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Biden's Pro-Union Presidency Isn't Good Enough for Union Members · Stephanomics

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello, Stephanomics here, the podcast that brings you the global economy.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This week focused on the history of the world since
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: eighteen seventy and President Joe Biden's efforts to be the
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  Speaker 1: most pro labor president in living memory. We're all about
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: variety here on Stephanomics. No. Two episodes alike. If you're
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: someone who looks at the state of the world and wonders,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: how on earth did we get here? The economist and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: blogger Bradford DeLong has a book to sell you, Slouching
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: towards Utopia. The way he tells it, you can understand
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: most of what's happened in the world in the past
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years or so with the help of
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: just two central European thinkers and one near universal human trait,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: fear of freeloading or muching. He and I had a
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: long conversation about all of that recently, which you can
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: hear in a few minutes. But first we look at
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: one of the many factors that have made the upcoming
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: US mid To so hard to call President Biden's hot
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  Speaker 1: and cold relationship with the labor unions. Bloomberg US Economy reported.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Molly Smith has the story much of which was reported
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  Speaker 1: by her colleague Katy Dmitrieva in the union stronghold of
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  Speaker 1: McComb County, Michigan. That's what juniors are about, my view,
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  Speaker 1: by providing dignity and respect for people from bust their neck.
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  Speaker 1: That's why I created the White House Task Force on
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  Speaker 1: Worker Organization Empowerment to make sure the choice to join
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  Speaker 1: a union belongs to workers alone. When President Joe Biden
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  Speaker 1: came into office, he promised to be the most pro
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  Speaker 1: union president in US history, and he takes a lot
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  Speaker 1: of boxes. In his first two years, he's been vocal
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  Speaker 1: about the importance of unions. He started a labor task
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  Speaker 1: Force and adopted many of its proposals, and most recently,
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  Speaker 1: his labor chief Marty Walsh, helped secure a deal for
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  Speaker 1: railway workers threatening to strike. But several important policies, like
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  Speaker 1: a higher federal minimum wage and laws that would make
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  Speaker 1: it easier for workers to unionize, were abandoned or remain
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  Speaker 1: stuck in Congress. Democrats labor record under Biden will be
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  Speaker 1: one of the many things that American workers will weigh
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  Speaker 1: as they vote in the midterm elections in November, and
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  Speaker 1: too often workers have been uninspired by the president and
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  Speaker 1: his sympathetic ear in Macomb County, Michigan, historical auto union stronghold,
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  Speaker 1: and the sight of a renewed organizing drive among service
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  Speaker 1: sector workers, things don't look good for Democrats. Here's Alyssa Cokeley,
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  Speaker 1: a worker at Starbucks in McComb. I think when it
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  Speaker 1: comes to labor, it's been all very for show like
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  Speaker 1: performative a little bit. Coakeley led a campaign to unionize
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  Speaker 1: her cafe where she's a shift supervisor. While they were successful,
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  Speaker 1: she and her colleagues say the company is dragging its
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  Speaker 1: feet in bargaining. In other words, it's not really any
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  Speaker 1: easier to unionize under Biden than previous presidents. Um like
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  Speaker 1: I know, like recently he invited like a Starbucks worker,
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  Speaker 1: like an Amazon worker to the White House, and it
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  Speaker 1: was like, okay, that's cool that you got to meet
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  Speaker 1: with them, but it's like, what or are you doing
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  Speaker 1: for for us? Showing support only goes so far. Union
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  Speaker 1: membership has declined for decades. In the nineties, one in
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  Speaker 1: five U S workers was part of a union. Today
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  Speaker 1: it's one in ten. The a f l C i OH,
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  Speaker 1: the country's largest labor union, has promised to grow union
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  Speaker 1: ranks by one million workers over the next decade. Government
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  Speaker 1: policies could prove decisive for whether or not that happens.
