WEBVTT - Malcolm Harris on "Keynes Was Wrong. Gen Z Will Have It Worse." 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.439 I'm Bethany McLean and this is making a killing interviews, 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:08.480 exploring the headlines you thought you understood, and finding the 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:12.119 long term lessons we can all learn from today's business stories. 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:17.840 I'm at Bethany mac twelve on Twitter. My guest today has, 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:22.320 among other things, a talent for writing catchy titles. Malcolm Harris, 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.160 who's an editor at The New Inquiry and an admirably 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:29.800 outspoken writer, published a recent piece in MIT's Technology Review 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.680 entitled Canes was wrong, gen Z will have it worse. 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.320 Malcolm is also the author of Kids These Days, and 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:40.960 his forthcoming book is entitled Shit is Fucked Up in 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:45.440 Bullshit History Since the end of History. Let's get some 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.000 generational clarity out of the way for context and disclosure, 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:52.479 I am squarely in gen x. Malcolm, as you'll hear 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.680 in the interview, is deeply gen y. In other words, 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:59.080 a millennial. My kids still elementary age are gen z. 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.400 I have no idea what any future grandchildren would be 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:04.679 called or what kind of world they'll be living in. 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:07.920 John Maynard Keynes, on the other hand, thought he knew 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:11.360 what his grandchildren would be facing. In his popular essay 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.720 from the early nineteen thirties called economic possibilities for our grandchildren. 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:19.279 The founder of macroeconomics wrote about the world a hundred 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:22.520 years in the future, which is pretty much now. He 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.759 imagined that capitalism would be almost over by now, having 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:29.440 simply been a means to greater ends. In his books 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:33.479 and in his articles, Malcolm seeks to understand where Canes 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.479 got it wrong and defies the cultural impression of millennials 0:01:37.560 --> 0:01:42.760 as tantrumy teenagers. Instead, he tries to understand what made 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.480 millennials the way they are, burned out, waiting later and 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:49.559 later to get married or have kids, terrified of debt 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:54.440 yet saddled with it, focused on technology inefficiency, but also 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.120 trying to have a larger purpose in life than work 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:01.000 for work's sake. Malcolm writes that a yuk of poll 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:05.120 found that support for capitalism among Americans under thirty fell 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:09.280 from thirty nine percent to thirty percent between two fifteen 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:14.000 and twenty eighteen. That's fourteen percentage points below the average. 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.440 At the same time, the prime age workforce of twenty 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:21.239 thirty was born between nineteen seventy six and two thousand 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.840 and five. So if Malcolm's right, his answers helped paint 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:28.680 a portrait of the economy of the future, and who 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.560 doesn't want to know more about that. I'm so excited 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.440 to dig into this today and grateful to Malcolm for 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.600 coming from Philly to meet me in New York. Hi, Malcolm. 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.160 So let's start with John Maynard Came's. I think it's 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.720 a name most people have heard, but you hold different 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.120 things out of his writing than other people have. What 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:50.680 made you gravitate toward him? Well, one of the reasons 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.320 I picked Cane's to focus this essay around was this 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:57.799 prediction about twenty thirty and realizing that the workers he's 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:01.000 talking about are all of them are already born, so 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.880 we could sort of assess this pre foundational prediction in 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:07.960 his thought empirically. Now it's about time we can look 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:10.120 around and see if that was true or not. And 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.239 he gets a lot of credit for being empirically right 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.959 about a lot of things throughout his work. But when 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:19.640 you look at this this sort of foundational question of 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.919 what is capitalism for, he seems like not right. And 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.320 what was his answer to this foundational question what's capitalism for? 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.640 It's to relieve us of necessity so that we could 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:35.800 focus on our species energy on things that aren't necessary 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:41.040 to being alive, like art and music, creativity, knowledge. I'm 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:43.120 I'm going to come back to that in terms of 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:45.440 what the meaning of life? Maybe, Oh dear, that's a 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:47.760 weighty conversation for today. But why do you think he's 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:50.160 wrong when you talk about the empirical evidence showing that 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:52.080 he didn't get it right? What do you look at 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.040 since the crisis two thousand and eight, there's been a 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.800 reassessment about achievements of capitalism, you know, or past the 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:01.240 Cold War. We don't have something else to compare it to, 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:03.840 so we can sort of look by its own standards 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.360 how capitalism is doing. And what we're seeing is not 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:14.200 the sort of accelerated pace of people's lives increasing in quality. Instead, 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:18.880 we've seen wages for most people level off, technology advantages 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:22.600 few instead of many. And that's not what was predicted. 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:25.440 And why do you think that is what's gone wrong? 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:28.400 Was Cans wrong or has something gone wrong to make 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:30.400 him wrong? Have there have been policy choices that have 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:34.600 made him wrong? What he misunderstood was the system is 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.719 built on exploitation at its very base, so that over 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:40.000 time things are going to get worse. Like that is 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:42.600 the nature of capitalism, and that's what marks it predicted 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:45.560 years before. So I'm going to come back to that. 