Latest / Thinking Class / #043 - Philip Pilkington - Why European Countries Face Economic Ruination Of Their Own Making

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#043 - Philip Pilkington - Why European Countries Face Economic Ruination Of Their Own Making · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello classmates and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking with Philip Pilkington.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Phil is a macroeconomist and investment professional, and he's also the host of the Multipolarity Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Phil and I talk about why European nations are struggling so much economically, why the macroeconomic environment shows that we're in for a scary ride, how the European Union and the European Central Bank are intervening in national elections, why central banks are increasingly intervening in democratic elections or political office, what is stopping the UK and European nations from reindustrializing, a potential pathway to reindustrialize, how to address labour shortages and low birth rates without giving more immigration than people can live with, and why Phil keeps changing his mind on the European Union and much, much more.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Phil knows his stuff and has a very broad view of trends in the UK, US and the European Union, and what struck me is just how committed the current crop of politicians, central bank leaders, and mainstream economists seem to be to the current path, despite it showing every sign of having failed.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: The fragilities in the system keep building, and there seems to be little way of avoiding an inevitable break.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably the most nuanced, balanced black pill you can get without going full doomer, so I do hope you enjoy it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: But before we dive in, you'd be really helping me out if you click subscribe on whatever platform you are listening to or watching the show on, because the more subscribers we have, the more guests we can attract, and the faster Thinking Class grows.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Philip Pilkington, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, John.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Phil, it's been uh a long time coming.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've been uh at the at the behest of our busy summer diaries.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think we made contact first time out uh at the time of the the French presidential elections.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um and Marine Le Pen had won the first round, and and then it seemed the European Central Bank would intervene should she win power.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: That that was the word that was being used uh within the European press and the mainstream press.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it has since been revealed then that the Bank of England has performed a political coup on Liz Truss, as it were, uh, despite her being left out of the room for suggesting so initially when she came to the end of her brief time in in power in the United Kingdom.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I would be interested to hear your take, because I know you've you've put this out into the open as to the nature of these political interventions by central banking institutions.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are the what are the political influences that they have uh on economics and government and and and why would these institutions do such a thing in the first place?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's a little bit complicated, this issue.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's not really as simple and as black and white as some people want to make out.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because effectively, central banks, well, first of all, central banks can definitely take down governments because the central bank, you know, issues the money to the ATMs.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And in extremes, if the ATMs are closed off, the government's not going to last very long.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now you say, oh, well, that's crazy.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's exactly what was threatened of Greece during the financial crisis, if you recall, when Alexis Tsipras and uh um Yanis Tarthakis came in and opposed the Troika austerity programs, the threat was we'll turn the ATMs off.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that shows you very clearly that central banks can um can you know get rid of governments or they can put substantial pressure on governments to change their party line.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, shutting down the ATMs is a little bit more extreme than what we're dealing with in the case of France and possibly the UK.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: But what they all share in common is that um that it's because central banking is kind of a rules-based system, and because the rules are a little less clear than might be uh preferable, shall we say, it's possible to use these institutions, or not even to use them, just for these institutions to find themselves at an opportune moment where they can they can take a swipe at a sitting government.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I think that's pretty much what happened in the United Kingdom.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Liz Truss um came out and said she was going to do tax cuts.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they were large but not extreme, I would say.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um I can't remember the exact number.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was 20-something billion was the total cost of the tax cuts.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that was definitely much smaller than, for example, the energy price guarantee that was propping up, uh that was allowing households to afford the energy in the wake of the Ukraine war, and it was definitely a lot smaller than the spending on lockdowns.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So um, just to put kind of the spending in context, those were two things that let's just say the economic establishment got on board with, which were much larger, and by the way, which have caused the substanti the most of the fiscal damage to the United Kingdom that the country is now experiencing.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it does seem to me that um that a decision was made there effectively to say these were good deficits, and that's a bad deficit.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Also, no, of course, they'll say, well, when we when we ran up those deficits with the lockdowns and then with the energy price guarantees, um, we didn't have as bad deficits, and now Les Truss is coming in to put the bad deficits on.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: But since then, the the debt has climbed substantially more than Les Truss's tax increases, and there's been no fiscal crisis.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: The fact of the matter is that the bond markets are not completely wedded to the to the central bank, but they're largely wedded to the central bank.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so if the central bank comes out and makes noises that it might not prop something up, as pretty much happened in the trust case, it was it was the pensioned vehicles, if you recall, then the markets can freak out and a government can fall.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So with the trust case, I think it was it was opportunistic.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that the Treasury and the central bank liked the tax cuts.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think they were um they were put together by trust and their chancellor, and they weren't seen as wise.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, I'm agnostic on the cuts themselves.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I if you put a gun to my head, I'd probably agree with the treasury and the central bank, to be honest.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, this isn't just a question of specific tax cuts, it's a it's a governance question.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um and they saw an opportunity to take a shot, and uh, and they did.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: The situation with the banana with the with the French elections seems far more naked to me.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the ECB has a history of political interventions.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: I just told you one with the Troika um leaning in on the CPAS government in Greece, I think it was 2015.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: I might have got the date wrong.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they pretty much, I mean, it was pretty mask-off.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: They said if Le Pen gets elected, all hell's gonna break lease.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then I pointed out on Twitter very ironically that in the days afterwards, after the election, when there was a little bit of electioneering taking place, which people will say, oh, you're calling it fraud.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm not.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that parties made a deal to keep the ride out.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's like reported.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, once that took place, it was the far left that basically looked like they had the upper hand initially, and markets calmed down.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the far left program included um uh food price, food price uh uh controls and so on.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, and not just food prices, I think.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it was much more extreme than the than the Ressemblement National uh Le Pen Le Pen plan.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: But what what was different was the ECB and you know others weren't signaling that they'd cause trouble.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So look, that calmed down, the trusting is over, but there is this kind of looming sense that the central banks are standing in the background waiting to clamp down on anything they don't like.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually a little bit concerned that something similar might take place in the United States.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I'll just be clear, you do need some fragilities in the system in order for central banks to be able to leverage this power.