Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, And this is next question.
Speaker 1: What pops into your head when I say the American dream?
Speaker 1: Have you achieved it? Did your parents? How would you
Speaker 1: know if you did? Perhaps no other concept is more
Speaker 1: iconically American than this idea that if you work hard,
Speaker 1: you can make it, whatever that means to you. But
Speaker 1: in recent years, it seems like the one thing most
Speaker 1: people can agree on is that the American dream is
Speaker 1: getting harder and harder to achieve. But what we can
Speaker 1: agree on is why so thank goodness for David Leonhardt.
Speaker 1: You may know him from his column at the New
Speaker 1: York Times, where he also runs the morning newsletter, which
Speaker 1: I read every day. His new book, ours was The
Speaker 1: Shining Future, aims to identify what's gone wrong to make
Speaker 1: the American dreams slip out of reach for so many.
Speaker 1: David has really done his research. His analysis of how
Speaker 1: our modern economy came to be as fascinating and illuminating,
Speaker 1: and it's so accessible because he lays all this out
Speaker 1: using the personal stories of the politicians, activists, and regular
Speaker 1: old people who shape the last one hundred years or
Speaker 1: so of America's sense of itself as a place where
Speaker 1: anyone can make it. As you'll hear in our interview,
Speaker 1: David is an optimist. He has a couple of diagnoses
Speaker 1: for both the political right, perhaps even more so for
Speaker 1: his fellow progressives on the left. But what pulses through
Speaker 1: David's book is the hope that comes from understanding how
Speaker 1: we got here so we can actually chart our path forward. Hi,
Speaker 1: David Leonhard, how are you.
Speaker 2: I've good, Katie. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to talk to you about your book.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of your work, and like everyone else,
Speaker 1: i read your morning newsletter right after I read my own,
Speaker 1: so I feel like I'm in touch with you on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. But I'm fascinated by your latest book
Speaker 1: called ours was the Shining Future, And gosh, where do
Speaker 1: I start? I think I'm always interested in the germ
Speaker 1: of the idea, the why of this book. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're reporting through the years. You've been at the New
Speaker 1: York Times for what twenty four years? Yeah, covering big issues,
Speaker 1: primarily domestic ones. So where did the germ for this
Speaker 1: book come from? David?
Speaker 2: The main thing that I've written about Katie in my
Speaker 2: time at the Times has been the economy. And I've
Speaker 2: written a lot about people's frustrations with the American economy,
Speaker 2: the idea that it isn't delivering what they wanted to deliver.
Speaker 2: There's this amazing thing now in which even when the
Speaker 2: economy is growing and the unemployment rate is relatively low,
Speaker 2: Americans say that they're not that happy with the economy.
Speaker 2: Now's a good example of exactly that phenomenon. And what
Speaker 2: I decided I really wanted to unpack was how did
Speaker 2: we get here? And I wanted to tell a story
Speaker 2: about how we ended up with an economy that feels
Speaker 2: disappointing to so many people. And so that's what I've
Speaker 2: set out to do. It's really a book written for
Speaker 2: people who who want to understand the economy and are
Speaker 2: really smart, and who also feel like, hey, you know what,
Speaker 2: the way it's talked about a lot in the media, frankly,
Speaker 2: is just too technical and it's hard to follow. And
Speaker 2: that's what I want to do. And I wanted to
Speaker 2: explain both how we've ended up here and frankly, as
Speaker 2: you know this, I'm an optimist by nature, and so
Speaker 2: even with all these problems, I also wanted to explain
Speaker 2: how is it we could end up in a better
Speaker 2: place than we're in today.
Speaker 1: I love someone who breaks it down. I am your
Speaker 1: target market to a t I hope I'm smart. I'm
Speaker 1: certainly curious, but sometimes economic reporting does feel too abstract
Speaker 1: to me. So I really appreciate someone who can connect
Speaker 1: the dots and identify macro trends because I'm fascinated too,
Speaker 1: like you are, David, Like how did we get here?
Speaker 1: What were the forces socioeconomic forces in particular, that led
Speaker 1: us to this moment? And I have to say, as
Speaker 1: I looked at your book, I really looked at it
Speaker 1: in terms of my own life, because not that it's
Speaker 1: all about me, but I was born in nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: I am certainly the beneficiary of what is traditionally known
Speaker 1: as the American dream. Born to parents who my mom
Speaker 1: didn't work. My dad made a modest salary, although he
Speaker 1: was highly intelligent and focused on education for his kids.
Speaker 1: His priority was to send us to good schools so
Speaker 1: we could advance our status in life. I think for
Speaker 1: my sisters, maybe to marry somebody who was very successful,
Speaker 1: but actually my dad really wanted my older sisters to
Speaker 1: have a job and to contribute to society. And my
Speaker 1: sister Emily was ten years older than I and my
Speaker 1: sister Kiki seven years older, so he was really a
Speaker 1: man ahead of his time in some ways. But I
Speaker 1: mentioned that because I feel like I really benefited from
Speaker 1: the notion of upward mobility, and I think I got in.
Speaker 1: I think I was born in the nick of time,
Speaker 1: honestly from what you describe in your book, which is
Speaker 1: from World War Two to the seventies and eighties, kind
Speaker 1: of what was the economic environment and then how things
Speaker 1: started to change in the seventies and eighties, But they
Speaker 1: didn't change in a way that it impacted me, because
Speaker 1: I graduated from college in nineteen seventy nine and I
Speaker 1: was and I think all the kids in our family
Speaker 1: were able to make a better living than my dad did.
Speaker 1: And that's not just say we had a wonderful childhood
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but we were
Speaker 1: the typical examples of doing better than your parents, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: So I'd love you to kind of break down and
Speaker 1: kind of give us the cliff notes of what happened
Speaker 1: not only over the last forty years, but what happened
Speaker 1: before that, and how things seemed to change.
