WEBVTT - Ezra Klein on the Future of Supply-Side Liberalism 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:15.120 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:19.280 I'm Joe WI Isn't and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy obviously, 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:24.239 one of our themes for like years now has essentially 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:26.480 just been all of these ways in which it seems 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:29.400 like the supply side of the economy is like kind 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.479 of broken or put under review. I would say the 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:35.880 pressure of the last two years has revealed a lot 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.640 of weak points. Yeah, so I called this the choke 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.960 point economy, um, which maybe I should have come up 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:44.440 with a catchier title, but it was basically the idea 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:49.479 that the extraordinary events of the pandemic had exposed the 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:53.640 shortages or choke points in things that the economy actually 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.760 really needs. Everything from semiconductors, which is kind of where 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:02.639 we started our supply chain exploration two, I mean vaccines themselves, right, 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:06.040 some countries couldn't get enough vaccines, others had too many, 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.560 and you can expand it to tons of different things, 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:12.319 everything from housing to healthcare. Right. It's kind of like 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:15.000 this running joke of Odd Lots listeners on Twitter, and 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:17.920 you're like, this is this is the new thing that's broken. 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:20.479 When our Tracy and Joe going to do a show 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.039 on it. But it also does you know when you 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.800 when you have this like these myriad broken aspects of 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:31.400 the supply chain or shortages or choke points or bottlenecks, 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:33.720 you know, it's sort of like gets the question like 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:36.759 is there like a bigger effort that can be made 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:38.880 because you can, like you can tackle these one at 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:41.240 a time, and of course that's being done in private 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:43.600 companies and governmental work on that one at a time, 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:47.319 But is there like a broader, a broader effort that 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:52.960 can be made where large maybe government involvement, regulations, something 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:56.760 such that we just have like more robust supply, more 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.760 robust supply side of the economy. Absolutely, and I think 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.280 for the past year or so we've certainly seen pockets 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.840 and indications of that, right like the Biden administrations Build 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:10.760 Back Better Program, the Inflation Reduction Act, all of those 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:15.120 are to some extent aimed at increasing capacity, building out 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:17.919 vital infrastructure and things like that. So it does feel 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.360 like there is a recognition that this is an issue, 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:25.200 but the solutions are still kind of tricky, and even 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.920 if we all agree to build more capacity, it's going 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:31.200 to take a while. There's still going to be questions 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:33.240 over how best to do that. It's going to be 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:36.640 tough to identify some of those cassidy constraints, like what 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:40.280 actually is the constraint exactly? Um, you know, it's funny 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.840 because for years there was, you know, supply side economics 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:47.160 in modern parlance, has this very specific idea and I 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.400 think of like the Reagan era and a bunch of 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:53.679 people's economists who sort of made their bones in that era. 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:56.120 But really it just made like tax cuts, like really 0:02:56.160 --> 0:03:00.000 like when people say supply side economics, they say tax cuts, 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:02.600 tax cuts for companies make them more company, right, just 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.400 make it easier for everyone to produce more by by 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:09.720 cutting text. Now there is this sort of revival of 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.760 so called supply side economics, a certain supply side progressivism. 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:17.200 We've heard Jenny Yelling talk about it, which is no, actually, 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:19.959 supply side economics doesn't have to just be tax cuts. 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:24.000 It can actually be about all this the Chips Act, etcetera, 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:27.600 active efforts in which the government, in theory can play 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:32.399 a productive role in making more robust, resilient, and abundant 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:36.520 supply side capacity, which speaks about the shortages the inflation 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:38.800 that we're experiencing right now. And just like what does 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:41.320 it mean to have an economy that just delivers more 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:43.880 goods for the public. Yeah, and to some extent, it's 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:48.440 almost a return to Kynesianism, right, It's about smoothing not 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:53.040 business cycles necessarily, but smoothing like the investment cycle. If 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:56.560 markets aren't doing it by themselves, then maybe the government 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.040 can step in and say, actually, we need to build 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:01.840 up this specific area of the economy or this particular 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.560 piece of infrastructure. Absolutely. So, let's our guest today is 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.840 someone who I think has been very influential on building 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:12.240 out in public this idea of like a new supply 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:18.240 side progressivism or reclaiming supply side economics is something that's 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.960 beyond just cutting taxes or cutting interest rates and actually 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:25.720 optimistic about the role that governments can play and alleviating 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:28.840 some of these bottlenecks and shortages and you know, not 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.400 running into all these scarcities again and just delivering more stuff, 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:35.200 more housing, more goods for the public. We're going to 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.440 be speaking to Ezra Cliin, columnist at the New York 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:42.600 Times and the host the podcast The Asraclient Show. So 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:45.479 uh big voice on this topic. Ezra, Thank you so 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.120 much for coming on Odd lots will to be here 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:50.400 on one of my favorite shows, thank You, Thank You. 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.839 You know it's funny when we first talked about coming 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:58.000 on the pot You're coming on the podcast, He's like, well, 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:02.919 the Democrats build back better climate plan. It's it's completely failed, 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:05.279 so let's talk about where they go next. But I 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.320 guess you in saying that a completely side like this 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.080 is like what duped Mitch McConnell and why they sort 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.479 of got this done because the Democrats did a very 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:17.520 convincing job convincing the public that it had failed and 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:20.160 then only to turn around at the very last minute. 