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Why The Men Aren't Working Anymore · 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
0:04
Speaker 2: Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
0:07
Speaker 2: and Jim Garrity of National Review.
0:10
Speaker 1: Free martinis coming up.
0:13
Speaker 3: So glad you're with us for the Monday edition of
0:15
Speaker 3: the Three Martini Lunch. Jim Garrity is away here in
0:18
Speaker 3: his place Charlie Cook, senior editor at National Review Online.
0:20
Speaker 3: He's also the host of the Charles C. W.
0:22
Speaker 1: Cook Podcast.
0:23
Speaker 3: And Charlie, it's always great to have you back.
0:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me.
0:26
Speaker 3: Well. One of the things the Democrats love to try
0:28
Speaker 3: and tell us, especially if there's a Socialist in the
0:31
Speaker 3: race that they don't think can win in November, is
0:33
Speaker 3: how different, how different the Democratic Party is from the
0:36
Speaker 3: radical agenda of the DSA and some others. But one
0:39
Speaker 3: of the things that's definitely gone mainstream in the Democratic
0:42
Speaker 3: Party is their desire to abolish the electoral college. This
0:46
Speaker 3: has flirt up a couple of times, and namely after
0:48
Speaker 3: Bush beat Gore in two thousand and Trump beat Hillary
0:51
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen, but they never seen to have a
0:53
Speaker 3: problem with it when the Democrat wins the electoral college. Nonetheless,
0:57
Speaker 3: Andy Basheer, the supposedly moderate Governor of Kentucky on The
1:00
Speaker 3: Nation Sunday, talking about why he thinks it's time for
1:03
Speaker 3: the electoral College to go.
1:05
Speaker 2: So a fix the darn government constitutional amendment. It is time.
1:09
Speaker 2: It should outlaw partisan redistricting and enshrine part of the
1:12
Speaker 2: Voting Rights Act right there in the Constitution. It should
1:15
Speaker 2: create term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court, no
1:18
Speaker 2: more gaming those appointments. It should also overturn citizens United
1:23
Speaker 2: and I think call for direct elections of the president
1:27
Speaker 2: and the vice president. That could actually make things work,
1:30
Speaker 2: A big idea that would yes change government, but in
1:33
Speaker 2: a way enshrined in the Constitution where people would know
1:36
Speaker 2: it's going to get better.
1:37
Speaker 4: I didn't realize you support abolishing the electoral college. If
1:40
Speaker 4: you're saying direct election of the president and vice president.
1:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've said it a number of times. And it's
1:45
Speaker 2: because in Kentucky we will never see a candidate for
1:49
Speaker 2: president or vice president unless they're from here. Why because
1:52
Speaker 2: people just expect that it'll go one way or the other.
1:55
Speaker 2: It's the idea that someone would get elected not just
1:58
Speaker 2: knowing about seven states, but having to earn votes all
2:02
Speaker 2: over the United States. I certainly think it's time, So.
2:05
Speaker 3: Charlie, the electoral college was basically designed so smaller states
2:08
Speaker 3: wouldn't get trampled, So the governor of a smaller state
2:11
Speaker 3: not getting that. And secondly, I'm pretty sure no presidential
2:14
Speaker 3: candidates would still come to Kentucky.
2:16
Speaker 4: This is part of a general push on the left,
2:22
Speaker 4: and I feel comfortable including bashering this given that he's
2:26
Speaker 4: tied himself to it. That is indifferent to order in
2:31
Speaker 4: some cases, hostile towards the states. The electoral College, like
2:35
Speaker 4: the Senate, exists because this is the United States. We
2:40
Speaker 4: don't have a system like they have in Canada or
2:43
Speaker 4: Germany or Brazil. Even where the states are creations or
2:50
Speaker 4: subdivisions of the federal government, the states pre existed the
2:53
Speaker 4: federal government. Now, there are many ways in which the
2:55
Speaker 4: federal government is important, and I think there are some
2:58
Speaker 4: ways in which it became important to extend the federal government,
3:01
Speaker 4: most notably with civil rights.