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.120 But there is this great quote by Cans about capitalism 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.280 that I've always loved, which capitalism is the astounding belief 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:53.560 that the most wickedest of men will do the most 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.160 wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. Does 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:58.880 that kind of sum it up to you? Yeah, Well, 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:02.040 it's certainly justified a lot of wickedness, right, and that 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.760 this is the natural state of being. It's only through 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:09.080 this wickedness, through this self interest, that we can achieve 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.880 our collective interest. That's certainly the bill of goods we 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:13.880 were sold for a long time, at least as American. 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:17.000 You're one of the grandchildren that Caines wrote about. How 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.920 do you feel about where we are? Not optimistic, especially 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.120 in the face of ecological crisis. So my parents live 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:27.560 in a small town called Cloverdale in northern California, and 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:31.000 this year they had to evacuate from their evacuation because 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:33.800 of fires. You know, That's that's the level of crisis 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:36.440 we're looking at. Is our country's on fire, their whole 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.080 continents on fire. It does that's who we're looking at 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.440 and that's going to be an annual phenomenon for a 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:44.640 lot of people. Is that a metaphor to you is 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.159 the ecological state? And the fire a metaphor to you 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.760 for the state of capitalism? Well, it's it's very literal, definitely, 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:53.720 but we can also read it as a metaphor, right. 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.560 And I got involved in politics through the anti war 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.000 movement when I was when I was a kid or whatever. 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:02.080 We invaded Iraq two thousand and three and there was 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:04.800 a group, a coalition called World Can't Wait, and their 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:08.080 their logo was a World on Fire, and there said, 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:09.360 we can't we can't wait to get rid of the 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.520 Bush regime. You know, the world, world can't wait. The 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:13.839 world's on fire. And now I look at those posters 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:15.800 and I've been thinking about them a lot lately because 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:18.760 you can see the fires in Australia from space like 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:22.240 these are these are literal? Is that what shaped you 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:25.359 the anti war movement? Is that what made you start 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.120 thinking about these broader economic questions? Or were there other 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.359 forces at work in shaping your worldview? That was my 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:35.400 entred into organized politics. I think left wing politics. I 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.080 came of age under under the Bush administration, the George W. 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.120 Bush administration, and it was a very scary time to 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:44.360 be alive. And a lot of the things that we're 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:48.039 seeing now the consequences of the Trump years, those things 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.080 were set in place during the Bush years. And so 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.760 we saw, you know, the Department of Homeland Security being built. 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:58.920 We saw this crackdown on domestic protest that's gone on. So, yeah, 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.000 it was the state of the world to push me here, 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.159 and it hasn't gotten any better. What made you turn 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.599 your eyes toward economics instead of continuing to focus on 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:11.520 anti war? What made you decide that economics was fundamental 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:15.520 to understanding where we were. So I graduated from the 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:18.080 University of Maryland in twenty ten, which means I was 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.560 a sophomore when the financial crisis hit, and at the 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.600 time I was organizing with a left wing student group 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.200 to organize against tuition increases on campus because this was 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.400 a central ide question for students on campus for accessibility 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:38.040 of education and a national issue of educational affordability, and 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.800 when the crisis hit, we were looking for some way 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:45.240 to link this to our campaign around tuition increases. So 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.840 you're saying, what's the relationship between these tuition increases, the 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:53.520 huge increases in college educational costs and housing prices, and 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:55.920 we didn't really know what the answer was, or if 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:57.920 there really was answer. We just sort of figured there 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:01.600 had to be at the time. But that yielded this 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.280 whole research project that me and a friend worked on, 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:06.760 and out of that came sort of my first work 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.080 on student debt, which is where my project started. And 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:12.760 so you have maybe I'm going to call it counterintuitive, 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:16.480 maybe contrarian, but you've got a view on student debt. 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:18.520 Tell us about that. Well, I don't know if it's 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.440 it's contrarian these days. I mean when I first started 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:26.119 writing about it was twenty eleven, which was Preoccupy Wall Street, 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:28.520 and I wrote this piece for this journal n plus 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.040 one about the way that student debt had been set up, 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:33.040 in the way it was increasing out of control, and 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:34.760 that it wasn't clear that people were going to be 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:36.560 able to pay this debt back at the time. Up 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:40.240 until then, the assumption had been that all educational debt 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.480 was good debt, because for every dollar you invest, you're 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:46.440 going to get one x back in terms of wages 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:51.679 for your better qualified job, you learn to code or whatever, whatever, degrees. 