Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Full Episode - Trump Is Risking A WAR With His Tariff Threats + Does America Need A Middle Class New Deal?

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Full Episode - Trump Is Risking A WAR With His Tariff Threats + Does America Need A Middle Class New Deal? · The Chuck ToddCast

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• 1:51
  Speaker 1: hello there, and happy Monday. It's Martin Luther King Day.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: So I hope you're doing some sort of service project
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: if you have a chance to do that in honor
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: of him, or however you plan to mark the day,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: or if you're doing what I'm doing, which is I'm
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: here in Miami already as I'm taping for you, I
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: am going to the big National title game Miami, Indiana.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I have to tell you I've got a mixed bag
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: about this entire podcast, because I couldn't be more excited
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: about this game, and I couldn't be more nervous about
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the state of the world, which I'm going to get
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: to you in a minute. I don't want it to
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: come across like ipurbole. I really mean it. I'm like,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: you know, I am sadly too good at compartmentalizing, so
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I have certainly compartmentalized. But yes, I am down here
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  Speaker 1: for Miami. Just got down here, flew from d C.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Apparently DC was the connecting city for all my friends
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: from Indianapolis who were changing planes. If you didn't get
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: your non stop from Innnianapolis to Miami, you changed planes
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: in d C. Apparently. Apparently there we have quite a
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: few nonstops. There are about five or six of them,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: so I see where we're Sometimes d National is treated
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: as a sort of quasi hub from some city. So yes,
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  Speaker 1: there were a ton of Indiana fans a couple of
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Miami fans on the plane. But it's been great being
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: down here, in the fact that it's nice to see
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I have yet to pass it an electronic construction sign
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: right that hasn't, said Gokain, So I'm glad to see
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: that it's a little look, I'm gonna have more to
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: say about this game at the end. I actually got
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: something to say about the transfer portal in the state
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: of college football, because Miami once again is stirring the
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  Speaker 1: pot if you will, on that good, bad, and indifferent
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  Speaker 1: on there. But let's be honest, college football is the
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  Speaker 1: least of our concerns. Unfortunately for the world right now,
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  Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with the next twenty four hours. Don't get
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  Speaker 1: me wrong on college football, but we're in a serious
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  Speaker 1: situation here. We are in a moment that I don't
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  Speaker 1: know if we are all fully comprehending the moment that
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  Speaker 1: we're in. But I'm going to put this as a
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  Speaker 1: question because I know it's going to sound I am
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  Speaker 1: trying really hard not to overreact here, But here's the
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  Speaker 1: question that we need to be contemplating. With Donald Trump's
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  Speaker 1: use of paris not just his economic policy, but as
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  Speaker 1: a negotiating and coercive tool, which is what he's doing
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  Speaker 1: to Europe right now increase the likelihood of America stumbling
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  Speaker 1: in to a war. He has started up all sorts
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  Speaker 1: of issues, whether it's on our own border with Canada,
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  Speaker 1: where he's essentially invited China into Canada. This is all
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  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's fault. Canada running into the arms of China,
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  Speaker 1: the threats to Europe, all of our allies right now
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  Speaker 1: having to do where he wants to buy Greenland, and
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  Speaker 1: he doesn't want Europe to stand in the way, and
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  Speaker 1: he's already setting up tariffs, and Europe's actually thinking about
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  Speaker 1: using a tool that was meant because they feared the
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  Speaker 1: rise of China. They weren't gonna fear their friend America.
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  Speaker 1: But here we are. And I know this may come
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  Speaker 1: across as a bit dramatic, and part of it is
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  Speaker 1: we've not most of us haven't been alive the last
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  Speaker 1: time bad American economic policy drove the world to war.
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  Speaker 1: And that's just a historical fact, which is why I
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  Speaker 1: think it's time to start warning that Donald Trump could
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  Speaker 1: get us to war because at this point there you know, look,
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  Speaker 1: I believe there's always a line he crosses for somebody
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  Speaker 1: at any given moment where he gets another opponent, even
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  Speaker 1: inside his own Republican party. Right. We have seen this.
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  Speaker 1: This has been true ever since he came down that escalator.
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  Speaker 1: He will do something to chase somebody away, chase people
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  Speaker 1: out of the Republican Party will be a line too far.
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  Speaker 1: Remember Liz Cheney was with him all the way until
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  Speaker 1: January sixth, and then she was out. Everybody has their lines.
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  Speaker 1: Starting destroying NATO and creating an economic war with Western
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  Speaker 1: Europe is going to be one of those moments. The
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  Speaker 1: question is how many Senate Republicans and how many House
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  Speaker 1: Republicans are going to put the country and the globe
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  Speaker 1: ahead of loyalty to Donald John Trump. And I think
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  Speaker 1: that's something I want you to be thinking about as
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  Speaker 1: I go through this longer distillation here of what we're facing.
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  Speaker 1: So I know I'm sounding a bit dramatic. Imagine how
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  Speaker 1: to sound if the day after Miami lost to the
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  Speaker 1: title game, if they lose the title game, be more
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  Speaker 1: than dramatic. That's the point I sort of want to
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  Speaker 1: and I don't want to make light of this, but
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  Speaker 1: I just focus on this a minute. It is alarming
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  Speaker 1: what has happened. It is absolutely unarming. So before you
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  Speaker 1: roll your eyes, stick with me here for a few minutes,
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  Speaker 1: because I want to take you down a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of history here, a bit to understand how Trump's use
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  Speaker 1: of tariffs right now have inched us closer to a
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  Speaker 1: hot war with more countries then we've had, arguably since
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  Speaker 1: you know, more than anything post nine to eleven. Because
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  Speaker 1: what tariffs do, especially when you use them for coheresive practices,
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  Speaker 1: is that they do change relationships. And when tariffs are
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  Speaker 1: not used or used not as policy but as leverage,
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  Speaker 1: especially against allies, they can quietly turn economic disputes into
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  Speaker 1: security problems. Let's go back in time. It's June of
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty. United States passes the Smoot Holly Tariff Act.
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  Speaker 1: Holly is no relationship, by the way, to the current
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Senator Holly from Missouri. In case you're wondering, I've wondered.
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  Speaker 1: Most of you probably haven't wondered, but I wondered, so
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  Speaker 1: I checked. But the intent was simple. At the time.
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  Speaker 1: They wanted to protect American farmers and workers during a
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  Speaker 1: deepening economic downturn. Right this is just after the stock
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  Speaker 1: market crash. Well, the effect of this was catastrophic, and
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  Speaker 1: not just economically but diplomatically, because here's what Smoot Holly did.
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  Speaker 1: Smoot Holly raised duties or taxes on more than twenty
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  Speaker 1: thousand imported goods and so as the Great Depression worsened
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  Speaker 1: and prices collapsed. The effective tariff ray on all these
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  Speaker 1: goods that we imported climbed dramatically, and it approached levels
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  Speaker 1: that economists often site near sixty percent by the early
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. And it was even magnified by deflation. Right,
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  Speaker 1: the less our money was worth, so it even it
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  Speaker 1: felt even more expensive. It felt like it was even
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  Speaker 1: higher than that sixty percent. But the signal to the
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  Speaker 1: world was unmistakable. America was done in the nineteen thirties
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  Speaker 1: are prioritizing cooperation. We were trying to be a global world, right,
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  Speaker 1: you go back to Woodrow Wilson and all of that.
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  Speaker 1: But when we did smoot Holly, retaliation followed. Barriers spread,
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  Speaker 1: trade collapsed, and it slow it collapsed in value terms.
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  Speaker 1: Global trade thanks to the United States and Smoot Holly
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  Speaker 1: fell by roughly two thirds in the early nineteen thirty
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  Speaker 1: So what did this mean? Countries that depended on exports
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  Speaker 1: to earn dollars suddenly couldn't pay debts, They couldn't stabilize banks,
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  Speaker 1: and they couldn't maintain political order. And this is incredibly
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  Speaker 1: important because historians will rightly argue that Smoot Holly did
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  Speaker 1: not cause World War two, but boy did it have
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  Speaker 1: a huge impact. Monetary policy, the gold standard, political extremism, reparations,
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  Speaker 1: and capital flows. They all mattered, and they all impacted
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  Speaker 1: Germany and Europe. But smoot Holly became something else. It
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  Speaker 1: also became a symbol the moment the world began shifting
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  Speaker 1: from economic cooperation to economic survivalism. Does this sound familiar
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  Speaker 1: because Europe and Canada right now are practicing economic survivalism
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  Speaker 1: because decades of cooperation with the United States have been
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  Speaker 1: flushed down the toilet by Donald J. Trump. So here's
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  Speaker 1: an undertold story of the nineteen thirties. The real damage
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  Speaker 1: wasn't just economic. It was also diplomatic. When trade becomes punitive,
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  Speaker 1: allies stopped acting like partners and they start acting like hedgers.
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  Speaker 1: Again what Canada just did. Democracies didn't want confrontation, but
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  Speaker 1: they began by building essentially different blocks. Britain, the UK
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  Speaker 1: they had to move towards imperial preference in nineteen thirty two.
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  Speaker 1: And it wasn't ideological, it was simply defensive. Cooperation with
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  Speaker 1: the United States a collapsed, so fallback systems started to emerge,
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  Speaker 1: and once nations start thinking in blocks, economics becomes security
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  Speaker 1: becomes it creeps towards militaries, and if you can't rely
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  Speaker 1: on markets for food, fuel, or raw materials, then leaders
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  Speaker 1: begin to justify territorial logic as quote resource security. We're
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  Speaker 1: starting to see Donald Trump start to talk about that
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  Speaker 1: in terms of Greenland. He's even quietly now starting to
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  Speaker 1: talk about that in terms of Canada, because Canada just
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  Speaker 1: did a big deal with China. Now, the logic didn't
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  Speaker 1: invent aggression, but it made aggression sound necessary. You start
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  Speaker 1: to think you have no other choice. You've got to
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  Speaker 1: secure resources for your country. You've got to secure security.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it's water, maybe it's energy. That's the danger zone.
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  Speaker 1: Now let's go back to where we are right now,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: because this is not some sort of academic history lesson
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to give you. We are watching this in
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  Speaker 1: real time. So President Trump is imposed and threatened escalating
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  Speaker 1: tariffs on several European allies explicitly to force them to
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  Speaker 1: allow the United States essentially to buy Greenland. Remember this
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: is not we don't have a trade dispute with the
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  Speaker 1: EU on steel or autos. These are tariffs, taxes, levies,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them, used as leverage for
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  Speaker 1: territorial and strategic gain. Economic bullying is what it is,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and it's being under the umbrella of national security in
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: the Arctic, and Europe's response is telling you everything you
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  Speaker 1: need to know. EU ambassadors are gathering for emergency talks,
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  Speaker 1: emergency talks on how to respond. The United States cannot
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  Speaker 1: be treated as an ally right now in Western Europe.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe we're still a military ally for NATO for the moment,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: but we'll get to that. The French President Manuel Macron
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: has called for the EU to activate an anti coercion instrument.
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  Speaker 1: It's a tool that the EU had, but it had
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  Speaker 1: never been used before. But they developed it because they
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  Speaker 1: assumed they were going to need it to deal with China.
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  Speaker 1: They never thought they were going to have to use
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  Speaker 1: it to deal with the United States. So here's what
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: this anti coersion law allows the EU to do. It
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  Speaker 1: to restrict access to its market for countries that use
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  Speaker 1: economic pressure to extract political concessions, which is exactly what
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Trump's doing. He's using economic pressure to extract a political concession.
