Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Mechele Dickerson - Does America Need A Middle Class New Deal?

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Interview Only w/ Mechele Dickerson - Does America Need A Middle Class New Deal? · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: As we get to the run up of not Just
1:53
Speaker 1: Campaign twenty twenty six week Campaign twenty twenty eight, one
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Speaker 1: of the things I'm going to actively be seeking out
2:00
Speaker 1: are academics and authors and historians that are that are
2:05
Speaker 1: trying to lay out visions that look forward, not necessarily
2:09
Speaker 1: relitigating the past and whether it's in How are we
2:15
Speaker 1: going to reform and change and modernize the public education system,
2:18
Speaker 1: which I think is something that I hope our next
2:23
Speaker 1: presidential campaign can begin to discuss. And in that vein,
2:28
Speaker 1: there's a terrific new book out by a professor at
2:33
Speaker 1: the University of Texas Law School, by Michelle Dickerson. She's
2:37
Speaker 1: my guest today.
2:38
Speaker 2: The book is.
2:38
Speaker 1: Called The middle Class New Deal, Restoring Upward Mobility and
2:43
Speaker 1: the American Dream. This is more than just a white
2:49
Speaker 1: paper of saying of aspiration. This is a book with
2:55
Speaker 1: a detailed blueprint for how we should tackle this. And
2:59
Speaker 1: what's in interesting about this and I'm going to shut
3:02
Speaker 1: up here in a minute and bring in Michelle, is
3:06
Speaker 1: that I view it as this better be a book
3:08
Speaker 1: that anybody running for president, I don't care which party
3:11
Speaker 1: you're running from, ought to read, because whether you're a
3:14
Speaker 1: liberal or conservative, the goals that are outlined here in
3:18
Speaker 1: this book, I think are something that frankly, both the
3:25
Speaker 1: left and the right aspire to. We're just disagreeing on
3:29
Speaker 1: how we get there. But it does begin here with
3:35
Speaker 1: I think the reminder that in order to have a
3:37
Speaker 1: middle class, you actually have to have government policy that
3:40
Speaker 1: wants to have a middle class. And I think that
3:43
Speaker 1: was before we begin our conversation. The most important insight
3:47
Speaker 1: I think that I took away from this book. So,
3:49
Speaker 1: without further ado, let me bring in Michelle Dickerson, University
3:53
Speaker 1: of Texas Law School. Been there, multiple books, She's written
3:58
Speaker 1: multiple books. Is again not a I don't this doesn't
4:03
Speaker 1: strike me. It didn't strike me as a political book.
4:05
Speaker 1: It struck me as a answer to the economic anxiety
4:09
Speaker 1: that has essentially been reflected in what has been now
4:13
Speaker 1: twenty years of what I call vote against politics. We
4:16
Speaker 1: know what we don't want, nobody's yet come up with
4:18
Speaker 1: the answer for what we do want. So Michelle Dickerson,
4:21
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast.
4:23
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
4:25
Speaker 1: So let me start with this because I think you
4:27
Speaker 1: know you hear the words new deal, and we've seen
4:30
Speaker 1: a lot of economic prescriptions using the umbrella of the
4:33
Speaker 1: new deal, right, and you know a lot of times
4:38
Speaker 1: it's just borrowing a popular phrase to sell something that
4:44
Speaker 1: people have been trying to sell for years. This didn't
4:47
Speaker 1: strike me. They tell me your origin as to what
4:52
Speaker 1: motivated you to put these ideas together the way you did.
4:58
Speaker 2: The first thing I did is I thought about, so
5:00
Speaker 2: how is it that we have a middle class? And
5:03
Speaker 2: this is a point that you just made in the introduction.
5:06
Speaker 2: We have a middle class because political leaders decided we
5:10
Speaker 2: needed to have a middle class. Now, part of it
5:13
Speaker 2: was in response to the depression, but after the depression
5:17
Speaker 2: in World War one world War two, political leader said,
5:21
Speaker 2: you know what, it's not a bad thing to have
5:23
Speaker 2: a middle class. They do good things for the US economy.
5:27
Speaker 2: And also as political leaders, we need to do good
5:31
Speaker 2: things for lower and middle income folks who are looking
5:35
Speaker 2: to achieve the American dream to have upward mobility. So
5:40
Speaker 2: I landed on the middle Class New Deal because we
5:44
Speaker 2: created the middle class roughly as part of the First
5:49
Speaker 2: New Deal, and political leaders need to stop. And I
5:53
Speaker 2: agree with the way that you framed this. This is
5:55
Speaker 2: not a left or a right, or a Democrat or
5:58
Speaker 2: a Republican book. This is a book for all political
6:02
Speaker 2: leaders to make a decision do we care about the
6:05
Speaker 2: middle class in this country or not?
6:09
Speaker 1: I thought the most important insight and it's almost to
6:13
Speaker 1: me it's the table stakes, right. If you don't accept
6:15
Speaker 1: this premise, then you're not going to accept the premise
6:17
Speaker 1: of the book is that somehow a middle class just
6:20
Speaker 1: happens in a free market economy. The fact of the matter,
6:23
Speaker 1: it doesn't. And when we lionize, you know, you know
6:27
Speaker 1: we It's always one of those things. Everybody wants to
6:29
Speaker 1: say they're in the middle class, right. It is popular
6:32
Speaker 1: to be in the middle class, even as we aspire
6:34
Speaker 1: to be. Even when you're not in the middle class anymore,
6:37
Speaker 1: you still want to say, well, I've got middle class roots, right,
6:40
Speaker 1: there's something about it, right, we want to be here.
6:43
Speaker 1: But this is not something a free market economy creates.
6:47
Speaker 1: Free Market economies, when left unchecked, create uber rich and
6:52
Speaker 1: a lot of poor. It actually, it doesn't automatically create
6:56
Speaker 1: a middle class. And I think understanding the history of
6:59
Speaker 1: the great building of the middle class of the fifties,
7:03
Speaker 1: the GI Bill, that was a government essentially making sure
7:07
Speaker 1: the troops that came home didn't become poor, gave them
7:10
Speaker 1: an opportunity to stay out of poverty, not even necessarily
7:13
Speaker 1: bringing people from poverty to the middle class. The development
7:18
Speaker 1: of the suburbs, the development of all of these things
7:20
Speaker 1: were in support of the middle of creating a middle class.
7:24
Speaker 1: And I think that might be hard for some of
7:27
Speaker 1: my free market conservative friends to sort of wrap their
7:30
Speaker 1: arms around, but guess what government actually has to create
7:33
Speaker 1: the conditions to allow a middle class to exist. Did
7:37
Speaker 1: I summarize your argument parently?
7:39
Speaker 2: We did exactly, And what I would say is, if
7:41
Speaker 2: you want to know what happens when the government is
7:43
Speaker 2: not involved, look at what has happened to lower and
7:47
Speaker 2: middle income people since the nineteen eighties. So if we
7:50
Speaker 2: want the free market to control, what that means is
7:53
Speaker 2: we will have the uber uber rich and everyone else
7:57
Speaker 2: will be struggling. So it's really hilarious to me when
8:01
Speaker 2: people look back at the middle class and all of
8:03
Speaker 2: the wonderful things it did. It helps people go to college,
8:07
Speaker 2: it helped people buy homes. But if we really wanted
8:10
Speaker 2: to put labels on what happened that the factors that
8:15
Speaker 2: helped to create the middle class, we'd have to say
8:18
Speaker 2: things like socialism and interfering with free markets, And of
8:23
Speaker 2: course nobody wants to say those words. The S word
8:26
Speaker 2: is just horrible. Well, fine, don't call it socialism, just
8:29
Speaker 2: call it what do we think this government owes to
8:33
Speaker 2: people who work hard, get up every day and try
8:36
Speaker 2: to do the right thing, and yet continue to struggle.
