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Speaker 1: Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Gurdski. Thank

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Speaker 1: you all for being here. Did you know that airlines

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Speaker 1: make more profits from credit card partnerships, with loyalty programs

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Speaker 1: often acting as the primary driver for profitability insteat of

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Speaker 1: ticket sales. Now, you know, I didn't write that sentence

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Speaker 1: because the way it came out, But basically, airport airlines

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Speaker 1: are acting more as banks than they are as airplanes,

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Speaker 1: as airlines, as people who fly all the time, which

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Speaker 1: would explain why certain things about air travel are not

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Speaker 1: improving and other things are getting actually a lot easier.

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Speaker 1: I know you're probably thinking, Ryan, what on earth are

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Speaker 1: you talking about. It's called financialization. It's how investment banks,

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Speaker 1: hedge funds, private equity firms, cryptocurrency platforms are increasingly a

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Speaker 1: larger part of our economy. And our guest today or

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Speaker 1: in cast says it's a grift. He'll be on a

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Speaker 1: little lay to discuss before we get into financialization. And

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Speaker 1: I try to, by the way, make it as easily

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Speaker 1: obtainable and palpable for people with my level of intellect,

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Speaker 1: which is on the lower end than people who are

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Speaker 1: smarter than you know, people who read the Wall Street Journal,

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Speaker 1: and can sit there and argue with the paper themselves

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Speaker 1: every day. I want to discuss what happened over the

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Speaker 1: weekend with me because I went out. I'm in New Orleans. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: Happy Marty Gras for those who celebrated. I'm taking on Tuesday,

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Speaker 1: you know, Happy ash Wednesday. It's Lent for all my

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Speaker 1: fellow Catholics out there. If you haven't thought something to

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Speaker 1: give up, now is the time. And no meat on Fridays.

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Speaker 1: But I was in Marty Gras over the weekend in

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Speaker 1: New Orleans, and I'm in the city and I run

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Speaker 1: into a British friend of mine and he's out with

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Speaker 1: a bunch of Brits and he's works in politics. He's

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Speaker 1: super fun for interesting, He's let's get lunch together. I said, okay,

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Speaker 1: sure we get lunch. Met him and the other Brits

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Speaker 1: and one was a foreign war correspondent, and I was

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Speaker 1: so fascinated by him because I'm like, what's you know,

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Speaker 1: where have you been in you know, in conflict zones?

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Speaker 1: And he was telling me how he was in Libya

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Speaker 1: while Kadafi was being overthrown. Actually what I did ask him,

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Speaker 1: because you know, on me, I sat there and said him,

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Speaker 1: what's the worst nation you've ever been? To him? Why

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Speaker 1: is a Pakistan? He did laugh at that joke, but

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Speaker 1: I said, what was you know, Libya like under the

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Speaker 1: overthrow of Kadafi? And he's talking about you know, you know,

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Speaker 1: lines of supplies falling apart, and the bombings and you know,

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Speaker 1: hearing bullets whiz past his head. And then he said

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Speaker 1: this was the case why Western countries should have intervened

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Speaker 1: more and at larger lengths, the greater lengths than they did,

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Speaker 1: you know. And in the last obviously fifteen years or

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Speaker 1: twenty years since Kadab, I guess fifteen years in kadaf

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Speaker 1: he's been overthrown. Libya is a failed state. It's been

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Speaker 1: through civil wars constantly. And I argued, no, actually, what

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Speaker 1: had the West not intervened, had Kadafi been able to

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Speaker 1: destroy the rebels, which he would have done, had not

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Speaker 1: America started bombing his tanks, less people would have likely

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Speaker 1: died then died out of Western compassionism for overthrowing a

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Speaker 1: dictator in Africa, right, because more than thirty thousand and

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Speaker 1: nine of that conflict, fifteen thousand died since that conflict,

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Speaker 1: and it's unloaded wide levels of you know, instability in

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Speaker 1: northern Africa. Libya, as I said, as a failed state,

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Speaker 1: they're practicing slavery again. And also Europe. Europe dealt with

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Speaker 1: a tremendous unstable situation because they had to deal with

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Speaker 1: Kadapi to keep you know, hordes of third worlders trying

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Speaker 1: to move from Africa moved from Africa to Europe away,

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Speaker 1: and it was a it was a disaster.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: They end up going to Italy and then from Italy

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Speaker 1: going to Britain, Germany, Sweden and the rest of the places.

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Speaker 1: And they said, you know, they went back and forth

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Speaker 1: and we're like, no, intervention was the right, right way,

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Speaker 1: of the right plan. We should have intervened her you

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Speaker 1: know more in Syria and Libya and Egypt and got

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Speaker 1: boots on the ground. And I finally was like who

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Speaker 1: it's all these Brits. I was like, who, who should

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Speaker 1: have done this? Because I know you're not talking about

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Speaker 1: the British military, which is the size of you know,

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Speaker 1: a booth at Denny's, And like what's European countries? Which

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Speaker 1: in what fantasy world of And I really like these people,

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Speaker 1: so I was, I was not this was not a

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Speaker 1: fight like I never spoke to them again, but I

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Speaker 1: just sat there and said, I was like, in what

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Speaker 1: fantasy world do you believe that the old victors of

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Speaker 1: World War Two can get together and you know, uh,

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Speaker 1: run run a show and recolonize the entire world or

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Speaker 1: spread democracy? What vision and alternate reality are you living in?

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Speaker 1: Because it's the US and the UK. And who it's

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Speaker 1: not Russia who followed World War Two? It's not Russia's

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Speaker 1: helping us? Is it the French? The Germans who you

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Speaker 1: know have a miniature army? Is it Italy who has

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Speaker 1: the largest standing army? I mean, best of luck winning

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Speaker 1: a war when you only got the Italian military. And

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Speaker 1: which groups of Muslim youths, the children of immigrants or

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Speaker 1: immigrant themselves are you going to convince to join Her

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Speaker 1: Majesty's army and fight against Muslims in Libya? Like? What

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Speaker 1: lie are you telling yourself now to believe that you

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Speaker 1: have the recruitment of capabilities and you haven't traded in

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Speaker 1: or not had I guess, And all these people had children,

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Speaker 1: by the way, traded in like the youth of Britain,

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Speaker 1: for you know, young Pakistanis who have no interest in

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Speaker 1: joining her Majesty's army, His Majesty's army. You know, you're

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Speaker 1: more Muslims in the last decade joined Isis than joined

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Speaker 1: the British military. You're all being delusional. And I said,

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Speaker 1: what you're saying is I want Americans. I want white

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Speaker 1: boys from farms in Iowa or Alabama or wherever to

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Speaker 1: go service an ideology which has never proven very successful,

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Speaker 1: and go fight and possibly die in countries where marrying

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Speaker 1: a fourteen year old cousin is more encouraged than Christianity.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but no, like no, you're not, you're this

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Speaker 1: is no. We would Europe would have been better off

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Speaker 1: had these situations of nation building and foreign intervention not

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Speaker 1: taken place. And spending a decade supporting al Qaeda in

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Speaker 1: Assyria to continue a civil war against a dictator who

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Speaker 1: didn't persecute Christians. I'm sorry. And then at that point

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Speaker 1: it was taken a while to get drinks. At one

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Speaker 1: point my British friend, to kind of diffuse the situation, said,

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Speaker 1: he goes, I knew an hour or two of getting

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Speaker 1: drinks Kurdusky would start defending African dictators. But whatever it was,

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Speaker 1: it was, it was funny and it was interesting. Then

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Speaker 1: we ended up changing the conversation, but it happened. I

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Speaker 1: thought it was interesting that this conversation happened my cous

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Speaker 1: with my British friends around the same time that Secretary

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Speaker 1: of State Mark Or Rubio went over to Germany and

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Speaker 1: had a lot of the same sentiments. I've criticized Rubial

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Speaker 1: a lot in the past when he was a senator,

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Speaker 1: especially a young senator, but this speech was phenomenal. It

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Speaker 1: was if he would have closed it by singer saying,

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Speaker 1: and that's why I'm running for president. Not only would

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Speaker 1: the Europeans have clapped, but most Republicans would have clapped.

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Speaker 1: He celebrated what unites Western people, Western civilization, and Christianity,

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Speaker 1: and that we are all kind of in this together.