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  Speaker 1: This has nothing to do with our trade deficit, This
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  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with lowering the cost of groceries.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, it's going to raise the price of everything.
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  Speaker 1: It is just terrible economics, terrible national security. But other
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  Speaker 1: than that, it's a great idea. In other words, as
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: streets tariffs, not his trade policy, but his economic coercion.
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  Speaker 1: So if the EU does pull this lever, this will
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  Speaker 1: stop being just a little art argument amongst allies. Then
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  Speaker 1: it becomes a confrontation, a trading block confrontation, and it's
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: not going to stop there. Trump's Greenland terror threat is
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: now likely to freeze USU trade agreement entirely. As one
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: observer put it bluntly, no deals ever final, not with
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. We all know that, and that sentence should
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: set off alarm bells in this In Senate Republican conference,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: they cannot keep their mouths shut this time. It can't
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: just be old guy Mitch McConnell speaking out saying what
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: a disaster this would be. John Thune, grow a spine, man,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: stop Trump from taking us to war. He is picking
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: a war with Europe. Stop this. It's madness. It's got
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: to stop. And they're the only only entity that can
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: probably stop this at the moment. The only legitimate entity
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  Speaker 1: are Senate Republicans. We know, Mike Johnson, that's a joke.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: We know that he doesn't do anything. But John Thune,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell, plenty of Senate Republicans know this is a
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: complete and utter disaster. This is crazy. We are risking everything,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the value of the dollar, the idea of the dollar
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: is the reserve currency. Any of you that have traveled
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the world and have always remarked how much better things
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: are here than everywhere else, well that ain't going to
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: be the case for very long if we stop behaving
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  Speaker 1: this way. This is how the nineteen thirties completely unraveled.
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  Speaker 1: Because once nations believe that agreements are provisional depended on
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: leverage rather than trust, they're going to stop investing in
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: cooperation and they're all going to invest in hedges. Which
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: brings me to Canada. This is the almost undercovered story
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: of last week, because you know, there's so much other
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: stuff that Trump throws at the wall. One of the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: least discussed consequences of Trump's trade wars for this first
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: year in office with allies is what those allies feel
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: compelled to do next. When the United States becomes an
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: unreliable or worse aputative partner, it means even our closest
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: friends starting diversifying risk. They'd be idiots if they didn't.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Canada has increasingly deepened trade engagement with China. Not because
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Ottawa prefers to deal with the untrustworthy thugs in Beijing.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: There are a bunch of authoritarians, but because economic coercion
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: leaves fewer options and he's got to keep the standard
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: of living of Canadians as high as he can. Again,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: this is exactly what a democracy has had to do
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: in the early nineteen thirties when the United States decision
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: to go protectionists force their hand. And this is why
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: this for North America. When China gains deeper trade access
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: into the North American economy north of our border, China
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: will gain leverage, influence, strategic presence, and the most integrated
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: economic region in the world in America's backyard. Good job, Donald,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: it's not paranoia. It becomes great power competition. And then,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: of course what happens right then, all of a sudden,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: we're in a doom load because now Trump has already
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: openly expressed frustration with Canada's Arctic defense, linking it to
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: China and Russia. He's already joked about the fifty first
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: state business with Canada. But now Canada's done a big
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: old trade deal with China, one that long ago that
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the United States got China to not do business with
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: China's largest telecom company, yahweh. And in fact it created
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: this huge dispute. There was this idea that you Canadians
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: were cooperating with the United States to keep some of
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: these executives from going back to China. Is a law
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: enforcement issue kind of cooperation we're going to get from
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Canada now and dealing with China. So and then the
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: more they do this, then Donald Trump starts to rationalize
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: treating Canada as a threat. Now you see how these
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: trade disputes get will be turned into security grievances, and
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: then suddenly we push allies to some to do things
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: that we don't like, and then they become liabilities for us.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: But we put we force them into these partnerships with
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: our mistreatment of Canada at the beginning of this craziness.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: And it's the same mental shift we saw in the thirties.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Now we know that the chatter about you know that
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Trump's joked about Canada as a strategic vulnerability. But now
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we should laugh any of this off,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: because once economic access becomes national security, which is what
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: this is all sort of stump. This is what I
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: mean when I don't think Donald Trump thinks he's taking
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: us to war, but he's stumbling into a point where
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: he's going to end up getting us into a war.
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  Speaker 1: Because nobody passed Smoot Holly in the United States Congress
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: thinking it was going to help trigger World War two.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: But that is what happened, and they backed into it
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  Speaker 1: step by step, redefining trade disputes and they became existential threats.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: So this is how our and then all these all
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: of these forced partnerships starts changing our vocabulary from our
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: political leaders, and this idea of coercion and these trade
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: disputes become normalized, and then we start to see him
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: as military threats. So I want to bring in a
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: warning from the historian Robert Kagan what he wrote in
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: The Atlantic this weekend, and he wrote this, Americans are
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: entering the most dangerous world they have known since World
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: War Two, one that will make the Cold War look
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: like child's play and the post Cold War world like paradise.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: In fact, this new world will look a lot like
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the world prior to nineteen forty five, with multiple great
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: powers and metastasizing competition and conflict. Kagan goes further and
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  Speaker 1: he writes this, the United States will have no reliable
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: friends or allies and will have to depend entirely on
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: its own strength to survive and prosper The open access
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: to overseas resources, markets, and strategic bases that Americans have
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: enjoyed will no longer come as a benefit of the
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: country's alliances. Instead, they will have to be contested and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: defended against other great powers. And then he warns Americans
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: are so accustomed to this basically peaceful, prosperous, and open
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: world that they tend to think of it is the
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: normal state of international affairs. They can't they can't imagine
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: it up. And yet that's exactly what's happening. Donald Trump
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: is like purposely unraveling this world. He's purposely doing it.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: This has been the greatest two weeks of Vladimir Putin's
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: efforts to defang the United States in the West. This
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: is better than anything he did in sixteen to hack
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: the election. This is better than anything he's done with Ukraine.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, it's astonishing. This is a dream scenario for
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the Chinese and the Russians, absolute dream scenario, the post
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty five world that all of us have benefited from.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: We can say, we can talk about plenty of things
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that have not gone as well as they should, but
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: trust me, we are at the top of the heat
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: in this globe. Economically, strategically, militarily. This endangers all of that.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: This was no natural order of history. This was built
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: by us. This was maintained by us, and now it's
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: being dismantled by us. That third one was not what
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Americans voted for, even those that wanted America first and
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: wanted out of these foreign wars. I promise you, if
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: you knew it came with this, you wouldn't support this.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Do you want America to be weaker and have less
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: friends and less prosperity. If you do, then let's continue
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: with these policies. If you don't, you better speak up,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: You better talk to your favorite Republican senator, because this
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: has got to stop. This is so catastrophic it'll set
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: us back generations plural. So I'm going to go back
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: to my opening question. Could Donald Trump's use of tariffs
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: as a coercive tool increased the likelihood of america'stuma into war,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: not directly and not intentionally, but history tells us that
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: this much is true. When trade stops being cooperative and
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: starts being punitive, especially amongst countries that all thought they
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: were allies, miscalculation becomes more likely, not less so. Smooth
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Holly didn't directly cause World War Two, but boy did
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: it help create the conditions for it. It helped usher
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: in a world where cooperation collapse, trading blocks hardened, and
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: strategic distrust flourished. It allowed a guy like Hitler to
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: say he had to expand Germany's territory simply because it
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: needed access to resources to survive. And that's what you
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: will start to have more countries rationalizing it just essentially,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is rationalizing this land grab of Greenland in
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: that way, he's rationalizing doing whatever the heck we're doing
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: in Venezuela. We apparently don't give a shit about theocracy
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: in Venezuela because we've we've yet to actually call for
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: it or argue for it, to plan for it. All
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: he wants is a minion to do what he's asking
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: them to do. And if this former Maduro number two
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: just pays the duty to the mob boss here, He's
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: gonna let her be. He doesn't give a shit about
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: democracy in Venezuela. What has he done? Here we are,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: So the lesson is smooth, Holly. Isn't just that tariffs
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: are bad economics, they are. The deeper lesson is that
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: economic coercion corrodes alliances, and alliances are what prevents small
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: crises from becoming large ones. So here we are. Greenland
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: is not just a land mass. Canada isn't just a
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: trading partner in Tariffs aren't just taxes. They are choices.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: They are specific choices, and this president has chosen all
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: of them. And he's essentially chosen a route to either
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: coerce people or to start wars. There's no other There's
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: no in between here. So history's Look, I've said this
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: a bunch of times. When the biggest country in the
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: world goes isolation his goes out of isolationism. So is
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: everybody else. Right When the United States says free trade
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: is the way to go, everybody wants in on the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: free trade agreements. We have been calling the shots, despite
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the bullshit that Trump's been silent for the last ten years.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: So yeah, he gets to call the shots his way.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: The guy, I guess never took an economics course, not one.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: And look what he's doing. And again I don't think
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: he's trying to get us into a war, but every
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: action he's done has brought us closer to it. It
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: should scare the Jesus out of everybody. But most importantly,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: this madness can stop. This has got to stop. And
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: there's only one entity that has any leverage to do
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: it and credibility to do it if they have any
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: credibility left, and it's Senate Republicans. So get your act together.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Stop this madness. I mean, it's bad enough what he's
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: doing to the FED and risking, you know, the credibility
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: of harmonetary system for the world. This is even worse,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: if that's possible. This episode of The Chuck Podcast is
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  Speaker 1: dot com slash chuck. All Right, a few other political notes,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: by the way, my guest today, it's a fascinating book,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: and it's a book that I think, and I'm going
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: to say this a few times that if you're running
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: for president, I don't care what party you're in. I's
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: you're jd Vance, Marco Rubio, you're Andy Basheer, Pete booteragig Rocanna,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: you need to read this book. It's called The Middle
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Class New Deal. My guess is University of Texas law
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: professor Michelle Dickerson. It's a terrific framework of sort of,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: and it's both a history lesson and a framework, and
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: it's look, it's not gonna it's not gonna be without
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: its detractors, because this decidedly says, hey, focus, you know,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: if you want a middle class, it takes it takes
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: a government to you've got to want it, you've actually
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: got to invest in it. You've got to create the
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: conditions that allow for it. It doesn't magically happen. You let
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: capitalism go without any guard rails, you're basically going to
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: have a few rich people and a lot of poor people.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: But what America did for the last seventy years was
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: create a structure that allowed for a middle class to flourish.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: That structure has been worn away, hit hard. Big part
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: of it is labor. The loss of labor unions, one
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: could argue, is certainly a huge impact on that that shifting,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: that that shift, which is why I think if you've
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: noticed labor unions have gotten popular on both sides of
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the aisle. I think more and more people realize that,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: you know, you're if you want to have a living wage,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: you're gonna you know, companies aren't going to do it
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: out of the goodness of their heart. Sometimes collective bargaining
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: is the only way. But that is not what this
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: interview is about. It's about a lot of things about retirement, security,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: health security, all sorts of things. I thought it was
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a terrific book, and again it's the type of book
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: presidential candidates and those that want to work on presidential
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: campaigns to figure out how to how to look forward.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: We can sit here and relitigate the past, and look,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: who knows what kind of you know, we could be
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: in a could be in a hot war by the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: time twenty twenty eight comes along. And I don't say
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: that with just just throwing it out there. What what
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: The things that Trump has done over the last couple
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: of weeks have inched us closer to that likelihood, has
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: not moved us further away. So I do have that.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: So a few other few other notes that I think
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: are worth a few other things that I wanted to
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: make note of. Obviously, the big, the big political news
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: is Donald Trump's decision to indeed go after Bill Cassidy,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Republican Center from Louisiana, despite all of Cassidy's efforts to
