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When economist Angus Deaton immigrated to the United States from Britain in the early 1980s, he was awed by America\\u2019s strengths and shocked by the extraordinary gaps he witnessed between people. In this conversation based on his new book, Economics in America, the Nobel Prize-winning economist explains in clear terms how the field of economics addresses the most pressing issues of our time\\u2014from poverty, retirement, and the minimum wage to the ravages of the nation\\u2019s uniquely disastrous health care system\\u2014and narrates Deaton\\u2019s account of his experiences as a naturalized U.S. citizen and academic economist.

Deaton is witty and pulls no punches. In his incisive, candid, and funny book, he describes the everyday lives of working economists, recounting the triumphs as well as the disasters, and tells the inside story of the Nobel Prize in economics and the journey that led him to Stockholm to receive one. He discusses the ongoing tensions between economics and politics\\u2015and the extent to which economics has any content beyond the political prejudices of economists\\u2015and reflects on whether economists bear at least some responsibility for the growing despair and rising populism in America.

Blending rare personal insights with illuminating perspectives on the social challenges that confront us today, Deaton offers a disarmingly frank critique of his own profession while shining a light on his adopted country\\u2019s policy accomplishments and failures.

Shermer and Deaton discuss: the science of science is economics \\u2022\\xa0winning a Nobel Prize \\u2022\\xa0what economists do, and how they determine causality \\u2022\\xa0Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand \\u2022 why a college education matters \\u2022 meritocracy and \\u201cJust World\\u201d theory \\u2022 minimum wage \\u2022 healthcare \\u2022 poverty \\u2022 inequality \\u2022 opioid crisis, alcoholism, suicide \\u2022 inflation and interest rates \\u2022\\xa0modern monetary theory \\u2022 think tanks.

Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Princeton University. He is the author (with Anne Case) of the New York Times bestselling book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality, and his new book Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality, all from Princeton University Press.