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Speaker 1: As we get to the run up of not Just
Speaker 1: Campaign twenty twenty six week Campaign twenty twenty eight, one
Speaker 1: of the things I'm going to actively be seeking out
Speaker 1: are academics and authors and historians that are that are
Speaker 1: trying to lay out visions that look forward, not necessarily
Speaker 1: relitigating the past and whether it's in How are we
Speaker 1: going to reform and change and modernize the public education system,
Speaker 1: which I think is something that I hope our next
Speaker 1: presidential campaign can begin to discuss. And in that vein,
Speaker 1: there's a terrific new book out by a professor at
Speaker 1: the University of Texas Law School, by Michelle Dickerson. She's
Speaker 1: my guest today.
Speaker 2: The book is.
Speaker 1: Called The middle Class New Deal, Restoring Upward Mobility and
Speaker 1: the American Dream. This is more than just a white
Speaker 1: paper of saying of aspiration. This is a book with
Speaker 1: a detailed blueprint for how we should tackle this. And
Speaker 1: what's in interesting about this and I'm going to shut
Speaker 1: up here in a minute and bring in Michelle, is
Speaker 1: that I view it as this better be a book
Speaker 1: that anybody running for president, I don't care which party
Speaker 1: you're running from, ought to read, because whether you're a
Speaker 1: liberal or conservative, the goals that are outlined here in
Speaker 1: this book, I think are something that frankly, both the
Speaker 1: left and the right aspire to. We're just disagreeing on
Speaker 1: how we get there. But it does begin here with
Speaker 1: I think the reminder that in order to have a
Speaker 1: middle class, you actually have to have government policy that
Speaker 1: wants to have a middle class. And I think that
Speaker 1: was before we begin our conversation. The most important insight
Speaker 1: I think that I took away from this book. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, let me bring in Michelle Dickerson, University
Speaker 1: of Texas Law School. Been there, multiple books, She's written
Speaker 1: multiple books. Is again not a I don't this doesn't
Speaker 1: strike me. It didn't strike me as a political book.
Speaker 1: It struck me as a answer to the economic anxiety
Speaker 1: that has essentially been reflected in what has been now
Speaker 1: twenty years of what I call vote against politics. We
Speaker 1: know what we don't want, nobody's yet come up with
Speaker 1: the answer for what we do want. So Michelle Dickerson,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1: So let me start with this because I think you
Speaker 1: know you hear the words new deal, and we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of economic prescriptions using the umbrella of the
Speaker 1: new deal, right, and you know a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's just borrowing a popular phrase to sell something that
Speaker 1: people have been trying to sell for years. This didn't
Speaker 1: strike me. They tell me your origin as to what
Speaker 1: motivated you to put these ideas together the way you did.
Speaker 2: The first thing I did is I thought about, so
Speaker 2: how is it that we have a middle class? And
Speaker 2: this is a point that you just made in the introduction.
Speaker 2: We have a middle class because political leaders decided we
Speaker 2: needed to have a middle class. Now, part of it
Speaker 2: was in response to the depression, but after the depression
Speaker 2: in World War one world War two, political leader said,
Speaker 2: you know what, it's not a bad thing to have
Speaker 2: a middle class. They do good things for the US economy.
Speaker 2: And also as political leaders, we need to do good
Speaker 2: things for lower and middle income folks who are looking
Speaker 2: to achieve the American dream to have upward mobility. So
Speaker 2: I landed on the middle Class New Deal because we
Speaker 2: created the middle class roughly as part of the First
Speaker 2: New Deal, and political leaders need to stop. And I
Speaker 2: agree with the way that you framed this. This is
Speaker 2: not a left or a right, or a Democrat or
Speaker 2: a Republican book. This is a book for all political
Speaker 2: leaders to make a decision do we care about the
Speaker 2: middle class in this country or not?
Speaker 1: I thought the most important insight and it's almost to
Speaker 1: me it's the table stakes, right. If you don't accept
Speaker 1: this premise, then you're not going to accept the premise
Speaker 1: of the book is that somehow a middle class just
Speaker 1: happens in a free market economy. The fact of the matter,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. And when we lionize, you know, you know
Speaker 1: we It's always one of those things. Everybody wants to
Speaker 1: say they're in the middle class, right. It is popular
Speaker 1: to be in the middle class, even as we aspire
Speaker 1: to be. Even when you're not in the middle class anymore,
Speaker 1: you still want to say, well, I've got middle class roots, right,
Speaker 1: there's something about it, right, we want to be here.
Speaker 1: But this is not something a free market economy creates.
Speaker 1: Free Market economies, when left unchecked, create uber rich and
Speaker 1: a lot of poor. It actually, it doesn't automatically create
Speaker 1: a middle class. And I think understanding the history of
Speaker 1: the great building of the middle class of the fifties,
Speaker 1: the GI Bill, that was a government essentially making sure
Speaker 1: the troops that came home didn't become poor, gave them
Speaker 1: an opportunity to stay out of poverty, not even necessarily
Speaker 1: bringing people from poverty to the middle class. The development
Speaker 1: of the suburbs, the development of all of these things
Speaker 1: were in support of the middle of creating a middle class.
Speaker 1: And I think that might be hard for some of
Speaker 1: my free market conservative friends to sort of wrap their
Speaker 1: arms around, but guess what government actually has to create
Speaker 1: the conditions to allow a middle class to exist. Did
Speaker 1: I summarize your argument parently?
Speaker 2: We did exactly, And what I would say is, if
Speaker 2: you want to know what happens when the government is
Speaker 2: not involved, look at what has happened to lower and
Speaker 2: middle income people since the nineteen eighties. So if we
Speaker 2: want the free market to control, what that means is
Speaker 2: we will have the uber uber rich and everyone else
Speaker 2: will be struggling. So it's really hilarious to me when
Speaker 2: people look back at the middle class and all of
Speaker 2: the wonderful things it did. It helps people go to college,
Speaker 2: it helped people buy homes. But if we really wanted
Speaker 2: to put labels on what happened that the factors that
Speaker 2: helped to create the middle class, we'd have to say
Speaker 2: things like socialism and interfering with free markets, And of
Speaker 2: course nobody wants to say those words. The S word
Speaker 2: is just horrible. Well, fine, don't call it socialism, just
Speaker 2: call it what do we think this government owes to
Speaker 2: people who work hard, get up every day and try
Speaker 2: to do the right thing, and yet continue to struggle.