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.440 So we had to sort of like rescrap even what 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:24.680 we're going to talk about because the premise of our 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:28.320 initial plan was undermined by the fact that the Democrats 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:30.880 passed Yeah. I didn't mean to rope you into my 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.600 ultimately completely successful scheme to pass the inflation production that, 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.160 but but you know, they had to do all damage 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.279 in this kind of work. So okay, maybe just to 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:44.320 begin with, give us like the definition what what is 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:49.800 modern supply side economics or supply side liberalism versus uh, 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:53.120 you know, demand side economics, and also the supplied side 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.080 economics of your the you know, the things that are 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.560 often considered a dirty word associated with Reagan tax cuts, 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:03.119 that sort of thing. Yeah, the definitional work is always 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:06.640 little trick here. So modern supply side economics is johnet 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.400 Yellen picking up sort of some of this framing and 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:12.080 and bring it into Treasury and around the Biden agenda, 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:14.360 and we can we can talk about that, but sort 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:16.400 of before that, what I've been trying to push for 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:20.240 a while what I call supply side liberalism. It's pretty simple. Um, Look, 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.760 I'm a liberal. I have spent most of my career 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:27.320 arguing and still argue that we should subsidize this for that, 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:31.200 do that cash transfer, expand health insurance to more people. 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:35.240 But liberals, i think, over decades, have become very used 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:38.560 to looking at the economy and looking at demand side problems, 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:41.480 looking for what we can subsidize a solution. Right. Do 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:43.200 people need health insurance, Let's give them a check to 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.480 get more health insurance. That's fundamentally Obamacare. Do they need housing, 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:49.440 let's give them a section eight boucher. Do they need schooling? 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.400 How about a Pelgram. What we're not as good at 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.200 is looking and seeing first where the problem is a 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:58.919 supply problem, we don't have enough of the thing we 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.680 want to give people um or the thing doesn't exist 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:04.159 at all, because pulling technology forward to me is a 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:08.400 very very important piece of supply side liberalism. Um. And secondarily, 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:11.040 we don't have very good language and certainly not very 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:14.760 good attentiveness to seeing when our own policies have made 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.880 a supply side choke point worse, where say subsidizing something 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.640 like maybe housing in very hot housing areas, where we've 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.120 also constrained the supply and thus we're pushing up prices 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.880 for everybody. So part of this is trying to add 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.240 a new lens or an old lens. Maybe many people 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:34.160 would say from new deal liberalism to sort of modern liberals, 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.960 men say, a lot of the problems now are supply 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.240 side problems, and we need both language and policies for 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:44.880 fixing them. So the liberal or progressive impulse remains the same, 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:48.160 which I imagine would be characterized as some sort of 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:54.320 more egalitarian distribution of the fruits that the economy produces. 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:58.760 So whether it's literal things, whether it's homes, whether it's 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:02.880 child care and healthcare, like the more equal distribution of 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:06.000 these things, the goal is the same. But we're used 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:09.760 to talking about, Well, the way to do that is checks, 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.880 so that someone can have a voucher for childcare or something, 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.480 but in a capacity constrained environment. And I you know, 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:19.080 one of the things that didn't get into the IRA 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:23.400 I believe was anything having to do with childcare. And 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:26.120 in theory it sounds like, yeah, sure you could like 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.240 give people check and give people more access to childcare, 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:33.800 but without more childcare facilities, without more teachers, without more 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:36.880 people who can look after children, you're gonna just run 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:39.720 into constraints. You may not actually get the outcomes that 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:43.200 you're you're hoping to see. Yeah, a hundred percents. Let 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:44.840 me say two things about that. So number one, I 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:47.600 don't want to say this is simply about distribution. A 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.360 lot of it is about the ability to have flourishing 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:52.320 lives in ways where we don't currently have the thing 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:54.520 we want to distribute. So if you think of, say, 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:56.960 what is happening in the i RA with a lot 0:08:57.040 --> 0:08:59.600 of the clean energy infrastructure they want to build, some 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:01.959 of that is of course making it easier to get 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.480 things we have today. Actually, you're really not going to 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:06.880 be able to use these subsidies for the current generation 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:10.079 of vv cars, but in theory an electric car subsidy 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:12.520 could get you an electric car soon. Though we can 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.400 talk about supply bottle next air, but much of what 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:18.520 that is doing is trying to create clean energy options. 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:21.480 It don't really exist right now. UM certainly at the 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:24.040 level of plentitude, we need them to exist, things like 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:28.080 hydrogen um you know, things like next generation. You know, 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:31.120 basically pick your next generation energy source. They're trying to 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:33.080 least subsidize it somewhat. So I do want to know 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:38.000 that the ability to pull forward um innovations and possibilities 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.960 that would allow for all kinds of goals that that 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.000 that I have, that that many I think liberals share 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:46.640 that could not be achieved now or the politics of 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:48.560 them would not work out now. I think it's an 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:50.440 important piece of it, and it gets too things that 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.400 might need to be rethought or thought through on the 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.679 level of institutions and grant science funding. But then your 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.079 other piece of it on childcare, I think is exactly 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:00.600 right and a lot of the for me, I mean, 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:04.040 I live in San Francisco, California. I come from California. 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:08.480 I grew up in Irvine, California, so I to watch 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:14.719 how liberal, how blue California is, and how badly it 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.479 fails at a lot of the basics of progressive outcomes 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:23.040 of making a middle class life affordable for people is 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.400 to really force yourself to reckon with some things that 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:28.839 have gone pretty profoundly wrong in liberal governance. And one 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:32.040 of them is, yeah, we have looked around. We keep 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:34.880 seeing demand side problems, and we don't see the role 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:37.080 that some of our governance institutions and other things have 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:40.240 created on supply side, with housing in California and in 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.160 New York and another kind of rich or blue areas 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:45.720 being I think example number one, but but child care 0:10:45.760 --> 0:10:48.160 being another. You can talk about higher education. We've not 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.720 built a new UC in California. There is an amazing, amazing, 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:55.320 amazing like jewel of like the global public education system. 