Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This clip came across my feed the other day on Twitter, actually,
Speaker 1: and I have to say something about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So boyfriend I have been together eight years, and
Speaker 2: that's because we met really young. I was twenty when
Speaker 2: we met, having got married simply because like neither of
Speaker 2: us have wanted to yet. And I guess now, I
Speaker 2: know a lot of people wouldn't date someone for eight
Speaker 2: years without a ring, and that's totally fine, Like that's
Speaker 2: your prerogative, but it works for us. Next thing is
Speaker 2: that I pay my boyfriend rent. In the past, when
Speaker 2: we've rented properties together, we've split the rent. Now my
Speaker 2: boyfriend has purchased a house. I'm still an adult that
Speaker 2: needs a place to live and pays for the place
Speaker 2: she lives. I just happened to pay that money to
Speaker 2: my boyfriend. People are upset that I'm doing this work
Speaker 2: for freed and I'm not gaining equity in this house
Speaker 2: way that I look at it. And he was able
Speaker 2: to buy this house because that has been a.
Speaker 1: Goal of hit.
Speaker 2: I didn't have the ability to take on that risk.
Speaker 2: I don't see it as my place to like reap
Speaker 2: those gains to me, it would be weird to not help,
Speaker 2: just like a friend helping out. People are gonna have
Speaker 2: a problem with the fact that I just referred to
Speaker 2: myself as a friend, but I am my boyfriend's friend. Well,
Speaker 2: if my boyfriend dumped me tomorrow, like, yes, the gains
Speaker 2: in the house.
Speaker 3: Would be his, But I can live with that.
Speaker 2: The other like little nuance is that, like, my rent
Speaker 2: is pretty low. It's definitely low for the size of
Speaker 2: house we live in and the location that we are so, like,
Speaker 2: if it makes you feel better, you could kind of
Speaker 2: look at it as like my rent is subsidized by
Speaker 2: the work that I do. I'm doing this work because
Speaker 2: it's fun and it improves the home that I live in.
Speaker 2: I will now stop talking about our relationship and get
Speaker 2: back to removing paint from old things. Please give us
Speaker 2: a follow if you want to see how my vision
Speaker 2: for this house comes to life, whether it's for me
Speaker 2: or my boyfriend's future wife.
Speaker 1: Now, this girl is twenty eight years old and she's
Speaker 1: contributing toward the mortgage of her boyfriend, who she has
Speaker 1: been dating for eight years. She says that they were
Speaker 1: too young to get married but they live together and
Speaker 1: now they're in their late twenties. I know I push
Speaker 1: marriage on here, and this is a great example of
Speaker 1: why what is this woman doing. I'd be so upset
Speaker 1: if this was my daughter dating a guy for nearly
Speaker 1: a decade, not on the path to marriage, and helping
Speaker 1: him pay for the home he owns. But she does not.
Speaker 1: You know, she says things like people are going to
Speaker 1: get upset, or this upsets people. I'm not upset for her.
Speaker 1: I'd be upset if it was my kid. You know,
Speaker 1: she could do whatever she wants. She's a stranger on
Speaker 1: the internet. I think this is particularly crazy to do,
Speaker 1: but I, you know, don't really care what strangers do.
Speaker 1: So for me, i'd be upset if it were my
Speaker 1: kid doing this, even without marriage. I'd point out that
Speaker 1: this guy is not interested in taking care of her.
Speaker 1: I know women can do it for themselves. They don't
Speaker 1: need no man. She mentions she's an adult whatever, But
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. We need each other. We take care of
Speaker 1: each other. It's not a one way thing. She's taking
Speaker 1: care of him, he's not taking care of her. To me,
Speaker 1: this video is a public service announcement for our to
Speaker 1: not fool themselves into believing that living like this is
Speaker 1: somehow a win, somehow this is feminism. She apparently made
Speaker 1: this video responding to a comment that said she's getting
Speaker 1: the home ready for him and his future wife to
Speaker 1: live in. But that's how I see this ending too.
Speaker 1: You're dating for eight years. Where is this going? Why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you be married yet? This makes no sense to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the fact that she's financially helping him,
Speaker 1: like build up his equity in a home that is
Speaker 1: not hers is wild to me. You're not into marriage, fine,
Speaker 1: but I'll be telling my kids to not do this
Speaker 1: pretend marriage thing where one person gets all the benefits either.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, an interview with Inez Stepman. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the Carol Marcowitz Show on iHeartRadio. My guest today
Speaker 1: is Inez Stepman, senior policy analyst for Independent Women's Forum
Speaker 1: and host of the show high Noon. Hy Inez.
Speaker 3: Hey, Carol, it's great to talk to you.
Speaker 1: It's so nice to have you on and to see you.
Speaker 1: We used to hang out a lot in New York,
Speaker 1: and you know what, one of us had to move away.
Speaker 3: Well I moved in, so I was I was the
Speaker 3: newcomer in New York and then everyone I knew left,
Speaker 3: including you. So right, because you did.
Speaker 1: The rare pandemic move to New York. What made me
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 3: My party trike is telling people. You know, imagine one
Speaker 3: of those horror shows where everybody's locked up trying to
Speaker 3: get out of the city after an apocalypse, and there's
Speaker 3: one car going in. That was me and my husband.