3:03
Speaker 1: But the states.
3:06
Speaker 4: Combine together to elect the federal government. You can't invert that.
3:11
Speaker 4: That would be the equivalent of getting rid of the
3:14
Speaker 4: Senate at the presidential level.
3:16
Speaker 1: So I really dislike this.
3:19
Speaker 4: Move because I think it portends ill things for the
3:22
Speaker 4: country and would make us much more divided, not less.
3:25
Speaker 4: The specific argument he made there, I think is ridiculous.
3:28
Speaker 4: He says, well, only seven states would matter. That's the
3:31
Speaker 4: argument for the electoral College. Yes, that only seven states
3:36
Speaker 4: would matter if you got rid of it. In my
3:39
Speaker 4: time in America, let alone my lifetime, the states that
3:43
Speaker 4: matter in presidential elections have shifted quite dramatically. They're about
3:49
Speaker 4: to shift again with the Census of twenty thirty, which
3:52
Speaker 4: is going to push focus into the sun Belt and
3:56
Speaker 4: away from Midwestern states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, and
3:59
Speaker 4: with Scolsen and Minnesota. If you had a national popular vote,
4:05
Speaker 4: it would be the case that a handful of states
4:07
Speaker 4: decided the election, and unfortunately, one of those states would
4:11
Speaker 4: be California, which can't vote, it seems, without three weeks
4:16
Speaker 4: to count, the tally is afterwards, so the chances of
4:21
Speaker 4: us getting another Bush v.
4:23
Speaker 1: Gore would be extremely high.
4:26
Speaker 4: And we just saw this in California that they spend
4:31
Speaker 4: three weeks counting, so we wouldn't know who the president
4:35
Speaker 4: was most likely for three weeks. And if anyone tried
4:38
Speaker 4: to do something about that by pushing say voter ID, they'd.
4:42
Speaker 1: Get called a racist. So I think it's a.
4:45
Speaker 4: Good thing that our system is set up the way
4:48
Speaker 4: that it is, even aside from the fact that that
4:51
Speaker 4: is the beating heart of this country, which is that
4:54
Speaker 4: we are a federation of states and not the other
4:56
Speaker 4: way around.
4:57
Speaker 3: As I like to point out, there are fifty one
4:59
Speaker 3: different part popular votes that decide the electoral college every state.
5:03
Speaker 3: Whoever wins the popular vote gets those electoral votes, So
5:05
Speaker 3: it's it's not like the popular vote doesn't matter what
5:08
Speaker 3: they want, like you said, is for the huge blue states,
5:12
Speaker 3: California in particular, but also New York and maybe Illinois,
5:15
Speaker 3: because there's never been chicane or in Illinois, you know,
5:18
Speaker 3: and we'd be waiting on weeks. And you know, there
5:20
Speaker 3: are laws out there in California that allow ballot harvesting,
5:24
Speaker 3: and they send out ballots to everybody unsolicited. So I mean,
5:28
Speaker 3: the opportunity for mischief is certainly out there. And if
5:31
Speaker 3: you knew that the next presidency depended entirely on who
5:35
Speaker 3: racked up a bunch of popular votes in California, the
5:38
Speaker 3: incentive to do that would not be good. The other
5:41
Speaker 3: thing you mentioned, and I think it might be at
5:43
Speaker 3: play here, is the fact that the electoral college is
5:45
Speaker 3: shifting south, and so what are currently redder states are
5:49
Speaker 3: likely to get more electoral votes in the next census,
5:52
Speaker 3: and upper Midwest and some other areas New York, probably
5:54
Speaker 3: California are going to decrease, and so the electoral college
5:57
Speaker 3: is increasingly, at least for the moment at the democ
6:00
Speaker 3: that's disadvantage. So is that feeding into the urgency for
6:02
Speaker 3: them here?
6:03
Speaker 1: Well, I think it is.