0:10:55.360 --> 0:10:57.800 We've not built a new UC here since the sixties. 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.440 Except from me said, um, it is very Once you 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.640 begin looking at the paucity of ambition on the supply side, 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:08.920 it becomes a little bit hard to stop seeing it. 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:11.560 So I'm just going to jump in real quickly and 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.600 ask one of the devil's advocate questions. You know, one 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.680 of the traditional criticisms of this kind of government intervention 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.480 would be that, well, why not just let the free 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.000 markets do it? You know, the free markets should be 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:29.080 efficiently allocating resources to the things that we need, like 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:33.320 housing and healthcare and childcare and things like that. What's 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:37.520 your response to that criticism? Wouldn't it be nice? There 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:40.400 are places here where I do think the regulation is 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.920 a big part of the solution. So I think housing 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.839 has a very very big component where if we let 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.440 the market do more of the work, the market actually 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:52.080 respond not immediately, not perfectly, but help a lot better 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:55.000 than what we've allowed to have happen in places like, um, 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.640 you know, northern California. On the other hand, there are 0:11:57.640 --> 0:11:59.360 things where the market won't do it, So I think 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:03.480 clean energy being a big example. Now increasingly over time 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:06.280 you have enough market signals being sent that there is 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:08.040 a lot of investment in clean energy. But it took 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.000 a long time, and we're nowhere near where we would 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.959 have wanted to be in terms of the market deciding that, 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:15.920 you know, ruining the planet is actually a bad thing 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.120 for long term for for long term profits, So that 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:22.160 kind of thing is not nearly as punished as one 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:24.160 would hope that to be. I actually think a huge 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:27.640 amount of the shift towards industrial policy and that I'm 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:30.920 trying of coalition. The shift towards believing that the government 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:33.400 does need to be able to set long term goals, 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.800 does need to be able to infuse the productive policy 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:40.560 and direction of the country with the values of the 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:45.120 polity comes from watching the market's failure on climate. So 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.520 one difficulty of this kind of of this way of 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.120 looking at the economy is it doesn't give you a 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.240 one size fits all policy solution. A little bit unlike 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:57.240 the old supplies side economics reagular or supplies side economics, 0:12:57.440 --> 0:12:59.600 where you just sort of wandered around looking for taxes 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.719 to cut and companies to deregulate. There are places here 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.000 where you need to deregulate the private sector, places we 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.800 need to deregulate the government, um places here where you 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:10.040 need to spend more, places here where you actually need 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.960 to spend less. It's much more playing bottleneck detective and 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:17.679 asking what is something we wish we had more of, 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:20.720 or simply wish we had altogether, right, it's something where 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:23.000 we really should be investing a lot of money and 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:25.320 trying to make some kind of technological breakthrough or make 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:28.360 something affordable that is not currently affordable, and then trying 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:30.680 to ask what is standing in the way um and 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:35.600 that answer, very frustratingly, is extremely different for for different things. 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:37.560 As I begun doing this work and it sort of 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.200 I'm working on a book in this era area, you 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:43.600 really have to look at different case studies and you 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:47.120 can't extrapolate across the entire range from them. They just 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:51.240 begin to overtime accumulate to a sense of a way 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.000 of looking for a problem as opposed to a singular 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:56.760 way of again and again solving a problem. So this 0:13:57.080 --> 0:13:59.960 is really key because you know, whether we're talking about 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.920 all right, the old supply side just cut as many 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:07.800 taxes as you can. This sort of traditional progressive demand 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.200 side is well where there's a group of people who 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.360 have inability to access something, cut a check, and both 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.720 of them may have their roles, but the solutions aren't 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:20.560 clearly as simple when we're talking about something as sprawling 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:23.880 as lack of supply side capacity. And your turn, bottle 0:14:23.960 --> 0:14:27.520 neck Detective is good in all of these things. We 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:29.320 talked about them all the time on the show. You 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:31.560 know it's like, okay, we seem to have gotten bad 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:36.440 at chips manufacturing. There are a lot of people waiting. Uh. 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:38.640 You know, last year we saw dwell times at the 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:41.280 Port of Los Angeles each weeks because we didn't have 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:44.480 uh pork throughput. It's like one thing after another, and 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:47.880 as you say, they're all very different. But what is 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:52.040 a good bottleneck. Are there certain broad principles that a 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:56.960 good bottleneck bottle neck detective could have that would start 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.960 to like, you know, a general theory perhaps of being 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.200 a bottleneck detective six that you start finding these and 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:08.080 identifying good solutions in a timely in a good rhythm. Yeah, 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:12.400 I think so, um, and I'll that brings up a lot. 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.800 So let me say a couple of things, uh quickly. 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:20.120 So what is one dimension of this is outcomes people 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:25.680 actually want? Right when people organized to stop dense development 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:29.360 from coming into their community, that isn't some accident. They 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:31.800 actually want the outcome we're getting. Now, we may say 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.520 that as a as a political system, as a polity, 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.320 as the state, as opposed to the city, we don't 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:40.920 want that, and we're going to try to pull the 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.240 responsibility or pull the voice away from them. But but 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:48.840 that's a case where you're looking at we have many many, many, many, 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:54.360 many institutions meant to raise up different voices, particularly than 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.000 not only marginalized voices. A lot of this comes out 0:15:57.040 --> 0:15:59.720 of a sort of liberal counter movement in the sixties 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:01.400 and seven and these you know your Ralph Nader, is 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:06.280 your Rachel Carson's, etcetera. UH that was correctly responding to 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:10.160 a period not just in American politics, but in liberalism 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.160 where the building really was quite heedless, where the needs 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:15.480 of communities really were run over, where people really were 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:19.200 dumping toxic poisons into streams and into waterways and into 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.280 the air with no real look at what it might mean. 