Speaker 3: We came to New York December of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: So what made you do a part of the it
Speaker 1: just seems really fun to be locked in a smaller apartment.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, because of the pandemic prices, were probably the
Speaker 3: first people in history who went from DC to New
Speaker 3: York and got a bigger apartment and then you know,
Speaker 3: booted out of that apartment based on the price increase.
Speaker 3: In any case, No, we had been planning to move
Speaker 3: to New York actually roughly in May of twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: and then as those plans were taking place, the pandemic
Speaker 3: hit and so we delayed it for a while. But
Speaker 3: given the low prices and stuff, it seemed to make sense.
Speaker 3: My husband had just gone remote so my husband, Jared Stepman,
Speaker 3: he works for the Daily Signal, but he had gone
Speaker 3: remote before the pandemic, and so we were sort of
Speaker 3: free to move to New York and that was our plan.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't We just kind of delayed our plan
Speaker 3: by a little bit, but it was our plan to
Speaker 3: move here. I just I like this, in all honesty,
Speaker 3: my husband was, you know, doing me a favor by
Speaker 3: moving here that Yeah, yeah, I just loved New York.
Speaker 3: I've always loved New York. I've wanted to move here
Speaker 3: for a decade and a half, but it never like
Speaker 3: sort of practically made sense. And so so have you
Speaker 3: enjoyed it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I have. I mean, obviously it's facing a lot of problems,
Speaker 3: as virtually every city is. I'm a city person. To
Speaker 3: be able as particularly to walk, I need o architecture
Speaker 3: is really important to me. A certain attention to aesthetics
Speaker 3: is really important to me that you don't find, I think,
Speaker 3: in a lot of American cities outside of New York.
Speaker 3: So just for that daily beauty, which I realize a
Speaker 3: lot of people look at New York and they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: look at the garbage. What are you talking about in
Speaker 3: the daily beauty? But I really think there is an
Speaker 3: enormous daily beauty in New York. There's a rhythm to it.
Speaker 3: There are beautiful buildings that you can look at walking around.
Speaker 3: It's enjoyable. It's energizing to walk around in New York.
Speaker 3: So despite all of the problems, and then of course
Speaker 3: there's just the enormous amount of things you have access
Speaker 3: to your culturally, artistically, just to me, day to day
Speaker 3: life here is exciting and is beautiful. And so I've
Speaker 3: always I've always had a romantic feeling about New York,
Speaker 3: which my actual New Yorker friends always help me is
Speaker 3: is cheesy and lame.
Speaker 1: No, not at all. I think New York is a
Speaker 1: beautiful city. I used to I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: was the biggest New York evangelist, New York supremacist, and
Speaker 1: I used to like take pictures of the city and
Speaker 1: of the bridges as I went over them or things
Speaker 1: like that, and I would, you know, tweet, I'm sure
Speaker 1: your city's nice too, but like, this is my city
Speaker 1: and look at it. So I totally get that. I
Speaker 1: don't like not liking New York. Like I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still deeply a New York lover overall. It's like
Speaker 1: the child that you have to like let go of
Speaker 1: and let them do their own thing because you've like
Speaker 1: gotten tired of fighting for them. Maybe that's a bad
Speaker 1: analogy because I actually, what would not stop fighting for my children,
Speaker 1: but for my you know, for my children, I had
Speaker 1: to leave New York. So that was kind of the
Speaker 1: sad truth of it. But I love how you love
Speaker 1: New York and that reminds me very much of the
Speaker 1: way I felt about it, and I I love to
Speaker 1: see it through your eyes. I love to watch you,
Speaker 1: you know, become a New Yorker and really live there.
Speaker 1: And it's been it's been great. I loved, I've been
Speaker 1: loved to watch you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think there are certain policy consequences
Speaker 3: that you can't escape with children. Part of the reason
Speaker 3: I think it's easy for us to stay here is
Speaker 3: because we don't have kids. They're really I understand perfectly
Speaker 3: why why you left.
Speaker 1: I mean, in my schools and crime thousand words on it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's schools and crime. Although I will say this,
Speaker 3: crime in New York is much worse than crime in
Speaker 3: New York in twenty nineteen. It's palpable, it's visible, you
Speaker 3: see you know, you see it a lot more you
Speaker 3: even just walking around, there are definitely more like high
Speaker 3: people wandering around. There's definitely I can see my citizen
Speaker 3: app taking up day by day. That being said, the
Speaker 3: focus from our own team, Carol the right on New
Speaker 3: York is sort of the disaster zone of the country,
Speaker 3: I think is really not accurate in terms of the
Speaker 3: big cities in America, all of which are basically except
Speaker 3: for Miami maybe Dallas are making the same policy mistakes,
Speaker 3: and they started not nearly as safe as New York.
Speaker 3: So people seem from outside the city sometimes to think like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's dangerous to walk down the street in Manhattan. It isn't.
