Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording from the home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: as we keep hearing things like the economy is doing well.
Speaker 1: Last week the Wall Street Journal put out in favorable
Speaker 1: article saying that they were impressed and surprised at how
Speaker 1: quickly the US economy was doing and how it has rebounded.
Speaker 1: And we hear about jobs reports, and we hear about
Speaker 1: all sorts of things. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's this push and pull between the oligarchs, right, the
Speaker 1: mega capitalists that see the rest of us in the
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent as just cogs and a wheel that
Speaker 1: they grind and grind and grind out to increase their
Speaker 1: profits at the expense of our health, our happiness, and
Speaker 1: our ability to attain whatever version of the American dreams
Speaker 1: still exists. And you know what, we all I think
Speaker 1: that what has come into our forefront, and particularly again
Speaker 1: looking at COVID nineteen and this being the time when
Speaker 1: we really had a moment, those of us that were
Speaker 1: privileged to take a pause and say, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: why am I working in this way? Why am I
Speaker 1: giving ten twelve hours a day, to this capitalistic machine,
Speaker 1: to this firm, to this organization, to this company, right
Speaker 1: to this entity, only to be spit out right, only
Speaker 1: to have my wages stagnant, only to watch, as you know,
Speaker 1: the Jeff Bezos of the world want to think the
Speaker 1: Amazon employees for sending them to fucking outer space. And
Speaker 1: so in my conversation today, was very excited to speak
Speaker 1: with Nick Romeo, who covers policy and ideas for The
Speaker 1: New Yorker and teaches in the Graduate School of Journalism
Speaker 1: at the University of Berkeley, because he has a new book,
Speaker 1: The Alternative, How to Build a Just Economy. And what
Speaker 1: I loved about our conversation is that it's some things
Speaker 1: that we know right, but it's other things that we
Speaker 1: don't know that Are we waiting for the one percent
Speaker 1: to give us permission? Are we waiting for the oppressors
Speaker 1: to essentially decide that, oh, maybe I found my moral compass.
Speaker 1: Are there different options and opportunities for the rest of
Speaker 1: us that don't rely on the benevolence of people who
Speaker 1: have showed us just how greedy they can be. So
Speaker 1: in this book, The Alternative, How to Build a Just Economy,
Speaker 1: Nick Romeo discusses the terrifying trends of the early twenty
Speaker 1: first century, the widening inequality, environmental destruction, and the emiseration
Speaker 1: of millions of workers around the world. And he talks
Speaker 1: about private markets and the efficiency of public ones, but
Speaker 1: basically coming to a place of is it possible to
Speaker 1: build an economy that works for the rest of us?
Speaker 1: And understand that capitalism was an idea, just like feudalism
Speaker 1: was an idea, So can we reimagine something better? That
Speaker 1: conversation with Nick Romeo is coming up next, folks. I
Speaker 1: am very excited to well come to ok F Daily
Speaker 1: for the very first time. Nick Romeo, who covers policy
Speaker 1: and ideas for The New Yorker and teaches in the
Speaker 1: Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley,
Speaker 1: and is author of a new book that literally is
Speaker 1: hot on your shelves right now, The Alternative How to
Speaker 1: Build a Just Economy. Nick, let's start off with a
Speaker 1: couple of I have so many questions, but I want
Speaker 1: to start off with your definition of what a just
Speaker 1: economy is right versus what we understand as a economy
Speaker 1: that we live in right now. What does it mean
Speaker 1: for you? To create a just economy.
Speaker 2: Well, first, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited
Speaker 2: to talk about the book. You know. It's a good
Speaker 2: question and sort of one that I'm not asked often enough.