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Speaker 1: The speech speech is too long for me to play,

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Speaker 1: you know, but look it up. I mean it's like

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Speaker 1: thirty minutes long. But if you have something to do,

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Speaker 1: you're doing dishes, Look listen to the Rubius speech. It

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Speaker 1: is absolutely brilliant, and I think that it goes into

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Speaker 1: a deeper conversation of who Westerners, those in Europe, those

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Speaker 1: in America, those in the Anglo world of Australia and Canada,

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Speaker 1: who we are because for so long we have been

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Speaker 1: beaten down that our connection is some kind of disgusting

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Speaker 1: dark history rather than its glorious moments. And our glorious

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Speaker 1: moments haven't just come in the shape of, you know,

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Speaker 1: promoting liberty to some third world country. Our glorious moments

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Speaker 1: have been achieving freedom, prosperity, expanding the Christian ideology in

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Speaker 1: our own countries. Right. No one looks at Notre Dame

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Speaker 1: Cathedral and things, think of all the money that could

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Speaker 1: have gone to you know, roads in Libya. How we

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Speaker 1: sat there not built this cathedral over again. No, we

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Speaker 1: celebrate our own culture and what makes it creates the

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Speaker 1: basic tenets of our civilization. Anyway, it's the Rubio speech

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Speaker 1: is fabulous, and the conversation was happening around the same time.

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Speaker 1: It reminded me of that. I was like, you know what,

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Speaker 1: let me bring up to my audience because and I

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Speaker 1: have European listeners, but like, this is such an important

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Speaker 1: point that needs to be really thought about currently when

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Speaker 1: it comes to what unites us and why we should

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Speaker 1: not be ashamed of what has united us, why we

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Speaker 1: should not be ashamed of our collective history, and we

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Speaker 1: concluded the lunch b I think talking about Hasidic Jewish

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Speaker 1: birth rates versus Amish birth rates. It was very very

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Speaker 1: you know, it was weird, but it was great. It

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Speaker 1: was great. Okay. Next up is my guest economist, or

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Speaker 1: In Cast. He's going to talk about the economy and

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Speaker 1: why over financialization is bad for it. Stay tuned. Next

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Speaker 1: Oran Cast is the chief economists and founder of American Compass.

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Speaker 1: It's a think tanking Washington. Thank you for being here

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Speaker 1: orrein Oh, thanks for having me so. Like many people

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Speaker 1: who read read The Sun in New York Times, I

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Speaker 1: was very interested in your op ed from two Sundays

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Speaker 1: ago about the financialization of the economy and how it's

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Speaker 1: a grift really hurting both capitalism and the overall country.

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Speaker 1: Can you start by just explaining what financialization is? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's it's an important place to start.

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Speaker 2: We were well into the editing, Like, we were well

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Speaker 2: into the editing before someone was like, we don't actually

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Speaker 2: have a definition of financialization in the piece.

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Speaker 1: That's a good point.

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Speaker 2: You know, there are sort of technical academic definitions of it,

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Speaker 2: but I think generally what it means and what I

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Speaker 2: have in mind when I use it is it is

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Speaker 2: a shift in the orientation of the economy toward financial

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Speaker 2: transactions as ends unto themselves. Because I think it's important

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Speaker 2: to say, like, I think financial markets are incredibly important.

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Speaker 2: I am here because I think capitalism is a very

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Speaker 2: good economic system. I think we need financial markets. I

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Speaker 2: think we need people who bring capital together and deploy it,

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Speaker 2: and they are entitled to a good return on investment.

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Speaker 1: When they do.

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Speaker 2: What we have seen in the US in recent decades, though,

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Speaker 2: is something very different, which is that financial markets and

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Speaker 2: the financial sector have exploded as a share of GDP.

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Speaker 2: They're now the largest source of corporate profits by sector.

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Speaker 2: They attract a lot of the top talent from business schools,

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Speaker 2: and yet that's not because they are doing more of

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Speaker 2: that important thing of deploying capital productively. In fact, productive

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Speaker 2: deployment of capital has been going down, and so what

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Speaker 2: you're seeing instead is this industry that sort of more

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Speaker 2: lives almost parasitically off of the real economy, taking those

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Speaker 2: real operating businesses that are creating products and services of value,

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Speaker 2: creating good jobs for Americans, and just treating them as

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Speaker 2: financial assets and trying to figure out how to extract

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Speaker 2: value out of them trying to figure out how to

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Speaker 2: trade stuff around in circles, to speculate, to generate fees

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Speaker 2: and profits in the financial market. Totally unrelated to anything

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Speaker 2: productive happening in the real world.

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Speaker 1: And something I've noticed recently. I mean, I think we're

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Speaker 1: around the same age, so it's not recently, but it's

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Speaker 1: people who were college gradges when I was supposed to

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Speaker 1: go to college like fifteen years ago. Is that a

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Speaker 1: lot of people who had the brains to become engineers

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Speaker 1: or doctors went into the financial sector because you can

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Speaker 1: make a lot of money in a relatively quick time.

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Speaker 1: Do you think that there is a brain drain of

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Speaker 1: sorts where other you know, we say, why are we

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Speaker 1: graduing more engineers, why are we grudging more doctors? And

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Speaker 1: because the financial incentives to work in finance are so

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Speaker 1: overwhelming compared to those other fields.

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Speaker 2: Oh, that's that's absolutely the case. Both that just descriptively.

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Speaker 2: It is true that the financial rewards are higher, and

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Speaker 2: you can see it in where people choose to go.

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Speaker 2: And it's it's not just that this is where people

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Speaker 2: from top business schools are going first and foremost, it's

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Speaker 2: also where engineers are going. And so you look at,

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Speaker 2: you know, places like MIT. You look at people who

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Speaker 2: are even pursuing education and degrees in technical scientific engineering fields,

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Speaker 2: even they are much more so than in the past.

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Speaker 2: Then heading to Wall Street, and I think it's important

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Speaker 2: to say, you know this, there's nothing well on the fringes.

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Speaker 2: There may be illegal things going on, but the core

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Speaker 2: problem here isn't illegality, right. It's not a scam where

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Speaker 2: people are being sort of you know, ripped off and

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Speaker 2: lied to. It's a system that we have set up

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Speaker 2: and blessed and promoted where these are the places where

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Speaker 2: the biggest returns are. And we just can't expect capitalism

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Speaker 2: to work well if the best way to pursue profit

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Speaker 2: is to either you know, offshore stuff that is here

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Speaker 2: or go work on Wall Street and find ways to

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Speaker 2: buy it and sell it and trade it around in

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Speaker 2: a circle.

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Speaker 1: Right. And the crazy thing for me is a while ago,

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Speaker 1: I add a relative who's got young boys tell me

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Speaker 1: that the financial sector was investing in youth sports, and

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Speaker 1: I kind of didn't believe him, but then it was

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Speaker 1: brought up in your article and I read more about it.

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Speaker 1: How is how is the financialization of the economy working

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Speaker 1: in the sense that like wols, you would never get

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Speaker 1: involved in, like youth travel sports, but there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of money to be made almost everywhere, So they're getting

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Speaker 1: to places and the economit you or I would not

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Speaker 1: think of and definitely wouldn't be there fifteen years ago.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's deafly right. And it's a phenomenon that

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Speaker 2: I call moral arbitrage. You know, the idea of arbitrage

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Speaker 2: generally is really in financial markets, you go find things

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Speaker 2: that you can buy at a lower price from one

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Speaker 2: place and sell at a higher price in another. And

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Speaker 2: what's going on with moral arbitrage is you're basically looking

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Speaker 2: for businesses industries that have not typically been run for

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Speaker 2: maximum profit, that you wouldn't want to see run just

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Speaker 2: for maximum profit. And you're saying, hey, if we buy

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Speaker 2: up a bunch of these things based on what they're worth,

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Speaker 2: not run for maximum profit, and then run them for

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Speaker 2: maximum profit, we can sell them for more.