Speaker 3: It's fine. I mean, it's more unpleasant than it used
Speaker 3: to be. You definitely have to be a little more
Speaker 3: alert than it used to be. But comparatively to DC,
Speaker 3: I mean, when I lived in DC in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: before any of this happened, there were twelve murders within
Speaker 3: half a mile in one summer of where I lived,
Speaker 3: and I lived in a nice part of DC. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so like, comparatively to that, there hasn't even been one
Speaker 3: murder in my vicinity since I moved here.
Speaker 1: So that's a wind, you know. I know, I fully.
Speaker 1: The depressing part to me is that New York solved
Speaker 1: like the mystery of ken a big city be governable?
Speaker 1: Can it be livable? And then threw it all away
Speaker 1: and then just decided that that's you know, that didn't
Speaker 1: actually happen, or that didn't work the way we wanted
Speaker 1: it to or whatever. And that's like the depressing part
Speaker 1: to me. It's not the you know, cities will have challenges.
Speaker 1: I always say this, but I grew up in a
Speaker 1: much worse New York than exists now, and yet I
Speaker 1: couldn't live in this New York because this New York
Speaker 1: didn't take seriously the threats that nineteen eighties New York
Speaker 1: took seriously. So crime was far worse in the eighties
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, But it wasn't a debate.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, what are you talking about? What crime?
Speaker 1: What crime? It's a crime, you know, And that's what
Speaker 1: I felt was going on. Especially in the neighborhood that
Speaker 1: I lived in Park Slope. It was like, literally, if
Speaker 1: you said, you know, oh, the crime's going up and
Speaker 1: I'm a little nervous about that, or can my kids
Speaker 1: walk around alone the way that they could you know
Speaker 1: six months ago you were racist? And how dare you
Speaker 1: bring this up? And that's the part that I like
Speaker 1: could not live with. And you know, also talking about
Speaker 1: like beauty of New York, like I one of the
Speaker 1: things I miss, and it's funny, but like the way
Speaker 1: people really try they like dress up, and I mean
Speaker 1: it's people in Florida look good, do not get me wrong,
Speaker 1: Like way better than like let's say, Parkslope, Brooklyn, like
Speaker 1: where I felt like nobody tried it at all. But
Speaker 1: you know, so there are things about New York that
Speaker 1: I think are beautiful and amazing and that I you know,
Speaker 1: miss about them. I just hate that they threw away
Speaker 1: decades of good government and good policies to you know,
Speaker 1: the ideology of the moment which turned out to be
Speaker 1: you know, fools gold.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it is a tragedy. And coming from
Speaker 3: California originally and from the San Francisco area, I mean
Speaker 3: I had a front seat to the tragedy that is
Speaker 3: San Francisco. Am I view much worse than New York,
Speaker 3: even though they start out with a baseline of like
Speaker 3: San Francisco is has a very very small black population
Speaker 3: for example, which does core relate with the crime rate.
Speaker 3: San Francisco is incredibly wealthy. It's much smaller than New York.
Speaker 3: Like all the demographics of San Francisco would point to
Speaker 3: the fact that it should be as it was, which
Speaker 3: was like an incredibly safe city when I was growing up.
Speaker 3: I mean I used to go when I was fourteen,
Speaker 3: fifteen years old. I used to walk around and then
Speaker 3: Tenorline District by myself as a teenager. There was no
Speaker 3: question that that was fine. I mean, yeah, there were
Speaker 3: there were some people doing drugs at San Francisco, very
Speaker 3: you know, there were some homeless people. It was San Francisco.
Speaker 3: But the there was a really real tipping point, and
Speaker 3: it was entirely as you say, it's like entirely the
Speaker 3: choice of people who live there to throw away all
Speaker 3: of the natural beauty of San Francisco, natural safety of
Speaker 3: San Francisco, everything that's wonderful about San Francisco to just
Speaker 3: like put it in the trash can and in San
Speaker 3: Francisco at actually the tipping point, I don't imagine how
Speaker 3: bad it's gotten, although I've seen plenty of the reporting
Speaker 3: and stuff, but the tipping point really was twenty five
Speaker 3: ten twenty sixteen where the actual experience of the city.
Speaker 3: And again, I'm a city person. I'm not somebody who
Speaker 3: is shocked by seeing a homeless person on the corner
Speaker 3: or all fighting or whatever. But in twenty sixteen it
Speaker 3: became San Francisco. The actual enjoyment of being in the city,
Speaker 3: the walking around, the sitting in the cafe, all of
Speaker 3: that started to very aggressively be impacted by the fact
Speaker 3: that the city basically threw open the doors to every
Speaker 3: drug drug addict in America and said, hey, shoot up here,
Speaker 3: why would you do that? You know, you know, look,
Speaker 3: they have their their idiot rationales. But it very very
Speaker 3: clearly fell off a cliff at that point. So I
Speaker 3: share your sense of tragedy. I do think there's a
Speaker 3: couple institutions in New York that are keeping it from
Speaker 3: going completely nuts, at least for now, because obviously the
Speaker 3: City Council is insane and they all have to go
Speaker 3: down the same path as DC, as Seattle, San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's funny because there are more Republicans now
Speaker 1: on the New York City Council than like in decades.