Speaker 2: One of the really nice things for me in going
Speaker 2: around and starting to talk about my book is hearing
Speaker 2: people's own stories of the American dream, their personal stories.
Speaker 2: I tell my own personal story, my family's at the
Speaker 2: start of the book, and so I love hearing other people's. So, yes, look,
Speaker 2: you captured it in your personal story. And I'll put
Speaker 2: some numbers around that. So, an American child born in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty had a ninety two percent chance of growing
Speaker 2: up to have a higher household income as an adult
Speaker 2: than their parents did. And that is the entire society, right,
Speaker 2: every racial group, ninety two percent. That's a virtual guarantee. Right.
Speaker 2: That means even people who got quite ill or who
Speaker 2: were laid off at some point in their life still
Speaker 2: grew up to make more money than their parents did
Speaker 2: ninety two percent. And so how did we get there?
Speaker 2: And I think it is very important to say that
Speaker 2: we're talking about the forties, the fifties, and the sixties.
Speaker 2: These are decades with horrible racism, horrible sexism, really bad
Speaker 2: religious bigotry as well. And so it's not that we
Speaker 2: want to go back to the society that we had then,
Speaker 2: But even for groups that were experiencing really vicious discrimination.
Speaker 2: This progress applied so in the forties and fifties, even
Speaker 2: before the great victories of the civil rights movement, the
Speaker 2: white black pay gap shrunk and the white black life
Speaker 2: expectancy gap shrunk. And the reason is because we were
Speaker 2: building the society that was basically bottom up or middle
Speaker 2: out prosperity, in which we were build holding a society
Speaker 2: in which people were able to get jobs even if
Speaker 2: they didn't have a college degree, that allowed them to
Speaker 2: enjoy really good standard of living. And the word I
Speaker 2: use to describe what we had is democratic capitalism, small
Speaker 2: d democratic capitalism. Look, I really believe the evidence shows
Speaker 2: that capitalism is the best system for organizing a society.
Speaker 2: The Soviet Union didn't work, Cuba doesn't work right, South
Speaker 2: Korea Lorks much better than North Korea. China got prosperous
Speaker 2: after it moved toward capitalism and away from communism. But
Speaker 2: not every form of capitalism works equally well. And a
Speaker 2: kind of rough and tumble form of capitalism where we
Speaker 2: have taxes really low and we don't have regulations and
Speaker 2: workers can't join unions, just works much less well than
Speaker 2: democratic capitalism, where we're investing in the future, and ordinary
Speaker 2: people are able to form grassroots organizations and advocate for themselves.
Speaker 2: And that's really what we had in the forties and
Speaker 2: the fifties and the sixties.
Speaker 1: Can you describe a little bit more, kind of unraveled
Speaker 1: the term democratic capitalism, a little bit more for us
Speaker 1: versus sort of unfettered capitalism.
Speaker 2: Yes. So I think one of the things to know
Speaker 2: about capitalism is both that it's superior to the alternatives,
Speaker 2: but it also has a predictable set of excesses and problems. Right,
Speaker 2: Capitalism on its own doesn't solve climate change. Capitalism on
Speaker 2: its own doesn't tend to build schools where kids can go,
Speaker 2: or roads for us to travel on. And capitalism on
Speaker 2: its own tends to lead to rising inequality. And so
Speaker 2: what you really need is a government to intervene and
Speaker 2: do things like invest in the future, building big roads
Speaker 2: and building airports, building schools for people. If you don't
Speaker 2: have the government involved and workers can't join labor unions,
Speaker 2: I think we've sort of lost sight of just how
Speaker 2: important labor unions are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to get into that.
Speaker 2: And so that's a great example. If the government isn't
Speaker 2: involved to make sure that blue collar workers can join
Speaker 2: labor unions. Businesses can pretty easily get rid of labor
Speaker 2: unions and labor unions for all their flaws, and they
Speaker 2: are flawed. I've been in a labor union. I've been
Speaker 2: a manager at The New York Times who's managed unionized employees.
Speaker 2: I'm well aware of their flaws. But corporations have their
Speaker 2: flaws too, And if we have corporations with our unions,
Speaker 2: we end up with this really unbalanced society. And so,
Speaker 2: to me, democratic capitalism is a system in which we
Speaker 2: acknowledge both the phenomenal strengths of capitalism and also the
Speaker 2: ways in which, left to its own devices, it doesn't
Speaker 2: tend to produce living standards that rise rapidly for most people.
Speaker 2: And just the simplest way to think about this is
Speaker 2: for the bottom ninety nine percent of the income distribution,
Speaker 2: wage growth was faster in the forties, fifties, and sixties
Speaker 2: than it's been since the nineteen eighties. So really, for
Speaker 2: most people, since we've moved to this more bare knuckle
Speaker 2: form of capitalism in the eighties, income growth has just
Speaker 2: been much more disappointing.
Speaker 1: You describe what was happening in the forties, fifties, and sixties.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about when it all started to go bad,
Speaker 1: and that was in the seventies and eighties, and you
Speaker 1: trace a number of societal forces that came together to
Speaker 1: create a lot of inequality and to really result in
Speaker 1: a realignment of what had been traditional political parties. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about that?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean the sixties and seventies was a time
Speaker 2: of really just phenomenal chaos, as people who lived through
Speaker 2: it can remember. I mean, we had the crime rate
Speaker 2: really start to rise in the early sixties. And I
Speaker 2: want to say something important here, which is the mainstream media,
Speaker 2: which you and I are both part of of the time,
Speaker 2: and the left half of the political spectrum, basically denied
Speaker 2: that rising crime was a problem. And they were wrong
Speaker 2: about that rise in crime really was a problem in
Speaker 2: the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: Why do you think they denied it? Why do you
Speaker 1: think they underplayed it?
