1 00:00:17,199 --> 00:00:21,280 We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jafnski, 2 00:00:21,359 --> 00:00:24,120 culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show 3 00:00:24,120 --> 00:00:27,960 at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST. 4 00:00:28,239 --> 00:00:31,399 Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts as well, and to 5 00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:35,520 the premium version of our website at at the Federalist dot com. We're joined 6 00:00:35,560 --> 00:00:38,439 today by Michael Lynd. He is, of course, a contributing editor for 7 00:00:38,520 --> 00:00:43,960 Tablet Magazine and a senior fellow at New America. He is also Germaine to 8 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:47,960 our conversation today, the author of Hell to Pay, How the Suppression of 9 00:00:48,039 --> 00:00:52,000 Wages Is Destroying America. That book is out on May second. Thank you 10 00:00:52,079 --> 00:00:56,119 so much for joining us, Michael Lynd, for of course, I think 11 00:00:56,119 --> 00:01:00,439 this book is fantastic, provocative, so interesting, and lands on a fairly 12 00:01:00,479 --> 00:01:04,519 cohesive theory of the case for why we look around and wonder what's going on 13 00:01:04,599 --> 00:01:08,120 with not just our economy but our social fabric. So I want to start 14 00:01:08,120 --> 00:01:12,359 with the one of the epigraphs. You have a Frederick Douglas quote in the 15 00:01:12,439 --> 00:01:17,159 sort of Gilded Age era. I think it's from eighteen seventy one, where 16 00:01:17,200 --> 00:01:19,519 he writes, cheap labor is a phrase that has no cheering music for the 17 00:01:19,560 --> 00:01:23,680 masses. Those who demand it and seek to acquire it have but little sympathy 18 00:01:23,799 --> 00:01:27,239 with common humanity. Can you tell us a little bit more about why that 19 00:01:27,319 --> 00:01:33,439 quote resonated as you were putting this book together? Well, what lines behind 20 00:01:34,280 --> 00:01:41,120 my new books altay is my experience and addressing audiences of Republican conservatives, progressive 21 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:48,159 Democrats, centrists independence over three decades. In one line I find always work 22 00:01:48,239 --> 00:01:52,519 with every audience, right wing or linking, and that line is people who 23 00:01:52,560 --> 00:01:57,640 work forty hours a week should be paid enough that they do not have to 24 00:01:57,680 --> 00:02:04,079 depend on welfare. And that's just the unanimous of clauseline in any audience, 25 00:02:05,159 --> 00:02:08,280 ideologically or politically. That is not the system we have. We have a 26 00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:14,599 system in which a substantial part of the population and it varies depending on the 27 00:02:14,599 --> 00:02:19,520 welfare program. So there's not a single number, but it's tens of millions 28 00:02:19,520 --> 00:02:25,199 of people are the so called working poor, a category which has only existed 29 00:02:25,240 --> 00:02:29,360 in the last fifty years or so. Before then, if you worked, 30 00:02:29,439 --> 00:02:32,639 you were not poor. In the middle of the twentieth century and the working 31 00:02:32,719 --> 00:02:38,639 poor are those who have to have two sources of income merely to buy food 32 00:02:38,680 --> 00:02:43,520 and pay the rent for one person, forget a family, and the sources 33 00:02:43,560 --> 00:02:46,840 of income are your wage, what your employer pays you. And if that's 34 00:02:46,879 --> 00:02:52,560 too low, then you have to have not just one but a number of 35 00:02:53,560 --> 00:02:58,599 usually means tested welfare program stack one top of each other. So you have 36 00:02:58,680 --> 00:03:00,879 to fill out a forum, and you have to get food stamps, you 37 00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:02,599 have to fill out a form, get a housing b you have to fill 38 00:03:02,639 --> 00:03:07,680 out a form, you know, for the earned income tax credit once a 39 00:03:07,759 --> 00:03:10,520 year, and so you know. The question that motivated me write this book 40 00:03:10,599 --> 00:03:15,639 was how did we go from a system in the middle of the twentieth century 41 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:23,240 under Republicans and Democrats on Life in which if you work forty hours a week 42 00:03:23,719 --> 00:03:27,080 you did not have to go on food stamps and you did not have to 43 00:03:27,120 --> 00:03:30,639 add your wages top to by the earned income tax credit to the present system, 44 00:03:31,199 --> 00:03:37,360 which I call the low wage high welfare system. It's not high welfare 45 00:03:37,879 --> 00:03:42,400 in the sense that welfare state is generous. It's not terribly generous, but 46 00:03:42,680 --> 00:03:49,240 welfare payments are a high aspect of the income of the so called working for 47 00:03:49,439 --> 00:03:55,520 an America. The libertarian critique might be, and I'm obviously you're familiar with 48 00:03:55,560 --> 00:03:58,879 this because you talked to a