8:40
Speaker 2: If your response is we owe them nothing, then we
8:43
Speaker 2: need to just say that.
8:45
Speaker 1: Well, and you know I can make a national security
8:48
Speaker 1: are if you want a stable and thriving population that
8:51
Speaker 1: also is patriotic, then you better have a sustainable middle
8:55
Speaker 1: class if we don't have one, Yeah, if we.
8:59
Speaker 2: Want a happy be population. So if again, even ignoring
9:03
Speaker 2: whether or not you care about the economic security of
9:07
Speaker 2: most families in this country, one of the things that
9:11
Speaker 2: I always say when people ask me, well, why is
9:14
Speaker 2: it so good to have a middle class? I can
9:16
Speaker 2: point to lots of things like toasters, or trash cans
9:23
Speaker 2: or Ford pickup trucks. Billionaires can only buy so many
9:29
Speaker 2: of those. So even if you don't care about the
9:33
Speaker 2: stability of human beings, the economic stability of human beings,
9:37
Speaker 2: y'all ought to care whether or not you can sell
9:41
Speaker 2: lots of pickup trucks and trash cans and microwaves. That's
9:46
Speaker 2: what the middle past also does. They drive spending in
9:51
Speaker 2: this economy. And if they're struggling financially, or if they're
9:55
Speaker 2: scared and we're seeing a lot of fear now, which
9:58
Speaker 2: is also unhealthy, then we're going to have a week economy.
10:02
Speaker 1: So I feel as if that you're you made a
10:06
Speaker 1: case in this book that government in sort of supporting
10:13
Speaker 1: the middle class. It's not about guaranteeing a certain level
10:16
Speaker 1: of income. But it is about guaranteeing and the following items, uh,
10:21
Speaker 1: the ability, stable employment, predictable health costs, affordable education, pathways
10:27
Speaker 1: to home ownership, and retirement security. And that those things
10:34
Speaker 1: Government has to involve itself if you want to have
10:38
Speaker 1: those guarantees, and that that that middle class is less
10:42
Speaker 1: about income and more about does the average American able
10:49
Speaker 1: to achieve those five goals in life?
10:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of the things when I talk about
10:54
Speaker 2: the middle class that I always stress is people who
10:58
Speaker 2: are struggling financially are not saying we need to be billionaires.
11:03
Speaker 2: They're simply saying, why is it so hard for me
11:06
Speaker 2: to find a full time job forty hours a week
11:11
Speaker 2: with benefits including health insurance and a retirement plan where
11:17
Speaker 2: I am called an employee when I go to work
11:21
Speaker 2: and not an independent contractor? So why is that so hard?
11:25
Speaker 2: Why is it so hard for me to be able
11:27
Speaker 2: to either go to college myself and not drown myself
11:31
Speaker 2: in student loan debt or help my kids go to college?
11:35
Speaker 2: Why is it so hard for me? And I'll tweak
11:37
Speaker 2: one thing that you said, it's not so much now
11:40
Speaker 2: to be able to own your own home. It's to
11:43
Speaker 2: be able to find affordable housing, even to rent in
11:47
Speaker 2: a lot of cities. Why is it so hard for
11:49
Speaker 2: me to find stable and secure housing? Why am I
11:53
Speaker 2: drowning in debt? Why don't I have savings? So you're
11:56
Speaker 2: absolutely right. My book isn't arguing that everybody needs to
12:01
Speaker 2: earn the same thing, but everybody in this country that
12:05
Speaker 2: works hard and wants to achieve. Whether we call it
12:08
Speaker 2: the American Dream, upward mobility, I really don't care.
12:12
Speaker 1: But everyone that wants to.
12:13
Speaker 2: Be stable should have the opportunity to do that.
12:17
Speaker 1: So let's talk about let's pick out these things one
12:20
Speaker 1: at a time. So the role, What are some ideas
12:24
Speaker 1: that government could do to create a more stable employment environment.
12:28
Speaker 2: Well, one thing is to focus on what I just said,
12:31
Speaker 2: why do we continue to allow businesses to treat their
12:36
Speaker 2: employees as independent contractors? Because if you say they don't
12:40
Speaker 2: have to treat them as employees, then that means they're
12:43
Speaker 2: not guaranteed forty hours a week, they don't get benefits,
12:47
Speaker 2: they don't have the right to unionize. So we need
12:50
Speaker 2: to start asking why is it that we allow companies
12:54
Speaker 2: to outsource whole swaths of their employment of their employees
12:59
Speaker 2: and the back as an independent contractor. We have to
13:04
Speaker 2: ask why is it. In the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies,
13:08
Speaker 2: people that worked had a defined benefit pension plan. That's
13:13
Speaker 2: what my parents have and I talk about them in
13:15
Speaker 2: the book. My parents get two I won't say checks,
13:18
Speaker 2: because it's not checks anymore. Two deposits into their checking
13:21
Speaker 2: account every month because they worked their entire lives and
13:25
Speaker 2: they have guaranteed retirement income. I am terrified to think
13:31
Speaker 2: what we're going to see in about ten years when
13:34
Speaker 2: people start retiring. They don't have pensions and they have
13:38
Speaker 2: not much saved in a defined contribution for a one
13:42
Speaker 2: K four three B plan.
13:44
Speaker 1: Oh, baby boomers are the last ones that got pensions,
13:47
Speaker 1: and ZAC gen X is the first generation. You know,
13:51
Speaker 1: you know, we're the ones that I had to figure
13:52
Speaker 1: out what is four O one K mean? Okay, it's
13:55
Speaker 1: like alphabet soup? Yeah, right, Ira roth Ira? What is that? Right?
13:59
Speaker 1: There were all these sort of new sort of you know,
14:02
Speaker 1: tax coded you know, numbers and numerologies or the names
14:06
Speaker 1: after senators who came up with the idea that we're
14:09
Speaker 1: all designed essentially to keep Americans from being angry that
14:15
Speaker 1: pensions were going away. I don't know any other way
14:17
Speaker 1: to describe it.
14:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, they shifted the risk of retirement security from employers
14:25
Speaker 2: to employees, and they did it in ways that was
14:29
Speaker 2: designed for us to end up exactly where we are.
14:32
Speaker 2: I remember the first time I had my first job.
14:36
Speaker 2: It was at a law firm, I think, and I
14:38
Speaker 2: went there and I had to actually look at the
14:41
Speaker 2: retirement offerings. I mean, I was a bankruptcy lawyer and
14:45
Speaker 2: I've graduated from law school. It so terrified me. I
14:48
Speaker 2: had to put it down and come back the next
14:50
Speaker 2: day because it was so complicated. Well, if I can't
14:54
Speaker 2: figure it out, imagine just a normal didn't doesn't have
14:59
Speaker 2: two degree, you know, isn't in bankruptcy employee that's sitting
15:03
Speaker 2: down trying to figure out what do I need to
15:05
Speaker 2: invest in, and when do I think I'm going to retire,
15:08
Speaker 2: and what level of income do I think I'm going
15:10
Speaker 2: to need the things that employers used to do for
15:14
Speaker 2: their workers.