Speaker 2: I think it's not a self evident phrase. You know,
Speaker 2: what does a just economy mean? I would answer it
Speaker 2: sort of at two levels. At the highest level, I
Speaker 2: think it's one that reflects human design, and especially human
Speaker 2: design in a kind of broadly democratic sense. So rather
Speaker 2: than being regarded as a domain of technocratic expertise best
Speaker 2: left to experts, I think a just economy, and this,
Speaker 2: you know, flows pretty naturally from a commitment to democracy,
Speaker 2: I think it should reflect a kind of broad scale
Speaker 2: intentionality by people. At a more specific level, you know,
Speaker 2: my answer would have to do with things like wealth
Speaker 2: inequality and climate change. I think those are two extraordinary
Speaker 2: challenges that any sort of just economy has to take
Speaker 2: quite seriously.
Speaker 1: I think about so many things when I saw the
Speaker 1: title of your book, because I think about the amount
Speaker 1: of greed right that we have seen that I think
Speaker 1: that most people, we've just kind of been moving through
Speaker 1: our lives, whether you live in the United States or elsewhere,
Speaker 1: we've been moving through our lives as cogs in a machine,
Speaker 1: right where we've understood and kind of accepted the fact
Speaker 1: that there are the top one percent that we have
Speaker 1: been told or smarter, you know, have more access and
Speaker 1: if we were them, we would do the same thing
Speaker 1: that they do. And so so long as we can
Speaker 1: keep our head above water, the rest of us are okay.
Speaker 1: Then COVID hit and I think that collectively we all
Speaker 1: began to really assess. Those of us that were privileged
Speaker 1: enough to be at home and work from home, we
Speaker 1: were able to pause and assess and see that, Wow,
Speaker 1: this system really is not right. You know, where sure
Speaker 1: people take taxes from us, government takes taxes, but when
Speaker 1: we actually need those funds the most, it requires emergency. Right.
Speaker 1: And when we see that people are working two three
Speaker 1: four jobs, we make something sexy and we call it
Speaker 1: that gig economy. Right, We make it seem like it's
Speaker 1: fun to work for jobs in order to make ends meet.
Speaker 1: I wonder how you think that our understanding of how
Speaker 1: our system has been unjust right was really exacerbated during
Speaker 1: COVID and now makes room for your book, your alternatives
Speaker 1: in terms of how we are thinking, Like I just
Speaker 1: think as workers. We've just been doing, and then there
Speaker 1: was this great pause, and now we're thinking about what
Speaker 1: we've been asked to do.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, I think I broadly share your analysis
Speaker 2: of the past few years. You know, in the book,
Speaker 2: I talk talk a little bit about this sort of
Speaker 2: default assumption that morality and justice are simply irrelevant concepts
Speaker 2: in the economic sphere, and I trace this back through
Speaker 2: a few centuries of economic and political thought. There's a
Speaker 2: kind of tradition that says the economy kind of akin
Speaker 2: to the natural world, is this law governed realm that
Speaker 2: only scientists can understand. When they do understand it, the
Speaker 2: laws are inevitable, they can never be changed, and so
Speaker 2: the best you can do is just kind of struggle
Speaker 2: to get by, or if you happen to be in
Speaker 2: the top one percent, like you mentioned, you can maybe
Speaker 2: congratulate yourself and feel occasional pity for other people. If
Speaker 2: that so the target of a lot of critique, both
Speaker 2: within academic economics, but also you know, by people in
Speaker 2: the private sector and the public sector who are actually
Speaker 2: pulling policy levers running businesses. I think at some level
Speaker 2: the target of critique is this inevitable view that the
Speaker 2: economy is a realm where morality has no place, and
Speaker 2: all we can do is follow laws that are akin
Speaker 2: to the laws of physics. So, you know, in the book,
Speaker 2: I talk about a lot of people within academia who
Speaker 2: are trying to reform economics education in order to kind
Speaker 2: of expand our political imagination to say, actually, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of key decisions about sort of distribution of resources,
Speaker 2: labor markets, quality of jobs, impacts on other people in
Speaker 2: the natural world. These are fundamentally moral and political, and
Speaker 2: to regard them as just sort of like the mechanistic
Speaker 2: model that a lot of neoclassical economics has used is
Speaker 2: a mistake, and it's also a mistake that really benefits
Speaker 2: entrenched interests.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Also, I agree with you that basically COVID was this
Speaker 2: little opening, a kind of clearing in the clouds where
Speaker 2: people had a sense that the gaps in the system,
Speaker 2: the fallacies and the reasoning were a little bit more
Speaker 2: present and salient maybe than they had been in previous years.