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: suck up to the Trump administration, give Robert F. Kennedy
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Junior and his kooky health ideas, all the benefited out
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: in the world, all the lies that Kennedy told him,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: and sort of Cassidy ate it. He took it, and
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: he took it for one reason. He was up for
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: election this year, and he was just hoping that he
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: showed he could be a team player work with the
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Trump administration on a handful of these issues that maybe
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't endorse against him. Right, he wasn't necessarily hoping
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: for the endorsement. Now, remember what Cassidy did, right. Cassidy
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: is one of the seven Republican senators who chose to
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: vote to convict Donald Trump. He was probably the most
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: prizing one at the time. A lot of people were
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: surprised because you saw most people thought it would be
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: retiring senator centators that weren't going to be trying to
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: see he was in his first term. It was, and
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: he's from a super red state. Well, Julia let Lowe
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: a congresswoman who has been some have been trying to
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: recruit her to come against to run in this primary.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Trump officially endorsed her. Now, the primary deadline filing deadline
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: is February thirteenth. You know, let's see. My guess is
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Cassidy's going to do some polling. He's going to see
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: and I remember Louisiana changed its rules Cassidy and the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: old in the in the you know, literally they changed
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: their rules just as to get rid of Cassidy. All
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the more reason why I don't know why Cassidy didn't
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: sort of push back a little bit harder at Trump.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, why he thought this was going to work
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: is beyond me. But he, like everybody else, you know,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the lesson of the and the scorpion. He gave the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: scorpion the ride with Robert F. Kennedy, and scorpion has
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: now stung him. But Louisiana Republicans got out of the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Louisiana was kind of like Washington California. All everybody participates
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: in the primary, if nobody gets fifty percent, then the
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: top two meet in a runoff. There's slightly different from
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Washington State in California in that if you you know
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: and regularly, you know, you have Senate races, got all
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: their campaigns were done this way. Well, they created this
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: new federal carve out. All of it was just designed
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: by sort of mega Republicans in Louisiana to target Bill Cassidy.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: So he's got to deal with a regular old Republican
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: primary where a Trump endorsement's probably enough to win or loose,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: depending on which side of the endorsement you're in. So
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Cassidy's in big trouble. Let's see what happens, he doesn't
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: have the benefit of that there. You know, I happen
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: to believe he should be running as an independent. Maybe
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: he chooses to do that. I think the only path
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: the reelection for him was is to run as an
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: eye and promise that if he wins, he will caut
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: us with Republicans A Llah Lisa Murkowski. I think there's
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: a path for him if that, if if he chose
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: to go to go down that road. So we'll see
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: what he does. I'm speculating on the independent run. That's
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: not anything that's out there. I know that Cassidy at
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: least kicked the tires or at least took the phone
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: calls that the folks that at no labels back when
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: they were looking for a sort of compromise presidential candidate.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: So I don't think he feels any sort of loyalty
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: at this point to Trump's Republican Party. So, you know,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: if he really wants to be a United States senator,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: I think a path exists. I don't think it means
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: running as a Democrat. I think that would be a mistake.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I don't think he could do that. But if he
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: said he pulled the Lisa Murkowski run as an independ
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: that's his path if he wants to win, and if
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: he wants to try to try to plan a flag
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to to sort of have a say in what the
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Republican Party might look like after Trump. But you got
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: to go win first, and you gotta have the guts
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: to do something like this. Ain't easy. It's more likely
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: to lose than win. But if you've if you've got principles,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: you want to fight for Senator Cassidy, that's the path
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: to do it. I think he is the type of
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: guy that could win just enough Democrats, just enough Republicans
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: probably have. Look, there are a lot of Democrats that
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: might have that are pretty upset with him over this
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Kennedy debacle. I mean, look, people are dying because Robert F.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Kennedy Junior is Secretary of Health. Okay, he his these
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: decisions are directly impacting the health and wellness of young people.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: So there's there are going to be people that maybe
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: won't be able to support Cassidy that might have a
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: year ago had he chosen this path. But I wonder
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: now if he's going to hold back and what he
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: has to say. We've seen that when Tom Tillis announced
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: that he's retiring instead of running a primary, praying that
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: somehow Trump was going to endorse him, which he never was.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: You know, Tillos was the first Republican out of the
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: gate to say he wasn't going to confirm a single
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: new Trump appointed to the FED until this, until this
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: trumped up investigation by Jenny Piro was dropped. So I'm
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: fascinated to watch what Cassidy does. I'm not convinced he
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: runs as a Republican. I'm not convinced he runs, but
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: we'll see what he does. But this is a big deal,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: and this was against I mean, this is Donald Trump
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: not caring about the future of the Republican party he wants,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you know, he cares about his retribution more than anything else.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: He cares about his grievances more than anything else. And
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: this is something that I try to repine my Republican friends.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: He does not care if there's a Republican party that's
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: viable come January twenty first, twenty twenty nine. He does
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: not care. He will be perhaps more happy if he
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: is seen as the only Republican that could win the presidents.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: So I always remember he is never rarely making a
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: decision that's in the best interests of the party in
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the long term. He just cares about what's in the
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: best interest of him. So we shall see very curious
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: to watch what mister Cassidy does. All right with that,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Let's sneak at a break and when we come back,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the middle Class New Deal, that's what this book is called.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: I think this is something everybody that listens to the
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: podcast Left, Right and Center. We're all trying to figure
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: out what does capitalism look like going forward? Because this
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: version is messy and broken, and we know we need
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: some new guardrails. We know we needed some new focus
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and some new investment. And Michelle Dickerson has an out,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: has a plan that she's hoping will at least get debated.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Let's take a break. Having good life insurance is incredibly important.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: I know from personal experience. I was sixteen when my
• 38:32
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• 38:35
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• 38:42
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• 40:03
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• 40:10
  Speaker 1: as we get to the run up of not just
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Campaign twenty twenty six, bit Campaign twenty twenty eight, one
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: of the things I'm going to actively be seeking out
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: are academics and authors and historians that are that are
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: trying to lay out visions that look forward, not necessarily
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: relitigating the past, and whether it's in how are we
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: going to reform and change and modernize the public education system,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: which I think is something that I hope our next
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: presidential campaign can begin to discuss. And in that vein,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: there's a terrific new book out by a professor at
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: the University of Texas Law School, by Michelle Dickerson. She's
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: my guest today. The book is called The Middle Class
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: New Deal, Restoring Upward Mobility and the American Dream. This
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: is more than just a white paper of saying of aspiration.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: This is a book with a detailed blueprint for how
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: we should tackle this and what's interesting about this And
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: I'm going to shut up here in a minute and
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: bring it Michelle is that I view it as this
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: better be a book that anybody running for president, I
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: don't care which party you're running from, ought to read,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: because whether you're a liberal or conservative, the goals that
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: are outlined here in this book, I think are something
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: that frankly, both the left and the right aspire to.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: We're just disagreeing on how we get there. But it
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: does begin here with I think the reminder that in
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: order to have a middle class, you actually have to
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: have government policy that wants to have a middle class.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: And I think that was before we begin our conversation,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the most important insight I think that I took away
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: from this book. So, without further ado, let me bring
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: in Michelle Dickerson, University of Texas Law School. Been there
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: multiple books, She's written multiple books. This is again not
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: a I don't this doesn't strike me. It didn't strike
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: me as a political book. It struck me as a
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: answer to the economic anxiety that has essentially been reflected
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: in what has been now twenty years of what I
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: call vote against politics. We know what we don't want,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: nobody's yet come up with the answer for what we
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: do want. So Michelle Dickerson Welcome to the podcast.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: So let me start with this because I think you
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: know you hear the words new Deal, and we've seen
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of economic prescriptions using the umbrella of the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: New Deal, right, and you know a lot of times
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: it's just borrowing a popular phrase to sell something that
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: people have been trying to sell for years. This didn't
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: strike me. They tell me your origin as to what
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: motivated you to put these ideas together the way you did.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: The first thing I did is I thought about, how
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: is it that we have a middle class. And this
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: is a point that you just made in the introduction.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: We have a middle class because political leaders decided we
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: needed to have a middle class. Now, part of it
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: was in response to the depression, but after the depression
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: in World War one, world War two, political leader said,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: you know what, it's not a bad thing to have
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: a middle class. They do good things for the US economy,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: and also as political leaders, we need to do good
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: things for lower and middle income folks who are looking
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: to achieve the American dream to have upward mobility. So
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: I landed the middle class New Deal because we created
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: the middle class roughly as part of the First New Deal,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: and political leaders need to stop. And I agree with
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: the way that you framed this. This is not a
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: left or a right, or a Democrat or a Republican book.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: This is a book for all political leaders to make
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: a decision do we care about the middle class in
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: this country or not?
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: I thought the most important insight and it's almost to
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: me it's the table stakes.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: If you don't accept this premise, then you're not going
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: to accept the premise of the book, is that somehow
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: a middle class just happens in a free market economy.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: The fact of the matter, it doesn't. And when we lionize,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: you know, you know we it's always one of those things.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Everybody wants to say they're in the middle class, right.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: It is popular to be in the middle class, even
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: as we aspire to be. Even when you're not in
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: the middle class anymore, you still want to say, well,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I've got middle class roots, right, there's something about it, right,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: we want to be here. But this is not something
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: a free market economy creates. Free market economies, when left unchecked,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: create uber rich and a lot of poor. It actually,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: it doesn't automatically create a middle class. And I think
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: understanding the history of the great building of the middle
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: class of the fifties, the GI Bill that was a
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: government essentially making sure the troops that came home didn't
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: become poor, gave them an opportunity to stay out of poverty,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: not even necessarily bringing people from poverty to the middle class.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: The development of the suburbs, the development of all of
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: these things were in support of the middle of creating
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a middle class. And I think that might be hard
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: for some of my free market conservative friends to sort
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: of wrap their arms around, but guess what government actually
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: has to create the conditions to allow a middle class
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: to exist. Did I summarize your argument parally?
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: We did exactly. And what I would say is, if
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: you want to know what happens when the government is
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: not involved, look at what has happened to lower and
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: middle income people since the nineteen eighties. So if we
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: want the free market to control, what that means is
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: we will have the uber uber rich and everyone else
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: will be struggling. So it's really hilarious to me when
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: people look back at the middle class and all of
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: the wonderful things it did. It helps people go to college,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: It helped people buy homes. But if we really wanted
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: to put labels on what happened that the factors that
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: helped to create the middle class, we'd have to say
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: things like socialism and interfering with free markets. And of
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: course nobody wants to say those words. The S word
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: is just horrible. Well, fine, don't call it socialism, just
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: call it what do we think this government owes to
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: people who work hard, get up every day and try
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: to do the right thing, and yet continue to struggle.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: If your respond, since we owe them nothing, then we
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: need to just say that.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Well, and you know, I can make a national security
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: or if you want a stable and thriving population that
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: also is patriotic, then you better have a sustainable middle
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: class if we don't have one.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if we want a happy population. So if again,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: even ignoring whether or not you care about the economic
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: security of most families in this country, one of the
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: things that I always say when people ask me, well,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: why is it so good to have a middle class?