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: But once those fragilities are in the system, and the fragilities are in the system, because I would say very poor economic decisions that have been made in the past five years that are themselves giving rise to the populism that we're seeing, those fragilities are there.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the central banks, the same people who approved of these very poor economic decisions, in my opinion, uh are then responding to the social response and political response that's coming out of those decisions in a way that gives them an awful lot of control.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's pretty sinister, I'd say, but it's also very dangerous because central banks shouldn't behave like this.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when they start behaving like this, they start to lose their credibility.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's a whole different question.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think these guys are skating on on really thin eyes.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it fair to say then that the the read of this, and without signing too too Marxian about it, but but it can be useful, is that there's a there's a governing class who are protecting their own interests as a kind of Nietzschean will to power, you know, that they're they're willing to make uh also Faustian patts, this this deal with whatever to remain in power in the face of challenges to their governing ideals and also to make sure that they aren't effectively held to account for their mistakes.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do find it disturbing if that is the case, because there's a whether it's intended or not, the the the impact on those non-metropolitan classes who are most likely to be impacted by the downturns of which we've seen, um, particularly in a time when everyone's struggling because of those decisions, it keeps ratcheting it up.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's this it's double-edged, well, not double-edged sword, it's this this um this double takedown of the people who are effectively saying we don't want any more of this, and then in the attempts to hold on to power and legitimacy, they get slapped down again.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that a fair take or is that too much of a is that too much of a populist take?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I I'd actually go one step further.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to call in a kind of a philosophical reference.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you're familiar with Alastair McIntyre and his book Virtue Ethics.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he he talks about how the elite kind of if he's the Marxian term, the bourgeois, have this new sense of themselves as technocratic elite, and that everything has to be judged in terms of this kind of technocratic pseudoethics or whatever.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and the justification for the technocratic pseudoethics is that it'll produce the most vibrant, uh, rational and prosperous society.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is pretty much how this group that you're talking about sees themselves.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they're capitalists in the old Marxian sense.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: They're more like the managerial elite, I guess is like the old Burnham phrase, similar to what McIntyre's talking about.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So they're like a managerial elite who pride themselves on their technocratic competency.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: My issue isn't actually that in itself.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I have some technocratic leanings myself, I guess, maybe not like ideologically committed to it, I have a life.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, I understand like some society, our societies, modern societies, require some technocratic prowess.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a macroeconomist.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: But my sense is that these guys have lost the run of themselves.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're not actually very good technocrats anymore.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the um the um uh theoretical models that they approach the world with are really broken.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everything from foreign policy to central bank monetary policy, all these things have kind of failed, and they don't have anything to replace them with.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so and they've boxed themselves in on their previous decisions.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, take the spending, for example.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: The main contributions to the very large deficits we see across the Western world right now are the lockdowns and the energy price guarantees in the wake of the Ukraine war.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the biggest drivers.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: No one wants to reassess them, they don't want to talk about that.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like shove that all under the under the hedge, right?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to question those policies.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: We need to move forward.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so when they move forward, they see this kind of janky political system in front of them that's generated from their own policies.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And their incentive is to double down.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what's actually very sad is there's a lot of people in this system who, although I may not agree with politically, I think were previously fairly competent technocrat types, and they actually had a sense of, you know, reality, as it were, maybe 10 or 15 years ago.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they seem to have lost that.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really strange.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: So just to give an example today, yesterday, Mario Draghi's paper on EU competitiveness has come out.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: We we aren't going to talk about that, I know.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: But just to give you my high-level take, it's rubbish and it's full of complete nonsensical arguments that fly in the face of like undergraduate level competition economics, you know, international trade economics, you know, Ricardian uh um uh uh uh uh whatever, sorry, the folks should remember.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, uh how to maintain your competitiveness is uh subjecting yourself to free trade forces and so on.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: We can debate those things, sure, but like these are standard takes, and the draggy thing is just like full of rubbish, and none of it's kind of argued or anything like that.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's basically what happened.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's happened, the technocratic managerial elite have run aground and they're dealing with a highly unstable political, economic, and geopolitical system, and they don't know what to do about it.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So they're increasing, their authoritarian tendencies are increasing.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: But as you allude to, this will only produce more instability, and it'll be pretty horrible for the people living under it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a question where I'm probably getting ahead of myself a little.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but backtrack in a moment for those who are hearing technocratic and managerial elite, effectively what we're talking about here are groups of people who are experts in a particular, a particular discipline, or at least experts insofar as they have gone through the the the university educated training, whether it's some kind of economics or or whatever, um, and typically they are dealing in you know uh abstract models to govern a society, and so they they tend to be found in metropolitan, cosmopolitan centers, and they believe that a society can be managed centrally, um not necessarily in the Soviet sense, but they are they are people who are detached from the actual production itself, though they're they're there are many layers removed from that.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so my question is, Phil, is it if the models that are being relied upon and that the the trajectory is not looking good, you know, that that the models keep failing, that that there are no new ideas, and there is a resistance to taking on board the dissent that is that is being expressed at ballot boxes, is where's the natural finish here?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it uh uh through financial overexposure and and ultimately some kind of collapse, or is it is it something else?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see a rising counter-elite, as it were, coming to take the place with a different governing worldview?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it definitely feels right now and has felt for two years at least, like we're living through a sort of a Brezhnev era in the West.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm referring to the 1970s in the Soviet Union when basically economic growth stagnated completely.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, people don't really remember it because we think that the Soviet system was always dysfunctional.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it was fairly functional in the 60s in its own weird way.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: But as it moved to consumer production in the 1970s, it became clear that there were serious limits to how a central planned economy could work.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like we're running up against similar limits.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're completely different limits.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about consumption.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're probably too good at promoting consumption in our societies and feeding that.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it seems almost uh uh strange at this point how much uh we want to fill our lives with consumption rather than other things.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: But the, you know, we are running into similar um similar inertia in our economies and in our societies, and our elites seem to be atrophying in the similar in a similar way to what happened under Grashnev.