15:17
Speaker 1: Look, politically, that's going to be very difficult, right you
15:21
Speaker 1: look at Let's just take FedEx in Amazon. Right. FedEx
15:24
Speaker 1: is an older company that arguably is the first major
15:28
Speaker 1: company to succeed with independent contractors. Right and Amazon obviously
15:33
Speaker 1: many of these people that work at Amazon don't work
15:36
Speaker 1: for Amazon right there, they're independent contractor. They have a
15:41
Speaker 1: lot of political leverage, right and the whole And there's
15:44
Speaker 1: some that will argue, well, independent contractors allow people to
15:49
Speaker 1: make more money because it can be a side hustle
15:51
Speaker 1: and right. You know, there are different ways that have
15:53
Speaker 1: been used frankly to convince or persuade parts of the population. No, no, no,
15:59
Speaker 1: no no. These these empower you, These don't hurt you,
16:05
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm not asking you to be a
16:06
Speaker 1: political messaging guru here, but I think that's going to
16:10
Speaker 1: be the political challenge to an obvious policy conundrum. Right.
16:15
Speaker 2: And we talk a lot about freedom and choice. So
16:19
Speaker 2: you have the freedom. You can choose not to work
16:23
Speaker 2: forty hours a week you want to have you want
16:24
Speaker 2: to be an independent contract it's good for you. You can
16:27
Speaker 2: choose to work in the gig economy, you know, pick
16:30
Speaker 2: up a little bit of work here and there. But
16:32
Speaker 2: if you actually talk to the people who are exercising
16:37
Speaker 2: the choice to be an independent contractor, it's not a choice.
16:41
Speaker 2: And I can say this from personal experience. I have
16:44
Speaker 2: a twenty five year old son who worked briefly for Amazon,
16:48
Speaker 2: but he didn't work for Amazon. He worked for a
16:52
Speaker 2: delivery service provider and they treated him very well. But
16:56
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, he was never going
16:59
Speaker 2: to work for Amazon, and he was never going to
17:01
Speaker 2: get forty hours a week working at the DSP because
17:05
Speaker 2: it wasn't set up for them to be full time
17:09
Speaker 2: forty hour a week. You got to give them benefits.
17:13
Speaker 1: Do you think this has to be mandatory legislation that
17:15
Speaker 1: basically says is there you know, can you design what
17:19
Speaker 1: would a what would a simple piece of legislation do
17:23
Speaker 1: to sort of dissuade the independent contractor route.
17:28
Speaker 2: Well, several states have actually tried. I think California tried.
17:33
Speaker 2: All have failed, but several states have tried. Basically, if
17:36
Speaker 2: you have someone that is doing the same work that
17:40
Speaker 2: people you called employees are doing, those people must be
17:44
Speaker 2: treated like employees, whether you call them contractors or not.
17:49
Speaker 2: So give them health insurance, allow them to participate in
17:53
Speaker 2: the retirement plans, and more importantly, allow them to organize
17:58
Speaker 2: and to participate in any or union organizing attempts at
18:03
Speaker 2: your company. Because at the end of the day, when
18:06
Speaker 2: you have fewer employees your cost or less as a business,
18:11
Speaker 2: and you're not at grade of a risk of having
18:14
Speaker 2: a strong union presence, because if you have fewer employees,
18:18
Speaker 2: you're less likely to have to deal with those pesky unions.
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Speaker 1: Health cust You know there was a time, I want
20:13
Speaker 1: to say twenty years ago, where I thought that there
20:16
Speaker 1: was a deal to be cut with big business. You
20:20
Speaker 1: know I would hear the complaints, you know, because I've
20:23
Speaker 1: worked where I worked I'd have interactions with this CEO
20:27
Speaker 1: of ge and I've had interactions with the CEO of
20:30
Speaker 1: Comcast and interactions with other CEOs, and all of them
20:33
Speaker 1: would complain about the cost of healthcare, and so you
20:38
Speaker 1: could I always thought that there was this great grand
20:40
Speaker 1: bargain where the government would say, look, we can save
20:43
Speaker 1: you some money. We'll take care of health We'll take
20:45
Speaker 1: healthcare out of your situation. Then you can go back
20:50
Speaker 1: to having pensions or you can go back to you
20:52
Speaker 1: know that there was this grand bargain to be had,
20:54
Speaker 1: so to tackle predictable health costs, you know, is it
21:00
Speaker 1: realistic to stick with the employer based healthcare system that
21:04
Speaker 1: ultimately we're still kind of attached to, even though the
21:07
Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act was supposed to make this a bit
21:09
Speaker 1: more portable. Do you think we need policy fixes that
21:14
Speaker 1: sort of deal with the world that we live in,
21:16
Speaker 1: or do we need to radically rethink how we deliver
21:19
Speaker 1: health insurance to folks or health care.
21:24
Speaker 2: I would say we need to make a radical change.
21:26
Speaker 2: And these are a couple of options. And I'll lead
21:29
Speaker 2: into this by telling a story involving a class that
21:32
Speaker 2: I taught at ut So it was a class that
21:35
Speaker 2: had both law students, public policy students, schools from students
21:40
Speaker 2: from a school of education, and foreign exchange students. So
21:44
Speaker 2: we were talking about the middle class and this particular
21:46
Speaker 2: class session we were talking about insurance and one of
21:51
Speaker 2: the students from the Netherlands finally asked a question says,
21:54
Speaker 2: I don't understand why when we're talking about health insurance
21:57
Speaker 2: you all keep talking about jobs. What do jobs have
22:01
Speaker 2: to do with anything? And then we had to explain
22:03
Speaker 2: to her, Well, in the US, that's how we provide
22:07
Speaker 2: health insurance. So if we leave it with businesses, businesses
22:13
Speaker 2: have to assume the cost. So rather than pushing the
22:16
Speaker 2: cost onto employees, tell them that, you know, whether we
22:21
Speaker 2: want to say that there are caps on what they
22:23
Speaker 2: can charge or but businesses can lobby Congress and be
22:28
Speaker 2: much more effective in coming up with solution that individual
22:33
Speaker 2: employees can. I will also say, and this is not
22:36
Speaker 2: necessarily a model that can be scaled, but when we
22:39
Speaker 2: look at the way that a military personnel in this country,
22:43
Speaker 2: how they receive health insurance, they receive it from the government.
22:47
Speaker 2: Is it perfect? They would probably say no, Is everyone covered?
22:52
Speaker 2: Yes they are. So we have to do something radical
22:55
Speaker 2: because we can't continue with the status quo. And I
22:59
Speaker 2: would also again thinking back to the past, although I'm
23:03
Speaker 2: not going to stick say in the past, I want
23:04
Speaker 2: us to be thinking in terms of the.
23:06
Speaker 1: Oh, and this is the point of your book is
23:08
Speaker 1: to stop. You know, we can't relitigate stuff.
23:10
Speaker 2: That that has happened yet.
23:12
Speaker 1: Right.