Speaker 1: I love when you said, like, open up the imagination
Speaker 1: and this idea that the way that we've thought about
Speaker 1: the economy has been like, oh, well, then there's gravity
Speaker 1: there's capitalism, there's gravity, right like the you know, it
Speaker 1: is just what it is. And anytime there is any
Speaker 1: type of movement to think about this structure differently who
Speaker 1: it is created for the system and who it's created for,
Speaker 1: who benefits, who doesn't, who's left behind? How most of
Speaker 1: us are one emergency bill, one emergency visit to you know,
Speaker 1: the hospital, away from you know, bankruptcy, except we can't
Speaker 1: actually eat apply from bankruptcy, right Like you're not a
Speaker 1: corporation uberwealthy, right, So for the average person, there's no
Speaker 1: way out. What I think about is interesting and someone
Speaker 1: I want you to offer up some of the suggestions
Speaker 1: that you provide and solutions that you offer in the
Speaker 1: book through your analysis. Is what it seems to me
Speaker 1: is that in order to make a change, though, there
Speaker 1: needs to be a will to do so. And I'm
Speaker 1: not certain that the people that are in power, that
Speaker 1: are controlling the levers of power that are tilted towards
Speaker 1: their favor outside of there being some type of moral
Speaker 1: compass which I just have not seen over the past
Speaker 1: ten years, let alone the entirety of my career in politics,
Speaker 1: that there is a will that is there that they
Speaker 1: are incentivized by just feeling good about not hoarding all
Speaker 1: of their resources at the top and seeing that well workers,
Speaker 1: these people are just expendable. So I'm wondering where will
Speaker 1: comes in to the solutions that you offer, and please
Speaker 1: do share some of the communal ways of operating and
Speaker 1: being like you did with examples of Patagonia and others.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, you know, I think you're right that there
Speaker 2: are certainly some folks for whom moral motivations are not
Speaker 2: particularly strong, and there's not a lot of will you
Speaker 2: know that being said, Within the book, I try to
Speaker 2: bring some sort of some nuance to the analysis of
Speaker 2: like the private sector, for example, because there are people
Speaker 2: with a range of motivations and kind of my goal
Speaker 2: is to spotlight some of the people doing really interesting
Speaker 2: and powerful work. So to give you a few examples.
Speaker 2: You know, people talk a lot about retiring business owners.
Speaker 2: Estimates vary, but everyone agrees that a huge percentage of
Speaker 2: American GDP is represented by folks who are in their
Speaker 2: sixties and seve and these folks are on the point
Speaker 2: of transition. Now, transition can take multiple forms. You could
Speaker 2: sell your company or your business to private equity. You
Speaker 2: can make a lot of money doing that. But then
Speaker 2: private equity may fire half of your staff. They'll certainly
Speaker 2: prioritize return on investment over wages and benefits for workers,
Speaker 2: or say, donations to organizations that support environmental causes. Now,
Speaker 2: a sale to private equity is not the only option
Speaker 2: for retiring business owners. One chapter in my book, I
Speaker 2: look at people who are converting the ownership structure of
Speaker 2: their businesses to a legal vehicle called a perpetual purpose trust.
Speaker 2: And just like the name suggests, it exists in perpetuity,
Speaker 2: and it stipulates a purpose as the sort of defining reason,
Speaker 2: the basic motivation of the business. So rather than profit maximumation,
Speaker 2: your purpose might be, well, I talk about a bakery
Speaker 2: here in Oakland, California, where the purpose is to hire
Speaker 2: folks who are formerly homeless or incarcerated and to do
Speaker 2: profit sharing with employees. So now you know, anyone who
Speaker 2: wants to buy this business in the future has to
Speaker 2: respect that purpose. So it's sort of protecting a social
Speaker 2: mission above the kind of standard profit maximizing one. And
Speaker 2: you know, there are enormous businesses doing this, like you mentioned.