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:26.720 And so a lot of institutions, a lot of nonprofits, 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:29.560 a lot of statutes were passed to make it easier 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:32.040 for people to to jump in front, to be conservative 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:35.920 about it, to jump in front of these UH mechanisms, 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:38.960 and you'll stop. And now, at a time when we 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.479 need to do things really fast, say to de carbonize, 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:45.239 those exact same problems, I'm sorry, those exact same solutions 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:47.160 have become today's problems. So it's part of it is 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.960 looking for you know what I think of his institutional crusts. Right, 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.600 where do we have long running processes that were maybe 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.560 passed correctly, or maybe passed with all good intentions, or 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:00.280 maybe passed and even solve the problems there are meant 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:02.720 to solve, but have now become captured for other reasons. 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:04.719 One piece I did that I think is a good 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:07.040 example of this is in New York, and I think 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:11.080 it's twenty nineteen, they pass congestion pricing, which is like 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.720 the most pro environmental idea you can possibly have. You're 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.239 gonna tax cars coming into New York City and you're 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:19.159 gonna move that money over to the m p A. 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:22.560 And congestion pricing has been held up now for four 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:26.080 years an environmental review because and I've spoken to the 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.359 Biden administration and I've spoken to the players in New 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:31.600 York about this, and everybody wants to get it done. 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:34.040 And what you'll hear is like, well, we're just afraid 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:36.199 we're going to get a lot of lawsuits, and so 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:38.000 we have to do this, you know, very very lengthy 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:41.040 environmental review with all these meetings to protect ourselves, which 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:44.120 is fine on some level, but on another level, when 0:17:44.119 --> 0:17:49.800 you're environmental bills are blocking pro environmentalist policies, you have 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:52.320 to begin to ask what has gone wrong there? And 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.200 so another place I just look at is affordability. When 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:57.520 you have a big affordability problem, and I think we 0:17:57.600 --> 0:17:59.800 know where we have very big affordability problems. We have 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:02.760 them in many areas in housing, we have them in childcare, 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:05.560 we have them in higher education, we have them in healthcare. 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:08.920 I think that is a place to begin looking um 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:12.200 for supply side problems as well. Now you'll get different 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.440 ones in different spaces there. But I think just in general, 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:17.720 and we can talk about this more broadly, I think 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:21.840 just affordability crises should be a signal that something has 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:24.159 gone wrong. If there's a reason we can't produce more 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:26.399 of a thing, well, okay, like fair enough, but a 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:28.720 lot of those things we know there's no you know, 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.320 it's not like the only way to get more childcare 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:33.800 centers is to get more lithium out of China, right. 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:36.639 I mean, we we have like the technological means to 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:39.480 set up a daycare. If there aren't enough daycares, then 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:42.000 the question of why becomes very salient and should be 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:44.359 an answerable question. I just had a vision of a 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.480 daycare with all these little toddlers like driving tiny electric 0:18:47.560 --> 0:19:10.399 vehicles around, and this is a future liberals want, okay, 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:13.680 But I just want to pause and dwell on that 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:16.840 timeline aspect of it for a second, because I think 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:19.360 this is really important. And you know, Joe mentioned this 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:23.960 idea that tax cuts can be an attractive policy solution 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.119 because you know, they're pretty one size fits all, the 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:30.680 same for cutting people checks like those are fairly simplistic 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:35.160 answers to sometimes complicated problems. But when you talk about 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:40.560 increasing investment um and building out capacity, it does feel 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:45.040 like the timeline starts to look very different. Like the 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:48.320 speed at which you can do that versus just cutting 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:52.679 a check or reducing taxes is vastly, vastly different. So 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:57.320 how do you overcome that? Because, especially in an inflationary environment, 0:19:57.640 --> 0:19:59.480 you have people who really want to see things that 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.880 are going to have an immediate impact versus waiting two 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:05.879 or four years for new housing supply to be built 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:10.560 out or something like that. So this becomes a cliche 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:12.600 example if you use it enough, and I probably have, 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.280 but I think it's always worth remembering that it doesn't 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:18.280 have to be that long. We built the Empire State 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:21.040 Building in about a year um we built the New 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:23.879 York Subways in if I'm remembering the number that the 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:26.520 early New York subways in about four. It takes us 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:28.920 longer than the and that now to open a bathroom 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:32.639 in a subway station. So there is a delta, a 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.320 pretty tremendous delta between what we've been able to do 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:41.480 as a poorer country with worst building technology, what other 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:44.040 countries that are poorer and have worst building technology than 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:45.560 us were able to do, and what we're able to 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.000 do now. Some of that is reasonable, right, we want 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:50.320 to build things more safely now, we want to build 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:52.679 things up to higher code now. And some of it 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.120 you have to ask is it is it really serving us? 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:57.480 So part of it is asking this question of are 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:01.680 we our time and simply too long now? I think Tracey, 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:04.000 you're also getting it something a little bit separate than that, 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:09.320 which is within the horizon of political accountability. How quickly 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.560 can you execute a policy that you may get rewarded for? 