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: What one very striking feature is the average age of the elite.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's it's become very obvious now.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: I know people uh if we're roughly the same age, which I think we are, um we always talk about boomers.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's like the perennial uh shadow of the boomer.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um we don't hate all boomers, obviously, uh like my parents, but you know, the the boomers are like becoming a problem um because they're too old and their ideas are shot.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it feels very similar to the Brezhnev era.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the issue is that um if we use the analogy, um, the Brezhnev era did see a new um bunch of leaders emerge, uh like Gorbachev and the people who are uh pushing for reforms like perestrogia and so on.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And um it ultimately didn't work and the system collapsed.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm open-minded about where we go next, but the longer it's a um it's path dependent, as economists say, the longer we stay on a path of instability, economic stagnation, inability to discuss ideas, um, you know, what's going wrong, all these like ideological third rails that like just seem to be, I don't know if you've noticed, I assume you have, more of them appear every few days.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, oh, don't touch that taboo, and it's like, okay.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then like three weeks later, it's like there's four more, and you're like, uh, this could become a problem because uh at a certain point we won't be allowed to talk about anything.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so with that kind of proliferation of of taboos and third rails and so on, um, it does increasingly feel like we could be on a path, as I said, it's path dependent.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the longer we stay on that path, the more likely it is that uh Parastrica might not work.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's my concern.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's let's dig into the state of things economically uh in amongst the Western nations.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that we can we can broadly see within the economic data that that shows the struggles that Western nations are are currently undergoing?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the first thing I'd say is it's different strokes for different folks.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: The problems in Europe are different from the problems in America.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: But let's talk about the general picture first of all, I think.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so basically, when capitalism, modern consumer capitalism emerged probably in the uh pre-war, interwar period, but really in its modern form and post the second world war, we saw incredibly rapid uh growth uh in the 1950s, 1960s.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um it hit a stagnationary block in the 1970s.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um we could discuss that for a very long time, we won't, but basically we kind of got out of that block in the 1980s, 1990s with the new economy, the so-called new economy, but growth rates were much lower in the new economy.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that was basically pitched by the managerial elite that we talked about earlier as being um as being a sort of a stable uh equilibrium of growth.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you might have seen 4% growth in the 1950s, 1960s.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're getting 2% growth, or maybe it's 3-6, whatever you want to call it.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, everything's fine and we'll chug on like this.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: They called it the Great Moderation.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of started to break down a little bit uh when the dot-com bubble burst in 1999-2000, and it became clear that like there was some instability in this system.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't this placid Nirvana um end of history kind of Fukiyama vision of the economy.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, you could still say, ah, that was only a little stock market bubble.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't get a Great Depression, we didn't even get a bad recession.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, all that was blown out of the water by 2008.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Formative experience in my life, probably in yours as well.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that was a real hit to the system.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: That that be that it became clear that this uh model actually didn't work too well.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And people had debate spent about 10 years debating that um why it didn't work.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Those were an interesting 10 years and actually quite productive.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um since 2008, Western economies have been kind of stagnant.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Not fully, the United States still appears to be growing, although the growth there is very unequal and very unusual in a lot of ways.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure if I really believe the GDP figures fully anymore, increasingly.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's a whole different discussion.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: But even there, growth has been a lot lower.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Europe's been pretty much almost completely stagnant.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're facing down.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we should say that those are deep structural trends.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what are they driven by?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: I would say boil it right down, they're probably driven by trade imbalances in the world.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And again, our managerial came to the same conclusion.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Savings got in China, this is what Bernanke said, and so on.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: But look, there are different interpretations of that.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: But let's say that there are these global imbalances in the system and that they're driving financial instability and stagnation in the West, also tied to deindustrialization and so on.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: The trade imbalances are there due to the fact that factories are going abroad.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, since the pandemic, or especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions and all this craziness, things have really started to turbocharge.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what's happened is something that was kind of the nightmare scenario for people who adhere to my kind of vision or view of how the global economy works and what the problems are, that all the underlying fragilities in that system would start to be exposed really quick.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that is what we're now living through.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's we're we're on the scary part of the ride, right?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: We've been going up click, click, click, click.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're on the scary part of the ride.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and if something doesn't change, it could get really rough.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the main things to highlight there are, as I said, different strokes for different folks.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Europe, the main the main issue, there are many, but the main issue is energy.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh energy prices are too high because Russian pipe gas has been cut off due to the war, due to the sanctions, counter sanctions, Nord Stream explosion, etc.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they can't get access to cheap energy.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: It is currently deindustrializing the continent.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I referred to Draghi's report that was out yesterday.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: The European Commission seemed to want to lie about it.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: They seem to want to pretend that the competitiveness problem has something to do with I can.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Go into the report.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've just spent all day reading it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Nonsense.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: The core reason is high energy prices.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now there are other issues, but if you don't get high energy prices fixed, you're not going to fix the other issues.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: So they can't touch that because a third rail, a taboo, has has come up about Nord Stream and about Russia and so on, right?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not allowed to talk about that.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Then in the US, the um the key problems haven't actually manifested themselves.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: There are some deep structural problems in the economy.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Biden administration has clearly overspent with the Inflation Reduction Act and so on.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Been a lot of overspending, a lot of inefficient capital development that's going to have to be flushed out of the system.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Also a lot of uh weird action in real estate markets and private equity, but we'll see where that goes.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Could be another financial crisis.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: But really, the kind of five to ten year trend that the US is facing down now is potential dedollarization.