lot of those audiences, and I'm sure you've 49 00:03:58,919 --> 00:04:02,879 heard it over and over again, that welfare essentially functioned as a giant subsidy 50 00:04:02,879 --> 00:04:06,439 to corporations. For instance, you write about Walmart, which is absolutely fascinating 51 00:04:06,520 --> 00:04:14,280 the statistics on how much the average taxpayer is forking over to support somebody who 52 00:04:14,319 --> 00:04:17,240 works at Walmart Walmart over the course of the year because they have to rely 53 00:04:17,600 --> 00:04:23,399 on subsidies. So the libertarian argument might be, obviously, then the problem 54 00:04:23,519 --> 00:04:27,120 is the welfare state, not with the corporations that if you have no Well 55 00:04:27,120 --> 00:04:30,480 that's my argument. I'm not sure that's the libertarian argument. We can get 56 00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:36,800 into that in a second. Yeah, there is no doubt that welfare payments 57 00:04:38,800 --> 00:04:44,000 means tested ones. In particular, you are not eligible unless you income from 58 00:04:44,360 --> 00:04:47,800 wages falls below a certain account means tested welfare, whether it's in the form 59 00:04:47,879 --> 00:04:54,360 of cash like the Armed Income Tax Credit and wage subsidy, or in kind 60 00:04:54,439 --> 00:05:00,199 benefits food stamps, you know Section eight housing vectors. Those are in X 61 00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:05,319 subsidies two employers. They allow the employer to get the benefit of the labor 62 00:05:05,800 --> 00:05:12,480 while paying a subliving rage. The reason I questioned characterizing that is libertarian, 63 00:05:12,560 --> 00:05:16,560 I think it's conservative argument, or a certain kind of conservative is because Milton 64 00:05:16,680 --> 00:05:25,519 Freeland and Charles Murray and other libertarians have been in favor of a substantial welfare 65 00:05:25,600 --> 00:05:29,000 state. Yeah, in favor of a negative income tax, which is the 66 00:05:29,079 --> 00:05:34,600 ancestor of the etc. Precisely in order to allow employers to pay low wages. 67 00:05:35,920 --> 00:05:40,120 And so what I was going to say is, if you go a 68 00:05:40,160 --> 00:05:44,480 step further, the libertarian because you start in a really interesting spot with debunking 69 00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:48,480 the human capital theory and oh my gosh, the Larry Summer's arc that you 70 00:05:48,600 --> 00:05:56,079 outline just beautiful. But the libertarian might say, because of those subsidies, 71 00:05:56,560 --> 00:06:01,439 we have a completely distorted version of what labor is worth, that we don't 72 00:06:01,600 --> 00:06:06,879 know the actual value of labor because we're not in this sort of Randy in 73 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:14,000 utopia where employers are in a position to determine the value of labor because the 74 00:06:15,040 --> 00:06:19,480 system is flooded with government subsidies. But as you go from point A and 75 00:06:19,600 --> 00:06:26,199 Summer's argument to point being, Summer's argument, can you flesh out to us 76 00:06:26,240 --> 00:06:32,240 why it's so important that we understand how or understand our very failures to understand 77 00:06:33,439 --> 00:06:38,040 the value of labor and our struggle to sort of put a number on the 78 00:06:38,199 --> 00:06:42,959 value of labor. Oh, of course, there are two theories of how 79 00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:47,120 wages are determined. The oldest, which is ironic since a lot of contemporat 80 00:06:47,199 --> 00:06:53,079 libertarians claim to be classical liberals. The oldest theory, since it is the 81 00:06:53,160 --> 00:06:59,920 modern economics developments, that of Adamis Smith in John Stuart Mill and Alfred marsh 82 00:07:00,120 --> 00:07:04,480 another class room and what these were generally pro market people that they said that 83 00:07:05,920 --> 00:07:12,120 the wage is determined by the bargaining power of the worker and the employer. 84 00:07:12,600 --> 00:07:17,279 In other words, there's not some mystical automatic process that says a worker is 85 00:07:17,360 --> 00:07:23,319 worth this much. It depends on relative bargaining power. And Smith pointed out 86 00:07:23,399 --> 00:07:29,879 that employers masters as you call them, have much more leverage over workers than 87 00:07:29,959 --> 00:07:35,800 workers to masters over employers. And for that reason these layer nineteenth century classes 88 00:07:35,839 --> 00:07:43,399 with erals John Stuart Mill and Marshall, who were quite free marketed other respects, 89 00:07:44,079 --> 00:07:46,720 they said, well, obviously we have to an units because the individual 90 00:07:46,759 --> 00:07:53,399 worker has an empower. Give an example, most Americans in the private sector 91 00:07:53,480 --> 00:08:00,639 today work for corporations that have more than five hundred employeees. Okay, so 92 00:08:01,040 --> 00:08:05,920 it's a joke to say that a janitor is negotiating over his or her sell 93 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:11,199 