Speaker 2: I think there is an instinct among liberals to say
Speaker 2: that poverty is that economics are the root cause of everything.
Speaker 2: And I understand that instinct. I've just written a book
Speaker 2: about economic history, and so the idea that crime was
Speaker 2: rising in the nineteen sixties, when the economy was still
Speaker 2: very good, and thus it couldn't be just because of economics.
Speaker 2: Meete people uncomfortable. So LBJ said, Hey, the way to
Speaker 2: deal with rising crime is let's pass my war on
Speaker 2: poverty and that I'll deal with it, Whereas in fact
Speaker 2: it was a much more complex set of reasons why
Speaker 2: crime was rising. It was basically people were coming to
Speaker 2: question the society in all kinds of ways. Think about
Speaker 2: the early sixties. It's SDS, it's in the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: it's Barry Goldwater. People were saying, wait a second, something
Speaker 2: about this post war situation feels a little off to us,
Speaker 2: And it wasn't really about the economy, which was still
Speaker 2: doing quite well. So crime starts to rise. In the sixties,
Speaker 2: we have the Vietnam War, we have the assassination of
Speaker 2: multiple prominent political figures, we have Watergate, and then in
Speaker 2: the mid seventies we have this really terrible economic crisis,
Speaker 2: mostly because of foreign reasons, the oil embargo. But Americans
Speaker 2: looked around and they said, wow, society just is kind
Speaker 2: of breaking down. And I completely understand why. People looked
Speaker 2: at the government and they basically said, maybe that's the problem.
Speaker 2: Maybe we just need a lot less government. And I
Speaker 2: actually in the book, I try to describe sympathetically the
Speaker 2: conservative movement that said, hey, if we have a lot
Speaker 2: less government, all our problems will be solved. One of
Speaker 2: the characters in my book is Robert Bork, who's famous
Speaker 2: as a Supreme Court nominee, but is an incredibly important
Speaker 2: economic thinker in the Reagan movement, more important than many
Speaker 2: people realize. And I try to tell his story in
Speaker 2: a way that let's readers understand why he came to
Speaker 2: those views. But let's also be honest that that Robert
Speaker 2: Bork revolution in economic policy made a lot of promises
Speaker 2: about how great things would be if we only got
Speaker 2: government out of the way. They said, living standards would
Speaker 2: rise for everyone, we would all become more prosperous. And
Speaker 2: the United States did move more toward a form of
Speaker 2: rough and tumble capitalism than a lot of other countries,
Speaker 2: and yet our results have been so disappointing. I mean, Katie,
Speaker 2: the first chart in my book shows life expectancy in
Speaker 2: every rich country. In nineteen eighty the United States had
Speaker 2: a normal life expectancy for a rich country. For the
Speaker 2: last fifteen years or so, We've had the single worst
Speaker 2: life expectancy of any rich country in the world. We've
Speaker 2: got to try something else.
Speaker 1: After this break, David breaks down how trickle down economics
Speaker 1: worked and didn't work the way Republicans hoped, and the
Speaker 1: surprising ways it's affected how long we live here in
Speaker 1: the US. If you want to get smarter every morning
Speaker 1: with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on
Speaker 1: health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our
Speaker 1: daily newsletter, Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com.
Speaker 1: Now back to my conversation with David Leonhardt. Well, connect
Speaker 1: those dots. I mean, Reagan was trickled down economics, less regulation,
Speaker 1: All kinds of things were happening right in the eighties,
Speaker 1: and this sort of individualism almost iron ran kind of
Speaker 1: attitude about wealth, right, So what were the ramifications of that?
Speaker 2: So there were certainly things that the Reagan administration didn't change,
Speaker 2: and I know conservatives sometimes look back and say, well,
Speaker 2: wait a second, he didn't get rid of Medicare and
Speaker 2: Social Security. That's true, but he changed so much. I mean,
Speaker 2: tax rates when he came into office were up, with
Speaker 2: the top tax rate up around seventy percent, it's never
Speaker 2: again been so high. It's sort of fluctuated in the thirties,
Speaker 2: depending on whether we have a Republican or Democratic president.
Speaker 2: He really unwound regulation in a lot of ways. He
Speaker 2: allowed companies. This was Bork's biggest involvement. He allowed companies
Speaker 2: to become so so much larger. The government stopped doing
Speaker 2: so much antitrust. And the theory was, if only we
Speaker 2: just let the market work, everyone will benefit.
Speaker 1: Well, that's trickle down economics, right, which David Stockman ended
Speaker 1: up disavowing.
Speaker 2: That is trickle down economics. And look, it was a
Speaker 2: theory and it had a argument behind it. And now
Speaker 2: more than forty years later, we can look at the results.
Speaker 2: And I know that true believers of the Reagan Revolution
Speaker 2: will say, well, that's because we never fully tried it.
Speaker 2: But that, to me is a little bit like Marxists
Speaker 2: who say communism work if only we actually tried it. Like,
Speaker 2: we moved a long way towards the vision Reagan wanted,
Speaker 2: and the results we've gotten since nineteen eighty for very
Speaker 2: affluent people have been great. They've been great for stock
Speaker 2: prices and top incomes, and for the vast majority of Americans,
Speaker 2: they've been less good than they used to be, and
Speaker 2: I think it's important to reflect on that.
Speaker 1: How does that directly impact life expectancy? Connect those dots
Speaker 1: for me, David, Yes.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that question. So what we know is
Speaker 2: that life expectancy has really diverged by class. So it's
Speaker 2: really diverged by whether you have a four year degree
Speaker 2: or whether you don't. For people with a four year
Speaker 2: college degree, the life expectancy trends are actually still pretty good.
