1
00:00:00,680 --> 00:00:04,200
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics

2
00:00:04,400 --> 00:00:07,160
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of

3
00:00:07,200 --> 00:00:11,280
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Donald Trump has revived the plan

4
00:00:11,360 --> 00:00:14,880
Speaker 1: to dismantle Obamacare in twenty twenty four. We have such

5
00:00:14,880 --> 00:00:17,760
Speaker 1: a great show for you today. The Financial Times is

6
00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:22,439
Speaker 1: John Burne Murdoch gives us a fascinating breakdown about why

7
00:00:22,560 --> 00:00:26,960
Speaker 1: life expectancy in the United States is plummeting. Then we'll

8
00:00:26,960 --> 00:00:29,960
Speaker 1: talk to the New York Times David leon Hart about

9
00:00:30,160 --> 00:00:34,320
Speaker 1: his new book. Ours was The Shining Future, the Story

10
00:00:34,320 --> 00:00:36,720
Speaker 1: of the American Dream. But first we have the host

11
00:00:36,920 --> 00:00:41,520
Speaker 1: of the Enemy's List, the one, the Only, the Lincoln Projects,

12
00:00:41,680 --> 00:00:46,080
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Rick Wilson.

13
00:00:46,520 --> 00:00:50,800
Speaker 2: Good Sunday afternoon for the Monday broadcast. To you, Molly

14
00:00:50,880 --> 00:00:51,479
Speaker 2: John Fast.

15
00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:54,320
Speaker 1: Yes, and we are waiting. I feel like we're in

16
00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:58,000
Speaker 1: this weird holding pattern where we're waiting for the American

17
00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:01,040
Speaker 1: people to wake up and be like, holy fuck, Donald

18
00:01:01,120 --> 00:01:05,560
Speaker 1: Trump is going to be the Republican nomine discuss.

19
00:01:04,600 --> 00:01:08,120
Speaker 2: For the five, three hundred and seventy fifth time to

20
00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:10,840
Speaker 2: my friends in the world out there who say things like, well,

21
00:01:10,959 --> 00:01:13,360
Speaker 2: Nicki Haley could still come from behind it beat him.

22
00:01:13,440 --> 00:01:16,559
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the thinking. It's so wish fulfillment.

23
00:01:16,760 --> 00:01:18,760
Speaker 2: Only run some numbers out for people because this is

24
00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:22,440
Speaker 2: this was my world. Math is a bitch. Math is

25
00:01:22,480 --> 00:01:25,800
Speaker 2: a cruel, horrible bitch. He will not be reasoned with.

26
00:01:26,040 --> 00:01:27,480
Speaker 1: I hate him, Math, I love that.

27
00:01:27,800 --> 00:01:30,360
Speaker 2: But she will not be reasoned with. She will not

28
00:01:30,440 --> 00:01:34,119
Speaker 2: be negotiated with. She will not allow for fantasies to

29
00:01:34,280 --> 00:01:38,679
Speaker 2: replace mathematical rigor. Donald Trump is going to go into

30
00:01:38,720 --> 00:01:42,600
Speaker 2: Iowa right now. He's under fifty percent, yes, but Nicki's

31
00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:45,800
Speaker 2: at seventeen. She's got fifty days to close a gap

32
00:01:46,080 --> 00:01:49,320
Speaker 2: of roughly thirty points. Let's call it in round number theory.

33
00:01:49,520 --> 00:01:52,200
Speaker 2: And does she do well? Probably? She probably does much

34
00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:55,560
Speaker 2: better than people expect. Desantas is fading. He won't leave

35
00:01:55,600 --> 00:01:59,000
Speaker 2: the race, but he's fading fast, so that never trump

36
00:01:59,320 --> 00:02:03,040
Speaker 2: Ish vote will remain split. Okay, all the others are

37
00:02:03,040 --> 00:02:05,720
Speaker 2: cat and dog, random noise in the system. She goes

38
00:02:05,720 --> 00:02:07,440
Speaker 2: out of Iowa with a good head of steam, goes

39
00:02:07,440 --> 00:02:10,520
Speaker 2: to New Hampshire, does pretty well, But Chris Christy's not

40
00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:12,920
Speaker 2: going to quit, and neither is DeSantis, so they're going

41
00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:15,919
Speaker 2: to still end up with Trump. Winning New Hampshire. Okay,

42
00:02:15,960 --> 00:02:17,680
Speaker 2: so he's won two. Then they're going to go to

43
00:02:17,720 --> 00:02:20,079
Speaker 2: South Carolina and he's going to do really well in

44
00:02:20,160 --> 00:02:22,320
Speaker 2: our home state and still fall short. Then they're going

45
00:02:22,400 --> 00:02:25,600
Speaker 2: to go to Super Tuesday. Now, just so people understand this,

46
00:02:25,880 --> 00:02:29,600
Speaker 2: there are two states on Super Tuesday, Texas and California.

47
00:02:29,680 --> 00:02:32,520
Speaker 2: In both of those states, and Texas, the last time

48
00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:35,880
Speaker 2: I look, Donald Trump was leading by about forty percent

49
00:02:36,160 --> 00:02:38,520
Speaker 2: over DeSantis, who was behind him and second, And in

50
00:02:38,560 --> 00:02:43,119
Speaker 2: California he was leading to Santas by about fifty points.

51
00:02:43,280 --> 00:02:46,280
Speaker 2: So once Super Tuesday happens and these winner take All

52
00:02:46,320 --> 00:02:51,480
Speaker 2: states go and you end up with Texas, California, South Carolina, Iowa,

53
00:02:51,880 --> 00:02:54,480
Speaker 2: New Hampshire, and a whole bunch of the other cat

54
00:02:54,520 --> 00:02:56,919
Speaker 2: and dog states on Super Tuesday, and then Donald Trump

55
00:02:56,960 --> 00:02:59,720
Speaker 2: is going to at that point have almost forty percent

56
00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:02,639
Speaker 2: of the votes he needs to take the nomination. Then

57
00:03:02,720 --> 00:03:05,240
Speaker 2: we go on March twelfth to the Great State of Florida,

58
00:03:05,520 --> 00:03:09,160
Speaker 2: where Donald Trump is presidently leading tiny Ron by thirty

59
00:03:09,200 --> 00:03:13,639
Speaker 2: five percent by thirty five rona Santa. His whole campaign

60
00:03:14,040 --> 00:03:17,240
Speaker 2: was built around the horseshit predicate. Oh won Florida about

61
00:03:17,320 --> 00:03:21,600
Speaker 2: nineteen points so okay, there, no, you can't. He owns

62
00:03:21,639 --> 00:03:25,079
Speaker 2: the Republican Party, Ronnie, He's gonna get spanked.

63
00:03:25,440 --> 00:03:29,960
Speaker 1: He's gonna oh man Rick Wilson in such peak Rick

64
00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:33,600
Speaker 1: Wilson fashion. But it's a really good point about how

65
00:03:34,160 --> 00:03:36,640
Speaker 1: I think this comes back to a fundamental problem Republicans

66
00:03:36,680 --> 00:03:38,760
Speaker 1: have had this entire time with Trump, which is they

67
00:03:38,920 --> 00:03:42,360
Speaker 1: truly believe that if they ignore him, or if they

68
00:03:42,440 --> 00:03:46,480
Speaker 1: wish hard enough, the actuarial tables is a direct quote

69
00:03:46,600 --> 00:03:50,320
Speaker 1: from The New York Times, right, remember the unknown Republican

70
00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:53,520
Speaker 1: who said the actuarial tables can't possibly be wrong for

71
00:03:53,600 --> 00:03:56,960
Speaker 1: this long like, eventually he's going to be And it's

72
00:03:57,000 --> 00:03:59,960
Speaker 1: like the road to the end of American democracy, see

73
00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:02,960
Speaker 1: paved with Donald Trump will just go away if we

74
00:04:03,000 --> 00:04:04,160
Speaker 1: close our eyes hard enough.

75
00:04:04,480 --> 00:04:07,600
Speaker 2: This wish fulfillment that Trump is going to get defeated

76
00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:10,120
Speaker 2: by a true conservative goes all the way back to

77
00:04:10,160 --> 00:04:13,520
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, twenty fifteen, where I was the one asshole

78
00:04:13,600 --> 00:04:17,040
Speaker 2: screaming no, no, no, this isn't going to work. And

79
00:04:17,120 --> 00:04:20,480
Speaker 2: yet here we are and they still believe that this

80
00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:23,440
Speaker 2: goddamn creature with the luck of the devil is going

81
00:04:23,440 --> 00:04:25,400
Speaker 2: to drop dead of a heart attack. We are not

82
00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:27,360
Speaker 2: that lucky. We live in the hands of a cruel

83
00:04:27,440 --> 00:04:30,240
Speaker 2: and capricious god who does not want Trump dead yet

84
00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:31,080
Speaker 2: for whatever reason.

85
00:04:31,279 --> 00:04:34,039
Speaker 1: I would also just say, like, what has happened has

86
00:04:34,080 --> 00:04:36,279
Speaker 1: not been that the Republican Party has come back to.

87
00:04:36,920 --> 00:04:39,920
Speaker 1: What has happened is that the Republican Party has gotten

88
00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:45,320
Speaker 1: very trumpy, and so they've rejected democracy and democratic norms.

89
00:04:45,480 --> 00:04:47,480
Speaker 2: As anyone who's ever been on any social media platform

90
00:04:47,520 --> 00:04:50,600
Speaker 2: and you say they were democracy, you'll instantly have fifteen

91
00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:54,440
Speaker 2: hundred Twitter trolls. Would We don't live in it. Mostly

92
00:04:54,520 --> 00:04:57,680
Speaker 2: we live in a republic. Yes, you fucked tards. It's

93
00:04:57,720 --> 00:05:01,480
Speaker 2: a republic based on democratic and constitutional principles. So pardon

94
00:05:01,480 --> 00:05:04,200
Speaker 2: me for shorthanding it. Next time, I use simple pictogram

95
00:05:04,320 --> 00:05:07,160
Speaker 2: so you dumb motherfuckers can understand what I'm trying to communicate.

96
00:05:08,080 --> 00:05:10,479
Speaker 1: Someone's been spending too much time on Twitter.

97
00:05:10,520 --> 00:05:13,680
Speaker 2: Oh actually, actually I've been almost completely off Twitter the

98
00:05:13,720 --> 00:05:17,520
Speaker 2: last week, and it's been glorious. I'm on the good place.

99
00:05:17,800 --> 00:05:20,839
Speaker 1: Yes, you're in threads. But as we're talking about this

100
00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:26,120
Speaker 1: idea that Republicans can't wish him away, but neither can democrats, right,

101
00:05:26,760 --> 00:05:30,560
Speaker 1: And now we find ourselves in a situation where I

102
00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:33,080
Speaker 1: think at some point Republicans are going to wake up

103
00:05:33,080 --> 00:05:35,279
Speaker 1: to the fact that they could have had Nicky Haley,

104
00:05:35,480 --> 00:05:38,680
Speaker 1: but they would have had to have originally not allowed

105
00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:41,719
Speaker 1: Trump to take over the entire Republican Party. And I'm

106
00:05:41,960 --> 00:05:45,720
Speaker 1: thinking about like the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson,

107
00:05:45,760 --> 00:05:50,080
Speaker 1: who has that job because Trump deemed him sufficiently loyal

108
00:05:50,279 --> 00:05:53,640
Speaker 1: because he wrote a brief trying to overturn the twenty

109
00:05:53,680 --> 00:05:57,800
Speaker 1: twenty election. So, if anything, trump Ism is a contagious

110
00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:01,240
Speaker 1: illness that is infecting the very few members who are

111
00:06:01,240 --> 00:06:02,520
Speaker 1: still in office. Right.