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is again, due to the war, they seized the Russian reserves, the Russian reserve assets, thereby rendering the uh US dollar as having massive geopolitical risk for anyone who wants to hold it in reserve.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so foreign central banks from everyone from China to India to Poland, close ally of the United States, Poland, are buying up massive amounts of gold.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the writing's on the wall.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're buying the most.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: In 2022, they bought the most gold since 1967.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And if that date means anyone to anyone, it's when the gold standard dollar started to collapse, 1970, 67 to 1971.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing similar levels of gold buying right now.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: That US dollar system props up a lot of things, one of them being the US trade deficit and therefore the standard of living of the average American.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've done some work on it to suggest it's by no means accurate, but it could it could prop up living standards by up to 20, 25% in the United States.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's unrealistic.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the United States needs to deal with that.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's a very difficult problem to deal with.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then just really quickly to the UK, because not because I'm separating between it and Europe, you know, due to Brexit or anything like that, but just because it's a slightly uh separate economic structure to the European Union.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Britain's having all the problems it wants because it's already deindustrialized.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: It deindustrialized first under Thatcher and then especially under Tony Blair.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's got one of the uh most minimal, for the size of its economy, it's got one of the smallest manufacturing sectors in the world, if not the smallest.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been completely reliant on somewhere, I believe we used to work adjacent to, which is the city of London.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that props up living standards in the country um through financial capital inflows.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've I've been telling people over the past two years, um, I ask the question, I say, do you know what the uh what the what the term for the US dollar uh British sterling pair among traders is?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's called uh cable, and it's called cable because the um because it was the first uh tran it was the first uh uh trans, I think it was transcontinental currency trade was run under the under the Atlantic using a telegram cable, I think, in the early 19th century, and they called the pair cable.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's also got a metaphorical value, doesn't it?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's a cable that's holding the sterling up, and that cable is the US dollar.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: The sterling is a US dollar adjacent currency.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's why the Bank of England can't lower rates unless the Fed lowers rates.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're tied, they're tied in terms of their monetary policy, not as violently as the European central bank.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's a single currency.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there's no currency peg between the uh sterling and the US dollar.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: But you'll see the Bank of England can't move without the Federal Reserve moving.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the power all flows one way.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a cable, it's a one-way cable.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so um the UK is facing down multiple problems at once.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's already experienced a deindustrialization much harsher than the United States.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And its entire living standards and structure is tied to the dollar, the dollarized US economy and the predominance in US in world monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, and at the same time, Britain's effectively bankrupt.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we're all, you know, different strokes for different strokes.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sad to say, having lived there for a long time, the UK's got the worst of it currently.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'd say Europe has the second worst of it, and the United States is still the tallest dwarf, as we used to say.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Dear classmate John here.
• 26:12
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• 26:16
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• 26:24
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• 26:27
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• 26:40
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• 26:43
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• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: For at risk of getting derailed here, and I'm certainly not asking you to nail down some uh reindustrialization policy, but I very recently had Peter Hitchens on, and Peter and his inimitable style had had said that there almost seems to be no hope of any kind of industrialization of the UK.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: It seems to be all but lost now.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I it made me think about an interview I saw with the CEO of Ineos, the the chemical manufacturer Jeremy Ratcliffe, who said, as a Brit that he would want to do much more investment in the country, but it's quite impossible when the energy costs five times the amount.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: So throwing a few things together in uh uh in the sky and seeing if they fit.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose we've got a Labour government now committed to uh a renewable energy strategy.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: They seem to have uh that they seem to be making noises to to calm some of the nuclear projects that were there, they've obviously stopped drilling in the North Sea.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um does it does it appear that that is taking us down a route of a continued reliance upon just imports and no self-reliance?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And also, what would actually need to happen if a country like the United Kingdom wanted to re-industrialise?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of policy levers would it have to pull on and and decide and what would it have to turn its back on?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because as someone from the northeast of England, uh I was running the Great North Run on the weekends and uh it finishes in South Shields on the banks of the the River Tyne, once one of the most industrial ports uh the the world had, and I couldn't help but walking along the the walk walk along the high street and notice as I do every time I walk around northern towns, is just how how there's this faded sense of grandeur, but now it's almost this um uh this tired, uh broken, empty place, and uh you you kind of walking amongst the ghosts of the past, and I I can't help but wonder whether there's a way of getting to something a little bit more self-respecting in the future.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: What what would we have to do?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean I worked a little bit on industrial policy after I got out in finance.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to some people around the Tory party who were interested in a couple MPs there, the new conservatives, if anyone remembers, before the collapse time.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and look, uh reindustrialization is hard enough.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about the positives in a minute, but it's one of those things, again, like I said, we're piling up third rails, like things we're not allowed to talk about.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're also kind of piling up problems.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: The two things are inherently related, as far as I can tell.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like reindustrialization, if we were sitting here in 2019 for Britain, was already very difficult, right?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll we'll go into what the challenges were in a minute and talk about maybe what could potentially be done.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: But the the point is, as you said, the energy prices then went up after 2022, after the Russian gas was cut off to the European market.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: And unless something changes, that's permanent because the UK is effectively buying LNG rather than pipe gas.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't work quite like that, but uh the market susses out the prices in Europe to that effect.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're buying gas that's 40% more expensive.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, you've got these ideologically ingrained like obsessions among governments, bipartisans, as far as I can tell, although labor a worse, to like shut down nuclear plants because like I don't know, Starmer's dad was like at a protest in 81 that was probably like funded by the Soviets or something.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's weird, completely weird ideological beliefs.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and like, you know, I saw a video the other day of like the Germans demolishing a nuclear power station.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you guys are deindustrializing.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're like, there's a madness.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's a madness here that like I don't know how to reason with.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm always assuming when I'm saying, like, let's do a reindustrialization policy, that I'm dealing with rational people.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're watching that, you're like, well, you can't actually assume that.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that's problem number one.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: They need to get the energy sorted.