23:13
Speaker 2: But the reason that we have so many employee benefits
23:17
Speaker 2: tied into work was because in World War Two there
23:21
Speaker 2: was a wage controls, so they couldn't increase wages. So
23:26
Speaker 2: what businesses did is say, oh, but we can give
23:28
Speaker 2: you non wage benefits. Once that happened, it became the norm.
23:34
Speaker 2: And so one of the things I want political leaders
23:37
Speaker 2: to do is to say, well, if it wasn't the
23:39
Speaker 2: norm until we created it, maybe we can create something
23:43
Speaker 2: new and that'll then become.
23:44
Speaker 1: The norm, a new essentially some new norms exactly if
23:48
Speaker 1: you want. But you're right, I mean it was people
23:51
Speaker 1: would panic if they found out healthcare wasn't connected to work. Yeah, right,
23:56
Speaker 1: that's what Look, that's what the Clintons found out when
23:59
Speaker 1: they first touched the healthcare back in ninety three. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
24:03
Speaker 1: People hate the system, but they like their own health.
24:05
Speaker 2: Care exactly, and they're always afraid that, well, I have
24:08
Speaker 2: to have the best health care and I have to
24:12
Speaker 2: have every single procedure that I want covered. And that's
24:16
Speaker 2: great that in theory, until you lose your job and
24:19
Speaker 2: then you have no health care. So one of the
24:22
Speaker 2: discussions we're going to have to have is to ask people,
24:25
Speaker 2: are you going to fight for what you have right now,
24:29
Speaker 2: knowing that if you lose your job you have nothing?
24:33
Speaker 1: You know, I what are I think there are real
24:35
Speaker 1: trade offs here that might be net positives for everybody,
24:39
Speaker 1: right if the government takes on the role of essentially
24:42
Speaker 1: guaranteeing insurance, guarantee health care, access to healthcare, in theory,
24:48
Speaker 1: that should free up money for corporations. I mean, and
24:54
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. You know, we don't do
24:57
Speaker 1: nuance very well in our country anymore in our political debates.
25:01
Speaker 1: But you know, that seems to be the type of
25:03
Speaker 1: thing that that that in a in a mature setting,
25:10
Speaker 1: that that people would accept the idea that this is
25:14
Speaker 1: trade offs. This isn't you know. Okay, I want this guarantee,
25:17
Speaker 1: but it means it won't get it over here, okay,
25:21
Speaker 1: and you put it out.
25:22
Speaker 2: There, Yeah, I mean we're again at the where we
25:24
Speaker 2: unfortunately spend most of our time in the political space
25:27
Speaker 2: with you know, we let perfect be the enemy of good, right,
25:31
Speaker 2: and so why not say these are the six things
25:35
Speaker 2: that we think people in this country deserve. And if
25:39
Speaker 2: we can agree that everyone deserves healthcare, everyone deserves some
25:43
Speaker 2: kind of retirement security, we can then say, Okay, now
25:47
Speaker 2: that we've agreed on that, who do we think should
25:50
Speaker 2: be responsible for providing it? Ignoring who may be providing
25:55
Speaker 2: it right now, but who going forward do we think
25:58
Speaker 2: should be responsible for providing it? That to me is
26:01
Speaker 2: a much more productive conversation than relitigating, well, it's not
26:08
Speaker 2: fair if businesses have to do this and it increase
26:10
Speaker 2: their costs. Okay, let's just assume that your true. Let's
26:14
Speaker 2: go forward.
26:16
Speaker 1: Let's talk about affordable education. You know, one of the
26:20
Speaker 1: head scratchers to me, I was convinced back in the
26:24
Speaker 1: mid nineties that it was inevitable that we were going
26:27
Speaker 1: to what I called thirteenth and fourteenth grade, that we
26:31
Speaker 1: were going that public education was essentially going to extend
26:34
Speaker 1: another two years, that there was going to be guaranteed
26:37
Speaker 1: public education up through quote unquote fourteen years of it,
26:41
Speaker 1: so you divided up how you want to divide it up. Right,
26:43
Speaker 1: You had your primary and secondary, and then you have
26:45
Speaker 1: essentially free community college, right the first two years of
26:48
Speaker 1: community college. The fact that we haven't gotten there, you know,
26:52
Speaker 1: the fact that we're still, like a think, debating university
26:55
Speaker 1: universal kindergarten in some states we have, I would argue
26:59
Speaker 1: the entire our education debate is just sort of stalled, right,
27:03
Speaker 1: and we're stuck with this terrible system of charters and
27:07
Speaker 1: where everybody has taken education in their own hands. And
27:12
Speaker 1: you know, you're discussing in some cases more about higher education.
27:15
Speaker 1: But I feel like the entire educational system just desperately
27:19
Speaker 1: needs a twenty first century makeover, and it's so politically
27:23
Speaker 1: polarized that we don't know how to do it. What
27:26
Speaker 1: are a few steps, a few ideas you're putting out
27:31
Speaker 1: there in the book that you think could make a
27:34
Speaker 1: tangible progress here.
27:36
Speaker 2: Well, I'll leave by saying one group that we also
27:38
Speaker 2: have to bring into this discussion our employers. Because even
27:43
Speaker 2: if we had K fourteen and everyone had a free
27:48
Speaker 2: community college education, employers need to be willing to hire
27:51
Speaker 2: them and pay them a decent wage. The challenge now
27:56
Speaker 2: is that the bachelor's degree has largely become the gateway
28:00
Speaker 2: to the middle class. So employers also need to come
28:03
Speaker 2: into the conversation and say, we're going to hire people
28:06
Speaker 2: and treat them decently even if they don't have a
28:09
Speaker 2: bachelor's degree. But you're absolutely right, we've got to look
28:13
Speaker 2: at what happens starting in kindergarten. I would like to
28:18
Speaker 2: start actually in preschool as well, And how do we
28:22
Speaker 2: treat lower and middle income children in public schools, And
28:28
Speaker 2: how do we treat rich children and lower rich children
28:32
Speaker 2: who are more likely to be educated in private schools.
28:35
Speaker 2: So we need to have an honest discussion when we're
28:38
Speaker 2: talking about charters and vouchers and all of these other things.
28:42
Speaker 2: Most lower and middle income kids in this country are
28:46
Speaker 2: educated in a public school somewhere. If they are in
28:50
Speaker 2: a rural area. There are no such things as choice options.
28:54
Speaker 2: There's no choice.
28:55
Speaker 1: To say this all the time. I mean, you know,
28:58
Speaker 1: it's essentially homeschool exactly. That's the only realistic option if
29:02
Speaker 1: you don't like your school.
29:04
Speaker 2: And some parents are doing that. But as we saw
29:08
Speaker 2: during COVID, exactly parents were like, oh my goodness, we
29:12
Speaker 2: love our school. Teachers, Boy, can we get these children back?
29:15
Speaker 1: Right?
29:15
Speaker 2: And so it's great to say homes Well, you know
29:18
Speaker 2: people need a homeschool. Most parents need two incomes in
29:22
Speaker 2: order to survive. So that's just not a thing. So
29:25
Speaker 2: one of the things I argue, and I know some
29:27
Speaker 2: of the things I proposed in the book are are
29:29
Speaker 2: quite radical, but we need to look at the public
29:33
Speaker 2: school buildings and ask ourselves why are they so underutilized?
