[SOUND]

Right now, what I would probably change is

something about how we die.

I think we don't really do death well.

We spent tremendous amount of money on the last few days of life.

It's an incredibly miserable experience.

It's bad for the families.

It's bad for the individuals.

It's bad for the healthcare system.

It's bad for the fact we don't have money for treating kids.

I mean there's a lot of things that come from it.

So that would probably be very hard but

I would probably try and work on that.

>> I guess, Openness,

international openness in trade and movements of people.

If you look at the most by far, by any, the most successful

developmental agency in the world in recent time has been the European Union.

Started with 6 countries and then expanded to what, 28 now?

Basically every time you post some rules but you let them in, you let them move

about, you let the Polish plumbers go to the UK and antagonize the guys from UKIP.

But nonetheless, they learn and say this is how it's done and they go back.

So they don't necessarily stay in the UK forever, a lot of migrants go back, so

I think that openness, and also openness to goods produced elsewhere.

It's ridiculous to say, these Kenyans, these poor Kenyans.

Are we going to help them?

We can send them a little bit of money in an envelope and feel good about it.

But when they're shipping their green beans to your supermarket, you say, no,

no, no I want to buy something locally sourced.

It's like, what is this?

[LAUGH] They make the effort, they build infrastructure, they have the airline.

They do all the things right and then it's no, no, no, no,

we're going to have UK only green beans.

I said no, sorry that's not acceptable.

So trade openness and also openness to migrations is,

by far, the most effective tool,

not just to help development and

help countries grow and prosper,

but it is also our only hope.

I mean, we can't just isolate ourselves in little corners and

develop little nationalistic views or intolerant views of others.

So yes, movement, an exchange of ideas, and

exchange of goods, that's the one policy I would want to change.

And the way to do it is like I say, one to do it was the European Union.

There are other similar initiatives that haven't necessarily

been as successful as that, but yes, I'm in favor of that.

>> Great.

>> Well again I think reflecting on my research,

what I might change is to make taxation more progressive.

Because we know that the benefits of income for

well-being are much greater at the lower end of the income distribution.

So basically putting more money in the pockets of people who have very little and

perhaps a little less money in the pockets of the people who have a lot,

would be a good way to sort of maximize happiness in a society.

>> That's a tricky one.

I think I used to say, have a lot more immigration.

And I think that's still a very important policy issue.

But, the more I've researched that,

the more I've realized that there are potential problems brought about by that.

And so, to some extent,

the devil is in the details in how you structure your immigration program.

I guess within the limits of what's allowable

[LAUGH] of what could be politically feasible.

I suppose I'd like to see more money spent by rich countries on

really basic health treatments in the developing world.

It feels like really an obvious excellent buy,

you can save lives and improve health at very low cost.

We could potentially eliminate or

dramatically reduce a lot of easily preventable diseases like malaria,

like intestinal worms, within quite a short space of time if the money for

those treatments were freed up by developed countries.

So yeah, I think that's one relatively simple policy change that already has

a decent amount of support in developed countries that I'd really like to see.

>> Mm-hm, perfect.

>> Well let's make an it example that applies to the United States and

Europe, not just to Australia, and that would be agricultural

subsidies on products that are grown in developing countries.

Because the effect of these subsidies is to depress the world price

of these commodities.

A good example for the United State, this I think doesn't apply to Europe,

is cotton.

So the United States grows some cotton and it subsidizes the growers of cotton.

Cotton is also grown by small peasant farmers in West Africa.

In the US, of course, cotton tends to be grown by larger wealthier farmers.

In West Africa the poor peasant farmers who are depending on

cotton prices to be able to feed and educate their family.

When the US subsidizes its cotton, the US cotton producers,

whose base cost of production is higher than the West African producers,

they're able to lower their selling price to a point that is below that of

the African producers, because they get these subsidies from the US taxpayer.

It's very bad for millions of small producers in Africa.

It's crazy for, from the point of view of the American taxpayer,

why are they subsidizing it?

It ought to be opposed by people both on the left and

the right of American politics.

On the left because it's harming the poorest people in the world.

On the right because it's a waste of taxpayer money.

But it persists year after year.

And similar things really do happen in Europe, although I know it's

more a matter of landscape preservation subsidies, it's called.

But still, I think opening to fairer trade policies for developing countries

would certainly help them without harming the more affluent countries.

>> Well the policy I would love is that in some small proportion of

all aid spending is set aside to evaluate the impacts of the program,

using experimental methods where possible.

And I think it would great if as part of that,

the impact evaluation also involved comparisons to cash transfers.

And someone is on the hook, can make the case as convincingly as possible that this

did or did not do more good for

the poor than they could have done if they had the money.

That would be a transformative policy if we allocated half a percent

of aid spending to that.

>> Okay, well, the first one that comes to mind may not be my top choice

if I had more time to think about it,

butsomething that I've been aware of since I first started studying economics.

Actually, it was in my first econ class when I really decided that e-on

was something I wanted to spend more time with, was the impact of subsidies and

quotas on the economy, particularly in the United States.

Although the impact is similar everywhere.

But I would love to remove subsidies that pick winners and losers in the economy and

have unintended consequences for lots of industries and people.

Imagine. You are almighty - what would you do?

Science Literacy - How Solid Science Can Help You Save the World

Meet the Instructors