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, now that might happen of its own accord because it's ultimately Germany's decision.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if Germany decides to turn on the Nord Stream or whatever, like that's it, it goes back to normal.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not Britain's decision, actually.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, Britain could at the margin, like if it wanted its own independent source, it would have to go nuclear, but that takes ages to come online.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: And coal, which if you think nuclear is controversial, let me introduce you to coal.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Advantage of coal is you can get a generator up in about two to three years.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to call your Chinese friends, maybe even 18 months, actually, you can get a, but it'll probably be a bit dirty.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's plenty of coal in Britain, and even if you don't want to go deep shaft mining, you can buy pretty cheap coal from uh Australia.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so so those are the options in terms of energy, but like there's no movement on it, and the current government is in for five years, and in five years the damage done is going to be insane.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, to be try and be a bit more productive, um, although sadly that is the reality, um, you'd need for an industrial programme, you'd need some sort of an import substitution, as far as I can tell.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what you'd need to do is you'd need to select industries that used to be in Britain but are outsourced, and you'd have to bring them back by um subsidizing the relative prices.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let me give you my favorite example is toasters, right?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: So if you buy a toaster in Britain today, you can get one of two models.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can get lots of models, but broadly speaking, you get one of two models.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: You can get the fancy high-tech one, probably from Germany or from Scandinavia, or you can get a cheap one, the technology of which is becoming increasingly good, actually, from China.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Chinese ones these days are a lot better than if you grow up in the you know, late 90s, you'll remember the complete garbage you got then.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: You actually get quite good ones now from China.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh Britain does make Rolls-Royce engines.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm pretty sure they can make a toaster.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's a dirt dearth of engineering talents.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: There is a dearth of engineering talent, and secondary education and uh tertiary education needs to be restructured if it wants to re-industrialize.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, in theory, you could pull in, for example, Indian engineers if you're if you're offering high enough wages.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: So what you'd need to do is basically have a replacement.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say that the difference between a Chinese toaster and a British toaster, assuming we can't compete with German toasters, which I think is reasonable.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, toaster is just a metaphor for all sorts of tech.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you you compete with the Chinese one, and let's say that the cost differential for production is, I don't know, 40% or something like that in terms of wage costs or price or whatever.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so you subsidize it to that effect.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And what that does is it closes your trade deficit because the imported toasters just disappear and they're replaced with toasters on the domestic market.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now note that what I'm advocating here is really low tech.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying like uh people today are like, well, we should subsidize chip production to become the leaders in chip production.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is complete economic garbage.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is complete nonsense.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Look, being a chip producer is geostrategically important.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like the Americans want to control the chips on China because they want to control China.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but those are those are geopolitical games.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Those are like uh, those are like um Doctor Strange Glove stuff.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: And to be honest with you, as much as people like playing them, they don't matter as much as the people playing them think they do.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: What actually matters for economies is is is the more meat and potato stuff, I'm afraid.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I, you know, all that stuff about chip production, I'm kind of like, eh, whatever, you're probably not going to impact it that much.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not against subsidization of chip factories or whatever.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: But building a bunch of chip factories isn't going to close your trade deficit.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: Open up your trade statistics account, and you'll see that your trade deficit's full of like jumpers and toasters.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: And like you can actually substitute them quite easily, like as long as you're willing to spend some money on it.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And now, how you get access to that money with a broke country is kind of difficult as well.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: But in theory, if you want it to be really Keynesian and adventurous, you could set up a subsidization investment bank that was backed by the Bank of England.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we can have a whole debate about whether that would cause inflation or not.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you could probably do it with minimal inflation effects.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem, again, is at a certain point, you can't just subsidize everything into existence.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: And without access to cheap energy, I don't really see how you can get around this.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the subsidies would either have to be so big, or my worry would be that they might start to create energy shortages if you had um you know, energy is expensive because there's less, and but like that, supply and demand does work in energy markets.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you if you engage in the subsidies while you have underlying energy shortages that are being um uh that are being manifesting through high prices, you might get um energy shortages and stuff.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is it worth a shot for a really adventurous government?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, maybe, but you know, you could just have the bond markets freak out or something.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: So so I think that's broadly how you'd reindustrialize.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: I can't think of any other way.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Just one more point on it.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: Devaluing sterling will not work.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sterling has been in uh a downward spiral since 1945.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think it used to be six dollars to the pound when after after 1945.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: So sterling's been coming down constantly, and the trade deficit continues to open up.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now we can't go into all the details of why that is, but I just want to be really clear.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Some countries' devaluation works for them.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, Britain, it does not work.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, to my mind, um uh without an extreme of like an 80% collapse in the sterling, I think any sterling decline will only uh feed through by higher import prices and inflation.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, to my mind, it's industrial um policy or bust.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've thought that for a very long time, but now it's energy policy is step one.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to get to step one, get your energy up and running, figure out how you're gonna finance it.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you're broke and you don't want to raise taxes, you might have to do some funny Keynesian investment bank thing.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then is that going to spoop the markets?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of problems.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean that would be a kind of a blueprint that I wouldn't fully endorse, but you know, it kind of sketches out at least at least you'll be able to see where the weak points are.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's fair.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Energy, I think, is safe to say, is one of those hot button topics that isn't going away and has been spoken about a lot for good reason.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it often gets blinded by those who are absolutely committed to decarbonisation of some sort and everything that entails, and closing down the idea of oil, gas, coal, nuclear.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's for sure.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose that's one of our big conundrums as a as a European uh league of societies to to figure out if we're not to oversee the the collapse of uh our societies in some way, or at least to the point where it it fades into irrelevance, or there's a creeping normal normalcy of declining living standards, of which we've we've obvious obviously experienced quite a lot of, but because it's happened over such a long period of time, it's it feels slightly less noticeable as you're going along.