29:38
Speaker 2: How can we use them to do more? So we
29:41
Speaker 2: know that there are educational gaps between lower and middle
29:44
Speaker 2: income children and lower rich and rich children. What can
29:47
Speaker 2: we do with the public school system to try to
29:50
Speaker 2: close those gaps. One of the things that we do
29:53
Speaker 2: now is we still treat public school the public school
29:58
Speaker 2: calendar is if we're in a great economy, So for
30:01
Speaker 2: three some three months of the.
30:03
Speaker 1: Summer, got to deal with the crops. Everybody, right, that's right.
30:08
Speaker 2: So you have children just there in the phrases use
30:11
Speaker 2: as a summer slide. If you're rich or lower rich,
30:15
Speaker 2: you can put your kids in these camps and robotic camps,
30:19
Speaker 2: and you can have them go to these summer high
30:22
Speaker 2: school camps on college campuses. Well, that's lovely, that's not
30:26
Speaker 2: the reality for lower and middle income families. And so
30:29
Speaker 2: you're what I do, both in the book and also
30:33
Speaker 2: when I'm giving different talks, is we have to focus
30:36
Speaker 2: on K twelve because it's too late once children are
30:40
Speaker 2: about to turn eight, age eighteen.
30:43
Speaker 1: No, And the whole thing is, you know, nobody's happy
30:46
Speaker 1: with the public school system, and everybody would be appalled
30:49
Speaker 1: if it went.
30:50
Speaker 2: Away, exactly.
30:52
Speaker 1: And and you know it's like, look, I empathize with
30:56
Speaker 1: these parents that go back and forth. Get I get
30:59
Speaker 1: school choice I had. You know, my parents didn't. The
31:02
Speaker 1: only choice they had was to find another neighborhood to
31:05
Speaker 1: live in with affordable housing, and they did that. That
31:08
Speaker 1: was that's all they could do, and that's what they did.
31:10
Speaker 1: I had a little bit more the ability to truly
31:14
Speaker 1: choose what was going to be best for my kids.
31:17
Speaker 1: But ultimately, we are not going to have a good
31:22
Speaker 1: labor force if we don't have a good public education system.
31:27
Speaker 1: And well, look, politically, the impediments have been a weird
31:33
Speaker 1: combination of people who don't want you know, I joke
31:36
Speaker 1: in the state of Virginia, it's the people that own
31:38
Speaker 1: an amusement park called King's Dominion that was making it
31:42
Speaker 1: impossible for school districts to even start two weeks earlier.
31:46
Speaker 1: You know, it would be like these weird you know,
31:48
Speaker 1: And then there was some teachers' unions are like no, no, no, no,
31:51
Speaker 1: we want we want our time off because a lot
31:54
Speaker 1: of teachers, because they're underpaid, spend their summers looking for
31:59
Speaker 1: extra in and are afraid of that going away, right, So,
32:03
Speaker 1: which then tells you we really aren't investing very well
32:05
Speaker 1: in our school teachers if they feel like they need
32:07
Speaker 1: a second job in the summer. So it's a it's
32:10
Speaker 1: a it's been a weird challenge to sort of break
32:14
Speaker 1: this norm of summer break.
32:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again one of the they're very COVID was awful.
32:22
Speaker 2: It was dreadful and and I've always had to purpose
32:24
Speaker 2: this with there's nothing good about COVID, but some good
32:26
Speaker 2: things did come out of COVID. And one of the
32:28
Speaker 2: things we saw during COVID is what happens when you
32:33
Speaker 2: have an extended educational slide. So we have children now
32:37
Speaker 2: who still have not caught up and who are still
32:41
Speaker 2: behind because of the COVID slide. So you're absolutely right,
32:45
Speaker 2: everyone has their own agenda. Actually, before I joined the
32:50
Speaker 2: UT faculty I worked at. I was at the law
32:52
Speaker 2: school at William and Mary and so I know I
32:54
Speaker 2: know about you know, those gated communities there. Yeah, and
32:57
Speaker 2: it was just striking. It's like, oh, so if you
33:00
Speaker 2: all don't want to lose cheap high school labor, that's
33:04
Speaker 2: the reason you want to. Oh, okay, that makes sense. Yeah,
33:09
Speaker 2: but for the school teachers, one of the things that
33:11
Speaker 2: we can do if we're using our K twelve buildings
33:14
Speaker 2: more effectively, we can actually allow the school teachers that
33:19
Speaker 2: want to they don't have to to pick up extra
33:22
Speaker 2: money in their area of expertise.
33:25
Speaker 1: You call this the summer trimester essentially.
33:27
Speaker 2: Concept exactly. Yeah, just the building is there, So why
33:31
Speaker 2: not use the building in ways that can put a
33:35
Speaker 2: little more money in the pockets of school teachers and
33:38
Speaker 2: also make sure that lower and middle income children get
33:41
Speaker 2: the same educational and vocational opportunities that rich kids do.
33:47
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about labor labor unions, because what's interesting
33:51
Speaker 1: is we're in a moment right now where you know, look,
33:55
Speaker 1: I think you and I are of the generation where
33:58
Speaker 1: labor unions were a punching back, you know, and politically,
34:04
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you know, it's almost like that
34:07
Speaker 1: every labor union was viewed through the prism of Jimmy Hoffa, right,
34:11
Speaker 1: and it's just like they're all, you know, and it
34:14
Speaker 1: really the damage, the perception damage Jimmy off did to
34:18
Speaker 1: the entire concept of collective bargaining and unions is is
34:22
Speaker 1: I think one of those one of those moments that
34:25
Speaker 1: probably we as sort of historical journalists need to unpack
34:28
Speaker 1: and realize, look at the damage this did. But there's
34:32
Speaker 1: now sort of an open mind on this. Now there's
34:35
Speaker 1: less ideological divide about labor unions. There's still some skepticism
34:40
Speaker 1: in corporate right now, the divide really seems to be
34:42
Speaker 1: corporate America versus everybody else. Right, you have a Donald
34:46
Speaker 1: Trump that in theory sees, you know, wants to be
34:49
Speaker 1: on the side at least of the trade unions. They're there,
34:55
Speaker 1: and I think with AI, the fear of AI job displacement,
34:59
Speaker 1: why collar were workers who you know, I've been you know,
35:02
Speaker 1: I've been a little skeptical of news of news rem
35:05
Speaker 1: unions myself, sort of like you know, I've always viewed
35:08
Speaker 1: unions as to protect the physical labor folks more than
35:11
Speaker 1: necessarily the but that's my own bias, and I will
35:15
Speaker 1: I'm you know, at the same time, the only way
35:18
Speaker 1: you're going to get equal treatment is through collective bargainy, right,
35:21
Speaker 1: we're about to I think we're going to see this
35:22
Speaker 1: in college sports. By the way, that's a separate topic,
35:26
Speaker 1: but you seem to peg one of the one of
35:32
Speaker 1: the reasons why we had a strong middle class in
35:35
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties was because we openly accepted labor unions.
35:40
Speaker 1: So how do you bring that back?
35:43
Speaker 2: Well, one of the divides that I think we're also
35:46
Speaker 2: seeing is there's a generational divide. So I remember when
35:50
Speaker 2: I first started teaching courses on the middle class. Again,
35:54
Speaker 2: this is one of the sessions where we were talking
35:56
Speaker 2: about labor and I had a student in the class
36:00
Speaker 2: to raise their hand and say, so, you know, we've
36:03
Speaker 2: been talking about this whole thing with you know, rights
36:07
Speaker 2: and workers' power, and you've been talking about unions. Exactly
36:11
Speaker 2: what is a union? And it was jarring to me
36:15
Speaker 2: until it occurred to me that we had so demonized
36:19
Speaker 2: unions that a lot of students fifteen years ago really
36:23
Speaker 2: weren't familiar with the benefits that unions actually could provide.
