Brink Lindsey

Brink Lindsey is a senior vice president at the Niskanen Center, where he plays a leading role in developing and articulating the Center’s distinctive policy vision. He has written about a wide range of policy issues as well as American social, economic, and cultural history.

Prior to joining Niskanen, Lindsey was vice president for research at the Cato Institute. From 2010 to 2012, he was a senior scholar in research and policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Lindsey is the coauthor (with Steven Teles) of the book The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality (Oxford University Press). His previous books include Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter—And More UnequalThe Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and CultureAgainst the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism; and, with Daniel Ikenson, Antidumping Exposed: The Devilish Details of Unfair Trade Law. He has also edited two ebooks – Reviving Economic Growth and Understanding the Growth Slowdown. In addition, his writings have been published widely in major media outlets.

Lindsey earned an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Brink Lindsey posts

Commentary

Back to the future: 'Free labor' and life after mass employment

18 Dec 2025 Brink Lindsey
Commentary
Abundance and Dynamism

Abundance of what? Abundance for what?

13 Nov 2025 Brink Lindsey
Commentary

Abundance and the Democrats, with Jonathan Chait

02 Jul 2025 Brink Lindsey
Podcasts

The prehistory, present, and future of abundance, with Steve Teles

12 Jun 2025 Brink Lindsey
Commentary
Abundance and Dynamism

Abundance and the permanent problem

25 Apr 2025 Brink Lindsey
Podcasts

Christianity and democracy, with Jonathan Rauch

23 Apr 2025 Brink Lindsey
Commentary
Open Society

The open society and the friends it needs

03 Apr 2025 Brink Lindsey
Podcasts

Symbolic capitalists and "awokenings", with Musa al-Gharbi

19 Feb 2025 Brink Lindsey, Musa al-Gharbi
Media
Abundance and Dynamism

Lindsey on Edge City Podcast

13 Dec 2024 Brink Lindsey
Podcasts

Abundance and collapse, with Eli Dourado

16 Jul 2024 Brink Lindsey
Podcasts

Decoding the birth rate decline, with Tim Carney

07 May 2024 Brink Lindsey
Podcasts

Giving gender equality a modern context, with Richard Reeves

09 Apr 2024 Brink Lindsey
Podcasts

Rethinking our vision for the future, with Virginia Postrel

07 Mar 2024 Brink Lindsey
Podcasts

How to create the sci-fi world we were promised, with James Pethokoukis

06 Feb 2024 Brink Lindsey
Commentary

Productivity growth: the good, the bad, and the ugly

24 Jan 2024 Brink Lindsey
Commentary

Speculations on an arc of history

08 Jan 2024 Brink Lindsey
Commentary

Why we need the Jetsons and solarpunk

13 Dec 2023 Brink Lindsey
Commentary

The need for a media temperance movement

30 Oct 2023 Brink Lindsey
Commentary

The advance of the monoculture

11 Oct 2023 Brink Lindsey
Commentary

Libertarian roots revisited

02 Oct 2023 Brink Lindsey