6:04
Speaker 4: But you know what's odd about that coming from Basha
6:08
Speaker 4: is that a nation in which the Sun Belt plays
6:12
Speaker 4: a bigger role than our politics will be a nation
6:15
Speaker 4: that has a different politics. It will push both parties
6:20
Speaker 4: away from Midwestern or rust belt politics, and that will
6:26
Speaker 4: have consequences. Andy Basheer is the governor of Kentucky. Now,
6:31
Speaker 4: he's a very weak governor because he has a supermajority
6:34
Speaker 4: Republican legislature that can override his veto and does almost
6:37
Speaker 4: every time. But if I were Andy Basheer, I would
6:41
Speaker 4: be looking at that change in our politics that is
6:43
Speaker 4: coming and saying that's great, that's good for me. Andy
6:47
Speaker 4: Basher and the sort of politics that in other circumstances
6:51
Speaker 4: he claims to espouse, the sort of politics that we're
6:55
Speaker 4: going to get after twenty thirty, should, in theory be
6:58
Speaker 4: good for figures such as bashir Or or John oss Off,
7:02
Speaker 4: not your Bernie Sanders types.
7:05
Speaker 1: But he's going in the other direction. He's decrying it.
7:09
Speaker 4: He's saying, no, let's not shift the politics to the
7:13
Speaker 4: sun Belt, let's keep it in California, which.
7:16
Speaker 1: Is just utterly bizarre to me. For a guy from Kentucky,
7:19
Speaker 1: it makes no sense.
7:20
Speaker 3: I think he's trying to like just keep in touch
7:23
Speaker 3: with the crazies. He knows he needs the crazies to
7:25
Speaker 3: win if he ever becomes the nominee, which you won't,
7:27
Speaker 3: but he would need them. So I got to give
7:30
Speaker 3: him a few breadcrumbs over here, and then in the
7:33
Speaker 3: general election, I would try to sound as normal as possible,
7:36
Speaker 3: which is not easy for a Democrat.
7:38
Speaker 4: Well, it's also a bit weird, isn't it that the
7:39
Speaker 4: other person who came up this week and said we
7:41
Speaker 4: need to get the electric clogure and then said it
7:44
Speaker 4: will sound weird coming from me. It was Kamala Harris
7:46
Speaker 4: who lost the popular vote. Why would it sound weird
7:49
Speaker 4: coming from her. It's not as if she was Hillary Clinton.
7:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, she hasn't come out with the parade of excuses
7:55
Speaker 3: like Hillary Clinton did. Although Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris
7:58
Speaker 3: have both declared war on college. But at least Kamala
8:01
Speaker 3: didn't blame Jim Comey and women obeying their husbands and
8:05
Speaker 3: Russia and you know whatever. She had a long, waundry
8:08
Speaker 3: list of reasons why she lost. But Kamala seems more
8:12
Speaker 3: pathetic than Hillary did. But we'll see if she gets
8:16
Speaker 3: in for twenty twenty eight. I don't think she will.
8:17
Speaker 3: She knows she's going to lose, but we'll see, all right.
8:20
Speaker 3: But for a lot of people who think abolishing the
8:22
Speaker 3: electoral College or the Senate or radically changing the Supreme
8:26
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9:28
Speaker 3: Interesting story today is by the New York Post Editorial Board.
9:32
Speaker 3: The title is if we don't face why men are
9:35
Speaker 3: giving up on work, America's future is grim and if
9:38
Speaker 3: you look at some of the most recent unemployment statistics,
9:42
Speaker 3: the workforce participation rate continues to go down, and a
9:45
Speaker 3: lot of that is for men who should be working. Now.
9:49
Speaker 3: This is the worst written lead I've ever heard because
9:53
Speaker 3: of the wrong verb here, But for only the third
9:56
Speaker 3: time in US history, more women are working than men,
9:58
Speaker 3: and this profoundly abnormal state of affairs could become the
10:01
Speaker 3: new normal. If we doesn't they mean we don't face
10:04
Speaker 3: this slow moving social disaster crucially the other two times,
10:08
Speaker 3: we're both this century after the two thousand and eight
10:10
Speaker 3: financial meltdown and the twenty twenty lockdowns, and now it's
10:14
Speaker 3: happening without any obvious crisis to explain it, they say.