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.360 You get it's going to rebound to you. All Educational 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:58.719 investment was a good idea, And around twenty eleven is 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:01.520 when people start looking at the totals, when we're looking 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.960 closely to a trillion dollars or whatever it was at 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:07.840 the time, and say, this doesn't make any sense. This 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:12.160 can't possibly be true, especially after wages had tanked during 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:14.760 the recession and had not rebounded in the way the 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:18.240 people expected. And you're looking at the numbers of the 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:21.040 average student os tens of thousands of dollars in debt, 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.960 and they're just making enough to get by, especially at 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:29.080 increased housing costs and transportation costs, and it just wasn't 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.880 lining up, and people kept paying because there really isn't 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:34.880 any alternative at the individual There is not right, they 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.000 come after you in bankruptcy well, and people kept in 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.000 rolling as well, although the enrollment did level off a 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:42.280 little bit around this time when people start drawing these 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:44.880 numbers into question, But people keep in enrolling because you 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:48.200 have an individual level. If you ask any expert, what's 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:50.440 the best thing I can do to increase my wages, 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:52.040 they'll still tell you to go to school, and they'll 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:55.200 still be right but you look at a collective level, 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:59.600 clearly that same dynamic isn't operating. It's not working. So 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:01.800 I think you're right. It's not contrarian now to be 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:05.920 terrified about the levels of student debt and what that means, 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.839 and even very hardcore capitalists are worried about what it 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.080 means in terms of financial crisis. But I think you 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.680 are contraying and that you've taken that into a broader 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:19.440 critique of the educational system at large. Yeah, and that 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.160 when we look at these jobs that aren't showing up 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:25.480 the way they're supposed to, and you still look at 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:29.240 young people who are putting in tons of not just money, 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.720 but also their time and their effort, huge amounts of 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:38.160 time and effort to get these educational degrees whatever certifications 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:40.880 at a time when there's more competition for them than ever. 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.240 Where is this value going Who is benefiting from all 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:45.480 of this? And there are some people who like to 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:47.240 throw up their hands and say, well, no one's really 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:49.959 benefiting from this, But that doesn't make any sense to me. 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:52.560 And so you can look at the economy and look 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.839 at who has been benefiting from this acceleration in human 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.959 capital development and the shift in costs from the state 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:05.199 and from corporations. Two workers themselves to train themselves on 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:07.560 behalf of companies that are going to hire them later. 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:10.720 And you can look at corporate profits which have never 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.439 been higher. Right, the DAO is at new records every year. 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:18.000 It seems like while people seem to be still suffering 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.760 out there, and it's because that's who's harvesting the profits 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:23.200 from this. You know, better trained workers are easier to 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.320 find than ever before. So we're making ourselves fodder for 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:31.080 the system. I shouldn't say we, You the millennials have 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.120 been making themselves fodder for the system. I mean the 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:38.040 equation was supposed to be the better educated you get, 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.040 the better job you get. And at an individual level 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:42.079 that still sort of makes sense. But if you look 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.199 at a societal level, if a bunch of people educate themselves, 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:47.800 they take it upon themselves, they spend the money they 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:50.560 invest in themselves to educate themselves, well suddenly they are 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:53.280 a lot more educated people and the cost that you 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.720 need to spend to hire one of them goes down. 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.520 In the old educational models, that's supposed to mean increased 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:03.800 scale of production. Right, They're like, well, there are a 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:07.679 lot of cheap, smart workers, we can expand production. That 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:11.199 hasn't happened. Instead, we've seen the ruling class just basically 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:13.280 grab as much of those profits as they can jack 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:17.280 up their own stock prices, and they've been very successful 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:19.280 at it. And for you, that shows up in the 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:23.400 gap between the stupendous rate of productivity increases and the 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.720 same time flat wages. Absolutely, and that whole wedge is 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:31.400 just increased ruling class share of the economy. That's nuts. 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:34.839 Why do you think it is that millennials and all 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:38.160 of us have been complicit in that system because it 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.559 takes all of us being complicit to make it work. Well, 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:45.360 it's hard to say what complicity looks like, right, say, like, well, 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.880 given this, there should be a nationwide rebellion of young people, 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:51.079 you know, in all of our major cities. They should 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:53.720 just like you know, run into the streets and say, no, 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:55.520 we won't do it, We don't want to pay this anymore. 