Speaker 2: If your response is we owe them nothing, then we
Speaker 2: need to just say that.
Speaker 1: Well, and you know I can make a national security
Speaker 1: are if you want a stable and thriving population that
Speaker 1: also is patriotic, then you better have a sustainable middle
Speaker 1: class if we don't have one, Yeah, if we.
Speaker 2: Want a happy be population. So if again, even ignoring
Speaker 2: whether or not you care about the economic security of
Speaker 2: most families in this country, one of the things that
Speaker 2: I always say when people ask me, well, why is
Speaker 2: it so good to have a middle class? I can
Speaker 2: point to lots of things like toasters, or trash cans
Speaker 2: or Ford pickup trucks. Billionaires can only buy so many
Speaker 2: of those. So even if you don't care about the
Speaker 2: stability of human beings, the economic stability of human beings,
Speaker 2: y'all ought to care whether or not you can sell
Speaker 2: lots of pickup trucks and trash cans and microwaves. That's
Speaker 2: what the middle past also does. They drive spending in
Speaker 2: this economy. And if they're struggling financially, or if they're
Speaker 2: scared and we're seeing a lot of fear now, which
Speaker 2: is also unhealthy, then we're going to have a week economy.
Speaker 1: So I feel as if that you're you made a
Speaker 1: case in this book that government in sort of supporting
Speaker 1: the middle class. It's not about guaranteeing a certain level
Speaker 1: of income. But it is about guaranteeing and the following items, uh,
Speaker 1: the ability, stable employment, predictable health costs, affordable education, pathways
Speaker 1: to home ownership, and retirement security. And that those things
Speaker 1: Government has to involve itself if you want to have
Speaker 1: those guarantees, and that that that middle class is less
Speaker 1: about income and more about does the average American able
Speaker 1: to achieve those five goals in life?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of the things when I talk about
Speaker 2: the middle class that I always stress is people who
Speaker 2: are struggling financially are not saying we need to be billionaires.
Speaker 2: They're simply saying, why is it so hard for me
Speaker 2: to find a full time job forty hours a week
Speaker 2: with benefits including health insurance and a retirement plan where
Speaker 2: I am called an employee when I go to work
Speaker 2: and not an independent contractor? So why is that so hard?
Speaker 2: Why is it so hard for me to be able
Speaker 2: to either go to college myself and not drown myself
Speaker 2: in student loan debt or help my kids go to college?
Speaker 2: Why is it so hard for me? And I'll tweak
Speaker 2: one thing that you said, it's not so much now
Speaker 2: to be able to own your own home. It's to
Speaker 2: be able to find affordable housing, even to rent in
Speaker 2: a lot of cities. Why is it so hard for
Speaker 2: me to find stable and secure housing? Why am I
Speaker 2: drowning in debt? Why don't I have savings? So you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right. My book isn't arguing that everybody needs to
Speaker 2: earn the same thing, but everybody in this country that
Speaker 2: works hard and wants to achieve. Whether we call it
Speaker 2: the American Dream, upward mobility, I really don't care.
Speaker 1: But everyone that wants to.
Speaker 2: Be stable should have the opportunity to do that.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about let's pick out these things one
Speaker 1: at a time. So the role, What are some ideas
Speaker 1: that government could do to create a more stable employment environment.
Speaker 2: Well, one thing is to focus on what I just said,
Speaker 2: why do we continue to allow businesses to treat their
Speaker 2: employees as independent contractors? Because if you say they don't
Speaker 2: have to treat them as employees, then that means they're
Speaker 2: not guaranteed forty hours a week, they don't get benefits,
Speaker 2: they don't have the right to unionize. So we need
Speaker 2: to start asking why is it that we allow companies
Speaker 2: to outsource whole swaths of their employment of their employees
Speaker 2: and the back as an independent contractor. We have to
Speaker 2: ask why is it. In the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: people that worked had a defined benefit pension plan. That's
Speaker 2: what my parents have and I talk about them in
Speaker 2: the book. My parents get two I won't say checks,
Speaker 2: because it's not checks anymore. Two deposits into their checking
Speaker 2: account every month because they worked their entire lives and
Speaker 2: they have guaranteed retirement income. I am terrified to think
Speaker 2: what we're going to see in about ten years when
Speaker 2: people start retiring. They don't have pensions and they have
Speaker 2: not much saved in a defined contribution for a one
Speaker 2: K four three B plan.
Speaker 1: Oh, baby boomers are the last ones that got pensions,
Speaker 1: and ZAC gen X is the first generation. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, we're the ones that I had to figure
Speaker 1: out what is four O one K mean? Okay, it's
Speaker 1: like alphabet soup? Yeah, right, Ira roth Ira? What is that? Right?
Speaker 1: There were all these sort of new sort of you know,
Speaker 1: tax coded you know, numbers and numerologies or the names
Speaker 1: after senators who came up with the idea that we're
Speaker 1: all designed essentially to keep Americans from being angry that
Speaker 1: pensions were going away. I don't know any other way
Speaker 1: to describe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they shifted the risk of retirement security from employers
Speaker 2: to employees, and they did it in ways that was
Speaker 2: designed for us to end up exactly where we are.
Speaker 2: I remember the first time I had my first job.
Speaker 2: It was at a law firm, I think, and I
Speaker 2: went there and I had to actually look at the
Speaker 2: retirement offerings. I mean, I was a bankruptcy lawyer and
Speaker 2: I've graduated from law school. It so terrified me. I
Speaker 2: had to put it down and come back the next
Speaker 2: day because it was so complicated. Well, if I can't
Speaker 2: figure it out, imagine just a normal didn't doesn't have
Speaker 2: two degree, you know, isn't in bankruptcy employee that's sitting
Speaker 2: down trying to figure out what do I need to
Speaker 2: invest in, and when do I think I'm going to retire,
Speaker 2: and what level of income do I think I'm going
Speaker 2: to need the things that employers used to do for
Speaker 2: their workers.