Speaker 2: I mean, COVID was variable for everyone, but that's true
Speaker 2: around the world. The life expectancy trends for Americans with
Speaker 2: a college degree have still been pretty good. The damning
Speaker 2: statistic I told you about how the US now has
Speaker 2: the lowest life expectancy of a high income country is
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly driven by people without a four year college degree.
Speaker 2: The causal mechanisms are really complex, but I also think
Speaker 2: it's not that hard to understand the big picture. We
Speaker 2: also know that the income gap between people with a
Speaker 2: college degree and people without one has grown enormously. We
Speaker 2: know people without a college degree are much less likely
Speaker 2: to be in households where children are growing up with
Speaker 2: two parents. We know they're much less likely to be
Speaker 2: able to go to college and to finish college their children,
Speaker 2: not just them. And so I think what we've ended
Speaker 2: up with is we've ended up with this that we
Speaker 2: have ended up with this kind of laissez faari society
Speaker 2: in which not only has income inequality increased, but we've
Speaker 2: lost a lot of the institutions churches, labor unions, community institutions,
Speaker 2: employers that came to a town and would be there
Speaker 2: for decades, that helped people build good and improving lives,
Speaker 2: and that has had a whole set of both economic
Speaker 2: and social causes that have been very damaging.
Speaker 1: All these things resulted in a political realignment with many
Speaker 1: Democrats becoming Republicans, and there were a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: for that as well, But can you explain some of
Speaker 1: the factors.
Speaker 2: If I could ask conservatives and Republicans to be self reflective,
Speaker 2: I would say, please look at these results since nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty with an open mind and ask what's worked and
Speaker 2: what happened. And I want to say there are a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of conservatives who are actually doing that. Even
Speaker 2: some members of Congress and a bunch of conservative intellectuals
Speaker 2: were saying we need to go in a different direction.
Speaker 2: I talk about them in the book. If I could
Speaker 2: ask Democrats to be a little bit self reflective, I
Speaker 2: would say, ask yourself, why is it that the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party has increasingly become the party of relatively well off professionals,
Speaker 2: And ask yourself, why is it that so many working
Speaker 2: class people look at the Democratic Party and say that
Speaker 2: party isn't my party. I feel like they talk down
Speaker 2: to me. Historically, Democrats have reacted to this by saying, well,
Speaker 2: it's mostly about racism, and look, it is partly about racism, right.
Speaker 2: Donald Trump has said a lot of racist things. The
Speaker 2: Republican Party at times has really used race baiting stereotypes.
Speaker 2: I want to be very clear about that. But I
Speaker 2: think progressives make a big mistake when they say the
Speaker 2: only reason anyone could ever not vote for US is
Speaker 2: because they're ignorant or because they're bigoted. I think that's
Speaker 2: both really bad political strategy to tell people that you
Speaker 2: need to vote for US or where you're ignorant. I also
Speaker 2: think it's empirically wrong when you look at a whole
Speaker 2: set of issues. College graduates and working class people have
Speaker 2: different views on a whole bunch of things. It's not
Speaker 2: just about race, And I think the clearest evidence of
Speaker 2: this has probably come in the last five years when
Speaker 2: we have seen Latinos, Asian Americans, and although the numbers
Speaker 2: are small, they're noticeable in the data, Black Americans, particularly
Speaker 2: working class people of all these groups shift away from
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party. And I would really encourage Liberals and
Speaker 2: Democrats to ask themselves, why is it that we're struggling
Speaker 2: so much to get working class votes, Why is it
Speaker 2: that increasingly true among Latinos and Asian Americans? And why
Speaker 2: is it that there are you know, twenty states in
Speaker 2: this country North Carolina, Florida, Texas where we basically can
Speaker 2: ever win an election. I don't think it's just that
Speaker 2: Republicans are cheating or they're doing these things. I think
Speaker 2: that the Democratic Party has sent a message that it's
Speaker 2: the party of educated people in a way that is
Speaker 2: off putting to many other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. A perfect example, I think is probably one of
Speaker 1: the biggest mistakes of the Hillary Clinton campaign, and that
Speaker 1: was when she said this.
Speaker 3: You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you can put
Speaker 3: half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket
Speaker 3: of deplorables. Right, the races, sex is homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic,
Speaker 3: you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that
Speaker 3: and he has lifted them up.
Speaker 1: I can't blame people for being insulted, and you can't
Speaker 1: tar any huge group of Americans with such a big brush.
Speaker 1: And I think it completely ignored the economic circumstances that
Speaker 1: they were in for reasons it had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with race. That was because we shifted from an industrial
Speaker 1: to a technological society. The fact that manufacturing had dried up,
Speaker 1: these cities had become, you know, just shadows of their
Speaker 1: former selves. So I don't blame people well for being
Speaker 1: highly offended by that comment.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, And it's just part of a much
Speaker 2: larger pattern. Right, that's maybe the clearest expression of it.
Speaker 2: But you know, there was a study of Texas after
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election to try to determine why Latino
Speaker 2: voters moved toward the Republican Party, who was done by
Speaker 2: a progressive group, and one of the things that they
Speaker 2: pointed out was a lot of Latinos in Texas were
Speaker 2: uncomfortable with the immigration system right now. They were worried
Speaker 2: about border security. That doesn't fit the democratic narrative, right
Speaker 2: of how we're supposed to think of immigration. Another thing
Speaker 2: that people were concerned about is they really wanted the
Speaker 2: economy to reopen once vaccines were available, and they were
Speaker 2: unhappy with the idea that we were going to have
Speaker 2: these extended shutdowns. That's another thing where I think sort
Speaker 2: of a lot of Democrats and a lot of college
Speaker 2: graduates said, the only way you can be in favor
Speaker 2: of reopening is if you don't understand science. And I
Speaker 2: think it's more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: Do you think some of this is because of the
Speaker 1: evaporation of the sensible middle and the inability to compromise
Speaker 1: between these two very polarized parties.
