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Which Jobs Are Really Worth Saving? · Trumponomics

0:00
Speaker 1: They are closing every day, hotels all over so because
0:03
Speaker 1: it's it's they there is no demand, there is no tourism.
0:07
Speaker 1: So but I tell you, if I close, we have
0:09
Speaker 1: a lot of costs too, so of my So that's
0:12
Speaker 1: why I tried to to keep open. You Hello, and
0:21
Speaker 1: welcome to Steconomics, the podcast that brings the global economy
0:24
Speaker 1: to you. And you heard they're a hotel owner in
0:27
Speaker 1: the southwest of Spain confronting a question that businesses and
0:31
Speaker 1: governments are facing in every country in the world. Which
0:34
Speaker 1: hasn't got on top of COVID nineteen, Which jobs should
0:37
Speaker 1: we try to save and which are already lost? Our
0:41
Speaker 1: Spanish economy reporter Jeanette Newman has been spending some time
0:45
Speaker 1: on the front lines of the battle to save jobs
0:48
Speaker 1: in the ancient Spanish city of Cardi. She also found
0:51
Speaker 1: another Johnny Cash fan while she was down there, or
0:54
Speaker 1: will be revealed in a few moments later on. You
0:57
Speaker 1: will also hear the economist John k and Support Collier
1:01
Speaker 1: explain exactly why Greed is Dead. Could have fooled me,
1:05
Speaker 1: I hear you say, Well, you can listen to them
1:08
Speaker 1: explain their new book and decide for yourself. But First,
1:12
Speaker 1: here's janet That cacophony is coming from inside a factory.
1:31
Speaker 1: At a storied ship building on Spain's Atlantic coast, dozens
1:36
Speaker 1: of welders, riggers and engineers are piecing together five warships.
1:40
Speaker 1: It's their first big naval contract in years. For centuries,
1:44
Speaker 1: shipbuilding has been a vital part of the economy here
1:46
Speaker 1: in the Bay of Cadi's. The bay has a privileged
1:50
Speaker 1: position next to one of the world's busiest waterways, the
1:53
Speaker 1: entrance to the Mediterranean Sea through the Straight of Gibraltar.
1:58
Speaker 1: At its peak in the early nineteen these, this shipyard
2:01
Speaker 1: employed nearly four thousand workers. Demand was high for warships
2:05
Speaker 1: and oil tankers. Since then, South Korea and China have
2:09
Speaker 1: eclipsed Europe in Nadi ship building. Now the shipyard employs
2:13
Speaker 1: around six hundred workers, the same number it had in
2:16
Speaker 1: the eighties. Juan Carlos Carrascal oversees the factory at the
2:21
Speaker 1: ship builder called Nevantia. That's always looking for a more
2:25
Speaker 1: skilled people instead of a lot of my power, always
2:30
Speaker 1: under looking for efficiency. As I walk across the shipyard,
2:40
Speaker 1: I see black smoke rising in the distance. Hundreds of
2:43
Speaker 1: furloughed workers at a nearby aviation company are burning tires.
2:48
Speaker 1: They're protesting and pending layoffs triggered by the pandemic. Those
2:52
Speaker 1: desperate aviation workers lie at the heart of a debate
2:54
Speaker 1: in Europe about how to wind down programs that have
2:57
Speaker 1: preserved millions of jobs. COVID nineteen has upended the airline industry.
3:04
Speaker 1: We will no longer need to fly to attend every
3:06
Speaker 1: meeting in person. Some people think those protesters are fighting
3:10
Speaker 1: for an industry that might never fully recover. You could
3:15
Speaker 1: say they're the Spanish shipbuilders of their day. If that's
3:19
Speaker 1: the case, the argument goes, then Europe's governments and companies
3:23
Speaker 1: should rethink the need to keep spending billions to preserve
3:26
Speaker 1: such jobs. Yet others warned that pulling the plug too
3:29
Speaker 1: soon could lead along spells of unemployment for workers in
3:33
Speaker 1: heart hit sectors. That's something that many naval shipbuilders have
3:36
Speaker 1: also faced. Before we delve into that debate, though some
3:40
Speaker 1: contexts on how European governments have responded to the pandemic.