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  Speaker 1: I think the general consensus in industry is that unions
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  Speaker 1: create conflict between employees and employers. That was William mackenzie,
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  Speaker 1: CEO of Left Coast, a cannabis company in Michigan, and
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  Speaker 1: I think that the opposite can be true if an
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  Speaker 1: employer supports a union the organizing of a workforce. So
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  Speaker 1: by supporting the workers, supporting the union, making them feel supported,
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  Speaker 1: we really wind up with a situation where we don't
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  Speaker 1: have any turnover. The overall consensus is that we care
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  Speaker 1: about our employees, and the employees appreciate that. One thing
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  Speaker 1: workers want to see is holding companies accountable. The government's
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  Speaker 1: enforcement arm, the National Labor Relations Board, remains chronically underfunded
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  Speaker 1: even under Biden. That means fewer people to investigate companies
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  Speaker 1: like Starbucks and fewer people to help workers unionize. In McComb,
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  Speaker 1: that's important for workers like Mike Davison. He helped unionize
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  Speaker 1: his cannabis retails to or only the second in the
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  Speaker 1: state of Michigan. The n l RB was instrumental for them.
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  Speaker 1: Staff answered questions, hosted the vote, and are now looking
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  Speaker 1: into a complaint filed by workers against the company at
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  Speaker 1: another location for coercive statements. Overall, though, Davison wants to
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  Speaker 1: see the president focus more on workers and do it
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  Speaker 1: sooner rather than later. And honestly, I'm not gonna wait
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  Speaker 1: for somebody in a big white house to help me.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to do it right now. I would love
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  Speaker 1: a pro union candidate. I love there beat a lot
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  Speaker 1: more focus politically on workers, the working class, the people
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  Speaker 1: who show up to their job do work, as opposed to,
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  Speaker 1: you know, benefiting the employer class that hires people and
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  Speaker 1: makes money from them. There's enough people looking out for them.
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  Speaker 1: They have their steak, they have their money, they have
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  Speaker 1: their security. I need someone looking out for me. M
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: many listeners to this podcast will already know the economic
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: historian and commentator Bradford DeLong, professor of economics at the
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: University of California in Berkeley, an author of the long
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  Speaker 1: running popular Grasping Reality blog, which I see is now
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  Speaker 1: a sub Stack newsletter. So I'm delighted to be able
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  Speaker 1: to talk to him about his new book, Slouching Towards Utopia.
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  Speaker 1: Brad thanks so much for coming on Stephanomics. Um, it's
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  Speaker 1: my great pleasure to be here. Although in this metaverse
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  Speaker 1: age here is something that's brought with complications slouching towards utopia.
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  Speaker 1: Is it's a history of the twentieth century that I
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  Speaker 1: would say speaks very directly to today's generation of politicians
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  Speaker 1: and economists. Not is because you've actually lengthened the century
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  Speaker 1: to include most of them, because your twentieth century extends
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  Speaker 1: from eighteen seventy to I mean, there's a lot to
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  Speaker 1: talk about in your book, but I guess we should
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  Speaker 1: start by asking you to explain briefly why you think
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  Speaker 1: that period marks a discreete period of economic history. Because
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  Speaker 1: before eighteen seventy, our global rate of technological progress was
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  Speaker 1: less than a quarter of what it has been eighteen seventy,
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  Speaker 1: which meant that before eighteen seventy, there was zero chance
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  Speaker 1: that humanity would ever be able to bake a sufficiently
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  Speaker 1: large economic pie so that everyone could even possibly have enough.
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  Speaker 1: You know, Thus, governance before eighteen seventy is how does
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  Speaker 1: an elite manage to run a force and fraud com
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  Speaker 1: game on the rest of humanity so they at least
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  Speaker 1: can have enough. But after eighteen seventy we have the
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  Speaker 1: possibility of having a truly human world, of baking a
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  Speaker 1: sufficiently large economic pie. And then all we have after
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  Speaker 1: that are the minor problems of figuring out how to
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  Speaker 1: slice the pie, how to equitably distribute things, and then
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  Speaker 1: how to taste the pot, you know, how to use
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  Speaker 1: our immense wealth and technological powers to enable us all
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  Speaker 1: to live lives wisely. And well, you make the claim
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  Speaker 1: that eighteen seventy is the hinge of global economic history,
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  Speaker 1: and that's obviously on the basis of what you just said.
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  Speaker 1: But why um, Because that's when the last three institutions
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  Speaker 1: needed to support economic growth that more than two percent
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  Speaker 1: per year, economic growth that doubles humanities technical competence every generation.