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.480 This is wrong. And that happened. That happened in twenty eleven, 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:02.920 and happened again, you know, during Black Lives Matter years after, 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:07.040 of different groups of mostly young people in both cases 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:09.839 refusing the status quo, and they called in the army 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.120 in both cases, and you have to understand that, like 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:14.760 they've been called in the army in Hong Kong, right, 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:18.600 Like that's a really it's a really aggressive step to 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:21.800 take by a state to crack down on their own population, 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:24.840 and they did it in city after city in the 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.880 United States. When you look back Unoccupied, do you think 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.520 it was a success. It's too soon to tell. I 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:33.600 guess I think there are some limited ways in which 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:36.840 it was a success. That we put this sort of 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:40.160 class language back on the map. Yeah, back on the 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.360 national radar. I think you don't have the Bernie Sanders 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:45.880 campaign the way you do now without Occupy changing the discourse. 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.640 You also have student debt as an object of discussion 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.199 in the way that it wasn't before the people recognize 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.360 that it's out of control, and you have this sort 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:57.880 of coalescing of a generational political perspective that I think 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:00.600 starts would occupy. On the other hand, it shows the 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.839 sort of limits of protest as a strategy, which is 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:06.520 ultimately what Occupied turned out to be is what kind 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.520 of national protest, and protest only works until the point 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:12.880 they don't want to listen to you anymore, and they've 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.120 shown the government, and these are democratic mayors and democratic 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:19.440 cities who called in their police and used chemical weapons 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.400 in city centers to clear them. It's an interesting point 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.040 because I think part of the point you're making is 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:27.600 that this question that's going on by millennials of the 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.320 system actually is a bigger threat to the system than 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.280 most people realize, and maybe that response to the occupy 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:37.400 movement shows what an existential threat it is. Yeah, it's 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:40.840 going to be interesting to see what the next cohorts 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:45.120 draw from our experiences or draw from their own experiences, 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:49.960 what people like the Sunrise movement or Extinction rebellion, especially 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.080 the climate protesters in general, draw from those experiences and 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:57.840 their own experiences. We'll see tactically what they end up thinking. 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:03.160 Coming back to millennial how would you explain to a 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:07.440 politician or someone my age what's made millennials the way 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.400 the way they are? I mean, I think it goes 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.120 back to the exactly what we've been talking about, which 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:18.040 is this break in correlation between productivity and wages, and 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:23.080 up until this nineteen seventy nine early eighties, you see 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:26.840 these numbers rising together in a way that indicates a 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:30.400 sort of shared national prosperity, and that shared national prosperity 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.960 was the grounds for sort of Keynesian type thought that 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:37.200 this is getting better for everyone, sort of along the 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:40.800 same line, and for a number of reasons. When you 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:43.920 hit nineteen eighty, which is also when this millennial cohort 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:47.960 starts being born, those two break and wages stay flat 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:51.040 and productivity keeps going up, and that gap between the 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:54.240 two of them is an increased rate of exploitation. So 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:57.240 you'd argue that it's not so much that millennials have 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:00.680 had unrealistic expectations about what the world should be like 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:04.360 for them. It's that there's something fundamentally wrong with the 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.400 world as it's currently structured, so that millennials are right 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.480 to be dissatisfied. Yeah, well, I think you see that. 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.800 With me. That's a break between sort of millennial gen 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.320 z categories is that I was raised in the era 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:19.560 of you can be anything you put your mind to, 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:23.160 you know, the world is yours, etcetera, etcetera. We were 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:27.320 sort of supposed to be this Keynesian generation where we're 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:29.680 finally able to be creative. We'll all be able to 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:32.760 be creative in our own ways, etcetera. Etcetera. At least 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.600 that was the bill of goods sold to our parents younger. 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:40.840 When I talk to scholars who work on the younger cohort, 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:44.280 whatever we want to call it, currently, they don't see 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:47.320 that same sort of expectation. There is a lowered level 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:50.080 of expectation where they don't expect to win every time. 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:52.480 They're not expected to win every time. They're just trying 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:56.880 to like cobble together enough good experiences to make them employable. 0:16:57.480 --> 0:16:59.920 And then that can become a self fulfilling prophecy. Right, 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.280 if you don't believe in a better future, how do 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:04.640 you possibly get a better future? That's fart of it. 