CU-Boulder scholar in conservative thought lectures on U.S. economic growth in Grand Junction

America’s relatively slow economic growth can be accelerated, as it has been in the past, according to Brian Domitrovic, visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Domitrovic is scheduled to give a public talk on that subject at 6 p.m. April 14 at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, with registration and a community reception beginning at 5 p.m. The event, held in CMU’s , is free and open to the public. Registration is required and can be completed on this or by calling 303-860-5633 or emailing cuadvocates@cu.edu.

Domitrovic’s presentation is titled, “The Easy Challenge of Economic Growth in the 21st Century: How We Can Shake the Slows, as We Did in the Past.”

“America has almost never had extended bouts of slow economic growth,” Domitrovic notes.

“Our lot has been expansive opportunity, innovation, new heights of prosperity scaled and cleared. Every resource necessary to restore the now centuries-long tradition of economic growth is still available to us. Even our very recent history, of the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s, is there to tell us, in fullness, how we can recapture the most vital of American traditions: that of economic growth.”

Domitrovic, a historian who did graduate work in economics, is author of the standard history of supply-side economics, “Econoclasts: The Rebels Who Sparked the Supply-Side Revolution and Restored American Prosperity.” He has written for The Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily and has appeared frequently on television and radio. His biweekly column appears on Forbes.com.

The event will also highlight partnerships between CU and the Mesa County community.

One partnership that continues to grow is the CMU and CU-Boulder mechanical-engineering program delivered entirely in Grand Junction. The first two years of the program are taught by CMU faculty, and the second two years of the program are taught by CU-Boulder faculty who live permanently in Grand Junction. Today, 49 students are enrolled.

Additionally, the CU Cancer Center at the Anschutz Medical Campus partners with St. Mary’s Regional Cancer Center in Grand Junction. The relationship brings specialty oncology care to patients in Mesa County who may not be able to travel to metro Denver for specialized care. It also provides clinical trials for cancer survivors in the area.

CU also offers health care education to the Grand Junction community through the Western Colorado Area Health Education Center (AHEC) based in Grand Junction. The center provides personal health-care learning experiences for consumers and professional learning experiences for health care providers.

Tim Brower, director of the CU/CMU mechanical engineering partnership will speak briefly about that program.

The April 14 event is sponsored by Colorado Mesa University Associated Student Government and Political Science Club, the CU Advocates Program in the Office of the President, CU-Boulder's College of Arts and Sciences and its Conservative Thought and Policy program.

Glen Gallegos, a Grand Junction resident who represents the 3rd Congressional District on the CU Board of Regents, will also attend.

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The "Western Civ Dialogue" series presents:

The Moral Limits of Free Markets

Monday, April 4, 2016
4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
British and Irish Studies Room
Norlin Library – 5th Floor
University of Colorado Boulder

Free and open to the public.

If you may do it for free, may you do it for cash? For instance, may you buy and sell votes? How about buying and selling kidneys? Or buying and selling children? What should be off-limits to the market economy? Or do genuinely free markets permit everything? Scholars representing a wide range of views discuss the issues.

Featuring:

- , Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics & Public Policy, Georgetown University
- , Professor of Law, Emerita, University of Michigan Law School & Distinguished Research Scholar, University of Toronto Faculty of Law
- , Professor of Law, Duke University Law School

Sponsored by the:
Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy (CWCTP)

Co-sponsored by the:
Center for Values and Social Policy

DIRECTIONS and MAPS

Norlin Library

Campus Parking Map

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The Conservative Thought and Policy Program speaker series presents:

Brave New World: The Supreme Court after Scalia

Featuring Ilya Shapiro, Cato Institute

Wed., March 30
7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
ECCR Engineering Center Room 1B40
University of Colorado Boulder

This event is free and open to the public.

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He will discuss the replacement of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Shapiro says Scalia was “a force to be reckoned with“ and “one of a kind, a giant who heralded a renaissance of both originalism and textualism.” According to Shapiro, Scalia “reoriented the study and practice of law towards the meaning of the actual constitutional and statutory text.” This talk will focus on the necessity to maintain Scalia’s substantial legacy as the process of replacing this justice begins.