112
00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:05,560
Speaker 2: None of these candidates who could win, I say that,

113
00:06:05,720 --> 00:06:07,960
Speaker 2: recognize that Will Hurd when he was in the race,

114
00:06:08,040 --> 00:06:10,440
Speaker 2: and Asa Hutcherson, I guess he's still in the race,

115
00:06:10,520 --> 00:06:14,640
Speaker 2: and Chris Christy all made cases that Trump was bad, wrong, evil,

116
00:06:14,720 --> 00:06:17,040
Speaker 2: must be destroyed. They were never able to win. But

117
00:06:17,160 --> 00:06:19,600
Speaker 2: none of the candidates who could win could get their

118
00:06:19,600 --> 00:06:22,560
Speaker 2: way out of the bear trap clamped around their legs.

119
00:06:22,640 --> 00:06:25,720
Speaker 2: That is Donald Trump's utter control of the Republican Party

120
00:06:25,920 --> 00:06:28,719
Speaker 2: at every level, top to bottom, stem to stern. And

121
00:06:28,760 --> 00:06:31,440
Speaker 2: if you are a Republican elected official in this country,

122
00:06:31,640 --> 00:06:34,280
Speaker 2: there is nothing that frightens you more than the thought

123
00:06:34,320 --> 00:06:37,200
Speaker 2: of crossing Donald Trump. No matter how bad, wrong and

124
00:06:37,279 --> 00:06:39,560
Speaker 2: evil you know he is, you don't want to say,

125
00:06:40,120 --> 00:06:44,440
Speaker 2: you know, Donald was slightly incorrect about claiming that Hillary

126
00:06:44,480 --> 00:06:47,480
Speaker 2: Clinton needs live babies. They don't want to say anything

127
00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:52,080
Speaker 2: to possibly offend him. And without offending him and having

128
00:06:52,120 --> 00:06:55,919
Speaker 2: a fight with him and having a competition with him,

129
00:06:56,440 --> 00:06:59,320
Speaker 2: then the message the Republican base voter receives is not

130
00:06:59,680 --> 00:07:02,720
Speaker 2: while that Ron decaid as sure as a smart, strong fella,

131
00:07:02,880 --> 00:07:05,479
Speaker 2: they hear this guy is ready to go wash Donald

132
00:07:05,480 --> 00:07:08,839
Speaker 2: Trump's car and polish his shoes before the workday starts.

133
00:07:09,200 --> 00:07:12,640
Speaker 2: It's just a weird blind spot that they recognize the

134
00:07:12,680 --> 00:07:16,800
Speaker 2: perniciousness of Trump, but they don't recognize that somebody has

135
00:07:16,840 --> 00:07:20,360
Speaker 2: to be sacrificed. Somebody has to blow themselves up to

136
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:22,560
Speaker 2: blow up Trump, and none of them want to do that.

137
00:07:22,640 --> 00:07:25,720
Speaker 2: There's just a vast, gaping lack of political.

138
00:07:25,280 --> 00:07:26,200
Speaker 3: Courage, right.

139
00:07:26,320 --> 00:07:28,160
Speaker 1: No, I think that's a good point. I think so

140
00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:31,120
Speaker 1: much about it. Like you have one party, democratic party.

141
00:07:31,160 --> 00:07:33,480
Speaker 1: You may like them, you may not like them, but

142
00:07:33,760 --> 00:07:38,800
Speaker 1: they believe in democratic principles, right, They believe in a democracy,

143
00:07:38,960 --> 00:07:42,760
Speaker 1: whereas you have this other party which really believes in

144
00:07:42,880 --> 00:07:46,360
Speaker 1: trump Ism. So now you have Trump. He is going

145
00:07:46,440 --> 00:07:48,800
Speaker 1: to be the nominee one hundred percent who he picks

146
00:07:48,840 --> 00:07:51,640
Speaker 1: as a vice president. It doesn't even matter, right because

147
00:07:51,640 --> 00:07:55,000
Speaker 1: that person, like, you know, look how well that turned

148
00:07:55,000 --> 00:07:57,960
Speaker 1: out for Mike Pants, right. I mean, you know, he

149
00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:01,760
Speaker 1: picks whoever, whoever is, He's lucky. And then you know

150
00:08:01,880 --> 00:08:05,240
Speaker 1: you will go into a year of like him coming

151
00:08:05,320 --> 00:08:10,720
Speaker 1: after you. And speaking of which he did come after

152
00:08:10,720 --> 00:08:13,760
Speaker 1: you this weekend, which is pretty interesting.

153
00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:16,760
Speaker 2: He cannot get the Lincoln Project and me out of

154
00:08:16,800 --> 00:08:18,720
Speaker 2: his vacuous little orange noggin.

155
00:08:19,040 --> 00:08:20,160
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is.

156
00:08:20,240 --> 00:08:22,120
Speaker 2: Because we whipped his ass and we never showed any

157
00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:24,880
Speaker 2: fear about him. Because the thing he hates and lows

158
00:08:24,920 --> 00:08:28,080
Speaker 2: the most molly is anyone who stands up to him

159
00:08:28,080 --> 00:08:30,960
Speaker 2: and doesn't break and anyone who doesn't put up with

160
00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:34,000
Speaker 2: his threats and bullshit intimidation. Even when he sent Bill

161
00:08:34,040 --> 00:08:36,680
Speaker 2: Barr after the Lincoln Project, our response wasn't like, oh no,

162
00:08:36,800 --> 00:08:39,120
Speaker 2: please stop, Johnold, We'll do anything you want. It was like,

163
00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:42,439
Speaker 2: go fuck yourself, come on over, try me again, bitch.

164
00:08:42,720 --> 00:08:44,920
Speaker 2: And look, he understands also that at a sort of

165
00:08:44,960 --> 00:08:50,040
Speaker 2: intuitive level, the kind of direct, in your face campaigning

166
00:08:50,080 --> 00:08:53,160
Speaker 2: that we did against him is something that had benefit.

167
00:08:53,240 --> 00:08:55,360
Speaker 2: It worked. It show Democrats had a tough en up,

168
00:08:55,520 --> 00:08:59,439
Speaker 2: and he intuitively gets that that's a bad outcome for help.

169
00:08:59,280 --> 00:09:02,720
Speaker 1: Right exactly. So tell me what you think it looks like.

170
00:09:02,800 --> 00:09:06,880
Speaker 1: Now we have Republicans nominating Trump, we have Democrats, a

171
00:09:06,920 --> 00:09:10,000
Speaker 1: lot of stuff going on, this bad Senate map, we

172
00:09:10,120 --> 00:09:13,160
Speaker 1: have a House that has now kicked the can. Mike

173
00:09:13,240 --> 00:09:16,000
Speaker 1: Johnson has a CR that he's going to have to

174
00:09:16,080 --> 00:09:21,120
Speaker 1: figure out starting in January. It's tiered, so people are

175
00:09:21,120 --> 00:09:24,520
Speaker 1: a little confused about it, but ultimately he did a

176
00:09:24,559 --> 00:09:28,240
Speaker 1: clean CR. It's a continuing resolution which funds the government

177
00:09:28,280 --> 00:09:31,560
Speaker 1: for another month. But eventually Mike Johnson is going to

178
00:09:31,559 --> 00:09:33,760
Speaker 1: have a come to Jesus moment right where he's going

179
00:09:33,800 --> 00:09:36,280
Speaker 1: to have to do government and he's part of a

180
00:09:36,320 --> 00:09:39,600
Speaker 1: party that no longer believes in quote unquote doing government right.

181
00:09:39,800 --> 00:09:42,560
Speaker 2: It's not just that it is that they believe that

182
00:09:42,600 --> 00:09:45,160
Speaker 2: the perverse incentive structure out there of I'm going to

183
00:09:45,160 --> 00:09:47,400
Speaker 2: get a primary from my right if I vote for

184
00:09:47,400 --> 00:09:51,199
Speaker 2: a CR is out there with enough Republican members. Because again,

185
00:09:51,200 --> 00:09:53,440
Speaker 2: the dog caught the car two years ago, They're like, hey,

186
00:09:53,559 --> 00:09:57,040
Speaker 2: district us into the most right wing, maga crazy districts.

187
00:09:56,640 --> 00:10:00,080
Speaker 3: In the world, right, why not? And why not? Their

188
00:10:00,160 --> 00:10:02,280
Speaker 3: prayers were answered, what's the worst they could happen?

189
00:10:02,280 --> 00:10:04,559
Speaker 2: What's the worst it could happen? Their prayers were answered

190
00:10:04,640 --> 00:10:07,840
Speaker 2: with that, And so now they exist in a world

191
00:10:08,160 --> 00:10:11,080
Speaker 2: where if Matt Gates or Marjorie Taylor Green or Lren

192
00:10:11,120 --> 00:10:12,760
Speaker 2: Bober or somebody wakes up pissed off at them and

193
00:10:12,760 --> 00:10:16,920
Speaker 2: starts talking about them on Fox that they're a libtard, Cuckshill.

194
00:10:16,640 --> 00:10:19,200
Speaker 1: Right or right Side Broadcasting.

195
00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:21,600
Speaker 2: Right or pizza Jack or any of the other crazies.

196
00:10:21,800 --> 00:10:27,400
Speaker 1: Human events, Yeah, human events, Oh my god. But I

197
00:10:27,400 --> 00:10:29,600
Speaker 1: mean you could just get on there and have some

198
00:10:29,760 --> 00:10:33,920
Speaker 1: vape pen and watch Beetle Juice and talk about how

199
00:10:33,960 --> 00:10:37,839
Speaker 1: you don't like this person. They're insufficiently maga and they

200
00:10:37,840 --> 00:10:38,880
Speaker 1: can be primary right.

201
00:10:38,960 --> 00:10:41,440
Speaker 2: Well, it's a lot like China during the Mao era.

202
00:10:42,400 --> 00:10:45,160
Speaker 2: You could be denounced at any time by anybody, and

203
00:10:45,320 --> 00:10:47,640
Speaker 2: suddenly you went from being like a senior member of

204
00:10:47,640 --> 00:10:51,359
Speaker 2: the People's Liberation Army to like having to dig potatoes

205
00:10:51,480 --> 00:10:57,079
Speaker 2: in some Northwest Frontier province if you were lucky, If

206
00:10:57,120 --> 00:10:59,640
Speaker 2: you were lucky We're just in a spot where the

207
00:10:59,679 --> 00:11:04,199
Speaker 2: realization that Trump runs the Republican Party. It's even problematic

208
00:11:04,320 --> 00:11:08,959
Speaker 2: for some otherwise very smart reporters to process that this

209
00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:11,439
Speaker 2: horse race they desperately want isn't real.