3:44
Speaker 1: I spoke to Katrina Utama. She's a senior economist at
3:48
Speaker 1: financial services company Allians and Frankfort. When the pandemic hit
3:52
Speaker 1: Europe in the spring, Most countries wanted to avoid mass layoffs,
3:56
Speaker 1: so they put in place what are known as furlough programs.
4:00
Speaker 1: Furlough schemes allow employers to reduce their employees working hours
4:04
Speaker 1: instead of laying them off, and the government then steps
4:07
Speaker 1: in and replaces a large part of the lost income.
4:11
Speaker 1: In the range of sixty and why did European governments
4:16
Speaker 1: choose to do that. The idea is to retain human
4:21
Speaker 1: skills um and to allow for a quicker um snapback,
4:26
Speaker 1: let's say, of the economy, because the workers are in
4:29
Speaker 1: place and um um and are ready to go as
4:33
Speaker 1: the recovery starts to unfold. The results of furlough schemes
4:38
Speaker 1: in Europe are nothing short of remarkable. Um. At the
4:41
Speaker 1: peak of the crisis, around a fourth of Europe's workforce,
4:44
Speaker 1: or what we calculate as thirty five million jobs in
4:47
Speaker 1: the five largest economies alone, benefited from these schemes. Compare
4:52
Speaker 1: that to the US. American companies fired millions of workers
4:56
Speaker 1: when the pandemic had The government then stepped in to
4:59
Speaker 1: provide more generous unemployment benefits, but they didn't try to
5:02
Speaker 1: prevent mass layoffs in the first place. Why did Europe
5:06
Speaker 1: do things differently. There are a lot of reasons. For one,
5:10
Speaker 1: many European economies aren't very dynamic. Once a worker is fired,
5:14
Speaker 1: it can take a long time to find a job again.
5:17
Speaker 1: The furlough programs were meant to be temporary, but this
5:20
Speaker 1: crisis has turned out to be more of a slog
5:23
Speaker 1: than many expected. So Spain, Italy, France and Germany keep
5:27
Speaker 1: extending the furloughs. That leaves them in a tough position
5:31
Speaker 1: when and how do they pull back on their aid.
5:34
Speaker 1: There has to be this re calibration of UM, the
5:37
Speaker 1: labor market support UM to target in particular viable jobs
5:42
Speaker 1: and less so what we have coined zombie jobs, because
5:46
Speaker 1: we think that in some cases, and actually we say
5:49
Speaker 1: that about every fourth worker that is currently taking advantage
5:53
Speaker 1: of a furlough scheme is at risk of not returning
5:57
Speaker 1: actually to the office or to the work days. Francisco
6:06
Speaker 1: Rometo and Mariano Serrano understand all too well the risks
6:10
Speaker 1: that Katarina is talking about. Both were among the protesting
6:13
Speaker 1: aviation workers I saw in Cutty's. I spoke to them
6:17
Speaker 1: and their wives at a nearby restaurant. They have been
6:19
Speaker 1: on furlough since March. Now they might be laid off.
6:24
Speaker 1: Almost said, We're going to be just the beginning. We're
6:28
Speaker 1: going to be the tip of the iceberg. Francisco and
6:31
Speaker 1: Mariano work assembling airplane parts. Their company, Alesties, is one
6:36
Speaker 1: link in a chain of aviation companies in the region.
6:38
Speaker 1: Of course, their jobs are viable. Mariano says, well, we're
6:44
Speaker 1: thinking a matter of six months. If there's a vaccine
6:47
Speaker 1: in six months, eight months, things will keep working juice
6:51
Speaker 1: like always when things come back to normal. But what
6:54
Speaker 1: if the slowdown in aviation isn't temporary? Economists say one
6:59
Speaker 1: solution is to retrain workers who are laid off, to
7:02
Speaker 1: give them the skills they need to get jobs in
7:04
Speaker 1: a sector that is growing. I asked Mariano and his
7:07
Speaker 1: wife Manoli what they think about that. They shake their
7:11
Speaker 1: heads and laugh. I have that more courses, then, what
7:17
Speaker 1: can I tell you? I've done all kinds of courses.
7:22
Speaker 1: I tried to put away all the books he had,
7:25
Speaker 1: and they didn't even fit on the bookshelf. Francisco was
7:28
Speaker 1: sixteen when he began to work at one of the
7:30
Speaker 1: shipyards here. It was the nineteen eighties. Two years later,
7:33
Speaker 1: the ship builder announced the restructuring Francisco was out of work.