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  Speaker 1: Economic growth that makes us potentially twice as rich as
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  Speaker 1: our parents were, and does that over and over and
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  Speaker 1: over again. That's when the last three things fall into place. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And so the doubling time of humanities technological progress is
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  Speaker 1: no longer measured in millennia or unreds of years, or
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  Speaker 1: even in the two hundred years it would have taken
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  Speaker 1: to double humanities technological competence during the Industrial Revolution, But
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  Speaker 1: it happens every single generation, and then it happens again
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  Speaker 1: at again, And you say yourself that if you're focused
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  Speaker 1: on different aspects of history, you've probably come up with
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  Speaker 1: different dates. And we know that sort of famously, the
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  Speaker 1: Marxist historian Eric Hobsborn focused on geopolitics, and then that
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  Speaker 1: led him to shorten his twentieth century when he wrote
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  Speaker 1: about it from nineteen fourteen to nine. Now, as we
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  Speaker 1: as we've gathered, your focus is on the economic and
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  Speaker 1: technological upheavals in this century, and you have got some
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  Speaker 1: great facts to drive that home, basically that there has
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  Speaker 1: been as much or more technological advanced since eighteen seventy
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  Speaker 1: as in all the years before that. But one one
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: point that comes through again and again I found reading
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  Speaker 1: the book is that our politics are political institutions have
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  Speaker 1: not been good at keeping up with that degree of
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  Speaker 1: economic upheaval in some way. How could they whatever institutions
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  Speaker 1: for society we had a generation to go, Even if
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  Speaker 1: they worked then, they won't fit the economy now. And
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  Speaker 1: whatever we managed to cobble together now, it won't fit
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  Speaker 1: the economy in a generation. And so it's frantic attempts
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  Speaker 1: to cobble together on the fly, a society that sort
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  Speaker 1: of works and kind of holds together. You know, that's
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  Speaker 1: I think the big story of political economy since eighteen seventy.
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  Speaker 1: There's a sort of dialectic running through your book. But
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  Speaker 1: between the two contrasting theories of actually two central European thinkers,
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  Speaker 1: the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayak and the less well
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  Speaker 1: known but I agree with you, I think underrated Hungarian
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  Speaker 1: philosopher Carl Polani. So so tell us about that. Why
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  Speaker 1: do those two thinkers help us understand that dynamic you
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: just talked about. Friedrich van Hyaku was an absolute genius,
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  Speaker 1: was the first person to see that if you properly
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: set up the market so you align prices with social values,
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  Speaker 1: then the market is uniquely great as a crowd sourcing
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  Speaker 1: mechanism for mobilizing human injuruity, you know, instead of having
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  Speaker 1: a few people at the top issuing orders, or a
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  Speaker 1: bureaucracy following standard procedures um, in which case the only
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  Speaker 1: brain power that's really applied in a bureaucracy is that
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  Speaker 1: of those who set up the system. With a market,
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  Speaker 1: you are crowdsourcing everyone's human brain and asking everyone what
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  Speaker 1: can you think of to do to help the situation along,
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  Speaker 1: And thus you pushed out the power to act to
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  Speaker 1: the periphery of the society where the information is, you know,
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  Speaker 1: because I'm god knows what the people at the center
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  Speaker 1: um actually believe what is actually going on out there
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  Speaker 1: in the real world. And you also solve the problem
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  Speaker 1: of having the people who are actually doing the work
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  Speaker 1: doing what they're supposed to, because if things are properly aligned,
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  Speaker 1: then they make a great deal of money and have
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  Speaker 1: social power as a result, if they in fact do
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  Speaker 1: the things that advanced social values in general. UM. So
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  Speaker 1: Friedrich von Hayek was great. He saw this. He also
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  Speaker 1: very strongly believed to the day he died, that that's
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  Speaker 1: all the market can do, right. It can't do anything
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  Speaker 1: like social justice um. And if we ask it to
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  Speaker 1: do social justice, we destroy its ability um to do
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  Speaker 1: the market to do to create the wealth the market
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  Speaker 1: can um and put us all on the road to servedom.
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  Speaker 1: So have Freedrich von Hayek, who basically says, the market
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  Speaker 1: can be great, and we have to worship it. You know,
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  Speaker 1: the market giveth, the market taketh away. Blessed be the
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  Speaker 1: name of the market. Um, that's all we can do.