36:28
Speaker 2: Students now they know exactly what unions do. Part of
36:32
Speaker 2: it is because I think they've looked at their local
36:34
Speaker 2: baristas who have gone out on strike. They've looked at
36:38
Speaker 2: in the educational context, some of the graduate assistants that
36:41
Speaker 2: have gone out on strike. I will not talk at
36:44
Speaker 2: all about sports because I'm very involved in that space
36:47
Speaker 2: at the University of Texas. I'm not going to talk
36:48
Speaker 2: about that. But yeah, I think that we have to
36:53
Speaker 2: acknowledge that nothing good has happened to lower and middle
36:57
Speaker 2: income workers since we gutted union. I would say Jimmy
37:01
Speaker 2: Hoffa is a very bad visual. I will also say
37:04
Speaker 2: that the destruction of pat Co by Ronald Reagan was
37:08
Speaker 2: another one of those moments exactly where we forget that
37:13
Speaker 2: that then told everybody else you can go out and
37:16
Speaker 2: destroy union two.
37:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a you know, I look at the
37:22
Speaker 1: model Germany has, and it's always been a fascinating model
37:26
Speaker 1: where workers are actually on the board of directors like
37:31
Speaker 1: they're so the union culture is so embedded with the
37:35
Speaker 1: corporate culture that it actually isn't as it doesn't strike
37:39
Speaker 1: me as antagonistic. Is there a model there worth worth copying?
37:45
Speaker 2: We have to look at the union or employees workers
37:51
Speaker 2: as partners. And so again, when we're deciding who gets what,
37:55
Speaker 2: if you view the union as a partner rather than
37:59
Speaker 2: as the inner, I think we have a very different
38:02
Speaker 2: framework going forward. The businesses often views the government as
38:08
Speaker 2: a partner. Well, if you view the government, if you
38:11
Speaker 2: have these public private partnerships with the government, why are
38:15
Speaker 2: you so hostile to the people that actually make it
38:19
Speaker 2: possible for your company to be productive. So, whether it's
38:23
Speaker 2: there on the boards or you are genuinely working toward
38:27
Speaker 2: these so we're all rowing in the same direction. We
38:30
Speaker 2: don't have that now, but I think we may get
38:33
Speaker 2: that if no other reason, young people are going to
38:36
Speaker 2: demand it.
38:40
Speaker 1: Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from
38:44
Speaker 1: personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away.
38:47
Speaker 1: We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in
38:49
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38:54
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38:55
Speaker 1: pay for college and lo and behold, my dad had
38:59
Speaker 1: one life insurance policy that we found wasn't a lot,
39:02
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39:05
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39:08
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40:18
Speaker 1: you've got a growing family, how do you eliminate You know,
40:26
Speaker 1: a lot of this take the union issue is that
40:31
Speaker 1: are classified. Sometimes people get blinded by race and ethnicity,
40:36
Speaker 1: when really our divides have always been class, and race
40:39
Speaker 1: and ethnicity have been sort of used as wedges to
40:43
Speaker 1: to to advance a class argument one way or the other.
40:51
Speaker 1: You know, well, maybe it's impossible, and maybe I'm asking
40:54
Speaker 1: you a political question and you're not offering a political question.
40:57
Speaker 1: But that seems to be something that we've got to
41:00
Speaker 1: get over as a culture before we all embrace a
41:05
Speaker 1: union mindset.
41:07
Speaker 2: I think we also have to admit it. I mean,
41:09
Speaker 2: you admit it. I know that it is true. A
41:12
Speaker 2: lot of people will not admit even now, a lot
41:15
Speaker 2: of the conversations that we are having are really about
41:19
Speaker 2: race and ethnicity. They are not about anything else. I
41:22
Speaker 2: don't care whether we's in the immigration space or guy.
41:27
Speaker 1: Look at Todd, Donald Trump and the trade unions. He's
41:29
Speaker 1: always worried about the trade unions. He's never worried about
41:31
Speaker 1: anybody at SEIU exactly.
41:33
Speaker 2: And Sciu just.
41:35
Speaker 1: Looks that union looks different than the Carpenters Union does.
41:38
Speaker 1: Although I would argue the Carpenter's Union looks a lot
41:41
Speaker 1: more like SCIU than he thinks, but you get my drift.
41:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, even the Teamsters, I mean, that was the
41:45
Speaker 2: one union that was more inclined to support the Republican
41:50
Speaker 2: Party than the Democratic Party, and their membership looks very
41:54
Speaker 2: different than the service workers unions. And so one of
41:57
Speaker 2: the things we're going to we're going to have to
41:59
Speaker 2: stop doing is saying that, well, the problems of the
42:04
Speaker 2: middle class are the workers are lazy? Okay, so which
42:08
Speaker 2: workers are we talking about? Are we talking about all
42:11
Speaker 2: workers or do you have a certain profile of a
42:14
Speaker 2: worker in mind? What made me actually think that I
42:18
Speaker 2: was sort of onto something here because I've been writing
42:21
Speaker 2: this book for an eternity. But it was the twenties,
42:25
Speaker 2: it was before the twenty sixteen election. We heard all
42:27
Speaker 2: of this, oh the angry middle class, and Hillary Clinton
42:32
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump were talking about how much they loved
42:34
Speaker 2: the middle class and the angst of the middle class.
42:37
Speaker 2: And then I kept asking, so, exactly which middle class
42:40
Speaker 2: are we talking about here? Because it is absolutely true,
42:46
Speaker 2: absolutely true, that there is economic inequality and that there
42:51
Speaker 2: is anxiety. There's economic anxiety, but that has been true
42:55
Speaker 2: for black and Latunal workers forever. The shift that we're
43:01
Speaker 2: seeing now is the same way that the black and
43:04
Speaker 2: Latino middle class has been treated, is the way the
43:08
Speaker 2: entire middle class is being treated. And if we can
43:12
Speaker 2: get lower and middle income workers to say, this is
43:15
Speaker 2: not tribalism, this is not people that don't look like us,
43:19
Speaker 2: we are all being treated the same way. None of
43:23
Speaker 2: us can afford to send our kids to college, none
43:25
Speaker 2: of us can find a forty hour full time job
43:29
Speaker 2: where we are called an employee, and none of us
43:31
Speaker 2: can find an affordable housing either.