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Speaker 1: YEA and travel sports, so like, if your kid's a

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Speaker 1: travel hockey player at twelve years old, the chance I'm

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Speaker 1: going to the NHL are very minimum, but parents will

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Speaker 1: spend instead of three thousands a year, ten thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: a year, is what you're saying, right, and it's you know,

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Speaker 1: you see it also in a lot of health fields,

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Speaker 1: so not just hospitals and doctors' offices, but then nursing homes,

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Speaker 1: then veterinarian practices. A fascinating recent one is you know,

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Speaker 1: services for volunteer fire departments. Right, there are all sorts

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Speaker 1: of places where you can find people who have been

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Speaker 1: running good businesses, making a good living, but not squeezing

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Speaker 1: everybody as hard as they can, and say, well, I

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Speaker 1: bet we could generate more profit if we squeeze everybody

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Speaker 1: as hard as we can. Yeah, and yeah, yeah, and

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Speaker 1: you put a lot of family. I know, with my

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Speaker 1: own grandparents when they got dementia and they were too

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Speaker 1: sick to be on their own, it was I mean, like,

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Speaker 1: I think, twelve thousand a month to put them in

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Speaker 1: a nursing home that was anywhere half decent and are

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Speaker 1: a facility to take care of them. And it is

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Speaker 1: I mean the elderly care for I mean people are

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Speaker 1: living longer, but elderly care for people who are not

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Speaker 1: like on death on their deathbed, but just too old

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Speaker 1: to live on their own is wildly expensive.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's right, And I think there's you know,

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Speaker 2: it's important to say, like, there's a very difficult policy

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Speaker 2: and societal problem here completely independent of Wall Street, right

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Speaker 2: about how do we want to go about supporting those folks,

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Speaker 2: making sure they have good care, making sure it's affordable

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Speaker 2: for families, And those would be challenges whether Wall Street

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Speaker 2: got involved or not. What's what's so remarkable and what

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Speaker 2: kind of makes this I think sort of a flashing

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Speaker 2: red light on our economy's dashboard, is that you basically

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Speaker 2: have a situation where in no rational, sort of objective

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Speaker 2: analysis would you say, hey, you know where like the

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Speaker 2: most money, you know, like the best place to go

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Speaker 2: really make a lot of money is like nursing home care. Right, So,

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Speaker 2: if that's what people now think is the case, something has.

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Speaker 1: Clearly broken down.

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Speaker 2: And you know, part of the problem is we have

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Speaker 2: a kind of ideology, certainly an issue on the right

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Speaker 2: of center. It's an issue in the field of economics

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Speaker 2: with folks who work in these in on Wall Street,

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Speaker 2: in these financial firms. There's this idea that if you've

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Speaker 2: generated a profit, you must have created something of value.

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Speaker 2: So if I buy up the nursing home, squeeze it

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Speaker 2: for efficiency, maybe at the cost of worst patient patient

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Speaker 2: outcomes and whatever else, and therefore generate higher cash flows

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Speaker 2: and can sell it out of profit. There is a

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Speaker 2: very strong line of thinking that says, but that profit

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Speaker 2: signals I've done something good, and I can therefore declare

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Speaker 2: there to be success, and we should therefore want more

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Speaker 2: of this to happen, and we can all feel good

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Speaker 2: about it. When that is simply there is no support

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Speaker 2: for that, either in you know, the idea of that

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Speaker 2: ideas of Adam Smith or anybody else about capitalism, nor

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Speaker 2: does it align in any way with common sense.

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Speaker 1: Well, it's also shemely politically unpopular. And I know you

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Speaker 1: worked for him while you were helping on his campaign

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Speaker 1: at mit Romney, but his career definitely haunted him in

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Speaker 1: a lot of places, the fact that they accused him,

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Speaker 1: and I don't know if it's true or not, but

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Speaker 1: the accusations always where he would fire people, strip it

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Speaker 1: down to you know, the bare bentlemen and sell them businesses,

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Speaker 1: and it definitely is extremely popular with voters. So I

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Speaker 1: read so after reading your great up ed very interesting

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Speaker 1: and thought provoking. I read a lot of criticism from

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Speaker 1: from the usual suspects, right national review Manhattans to the

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Speaker 1: Woldshaw Journal, and I wanted to ask questions that they

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Speaker 1: were posing. I thought was interesting, Right, So, how does

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Speaker 1: financialization actually make the American economy less competitive than other economy?

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Speaker 1: If we were such a great thrive economy, how does

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Speaker 1: financialization make us less competitive? Well?

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Speaker 2: It ultimately because it misallocates resources. And part of that

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Speaker 2: is it misallocates capital. So something that you see is,

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Speaker 2: you know, it is much harder to get capital investment

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Speaker 2: into long term, risky asset intensive activities when you can

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Speaker 2: get a higher return starting edge fund or you know,

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Speaker 2: trading crypto or whatever else. And so you know, we

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Speaker 2: have seen a lot.

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Speaker 1: Of investing in a bubble that doesn't say so yeah

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Speaker 1: I saw I saw an AI mattress for sale and

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Speaker 1: I literally was like, oh, this entire thing is fake.

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Speaker 2: Yeah right, I mean so that you know, there's a

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Speaker 2: really interesting discussion that we had about how AI connects

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Speaker 2: to all of this, because one thing people are now

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Speaker 2: realizing is, look, we went to this entirely asset light

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Speaker 2: software driven model. Software is going to eat the world,

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Speaker 2: as you know, the saying went, and that's where all

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Speaker 2: the returns are going to be now as the big

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Speaker 2: tech companies are finding wait a minute, our success in

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Speaker 2: what we want to do is actually dependent on a

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Speaker 2: on a robust physical layer in the economy. Oops, we

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Speaker 2: don't have that anymore. So, whether it's you know, we

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Speaker 2: don't have the ability to build out energy production rapidly,

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Speaker 2: we don't have the gas turbines, gave up on nuclear power.

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Speaker 2: We can't make the transformers to expand the grid all

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Speaker 2: the way. We can't make the chips right because we said,

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Speaker 2: well we'll just design chips. Someone else can make them.

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Speaker 2: And so at every step where you have, first of all,

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Speaker 2: where you have a mental model that says, well, whatever

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Speaker 2: is most profitable is best you're going to see and

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Speaker 2: we have seen much less investment in those really important

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Speaker 2: industries that might not be the most attractive things in

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Speaker 2: all cases to invest in at first glance, but are

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Speaker 2: critically important, you know, to national security and resilience, to

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Speaker 2: growth and innovation and all of these things. And so

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Speaker 2: when when you have a high degree of financialization, I

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Speaker 2: think you both have the problem of sort of people

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Speaker 2: are just looking at how do I get them what

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Speaker 2: gets me the most cash quickest, And you then have

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Speaker 2: a problem that a lot of the best people who

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Speaker 2: could be building new stuff are instead working on the

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Speaker 2: question of what gets the most cash the quickest.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so America is, though, the most innovative economy on

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Speaker 1: the planet. Are you suggesting that we'll be more innovative

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Speaker 1: if this didn't exist the way it is. It's like

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Speaker 1: holding back from greater prosperity, Is that your argument? Because

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Speaker 1: we are very innovative as an economy, as a country.

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Speaker 2: We are very innovative in certain areas. So you know

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Speaker 2: one study that it's one of these ones where it's

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Speaker 2: kind of so arresting that now everybody cites it, and

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Speaker 2: it's by no means a perfect study. But you know,

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Speaker 2: I think gets at the point if you look at

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Speaker 2: who is actually leading in front what it defines as

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Speaker 2: frontier technologies. You know, the US used to be leading

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Speaker 2: in virtually all of them, sixty or seventy different technologies.

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Speaker 2: China now leads in virtually all of them. So yes,

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Speaker 2: we do still lead in designing frontier artificial intelligence models.

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Speaker 2: We do lead in some stuff in biotech. But if

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Speaker 2: you're asking, you know who is actually leading what where

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Speaker 2: it's in electric vehicles, whether it's in shipbuilding, whether it's

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Speaker 2: in drones, whether it's in actually producing semiconductors, whether it's

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Speaker 2: in you know, pick your field. There actually aren't nearly

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Speaker 2: as many places where the US, at least commercially is leading.

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Speaker 2: And I think that's a really important distinction because certainly

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Speaker 2: our universities, you know, at the basic research level, are

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Speaker 2: still generating a lot of the most important knowledge. But

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Speaker 2: that almost underscores the problem. It's at that translation from

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Speaker 2: idea to actual commercialized business that we no longer have

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Speaker 2: the focus, the talent, the capacity to do the commercialization,

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Speaker 2: the scaling, all of that stuff. And one piece of

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Speaker 2: that is the financialization, and of course the other piece

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Speaker 2: of that is the globalization. Where we said it doesn't

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Speaker 2: matter where that stuff happens, and a lot of other

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Speaker 2: countries said, actually it matters a lot where that happens,

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Speaker 2: will take it, and so that's where it is now.

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Speaker 1: People who generally hate the United States were jumping at it.

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Speaker 1: The other thing that was brought up was that, you know,

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Speaker 1: all a historic compared to historic numbers, our unemployment rate

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Speaker 1: is relatively low. Has financialization economy affected employment in any way?

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Speaker 2: So I think what financialization effects is the quality and

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Speaker 2: productivity of jobs not not the quantity of jobs. And

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Speaker 2: you know, there's sort of a formal way to make

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Speaker 2: this point that you know, what people would say is

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Speaker 2: basically it's our monetary policy that determines the unemployment rate. Right,

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Speaker 2: you can you can always kind of reduce interest rates

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Speaker 2: and heat up the economy and get more jobs created.