Speaker 2: I do, and I've spent a lot of time looking
Speaker 2: at polling data, and I talk about it in the book.
Speaker 2: I think there is a middle in this country, the
Speaker 2: political middle. And it's what it's interesting is it's not
Speaker 2: on the middle of every issue. It's actually left of
Speaker 2: center on economics. So the middle of this country is
Speaker 2: in favor of a higher minimum wage, and they're in
Speaker 2: favor of expanding medicaid, and they like labor unions, not
Speaker 2: every union, but they believe that people should be able.
Speaker 2: But they're well to the right of where the Democratic
Speaker 2: Party is on a lot of social issues. We can
Speaker 2: say they're in the middle, or they're a little right
Speaker 2: of center. I don't know what it is, but put
Speaker 2: it this way, they're not as far left as where
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party is. And so a lot of those
Speaker 2: voters look at the two parties and they kind of
Speaker 2: struggle to see themselves in either one.
Speaker 1: Especially when they say sort of young liberals. I think
Speaker 1: that have really pulled the party further to the left
Speaker 1: and at a pace that I think may feel too
Speaker 1: fast for older Americans, even liberal one.
Speaker 2: Yes, and look, part of the reason Joe Biden got
Speaker 2: the nomination and became the president is because one of
Speaker 2: the more moderate sections of the Democratic Party are black voters.
Speaker 2: And the way the calendar worked the South Carolina primary,
Speaker 2: which is overwhelmingly black voters, came in this moment where
Speaker 2: it wasn't clear what's going to happen, and black voters
Speaker 2: flocked to Joe Biden right. Which is a reminder that
Speaker 2: a lot of what we hear on social media, on
Speaker 2: university campuses, again sometimes in the media is a version
Speaker 2: of liberalism that is more upscale than actually the way
Speaker 2: many people are. To put a fine point on it.
Speaker 2: I think the Democratic Party would probably solve some of
Speaker 2: its problems if it spent more time listening to voters
Speaker 2: of color who have community college degrees or who don't
Speaker 2: have a college degree, and less time listening to white
Speaker 2: voters who have graduate degrees. And white voters with graduate
Speaker 2: degrees really drive not only white voters, but white voters
Speaker 2: with graduate degrees holing shit are disproportionately in sort of
Speaker 2: influential jobs in the progressive atmosphere.
Speaker 1: I've always wondered why Democrats don't talk more directly to
Speaker 1: working class voters that their outreach seems to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong. I don't obviously know every strategy that's
Speaker 1: being employed, but I do feel, and maybe it's not
Speaker 1: covered enough, that there does seem to be a disconnect
Speaker 1: between blue collar voters and Democrats that is really surprising.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that I enjoyed doing this book.
Speaker 2: In this book was taking people whose names are well known,
Speaker 2: but telling you parts of their stories that are not
Speaker 2: well known. And I mentioned Robert Bork about that, But
Speaker 2: another person who I talk about who I think his
Speaker 2: legacy is aged better than Robert Bork's is Robert F. Kennedy,
Speaker 2: the original one, not the junior. And when he ran
Speaker 2: for president in nineteen sixty eight, there were a lot
Speaker 2: of people who the Democratic Party was starting to have
Speaker 2: this development of the kind of more elite, very socially liberal,
Speaker 2: and people told RFK, don't talk about crime, and he said, no,
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about crime. I know that Richard
Speaker 2: Nixon and George Wallace are demograguing crime and they're talking
Speaker 2: about it in ways that are meant to spark racism.
Speaker 2: But people's concerns about crime are legitimate, and Kennedy ran
Speaker 2: this campaign in which he made law and order central
Speaker 2: to his campaign. Journalists said, where is the great liberal
Speaker 2: Robert Kennedy because of the way he was talking about crime.
Speaker 2: He talked about Vietnam and actually very nuanced ways, because
Speaker 2: he understood that many Americans were unhappy with Vietnam, but
Speaker 2: also many working class people were frustrated that their kids
Speaker 2: had gone to fight. And the reason why I think
Speaker 2: he's important is Robert Kennedy didn't try to win working
Speaker 2: class votes by telling people, hey, just vote on economic policy,
Speaker 2: ignore my social policy. He treated working class voters with
Speaker 2: respect on both social policy and economic policy, and I
Speaker 2: think part of what modern Democrats should be reflective on
Speaker 2: is you can't just tell people don't vote against your
Speaker 2: economic interests. I mean, Katie, you and I know that
Speaker 2: the fanciest parts of New York City and all these
Speaker 2: resort towns, they vote Democratic. They're voting against their economic interests, right,
Speaker 2: They're voting to raise their own taxes. So lots of
Speaker 2: people vote against their economic interests. And I think Democrats
Speaker 2: lose working class voters when they say, hey, let's just
Speaker 2: ignore social policy and just talk about taxes. And RFK
Speaker 2: didn't do that.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to unions real quick, David, because they
Speaker 1: were thriving. What happened to unions? It was it deregulation.
Speaker 1: Was this these new attitudes about capitalism? How did unions
Speaker 1: kind of fall apart? Did they overreach?
Speaker 2: Yes? They did. They did overreach, and they and a
Speaker 2: lot of union leaders actually cared less about continuing to
Speaker 2: build a movement and cared more just about their own
Speaker 2: immediate members and didn't understand that if they cared only
Speaker 2: about their immediate members rather than attracting new union members,
Speaker 2: eventually the labor movement would shrivel, which is exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: So absolutely, union leaders overreached. I tell some of that
Speaker 2: story in the book. They deserve significantly. It's also the
Speaker 2: case that the government became quite hostile to labor unions.