Speaker 1: Look, politically, that's going to be very difficult, right you
Speaker 1: look at Let's just take FedEx in Amazon. Right. FedEx
Speaker 1: is an older company that arguably is the first major
Speaker 1: company to succeed with independent contractors. Right and Amazon obviously
Speaker 1: many of these people that work at Amazon don't work
Speaker 1: for Amazon right there, they're independent contractor. They have a
Speaker 1: lot of political leverage, right and the whole And there's
Speaker 1: some that will argue, well, independent contractors allow people to
Speaker 1: make more money because it can be a side hustle
Speaker 1: and right. You know, there are different ways that have
Speaker 1: been used frankly to convince or persuade parts of the population. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. These these empower you, These don't hurt you,
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm not asking you to be a
Speaker 1: political messaging guru here, but I think that's going to
Speaker 1: be the political challenge to an obvious policy conundrum. Right.
Speaker 2: And we talk a lot about freedom and choice. So
Speaker 2: you have the freedom. You can choose not to work
Speaker 2: forty hours a week you want to have you want
Speaker 2: to be an independent contract it's good for you. You can
Speaker 2: choose to work in the gig economy, you know, pick
Speaker 2: up a little bit of work here and there. But
Speaker 2: if you actually talk to the people who are exercising
Speaker 2: the choice to be an independent contractor, it's not a choice.
Speaker 2: And I can say this from personal experience. I have
Speaker 2: a twenty five year old son who worked briefly for Amazon,
Speaker 2: but he didn't work for Amazon. He worked for a
Speaker 2: delivery service provider and they treated him very well. But
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, he was never going
Speaker 2: to work for Amazon, and he was never going to
Speaker 2: get forty hours a week working at the DSP because
Speaker 2: it wasn't set up for them to be full time
Speaker 2: forty hour a week. You got to give them benefits.
Speaker 1: Do you think this has to be mandatory legislation that
Speaker 1: basically says is there you know, can you design what
Speaker 1: would a what would a simple piece of legislation do
Speaker 1: to sort of dissuade the independent contractor route.
Speaker 2: Well, several states have actually tried. I think California tried.
Speaker 2: All have failed, but several states have tried. Basically, if
Speaker 2: you have someone that is doing the same work that
Speaker 2: people you called employees are doing, those people must be
Speaker 2: treated like employees, whether you call them contractors or not.
Speaker 2: So give them health insurance, allow them to participate in
Speaker 2: the retirement plans, and more importantly, allow them to organize
Speaker 2: and to participate in any or union organizing attempts at
Speaker 2: your company. Because at the end of the day, when
Speaker 2: you have fewer employees your cost or less as a business,
Speaker 2: and you're not at grade of a risk of having
Speaker 2: a strong union presence, because if you have fewer employees,
Speaker 2: you're less likely to have to deal with those pesky unions.
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Speaker 1: Health cust You know there was a time, I want
Speaker 1: to say twenty years ago, where I thought that there
Speaker 1: was a deal to be cut with big business. You
Speaker 1: know I would hear the complaints, you know, because I've
Speaker 1: worked where I worked I'd have interactions with this CEO
Speaker 1: of ge and I've had interactions with the CEO of
Speaker 1: Comcast and interactions with other CEOs, and all of them
Speaker 1: would complain about the cost of healthcare, and so you
Speaker 1: could I always thought that there was this great grand
Speaker 1: bargain where the government would say, look, we can save
Speaker 1: you some money. We'll take care of health We'll take
Speaker 1: healthcare out of your situation. Then you can go back
Speaker 1: to having pensions or you can go back to you
Speaker 1: know that there was this grand bargain to be had,
Speaker 1: so to tackle predictable health costs, you know, is it
Speaker 1: realistic to stick with the employer based healthcare system that
Speaker 1: ultimately we're still kind of attached to, even though the
Speaker 1: Affordable Care Act was supposed to make this a bit
Speaker 1: more portable. Do you think we need policy fixes that
Speaker 1: sort of deal with the world that we live in,
Speaker 1: or do we need to radically rethink how we deliver
Speaker 1: health insurance to folks or health care.
Speaker 2: I would say we need to make a radical change.
Speaker 2: And these are a couple of options. And I'll lead
Speaker 2: into this by telling a story involving a class that
Speaker 2: I taught at ut So it was a class that
Speaker 2: had both law students, public policy students, schools from students
Speaker 2: from a school of education, and foreign exchange students. So
Speaker 2: we were talking about the middle class and this particular
Speaker 2: class session we were talking about insurance and one of
Speaker 2: the students from the Netherlands finally asked a question says,
Speaker 2: I don't understand why when we're talking about health insurance
Speaker 2: you all keep talking about jobs. What do jobs have
Speaker 2: to do with anything? And then we had to explain
Speaker 2: to her, Well, in the US, that's how we provide
Speaker 2: health insurance. So if we leave it with businesses, businesses
Speaker 2: have to assume the cost. So rather than pushing the
Speaker 2: cost onto employees, tell them that, you know, whether we
Speaker 2: want to say that there are caps on what they
Speaker 2: can charge or but businesses can lobby Congress and be
Speaker 2: much more effective in coming up with solution that individual
Speaker 2: employees can. I will also say, and this is not
Speaker 2: necessarily a model that can be scaled, but when we
Speaker 2: look at the way that a military personnel in this country,
Speaker 2: how they receive health insurance, they receive it from the government.
Speaker 2: Is it perfect? They would probably say no, Is everyone covered?
Speaker 2: Yes they are. So we have to do something radical
Speaker 2: because we can't continue with the status quo. And I
Speaker 2: would also again thinking back to the past, although I'm
Speaker 2: not going to stick say in the past, I want
Speaker 2: us to be thinking in terms of the.