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Speaker 2: But the question is what kind of jobs are they?

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Speaker 2: Is is the productivity of the typical worker improving, Is

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Speaker 2: the quality of their conditions, what they're being paid improving,

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Speaker 2: And that's where, you know, before we get to the

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Speaker 2: financialization piece, it's just important to say there's there's a

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Speaker 2: real problem. There's no question the unemployment rate is low,

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Speaker 2: that there are many more jobs in the economy. But

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Speaker 2: if you're asking what do those jobs pay? Do they

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Speaker 2: allow you to support a family and provide middle class security?

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Speaker 2: Have they kept up in their wages with overall economic

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Speaker 2: growth and with wages at the top, answer on all

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Speaker 2: of those front is is no, not even a little.

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Speaker 2: And a big part of the problem appears to be

432
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 2: just that you haven't seen the productivity gains that you

433
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:33,919
Speaker 2: have seen producturity gains at the very top, but that

434
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:37,040
Speaker 2: the kinds of jobs we offer the way that businesses

435
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 2: operate simply isn't geared toward you know, if you want productivity,

436
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 2: you also have to make a lot of investment, and

437
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 2: they're not geared towards sort of investing in creating higher

438
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:52,879
Speaker 2: quality jobs or succeeding in industries that are likely to

439
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 2: have those kinds of jobs. And so, you know, it

440
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 2: was funny. I think it was David Bonsen maybe who

441
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:03,600
Speaker 2: who raised this question the unemployment rate. I'm quite certain

442
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 2: my essay does not mention the unemployment rate.

443
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:09,120
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't, No, But I was a criticism I heard,

444
00:25:09,119 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, I should ask them

445
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: about that. I don't, you know, it's I listen, I

446
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:14,679
Speaker 1: didn't go I didn't get a degree in anything. But

447
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:17,480
Speaker 1: I look to people like you and others and even

448
00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: critics of yourders, and sit there and say, okay, where

449
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 1: is the truth of why Americans feel like they are

450
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 1: financially not getting ahead? But the markets are doing phenomenally well,

451
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:31,560
Speaker 1: and there has to be something that is not talked about.

452
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:33,600
Speaker 1: And I'm a very simple person when it comes to

453
00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:37,240
Speaker 1: my understanding of economics. So I like to sit there

454
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 1: and kind of, you know, I try to make sure

455
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: that I've covered every hole for people who hear your

456
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:45,719
Speaker 1: arguments say wow, it's really really smart, and then here

457
00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:48,240
Speaker 1: a couple couple, you know, people throwing punches from us

458
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:51,840
Speaker 1: from the other side of the intellectual aisle, and then

459
00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: they say, well, there you go. It must all be

460
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 1: a lie. I want to sit there. And and that's

461
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: why I was asking about this. I know your article

462
00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 1: didn't bring it up, though, Yeah. Uh, I mean that

463
00:26:01,320 --> 00:26:04,480
Speaker 1: dynamic or game is a really important one. And something

464
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 1: I've been you know, frustrated by, thoughly not all that

465
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:11,679
Speaker 1: surprised by since the article came out, is that, you know,

466
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:13,480
Speaker 1: I'll be the first to say a lot of the

467
00:26:13,560 --> 00:26:16,680
Speaker 1: arguments that I'm making are you know, highly contested. There

468
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:20,240
Speaker 1: are all sorts of arguments on all side of them,

469
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:22,359
Speaker 1: and and so I think it would be great to

470
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:24,920
Speaker 1: have somebody come out and say, you know, look, here

471
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,199
Speaker 1: are here are some of the reasons this. You know,

472
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:30,880
Speaker 1: we think this overstates the impacts of financialization. We think

473
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 1: this thing he says is bad is actually good. Like,

474
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 1: you know, here are studies showing this other like that

475
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:38,280
Speaker 1: would all be great. Those would be really.

476
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:43,159
Speaker 2: Interesting arguments and and what's very frustrating about the you know,

477
00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:46,360
Speaker 2: the legacy right of center, what what we're increasingly calling

478
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 2: sort of the old right is that I don't know

479
00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 2: if they're just not interested in doing that, or that

480
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:55,560
Speaker 2: that they're not equipped to do that. But the arguments

481
00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 2: that come back tend to just sort of beuh, you're

482
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:03,439
Speaker 2: and you don't understand anything, and everybody knows that's not true,

483
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,919
Speaker 2: and like a very sort of like per se like,

484
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 2: well as we all know markets work, and you know,

485
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 2: people only pursue profit and make money if they're doing

486
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 2: valuable things. Therefore, anyone saying anything else must be wrong

487
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:21,639
Speaker 2: like qed, end of story, you know, move on to

488
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:26,680
Speaker 2: various insults, and it's just, you know, partly it's just

489
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:30,560
Speaker 2: striking to me that like it's incredibly ineffective. I mean, like,

490
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:34,200
Speaker 2: be my guest, if that's how you want to sort

491
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 2: of approach the argument, you're you're not persuading anyone like that.

492
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 2: But I think it also just isn't very good for

493
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 2: the right of center broadly and the sort of debates

494
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:46,640
Speaker 2: that we do have to have in consulatives.

495
00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 1: It's so funny because this is actually my next question

496
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,440
Speaker 1: to you was, while reading a lot of your critics,

497
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:58,080
Speaker 1: they were bring up leftists, leftist economists, left the economist,

498
00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:02,400
Speaker 1: not you, and disman their arguments, associating you with them,

499
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: then dismantling their arguments. But they were not actually talking

500
00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: about your argument most of the time, and there were

501
00:28:08,320 --> 00:28:09,680
Speaker 1: sometimes I was reading it was like, well, he never

502
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:11,640
Speaker 1: brought that up, and he never brought that up. And

503
00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:14,359
Speaker 1: I find that as somebody who is not among the

504
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:18,879
Speaker 1: quote unquote traditional right on a lot of subject matters,

505
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 1: and was always kind of out there on immigration before

506
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: it was popular, or foreign policy or whatnot, that is

507
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:27,840
Speaker 1: that is always their go to thing, is hey, let's

508
00:28:27,880 --> 00:28:32,680
Speaker 1: reference Nazism or World War two or the Cold War

509
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 1: or some other argument that we're having on immigration, on

510
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:38,680
Speaker 1: Irish immigration from the eighteen hundreds, talk about that, and

511
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:41,959
Speaker 1: then that answers any kind of criticisms towards whatever. And

512
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:44,240
Speaker 1: that was what a lot of people do. You find,

513
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: That's what people do on the right to you all

514
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:48,480
Speaker 1: the time. It's like, hey, let's bring up what a

515
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 1: communist said, say they both wear glasses, therefore or and

516
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:54,440
Speaker 1: it's just like a communist and then that's dismissed the

517
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 1: communist argument because it's not it's not the same thing.

518
00:28:57,640 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's exactly right, and I think it

519
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 2: gets at a much broader dynamic within the right of center,

520
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 2: you know, not just on this financialization question where you

521
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 2: had such an entrenched orthodoxy for so long. I think

522
00:29:11,320 --> 00:29:17,600
Speaker 2: you sort of have an entire generation of you know, commentators, researchers,

523
00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 2: publications that just got so comfortably in the habit of

524
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:25,280
Speaker 2: like this is the set of arguments from the left

525
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 2: of center that we rebut and this is the you know,

526
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:32,880
Speaker 2: this is what we're here to do. And as the

527
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 2: world actually changed, as new arguments came forward, as new

528
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:40,480
Speaker 2: evidence came forward, as you know, applying conservative principles to

529
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 2: the world's problems brought up new ideas, they either just

530
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 2: out of habit or because the muscle so that had

531
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 2: atrophied so badly don't actually seem to engage with what

532
00:29:56,600 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 2: the new argument is. It's like, oh, like, let me

533
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 2: kind of like, you know, look through my file folders

534
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 2: for the thing I pull out and say, when somebody

535
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:06,960
Speaker 2: says something about financial market, let me.

536
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: Go to my insul cue card. And what I think

537
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 1: was since Trump really got elected, and I always, as

538
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: I worked in politics, I always equitted this being political

539
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:17,719
Speaker 1: and then I worked with Bill Crystal at the time

540
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:21,600
Speaker 1: of his elections. I was really comfortable. I say, it's

541
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 1: like a rabbi in ancient Israel, you know, two thousand

542
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:27,800
Speaker 1: years ago, who was like walking down the road sees

543
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: Jesus resort from the dead, and it has to make

544
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 1: a choice. Am I going to convert to something I see?