7:37
Speaker 1: He's had spells of unemployment since then. That's when he's
7:41
Speaker 1: done some of those training programs, building solar panels and
7:44
Speaker 1: wind turbines, learning to weld. Mariano agrees more training isn't
7:48
Speaker 1: what's needed. They both just want to keep their jobs.
7:54
Speaker 1: There's a ton of people in Cartage who are well trained,
7:57
Speaker 1: incredibly well trained. But the thing is that doesn't come
8:00
Speaker 1: with a key ingredient, which is industry. I want to
8:04
Speaker 1: emphasize that what God these needs is more industry. This
8:08
Speaker 1: doesn't need any more hotels or bars. Mariano raises an
8:20
Speaker 1: interesting point. The pandemic has upended the aviation sector, but
8:24
Speaker 1: other industries are bouncing back, and so were Germany and
8:27
Speaker 1: other European countries whose economies rely more on manufacturing. Places
8:32
Speaker 1: like Spain, where the economy is powered by services, hotels, restaurants,
8:36
Speaker 1: bars have been particularly hard hit. Most of the employees
8:41
Speaker 1: who are still on furlough in Spain work in the
8:43
Speaker 1: services sector. I wanted to know how companies and workers
8:46
Speaker 1: are faring as we head into low season. Tourism is
8:49
Speaker 1: important in this region. Hotel owner agrees to speak with
8:52
Speaker 1: me and Rota a town. That's a ferry right away
8:55
Speaker 1: across the Bay of Caddis. Once I'm there, I take
9:04
Speaker 1: a taxi. The driver is playing American country music. I've
9:09
Speaker 1: been in many taxis during my time in Spain, and
9:12
Speaker 1: I've never heard country music through face masks. The driver
9:16
Speaker 1: and I talk about our favorite singers as a classic.
9:28
Speaker 1: The wistful music seems to match the driver's mood. It's
9:31
Speaker 1: been a bad summer, he says. There haven't been many tourists,
9:35
Speaker 1: and trouble is brewing at the aviation companies. It's only
9:38
Speaker 1: going to get worse, he says. We arrived at the
9:42
Speaker 1: play at de la Lous. Hotel owner Stephen de Clerk
9:45
Speaker 1: comes out to greet me. The building where we meet
9:48
Speaker 1: was an abandoned nineteenth century tuna factory before Stephen's Belgian
9:52
Speaker 1: grandfather bought it and turned it into a hotel. We
9:56
Speaker 1: sit down in the restaurant. I asked him what's happening
9:58
Speaker 1: with his workers in the fur Low program known as
10:01
Speaker 1: edites in Spanish. They're starting to go to the again.
10:05
Speaker 1: They're going back, They're going back to the editors. Stephan
10:08
Speaker 1: had just closed one of his hotels the day before
10:10
Speaker 1: we met. Occupancy was only a fifteen percent. They're closing
10:14
Speaker 1: every day, hotels all over so because it's it's they
10:18
Speaker 1: there is no demand, there's no tourism. So but I
10:22
Speaker 1: tell you, if I close, we have a lot of
10:24
Speaker 1: costs too, So so that's why I tried to to
10:28
Speaker 1: keep open. Hotels that are closing and more workers in
10:31
Speaker 1: the furlough program, I mean less tax revenue for the
10:33
Speaker 1: Spanish government and higher costs. Remember, the state is paying
10:38
Speaker 1: a large portion of the salaries of furloughed workers. That
10:41
Speaker 1: puts Spain in a bind. The country already had a
10:44
Speaker 1: huge pile of debt and a big deficit when the
10:46
Speaker 1: pandemic hit. That limited its ability to offer financial support
10:50
Speaker 1: to companies and workers. At the same time, though, Spain
10:54
Speaker 1: had to respond decisively because it was one of the
10:56
Speaker 1: hardest hit countries in Europe. Further complicating things is the
11:00
Speaker 1: fact that the Spanish economy isn't very dynamic. Economists talk
11:05
Speaker 1: about creative destruction let companies go bankrupt, for instance, because
11:09
Speaker 1: people will create new ones, but in Spain created destruction
11:13
Speaker 1: usually just ends up meaning destruction. The labor market in
11:16
Speaker 1: particular does not rebound quickly. Stuff And says the employment
11:21
Speaker 1: laws are very strict and very and not flexible for
11:25
Speaker 1: the company. So Spain couldn't really afford to act decisively,
11:29
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it couldn't afford not to
11:32
Speaker 1: because the damage would have been even worse. Stephan is
11:35
Speaker 1: frustrated about what this fiscal predicament means for him. The
11:38
Speaker 1: Spanish furlough is less generous than in some other countries.