Speaker 1: Oh, and this is the point of your book is
Speaker 1: to stop. You know, we can't relitigate stuff.
Speaker 2: That that has happened yet.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But the reason that we have so many employee benefits
Speaker 2: tied into work was because in World War Two there
Speaker 2: was a wage controls, so they couldn't increase wages. So
Speaker 2: what businesses did is say, oh, but we can give
Speaker 2: you non wage benefits. Once that happened, it became the norm.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things I want political leaders
Speaker 2: to do is to say, well, if it wasn't the
Speaker 2: norm until we created it, maybe we can create something
Speaker 2: new and that'll then become.
Speaker 1: The norm, a new essentially some new norms exactly if
Speaker 1: you want. But you're right, I mean it was people
Speaker 1: would panic if they found out healthcare wasn't connected to work. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that's what Look, that's what the Clintons found out when
Speaker 1: they first touched the healthcare back in ninety three. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: People hate the system, but they like their own health.
Speaker 2: Care exactly, and they're always afraid that, well, I have
Speaker 2: to have the best health care and I have to
Speaker 2: have every single procedure that I want covered. And that's
Speaker 2: great that in theory, until you lose your job and
Speaker 2: then you have no health care. So one of the
Speaker 2: discussions we're going to have to have is to ask people,
Speaker 2: are you going to fight for what you have right now,
Speaker 2: knowing that if you lose your job you have nothing?
Speaker 1: You know, I what are I think there are real
Speaker 1: trade offs here that might be net positives for everybody,
Speaker 1: right if the government takes on the role of essentially
Speaker 1: guaranteeing insurance, guarantee health care, access to healthcare, in theory,
Speaker 1: that should free up money for corporations. I mean, and
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. You know, we don't do
Speaker 1: nuance very well in our country anymore in our political debates.
Speaker 1: But you know, that seems to be the type of
Speaker 1: thing that that that in a in a mature setting,
Speaker 1: that that people would accept the idea that this is
Speaker 1: trade offs. This isn't you know. Okay, I want this guarantee,
Speaker 1: but it means it won't get it over here, okay,
Speaker 1: and you put it out.
Speaker 2: There, Yeah, I mean we're again at the where we
Speaker 2: unfortunately spend most of our time in the political space
Speaker 2: with you know, we let perfect be the enemy of good, right,
Speaker 2: and so why not say these are the six things
Speaker 2: that we think people in this country deserve. And if
Speaker 2: we can agree that everyone deserves healthcare, everyone deserves some
Speaker 2: kind of retirement security, we can then say, Okay, now
Speaker 2: that we've agreed on that, who do we think should
Speaker 2: be responsible for providing it? Ignoring who may be providing
Speaker 2: it right now, but who going forward do we think
Speaker 2: should be responsible for providing it? That to me is
Speaker 2: a much more productive conversation than relitigating, well, it's not
Speaker 2: fair if businesses have to do this and it increase
Speaker 2: their costs. Okay, let's just assume that your true. Let's
Speaker 2: go forward.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about affordable education. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: head scratchers to me, I was convinced back in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties that it was inevitable that we were going
Speaker 1: to what I called thirteenth and fourteenth grade, that we
Speaker 1: were going that public education was essentially going to extend
Speaker 1: another two years, that there was going to be guaranteed
Speaker 1: public education up through quote unquote fourteen years of it,
Speaker 1: so you divided up how you want to divide it up. Right,
Speaker 1: You had your primary and secondary, and then you have
Speaker 1: essentially free community college, right the first two years of
Speaker 1: community college. The fact that we haven't gotten there, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that we're still, like a think, debating university
Speaker 1: universal kindergarten in some states we have, I would argue
Speaker 1: the entire our education debate is just sort of stalled, right,
Speaker 1: and we're stuck with this terrible system of charters and
Speaker 1: where everybody has taken education in their own hands. And
Speaker 1: you know, you're discussing in some cases more about higher education.
Speaker 1: But I feel like the entire educational system just desperately
Speaker 1: needs a twenty first century makeover, and it's so politically
Speaker 1: polarized that we don't know how to do it. What
Speaker 1: are a few steps, a few ideas you're putting out
Speaker 1: there in the book that you think could make a
Speaker 1: tangible progress here.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll leave by saying one group that we also
Speaker 2: have to bring into this discussion our employers. Because even
Speaker 2: if we had K fourteen and everyone had a free
Speaker 2: community college education, employers need to be willing to hire
Speaker 2: them and pay them a decent wage. The challenge now
Speaker 2: is that the bachelor's degree has largely become the gateway
Speaker 2: to the middle class. So employers also need to come
Speaker 2: into the conversation and say, we're going to hire people
Speaker 2: and treat them decently even if they don't have a
Speaker 2: bachelor's degree. But you're absolutely right, we've got to look
Speaker 2: at what happens starting in kindergarten. I would like to
Speaker 2: start actually in preschool as well, And how do we
Speaker 2: treat lower and middle income children in public schools, And
Speaker 2: how do we treat rich children and lower rich children
Speaker 2: who are more likely to be educated in private schools.
Speaker 2: So we need to have an honest discussion when we're
Speaker 2: talking about charters and vouchers and all of these other things.
Speaker 2: Most lower and middle income kids in this country are
Speaker 2: educated in a public school somewhere. If they are in
Speaker 2: a rural area. There are no such things as choice options.
Speaker 2: There's no choice.
Speaker 1: To say this all the time. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's essentially homeschool exactly. That's the only realistic option if
Speaker 1: you don't like your school.
Speaker 2: And some parents are doing that. But as we saw
Speaker 2: during COVID, exactly parents were like, oh my goodness, we
Speaker 2: love our school. Teachers, Boy, can we get these children back?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And so it's great to say homes Well, you know
Speaker 2: people need a homeschool. Most parents need two incomes in
Speaker 2: order to survive. So that's just not a thing. So
Speaker 2: one of the things I argue, and I know some
Speaker 2: of the things I proposed in the book are are
Speaker 2: quite radical, but we need to look at the public
Speaker 2: school buildings and ask ourselves why are they so underutilized?
