The American Enterprise Institute is identified in The Bob Zadek Show excerpts only through the institutional affiliations of three guests. No episode takes the institute as its subject; it enters the program as the workplace or affiliation of a physician-scholar, a resident fellow, and an adjunct fellow. The excerpts accordingly supply no founding date, no statement of principles, and no account of the institute’s internal structure or funding.
Sally Satel and organ transplantation
Virginia Postrel, discussing proposals to increase the supply of kidneys, describes her friend Sally Satel as very active and as working at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Postrel says she gave Satel a kidney, and describes Satel as a physician originally and a practicing psychiatrist who still practices a little but mostly writes books and is a scholar on various health-related issues. Postrel specifies the character of that scholarship by contrast: it is not about how to pay for healthcare and not Obamacare kind of things, but issues around the way we think about brains and psychiatry and courts and also around organ transplants. Virginia Postrel on Stasis vs. Dynamism (2014)
Within that account, Satel is credited with a particular approach to organ policy. Postrel says Satel has been working on the idea that, granted the belief that incentives would help, pilot projects should be tried — allowing a little experimentation with various forms of incentives that do not necessarily involve direct payment or an exchange of cash. The forms Postrel lists are a contribution to a retirement plan, health insurance, or a college scholarship for living donors, and, in the case of deceased donors, a contribution toward funeral expenses. Postrel notes that the state of Pennsylvania wanted to do this some years ago and ran into the federal law, and that Pennsylvania pursued it through a tax credit but could not get the federal government to say it would be okay. Virginia Postrel on Stasis vs. Dynamism (2014)
The same excerpt places Satel’s work alongside a separate project. Postrel says Sigrid Fry-Revere, who had previously been a guest discussing her book on kidneys in Iran, has started the American Living Organ Donor Fund, a private fund to cover out-of-pocket expenses and lost wages that are legal to cover but not covered now in the system. Postrel describes a campaign at charitable.org, Save 30 Lives in 30 Days, and says contributions are tax-deductible. She frames both efforts as incremental steps that can help within the law. Virginia Postrel on Stasis vs. Dynamism (2014)
Brent Orrell and the future of cities
Brent Orrell is introduced by Bob Zadek as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In the same introduction Zadek says Orrell has worked in the Bush administration, has been involved in the legislative and executive branch of our government for some time, has studied work in America for most of his life, and hosts a podcast called Hardly Working. Zadek describes him as having studied the issue and written thoughtfully on the future of cities. The Future of Cities (2020)
Orrell’s own description of his AEI work comes at the close of the episode. He says his work at AEI falls under the heading of vocation, career, and work, and that this gives him a broad mandate to look at a wide variety of topics touching on both the tangible aspects of work — what kind of jobs you want, how you think about finding them — at which point Zadek cuts in to ask for the link. Orrell directs listeners to the AEI website, aei.org, under multimedia, where he says the podcasts are listed. The Future of Cities (2020)
The substance of the episode is Zadek’s argument, not Orrell’s institutional account. Zadek contends that what the virus is accelerating is the severing of the mandated connection between where you live and where you work, so that one decision no longer forces the other; he says the concept of where you work disappears and that the value can be added from anywhere where it works. He calls this freeing and says it gives him goosebumps, compliments of the virus, while allowing that cities will always provide cultural base and social base and the circus aspects and collaboration where needed. Orrell’s recorded contributions in the excerpt are confined to the closing exchange about his podcast. The Future of Cities (2020)
Edward Conard and income inequality
Edward Conard is introduced by Zadek as a bestselling author with two books in the top 10 of the New York Times bestselling books, most recently The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class, and previously Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong. Zadek identifies him as an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a founding partner at Bain Capital, where he worked closely with Mitt Romney, described as former presidential candidate and now United States Senator from Utah. Questioning Biden’s Inequality Narrative (2021)
Conard’s contribution in the excerpt is a taxonomy of inequality. He says the straightforward answer is how much income one person earns relative to another, then gives four commonly used definitions: market income, meaning what you actually earn out in the marketplace, forgetting taxes and government transfers; after-tax income after government transfers, meaning how much money you have to spend; consumption inequality, which he says has not changed since the 1960s, with the 90th percentile consuming about four times more than the 10th percentile; and wealth inequality, which he says proponents of redistribution are most likely to point to because it is much more extreme than the other forms. Questioning Biden’s Inequality Narrative (2021)
Conard offers an explanation for the wealth measure. He says about 40% of the population consumes all of its income, every dollar that comes its way, so their wealth is zero; that a very large segment has saved some money for retirement, and that many people stopped saving for retirement as Social Security benefits increased; and that a very small group has produced some sort of innovation or is extremely skilled, in the case of some lawyers and doctors, or owns a business that is extremely valuable. He argues that most economists would agree the right measure is consumption, and that what is really at issue is increasing the consumption of people at the bottom end of the spectrum. Questioning Biden’s Inequality Narrative (2021)
Across episodes
The three episodes do not argue a common question about the American Enterprise Institute; each mentions it only as a guest’s affiliation, and the excerpts show no development in how the institute is treated between the 2014, 2020 and 2021 broadcasts. What changes is the guest and the subject matter: Postrel’s 2014 discussion of kidney markets, Orrell’s 2020 discussion of cities and remote work, and Conard’s 2021 discussion of income inequality. Virginia Postrel on Stasis vs. Dynamism (2014) The Future of Cities (2020) Questioning Biden’s Inequality Narrative (2021)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when the American Enterprise Institute was founded, where it is housed beyond Postrel’s reference to Washington, how it is funded, or what its stated principles are. They do not describe its internal organization, its size, or its relationship to other institutions. No speaker in these excerpts criticizes or defends the institute as such, and no episode examines its output beyond the individual work attributed to Satel, Orrell and Conard. The excerpts also do not say whether the three guests’ affiliations overlapped in time or whether any of them spoke on the institute’s behalf.
Guests and episodes
3 appearances by 3 guests, 2020–2021.
- Brent Orrell (Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute) — The Future of Cities (2020) — Impact of COVID-19 on urban life and cities.
- Edward Conard (Author and AEI Adjunct Fellow) — Questioning Biden’s Inequality Narrative (2021) — The upside of inequality and income distribution.
- Peter Wallison (Co-director at AEI) — Will We Know Who the President Is on November 4? (2020) — Electoral College and National Popular Vote Stability.