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you when you look at it from point A to point B, you realize how big it's been.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Last five years have been pretty bad.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've certainly noticed that even through the social mobility of new jobs and higher pay, and realizing that you're effectively just treading water is it's been quite something.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I'm I'm not even the the type of person who is on the average income for a a British uh a British person.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: So if even I'm saying that, uh not that I'm any city high flyer or anything, is that's that's a uh a damning indictment of those uh those running things.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: The the other topic which you can't get moved for for, and and rightly so.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's it's it's unprecedented.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm I suppose I'm betraying my own views here, but it's it's hard not to, is immigration.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I guess there's been an orthodoxy over the years, which to stop people talking about the cultural things, and that's not for us to go into right now.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it often talked about us needing lots of new people for GDP, whether it was national GDP or whether it's to do the jobs that we won't do, all of those things.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that there's also an orthodoxy in there which I suppose has been around perhaps since the 19th century, you might be able to correct me, which is more people equals better economies.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so everyone's been obsessed with this idea of growing populations and doing it by any means necessary.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose I I wonder, and I and I know you you are concerned also with demographic collapse, but but I do wonder whether whether what we're what what we are doing, these orthodoxies that we're relying upon, are self-defeating in some way if not thought through particularly well, because as as some of the data, the limited data seems to show, is that immigration is not the economic uh Eldorado that um it had been painted out to be.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um data is now increasingly being shut down and and uh put to one side so people can't see the costs of it, though it is springing up in other parts of Europe to show different contributions, etc.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we we've got a growing uh welfare state to to pay for a lot of immigrants and the the um pressure on public services, etc.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so there seems to be this self-defeating set of policy decisions, which mean that you have a growing national debt to service new people in the hope that they're gonna grow the GDP, but the data shows the GDP is not really growing.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to know whether whether we really do need more people for all of those things and what sensible immigration policies might actually look like uh to contribute economically, uh, forgetting the the cultural question, which is important, but for another day.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean I I know you said before that you had my co-author on apparently a long time ago, or at least relatively long time ago, before our paper was out, Paul Moreland.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think we share a few.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we work together, so we share views in common on this.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to be really nuanced about the whole thing.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing I'd highlight is, yeah, the cultural thing, lots of people are discussing that, whatever, probably not that interesting.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have anything to contribute on it, really.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say um, you know, feeding into the cultural thing, and it's a huge um deal, is political stability.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Britain's just gone through a bunch of riots that were effectively anti-immigration riots.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Ireland has too.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: Ireland was a year early on that.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: The cause of them was identical.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was the stabbing of some children.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: How on earth, something that's completely baffled me taking place in the demo um taking part in the demographic and immigration debates with some very prominent people, uh, including the editor of a certain well-known magazine that was very controversial, is that um they don't seem to think about political stability.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, it's just the most obvious thing on the planet, right?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, you're like, I'm not particularly anti-immigrant in theory, I guess.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've been an immigrant most of my life, but like it seems obvious to me, like, okay, how many immigrants, like first generation immigrants, can you have in a country with a with a political instability?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: And like, just scale it.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is it 80, is it, is it 20%?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is it 80?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can you have 80% of just random people from all over the world in the country and 20% of the native born?
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: And like, oh yeah, you'll have political instability.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's absurd.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, to me, that's pretty much absurd.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's nothing, there's nothing racial or anything, it's nothing to do with that.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like they won't speak the same languages, like they won't adhere to the same legal structures.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone will have to get used to like what what are you talking about?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, it's like that's the interesting question.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the core question from an empirical point of view.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the here's the red pill on it, I guess.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: The the only society that we have an example of successful integration of very large migration, modern Western society.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: I am abstracting from uh uh the settlement of colonies such as Australia and so on.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, that becomes at some point like 95% immigrant, but that's a settlement of a of a colony.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's no pre, well, there's a very small pre-existing culture there, but it's kind of wiped out, I guess.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um, and the same in America in the colonial period, I suppose.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I mean an established society.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: The the one example we have is America, um, which went from being a kind of a white Anglo Saxon Protestant society uh to being a multi religious society, I suppose you'd say, in the late 19th and early 20th century.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it had mainly Germans and English.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: And small amount of French down in the south.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was flooded first with Irish and then with Italians and some Jews from Eastern Europe.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it successfully integrated them, but it was hard.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: The way that it's advertised today is really misleading.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all those Al Capone films you'll see, that's integration happening right there.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: It gave rise to street gangs.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was Irish mafia, Italian mafia, there was Jewish mafia.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, everyone, like, there was a big problem with like even even Catholics, Italians and Irish were Catholics, but like you couldn't go to the other person's church.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the integration period was difficult.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: They had a whole theory of it called the triple melting pot.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: None of this is discussed anymore.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: We just gloss over it and say, oh, yeah, it was super easy.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't easy.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: It took a lot, and it took a lot of government effort to do it.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, here's the big red pill.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: The maximum amount of immigrants per share of the population that America in that period ever reached was 15%.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: So my my argument and Paul's argument in the paper that we did a few years ago is we've only tested 15%.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Anything beyond that's experimental.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we know from that 15% that it's possible, but it's hard.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're pretty much in most Western countries at 15%.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, Ireland's at 20% now.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we haven't even begun the process of integration.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's very clear.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: And yet we don't even question it.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we're saying, like, so can what can we go up to?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Can we go up to 40?
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like without integrating the previous 20%.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not when I talk to people about this, no one wants to answer any of these questions.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, what do you mean put a number on it?