Speaker 2: How can we use them to do more? So we
Speaker 2: know that there are educational gaps between lower and middle
Speaker 2: income children and lower rich and rich children. What can
Speaker 2: we do with the public school system to try to
Speaker 2: close those gaps. One of the things that we do
Speaker 2: now is we still treat public school the public school
Speaker 2: calendar is if we're in a great economy, So for
Speaker 2: three some three months of the.
Speaker 1: Summer, got to deal with the crops. Everybody, right, that's right.
Speaker 2: So you have children just there in the phrases use
Speaker 2: as a summer slide. If you're rich or lower rich,
Speaker 2: you can put your kids in these camps and robotic camps,
Speaker 2: and you can have them go to these summer high
Speaker 2: school camps on college campuses. Well, that's lovely, that's not
Speaker 2: the reality for lower and middle income families. And so
Speaker 2: you're what I do, both in the book and also
Speaker 2: when I'm giving different talks, is we have to focus
Speaker 2: on K twelve because it's too late once children are
Speaker 2: about to turn eight, age eighteen.
Speaker 1: No, And the whole thing is, you know, nobody's happy
Speaker 1: with the public school system, and everybody would be appalled
Speaker 1: if it went.
Speaker 2: Away, exactly.
Speaker 1: And and you know it's like, look, I empathize with
Speaker 1: these parents that go back and forth. Get I get
Speaker 1: school choice I had. You know, my parents didn't. The
Speaker 1: only choice they had was to find another neighborhood to
Speaker 1: live in with affordable housing, and they did that. That
Speaker 1: was that's all they could do, and that's what they did.
Speaker 1: I had a little bit more the ability to truly
Speaker 1: choose what was going to be best for my kids.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, we are not going to have a good
Speaker 1: labor force if we don't have a good public education system.
Speaker 1: And well, look, politically, the impediments have been a weird
Speaker 1: combination of people who don't want you know, I joke
Speaker 1: in the state of Virginia, it's the people that own
Speaker 1: an amusement park called King's Dominion that was making it
Speaker 1: impossible for school districts to even start two weeks earlier.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be like these weird you know,
Speaker 1: And then there was some teachers' unions are like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we want we want our time off because a lot
Speaker 1: of teachers, because they're underpaid, spend their summers looking for
Speaker 1: extra in and are afraid of that going away, right, So,
Speaker 1: which then tells you we really aren't investing very well
Speaker 1: in our school teachers if they feel like they need
Speaker 1: a second job in the summer. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's been a weird challenge to sort of break
Speaker 1: this norm of summer break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again one of the they're very COVID was awful.
Speaker 2: It was dreadful and and I've always had to purpose
Speaker 2: this with there's nothing good about COVID, but some good
Speaker 2: things did come out of COVID. And one of the
Speaker 2: things we saw during COVID is what happens when you
Speaker 2: have an extended educational slide. So we have children now
Speaker 2: who still have not caught up and who are still
Speaker 2: behind because of the COVID slide. So you're absolutely right,
Speaker 2: everyone has their own agenda. Actually, before I joined the
Speaker 2: UT faculty I worked at. I was at the law
Speaker 2: school at William and Mary and so I know I
Speaker 2: know about you know, those gated communities there. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it was just striking. It's like, oh, so if you
Speaker 2: all don't want to lose cheap high school labor, that's
Speaker 2: the reason you want to. Oh, okay, that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but for the school teachers, one of the things that
Speaker 2: we can do if we're using our K twelve buildings
Speaker 2: more effectively, we can actually allow the school teachers that
Speaker 2: want to they don't have to to pick up extra
Speaker 2: money in their area of expertise.
Speaker 1: You call this the summer trimester essentially.
Speaker 2: Concept exactly. Yeah, just the building is there, So why
Speaker 2: not use the building in ways that can put a
Speaker 2: little more money in the pockets of school teachers and
Speaker 2: also make sure that lower and middle income children get
Speaker 2: the same educational and vocational opportunities that rich kids do.
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about labor labor unions, because what's interesting
Speaker 1: is we're in a moment right now where you know, look,
Speaker 1: I think you and I are of the generation where
Speaker 1: labor unions were a punching back, you know, and politically,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you know, it's almost like that
Speaker 1: every labor union was viewed through the prism of Jimmy Hoffa, right,
Speaker 1: and it's just like they're all, you know, and it
Speaker 1: really the damage, the perception damage Jimmy off did to
Speaker 1: the entire concept of collective bargaining and unions is is
Speaker 1: I think one of those one of those moments that
Speaker 1: probably we as sort of historical journalists need to unpack
Speaker 1: and realize, look at the damage this did. But there's
Speaker 1: now sort of an open mind on this. Now there's
Speaker 1: less ideological divide about labor unions. There's still some skepticism
Speaker 1: in corporate right now, the divide really seems to be
Speaker 1: corporate America versus everybody else. Right, you have a Donald
Speaker 1: Trump that in theory sees, you know, wants to be
Speaker 1: on the side at least of the trade unions. They're there,
Speaker 1: and I think with AI, the fear of AI job displacement,
Speaker 1: why collar were workers who you know, I've been you know,
Speaker 1: I've been a little skeptical of news of news rem
Speaker 1: unions myself, sort of like you know, I've always viewed
Speaker 1: unions as to protect the physical labor folks more than
Speaker 1: necessarily the but that's my own bias, and I will
Speaker 1: I'm you know, at the same time, the only way
Speaker 1: you're going to get equal treatment is through collective bargainy, right,
Speaker 1: we're about to I think we're going to see this
Speaker 1: in college sports. By the way, that's a separate topic,
Speaker 1: but you seem to peg one of the one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we had a strong middle class in
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties was because we openly accepted labor unions.
Speaker 1: So how do you bring that back?