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  Speaker 1: We've got to accept that's the best we can do. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But Carl Polani said, wait a minute, that doesn't work.
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  Speaker 1: You have a market society, and that dissolves every single
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  Speaker 1: form of social power other than wealth. That means that
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  Speaker 1: there are no rights that are respected except for property rights,
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  Speaker 1: and the only property rights that are worth anything are
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  Speaker 1: those that may help you make things for which the
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  Speaker 1: rich have a serious jones, you know, and people who
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  Speaker 1: simply will not stand for that. You're going to get
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  Speaker 1: a very powerful reaction. It may be smart, it may
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: be stupid, it may be genocidal, it may be benevolent,
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  Speaker 1: but that an attempt to impose the Van Hyaki in
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  Speaker 1: market view of the world will blow up and explode.
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  Speaker 1: And indeed, a huge amount of the politics m of
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  Speaker 1: the world since eighteteen seventy has been various people for
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  Speaker 1: whom the market is good saying we should definitely expand
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  Speaker 1: its role, and all kinds of counter reactions of one
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  Speaker 1: sort or another. And it's a frame in which you
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  Speaker 1: can make a good deal of sense of a huge
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  Speaker 1: amount of stuff that's been going on since eighteen seventy.
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  Speaker 1: I noticed the review in the economist of your book
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  Speaker 1: was titled titled money Can't Buy You Love? I mean,
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  Speaker 1: is that basically the conclusion of the long century? We
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  Speaker 1: look at all that technological change, and then we look
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: at the state of our politics, the state of our
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: contentment around the world, this lack of correlation between the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: level of income and happiness. Do you think that? Is
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: that that the economist has grasped the fundamental point of
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: your book? I do, I do, I do. The thing
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: that astonishes me is I suppose how narrow and uneven
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: our progress is that we've managed to boost human life
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  Speaker 1: expectancy from twenty five years to seventy years or so,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: and by and large spread that throughout the entire globe um.
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  Speaker 1: But then we also, although we have a huge world,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the world with twelve thousand dollars per years, so as
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: average income per capita um, it's extraordinarily unequally distributed around
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the world. Our ability to produce, even though it's mighty,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the distribution is absolutely stunning the awful. Though we've solved
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the problem of public health to a great degree, we've
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: solved the problem of producing enough, we definitely have not
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: solved the problem of slicing of equitably distributing it either
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: around the world or within this country, since I can
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: go outside the door of my extremely nice house here
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: in Berkeley, California, and all I have to do is
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  Speaker 1: walk a mile to find someone living in a box. Right. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And then of course the problem of actually utilizing it,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: of taking wealth and using it to create a good
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: life for yourself, rather than a life in which um,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: for some reason, of what you thought would make you
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: happy does not UM, and in which you're the technological powers,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: the ability to manipulate nature and command the attention and
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: assistance of others that you have is just more rope
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: with which you can hang yourself in some particularly, And
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: it's that extraordinary disjunction. Um, when people back in the
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: past thought the big problem was the one of production,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: and once you would solve that, everything would be fine.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: You know that strikes me as most interesting and most
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: terrible about the long twentieth century. I should say to
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: anyone listening, I mean, there's what you've just said, But
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: also from reading the book, I mean, you absolutely succeed
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: in having very interesting nuggets as well as a driving
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: narrative on pretty much every page. But that the one
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: example that you mentioned Herbert Hoover. I had no idea
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: that he had this whole other history um in China
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: taking over various my im crucial bits of the mining
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: industry in in in China before and where he'd come from.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: What was he son of a blacksmith or the blacksmith
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and l and Iowa. Yes, as one of my ex
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: roommates said, come for the ad for the high foluting
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: abstract political economy theory, stay for the Herbert Hoover gossip.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: If technology is to some extent driving the upheaval and
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the or the challenges to the political system, there's also
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: a human nature piece that you identify. And what I
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: thought was a pretty crucial observation towards the end of
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: the book which were used, which is really comes down
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: to the fear of Moocha's being a sort of driving
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: source of instability. And you say humans, at least we
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: humans see society as a network of reciprocal gift exchange relationships,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and as a general principle, we agree that all of
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: us do much better if we do things for one another,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: rather than requiring that individuals do everything for themselves. We
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: don't always want to be the receiver we don't always
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: want to be the giver, and we tend to disapprove
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: whenever we see a situation where we think someone is
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: following a strategy of always being a receiver. And I