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: I can point to lots of things like toasters, or
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: trash cans or Ford pickup trucks. Billionaires can only buy
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: so many of those. So even if you don't care
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: about the stability of human beings. The economic stability of
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: human beings. Y'all are to care whether or not you
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: can sell lots of pickup trucks and trash cans and microwaves.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: That's what the middle past also does. They drive spending
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: in this economy. And if they're struggling financially, or if
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: they're scared and we're seeing a lot of fear now,
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: which is also unhealthy, then we're going to have a
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: weak economy.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: So I feel as if that you made a case
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: in this book that government in sort of supporting the
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: middle class. It's not about guaranteeing a certain level of income,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: but it is about guaranteeing and the following items the
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: ability stable employment, predictable health costs, affordable education, pathways to homeownership,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: and retirement security, and that those things government has to
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: involve itself if you want to have those guarantees, and
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: that that middle class is less about income and more
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: about does the average American able to achieve those five
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: goals in life.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: And one of the things when I talk about the
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: middle class that I always stress is people who are
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: struggling financially are not saying we need to be billionaires.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: They're simply saying, why is it so hard for me
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: to find a full time job forty hours a week
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: with benefits including health insurance and a retirement plan where
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: I am called an employee when I go to work
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: and not an independent contractor? So why is that so hard?
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: Why is it so hard for me to be able
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: to either go to college myself and not drown myself
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: in student loan debt or help my kids go to college?
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: Why is it so hard for me? And I'll tweak
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: one thing that you said. It's not so much now
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: to be able to own your own home. It's to
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: be able to find affordable housing, even to rent in
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of cities. Why is it so hard for
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: me to find stable and secure housing? Why am I
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: drowning in debt? Why don't I have savings? So you're
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: absolutely right. My book isn't arguing that everybody needs to
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: earn the same thing, but everybody in this country that
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: works hard and wants to achieve. Whether we call it
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: the American Dream, upward mobility, I really don't care. But
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: everyone that wants to be stable should have the opportunity
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: to do that.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about let's pick out these things one
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: at a time. So the role, what are some ideas
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: that government could do to create a more stable employment environment.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: Well, one thing is to focus on what I just said,
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: why do we continue to allow businesses to treat their
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: employees as independent contractors? Because if you say they don't
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: have to treat them as employees, then that means they're
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: not guaranteed forty hours a week, they don't get benefits,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: they don't have the right to unionize. So we need
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: to start asking why is it that we allow companies
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: to outsource whole swaths of their employment of their employees
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: and then hire them back as an independent contractor. We
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: have to ask why is it In the nineteen sixties
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: and nineteen seventies, people that worked had a defined benefit
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: pension plan. That's what my parents have, and I talk
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: about them in the book. My parents get two I
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: won't say checks, because it's not checks anymore, two deposits
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: into their checking account every month because they worked their
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: entire lives and they have guaranteed retirement income. I am
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: terrified to think what we're going to see in about
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: ten years when people start retiring, they don't have pensions,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: and they have not much saved in a defined contribution
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: for a one K four three B plan.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, baby boomers are the last ones that got pensions,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: and Gen X is the first generation you know, you know,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: we're the ones that I had to figure out what
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: is four O one K mean?
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's like an alphabet soup?
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, Ira roth Ira? What is that? Right? There
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: were all these sort of new sort of you know,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: tax coded you know, numbers and numerologies or the names
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: after senators who came up with the idea that we're
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: all designed essentially to keep Americans from being angry that
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: pensions were going away. I don't know any other way
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: to describe it.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they shifted the risk of retirement security from employers
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: to employees, and they did it in ways that was
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: designed for us to end up exactly where we are.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: I remember the first time I had my first job.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: It was at a law firm, I think, and I
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: went there and I had to actually look at the
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: retirement offerings. I mean, I was a bankruptcy lawyer and
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: I've graduated from law school. It so terrified me. I
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: had to put it down and come back the next
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: day because it was so complicated. Well, if I can't
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: figure it out, imagine just a normal din't doesn't have
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: two degrees, you know, isn't in bankruptcy employee that's sitting
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: down trying to figure out what do I need to
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: invest in and when do I think I'm going to retire,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: and what level of income do I think I'm going
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: to need? The things that employers used to do for
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: their workers.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Look, politically, that's going to be very difficult, right you
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: look at let's just take Fetex in Amazon. Right. Fed
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: X is an older company that arguably is the first
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: major company to succeed with independent contractors. Right. And Amazon Obviously,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: many of these people that work at Amazon don't work
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: for Amazon. Right there. They they're they're independent contractor. They
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: have all lot of political beverage, right and the whole.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: And there's some that will argue, well, independent contractors allow
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: people to make more money because it can be a
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: side hustle and right, you know, there are different ways
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: that have been used frankly to convince or persuade parts
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: of the population. No, no, no, no, no, These these
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: empower you, These don't hurt you, you know, And I'm
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: not asking you to be a political messaging guru here,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: but I think that's going to be the political challenge
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: to an obvious policy conundrum.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: Right. And we talk a lot about freedom and choice.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: So you have the freedom. You can choose not to
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: work forty hours a week you want to have you
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: want to be an independent contract it's good for you. You
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: can choose to work in the gig economy, you know,
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: pick up a little bit of work here and there.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: But if you actually talk to the people who are
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: exercising the choice to be an independent contractor, it's not
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: a choice. And I can say this from personal experience.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: I have a twenty five year old son who worked
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: briefly for Amazon, but he didn't work for Amazon. He
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: worked for a delivery service provider and they were they
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: treated him very well, but at the end of the day,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: he was never going to work for Amazon and he
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: was never going to get forty hours a week working
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: at the DSP because it wasn't set up for them
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: to be full time forty hour a week. You got
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: to give them benefits.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: Do you think this has to be mandatory legislation that
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: basically says is there, you know, can you design what
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: would a what would a simple piece of legislation do
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: to sort of dissuade the independent contractor route.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Well, several states have actually tried. I think California tried.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: All have failed, but several states have tried. Basically, if
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: you have someone that is doing the same work that
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: people you called employees are doing, those people must be
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: treated like employees, whether you call them contractors or not.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: So give them health insurance, allow them to participate in
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: the retirement plans, and more importantly, allow them to organize
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: and to participate in any union organizing attempts at your company,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: because at the end of the day, when you have
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: fewer employees, your costs or less as a business, and
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: you're not at grade of a risk of having a
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: strong union presence because if you have fewer employees, you're
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: less likely to have to deal with those pesky unions.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Got a predictable health cut. You know, there was a time,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I want to say twenty years ago, where I thought
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: that there was a deal to be cut with big business.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: You know, I would hear the complain aints. You know,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: because I've worked where I worked, I'd have interactions with
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: this CEO of GE and I've had interactions with the
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: CEO of Comcast and interactions with other CEOs, and all
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: of them would complain about the cost of health care,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: and so you could I always thought that there was
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: this great grand bargain where the government would say, look,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: we can save you some money. We'll take care of
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: health We'll take health care out of your situation. Then
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: you can go back to having pensions or you can
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: go back to you know that there was this grand
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: bargain to be had, so to tackle predictable health costs?
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: You know, is it realistic to stick with the employer
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: based healthcare system that ultimately we're still kind of attached to,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: even though the Affordable Care Act was supposed to make
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: this a bit more portable. Do you think we need
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: policy fixes that sort of deal with the world that
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: we live in, or do we need to radically rethink
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: how we deliver health insurance to folks or healthcare work.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: I would say we need to make a radical change,
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: and these are a couple of options. And I'll lead
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: into this by telling a story involving a class that
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: I taught at ut So. It was a class that
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: had both law students public policy students, schools from students
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: from the School of Education and foreign exchange students. So
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: we were talking about the middle class and this particular
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: class session we were talking about in insurance and one
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: of the students from the Netherlands finally asked a question.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: She says, I don't understand why when we're talking about
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: health insurance you all keep talking about jobs. What do
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: jobs have to do with anything? And then we had
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: to explain to her, Well, in the US, that's how
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: we provide health insurance. So if we leave it with businesses,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: businesses have to assume the cost. So rather than pushing
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: the costs onto employees, tell them that you know where
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: you want to say that there are caps on what
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: they can charge or but businesses can lobby Congress and
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: be much more effective in coming up with solution than
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: individual employees can. I will also say, and this is
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: not necessarily a model that can be scaled, but when
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: we look at the way that a military personnel in
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: this country, how they receive health insurance, they receive it
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: from the government. Is it perfect? They would probably say no,
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: Is everyone covered? Yes they are. So we have to
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: do something radical because we can't continue with the status quo.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: And I would also again thinking back to the past,
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: although I'm not going to stick say in the past,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: I want us to be thinking in terms.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Of the Oh, and this is the point of your
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: book is to stop. You know, we can't relitigate stuff
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: that has.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: Happened yet, right, But the reason that we have so
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: many employee benefits tied into work was because in World
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: War Two there was a wage controls so they couldn't
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: increase wages. So what businesses did is say, oh, but
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: we can give you non wage benefits. Once that happened,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: it became the norm. And so one of the things
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: I want political leaders to do is to say, well,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: if it wasn't the norm until we created it, maybe
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: we can create something new and that'll then become.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: The norm, a new essentially some new norms exactly if
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: you will. But you're right, I mean it was if
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: people would panic if they found out healthcare wasn't connected
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: to work, Yeah right, that's what Look, that's what the
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Clintons found out when they first touched the healthcare back
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: in ninety three. Whoa, whoa, whoa. People hate the system,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: but they.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: Like their own health care exactly, and they're always afraid that, well,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: I have to have the best health care and I
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: have to have every single procedure that I want covered.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: And that's great that in theory, until you lose your
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: job and then you have no health care. So one
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: of the discussions we're going to have to have is
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: to ask people, are you going to fight for what
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: you have right now, knowing that if you lose your
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: job you have nothing?
