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Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio.

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Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.

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Speaker 1: His name is Paul Krugman, and you probably know him

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Speaker 1: from his ubiquitous New York Times columns. UH. If you

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Speaker 1: don't know him from that, you must know him from

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Speaker 1: from television, from all of his books, including his textbooks.

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Speaker 1: He was the two thousand and eight winner of the

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize as well as just too many honorifics to list.

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Speaker 1: If you are remotely interested in any of the following economics, UH,

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Speaker 1: income inequality, climate change, the history of economic development and thought,

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Speaker 1: how public policy affects the population, UM, healthcare law, climate change,

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Speaker 1: will go down, go down the list. We just walk

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Speaker 1: out on everything and it's just been absolutely fascinating conversation. So,

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Speaker 1: with no further ado, my m IB interview with Paul Krugman.

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Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholtz on Boomberg Radio.

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Speaker 1: My extra special guest today is Paul Krugman. He is

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Speaker 1: the winner of the two thousand and eight Nobel Memorial

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Speaker 1: Prize for his contributions UH to new trade theory and

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Speaker 1: new economic geography. He is a Distinguished Professor at the

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Speaker 1: Quney Graduate Center of the City of New York. He

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Speaker 1: spent much of his career teaching at M I T

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Speaker 1: and Princeton, where he focused on economics. He has either

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Speaker 1: authored or edited twenty seven books, published over two hundred

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Speaker 1: scholarly articles. Most recently, his book Arguing with Zombies, Economics, Politics,

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Speaker 1: and a Fight for a Better Future just came out.

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Speaker 1: He is the second most cited author on the College

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Speaker 1: syllabi for economics, and is perhaps best known as a

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Speaker 1: columnist for The New York Times. Paul Krugman, Welcome back

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Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Hi there, it's good to see you again.

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Speaker 1: Let's jump right into this. So I recall you telling

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Speaker 1: a story that you were a science fiction geek as

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Speaker 1: a kid. How did Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy lead you

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Speaker 1: to economics? Isaac Asimov wrote this, you know these books,

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Speaker 1: uh thereabouts, which are you know? It's the Galactic Empire

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Speaker 1: and people use blasters and have spaceships. But actually the

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Speaker 1: science fiction e part is the least of it. It's

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Speaker 1: social science fiction. The core of the story is there's

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Speaker 1: this group of mathematical social scientists, the Psychohistorians, who have

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Speaker 1: figured out that galactic civilization is falling and have discovered

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Speaker 1: that if they intervene in just the right way, they

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Speaker 1: can limit the period of barbarism. So it's basically social

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Speaker 1: scientists save the universe. I want to be one of

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Speaker 1: those guys. Economics was as close as I could get.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty amusing. People may not know that you are

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Speaker 1: an economics textbook author. You and your wife wrote what

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Speaker 1: is today the second most popular economics textbook in colleges today.

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Speaker 1: Who who's the lead? Is that? Mank You? Ah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm afraid it's Greg mank You. So whatever led you

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Speaker 1: to write a textbook that sounds like a lot of work? Actually? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: So the first thing about it is that nobody writes

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Speaker 1: one of the those principles books except out of ignorance

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Speaker 1: of how much work it's going to involve. The actual

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Speaker 1: the labor that's involved in producing, especially the first edition,

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Speaker 1: but even the revisions is enormous. Partly it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a reasonably honest way to make a living. Since it

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Speaker 1: is my book, teaching is not well, it's supplemental. So

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Speaker 1: since my wife is my co author, our in house

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Speaker 1: name for the book is Economics for one k um.

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Speaker 1: But it was also we thought that we could have

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Speaker 1: a different kind of textbook that people. Most students come

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Speaker 1: thinking economicis is this totally dry subject, and you know,

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Speaker 1: some of it is, I've got to admit that, but

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Speaker 1: there's stories. So we thought we could try to write

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Speaker 1: a textbook which was as much as possible story driven.

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Speaker 1: It was about real world things, and then we say,

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Speaker 1: here's how economics helps me makes sense of these things.

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Speaker 1: And so we wrote a textbook that was different and

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Speaker 1: a lot of people like it. And you were you

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Speaker 1: were still doing the revisions on the textbook while you

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Speaker 1: were in Stockholm for the not that that edition, that

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Speaker 1: was second edition, and the financial crisis broke as we

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Speaker 1: were going through pages, so we already were in galleys

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Speaker 1: and suddenly nothing in the money in Banking chapter was

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Speaker 1: true anymore, and so we were frantically working to revise

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Speaker 1: that that chapter in pages. So every replacement passage had

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Speaker 1: to exactly physically fill the space of the stuff it replaced.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, we uh, I had a lot of stuff

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Speaker 1: I had to do in Stockholm. Robin spent a large

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Speaker 1: part of the time on the floor of our hotel room,

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Speaker 1: crawling from one set of paper as to another doing

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Speaker 1: the revisions that was insane. You had written, or maybe

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Speaker 1: I read it in an interview about a decade ago

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Speaker 1: that at the top of the dot com bubble you said, Gee,

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Speaker 1: the stock market doesn't make any more sense. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to pull out of equities. It was a was that true?

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Speaker 1: Would be? How did you that was true? Then we

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Speaker 1: have in fact gotten back in some Still, I think

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Speaker 1: probably our portfolio is less equity heavy than than probably

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Speaker 1: the the average. But well, twenty years ago you were

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Speaker 1: what early fifties, lates forties. I was, No, twenty years ago,

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Speaker 1: I was late forties, late forties, So you should have

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Speaker 1: equities then and now less equities. Yeah, yeah, So I

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Speaker 1: mean I don't claim to be a great investor. In fact,

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Speaker 1: Robbin's got the better head for detail, which is important.

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Speaker 1: So we uh uh, we own a lot of you know,

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Speaker 1: selective real estate, not not things where we think we

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Speaker 1: know something. Okay, Well, real estate goes up over time

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Speaker 1: as well. So eight if when you say you've partially

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Speaker 1: gotten back in, does that mean your some stocks, some bond,

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Speaker 1: some real estate. So you have a diverse portfolio that

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Speaker 1: makes a whole lot of sense. There's another issue I

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Speaker 1: have to ask you about, which is that of media bias. Um.

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Speaker 1: Lots of people these days have accused the media of

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Speaker 1: being fake news or biased or whatever. You take a

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Speaker 1: decidedly different perspective on bias. Tell us a little bit

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Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, the biggest so by and large, the

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Speaker 1: media get facts right. Uh. They formal me. I mean

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Speaker 1: that's not obviously true of you know, Breitbart or something

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Speaker 1: like that, but they But the New York Times gets

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Speaker 1: its facts right. The what it doesn't do very well

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Speaker 1: is it it doesn't know how to handle things where

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Speaker 1: there really aren't two sized to a debate when when

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Speaker 1: there's a One of the very first columns I wrote

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Speaker 1: back during the two thousand election said that if if

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Speaker 1: Bush had had said that the Earth was flat, the

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Speaker 1: headline would probably read views differ on shape of the planet. Right.

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Speaker 1: The media are really terrible. And that's very hard to

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Speaker 1: That's a real problem when you have a not just

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Speaker 1: a highly polarized political environment, but an asymmetrically polarized political

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Speaker 1: environment where one side of the debate is peddling zombie

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Speaker 1: lies uh and the other is is not uh. And

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Speaker 1: it's so it's very there's a real failure I think

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Speaker 1: to inform. There's a unwillingness to I mean, when I

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Speaker 1: started out, I was literally forbidden to use the word

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Speaker 1: lie in my columns, and that's no longer true. But

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Speaker 1: even so, there's a tremendous bias towards even handedness, even

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Speaker 1: when the hands are not remotely even so you get

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Speaker 1: this false equivalence where both sides are trade equally. The

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Speaker 1: The other thing that you have referenced as a form

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Speaker 1: of bias that i'm a has been amused by is

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Speaker 1: the concept of quote very serious people. That's right, what

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Speaker 1: what are the very serious people? So very serious people?

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Speaker 1: The phrase actually a lot of it comes from the

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Speaker 1: build up to the Iraq War, when all the serious

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Speaker 1: people thought it made that this was a good idea,

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Speaker 1: which it wasn't obviously, um, but very serious people are

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Speaker 1: people who buy into what is a conventional wisdom of

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Speaker 1: the time, something that important people say and everybody thinks

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Speaker 1: it's serious because all of the other serious people are

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Speaker 1: saying it, and they will nod their head and so

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Speaker 1: like you know, the US debt levels are major threats,

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Speaker 1: even though it's not really true or the um we

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Speaker 1: have a real problem of a skills gap in the workforce.

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Speaker 1: And so these are things that so I stole it.

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Speaker 1: I think I stole it from the blogger at us.

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Speaker 1: But it really works, these things that And that's, by

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Speaker 1: the way, where the media drops it's even handled this

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Speaker 1: on this So a lot of reporting on debt it

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Speaker 1: was uncritically Bowls and Simpson are great national heroes. Uh

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Speaker 1: so it's yeah, I remember that, but the but the whole.

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Speaker 1: So it's funny that the one place where the news

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Speaker 1: media really dropped the false equivalence and started saying one

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Speaker 1: side is right is in fact where that side happens

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Speaker 1: to be wrong. But they're very impressed by titles and

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Speaker 1: by positions and by some academic credentials. And if you're

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Speaker 1: the head of a think tank, they think you're actually

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Speaker 1: thinking when really you're not thinking. Well they yeah, they

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Speaker 1: are impressed by think tanks, which is really a bad

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Speaker 1: idea because uh, there a think tanks, and then there

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Speaker 1: are think tanks, and a lot of the thing tanks

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Speaker 1: don't actually think. Uh they're very impressed by uh, rich people,

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Speaker 1: powerful people. So if you're you know, if Jamie Diamond

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Speaker 1: says we have a skills gap, that must be serious,

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Speaker 1: whereas Jamie Diamond is no doubt a great business person,

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Speaker 1: but he doesn't know anything about macroeconomics, so it's a

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Speaker 1: really it is a real problem the U on many issues,

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Speaker 1: going to important people is absolutely the worst place to

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Speaker 1: get information because there are people who have a stake

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Speaker 1: in a particular point of view and or or they're

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Speaker 1: too busy to actually think hard. So it is a

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Speaker 1: you know, that's those are the places. Now it's gotten better,

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Speaker 1: I have to say, the The Times um now has

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Speaker 1: several people writing who actually do understand some economics, don't

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Speaker 1: uncritically accept stuff. We've got a hold section the Upshot,

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Speaker 1: which tends to be analytical pieces from multiple disciplines. So

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Speaker 1: it's better than it was, but still, uh so, those

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Speaker 1: are the biases. It's not liberal bias, it's not even

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Speaker 1: actually conservative bios So there does very serious people tend

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Speaker 1: to be somewhat right of center, but it's it's mostly

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Speaker 1: it's it's seriousness and even handedness on things which are

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Speaker 1: in fact not serious and in fact where you shouldn't

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Speaker 1: be treating equally both sides equally. Let's talk a little

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Speaker 1: bit about free trade, which is what you won your

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Speaker 1: Nobel for free trade has been the cornerstone of US

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Speaker 1: economic policy. Why has it gotten such a bad reputation

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Speaker 1: amongst some economists and a lot of people in this administration.

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Speaker 1: Economists love free trade for some good reasons and some

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Speaker 1: not so good reasons. We love free trade because, in fact,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said for it. It's particularly

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Speaker 1: important really for smaller, poorer countries. Try and think about

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Speaker 1: what would happen to Bangladesh without the ability to export

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Speaker 1: clothing would probably literally be starting to death. So trade

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Speaker 1: open markets doesn't have to be precisely free trade, but

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Speaker 1: open markets are really important for a lot of the world.

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Speaker 1: It's always been the case that if you did it right,

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Speaker 1: you understood that while free trade generally makes all countries richer, uh,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't make everybody within the country's richer. Has effects,

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Speaker 1: possibly strong effects on the distribution of income. Now, we

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Speaker 1: tried to quantify that a little bit, and then no

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Speaker 1: question that it's it's a growing world. Trade has been

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Speaker 1: some a source nowhere near the dominant source, but a

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Speaker 1: source of rising inequality within the US. Um What we

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Speaker 1: really missed and which has been where a lot of

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Speaker 1: the academic research has gotten We missed how concentrated the

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Speaker 1: negative effects are. Right, So you take a look and

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Speaker 1: you say, look, okay, we're importing a lot of stuff

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Speaker 1: from China we didn't used to import. One of the

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Speaker 1: things is furniture, So we're importing lots of furniture from China.

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Speaker 1: Clothing boys. I like furniture as a particular example, because

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Speaker 1: if you ask, all right, how many jobs were displaced

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Speaker 1: by Chinese imports of Chinese furniture answers, Maybe it might

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Speaker 1: is more, probably more than the duh, maybe even two

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand, But you know, the other jobs were created

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Speaker 1: lower price to consumers. How big a deal is that? Well,

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Speaker 1: if you happen to be in Hickory, North Carolina, which

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Speaker 1: is a city that is built entirely around the furniture industry,

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden, for that community, it's a devastating impassion.

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Speaker 1: So we missed the extent to which the U. S

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Speaker 1: economy is gigantic, and it's churning all the time. A

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Speaker 1: million and a half people are fired every month. So

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Speaker 1: you say, how much difference Canada's trade make? Well, the

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Speaker 1: trouble is that the impacts of trade have tended to

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Speaker 1: fall quite heavily on specific communities, and I may Apa,

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Speaker 1: I didn't see that, and it really took a very

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Speaker 1: good paper, you know, published in in in twenty I think,

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Speaker 1: on the China shock um that, among other things, written

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Speaker 1: by one of my students, uh and to to point

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Speaker 1: out how much we were missing that effect. So lots

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Speaker 1: of um countries have an industrial policy. Shouldn't there be

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Speaker 1: some sort of Hey, if you're in West Virginia coal country,

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Speaker 1: or in North Carolina furniture country, or in the broad

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Speaker 1: loom and fabric areas that are specifics to certain states.

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Speaker 1: When it's apparent that a region is getting estimated because

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Speaker 1: the global trade advantages where essentially global labor arbitrage and

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Speaker 1: and some of the improved technologies that become specific to

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Speaker 1: elsewhere in the world, why don't we do a retrain,

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Speaker 1: re educate, give people new skills so they can compete

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Speaker 1: even if it's no longer in coal or furniture. Well,

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Speaker 1: we try, and actually we've had trade adjustment assistance at

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Speaker 1: various points in our history. It's never been tremendously successful.

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Speaker 1: And by the way, trade is not unique. You know,

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Speaker 1: technology does it? Does it? If you actually want to

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Speaker 1: ask what happened to West Virginia. International trade, it turns out,

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Speaker 1: is not an important thing for West Virginia. It's changes

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Speaker 1: in the technology wracking, fracking, and even before fracking, it

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Speaker 1: was mountain top removal. So all of a sudden, instead

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Speaker 1: of employing thousands of workers to mind coal, you just

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Speaker 1: blow the tops off mountains and use some So um,

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Speaker 1: now you can't have a policy too, or it's it's

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Speaker 1: hard to have a policy to deal with every shock.

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Speaker 1: What you really wanted to straw long safety net so

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Speaker 1: that at least some basics are supplies, so at least

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Speaker 1: people are the resources, among other things, the resources to

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Speaker 1: move or seek different jobs. Whatever. The little secretive American

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Speaker 1: policy is that we actually have a lot of that.