Speaker 1: It's just the leftist on the city Council. The Democrats
Speaker 1: have become far left, is really what happened. So you
Speaker 1: have actually more quantity of Republicans. I think this five now,
Speaker 1: which was unheard of in you know, the last number
Speaker 1: of years. But the Democrats have just become insane.
Speaker 3: Crazy, I mean yeah, and it's They do have two institutions,
Speaker 3: like I said that I think help balance a little bit.
Speaker 3: One is that the NYPD is the best force in
Speaker 3: the world. I really believe that. I mean, it's remarkable
Speaker 3: what they're able to do when they're allowed to do it.
Speaker 3: And they're very large force, like per capita comparatively to
Speaker 3: a lot of these other cities. So there are the
Speaker 3: cops to put on corners and they're very well organized.
Speaker 3: And then they we have clout apparently behind the scenes, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, the police union is still a big deal
Speaker 3: in New York politically in the way that it's completely
Speaker 3: non existent, and I can demonstrate very easily how that
Speaker 3: works between DC and New York. I cannot imagine. And Carol,
Speaker 3: you've spent plenty of time in DC. Can you imagine
Speaker 3: the kind of parade that was put on for the
Speaker 3: fallen officers maybe two years ago, where you have just
Speaker 3: like hundreds, maybe thousands of cops marching down the street
Speaker 3: in New York. For that would never happen in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: It would just never happen in DC because there's such
Speaker 3: a hostility to the cops. There still is like a
Speaker 3: pride in the police force here among average people, and
Speaker 3: I think that's really important, and it gives them the
Speaker 3: clout I assume a little bit behind the scenes, although
Speaker 3: I'm sure that their lives are much worse than they
Speaker 3: used to be. Don't get me wrong again, I'm not
Speaker 3: down comparatively to these other cities.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. I've really never thought of that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they're absolutely.
Speaker 3: You should think about the second one, which is that
Speaker 3: they have the New York Post. Yeah, wow, which there's
Speaker 3: no major daily newspaper with a actual city readership. There
Speaker 3: are conservative journals and so on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, everybody needs the Post. Yeah, like everybody across
Speaker 1: the political spectrum in New York has always read the Post.
Speaker 3: They will just post reports on crime, and the Post
Speaker 3: hosts conservative opinion. And the fact that that's a daily
Speaker 3: newspaper in New York that's in everybody's padega like that, people,
Speaker 3: ordinary people a political people not like you and me
Speaker 3: read I think is an enormous asset for the city
Speaker 3: and keeping it going completely insane. Now, maybe all those
Speaker 3: things will be overcome and the left will steamroll or
Speaker 3: all of those things.
Speaker 1: But let's root for New York, like you know, I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope they don't. I hope that the voices of
Speaker 1: sanity within and you get to live in a beautiful,
Speaker 1: safe New York the way that I remember that it
Speaker 1: should be right now, But you know, isn't for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. So what do you mostly work on
Speaker 1: at IWF? I mean, I obviously read a lot of
Speaker 1: your stuff, but what would my listeners want to know
Speaker 1: about what you do?
Speaker 3: So I have a kind of funny hodgepodge of issues.
Speaker 3: I did do more than a decade as an education
Speaker 3: policy analyst, so I still do some education stuff some
Speaker 3: I mean school choice K twelve policy stuff. I also
Speaker 3: have been working a lot on higher ed recently. So
Speaker 3: I have a proposal out to tax the university sector
Speaker 3: for a loan forgiveness, and I think this is going
Speaker 3: to be I think this has the potential to be
Speaker 3: a huge win for the right. There is an enormous
Speaker 3: pressure to forgive student loans, and I think we often
Speaker 3: talk about it as a matter of individual responsibility, which
Speaker 3: it is. I'm not saying that the EIGHTEENEP signing on
Speaker 3: the dotted line, you know, didn't legally incur that debt,
Speaker 3: but the entire system since the nineteen sixties really has
Speaker 3: been structured to push as many people prepared or not
Speaker 3: into college as possible. And I think it's a little
Speaker 3: too much to assume that the average eighteen year old
Speaker 3: is more financially savvy than the US Congress that put
Speaker 3: these these loans government loans in front of basically every
Speaker 3: every high school graduate in America. The universities get their
Speaker 3: money upfront, so they're you know, they're rolling in. They've
Speaker 3: created enor miss wealth from this policy that is directly
Speaker 3: directly financed by the US taxpayer, and you know, everyone
Speaker 3: else is kind of screwed, right, The taxpayer is screwed
Speaker 3: because by the way we hold all these loans. So
Speaker 3: if a large proportion, as is predicted, default on the
Speaker 3: student loans, and it could be anywhere from fifty to
Speaker 3: sixty percent, that those are like reasonable estimates of how
Speaker 3: much like what default rate we're likely to see. We
Speaker 3: already own all those loans that Department of Education owns
Speaker 3: ninety three or some of those loans. You know, there's
Speaker 3: those companies like Moela or Mohela whatever it's called, or
Speaker 3: Naviant before it. They're just managers of their hired guns
Speaker 3: to manage the loans and collect payments. But the US
Speaker 3: government owns that debt, so we're already on the hook
Speaker 3: for it. I think we will have a default bailout,
Speaker 3: whether we like it or not, by default. So to
Speaker 3: my mind, the fair way to do this is to
Speaker 3: take some of that enormous wealth that's been amassed on
Speaker 3: the basis of the backs of the US taxpayer by
Speaker 3: institutions that are overtly hostile, and I don't think anyone
Speaker 3: can argue that point in twenty twenty four, overtly hostile
Speaker 3: to everything that's good about this country and about America.