11:42
Speaker 1: I looked to German and to Belgium and and and
11:45
Speaker 1: the area. The economy goes well, much better than in Spain.
11:50
Speaker 1: And like I told the Germany is helping and with
11:52
Speaker 1: rites until aimed aimed of twenty one, and Belgium too,
11:57
Speaker 1: So I think these countries are they're doing it better
12:01
Speaker 1: than us. Spain's program is said to expire at the
12:04
Speaker 1: end of January. Stephen says many hotels will go bankrupt
12:07
Speaker 1: if that happens. We are demanding that it will be
12:10
Speaker 1: a standard at least at March one. And why is
12:14
Speaker 1: that important? Because we started the new U seed. The
12:16
Speaker 1: season starts for us in the area starts around March April.
12:20
Speaker 1: So if if we keep that until March, maybe, if
12:24
Speaker 1: if if God's help us, well, we will have a
12:28
Speaker 1: kind of a normal situation next year. So that's we are.
12:32
Speaker 1: We're we're praying now for that, and we're trying to
12:36
Speaker 1: work for that. Leaving the hotel, I can see the
12:39
Speaker 1: shipyard cranes towering along the shoreline, a reminder that jobs, industries,
12:45
Speaker 1: and economies don't always bounce back as expected. Europs for
12:49
Speaker 1: low programs were meant to be temporary. The crisis has
12:52
Speaker 1: proved to be anything but, so the programs have been extended.
12:57
Speaker 1: It's likely that the scars from the pandemic will be
12:59
Speaker 1: deeper than we expect. Your Jeanette Newman, Bloomberg News. You
13:13
Speaker 1: could hear they're our short term crisis over jobs and
13:15
Speaker 1: the cost of government support packages has also been forcing
13:20
Speaker 1: Spain to confront long term choices about the direction of
13:23
Speaker 1: the Spanish economy. The same could be said of Europe
13:26
Speaker 1: and the US generally. Now. Two people who think that
13:30
Speaker 1: kind of debate is long overdue are the economist John
13:33
Speaker 1: k and Support Collier. You may know John. He's been
13:36
Speaker 1: a columnist for the Financial Times for many years. It's
13:39
Speaker 1: also my first boss a long time ago at the
13:41
Speaker 1: London Business School. He's written many excellent books, mainly about economics,
13:46
Speaker 1: including most recently the book Radical Uncertainty with the former
13:50
Speaker 1: Bank of England Governor Lord Mervin King. So Paul Collier's
13:54
Speaker 1: known more for his contributions to development economics, though more
13:58
Speaker 1: recently he's written modest book called The Future of Capitalism.
14:03
Speaker 1: We had an online conversation recently convened by the Royal
14:06
Speaker 1: Society for the Arts in London about their new book
14:10
Speaker 1: Greed Is Dead, which for an economics book, contains a
14:14
Speaker 1: surprising amount of political philosophy. I started by asking John
14:18
Speaker 1: why they wrote it. So, Paul and John, thank you
14:24
Speaker 1: very much for talking to me. John, let me start
14:28
Speaker 1: with you just to get more of a sense of
14:32
Speaker 1: what this book's about and perhaps how why you decided
14:37
Speaker 1: to write it. Yeah, this book originated Stephanie in our
14:41
Speaker 1: lunch we had in Arrest Thai restaurant and Oxford called
14:46
Speaker 1: the Giggling Squid for some incomprehensible reason. And I was
14:52
Speaker 1: as I've just recently finished the book you describe on
14:56
Speaker 1: Radical Uncertainty, while Paul, as you will, also mentioned and
15:00
Speaker 1: written The Future of Capitalism, and we were talking and
15:04
Speaker 1: I really I was aware that what I wanted to
15:07
Speaker 1: do next was to write a book about something about business,
15:12
Speaker 1: emphasizing that the presentation of business essentially as a group
15:17
Speaker 1: of individuals who happened to find it convenient to get
15:21
Speaker 1: together every day and work together, failed to recognize that
15:26
Speaker 1: successful businesses, particularly the knowledge businesses we have in the
15:30
Speaker 1: twenty per century, are made up of essentially communities of
15:35
Speaker 1: people were able to solve problems together. That seemed to
15:39
Speaker 1: me a much more powerful way of thinking about business
15:42
Speaker 1: than the reductionist approach which has dominated economics for last
15:46
Speaker 1: fifty years. And Paul was interested in many of the
15:49
Speaker 1: same issues, but from the rather different angle of communities
15:53
Speaker 1: of place. So, um, what is the community of place?