Speaker 2: Well, one of the divides that I think we're also
Speaker 2: seeing is there's a generational divide. So I remember when
Speaker 2: I first started teaching courses on the middle class. Again,
Speaker 2: this is one of the sessions where we were talking
Speaker 2: about labor and I had a student in the class
Speaker 2: to raise their hand and say, so, you know, we've
Speaker 2: been talking about this whole thing with you know, rights
Speaker 2: and workers' power, and you've been talking about unions. Exactly
Speaker 2: what is a union? And it was jarring to me
Speaker 2: until it occurred to me that we had so demonized
Speaker 2: unions that a lot of students fifteen years ago really
Speaker 2: weren't familiar with the benefits that unions actually could provide.
Speaker 2: Students now they know exactly what unions do. Part of
Speaker 2: it is because I think they've looked at their local
Speaker 2: baristas who have gone out on strike. They've looked at
Speaker 2: in the educational context, some of the graduate assistants that
Speaker 2: have gone out on strike. I will not talk at
Speaker 2: all about sports because I'm very involved in that space
Speaker 2: at the University of Texas. I'm not going to talk
Speaker 2: about that. But yeah, I think that we have to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that nothing good has happened to lower and middle
Speaker 2: income workers since we gutted union. I would say Jimmy
Speaker 2: Hoffa is a very bad visual. I will also say
Speaker 2: that the destruction of pat Co by Ronald Reagan was
Speaker 2: another one of those moments exactly where we forget that
Speaker 2: that then told everybody else you can go out and
Speaker 2: destroy union two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a you know, I look at the
Speaker 1: model Germany has, and it's always been a fascinating model
Speaker 1: where workers are actually on the board of directors like
Speaker 1: they're so the union culture is so embedded with the
Speaker 1: corporate culture that it actually isn't as it doesn't strike
Speaker 1: me as antagonistic. Is there a model there worth worth copying?
Speaker 2: We have to look at the union or employees workers
Speaker 2: as partners. And so again, when we're deciding who gets what,
Speaker 2: if you view the union as a partner rather than
Speaker 2: as the inner, I think we have a very different
Speaker 2: framework going forward. The businesses often views the government as
Speaker 2: a partner. Well, if you view the government, if you
Speaker 2: have these public private partnerships with the government, why are
Speaker 2: you so hostile to the people that actually make it
Speaker 2: possible for your company to be productive. So, whether it's
Speaker 2: there on the boards or you are genuinely working toward
Speaker 2: these so we're all rowing in the same direction. We
Speaker 2: don't have that now, but I think we may get
Speaker 2: that if no other reason, young people are going to
Speaker 2: demand it.
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Speaker 1: insurance is something you should really think about, especially if
Speaker 1: you've got a growing family, how do you eliminate You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of this take the union issue is that
Speaker 1: are classified. Sometimes people get blinded by race and ethnicity,
Speaker 1: when really our divides have always been class, and race
Speaker 1: and ethnicity have been sort of used as wedges to
Speaker 1: to to advance a class argument one way or the other.
Speaker 1: You know, well, maybe it's impossible, and maybe I'm asking
Speaker 1: you a political question and you're not offering a political question.
Speaker 1: But that seems to be something that we've got to
Speaker 1: get over as a culture before we all embrace a
Speaker 1: union mindset.
Speaker 2: I think we also have to admit it. I mean,
Speaker 2: you admit it. I know that it is true. A
Speaker 2: lot of people will not admit even now, a lot
Speaker 2: of the conversations that we are having are really about
Speaker 2: race and ethnicity. They are not about anything else. I
Speaker 2: don't care whether we's in the immigration space or guy.
Speaker 1: Look at Todd, Donald Trump and the trade unions. He's
Speaker 1: always worried about the trade unions. He's never worried about
Speaker 1: anybody at SEIU exactly.
Speaker 2: And Sciu just.
Speaker 1: Looks that union looks different than the Carpenters Union does.
Speaker 1: Although I would argue the Carpenter's Union looks a lot
Speaker 1: more like SCIU than he thinks, but you get my drift.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, even the Teamsters, I mean, that was the
Speaker 2: one union that was more inclined to support the Republican
Speaker 2: Party than the Democratic Party, and their membership looks very
Speaker 2: different than the service workers unions. And so one of
Speaker 2: the things we're going to we're going to have to
Speaker 2: stop doing is saying that, well, the problems of the
Speaker 2: middle class are the workers are lazy? Okay, so which
Speaker 2: workers are we talking about? Are we talking about all
Speaker 2: workers or do you have a certain profile of a
Speaker 2: worker in mind? What made me actually think that I
Speaker 2: was sort of onto something here because I've been writing
Speaker 2: this book for an eternity. But it was the twenties,
Speaker 2: it was before the twenty sixteen election. We heard all
Speaker 2: of this, oh the angry middle class, and Hillary Clinton
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump were talking about how much they loved
Speaker 2: the middle class and the angst of the middle class.
Speaker 2: And then I kept asking, so, exactly which middle class
Speaker 2: are we talking about here? Because it is absolutely true,
Speaker 2: absolutely true, that there is economic inequality and that there
Speaker 2: is anxiety. There's economic anxiety, but that has been true
Speaker 2: for black and Latunal workers forever. The shift that we're
Speaker 2: seeing now is the same way that the black and
Speaker 2: Latino middle class has been treated, is the way the
Speaker 2: entire middle class is being treated. And if we can
Speaker 2: get lower and middle income workers to say, this is
Speaker 2: not tribalism, this is not people that don't look like us,
Speaker 2: we are all being treated the same way. None of
Speaker 2: us can afford to send our kids to college, none
Speaker 2: of us can find a forty hour full time job
Speaker 2: where we are called an employee, and none of us
Speaker 2: can find an affordable housing either.