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I what are I think there are real
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: trade offs here that might be net positives for everybody.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: Right if the government takes on the role of essentially
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: guaranteeing insurance, guaranteeing healthcare, access to healthcare, in theory, that
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: should free up money for corporations. I mean, and you know,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, we don't do nuanced very
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: well in our country anymore in our political debates. But
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: you know, that seems to be the type of thing
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: that that that in a in a mature setting, that
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: that people would accept the idea that this is trade offs.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: This isn't you know. Okay, I want this guarantee, but
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: it means it won't get it over here, okay, and
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: you put it out there.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we're again at the where we unfortunately
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: spend most of our time in the political space with
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: you know, we let perfect be the enemy of good, right,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: and so why not say these are the six things
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: that we think people in this country deserve. And if
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: we can agree that everyone deserves healthcare, everyone deserves some
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: kind of retirement security, we can then say, Okay, now
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: that we've agreed on that, who do we think should
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: be responsible for providing it? Ignoring who may be providing
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: it right now, but who going forward do we think
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: should be responsible for providing it? That to me is
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: a much more productive conversation than re litigating, well, it's
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: not fair if businesses have to do this and it
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: increased their costs. Okay, let's just assume that your true.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: Let's go forward.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about affordable education. You know, one of the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: head scratchers me, I was convinced back in the mid
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: nineties that it was inevitable that we were going to
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: what I called thirteenth and fourteenth grade, that we were
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: going that public education was essentially going to extend another
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: two years, that there was going to be guaranteed public
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: education up through quote unquote fourteen years of it. So
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: you divided up how you want to divide it up. Right,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: you got your primary and secondary, and then you have
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: essentially free community college, right the first two years of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: community college. The fact that we haven't gotten there, you know,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: the fact that we're still like the debating university universal
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: kindergarten in some states we have, I would argue the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: entire education debate is just sort of stalled, right, and
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: we're stuck with this terrible system of charters and where
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: everybody has taken education in their own hands. And you know,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: you're discussing in some cases more about higher education. But
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: I feel like the entire educational system just desperately needs
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: a twenty first century makeover, and it's so politically polarized
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: that we don't know how to do it. What are
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: a few steps, sheet, a few ideas you're putting out
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: there in the book that you think could make a
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: tangible progress here.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll leave by saying one group that we also
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: have to bring into this discussion are employers. Because even
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: if we had K fourteen and everyone had a free
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: community college education, employers need to be willing to hire
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: them and pay them a decent wage. The challenge now
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: is that the bachelor's degree has largely become the gateway
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: to the middle class. So employers also need to come
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: into the conversation and say, we're going to hire people
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: and treat them decently even if they don't have a
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: bachelor's degree. But you're absolutely right, we've got to look
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: at what happens starting in kindergarten. I would like to
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: start actually in preschool as well. And how do we
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: treat lower and middle income children in public schools, And
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: how do we treat rich children and lower rich children
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: who are more likely to be educated in private schools.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: So we need to have an honest discussion when we're
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: talking about charters and vouchers and all of these other things.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: Most lower and middle income kids in this country are
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: educated in a public school somewhere if they are in
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: a rural area. There are no such things as choice options.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: There's no choice.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: To say this all the time. I mean, you know,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: it's essentially homeschool exactly. It's the only realistic option if
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: you don't like your school.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: And some parents are doing that. But as we saw
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: during COVID, exactly parents were like, oh my goodness, we
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: love our school teachers. Boy, can we get these children back, right,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: and so it's great to say homes Well, you know,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: people need a homeschool people most parents need two incomes
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: in order to survive. So that's just not a thing.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: So one of the things I argue, and I know
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: some of the things I propose in the book are
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: are quite radical, but we need to look at the
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: public school buildings and ask ourselves, why are they so underutilized?
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: How can we use them to do more? So we
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: know that there are educational gaps between lower and middle
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: income children and lower rich and rich children. What can
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: we do with the public school system to try to
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: close those gaps. One of the things that we do
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: now is we still treat public school the public school
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: calendar is if we're an agrarian economy. So for three
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: some three months of the summer, got to deal with
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: the crops, everybody, right, that's right. So you have children
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: just in the phrases use as a summer slide. If
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: you're rich or lower rich, you can put your kids
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: in these camps and robotic camps, and you can have
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: them go to these summer high school camps on college campuses. Well,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: that's lovely, that's not the reality. For lower and middle
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: income families. And so you're what I do, both in
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: the book and also when I'm giving different talks, is
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: we have to focus on K twelve because it's too
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: late once children are about to turn age eighteen.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: No, And the whole thing is, you know, nobody's happy
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: with the public school system, and everybody would be appalled
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: if it went away, exactly. And and you know it's like, look,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: I empathize with these parents that go back and forth.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: I get school choice. I had. You know, my parents didn't.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: The only choice they had was to find another neighborhood
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: to live in with affordable housing, and they did that.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: That was that's all they could do, and that's what
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: they did. I had a little bit more the ability
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: to truly choose what was going to be best for
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: my kids. But ultimately, we are not going to have
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: a good labor force if we don't have a good
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: public education system. And well, look, politically, the impediments have
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: been a weird combination of people who don't want you know,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: I joke in the state of Virginia, it's the people
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: that own an amusement park called King's Dominion that was
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: making it impossible for school districts to even start two
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: weeks earlier, you know, it would be like these weird
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: you know, And then there was some teachers unions are
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: like no, no, no, no, we want our we want our
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: time off, because a lot of teachers, because they're underpaid,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: spend their summers looking for extra income and are afraid
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: of that going away, right, So which then tells you
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: we really aren't investing very well in our school teachers
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: if they feel like they need a second job in
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: the summer. So it's a it's a it's been a
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: weird challenge to sort of break this norm of summer break.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but again one of the they're very COVID was awful.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: It was dreadful, and I've always had to purposes with
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: there's nothing good about COVID, But some good things did
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: come out of COVID. And one of the things we
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: saw during COVID is what happens when you have an
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: extended educational slide. So we have children now who still
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: have not caught up and who are still behind because
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: of the COVID slide. So you're absolutely right, everyone has
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: their own agenda. Actually, before I joined the UT faculty,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: i worked at I was at the law school at
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: William and Mary and so I know about those gated
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: communities there.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was just striking.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: It's like, oh, so you all don't want to lose
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: cheap high school labor. That's the reason you want to. Oh, okay,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: that makes sense. Yeah, but for the school teachers. One
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: of the things that we can do if we're using
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: our K twelve buildings more effectively, we can actually allow
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: the school teachers that want to they don't have to
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: to pick up extra money in their area of expertise.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: You call this the summer trimester.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: Essentially concept exactly. Yeah, just the building is there, so
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: why not use the building in ways that can put
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: a little more money in the pockets of school teachers
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: and also make sure that lower and middle income children
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: get the same educational and vocational opportunities that rich kids did.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about labor labor unions, because what's interesting
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: is we're in a moment right now where you know, look,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: I think you and I are of the generation where
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: labor unions were a punching back, you know, and politically,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like, you know, it's almost like every
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: labor union was viewed through the prism of Jimmy Hoffa, right,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: and it's just like they're all, you know, and it
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: really the damage, the perception damage Jimmy Offa did to
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: the entire concept of collective bargaining and unions is is
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: I think one of those one of those moments that
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: probably we as sort of historical journalists need to unpack
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: and realize, look at the damage this did. But there's
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: now sort of an open mind on this. Now there's
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: less ideological divide about labor unions. There's still some skepticism
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: in corporate right now, the divide really seems to be
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: corporate America versus everybody else. Right, you have a Donald
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: Trump that in theory sees, you know, wants to be
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: on the side at least of the trade unions. They're there,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: and I think with AI, the fear of AI job displacement,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: why collar workers who you know, I've been, you know,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: I've been a little skeptical of news of newsroom unions myself,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: sort of like you know, I've I've always viewed unions
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: as to protect the physical labor folks more than necessarily
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: the But that's my own bias, and I will I'm
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: you know, at the same time, the only way you're
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: going to get equal treatment is through collective bargaining. Right,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: we're about to I think we're going to see this
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: in college sports. By the way, that's a separate topic.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: But you seemed to peg one of the one of
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: the reasons why we had a strong middle class in
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties was because we openly accepted labor unions.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: So how do you bring that back?
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: Well, one of the divides that I think we're also
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: seeing is there's a generational divide. So I remember when
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: I first started teaching courses on the middle class. Again,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: this is one of the sessions where we were talking
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: about labor and I had a student in the class
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: to raise our hand and say, so, you know, we've
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: been talking about this whole thing with you know, rights
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: and workers' power, and you've been talking about unions. Exactly
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: what is a union? And it was jarring to me
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: until it occurred to me that we had so demonized
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: unions that a lot of students fifteen years ago really
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: weren't familiar with the benefits that unions actually could provide.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: Students now they know exactly what unions do. Part of
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: it is because I think they've looked at their local
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: baristas who have gone out on strike, They've looked at
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: in the educational context, some of the graduate assistants that
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: have gone out on strike. I will not talk at
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: all about sports because I'm very involved in that space
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: at the University of Texas, so I'm not going to
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: talk about that. But yeah, I think that we have
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: to acknowledge that nothing good has happened to lower and
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: middle income workers since we gutted unions. I would say
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: Jimmy Hoffa is a very bad visual. I will also
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: say that the destruction of pat Co by Ronald Reagan
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: was another one of those moments exactly where we forget
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: that that then told everybody else you can go out
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: and destroy union two.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a you know, I look at the
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: model Germany has, and it's always been a fascinating model
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: where workers are actually on the board of directors like
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: they're so the union culture is so embedded with the
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: corporate culture that it actually isn't it as it doesn't
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: strike me as antagonistic? Is there a model there worth copying?
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: We have to look at the union or employees workers
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: as partners and so again, when we're deciding who gets what.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: If you view the union as a partner rather than
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: as the enemy, I think we have a very different
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: framework going forward. The businesses often views the government as
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: a partner. Well, if you view the government, if you
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: have these public private partnerships with the government, why are
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: you so hostile to the people that actually make it
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: possible for your company to be productive. So, whether it's
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: they're on the boards or you are genuinely working toward
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: these we're all rowing in the same direction. We don't
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: have that now, but I think we may get that
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: if no other reason, young people are going to demand it.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: How do you eliminate you know, a lot of this
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: take the union issue is that are classified. Sometimes people
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: get blinded by race and ethnicity, when really our divides
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: have always been class, and race and ethnicity have been
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: sort of used as wedges to to advance a class
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: argument one way or the other. You know, well, maybe
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: it's impossible, and maybe I'm asking you a political question
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: and you're not offering a political question. But that seems
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: to be something that we've got to get over as
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: a culture before we all embrace a union mindset.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: I think we also have to admit it. I mean,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: you admit it. I know that it is true. A
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: lot of people will not admit even now, a lot
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: of the conversations that we are having are really about
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: race and ethnicity. They are not about anything else. I
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: don't care whether it's in the immigration space or.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: I look at Todd Donald Trump and the trade unions.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: He's always worried about the trade unions. He's never worried
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: about anybody at SEIU exactly. And SCIU just looks that
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: union looks different than the Carpenters Union does. Although I
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: would argue the Carpenter's Union looks a lot more like
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: SCIU than he thinks, but you get my drift.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, even the Teamsters, I mean, that was the
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: one union that was more inclined to support the Republican
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: Party than the Democratic Party, and their membership looks very
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: different than the service workers unions. And so one of
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: the things we're going to we're going to have to
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: stop doing is saying that, well, the problems of the
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: middle class are the workers are lazy. Okay, so which
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: workers are we talking about? Are we talking about all
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: workers or do you have a certain profile of a
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: worker in mind? What made me actually think that I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: was sort of onto something here because I've been writing
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: this book for an eternity. But it was the twenties.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: It was before the twenty sixteen election. We heard all
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: of this, oh, the angry middle class, and Hillary Clinton
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: and Donald Trump were talking about how much they loved
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: the middle class and the angst of the middle class.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: And then I kept asking, so exactly which middle class
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: are we talking about here? Because it is absolutely true,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: absolutely true, that there is economic inequality and that there
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: is anxiety. There's economic anxiety, but that has been true
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: for black and Latunal workers for and the shift that
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: we're seeing now is the same way that the black
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: and Latino middle class has been treated, is the way
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: the entire middle class is being treated. And if we
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: can get lower and middle income workers to say, this
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: is not tribalism, this is not people that don't look
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: like us, we are all being treated the same way.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: None of us can afford to send our kids to college,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: none of us can find a forty hour full time
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: job where we are called an employee, and none of
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: us can find an affordable housing either.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: Look what made I think this book also why I
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: think it should be should be read by all these
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: presidential candidates is that you know, a lot of times
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: presidential candidates will focus on poverty, safe safety net programs
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: primarily focused on helping the poor and these you know,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: whether it's a fight about medicaid, right, whether it's a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: fight and and you know, the cynic and me has
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: often said, look, all voters are self centered. Okay, let's
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: let's not pretend that they aren't. And that's okay. It's
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: your job as the politician to figure out a message
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: that both appeals to them and at the same you know,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: in a self centered way, but at the same time,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: can help help a greater good. Where do you prioritize
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: poverty programs in your vision here for a renewed middle
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: class or and you sort of see in an odd
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: way that it kind of if you revive a intentionally
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: revive a middle class, right, because essentially we're arguing that
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: we intentionally dismantled it, so you've got to intentionally bring
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: it back that you're actually creating an anti poverty program
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: without having to target the poor.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: And again I'll answer this with someone with the story
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: with the same course of I taught. I was saying
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: something in class and a student said something about either
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: Medicaid or AFDC, and I said, oh, no, no, no, no,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: we don't care about poor people in here. And then
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: I had to stop myself and say, no, no, no, I
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: mean I do care about poor people. That's not the
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: focus of this class. And then I realized that my
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: emphasis in teaching and also in the book is the
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: goal in this country has always been to take people
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: from being poor to being middle income upward. Mobility is
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: wired into the DNA of people in this country. So
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: though I am focusing mostly on the middle class, I
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: need us to be sure that we're doing things to
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: help poor people to become somewhat financially stable, because without that,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: they can't become middle class. And looping back to a
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: comment that you made earlier, everybody wants to be middle class.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: It's the norm. It's viewed as you know, sort of
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: apple pop and mom and America and the national anthem.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: Given that, I think we need to say, let's focus
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: on the middle class, because people who are poor are
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: aspiring to be middle class.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: Who's the uh who do you envision are the biggest optic?