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:17.040 And that's a hard question, although I would have thought 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:19.840 two years ago in a way it was a harder 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.280 question than I think it is now, not because you 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:26.480 are able to build more quickly now, but because my 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:31.159 estimation of how much reward there is for um tax 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:34.040 policies basically has gotten pretty far down. So I think 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:37.440 the the expectation among the Biden administration, and to be honest, 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.919 my expectation was the child tax credit, which was a 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.280 very simple, like direct, like here's a check, policy would 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:48.120 be very popular and it would create a feedback loop 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:50.240 of its own popularity which would lead to its extension. 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:53.199 It did not do that. Um, it just did not 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:54.960 do that. And if you go over the past couple 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:58.560 of years, it's actually very hard to find big tax 0:21:58.600 --> 0:22:03.120 side policies that seem to have created a very strong 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:06.840 political feedback effects. The Trump tax cuts in eighteen didn't 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:09.000 do all that much for for Donald Trump. You know, 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:11.320 we can argue about the stimulus checks and the Cares 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:15.159 Act and and in the um subsequent um you know 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:17.480 acts too, but it really doesn't look like it's saved 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:21.760 anybody's bacon exactly. So I actually find this worrying for 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:23.960 a bunch of other reasons that I think there is 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:27.920 a very very very tenuous connection now between the policies 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.480 either side passes and political and the political feedback's rewards 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:35.000 or accountability for them. Um. The real exception is being 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:37.959 when you make a policy highly salient through a very 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:42.040 big repeal fight like Obamacare but the but in general, 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:44.920 it isn't clue to me that politicians are getting obviously 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:48.359 rewarded for the tax side policies either, So you know, 0:22:48.400 --> 0:22:51.520 you may as well try to do a good job. Well, 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:55.080 you know, speaking of policies, let's just pause right here, 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:58.600 because we did have two pretty extraordinarily big pieces of 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:03.399 legislation passed in the last I don't know, two months basically, 0:23:03.680 --> 0:23:06.880 And you are the original wonk, and you made your 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:10.760 career because you're extremely good at sort of taking these 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:13.920 big policy things and writing about them and talking about 0:23:13.920 --> 0:23:16.560 them in a way that people can understand. So these 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:20.520 two bills, Chips and I ra Someone comes to you, says, Ezrael, like, 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:22.080 what's in these bills? What do they do? What are 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:23.639 they gonna do for me? How are they going to 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:26.159 expand supply side capacity? Why do you give us like 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:31.000 this short, asra klient summary of these pretty extraordinary legislative 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:34.359 accomplishments that up until very recently people thought there was 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:38.000 no chance of this administration getting sure. And I think 0:23:38.000 --> 0:23:39.960 we should actually put the infrastructure bill in here too. 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:42.679 So if you if you take the three of them together, 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:45.679 what you have is about four hundred and fifty billion 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:51.320 dollars in climate investment UM, roughly three five in the 0:23:51.400 --> 0:23:53.919 ira A. UM. It's really weird to keep saying the 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:58.720 I r A and the Irish UH, and then a 0:23:58.760 --> 0:24:02.440 fair amount more in the Infrastructure bill. And then Chips 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:05.480 has a bunch of you know, we're going to set 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:09.280 up an agency, inter agency process, that kind of department. Here, 0:24:09.320 --> 0:24:11.840 we're going to give a direction, but they don't actually 0:24:11.880 --> 0:24:14.520 authorize the money for it, or rather, in technical terms, 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:16.440 they authorize the money, but they don't spend the money. 0:24:16.480 --> 0:24:19.120 The other ones are actually like, here's a check. One 0:24:19.200 --> 0:24:21.320 tricky thing about these bills is none of them do 0:24:21.400 --> 0:24:24.160 one thing as a want. I find them very very 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:26.840 hard to explain because there is no central architecture. But 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:30.520 the major happened, I know, right well, I've I've moved 0:24:30.520 --> 0:24:35.919 on much easier, UM. But I would say there's been 0:24:35.960 --> 0:24:38.960 a huge move in climate policy. And and this goes 0:24:39.000 --> 0:24:40.920 actually a little bit too to the question of letting 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:43.560 the market work. You go back to you know, two 0:24:43.600 --> 0:24:46.720 thousand and um, what was it two ten or eleven 0:24:46.800 --> 0:24:48.960 when they were doing uh Boxman market, the Big Captain 0:24:49.000 --> 0:24:51.760 Trade Bill. The theory for a long time was we 0:24:51.760 --> 0:24:55.879 were going to price the externalities of carpon as such, 0:24:55.960 --> 0:24:59.000 the market would then begin sending signals across the entire 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:02.000 market so that the response from from both government and 0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:06.639 consumers and private uh you know, companies would be to 0:25:06.680 --> 0:25:09.879 begin investing much more in clean energy and infrastructure for 0:25:09.880 --> 0:25:12.879 clean energy and products that use clean energy, and you know, 0:25:13.040 --> 0:25:15.200 less in things that they used a lot of fossil 0:25:15.240 --> 0:25:18.200 fuels for a bunch of reasons. There's been a big 0:25:18.240 --> 0:25:20.600 movement away from that. And so now what they're trying 0:25:20.640 --> 0:25:22.719 to do in the i RA and to some degree 0:25:22.760 --> 0:25:26.239 in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill is there they're trying to 0:25:26.280 --> 0:25:29.560 sort of wander around with checks, with tax rebates, with 0:25:29.680 --> 0:25:32.600 tax credits and say, look like, if you can set 0:25:32.680 --> 0:25:35.840 up domestic and it's actually pretty important because they are 0:25:35.840 --> 0:25:38.480 putting a lot into the bucket of not just trying 0:25:38.520 --> 0:25:42.840 to create clean energy infrastructure and supply chains and product chains, 0:25:42.880 --> 0:25:46.160 but create them in America. If you can create enough 0:25:46.200 --> 0:25:48.840 of this chain here, like, we will give you a 0:25:48.920 --> 0:25:52.879 tremendous amount of you know, subsidies or will be guaranteed 0:25:52.880 --> 0:25:55.679 purchasers or whatever it might be. So they're basically just 0:25:55.720 --> 0:25:58.760 trying to spend their way to a very very very 0:25:58.880 --> 0:26:05.320 large UH decarbonization both UM push but also industry in America. 0:26:05.320 --> 0:26:07.280 I really think you have to understand what Biden is 0:26:07.320 --> 0:26:10.119 doing here as also an idea about the future of 0:26:10.119 --> 0:26:12.719 the economy. And I've been thinking about how will we 0:26:12.760 --> 0:26:15.440 know in ten years of this world. One way to 0:26:15.480 --> 0:26:18.080 think about it is we will know because we will 0:26:18.160 --> 0:26:21.080 have gotten you know. I think the estimate out of 0:26:21.080 --> 0:26:23.840 the group in Princeton and others is about two thirds 0:26:23.840 --> 0:26:26.600 of the way to the Paris climate. UM are are 0:26:26.640 --> 0:26:29.320 our target under Paris Climate. I think another way though 0:26:30.000 --> 0:26:32.040 that that I think, you know, if it doesn't happen, 0:26:32.080 --> 0:26:33.560 we're all going to have to answer for it a bit. 0:26:34.240 --> 0:26:39.240 Is is there a really strong domestic next generation battery 0:26:39.240 --> 0:26:43.080 manufacturing sector in America. They're putting a lot of money 0:26:43.080 --> 0:26:45.520 into that and some other things like that, and if 0:26:45.560 --> 0:26:48.119 those industries don't build up here, then there will be 0:26:48.119 --> 0:26:49.800 a real you know, that would be a real point 0:26:49.800 --> 0:26:51.320 for the people who say, you know, you can't use 0:26:51.359 --> 0:26:54.160 industrial policy to create these kinds of industries. That's one 0:26:54.359 --> 0:26:57.280 layer of this. The bills do a bunch of other 0:26:57.320 --> 0:26:59.520 things that should be said, so there's a huge amount 0:26:59.520 --> 0:27:02.199 of tax policy in the IRA to pay for not 0:27:02.280 --> 0:27:05.399 just the climate investments, but also to um uh, just 0:27:05.680 --> 0:27:07.840 pay down the deficit a bunch, to make Joe Mansion 0:27:07.920 --> 0:27:12.080 and to sunder Christian cinema happy. I would want to 0:27:12.119 --> 0:27:14.280 bone up on that more before I talked it through 0:27:14.359 --> 0:27:16.560 right here. And then there's obviously a fair amount of 0:27:16.600 --> 0:27:21.440 extension of Obamacare health