Speaker 1: Look what made I think this book, also why I
Speaker 1: think it should be should be read by all these
Speaker 1: presidential candidates is that, you know, a lot of times
Speaker 1: presidential candidates will focus on poverty, stafe safety net programs
Speaker 1: primarily focused on helping the poor, and these you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's a fight about Medicaid aid right, whether it's
Speaker 1: I and you know the synic and me has often said, look,
Speaker 1: all voters are self centered. Okay, let's let's not pretend
Speaker 1: that they aren't. And that's okay. It's your job as
Speaker 1: the politician to figure out a message that both appeals
Speaker 1: to them and at the same you know, in a
Speaker 1: self centered way, but at the same time can help
Speaker 1: help a greater good. Where do you prioritize poverty programs
Speaker 1: in your vision here for a renewed middle class? Or
Speaker 1: and you sort of see in an odd way that
Speaker 1: it kind of if you revive a intentionally revive a
Speaker 1: middle class, right, because essentially we're arguing that we intentionally
Speaker 1: dismantled it, so you've got to intentionally bring it back
Speaker 1: that you're actually creating an anti poverty program without having
Speaker 1: to target the poor.
Speaker 2: And again, I'll answer this with someone with the story
Speaker 2: with the same course that I taught. I was saying
Speaker 2: something in class and a student said something about either
Speaker 2: Medicaid or AFDC, and I said, oh, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: we don't care about poor people in here. And then
Speaker 2: I had to stop myself and say, no, no, no, I
Speaker 2: mean I do care about poor people, that's not the
Speaker 2: focus of this class. And then I realized that my
Speaker 2: emphasis in teaching and also in the book is the
Speaker 2: goal in this country has always been to take people
Speaker 2: from being poor to being middle income upward. Mobility is
Speaker 2: wired into the DNA of people in this country. So
Speaker 2: though I am focusing mostly on the middle class. I
Speaker 2: need us to be sure that we're doing things to
Speaker 2: help poor people to become somewhat financially stable, because without that,
Speaker 2: they can't become middle class. And looping back to a
Speaker 2: comment that you made earlier, everybody wants to be middle class.
Speaker 2: It's the norm. It's viewed as you know, sort of
Speaker 2: apple pie and and America and the national anthem. Given that,
Speaker 2: I think we need to say, let's focus on the
Speaker 2: middle class, because people who are poor are aspiring to
Speaker 2: be middle class.
Speaker 1: Who's the uh, who do you envision are the biggest optic?
Speaker 1: Who are what is the biggest obstacle to your middle
Speaker 1: class new deal? In your mind? When you think about
Speaker 1: the opposition, who is it?
Speaker 2: Billionaires? Billionaires that control Amazon, it is in their best
Speaker 2: interest to keep Amazon, to keep the people that drive
Speaker 2: Amazon trucks employed by DSPs and not employed by Amazon.
Speaker 2: DSP would say that delivery service providers right, It is
Speaker 2: in the best interest of billionaires to be able to
Speaker 2: eliminate jobs and to automate jobs, and to have favorable
Speaker 2: tax credits for being innovative, but not be forced to
Speaker 2: do anything for the human beings that you have now
Speaker 2: caused to lose their jobs. So again, if the lower
Speaker 2: income people that want to become middle class, and if
Speaker 2: the middle class folks who would like to remain middle
Speaker 2: class for the rest of their lives looked up economically
Speaker 2: and said those are the problems, rather than looking around
Speaker 2: at each other and saying, well, because that person is
Speaker 2: of a different race, so that person is a different ethnicity,
Speaker 2: they're are the problem. I think we could actually work
Speaker 2: on some solutions here.
Speaker 1: You know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
Speaker 1: And you know, it feels like we are in an
Speaker 1: almost identical place that we were about one hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: where you had this incredible new technology industrial revolution. Every
Speaker 1: day was bringing more incredible developments to market, whether it's
Speaker 1: the car right, whether it was electricity, personalized, you know,
Speaker 1: getting it to any place. You know, more and more
Speaker 1: that we got it, and we had to come up
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of laws because left, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it was the oil barons, the railroad barons, the
Speaker 1: auto barons, left of their own device. They were you know,
Speaker 1: not everybody was going to be like mister Hershey, who
Speaker 1: thought I'm going to build a city with an amusement
Speaker 1: park and have this wonderful community. There were a few
Speaker 1: companies people like that, but not many Hershey. I find
Speaker 1: that to be just just as a quick sort of
Speaker 1: a sidetrack here. Where do you put Hershey in sort
Speaker 1: of that in that world of you know, should corporations
Speaker 1: behave the way he did in building a community and
Speaker 1: wanting to have that or was that just sort of
Speaker 1: an outlier type of thing that wouldn't work for other industries.
Speaker 2: I think it would work for all industries if again,
Speaker 2: we work on the from the premise that we would
Speaker 2: like to have happy, healthy workers. So you don't need
Speaker 2: to build a community, but you could commit, for example,
Speaker 2: that whatever the top workers earn won't be a larger
Speaker 2: than a fill in the blanks multiple of what the
Speaker 2: forest workers earn.
Speaker 1: Say, that's Costco right now. About the biggest company that
Speaker 1: does this is Costco right The CEO always emphasizes that ratio.
Speaker 2: I believe yeah, and I am a Costco member. I
Speaker 2: will always be a Costco member. When I go into Costco,
Speaker 2: these are the happiest employees you will ever see. I
Speaker 2: took my children. Now we're twenty two and twenty five,
Speaker 2: but we and their boys so they would eat everything
Speaker 2: that wasn't nailed down. We'd go into Costco and get
Speaker 2: those samples. They have gone back now as adults and
Speaker 2: have seen some of the same employees that used to
Speaker 2: allow them to raid the samples when they were children.
Speaker 2: So it can work. It definitely can work.
Speaker 1: Well, what kind of you know if you had if
Speaker 1: you had an hour to brief President Trump on this,
Speaker 1: what do you think would be your best way to
Speaker 1: get him interested in US?
Speaker 2: I would say that your constituents, the people that support you,
Speaker 2: are struggling. They are not struggling because of race issues
Speaker 2: and class issues. They are struggling because they don't know
Speaker 2: how they're going to pay their bills at the end
Speaker 2: of this month. So if you want these people to
Speaker 2: continue to support you, you're going to have to figure
Speaker 2: out a way not to just say they're doing okay,
Speaker 2: but to actually help them to do okay. We can't
Speaker 2: He will not be able to continue to tell people
Speaker 2: that the affordability issue is a hoax, because at the
Speaker 2: end of every month, when people don't have enough to
Speaker 2: pay their bills for that month, they know it's not
Speaker 2: a hoax because they're living it.