Sponsored by the:
Conservative Thought & Policy Program

A Program of the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy
College of Arts & Sciences | University of Colorado Boulder

Co-sponsored by the Steamboat Institute:

DIRECTIONS and MAPS

Maps of Engineering Center
NOTE: Room 1B40 is in the Classroom Wing by the WEST Entrance

Campus Parking Map

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The "Western Civ Dialogue" series presents:

Climate Change after Paris
Monday, Feb. 22, 2016
7 p.m.
Eaton Humanities Room 150
University of Colorado Boulder

Free and open to the public.

For 21 years, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been seeking to forge a global agreement to address climate change. A panel of specialists representing a range of perspectives will address some of the dominant moral questions raised by the Paris meetings, including questions of fairness between rich and poor, of responsibility between states, and of what sort of procedures might yield a viable yet just outcome.

Featuring:

- , White House Bureau Chief, The Washington Post

- , Senior Advisor to the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change and Director, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, George Mason University

- , Associate Professor of Philosophy, York University

- Jesse Vogel, Washington, D.C. consultant on climate

- , Professor for International Political Theory, Goethe University Frankfurt

- , CU-Boulder’s first visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy

Sponsored by the:
Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy (CWCTP)

DIRECTIONS and MAPS
Eaton Humanities Building

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The Conservative Thought and Policy Program speaker series presents:

Supply-Side Economics: The Challenge of Overcoming Slow-Growth in this Millennium

Featuring Brian Domitrovic, CU-Boulder’s Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought & Policy

Wed., Feb. 17, 2016
7:00 p.m.
Benson Earth Sciences Room 180
University of Colorado Boulder

This event is free and open to the public.

Supply-side economics was the policy innovation of a generation ago that put an end to the “stagflation” episode of the 1970s and early 1980s. Its formula of monetary restraint in concert with tax-rate cuts was also crucial to the booms of the 1960s and the Roaring 1920s. In our contemporary environment of economic near-stagnation, the tradition of supply-side economics remains relevant and instructive.

Brian Domitrovic is the leading historian of supply-side economics. His book (2009) chronicled the history of the movement from its origins in academia in the 1950s through its policy triumph in the Ronald Reagan years. He will speak about the useful ways that the tradition of supply-side economics can inform our urgent debate over how to restore economic growth today.

Sponsored by the:
Conservative Thought & Policy Program

A Program of the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy
College of Arts & Sciences | University of Colorado Boulder

DIRECTIONS and MAPS

Map to Benson Earth Sciences Building

Campus Parking Map

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The Conservative Thought and Policy Program speaker series presents:

My Journey for Freedom: From Mao's Young Pioneer to Libertarian

Featuring Lily Williams, Libertarian Candidate for U.S. Senate

Thurs., Feb. 18, 2016
7:00 p.m.
Hale 270
University of Colorado Boulder

This event is free and open to the public.

(NOTE: This event was originally scheduled for Feb. 2 but was canceled due to weather. Feb. 18 is the new date.)

Lily Williams grew up in China, in the thick of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She will tell us about the indoctrination she, her family, and her people faced, and the threats they endured when they spoke up and outlined resistance. In the 1980s, she immigrated to the United States, where she has become one of Colorado’s most prominent libertarian activists. Join us as Lily recounts her incredible story and impresses upon us its relevance in our own time today.

For more information, see:

Sponsored by the:
Conservative Thought & Policy Program

A Program of the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy
College of Arts & Sciences | University of Colorado Boulder

DIRECTIONS and MAPS

Map to Hale Science Building:

Campus Parking Map

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This coming week, on Wed. Feb. 17 and then on Thurs. the 18th, the Conservative Thought and Policy lecture series presents two events. On the 17th, I myself shall give a public lecture, on the acute and ever-growing need for absorbing the historical lessons of supply-side economics, that of the Reagan Revolution, in our agonizingly sluggish and underperforming economy. The venue is Benson Earth Sciences 180 and time 7pm. 

On the heels of this event, 24 hours later, on Thursday the 18th at 7pm, in Hale 270, Lily Williams will discuss the harrowing experience of growing up in Mao's Cultural Revolution. Lily is rightly concerned, in this "feel the Bern" (as in Sanders) wave that we see this election season in young people, that Americans have become too un-acquainted with the failures (and worse) of socialism and its devolutions into Communism. Lily is also the libertarian candidate for Senate.