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: Who are what is the biggest obstacle to your middle
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: class new deal. In your mind, when you think about
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: the opposition, who.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: Is it billionaires? Billionaires that control Amazon, it is in
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: their best interest to keep Amazon, to keep the people
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: that drive Amazon trucks employed by DSPs and not employed
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: by Amazon.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: DSP would say that.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: Delivery service providers. It is in the best interest of
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: billionaires to be able to eliminate jobs and to automate jobs,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: and to have favorable tax credits for being innovative, but
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: not be forced to do anything for the human beings
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: that you have now caused to lose their jobs. So again,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: if the lower income people that want to become middle class,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: and if the middle class folks who would like to
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: remain middle class for the rest of their lives looked
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: up economically and said those are the problems, rather than
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: looking around at each other and saying, well, because that
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: person is of a different race, so that person is
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: a different ethnicity, they're are the problem. I think we
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: could actually work on some solutions here.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: You know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: and you know, it feels like we are in an
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: almost identical place that we were about one hundred years ago.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: Where you had this incredible new technology industrial revolution. Every
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: day was bringing more incredible developments to market, whether it's
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: the car right, whether it was electricity, personalized, you know,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: getting it to any place. You know, more and more
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: that we got it, and we had to come up
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of laws because left, you know,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: whether it was the oil barons, the railroad barons, the
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: auto barons, left of their own device, they were you know,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: not everybody was going to be like mister Hershey, who
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: thought I'm going to build a city with an amusement
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: park and have this wonderful community. There were a few
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: company people like that, but not many Hershey. I find
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: that to be it just just as a quick sort
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: of a sidetrack here. Where do you put Hershey in
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: sort of that in that world of you know, should
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: corporations behave the way he did in building a community
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: and wanting to have that or was that just sort
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: of an outlier type of thing that wouldn't work for
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: other industries.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: I think it would work for all industries if again,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: we work on the from the premise that we would
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: like to have happy, healthy workers. So you don't need
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: to build a community, but you could commit, for example,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: that whatever the top workers earn won't be a larger
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: than a fill in the blanks multiple of what the
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: forest workers earn.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: You could say that's Costco right now. About the biggest
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: company that does this is Costco right The CEO always
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: emphasizes that ratio.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: I believe yeah, and I am a Costco member. I
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: will always be a Costco member. When I go into Costco,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: these are the happiest employees you will ever see. I
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: took my children. Now we're twenty two and twenty five,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: but we and their boys, so they would eat everything
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: that wasn't nailed down. We'd go into Costco and get
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: those samples. They have gone back now as adults and
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: have seen some of the same employees that used to
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: allow them to raid the samples when they were children.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: So it can work. It definitely can work.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: Well, what kind of you know if you had, if
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: you had an hour to brief President Trump on this,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: what do you think would be your best way to
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: get him interested in US?
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: I would say that your constituents, the people that support you,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: are struggling. They are not struggling because of race issues
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: and class issues. They are struggling because they don't know
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: how they're going to pay their bills at the end
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: of this month. So if you want these people to
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: continue to support you, you're going to have to figure
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: out a way not to just say they're doing okay,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: but to actually help them to do okay. We can't
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: he will not be able to continue to tell people
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: that the affordability issue is a hoax, because at the
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: end of every month, when people don't have enough to
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: pay their bills for that month, they know it's not
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: a hoax because they're living it.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: Do you view the election of Donald Trump as the
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: middle class primal screen?
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: I viewed the twenty sixteen election as the middle class
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: primal screen, and it's but it was the fight middle
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: class primal screen because it was the first time I
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: think that white Americans realized, ooh, something is wrong here,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: and they didn't exactly know how to react, but they
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: knew it in their heart, their soul, and their pockets
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: that something is happening to us now that isn't supposed
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: to be happening to us.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: And the risk of not addressing this erosion of the
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: middle class, because that's I mean, look, you give me,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I look at You know, how did Venezuela
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: get Chavez and Maduro? You had a wealthy elite and
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: a massive number of poor people, no middle class. How
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: did Ara Towan turn a democracy into an autocracy? No
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: middle class? So I know the political risk here of
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: eroding a middle class. It will drive people into one
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: direction or the other, but it will drive them into
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: you know, is this we've got ten years, we've got
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: twenty years? Is this fear of a lost generation? What
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: is your timetable here of like, look, regardless of whether
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: they your book is the blueprint, we've got to do
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: something about saving the middle class and expanding it rather
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: than what we've seen.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: I think it's less than definitely less than twenty years.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: I would say it's less than ten years. One of
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: the reasons I would say it's less than ten years
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: is because even the younger boomers are going to be
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: retiring soon or think about retiring, and they're going to
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: freak out in panic because they can't retire. Their children
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: are going to increasingly have to subsidize their housing and
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: their living expenses. And so I totally agree with you,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: we need to look a little bit to the history.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: Though I want to focus going forward to say how
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: do these economies end? They don't end well. So the
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: fact that there was a Great Gatsby party at mar
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: A Lago over Christmas, I thought, oh, that is a
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: symbol that you perhaps really don't want to have.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, they've done some things. You're just sitting there going, wow,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: that was a let the meet cake moment they have.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: You know, there's this exclusive club that they've created in
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: DC where the entry fee is half a million dollars
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: and you're like, what are we doing?
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you probably want to hide that from the
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: eighty percent of the people in this country that are
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: terrified that they're going to be shocking.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: That they didn't hide it.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the part.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: You're like, why aren't you embarrassed by this?
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: Maybe they're all in an echo chamber and they really
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: don't talk to anybody that earns like, you know, ninety
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: or even one hundred thousand dollars a year.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: You know, this is why I really like this book.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to close on this, which is it is. Look,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I've always tried to explain, you know, why
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: do why do middle class people not want to rate,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: not always want to raise taxes on high class people
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: because they think they're going to be wealthy someday. Right,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: that's the beauty of Americas. We all think, well, that
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: could be me, and it's like the ninety percent chance
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: it ain't going to be you. But you know what,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: if we don't have that mindset that you know, that
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: is sort of that is what has always sort of
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: created the engine of growth in this in this country.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: So you know, how do you embrace the aspiration? You know,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: making middle class aspirational? Is that well?
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that really scares me, and
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: again is because they have a twenty two, twenty five
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: year old and I also teach students sort of ranging
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: from twenty two to thirty, is there's sort of this
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: economic nihilism which terrifies me, where they don't think things
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: are going to get better, where they are angry at
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: older people. We've got to fix that if we want
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: this country to remain normal and stable economically and politically.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: To the point that you've just made, we have got
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: to make young people believe that if they work hard,
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: they try hard, things will be good for them or
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: things will get better.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: It's a great Bill Clinton ism, right, work hard, played
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: by the.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: Rules exactly exactly.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: That was all. And I think that is a universalism.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. It's like there's for a variety
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: of reasons, there's a lot of sort of of the
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton era that that gets ignored or it's been
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: sort of washed away and all this stuff. But one
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: thing he understood was the middle class. It's a way
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: that I don't don't I don't know, and in some
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: ways because he was of it, right, And I wonder
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: how important you know that experience truly is with our
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: elected officials.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: Well, for him it was key because not only could
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: he talk about the middle class, he could talk to
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: the middle class because there was a point in his
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: life when he was poor, right. And so when you
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: have gone, when you understand the importance of upward mobility,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: that you were a poor kid in arc and Hope, Arkansas,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: who ultimately occupied sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, you can speak
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: about the struggles of the poor and what it takes
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: to get from there to where he was because he
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: literally had to do it.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I remember during his early campaign that the
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: number one place he would campaign, no matter the community
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: he was in, was always the community college.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: Oh exactly, he.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: Knew exactly exactly the type of people that he should
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: be talking to. Anyway, Michelle, this was great. Congrats in
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: the book. Like I said, I hope you know, whether
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: it's Gavin Newsom, jd Vance, Ram, Emanuel Pete, Boodagic, Glenn Youngkin,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: anybody else, this is they ought to consume this book
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: as they think about what they want to say to
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: the American people in twenty twenty eight.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: And I hope they do too. All right, thanks so much,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: thanks for having me home.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. And as you
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: could say, look go if you want to take a
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: look at the book and read it. But like I said,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: I really think, I really hope presidential campaigns and both
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: parties take a look because I think whether you may
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: not agree with the specific policy prescriptions, I think the
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: policy goals are pretty universal. We've got to figure out
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: stable retirement, stable healthcare, and I think those are the
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: guarantees that are necessary. But you know, you have a
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: middle class and revolt right now, and understandably so, and
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: I think that that's that's also an important data point
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: that we need to absorb. All right, so with that,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: I know I did a little bit of time machine
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: like stuff with my opening monologue there. But now to
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: my real as you know, the toodcast time machine every week,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: this is the segment I want to step back. It's
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: my version of this week in history. So we don't
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: just remember what happened, but we want to understand why