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Speaker 1: We actually have because the major social programs Social Security, Medicare,

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Speaker 1: Medicaid are paid for at the federal level, mostly because

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Speaker 1: the tax system is uh, at least the federal tax

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Speaker 1: system is fairly progressive, we actually end up providing a

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Speaker 1: lot of de facto aid to distressed regions. And you

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Speaker 1: take Kentucky, it's receiving net aid from the federal government

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Speaker 1: to the tune of about GDP. So you know, we

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Speaker 1: don't we actually do do a lot. Now that doesn't

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Speaker 1: it's not clear that we have anything that can We

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Speaker 1: can replace a fair bit of the income that's lost.

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Speaker 1: We can't replace the dignity, and but it's not clear

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Speaker 1: that anyone knows how to do that. Another thing that's

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Speaker 1: kind of interesting that you've written, quote international trade and

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Speaker 1: trade policy aren't nearly as important as people think they are.

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Speaker 1: People love to go on about international trade because a

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Speaker 1: variety of reasons, but among other things, it sounds important.

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Speaker 1: It's international, it's global. Uh. My parents wants gave me

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Speaker 1: a sweatshirt that said global Schmobile on it. I said

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Speaker 1: what and they said, every time you go off to

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Speaker 1: a conference, we ask you what it's about, you say

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Speaker 1: global schmobile. You know, people love to talk global and

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Speaker 1: u which means that we exaggerate, you know, compare we

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Speaker 1: we spent about the same share of our income on

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Speaker 1: imports and on healthcare as a nation. Uh. Trade, even

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Speaker 1: after even with the Trump tariffs, trade is sort of

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Speaker 1: only it's mostly actually pretty clean. Healthcare is a howling mess.

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Speaker 1: So health care policy is much much more important than

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Speaker 1: trade policy. And but that's not reflected. And the way

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Speaker 1: we talk about the world so so let's talk about

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Speaker 1: changes to some of the trade policy we had. I

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Speaker 1: recall Ross Perow talking about the great sucking sound that

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Speaker 1: NAFTA is going to create, pulling all those jobs south

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Speaker 1: of the border. Trump effectively ran on that. And now

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Speaker 1: we've tossed the side NAFTA with U s m c A.

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Speaker 1: We're all so much better now, aren't we. Right? So

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Speaker 1: I have people I know have been calling the U

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Speaker 1: s m c A the village people who agree. Uh. Um,

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Speaker 1: And it's a U s m c A is basically

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Speaker 1: NAFTA with Trump's name stuck on it. Um. Is it

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Speaker 1: not all that different than what it's of. It is

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Speaker 1: just the same thing as before, and there's a few

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Speaker 1: other things. The one place where there's some significant differences

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Speaker 1: it actually gives a little bit more protection clout to

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Speaker 1: labor unions, which is why Democrats voted for it in

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Speaker 1: the US. In the US really uh in Mexico to

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Speaker 1: but it's it was kind of a pro labor union

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Speaker 1: change in policy. Not big deal, but enough so that

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Speaker 1: Richard Trumka of the A F L c I O said,

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Speaker 1: you know, vote for this, and and the Democratic Caucus

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Speaker 1: voted it through um because there was something in it

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Speaker 1: for organized labor, which I'm sure was not. I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure whether that was, you know, over Trump kicking and screaming,

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Speaker 1: or whether he just didn't even know that he'd done that.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, that's quite the policy wonk, right, so I

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Speaker 1: think that he knows unlike everybody else in Kansas cities

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Speaker 1: in Kansas. But the post super Bowl congratulations that was

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Speaker 1: pretty so A few people pointed out, um that it's

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Speaker 1: actually in Missouri. Yeah, well, kind of people in Missouri

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Speaker 1: kind of noticed that. Let's talk a little bit about

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Speaker 1: your book, which I found quite intriguing, filled with all

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Speaker 1: sorts of fascinating topics. Let's begin with a great financial crisis.

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Speaker 1: You had some very prescient columns in O. Five and

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Speaker 1: oh seven, running out of bubbles, that hissing sound coming

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Speaker 1: out of real estate and innovating our way to financial crisis,

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Speaker 1: all of these pre date two thousand and eight. What

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Speaker 1: were you looking at that gave you such a clear

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Speaker 1: view of the financial crisis? That was it was just

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Speaker 1: clear that on the normal metrics, things like the prices

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Speaker 1: to rents, uh, the housing had gone way out of sight.

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Speaker 1: And he just said, is there there are a good

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Speaker 1: reason for this, and then you if you were there

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Speaker 1: were the kind of a tell's tale informal signs, you know,

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Speaker 1: if if um the dot com bubble, I thought I

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Speaker 1: had an inkling that things were gonna be bad when

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Speaker 1: I realized that and when you when when you went

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Speaker 1: into a bar, they tended to have CNBC on in

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Speaker 1: the bar instead of sports. And then I have a

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Speaker 1: very vivid recollection of that era where where stocks became

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Speaker 1: the national pastime, right and then so if you go

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Speaker 1: back to around two thousand five, it was shows like

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Speaker 1: Flipped This House, so it was the same kind of

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Speaker 1: feel to it. So it just looked way out of whack.

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Speaker 1: And I had an inkling, but only a partial inkling,

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Speaker 1: that the financial sector was out of control, that that

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Speaker 1: we didn't know what we were doing, that things had

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Speaker 1: gotten complicated. Was only when the crisis was in full

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Speaker 1: swing that it became clear that we were in much

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Speaker 1: worse shape than I'd realized, that that more than half

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Speaker 1: of the banking sector was was things that weren't called

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Speaker 1: banks and therefore weren't regulated like banks. And then so

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Speaker 1: shadow banking was was a huge vulnerability. But that was

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Speaker 1: one of the few times when it's it really seemed

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Speaker 1: obvious that something was majorly out of whack and that

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Speaker 1: something bad was gonna happen. So let's fast forward a

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Speaker 1: couple of years. During the second Bush term, you had

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Speaker 1: been staunchly opposed to privatizing Social Security, and you wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: an amazing thing happened for the first time since I

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Speaker 1: became a New York Times columnist in two thousand, my

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Speaker 1: side of a policy debate. Actually one, how is that

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Speaker 1: possible that you know, for ten years you're not winning

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Speaker 1: any debates despite making pretty good arguments. Well if if

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Speaker 1: good arguments one, and the world would be a very

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Speaker 1: different place from the way it is. And uh, look,

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Speaker 1: I I started writing during the two thousand election, and

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Speaker 1: the Times, yes, because you have been publishing it's slate

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Speaker 1: for a good couple of years. Yeah, unfortunate as well.

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Speaker 1: So but for right for the Times, I've only got

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Speaker 1: really political during the two thousand election because it was

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Speaker 1: obvious to me that then candidate George W. Bush was

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Speaker 1: lying through his teeth about his policies. Um. But the

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Speaker 1: uh so it was our period of Republican ascendency, and

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Speaker 1: the Republican Party uh already then, although not as much now.

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Speaker 1: Was dominated by zombie ideas, by beliefs and the magical

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Speaker 1: power of tax cuts and so on. So I was

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Speaker 1: on the losing side of most of the political stuff,

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Speaker 1: and it was you tell me, you don't believe the

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Speaker 1: laugh of curve is a real Oh. I believe that

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Speaker 1: there is a laugh of curve, and there is a

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Speaker 1: some tax rate beyond which you actually lose revenue. But

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Speaker 1: I suspect that that tax rate is on the order

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Speaker 1: of or, and I suspect I actually estimated the laugh

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Speaker 1: of curve is not relevant for the U. S. Economy.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, So between the fact that you have a

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Speaker 1: very powerful right wing which has is committed to things

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Speaker 1: that are not true, and the fact that the very

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Speaker 1: serious people tend to go for things that are serious

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Speaker 1: but not actually serious. So let's talk about a very

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Speaker 1: serious person that you seem to have a constant um

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Speaker 1: ongoing argument with, Paul Ryan. You you have a section

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Speaker 1: called fiscal phonies. You specifically point out, Paul Ryan, I

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Speaker 1: have a problem with the group I call the UH

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Speaker 1: deficit chicken hawks. They're chicken hawks, They're they're big deficit

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Speaker 1: hawks as long as they're out of power. Once they

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Speaker 1: get into power, suddenly the deficit doesn't matter. What's your

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Speaker 1: beef with Paul Ryan? Well, I wasn't really with him.

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Speaker 1: I mean fact, I'm not a uh you know me personally,

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Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not a person that's particularly into grudges,

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Speaker 1: personal feuds whatever. I don't uh, But Paul Ryan was

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Speaker 1: as symboled both of where the Republican Party has gone,

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Speaker 1: but also of what's wrong with with me? Your coverage,

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Speaker 1: I mean, the the the media equivalence required that there

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Speaker 1: be serious, honest conservatives, the people who are really earnest

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Speaker 1: had interesting ideas. So there was a role that someone

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Speaker 1: had to feel except there actually is nobody like that.

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Speaker 1: So they promoted Paul Ryan into that role because he

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Speaker 1: pretended to be that kind of person, not actually very

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Speaker 1: good imitation. It was pretty obvious if you took even

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Speaker 1: a few minutes reading his stuff that he was a phony.

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Speaker 1: But that wasn't what people wanted to hear. So I

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Speaker 1: was out there, you know, years ahead of of almost

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Speaker 1: anybody else, saying, Hey, this guy that you're claiming it

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Speaker 1: to be the you know, the the intellectual leader of

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Speaker 1: the Republican Party is a flat out phony and an

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Speaker 1: obvious one, and actually a pretty clumsy one. So uh,

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Speaker 1: I returned to him as as an example both of

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Speaker 1: where the GOP has gone and how the media can

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Speaker 1: go wrong. So you said, uh, I know you personally,

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Speaker 1: and I want to put a little color on that.

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Speaker 1: I probably know you pretty well for is it a decade?

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Speaker 1: Probably it was before of the financial crisis that more

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Speaker 1: than a decade, So it's more than a decade. But

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Speaker 1: the thing that I find fascinating about you, and full disclosure,

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Speaker 1: we have these monthly salons, we go to dinner. I

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Speaker 1: see you pretty regularly. I think that something I wrote

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Speaker 1: was the subject of your very first blog post and

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Speaker 1: conscious of a liberal you'd since backfield. So it's hard

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Speaker 1: to judge, but I recall seeing that in posting and saying, oh, look,

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Speaker 1: Paul Krugman is a blogging Um. I'm fascinated by your

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Speaker 1: public persona and how what people think of you because

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Speaker 1: of your columns is nothing like what you're like in

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Speaker 1: the real world. You're a very different person in the

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Speaker 1: real world in reality. Then I think what people see

428
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: in terms of your columns. Yeah, I'm a pussycat. I mean,

429
00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:53,479
Speaker 1: I'm I'm quiet, shy, uh, not at all, you know,

430
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,360
Speaker 1: I'm not a very angry person or any of those,

431
00:24:56,359 --> 00:24:59,439
Speaker 1: not at all. You're You're optimistic, your upbeat, you're funny.

432
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:02,480
Speaker 1: People don't realize you have a sense of humor. Um

433
00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:05,160
Speaker 1: sometimes a sharp sense of humor. But still, I don't

434
00:25:05,200 --> 00:25:07,119
Speaker 1: know if I would use the phrase happy, go lucky,

435
00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:11,600
Speaker 1: but you're pretty easy going, happy person. Yeah. It's not

436
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:14,440
Speaker 1: your image. Yeah, because people look and say, well, those

437
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: are tough columns. Yeah, but I'm not angry. I'm just realistic.

438
00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:22,840
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes I'm angry. But that's a but it's

439
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:26,720
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a policy anger, it's a it's

440
00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:30,919
Speaker 1: about uh, about about how we how we handle the

441
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:35,679
Speaker 1: world person to person, I'm you know, mild mannered to

442
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:38,680
Speaker 1: Clark Kent or something. Okay, that's that's that's pretty fair

443
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:41,159
Speaker 1: collect Kent. And And one of the things that I

444
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: find fascinating is that you're much more right than wrong.

445
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:49,200
Speaker 1: I don't mean right versus left, but on a lot

446
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:53,240
Speaker 1: of things you've discussed broad policy issues, the result of

447
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:57,159
Speaker 1: certain things, You've been pretty dead on on everything. On

448
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:01,440
Speaker 1: the rare occasions where you get something wrong, people like

449
00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: jump on it and beat on it. But I always

450
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:07,639
Speaker 1: want to say, hey, that's the exception that proves the

451
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 1: rule if you have to. My favorite example is, you know,

452
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 1: if Trump gets elected, we're gonna have a recession or

453
00:26:13,760 --> 00:26:16,719
Speaker 1: the market's gonna crash or something like that. People pound

454
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:19,600
Speaker 1: that beat that drum constantly, and I always say, what

455
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: else has he gotten wrong? It's hard to find broad

456
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 1: pronouncements that are widely apptable that you weren't. And I

457
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:30,320
Speaker 1: retracted that called three days later, they don't. No one

458
00:26:30,359 --> 00:26:32,479
Speaker 1: wants to talk about that. Yeah. I protracted that call

459
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:34,679
Speaker 1: and said that that Trump was going to run bigger death,

460
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: that that was probably going to provide some some stimulus,

461
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:41,119
Speaker 1: and he has and it has so well. But that

462
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 1: but that's you know, that's part of um. Why do

463
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 1: zombie ideas persist? Well, because there's a network, there's a

464
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: there's money behind it. I mean it used to be

465
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 1: a guy at National Review whose full time job was

466
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: basically the stalk me. You know too. He wrote more

467
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:59,480
Speaker 1: blog posts attacking my columns than I wrote columns. And

468
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 1: so there's a whole industry. They go after lots of people,

469
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: but it's a but I seem to be a particular favorite.

470
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 1: And so yeah, there there's that means. That means because

471
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 1: you're effective. Well it's yeah, it's a bit of a compliment.

472
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:13,879
Speaker 1: And you know, in terms of getting now, if you

473
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 1: never make a mistake, if you never get something wrong,

474
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 1: then you're not taking enough risks. So but but of course,

475
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:22,640
Speaker 1: if you're in a position like mine, where there are

476
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:25,119
Speaker 1: people you know, I'm probably I'm I am paranoid, but

477
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 1: there are in fact also people out to get me.

478
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:30,200
Speaker 1: Just that's the old old line. Just because your paranoid

479
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:32,400
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they're not some there are, there are well

480
00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: financed people out to get me. And by the way,

481
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 1: that might be Philip K. Dick, although I could be wrong,

482
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 1: since I know you're a sci fi buff. I don't know.

483
00:27:41,040 --> 00:27:43,920
Speaker 1: I don't remember whether he used that. But anyway, um

484
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:48,720
Speaker 1: and sure, uh so, uh yeah, I think if you

485
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 1: take it as a whole. In fact, look the the

486
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 1: five years or so after the financial crisis, we're in

487
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 1: a peculiar way. They were glory days because the models worked.

488
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:00,040
Speaker 1: You know, people like me who had an update and

489
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 1: modernized but still fundamentally Kenzie and approach to things made

490
00:28:04,240 --> 00:28:06,879
Speaker 1: predictions about what would happen to interest rates, to inflation,

491
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:09,880
Speaker 1: what the effects of austerity policies would be that all

492
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 1: came out right and all the very serious people who

493
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: said something different turned out to be wrong. So hyper

494
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: inflation didn't happen, Austerity would bring us out of the

495
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 1: Our economic doll drums, especially in the UK didn't work. Um, basically,

496
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:29,680
Speaker 1: keenes knew what he was talking about. I mean, you

497
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 1: Kansians came in thinking that the multiplier the the impact

498
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,359
Speaker 1: on GDP about one dollar cutting government spending would be

499
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 1: around one point five. And after we had five years

500
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:43,440
Speaker 1: or so of hard evidence, it turns out that the

501
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,440
Speaker 1: multiplayer is one point five. I mean, it wasn't just

502
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: the quality, even even the quantitative stuff was dead on.