210
00:11:11,800 --> 00:11:14,120
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that for a minute. There is

211
00:11:14,200 --> 00:11:17,680
Speaker 1: no primary, right, you have the incumbent Joe Biden, who

212
00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:20,280
Speaker 1: is old. Okay, we're going to give you that he's old.

213
00:11:20,320 --> 00:11:21,600
Speaker 1: He's eighty one. He's old.

214
00:11:21,720 --> 00:11:24,200
Speaker 2: I noticed Joe Biden was old. I noticed that.

215
00:11:24,280 --> 00:11:27,040
Speaker 1: He's spry, he rides a bike, but he is old.

216
00:11:27,080 --> 00:11:29,840
Speaker 1: Sure he's been to like fifteen war zones, but okay,

217
00:11:29,880 --> 00:11:33,199
Speaker 1: he's old versus the guy with the ninety one criminal indictments.

218
00:11:33,240 --> 00:11:35,960
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about this. A second straight News

219
00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:39,120
Speaker 1: again is going to have an opportunity to cover Donald Trump.

220
00:11:39,440 --> 00:11:43,120
Speaker 1: What is going to happen besides the death of the universe? Go,

221
00:11:43,520 --> 00:11:46,080
Speaker 1: what should the mainstream media do. We're on the opinion side,

222
00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:48,319
Speaker 1: so we're lucky we can just say our opinions.

223
00:11:48,520 --> 00:11:51,120
Speaker 2: I wish they would adopt the Jay Rosen rule. Don't

224
00:11:51,120 --> 00:11:54,520
Speaker 2: cover the odds, cover the stakes. And unfortunately, the horse

225
00:11:54,640 --> 00:11:59,120
Speaker 2: race coverage, the breathless horse race coverage, distracts from the

226
00:11:59,120 --> 00:12:02,880
Speaker 2: existential day that a second Trump term poses.

227
00:12:02,559 --> 00:12:04,439
Speaker 1: And it normalizes him, right.

228
00:12:04,320 --> 00:12:06,480
Speaker 2: Yes, it it gives people a sense of like well

229
00:12:06,720 --> 00:12:09,960
Speaker 2: and Mallia to this point, I actually had a serious

230
00:12:10,040 --> 00:12:13,760
Speaker 2: reporter last week say to me, well, I think all

231
00:12:13,840 --> 00:12:16,600
Speaker 2: of this Project twenty twenty five stuff is a little

232
00:12:16,640 --> 00:12:20,520
Speaker 2: overblow because there's no way the lawyers would let I'm like,

233
00:12:20,800 --> 00:12:22,800
Speaker 2: that's not the point. They're not going to have the

234
00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:24,319
Speaker 2: lawyers you think they're going to have.

235
00:12:24,520 --> 00:12:28,199
Speaker 1: And also Project twenty twenty five is the Heritage Foundation's

236
00:12:28,280 --> 00:12:33,040
Speaker 1: foray into fascism, where they replace all of the normal

237
00:12:33,640 --> 00:12:37,200
Speaker 1: bureaucrats with far right fascist bureaucrats.

238
00:12:37,360 --> 00:12:41,480
Speaker 2: Don't forget the Heritage Foundation is the soft face of

239
00:12:41,520 --> 00:12:46,120
Speaker 2: this plan. They're the like gentry Republican version of this plan.

240
00:12:46,320 --> 00:12:49,080
Speaker 2: And if you think that having people like Steven Miller

241
00:12:49,120 --> 00:12:52,440
Speaker 2: and Steve Bannon and all these crazy and Kevin Slack,

242
00:12:52,520 --> 00:12:55,840
Speaker 2: the Red Caesar guy and all these cuckoos back in

243
00:12:55,920 --> 00:12:58,720
Speaker 2: charge is going to be constrained next time by grown

244
00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:02,280
Speaker 2: ups or the cords somebody else, they will ignore the

245
00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:05,240
Speaker 2: law and the courts. And our friend George Conways are

246
00:13:05,240 --> 00:13:07,320
Speaker 2: a new group this week where they are pointing out

247
00:13:07,360 --> 00:13:09,720
Speaker 2: to Republican lawyers, Hey, you know, you swore an oath

248
00:13:09,760 --> 00:13:12,440
Speaker 2: to the Constitution as a rule of law not to Trump.

249
00:13:12,600 --> 00:13:15,240
Speaker 2: But there will be enough Republican lawyers who don't give

250
00:13:15,280 --> 00:13:15,600
Speaker 2: a shit.

251
00:13:15,760 --> 00:13:18,040
Speaker 1: You're gonna have Pizza Jack as a Secretary of the Army.

252
00:13:18,120 --> 00:13:20,600
Speaker 1: Let's be honest, like you're going to long for the

253
00:13:20,720 --> 00:13:24,320
Speaker 1: days when you had Jared as secretary of everything.

254
00:13:24,559 --> 00:13:29,160
Speaker 2: And you will find very quickly that even the Republicans

255
00:13:29,200 --> 00:13:31,720
Speaker 2: in the US Senate who do not like Trump, and

256
00:13:31,760 --> 00:13:34,960
Speaker 2: there are still in the Republican caucus.

257
00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:36,160
Speaker 1: A few Mitt will be gone.

258
00:13:36,400 --> 00:13:38,840
Speaker 2: No Mitt will be gone. There are still a dozen

259
00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:42,320
Speaker 2: who are uncomfortable, four or five who are real like

260
00:13:42,520 --> 00:13:46,240
Speaker 2: in opposition to Trump. Even those people, even Sue Collins,

261
00:13:46,240 --> 00:13:48,800
Speaker 2: who believes that Trump has learned his lesson, they will

262
00:13:48,840 --> 00:13:51,000
Speaker 2: vote for all these crazy appointees. They will vote for

263
00:13:50,960 --> 00:13:53,280
Speaker 2: Pizza Jack. They will vote for Seb Gorka to be

264
00:13:53,360 --> 00:13:56,440
Speaker 2: the Secretary of Defense or whatever they're going to name

265
00:13:56,520 --> 00:14:07,719
Speaker 2: the most insane lunatics. The Dragon of Buddhipem.

266
00:14:03,720 --> 00:14:06,640
Speaker 1: Gorka will be the person who puts the order in

267
00:14:06,800 --> 00:14:08,360
Speaker 1: to send us to Gidmo.

268
00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:11,280
Speaker 2: Actually, I think Seb will end up being I'm not

269
00:14:11,520 --> 00:14:13,319
Speaker 2: kidding you national Security advisor.

270
00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:16,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, why not. What's the bar here?

271
00:14:16,840 --> 00:14:19,120
Speaker 2: They're going to make cash and Carrie Patel, the Secretary

272
00:14:19,120 --> 00:14:21,680
Speaker 2: of Defense, and Rich Grenell is going to go ahead,

273
00:14:21,720 --> 00:14:24,680
Speaker 2: you know, the intelligence community. Again, that's good, great news,

274
00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:25,680
Speaker 2: fucking great news.

275
00:14:25,680 --> 00:14:26,600
Speaker 1: It's going to be amazing.

276
00:14:27,680 --> 00:14:30,080
Speaker 2: Don't worry. It's just the horse race is what really matters.

277
00:14:30,080 --> 00:14:32,320
Speaker 2: And so right, all the grown ups will be back.

278
00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:35,960
Speaker 1: I think it's a good point, and I think it's

279
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:39,680
Speaker 1: worth remembering just that the stakes here are humongous. I

280
00:14:39,720 --> 00:14:43,320
Speaker 1: mean they're basically I want to expand this for a minute,

281
00:14:43,320 --> 00:14:46,120
Speaker 1: which is even if and again we don't know what's

282
00:14:46,160 --> 00:14:48,400
Speaker 1: going to happen. We're still a year out. I can't

283
00:14:48,400 --> 00:14:50,400
Speaker 1: believe we're gonna have another fucking year of this. I mean,

284
00:14:50,440 --> 00:14:53,640
Speaker 1: I'm exhausted just thinking about it. But even despite that,

285
00:14:54,040 --> 00:14:56,840
Speaker 1: there still is a Republican party that does not really

286
00:14:56,880 --> 00:14:59,880
Speaker 1: believe in any of these principles anymore of democracy.

287
00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:04,320
Speaker 2: Now, no, we'd live in a post ideological republican party.

288
00:15:04,560 --> 00:15:06,520
Speaker 2: They do not believe. They are what I call the

289
00:15:06,560 --> 00:15:11,040
Speaker 2: old trope was limited government conservatives. They are unlimited government conservatives.

290
00:15:11,240 --> 00:15:14,920
Speaker 2: They want power and control at every level. And that

291
00:15:14,960 --> 00:15:18,840
Speaker 2: includes from what the law means in terms of it means,

292
00:15:18,840 --> 00:15:21,240
Speaker 2: what the president says it means, to who can be

293
00:15:21,280 --> 00:15:23,960
Speaker 2: an American, who can come to America to try to

294
00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:26,960
Speaker 2: build a better life, to whether there's any degree of

295
00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:30,480
Speaker 2: autonomy or individual liberty when it comes to women. All

296
00:15:30,520 --> 00:15:32,760
Speaker 2: these things are going to add up in a fundamental

297
00:15:32,760 --> 00:15:37,200
Speaker 2: way where if he becomes president, the transition time between

298
00:15:37,600 --> 00:15:40,560
Speaker 2: him swearing that oath on the Bible as it catches

299
00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:45,360
Speaker 2: fire and the outright deployment and use and abuse of

300
00:15:45,440 --> 00:15:50,040
Speaker 2: military power in this country will be hours, not days,

301
00:15:50,280 --> 00:15:54,800
Speaker 2: Days not weeks, weeks not months. Rick Wilson, Ray of

302
00:15:54,880 --> 00:15:58,880
Speaker 2: Sunshine as always.

303
00:16:01,840 --> 00:16:05,480
Speaker 1: John Byrne Murdoch is a columnist and chief data reporter

304
00:16:05,640 --> 00:16:09,200
Speaker 1: at The Financial Times. Welcome to you Fast Politics, John,

305
00:16:09,440 --> 00:16:12,680
Speaker 1: Thank you thanks for having me describe yourself so that

306
00:16:12,720 --> 00:16:13,520
Speaker 1: I don't get it wrong.

307
00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:17,120
Speaker 4: So I'm the chief data reporter at the which basically

308
00:16:17,160 --> 00:16:21,000
Speaker 4: means I'm trying to do journalism using statistics, using data,

309
00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:25,560
Speaker 4: using charts. So that means both finding stories in data

310
00:16:25,600 --> 00:16:29,560
Speaker 4: sets or using things like Foier requests, and then also

311
00:16:30,200 --> 00:16:33,160
Speaker 4: using graphs and maps and stuff to actually get those

312
00:16:33,200 --> 00:16:35,120
Speaker 4: stories get that journalism out to people as well.

313
00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:38,560
Speaker 1: And you're a senior fellow at the London School of Economics,

314
00:16:38,640 --> 00:16:40,880
Speaker 1: so you are, as we say, on this side of

315
00:16:40,920 --> 00:16:42,920
Speaker 1: the pond, no slouch.