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: it mattered then and why it still matters down. So
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: I'm taking to you. I'm going to take you back
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: to January twenty second, nineteen sixty four. I wonder if
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: you guys know where I'm going here before I actually
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: say it. Just days after winning the heavyweight championship of
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: the world, a twenty two year old boxer still widely
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: known to the public as cash As Clay, stood before
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: reporters and did something that stunned the country at the time.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: He announced that he had inverted to Islam. He rejected
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: the name Cassius Clay, and he made clear that he
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: would no longer behave the way America expected its champions
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: of boxing to behave. From that moment forward, he would
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: be known as Muhammad Ali. At the time, this was
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: not treated as a personal or spiritual decision. In many ways,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: this was treated as a provocation. It's hard to overstate
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: how jarring this actually was. Back in nineteen sixty four, Okay,
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: we had yet passed the Civil Rights Act. You've heard
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: me say before. Honestly, I don't think we've really been
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: a multi ethnic democracy until nineteen sixty six. Okay, Ali
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't just famous. He was the heavyweight champion. And back
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: then boxing was number two or three. Okay, it was baseball, boxing, football,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: horse racing, right, those were Big four NBA, way down
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: the list, NHL. You needed binoculars to find out on
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: the list heavyweight champ. Whoever was the heavyweight champion of
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: the world always was among the most famous people in
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: the world, or at least in this country. So he
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: carried enormous symbolic weight. We expected our heavyweight champions, even
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: in eras when we were a racist and openly racist
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: country and we had a black champion. There was this
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: idea that we always unified around our heavyweight champions. Champions
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: were supposed to unify the country. They weren't supposed to
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: challenge it. Well, I'll lead to the opposite. He was loud,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: he was confident, he was politically aware, and he was
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: of course religiously nonconforming, and he didn't ask to be embraced.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: He didn't soften his message, and he didn't explain himself
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: in ways that made others comfortable. In fact, he wanted
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: to make us uncomfortable. At the time, sports writers mocked them,
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: political leaders questioned his loyalty to the country. Much of
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: White America recoiled not because he boxed, but because he
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: refused to assimilate the way they want him to assimily.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: Trust me, those Ali Fraser fights back in the day,
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: White America was with Joe Fraser, Black America was with
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali was talk about something that was hard on
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: Joe Fraser as well. So what Ali exposed almost immediately
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: was an unspoken rule. You can succeed in America, but
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: only if you're grateful, deferential, and quiet about who you
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: really are. Well, Muhammad Ali was none of those things.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: So why did this feel threatening at the time. Well,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: Ali's name change wasn't just about religion. It was about ownership.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: He rejected a name that he associated with slavery. He
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: rejected expectations of obedience, and he rejected the idea that
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: fame required submission to some sort of rule book. In
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. Okay, that combination hit three nerves all
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: at once, race, religion, and patriotism. So to say it
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: sparked a lot of outrage is and understatement. We didn't
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: even have social media then. The press did not treat
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: him as a young man asserting autonomy. The press back
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: then treated him as a problem to be managed. The
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: sports can I just tell you so. Look, there were
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: some great sports writers back then, but there were a
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: lot of sports writers that were just terrible and terrible humans.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: The treatment that Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: got from sports writers simply because they had a political
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: opinion was when you look back on it, just outrageous,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: just outrageous. But two years later, Ali's transformation from controversial
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: to outright villain even accelerated when he refused induction in
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: the US military during the Vietnam War. The backlash was
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: swift and severe. He lost his heavyweight title, he lost
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: his he couldn't even get a license to box. He
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: lost four prime years of his career. It's one of
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: the keys, basically one of the greatest heavyweights of all time,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: and he lost four years of his career. To some
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: sort of unofficial political banishment because he was labeled as
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: an American ungrateful and dangerous. But Ali didn't change his beliefs.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: When the pressure intensified, he absorbed the punishment, and he
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: paid the price in real time. But something else was
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: happening slowly, unevenly, and almost reluctantly. The Vietnam War grew
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: more unpopular, the civil rights movement exposed, deeper hypocrisies, Distrust
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: of institutions spread, and in retrospect, Ali's stance began to
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: look less radical and instead a bit more prophetic. Court
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: rulings eventually vindicated him. Public opinions softened, and Ali returned
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: to the ring, not just as a fighter that is
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: a symbol of endurance. I'm sure he was polarizing, but
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: he wasn't dismissed anymore. Now, this part often gets overlooked,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: but Ali didn't just wait for America to come around.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: Ali evolved as well. He remained principled, but he also
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: became more reflective as he got older, more generous in
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: tone on his and more willing to let humor, grace,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: and vulnerability soften the message. Parkinson's disease cruel as it
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: was transformed how the public saw him. He no longer
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: was a threat. They finally saw him as a human being.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: And then Ali himself leaned into that humanity. But he
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: never leaned into it by recanting, He never apologized, but
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: he did allow the country to see him not just
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: as a defiant rebel, but as a man who carried
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: conviction at great personal cost. And if you want the
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: clear symbol of how America came back to Ali, for
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: those of you a certain age, you'll never forget this
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: moment the nineteen ninety six Atlanta Olympics. There's Muhammad Ali,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: a gold medal winner. That's why he was there. His
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: hands were shaking, his bodily body was badly weakened. See it,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: and he lit the Olympic torch. Same man who was
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: once stripped of his title, once branded unpatriotic, was now
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: celebrated as a unifying national icon. Same beliefs, same past,
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: different memory. So this is why I thought I'd do
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: a little try to be in a weird way, try
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: to be a bit uplifting with the time machine today.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: So January twenty second, nineteen sixty four matters. It reminds
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: us that societies are often terrible at judging dissent in
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: real time, and we're remarkably generous at celebrating it later.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: Ali didn't change America overnight. America changed its story about Ali, though,
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: and that tells us something important, not just about him,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: but about all of us. We love our rebels once
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: they're no longer dangerous, We on our courage, once the
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: cost has been paid, and we smoothed the rough edges
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: of history to make ourselves feel wiser than we actually
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: we were at the time. So look, when we look
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: back at Muhammad Ali, we shouldn't just marvel at the
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: arc from villain the hero. We should ask a harder question,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: who are we dismissing today that we'll pretend we understood tomorrow.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: January twenty second, nineteen sixty four wasn't the birth of
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: a hero. It was the moment America was challenged, and
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: at the time America didn't know how to respond. They
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: eventually figured it out. All right, let's do a few letters. Letters.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: Listen to me, letters. I have these letters the mail
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: bag right the post office drops all these letters as Chuck,
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: probably only going to do three or four as you
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: We'll see how I feel. Right, All right anyway, all right.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: First question comes from Jason Williamsburg, Virginia, and he says, hey, check,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: I found your podcast through Crystalism. I've really enjoyed the
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: new iteration you, Solissa. Appreciate that brother, especially as someone
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: who lives in the middle politically. I appreciated the year
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: in top five books list. It pushed me to read
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: titles I might have skipped, like one hundred and seven
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: Days the Drift and Fateful Hours. Currently reading The Barn
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: after hearing your interviews, such a powerful conversation. No question here,
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: just heartfelt thanks. Even if we'll always see sports through
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: orange and blue glasses and go Gators. Wow, when a
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: Gator can say something nice and I can say something
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: nice about the Gators. You are a great university. It's
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: a really good academic institution here in the state of Florida.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: So I should I should give the Gators a little
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: bit more credit than that. So glad you brought up
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: The Barn. Man, I've been thinking, Man, I got it.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: I write Thompson. Of all the guests I've had, I'm like,
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: who's the guy I want to I just want to
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: watch him, watch sort of watch America's two hundred and
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: fifty eeth birthday with almost constantly. It's with right Thompson anyway,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: he's I'm glad, glad you're enjoying the barn. That's great
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: to hear, Patrick, from what Herford, Michigan rights. Hey, Chuck,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: congrats to your knes and that incredible fiestable just bought my
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: fiestable victory victory ensured at the Hurricane store today. Patrick,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: he goes, I'm struck by the hipocrisy of treating Ashley
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: Babbitt as a martyr while labeling Renee good as a
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: domestic terrorist. Actually Babbott, of course, was the woman that
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: was killed on January sixth, Renee Goods the woman that
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: was killed during that confrontation with an Ice officer a
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. With recent GOP resignations and death,
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: what's their current House majority three? If it's that slim,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: could you see any Republican temporarily becoming independence to shift
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: control and restore function to the Chamber. Anyone like Don
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: Bacon or Thomas Massey come to mind. Patrick, You know,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: that's an interesting question, and I don't rule anything out
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: right if you look at it, and it goes back
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: to my opening monologue today, the erratic behavior of this
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: administration as a lot of I think Republicans, particularly ones
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: that are retiring, that could be in a different spot.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: Look politically, it's terrible for the Democrats to get control
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: of the House before November, but it may be that
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: the country it happens, maybe you know who's to say
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: if leadership isn't responding properly to this threat in Europe.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, if it really feels like he's going to
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: start pounding war drums with Canada and Europe over this
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: Greenland business or with the Chinese trade deal that Canada struck,
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't rule anything out. I think you've identified. I
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: think Bacon is the right guy to identify. Maybe Massy right,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: you could picture both of them. They're both going to
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: be serving out if Massie can lose his primary. But
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: he's still a member of Congress for the rest of
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. So look at this point, I don't
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: rule anything out. It's all of those scenarios unlikely, sure,
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: but we haven't had House majorities this slim going back
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, so
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: it's I don't expect any of those things, though, unless
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: there's a perceived emergency. I know some of you may say, well,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: isn't Trump's danger right now in emergency? I hear you.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: I think for plenty of us that does sort of
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: meet the definition of emergency. So that's the only that'd
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: be the only way I could picture that scenario where
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: you lawmaker switching in any of that stuff. All right,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: next question comes from Mike, and he writes, Hey, really
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: enjoy the podcast and your thoughtful coverage. I've been wondering
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: what if policy experts drafted we the People bills on
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: issues with seventy percent plus public support, like campaign finance
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: or gun control, and voters pledge not to support reps
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: who refuse to pass them. Could that force action on
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: popular issues that never get a vote due to the filibuster?