503
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:53,480
Speaker 1: Quite fascinating. I want to talk about politics because some

504
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:56,320
Speaker 1: of the reviews of this book and other books that

505
00:28:56,360 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: you've written have described you as a political animal. But really,

506
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: if you go back to the early history of Paul Krugman,

507
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 1: Newsweek did a profile of you and called you ideologically

508
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: color blind. I think a lot of people don't know

509
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:17,040
Speaker 1: you worked in the Reagan White House. Yeah, that was interest,

510
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: that was a sub political level. I was the senior

511
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 1: international economic staffer at the Council of Economic Advisors. So

512
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: no Senate approval. No. Yeah, the senior domestic staff Stafford

513
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 1: was a guy what was his name, Larry Summers. Don't

514
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:34,400
Speaker 1: know what happened to him. Uh So, yeah, that was

515
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 1: I mean, it was high level but technical position. And

516
00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: uh um, I mean I was already I was a

517
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 1: registered Democrat, as was Larry Um, but willing to work,

518
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 1: and my job did not require that I'd be in

519
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: public defending positions. And of course being at the Reagan administration.

520
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 1: Although Marty Feldstein, who was the Chair of the Council

521
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 1: and who brought Larry and me down, although he was

522
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:03,479
Speaker 1: a Princeton Marty Felds Harvard, although he was a you know,

523
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 1: a conservative, Um, he was reasonable and on any internal

524
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:13,720
Speaker 1: debate within the Reagan administration, I always was happy to

525
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 1: back Marty's side of that debate. So, but it was interesting,

526
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was. It was partially I

527
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: hope I did some good, but it was also a

528
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: little bit of tourism, got to see government from the inside.

529
00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:25,840
Speaker 1: So that was a different era in conservatism. They seemed

530
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:30,640
Speaker 1: to be a little more um, rational, fact based. Yeah. No,

531
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: there were a fair number of strange people even in

532
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:35,800
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration. I mean some of the people I

533
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: dealt with me and are dealt with people that economics

534
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 1: people at the National Security Council who I who were

535
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 1: crazy And I thought, wow, but this is not their

536
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: real thing. I'm sure the actual security people are better.

537
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: Then along came Iran Contra, and it turned out, no,

538
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:50,560
Speaker 1: they're all crazy. One of the things about where we

539
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 1: are now is that each successive Republican president is managing

540
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 1: to make his predecessor look good by comparison. So it

541
00:30:57,040 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 1: would certainly looked better. So but it was it was

542
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:02,120
Speaker 1: still It was true that that there was a lot

543
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: more room for rationality then than there is now. So

544
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: most of your career not a partisan, more of a technocrat.

545
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 1: Your role is to provide policymakers with information about what

546
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 1: did and didn't work. What changed? How did you flick

547
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: a switch from being an ideological, color blind technocrat to

548
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,840
Speaker 1: someone who has been described as a hardcore partisan. Well,

549
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 1: two things happened. One is that change jobs. So what

550
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:33,440
Speaker 1: you want to write if you're writing working papers and

551
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:35,960
Speaker 1: publishing an academic journalism very different from what you want

552
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:37,760
Speaker 1: to write if you're writing columns in the New York Times.

553
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:41,680
Speaker 1: But also the world changed and a particularly the Republican

554
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:45,160
Speaker 1: Party changed. So the Republican Party of the nineteen eighties

555
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 1: was still a fairly diverse group. And while there were

556
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 1: some voodoo economics types, and we were still in some

557
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: to some degree in a space where we were having

558
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: real arguments about real issues. Uh. Today it's a monolithic

559
00:31:58,080 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 1: Uh it's been completely taken over by zombies that have

560
00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:05,720
Speaker 1: eaten the party's brains. Uh. So, actually, just saying things

561
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:08,280
Speaker 1: that are true, it's just saying, you know, I'm not

562
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not going to give credence to stuff that's

563
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 1: obviously false is a part as an act. And since

564
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:15,760
Speaker 1: you're gonna be doing that, you might as well try

565
00:32:15,800 --> 00:32:18,680
Speaker 1: and make that case in a strong way and not

566
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:22,880
Speaker 1: not pretend that you're having a serious argument when you aren't. So,

567
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 1: once facts are no longer um indisputable ones, once people

568
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: can say what they want to believe, how can you

569
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:37,200
Speaker 1: have an intelligent debate about economic policy, well across party lines.

570
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 1: You can't. Mean, it's just now they're not everything is

571
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:43,400
Speaker 1: party politics. You know. If we want to talk about

572
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 1: military policy, the federal reserve is still a zone of

573
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: actual discussion and relatively non politicized, although Trump is trying

574
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: to put some very uh, strange people on the Federal

575
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:57,400
Speaker 1: Reserve Board, right, goldbugs and and all sorts of whack.

576
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: So that may change, but for now it's it's a

577
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:03,040
Speaker 1: place where you're gonna have honest arguments, and of course

578
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 1: within the Democratic Party their serious discussion. There's no no

579
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:10,360
Speaker 1: question that there were real debates about the shape of

580
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:13,760
Speaker 1: stimulus or the TPP or whatever where you were having.

581
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: But it's true that half the political spectrum is just

582
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:20,120
Speaker 1: a complete dead zone for actual debate. So let me

583
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 1: switch gears with you and talk about something related to

584
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,560
Speaker 1: this that you wrote a New York Times Sunday magazine

585
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 1: article about, which is how did economists get it so wrong?

586
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: So let me throw the question back to you. Why

587
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 1: did the profession fail to anticipate the Great Financial Crisis? Okay,

588
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: so that actually at some level we have prediction. Predictions

589
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: are hard, especially about the future, uh, and failing to

590
00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 1: see the financial crisis. I think that people should have

591
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 1: seen the housing bubble, because that seemed pretty obvious. But

592
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: that's not the major sin. The major sin was that

593
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 1: a substantial number of economists um enthusiastically embraced financial deregulation

594
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:09,480
Speaker 1: before the crisis, UM, and at least for the decades

595
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: before the crisis, going back to UM, the repeal of

596
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: Glass Stiegel, and much more than that. Wait, wait, even

597
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:19,520
Speaker 1: before that, yeah, and and and then post crisis, many

598
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:24,399
Speaker 1: of them were extremely critical of fiscal stimulus, even though

599
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 1: they should have known better. Um. And what happened there.

600
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: So this is academic economics, And to a large extent,

601
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 1: what happened there was that look there, partly its ideology,

602
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 1: it was a kind of conservatism that the economics profession

603
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 1: is kind of center right on on average. Um. So

604
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: there was something political about it, but it was also

605
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,680
Speaker 1: we have these beautiful models in the bottle of an

606
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: efficient market. Efficient financial market where asset prices are always right.

607
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: Is gorgeous. It's esthetically pleasing, it's it's it feels great

608
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: to to play with it. Um. Happens not to be true,

609
00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: but it's it's a huge lure for the profession. And

610
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:09,359
Speaker 1: then uh, after the crisis, it turned out also that

611
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:13,759
Speaker 1: the years and years of railing against Kenzie and economics

612
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: as being too ad Hawkins on that had led to

613
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:19,799
Speaker 1: a lot of people just not actually understanding. You know,

614
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 1: if we had this. If we had the financial crisis

615
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:25,560
Speaker 1: instead of in two thousand eight, we would have had

616
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:29,040
Speaker 1: a much better policy response because it was Unfortunately, the

617
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:32,440
Speaker 1: evolution of the economics profession UH in the seventies and

618
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:36,440
Speaker 1: the eighties and the nineties took us away from understanding

619
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:39,280
Speaker 1: what we needed to understand UH in in the aftermath

620
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:41,919
Speaker 1: of two thou eight. So, so let's talk about how

621
00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 1: where you physically were at different schools around the country

622
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: impact your understanding of that You you describe this in

623
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:55,279
Speaker 1: that same column as the difference between salt water and

624
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 1: freshwater economists. Yeah, that's love. I love that that. Yeah,

625
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:01,560
Speaker 1: it's actually Hole came up with that one. But it's

626
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 1: a um. It turns out that the places that kept

627
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,759
Speaker 1: the memory of Knes alive tended to be places like

628
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:12,960
Speaker 1: m I. T And Yale and Princeton, and the places

629
00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:15,360
Speaker 1: that forgot all about it tended to be places like

630
00:36:15,440 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 1: Chicago and UH Minnesota and Carnegie UH. And so the

631
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:24,240
Speaker 1: it just so turns it just so happens the places

632
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:27,359
Speaker 1: that that I would say, maintain a fairly realistic view

633
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:30,359
Speaker 1: of how macroeconomics works, that we're willing to actually look

634
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:32,719
Speaker 1: at the facts and not insist on the perfection of

635
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 1: their models. Um tended to be places that were on

636
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:37,440
Speaker 1: the coasts of the US as opposed to in the middle.

637
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:40,239
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna throw a curve ball at you. Berkeley

638
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: clearly is a salt water economics thesis. Where do you

639
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 1: put Stanford and the Hoover Institute? Oh, the Hoover Institute

640
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 1: is a is a peculiar thing within Stanford. It's it's

641
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 1: it's an odd thing. It's not actually the uh and

642
00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: and the Stanford is a mix ideologically and Hoover is

643
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 1: this independent entity really within it? So uh yeah, so

644
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:05,319
Speaker 1: what what can you say? But but no, definitely, I

645
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: mean the uh you know, Bernankee hired me at Princeton

646
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 1: and then actually promptly left for the FED. But still um.

647
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:15,720
Speaker 1: But Princeton was a hotbed of people who worried about

648
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:19,280
Speaker 1: Japan because we thought that Japan's problems were a possible

649
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:21,319
Speaker 1: omen for the rest of us, and that turned out

650
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:23,319
Speaker 1: to be exactly right. Can you stick around a bit?

651
00:37:23,320 --> 00:37:25,000
Speaker 1: I have a ton of questions we can do that.

652
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,400
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Paul Krugman, professor at Keuni

653
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 1: Graduate Center and author of the book arguing with zombies.

654
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:35,839
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and come back

655
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,160
Speaker 1: for the podcast extras, where we keep the tape rolling

656
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 1: and continue discussing all things economics. We love your comments,

657
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast

658
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure and check out my

659
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 1: weekly column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Follow me

660
00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:58,840
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Ridholts. I'm Barry Riholts. You're listening to

661
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:06,840
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Paul.

662
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:08,760
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. I've been looking

663
00:38:08,800 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 1: forward to discussing your new book, which I have right here,

664
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:16,160
Speaker 1: and just talking about um so many other things. How

665
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:19,480
Speaker 1: goes the book slog? I know, and I know it's

666
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:22,399
Speaker 1: a slog. Yeah, I'm just in the early stages, as

667
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:27,880
Speaker 1: we said here. I've just on two events so far. Actually,

668
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: Samantha b in New York. She's so funny, isn't yeah?

669
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:33,279
Speaker 1: And then Marks Andy in Philadelphia who was not quite

670
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: as funny, but it was also really good. So right,

671
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:39,000
Speaker 1: so so sad, Samdy, It's hard not When I did

672
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:42,720
Speaker 1: the Daily Show, she was the one who ran that segment,

673
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 1: and you just so many takes ruin because she just

674
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:48,439
Speaker 1: makes you laugh. You can't not laugh. No, we did.

675
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: That was fine. Yeah, but you know, I'm I'm not

676
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: Spring Chicken anymore, so I'm not doing the crazy change

677
00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:59,359
Speaker 1: cities every coast to coast. So you should do Bill Maher.

678
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 1: He would have you on in a hard too far

679
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 1: to fly. Yeah, although I'm actually I'm doing London and

680
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: Madrid because I'm big in Spain. For some very peculiar reason,

681
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:10,800
Speaker 1: I'm big in Spain. Aren't you affiliated with London School

682
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:13,200
Speaker 1: of Economics? All? Yeah, but it's a it's a very

683
00:39:13,200 --> 00:39:16,520
Speaker 1: loose thing. But yeah. But but they advertised my books

684
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: on the side of buses in Spain for some reason.

685
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 1: Really yeah, And Spanish language edition came out the same

686
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:23,480
Speaker 1: day as the English edition. So so where are you

687
00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 1: going in Spain? It's all going to be in Madrid.

688
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:30,640
Speaker 1: But even so, so we were about two maybe three

689
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:36,160
Speaker 1: timers ago. We were in um San Sebastian and it's

690
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:39,239
Speaker 1: in deep in the Hinchel lands of Spain and it's

691
00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 1: just spectacular. I I've spent a fair bit of time

692
00:39:42,520 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 1: in Santiago to Compostela, which is really great. Uh. The climate,

693
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:50,120
Speaker 1: it's really weird. The climate feels like whales and it's

694
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:52,800
Speaker 1: uh uh and they still take siesta's but it's uh

695
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 1: but it's it's really there's a lot of great stuff.

696
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 1: But I've been I've been around with a fair bit

697
00:39:57,480 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 1: of Spain. They know how to live there, they know

698
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 1: how to kick relax enjoy food and wine there. Really

699
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 1: it's a whole different head space. Yeah, Paul, What do

700
00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 1: you think are the two most important zombies that you

701
00:40:08,840 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: discuss in the book? Oh, clearly it's the belief that

702
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: tax cuts pay for themselves. I thought they do. You're

703
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: telling me they don't. Didn't the laugh for curve on

704
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:22,279
Speaker 1: that Napkins say that you could cut taxes and they

705
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:25,960
Speaker 1: pay for themselves. Yeah, it turns out we've had an

706
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:29,279
Speaker 1: erroneous napkin and it is has never once happened. So

707
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:31,799
Speaker 1: that's the one that in terms of our political life matter,

708
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:35,319
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Um. And the other one is

709
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 1: climate change denial. It's a hoax. It's a Chinese un

710
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: that's right. The belief that it's a hoax, or at

711
00:40:41,200 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: least that it's not really serious or anyway there's nothing

712
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:47,879
Speaker 1: we can do about it. Um. That's you know, as

713
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,240
Speaker 1: the evidence keeps on piling in and as the consequences

714
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 1: start to show the fact that that is still I

715
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: mean sixty of Republicans and congress our climate deniers. They

716
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: deny the climate change is happening at all. The only

717
00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 1: major political party in the world with the majority that

718
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: believes climate change isn't real. Yeah, although I'm not entirely

719
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:11,840
Speaker 1: sure about the current governing party in Australia. But yes, um,

720
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:15,399
Speaker 1: but yes, this is and this is really that. Those

721
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: are those are enough to go on. There are there

722
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:19,399
Speaker 1: are other zombies out there, but those are the two

723
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 1: really big ones. Those are the big ones. Fascinating, all right.

724
00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: So so let me jump through a couple of questions

725
00:41:25,080 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 1: we missed during the broadcast portion. Um. The two things

726
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:35,319
Speaker 1: I didn't get to, um that I felt were important were, Well,

727
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 1: let's start with climate change, a well known Chinese hoax, right,

728
00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:43,320
Speaker 1: climate change created by the Chinese so they could continue

729
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 1: to dominate us on the industrial side. You call it

730
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 1: quote an existential threat and a priority above health for reform, income, inequality,

731
00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:57,719
Speaker 1: and financial crisis. That's a big statement, yeah, because if

732
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:00,319
Speaker 1: you make the plan an unlivable or large portion of

733
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:03,120
Speaker 1: the planet on livable, that I was about to say

734
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 1: Trump's everything else, and now that's uh, and it's and

735
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:12,359
Speaker 1: that is you know, we're on track to really catastrophic outcomes.