Speaker 3: To take the money from those institutions and use it
Speaker 3: to essentially settle up with those who were preyed upon,
Speaker 3: frankly by this system, by this promise that if you
Speaker 3: take on this debt and go to a four year school,
Speaker 3: oftentimes a four year school, you're totally academically unprepared for
Speaker 3: because the graduation rates only sixty percent. These schools were
Speaker 3: admitting people because everybody comes with the government check that
Speaker 3: they get up FROMT So a lot of those defaults
Speaker 3: are people who are admitted to schools that had no
Speaker 3: chance of ever graduating from for the money for two
Speaker 3: or three years and they are stuck with the debt
Speaker 3: and they have no degree and anyway, Like, I could
Speaker 3: talk forever about this, but I think that there is
Speaker 3: a lot of merit to taxing universities for this. For
Speaker 3: the right, I see it as a twofer. We hit
Speaker 3: our institutional enemies because that's what they are, and we
Speaker 3: justly make the people who have made money off of
Speaker 3: this system pay for the fallout of it instead of
Speaker 3: the US taxpayer and the majority of Americans without a
Speaker 3: four year degree, you know, redistributing their wealth towards paying
Speaker 3: off loans for people who did go to college, who
Speaker 3: did go to for example, law school, which seems blatantly regressive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so who is opposed to this politically? Like, obviously
Speaker 1: the colleges are against it, but who I conceive the
Speaker 1: argument from both the Republican and the Democrat side of
Speaker 1: why this is a great idea.
Speaker 3: Democrats don't see it that way, because I think they
Speaker 3: know better than Republicans who their friends are. The real
Speaker 3: political question is why have Republicans been willing to fund
Speaker 3: universities at such an extreme rate and give them such
Speaker 3: a special little deal from the federal government for so
Speaker 3: many years when university has always been overtly hostile to
Speaker 3: everything Republicans believe in. That's the question. It's a matter
Speaker 3: of political will on the right. If Republicans prioritize this,
Speaker 3: I think that we could very well drive a wedge
Speaker 3: between Democratic politicians who know that the universities aren't incredibly
Speaker 3: valuable in doctor nation resource to them, and Democratic voters
Speaker 3: because you know, look the kids with these loans, they
Speaker 3: don't care if it comes from Harvard, right, They're happy
Speaker 3: to have them bailed out. Right. So I was on
Speaker 3: Doctor phil Weirdly enough, he did a series at the end,
Speaker 3: he did a series of like policy chats, we're on
Speaker 3: various political issues. And I think I convinced a fair
Speaker 3: number because everyone came on there saying I need my
Speaker 3: student loans bailed out, and I think I got a
Speaker 3: fair number of them convinced. You know, yeah, it's right
Speaker 3: that the university should pay for this and not, you know,
Speaker 3: people who didn't go to college. That's not fair. So
Speaker 3: I think it would be a very politically smart argument
Speaker 3: for the Republicans to make. I think it would put
Speaker 3: a lot of pressure on Democrats, and I think more
Speaker 3: than anything, it would politically cut off the knees from
Speaker 3: a strategy that Biden used in the midterms. I'm pretty
Speaker 3: sure he will use going forward in this twenty four election,
Speaker 3: which is to promise a bailout he knows is going
Speaker 3: to get knocked down by the court to get young
Speaker 3: people out to vote. It worked for them in the midterms,
Speaker 3: and Republicans can destroy that political talking point. They can
Speaker 3: provide a real solution for people who are legitimately struggling
Speaker 3: with what in any other context we would call predatory loans. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they can hit their institutional enemies and make it
Speaker 3: a wedge issue on the line. I just I don't
Speaker 3: see a downside to the right pushing this jd Vance
Speaker 3: has introduced something real similar to my proposal. It wouldn't
Speaker 3: be very difficult for Republicans to tax at university endowments.
Speaker 3: For example, there already is a very, very very tiny
Speaker 3: tax and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Well, that
Speaker 3: would be required would be to expand that tax and
Speaker 3: treat them like the hedge funds that they are.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and be right
Speaker 1: back on the Carol Marcowitch Show. So what would you
Speaker 1: be doing as a career if you weren't doing this,
Speaker 1: if you weren't doing policy, if you weren't writing What
Speaker 1: would be then? As plan B, do I.
Speaker 3: Get booted off as a tradwife if I say I'd
Speaker 3: rather just like arrange flowers at home and paint my
Speaker 3: apartment different colors?