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: Also sports trivia for you. Do you know the pro
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: team that won the most games in its league in
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: a season but still miss the playoffs? Thanks for all
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: that you do, Mike, Huh, the pro team? That's interesting
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: the way you put pro team there that won the
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: most games in its league in a season but still
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: miss the playoffs. I'm going to guess it is. I
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: believe it's the Cincinnati Reds from nineteen eighty one, So
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one had that. I'm going to guess. I
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: hope you file back. I'll look it up later. I
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: did not pre I never do that. I want I
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: always want to answer the question sort of this way,
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: you know, do research if I feel like I need
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: to answer the question. But with the trivia question, I'm
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: keeping one on that yet. I think my answer is
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: Cincinnati Reds nineteen eighty one. That was debate. It was
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: a split season, the strike happened, sort of, they literally
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: had we had. It was the first time they ever
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: had divisional playoffs, and then, of course we now have
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: them in the past. So I think the Dodgers won
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: the first half of the NL West, the Astros won
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: the second half of the NL West, the Reds finished
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: second in both. Right, But what and then once you
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: decided you won one, you didn't really have to if
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: you already knew you were in the playoffs, you didn't
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: really have to worry about uh, if you're in the place,
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: he didn't really have to worry about competing in the
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: second time. So I believe and I remember then that
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: the Cincinnati Reds that was. I think it was them,
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: but it was some team and it sticks with me.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: There was red back then. The Reds were in the
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: NL West. That goes in the crazy horrible divisions we
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: used to have, and so I think that's it. So
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: they didn't get into the playoffs because they finished second.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: I believe in both halves of that season. Mike. I
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: hope that's the one you have, because then I'll feel
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: really smarty pants about myself that one. All right, last
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: question goes from it. It's gonna be a little Packer question.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: Here goes Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Appreciate your take the Packers
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: bear rivalry, but you've got to grow You've got to
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: grow up with it to really understand it. It goes
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: way deeper than football. It's big city arrogance Chicago versus
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: a small town friendly this Wisconsin. Oh, buddy, I know that.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: My father Waterloo, Iowa. Okay, why was he a Packer
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: fan and water Louiow when he was growing up as
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: a kid in the fifties Because you hated everything Chicago
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: and who was Chicago's greatest rival was the Packers. So
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: that was why he became a Packer fan exactly, for
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: what you're defining there, all right, but you know now,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: Iowans are split between I think the Vikings and the
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: Chiefs these days more than more than the Packers. But
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: I digress. But yes, he goes. Bears fans often say
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: they're treated great at Lambea. Not so much for Packers fans.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: It's social field, mind you, not like the respectful Packers
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: Vikings rival Go Packo, john As keep up the great podcast.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: So no, no, no, You're right about the whole Chicago
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: arrogance thing. That is absolutely why. That is absolutely why
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: my dad became a Packer fan. It was being anti Chicago,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: no more, no less. All right, A quick word on
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: this in this football game. A few things, and I'm
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: gonna make it a bit Miami as in the community
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: centric more than anything else. It's been amazing to watch
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: this town really get fired up about the Hurricanes, because
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: you know, when Miami went its first national title in
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: eighty three, this was still a Dolphins town. And by
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: the way, deserve it. Okay, it was a deserved Dolphins town.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: They made everything else run there was We had no
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: other pro sports. It was just the Dolphins. The heat
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: would come in nineteen eighty seven, and then the Hurricanes
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: rose up and Hurricane football, you know, became the number
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: two thing to the Dolphins. I still have that great
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: cover Marino and co Sar on the covers. It's illustrated.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: You know, it was eighty it's it's uh, it's you know,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: that's what that was. That was what going viral meant
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: back in the eighties. What's amazing now is I think
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: the Hurricanes are now the number one team in South Florida,
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: the number one the number one team in Miami. I
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: mean the Dolphins are just in this funk that is
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: now three generations. I mean it is basically what Marino
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: retires sometime in ninety nine, ninety eight. I feel like
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: I go back to that sixty three to seven loss
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: that the Dolphins had in the playoffs of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: I think it was Johnson's last year's coach, Jimmy Johnson said.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: It just feels like like that was like this exclamation point.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: You know, Marino makes a Super Bowl in his first
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: year as a starter, second year as a pro, and
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: the assumption was, oh, he's gonna be back to so
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: many super Bowls. Never gets back to another one that
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: Dolphins haven't really think they were in one other AFC
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: title game, maybe two if I'm if I'm keeping track.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: So it is this time to watch this town. I
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: have to say, is it is absolutely become a Hurricanes
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: football town. We love football here. High school football is
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: so popular. All the dominant high school football teams in
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: the state of Florida, almost all of them are either
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: in Miami, Dade County, Broward County. You know, South Florida
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: really is one of the dominant sort of high school
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: football areas in the country. So football is just you know,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: so whoever's the winner. And look, some people say it's
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: fair weather. It's not fair weather. We show up for
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: winning teams. Miami fans don't show up for losing teams.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: I show up for all my a Hurricane games because
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: I love my games and I feel that loyal to them.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: But it's I have to say, in the hierarchy, I
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: think it's Kane's football one right now. I still think
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: the Heat are two, and the Heat had the number
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: one spot. I'd argue for a bit there. My friend
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: Barry Jackson at The Herald might have I'd love his
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: opinion on this and Dan Lebttard what they think of this.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: But I think I think the Heat was sort of
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: in that one slot for a while there, but we
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: didn't like them there, right. We always wanted one of
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: the two football teams to get there. The Dolphins are
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: the Hurricanes. So the Hurricanes getting good and right back.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: But you know, right now, I'm wondering if if the
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: MLS team and essentially messy is number three and are
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: the Dolphins four, are the Dolphins fourth? Why they got
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: to get this new coach, right? They got to get
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: a new quarterback, They got to get some new juice here.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: It's you know, it's like watching what's happened to the Dolphins,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: very similar to what I've watched front row seat with
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: the Commanders and the Washington football team over that period
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: of time. But unlike the Washington football team, I think
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: the Dolphins have a good owner. It just they've just
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: chosen poorly when it comes to quarterbacks. They've just not
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: gotten it right since Marino, and it's however you want
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: to look at it, it's been a mess, but it
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: has just been fascinating. I feel like there's more support
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: for Miami Hurricane football right now than I have ever
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: seen in South Florida. Part of it has been a
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: while since we've had some winning football around here. So
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: there's a little bit of a lot of thirsty people
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: running to the water, cold water, and that cold water
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: is being delivered by the University of Miami. But it's
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: that's been that's been heartening to watch. So look, I am,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: I'm obviously recording before the game. Some of you may
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: hear this after the game. I'm pretty confident it's gonna
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: be a close game. I am. I would be shocked
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: if Miami lost by more than I'd be by more
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: than one score okay, three, seven, eight, Okay, I'd be shocked.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: That's why I think that the line is sort of absurd.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: A few things I'm worried about. If Miami loses a
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: close game because they fizzle in the fourth quarter, Well,
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: Miami's played three playoff games to get here and had
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: to play all four quarters. Indiana's only I had to
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: do two and only had to really play two quarters
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: in each game. Right, they are a little better arrested
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: than Miami is. I worry that the old misgame felt
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: like a war of attrition and we've got we're we're already,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: you know. So I worry about depth a little bit.
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: I worry about just exhaustion. These guys rare. No, nobody
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: plays sixteen games very often. Now we're going to obviously
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: with the playoff coming full full, you know, becoming a
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: full time thing, this will happen. We'll have eight or
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: ten teams have to play at least, you know, thirteen, fourteen,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: and then the final two teams play sixteen games when
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: all said and done. But it's, uh, that's the one
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: thing I'm worried about. But you know, it's the strangest thing.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: And I shared this with you before the last time
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: Miami was an underdog at home playing for a national
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: title at home was against a team whose colors were
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: red and white, those big bad Nebraska Cornhuskers, and they
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: were I think, I think I read today, I'm not
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: going to remember this one. I read this today. They
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: were eleven and a half point favorites. It's a great game,
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: one of the all time games. And by the way,
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: if Nebraska had gotten the two point conversion, there was
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: forty seconds left in that game. Bernie Cossar was not
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: losing that game. Miami was going to win that game.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: They would have just had to win. The final score
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: would have been thirty four to thirty two rather than
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: thirty one to thirty. But that's how co Star was
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: not going to be stopped. That game just wasn't going
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: to be stopped, and that Nebraska defense was exhausted. They
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: could not cover our guys. It wasn't going to happen.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: So we'll see. There's a little bit of a weird news.
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: Looks like Miami's got its quarterback. I think it's Darren Mensa.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: Is his name from Duke? Look, I'm glad Miami's got
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: this quarterback. Look, I'm not comfortable with the circumstances. I
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: don't believe Miami tampered. I actually believe that the fact
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: that Ty Simpson, the quarterback that decided to stay going pro,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: where he went public saying Miami offered him six and
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: a half million dollars to pull out of the NFL
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: draft like Carson Beck did and play one season for Miami.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: He chose to pursue the NFL draft. It was weird
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: that he decided to go public with that with how
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: much Miami offered. Now, if you tell me that the
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: an agent or a family member of Mensa said, whoa,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: Miami needs a quarterback and they're willing to pay six
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: and a half. Well, Mensa's better than Ty Simpson. Yes,
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: Mensa's better than Dye Simpson. How much could he get?
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: So I think it's very possible, you know, I don't
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: I you know, I don't want to presume nefarious things.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: I don't think, you know, I think with so many
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: eyeballs on Miami, I don't think Miami's breaking any rules.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: There's barely any rules with this anyway. But I don't
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: think they think they're going to be super careful. So
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: I don't think this is going to be a tampering
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: situation or anything. Ain't that. It's just you think you
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: have a contract with a player. Look, Miami was on
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: the other end of this last year with a couple
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: of receivers. Shoot Duke was the predator on Tulane in
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: sort of a similar situation to get Mensa in the
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: first place last season. So you know, I'm not saying
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: they're good guys. Are bad guys here. The system sucks
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: and you think you have a contract. You know, they
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: thought they had them for a two year deal with
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: this revenue sharing, and it turns out even a contract's
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: not a contract. That's got to change. And like I said,
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: I'm glad Miami got. Miami probably ended up with a
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: better quarterback than any of the three they pursued. I
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: think Mensa is that better than Sam Levitt, Mensus better
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: than Ted Simpson. Mens' is probably better than than than Soresby.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: But if the roles were reversed, we'd all be crying foul,
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: too complain, and then to do it in conference, it's
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: just a mess. And then of course here in Miami
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: it's the whole Many Dias Mario thing, so it becomes
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: this weird Cuban Cuban rivalry too, you know, Many Dias,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: it's always kind of been. I think, you know, his
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: father is one of the few Cuban democrats, you know.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: I've always thought that was a little bit of a
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: cause of a little bit of of why he wasn't
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: as embraced Many Diaz junior as in Miami the way
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: Mario's embraced Mario. Yeah, Columbus high guy two. That was
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: sort of working class Cubans many ideas, wasn't so I
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't look, you could we could all
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: pick through that but boy, talk about adding to what
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: is this week? What is turning into a fascinating little
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: rivalry here between many Dias and Mario Crystal Paul. But
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: if you're wondering, my friend Marco Puto and I were
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: joking about this, the Cuban power Index, Marco Rubio right
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: down here in Miami. Marco Rubio got Maduro. That's that's
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: got him pretty high up on the in the Cuban community.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: Here right now, Fernando Mendezo won of Heisman. He's probably
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: number one. Ruby was probably number two. Poor Mario is
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: probably number three. But if Mario wins a national title,
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: check the records here, But I believe he's the first
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: non white Anglo to win. It's not an insignificant development.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: And I remember in the eighties wondering what would with
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: the Cuban community and all of that, with the with
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: they're being embracing of Miami Hurricanes football, of football is
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: a sport and all of that stuff. Boy, thirty five
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: years later, that relationship couldn't be any tighter, and it's
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: done nothing but benefit the benefit the University of Miami.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: But I will say this, I'm not going to sit
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: here and say the mensa thing. It's you know, this
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: is a reminder that when when Miami starts winning, everybody
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: wants in. You know, we may lose out the Ohio
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: state and recruiting wars when we're not winning, but now
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: that we're winning, those kids are going to stay. They're
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: not those receivers that were going to Columbus Ohio probably
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: going to say and quarterbacks that break records at Duke
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: when they suddenly see that there's an opening for a
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: quarterback here at Miami, they're going to want end. So
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: I think this is the uh, this is what success
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: means with these with this new system. But I mean,
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: we've got to figure out a system where a contract
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: means something, because again we've been on the wrong Miami's
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: been on the wrong end of this. See Isaiah Horton,
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: a few of these other guys, Kobe Young, a couple
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: of receivers from last team. So it's none of us
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: should be celebrating the fact that this can happen. We
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: still need to figure out how to how to get
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: and I promise you Congress is going to get involved.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: No one's going to cry for Duke. Okay, you know
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: they've got plenty of money, private school, all of that,
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: and again they went and poached from Tulane. Right, they
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: were a predator. It just turned out they had a
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: larger predator coming after them. All Right with that, I'm
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: gonna take a break for forty eight hours. I'm now
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: getting into all Canes mode. Apparently we're supposed to wear
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: orange at the game tomorrow, not green, so you're gonna
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: see a lot of red and orange. So fix your
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: TV screens so that you can see the distinction between
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: the red and the orange. And let's hope it's at
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: least fifty fifty. My prediction is if Miami wins, they
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: win the game twenty four to seventeen. I don't expect
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: a super high scoring, but I think we hold Indiana
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: under twenty four points. So twenty four twenty four Miami loses,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: I expect it to be something like twenty to seventeen.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: So there your scores, there's your hot takes. Thanks for
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: humoring me on this journey this year with the college
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: football Playoff, I did not expect that I was going
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: to be able to ride this way all the way
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: to the title game. That's been gravy, but that holy grail,
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: I can touch it. Let's go get that chip. See
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: you in forty eight hours.