Speaker 2: Patagonia is one example. So there's three billion dollar business
Speaker 2: using a purpose trust model. But there are also lots
Speaker 2: of smaller businesses, you know, people who might do three
Speaker 2: to five million dollars of revenue annually, all the way
Speaker 2: up to mid range, say fifty to one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you aggregate this, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: not a trivial part of the American economy. And so
Speaker 2: I think there is some optimism with that kind of
Speaker 2: purpose trust model, although like you say, ultimately this hinges
Speaker 2: on a previous will, a previous moral commitment. So I
Speaker 2: agree with that point.
Speaker 1: I wonder too, there there are and I think that
Speaker 1: you also do examine in other countries and other spaces
Speaker 1: where there is more of a communal sense of being
Speaker 1: right that if you know, and I have worked inside
Speaker 1: of movements that want to create a movement around you know,
Speaker 1: this idea that we're not all islands onto ourselves, that
Speaker 1: it isn't about you know, this one wealthy person over here,
Speaker 1: because if everyone around you right is suffering, then how
Speaker 1: wealthy are you truly? And is there a way to
Speaker 1: have a shared sense of responsibility? And you can look
Speaker 1: at countries that you know, we talk about on this
Speaker 1: show that have you know, robust healthcare systems because the
Speaker 1: money that was being drained out by taking care of
Speaker 1: those that were ill. It's just like, well, we can
Speaker 1: create this, like we have the resources and the tax
Speaker 1: dollars to do this. Again, to me, though, it comes
Speaker 1: back to the sense of who is the collective weed
Speaker 1: that we want to do right by? And if we were,
Speaker 1: you know, if America was a homogenous type of place,
Speaker 1: then I could see, oh, yeah, let's move into this
Speaker 1: economy that is more of a shared economy, as people
Speaker 1: have said, where the workers get to have a piece
Speaker 1: and that incentivizes them. Didn't we have something like that
Speaker 1: where businesses offered pensions. You put in this amount of
Speaker 1: time for us, and then we're going to take care
Speaker 1: of you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You know, one thing I talk a lot about
Speaker 2: in the book throughout is worker ownership, and they're different
Speaker 2: models and different companies that are really trying to expand
Speaker 2: the percentage of American workers, but also workers around the
Speaker 2: world who own equity in the companies for which they work.
Speaker 2: And to your point that there used to be a
Speaker 2: more widespread embrace of this model. You know, something I
Speaker 2: mentioned in the book. If you think about seers department stores,
Speaker 2: a once mighty American brand. You know, if if Amazon
Speaker 2: today had the same level of worker ownership that Seers
Speaker 2: department stores did in the nineteen fifties, Amazon workers and
Speaker 2: this is actually from twenty eighteen, so the figures would
Speaker 2: be higher now. But Amazon workers in twenty eighteen, each
Speaker 2: one would have owned about three hundred and eighty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars of equity and Amazon so, you know, think about
Speaker 2: folks delivering packages, driving forklifts around warehouses. If all of
Speaker 2: those folks had, you know, today, it would be closer
Speaker 2: to a million dollars. I think Amazon stock has close
Speaker 2: to double since twenty eighteen. If all of those folks
Speaker 2: had hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity, that would
Speaker 2: go a long way towards creating a middle class. If
Speaker 2: you expand that model to the top one hundred businesses
Speaker 2: in America, you know, I think that that would be
Speaker 2: a pretty extraordinary change. And it's it's just worth remembering that, yes,
Speaker 2: pensions used to be widespread, worker ownership used to be
Speaker 2: much more common. There's no sort of physical law akin
Speaker 2: to gravitation preventing this from being the case. Again. You know,
Speaker 2: another thing that comes to mind is the model of
Speaker 2: the Mandragon cooperatives in Spain, which I'm happy to talk
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah please please, yeah, unpack that for us.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, so, mandra Gon is really fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: There a network of co ops in the northern part
Speaker 2: of Spain and a huge range of industries are all
Speaker 2: organized in this cooperative manner. So you know, they do
Speaker 2: everything from manufacture of injustice components like parts of jet
Speaker 2: engines or elevators, to serviced oriented things like there are
Speaker 2: grocery stores organized according to this cooperative model. The basic
Speaker 2: feature of the model is really two elements. One is
Speaker 2: a six to one cap of highest to lowest worker pay.