Speaker 1: Wait, who's booting you? This is like, this is a
Speaker 1: safe space.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like in terms of professional work, I
Speaker 3: think i'd make a pretty good architect. Actually was a
Speaker 3: good at math. It was pretty good at sketching, and
Speaker 3: I really enjoy looking at buildings. I don't have any
Speaker 3: extent of knowledge and architecture other than what I like.
Speaker 1: But that's okay, this is fantasy, you know a series of.
Speaker 3: My skills, like the sort of design and aesthetic element
Speaker 3: with the mathematical uh and an analytical kind of that's
Speaker 3: more what I'm good at. I'm not like, I'm not
Speaker 3: an artiste, but I think the combination of aesthetic and
Speaker 3: mathematics would it appeal to me? There was no I
Speaker 3: looked for courses in it, but there weren't any of
Speaker 3: my university.
Speaker 1: I think i'd be a DJ. I think that would
Speaker 1: be make me see it, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: I need I know how to get the party going.
Speaker 1: I also enjoyed planning travel, so maybe a travel agent.
Speaker 1: I like those two, like you know fields, but I,
Speaker 1: you know, trad wife was the original plan for me.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I got off that track. And
Speaker 1: my husband sometimes says, you know, he signed up for
Speaker 1: a stay at home mom, stayed at home wife, and
Speaker 1: I decided to go have a career, which is like
Speaker 1: a crazy thing to do. So you know, anything is possible, really,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying here. Do you feel like you've
Speaker 1: made it?
Speaker 3: You sent me this question in advance, and I still
Speaker 3: don't know how to answer it. I think I don't
Speaker 3: think I've made it. I would say that there are
Speaker 3: things that I'm more grateful about in my career as
Speaker 3: the years go on, especially in this environment. The fact
Speaker 3: that I have the freedom, enormous freedom, even within our profession.
Speaker 3: I'm so grateful for to IWF for providing this. I mean,
Speaker 3: they don't have a one voice policy. They really do hire,
Speaker 3: you know, a variety of smart women with a variety
Speaker 3: of views from you know, moderate independent all the way
Speaker 3: to conservative, like I'm clearly conservative. But they really do
Speaker 3: an enormous job of supporting women who want to make
Speaker 3: an argument about X, Y and z. That kind of
Speaker 3: freedom is when I think about, oh, like, would I
Speaker 3: rather be an architect or something like that. You know,
Speaker 3: there are ways in which I'd rather do that. But
Speaker 3: on the other hand, there is no escape from politics now.
Speaker 3: Right when I think about what the corporate office politics
Speaker 3: is like now, when I think about the things that
Speaker 3: are allegedly offensive or like a problem for HR, I'm
Speaker 3: incredibly grateful that I don't have that kind of job.
Speaker 1: I would be able to tolerate it for HR.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never talked to HR, I've never used HR.
Speaker 3: I don't anyway, I'm enormously grateful for that, and I
Speaker 3: feel like it's a rare, a rare thing now to
Speaker 3: be able to work in our current environment, which maybe
Speaker 3: you agree or don't, I think it is pretty close
Speaker 3: to not like Stalinism, you know, not like being thrown
Speaker 3: in the Gulag. But by the time you get to
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union in like the seventies right where yer structure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: very different structure, and there's lots of there's a long
Speaker 3: discussion we had about like the similarities and differences. But
Speaker 3: in terms of the feeling of wait, you know, you
Speaker 3: just don't share your opinions unless you really know the
Speaker 3: people you know, like who you're talking to. Uh, there's
Speaker 3: just all these like trip wires. You can't really you
Speaker 3: can't really just do your business and have your friends
Speaker 3: and live your life. Like the political system is intruding
Speaker 3: into that private sphere in a very direct way. And
Speaker 3: I'm yeah, I think in that context all the more
Speaker 3: grateful to to have a position I do, because I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think I deal very well with, you know,
Speaker 3: being told that something that I'm saying is offensive and
Speaker 3: therefore like I'm gonna lose my job and having to
Speaker 3: balance those two things. I have the utmost sympathy for
Speaker 3: people who feel they have to have to do that. Like,
Speaker 3: I'm not naive about it at all. I don't think
Speaker 3: everybody needs to be so John Needson, right, I'm not
Speaker 3: and I don't mean just in talent. I mean that
Speaker 3: I'm not directly threatened that way. And I don't know
Speaker 3: what I would do if saying what I say meant
Speaker 3: that I couldn't make rent absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, I found an essay that I wrote in college,
Speaker 1: where I was already an open conservative, but I wrote
Speaker 1: about how the traditional family was outdated, and of course,
Speaker 1: you see, I got an a on it, and I remember,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't remember this, but I don't remember
Speaker 1: particularly writing this essay actually, but I remember having to
Speaker 1: kind of adjust my opinions to what I knew the
Speaker 1: professor wanted to hear. Because what was the point, really,
Speaker 1: I was there to get the good grades?
Speaker 3: Men?
Speaker 1: Who cared what my professor thought about what? You know,
Speaker 1: what I thought? Why would I need to debate him
Speaker 1: or argue out my point? You want to hear that
Speaker 1: the modern families, you know, the traditional families outdated like
Speaker 1: here you go, hey, yeah, my dad.