15:58
Speaker 1: We're hard wired for community, Stephanie. He said, we were
16:03
Speaker 1: drawing a lot on philosophy in the book, but we're
16:06
Speaker 1: also drawing a lot on modern evolutionary biology. And the
16:11
Speaker 1: news from modern evolutionary biology is really very good for
16:16
Speaker 1: people who believe in communities, both communities of work and
16:19
Speaker 1: communities of place. We're very distinctive. Mammals were designed, were
16:23
Speaker 1: hardwired to bond to each other and for mutuality, for reciprocity,
16:30
Speaker 1: for pro sociality. The big bad idea that we aim
16:37
Speaker 1: to demolish in modern economics is that notion that greed
16:44
Speaker 1: is good, which came out of the idea that humans
16:49
Speaker 1: were basically economic. Man were gredient, selfish, and greed was
16:55
Speaker 1: therefore the fuel which got people up in the morning
16:59
Speaker 1: and and fueled capitalism. If that was the fuel, greed
17:02
Speaker 1: was good, well it isn't. It isn't the fueler capitalism.
17:07
Speaker 1: The fueler capitalism is our ability to work together around
17:12
Speaker 1: a common purpose and to imagine and create. So we're
17:17
Speaker 1: very well designed both for communities of purpose, whether they're
17:25
Speaker 1: per communities of work or community of place, and we're
17:29
Speaker 1: very well designed for radical uncertainty because if you're if
17:31
Speaker 1: you're in a world radical uncertainty, you need to work
17:34
Speaker 1: out what to do. And we're hardwired for creativity. We're
17:39
Speaker 1: very imaginative. And so the fuel of capitalism is not greed.
17:47
Speaker 1: It's that collective common purpose and imagination and creativity. And
17:55
Speaker 1: when we say greed is dead, the normal responses to say,
18:00
Speaker 1: but look around you. The world is it's absolutely saturated.
18:04
Speaker 1: Increase as saturated in greed is actually the first the
18:08
Speaker 1: opening sentence of greed is dead. What we mean by
18:13
Speaker 1: greed is dead is intellectually the pillars that built the
18:19
Speaker 1: notion greed is good and now untenable, and so that's
18:26
Speaker 1: why we're saying greed is dead. We are now at
18:30
Speaker 1: peak greed because gradually these ideas will filter through. So
18:36
Speaker 1: let me turn just to pick up on John's queue
18:39
Speaker 1: of communities of place. Um, we need communities of place
18:47
Speaker 1: because so much of our public policy and our lives
18:52
Speaker 1: are lived in place. Our politics isn't very heavily dependent
18:56
Speaker 1: on place, and what's happened recently is big spatial divides.
19:04
Speaker 1: We've seen it in Brexit, which was basically a mutiny
19:08
Speaker 1: of provincial Britain against London. We've seen it with Trump,
19:12
Speaker 1: which was basically a mutiny of provincial America against the metropolis.