Speaker 2: So if you're the CEO and I'm the lowest paid worker,
Speaker 2: you can never make six x what I do. So
Speaker 2: that's a key component of their model. Another key component
Speaker 2: is democratic governance. You know, people often talk about workplace democracy,
Speaker 2: so what does that mean. It means that every worker
Speaker 2: gets a vote on key decisions, and these can be
Speaker 2: really impactful decisions like during the pandemic, should we decrease
Speaker 2: our hours to protect our long term interests or should we,
Speaker 2: you know, should we consider a new acquisition, do we
Speaker 2: want to buy another company, one worker, one vote on
Speaker 2: these decisions. So it's a kind of radically democratic model,
Speaker 2: and it's also a model that limits wealth inequality. You know,
Speaker 2: one thing I really like that you said earlier is
Speaker 2: that wealth alone is sort of inadequate to give someone
Speaker 2: a good life. I quote in the book an engineer
Speaker 2: at Mandragon who had actually declined some competing job offers
Speaker 2: elsewhere in Spain where he would have made a lot
Speaker 2: more money, And what he said to me was, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd rather live here with a lot of friends than
Speaker 2: live alone like a king. I think the American dream, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: is closer to living alone like a king. What I
Speaker 2: like about his comment is the suggestion that that's actually
Speaker 2: sort of a nightmare, right, that doesn't respond to sort
Speaker 2: of a basic aspect of humans, which is we like community,
Speaker 2: we like other people, and radical wealth inequality tends to
Speaker 2: erode those common bonds that make for a good life.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, what your thoughts then? In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, in the summer, you know, we had
Speaker 1: so many different industries were on strike, right, You had
Speaker 1: the writers, you had the actors, you had you know,
Speaker 1: the auto industry, you had. You know, all of these
Speaker 1: different groups were going on strike, and unions are seeing
Speaker 1: a resurgence in a way right to increase worker protections,
Speaker 1: pay and all of these things. How does that pair
Speaker 1: into again, not just asking for the bare minimum, right
Speaker 1: like bathroom breaks right like, you know, not just asking
Speaker 1: for the bare minimum. But how does that kind of
Speaker 1: movement pair with what you're offering in your book, which
Speaker 1: is this robust alternative, multiple alternatives. We don't have to
Speaker 1: live this way under this system.
Speaker 2: I think unions are an essential part of winning some
Speaker 2: of these concessions, you know, whether that's living wages or
Speaker 2: actual equity ownership in companies, more humane working conditions, more
Speaker 2: meaningful and satisfying jobs. You know, collective bargaining has been
Speaker 2: crucial to keeping wealth inequality in check. We know that
Speaker 2: from the middle decades of the twentieth century, when union
Speaker 2: rates were high and inequality was relatively low. There are
Speaker 2: strong legislative headwinds, it's tough to organize. The field is
Speaker 2: kind of tilted against unions at this point. I think
Speaker 2: on doing that would be a great sort of policy goal.