736
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 1: It's the climate models have been surprisingly accurate so far,

737
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 1: and they there was just a big piece, Um, I

738
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: don't remember was Bloomberg at the Times about I think

739
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 1: it was Bloomberg? Was the nineteen eight forecast turned out

740
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 1: to be dead accurate? Yeah? Yeah, So that it's that.

741
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 1: This is you know, it's good science, it's real science,

742
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 1: and it's scary as hell. And the thing about it

743
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:39,840
Speaker 1: also has an issue is it happens to be something

744
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:43,400
Speaker 1: we know how to deal with. We a little a

745
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:47,279
Speaker 1: mixture of public investment in new technologies plus putting a

746
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:51,960
Speaker 1: price on carbon. Uh, it would make an enormous difference.

747
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:56,359
Speaker 1: And technology is is our friend here. Renewable technology has

748
00:42:56,360 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 1: made enormous advances. So all the ingredients are in place

749
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:08,399
Speaker 1: for solving this existential threat, except that we have the leadership. Well,

750
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:10,600
Speaker 1: we we have leadership which is trying to make sure

751
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:14,759
Speaker 1: that the catastrophe happens. So what about a technological solution?

752
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:17,719
Speaker 1: So if we don't get a change in leadership, and

753
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:21,800
Speaker 1: ten years from now we find ourselves with a rising

754
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:25,920
Speaker 1: global temperature and rising sea levels. What about seating the

755
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 1: clouds or some magic bullet that will make all this

756
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: go away? Well, you know that's the last resort. I'm

757
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: not going to rule it out. Uh, but there's enormous

758
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: problems if you start to think about that, because anything

759
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 1: you do that is actually geoengineering is it's going to

760
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 1: have very uneven impacts. It's gonna it may stop the

761
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: planet from cooking, but it will um cause worsening of

762
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 1: the climate in some places. It will be very uneven.

763
00:43:54,960 --> 00:44:00,680
Speaker 1: So if you're upper lower Slabstan and turns out that

764
00:44:00,719 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 1: the United States and the European Union are planning a

765
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,919
Speaker 1: project of geo engineering that just has as a small

766
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,120
Speaker 1: side effect is going to turn your country into a desert. Uh,

767
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:13,160
Speaker 1: how are we gonna deal with the political fallout of that?

768
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:15,799
Speaker 1: That's a it's a I mean, it's better than than

769
00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:19,439
Speaker 1: than than total doom, but it's really not the route

770
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:21,799
Speaker 1: we want to go down. Have you been following the

771
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 1: debate about climate change in Australia. It's quite fascinating some

772
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:30,439
Speaker 1: of it. And they you know that they're they're deep

773
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:33,839
Speaker 1: in denial, at least the elected officials, elected officials are

774
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:37,439
Speaker 1: So it's it's a lot like our situation, like Florida. Yeah,

775
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's a place which is is really

776
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:43,799
Speaker 1: on the as it happens. They have to be right

777
00:44:43,800 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 1: at sort of the leading edge of disaster then that

778
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: the continent is burning. Um. But they have like us,

779
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: they have people who have an ideological opposition to any

780
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 1: form of government action. They have powerful fossil fuel interests,

781
00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 1: huge mineral and timber interests that don't want to change.

782
00:45:04,880 --> 00:45:08,719
Speaker 1: So um. Yeah, to Australia. If you really want to

783
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,439
Speaker 1: feel depressed, look at Australia, where on the one hand,

784
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:13,919
Speaker 1: you can see what the shape of things to come

785
00:45:13,920 --> 00:45:17,160
Speaker 1: in terms of disaster, and you can also see politically

786
00:45:17,200 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 1: how hard it is to do the right thing. There's

787
00:45:19,600 --> 00:45:23,360
Speaker 1: a wonderful book called Windfall came out about four years

788
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 1: ago that traces the history of investment in climate change

789
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:32,839
Speaker 1: and new technology and all these things. And the conclusion

790
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 1: of the book is essentially, Areas that are hot are

791
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:38,120
Speaker 1: going to get hotter, Areas that are dryer are gonna

792
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:40,480
Speaker 1: get drier, Areas that are cold are gonna get colder.

793
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:42,919
Speaker 1: Areas that a wet are going to get wetter. And

794
00:45:43,160 --> 00:45:46,640
Speaker 1: it's not so much that the climate is going to change,

795
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: as it's just going to be so much more intense everywhere.

796
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:55,520
Speaker 1: Desertification is going to continue expanding. Places that suffer coastal

797
00:45:55,520 --> 00:45:58,520
Speaker 1: flooding are going to be overwrought. It's whatever you have

798
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 1: just multiple times. That's simple. But it's but yeah, there's

799
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:04,080
Speaker 1: a lot of things. It's not it's not linear. It's

800
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: not just that every place gets two degrees warmer. It

801
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:09,440
Speaker 1: is that a lot of stuff happens in addition to that,

802
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, it's it's and it really really uh

803
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:21,480
Speaker 1: it's it's quite terrifying and um, um really we fossil

804
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:25,280
Speaker 1: I talked in the book about zombie ideas. Fossil fuels

805
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 1: is basically a zombie sector. We shouldn't be uh, we

806
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:32,759
Speaker 1: should be phasing out fossil fuels entirely, quite quickly, and

807
00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 1: in fact, we have the technology to do that. So

808
00:46:35,239 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 1: they Uh, if we had any kind of realistic pricing,

809
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:41,040
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be we wouldn't be digging coal, we wouldn't

810
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 1: be Uh, we might be doing every bit of subsidized

811
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:47,439
Speaker 1: this solar is more so at this point and PCT

812
00:46:47,560 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 1: me at the moment, Cole is losing the battle against

813
00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 1: solar and wind um just on pure cost grounds. And

814
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:56,120
Speaker 1: and you have the Trump administration trying desperately to force

815
00:46:56,120 --> 00:47:02,239
Speaker 1: people to burn coal, and and the electrical electric production facilities,

816
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: all of all of the big plants that are making electricity,

817
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: they're all moving to natural gas. It's so much cheaper

818
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:10,440
Speaker 1: and cleaner. Well, they're moving to natural gas and to

819
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: uh and a lot of wind and solar and natural gas.

820
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:17,680
Speaker 1: Fracking is one of those things which it uh there,

821
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: there's a lot of It turns out we're releasing a

822
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:22,799
Speaker 1: lot of greenhouse gases because of lacks regulation. But if

823
00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 1: we did it right, fracking is a good transition technology

824
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:30,920
Speaker 1: because hydrocarbons methane has a lot less carbon per btu

825
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:34,320
Speaker 1: than coal does, so and it's good for sarge capacity.

826
00:47:34,400 --> 00:47:36,879
Speaker 1: So you know, we we could in a rational world,

827
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:39,920
Speaker 1: we'd be we'd be using a natural gas to provide

828
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 1: searge capacity, were using renewables to provide based capacity. Uh

829
00:47:45,080 --> 00:47:48,240
Speaker 1: some nuclear I'm I'm okay with that. Um, we would

830
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 1: be getting it completely out of the coal business. We'd

831
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 1: be shifting to electric vehicles, all of it. Fraction of

832
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 1: a percent of g d P in terms of what

833
00:47:56,760 --> 00:47:59,399
Speaker 1: it would actually do to growth, um, but of course

834
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 1: not under current management. Interesting. And then the other thing

835
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:05,759
Speaker 1: we didn't get to during the broadcast portion that I

836
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:08,839
Speaker 1: have to talk about because you've written about it so

837
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 1: much and it's such a giant issue, is the income

838
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 1: and wealth inequality that's in our our society. And I

839
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:22,480
Speaker 1: have to point out that back in you were first

840
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:24,920
Speaker 1: writing about this. Yeah, I wasn't the first person to

841
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 1: notice it, but it was already obvious. So yeah, piece

842
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 1: called the Rich, the Right and the Facts, um, which

843
00:48:33,160 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: goes through you know, a lot of the bad arguments

844
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 1: that people were making against worrying about rising in comm inequality,

845
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 1: all of which all of those arguments, by the way,

846
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 1: still being live because there's zombie ideas that won't go away. Um.

847
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: So yeah, this was now it's gotten substantially worse since then,

848
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 1: you know, by by modern standards. Gordon Getko was a piker. Uh.

849
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:58,840
Speaker 1: But theh this is definitely um uh and it it

850
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,319
Speaker 1: colors everything. I mean, the fact that we have a

851
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:05,719
Speaker 1: society where a few people have so much money, so

852
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: much influence, and also where people aren't living in the

853
00:49:09,640 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 1: same universe, so we're socially divided part because we don't

854
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:16,600
Speaker 1: live in the at all in the same material universe,

855
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 1: which is not the kind of the America I grew

856
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:22,160
Speaker 1: up in. Right, So so let's put some some numbers,

857
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 1: some flesh on the bone. You wrote quote, CEO is

858
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:29,120
Speaker 1: now get paid more than three hundred times as much

859
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:33,160
Speaker 1: as the average worker. So how did that come about?

860
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:37,719
Speaker 1: How was it formally x or thirty X to now three?

861
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 1: Now that's a that's actually quite an interesting story, right,

862
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:49,759
Speaker 1: it's um, it's now. CEOs have always pretty much appointed

863
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: the people who decide how much that they'll be they'll

864
00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:54,239
Speaker 1: be paid. So in some sense it was always a

865
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: game where CEO appoints some people who have every incentive

866
00:49:57,719 --> 00:49:59,319
Speaker 1: to say this guy is great, he needs to be

867
00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:02,600
Speaker 1: paid ins. But they didn't used to exercise that power

868
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:06,239
Speaker 1: to anything like the extent that they do now. Um.

869
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: What changed? Um, there was big shift in power. Relations

870
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: used to be that if you have paid an extravagance

871
00:50:14,120 --> 00:50:17,479
Speaker 1: some uh, your union would kick up, and of course

872
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: we think the death of private sector unions has meant

873
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:22,880
Speaker 1: that that's gone away. Um. It used to be that

874
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:26,239
Speaker 1: if you got yourself paid an enormous salary, Uh, the

875
00:50:26,239 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: Farawore government would take a lot of it away in

876
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:31,600
Speaker 1: higher taxes. So at some level, if there was a

877
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: question of shall I piss off my entire workforce in

878
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 1: order to be able to take home an extra in

879
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 1: order to get paid an extra million dollars? Uh, Well,

880
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:41,440
Speaker 1: if I'm only gonna be able to take home and

881
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:43,319
Speaker 1: fifty thousand of that, I might not want to do it.

882
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: If I can get take home a much larger share

883
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 1: of it than then maybe I will. So that changed.

884
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 1: And then just a general set of norms expectations. One

885
00:50:52,560 --> 00:50:54,840
Speaker 1: thing is clear. It's not because we're that we have

886
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:58,959
Speaker 1: better c e O s, right that what's the same

887
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:01,880
Speaker 1: pool they're coming from? This? And then and look at

888
00:51:01,880 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: how much money disastrous CEOs end up getting in their

889
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:07,879
Speaker 1: severance packages. Right, So yeah, that's kind of surprising. It's

890
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:10,759
Speaker 1: really that sort of thing used to be if you're

891
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:12,920
Speaker 1: really screwed up, they would hit hand you your hat

892
00:51:12,960 --> 00:51:15,919
Speaker 1: and send you on your way, not with the million

893
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:20,960
Speaker 1: dollar exit pack. Yeah anyway, but yeah, so so so

894
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 1: this is a real This is one of the key

895
00:51:23,239 --> 00:51:26,440
Speaker 1: pieces of evidence that says that if you think that

896
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:31,920
Speaker 1: technology and globalization explains why we've gotten so unequal. You know,

897
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: explained to me how that has means that incompeten CEOs

898
00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 1: get paid as much money as they get paid doesn't.

899
00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:41,160
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of bullet points that come from that. Um. First,

900
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 1: there's a fascinating Planet Money episode on the unintended consequences

901
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:53,360
Speaker 1: of some of the employment compensation changes under Clinton Bill Clinton.

902
00:51:53,440 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 1: That was part of a big set of tax changes

903
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:58,920
Speaker 1: where they try to cap the dollar payment and allowed

904
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: payment in stock. How much of that is the source

905
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:06,560
Speaker 1: of this giant because when you look at stock composite compensation,

906
00:52:06,920 --> 00:52:12,799
Speaker 1: it's the lion's share of these giant yeah, um ceo comps. Yeah.

907
00:52:12,840 --> 00:52:17,040
Speaker 1: And it's a whether that's the result of the of

908
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:20,160
Speaker 1: the policies enacted during the Clinton years, I don't know.

909
00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's certainly as part of the part of

910
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:24,840
Speaker 1: the issue. And it um. I mean there was a

911
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:28,320
Speaker 1: period when economists, some of them said, you know, good,

912
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: we should pay people in stock because that gives them

913
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:33,880
Speaker 1: an incentive to perform well. But it turns out it

914
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: doesn't actually work that way, partly because you get the

915
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:38,440
Speaker 1: stock options, but they reset the price that the company

916
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:42,680
Speaker 1: does badly. Um, but aren't CEO is incentive to do

917
00:52:42,719 --> 00:52:45,160
Speaker 1: a good job. Because they're the CEOs, you have to

918
00:52:45,160 --> 00:52:48,359
Speaker 1: incentivize them more. That's that's the point it turns out.

919
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:50,399
Speaker 1: You know, back in back in the America, I grew

920
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:52,279
Speaker 1: up in again, I'm an all the cards were here.