43:34
Speaker 1: Look what made I think this book, also why I
43:38
Speaker 1: think it should be should be read by all these
43:40
Speaker 1: presidential candidates is that, you know, a lot of times
43:44
Speaker 1: presidential candidates will focus on poverty, stafe safety net programs
43:50
Speaker 1: primarily focused on helping the poor, and these you know,
43:58
Speaker 1: whether it's a fight about Medicaid aid right, whether it's
44:01
Speaker 1: I and you know the synic and me has often said, look,
44:06
Speaker 1: all voters are self centered. Okay, let's let's not pretend
44:10
Speaker 1: that they aren't. And that's okay. It's your job as
44:14
Speaker 1: the politician to figure out a message that both appeals
44:19
Speaker 1: to them and at the same you know, in a
44:21
Speaker 1: self centered way, but at the same time can help
44:24
Speaker 1: help a greater good. Where do you prioritize poverty programs
44:30
Speaker 1: in your vision here for a renewed middle class? Or
44:32
Speaker 1: and you sort of see in an odd way that
44:35
Speaker 1: it kind of if you revive a intentionally revive a
44:39
Speaker 1: middle class, right, because essentially we're arguing that we intentionally
44:43
Speaker 1: dismantled it, so you've got to intentionally bring it back
44:48
Speaker 1: that you're actually creating an anti poverty program without having
44:52
Speaker 1: to target the poor.
44:54
Speaker 2: And again, I'll answer this with someone with the story
44:57
Speaker 2: with the same course that I taught. I was saying
45:00
Speaker 2: something in class and a student said something about either
45:02
Speaker 2: Medicaid or AFDC, and I said, oh, no, no, no, no,
45:06
Speaker 2: we don't care about poor people in here. And then
45:08
Speaker 2: I had to stop myself and say, no, no, no, I
45:10
Speaker 2: mean I do care about poor people, that's not the
45:12
Speaker 2: focus of this class. And then I realized that my
45:16
Speaker 2: emphasis in teaching and also in the book is the
45:20
Speaker 2: goal in this country has always been to take people
45:23
Speaker 2: from being poor to being middle income upward. Mobility is
45:29
Speaker 2: wired into the DNA of people in this country. So
45:33
Speaker 2: though I am focusing mostly on the middle class. I
45:38
Speaker 2: need us to be sure that we're doing things to
45:41
Speaker 2: help poor people to become somewhat financially stable, because without that,
45:46
Speaker 2: they can't become middle class. And looping back to a
45:50
Speaker 2: comment that you made earlier, everybody wants to be middle class.
45:54
Speaker 2: It's the norm. It's viewed as you know, sort of
45:58
Speaker 2: apple pie and and America and the national anthem. Given that,
46:05
Speaker 2: I think we need to say, let's focus on the
46:08
Speaker 2: middle class, because people who are poor are aspiring to
46:12
Speaker 2: be middle class.
46:16
Speaker 1: Who's the uh, who do you envision are the biggest optic?
46:21
Speaker 1: Who are what is the biggest obstacle to your middle
46:25
Speaker 1: class new deal? In your mind? When you think about
46:28
Speaker 1: the opposition, who is it?
46:31
Speaker 2: Billionaires? Billionaires that control Amazon, it is in their best
46:37
Speaker 2: interest to keep Amazon, to keep the people that drive
46:41
Speaker 2: Amazon trucks employed by DSPs and not employed by Amazon.
46:48
Speaker 2: DSP would say that delivery service providers right, It is
46:54
Speaker 2: in the best interest of billionaires to be able to
46:58
Speaker 2: eliminate jobs and to automate jobs, and to have favorable
47:02
Speaker 2: tax credits for being innovative, but not be forced to
47:06
Speaker 2: do anything for the human beings that you have now
47:10
Speaker 2: caused to lose their jobs. So again, if the lower
47:14
Speaker 2: income people that want to become middle class, and if
47:18
Speaker 2: the middle class folks who would like to remain middle
47:21
Speaker 2: class for the rest of their lives looked up economically
47:25
Speaker 2: and said those are the problems, rather than looking around
47:29
Speaker 2: at each other and saying, well, because that person is
47:32
Speaker 2: of a different race, so that person is a different ethnicity,
47:36
Speaker 2: they're are the problem. I think we could actually work
47:39
Speaker 2: on some solutions here.
47:42
Speaker 1: You know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
47:45
Speaker 1: And you know, it feels like we are in an
47:49
Speaker 1: almost identical place that we were about one hundred years ago,
47:53
Speaker 1: where you had this incredible new technology industrial revolution. Every
47:58
Speaker 1: day was bringing more incredible developments to market, whether it's
48:06
Speaker 1: the car right, whether it was electricity, personalized, you know,
48:10
Speaker 1: getting it to any place. You know, more and more
48:13
Speaker 1: that we got it, and we had to come up
48:17
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of laws because left, you know,
48:21
Speaker 1: whether it was the oil barons, the railroad barons, the
48:24
Speaker 1: auto barons, left of their own device. They were you know,
48:27
Speaker 1: not everybody was going to be like mister Hershey, who
48:29
Speaker 1: thought I'm going to build a city with an amusement
48:31
Speaker 1: park and have this wonderful community. There were a few
48:35
Speaker 1: companies people like that, but not many Hershey. I find
48:40
Speaker 1: that to be just just as a quick sort of
48:44
Speaker 1: a sidetrack here. Where do you put Hershey in sort
48:51
Speaker 1: of that in that world of you know, should corporations
48:56
Speaker 1: behave the way he did in building a community and
48:58
Speaker 1: wanting to have that or was that just sort of
49:03
Speaker 1: an outlier type of thing that wouldn't work for other industries.
49:10
Speaker 2: I think it would work for all industries if again,
49:14
Speaker 2: we work on the from the premise that we would
49:16
Speaker 2: like to have happy, healthy workers. So you don't need
49:21
Speaker 2: to build a community, but you could commit, for example,
49:25
Speaker 2: that whatever the top workers earn won't be a larger
49:30
Speaker 2: than a fill in the blanks multiple of what the
49:33
Speaker 2: forest workers earn.
49:35
Speaker 1: Say, that's Costco right now. About the biggest company that
49:37
Speaker 1: does this is Costco right The CEO always emphasizes that ratio.
49:43
Speaker 2: I believe yeah, and I am a Costco member. I
49:45
Speaker 2: will always be a Costco member. When I go into Costco,
49:48
Speaker 2: these are the happiest employees you will ever see. I
49:52
Speaker 2: took my children. Now we're twenty two and twenty five,
49:54
Speaker 2: but we and their boys so they would eat everything
49:57
Speaker 2: that wasn't nailed down. We'd go into Costco and get
50:00
Speaker 2: those samples. They have gone back now as adults and
50:05
Speaker 2: have seen some of the same employees that used to
50:08
Speaker 2: allow them to raid the samples when they were children.
50:12
Speaker 2: So it can work. It definitely can work.
50:19
Speaker 1: Well, what kind of you know if you had if
50:21
Speaker 1: you had an hour to brief President Trump on this,
50:25
Speaker 1: what do you think would be your best way to
50:27
Speaker 1: get him interested in US?
50:29
Speaker 2: I would say that your constituents, the people that support you,
50:34
Speaker 2: are struggling. They are not struggling because of race issues
50:40
Speaker 2: and class issues. They are struggling because they don't know
50:44
Speaker 2: how they're going to pay their bills at the end
50:46
Speaker 2: of this month. So if you want these people to
50:49
Speaker 2: continue to support you, you're going to have to figure
50:52
Speaker 2: out a way not to just say they're doing okay,
50:57
Speaker 2: but to actually help them to do okay. We can't
51:01
Speaker 2: He will not be able to continue to tell people
51:04
Speaker 2: that the affordability issue is a hoax, because at the
51:08
Speaker 2: end of every month, when people don't have enough to
51:10
Speaker 2: pay their bills for that month, they know it's not
51:13
Speaker 2: a hoax because they're living it.