Speaker 3: Like like you as you know, but for your audience,
Speaker 3: my family comes from communist Poland, so sort of similar
Speaker 3: Warsaw packed style background, and my dad even in my
Speaker 3: high school in Palo Alto and the like mid two thousands,
Speaker 3: I mean, he had that feeling about, oh, like you're
Speaker 3: getting assignments that you know what you're supposed to write. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he was like, this is like being in the
Speaker 3: This is like being in communist Poland, like the you know,
Speaker 3: the proletariator always oppressed, they always rise up, like you
Speaker 3: know what you're supposed to write, and it's the same
Speaker 3: same stuff. And that was like, I think the early
Speaker 3: wave of that, but it was already there in the
Speaker 3: in the two thousands and in public school, right, it
Speaker 3: was already the vision that America had. America's sins are
Speaker 3: so much greater than her triumphs that course are unique,
Speaker 3: and her triumphs are irrelevant, right, and yeah, and it
Speaker 3: is like it it again. I don't want to.
Speaker 1: Over no, I get I never plugged my book on
Speaker 1: my show. But like in Stolen Youth book that we
Speaker 1: published my co author Bethany Mandel and I in March,
Speaker 1: it opens with a history chapter which compares a lot
Speaker 1: of what's going on right now to what has happened
Speaker 1: into talitarian societies in the past. And we're not saying
Speaker 1: that anybody gets thrown in a gulag right now or
Speaker 1: you know, like that, but there's definitely some threads that
Speaker 1: of connection that are obvious. And I think that if people,
Speaker 1: you know, don't see them, then maybe they're saying what
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be saying, and maybe that's why.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a friend of mine told me a story. He's
Speaker 3: a professor and I won't use the names or whatever,
Speaker 3: but told me a story about a graduate student of
Speaker 3: his from Belarus. And for people who have not followed it,
Speaker 3: there were huge uprisings in Belarus and twenty twenty and
Speaker 3: after basically a very obviously faked election, and it's known
Speaker 3: Lukashenko there is known as eelast dictator in Europe obviously
Speaker 3: like stealing everybody all the money, like blind stealing from
Speaker 3: his people. And in any case, there were a lot
Speaker 3: of protests there and unrest. And the Spelarusian student was
Speaker 3: talking to her professor and she said, you know, when
Speaker 3: I first came to America, I had the idea that
Speaker 3: it was like a free country, you know, And I
Speaker 3: was amazed by this fact and I thought, it's, oh,
Speaker 3: it's how incredible, Like everyone can say whatever they think
Speaker 3: about politics without this kind of fear. And then she
Speaker 3: literally physically leaned forward, looked behind her and said, I've
Speaker 3: learned you just have different trip wires, Like there are
Speaker 3: different things you're not supposed to say here, and like
Speaker 3: the physical act of like leaning forward and checking behind
Speaker 3: you before you say what you're going to say, Like
Speaker 3: this itself is so emblematic to me of how we've
Speaker 3: lost the freedom that America is known for or was
Speaker 3: known for around the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I fully agree with you, And look, I do
Speaker 1: it myself. I could think of times in the past
Speaker 1: where I looked around before I said something in a restaurant,
Speaker 1: and you know, I had to be careful about who
Speaker 1: could hear what or not to have an altercation or something.
Speaker 1: So it's sad, and I hope we are climbing out
Speaker 1: of it because I do feel like wokeness and this
Speaker 1: whole you know, insane culture is coming to an end
Speaker 1: because it just can't last. You know, eventually you run
Speaker 1: out of victims because it's a circular firing squad and
Speaker 1: everybody's getting hit. What would you say is our largest
Speaker 1: cultural or societal problem and do you think that it's solvable.
Speaker 3: I think the largest problem is probably a loneliness. I
Speaker 3: think it's a small, ill liberal problem. Some people would
Speaker 3: call it atomization. I think we're discovering that the unchosen relationships,
Speaker 3: the things that are not entered into as a matter
Speaker 3: of contract and benefit and detriment, are very, very very
Speaker 3: difficult to maintain in a civilization as prosperous as ours.
Speaker 3: And you see it a lot in the sex wars
Speaker 3: right where if you look at in almost every country,
Speaker 3: you have single women politically pulling way, way, way away
Speaker 3: from single men. All these single women are left leaning,
Speaker 3: the men are actually they're leaning right and turning a
Speaker 3: little more right, but like it's not a comparable turn.
Speaker 3: But if you look at the numbers and a long
Speaker 3: term look at the numbers in the United States of
Speaker 3: women voting Republican, married women vote Republican married men vote Republican.
Speaker 3: Single men vote, Republican single women vote, you know, buy
Speaker 3: a margin or thirty or more points vote Democrat. I
Speaker 3: think those politics are a reflection of not and even
Speaker 3: the extremes of the sex war on the right and
Speaker 3: the left. Now where you see like the manosphere, which
Speaker 3: I think originally had a lot of good points and
Speaker 3: I consider myself sort of adjacent to it, now it
Speaker 3: really does seems sort of at least some portion of it.