316
00:16:43,480 --> 00:16:45,800
Speaker 4: Well, you know, some of those titles come with more

317
00:16:45,840 --> 00:16:48,400
Speaker 4: responsibilities than others, but that just means folks at the

318
00:16:48,480 --> 00:16:51,040
Speaker 4: ls you give give me support on some of the

319
00:16:51,080 --> 00:16:52,080
Speaker 4: pieces I'm working with.

320
00:16:52,360 --> 00:16:57,760
Speaker 1: I decided to write to you because you had an

321
00:16:57,760 --> 00:17:02,280
Speaker 1: incredible piece which something that had a sense that this

322
00:17:02,440 --> 00:17:05,840
Speaker 1: was happening, but I don't think I quite understood it.

323
00:17:06,040 --> 00:17:10,160
Speaker 1: So American life expectancy is having the worst crisis of

324
00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:13,399
Speaker 1: my lifetime. So I'm hoping you can talk to me

325
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:15,720
Speaker 1: a little bit about this research you did. Yeah.

326
00:17:15,880 --> 00:17:16,160
Speaker 3: Sure.

327
00:17:16,320 --> 00:17:19,360
Speaker 4: So this was prompted by just the fact that, as

328
00:17:19,400 --> 00:17:22,000
Speaker 4: I think most of your listeners will know, and during COVID,

329
00:17:22,359 --> 00:17:25,800
Speaker 4: life expectancy around the world dropped pretty much everywhere because

330
00:17:26,320 --> 00:17:30,040
Speaker 4: simply while people were dying this direct result of the virus.

331
00:17:30,080 --> 00:17:33,399
Speaker 4: But the really interesting thing that I saw was after

332
00:17:33,880 --> 00:17:37,000
Speaker 4: the initial sort of brant of the virus, after twenty twenty,

333
00:17:37,119 --> 00:17:39,840
Speaker 4: by the time vaccines were online and that kind of thing,

334
00:17:40,119 --> 00:17:43,480
Speaker 4: life expectancy broadly recovered in most countries in the world,

335
00:17:43,520 --> 00:17:46,960
Speaker 4: so we saw this sudden dip and then a fairly

336
00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:49,159
Speaker 4: smooth rebound back to roughly.

337
00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:49,920
Speaker 3: Where it would have been.

338
00:17:50,160 --> 00:17:52,919
Speaker 4: However, there was one exception, which was in the UAPs,

339
00:17:53,040 --> 00:17:58,560
Speaker 4: where life expectancy dipped by about two years in twenty twenty,

340
00:17:58,600 --> 00:18:01,560
Speaker 4: but then dipped by an another year or so in

341
00:18:01,680 --> 00:18:04,639
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one. And that just got me thinking, like,

342
00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:07,240
Speaker 4: what's happening here? Why is it that in the rest

343
00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:08,679
Speaker 4: of the world we saw this blip, but in the

344
00:18:08,760 --> 00:18:13,560
Speaker 4: US things have only continued getting even worse. And also,

345
00:18:13,680 --> 00:18:16,879
Speaker 4: you know, what can we learn by making more direct

346
00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:19,159
Speaker 4: comparisons between what we see in the US and what

347
00:18:19,200 --> 00:18:22,520
Speaker 4: we see elsewhere. My entry point in that as a

348
00:18:22,760 --> 00:18:26,399
Speaker 4: brit was to think, okay, let's say England and the US.

349
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:30,080
Speaker 4: So you've got two relatively wealthy countries in the West

350
00:18:31,119 --> 00:18:36,040
Speaker 4: with fairly similar demographics, fairly similar in many ways, and

351
00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:38,920
Speaker 4: yet people in people in England, people in Britain live

352
00:18:39,560 --> 00:18:42,560
Speaker 4: a couple of years longer than people in the US.

353
00:18:42,960 --> 00:18:45,560
Speaker 1: The central premise of those piece is why are Americans

354
00:18:45,640 --> 00:18:48,160
Speaker 1: dying so young? Continue, Yeah, well.

355
00:18:48,600 --> 00:18:50,600
Speaker 4: Exactly that, But as you say, it is completely in

356
00:18:50,720 --> 00:18:52,919
Speaker 4: same because I've read and you and I've read, and

357
00:18:53,359 --> 00:18:54,879
Speaker 4: all sorts of people who've read and heard over the

358
00:18:54,960 --> 00:18:57,160
Speaker 4: last couple of years, so many stories about how much

359
00:18:57,320 --> 00:19:01,840
Speaker 4: richer Americans are now than people or people in most

360
00:19:01,920 --> 00:19:03,200
Speaker 4: parts of the We have.

361
00:19:03,160 --> 00:19:07,160
Speaker 1: Lower inflation, much lower inflation, because we didn't sanction ourselves

362
00:19:07,200 --> 00:19:07,840
Speaker 1: with Braxite.

363
00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:10,520
Speaker 4: Continue well, indeed, yeah, there are all sorts of things

364
00:19:10,520 --> 00:19:12,800
Speaker 4: going on here, but there's there's no question that the

365
00:19:12,840 --> 00:19:16,000
Speaker 4: average American is now substantially richer than the average britt

366
00:19:16,080 --> 00:19:19,760
Speaker 4: by somewhere between about thirty and even sixty percent, depending

367
00:19:19,760 --> 00:19:22,359
Speaker 4: on exactly what be used. And so that makes this

368
00:19:22,560 --> 00:19:26,680
Speaker 4: even more striking because you've got this very large gap

369
00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:30,520
Speaker 4: in life expectancy between the two countries, despite the fact

370
00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:35,119
Speaker 4: that Americans in theory have considerably higher living standards. Like

371
00:19:35,119 --> 00:19:37,360
Speaker 4: it's people in England live five years longer than people

372
00:19:37,359 --> 00:19:40,560
Speaker 4: in America, despite America much more insane.

373
00:19:40,880 --> 00:19:43,000
Speaker 3: So that in itself is startling.

374
00:19:43,040 --> 00:19:45,800
Speaker 4: But when you look at this across the income distribution

375
00:19:46,119 --> 00:19:48,920
Speaker 4: is where it gets really. So this is where if

376
00:19:48,960 --> 00:19:54,239
Speaker 4: you imagine the richest, most high earning people on the

377
00:19:54,320 --> 00:19:57,040
Speaker 4: right and the poorest, most low earning people on the left,

378
00:19:57,440 --> 00:20:00,520
Speaker 4: and look at what life expectancy is across that distribution,

379
00:20:00,880 --> 00:20:03,520
Speaker 4: and what you say is, if you're a really well

380
00:20:03,560 --> 00:20:06,080
Speaker 4: off person in America, you live about as long as

381
00:20:06,119 --> 00:20:08,919
Speaker 4: a really well off person in the UK. So average

382
00:20:08,960 --> 00:20:12,240
Speaker 4: life expectancy there is maybe around eighty five years. But

383
00:20:12,320 --> 00:20:14,960
Speaker 4: at the bottom, the people who are right at the

384
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:18,360
Speaker 4: bottom of British society, who are really really struggling all

385
00:20:18,400 --> 00:20:20,440
Speaker 4: sorts of things in their lives have gone role they're

386
00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:23,440
Speaker 4: still living on average seventy six years, whereas the people

387
00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:25,600
Speaker 4: right at the bottom of the US society are living

388
00:20:25,920 --> 00:20:29,080
Speaker 4: less than seventy years. So it's really at the bottom

389
00:20:29,160 --> 00:20:31,959
Speaker 4: end of things among people who've come across a lot

390
00:20:31,960 --> 00:20:36,919
Speaker 4: of disadvantage that the US theirs exceptionally poorly. And this

391
00:20:37,080 --> 00:20:39,159
Speaker 4: was I think actually the statistic that first stopt me

392
00:20:39,240 --> 00:20:42,200
Speaker 4: interested in doing this was I was looking at some

393
00:20:42,359 --> 00:20:46,000
Speaker 4: data on what's called health adjusted life expectance, So this

394
00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:47,720
Speaker 4: is not just how long you're going to live, but

395
00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:50,679
Speaker 4: how long people are expected to live in good health,

396
00:20:50,760 --> 00:20:52,359
Speaker 4: so when we're still able to be up with about

397
00:20:52,359 --> 00:20:56,200
Speaker 4: and physically acting and mentally sharp. And what that shows

398
00:20:56,280 --> 00:20:59,280
Speaker 4: is the average person in America is expected to get

399
00:20:59,280 --> 00:21:02,520
Speaker 4: around sixty five years in good health like that, and

400
00:21:03,040 --> 00:21:05,840
Speaker 4: that figure in the UK, sixty five years is the

401
00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:09,720
Speaker 4: figure for the lowest healthy life expectancy in the entire country.

402
00:21:09,840 --> 00:21:12,240
Speaker 4: So there's a seaside tower a coastal town in the

403
00:21:12,280 --> 00:21:16,520
Speaker 4: UK called Blackpool, which is kind of notorious for having

404
00:21:16,800 --> 00:21:21,840
Speaker 4: a lot of drug problems up and antidepressants, homelessness. It's

405
00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:25,600
Speaker 4: the sort of poster child are struggling art of this country,

406
00:21:25,680 --> 00:21:28,040
Speaker 4: and the average person who's born in that part of

407
00:21:28,080 --> 00:21:30,600
Speaker 4: England lives as long and healthy a life as the

408
00:21:30,640 --> 00:21:31,640
Speaker 4: average America does.

409
00:21:31,680 --> 00:21:33,400
Speaker 1: Some of this have to do with the fact that

410
00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:35,359
Speaker 1: the British have healthcare.

411
00:21:35,680 --> 00:21:39,080
Speaker 4: It's a really interesting one because that I think is

412
00:21:39,119 --> 00:21:42,000
Speaker 4: certainly what a lot of people would assume is going right.

413
00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:44,960
Speaker 4: In the UK, we have the National House of Free

414
00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:46,560
Speaker 4: at the point of view, so you're never hit with

415
00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:48,720
Speaker 4: a bill. You're never having to think, you know, am

416
00:21:48,760 --> 00:21:51,000
Speaker 4: I going to be able to afford this? If you've

417
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:53,240
Speaker 4: got a health issue, it gets to can count. In

418
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:55,720
Speaker 4: the US, obviously, that's true for a lot of people

419
00:21:55,720 --> 00:21:59,280
Speaker 4: who've got health insurance, perhaps with their employer or even

420
00:21:59,320 --> 00:22:01,960
Speaker 4: if they're being directly. But of course there is a

421
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:05,440
Speaker 4: minority of Americans who don't have health insurance and don't

422
00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:07,800
Speaker 4: have health cover, and therefore are worried about am I

423
00:22:07,840 --> 00:22:09,520
Speaker 4: going to be able to afford this treatment? And so

424
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:12,160
Speaker 4: I think the default position a lot of people coming

425
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:14,640
Speaker 4: to this with like, well, that must explain it. And

426
00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:17,200
Speaker 4: I don't want to say I'm not going to say

427
00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:18,760
Speaker 4: that that isn't a factor at all.

428
00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:19,920
Speaker 3: But when you.

429
00:22:19,840 --> 00:22:24,480
Speaker 4: Start looking at the reasons for this gap in life expectancy,

430
00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:26,800
Speaker 4: when you start looking at what people are dying, it

431
00:22:27,000 --> 00:22:30,640
Speaker 4: starts to become clear that that that the health insurance

432
00:22:30,680 --> 00:22:33,040
Speaker 4: factor can only explain the small part of it.