10:18
Speaker 3: The most likely explanation, we've all but lost clear paths
10:22
Speaker 3: towards responsible manhood, the economy's long shift from industrial to
10:26
Speaker 3: service sector employment. I guess you know, some of them
10:29
Speaker 3: are convinced, especially the ones who think they're a socialists,
10:32
Speaker 3: that the system is rigged against them, So why give
10:35
Speaker 3: all their hours to the man for what they think
10:37
Speaker 3: is not enough money? But Charlie, this is, like they said,
10:40
Speaker 3: not anything particularly new. So how do we get the men,
10:45
Speaker 3: young and middle aged to really fire up here?
10:47
Speaker 4: So I'm not an economist, and I'm not going to
10:49
Speaker 4: pretend that I know why this is happening. But one
10:51
Speaker 4: thing I do know is that we have not updated
10:57
Speaker 4: our conception of what is happening in America, and as
11:02
Speaker 4: a result of it, we're still fighting battles that have
11:06
Speaker 4: largely been one. And by this I mean that if
11:11
Speaker 4: you listen to the way in which advocacy groups talk,
11:17
Speaker 4: you would think that the biggest problem in America right
11:22
Speaker 4: now was sexism and that men, the patriarchy, if you will,
11:28
Speaker 4: were dominating all aspects of the economy, and that the
11:35
Speaker 4: work that needed to be done was to get women
11:37
Speaker 4: into those positions of responsibility.
11:41
Speaker 1: And it's just not true.
11:43
Speaker 4: If you look, for example, at college, more women now
11:49
Speaker 4: are going to college than men, and they're doing better
11:52
Speaker 4: than men in college. The most recent jobs report, as
11:56
Speaker 4: we're discussing, showed huge numbers of women being hired.
12:02
Speaker 1: Now, that's partly, I.
12:04
Speaker 4: Think, because of where the economy is growing, especially the
12:09
Speaker 4: healthcare sector.
12:12
Speaker 1: It's also because as we have regulated.
12:16
Speaker 4: The economy, as government has grown and become more intrusive,
12:20
Speaker 4: we've had a great need for HR in the private sector,
12:25
Speaker 4: and HR is dominated by women as well, and there's
12:28
Speaker 4: got to be some degree of manufacturing losses to it.
12:34
Speaker 4: What bothers me is that we just we haven't acknowledged this,
12:40
Speaker 4: And if I could draw an analogy, there was with
12:44
Speaker 4: very good reason, a real push started about twenty twenty
12:48
Speaker 4: five years ago to raise awareness for breast cancer. Breast
12:51
Speaker 4: cancer was under funded and a lot of people were
12:57
Speaker 4: unaware of the signs of it. That has been so successful.
13:03
Speaker 4: It's one of the great success stories in American healthcare,
13:06
Speaker 4: but we're still doing it. And if you look at
13:08
Speaker 4: a golf tournament, you know, or charity days, it's still
13:13
Speaker 4: often breast cancer. Well, actually, that fight to raise awareness
13:17
Speaker 4: has largely been one, and now a lot of the
13:20
Speaker 4: sort of cancers that people need to become more aware
13:24
Speaker 4: of affect men. And I think this is the same thing,
13:27
Speaker 4: which is that well meaning people have tried to fight
13:32
Speaker 4: certain issues and then they've done really really well at
13:34
Speaker 4: doing and then and then they haven't said, well, what's
13:36
Speaker 4: the next issue? And clearly this is the next issue,
13:39
Speaker 4: right is that is that men are not doing us
13:43
Speaker 4: well in school, they're not doing us well in the workplace,
13:47
Speaker 4: and they're dropping out of employment. And I don't quite
13:51
Speaker 4: know how you fix that because it sounds historically weird
13:56
Speaker 4: to sort of say, you know what the problem is
13:58
Speaker 4: white working class men. That obviously was not the problem
14:03
Speaker 4: for a lot of the twentieth century, but it is now.