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: guess the summary of that is fear of mooching. So
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: that did that was very resonant to me. I mean,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: that did seem to me a fundamental issue which has
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: perhaps been exacerbated by technological change. Yes, and I am,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: in fact I think they stall this from the wonderful
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Paul cy Bright, who has an excellent book called In
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the Company of Strangers, you know, which makes this point
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: among others. But there is an extremely strong sense that,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: at least those of us whose cultures bring the Indo
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: European part of the tree, that the idea of a
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: guest and a host and reciprocal obligations between them is
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: very very very strong, um. And that means that, you know, um,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that we are very strongly committed to not just think
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: that people deserve things, that we deserve things based on
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: how we have we have acted and how we are,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: you know, but that other people deserve things based on
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: how they have acted, you know, and how they are,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and especially that other people do not should not have
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: more than they deserve. For example, they're surprising fuss in
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the past two weeks over what is a small um
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: shift in America's resources that moves thirty five billion dollars
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a year from the federal government to people with student
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: loan balances. We have Ted Cruz. They're saying that it's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: an absolute offense to give ten thousand dollars to you know,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: a slacker barista who majored in lesbian dance therapy. You know, now, look,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: I mean Ted Cruz is does is in fact a
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: second generation Cuban Canadian American immigrant who has kind of
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: clawed himself up from a position of substantial social disadvantage
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to a position of wealth and eminence. Um and he maneuver,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: but he maneuvers in a world in which there are
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: also people like me. And my grandfather was at one
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: time the richest man between Tampa and Orlando and hired
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the engineers who created and owned the patent for the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: technology for taking sulfur out of natural gas, so you
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: can use natural gas without making your house smell like
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the pit of hell um And from him, I've gotten
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars a year, not once, but it's correctively
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: every single year of my life. Um, And is Ted
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Cruz incredibly angry with me because by now I have
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: gotten sixty two times what the mythical slacker barista who
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: edred and lesbian dance therapy at Sarah Lawrence. God, you know, no,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: he isn't mad at all. It's interesting because one of
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the what I was one of the things I was
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: going to say was that possibly the other bit of
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: human nature that you're battling with often when you have
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the kind of mindset that you have when you look
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: at the world today and the desire for greater, more equal,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: equal distribution of income and power, is you're almost always
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: also battling with people's desire to help their kids. And
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: that is a basic human desire that it gets in
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: the way of otherwise quite obviously sensible taxes on capital
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and wealth and indeed on the heritance that you just
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: talked about. Even when it's attacks on wealth that is
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: affecting a very small percentage, the fear that it will
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: interfere with people's efforts to improve the lives of their
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: kids and give them an upper hand is a pretty
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: potent political force. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I have had a debate with my friend Glenn Huggard
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: you over this at the Baker Center in Texas a
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: while ago, you know, And I was pointing out to
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: him that on talking for I was strongly advocating a
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: return of the inheritance tax um, and I used Glenn
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: is an example, saying that the oss is a longtime consultant,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and as dean of Columbia's Business School, he's rather rich,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: and yet his parents have lots of other educational um
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: and kind of educational and cultural advantages, and he has
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: raised his children very well for success in this world,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and so why should they also get, you know, the
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: privilege of a substantial inheritance from Glenn when there are
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: people for whom, you know, single mothers, for whom an
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: extra forty dollars so they can take their kids out
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: to McDonald's one extra time would be worthwhile. And Glenn's
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: reactions ruck me as very interesting, and it was you know, yes,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: that the cultural capital that you contribute to your children
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: by how you raised them is overwhelmingly by far the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: most important part of what you do. Um. So then
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: financial inheritances are kind of a second or third order thing,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: and we shouldn't worry about them and shouldn't text them.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: But then if they're not important, then it doesn't matter
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: so much to text them. And you know, I'm glad
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: it's not dumb, but still you can see, UM, you
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: can see his mind trying to cling to not reaching
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the conclusion that he ought to be in favor of
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: inheritance tances because if he were in favor of them,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: he would in some way failing to failing his duty
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: to his kids. UM. And yeah, you know we are
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: we are network, a network species UM, structured in guest
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: host gift exchange relationships. And we are a emily species,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: you know, structured across time and who is related to who?