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:08.040 You've talked about this idea of helicopter parents, and you're 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.520 actually less critical of helicopter parents than some of us 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.679 who are older are, And you think there's a reason 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:18.359 for it. So explain that when I started writing Kids 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:20.120 These Days, when I was working on that book, i'd 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:23.719 sort of had a pretty critical view of helicopter parents 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.600 because I had the stereotype sort of built in my 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:31.240 mind of an upper class mostly moms who are putting 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:33.239 their thumb on the scale to help their kids who 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:36.800 are already pretty advantage within the system. But the more 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.480 I read research about other classes of parents who are 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:43.199 stuck doing the same kind of work, the more I 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:47.000 realized that that was a rarefied picture. That most of anything, 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:51.679 they are not rich. Most helicopter parents are working class, 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.640 because most people are working class, and so you have 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.560 most what we'd call helicopter parents helicopter moms because again, 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.840 mostly moms, while we're talking about, are just trying to 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.959 get their kid by, right, They're people trying to create 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:09.240 some level of generational progress for their child, which if 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:13.880 their child has a learning disability or trouble in school 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:16.439 and one way or another they're laned badly, that can 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:18.360 be a full time job just trying to keep your 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:23.520 kid on track academically to go to a state college 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:25.400 or a community college such that they might be able 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.879 to participate in the twenty first century economy in some 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:33.240 way that's not totally stagnant. So you'd see helicopter parenting 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:35.960 not as a sign of entitlement, but rather as a 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:40.399 sign almost of terror. Yeah, well, just most people aren't entitled, right, 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:45.720 it's not the reality of American life, and the stereotypes 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:49.120 that we are given of entitled people are mostly written 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:52.200 by entitled people. You wrote this in kids. These days, 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:55.600 every authority from mom to presidents told millennials to accumulate 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:58.120 as much human capital as we could, and we did, 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:00.560 but the market hasn't held up its end of the bargain. 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.280 Do you think there's something wrong just inherently with the 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:07.040 notion of human capital. There's definitely something wrong about how 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:10.040 we understand the concept of human capital. We think about it. 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:13.320 It's something that belongs to you once you've achieved it, right, 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:16.040 because it seems like a wage. Right, I got a degree. 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.800 I earned a degree. The degree belongs to me, but 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:21.120 it doesn't belong to me in a way that other 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.840 commodities do. I can't sell it, right. All I can 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:27.520 do is work. And so human capital is how labor 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:31.000 appears to capital once it's been hired. Right, human capital 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:34.480 or to a state that's trying to compete with another state. 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:37.920 So human capital theory emerges in the sixties from these 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:43.000 neoliberal ideas of national competition. Can America keep up with 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:46.440 the Soviet Union in regard to human capital production? Are 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:50.360 we producing enough scientists and engineers so that we don't 0:19:50.400 --> 0:19:53.199 get wiped out by the USSR? At the time, the 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:56.280 answer was no, we weren't. And that's where the Higher 0:19:56.320 --> 0:20:00.399 Education Act comes from. Right. They're assessing a work force 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.479 that belongs to either the state or to a company 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.200 that's trying to think about them in terms of say 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:10.240 human resources or whatever. It's workers capacities as interpreted by 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:12.840 people who are putting those workers to work. The worker 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:16.439 themselves doesn't own your human capital. You can't sell your 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:18.520 human capital. All you can do is sell your labor, 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:22.000 which is the only commodity you have. And so we 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:24.440 get this idea twisted because you think that you can 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:27.320 accumulate human capital and that it's something that it's somehow 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:30.000 accrues to you. Yeah, that's that's something to belong that 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:32.000 belongs to you. But the truth is it just is you, 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:35.120 that is who you are. Only other people can put 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:37.600 that human capital to work. You're not actually a capitalist, 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.879 You're just a person. Right. What do you make of 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.960 the role that we all play in enabling this. I'm 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.840 coming back to this idea of complicity because you break 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:51.240 out these lines between consumers and workers, and yet we 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:55.520 who are workers are also consumers. Right, So in other words, yes, 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.040 we all enable an Amazon, right because we use the service. 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.159 Maybe you don't, But how do you break out that 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.520 line between who's a consumer and who's a worker when 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:07.320 all we're all some of both. Yeah. Well, that's why 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:10.520 I try not to look at consumption as a basis 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:13.359 for politics, because that just means being alive on a 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:15.879 capitalism right. You have to buy things. You have to 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.400 buy food, you have to buy shelter, and so when 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:21.920 you start talking about people as consumers, you're already just 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:25.400 talking about a very limited kind of choice where what 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:27.639 you can buy is what's for sale on a market, 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:30.280 and you have to buy something, especially when it comes 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:32.919 to say food and shelter. That's why I think it's 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:35.879 important to look at class as a question of capitalists 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:38.640 and workers and the question of do you work for 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.960 someone else or do other people work for you, and 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:46.640 that this is the central division that explains everything that's 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:48.920