19:18
Speaker 1: And so rehealing that that's what's really needed in the
19:25
Speaker 1: community of place, restoring community of place. Let me pass
19:30
Speaker 1: back to John, because we've got lots of ideas about
19:33
Speaker 1: how to do it. You know, we're learning a lot
19:37
Speaker 1: about this interaction of communities and place and work in
19:41
Speaker 1: the current in the current crisis, we um, the three
19:47
Speaker 1: of us are able easily to this productive conversation together
19:53
Speaker 1: over zoom. We're able to do that because actually we've
19:56
Speaker 1: met each other in real life quite frequent in the past,
20:01
Speaker 1: and quite a lot of businesses are discovering to their
20:04
Speaker 1: surprise that they can conduct business reasonably well over zoom
20:10
Speaker 1: and other online aids like that. Would they be able
20:14
Speaker 1: to do that if people hadn't been able to meet
20:18
Speaker 1: each other, work together, talk to each other, form relationships
20:22
Speaker 1: with each other in the past, I doubt that. Can
20:27
Speaker 1: you know the community of place which happens in the
20:31
Speaker 1: office can be conducted online because it is a community
20:36
Speaker 1: of people who are used to working together. Did you
20:44
Speaker 1: come away hopeful after writing this book? Because one could
20:48
Speaker 1: read it as saying, yeah, we really are in a
20:50
Speaker 1: bad way and I can't see a way out. We're
20:54
Speaker 1: not saying we can't see a way out, but we've
20:57
Speaker 1: been going in many ways in the wrong direction. For
21:01
Speaker 1: in recent decades in the business area, we went badly
21:05
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. With the fifty years since Freedman
21:10
Speaker 1: wrote that notorious article, the social responsibility of business is
21:15
Speaker 1: to maximize its profits. The social responsibility of business is
21:19
Speaker 1: actually to produce goods and services that people want, to
21:23
Speaker 1: provide satisfying employment, to meet the needs of the communities
21:27
Speaker 1: in which business operates. That's the social responsibility of business,
21:32
Speaker 1: and I'd contrast that on the one hand to the
21:35
Speaker 1: social responsibility of businesses to maximize its profits. But in
21:39
Speaker 1: the other the social responsibility of business is not to
21:43
Speaker 1: do good social responsibility of business is to do good business.
21:48
Speaker 1: And that's true of all the other communities we're talking about.
21:52
Speaker 1: As far as business is concerned, I think that the
21:56
Speaker 1: pendulum is at least swinging back in the right direction.
21:59
Speaker 1: It's got a long way to go before it gets
22:02
Speaker 1: to the central position it was in fifty years ago,
22:08
Speaker 1: but we are now getting a fairly satisfactory reaction to that,
22:14
Speaker 1: and that's what business needs. And business needs to stop
22:17
Speaker 1: describing itself in ways that actually are actually both repulsive
22:23
Speaker 1: and do not correspond to the reality of what successful
22:26
Speaker 1: business is actually like. I thought I was wonderfully bracing
22:30
Speaker 1: in the book that you point out that any company
22:33
Speaker 1: that's really tried to implement that very individualistic business model
22:38
Speaker 1: has tended to do extremely badly. Yeah, it's almost funny
22:42
Speaker 1: the extent to which that is true. Classic, of course,
22:45
Speaker 1: was Burst Earns, which was the business that had a
22:49
Speaker 1: sign above its trading floor saying we make nothing but money.
22:54
Speaker 1: And what happened towards in the long run they turned
22:57
Speaker 1: up or not to make that either. I've been writing
23:01
Speaker 1: a little piece for myself on called The Fall of
23:04
Speaker 1: the Icons, which runs through how the businesses which we
23:08
Speaker 1: would have regarded as paragons of good business fifty years ago.
23:12
Speaker 1: I see I Marks and Spencer in this country, General Electric, Sears,
23:18
Speaker 1: Roebuck in the United States, one after the other. These
23:23
Speaker 1: businesses have been damaged by essentially this individualistic approach to
23:28
Speaker 1: what businesses are like. And there are just so many cases.