Speaker 2: You know, one thing I talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: in the book, though, is that just like you said,
Speaker 2: it's sort of it's one thing to win a bare minimum, right,
Speaker 2: like maybe just enough of a wage increase that folks
Speaker 2: can pay the rent, that they can afford food. But
Speaker 2: if you actually think about the kind of financial necessities
Speaker 2: in our current economy, given the cost of housing, the
Speaker 2: cost of a college education, wage increases alone are pretty
Speaker 2: unlikely to ever build up the sort of generational wealth
Speaker 2: that would allow people to buy a home in most
Speaker 2: parts of America to pay for college education for their
Speaker 2: kids or their grandkids. I think for that level of
Speaker 2: wealth accumulation, we need to be thinking about more than wages.
Speaker 2: We need to be thinking about worker ownership, where value
Speaker 2: creation doesn't just flow away to shareholders, it goes directly
Speaker 2: to people who are day in and day out doing
Speaker 2: the work, whether that's at an Amazon or really anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Last question for you is a political one, you know,
Speaker 1: a deeply political one. Is that you know, we're in
Speaker 1: the midst of the beginning of a most consequential presidential
Speaker 1: election this country I think has ever seen. And you know,
Speaker 1: we're have one party that is hell bent on you know,
Speaker 1: authoritarianism right and a king right and holding up in
Speaker 1: the recreation of a king and another that is struggling
Speaker 1: to find a message that resonates. And we always say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's the economy, it's the economy. But how we talk
Speaker 1: about the economy and what we say about the economy
Speaker 1: doesn't from a political sphere, doesn't ever seem to land
Speaker 1: with workers in an a layman space. And so if
Speaker 1: you were offering up right to Biden, like we need
Speaker 1: to break open and have like you said, deep imagination, right, like,
Speaker 1: give people who are suffering from hopelessness a sense of
Speaker 1: what is possible, what would you say.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a tricky question, but I guess you know,
Speaker 2: my advice would be to focus on some of these
Speaker 2: core economic issues. And you know, two things in particular
Speaker 2: come to mind. One is bringing industrial jobs back to America.
Speaker 2: You know, the Inflation Reduction Act with a pretty impressive
Speaker 2: distance in that direction. But I think there's a sort
Speaker 2: of a lot more to do, both in communicating and
Speaker 2: sort of celebrating what's been achieved, but also in actually
Speaker 2: achieving more. You know, I think that really since NAFTA
Speaker 2: in the early nineties, the Democrats have not worked particularly
Speaker 2: hard for the working class. They've cared much more about
Speaker 2: the sort of wealthier sectors of the economy. So one
Speaker 2: key element I think is actually creating industrial jobs here
Speaker 2: in America. This is potentially bipartisan as well. Right, there
Speaker 2: are folks on the right who, whatever you think of
Speaker 2: their motives, they're concerned about supply chain security, they're concerned
Speaker 2: about national security, they want more production onshore. So that's
Speaker 2: kind of one point. And then I guess the second point,
Speaker 2: not to be too much of a broken record, would be,
Speaker 2: you know, to make say, corporate tax breaks, if you
Speaker 2: have to have them, what if all of those were
Speaker 2: contingent on extending worker ownership to all employees. So again,
Speaker 2: if we think about the one hundred largest companies in America,
Speaker 2: if they adopted even modest levels of worker ownership like
Speaker 2: Sears had in the nineteen fifties, you know, we could
Speaker 2: have millions of workers with hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: in equity. And I think that's the sort of change
Speaker 2: to folks circumstances that the Democrats, if they could point
Speaker 2: to that and say, well, look, now you have four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars we believe in the working class, that
Speaker 2: would not be a hollow message, right, That would be
Speaker 2: a real achievement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nick Romeo, thank you so much for making the
Speaker 1: time for WOKF folks. The book is the Alternative How
Speaker 1: to Build a Just Economy and it is out now,
Speaker 1: so get it Nick. I hope that you come back
Speaker 1: and join us again. This was a really illuminating conversation
Speaker 1: for me on how to think about the economy and
Speaker 1: talk about it differently. So appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today. Dear friends on WOKF
Speaker 1: as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.