed their children while poor people use formulas so I was just discussing why do you think this good flipped she was attacking she was gonna scratch my eyes out and she said because poor mothers unlike you they did not have a luxury of their own office like pumping your milk and breastfeeding your child they have to work three jobs you know minimum wage jobs and she was not even that's not when I wanted to discuss she was just immediately attacking me so that's what I find and with some other discussions that we had is you know they just very angry it's almost kind of like a religion for them and they believe it I believe in God right and that is like I believe in socialism but why you ask them why you ask for more questions they can't provide any arguments they start usually attacking you and but anyway so that the girl she was a poly science major she just graduated with degree in economics and she told me she told me that my class changed her and then she decided to draw her poly science major and she became she actually graduated with and I think she's going to law school somewhere but when I met her in my class she was just very angry she was just anything I said she would just attack me because she kind of feel that my viewpoint were different than hers you know and when I introduced myself I tell them well I grew up in Soviet Union so given my background I am more pro-market than pro-government you guys can get that I don't belong to any political party or anything like that and I think from that moment she was just she did not like me at all and she was just very aggressive but that changed throughout the semester so anyway and she graduated with degree in economics and she's like well thank you so much for putting up with me and starting the discussions so I find a lot of people like that you know they just they defend it and they don't know what that really is because it's almost like a religion for them well we have to end on that note that's peak america 2019 woke 20 year olds explaining socialism to somebody from the former Soviet Union big thanks for Dr. Liliana Stern thank you thank you subscribe to get new episodes every week and find more content like this on Mises.org