433
00:22:33,400 --> 00:22:36,240
Speaker 1: Ooh, so interesting, So tell me more.

434
00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:39,120
Speaker 4: What we can do is we can look at There's

435
00:22:39,119 --> 00:22:41,960
Speaker 4: a couple of things, right, So one is we can

436
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,879
Speaker 4: look at the age at which people die and the

437
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:48,600
Speaker 4: rate at which people die at different ages in various countries.

438
00:22:48,880 --> 00:22:52,400
Speaker 4: So if you take not just England, not just in UK,

439
00:22:52,520 --> 00:22:58,680
Speaker 4: but a whole load of wealthy countries, so Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands,

440
00:22:58,800 --> 00:23:00,400
Speaker 4: throw it over of them in here, and look at

441
00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:03,440
Speaker 4: what is the chance of someone dying in any given

442
00:23:03,560 --> 00:23:06,119
Speaker 4: year from the age of zero, from a newborn all

443
00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:08,000
Speaker 4: the way up to one hundred years old. And what

444
00:23:08,040 --> 00:23:10,800
Speaker 4: you see is in all of those other developed countries,

445
00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:13,719
Speaker 4: the risk of death at any age is pretty similar

446
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,760
Speaker 4: to whatever country were in. So your chaps of dying

447
00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:20,480
Speaker 4: at age twenty years old is about zero point not

448
00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:25,040
Speaker 4: five percent. So that's saying about let me think, so

449
00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:27,480
Speaker 4: one percent will be you've got worried one hundred chance.

450
00:23:27,960 --> 00:23:30,480
Speaker 4: So this is about you've got about one in two

451
00:23:30,560 --> 00:23:33,280
Speaker 4: thousand chants of diet age twenty years old in most

452
00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:37,120
Speaker 4: developed countries, whereas in the US it's more time high

453
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 4: than oh.

454
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:40,679
Speaker 1: So this is really interesting. So what you're saying is

455
00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 1: if you're a twenty year old in Britain and a twenty

456
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 1: year old in America, the twenty year old in America

457
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:50,440
Speaker 1: is four times more likely to die exactly.

458
00:23:50,720 --> 00:23:52,359
Speaker 4: And the reason I bring that up with answer to

459
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:55,439
Speaker 4: launting biggest question about the impact of the different healthcare

460
00:23:56,600 --> 00:23:59,120
Speaker 4: is when you think about what someone is twenty years old,

461
00:23:59,160 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 4: is dying of one in their late teens, twenties to

462
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:05,760
Speaker 4: only thirties, what we're talking about we're not really talking here,

463
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:08,879
Speaker 4: and we'll come onto this in more detailed with boarders

464
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:11,280
Speaker 4: of death. But generally these are not people who sort

465
00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:15,160
Speaker 4: of got a chronic condition that requires expensive health care treatment.

466
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 4: These are not people who've got who are dying from

467
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:23,520
Speaker 4: saying cancer or or heart disease. These are people who

468
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 4: buy and large in America are dying from gunshot wounds, opioids,

469
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:34,359
Speaker 4: and to a smaller extent, road accidents and deaths involving vehicles.

470
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 4: And it's not, of course that it's not that the

471
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 4: healthcare system is completely ew elegant in it, but it's

472
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:43,720
Speaker 4: that if someone dies from the gunshot wound, chances are

473
00:24:44,119 --> 00:24:46,200
Speaker 4: whether or not you've got health insurance wouldn't have made

474
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 4: a huge impact on the situation. So I think when

475
00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:52,280
Speaker 4: people think about life expense, because the average life expectency

476
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:55,440
Speaker 4: is always somewhere in the seventies or eighties, people imagine

477
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:58,800
Speaker 4: that trends in life expectancy and difference in your life

478
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 4: expenses in countries are driven by what's happened to people

479
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:05,160
Speaker 4: aged in their late sixties and seventies, when in reality,

480
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:09,560
Speaker 4: the impact of the very very large numbers of people

481
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 4: dying at young ages, which is what we see in America,

482
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 4: people in their twenties and thirties, the impact of that

483
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:17,720
Speaker 4: is larger than the impact of lots of people dying

484
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:21,400
Speaker 4: very slightly earlier in their older ages. So the assumption

485
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:23,879
Speaker 4: is always to say, oh, people in the US are

486
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 4: dying in their seventies instead of eighties. This must be

487
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 4: because older people have less access to health care. But

488
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:33,720
Speaker 4: it's actually the vast quantities of people in their late teens, twenties, thirties,

489
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 4: even early forties who die in America from things that

490
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 4: people simply don't die from in these other countries.

491
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:45,120
Speaker 1: This is insane today. So it's the guns. I mean, really,

492
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:48,560
Speaker 1: if you were to change in one element, the life

493
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 1: expectancy in America is falling because of guns.

494
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 4: Well, so it's interesting to say that because this again

495
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:57,440
Speaker 4: is I think, you know, once we say it's not

496
00:25:57,520 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 4: just about alcare, and it's not just about older ages,

497
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:02,240
Speaker 4: everyone goes to the guns. Everyone thinks, Okay, if we

498
00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 4: know one thing about America, it's that there are a

499
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:07,560
Speaker 4: lot of guns, and a lot of people unfortunately lose

500
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 4: their lives as a result of that. But the really

501
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 4: striking thing that I think people so people are definitely

502
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:14,760
Speaker 4: aware of this this next thing I'm going to talk about,

503
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:16,720
Speaker 4: I don't think people realize the scale of it, which

504
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:20,800
Speaker 4: is the opioid crisis Fentadel in this coming Stone. So,

505
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,639
Speaker 4: but I think everyone both in America and outside of

506
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:27,400
Speaker 4: America knows that America has a lot of gun and

507
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:29,880
Speaker 4: that you know, it's it's a very very large number,

508
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:31,239
Speaker 4: and it's far bigger than what we see in other

509
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:34,679
Speaker 4: developed countries. But the extent that that's true, it's twice

510
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 4: as true for opio the death rate. Once you adjust

511
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 4: for the ages that people die from guns and die

512
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 4: from opioids, the death rate in America from opioids is

513
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:47,640
Speaker 4: twice as high as it is from guns, and other

514
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 4: countries just don't have this opioid problem. Of course, you know,

515
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 4: people do die from unfortunately from drug overdoses in various

516
00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 4: parts of the world. Within the UK, Scotland has a

517
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,280
Speaker 4: bit of a problem, but nothing is anywhere near the

518
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 4: scale of the US. And in the US it's only

519
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 4: been in the last few years where this where this

520
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:07,080
Speaker 4: is really really wouldn't taken off.

521
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 3: So the guns take has been a probably in the

522
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:09,440
Speaker 3: US decades.

523
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:13,040
Speaker 4: The opioids thing has become this mssive problem recently, and

524
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:17,360
Speaker 4: that is actually why in the US we didn't see

525
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 4: life expectancy rebound back up after COVID it's because we're

526
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 4: not seeing all these COVID deaths anymore. But the sheer

527
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 4: number of people dying from drugs drug over this is

528
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:30,360
Speaker 4: in the US has stop up so quickly that it's

529
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:32,959
Speaker 4: more than made up for the disappearance of COVID.

530
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm sober since I was nineteen years old, So

531
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:42,639
Speaker 1: this for me is someone who had drug overdoss myself

532
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 1: and also had many friends die of drug overdoces. This

533
00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:51,480
Speaker 1: is just an incredible you know, to hear something like

534
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: this from someone on the data side is really quite shocking.

535
00:27:56,240 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 1: And also I wish I were more surprised by it,

536
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:01,240
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense.

537
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, And and this is this is the thing.

538
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 4: It's it's a tragic, tragic thing. It's been sort of

539
00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:09,640
Speaker 4: slowly building up, and you know, we've been getting more

540
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 4: news stories about this in the last three or four years.

541
00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 4: People are definitely aware of it. But I still think

542
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:17,159
Speaker 4: that the sheer scale of what we're seeing, of what

543
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 4: we're seeing here is beyond what people realize, because again,

544
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 4: you know, we're talking about a something that I think

545
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 4: people think of as this is the thing that happens

546
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:28,399
Speaker 4: to other people, right, It's you know, you hear about this,

547
00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:30,959
Speaker 4: but you don't necessarily see it. But it's happening on

548
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 4: such a scale that it is literally pulling down.

549
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 3: Life expectance that the entirety of the US.

550
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 4: And you know, it's obviously easy to say again that

551
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 4: well shore, but it's still okay if you're rich, but

552
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 4: a you know exactly, that's that's a remarkable lack of

553
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 4: empathy for them. But it's also this this does you know,

554
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 4: affect people further up the income distribution as well. Things

555
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 4: can go well for people a few role turns in life,

556
00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 4: and you're another statistic, Well, I think.

557
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:01,720
Speaker 1: Also, I mean, first of all, that's no way to

558
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: go through life not giving a shit about people who

559
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 1: don't have money. And then the other thing is that

560
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: I think is so interesting. I want you to go

561
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: back to that what you said that that people who

562
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: do drugs that they're more likely to die of an

563
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: overdose in the United States, right.

564
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:20,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well that's that's fentanyl. Right.

565
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 4: So there are all sorts of opioids that get around

566
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 4: various countries in the world. As I mentioned, Scotland and

567
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 4: the UK has a smaller problem, but it does have

568
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 4: an issue with these freet sort of street opening oils

569
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 4: and in the UK, but nothing as leasure as ventandel

570
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 4: is circulating pretty much anywhere else. The sort of the

571
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 4: emergence of fentanyls in the city has really driven what

572
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:45,200
Speaker 4: was already this sort of slow rumbling problem in the

573
00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 4: US and turned it into this just absolutely enormous spike

574
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:51,800
Speaker 4: which just takes lives away like nothing else.

575
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: Ventanyl is actually really a problem.

576
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 4: Absolutely, it's an enormous bob. I'm sure some of your

577
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 4: listeners will have been aware of them. Presidency from China

578
00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 4: being over in San Francisco recently to talk to Biden

579
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 4: among others, and one of the points of discussion was

580
00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:09,400
Speaker 4: spent A lot of it tends to be manufactured and

581
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 4: imported from well, not so much imported, but it gets

582
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:15,600
Speaker 4: into the country from China, and it is a massive,

583
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 4: massive issue.

584
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:19,120
Speaker 3: You know, in twenty twenty one, seventy thousand.

585
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:22,080
Speaker 4: People in the US died from fentanyl alone, and the

586
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 4: numbers only increased since then, I believe in and this

587
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 4: was not including other opiods, but that is still more

588
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:30,800
Speaker 4: than the total number of people who died outside the

589
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 4: homicide or suicide.

590
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 3: So it's an absolutely enormous issue.

591
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:38,440
Speaker 4: And as recently as twenty thirteen, about two thousand people

592
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 4: who died from invented that.

593
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 3: So you've gone from two.

594
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:43,080
Speaker 4: Thousand to more than seventy thousand in the space of

595
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 4: less than ten years. It's just has been that sudden,

596
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,240
Speaker 4: and I think people don't realize that we completely changed

597
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 4: from this sort of slow rumbling opioid crisis which started

598
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:55,280
Speaker 4: with prescription and puides, to something now which is just

599
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:56,720
Speaker 4: on a completely different stay.