545
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: Or am I going to double down in something that's

546
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 1: not working. And that's not a perfect analogy, but that's

547
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: one that so many people who who really ran the

548
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 1: roosts and their heirs they are air too, ran the

549
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 1: roost for decades almost without any criticism, and it was

550
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 1: extremely easy to silence critics. You could just kick them

551
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: out of the major newspapers and they or the three

552
00:30:56,200 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: television stations and there you go, they're out. They they've

553
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: never been trying to really have a discussion from the right,

554
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:06,720
Speaker 1: that is without that's outside of their orthodoxy.

555
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I could poke a couple of holes

556
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 2: in the specific analogy, not.

557
00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:15,680
Speaker 1: A personal but what I've made.

558
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 2: But I'm actually glad you went to the religious context,

559
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 2: because you know, I often refer to a lot of

560
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:24,640
Speaker 2: this opposition as market fundamentalism, which you know, in some

561
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 2: senses obviously doesn't have a great connotation, but I mean

562
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 2: in a very sort of precise descriptive sets, like a

563
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 2: fundamentalism is a type of ideology that relies on kind

564
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:40,200
Speaker 2: of very strict adherents to a sort of absolute, absolute

565
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 2: set of dogma, structured typically in a way that does

566
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:49,200
Speaker 2: not intentionally does not fit all that well with the

567
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 2: modern world. That is designed to create a kind of

568
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 2: privileged class of interpreters that sort of get to say,

569
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 2: in all cases what is right and what is wrong right,

570
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 2: And by the way, that is typically premised on a

571
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:07,960
Speaker 2: you know, at least accidental maybe intentional misinterpretation of the

572
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 2: of the original texts.

573
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: Right, And you know, it's so funny if you can't,

574
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:13,920
Speaker 1: sorry to cut you up, but you kind of always

575
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: used to tell me when when I was doing I

576
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: did his I did his show for a while. Uh,

577
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 1: if you kind of would say conservatism is not an ism,

578
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: He's like, we should never added the im to it,

579
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 1: because it's an antithesis to to an ism. And ism

580
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 1: is an ideology. Libertarianism, socialism, communism, they are a political religion.

581
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 1: We are the antithesis to that. As a thought process,

582
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: so you just brought that up and it just kind

583
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: of had a flashback, and it was very profound for

584
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:43,960
Speaker 1: me at the time. And a lot of it comes

585
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 1: from his readings from like you know, Russell Kirk and

586
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: others before him. But he said, if something doesn't work,

587
00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:52,800
Speaker 1: we don't have a religious doctrine or a political religion

588
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: to sit there and say these must affiliate all of

589
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: the solutions. You know, ours is much looser than than

590
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: that strict ideology of like libertarianess with socialism.

591
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 2: Yeah.

592
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 1: No, I think that's actually right now.

593
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 2: You know, I wouldn't describe it as looser so much

594
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:09,240
Speaker 2: as just more pragmatic. And you know, this is saying

595
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 2: that going away to Burke, sort of the the empsis

596
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 2: on prudentialism was so important, And I think you're right.

597
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:18,320
Speaker 2: It's partly if it's not working, like you don't have

598
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:21,000
Speaker 2: to keep doing it. It's it's also sort of the

599
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 2: flip side of that, which is that just because something

600
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:26,840
Speaker 2: was true at one time doesn't mean it is true

601
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 2: for all times in all places, like and you brought

602
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 2: this up a great examples, like in these immigration discussions

603
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:34,720
Speaker 2: where it's like, well, let me tell you how we

604
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 2: approached the Irish potato famin. It's like, like that is

605
00:33:39,040 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 2: absolutely true, and like there is there are many strains

606
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 2: of thought that would say, like that established some principle

607
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:48,520
Speaker 2: for all times that we can apply for the situation.

608
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 2: But that is obviously not conservative. The conservative thing to

609
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 2: do would be say, okay, like, well, what were the circumstances,

610
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:57,440
Speaker 2: you know, why did that make sense in those circumstances?

611
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 2: What are the circumstances today. Let's you know, maybe it

612
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 2: turns out that we should the same reasoning holds, but

613
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:08,359
Speaker 2: it certainly doesn't hold automatically. Right, Why are Somalians and

614
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:11,359
Speaker 2: Irish not the same? And why is Tony twenty five

615
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:13,839
Speaker 2: and eighteen sixty five not the same?

616
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:15,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point, right.

617
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:17,080
Speaker 2: There's just a lot different. And I think the other

618
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 2: thing that, you know, the phrase preaching to the choir

619
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 2: sometimes gets overused because like there's nothing wrong with preaching

620
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:28,719
Speaker 2: to the choir, right, Like, you know, if you have

621
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:32,919
Speaker 2: National Review, and National Review has an audience that sort

622
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 2: of has a particular point of view and it wants

623
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 2: to sort of equip them with the best arguments for

624
00:34:37,480 --> 00:34:42,360
Speaker 2: advancing that point of view, Like that's an extremely legitimate

625
00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 2: function in our political system.

626
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: The problem is that.

627
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:50,520
Speaker 2: What a lot of these entities are increasingly doing is

628
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 2: not so much sort of preaching to the choir as

629
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 2: like policing who can come into the church, right. It's

630
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 2: much more intended to say, like, you are in the

631
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:04,279
Speaker 2: right place here, like the people outside are bad, and

632
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:07,960
Speaker 2: like like please don't get up and go by the way.

633
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:10,279
Speaker 2: What is that like? Unfortunately for them, a kind of

634
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:16,200
Speaker 2: rapidly dwindling congregation. It is a sort of ideological enforcement

635
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 2: mechanism more than anything that I think you see really

636
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:22,720
Speaker 2: comes out in some of the responses to this financialization piece,

637
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 2: where there really isn't even an attempt at you know,

638
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 2: let us equip you with recent arguments, and it's just

639
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:32,920
Speaker 2: let us sort of remind you of the dogma and

640
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 2: assure you that anybody saying anything else must, you know,

641
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 2: is a crazy person.

642
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:41,160
Speaker 1: Sort of. Also, what you're calling for and what you're

643
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: prescribing is not extraordinarily radical. You're not saying the conservative

644
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 1: case for abolishing property rights. I mean, this is not

645
00:35:50,920 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 1: like and there were National Review we so famously always

646
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:57,840
Speaker 1: published like the conservative case for and some liberal position. Yeah,

647
00:35:57,920 --> 00:36:00,319
Speaker 1: I have a very odd question for you if you

648
00:36:00,360 --> 00:36:02,239
Speaker 1: don't have an answer it to ally financially thought of it.

649
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: But what, like you're a founder of American Compass, what

650
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 1: guides you in terms of saying, like, here's something that's

651
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:14,840
Speaker 1: going on in our country that my political brethren have

652
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: not looked at that solution from this angle. We have

653
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: not examined the economy from this perspective or this thing

654
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:25,960
Speaker 1: from this perspective. Do you have a certain like starting

655
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: point that you usually go to when examining big issues

656
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 1: and say this, this group is not being looked at properly.

657
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I start from what I at least

658
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:41,160
Speaker 2: would define as conservative principles. And of course there's a

659
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:44,440
Speaker 2: never ending debate about even you know, what conservative principles are,

660
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,040
Speaker 2: but I think, you know, they start from as we

661
00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 2: were talking about that prudentialism, you know, I think they

662
00:36:50,719 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 2: start from a skepticism of broad issues at you know,

663
00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:59,360
Speaker 2: broad efforts, a social engineering, a preference for limited government,

664
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 2: recognition in all of the failings of human nature, and

665
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:06,319
Speaker 2: I believe that you probably can't change those all that.

666
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:07,000
Speaker 1: Much and so on.

667
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 2: You know, we could enumerate all of the things. But

668
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:13,319
Speaker 2: then I think it's very important to apply those to

669
00:37:14,080 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 2: the world as it is. You know, one thing that

670
00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:19,760
Speaker 2: I think the right of center is going to stray

671
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:22,439
Speaker 2: on and the left of center has it's parallel version

672
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 2: of this is trying to argue about diagnosis and in

673
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:29,480
Speaker 2: what even is or is not a problem, for fear

674
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:33,239
Speaker 2: that if you acknowledge some problem, then somehow you have

675
00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 2: to kind of grant the other side it's preferred solution.