921
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:56,879
Speaker 1: Uh we had think about photos of I always think

922
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:01,279
Speaker 1: of photos of of NASA and the all of these

923
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:04,879
Speaker 1: guys and uh in short sleeve white shirts, the pocket

924
00:53:05,120 --> 00:53:08,360
Speaker 1: with the pocket protectors, all of whom are being paid

925
00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:13,000
Speaker 1: not all that well, none of whom have incentive pay

926
00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:16,240
Speaker 1: doing incredible things. You know, it wasn't we think of NASA,

927
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:17,879
Speaker 1: But the same thing was going on at the great

928
00:53:17,920 --> 00:53:22,439
Speaker 1: technology companies at the time. So it's not it. It's

929
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:25,920
Speaker 1: amazing actually to think that that. I mean, money matters,

930
00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:29,520
Speaker 1: monetary incentence matter. But people do good work for lots

931
00:53:29,560 --> 00:53:32,200
Speaker 1: of reasons. And we've we've lost the notion that people

932
00:53:32,280 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 1: might do good work because they take some pride in

933
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:36,680
Speaker 1: their work right. Also it's their job not to not

934
00:53:36,719 --> 00:53:39,879
Speaker 1: to go too far on a limb. So you've described

935
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:43,320
Speaker 1: we we're talking about climate change and denial there before

936
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:49,520
Speaker 1: you've described um quote, the inequality denial industry that either

937
00:53:49,600 --> 00:53:54,879
Speaker 1: inequality wasn't rising, or that it didn't matter. Who can legitimately,

938
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:58,000
Speaker 1: with the straight face say there hasn't been a giant

939
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:02,680
Speaker 1: increase in economic getting. Well, you know, there's a there's

940
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: a good salary to be made from the ability to

941
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:07,279
Speaker 1: say that with a straight face, and that's really what

942
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:11,000
Speaker 1: drives it. But yeah, it's it's quite amazing. I mean,

943
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:14,760
Speaker 1: the numbers, the official numbers show it. Although we actually

944
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 1: have a problem with many of the standard measures because

945
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 1: they don't actually keep track of gigantic incomes because that's uh,

946
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 1: we didn't think we needed to, but because but now

947
00:54:24,239 --> 00:54:28,239
Speaker 1: we do. Um but uh yeah, when when there are

948
00:54:28,280 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 1: people out there still trying to claim, uh that inequality

949
00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:35,040
Speaker 1: hasn't gone up much, and then just say, among other things,

950
00:54:35,080 --> 00:54:38,480
Speaker 1: just you walk around, look look look, you know, look

951
00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:41,320
Speaker 1: at look at New York City, look at the um

952
00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:43,759
Speaker 1: at the way we live now. It's just is not

953
00:54:43,880 --> 00:54:46,680
Speaker 1: the same middle class country it used to be. And

954
00:54:46,719 --> 00:54:50,920
Speaker 1: then we do have, uh, you know, we have pretty

955
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 1: sophisticated ways of h between tax data surveys and so on,

956
00:54:55,280 --> 00:54:59,640
Speaker 1: which the that's new. They never used the slice of

957
00:54:59,680 --> 00:55:02,000
Speaker 1: this fun as they do top one percent, ten percent,

958
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:05,640
Speaker 1: half and that's a big change the top point of

959
00:55:05,760 --> 00:55:08,439
Speaker 1: one percent. Nobody ever thought that was important. How much

960
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 1: money could there be up there? But the answer is

961
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:13,880
Speaker 1: now a lot? And so yeah, so this is not

962
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:17,000
Speaker 1: there shouldn't be any real question about that. But again,

963
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:20,399
Speaker 1: it's difficult to get a man to understand something when

964
00:55:20,400 --> 00:55:22,959
Speaker 1: the salary depends on it's not understanding it. So let's

965
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:26,480
Speaker 1: talk about a headline um from a different writer that

966
00:55:26,520 --> 00:55:28,759
Speaker 1: I had to ask you about because it's so fascinating.

967
00:55:28,880 --> 00:55:32,880
Speaker 1: Derrick Thompson in the Atlantic the weekend before we tape

968
00:55:32,880 --> 00:55:37,400
Speaker 1: this had a column quote, this is the headline boomers

969
00:55:37,400 --> 00:55:42,960
Speaker 1: have socialism? Why not millennials. It's kind of a fascinating take. Well,

970
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 1: there is a yeah, I mean, it is a peculiar

971
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 1: thing that when people say, oh, America will never stand

972
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:52,839
Speaker 1: for government health insurance, every American sixty five and old

973
00:55:52,840 --> 00:55:55,879
Speaker 1: there has government health insurance. When they say Americans won't

974
00:55:55,920 --> 00:56:00,560
Speaker 1: stand for wide, large government guarantees of income so security.

975
00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:03,560
Speaker 1: Uh so we actually do have, in fact, the US

976
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,360
Speaker 1: welfare state. Uh. It's not that it's smaller than that

977
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:09,960
Speaker 1: of other advanced countries, but not that much smaller, because

978
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:14,920
Speaker 1: in fact, we do provide healthcare and retirement income to

979
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:19,200
Speaker 1: people people vote. It's probably people who vote. But I

980
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:24,040
Speaker 1: think the other thing that happened was that, um, you know,

981
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:30,040
Speaker 1: I thought, when when Medicare came in, uh uh, why

982
00:56:30,160 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 1: was it possible to go and provide government health insurance

983
00:56:34,200 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 1: to everybody over sixty five? Why didn't people complain that

984
00:56:37,080 --> 00:56:39,880
Speaker 1: this was taking away private insurance? The answer was that

985
00:56:39,920 --> 00:56:43,080
Speaker 1: private insurers weren't interested in covering people over sixty five.

986
00:56:43,120 --> 00:56:47,400
Speaker 1: There was never an expensive Yeah, they're expensive and unpredictably expensive.

987
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:51,200
Speaker 1: So the so that you were basically moving into a

988
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:55,120
Speaker 1: blank space. Um. And the trouble, the reason that it's

989
00:56:55,120 --> 00:56:58,680
Speaker 1: not so easy to just have Medicare for all is

990
00:56:58,760 --> 00:57:02,239
Speaker 1: that people under sixty five, many of them do have

991
00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:05,680
Speaker 1: private health insurance, which both means that you have a

992
00:57:05,719 --> 00:57:09,440
Speaker 1: lobby uh interest group, but I think even more important

993
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:12,440
Speaker 1: means that you're telling people, you know, we're going to

994
00:57:12,560 --> 00:57:14,880
Speaker 1: take away the insurance you now have, and we're going

995
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:17,240
Speaker 1: to replace it with something different. Trust us, it will

996
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:20,560
Speaker 1: be better, probably plus death panels on top of it,

997
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:23,280
Speaker 1: plus death panels, and it probably will be better in fact,

998
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 1: but that's a that's a really heavy political lift, and

999
00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 1: it's I mean, if you can start with the Tabla

1000
00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:34,560
Speaker 1: raza Um. I dedicate this book to the Arguing Zombies,

1001
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:37,360
Speaker 1: to the to the memory of Uva Reinhardt, healthcare economist

1002
00:57:37,400 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: of Princeton, who helped me a lot. And Uva and

1003
00:57:40,200 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 1: and his wife May Chung, they actually put together Taiwan's

1004
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 1: healthcare system, which is single payer's basically Medicare for all.

1005
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:48,960
Speaker 1: And how's it working. It's working fine, but the but

1006
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 1: Uva himself said, look, we're not gonna be able to

1007
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:54,880
Speaker 1: do that in the United States. We're if you want,

1008
00:57:55,400 --> 00:57:57,240
Speaker 1: if you want to get there, I wouldn't start from here.

1009
00:57:57,840 --> 00:58:01,160
Speaker 1: So we're recording this the day of the Iowa Calucus

1010
00:58:01,240 --> 00:58:04,280
Speaker 1: is of all the Democrats who were running for office,

1011
00:58:04,520 --> 00:58:10,919
Speaker 1: who has the most compelling, workable healthcare proposal of everybody? Oh,

1012
00:58:11,080 --> 00:58:17,120
Speaker 1: that's an interesting question because the I mean, they're all

1013
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:24,560
Speaker 1: workable proposals. On the technicalities, Medicare for all would work. Uh,

1014
00:58:24,640 --> 00:58:27,520
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren has laid out a lot more detail about

1015
00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 1: how it would be paid for than Bernie Sanders has,

1016
00:58:30,120 --> 00:58:35,240
Speaker 1: But something like that would work. UM enhanced massively enhanced Obamacare,

1017
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:38,840
Speaker 1: which is basically what Joe Biden means, just extended to

1018
00:58:38,920 --> 00:58:42,280
Speaker 1: cover everybody and well extend cover. Yeah, so the subsidies

1019
00:58:42,280 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 1: don't cut off, so that we have much reduced code

1020
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:49,400
Speaker 1: pays and it's just uh that also works. There are

1021
00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:51,880
Speaker 1: countries that have universal health coverage that do it through

1022
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 1: private insurance companies, like the Netherlands, so that's also workable.

1023
00:58:55,800 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure that anyone in terms of of

1024
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:03,440
Speaker 1: who plan is actually the truth is. I believe that

1025
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:05,760
Speaker 1: if any Democrat is elected, what we will in fact

1026
00:59:05,800 --> 00:59:09,240
Speaker 1: get is Obamacare two point Oh that Medicare for all

1027
00:59:09,240 --> 00:59:12,760
Speaker 1: ain't gonna happen, uh not not for a few years anyway.

1028
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:14,560
Speaker 1: And so what we're actually going to get to something

1029
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:17,600
Speaker 1: that is just a greatly enhanced version of what we

1030
00:59:17,600 --> 00:59:21,800
Speaker 1: we we managed to achieve in which is fine with me, right,

1031
00:59:21,840 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 1: and people have come to like Obamacare. In fact, the

1032
00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:29,400
Speaker 1: current administration but for John McCain, would have gotten rid

1033
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:32,680
Speaker 1: of it. I think that is certainly a factor in

1034
00:59:32,760 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: the outcome of the midtime was probably the single biggest factor. Um, yeah,

1035
00:59:38,160 --> 00:59:40,560
Speaker 1: that's what most of it's that was largely a healthcare election.

1036
00:59:40,880 --> 00:59:43,080
Speaker 1: One thing that worries me about Medicare for all and

1037
00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:45,720
Speaker 1: all that is it that instead of people talking about

1038
00:59:45,720 --> 00:59:47,880
Speaker 1: the fact that Trump wants to take away what we

1039
00:59:47,960 --> 00:59:50,600
Speaker 1: have achieved, that they're gonna be talking about some you know,

1040
00:59:50,800 --> 00:59:54,680
Speaker 1: radical new proposal. Um. And we need to keep focused

1041
00:59:54,680 --> 00:59:58,600
Speaker 1: because the in fact, if Trump is reelected, there's a

1042
00:59:58,680 --> 01:00:00,480
Speaker 1: very good chance that he will find way to kill

1043
01:00:00,520 --> 01:00:03,440
Speaker 1: Obamacare in his second term. Um. So what do you

1044
01:00:03,480 --> 01:00:07,440
Speaker 1: think the outcome of November is going to be? I

1045
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:11,240
Speaker 1: personally have no idea, although I will t this up

1046
01:00:11,240 --> 01:00:16,120
Speaker 1: by saying, it feels it seems like he had a

1047
01:00:16,200 --> 01:00:19,720
Speaker 1: thread and needle quite precisely. And it was a hundred

1048
01:00:19,760 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand votes across five states that put him

1049
01:00:22,640 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 1: over the team. Yeah, and as he gained votes or

1050
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:28,360
Speaker 1: lost votes since I don't know that, we really don't know.

1051
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:30,960
Speaker 1: I mean, it was also a media obsession with Hillary's

1052
01:00:30,960 --> 01:00:33,720
Speaker 1: emails and all of that. And Trump won in large

1053
01:00:33,760 --> 01:00:37,040
Speaker 1: part because nobody thought he could possibly win. He benefited

1054
01:00:37,120 --> 01:00:40,760
Speaker 1: enormous things drama from you know, coverage that ignored the

1055
01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:43,600
Speaker 1: possibility of his winning. And so it was okay to

1056
01:00:43,640 --> 01:00:46,760
Speaker 1: beat up on Hillary because obviously Trump can't win. Uh,

1057
01:00:46,800 --> 01:00:50,800
Speaker 1: and that won't happen, I hope this time. But God knows.

1058
01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:53,600
Speaker 1: I mean, the economy is unemployment is low, although what

1059
01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:56,760
Speaker 1: all of the political scientists say is that what matters

1060
01:00:56,840 --> 01:00:59,520
Speaker 1: is how fast is the economy growing, not the level

1061
01:00:59,560 --> 01:01:02,400
Speaker 1: but the rate of change in the year before the election.

1062
01:01:04,120 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: And two it's kind of a borderline that's that's more

1063
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:11,800
Speaker 1: or less neutral. So but who knows. I mean, Trump

1064
01:01:11,840 --> 01:01:16,760
Speaker 1: has certainly not managed to build mass support his core

1065
01:01:17,560 --> 01:01:21,360
Speaker 1: his core group. He's still at whatever that is. And

1066
01:01:21,440 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 1: it's uh, and but electoral college probably still gives him

1067
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:30,920
Speaker 1: an advantage. Um, well, it looks like he's lost Pennsylvania already,

1068
01:01:31,080 --> 01:01:34,120
Speaker 1: we hope. And it looks like he's lost Michigan already

1069
01:01:34,240 --> 01:01:38,720
Speaker 1: and possibly Wisconsin. Well, it is interesting that to the

1070
01:01:38,720 --> 01:01:42,200
Speaker 1: extent that Trump was making the Trump economy overall, I

1071
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:45,840
Speaker 1: have to admit, it's a low unemployment. It's the Obama

1072
01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:49,480
Speaker 1: economy extended out for years. But if it feels pretty,

1073
01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:52,880
Speaker 1: you know, it feels good. It feels good. But the

1074
01:01:52,960 --> 01:01:57,600
Speaker 1: peculiar thing, the amazing thing, actually is that where Trump's

1075
01:01:57,600 --> 01:02:01,440
Speaker 1: economy is bad is precisely where he promised to help.

1076
01:02:01,880 --> 01:02:07,080
Speaker 1: So manufacturing bankratsy is a way up manufacturing. We're in

1077
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:10,040
Speaker 1: a manufacturing recession, even as even as we had so

1078
01:02:10,440 --> 01:02:15,520
Speaker 1: it's possible that that that that tips the bottle Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin.

1079
01:02:15,640 --> 01:02:22,800
Speaker 1: That so maybe, but then on you know, the third hand, Uh,

1080
01:02:23,040 --> 01:02:26,360
Speaker 1: there may be other factors coming in and it's hard.

1081
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:31,440
Speaker 1: I really have no ability to prognosticate on this. Two

1082
01:02:31,520 --> 01:02:34,800
Speaker 1: years ago, I would have bet you a million dollars

1083
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 1: that the Senate would not change hands. And following and

1084
01:02:39,800 --> 01:02:42,680
Speaker 1: following the arc of all the news that's come out

1085
01:02:42,720 --> 01:02:47,160
Speaker 1: this year, I think it's a better than even chance that, um,

1086
01:02:47,200 --> 01:02:51,160
Speaker 1: the Democrats take the Senate or at the very least

1087
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:53,440
Speaker 1: it's yeah, I think that. And that wasn't true to you.

1088
01:02:53,600 --> 01:02:56,240
Speaker 1: So that's clear, and it's and in some way map

1089
01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:58,200
Speaker 1: but challenging. You know, it's only a third of the

1090
01:02:58,320 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 1: of the seats ruppied. Everybody said, oh two maybe chance,

1091
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:05,760
Speaker 1: it's a real chance. Now that's one of those things

1092
01:03:05,760 --> 01:03:10,480
Speaker 1: that we're there's enough, there are enough really weak uh

1093
01:03:11,120 --> 01:03:15,280
Speaker 1: Comlican senators and it uh yeah, Arizona, you know there's

1094
01:03:15,560 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 1: places she was in point she never won anything, that's right,

1095
01:03:18,240 --> 01:03:21,040
Speaker 1: and and and his lacking pretty bad. But I try, actually,

1096
01:03:21,040 --> 01:03:23,560
Speaker 1: I try not to running against an by the way

1097
01:03:23,560 --> 01:03:26,120
Speaker 1: in Arizona, Yeah, I try not to od on this

1098
01:03:26,160 --> 01:03:28,280
Speaker 1: stuff too much. It's it's the fact of the matter

1099
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:31,960
Speaker 1: is is that we don't know. But it's the realm

1100
01:03:32,000 --> 01:03:35,960
Speaker 1: of possibilities I think do range from Trump victory and

1101
01:03:36,040 --> 01:03:41,320
Speaker 1: Republican Senate probably it's still Democratic House, but to uh,

1102
01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:45,360
Speaker 1: democratic victory, democratic sweep, and that would be really interesting.

1103
01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:47,880
Speaker 1: I mean, it would be give us a chance to

1104
01:03:47,920 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 1: do you know about only had two years when he

1105
01:03:49,880 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: was actually able to do anything, so did Trump. Yeah,

1106
01:03:53,280 --> 01:03:56,120
Speaker 1: and uh so I think if we actually look at it,

1107
01:03:56,560 --> 01:04:00,840
Speaker 1: the the possibility of another you know, we're not we're

1108
01:04:00,880 --> 01:04:03,280
Speaker 1: not going to get Medicare for all. We're not going

1109
01:04:03,320 --> 01:04:07,520
Speaker 1: to get uh the free college, free college. We're not.