14:06
Speaker 4: And I just hope as a country we're able to
14:08
Speaker 4: shift gears and get over our preconceptions, because if we're not,
14:13
Speaker 4: we're going to create a lot of very very unhappy people.
14:16
Speaker 3: Part of the problem is, you know, They talk a
14:18
Speaker 3: lot about how much the cost of everything has gone up,
14:21
Speaker 3: and so it's hard to rent an apartment, it's hard
14:23
Speaker 3: to buy a house, obviously, But the same story from
14:26
Speaker 3: the New York Post, the same editorial says one in
14:28
Speaker 3: five men aged twenty five to thirty four are still
14:31
Speaker 3: living at home, markedly more than their female peers, and
14:35
Speaker 3: twenty five seems pretty if he thirty four, I mean,
14:38
Speaker 3: by thirty four, you should be pretty far along on
14:41
Speaker 3: figuring out what your career path is going to look like.
14:43
Speaker 3: Some people struggle more than others, but I think there's
14:46
Speaker 3: also some tough love maybe needed on the part of
14:49
Speaker 3: some people who continue to not require if their kids
14:53
Speaker 3: are at home, you should at least be working or
14:55
Speaker 3: constantly looking for work and until you can build enough
14:58
Speaker 3: money to get out of a house.
15:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, And of course, I think no way obviates my
15:05
Speaker 4: usual bootstrap go and get a job, go and get
15:08
Speaker 4: on with life argument. I mean, I think one other
15:10
Speaker 4: thing that's happening, and again I don't know how to
15:12
Speaker 4: fix this, but it must be playing into it is
15:16
Speaker 4: that there is now one outlier when it comes to
15:20
Speaker 4: political views, and that is women across the country. College
15:31
Speaker 4: educated women have political views that are just different than
15:35
Speaker 4: everybody else's. College educated men and non college educated men
15:41
Speaker 4: and non college educated women. You have to break it
15:44
Speaker 4: down by race and income, but they basically think the
15:48
Speaker 4: same things and college educated women do not. Now, I,
15:53
Speaker 4: as a conservative, tend not to agree with what it
15:58
Speaker 4: is that the college educated women believe, but that's not
16:00
Speaker 4: the point. The point is that there is now a
16:03
Speaker 4: considerable gap, especially given them more women are going to
16:07
Speaker 4: college than men, between one segment of the population and
16:13
Speaker 4: the other. And I just think that that, in combination
16:16
Speaker 4: with this is splitting people apart in ways we're going
16:19
Speaker 4: to have to work out, because you know, that wasn't
16:21
Speaker 4: always the case. Historically, men and women were always kind
16:24
Speaker 4: of quite close politically, and maybe that helped them get married.
16:27
Speaker 4: And what's that movie failure to launch?
16:30
Speaker 1: Well launch?
16:31
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, no, that's exactly right. Yeah, Jim and I
16:34
Speaker 3: just did the story on Friday about how white voters
16:37
Speaker 3: in Michigan, the non college educated were sixty percent plus
16:41
Speaker 3: for Mike Rogers. The college educated men were fifty five
16:44
Speaker 3: percent for Mike Rogers. But college educated, you might say,
16:48
Speaker 3: college and doctrinated white women or sixty thirty seven for
16:51
Speaker 3: l say it. It's not just a small difference, it's
16:53
Speaker 3: a huge difference. And so, like you said, a lot
16:57
Speaker 3: of different factors here, but we got to get people
16:59
Speaker 3: engaged in and contributing to society more than they are
17:02
Speaker 3: right now. So the debate goes on, and it should
17:05
Speaker 3: be a pretty big part of the debate going on
17:06
Speaker 3: in this campaign, but it doesn't seem to be very much.