insurance subsidies. Chips um is primarily 0:27:21.440 --> 0:27:23.119 a little bit to the side of this CHIPS. It 0:27:23.440 --> 0:27:25.639 comes out of competes and the I think it was 0:27:25.680 --> 0:27:29.360 called the Competition and Invasion Act, this huge Christmas tree 0:27:29.440 --> 0:27:33.240 kind of legislation for every R and D idea and 0:27:33.320 --> 0:27:37.240 domestic manufacturing idea anybody in Congress had that eventually got 0:27:37.240 --> 0:27:42.240 whittled down to primarily being an idea about reconstructing domestic 0:27:42.359 --> 0:27:45.520 semiconductor manufacturing and innovation, with the idea being these are 0:27:45.600 --> 0:27:48.159 such a critical component of the both the current and 0:27:48.200 --> 0:27:51.440 the next generation economy that to be dependent on other 0:27:51.440 --> 0:27:54.200 countries for them, partically other countries either they don't like us, 0:27:54.600 --> 0:27:57.000 or that could be easily invaded by countries a tone 0:27:57.119 --> 0:27:59.920 that that we have a complicated relationship with like Taiwan, 0:28:00.440 --> 0:28:04.800 UM is a critical national security, uh, not just failure, 0:28:05.160 --> 0:28:09.520 but vulnerability. And so I think Chips sits a little 0:28:09.520 --> 0:28:11.720 bit differently, whereas the IRA, I think of it is 0:28:11.800 --> 0:28:14.600 very much like a supply side progressivism bill. Right, We're 0:28:14.640 --> 0:28:17.800 going to invest hugely in the supply side of this 0:28:18.000 --> 0:28:21.679 very very central progressivism no goal, which is decarbonizing the 0:28:21.680 --> 0:28:25.840 economy and slowing climate change. Chips is very much am 0:28:26.680 --> 0:28:30.840 a national security. You know, the two parties can still 0:28:30.920 --> 0:28:35.919 somewhat come together to try to pass anti China or 0:28:35.960 --> 0:28:38.720 compete with China kind of legislation, and there are two 0:28:38.720 --> 0:28:40.200 a little bit like batteries are gonna be a really 0:28:40.200 --> 0:28:42.760 big test for for the IRA, whether not we're able 0:28:42.800 --> 0:28:47.600 to create the semiconductor capability and industry in America is 0:28:47.600 --> 0:28:49.760 going to be a really big test of whether or 0:28:49.760 --> 0:28:51.880 not it is possible for this kind of industrial policy 0:28:51.880 --> 0:29:11.560 to work. So, speaking of China, that's my queue to 0:29:11.600 --> 0:29:14.880 ask another Devil's advocate question, which is, you know, normally 0:29:15.520 --> 0:29:20.000 when I think of large scale investment or infrastructure spending 0:29:20.040 --> 0:29:25.200 things like that, I think of China, and China has 0:29:25.240 --> 0:29:29.200 sort of a mixed record on success on that front. 0:29:29.320 --> 0:29:32.440 UM And my favorite example of this is um the 0:29:32.720 --> 0:29:38.000 swine fever epidemic where a huge chunk of China's supply 0:29:38.120 --> 0:29:41.640 of pigs got wiped out by this pandemic, and then 0:29:41.680 --> 0:29:44.880 the government intervened and said, we have to rebuild our herds, 0:29:45.280 --> 0:29:47.920 and then they rebuilt them so quickly that they had 0:29:47.960 --> 0:29:50.240 too many pigs, and we had a bunch of pig 0:29:50.280 --> 0:29:53.320 farmers and pig farming companies that ended up going bust. 0:29:53.360 --> 0:29:56.320 And so if you look at the supply of China's 0:29:56.880 --> 0:29:59.920 heard of hogs, as I do regularly, it's just it's 0:30:00.040 --> 0:30:02.880 spikes and then it troughs. All made hobbies, right, and 0:30:02.920 --> 0:30:05.800 then it spikes and it troughs. So for them it's 0:30:05.800 --> 0:30:10.560 been very hard to smooth that particular cycle. And so 0:30:10.640 --> 0:30:13.479 I guess my question is, like, how difficult is it 0:30:13.560 --> 0:30:18.000 to calibrate this kind of supply side intervention and how 0:30:18.000 --> 0:30:21.840 do you ensure that you don't contribute to a boom 0:30:22.040 --> 0:30:24.760 that then ends in a bust? I think you might. 0:30:25.720 --> 0:30:28.000 I have two thoughts on this one. It goes back 0:30:28.040 --> 0:30:30.280 to something you were saying at the beginning, Tracy, about 0:30:30.800 --> 0:30:33.640 this in some ways being a rediscovery of Kanes people. 0:30:34.120 --> 0:30:36.520 You know, it posts great recession thought a lot about 0:30:36.560 --> 0:30:39.920 Kanes in terms of smoothing business cycles. But I in 0:30:39.960 --> 0:30:43.280 many ways think of the central contribution of modern monetary 0:30:43.320 --> 0:30:47.400 theory to tart discourse, being that the rediscovery and the 0:30:47.560 --> 0:30:51.400 central and central focus on the old Kanes quote. Whatever 0:30:51.480 --> 0:30:53.960 we can actually do we can afford to do, which 0:30:54.000 --> 0:30:57.040 I might have slightly wrong in in memory. But after that, 0:30:57.200 --> 0:30:59.840 all my my new KEYNESI and friends, you know, you're 0:31:00.120 --> 0:31:02.800 Larry Summers and Jason Furman's and everybody said, oh, yeah, 0:31:02.800 --> 0:31:06.040 we've always believed that, and well you never never mentioned it. 0:31:06.080 --> 0:31:10.000 Actually it was not something you all said. But to 0:31:10.120 --> 0:31:12.160 take to to open up that quote a little bit. 0:31:13.240 --> 0:31:16.240 There are things we want to do that we cannot 0:31:16.240 --> 0:31:19.520 currently do. We either don't have the capacity, we don't 0:31:19.560 --> 0:31:22.960 have the market, we don't have the manufacturing skill and 0:31:23.480 --> 0:31:25.800 the supply chains, and we worry those chains are gonna 0:31:25.800 --> 0:31:29.560 be vulnerable to future geopolitical shock. And so there is 0:31:29.640 --> 0:31:32.320 a real effort here, I think, not to smooth out right. 0:31:32.400 --> 0:31:35.720 I mean, as you say, China had a pig industry, right, 0:31:35.760 --> 0:31:39.360 they they did have hogs. We just don't have a 0:31:39.400 --> 0:31:41.080 lot of the capacity we want to have, and so 0:31:41.160 --> 0:31:43.120 the theories to build it now I do think the worry, 0:31:43.160 --> 0:31:46.400 which is similar, is we will build the wrong things. 0:31:46.600 --> 0:31:48.600 You know, We'll put all this money into e v s, 0:31:48.680 --> 0:31:50.280 but it turns out everybody is going to be on 0:31:50.360 --> 0:31:53.680 the bikes, you know, or something, and so the government 0:31:53.720 --> 0:31:57.600 will in picking its you know, winners, have actually picked 0:31:57.640 --> 0:32:01.240 up a bunch of losers. And this gets to something else. 0:32:01.320 --> 0:32:04.200 And I talk a lot about supply side liberalism, but 0:32:04.600 --> 0:32:07.000 there's a lot of pickup for this idea on the right, 0:32:07.640 --> 0:32:09.959 and a lot of people on the right like to say, yeah, like, 0:32:10.000 --> 0:32:13.320 you know, finally liberals are taken, are taken the supply 0:32:13.360 --> 0:32:17.080 side seriously, and there's a pretty deep critique and for me, 0:32:17.120 --> 0:32:20.960 a pretty deep frustration towards my conservative friends, who on 0:32:21.040 --> 0:32:24.680 the one hand want a government that plays a more 0:32:24.720 --> 0:32:29.360 serious and I think risk tolerant role in backing up 0:32:29.480 --> 0:32:32.400 and accelerating the frontier or expanding the frontier of the 0:32:32.440 --> 0:32:35.480 supply chain. And on the other hand, they have themselves 0:32:35.520 --> 0:32:40.560 created an unbelievably risk intolerant, terrified of its own shadow government. 0:32:41.040 --> 0:32:43.920 So whether you're thinking about you know, things like the 0:32:43.920 --> 0:32:47.360 loan guarantee program that everybody knows from backing Cylindra, but 0:32:47.400 --> 0:32:50.520 that also was an incredibly important lifeline to Tessa. Or 0:32:50.560 --> 0:32:54.640 you're thinking about things like the incredibly heavy level of 0:32:55.040 --> 0:32:58.840 peer review and consensus oriented decision making at the NIH 0:32:59.440 --> 0:33:01.120 or the n S, which I think of as pretty 0:33:01.120 --> 0:33:03.200 big problems for a bunch of things I care about. 0:33:03.560 --> 0:33:06.960 But these places are terrified of funding things that then 0:33:07.040 --> 0:33:09.320 members of Congress on the right get up and say, 0:33:09.640 --> 0:33:12.160 what a stupid thing. These are shrimp running on treadmills 0:33:12.200 --> 0:33:14.600 or whatever. It is a lot of science looks weird. 0:33:14.800 --> 0:33:17.959 We need a government that the role government should be 0:33:17.960 --> 0:33:21.920 playing in a lot of these areas is to be 0:33:21.960 --> 0:33:24.080 investing in things that might fail to to your point 0:33:24.120 --> 0:33:27.320 about the government earlier, I'm sorry the market earlier. There 0:33:27.320 --> 0:33:29.720 are things the market does really well, and the market 0:33:29.800 --> 0:33:32.440 is really really really good at betting on things that 0:33:32.480 --> 0:33:34.720 are pretty likely to turn a profit. And there are 0:33:34.720 --> 0:33:37.240 places where maybe we need to deregulate or places we 0:33:37.240 --> 0:33:38.720 need to give a little push or make things a 0:33:38.760 --> 0:33:41.560 little bit easier. But in general, you know, if you 0:33:41.560 --> 0:33:45.440 didn't do anything on electric vehicles right now, the market 0:33:45.480 --> 0:33:48.000 is moving in that direction, maybe a little slowly, you know, 0:33:48.080 --> 0:33:49.800 compared to what we were like, but it is definitely 0:33:49.800 --> 0:33:52.520 moving in that direction, um with of course we should 0:33:52.560 --> 0:33:55.360 say a huge amount of government help up until now, um. 0:33:55.400 --> 0:33:57.800 But there are things that are just too risky. There 0:33:57.840 --> 0:34:00.400 are things that just you know, if they haid off, 0:34:00.480 --> 0:34:04.400 it would be unbelievably great, but they very likely won't 0:34:04.440 --> 0:34:06.600 pay off. And we need a government able to make 0:34:06.640 --> 0:34:10.000 a lot of bets like that and absorb not just financially, 0:34:10.160 --> 0:34:12.359 a bunch of failure. But and this is a much 0:34:12.360 --> 0:34:14.440 harder part, and the part where the right place a 0:34:14.520 --> 0:34:16.719 very toxic role. It needs to be. It needs to 0:34:16.760 --> 0:34:19.279 be able to politically absorb a bunch of failure. If 0:34:19.320 --> 0:34:21.960 you spend all this money and you don't get any 0:34:22.000 --> 0:34:24.680 big failures, right, you spend all this money and you 0:34:24.719 --> 0:34:26.640 do all this backing up of things, and you bet 0:34:26.640 --> 0:34:29.239 on all these technologies, and there's nothing we can say 0:34:29.280 --> 0:34:31.680 at the end of it, hey, like that really didn't 0:34:31.680 --> 0:34:34.440 work out, Like you really picked wrong there. Then we 0:34:34.520 --> 0:34:38.640 have way, way, way aired on the side of making 0:34:38.640 --> 0:34:41.520 overly safe bets. You really want a bunch of things 0:34:41.920 --> 0:34:45.680 where if one of the fifteen pan out, it's transformative, 0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:48.920 as opposed to fifteen things were fourteen of the fifteen 0:34:49.120 --> 0:34:51.239 obviously pan out, and as such, the market could have 0:34:51.239 --> 0:34:54.080 done it just fine. The market has never, as far 0:34:54.120 --> 0:34:57.560 as I know, funded a shrimp running on treadmill startup, 0:34:57.600 --> 0:35:00.520 which is an obvious market failure and clear reason why 0:35:00.520 --> 0:35:02.480 we did the public sector. I believe, I'm not I 0:35:02.520 --> 0:35:05.880 believe I'm pulling that from something real. There are all 0:35:05.920 --> 0:35:08.920 these things there are There are all these um uh 0:35:09.440 --> 0:35:12.960 congressmen who give awards for dumbest no like there used 0:35:12.960 --> 0:35:17.840 to be like the cow farts one, but all this stuff. Um. 0:35:17.880 --> 0:35:20.040 You know, I here's a question, and I don't you 0:35:20.080 --> 0:35:23.560 know uh where I feel like you're probably uniquely positioned 0:35:23.600 --> 0:35:28.560 to answer um for us, which is within the Democratic Party. 