1110
01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:10,320
Speaker 1: We're uh, we might get a Green New deal, maybe

1111
01:04:10,360 --> 01:04:13,680
Speaker 1: not as big as the one that that advocates want,

1112
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:16,520
Speaker 1: but I would definitely be for that. And um but

1113
01:04:16,600 --> 01:04:18,960
Speaker 1: on the other hand, we might, uh we may be

1114
01:04:19,080 --> 01:04:22,960
Speaker 1: on a slide into becoming in a authoritarian, one party state.

1115
01:04:23,280 --> 01:04:25,920
Speaker 1: That's that has happened, and I'm I'm really quite concerned

1116
01:04:25,960 --> 01:04:27,600
Speaker 1: that it could happen to us. That that would be

1117
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:30,360
Speaker 1: bad if it happened. So on that cheerful note, because

1118
01:04:30,360 --> 01:04:33,360
Speaker 1: I know you are heading out to seth myers. From here,

1119
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:36,600
Speaker 1: let's jump to our favorite question that we ask all

1120
01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:39,919
Speaker 1: of our guests. We call this the speed round, um.

1121
01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:41,920
Speaker 1: And I'll just plough through these as quickly as I can,

1122
01:04:41,960 --> 01:04:44,600
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll send you on your way, starting with

1123
01:04:45,360 --> 01:04:47,440
Speaker 1: what are you watching these days? What are you streaming?

1124
01:04:47,520 --> 01:04:49,840
Speaker 1: What's your favorite podcast? What are you what are you

1125
01:04:49,880 --> 01:04:52,960
Speaker 1: paying attention to? Okay, I actually shouldn't say that. I

1126
01:04:53,000 --> 01:04:57,560
Speaker 1: don't really do podcasts okay, very little. I am listening

1127
01:04:57,560 --> 01:05:01,520
Speaker 1: when I can to, uh to the uh Prince Peterson

1128
01:05:01,640 --> 01:05:05,880
Speaker 1: Institute Trade talks, which is that's professional listening. Um, the

1129
01:05:07,280 --> 01:05:12,000
Speaker 1: uh how about watching? What are you watching? Oh crime?

1130
01:05:12,400 --> 01:05:14,320
Speaker 1: I have both Amazon Prime in Netflix, and I watch

1131
01:05:14,360 --> 01:05:18,840
Speaker 1: all kinds of of stuff, but mostly not uh not

1132
01:05:19,120 --> 01:05:21,920
Speaker 1: you know, nerdy stuff. So I'm a huge fan of

1133
01:05:21,960 --> 01:05:25,560
Speaker 1: the Expanse. Oh god, I love that, right, so, I think,

1134
01:05:26,080 --> 01:05:28,520
Speaker 1: and it makes me almost forgive Jeffs for all the

1135
01:05:28,520 --> 01:05:30,840
Speaker 1: other things he's done that he rescued the Expanse and

1136
01:05:30,920 --> 01:05:33,960
Speaker 1: his continued this last season has been spectacular fabulous. So

1137
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:37,280
Speaker 1: actually that's something that's social science nerds like as well,

1138
01:05:37,320 --> 01:05:39,840
Speaker 1: which is a whole story. And there's another season now

1139
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:42,760
Speaker 1: coming in the future. There's another season coming. There's also

1140
01:05:42,800 --> 01:05:45,480
Speaker 1: gonna be uh. I don't know how many people saw this,

1141
01:05:45,560 --> 01:05:49,680
Speaker 1: but Altered Carbon, which was Netflix and that was that

1142
01:05:49,800 --> 01:05:52,120
Speaker 1: was a great science fiction novel and they turned into

1143
01:05:52,120 --> 01:05:54,560
Speaker 1: a great series and they'll be I think we're having

1144
01:05:54,600 --> 01:05:57,280
Speaker 1: a second season coming up the next month. So if

1145
01:05:57,320 --> 01:06:00,520
Speaker 1: you like Altered Carbon, you should check out Electra Dreams,

1146
01:06:00,520 --> 01:06:03,520
Speaker 1: which is loosely based on Philip K. Dick. Haven't watched really,

1147
01:06:03,520 --> 01:06:06,800
Speaker 1: it's the first one is spectacular, and they're all separate.

1148
01:06:06,800 --> 01:06:10,200
Speaker 1: There's not a contiguous series. They're all standalone, so really

1149
01:06:10,640 --> 01:06:15,400
Speaker 1: really interesting. Um, and I watched lots of concerts. That's right,

1150
01:06:15,400 --> 01:06:17,920
Speaker 1: you're a music geek. I'm well, it's kind of weird.

1151
01:06:18,000 --> 01:06:19,880
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a sixty six year old want to

1152
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:23,840
Speaker 1: be hipster. Right, I'll watch a lot of indie music performances. Right.

1153
01:06:23,880 --> 01:06:27,360
Speaker 1: Have you seen David Burns on Broadway American Utel? No?

1154
01:06:27,480 --> 01:06:30,840
Speaker 1: I have, not so amazing. I've seen it twice already.

1155
01:06:31,000 --> 01:06:33,280
Speaker 1: It's done in February sixteen, So you better go hurry

1156
01:06:33,360 --> 01:06:37,440
Speaker 1: up and see if you're win because you're leaving the

1157
01:06:38,160 --> 01:06:40,080
Speaker 1: out of the country. If you're a Talking Heads fan,

1158
01:06:40,280 --> 01:06:45,040
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's really just amazing. Um and did you

1159
01:06:45,080 --> 01:06:48,320
Speaker 1: see it's been you mentioned Amazon Prime. The boys haven't

1160
01:06:48,360 --> 01:06:52,360
Speaker 1: watched that yet. So it's like the anti Marvel universe,

1161
01:06:52,760 --> 01:06:58,160
Speaker 1: like the opposite where where when you when you look

1162
01:06:58,200 --> 01:07:00,960
Speaker 1: at the model, they're super Euros are part of a

1163
01:07:01,000 --> 01:07:06,000
Speaker 1: corrupt corporation that abuse their power to obtaining government contracts.

1164
01:07:06,800 --> 01:07:09,520
Speaker 1: It's just fascinating. I probably should be in because I'm

1165
01:07:10,440 --> 01:07:12,880
Speaker 1: the whole superhero thing, by and large leaves me cold.

1166
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:16,120
Speaker 1: So you would, you would totally. So I only recommended

1167
01:07:16,360 --> 01:07:20,800
Speaker 1: this series to two people who could not be more different,

1168
01:07:21,000 --> 01:07:24,040
Speaker 1: you and Cliff Fastness, and I'm betting both of you

1169
01:07:24,040 --> 01:07:26,880
Speaker 1: are gonna love it. Okay, so put that down. Second,

1170
01:07:27,160 --> 01:07:31,320
Speaker 1: what's the most important thing we don't know about Paul Krugman? Okay,

1171
01:07:31,360 --> 01:07:33,040
Speaker 1: so we have touched on this before. I think the

1172
01:07:33,040 --> 01:07:35,160
Speaker 1: most important thing that people don't know is that I

1173
01:07:35,720 --> 01:07:38,080
Speaker 1: is that I'm a pussycat and person. That's right, your

1174
01:07:38,120 --> 01:07:41,520
Speaker 1: whole public persona, the public persona somehow even though I

1175
01:07:41,520 --> 01:07:44,120
Speaker 1: don't think you know, you don't encourage it. I don't

1176
01:07:44,200 --> 01:07:46,480
Speaker 1: encourage it. I don't insult, I don't talk about people's

1177
01:07:46,520 --> 01:07:50,800
Speaker 1: personal appearance. Uh. I don't. But your writing is barbed

1178
01:07:51,120 --> 01:07:55,280
Speaker 1: and effective, and people interpret that as mean and angry. Yeah,

1179
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:57,840
Speaker 1: but I'm not angry and I'm not a I don't

1180
01:07:57,880 --> 01:08:01,080
Speaker 1: hold registered. Yeah, you're a mench um. Let's talk about

1181
01:08:01,080 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 1: your early mentors who influenced the way you look at

1182
01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:06,960
Speaker 1: the world of economics. Okay, So I had two great

1183
01:08:07,040 --> 01:08:15,000
Speaker 1: economics mentors. First, Bill Nordhouse uh Yale Yale Nobel or

1184
01:08:15,040 --> 01:08:16,800
Speaker 1: right although after me, which is kind of weird, but

1185
01:08:17,000 --> 01:08:20,080
Speaker 1: Buddy got it. Um And I was his research assistant

1186
01:08:20,080 --> 01:08:23,800
Speaker 1: when I was still an undergraduate, and that was tremendous apprenticeship.

1187
01:08:24,560 --> 01:08:26,439
Speaker 1: And then a Rudy dorn Bush and M I T

1188
01:08:27,280 --> 01:08:31,720
Speaker 1: was a huge influence on me and on the many students,

1189
01:08:31,720 --> 01:08:36,639
Speaker 1: So huge influence. Um So those are the two people

1190
01:08:37,240 --> 01:08:41,920
Speaker 1: you know whose personal advice mentorship mattered a huge amount.

1191
01:08:42,040 --> 01:08:45,439
Speaker 1: What about economists? What economists have influenced how you think

1192
01:08:45,479 --> 01:08:51,639
Speaker 1: of the field? Yeah? So the um So, although I

1193
01:08:51,880 --> 01:08:55,640
Speaker 1: wasn't an advisor, but Bob solo of M I T

1194
01:08:56,680 --> 01:09:00,960
Speaker 1: just I a whole lot of the way I do economics,

1195
01:09:01,000 --> 01:09:04,559
Speaker 1: the whole writing style which fills over to my public

1196
01:09:04,560 --> 01:09:07,160
Speaker 1: writing as well. It comes a lot from Robert solo,

1197
01:09:07,200 --> 01:09:09,200
Speaker 1: who was this great m I t a commist who

1198
01:09:09,240 --> 01:09:13,559
Speaker 1: had this tremendous gift for taking complicated issues and turning

1199
01:09:13,600 --> 01:09:17,080
Speaker 1: them into simple models that illuminated the world. And I've

1200
01:09:17,160 --> 01:09:21,960
Speaker 1: always been in that. And then um not a simple modeler,

1201
01:09:22,040 --> 01:09:24,880
Speaker 1: but John Maynard Keynes. I was waiting for you to

1202
01:09:24,880 --> 01:09:29,840
Speaker 1: go there it. Maybe you have to actually do economics

1203
01:09:30,880 --> 01:09:35,519
Speaker 1: as a as an advocation to appreciate the greatness Kaynes's

1204
01:09:35,600 --> 01:09:38,320
Speaker 1: ability to think his way out of the box in

1205
01:09:38,360 --> 01:09:41,759
Speaker 1: which economists were trapped at the time and see things differently.

1206
01:09:41,800 --> 01:09:44,040
Speaker 1: There's never been anything like it, I would say, not

1207
01:09:44,120 --> 01:09:47,920
Speaker 1: even Adam Smith did as much to really just say

1208
01:09:47,960 --> 01:09:50,360
Speaker 1: this is the world is not the way you think

1209
01:09:50,360 --> 01:09:54,640
Speaker 1: it is, and it's amazing performance, quite fascinating. Let's talk

1210
01:09:54,680 --> 01:09:56,880
Speaker 1: about books. What do you like to read for fun?

1211
01:09:57,479 --> 01:09:59,840
Speaker 1: What do you read? What do you recommend to people?

1212
01:10:00,040 --> 01:10:01,800
Speaker 1: Tell us some of your favorite books. Okay, so I'm

1213
01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:06,559
Speaker 1: a geek. Uh so I read a lot of science fiction. Um,

1214
01:10:07,400 --> 01:10:12,160
Speaker 1: I anything by Charlie Strauss, who I consider the greatest

1215
01:10:12,200 --> 01:10:20,080
Speaker 1: living uh science fictional author. Um and uh the yeah

1216
01:10:20,320 --> 01:10:26,080
Speaker 1: s t R O s s um the but but

1217
01:10:26,240 --> 01:10:29,519
Speaker 1: lots of there we are actually if you search, you

1218
01:10:29,560 --> 01:10:35,040
Speaker 1: can find uh I have met him. The Frocity Archives, Yeah,

1219
01:10:35,479 --> 01:10:39,600
Speaker 1: the laundry, the laundry files. Novels are amazing, they are

1220
01:10:40,080 --> 01:10:44,679
Speaker 1: they are, the Annihilation Score, yeah. The But he's he's

1221
01:10:44,720 --> 01:10:48,400
Speaker 1: incredibly prolific. And I had a memorable evening with him

1222
01:10:48,400 --> 01:10:51,640
Speaker 1: and several other science fiction authors who all live in Edinburgh,

1223
01:10:51,840 --> 01:10:55,000
Speaker 1: where we talked science fiction and tasted single malt scotches.

1224
01:10:55,520 --> 01:10:58,280
Speaker 1: And I describe it as a half memorable evening because

1225
01:10:58,320 --> 01:11:01,400
Speaker 1: I only remember the first half. So give us some

1226
01:11:01,439 --> 01:11:04,200
Speaker 1: other books that he's interesting, So, I mean and in

1227
01:11:04,240 --> 01:11:06,920
Speaker 1: science fiction. Actually, I just recently, for the first time

1228
01:11:06,920 --> 01:11:11,000
Speaker 1: in decades reread Done. You know, it's going to be

1229
01:11:11,000 --> 01:11:13,639
Speaker 1: a new version coming out, and you know the previous

1230
01:11:13,720 --> 01:11:16,040
Speaker 1: ones they've all screwed it up somehow. But let's see,

1231
01:11:16,080 --> 01:11:19,439
Speaker 1: because that is actually an incredible book. The other thing

1232
01:11:19,479 --> 01:11:21,799
Speaker 1: I do is I read a lot of history, so

1233
01:11:22,000 --> 01:11:25,240
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff, and I just read a a

1234
01:11:25,280 --> 01:11:30,639
Speaker 1: long detailed book on the Peninsular War, which is part

1235
01:11:30,680 --> 01:11:32,920
Speaker 1: of the Napoleonic Wars, but it's the piece that where

1236
01:11:32,960 --> 01:11:36,080
Speaker 1: the the Spaniards and the Portuguese, with help from the

1237
01:11:36,160 --> 01:11:39,120
Speaker 1: Duke of Wellington, were fighting the French in Spain, and

1238
01:11:39,200 --> 01:11:42,240
Speaker 1: it's uh. And what was great about that was that

1239
01:11:43,280 --> 01:11:45,200
Speaker 1: most of the stuff that you read about that in

1240
01:11:45,280 --> 01:11:49,360
Speaker 1: English is very Wellington's centered. It's very much about the

1241
01:11:49,360 --> 01:11:52,240
Speaker 1: British army. But this one gives you the whole panorama

1242
01:11:52,320 --> 01:11:56,360
Speaker 1: which is much vaster and uh, much more brutal. The

1243
01:11:56,360 --> 01:11:59,719
Speaker 1: Peninsula War, Peninsular War. So it's it's really from eighteen

1244
01:12:00,000 --> 01:12:05,959
Speaker 1: o eight up until eight thirteen there was this uh, extraordinary,

1245
01:12:06,520 --> 01:12:10,479
Speaker 1: very grim but but it's fascinating struggle for for control

1246
01:12:10,520 --> 01:12:12,920
Speaker 1: of Spain. Give us one more and then I'm gonna

1247
01:12:12,960 --> 01:12:17,719
Speaker 1: ask you about one. Okay, so favorite books, UM, got

1248
01:12:17,760 --> 01:12:24,360
Speaker 1: so many things, I mean, uh, I'm I mean actually

1249
01:12:24,400 --> 01:12:28,120
Speaker 1: it was very much influenced by I haven't not but

1250
01:12:30,439 --> 01:12:35,600
Speaker 1: the philosophy of of David Hume inquiry concerning human understanding,

1251
01:12:36,320 --> 01:12:41,040
Speaker 1: How skepticism and demanding evidence made a big difference. That

1252
01:12:41,160 --> 01:12:43,640
Speaker 1: was actually only the years later that I realized that

1253
01:12:43,680 --> 01:12:47,080
Speaker 1: actually he probably was the first modern economist, even before

1254
01:12:47,120 --> 01:12:52,719
Speaker 1: Adam Smith. That's really quite fascinating. So back to science fiction. Um,

1255
01:12:53,360 --> 01:12:56,800
Speaker 1: two different people who are sci fi geek friends who

1256
01:12:56,800 --> 01:12:59,840
Speaker 1: I I have a giant overlap with their taste. There

1257
01:12:59,920 --> 01:13:03,200
Speaker 1: was aspect what they like and don't like. When two

1258
01:13:03,240 --> 01:13:05,439
Speaker 1: people recommend the book, I go out and get it,

1259
01:13:05,520 --> 01:13:08,519
Speaker 1: but I haven't read it yet. Both recommended The Three

1260
01:13:08,600 --> 01:13:11,519
Speaker 1: Body Problem. Yeah, have you have you seen? I have

1261
01:13:11,600 --> 01:13:13,600
Speaker 1: read it. You read it? What are your thoughts on?