Speaker 1: Do you view the election of Donald Trump as the
Speaker 1: middle class primal screen.
Speaker 2: I viewed the twenty sixteen election as the middle class
Speaker 2: primal screen, but it was the fight middle class primal
Speaker 2: screen because it was the first time I think that
Speaker 2: white Americans realized, ooh, something is wrong here, and they
Speaker 2: didn't exactly know how to react, but they knew it
Speaker 2: in their heart, their soul, and their pockets that something
Speaker 2: is happening to us now that isn't supposed to be
Speaker 2: happening to us.
Speaker 1: And the risk of not addressing this erosion of the
Speaker 1: middle class, because that's I mean, look, you give me,
Speaker 1: you know, I look at you know, how did Venezuela
Speaker 1: get Chavez and Maduro? You had a wealthy elite and
Speaker 1: a massive number of poor people, no middle class. How
Speaker 1: did Arawan turn a democracy into an autocracy? No middle class?
Speaker 1: So I know the political risk here of eroding a
Speaker 1: middle class. It will drive people into one direction or
Speaker 1: the other, but it will drive them into you know,
Speaker 1: is this We've got ten years, We've got twenty years?
Speaker 1: Is this fear of a lost generation? What is your
Speaker 1: timetable here of like, look, regardless of whether they your
Speaker 1: book is the blueprint, We've got to do something about
Speaker 1: saving the middle class and expanding it rather than what
Speaker 1: we've seen.
Speaker 2: I think it's less than definitely less than twenty years.
Speaker 2: I would say it's less than ten years. One of
Speaker 2: the reasons I would say it's less than ten years
Speaker 2: is because even the younger boomers are going to be
Speaker 2: retiring soon or thinking about retiring, and they're going to
Speaker 2: freak out in panic because they can't retire. Their children
Speaker 2: are going to increasingly have to subsidize their housing and
Speaker 2: their living expenses. And so I totally agree with you.
Speaker 2: We need to look a little bit to the history, though,
Speaker 2: I want to focus going forward to say how do
Speaker 2: these economies end? They don't end well. So the fact
Speaker 2: that there was a Great Gatsby party at Mara a
Speaker 2: Lago over Christmas, I thought, oh, that is a symbol
Speaker 2: that you perhaps really don't want to have.
Speaker 1: Oh they've done some things. You're just sitting there going, wow,
Speaker 1: that was a let the meat cake moment they have.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this exclusive club that they've created in
Speaker 1: DC where the entry fee is a half a million
Speaker 1: dollars and you're like, what are we doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you probably want to hide that from the
Speaker 2: eighty percent of the people in this country that are terrified.
Speaker 1: That they're going to shocking that they didn't hide it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think, why aren't you embarrassed by this?
Speaker 2: Maybe they're all in an echo chamber and they really
Speaker 2: don't talk to anybody that earns like, you know, ninety
Speaker 2: or even one hundred thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: You know, this is why I really like this book.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to close on this, which is it
Speaker 1: is Look, you know, I've always tried to explain, you know,
Speaker 1: why do why do middle class people not want to rate,
Speaker 1: not always want to raise taxes on high class people
Speaker 1: because they think they're going to be wealthy someday. Right,
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of Americas. We all think, well, that
Speaker 1: could be me, and it's like the ninety percent chance
Speaker 1: it ain't going to be you. But you know what,
Speaker 1: if we don't have that mindset that you know, that
Speaker 1: is sort of that is what has always sort of
Speaker 1: created the engine of growth in this in this country. So,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you embrace the aspiration? You know,
Speaker 1: making middle class aspirational?
Speaker 2: Is that well, And one of the things that really
Speaker 2: scares me, and again it is because I have a
Speaker 2: twenty two, twenty five year old, and I also teach
Speaker 2: students sort of ranging from twenty two to thirty. Is
Speaker 2: there's sort of this economic nihilism which terrifies me, where
Speaker 2: they don't think things are going to get better, where
Speaker 2: they are angry at older people. We've got to fix
Speaker 2: that if we want this country to remain normal and
Speaker 2: stable economically and politically. To the point that you've just made,
Speaker 2: we have got to make young people believe that if
Speaker 2: they work hard, they try hard, things will be good
Speaker 2: for them or things will get better.
Speaker 1: It's a great Bill Clinton isn't right, work hard, play by.
Speaker 2: The rules exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: That was all. And I think that is a universalism.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. It's like there's for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons, there's a lot of sort of of the
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton era that gets ignored or it's been sort
Speaker 1: of washed away and all this stuff. But one thing
Speaker 1: he understood was the middle class. It's a way that
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know, and in some ways because
Speaker 1: he was of it right, and I wonder how important
Speaker 1: you know that experience truly is with our elected officials.
Speaker 2: Well, for him it was key because not only could
Speaker 2: he talk about the middle class. He could talk to
Speaker 2: the middle class because there was a point in his
Speaker 2: life when he was poor, right, And so when you
Speaker 2: have gone, when you understand the importance of upward mobility,
Speaker 2: that you were a poor kid in arc and Hope,
Speaker 2: Arkansas who ultimately occupied sixteen hundred Pennsylvania abvenue, you can
Speaker 2: speak about the struggles of the poor and what it
Speaker 2: takes to get from there to where he was because
Speaker 2: he literally had to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I remember during his early campaign that the
Speaker 1: number one place he would campaign, no matter the community
Speaker 1: he was in, was always the community college.
Speaker 2: Oh exactly.
Speaker 1: He knew exactly exactly the type of people that he
Speaker 1: should be talking to. Anyway, Michelle, this was great. Congrats
Speaker 1: in the book. Like I said, I hope you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's Gavin Newsom, jd Vance, Ram, Emanuel Pete Boodage,
Speaker 1: Glenn Younkin, anybody else. This is they ought to consume
Speaker 1: this book as they think about what they want to
Speaker 1: say to the American people in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: And I hope they do too.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much, thanks for having me. Huh.