Speaker 2: And if you don't have the government playing referee, if
Speaker 2: you just have kind of corporations and workers out there,
Speaker 2: If it's a question between can a single corporation prevent
Speaker 2: a bunch of individual workers from joining a union, the
Speaker 2: answer is almost always yes. I mean, look what Starbucks
Speaker 2: has done recently. When people organize at a shop, Starbucks
Speaker 2: somehow finds lots of little violations among the people who
Speaker 2: decided to join a union and schedules them with really
Speaker 2: bad shifts or you know, says we need to let
Speaker 2: you go. And so there are lots of ways for companies,
Speaker 2: sometimes within the rules, to make sure that unions don't form.
Speaker 2: And the government basically stopped playing a version of an
Speaker 2: impartial referee or judge and really let corporations shrink unions.
Speaker 2: And that's what happened.
Speaker 1: Well, union's overreached, But I think it's important to point
Speaker 1: out that corporations got greedy, yes, right, I mean that
Speaker 1: was a big factor too. They didn't want to pay
Speaker 1: people necessarily fair wages. They wanted to make sure their
Speaker 1: quarterly profits were good for their shareholders. I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole balance of power really shifted.
Speaker 2: It did. And you know, when you talk about greed,
Speaker 2: that's really a form of culture. And culture is hard
Speaker 2: to talk about because it's imorphous, right, It's people's attitudes,
Speaker 2: and you can't necessarily pass a bill that changes the culture.
Speaker 2: But I really emphasized the importance of culture in the
Speaker 2: book because I don't think the corporate executives of the
Speaker 2: past were any morally superior to the corporate executives today,
Speaker 2: but they did behave differently because the culture was different.
Speaker 2: I mean, Mitt Romney's dad, George Romney, was the CEO
Speaker 2: of a car company in Detroit, and it hit so
Speaker 2: many of its benchmarks that he was due a huge bonus.
Speaker 2: And he went to the board and he said, I
Speaker 2: think this is unseemly. I don't think it's healthy for
Speaker 2: our country or our company to have me making so
Speaker 2: much more than any workers. Will you please take back
Speaker 2: this bonus? I mean, my goodness, can.
Speaker 1: You imagine any of the corporate CEOs who are making
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars today? Saying their salaries were unseemly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's just and again, it's not that
Speaker 2: he was. It's not that he's inherently a better person.
Speaker 2: It's that he lived in a different culture, a less selfish.
Speaker 1: He sounds like a better person to me.
Speaker 2: That's fair. But so I would say it is at
Speaker 2: least in part that he lived in a less selfish,
Speaker 2: and let's be honest here, more patriotic and communitarian culture,
Speaker 2: and he reflected those values in his behavior.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with David Leonhardt.
Speaker 3: One.
Speaker 1: If you'd loved listening to Kelly Corrigan in my recent
Speaker 1: conversation with David Brooks, you'll definitely love her podcast, Kelly
Speaker 1: Corrigan wonders. Kelly has this every woman wisdom that people
Speaker 1: just gravitate to. Oprah Magazine calls her the voice of
Speaker 1: a generation. Huffington Post calls her the poet laureate of
Speaker 1: the ordinary. You might know her books about family life.
Speaker 1: All four were New York Times bestsellers. I met her
Speaker 1: when she was a guest on The Today Show almost
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, and we've stayed in touch ever since.
Speaker 1: On her show, Kelly wonders about family ties, our deepest
Speaker 1: ambitions and how to be useful with people like Brian Stevenson,
Speaker 1: Anna Quinlan, Jenny Wallace, Neil Katilla, Claire Danes, and Kate Bohler.
Speaker 1: I saw somewhere that someone said she's like a cross
Speaker 1: between Tina Fey and Krista Tippett. So jump on board,
Speaker 1: tune into Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'd say you might as
Speaker 1: well subscribe. Actually, wherever you're listening to this podcast, we're
Speaker 1: back with David Leonhart. I want to talk about that
Speaker 1: communitarian culture, because I know that's something you address in
Speaker 1: the book as well. But I want to finish the
Speaker 1: union conversation so they start to weaken. I think is
Speaker 1: PAPCO one of the big turning points during the I
Speaker 1: hate to keep pointing a finger at the late Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: but the air traffic controllers that was a huge inflection point,
Speaker 1: wasn't it in terms of union power and muscle?
Speaker 2: Yes, And it's actually I think it's an important example.
Speaker 2: So Ronald Reagan comes to office. The air traffic controllers
Speaker 2: who indorsed Ronald Reagan, which is fascinating, perhaps feeling empowered
Speaker 2: because they had endorsed this new president and most unions
Speaker 2: obviously had not made just unbelievable demands really in terms
Speaker 2: of wage increases and in terms of being able to
Speaker 2: take time off. I walk through some of them in
Speaker 2: the book. It just in terms of you look at
Speaker 2: them and you're like, WHOA, that's too much. And Ronald
Speaker 2: Reagan said, if you go on strike, I'll fire you.
Speaker 2: And the air traffic controllers didn't believe it, and they
Speaker 2: went on strike and he fired them, And so they
Speaker 2: do deserve some blame in that story. But the message
Speaker 2: that it sent, which was before a lot of companies
Speaker 2: pushed back against unions, often very hard, but once unions formed,
Speaker 2: they didn't try to destroy them, typically at their own
Speaker 2: company or through government policy. And Reagan's policy was basically
Speaker 2: a version of hey, the gloves are off in a
Speaker 2: way that they weren't under Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon
Speaker 2: and previous Republicans. And it's not simply trying to restrain
Speaker 2: unions from expanding into new regions or it restrained their
Speaker 2: wage increases. It's fine to go after them and really
Speaker 2: try to eliminate them. And that's what happened in a
Speaker 2: lot of industries is as well as globalization, but the
Speaker 2: cultural change was vital.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about globalization and how that impacted unions
Speaker 1: as well. Well, they just lost some of their power
Speaker 1: because the world became flatter, as Tom Friedman would say, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, they did. So that's interesting. That's definitely the case
Speaker 2: from the past. Weirdly, I think though, that might be
Speaker 2: reason to believe that unions can play a bigger role
Speaker 2: going forward than they have over the last fifty years.