600
00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: Because ramostone a time, I want you to go over

601
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 1: the tap lines in this story again, poorer Americans are

602
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:04,960
Speaker 1: living how many years shorter?

603
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:08,959
Speaker 4: Are so? Poor Americans live about fifteen years shorter than

604
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:12,360
Speaker 4: the richest Americans. But then the point is that every

605
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 4: country has a bit of a gap one to that.

606
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 4: Like in UK it's maybe a nine yeager and that's

607
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 4: certainly normal for wealthy countries, But in the US it's

608
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 4: a fifteen yega. And that's not because both ends are

609
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:24,840
Speaker 4: stretched out, as it were, it's specifically because people at

610
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 4: the bottom.

611
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 3: End in America live much more lethal lives.

612
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, Basically, the way we think about it is the

613
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:34,760
Speaker 4: experience of being poor in America is much more deadly,

614
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 4: like disadvantage in America is much more lethal than disadvantage

615
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 4: in other parts of the world.

616
00:31:40,640 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 1: Such an insane way to run a country. And the

617
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: top lines I'm taking away here are that it's not

618
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: necessarily healthcare. I wonder if you could, just for my

619
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 1: own edification, I have two questions. One is maternal fetal mortality,

620
00:31:56,120 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 1: if you had some take on that that you could

621
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: fold into the data. And the other is racism and medicine.

622
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: I know that African Americans get much less good medical

623
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: care in this country, and I'm just wondering if you

624
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:11,480
Speaker 1: could speak to either or either or about sure.

625
00:32:11,560 --> 00:32:15,760
Speaker 4: So maternal mortalities is definitely point worth mentioning, and so

626
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 4: I'm glad you did. And that is still a figure

627
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 4: where number one, the US does worse than pretty much

628
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 4: all of its peer countries or other developed countries. But

629
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:28,560
Speaker 4: also that's especially true among black women, among African American women,

630
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 4: and again in most countries. Do you see something slightly

631
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 4: similar in terms of Black women in the UK for

632
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 4: examples of their worst than white women in the UK.

633
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 4: But the rate of maternal deaths and on black women

634
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 4: in America is far, far, far, far far higher than

635
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 4: from what we see either for black women in any

636
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 4: other parts of the world, so they're definitely is affacting it. Sorry,

637
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 4: that definitely is a factor. And racism and medicine again. Yeah,

638
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,320
Speaker 4: you know, I've read some powerful stories about about what

639
00:32:57,360 --> 00:32:59,960
Speaker 4: that looks like, and certainly I think it's specially for

640
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 4: black women that does seem to be a consistent theme.

641
00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 4: So it's yeah, I'm absolutely not sort of dismissing the

642
00:33:06,880 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 4: roles of those things in play. And you know, the

643
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:12,320
Speaker 4: lack of access to healthcare in America is absolutly be

644
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 4: an issue as well. But I think when you look

645
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 4: at the data on this, it really is guns and

646
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 4: particularly drugs, which account for the vast majority of what

647
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:21,040
Speaker 4: we're talking about.

648
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting. Thank you so much for coming. I

649
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 1: hope you'll come back.

650
00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me, and yeah, I'd love it.

651
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:32,320
Speaker 1: David Leonhard is a senior writer at The New York

652
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 1: Times and author of Ours Was The Shining Future, The

653
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: Story of the American Dream. Welcome too, Fast Politics.

654
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 3: David, It's great to be back.

655
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: Rolly, Yes, welcome back. So I want to talk about

656
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:49,560
Speaker 1: this book, Ours Was The Shining Future. I want you

657
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: to sort of you know, I think of you as

658
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 1: someone who writes more than pretty much anyone else, because

659
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:58,360
Speaker 1: you write this daily newsletter, and I know you don't

660
00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: do it every day, but you do it a lot,

661
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 1: and it is considered to be at least by the

662
00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:07,000
Speaker 1: people at the times. They're sort of digital front page.

663
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:08,759
Speaker 1: How did you find time to do this?

664
00:34:09,800 --> 00:34:11,839
Speaker 3: First of all, I missed a lot of deadline. I

665
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 3: spent a long time writing the book, and I loved

666
00:34:14,320 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 3: doing it. I did a lot of historical research. I mean,

667
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 3: it's really a book of stories and a book of

668
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 3: history be of how the American economy has ended up

669
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:24,920
Speaker 3: where it is. But so part of the answer is

670
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 3: that I spent years writing it. And then part of

671
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 3: the answer is that it overlaps a lot with my job,

672
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 3: which is I spent a lot of time in my

673
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 3: job writing about the American economy and writing about the

674
00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 3: American political system, and this is very much a book

675
00:34:36,840 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 3: about both. And then, weirdly, COVID help, because it's the

676
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 3: world slowed down so much during the miseries of COVID

677
00:34:45,640 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 3: and people stopped commuting. I basically found that I had

678
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:56,280
Speaker 3: a couple hours every morning when I wasn't commuting, and

679
00:34:57,440 --> 00:35:00,799
Speaker 3: I at first at home and then when it was

680
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 3: allowed at a coffee shop, sitting outside when you couldn't

681
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 3: sit inside, and then sitting inside when you could. I

682
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:09,920
Speaker 3: ended up doing a lot of writing of the book

683
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 3: during the long period of time when we really didn't

684
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:17,759
Speaker 3: do that much during COVID, and then finally I took

685
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:20,720
Speaker 3: a four month leave and really did the final sprint

686
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 3: of editing the book during that.

687
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: So, you know, we have a lot of people on

688
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 1: this podcast who talk about the economy and who talk about,

689
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: you know, this discrepancy between the way the economy is

690
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:36,440
Speaker 1: doing and the way people feel. Can you pinpoint this

691
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:37,360
Speaker 1: from your book?

692
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 3: So I think they are basically the ideas the economy's metrics,

693
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:44,359
Speaker 3: or at least many of them GDP, the unemployment rate

694
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:47,480
Speaker 3: look good, and Americans are really grouchy about the economy.

695
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 3: I assume that that's the contradiction you're talking about, and

696
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 3: I think there are some important short term reasons for that.

697
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:58,080
Speaker 3: Then much of the discussion about this revolve around and

698
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 3: I'd spend time talking about that as well. A lot

699
00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:03,280
Speaker 3: of it involves inflation, but my focus in the book

700
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:07,200
Speaker 3: is the long term, and I think that doesn't get

701
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 3: enough attention. So yes, it's the case that people are

702
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:14,720
Speaker 3: grouchier now than GDP and unemployment suggest they should be

703
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 3: because prices have arisen so much in interest rates to prison.

704
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:21,560
Speaker 3: That's absolutely true. But I also think it's true that

705
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 3: the inflation is like the man. But the kindling is

706
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 3: the fact that the economy has delivered disappointing results in

707
00:36:28,640 --> 00:36:32,240
Speaker 3: the way that actually affect people's lives for so long

708
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:36,880
Speaker 3: that people that sort of just lit this fire of dissatisfaction.

709
00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:40,279
Speaker 3: And I think that does not get enough attention. So

710
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:44,080
Speaker 3: it comes for the bottom ninety percent of the population

711
00:36:44,200 --> 00:36:47,640
Speaker 3: have grown much more slowly than economic growth. Wealth has

712
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,719
Speaker 3: grown really slowly. You will sometimes your economists fighting about this.

713
00:36:50,719 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 3: They'll say, well, but if you do this inflation inflation

714
00:36:53,080 --> 00:36:56,440
Speaker 3: adjustment differently, actually the last few decades have been better

715
00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 3: than all these people say. I think that's wrong on

716
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:01,400
Speaker 3: the merits, but it's also wrong when you look at

717
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:04,239
Speaker 3: any other measure. I mean, look at various measures of

718
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:07,560
Speaker 3: social well being, like people's health. Look at what Americans

719
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:10,360
Speaker 3: say about the economy, not just now, but over the

720
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:12,799
Speaker 3: last twenty years. People are usually rouchy about it. And

721
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 3: then to me, the real statistic that just ends this

722
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 3: debate about whether the American economy is actually healthy in

723
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 3: a long term way. Is the following. I think life

724
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,719
Speaker 3: expectancy is the most basic measure of how well a

725
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 3: society is serving as citizens. And in nineteen eighty the

726
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:31,720
Speaker 3: United States had a typical life expectancy for a rich country,

727
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 3: similar to Europe. And for about fifteen years now we've

728
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:38,840
Speaker 3: had the single worst life expectancy of any rich country,

729
00:37:39,200 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 3: worse than every country in Western Europe, worse than Canada,

730
00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:45,400
Speaker 3: worse than Japan. And it's not even that close. This

731
00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 3: is the first chart in my.

732
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: Book I'm covailing because today we had Jonathan Bernmurdoch from

733
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: ft ON to talk about the life expectancy problem. Sorry,

734
00:37:57,719 --> 00:37:58,439
Speaker 1: we go on going.

735
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:01,760
Speaker 3: No, he's great, he does plastic charts on social media

736
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:06,879
Speaker 3: and fantastic work. Overall, it's a shocking chart fifteen years right. Well,

737
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:09,280
Speaker 3: so there are two things, right, There's the gap between

738
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 3: the US and other countries, and then you look within

739
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 3: the US. The reason why our life expectancy data is

740
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 3: so bad is that the life expectancy for people who

741
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 3: don't have a four year college degree has just absolutely stagnated.

742
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:24,080
Speaker 3: It was growing really slowly, and then it even started

743
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:26,880
Speaker 3: falling a little bit before COVID, and then it plummeted

744
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 3: during COVID. But this isn't just only a COVID story.

745
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:33,360
Speaker 3: These trends pre date COVID in a real large variety

746
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:36,239
Speaker 3: of ways. We are living a society with massive and

747
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:39,800
Speaker 3: massively higher inequality than we used to have, and that

748
00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 3: has affected people's health and their happiness and how long

749
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 3: they live. And I think those of us who are

750
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 3: lucky enough to be on the other side of that divide,

751
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 3: I think it's really important that we spend more time

752
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 3: thinking about how did we end up with this society

753
00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 3: that is so fundamentally sick for so many of our

754
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 3: fellow citizens.

755
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a really good point. And a

756
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 1: lot of this life expectancy stuff was made significantly worse

757
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:09,399
Speaker 1: by COVID and then following in short order deaths of despair. Right,

758
00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:14,000
Speaker 1: So some of this should be able to be explained,

759
00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:21,839
Speaker 1: at least on a macro level in America by this

760
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: post pandemic period of insanity.

761
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:29,040
Speaker 3: In an absolute sense, that's right, but I think the

762
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:32,880
Speaker 3: relative is really important. COVID also hit France and England,

763
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:37,279
Speaker 3: and it also did bad things to life expectancy in

764
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 3: all those countries as well. And when you look at

765
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:43,680
Speaker 3: it in a relative basis, COVID is not the most

766
00:39:43,680 --> 00:39:46,600
Speaker 3: important part of a story here, because now all those

767
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 3: countries have gone down, and on a relative basis, you

768
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 3: just really see right around nineteen eighty, their lines keep

769
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 3: going up at a different I don't mean exactly nineteen eighty.