51:16
Speaker 1: Do you view the election of Donald Trump as the
51:18
Speaker 1: middle class primal screen.
51:22
Speaker 2: I viewed the twenty sixteen election as the middle class
51:26
Speaker 2: primal screen, but it was the fight middle class primal
51:32
Speaker 2: screen because it was the first time I think that
51:35
Speaker 2: white Americans realized, ooh, something is wrong here, and they
51:39
Speaker 2: didn't exactly know how to react, but they knew it
51:42
Speaker 2: in their heart, their soul, and their pockets that something
51:46
Speaker 2: is happening to us now that isn't supposed to be
51:49
Speaker 2: happening to us.
51:50
Speaker 1: And the risk of not addressing this erosion of the
51:55
Speaker 1: middle class, because that's I mean, look, you give me,
51:59
Speaker 1: you know, I look at you know, how did Venezuela
52:02
Speaker 1: get Chavez and Maduro? You had a wealthy elite and
52:07
Speaker 1: a massive number of poor people, no middle class. How
52:11
Speaker 1: did Arawan turn a democracy into an autocracy? No middle class?
52:16
Speaker 1: So I know the political risk here of eroding a
52:21
Speaker 1: middle class. It will drive people into one direction or
52:24
Speaker 1: the other, but it will drive them into you know,
52:28
Speaker 1: is this We've got ten years, We've got twenty years?
52:31
Speaker 1: Is this fear of a lost generation? What is your
52:33
Speaker 1: timetable here of like, look, regardless of whether they your
52:36
Speaker 1: book is the blueprint, We've got to do something about
52:41
Speaker 1: saving the middle class and expanding it rather than what
52:43
Speaker 1: we've seen.
52:44
Speaker 2: I think it's less than definitely less than twenty years.
52:48
Speaker 2: I would say it's less than ten years. One of
52:50
Speaker 2: the reasons I would say it's less than ten years
52:52
Speaker 2: is because even the younger boomers are going to be
52:57
Speaker 2: retiring soon or thinking about retiring, and they're going to
53:00
Speaker 2: freak out in panic because they can't retire. Their children
53:05
Speaker 2: are going to increasingly have to subsidize their housing and
53:09
Speaker 2: their living expenses. And so I totally agree with you.
53:13
Speaker 2: We need to look a little bit to the history, though,
53:15
Speaker 2: I want to focus going forward to say how do
53:19
Speaker 2: these economies end? They don't end well. So the fact
53:24
Speaker 2: that there was a Great Gatsby party at Mara a
53:27
Speaker 2: Lago over Christmas, I thought, oh, that is a symbol
53:29
Speaker 2: that you perhaps really don't want to have.
53:33
Speaker 1: Oh they've done some things. You're just sitting there going, wow,
53:37
Speaker 1: that was a let the meat cake moment they have.
53:39
Speaker 1: You know, there's this exclusive club that they've created in
53:41
Speaker 1: DC where the entry fee is a half a million
53:43
Speaker 1: dollars and you're like, what are we doing?
53:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you probably want to hide that from the
53:51
Speaker 2: eighty percent of the people in this country that are terrified.
53:55
Speaker 1: That they're going to shocking that they didn't hide it. Yeah,
53:58
Speaker 1: that's I think, why aren't you embarrassed by this?
54:02
Speaker 2: Maybe they're all in an echo chamber and they really
54:04
Speaker 2: don't talk to anybody that earns like, you know, ninety
54:08
Speaker 2: or even one hundred thousand dollars a year.
54:10
Speaker 1: You know, this is why I really like this book.
54:11
Speaker 1: And I'm going to close on this, which is it
54:13
Speaker 1: is Look, you know, I've always tried to explain, you know,
54:16
Speaker 1: why do why do middle class people not want to rate,
54:21
Speaker 1: not always want to raise taxes on high class people
54:23
Speaker 1: because they think they're going to be wealthy someday. Right,
54:26
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of Americas. We all think, well, that
54:28
Speaker 1: could be me, and it's like the ninety percent chance
54:30
Speaker 1: it ain't going to be you. But you know what,
54:33
Speaker 1: if we don't have that mindset that you know, that
54:35
Speaker 1: is sort of that is what has always sort of
54:38
Speaker 1: created the engine of growth in this in this country. So,
54:43
Speaker 1: you know, how do you embrace the aspiration? You know,
54:46
Speaker 1: making middle class aspirational?
54:49
Speaker 2: Is that well, And one of the things that really
54:51
Speaker 2: scares me, and again it is because I have a
54:53
Speaker 2: twenty two, twenty five year old, and I also teach
54:57
Speaker 2: students sort of ranging from twenty two to thirty. Is
55:00
Speaker 2: there's sort of this economic nihilism which terrifies me, where
55:04
Speaker 2: they don't think things are going to get better, where
55:08
Speaker 2: they are angry at older people. We've got to fix
55:13
Speaker 2: that if we want this country to remain normal and
55:17
Speaker 2: stable economically and politically. To the point that you've just made,
55:22
Speaker 2: we have got to make young people believe that if
55:26
Speaker 2: they work hard, they try hard, things will be good
55:30
Speaker 2: for them or things will get better.
55:32
Speaker 1: It's a great Bill Clinton isn't right, work hard, play by.
55:34
Speaker 2: The rules exactly exactly.
55:36
Speaker 1: That was all. And I think that is a universalism.
55:40
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. It's like there's for a variety
55:42
Speaker 1: of reasons, there's a lot of sort of of the
55:45
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton era that gets ignored or it's been sort
55:48
Speaker 1: of washed away and all this stuff. But one thing
55:51
Speaker 1: he understood was the middle class. It's a way that
55:56
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know, and in some ways because
55:59
Speaker 1: he was of it right, and I wonder how important
56:03
Speaker 1: you know that experience truly is with our elected officials.
56:09
Speaker 2: Well, for him it was key because not only could
56:12
Speaker 2: he talk about the middle class. He could talk to
56:15
Speaker 2: the middle class because there was a point in his
56:18
Speaker 2: life when he was poor, right, And so when you
56:20
Speaker 2: have gone, when you understand the importance of upward mobility,
56:25
Speaker 2: that you were a poor kid in arc and Hope,
56:28
Speaker 2: Arkansas who ultimately occupied sixteen hundred Pennsylvania abvenue, you can
56:33
Speaker 2: speak about the struggles of the poor and what it
56:36
Speaker 2: takes to get from there to where he was because
56:39
Speaker 2: he literally had to do it.
56:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I remember during his early campaign that the
56:44
Speaker 1: number one place he would campaign, no matter the community
56:46
Speaker 1: he was in, was always the community college.
56:48
Speaker 2: Oh exactly.
56:49
Speaker 1: He knew exactly exactly the type of people that he
56:54
Speaker 1: should be talking to. Anyway, Michelle, this was great. Congrats
56:57
Speaker 1: in the book. Like I said, I hope you know,
57:00
Speaker 1: whether it's Gavin Newsom, jd Vance, Ram, Emanuel Pete Boodage,
57:05
Speaker 1: Glenn Younkin, anybody else. This is they ought to consume
57:10
Speaker 1: this book as they think about what they want to
57:13
Speaker 1: say to the American people in twenty twenty eight.
57:15
Speaker 2: And I hope they do too.
57:16
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much, thanks for having me. Huh.