1262
01:13:13,880 --> 01:13:16,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I liked it. It's a full trilogy, and

1263
01:13:16,360 --> 01:13:18,400
Speaker 1: it's feel full trilogy, and it's kind of weird. I mean,

1264
01:13:18,439 --> 01:13:22,879
Speaker 1: it's it's but it's it's Chinese resiction. It's very different

1265
01:13:23,479 --> 01:13:26,519
Speaker 1: in field, and it's it's strange. But it's full of

1266
01:13:26,560 --> 01:13:30,200
Speaker 1: interesting ideas and even even some character development. You know

1267
01:13:30,240 --> 01:13:31,800
Speaker 1: a lot of science fiction, and I have to admit

1268
01:13:31,920 --> 01:13:34,240
Speaker 1: that the characters are kind of too dimensional because it's

1269
01:13:34,240 --> 01:13:36,439
Speaker 1: a little bit better than that with with this, and

1270
01:13:36,560 --> 01:13:42,920
Speaker 1: it's not it's not the best, uh that I with

1271
01:13:43,200 --> 01:13:47,000
Speaker 1: stuff I've read. I mean, I think maybe it may

1272
01:13:47,080 --> 01:13:50,120
Speaker 1: lose something in translation. I don't know. But you didn't

1273
01:13:50,160 --> 01:13:52,840
Speaker 1: read it any original man, not my man. Darine skills

1274
01:13:52,840 --> 01:13:55,639
Speaker 1: are a little so that's probably where where it fell

1275
01:13:55,680 --> 01:13:59,400
Speaker 1: a little A little short. Speaking of fail um, tell

1276
01:13:59,479 --> 01:14:01,679
Speaker 1: us about it time you failed and what you learned

1277
01:14:01,680 --> 01:14:04,400
Speaker 1: from the experience. Oh gosh, I mean, there there have

1278
01:14:04,439 --> 01:14:08,880
Speaker 1: been multiples but um, I mean, obviously I made a

1279
01:14:08,880 --> 01:14:12,559
Speaker 1: bad call about the economy on election en, didn't you

1280
01:14:12,680 --> 01:14:16,439
Speaker 1: roll that back pretty quick? Days? But no one wants

1281
01:14:16,479 --> 01:14:18,000
Speaker 1: to hear about that. They just want to beat you

1282
01:14:18,040 --> 01:14:20,720
Speaker 1: with the original call. But it is a reminder not

1283
01:14:20,800 --> 01:14:23,639
Speaker 1: to let not to let you know. And I've done

1284
01:14:23,680 --> 01:14:27,439
Speaker 1: some things before. I mean, I was warning about a

1285
01:14:27,439 --> 01:14:31,120
Speaker 1: debt crisis during the Bush years and I never happened.

1286
01:14:31,120 --> 01:14:34,600
Speaker 1: And I and usually when I make these things, I

1287
01:14:35,080 --> 01:14:38,240
Speaker 1: go back and ask myself, was that actually grounded in

1288
01:14:38,400 --> 01:14:41,280
Speaker 1: hard thinking? Or was I letting my my desire to

1289
01:14:41,280 --> 01:14:44,120
Speaker 1: see bad things happen to bad people influence my judgment?

1290
01:14:44,680 --> 01:14:47,160
Speaker 1: That's usually what what do you think Bush was a

1291
01:14:47,160 --> 01:14:49,640
Speaker 1: bad person or was he just an amiable dufast in

1292
01:14:49,720 --> 01:14:52,519
Speaker 1: over his head. I think he was not a great person,

1293
01:14:52,600 --> 01:14:56,439
Speaker 1: and I think that was he a bad person. So

1294
01:14:56,439 --> 01:14:58,920
Speaker 1: if you had to pick Cheney, your Bush, Oh, Cheney

1295
01:14:58,960 --> 01:15:00,719
Speaker 1: was a bad Okay. So when I look at Bush,

1296
01:15:00,760 --> 01:15:03,559
Speaker 1: I look at like, all right, I don't agree with

1297
01:15:03,640 --> 01:15:06,160
Speaker 1: most of his decisions, but he seems kind of like

1298
01:15:06,240 --> 01:15:09,880
Speaker 1: a goofy well, utterly lacking an empathy for the people

1299
01:15:09,920 --> 01:15:13,599
Speaker 1: who are less fortunate than himself. So that's a that's fair,

1300
01:15:13,640 --> 01:15:16,080
Speaker 1: you know, so, but not not actively evil in the

1301
01:15:16,120 --> 01:15:17,960
Speaker 1: same way that Cheney was, and certainly not in the

1302
01:15:18,000 --> 01:15:22,360
Speaker 1: way that the Trump is. All right, so let's um.

1303
01:15:22,439 --> 01:15:24,200
Speaker 1: So the value is there? What do you do for fun?

1304
01:15:24,240 --> 01:15:27,639
Speaker 1: What do you do when you're not panning New York

1305
01:15:27,680 --> 01:15:31,920
Speaker 1: Times columns? Well? Uh, go to as many indie concerts

1306
01:15:31,960 --> 01:15:34,639
Speaker 1: as I can manage. Tell us the last couple you saw? Okay,

1307
01:15:34,760 --> 01:15:40,920
Speaker 1: last two I saw We're uh. Most recently Raina del

1308
01:15:41,000 --> 01:15:44,840
Speaker 1: Sid which is actually it's the it's an indie band.

1309
01:15:45,160 --> 01:15:47,439
Speaker 1: It's also a person, but she's the core of it

1310
01:15:47,760 --> 01:15:55,240
Speaker 1: from Minneapolis. Sort of folky stuff but really great fun.

1311
01:15:55,320 --> 01:15:58,519
Speaker 1: And I saw that at Rockwood Musical, which is a

1312
01:15:58,680 --> 01:16:01,000
Speaker 1: standing only venue. Stand there with a beer in your

1313
01:16:01,040 --> 01:16:04,240
Speaker 1: hand and your your five feet from the band. So

1314
01:16:04,320 --> 01:16:06,479
Speaker 1: that was great. You stood for two hours in front

1315
01:16:06,479 --> 01:16:08,439
Speaker 1: of the band. I imagine, you know, as long as

1316
01:16:08,479 --> 01:16:12,400
Speaker 1: I can keep on doing it. Uh And then uh um.

1317
01:16:12,520 --> 01:16:17,519
Speaker 1: And then one before that was another Larkin Poe, which

1318
01:16:17,560 --> 01:16:21,840
Speaker 1: is blues. There are two sisters from Atlanta and they

1319
01:16:21,880 --> 01:16:24,559
Speaker 1: have a band for for touring. They have a band

1320
01:16:24,600 --> 01:16:27,719
Speaker 1: and their their records are just them plus various pieces

1321
01:16:27,800 --> 01:16:29,760
Speaker 1: like a drummer and a guitarist or a a drummer, and

1322
01:16:29,800 --> 01:16:31,519
Speaker 1: they add that, but the two of them are are

1323
01:16:31,560 --> 01:16:34,120
Speaker 1: both the one one is slide guitar and one is

1324
01:16:34,120 --> 01:16:40,200
Speaker 1: is is regular guitar, and and they do h amazing

1325
01:16:40,280 --> 01:16:44,160
Speaker 1: harmony vocals and um and that was just they got hot.

1326
01:16:44,200 --> 01:16:47,439
Speaker 1: Recently they got nominated for didn't win one, but they

1327
01:16:47,560 --> 01:16:50,400
Speaker 1: got nominated for Grammy and they um no. And I

1328
01:16:50,479 --> 01:16:55,360
Speaker 1: saw them at Bowery Ballroom, which is uh five fifty

1329
01:16:55,760 --> 01:16:59,240
Speaker 1: instead of one hundred fifty standing room. So so so

1330
01:16:59,400 --> 01:17:01,639
Speaker 1: these are standing with a beer in your hand concerts.

1331
01:17:02,160 --> 01:17:04,160
Speaker 1: That's a tough kid. The last thing I did that

1332
01:17:04,400 --> 01:17:07,840
Speaker 1: for was you two with the Garden, and that has

1333
01:17:07,880 --> 01:17:10,439
Speaker 1: to be twelve years ago. And I'm younger than you.

1334
01:17:10,520 --> 01:17:13,320
Speaker 1: I can't stand for two hours. Well so far, so far,

1335
01:17:13,400 --> 01:17:15,280
Speaker 1: so good. I mean, you know, well time with time

1336
01:17:15,280 --> 01:17:16,840
Speaker 1: when I can't. And the other thing I do is

1337
01:17:16,920 --> 01:17:21,519
Speaker 1: I I do. I do bike trips. Now I have

1338
01:17:21,600 --> 01:17:23,800
Speaker 1: actually done by trips, like the full trip with the

1339
01:17:23,880 --> 01:17:28,120
Speaker 1: Chase fin and there there's more for you and saying

1340
01:17:28,160 --> 01:17:31,320
Speaker 1: go two hours this direction, and there's a pace vehicle

1341
01:17:31,360 --> 01:17:34,320
Speaker 1: in your following, well not pace vehicle, there's a van

1342
01:17:34,439 --> 01:17:36,599
Speaker 1: that pops up with with bottles of cold water every

1343
01:17:36,640 --> 01:17:38,400
Speaker 1: once in a while and and takes your bags to

1344
01:17:38,479 --> 01:17:41,680
Speaker 1: the next hotel. And so I've been doing lately. I've

1345
01:17:41,720 --> 01:17:44,360
Speaker 1: been doing two of those years. So so you're biking

1346
01:17:44,400 --> 01:17:48,000
Speaker 1: for seven days effectively. Yeah, we're Actually it's the next one,

1347
01:17:48,120 --> 01:17:49,880
Speaker 1: which is in Portugal, is gonna be ten days. And

1348
01:17:49,920 --> 01:17:52,800
Speaker 1: your wife does this happily with um. She actually has

1349
01:17:53,800 --> 01:17:56,240
Speaker 1: the last couple. She's gone and done other things and

1350
01:17:56,360 --> 01:17:59,280
Speaker 1: met me at the end. But I have some buddies,

1351
01:18:00,120 --> 01:18:01,960
Speaker 1: all of them, you know, sort of my age, who

1352
01:18:02,000 --> 01:18:04,600
Speaker 1: are all of us, you know, still saying hey, we

1353
01:18:04,640 --> 01:18:06,720
Speaker 1: can still do this, let's do it, and you can

1354
01:18:06,760 --> 01:18:08,880
Speaker 1: do that pretty easily in Europe. They're they're built for

1355
01:18:08,920 --> 01:18:10,680
Speaker 1: that more than we are. Yeah, you want to go

1356
01:18:10,760 --> 01:18:13,600
Speaker 1: village to village, although I've done I've done them in

1357
01:18:13,720 --> 01:18:17,280
Speaker 1: Vermont and Donmond, Quebec done you know. So, But it's

1358
01:18:17,320 --> 01:18:19,960
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a great way to get out

1359
01:18:19,960 --> 01:18:22,439
Speaker 1: of your head right, instead of instead of worrying about

1360
01:18:22,479 --> 01:18:24,200
Speaker 1: the fate of the economy or the faith of the

1361
01:18:24,200 --> 01:18:26,519
Speaker 1: thing that it's it's just can I actually get up

1362
01:18:26,520 --> 01:18:30,960
Speaker 1: that hill? Right? Changes your focus. So so speaking about

1363
01:18:31,240 --> 01:18:34,320
Speaker 1: worrying and being pessimistic or not. What are you most

1364
01:18:34,360 --> 01:18:38,960
Speaker 1: optimistic about these days? And what are you most pessimistic? Well,

1365
01:18:41,200 --> 01:18:43,479
Speaker 1: I'll start with the pessimism. I think. I think there's

1366
01:18:43,479 --> 01:18:46,400
Speaker 1: basically an even chance that we're going we're going to

1367
01:18:46,520 --> 01:18:51,439
Speaker 1: lose our democracy. You know, that's even if we get

1368
01:18:51,439 --> 01:18:57,120
Speaker 1: past Trump. The forces of have been unleashed and that yeah,

1369
01:18:57,200 --> 01:19:00,559
Speaker 1: I mean I I for complicated reasons. I tracked the

1370
01:19:00,840 --> 01:19:04,400
Speaker 1: collapse of democracy in Hungary pretty closely, and and you

1371
01:19:04,439 --> 01:19:06,160
Speaker 1: can easily see. I mean, I if Trump was as

1372
01:19:06,160 --> 01:19:08,840
Speaker 1: smart as Victor Orbon, we'd have lost it already. And

1373
01:19:08,880 --> 01:19:13,320
Speaker 1: so this is this is what really scares me most. Uh,

1374
01:19:13,520 --> 01:19:21,960
Speaker 1: there's my pessimism, my optimism. Um, you know, the Americans

1375
01:19:22,000 --> 01:19:25,880
Speaker 1: are just incredibly more open minded than they were as

1376
01:19:25,920 --> 01:19:28,200
Speaker 1: partly young people. It's not just young people. I mean

1377
01:19:28,720 --> 01:19:32,880
Speaker 1: when I think back to what the country was like

1378
01:19:33,040 --> 01:19:36,519
Speaker 1: in in the early nineteen eighties, I mean, and you

1379
01:19:36,560 --> 01:19:38,800
Speaker 1: can you can see it both. You can see it

1380
01:19:38,840 --> 01:19:41,000
Speaker 1: in in polling, but other things too. I mean we

1381
01:19:41,080 --> 01:19:44,800
Speaker 1: I um, as an adult working economist, I lived in

1382
01:19:44,800 --> 01:19:47,200
Speaker 1: a country where only a third of white people thought

1383
01:19:47,240 --> 01:19:52,080
Speaker 1: interracial marriages were okay, a country where. I mean, as

1384
01:19:52,120 --> 01:19:56,360
Speaker 1: recently as two thousand four, gay marriage was a major

1385
01:19:56,360 --> 01:20:00,880
Speaker 1: election losing issue. We're just we had a close mindedness

1386
01:20:00,920 --> 01:20:06,000
Speaker 1: and prejudice level, and we've gotten vastly more tolerant, and

1387
01:20:06,040 --> 01:20:09,120
Speaker 1: that's that's gotta be a good thing. So the pushback

1388
01:20:09,160 --> 01:20:15,320
Speaker 1: to that is hasn't the current administration revealed I'm not

1389
01:20:15,400 --> 01:20:19,280
Speaker 1: saying they are this. I'm saying Trump has revealed there's

1390
01:20:19,280 --> 01:20:24,040
Speaker 1: still big streaks of anti semitism, racism, misogyny, much more

1391
01:20:24,080 --> 01:20:29,559
Speaker 1: in the United States than a naive, upper middle class

1392
01:20:29,560 --> 01:20:33,080
Speaker 1: white guy like myself would have guessed. No one is

1393
01:20:33,080 --> 01:20:36,000
Speaker 1: anti Semitic. To me, how could it exist in the country.