0:35:28.800 --> 0:35:31.600 You know, there is there was a lot of reservation, 0:35:31.640 --> 0:35:34.839 particularly on the left, I think, towards chips, even though 0:35:34.880 --> 0:35:39.360 it's about public investment, the idea like private companies theoretically 0:35:39.400 --> 0:35:41.440 are going to benefit a lot from it. You know, 0:35:41.480 --> 0:35:43.120 you were like, are they going to use this money 0:35:43.120 --> 0:35:46.440 for stock buy backs? Etcetera? And so like within the 0:35:46.480 --> 0:35:49.200 Democratic Party right now, it's not like everyone has suddenly 0:35:49.239 --> 0:35:53.120 become supply siders, and that sort of old school do 0:35:53.239 --> 0:35:56.279 it on the demand side is pretty strong. How would 0:35:56.320 --> 0:35:59.720 you rate you know where the center of the Party. 0:36:00.040 --> 0:36:03.040 I don't mean centers and centrist although maybe implicitly it is, 0:36:03.239 --> 0:36:06.520 but the center of gravity within the Democratic Party, which 0:36:06.520 --> 0:36:09.440 you're much more plugged into than we are in terms 0:36:09.480 --> 0:36:13.480 of like taking on this supply side framing two problems. 0:36:14.920 --> 0:36:17.960 I have found on a bunch of these issues that 0:36:18.120 --> 0:36:23.160 there is more interest and less resistance than I expected, 0:36:23.600 --> 0:36:26.879 but also, in a funny way, less eventual pickup. So 0:36:26.960 --> 0:36:29.160 I thought a lot of this stuff would cause, frankly, 0:36:29.160 --> 0:36:32.040 a lot more blowback. Like I've been very critical of 0:36:32.120 --> 0:36:35.040 things like the National Environmental Policy Act, to the California 0:36:35.120 --> 0:36:38.360 Environmental Quality Act, think the Clean Air Act to some degree, 0:36:38.440 --> 0:36:41.480 things that are very central parts of the environmental movement 0:36:41.520 --> 0:36:45.320 legacy in this country operating today that are now being 0:36:45.360 --> 0:36:49.799 wielded against clean energy, or like my favorite example in Minnesota, 0:36:49.880 --> 0:36:54.120 they banned Minnesota. Minneapolis banned um single family zoning and 0:36:54.719 --> 0:36:59.600 there that policy got an injunction based on environmental review, 0:36:59.640 --> 0:37:01.360 like they they can't move forward on their band of 0:37:01.360 --> 0:37:03.839 single families owning because it didn't go through enough environmental view, 0:37:03.840 --> 0:37:07.160 like it's just crazy making. People have been more receptive 0:37:07.160 --> 0:37:09.960 to that, though not that interested in doing anything about it. 0:37:11.000 --> 0:37:13.760 I think of This is more of a problem of 0:37:14.320 --> 0:37:18.239 attention and what gets people into liberalism, um, you know, 0:37:18.480 --> 0:37:21.960 kind of liberal or democratic politics and to something even 0:37:22.000 --> 0:37:25.080 how the uh the machinery of government is set up, 0:37:25.440 --> 0:37:27.440 and I think of it is really a very tough 0:37:27.480 --> 0:37:30.160 ideological fight. So this is something I'm sure you guys 0:37:30.280 --> 0:37:33.600 ran into, but I was really struck over the last 0:37:33.840 --> 0:37:37.080 you know, it's called eighteen months as inflation got worse 0:37:37.080 --> 0:37:40.360 and worse and worse, talking to members of the Biden 0:37:40.440 --> 0:37:44.759 administration and just really realizing how much they were having 0:37:44.840 --> 0:37:50.600 to try to retool themselves bureaucratically, institutionally to just understand 0:37:50.680 --> 0:37:53.439 the productive side of the economy. Where you weren't trying 0:37:53.440 --> 0:37:57.120 to do efforts of macroeconomic stabilization, Um, you weren't just 0:37:57.200 --> 0:37:59.480 trying to kind of ask what are the big trends, 0:37:59.520 --> 0:38:02.120 but you're actually having to kind of figure out the ports. 0:38:02.160 --> 0:38:04.080 And the people who got charged with figure out the 0:38:04.120 --> 0:38:05.600 ports like that had not been their job. There was 0:38:05.640 --> 0:38:08.920 no person who that was their job, and like they 0:38:08.960 --> 0:38:11.719 had that information streaming in in a very usable way, 0:38:12.040 --> 0:38:14.040 and like they had a bureaucracy well set up to 0:38:14.040 --> 0:38:16.680 do something with it. So to some degree there is 0:38:16.719 --> 0:38:20.680 simply a mismatch, I think in the motivations and structures 0:38:20.680 --> 0:38:23.640 of the Democratic Party and also for that matter, of 0:38:23.640 --> 0:38:27.480 the Republican Party, and some of these problems in health care, 0:38:27.480 --> 0:38:30.800 for instance, which I know very very well. The amount 0:38:30.960 --> 0:38:36.080 of organizations, groups, non profits, people um talent that has 0:38:36.120 --> 0:38:37.920 gone in for decades to the question of how do 0:38:37.960 --> 0:38:40.600 we get more people health insurance is really really traumatic. 0:38:41.520 --> 0:38:43.680 The amount of people who got into that to go 0:38:43.760 --> 0:38:47.279 to war with the American Medical Association over how many 0:38:47.320 --> 0:38:50.279 doctors we are credit every year and what kinds of 0:38:50.320 --> 0:38:54.120 regulations we have on other qualified practitioners like nurse practitioners, 0:38:54.400 --> 0:38:57.720 so we could expand primary care um such that prices 0:38:57.719 --> 0:39:00.359 would fall on that UM. Nobody's in it for that 0:39:00.520 --> 0:39:02.520 right there in it to get health insurance to poor people, 0:39:02.640 --> 0:39:05.040 not to fight with doctors who are actually their friends 0:39:05.040 --> 0:39:07.399 on a bunch of these issues. And so it's more 0:39:07.440 --> 0:39:10.200 about that if you say this and not exactly against it, 0:39:10.239 --> 0:39:12.920 I mean the fact that we have capped the number 0:39:12.920 --> 0:39:16.359 of residency slots, and there was actually this big fight 0:39:16.400 --> 0:39:18.719 from the a M A years ago and others to 0:39:18.880 --> 0:39:21.919 convince politicians, and we had a problem with doctor over 0:39:22.000 --> 0:39:24.160 supply and now we have a problem with particularly primary 0:39:24.160 --> 0:39:28.440 care under supply. It's not people disagree with you, it's just, 0:39:28.840 --> 0:39:30.680 you know, it's like a company trying to do something 0:39:30.719 --> 0:39:33.200 that wasn't set up to do it, doesn't really know 0:39:33.280 --> 0:39:35.520 how to do it the right. People aren't that interested 0:39:35.560 --> 0:39:38.800 in it. It's coalition splitting work as opposed to coalition 0:39:38.880 --> 0:39:41.640 uniting work. So the problem isn't so much like the 0:39:41.680 --> 0:39:45.560 counter argument. The problem is almost like the argument has 0:39:45.560 --> 0:39:48.120 nowhere to go, like it's not well structured in the 0:39:48.120 --> 0:39:50.879 congressional committees. Um. So I've actually found that to be 0:39:50.960 --> 0:39:55.280 to be more of the difficulty here. So I realized 0:39:55.320 --> 0:39:59.400 we've been very focused on US policy for obvious reasons. 0:39:59.440 --> 0:40:03.239 But the problem of under investment is not exclusive to America. 0:40:03.360 --> 0:40:05.520 And in fact, you know, one thing we've learned over 0:40:05.520 --> 0:40:08.800 the summer is that it very much applies to places 0:40:08.880 --> 0:40:12.759 like Europe. Um, with their energy supply and energy policies 0:40:12.760 --> 0:40:17.320 and things like that. What accounts for that under investment 0:40:17.400 --> 0:40:20.600 in Europe? Like, what is the condition that is I 0:40:20.640 --> 0:40:24.440 guess common to both the US and places like Europe 0:40:24.440 --> 0:40:27.279 when it comes to under investment, Because when you look 0:40:27.320 --> 0:40:28.880 at Europe, you can't just say Oh, it's you know, 0:40:28.960 --> 0:40:31.880 Democrats and Republicans fighting and they can't agree on anything, 0:40:32.080 --> 0:40:33.839 or you know, we can't agree on how to fund 0:40:33.880 --> 0:40:36.560 it and things like that. Europe already has a slightly 0:40:36.640 --> 0:40:39.920 different approach when it comes to that, and yet they 0:40:39.960 --> 0:40:44.000 also seem to have struggled over the past decades. I 0:40:44.000 --> 0:40:46.160 don't know how to think about the question of under 0:40:46.200 --> 0:40:50.080 investment as both a sort of macro and international phenomenon, 0:40:50.160 --> 0:40:52.840 and I mean that in the sense of I'm not 0:40:52.920 --> 0:40:56.080 sure how useful I think under investment is as a concept. 0:40:56.840 --> 0:40:58.839 So some countries in Europe have done a lot more 0:40:58.960 --> 0:41:02.280 to invest in green energy than we have. Some countries 0:41:02.280 --> 0:41:04.480 in Europe invested a lot in nuclear energy, you know, 0:41:04.520 --> 0:41:07.680 like France over time, you know, and some have been, obviously, 0:41:07.719 --> 0:41:10.600 like Germany, going in the opposite direction. So one thing 0:41:10.640 --> 0:41:13.680 is I think it is worth looking at the sort 0:41:13.680 --> 0:41:16.520 of differences that are exploitable there. Something has been very, 0:41:16.600 --> 0:41:20.000 very helpful when thinking about infrastructure build is that, you know, 0:41:20.160 --> 0:41:24.400 lots of countries in Europe do rail train bridges, etcetera. 