Latest / Trumponomics / Biden's Pro-Union Presidency Isn't Good Enough for Union Members

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

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
0:14
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
1:03
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
1:11
Speaker 1: by her colleague Katy Dmitrieva in the union stronghold of
1:15
Speaker 1: McComb County, Michigan. That's what juniors are about, my view,
1:23
Speaker 1: by providing dignity and respect for people from bust their neck.
1:27
Speaker 1: That's why I created the White House Task Force on
1:30
Speaker 1: Worker Organization Empowerment to make sure the choice to join
1:34
Speaker 1: a union belongs to workers alone. When President Joe Biden
1:38
Speaker 1: came into office, he promised to be the most pro
1:42
Speaker 1: union president in US history, and he takes a lot
1:45
Speaker 1: of boxes. In his first two years, he's been vocal
1:48
Speaker 1: about the importance of unions. He started a labor task
1:51
Speaker 1: Force and adopted many of its proposals, and most recently,
1:55
Speaker 1: his labor chief Marty Walsh, helped secure a deal for
1:58
Speaker 1: railway workers threatening to strike. But several important policies, like
2:03
Speaker 1: a higher federal minimum wage and laws that would make
2:06
Speaker 1: it easier for workers to unionize, were abandoned or remain
2:11
Speaker 1: stuck in Congress. Democrats labor record under Biden will be
2:15
Speaker 1: one of the many things that American workers will weigh
2:18
Speaker 1: as they vote in the midterm elections in November, and
2:22
Speaker 1: too often workers have been uninspired by the president and
2:25
Speaker 1: his sympathetic ear in Macomb County, Michigan, historical auto union stronghold,
2:32
Speaker 1: and the sight of a renewed organizing drive among service
2:35
Speaker 1: sector workers, things don't look good for Democrats. Here's Alyssa Cokeley,
2:40
Speaker 1: a worker at Starbucks in McComb. I think when it
2:44
Speaker 1: comes to labor, it's been all very for show like
2:48
Speaker 1: performative a little bit. Coakeley led a campaign to unionize
2:52
Speaker 1: her cafe where she's a shift supervisor. While they were successful,
2:56
Speaker 1: she and her colleagues say the company is dragging its
2:59
Speaker 1: feet in bargaining. In other words, it's not really any
3:03
Speaker 1: easier to unionize under Biden than previous presidents. Um like
3:07
Speaker 1: I know, like recently he invited like a Starbucks worker,
3:12
Speaker 1: like an Amazon worker to the White House, and it
3:14
Speaker 1: was like, okay, that's cool that you got to meet
3:16
Speaker 1: with them, but it's like, what or are you doing
3:19
Speaker 1: for for us? Showing support only goes so far. Union
3:23
Speaker 1: membership has declined for decades. In the nineties, one in
3:28
Speaker 1: five U S workers was part of a union. Today
3:31
Speaker 1: it's one in ten. The a f l C i OH,
3:35
Speaker 1: the country's largest labor union, has promised to grow union
3:39
Speaker 1: ranks by one million workers over the next decade. Government
3:43
Speaker 1: policies could prove decisive for whether or not that happens.
3:52
Speaker 1: I think the general consensus in industry is that unions
3:57
Speaker 1: create conflict between employees and employers. That was William mackenzie,
4:05
Speaker 1: CEO of Left Coast, a cannabis company in Michigan, and
4:09
Speaker 1: I think that the opposite can be true if an
4:13
Speaker 1: employer supports a union the organizing of a workforce. So
4:19
Speaker 1: by supporting the workers, supporting the union, making them feel supported,
4:24
Speaker 1: we really wind up with a situation where we don't
4:27
Speaker 1: have any turnover. The overall consensus is that we care
4:30
Speaker 1: about our employees, and the employees appreciate that. One thing
4:35
Speaker 1: workers want to see is holding companies accountable. The government's
4:39
Speaker 1: enforcement arm, the National Labor Relations Board, remains chronically underfunded
4:45
Speaker 1: even under Biden. That means fewer people to investigate companies
4:49
Speaker 1: like Starbucks and fewer people to help workers unionize. In McComb,
4:54
Speaker 1: that's important for workers like Mike Davison. He helped unionize
4:58
Speaker 1: his cannabis retails to or only the second in the
5:01
Speaker 1: state of Michigan. The n l RB was instrumental for them.
5:06
Speaker 1: Staff answered questions, hosted the vote, and are now looking
5:10
Speaker 1: into a complaint filed by workers against the company at
5:13
Speaker 1: another location for coercive statements. Overall, though, Davison wants to
5:19
Speaker 1: see the president focus more on workers and do it
5:22
Speaker 1: sooner rather than later. And honestly, I'm not gonna wait
5:26
Speaker 1: for somebody in a big white house to help me.