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18:31
Speaker 3: Are crazy martini now And when you're looking for sanity
18:34
Speaker 3: and academia, cal Berkeley is not usually the first place
18:37
Speaker 3: you look, but we do have a sliver coming from there,
18:40
Speaker 3: so I guess this is also a good martini.
18:42
Speaker 1: To some extent.
18:43
Speaker 3: New York Post again with the story a well known
18:45
Speaker 3: university of California, Berkeley mathematics professor has slammed in mission
18:49
Speaker 3: standards at the top flight university, where she says huge
18:53
Speaker 3: portions of her students are failing to keep up with
18:55
Speaker 3: college calculus and she's forced to teach middle school algebra
18:59
Speaker 3: and fractions to her students.
19:01
Speaker 1: Quote.
19:01
Speaker 3: Some students are five to eight years behind in mathematics.
19:05
Speaker 3: Office hours that should be spent discussing integirls instead become
19:08
Speaker 3: lessons on fractions and basic algebra you would expect students
19:11
Speaker 3: to learn in middle school, wrote Zvesdalina Stankova of Berkeley
19:16
Speaker 3: and op ed peace Saturday for the San Francisco Standard. Stankova,
19:19
Speaker 3: who rose through the math world to earn a PhD
19:21
Speaker 3: from Harvard after being born in communist Bulgaria, described the
19:25
Speaker 3: admissions process as quote less like careful evaluation and more
19:29
Speaker 3: like chance unquote. She is also one of thousands of
19:32
Speaker 3: faculty members who signed open letters earlier this year calling
19:35
Speaker 3: for the restoration of the sat And Act and admissions
19:38
Speaker 3: to ensure the best students are getting in and so Charlie,
19:43
Speaker 3: sometimes the best lessons come from the people who have
19:45
Speaker 3: lived under insane leftism like communism in Bulgaria. Their rationality
19:50
Speaker 3: continues on campus even when they're surrounded by crazy people.
19:52
Speaker 3: And obviously she's right here.
19:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, every time this topic comes up. I
19:56
Speaker 4: remember the first debate I ever attended at the Oxford
20:00
Speaker 4: Union in my first year at Oxford, and the question
20:05
Speaker 4: before the house was whether or not elite universities ought
20:11
Speaker 4: to try to fix what's wrong with society with admissions.
20:16
Speaker 4: And the first speaker stood up and he said they shouldn't.
20:19
Speaker 4: And the second speaker, who's a left wing writer for
20:22
Speaker 4: The Guardian while he was speaking, stood up and roared
20:26
Speaker 4: why not like this? And lots of people in the
20:29
Speaker 4: audience sort of clapped, and the speaker brilliantly dismantled this.
20:35
Speaker 4: He said, because it's too late. It's simply too late.
20:39
Speaker 4: You cannot take an eighteen year old who hasn't had
20:43
Speaker 4: the requisite education and then expect them to perform at
20:47
Speaker 4: the level that the university expects. And his view, and
20:51
Speaker 4: I think this is substantiated if you look through the research,
20:55
Speaker 4: is that the point at which you can meddle and
20:59
Speaker 4: expect to get okay results. It's like nine. I mean,
21:03
Speaker 4: once someone's reached nine, if they're sincerely behind in the curriculum.
21:10
Speaker 4: The amount of remedial work that is necessary is probably
21:17
Speaker 4: not going to be doable. You're probably not going to
21:21
Speaker 4: get them into Berkeley, which is a very good school. Now,
21:25
Speaker 4: I would say, of course, that this is precisely why
21:28
Speaker 4: we need to limit the power of teachers' unions and
21:30
Speaker 4: expand vouchers in school choice and follow the path that
21:36
Speaker 4: has been taken. Although it sounds weird to say by
21:39
Speaker 4: say Mississippi, which is making great strides in education, because
21:45
Speaker 4: shockingly it's decided that the role of the schools is
21:48
Speaker 4: to educate children. But whatever your take on it, I
21:54
Speaker 4: think we should agree that you can't fix this at Berkeley,
22:00
Speaker 4: in Stanford and Harvard and anywhere else.