676
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 2: And so you know, on a lot of these economic questions,

677
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 2: it seems to me that conservatives, because they were so

678
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 2: committed to this kind of market fundamentalism and not just

679
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,239
Speaker 2: limited government, but you know, drown government in a bathtub

680
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 2: kind of mindset, has tried so hard to make the

681
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 2: case that everything is great and therefore or there is

682
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 2: no need to do anything. And you know, you see

683
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:05,000
Speaker 2: this on specific issues, like I used to do a

684
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:08,279
Speaker 2: lot of work on climate change, where it was like, like, well,

685
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 2: if we admit that climate change is a problem, then

686
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 2: we're going to get the Green New Deal. So like,

687
00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:14,640
Speaker 2: let's stand our ground on like climate.

688
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 1: Change isn't exist.

689
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't exist or won't cause any problems, which,

690
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 2: by the way, in addition to not being especially honest

691
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 2: in most cases is just like not the right ground

692
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 2: to be fighting on if you want to win, because

693
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 2: then once you lose that argument, then truly all that

694
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 2: is left is the other side's ideas.

695
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 1: Right.

696
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 2: So I think you've seen that on a lot of

697
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 2: these core economic issues, where there is so much effort

698
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:42,839
Speaker 2: made to sort of find a way to show in

699
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 2: the data that in fact, everyone is doing great for

700
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:49,040
Speaker 2: fear that you know, or that our financial markets are

701
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:51,440
Speaker 2: working well and all of the outcomes are really efficient,

702
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 2: for fear that if you admit that there's a problem there,

703
00:38:54,640 --> 00:38:57,280
Speaker 2: like well then you just then you get Marxism or whatever.

704
00:38:57,920 --> 00:38:59,080
Speaker 1: And so I think.

705
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 2: It's there is a tremendous amount of constructive work to

706
00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 2: be done on the right of center, just in being

707
00:39:04,680 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 2: willing to try to look clearly at the actual challenges

708
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:14,120
Speaker 2: we have and then say I want to understand those good. Now,

709
00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:17,280
Speaker 2: let's talk about how we would apply conservative principles to

710
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 2: trying to do something about them.

711
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:21,040
Speaker 1: Would you say, I mean a lot of people on

712
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 1: the right say that college and the media and social

713
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:28,359
Speaker 1: media brainwash people against capitalism. Would you say that the

714
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 1: financial sector is turning capitalists against people against capitalism the

715
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:37,640
Speaker 1: way it's not the principle the way it's being done.

716
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:41,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there. I think there's a huge problem there.

717
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:45,000
Speaker 2: And you know, one piece of it is in the

718
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 2: kind of what they're doing, right, Like, if you are

719
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 2: doing lots of stuff and making lots of money in

720
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,640
Speaker 2: ways that are not productive, people are going to look

721
00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 2: at that and say, wait a minute, this this system

722
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:01,359
Speaker 2: isn't working well and and lose confidence in it.

723
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:04,879
Speaker 1: Or I can't afford the things my parents could afford well,

724
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:05,680
Speaker 1: and so that's yeah.

725
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:07,080
Speaker 2: So that's the thing I would say is the second

726
00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 2: problem is then, like also, if you are operating the

727
00:40:10,200 --> 00:40:13,080
Speaker 2: system and advocating for a system that in fact is

728
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:17,879
Speaker 2: going to produce bad outcomes, then people are going to

729
00:40:17,920 --> 00:40:21,440
Speaker 2: turn against a system that does not deliver on what

730
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 2: was promised. And so I think that's where you know,

731
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 2: these pieces these days end up with different titles in

732
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:31,959
Speaker 2: print and online, online and so on and so forth.

733
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,359
Speaker 2: But one of the headlines for this New York Times

734
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:38,239
Speaker 2: piece was saving capitalism from the capitalists, because I think

735
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:42,640
Speaker 2: there's sort of there is nothing worse for capitalism than

736
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 2: standing up and saying, my high frequency trading hedge fund

737
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,719
Speaker 2: is capitalism and what's bizarre is that I think it

738
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:54,760
Speaker 2: was Judge Glock at the Manhattan Institute wrote a piece

739
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:58,560
Speaker 2: for City Journal right basically doubled down on this and said,

740
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 2: like investors making profit is just like that is a

741
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 2: synonym for capitalism.

742
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: Well, he was the one I was referencing in the

743
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:09,839
Speaker 1: fact that he literally didn't even talk about your your

744
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:12,280
Speaker 1: I was, I said, I mean, he's a fine writer,

745
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: but I was like, he's he's taught, he's debating somebody

746
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 1: who's not oring cass He's debating Zora Mondani or somebody

747
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 1: and saying therefore they are the same. And it's I

748
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: was just that was That's what kind of got because

749
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:28,000
Speaker 1: you're not And I think this is so important for

750
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 1: people who are like it's like they're friving in their

751
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:33,400
Speaker 1: brains saying if you have any Chrisms at all, you

752
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 1: must be a socialist, where you're like, there is a

753
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:38,280
Speaker 1: little more gray than you're offering.

754
00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 2: Although I have to say I am less offended by

755
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:47,800
Speaker 2: the kind of combining and confusing of positions than I

756
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:49,759
Speaker 2: am with just how bad a job they do of

757
00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:53,719
Speaker 2: defending their own position. Right, Like, if you if you

758
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:55,919
Speaker 2: think you have a better case to make for capitalism.

759
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 2: For goodness sake, don't make it by saying this capitalism

760
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 2: is just another word for investors making money. And then

761
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:05,879
Speaker 2: and I think he concludes the piece by noting that,

762
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 2: you know, I complain that a lot of the profit

763
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:14,920
Speaker 2: made on Wall Street is extractive, and he responded by saying, like, no,

764
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:18,840
Speaker 2: like companies extracting money, like that's just what profit is.

765
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 2: And it's like, no, that's that's completely wrong. You can

766
00:42:23,239 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 2: earn a good profit by creating new value. It's not

767
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 2: does not have to be a zero sum game. You

768
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 2: only end up with extractive profits under the conditions of

769
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:35,359
Speaker 2: well you can. You can end up with all sorts

770
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:38,720
Speaker 2: of extractive profits. The ones we're talking about here exist

771
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:42,000
Speaker 2: because you have a financialization where people are trying to

772
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:45,800
Speaker 2: generate profit without creating anything of value. But that's that

773
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:48,239
Speaker 2: is not the heart of the capitalist system. That is

774
00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 2: a disfigurement of it.

775
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:51,879
Speaker 1: And there used to be, I mean, back in the

776
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:54,400
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. I'm not an economic historian, and I'm so

777
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 1: off topic from what he's there, but I've read about

778
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:00,160
Speaker 1: I read a biograph mister Rogers and mister Rodgers as

779
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: this family. I think it was from Western BA and

780
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:03,799
Speaker 1: it used to be a thing where if you were

781
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:05,959
Speaker 1: a wealthy person in a region and you were probably

782
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,480
Speaker 1: gonna be there generationally, it was you felt it was

783
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:11,840
Speaker 1: your responsibility to invest only not only into your company,

784
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:14,719
Speaker 1: but your community. And then there was an upstate New

785
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: York they had the four Squares, a four square plan

786
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: where it was to improve life, the life of the employees. Overall,

787
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 1: there was a bit deeper attachment to a lot of

788
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:28,239
Speaker 1: things than there are currently. I think financialization makes all

789
00:43:28,280 --> 00:43:30,720
Speaker 1: those things a lot worse. I have two last questions.

790
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 1: I know I'm so far over that I wanted to

791
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 1: keep you, but you're so interesting, and I this is

792
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:37,439
Speaker 1: the first time you ever spoke. I have a very

793
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 1: strange suspicion over the financialization with AI, and we talked

794
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:44,759
Speaker 1: about a second. But for every company that is being

795
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:47,359
Speaker 1: invested in that will become the next Amazon, there are

796
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 1: like a million that our people are just passing money

797
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 1: around to invest in in things that don't ever make

798
00:43:54,080 --> 00:44:00,319
Speaker 1: profit and very rarely ever make real product. What is

799
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:04,120
Speaker 1: your position on this the way that like hedge funds

800
00:44:04,120 --> 00:44:07,640
Speaker 1: are increasingly just buying shares to prop up businesses that

801
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: I don't think we'll ever become Google Amazon Talent here

802
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:16,360
Speaker 1: what you name the successful one. There's a million pets

803
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:19,120
Speaker 1: dot com version of AI going on right now. In

804
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 1: my opinion, I mean, what do I know, But that's

805
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: my opinion.

806
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 2: Well, I think there are a couple of different issues

807
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:28,280
Speaker 2: to separate there. One is the sort of speculative bubble problem.