0:41:24.760 --> 0:41:27.640 We can actually look at proclometer costs and it's not perfect, 0:41:27.640 --> 0:41:28.880 but but there are people have been doing this like 0:41:28.920 --> 0:41:33.960 Alan Levy, and you can really see unbelievably large differences 0:41:34.320 --> 0:41:37.560 and how much things cost. But within that, I do 0:41:37.680 --> 0:41:46.280 think there's probably a consistent issue of simply rich society 0:41:46.360 --> 0:41:50.879 is becoming affluent enough that things are broadly good enough 0:41:51.920 --> 0:41:56.520 that what people want is not actually all that much change, 0:41:57.040 --> 0:42:00.200 and a lot of say infrastructure build is a among 0:42:00.239 --> 0:42:02.440 other things, a lot of disruption. I mean, it's all 0:42:02.440 --> 0:42:05.000 great to talk about infrastructure in your head, and then 0:42:05.160 --> 0:42:07.279 they're ripping up all the streets near my house and 0:42:07.280 --> 0:42:10.240 it's an unbelievable pain in the ass, right, Like, nobody 0:42:10.280 --> 0:42:13.839 actually likes it when infrastructure is being built near them. Um. 0:42:13.840 --> 0:42:16.920 And similarly, you know, I go back and forth on 0:42:17.200 --> 0:42:19.800 this old book by an economist named Manser Olson. I 0:42:19.840 --> 0:42:21.600 think it's called The Rise and Fall Nations or The 0:42:21.680 --> 0:42:24.480 Rise and Decline of Nations, and I think it's published 0:42:24.480 --> 0:42:26.600 in the seventies, if I'm not wrong, and it's a 0:42:26.640 --> 0:42:29.919 classic in public choice economics. But it you know, he's 0:42:29.920 --> 0:42:33.839 basically trying to explain why are Japan and Germany, which 0:42:33.880 --> 0:42:36.480 were bombed out during World War Two, growing so much 0:42:36.560 --> 0:42:39.160 quicker than the UK, UM and some other countries. And 0:42:39.200 --> 0:42:41.600 he comes to this argument that is wrong in a 0:42:41.640 --> 0:42:44.160 bunch of its particulars now that we have a longer 0:42:44.280 --> 0:42:47.560 time series on it, but it's clearly right in its 0:42:47.840 --> 0:42:54.120 general thrust that stable, affluent societies build up these very 0:42:54.200 --> 0:42:58.520 very thick networks of interest groups that are trying to 0:42:58.520 --> 0:43:00.640 get their bit of pie. I think misses that they 0:43:00.640 --> 0:43:04.120 also get a lot of actor networks that they're not 0:43:04.160 --> 0:43:06.440 just trying to redistribute money to themselves, but also just 0:43:06.480 --> 0:43:09.239 are trying to get their values instituted in society, even 0:43:09.239 --> 0:43:11.200 when that would be bad for their bottom line. But 0:43:11.280 --> 0:43:12.799 we have a lot of that um, you know, where 0:43:12.800 --> 0:43:14.440 people are trying to fight for the way they want 0:43:14.440 --> 0:43:16.920 a community to be as opposed to what they're housing. 0:43:17.320 --> 0:43:20.040 You know, values could actually be UM. He talks about 0:43:20.040 --> 0:43:24.360 complex agreements. As countries become, you know, again more affluent, 0:43:24.400 --> 0:43:27.600 more stable, they begin to become very you need a 0:43:27.680 --> 0:43:32.200 lot of complex negotiations between different players who, due to 0:43:32.280 --> 0:43:35.160 their longevity, due to their power, due to sort of 0:43:35.200 --> 0:43:38.480 move towards more small d democratic processes, have a real 0:43:38.640 --> 0:43:41.520 hold in the system, and so being able to negotiate 0:43:41.560 --> 0:43:45.600 these increasingly complex um negotiations becomes a core thing that 0:43:45.719 --> 0:43:47.759 ther rewarding people for and a lot of your talent 0:43:47.800 --> 0:43:50.800 goes into those areas as opposed to say engineering. I 0:43:50.840 --> 0:43:52.840 think it's Patrick Collison of Stripe who has made the 0:43:52.880 --> 0:43:56.640 point that if you're really into high speed rail in America, 0:43:57.040 --> 0:43:59.239 you're just not going to be very productive because it 0:43:59.560 --> 0:44:01.080 is in a lot of hi speed rail being built, 0:44:01.160 --> 0:44:03.719 and even though they are still working on things like 0:44:03.760 --> 0:44:07.640 the California High speed Rail initiative, uh, it's really really slow, 0:44:07.760 --> 0:44:10.839 it's really expensive. Like we've made a lot of engineers 0:44:10.920 --> 0:44:13.400 here unproductive, and it's a big pain to be an 0:44:13.400 --> 0:44:15.759 engineer working on these things. I'm just flooded now with 0:44:15.800 --> 0:44:19.319 people working on domestic infrastructure projects who want to tell 0:44:19.360 --> 0:44:21.600 me about how miserable their lives are where It's like 0:44:21.640 --> 0:44:23.600 working on crypto up until a couple of months ago 0:44:23.640 --> 0:44:25.680 was super fun because nobody told you know, and I 0:44:25.680 --> 0:44:28.120 would just shoveled money on you. So I do think something. 0:44:28.120 --> 0:44:31.320 It's probably consistent, you know, whatever the I think. The 0:44:31.360 --> 0:44:34.359 reason I'm a little skeptical under investments sometimes is that 0:44:34.760 --> 0:44:36.960 there's what our investment could be getting us at its 0:44:37.000 --> 0:44:39.799 current levels, and what it is getting us. But nevertheless, 0:44:39.840 --> 0:44:43.560 like there is clearly a these societies are all turning 0:44:43.600 --> 0:44:50.320 dials in a billion different ways against building, against risk, 0:44:50.440 --> 0:44:53.239 and it just becomes sludgy. And then you know, you're 0:44:53.280 --> 0:44:55.279 a young person thinking about where to go and like 0:44:55.280 --> 0:44:57.239 where to make your mark, and it's like, you know, 0:44:57.280 --> 0:45:00.200 you go into these mediator industries, like you know at 0:45:00.280 --> 0:45:03.080 law and management consulting and finance as opposed to the 0:45:03.120 --> 0:45:07.040 actual building stuff industries, and that stuff you know, cycle off, 0:45:07.040 --> 0:45:08.880 the cycle, you know, begins to have a real effect. 0:45:09.640 --> 0:45:12.400 I think this is the second episode of Late where 0:45:12.600 --> 0:45:14.920 the conclusion is we had to kill this crypto thing 0:45:15.040 --> 0:45:18.400 so people can work on something productive as a client. 0:45:18.520 --> 0:45:21.000 It was so great to have you on. We're out 0:45:21.000 --> 0:45:23.280 of time, but we could actually go for a long time, 0:45:23.440 --> 0:45:27.440 and as all the good conversations, all our best conversations, 0:45:27.480 --> 0:45:30.640 give me like five ideas for episodes including you know, 0:45:31.239 --> 0:45:33.640 we got to talk more about environmental review and we 0:45:33.760 --> 0:45:37.080 got to talk about old environmentalism versus new environmentalism and 0:45:37.120 --> 0:45:39.359 all this stuff. So great to have you on the show. 0:45:39.480 --> 0:45:43.239 Really appreciate you coming on out lots, Thank you. I 0:45:43.280 --> 0:46:01.200 love being here. So should we do spin off the 0:46:01.239 --> 0:46:04.319 Bottleneck Detectives? That would be a fun show. Like a 0:46:04.360 --> 0:46:07.719 TV show. That would be a great name for a 0:46:07.760 --> 0:46:11.040 TV series or even a podcast. So yes, yes we 0:46:11.040 --> 0:46:13.600 should have like some like haunted, you know, sort of 0:46:13.640 --> 0:46:18.640 like mysterious music, like the Scooby Doo. We're wandering around 0:46:18.719 --> 0:46:23.480 with like big magnifying glasses looking for supply side constraints. Okay, 0:46:23.600 --> 0:46:25.239 on a serious note, there was a lot that I 0:46:25.320 --> 0:46:28.400 found interesting in that conversation. But I did think Ezra's 0:46:28.440 --> 0:46:32.920 point about the government being willing to finance and support 0:46:33.120 --> 0:46:38.560 failures and politically failure, yeah, I thought that was really interesting. 0:46:38.600 --> 0:46:41.440 And also, can I just say that that shrimp treadmill 0:46:41.560 --> 0:46:44.360 study is a real thing, and there is a video 0:46:44.960 --> 0:46:47.239 of the shrimp running on the treadmill, and I have 0:46:47.320 --> 0:46:49.360 to say they move kind of like I do on 0:46:49.360 --> 0:46:53.680 a treadmill, which is which is to say, reluctantly, extremely reluctantly. 0:46:54.040 --> 0:46:56.279 But yeah, that does plice in some of the video 0:46:56.520 --> 0:47:00.560 for the video version of this episode. You Know, something 0:47:00.600 --> 0:47:02.680 I was thinking that I thought was very powerful is 0:47:02.719 --> 0:47:06.000 like this idea of there's a lot of openness to 0:47:06.120 --> 0:47:09.040 some of these supply side ideas, but whether that openness 0:47:09.080 --> 0:47:12.520 actually turns turns into action is a very separate question, 0:47:13.000 --> 0:47:17.359 and you know, just recording this August yesterday we had 0:47:17.360 --> 0:47:20.120 the New York primaries and one of the candidates in 0:47:20.200 --> 0:47:22.800 New York twelve and maybe he never had a shot 0:47:22.800 --> 0:47:25.719 of winning anyway, but one of the candidates, uh in 0:47:25.719 --> 0:47:28.680 New York call made a point about like repealing the 0:47:28.719 --> 0:47:34.840 foreigne Rege Act of clearly an odd lots fan um 0:47:35.160 --> 0:47:38.239 sarage pateel Uh. Maybe we should have on at some 0:47:38.280 --> 0:47:40.520 point and talk about that. But it was interesting because 0:47:40.560 --> 0:47:43.400 it's like that's not a big vote mover, you know. 0:47:43.160 --> 0:47:45.400 And granted he didn't make that like the centerpiece of 0:47:45.440 --> 0:47:48.480 his campaign, but it does seem to you know, get more, 0:47:49.040 --> 0:47:52.160 take take home more of your money, tax cuts, etcetera. 0:47:52.480 --> 0:47:55.040 The language exists, to Ezra is in initial point the 0:47:55.160 --> 0:47:58.680 language of these sort of like taxes or vouchers that exists. 0:47:59.080 --> 0:48:03.560 What is the political language of talking about dredge capacity? Right? 0:48:03.840 --> 0:48:06.040 I think that's a really important point, which is that 0:48:06.520 --> 0:48:10.480 you know, as are mentioned that info gathering idea that 0:48:10.560 --> 0:48:13.200 all these politicians in d C have had to suddenly 0:48:13.239 --> 0:48:15.920 get up to speed on things like the ports over 0:48:15.960 --> 0:48:18.400 the last couple of years. But then it's also the 0:48:18.480 --> 0:48:21.280 voting population, right, like all of these people are suddenly 0:48:21.280 --> 0:48:23.520 going to have to form opinions on things like the 0:48:23.560 --> 0:48:26.440 Foreign Drudge Act and how do we actually do the 0:48:26.520 --> 0:48:30.319 voters are not it seems unless they listen, it seems tough. 0:48:30.400 --> 0:48:32.120 But on the other hand, you know, if the pitches 0:48:32.239 --> 0:48:34.720 this is something that can help the economy and push 0:48:34.760 --> 0:48:39.080 down prices, then maybe that's a simplistic way into it. Yeah, 0:48:39.239 --> 0:48:41.520 a lot there. Okay, are we going to leave it there? 0:48:41.640 --> 0:48:44.680 Let's leave it there. Okay. This has been another episode 0:48:44.719 --> 0:48:47.200 of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can 0:48:47.239 --> 0:48:49.919 follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe 0:48:50.120 --> 0:48:52.960 Isn't All. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. 0:48:53.280 --> 0:48:56.400 Follow our guest As Recline on Twitter at as Reclined, 0:48:56.640 --> 0:49:00.799 follow our producer Kerman Rodriguez at Carmen Armand, and check 0:49:00.800 --> 0:49:03.680 out all of the podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle 0:49:04.040 --> 0:49:05.800 at podcasts. Thanks for listening.