Plus: The purpose of government; states’ ballooning K–12 education spending; and ‘After Keynesian Macroeconomics.’

What’s the purpose of business? It’s a basic question, but it’s an important one to get right. Groups such as the Business Roundtable have offered their own definitions. David Bahnsen, of the Bahnsen Group and the Capital Record podcast, wasn’t a fan when the Business Roundtable’s Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation came out in 2019. (He wrote about it at the time for NR.) Now, there’s a new statement from a group called the Good for Business Coalition, and David is an enthusiastic signer. I talked with him about what makes this statement better, and what business is for, along with his efforts to use market mechanisms to fix bad corporate practices.

What’s the purpose of government? That’s the next topic I discuss on this episode. The Declaration of Independence provides the American answer to that question: Government is to secure our God-given rights. But increasingly today, the federal government has a different purpose: Subsidizing the consumption of retirees. The tension between these views is not playing out well for the health of the country’s finances.

Then, I discuss the massive increase in K–12 education spending at the state level so far this century. With the average state increasing inflation-adjusted spending by 37 percent per pupil since 2000, have students been performing better? Not really.

The Paper of the Episode is “After Keynesian Macroeconomics” by Robert Lucas and Thomas Sargent.

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