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then they'll like call you a name or something.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I'm just saying put a number on it.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so we did the ARC paper that Moreland and I did, we showed that on current trajectory, due to birth low birth rates and so on, if Britain wants to continue with its current economic model that you are referring to of pretty much consistent migration, that by 2080, I think nearly 60% of the population would be first generation immigrant.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's going to happen.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't think that's politically stable.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: And every single like pro-immigration person on the right, on the left that I've put that to, 60%, none of them said that it was stable because it's prima facile, not stable.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the that's the issue as I see it.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to be very clear.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry for that very long-winded answer, but this isn't usually discussed in in uh in in a level of specific specificity specificity that I like as an economist, and I think it's useful useful to get out there.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you're judging any policy based on that backdrop from my perspective.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the flip side of that is that um it's what Paul says.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: We don't even really have to talk about economic growth.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Look, all economic growth in Britain is run on immigration, right?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't I don't mean that like uh facetiously.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean like there's zero productivity growth, and so everything comes through labor force growth.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's only two variables that impact growth labor force growth, productivity growth, right?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: When you look at it that way.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: And as you say, there's no but there's no economic growth, Philip.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there's none.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: But if there was no labor force growth, the economy will be like minus 2%.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: It will be shrinking.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: So no, we can have all debate.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Can you have a shrinking economy per capita GDP, Japan's model, and so on?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: We can have that debate.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you want my takeaway from that, you are trading off per capita GDP growth, fairly large amounts.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: But Paul's point is more profound.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's that at a certain point, as the population ages, you will face a labor shortage, and it'll probably become most apparent in your care homes.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul is just saying, are you going to let your granny not be able to go to the toilet, or are you going to let the immigrant in?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to let the immigrant in.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we're already seeing that.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Japan's tried to close off its society from immigration despite the extreme aging in its population.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: And in the past four years, they've started issuing visas.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it started with care workers from the Philippines because they couldn't staff these care homes.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there were all these promises that robots would do it.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: None of us come to help me.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: They issued the visas.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now they're issuing visas for their export industry, because they're starting to see a shortage of workers there.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what Japan proves is that even if you have a very insular society, um, which doesn't want outsiders, frankly.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm not judging Japanese culture, but that's what it's like.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you have that, when push comes to shove and you have staffing shortages in the care homes and then in the export industries, the government will issue the visas.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, it'll be very interesting to see what happens in Japan because I think the population's going to find that even very hard.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Even though it's Filipinos, which are fairly local, and uh, I'm not sure who the fact I think they're getting in, I don't know, they're getting in for factors, might be Filipinos too.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it'll be very interesting to see how that develops.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: But my point is that when push comes to shove, you'll probably, you'll probably, you know, accept the immigration rather than the labor shortages.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, really, to my mind, I mean, Paul and I kind of advocate um a family policy and trying to get domestic birth rates up.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a whole different question.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess that's my nuanced take on it.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: I will say this the of all the bad ideas that the boomers came up with, having tiny families was like the one that we're gonna we're gonna curse them for most because it's gonna be like this enormous, rolling political issue.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing I'd say about it is because we're experiencing this as a massive political issue right now.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have been for a few years now.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what's really tragic about it is, and I'm not saying this judgmentally, but it takes up all political energy.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, like you're interested in industrial policy and stuff, but you know what most people are interested in.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, oh, it's about immigration.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, yeah, I get it, I understand.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to talk that down, but there's other problems.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's very, very hard to get any focus on any of the problems when your society has become very divided on that issue.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Divisive societies are hard to rule in a rational way, and it feels like that's what we're tilting.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry, another kind of black pill doomer answer, but I think it's honest.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's let's go with honesty, even if it it comes across as black pill.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I think it it had a an appropriate uh tone to it, which took it out of the realms of being black pill.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: There are some who deliver it very seriously and in in low, straight voices, and uh and it feels like the world is is absolutely doomed.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, I think you you gave a a pretty balanced take with with where things are at.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose some of the pulling on a few of the threads you you brought up there, you you talked about how you've got these models about current immigration trends that if they remain where they're at, then you could start seeing these majority uh minority societies, or shall I say, you you've got more more immigrants than than native-born.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that freaks lots of people out.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I would imagine if you showed that data to any nation on the planet, regardless of whether they're from Western or non-Western, that they would in some way end up freaking out in their own way and there'd be responses to that.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I suppose what I've been interested in in seeing is um how there have been these orchestrated, whether bottom-up and amongst smaller actors, little interest groups or or increasingly prominent people that are starting to push the Overton window toward bounds of acceptable discourse around why the current model of immigration isn't a good idea, the cultural issues that they're facing.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I guess what I'm saying is I think these things are bubbling up so much now that even though there's all of these attempts to keep um the populist parties and whatever else they're representing down, is that it feels like it's almost going to be unstoppable insofar as people definitely want something done about immigration.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say almost to the point of to hell with all of the other stuff, you come up with the answers, but we don't want that.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and I suppose you talked a little bit about how in the economic world we're on this ratcheting up, like we're on a roller coaster waiting for the big dip to happen.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels like it's happening on on various different levels.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just wonder if policymakers, politicians, you know, for all of their self-serving reports saying we just need more bureaucracy and technology and whatever to fix it, is whether they're effectively going to have to, whether they agree with it or not, whether they want to give any concessions to those populist movements or the people who are railing against current models, they're just going to have to come up with answers and come up with them quickly.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if that means dropping these taboos, these these shibboleths by the wayside and making policy decisions around energy or whatever else to bring things back on track and to uh effectively give something back to most people instead of just continuing on down that path.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I wonder if that's that's gonna be gonna have to be the thing that happens because in the end, what I've think I've noticed is most people care about maintaining their own uh their their own livelihoods and status for those who are running things.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if it it starts getting to the point where that is very quickly put under pressure and there is almost no turning back, that they will start to make decisions to that that miraculously start to bring things to bear in the direction people might want.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe that's too much of an optimistic take.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh is it have you got any historical vignettes that suggest that might be one way out of this?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I there is going to be a response, but you know, some of the issues are so complex.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I talk to a lot of my friends in the Conservative Party, you know, on the right of the Conservative Party, who are very uh focused on the immigration issue, and like I get it, and that's what their voters want, and like that's what everybody wants.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's inevitably going to happen.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd even say, among the kind of cappuccino liberals, I think they're becoming aware that the immigration might be too much.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's becoming like you can't ignore riots and stuff.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: You have to, you know, if if if you're even if you if you have the bare bones of uh civilization, like you're like, okay, I don't want social disorder.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's dangerous.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people still have that instinct.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not so concerned that um, for example, immigration won't be addressed.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh, but it's it's a it's really hard to address.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I've always been saying to my friends who are dealing with that in British politics and in Irish politics for that matter, you have to tell people at the very least, at the very least, you have to explain to people that there's a trade-off between economic growth and immigration now, because of the low fertility rates.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the public need to be made to understand that.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't just mean that from the point of view of being the harsh, Kear Starmer-like civil servant who comes along and does the mean thing.