808
00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:30,560
Speaker 2: And you know, we saw this, of course with the

809
00:44:30,600 --> 00:44:34,359
Speaker 2: dot com bubble, which has kind of two lessons. Right.

810
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:38,239
Speaker 2: You had this new internet technology taking off rapidly diffusing

811
00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 2: people realized it was going to be a massive economic opportunity,

812
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 2: was going to mint new trillion dollar businesses, and so

813
00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 2: you had people basically placing bets on all of them.

814
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 2: And anytime that happens, a whole bunch of stuff ends

815
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 2: up not working out, and then some of it does.

816
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 2: Like the funny thing is you right, Like go compare

817
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:00,279
Speaker 2: the value of the NASDAC today to the as that

818
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:02,520
Speaker 2: at the very peak of the dot com bubble, and

819
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 2: you'd say, actually, the people buying at the top of

820
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:08,319
Speaker 2: the bubble, if they could wait long enough, were exactly right.

821
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:12,320
Speaker 2: And so you know, that's actually something you tend to

822
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 2: see across what what you might call bubbles. Historically you

823
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:19,600
Speaker 2: see kind of a rapid over investment in a sense,

824
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 2: but it's not actually irrational, and it actually provides a

825
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 2: lot of benefits. So, you know, you even saw back

826
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 2: in the days of like wild overbuilding of railroads did

827
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:32,240
Speaker 2: not work out well for a bunch of the people

828
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:34,279
Speaker 2: who were overbuilding the railroads, worked out great for a

829
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 2: country that then had lots of railroads. We saw that

830
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 2: with broadband rolling out, And so I think it's fine

831
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:42,480
Speaker 2: to say that, you know, where you do what I

832
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:46,320
Speaker 2: think is certainly an important new technology like AI. Seeing

833
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:49,479
Speaker 2: lots of entrepreneurs placing lots of bets on it, knowing

834
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 2: a lot of them aren't going to work out, is

835
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:58,040
Speaker 2: a perfectly fine step in the capitalist process. One thing

836
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 2: you worry about is, just given that you know the

837
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 2: bubble is also going to deflate at some point, do

838
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:06,520
Speaker 2: you have any sort of systemic risk that you know.

839
00:46:07,640 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 2: One of things that was so different about the financial

840
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 2: crisis in two thousand and eight was it wasn't a

841
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 2: stock market crash. It was the actual financial institutions and

842
00:46:16,000 --> 00:46:20,880
Speaker 2: their solvency collapsing. And so if what you have is

843
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of these companies kind of pumping up,

844
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 2: and three quarters of them are going to end up worthless.

845
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:28,480
Speaker 2: And that's fine. The people who invest, you know, bet

846
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 2: on those lose money, and the people who bet on

847
00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:33,080
Speaker 2: the winning ones win money. There's nothing wrong with that.

848
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:36,440
Speaker 2: If you get to the point where, you know, you

849
00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:40,840
Speaker 2: have banks and financial institutions and retirements and all of

850
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:45,719
Speaker 2: these things overly exposed to those bets, you know, you

851
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:48,040
Speaker 2: get to the point where sort of most of our

852
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 2: stock market value is actually tied to these bets instead

853
00:46:51,520 --> 00:46:53,840
Speaker 2: of it just being kind of one one piece to

854
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 2: the side. That's yeah, that's when you have to worry

855
00:46:57,200 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 2: about that.

856
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 1: And we're not there yet. You don't think, I don't

857
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 1: think so.

858
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,560
Speaker 2: I think the you know, certainly, it's important for people

859
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 2: to understand that a large share of the run up

860
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,160
Speaker 2: in the stock market recently is driven by that, and

861
00:47:10,200 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 2: that if and when that corrects, the paper value of

862
00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:16,080
Speaker 2: your equity holdings, right, what, what your four to one

863
00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 2: case says is going to be lower than it is

864
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:22,560
Speaker 2: now in all likelihood, and you know, but that doesn't

865
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:25,000
Speaker 2: equal you know, and that could even give you a recession.

866
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:26,920
Speaker 2: I mean, we saw a recession after the dot com

867
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 2: collapse that that doesn't kind of give you economic meltdown.

868
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:32,840
Speaker 2: I think you know what concerns me more in this

869
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:35,759
Speaker 2: space is two things. One, what you're seeing is kind

870
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:40,320
Speaker 2: of very common in bubbles is increasingly circular behavior where

871
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 2: there isn't actually the demand necessarily in the business model

872
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:46,719
Speaker 2: for what people want to do, and so they're kind

873
00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:50,280
Speaker 2: of passing things around in a circle. And VideA invests

874
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 2: in open Ai, who invests in Amazon, who invests in videos?

875
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:55,919
Speaker 2: I mean that's not the exact circle, but this kind

876
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:59,840
Speaker 2: of stuff, and if that then gets tied up with

877
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:02,200
Speaker 2: you know, you have what's called the private credit market.

878
00:48:02,320 --> 00:48:04,439
Speaker 2: So a lot of the data centers being built out

879
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,160
Speaker 2: are being financed in part by these other institutions that

880
00:48:07,239 --> 00:48:08,920
Speaker 2: have borrowed a lot of their money from banks and

881
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 2: so forth. So that's where you start to worry more

882
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 2: about it. I think at this point we are headed

883
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:17,719
Speaker 2: for something that looks on the AI side, something that

884
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 2: looks more like the dot com bubble than you know,

885
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:22,880
Speaker 2: something that looks like a financial.

886
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:25,759
Speaker 1: Crash, right or where can you go to read more

887
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:27,319
Speaker 1: about what you do? Where I can people go to

888
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:29,799
Speaker 1: reach an American compass? You're so smart and you're such

889
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:31,840
Speaker 1: you put up very thought provoking pieces.

890
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 2: Oh well, thank you. I appreciate that. We you know,

891
00:48:34,200 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 2: American Compass dot org has all of our research. We

892
00:48:37,960 --> 00:48:41,720
Speaker 2: publish a magazine called Commonplace. You've you've written a written

893
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:42,400
Speaker 2: wonderful stuff.

894
00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:42,760
Speaker 1: Yeah.

895
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:45,719
Speaker 2: So, whether you like Ryan or you want more of this,

896
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 2: you can subscribe at Commonplace dot org. We put out

897
00:48:49,280 --> 00:48:51,040
Speaker 2: three or four good things a month. We do or

898
00:48:51,080 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 2: excuse me, three or four things a week. We do

899
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 2: a weekly podcast, and you can always find me on

900
00:48:56,440 --> 00:48:58,320
Speaker 2: x at Oran Underscore Casts.

901
00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:00,120
Speaker 1: All right, thank you for coming on the podcast. I

902
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Yeah, this was great. Good to see you.

903
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 1: Now it's time for the ask Me Anything segment. If

904
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:09,080
Speaker 1: you want a part of the Ask Me Anything segment,

905
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,160
Speaker 1: email me Ryan at Numbers Gamepodcast dot com. That's Ryan

906
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:14,960
Speaker 1: at numbers Plural gamepodcast dot com and I will get

907
00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 1: some first question comes from John. He says, Hi, Ryan,

908
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:20,759
Speaker 1: I really like your podcast. I don't really expect you

909
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 1: to have to answer this, but since it's asked Me Anything,

910
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 1: I thought i'd give it a shot. Is Congressman Brandon

911
00:49:26,239 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 1: Gail as hot in person as he it? Because on

912
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:35,200
Speaker 1: TV this guy looks like Clark Kent's hotter younger brother

913
00:49:35,360 --> 00:49:38,360
Speaker 1: or hotter brother. I even like his vocal frye and

914
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 1: I don't like vocal fries. Well, keep up the great work.

915
00:49:43,040 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 1: Great question, Great question, John, I I do Brandon is

916
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:54,240
Speaker 1: extremely attractive, extremely handsome, very tall. His wife is also

917
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: extremely attractive, extremely extremely pretty, very sweet, extremely sweet. I've

918
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:02,600
Speaker 1: told them a million times, by the way, to dress

919
00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:05,560
Speaker 1: up like Clark Kent and with the Superman underneath it

920
00:50:05,640 --> 00:50:07,640
Speaker 1: for Halloween and saying you should do the while running

921
00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:09,640
Speaker 1: for Congress. So it's very funny you brought that up.

922
00:50:10,000 --> 00:50:14,399
Speaker 1: I will pass along the message. But uh yeah, he's

923
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: a very good looking guy. Okay. Next up comes from Michael.