23:32
Speaker 1: The most extreme case is actually Deutsche Bank, which has
23:36
Speaker 1: moved from being h the bank that was the powerhouse
23:42
Speaker 1: of financing German industry, into an essentially a failed US
23:48
Speaker 1: hedge fund. And for that to happen in twenty five
23:53
Speaker 1: years is a quite extraordinary and entirely negative achievement. I'm
23:59
Speaker 1: going to go back to question, are we hopeful greed
24:03
Speaker 1: is dead? Is a prediction. It's a very hopeful book,
24:07
Speaker 1: and it says we're at pete greed and why we
24:09
Speaker 1: are at pete greed because gradually ideas filter through, ideas matter,
24:17
Speaker 1: and the ideas on which peak on which greed was founded,
24:23
Speaker 1: these individualistic ideas turn out to be just wrong that
24:29
Speaker 1: they are against the grain of the new evidence from
24:33
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology. There against the grain of the evidence from
24:38
Speaker 1: business performance. They're just not how we are designed to
24:43
Speaker 1: work well together. And those ideas will gradually filter through,
24:49
Speaker 1: and you see it in a tidal wave of new
24:54
Speaker 1: books basically all along a communitarian theme and by some
24:59
Speaker 1: very influential people across the board. And so I think
25:03
Speaker 1: intellectually we are already comfortably past pepe greed. Those ideas
25:10
Speaker 1: will take a decade to filter through, but they will,
25:13
Speaker 1: And of course COVID as an accelerator, because COVID is
25:17
Speaker 1: a splendid example of the need to come together. Just
25:22
Speaker 1: look around Europe. The most successful country as far as
25:26
Speaker 1: I can see as Denmark. It's had about the lowest
25:32
Speaker 1: economic hit and about the lowest mortality hit. So it's
25:37
Speaker 1: not even set it up as a trade off. Do
25:39
Speaker 1: we save the economy or do we save people? It
25:42
Speaker 1: save both. Why has it done that because repeatedly over
25:47
Speaker 1: the decades, Denmark has demonstrated an ability to work together
25:54
Speaker 1: for a common purpose. That's why on all the indicators
25:59
Speaker 1: the subject give indicators of well being and happiness, the
26:02
Speaker 1: objective indicators of lifestyle, it comes out as top in
26:06
Speaker 1: the world, and so along comes this new crisis of
26:10
Speaker 1: COVID and Denmark, unlike a number of other countries, has
26:15
Speaker 1: a very modest leader, a very ordinary person, very humble person,
26:22
Speaker 1: single mother. When she says we people listen, I think
26:29
Speaker 1: a lot of people would wonder for those countries that
26:33
Speaker 1: have gone down the individualist route, that have trashed many
26:36
Speaker 1: of these institutions and find it with social media particularly
26:41
Speaker 1: harder and harder to have single conversations around important matters
26:46
Speaker 1: and constructive dialogue. Are you not concerned that we now
26:51
Speaker 1: have taken away the levers in those societies to get
26:54
Speaker 1: back to a better equilibrium, that we might in fact
26:56
Speaker 1: be trapped on a bad and a bad equilibrium where
27:00
Speaker 1: without any of the tools to be able to go back.
27:02
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think that there's a real
27:05
Speaker 1: worry there. And one of the things we trace in
27:07
Speaker 1: the book is the way that the organization of political parties,
27:12
Speaker 1: the historic organization, essentially collapsed after communism collapsed. What we
27:19
Speaker 1: need is actually a rebuilding of political parties and political
27:23
Speaker 1: institutions around about some of the ideas we've talked about.
27:28
Speaker 1: The question which you posed right at the beginning, which
27:32
Speaker 1: is the question of what are economists doing writing about
27:35
Speaker 1: political philosophy? And the answer to that, and my answer
27:39
Speaker 1: to that certainly is I don't think we've anything new
27:42
Speaker 1: to say about political philosophy. But what has happened is
27:46
Speaker 1: that over the last half century, economics became associated with
27:51
Speaker 1: a particular political philosophy that was at odds with how
27:56
Speaker 1: successful business and economy is actually operated. And we're trying
28:00
Speaker 1: to redress that. So thank you both very much, Support
28:05
Speaker 1: Collier and John Kay, thanks for listening to Stephanomics. We'll
28:15
Speaker 1: be back next week with more on the ground reporting
28:17
Speaker 1: and analysis of the economic fallout from the COVID pandemic
28:21
Speaker 1: and anything else we think is important that's happening in
28:24
Speaker 1: the global economy. Remember you can always find us on
28:27
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg terminal, website, app and wherever you get your podcast.
28:32
Speaker 1: And for more news and analysis through the week from
28:34
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Economics, follow us Economics on Twitter. This episode was
28:39
Speaker 1: produced by Magnus Hendrickson, with special thanks to Jeanette Newman, Rodrigo,
28:44
Speaker 1: Arduela Alonso Soto, Laura Milan, Thomas Galtieri, John k Sir
28:50
Speaker 1: Paul Collier, and the Royal Society for the Arts in London.
28:54
Speaker 1: Lucy Meekin is the executive producer of Stephonomics and the
28:57
Speaker 1: head of Bloomberg podcast is Francesca Levy.