5:28
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it right now. I would love
5:30
Speaker 1: a pro union candidate. I love there beat a lot
5:33
Speaker 1: more focus politically on workers, the working class, the people
5:38
Speaker 1: who show up to their job do work, as opposed to,
5:43
Speaker 1: you know, benefiting the employer class that hires people and
5:46
Speaker 1: makes money from them. There's enough people looking out for them.
5:49
Speaker 1: They have their steak, they have their money, they have
5:52
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
6:24
Speaker 1: running popular Grasping Reality blog, which I see is now
6:29
Speaker 1: a sub Stack newsletter. So I'm delighted to be able
6:32
Speaker 1: to talk to him about his new book, Slouching Towards Utopia.
6:36
Speaker 1: Brad thanks so much for coming on Stephanomics. Um, it's
6:40
Speaker 1: my great pleasure to be here. Although in this metaverse
6:43
Speaker 1: age here is something that's brought with complications slouching towards utopia.
6:51
Speaker 1: Is it's a history of the twentieth century that I
6:54
Speaker 1: would say speaks very directly to today's generation of politicians
6:58
Speaker 1: and economists. Not is because you've actually lengthened the century
7:02
Speaker 1: to include most of them, because your twentieth century extends
7:05
Speaker 1: from eighteen seventy to I mean, there's a lot to
7:09
Speaker 1: talk about in your book, but I guess we should
7:11
Speaker 1: start by asking you to explain briefly why you think
7:14
Speaker 1: that period marks a discreete period of economic history. Because
7:19
Speaker 1: before eighteen seventy, our global rate of technological progress was
7:24
Speaker 1: less than a quarter of what it has been eighteen seventy,
7:28
Speaker 1: which meant that before eighteen seventy, there was zero chance
7:33
Speaker 1: that humanity would ever be able to bake a sufficiently
7:36
Speaker 1: large economic pie so that everyone could even possibly have enough.
7:43
Speaker 1: You know, Thus, governance before eighteen seventy is how does
7:46
Speaker 1: an elite manage to run a force and fraud com
7:49
Speaker 1: game on the rest of humanity so they at least
7:52
Speaker 1: can have enough. But after eighteen seventy we have the
7:55
Speaker 1: possibility of having a truly human world, of baking a
7:59
Speaker 1: sufficiently large economic pie. And then all we have after
8:03
Speaker 1: that are the minor problems of figuring out how to
8:05
Speaker 1: slice the pie, how to equitably distribute things, and then
8:09
Speaker 1: how to taste the pot, you know, how to use
8:11
Speaker 1: our immense wealth and technological powers to enable us all
8:15
Speaker 1: to live lives wisely. And well, you make the claim
8:18
Speaker 1: that eighteen seventy is the hinge of global economic history,
8:23
Speaker 1: and that's obviously on the basis of what you just said.
8:25
Speaker 1: But why um, Because that's when the last three institutions
8:32
Speaker 1: needed to support economic growth that more than two percent
8:36
Speaker 1: per year, economic growth that doubles humanities technical competence every generation.
8:41
Speaker 1: Economic growth that makes us potentially twice as rich as
8:45
Speaker 1: our parents were, and does that over and over and
8:47
Speaker 1: over again. That's when the last three things fall into place. Um.
8:53
Speaker 1: And so the doubling time of humanities technological progress is
8:57
Speaker 1: no longer measured in millennia or unreds of years, or
9:01
Speaker 1: even in the two hundred years it would have taken
9:03
Speaker 1: to double humanities technological competence during the Industrial Revolution, But
9:08
Speaker 1: it happens every single generation, and then it happens again
9:11
Speaker 1: at again, And you say yourself that if you're focused
9:14
Speaker 1: on different aspects of history, you've probably come up with
9:16
Speaker 1: different dates. And we know that sort of famously, the
9:18
Speaker 1: Marxist historian Eric Hobsborn focused on geopolitics, and then that
9:23
Speaker 1: led him to shorten his twentieth century when he wrote
9:26
Speaker 1: about it from nineteen fourteen to nine. Now, as we
9:29
Speaker 1: as we've gathered, your focus is on the economic and
9:33
Speaker 1: technological upheavals in this century, and you have got some
9:37
Speaker 1: great facts to drive that home, basically that there has
9:41
Speaker 1: been as much or more technological advanced since eighteen seventy
9:44
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
9:50
Speaker 1: the book is that our politics are political institutions have
9:54
Speaker 1: not been good at keeping up with that degree of
9:58
Speaker 1: economic upheaval in some way. How could they whatever institutions
10:04
Speaker 1: for society we had a generation to go, Even if
10:07
Speaker 1: they worked then, they won't fit the economy now. And
10:11
Speaker 1: whatever we managed to cobble together now, it won't fit
10:13
Speaker 1: the economy in a generation. And so it's frantic attempts
10:17
Speaker 1: to cobble together on the fly, a society that sort
10:20
Speaker 1: of works and kind of holds together. You know, that's
10:24
Speaker 1: I think the big story of political economy since eighteen seventy.