Speaker 2: It's certainly the case that if a factory wants to
Speaker 2: avoid being unionized, it can move to another state or
Speaker 2: another country. But let's think about how our economy has changed.
Speaker 2: So much more of it is now service businesses. A
Speaker 2: hospital can't move in the same way that a factory can.
Speaker 2: A warehouse that is serving a particular region for online
Speaker 2: orders can't move in the same way that a factory can.
Speaker 2: A restaurant can't, and so unions have a lot of
Speaker 2: challenges today. The law is still really stacked against them,
Speaker 2: and I don't think we'll see a resurgence in unions
Speaker 2: until we see some legal changes the same way we've
Speaker 2: recently seen legal changes in healthcare and legal changes in
Speaker 2: other ways climate policy. I think it will take changes
Speaker 2: in the law. But if you got those changes in
Speaker 2: the law, I do really think you could imagine more
Speaker 2: of the workforce being unionized because we're now moving away
Speaker 2: from manufacturing and we're moving toward businesses that are inherently
Speaker 2: local and thus the business camp so easily simply pick
Speaker 2: up and move.
Speaker 1: But aren't we seeing the pendulum swing slightly already, David?
Speaker 1: In terms of some of the activities we've seen at Amazon,
Speaker 1: for example, Hollywood ongoing you aw strike and fast food
Speaker 1: workers and the minimum wage, it does seem like there's
Speaker 1: something in the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: I think there absolutely is. I think everything you said
Speaker 2: is right, and the only thing I would tack on
Speaker 2: with apologies for being repetitive, is I don't think it
Speaker 2: will last without some changes in the law because at
Speaker 2: a lot of these companies where the workers are expressing interest,
Speaker 2: they ultimately fail before unions because it's still too easy
Speaker 2: for companies to vent them from doing so.
Speaker 1: So where do we go from here? I guess the
Speaker 1: question is, David, you know you use the past tense
Speaker 1: in your title. I think intentionally it's ours was the
Speaker 1: Shining Future. Now it's based on something Mary Anton and
Speaker 1: immigration rights advocate wrote at the turn of the century,
Speaker 1: mine is the Shining Future. So you know, you started
Speaker 1: this conversation by saying you were an optimist. So how
Speaker 1: do we get out of this mess? How do we
Speaker 1: restore some equilibrium and honestly some equality to people because
Speaker 1: income inequality is just so outrageous in this country.
Speaker 2: It is, and you know, the white black wage gap
Speaker 2: is is almost as large as it was when Harry
Speaker 2: Truman was president, and so all forms of inequality are
Speaker 2: just really, really quite outrageous. Yeah, you're right. The title
Speaker 2: is ours was the Shining Future. If I had a
Speaker 2: longer title, maybe it would be ours was the Shining Future,
Speaker 2: and it could be again.
Speaker 1: But that's not colin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but so I love that question. Here to me
Speaker 2: is the reason to have optimism, not that we will
Speaker 2: get over our problems, but that we can get over
Speaker 2: our problems. I know that many people think that our
Speaker 2: system is rigged, that our democracy doesn't work, and I
Speaker 2: actually agree in certain ways it's rigged and our democracy don't.
Speaker 1: Well, I've heard you talk about upward mobility and how
Speaker 1: it's really declined, and you know, I think their statistics
Speaker 1: about forty plus percent of people never leave their socioeconomic
Speaker 1: group they were born in. So you know, they're not
Speaker 1: like the current kids. They're not climbing up, they're staying down.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so inequality, it's just it's really really high.
Speaker 2: What I would ask people to reflect on is how
Speaker 2: has this country changed before, not just in the long
Speaker 2: ago past, but I'll get to this, but also fairly recently.
Speaker 2: And I think it's almost always changed through grassroots political movements.
Speaker 2: Usually grassroots political movements that seemed like the odds were
Speaker 2: too long when they began. So how did the union
Speaker 2: movement in this country begin? It began, the modern one
Speaker 2: began in the nineteen thirties when unions lost every fight
Speaker 2: that they had fought for years and years and years,
Speaker 2: and then we were in the depression, and it won
Speaker 2: because people like a. Philip Randolph and others kept fighting
Speaker 2: and not only persuaded workers to join unions, but persuaded
Speaker 2: the federal government to change the law. That's the lesson
Speaker 2: of the labor movement that shortened hours and helped build
Speaker 2: the middle class. It's also the lesson of the civil
Speaker 2: rights movement. We look back on the civil rights movement
Speaker 2: as a glorious victory, as we should, but it didn't
Speaker 2: feel that way in the moment to a lot of organizers.
Speaker 2: It felt like defeat after defeat after defeat, and then
Speaker 2: a little bit of progress. But they kept at it.
Speaker 2: And what they did was they tried to shape public opinion,
Speaker 2: and they built these grassroots movements and they changed the law.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the lesson of the labor movement,
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the disability rights movement.
Speaker 2: If someone saying wait a second, or all of his
Speaker 2: examples coming from the political left, I actually think it's
Speaker 2: the lesson of the anti abortion movement fifty years ago.
Speaker 2: They were furious about Roe v. Wade, and so what
Speaker 2: did they do. They organized, and they won local elections,
Speaker 2: and they basically took over the Republican Party and they
Speaker 2: were able to appoint judges who are friendly to them.
Speaker 2: Whether you celebrate these changes or abhor them, this is
Speaker 2: how our country changes. And I think we've gotten a
Speaker 2: little distracted from the material living standards of most people.