Speaker 3: I don't want to broaden out. It really does seem
Speaker 3: like hate women for being women, which I find is
Speaker 3: ludicrous as hating men for being men. But I think
Speaker 3: those sexual politics burn real hot because we don't have
Speaker 3: in real life ties. I mean, the average American is
Speaker 3: now born into a family that's either never you know,
Speaker 3: their parents either never married or to their parents are
Speaker 3: divorced before they're eighteen. Right, we have fewer siblings on average,
Speaker 3: smaller family size, all of those things, I think, And
Speaker 3: then you enter the dating market, and there's just an
Speaker 3: endless number of hours of podcasting tape quote unquote on
Speaker 3: the just general screwed uppitness of the dating scene. Right,
Speaker 3: So it's very easy in our society now to never
Speaker 3: to go. Oh. And the final point, friendship is totally collapsed.
Speaker 3: Right if you look even since the nineties, the percentage
Speaker 3: of people who say they have say more than five
Speaker 3: friends completely collapsing in the toilet. So it's very possible
Speaker 3: that you can now it's very common to grow up
Speaker 3: in a broken home without any you know, close relationships
Speaker 3: with siblings of the opposite sex, without a good relationship
Speaker 3: with your parent of the opposite sex, and then without
Speaker 3: any real good friends of the opposite sex, and then
Speaker 3: your only interaction with the opposite sex is like messages
Speaker 3: on dating apps, right, And I can see why that
Speaker 3: would make somebody form a very negative opinion that the
Speaker 3: opposite sex.
Speaker 1: Great point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I think it's it's not
Speaker 3: just about sexual relationships, but about friendship, about family relationships,
Speaker 3: we just have fewer of those thick ties. And and
Speaker 3: the problem with liberalism and prosperity large which I'm I'm
Speaker 3: a fan of both to some degree, right, is that
Speaker 3: the short term preference of people, you know, having those
Speaker 3: kinds of thick community ties. And I think your own,
Speaker 3: like very public, beautiful writings about your relationship with Judaism
Speaker 3: and the Jewish community demonstrate this very well. Those thick
Speaker 3: ties are not easy or pleasant a lot of the time, right,
Speaker 3: Like there's a lot of conflict in small towns between
Speaker 3: church ladies and right, those things are not necessarily pleasant.
Speaker 3: Family relationships are not always pleasant, They're in difficult, and
Speaker 3: so the short term interest of a lot of people
Speaker 3: is to basically say, well, I'm going to do me right,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do me and I'm not going to
Speaker 3: be constricted by those relationships, those deeper, unchosen relationships, because
Speaker 3: any serious relationship constricts what you can do obviously like marriage,
Speaker 3: what you can do sexually, right, But any deep relationship
Speaker 3: is exclusionary by nature. It means that two people are
Speaker 3: going to have to make room for each other in
Speaker 3: what they want to do and what they want to
Speaker 3: say and what they want to you know, there's a
Speaker 3: negociation there. That negotiation is not always pleasant, especially short term,
Speaker 3: and I think what we're seeing is the short term
Speaker 3: incentive is to dump those relationships, and in the long
Speaker 3: term that's killing us.
Speaker 1: So do you think that's solvable.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know if we'll be able
Speaker 3: to come up with something to replace the fear of destitution,
Speaker 3: right because you didn't keep with your family because it
Speaker 3: was always pleasant. You kept with your family because you
Speaker 3: might be out on the street and starving, right, And
Speaker 3: that's all you know, same reason that divorce was much lower.
Speaker 3: It's yes, it's social convention, but that social convention also
Speaker 3: comes from, you know, the very real fear of losing
Speaker 3: your children, of being cast out. I don't know, Like
Speaker 3: I don't want to return to a uh to destitution
Speaker 3: that's not that's not solution. So I don't know if
Speaker 3: we'll be able to come up with something that. I mean,
Speaker 3: maybe we are smart enough as a species to start
Speaker 3: considering these long term interests, but maybe not. But I
Speaker 3: will say that the direction we're currently going forget about
Speaker 3: politics on this question. The direction we're curling going is
Speaker 3: all downhill. The therapeutic language of how to speak to
Speaker 3: people is actually deeply horrifying to me in a pre
Speaker 3: political way. It bothers me if it places distance, all
Speaker 3: the time, distance between people to talk to them in
Speaker 3: this like, well, you're intruding on my boundaries. So that's
Speaker 3: what friendship is. You know, if you have everybody outside
Speaker 3: your boundaries, you have no friends.
Speaker 1: Right, that's absolutely right. I'm reading Abigail Schreyer's Bad Therapy
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to cry that.
Speaker 1: Oh it's amazing. It's so good. I can't put it down.
Speaker 1: It's really a great book. It's coming out soon and
Speaker 1: Bad Therapy by Abigail Schreier highly highly recommend it. So
Speaker 1: I love talking to you. This has been awesome. And
Speaker 1: here with your best tip for my listeners on how
Speaker 1: they can improve their lives.
Speaker 3: Through dinner parties. Talk to people in real life. I
Speaker 3: think that parties might save us.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's probably true. All right, throw parties.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Anez, thank you for coming on,
Speaker 1: love talking to you.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Carol, it's been great.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
Speaker 1: Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.