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not in favor of that.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean that in the sense that if you don't explain it, what'll happen is let's say you, you know, you cut down immigration levels over five years over the course of a government, and you start getting negative economic growth, and people start to feel it in their pockets, and there's labor shortages, for example.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't you haven't explained that.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: So people will be like, well, fix the economy, or we're gonna throw you out.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like voters are very voters want the pony and you know the dinosaur as well, you know.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: So like you have to explain that there's a trade-off here because there is a trade-off.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's no magic being solution to that.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I mean the energy question is much more complicated because you have to get over all these ideological hurdles and so on.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, the um the energy question doesn't actually have a great deal of trade-offs to it, if you see what I mean.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, turning on the Russian Nord Stream gas, okay, that's a whole different issue.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: But as I said, that's in Germany's hands.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even an uh outside Germany issue.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, firing up coal power plants or building nuclear, there's not actually a trade-off there.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it'll cost money, sure.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: But like, there's not that much of it.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's environmental this and that, but there's not that clear of the trade-off.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you can just do that, but the ideological hurdles to it are so low.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: So um the funny thing is, I'd be more optimistic that uh the immigration issue will be solved in the coming years.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think even the Labour government are committed to doing something about it.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but my concern there is that if people don't understand the trade-offs, that people will complain that they got the pony but not the dinosaur, and you might not be able to manage it properly.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas with energy policy, I'm much more pessimistic that we'll actually get anything over the line because of the deep ideological commitment to it.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: And yet at the same time, it's a much simpler problem.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we're in this kind of backwards world.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really know what to do about it.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: I guess you just take your victories as they come.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to immigration, I really would just ask people to consider the trade-offs.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not coming at it from the point of view clearly of the average economist or city guy who's like, well, if you don't let them in, the houses won't get built.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't I don't think like that.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think more holistically, but the average city guy or the construction guy, he has a point.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't let them in, there may be labor shortages and there will be lower economic growth, at least in the short term.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so that has to be, I just really um I think people need to be open and honest about that.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: Be and I don't again, I don't mean that just because, oh, well, the people have to know, otherwise, they're in a state of self-delusion.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: I just mean that like if you don't do that and if you don't communicate it properly, and if you don't figure out a way to talk to people about that, they'll they'll set their expectations of what to expect too high.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: So my ideal on that is obviously family policy, and I think some uh medium scale restrictions in the as you get the family policy off the ground.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's all much harder than it sounds, trust me.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, that's the broad approach.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: But in that medium term period, you're gonna have to be honest about people that that economic growth is gonna be slower.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there may be some labor shortages, um, you may have to staff key sectors, care homes strikes me as a key one, maybe healthcare.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: Have a debate about what sectors you can let have labor shortages and what you can't.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: So um so it's it's hard, but it's not impossible, but it's hard.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we're coming off the starting line with just the kind of a uh bunch of chaos behind us, and we're only kind of starting to clamor at the ideas of how to how to grab at them.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: But Phil, thank you.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: Before I let you go, because we got started a little bit late, but I do want to uh ask one more question, which is one I ask all of my guests, and that's what have you changed your mind on in the course of your life that you once held to be untouchable?
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was that was the way of things.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: And and what was it that made you change your mind?
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if there was anything I've considered ultimate taboo.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not uh much of a taboo guy, but um I think I think recently and importantly, and I've changed my mind on it now twice in the past like seven years, is the EU.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I was quite skeptical.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: The EU after seeing the Troika crisis, uh the Eurozone crisis.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, my own country was controlled by the Troika for like three years in an austerity government.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I thought that was very suspect.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't think the economic management was good.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then, the as I talk about we have the show multipolarity of the podcast, a multipolar world starts to emerge.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: China, Russia rising, not clear that the United States and Europe have the same strength that they did, a new world order in effect.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems to me immediately logical, despite my reservations about the European Union, having a strong bloc, you know, a European Union there to face off against the United States, because I hate to tell your listeners, they're not always your friends.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they are, but sometimes they're not.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, to face off against the United States, to China on the other hand, Russia on the other hand, India rising up, to have a bloc there that's bigger than the sum of its parts makes a lot of sense.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the issue now is that we're seeing these new developments in Europe itself, the authoritarian tendencies we're starting to see coming out around the French elections, some really weird stuff coming out of the Commission where they just like.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I'm sorry to bring up the report again, but it's that is Soviet tier to me.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I was writing something today where I called it economical senkoism.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I really think it's Europe is like, I think I said on Twitter or something, Europe like the USSR could die by its lies.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like that it is becoming increasingly clear that Europe is is becoming this place where like everything is lied about, like constantly.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very hard.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_01: In the past, in the past two months or so, I've become so disillusioned with it.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I just am thinking like the Commission has become it's become like a Politburo.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's it's the all the anti-European people said the worst things about the European Commission, like it's like the Polar Bureau and stuff.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I was always like, I know it's bad, but it's not that bad.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's like, oh wow, they're putting out like up as down papers with Mario Draghi's signature on them.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and Mario Draghi's like, he's a serious economist.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why are you signing this Lysenkoism that says like protectionism increases the competition of your car manufacturers?
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what?
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, I'm so I'm I'm changing my mind.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: I uh you might have me back on next year and I'm I I have a little EU flag on, I'm justifying it or something, but but right now I'm going back and forth on it.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that that's a big one.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I don't want to make that as a trivial point because the EU is a massive, obviously, political issue for not just Europe, but for the United Kingdom.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I don't want to trivialise that at all.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, it's it's something, it's uh it's a it's a roller coaster romance with the EU.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, long may it continue.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: You need some spice in life, don't you?
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh and and Phil, what what if we we know you you're the the the host of the multicolored podcast.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: What else are you working on and where can people find you?
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um oh wow, so uh Twitter, everything's on Twitter at Philip Pilk at P H I L I P-I-L-K.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have a weekly column at Unheard.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's where you found my stuff.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um that that's all on my Twitter though.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: Multipolarity of the podcast is our geopolitics and economics show.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's got quite big now.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'd really encourage people to check it out.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of happy subscribers.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then finally, um, well, we'll be doing more dem demographic modeling with Paul Moreland.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have a paper coming out on the impact on the fiscal situation uh in the coming weeks, I think.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, next year I have a book coming out, which I haven't written a book in like 10 years.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um, and it's called The Collapse of Global Liberalism.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh people can probably get a sense of what that's about.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that should be fun.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's coming out uh in May, I think.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: This explains why we both had scheduling issues over the summer.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're a busy chap.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh busy.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I wish you all the best with it and definitely hope to have you back on.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: Phil, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: Take good care, keep fighting the good fight, and until next time.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, John.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: Good interview.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: Here, I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.