The goal, the Aristotelian telos of this nation, is for all to live well--very well--in prosperity. Distressing as it has been not to shake the after-effects of the Great Recession, and to have our economy persist in its low-employment, debt-ridden state, it will do us well to remember that this situation comes unnaturally to this country. The standard experience of the American people is of opportunity and success. The strong, repeated tendency of this nation is to grow and grow abundantly. We shall have the chance to discuss these matters on the 17th and 18th. Yesterday, on Forbes.com, I harkened back to the last time we had the opportunity to fix a major economic mess:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briandomitrovic/2016/02/09/the-last-time-oil-collapsed/#38f437c94017

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The Laffer curve--a bell curve looking like a "McDonald's arch on its side," as the great Wall Street Journal editor Robert L. Bartley described it--remains the most recognizable economics graph of the last fifty years. Economists and non-economists alike know or have heard of it: at some point, tax rates get so high such that they produce progressively less government revenue, at which point cutting tax rates can increase revenue. The author of the curve, Arthur B. Laffer, is speaking at CU Boulder, tomorrow (Jan. 20) at 4pm in Old Main, in the Conservative Thought and Policy speaker series.

When Laffer developed his curve in the early 1970s, as a faculty member at the University of Chicago, he was working on the "substitution effects" of macroeconomic policies. These were the kinds of behavior that changed because, as was the case at the time, the dollar was unsound, taxes were increasing on account of inflationary "bracket creep," and government spending and regulation was on the march. Economic actors were "substituting" hedges (such as buying commodities) against the blanket governmental intrusion upon the economy for what they had been previously doing, namely real-world investment and consumpton. Underlying the curve was the notion that if tax rates were cut (and if the dollar regained soundness and the spending and regulation stepped back), people would substitute back into real-world economic activity. The increased tax revenue would be an effect of a much larger process of a return to the normal conditions of economic growth. 

Keynesians had said that the chief effect of even a marginal tax cut was on the "income" side--it put more money in people's pockets. Laffer countered with an array of behavioral changes far beyond the income effect. The identification of the primacy of substitution effects became the foundation of the supply-side economics that at last bore fruit with the capital gains tax cut of 1978 and the Ronald Reagan reforms of the 1980s. 

Laffer and his colleagues at his research and investment firm have published an enormous amount in this tradition. I have had the priviledge of bringing a sample of this work to print and public access: http://www.amazon.com/The-Pillars-Reaganomics-Supply-Side-Revolutionaries/dp/1934276197

Please join us on Wednesday, Jan. 20 at 4pm in Old Main, for the public lecture by Arthur Laffer, and see this site for further announcements of lectures in the supply-side tradition. 

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Two candidates for the position of Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy for the 2016-2017 academic year have been announced. . The candidates will give the following talks that are free and open to the public:

Conservativism: Another Ideology?
Featuring candidate Richard Bishirjian
Tues., Jan. 19, 4:30 p.m.

Richard Bishirjian received a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 1972. He is the founder of an online liberal arts university and author of the book (St. Augustine Press, 2015). For more information on Richard Bishirjian, see:

Taking Rites Seriously: Faith, Reason and the Courts
Featuring candidate Francis J. Beckwith
Thurs., Jan. 21, 4:30 p.m.

Francis J. Beckwith received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Fordham University in 1989. He is currently professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University and is the author of the book (Cambridge University Press, 2015). For more information on Francis J. Beckwith, see:

LOCATION:
Both talks will be held in Hellems Room 199 on the University of Colorado Boulder campus.

MAPS and DIRECTIONS
Map to Hellems building:

Campus Parking Map

Sponsored by the:
Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought & Policy Program

A Program of the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy
College of Arts & Sciences | University of Colorado Boulder

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The Conservative Thought and Policy Program speaker series presents:

The Supply-Side Agenda Today

Featuring Economist Arthur B. Laffer

Wed., Jan. 20, 2016
4:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.

1600 Pleasant Street
University of Colorado Boulder

This event is free and open to the public.

Economist Arthur B. Laffer will speak on the tradition of supply-side economics as part of the Conservative Thought and Policy Program speaker series at the University of Colorado Boulder. Laffer is known as the founder of supply-side economics, the author of the most recognized economics curve of modern times and a decisive economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan. This historic figure continues his relevance today in his 2016 election activism through the just-launched .

For more information, see

Parking Information:

Sponsored by the:
Conservative Thought & Policy Program
A Program of the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy
College of Arts & Sciences | University of Colorado Boulder

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