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American Enterprise Institute

5 min read

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) enters The Bob Zadek Show not as a subject in its own right but through the institutional affiliations of three guests. Across three episodes spanning 2014 to 2021, Bob Zadek introduces or guests mention AEI while discussing kidney donation, the future of cities, and income inequality.

Sally Satel and organ-donation incentives

In the December 2014 episode on stasis versus dynamism, Virginia Postrel identifies Sally Satel as her friend and the recipient of her kidney. Postrel says Satel “works at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington,” is a physician originally and a practicing psychiatrist who still practices a little, and mostly writes books as a scholar on health-related issues. Postrel distinguishes that work from questions of how to pay for healthcare or Obamacare, describing Satel’s focus instead as issues around how brains, psychiatry and courts are thought about, and also organ transplants Virginia Postrel on Stasis vs. Dynamism (2014).

Postrel describes Satel as active in efforts toward incremental progress on organ donation. She attributes to Satel the idea of pilot projects allowing experimentation with incentives that do not necessarily involve direct cash payment — for living donors, contributions to a retirement plan, health insurance, or a college scholarship; for deceased donors, contributions toward funeral expenses. Postrel notes that Pennsylvania wanted to pursue such an approach through a tax credit but could not get the federal government to say it would be okay, and that the law is very sweeping. She also mentions Sigrid Fry-Revere, whom Zadek had previously had on the show to discuss her book on kidneys in Iran, and Fry-Revere’s American Living Organ Donor Fund, including a campaign at charitable.org called “Save 30 Lives in 30 Days” Virginia Postrel on Stasis vs. Dynamism (2014).

Zadek frames the underlying question: whether Americans should be prohibited under pain of incarceration from making an informed decision to sell parts of their body, specifically kidneys. He cites Pope John Paul II’s writing that buying and selling organs violates “the dignity of the human person,” and notes that many medical associations oppose the sale of body parts, one having found it “morally and ethically irresponsible and also inhumane and unacceptable.” Postrel says there are 102,000 Americans waiting for kidneys today and that she does not want to wait for a libertarian utopia to help them. She argues that people make too big a deal of being a kidney donor, that the idea of living donation needs to be normalized first, and compares kidney donation to firefighting as a risky activity for which we do not insist on volunteers only Virginia Postrel on Stasis vs. Dynamism (2014).

Brent Orrell and the future of cities

In the June 2020 episode on the future of cities, Zadek introduces Brent Orrell as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a veteran of the Bush administration who has been involved in the legislative and executive branches, a student of work in America, and host of a podcast called Hardly Working The Future of Cities (2020). The episode’s discussion concerns the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on cities, remote work, and the decoupling of residence from employment.

Zadek argues that the virus is accelerating the severing of the mandated connection between where one lives and where one works, and that this will provide enormous freedom for workers who previously had to live where the job was. He says the choice of where to live will be the worker’s, and that cities will always provide a cultural base, a social base, and collaboration where needed. Orrell, in the closing segment, says his work at AEI falls under the heading of vocation, career, and work, giving him a broad mandate to look at topics touching on the tangible aspects of work. Asked for a link to Hardly Working, he directs listeners to the AEI website, aei.org, under multimedia The Future of Cities (2020).

Edward Conard and income inequality

In the January 2021 episode questioning Biden’s inequality narrative, Zadek introduces Edward Conard as a bestselling author, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a founding partner at Bain Capital, where he worked closely with Mitt Romney. Zadek names Conard’s books, The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class and Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong Questioning Biden’s Inequality Narrative (2021).

Conard offers four commonly used definitions of income inequality: market income, after-tax-and-transfer income, consumption inequality, and wealth inequality. He says consumption inequality has not changed since the 1960s, with the 90th percentile consuming about four times more than the 10th percentile. He attributes wealth inequality’s extremity to about 40% of the population consuming all of its income, a large segment that has saved for retirement, and a small group that has produced innovations or built valuable businesses. He argues that most economists would agree consumption is the right measure, and that what is really at issue is increasing the consumption of people at the bottom of the spectrum Questioning Biden’s Inequality Narrative (2021).

Across episodes

The three episodes touch the institute only through guests’ affiliations, and the episodes show no development in how AEI itself is treated: Postrel in 2014 locates Satel there as a health-policy scholar, Zadek in 2020 identifies Orrell as a resident fellow, and Zadek in 2021 identifies Conard as an adjunct fellow. What changes is the subject matter — organ-donation incentives, then remote work and cities, then income inequality — not any account of the institute.

Guests and episodes

3 appearances by 3 guests, 2020–2021. Guests A–Z by first name.

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