22:02
Speaker 1: You can't do that.
22:04
Speaker 4: You can't say, well, this person hasn't got a good
22:07
Speaker 4: enough education, well let them in anyway. It's just not
22:10
Speaker 4: fair to anyone. And you especially can't do it in mathematics.
22:15
Speaker 4: And I say that with all humility because I'm not
22:17
Speaker 4: good at mathematics. There's no way I could have done
22:19
Speaker 4: mathematics at a high level. And that's why Greg I
22:22
Speaker 4: didn't well, because the professor that you're describing would have
22:27
Speaker 4: been describing me, they would have said, Charles is in
22:29
Speaker 4: my office every day trying to get a grasp on
22:32
Speaker 4: the basics. That would have been a waste of their time,
22:35
Speaker 4: and it would have been a waste of my time.
22:37
Speaker 1: So this, to me is a great.
22:40
Speaker 4: Example not just of declining standards in many areas of
22:42
Speaker 4: the country, and we should be careful with that, because
22:45
Speaker 4: especially in the South, standards are improving in many ways.
22:48
Speaker 1: But it's a.
22:49
Speaker 4: Great example of where you need to fix the problem,
22:51
Speaker 4: and where you need to fix the problem is with
22:53
Speaker 4: people in first and second grade.
22:55
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right.
22:57
Speaker 3: And so they want certain I mean the same thing.
23:00
Speaker 3: We've had this fight at the Supreme Court many many
23:02
Speaker 3: times over. They want to have certain percentages of certain
23:06
Speaker 3: groups to be admitted to these campuses. And like you said,
23:10
Speaker 3: it's unfair to everyone. It's unfair to the professor's got
23:12
Speaker 3: to spend all this time trying to catch people up.
23:13
Speaker 3: It's unfair to the student who's not qualified or prepared
23:17
Speaker 3: to study at that level. It's unfair to the student
23:19
Speaker 3: who didn't get in, who could have performed at that
23:20
Speaker 3: level because the slot was given to someone who wasn't.
23:23
Speaker 3: So hopefully the fact that you know, this backlash to
23:28
Speaker 3: abolishing SATs and acts and basic standards in math. Hopefully
23:32
Speaker 3: that's catching fire, and hopefully colleges will notice. But I
23:36
Speaker 3: think the admissions department and the people who deal with
23:38
Speaker 3: reality on the ground on campus are not necessarily on
23:41
Speaker 3: the same track here. But we'll see. All right, Well,
23:43
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Speaker 3: Com Slash three m L. All right, Charlie, Well, when
24:58
Speaker 3: you get people who are not good at math, as
25:01
Speaker 3: we talked about in the third Martini, and people who
25:03
Speaker 3: aren't working, as we talked about in the second Martini,
25:06
Speaker 3: you get chasers like this one. The latest CBSU go
25:09
Speaker 3: of poll shows to this question, would you approve or
25:14
Speaker 3: disapprove of government price controls? That's a pretty broad question,
25:18
Speaker 3: but overall, just fundamentally, the answer should be no. Pretty obviously,
25:22
Speaker 3: Democrats say yes seventy five twenty five, independents say yes
25:26
Speaker 3: sixty two thirty eight, and even Republicans fifty four forty
25:30
Speaker 3: six say yes. So, Charlie had a time when the
25:34
Speaker 3: socialists are trying to shove their foot in the door
25:36
Speaker 3: here in our politics. These numbers are not encouraging that
25:39
Speaker 3: people are smart enough to just tell them no and
25:41
Speaker 3: slam the door back in their face.
25:43
Speaker 4: No, and I'm happy to blame the public to some extent,
25:46
Speaker 4: but I think we have a coss of politicians, and
25:49
Speaker 4: this includes some on the right who are repeatedly and
25:55
Speaker 4: in many cases cynically telling people things that aren't true. Now,
26:00
Speaker 4: of course, that's always been the case to some extent.