Speaker 2: We don't really have large grassroots movements that are focused
Speaker 2: on improving their lives. And I still really believe that
Speaker 2: if those movements come together, the biggest lesson of history
Speaker 2: is not that our society is irrevocably broken, but that
Speaker 2: we haven't done the things that we need to do
Speaker 2: to fix it. And American democracy, for all the challenges
Speaker 2: to it, and I do not want to minimize the
Speaker 2: authoritarian challenges to American democracy right now, for all of
Speaker 2: the challenges to American democracy, it's still has the tools
Speaker 2: to build a much better society. And indeed, the only
Speaker 2: way we've built a better society in the past is
Speaker 2: through those democratic tools.
Speaker 1: But you talk about establishing a communitarian sensibility, what is
Speaker 1: that and does that have to be hand in hand
Speaker 1: with some of these grassroots movements?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think the good news is that it probably
Speaker 2: would go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: What is it exactly?
Speaker 2: It's the idea that I care deeply about the people
Speaker 2: in my community, and not just in a sort of
Speaker 2: ephemeral way. I care about them. They are a priority
Speaker 2: to me, even maybe before other parts of the world.
Speaker 2: And I know that's a kind of controversial thing to say,
Speaker 2: particularly maybe on the left. But if you had corporate
Speaker 2: executives who said, you know what, I'm not neutral about
Speaker 2: whether I'm going to save jobs in my own town
Speaker 2: or move jobs to another town or another country. That
Speaker 2: is the kind of thing that the corporate executives in
Speaker 2: the past felt. They said, you know what, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to leave Milwaukee. I'm going to build a beautiful
Speaker 2: theater in Milwaukee because I care about Milwaukee. I'm not
Speaker 2: neutral about my own community. And I really do think
Speaker 2: I don't know the exact way we get back to that,
Speaker 2: but I really do think a certain amount of communitarianism
Speaker 2: and patriotism, the idea that hey, we're all in this together.
Speaker 2: We care about other parts of the world, but we're
Speaker 2: Americans and we care about this and we're going to
Speaker 2: fix our country, Americans of all races and all religions
Speaker 2: and all different parts of the world. That kind of
Speaker 2: communitarianism is different from oh, we're agnostic about whether this
Speaker 2: job is in the United States or not in the
Speaker 2: United States. It's a different culture.
Speaker 1: But given the polarization, and I'm so tired of that word, David,
Speaker 1: but given how vitriolic our civil discourse has become, how
Speaker 1: we've been our social fabric has been shredded. As David
Speaker 1: Brooks often talks about, I mean, how do you even
Speaker 1: start doing that?
Speaker 2: It's incredibly difficult. Surely I won't be the one who's
Speaker 2: able to solve it. I would just remind people that
Speaker 2: there are people in our past who've looked at even
Speaker 2: steeper odds and didn't give up, but said, all we
Speaker 2: can do is try to make this a better country.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mentioned a Philip Randolph before he built
Speaker 2: the first meaningful union of black employees in the United
Speaker 2: States in the nineteen thirties, right, and then he faced
Speaker 2: down FDR when FDR told him to cancel a march
Speaker 2: meant to integrate wartime factories. And so our country has
Speaker 2: faced these incredibly long odds for certain groups before, and
Speaker 2: what they've done is they've found ways to organize, and
Speaker 2: they've found ways to be incredibly strategic, sometimes ruthlessly strategic.
Speaker 2: Here's what we're going to do to make this a
Speaker 2: better country. It's not guaranteed to succeed, but I don't
Speaker 2: really know what the alternative is for us to get
Speaker 2: out of these problems that we have today.
Speaker 1: And I think really strong leaders that can help inspire
Speaker 1: people to do all the things you're talking about, strong
Speaker 1: leadership at the national, state, and local level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, many people lament just how old our
Speaker 2: political leaders are not just the president, not just the
Speaker 2: likely nominee from the other party, but the leaders in Congress.
Speaker 2: And that's true. It's somewhat bizarre how old our political
Speaker 2: leaders are. You can look at that, though, and say
Speaker 2: there is an opportunity They're not going to be around
Speaker 2: that much longer in the grand sweep of things, and
Speaker 2: we really do need new leaders, right We need people
Speaker 2: who can come forward and express fresh visions of what
Speaker 2: inspires America.
Speaker 1: Well, hopefully people will read this book and can have
Speaker 1: a blueprint of how to, I think repair some of
Speaker 1: the deep wounds and the setbacks that need resetting in
Speaker 1: our society and in our culture. I think if I
Speaker 1: reviewed this book, I would say imminently readable, highly accessible,
Speaker 1: and ultimately inspiring.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Katie, I really appreciate. I hope people read
Speaker 2: the book too.
Speaker 1: I think they will, and don't be afraid of it, everybody.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to digest and understand, even for someone
Speaker 1: like me whose eyes glaze over when I read a
Speaker 1: lot of economic stories, because I think telling the stories
Speaker 1: of people behind the trends and really understanding their role
Speaker 1: makes it a lot more fun. And plus it just
Speaker 1: explains so much, and so if anyone wants to understand
Speaker 1: where we are today, you really do need to understand
Speaker 1: our past, and David does an excellent job of explaining it.
Speaker 1: So thank you, David.
Speaker 2: Thank you. You are as I've told you before, you
Speaker 2: are my favorite interviewer in the whole country. So to
Speaker 2: come on and be interviewed by you is a tremendous thrill.
Speaker 1: That's such a nice thing to say, because you talk
Speaker 1: to a lot of smart people, So thank you very
Speaker 1: much for that compliment.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
Speaker 1: a subject you want us to cover, or you want
Speaker 1: to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
Speaker 1: reach out. You can leave a short message at six
Speaker 1: h nine five point two five five five, or you
Speaker 1: can send me a DM on Instagram. I would love
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Speaker 1: Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
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