770
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:59,120
Speaker 3: At some point in the ninet eighties, their lines can

771
00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 3: continue to go up at relatively healthy rate, and ours doesn't.

772
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:07,080
Speaker 3: And there seems to be something in particular that the

773
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,439
Speaker 3: United States is doing, and it's more than one thing

774
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 3: that makes us particularly poor at keeping alive of our citizens,

775
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 3: particularly our working class citizens. And that is a story

776
00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 3: that is much older than COVID. It's older than deaths

777
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:25,800
Speaker 3: of Despair, although they're important. It's a decade long story.

778
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:31,400
Speaker 3: It almost perfectly matches timing wise, the trends in economic inequality.

779
00:40:31,760 --> 00:40:37,279
Speaker 1: So talk to me about this sort of political re

780
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: alignments in the sixties and explain that to me a

781
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 1: little bit, and how that factors into your these I.

782
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:47,800
Speaker 3: Have to say, so when I would disappear into archives

783
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:51,400
Speaker 3: of the Library of Congress or the Truman Presidential Library

784
00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 3: or the Minneapolis Historical society or you name it. I

785
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 3: went into a.

786
00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:55,640
Speaker 2: Lot of these.

787
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 3: I read a ton of old newspapers. One of the

788
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 3: things that I was really struck by was the echoes

789
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:07,239
Speaker 3: of our current political debates that existed in the sixties,

790
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:09,719
Speaker 3: or I guess we're echoing the sixties, not price verse.

791
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 3: And what you really see start to happen in the

792
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:17,399
Speaker 3: early sixties is you see a whole bunch of people.

793
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:17,760
Speaker 2: On the left.

794
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 3: The most influential figure in many ways was Seawright Mills,

795
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 3: this Columbia University sociologist. He's one of the figures in

796
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:27,439
Speaker 3: my book. I'm sure many people have hurt his knee,

797
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 3: and he wrote a couple of famous books, but he's

798
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 3: this amazing character. He was a Texan who was a

799
00:41:31,680 --> 00:41:34,920
Speaker 3: professor at Columbia University, and he rode a motorcycle down

800
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:37,120
Speaker 3: the Hudson River Valley to get to work at Columbia,

801
00:41:37,160 --> 00:41:41,000
Speaker 3: and he loved picking fights with people, and he was

802
00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:44,239
Speaker 3: a man of the left, and he said, look, the

803
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:46,319
Speaker 3: way to make change in this country is to do

804
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 3: it through intellectuals. It's this notion that the way to

805
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:53,280
Speaker 3: create political change through the working class, which the left

806
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 3: had long valorized Marxists had valorized at labor unions, had

807
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:00,399
Speaker 3: valorized it. See Ry Mills said, no, no, no, that's role.

808
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 3: The way to create changes through intellectuals, through college students

809
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:08,960
Speaker 3: and college professors. And while he and his bellow leftists

810
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 3: at the time had some really important and valid criticisms

811
00:42:13,480 --> 00:42:16,240
Speaker 3: of the old Left, they were way too forgiving of Stalin.

812
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 3: They had definite problems.

813
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:20,920
Speaker 1: This hits a little close to home because my grandfather

814
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: got the Stalin Peace Prize.

815
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 3: Wow.

816
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:28,280
Speaker 1: I didn't eat Yes, Howard Fast, recipient of the Stalin

817
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:31,840
Speaker 1: Peace Prize. Wow, my father found it in a box

818
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 1: and dropped it. He was completely freaked out by the experience.

819
00:42:36,719 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 3: Anyway, Yes, I'm sure. Anyway, there were really good critiques

820
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:42,880
Speaker 3: of the old Left that see right Mills and others had,

821
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:45,760
Speaker 3: but the notion that the way you create a mass

822
00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:50,239
Speaker 3: progressive movement is through intellectuals was just fundamentally flawed. The

823
00:42:50,320 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 3: numbers don't work. You can't create a mass movement just

824
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 3: involving intellectuals unless you win over a lot of people.

825
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:00,359
Speaker 3: And what happened in the sixties, and it's that's a

826
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 3: long complicated story. I'm not saying this all dates to

827
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 3: the sixties by any means, is that increasingly the left

828
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:08,680
Speaker 3: in both this country and in much of the West,

829
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 3: became a movement that was a movement of and by

830
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 3: and for more highly educated progressives, and that created this

831
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 3: big problem because the political right in our country has

832
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:25,360
Speaker 3: adopted this economic theory that is basically failed right, the

833
00:43:25,440 --> 00:43:27,800
Speaker 3: idea that if we just get government out of the way,

834
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 3: everything will be great for everyone, which is what Milton

835
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 3: Treatment and Roden Reagan promised, and that's failed. I mean

836
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 3: the income, the income stagnation, the life expectancy stagnation, the

837
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:40,360
Speaker 3: fact that people are so unhappy. A lot of that

838
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 3: stems from this neoliberal economic revolution since the nineteen eighties,

839
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 3: and the left has struggled to win over people from

840
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 3: blue collar backgrounds of all races, has struggled to win

841
00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:57,720
Speaker 3: them over because so much of the left is much

842
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 3: more socially liberal and much more upset than most American

843
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:04,520
Speaker 3: voters are. And that's a story that really begins in

844
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:08,200
Speaker 3: the sixties and that we've seen accelerate recently. That helps

845
00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:11,560
Speaker 3: to explain why you asked yourself, how is it possibly

846
00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:14,160
Speaker 3: that the Democratic Party could have lost support over the

847
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:17,319
Speaker 3: last five years among Latino and Asian American and even

848
00:44:17,360 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 3: black voters in the age of Donald Trump. How could

849
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:23,879
Speaker 3: that possibly be? And part of the answer is that

850
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 3: the political left in our country is too geared toward

851
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 3: the views of higher earning college graduates. And just to

852
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:33,799
Speaker 3: be glib about it, what I would say is if

853
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:37,440
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party spent less time listening to the views

854
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:41,360
Speaker 3: of white people with graduate degrees, which describes many of

855
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 3: the people whose staff important progressive institutions, and more time

856
00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 3: listening to the views of Americans of color who don't

857
00:44:48,040 --> 00:44:50,640
Speaker 3: have a four year degree, the party would become more

858
00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 3: moderate and probably more successful.

859
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: This is a thesis that a lot of people have,

860
00:44:55,880 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 1: but I disagree with it for a bunch of different reasons.

861
00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:03,400
Speaker 1: But the reasons why I wonder. It's definitely a more

862
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:05,919
Speaker 1: nuanced conversation, and I want to keep talking about the book,

863
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:08,879
Speaker 1: but it's certainly a thing a lot of people think

864
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:12,799
Speaker 1: is right. But I'm just curious when you look at

865
00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:17,120
Speaker 1: the sort of Republican's complete failure to you know, I mean,

866
00:45:17,160 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 1: they sort of had one idea, which was trickle down economics. Right,

867
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 1: do you think there's ever a moment, I mean, especially

868
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 1: now when the when the Republican Party has turned so

869
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:32,920
Speaker 1: populist when they start to develop other economic ideas besides

870
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: less taxes for the rich.

871
00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 3: Well, you see, I don't want to exact great Helmut,

872
00:45:38,600 --> 00:45:41,839
Speaker 3: but you see little bits of it, right. I mean,

873
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 3: I have been genuinely surprised by how much bipartisan legislation

874
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:50,239
Speaker 3: Joe Biden has been able to sell. And I just

875
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:54,359
Speaker 3: thought the Republican Party was too obstructionist for them to play. Yeah,

876
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:57,200
Speaker 3: me too, And look that is we should just credit

877
00:45:57,239 --> 00:46:01,720
Speaker 3: Joe Biden and his aides. They manage that legislation really well.

878
00:46:02,080 --> 00:46:05,480
Speaker 3: And Barack Obama was a fantastically successful president in a

879
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:07,319
Speaker 3: bunch of ways, like he passed the health reform that

880
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,080
Speaker 3: no other president had been able to pass. But Obama

881
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 3: didn't really succeed at winning over Republicans to big, ambitious

882
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:16,000
Speaker 3: bills for I think a whole bunch of reasons. Bill

883
00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 3: Clinton didn't succeed be it. And Joe Biden has succeeded

884
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 3: where Obama and Clinton struggled a little bit more. And

885
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:24,880
Speaker 3: I do think that Biden deserves some personal credit for that,

886
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:28,040
Speaker 3: but it's not just personality. And I think on the

887
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:32,560
Speaker 3: infrastructure bill and the semiconductor bill, you do both, which

888
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:36,959
Speaker 3: got some Republican votes. You do see some Republicans basically saying,

889
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:40,560
Speaker 3: wait a second, some of this Reaganism stuff doesn't actually work,

890
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 3: and we need the government to do some things. Some

891
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:47,480
Speaker 3: of it's about competition with China. So you see it there.

892
00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 3: You see it with found Republican skepticism on a bunch

893
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:53,800
Speaker 3: of trade. This hasn't led to any legislation, so I

894
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 3: don't want to exaggerate it. But you know, Mark or

895
00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 3: Rubio signed a public letter about how labor unions are important,

896
00:46:59,000 --> 00:47:03,719
Speaker 3: so there are little signs. You know, Josh Holly talks

897
00:47:03,719 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 3: about how bad Silicon Valley is because it's so big.

898
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:07,879
Speaker 3: Now he does it with a conservative bent, but that's

899
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 3: start of the point, right Josh Liberally. The point is

900
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:14,719
Speaker 3: you do start to see some ways in which arts

901
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:18,440
Speaker 3: of the Republican Party are questioning trickle down economic But

902
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:21,319
Speaker 3: I don't want to exaggerated. Donald Trump's only significant Billy

903
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 3: sign was a huge tax cut, mostly for the rich.

904
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 3: The Supreme is still very much this trickle down Reganist philosophy.

905
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:29,759
Speaker 3: So you see little signs, but not more than little.

906
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:32,520
Speaker 1: It's such an interesting point, so who are the sort

907
00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:34,960
Speaker 1: of if you were you've written this whole book about

908
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:37,879
Speaker 1: the history of it. You know, you have real insights

909
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: into what the American economy looks like and probably what

910
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 1: it needs to look like. What are the sort of

911
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:47,839
Speaker 1: tools like it does seem to me like the Biden administration.

912
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 1: And again this is really not you know, this is

913
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:52,719
Speaker 1: one of the things I know the least about, but

914
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 1: it does seem from like talking to Paul Krugman and

915
00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: people like that, and you know, we have justin Wolfer's

916
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 1: on a lot that this administration has worked really hard

917
00:48:03,400 --> 00:48:07,800
Speaker 1: to try to think creatively to solve some financial problems

918
00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:11,960
Speaker 1: and even I'm thinking about like some of the problems

919
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:17,240
Speaker 1: with anti trust too rite, which has become a huge problem.

920
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 1: But are there sort of kind of magic bullets out

921
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: there that people aren't using. Do you see a sort

922
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,840
Speaker 1: of anything that you think historically people have not used

923
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: that they should be.

