A leading socialist economist and a leading free-market economist/political scientist will advance contrasting views on a crucial question in American public life: IS CAPITALISM WORTH SAVING?

Answering “NO” – Richard Wolff has been called “America’s most prominent Marxist economist” by the New York Times Magazine. Professor Emeritus at UMass-Amherst and Visiting Professor at the New School University in New York, he is author over 50 scholarly articles and ten books, including Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It (2009), Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown (2016), and Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (2012), Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism (2012). Wolff hosts a weekly hour-long radio program, Economic Update, and is featured regularly in print and television media, including PBS, Fox Business, and HBO.

Answering “YES” – Michael Munger is Professor of Political Science, Economics, and Public Policy at Duke University. One of the country’s leading libertarian social scientists, his primary research focus is on the functioning of markets, regulation, and government institutions. He is author of over 50 journal articles and author or editor of ten books, including Is Egalitarianism Fair? (2019) and Tomorrow 3.0: Transaction Costs and the Sharing Economy (2018). He served 10 years as chair of the Duke Political Science Department and is the current is a past President of the Public Choice Society. Before entering the academy, he worked as a staff economist at the Federal Trade Commission during the Reagan Administration. In 2008, Munger ran for Governor of North Carolina on the Libertarian ticket.

Cosponsored by Alexander Hamilton Forum.