1394
01:20:36,360 --> 01:20:38,479
Speaker 1: You don't get my mail, Oh I I get I

1395
01:20:38,560 --> 01:20:40,240
Speaker 1: used to get the blog comments. You and I have

1396
01:20:40,280 --> 01:20:43,680
Speaker 1: had conversations about how horrific some of the comments used

1397
01:20:43,720 --> 01:20:46,120
Speaker 1: to be, and I just, you know, I just chucked

1398
01:20:46,120 --> 01:20:48,360
Speaker 1: it up to hey, people are getting killed in the

1399
01:20:48,400 --> 01:20:52,000
Speaker 1: financial crisis. No one wants to read me yammering about it,

1400
01:20:52,040 --> 01:20:54,679
Speaker 1: but they do, And then they would make a really

1401
01:20:54,680 --> 01:20:59,120
Speaker 1: obnoxious comment that said I didn't think that that was

1402
01:20:59,240 --> 01:21:02,840
Speaker 1: I didn't never repulated that to the rest of American society.

1403
01:21:03,000 --> 01:21:05,160
Speaker 1: I think that but that stuff is always there, and

1404
01:21:05,200 --> 01:21:07,479
Speaker 1: that's what you think of it as a streak is

1405
01:21:07,520 --> 01:21:10,320
Speaker 1: like you know, a couple of outsider cranks. No, it's

1406
01:21:10,479 --> 01:21:12,920
Speaker 1: it's it kind of feels like it's a little more

1407
01:21:13,720 --> 01:21:16,720
Speaker 1: expansive than it was. I actually wrote something it's not

1408
01:21:16,920 --> 01:21:19,439
Speaker 1: it's not in arguing with zombies, but I wrote something,

1409
01:21:19,680 --> 01:21:26,040
Speaker 1: uh early two thousand's about about actually about France, where

1410
01:21:26,479 --> 01:21:29,800
Speaker 1: at the National Front had gotten a lot of votes

1411
01:21:29,800 --> 01:21:32,519
Speaker 1: in an election and saying that there that there are

1412
01:21:32,520 --> 01:21:35,240
Speaker 1: angry people, that there's something like a quarter of the population,

1413
01:21:35,280 --> 01:21:38,000
Speaker 1: and every advanced country who are who are all of

1414
01:21:38,040 --> 01:21:40,800
Speaker 1: these things? And that doesn't go away the idea that

1415
01:21:40,800 --> 01:21:45,200
Speaker 1: we're every disenfranchise frustrated and will express it in kicking

1416
01:21:45,200 --> 01:21:47,160
Speaker 1: the cat in any way they can. Yeah, and does

1417
01:21:47,200 --> 01:21:50,680
Speaker 1: anybody uh? And as it's always the usual things, it's

1418
01:21:50,680 --> 01:21:53,760
Speaker 1: always about brown people, it's always um. I don't know

1419
01:21:53,800 --> 01:21:56,040
Speaker 1: if anybody listens to Tom Lear or anymore, but he

1420
01:21:56,080 --> 01:22:00,559
Speaker 1: had a great satirical song from nineteen one about uh

1421
01:22:00,720 --> 01:22:02,960
Speaker 1: that that choruses the Protestants hate the Catholics, and the

1422
01:22:03,000 --> 01:22:05,439
Speaker 1: Catholics hate the Protestants, and they hate the Muslims and

1423
01:22:05,479 --> 01:22:08,600
Speaker 1: everybody hates the Jews, and uh, and that's uh, so

1424
01:22:08,720 --> 01:22:11,439
Speaker 1: that's always there. But the point is that there was

1425
01:22:11,520 --> 01:22:15,400
Speaker 1: a sort of assumption that that majority, the majority of

1426
01:22:15,439 --> 01:22:18,720
Speaker 1: the population was like that, which was probably true in

1427
01:22:18,840 --> 01:22:22,760
Speaker 1: the in the fifties, and it's not. Uh, it's a

1428
01:22:22,800 --> 01:22:27,559
Speaker 1: lot better now. So just just as economics advances one

1429
01:22:27,600 --> 01:22:31,719
Speaker 1: funeral at a time, does the enlightenment of America advanced

1430
01:22:31,760 --> 01:22:35,200
Speaker 1: one generation at a time? Is that what's going on? Well? Some,

1431
01:22:35,479 --> 01:22:38,360
Speaker 1: I mean you although there are plenty of you know,

1432
01:22:38,400 --> 01:22:42,320
Speaker 1: there are plenty of horrible young people and plenty of

1433
01:22:43,160 --> 01:22:46,840
Speaker 1: pretty decent older people, so it's not that straightforward, but

1434
01:22:46,960 --> 01:22:50,120
Speaker 1: it's uh. I think it is true that that the younger,

1435
01:22:50,600 --> 01:22:54,439
Speaker 1: younger generations are more tolerant than older generations. And um.

1436
01:22:54,520 --> 01:22:55,880
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you know, I grew up in

1437
01:22:55,880 --> 01:22:58,920
Speaker 1: the sixties and I did watch lots of age of

1438
01:22:58,920 --> 01:23:02,120
Speaker 1: aquarious people to and into a Wall Street traders, So uh,

1439
01:23:02,800 --> 01:23:06,000
Speaker 1: that's not always the case that people. Right, what's the

1440
01:23:06,000 --> 01:23:09,839
Speaker 1: old joke, You're you're heartless if you're not a socialist

1441
01:23:09,920 --> 01:23:13,679
Speaker 1: when you're young and a capitalist when you're older. No, anyone,

1442
01:23:13,720 --> 01:23:16,160
Speaker 1: anyone who's who is not a socialist under thirty has

1443
01:23:16,160 --> 01:23:18,519
Speaker 1: no heart. Anyone who's still a socialist after thirty has

1444
01:23:18,520 --> 01:23:20,600
Speaker 1: no head. There was the old line that that's a

1445
01:23:20,640 --> 01:23:24,880
Speaker 1: great joke. So we're down to our last two UM questions.

1446
01:23:25,160 --> 01:23:27,720
Speaker 1: Speaking of young people, what sort of advice would you

1447
01:23:27,760 --> 01:23:31,960
Speaker 1: give a college graduate or millennial who was interested in

1448
01:23:32,000 --> 01:23:37,680
Speaker 1: exploring a career in economics? Okay, UM, so you know,

1449
01:23:37,720 --> 01:23:40,599
Speaker 1: first of all, do get the education? UM? And does

1450
01:23:40,640 --> 01:23:43,200
Speaker 1: that mean doctorate or how far do you go? It

1451
01:23:43,240 --> 01:23:45,000
Speaker 1: depends on what you want to do, but you want

1452
01:23:45,000 --> 01:23:47,040
Speaker 1: to you're gonna need some kind of graduate degree to

1453
01:23:47,040 --> 01:23:50,040
Speaker 1: get on trade into stuff. A master's in some cases

1454
01:23:50,080 --> 01:23:53,040
Speaker 1: as good enough, but the UM. But you do need

1455
01:23:53,120 --> 01:23:57,080
Speaker 1: some certification. UM. You know. The thing I can say

1456
01:23:57,400 --> 01:24:05,040
Speaker 1: is um, yeah it uh, it's you do do figure

1457
01:24:05,080 --> 01:24:08,719
Speaker 1: out what you're good at and and something that interests

1458
01:24:08,760 --> 01:24:12,479
Speaker 1: you but not necessarily of cosmic importance. Figure out something

1459
01:24:12,520 --> 01:24:15,639
Speaker 1: that's really good and that that that you do well,

1460
01:24:15,920 --> 01:24:19,200
Speaker 1: and get that as a kind of a baseline. You

1461
01:24:19,240 --> 01:24:21,640
Speaker 1: can you can branch out, you can start to do

1462
01:24:21,680 --> 01:24:23,840
Speaker 1: stuff like writing newspaper columns or so on later on,

1463
01:24:23,880 --> 01:24:27,120
Speaker 1: but you do want to get that baseline. In fact,

1464
01:24:27,160 --> 01:24:30,599
Speaker 1: your contribution to society, by and large basically the answer

1465
01:24:30,760 --> 01:24:34,559
Speaker 1: don't try to be me uh uh not yet uh

1466
01:24:34,600 --> 01:24:38,400
Speaker 1: and uh the U I quote in arguing with zombies.

1467
01:24:38,439 --> 01:24:40,280
Speaker 1: I quote there was an essay by Riemon Chandler on

1468
01:24:40,400 --> 01:24:43,320
Speaker 1: writing I'm writing books, and he said, you know that

1469
01:24:43,360 --> 01:24:45,559
Speaker 1: there have been some very dull books written about God

1470
01:24:45,600 --> 01:24:49,040
Speaker 1: and some very fine books written about making a living

1471
01:24:49,040 --> 01:24:52,040
Speaker 1: while staying fairly honest. So focus on where you can

1472
01:24:52,040 --> 01:24:55,920
Speaker 1: actually add. I like that. And our final question, what

1473
01:24:55,960 --> 01:24:58,840
Speaker 1: do you know about the world of economics today that

1474
01:24:59,000 --> 01:25:01,559
Speaker 1: you wish you knew thirty or forty years ago when

1475
01:25:01,560 --> 01:25:06,160
Speaker 1: you were first ramping up your career. Oh? Actually, see,

1476
01:25:06,200 --> 01:25:13,520
Speaker 1: the thing is my career has been uh that the

1477
01:25:13,520 --> 01:25:16,519
Speaker 1: the angels were smiling on me. I've had an optimal career.

1478
01:25:16,600 --> 01:25:20,559
Speaker 1: There never been anything that everything who broke the right

1479
01:25:20,600 --> 01:25:23,840
Speaker 1: way for me in ways that that's just uh, I

1480
01:25:23,880 --> 01:25:27,360
Speaker 1: had no right to to to expect. So it's not

1481
01:25:27,560 --> 01:25:34,200
Speaker 1: that um what I There is now a major uh

1482
01:25:34,360 --> 01:25:38,520
Speaker 1: sort of scandal has pretty much come up in economics

1483
01:25:38,520 --> 01:25:42,360
Speaker 1: where we're realizing just how strong the misogyny within the

1484
01:25:42,400 --> 01:25:47,479
Speaker 1: profession has been, just how badly um people, how badly

1485
01:25:47,479 --> 01:25:50,200
Speaker 1: women have been treated, you know, not Harvey Weinstein level.

1486
01:25:50,240 --> 01:25:55,040
Speaker 1: But but lots of of discrimination is just in terms

1487
01:25:55,120 --> 01:25:59,280
Speaker 1: of hiring or publishing or everything publishing, the way that

1488
01:25:59,320 --> 01:26:01,240
Speaker 1: they're treated and am in ours. And of course then

1489
01:26:01,280 --> 01:26:05,479
Speaker 1: the thanks to uh we have you know, anonymous social media.

1490
01:26:05,560 --> 01:26:07,960
Speaker 1: We know the way that that some male economists talk

1491
01:26:08,000 --> 01:26:13,800
Speaker 1: about their female colleagues. Um. And I was oblivious. I

1492
01:26:14,200 --> 01:26:16,559
Speaker 1: you know, maybe had some sense, but I didn't realize.

1493
01:26:16,560 --> 01:26:18,760
Speaker 1: I don't think I was ever doing it, but I

1494
01:26:18,840 --> 01:26:23,920
Speaker 1: wasn't um campaigning to to say let's stop this. So

1495
01:26:23,960 --> 01:26:27,120
Speaker 1: I I really wish that I had been more aware.

1496
01:26:27,280 --> 01:26:30,759
Speaker 1: I was sitting there comfortably, you know, and it's super

1497
01:26:30,800 --> 01:26:33,080
Speaker 1: comfortable environment. And mean I was I had all the

1498
01:26:33,160 --> 01:26:36,200
Speaker 1: qualifications at the right school. I was white, that was male.

1499
01:26:36,320 --> 01:26:39,080
Speaker 1: I was Jewish, which actually and economics in my generation

1500
01:26:39,160 --> 01:26:42,760
Speaker 1: was sort of normal. Uh and um, And had no

1501
01:26:42,840 --> 01:26:47,320
Speaker 1: idea what a lot of people were going through. Um

1502
01:26:47,479 --> 01:26:50,800
Speaker 1: And so I regret if I had, if I had

1503
01:26:50,840 --> 01:26:52,960
Speaker 1: had a better sense of what was really going on,

1504
01:26:53,560 --> 01:26:56,160
Speaker 1: maybe I could have contributed a little bit to making

1505
01:26:56,160 --> 01:27:00,920
Speaker 1: it better interesting observation along those lines. Paul, thank you

1506
01:27:00,960 --> 01:27:03,760
Speaker 1: so much for being so generous with your time. We

1507
01:27:03,840 --> 01:27:08,320
Speaker 1: have been speaking with Paul Krugman professor at Cuney Graduate School,

1508
01:27:08,520 --> 01:27:13,200
Speaker 1: as well as the author, most recently of Arguing with Zombies.

1509
01:27:13,760 --> 01:27:16,240
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this conversation, well be sure and look

1510
01:27:16,320 --> 01:27:18,360
Speaker 1: Up an Inch or Down an Inch on Apple iTunes

1511
01:27:18,760 --> 01:27:21,400
Speaker 1: and you can see any of the three hundred plus

1512
01:27:21,800 --> 01:27:25,920
Speaker 1: conversations we've had over the past five plus years. We

1513
01:27:26,000 --> 01:27:29,559
Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at

1514
01:27:30,240 --> 01:27:32,840
Speaker 1: m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Give us a

1515
01:27:32,920 --> 01:27:37,800
Speaker 1: review on Apple iTunes. Check out my daily reads on

1516
01:27:37,920 --> 01:27:42,160
Speaker 1: rid Halts dot com, my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com.

1517
01:27:42,280 --> 01:27:45,439
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at rit Halts. I would be

1518
01:27:45,479 --> 01:27:48,040
Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank the Cracks staff that

1519
01:27:48,120 --> 01:27:53,680
Speaker 1: helps put together these conversations each week. Sam Chivraj is

1520
01:27:53,760 --> 01:27:58,360
Speaker 1: my producer. Michael Batnick is my head of research. I'm

1521
01:27:58,439 --> 01:28:01,000
Speaker 1: Barry rit Halts. You've been listen sending some Masters in

1522
01:28:01,080 --> 01:28:02,840
Speaker 1: Business on Bloomberg Radio.