924
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 1: Michael says, why does the Mormon Church have one hundred

925
00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:24,320
Speaker 1: billion dollars in au M and the Catholic churches broke?

926
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 1: It's just settlements from abuse, scanners or reduced giving. Both

927
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 1: my kids went to Catholic school and my daughter graduated

928
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: from BC and my son from Notre Dame. I don't

929
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:34,800
Speaker 1: know what BC is. I give more to the schools

930
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:38,359
Speaker 1: than most than I do the church. Okay, Well that's good,

931
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:40,719
Speaker 1: and it's that's good that you brought that up. It's

932
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 1: a very complicated question. For so, the Mormon Church is

933
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:46,000
Speaker 1: obviously much smaller than the Catholic churches. And a big

934
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:48,640
Speaker 1: thing that happened to the Catholic Church over the recent

935
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 1: decades is that when many Catholics immigrated to the United States,

936
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:56,400
Speaker 1: they built their own ethnic enclave churches so it wouldn't

937
00:50:56,480 --> 00:51:01,480
Speaker 1: be it was considered normal that it's all ethnic enclaved

938
00:51:01,520 --> 00:51:04,840
Speaker 1: church and an Irish ethnic enclave church were like blocks

939
00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:07,920
Speaker 1: from each other. So there was an over abundance of

940
00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 1: churches and parishes, which I think led to extremely high

941
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:15,880
Speaker 1: costs with maidenance and keep upkeep, and that is part

942
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 1: of the reason. It's obviously not the whole reason, but

943
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:20,799
Speaker 1: that's part of it. Secondly is the abuse scandals. I mean,

944
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:24,440
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church paid five billion dollars to survivors of

945
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 1: sexual assault and in the last twenty years. I mean,

946
00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:33,040
Speaker 1: that's absolutely hurt the church. And then there's the stupidity

947
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 1: of bishops who have thought that pews, you know, butts

948
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:43,800
Speaker 1: in the pews matter no matter who they are, and

949
00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:50,279
Speaker 1: having an endless supply of poor immigrants fill churches and

950
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 1: giving less than that because they can't give them as

951
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:58,560
Speaker 1: much is more important than trying to retain religiosity among

952
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:02,279
Speaker 1: communities who could give more, and Catholics have done a

953
00:52:02,360 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 1: very poor job at, you know, giving higher amounts at church.

954
00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:09,920
Speaker 1: I think the average Catholic gives about sixteen hundred dollars

955
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:12,439
Speaker 1: a year, the average practicing Catholic of sixteen hundred dollars

956
00:52:12,480 --> 00:52:17,080
Speaker 1: a year. The averaging practicing mainline Protestant gives two thousand

957
00:52:17,080 --> 00:52:20,280
Speaker 1: and seven fifty a year. So there are fewer Catholics

958
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 1: going to church. They're giving less for some reason. And

959
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 1: this is maybe for my fellow Catholics out there. There

960
00:52:26,040 --> 00:52:28,400
Speaker 1: was like this notion growing up that you had to

961
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:31,439
Speaker 1: give a dollar a church a week. There was no

962
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:34,760
Speaker 1: idea of tithing. Like I was never brought up on tithing,

963
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:37,919
Speaker 1: and I never heard anyone who was. And I guess

964
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:39,680
Speaker 1: because I grew up in a poor family. Like a

965
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: dollar was all my grandparents could afford to give, so

966
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,239
Speaker 1: their children were doing it. But like some grew up

967
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:48,160
Speaker 1: to be multi multimillionaires and I saw them still giving

968
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 1: a dollar a week. That's that always irritated me. Lastly

969
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:53,960
Speaker 1: is the immense costs from retiring priests and nuns, the

970
00:52:54,040 --> 00:52:57,360
Speaker 1: healthcare costs for elderly people is very expensive. And we

971
00:52:57,440 --> 00:52:59,440
Speaker 1: have a lot of priests and nuns and they are

972
00:52:59,440 --> 00:53:02,239
Speaker 1: all getting to an age where they have to be

973
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:05,719
Speaker 1: taken care of. So all those things are manifesting and

974
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: the you know, this caused five hundred parishes to close

975
00:53:09,040 --> 00:53:11,239
Speaker 1: in two thousand and there's a lot of mergers, and

976
00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 1: the Vatican is not responsible for those things. It's not

977
00:53:14,160 --> 00:53:18,239
Speaker 1: only the Vatican. We'll sit there. Usually they fund in

978
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:21,799
Speaker 1: loan money to the Vatican. The Vatican doesn't bring money down.

979
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:25,359
Speaker 1: They were responsible for their own powershes. So yeah, all

980
00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:27,520
Speaker 1: those reasons. Okay, last question for the episode. I know

981
00:53:27,560 --> 00:53:29,839
Speaker 1: this was a long episode goes to Daniel. He says,

982
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:31,880
Speaker 1: I think the assassination Charlie Kirk was a nine to

983
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 1: eleven type moment from mainly in the conservative movement. Do

984
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:36,759
Speaker 1: you remember where you were when you found out he

985
00:53:36,800 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 1: got shot. Yes. I was working from home and I

986
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:43,480
Speaker 1: started getting messages that there was a shooting. Like I think,

987
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:45,520
Speaker 1: I said, like shots wrung out of Charlie Kirk avent,

988
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:48,560
Speaker 1: which I did not assume meant anything. I just thought

989
00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:51,920
Speaker 1: that was, you know, there's shootings everywhere in America, And

990
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:55,160
Speaker 1: then I went to walk my dog and I saw

991
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:58,320
Speaker 1: a flurry of text messages saying I'm one of my employees.

992
00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:00,120
Speaker 1: My employee aid and called me and said, I think

993
00:54:00,200 --> 00:54:03,760
Speaker 1: Charlie is dead. I think he was murdered, and I also,

994
00:54:03,840 --> 00:54:06,239
Speaker 1: I just you just dismissed it. I was like, that

995
00:54:06,440 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 1: cannot possibly be true. And then I saw the video

996
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:12,360
Speaker 1: and I talked to Buck Sexton and Buck was talking

997
00:54:12,360 --> 00:54:13,840
Speaker 1: about the veins in your neck and he was like,

998
00:54:13,920 --> 00:54:16,160
Speaker 1: if they hit this artery, he's not gonna make it.

999
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: And there was just a lot of miscommunication, a lot

1000
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 1: of people saying that he was alive and he was

1001
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 1: making a recovery, and I remember really wanting everything to

1002
00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:28,160
Speaker 1: work out. I remember calling my pressed person who knew

1003
00:54:28,200 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 1: someone who knew him, and they said it was not

1004
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:33,600
Speaker 1: looking good. I said, Andrew Covid a text message and

1005
00:54:33,600 --> 00:54:35,160
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I'm praying for you, guys. I

1006
00:54:35,200 --> 00:54:38,560
Speaker 1: know the whole world was. And then I just basically

1007
00:54:38,800 --> 00:54:41,640
Speaker 1: was hooked on Twitter and Megan Kelly, you know, broke

1008
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 1: the news to me. Anyway, I'm on the feed. I

1009
00:54:44,239 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 1: was watching her live feed and she said, yeah, so

1010
00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 1: I text a few people from that. You know, he

1011
00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:53,200
Speaker 1: was very important to the Jdvan's campaign in twenty twenty two.

1012
00:54:53,280 --> 00:54:57,080
Speaker 1: So a lot of my colleagues on that campaign knew

1013
00:54:57,120 --> 00:55:00,080
Speaker 1: him well. So I saw him talking to them and

1014
00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:02,359
Speaker 1: you know, wishing them condolences. I wasn't that close to him,

1015
00:55:02,360 --> 00:55:05,719
Speaker 1: but they were. So it was pretty terrible. It was

1016
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:09,280
Speaker 1: pretty terrible. That's I remember it. Yeah, very very well.

1017
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:13,280
Speaker 1: So well, way to finish off the episode on a positive. No, Danielle,

1018
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:15,040
Speaker 1: thank you for that message. I'm just joking. Thank you

1019
00:55:15,080 --> 00:55:16,760
Speaker 1: guys so much for listening. Love you all for listening.

1020
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:19,760
Speaker 1: Thank you, guys. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful

1021
00:55:19,800 --> 00:55:22,360
Speaker 1: ash Wednesday. And please, if you liked this episode and

1022
00:55:22,440 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 1: like the show, like it, subscribe to the iHeartRadio app

1023
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts where we get your podcast, and please subscribe

1024
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:29,000
Speaker 1: on YouTube. It means the world to me. I will

1025
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:30,280
Speaker 1: talk to you guys on Friday.