26:03
Speaker 4: But the problems that this country faces are real and complex,
26:10
Speaker 4: but they are largely not the problems that the politicians describe.
26:14
Speaker 4: One example of this would be social security. We're not
26:19
Speaker 4: running out of money in social security because we spend
26:22
Speaker 4: too much on defense. Defense is about sixteen percent of
26:25
Speaker 4: the budget.
26:26
Speaker 1: At the federal level.
26:28
Speaker 4: People are not struggling with increasing prices thanks to years
26:32
Speaker 4: of inflation because billionaires exist and the issue on the
26:37
Speaker 4: supply side of the economy cannot be solved with government
26:41
Speaker 4: imposing price controls. And the fact that we now have
26:47
Speaker 4: so many people in positions of influence and authority telling
26:51
Speaker 4: people otherwise is a huge issue. It's also an issue
26:56
Speaker 4: that will spiral because if politicians say that people believe them,
27:00
Speaker 4: then people are more likely to reward the politicians who
27:03
Speaker 4: say that, and I don't quite know how you get
27:06
Speaker 4: out of this. So this is a big problem, but
27:10
Speaker 4: it's a problem that has both a supply side and
27:13
Speaker 4: a demand side, cause there's very few people at the
27:19
Speaker 4: moment who are willing to tell the public the truth.
27:22
Speaker 4: And I don't mean when I say the truth what
27:24
Speaker 4: I Charles Cook thinks is best. Of course, I want
27:28
Speaker 4: my politics to prevail, but I'm talking about things that
27:31
Speaker 4: are just factually untrue, like the issue with the federal budget,
27:39
Speaker 4: like what you could do if you did raise taxes
27:44
Speaker 4: on very rich people. You know, these are math questions,
27:48
Speaker 4: back to our third topic, and we just don't talk
27:50
Speaker 4: about them properly as a country. We just we will
27:53
Speaker 4: not honestly engage with these questions, and so we live
27:56
Speaker 4: in this fantasy land. And this is just another of
27:59
Speaker 4: those fans to see that if you allowed the government
28:01
Speaker 4: to tell you, I don't know what they want, price
28:03
Speaker 4: controls on airplane's bananas.
28:05
Speaker 1: But whatever it was there suggesting that it would work,
28:09
Speaker 1: it won't work.
28:10
Speaker 4: It will either do nothing, or more likely, it will
28:13
Speaker 4: make the problem worse.
28:14
Speaker 3: I think that's absolutely right, and I'm pretty sure the
28:15
Speaker 3: Bulgarian math professors not in favor of this. I don't
28:18
Speaker 3: want to speak for her, but if you've lived under
28:19
Speaker 3: this type of system, you know what happens. If you
28:23
Speaker 3: artificially lower the price, you're gonna have shortages and then
28:26
Speaker 3: you got to jack up the price or you just
28:28
Speaker 3: go without. So there's a reason the prices are what
28:31
Speaker 3: they are, and the nefarious forces are called supply and demand,
28:35
Speaker 3: like you said. So anyway, Charlie, a lot to talk
28:38
Speaker 3: about today. I'm sure they'll be plenty to talk about
28:39
Speaker 3: tomorrow when we convene again.
28:41
Speaker 4: See you then, Yeah, thanks for having me.
28:43
Speaker 3: Charles cook is the senior editor at National Review Online.
28:46
Speaker 3: He's also the host of the Charles CW. Cook Podcast.
28:49
Speaker 3: He'll be in for Jim again tomorrow. I'm Greg Corumbus
28:52
Speaker 3: of Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today.
28:54
Speaker 3: Please subscribe to the podcast if you don't already, tell
28:56
Speaker 3: your friends about us as well. Thanks also for your
28:58
Speaker 3: five star ratings and your reviews. Please keep those coming.
29:01
Speaker 3: Get us on your home devices. All you have to
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29:06
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29:09
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29:10
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29:12
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29:18
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