924
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:30,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I agree with you. The administration is trying

925
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 3: to do a bunch of interesting and important things. But

926
00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 3: there is a very beginning the revolution and anti trust

927
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 3: that Robert Borke over Sawborg has become famous for being

928
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 3: a failed Supreme Court justice who was super conservative of

929
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:44,919
Speaker 3: all kinds of things, but actually his biggest intellectual contribution,

930
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:47,720
Speaker 3: as it were, was getting people comfortable with the idea

931
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:51,520
Speaker 3: of defanging anti trust policy. It took him decades to

932
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 3: persuade people to do that, and it's going to take

933
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 3: decades if kind of the new trustbusters like Tim Woo

934
00:48:57,200 --> 00:48:59,600
Speaker 3: and Lena Kom can persuade the country to go back.

935
00:48:59,640 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 3: It's going to take a lot of intellectual work defining

936
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 3: what is too big. They've started, but really only just started.

937
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:07,880
Speaker 3: So I would say that Biden folks have done a

938
00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:10,360
Speaker 3: bunch of interesting things. If I were to highlight maybe

939
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:12,239
Speaker 3: one thing. It's not a magic bullet, but I think

940
00:49:12,239 --> 00:49:15,600
Speaker 3: it's really important. I think as a country, and I

941
00:49:15,640 --> 00:49:20,480
Speaker 3: think the political left too, has really underemphasized the importance

942
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:24,399
Speaker 3: of organized life. And we start to see some real

943
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:26,759
Speaker 3: new recognition of that now. And we've had some big

944
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 3: wins for the actors and writers and autoworkers unions.

945
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:33,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. It's been an incredible time for labor.

946
00:49:33,160 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 3: But there's a big butt which it is still phenomenally

947
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:40,160
Speaker 3: difficult for people who are not already in unions to orderers.

948
00:49:40,200 --> 00:49:43,759
Speaker 3: One of the central characters in my book is one

949
00:49:43,840 --> 00:49:45,799
Speaker 3: of these people who I think most Americans, and I

950
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:47,759
Speaker 3: would guess most of your listeners have heard his name

951
00:49:47,800 --> 00:49:49,319
Speaker 3: and could give you a sentence or two on him,

952
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 3: but don't actually know his story. A Philip Brandall who

953
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 3: organizes the first important union of black Americans in the country.

954
00:49:57,600 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 3: It's the Brotherhood of Sleeping Hard Quarters, the name of

955
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 3: the union with sexist. It also included maids on these

956
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:06,799
Speaker 3: Pullman trains, which were fancy trains that wealthy people took.

957
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,880
Speaker 3: And Randolph spent twelve years trying to organize this union

958
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:13,719
Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties and thirties, and he lost and

959
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,840
Speaker 3: lost and lost. He just kept losing. At one point,

960
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:19,400
Speaker 3: the union's furniture was thrown out on the street in

961
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:22,560
Speaker 3: Harlem because they couldn't afford to make their payments. And

962
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:26,279
Speaker 3: he signed workers up, but the company refused to negotiate.

963
00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 3: And it really is the same tactics that we see

964
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:32,440
Speaker 3: today at companies like Starbucks, in which people say we

965
00:50:32,600 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 3: join a union and the company just kind of ignores

966
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 3: them or figures out excuses to fire the people or

967
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 3: give them bed shift. And then only, but not the

968
00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:42,280
Speaker 3: only reason. The first thing you needed was Randolph organizing

969
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 3: this incredible group, this incredible union. And then the second

970
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:48,719
Speaker 3: thing you needed was changes to federal government policy that

971
00:50:49,040 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 3: forced companies to actually recognize and negotiate with the union

972
00:50:53,600 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 3: when most workers wanted to join it. And only in

973
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty seven when that change in government policy happened

974
00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 3: did the Pullman Company need to negotiate with Randolph and

975
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 3: his union. And it led to this incredible victory, decline

976
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:08,400
Speaker 3: in hours, increase in wages, and it also became the

977
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:11,080
Speaker 3: really the building blocks of the civil rights revolution. In

978
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 3: the civil rights movement country, Randolph was the organizer of

979
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:17,040
Speaker 3: the march that scared FDR so much he agreed to

980
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 3: integrate wartime factories to get the march counciled. In nineteen

981
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:22,480
Speaker 3: forty one, he was called the March on Washington, and

982
00:51:22,520 --> 00:51:24,799
Speaker 3: twenty two years later in nineteen sixty three, when they

983
00:51:24,800 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 3: held the actual March on Washington, they were just redoing

984
00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:31,360
Speaker 3: the Randolph's original idea. And so it's just an amazing

985
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:34,440
Speaker 3: bit of history with a showdown between FDR and Randolph

986
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 3: and all this incredible stuff. But to me, the lesson

987
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:40,759
Speaker 3: for today is, yes, the autoworkers and Hollywood unions have

988
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 3: won some big victories, but we're not going to see

989
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:45,880
Speaker 3: fundamental change with this until we have a change in

990
00:51:45,920 --> 00:51:49,279
Speaker 3: the law that makes it possible for Amazon workers and

991
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 3: Starbucks workers and a lot of other workers who aren't

992
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:55,240
Speaker 3: unionized today to be able to organize. And Joe Biden

993
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:57,239
Speaker 3: said he was in favor of that. I don't doubt

994
00:51:57,239 --> 00:51:59,920
Speaker 3: he was, but he didn't have the support in Congress

995
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 3: to get it passed. And this is an issue labor

996
00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 3: law reform that whenever a Democratic president comes in they

997
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 3: say they're in favor of, but it doesn't quite rise

998
00:52:08,640 --> 00:52:11,160
Speaker 3: up the priority list the way healthcare reform or climate

999
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:13,640
Speaker 3: change or something else does. And I think the only

1000
00:52:13,719 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 3: way we're going to see real change in the percentage

1001
00:52:16,680 --> 00:52:19,200
Speaker 3: of Americans belong with labor unions, which will help people

1002
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:22,200
Speaker 3: earn better wages, which will help the progressive political movement

1003
00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:24,880
Speaker 3: in this country, is if there is reform of the

1004
00:52:24,960 --> 00:52:28,440
Speaker 3: law so companies can't just crush unions the way they

1005
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:29,080
Speaker 3: so often do.

1006
00:52:29,239 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 1: Now, thank you so much. A moment, all right, Rick Wilson.

1007
00:52:37,680 --> 00:52:39,640
Speaker 1: We have to do a thing that you and I

1008
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 1: do once a week, that thing we do, that thing

1009
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:49,280
Speaker 1: we do. It is a moment of fuckery. My moment

1010
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:57,800
Speaker 1: of fuckery this week comes via Elon Musk, who sits

1011
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:00,919
Speaker 1: on a pile of government contract Have you heard of him?

1012
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:03,360
Speaker 2: He sits on a throat of lives and spells like

1013
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:05,200
Speaker 2: beef and cheese.

1014
00:53:06,160 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: He also controls, like, I don't know, a large percentage

1015
00:53:09,600 --> 00:53:10,520
Speaker 1: of the satellites.

1016
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:14,200
Speaker 2: Yes, he actually controls fifty percent of the communication satellites.

1017
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 2: And we're been around the earth today. What could go wrong?

1018
00:53:18,920 --> 00:53:21,800
Speaker 1: Nothing at all. He sort of backed himself into a corner.

1019
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:28,319
Speaker 1: He continues to tweet at and interact with largely the

1020
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 1: most far right people on what's left of his burning

1021
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:36,320
Speaker 1: hunk of social media. He's my moment of fuckery because

1022
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:39,839
Speaker 1: I am just watching this go up in flames more

1023
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:44,399
Speaker 1: and more, and he is become more and more right

1024
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:50,319
Speaker 1: wing and unhinged and interacting with the Charlie Kirks and

1025
00:53:50,400 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: all of it. And he has all of this control

1026
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: over the lights and starlank and he's made billions of

1027
00:53:56,960 --> 00:54:00,239
Speaker 1: dollars on government subsidies. And for that, he is my

1028
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:01,320
Speaker 1: moment of fuckery.

1029
00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:03,720
Speaker 2: That's a great moment of fuckery. I gotta be honest,

1030
00:54:03,880 --> 00:54:04,920
Speaker 2: because it's.

1031
00:54:04,760 --> 00:54:07,160
Speaker 1: A huge moment. It's like the last year.

1032
00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:10,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, I've said this before. I think some

1033
00:54:10,400 --> 00:54:14,200
Speaker 2: of the things that SpaceX does are tremendously important and impressive.

1034
00:54:14,400 --> 00:54:17,240
Speaker 2: Just so people remember this, Elon Musk does not build rockets.

1035
00:54:17,239 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 2: He's not a rocket engineer. He's not a car engineer.

1036
00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:22,400
Speaker 2: He's a guy who's got a pile of PayPal money

1037
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 2: that he'd got there in the nineties and he's leveraged

1038
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:26,560
Speaker 2: it over and over again to buy these big companies

1039
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:29,280
Speaker 2: and now he's become the greatest troll in the world.

1040
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:30,640
Speaker 2: But to move on from.

1041
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, who is your moment of fuck Gray Moore?

1042
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:34,960
Speaker 2: You know my moment of fuckery? I got to go

1043
00:54:35,040 --> 00:54:37,120
Speaker 2: back to the classics this week. I got to go

1044
00:54:37,160 --> 00:54:40,359
Speaker 2: back to Donald Trump once again, because on Thanksgiving Day,

1045
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 2: Trump continues to post on his dollar store janky low

1046
00:54:44,840 --> 00:54:49,360
Speaker 2: end kmart social media platform truth Social, and on Thanksgiving

1047
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:53,759
Speaker 2: Day he tweeted out probably the most deranged and insane

1048
00:54:53,920 --> 00:54:56,520
Speaker 2: threats that you could imagine. And I have to say,

1049
00:54:56,560 --> 00:54:58,400
Speaker 2: there are two moments of fucker here. One is that

1050
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:00,960
Speaker 2: Trump keeps doing this, threatening the judges in the cases

1051
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:04,279
Speaker 2: that he's under investigation in, threatening the legal system, and

1052
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:06,399
Speaker 2: they are the people who won't fucking do anything about

1053
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 2: it at this point. A normal person who was threatening

1054
00:55:09,520 --> 00:55:11,439
Speaker 2: a judge in a case would be in jail at

1055
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:14,360
Speaker 2: this point. If John Smith had been talking about Judge

1056
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:17,319
Speaker 2: Ernigan and his clerk and his people were posting their

1057
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 2: home addresses and they were getting rolling waves of death threats,

1058
00:55:21,080 --> 00:55:23,680
Speaker 2: the person who was causing that would be in jail,

1059
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:25,840
Speaker 2: and Trump isn't. Yeah, he would go to jail for

1060
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:29,440
Speaker 2: contempt and he's not. So you know, Trump keeps pushing

1061
00:55:29,480 --> 00:55:32,120
Speaker 2: the legal system further and further, but the legal system

1062
00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 2: keeps not doing anything about it. And that's a very

1063
00:55:35,320 --> 00:55:38,040
Speaker 2: dangerous precedent. It's a very very dangerous present.

1064
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:42,640
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in

1065
00:55:42,680 --> 00:55:45,920
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds

1066
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:49,160
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you

1067
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:51,960
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend

1068
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:55,560
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.