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: You know? So much so that we find it very
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: hard to assemble a large scale political organization without turning
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: it into some kind of fictitious kinship, you know organization. UM.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: That gives us hope, right because right now our economy
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: is so complex and so complicated that we really are
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: engaged in a gift exchange relationship UM with the people
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: ten thousand miles away. Right there is someone whose house
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: is underwater in Pakistan right now, who probably did something
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: we have wove the wool that could have been in
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the carpet that my feet are now resting up, you know.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And we also are extremely closely related. Right I'm told
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: there's more genetic diversity in a single baboon troop than
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: in the entire human race as of now. So we
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: ought to be able to turn these things towards your
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: mutual benefit and social solidarity. Um, yet we have a
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: hard time doing so, and it seems that we've if
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: we need some kind of mutual respect to carve out
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: a different direction, we're we're quite far away from that.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: If if more, if we increasingly feel we're surrounded by
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: mucha's yes, yes, yes, or we're we're fear, we fear
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: that we are so briefly point to us some sort
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: of straws in the wind or chinks of light where
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: people have actually are recognizing that where you think there's
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: signs of of of hope, that we could be moving
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: in a better direction in some parts of the world,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: some or some battle. The incredible, um incredible technological competence
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: of humanity today absolutely astonishes me. And the extraordinarily fall
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: in the price of renewable energy, you know, that has
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: happened in the past fifteen years gives me enormous hope.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: You know that it is twenty nine years ago. You know,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I was tramping through the halls of the Capitol Building, UM,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: trying to help carrying spears for Larry Summers and others
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: as they tried to lobby and hold the Democratic Coalition
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: together for the Clinton Reconciliation Bill, including the BTU tax.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: But we got within one vote of getting the BTU
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: tax in. And back then we strongly believed, I strongly
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: believed that you needed not just a characteristic in order
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: to deal with global warming. You know that it was
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: going to be nasty and expensive to shift the economy
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: away to a less energy intensive configuration, simply because all
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: the stored sunlight in coal and oil is such a
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: great way of accessing solar power, albeit the solar power
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: of the sun from half a billion years ago, UM,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: And that there really was going to be no substitute. Well,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: lo and behold, now there is. And now we don't
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: need the stick. All we need is the carrot. All
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: we need is a little bit of subsidies to make
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: investments that make sense on their own, and we can
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: move extremely rapidly to keep ourselves from cooking the planet
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: much more. You know that gives enormous hope. Another good
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: straw on the wind from the Steve Jobs archive. Um,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: you know a email Steve Job sent to himself in
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: two thousand and ten. Um, that begins, I grow little
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: of the food I eat of the little I do grow.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I do not breed or perfect the seeds. I do
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: not make any of my own clothing. I speak a
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: language I did not invent or refined. I did not
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: discover the mathematics I use. I am protected by freedoms
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: and laws I did not conceive of or they just
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: like um. And you know, here is Steve, who, in
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the libertarian iconography is one of the great heroes, you know,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: one of the job creators, one of the John Galts, who,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: by his sheer brain and force of personality, you know,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: accomplished huge amounts of stuff. Um, you know, one of
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the bosses who deserves to have as much as possible.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: You know. And he did not view it this way.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: He recognized that he was just you know that he
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: was indeed standing on the shoulders of giants, as Sir
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Isaac who put it and without the giants on whose
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: shoulders he was standing on, he was unable to do
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: pretty much, and he would have not have been able
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: to do anything. And the fact that we have that consciousness,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: that we have that powers that can we can bring
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: out the sides of our fear and of what otherwise
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: comes out as fear and suspicion of others getting above
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: themselves is I does I think provide great cause for hope.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Brad DeLong, thanks very much. That's it for Stephonomics next week,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: more on the US and maybe Brazil too, who knows.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: But check out the Bloomberg News website for a lot
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: more economic news and views on the global economy, and
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: follow at economics on Twitter. This episode was produced by
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Summer Sadi Yang Yang and Magnus Henrickson. Special thanks to
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Bradford DeLong, Cata Dmitrieva, and Molly Smith. Mike Sasso is
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: the executive producer of Stephanomics