10:29
Speaker 1: There's a sort of dialectic running through your book. But
10:33
Speaker 1: between the two contrasting theories of actually two central European thinkers,
10:38
Speaker 1: the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayak and the less well
10:42
Speaker 1: known but I agree with you, I think underrated Hungarian
10:46
Speaker 1: philosopher Carl Polani. So so tell us about that. Why
10:49
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,
10:58
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,
11:06
Speaker 1: then the market is uniquely great as a crowd sourcing
11:09
Speaker 1: mechanism for mobilizing human injuruity, you know, instead of having
11:14
Speaker 1: a few people at the top issuing orders, or a
11:17
Speaker 1: bureaucracy following standard procedures um, in which case the only
11:22
Speaker 1: brain power that's really applied in a bureaucracy is that
11:25
Speaker 1: of those who set up the system. With a market,
11:28
Speaker 1: you are crowdsourcing everyone's human brain and asking everyone what
11:33
Speaker 1: can you think of to do to help the situation along,
11:37
Speaker 1: And thus you pushed out the power to act to
11:39
Speaker 1: the periphery of the society where the information is, you know,
11:44
Speaker 1: because I'm god knows what the people at the center
11:48
Speaker 1: um actually believe what is actually going on out there
11:52
Speaker 1: in the real world. And you also solve the problem
11:56
Speaker 1: of having the people who are actually doing the work
11:59
Speaker 1: doing what they're supposed to, because if things are properly aligned,
12:03
Speaker 1: then they make a great deal of money and have
12:06
Speaker 1: social power as a result, if they in fact do
12:10
Speaker 1: the things that advanced social values in general. UM. So
12:14
Speaker 1: Friedrich von Hayek was great. He saw this. He also
12:17
Speaker 1: very strongly believed to the day he died, that that's
12:20
Speaker 1: all the market can do, right. It can't do anything
12:25
Speaker 1: like social justice um. And if we ask it to
12:29
Speaker 1: do social justice, we destroy its ability um to do
12:34
Speaker 1: the market to do to create the wealth the market
12:36
Speaker 1: can um and put us all on the road to servedom.
12:41
Speaker 1: So have Freedrich von Hayek, who basically says, the market
12:44
Speaker 1: can be great, and we have to worship it. You know,
12:47
Speaker 1: the market giveth, the market taketh away. Blessed be the
12:50
Speaker 1: name of the market. Um, that's all we can do.
12:53
Speaker 1: We've got to accept that's the best we can do. Um.
12:57
Speaker 1: But Carl Polani said, wait a minute, that doesn't work.
13:01
Speaker 1: You have a market society, and that dissolves every single
13:06
Speaker 1: form of social power other than wealth. That means that
13:10
Speaker 1: there are no rights that are respected except for property rights,
13:14
Speaker 1: and the only property rights that are worth anything are
13:17
Speaker 1: those that may help you make things for which the
13:20
Speaker 1: rich have a serious jones, you know, and people who
13:23
Speaker 1: simply will not stand for that. You're going to get
13:26
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,
13:33
Speaker 1: but that an attempt to impose the Van Hyaki in
13:38
Speaker 1: market view of the world will blow up and explode.
13:44
Speaker 1: And indeed, a huge amount of the politics m of
13:48
Speaker 1: the world since eighteteen seventy has been various people for
13:52
Speaker 1: whom the market is good saying we should definitely expand
13:57
Speaker 1: its role, and all kinds of counter reactions of one
14:01
Speaker 1: sort or another. And it's a frame in which you
14:05
Speaker 1: can make a good deal of sense of a huge
14:07
Speaker 1: amount of stuff that's been going on since eighteen seventy.
14:10
Speaker 1: I noticed the review in the economist of your book
14:13
Speaker 1: was titled titled money Can't Buy You Love? I mean,
14:16
Speaker 1: is that basically the conclusion of the long century? We
14:19
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
14:47
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.
14:56
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
15:39
Speaker 1: walk a mile to find someone living in a box. Right. Um.
15:43
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