with a corporation that s five it's given. I mean, there's just no 94 00:08:11,920 --> 00:08:16,439 no contract. And this is a principle of Anglo American commonal too, where 95 00:08:16,480 --> 00:08:22,240 there's no bargaining power, the contract is involved. So the way to think 96 00:08:22,240 --> 00:08:30,879 about this correctly is that capitalism is great. It's the best most dynamic economic 97 00:08:30,959 --> 00:08:35,000 system in human industry. The way it works is you have a firm. 98 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:39,159 It creates a good service that it then sells to consumers. After it pays 99 00:08:39,200 --> 00:08:43,399 off its costs and expenses, it then has a profit. The profit is 100 00:08:43,440 --> 00:08:48,320 divided. Let's keep it simple. We'll forget stock options for now. The 101 00:08:48,399 --> 00:08:54,120 profit is divided among shareholders, the owners of the stock who get dividends, 102 00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:00,519 the managers of the corporation to get a salary, and the employee get a 103 00:09:00,559 --> 00:09:09,039 celle paid. How that is divided is not based on markets. It's based 104 00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:13,240 on the relative power of these three groups. And it turns out in the 105 00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:20,639 last fifty years without pooled labor power in the form of unions of some fort 106 00:09:20,039 --> 00:09:24,639 and I don't defend our and carried it system of borrianized labor. I think 107 00:09:24,679 --> 00:09:28,559 it's collapsed from something we can get into that. But without that countervailing power 108 00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:35,240 of pooling their labor, workers have gotten less and less of the share and 109 00:09:35,480 --> 00:09:39,919 guess what, the managers and the shareholders get more. Yeah, And speaking 110 00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:43,480 of that, that's exactly where where I was going to go next. Because 111 00:09:43,519 --> 00:09:46,600 you look at the decline of organized labor and it's acceleration in the nineteen eighties 112 00:09:46,600 --> 00:09:52,519 and the nineteen nineties. It coincides with an acceleration of globalism, of private 113 00:09:52,600 --> 00:09:56,799 equity, of immigration. And I'll set immigration aside for the moment, because 114 00:09:56,799 --> 00:09:58,759 you write about that at length in a very helpful way. But how do 115 00:09:58,799 --> 00:10:03,639 you globalism and the rise of globalism, the rise of private equity, the 116 00:10:05,120 --> 00:10:09,559 rise of global markets, and the rise of you all. Everything that we 117 00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:15,720 saw with Wall Street in the nineteen eighties until today has affected bargaining power and 118 00:10:16,200 --> 00:10:20,360 our ability to sort of understand that contract between a worker and an employer. 119 00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:26,440 Well, the key concept is labor arbitrage, which is kind of a technical 120 00:10:26,639 --> 00:10:30,559 term, but it's used in the business. They're quite blatant about it. 121 00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:37,240 Arbitrage appears when you have two separate jurisdictions with different standards. So you can 122 00:10:37,279 --> 00:10:41,039 have a tax arbitrage, you can have regulatory arbitrage. You can also have 123 00:10:41,159 --> 00:10:43,480 labor arbitrage. If you have two states of the United States, for example, 124 00:10:45,080 --> 00:10:48,720 and one has proo labor laws and the other has anti work programs, 125 00:10:50,759 --> 00:10:54,440 then the employer can simply shut down the factory in one state and move it 126 00:10:54,480 --> 00:11:01,200 to another. So in the fifty year period reseating globalization from the nineteen fifties 127 00:11:01,440 --> 00:11:05,519 until the nineteen nineties, many firms in the US took advantage of geographic labor 128 00:11:05,639 --> 00:11:11,320 art approject within the United States, you know, they shut down unionized steel 129 00:11:11,720 --> 00:11:18,080 textile bods in New England and opened them up in southern states with so called 130 00:11:18,159 --> 00:11:22,480 right to union laws which are making very difficult to organize unions under the nineteen 131 00:11:22,519 --> 00:11:30,120 thirty five National Labor Relations Act system. So there was a massive migration from 132 00:11:30,320 --> 00:11:35,519 northern Midwestern states to Southern states and Southwestern states to take advantage of cheaper labor 133 00:11:35,639 --> 00:11:39,840 that was unionized. Well, guess what, during the Cold War, the 134 00:11:39,919 --> 00:11:46,440 companies could not do that outside of US borders, for example, Mexico and 135 00:11:46,519 --> 00:11:50,960 Latin America very protectionists. The communist countries, we had an embargo on women 136 00:11:52,440 --> 00:11:58,519 and they weren't inviting capitalist companies in. After the Cold War, suddenly had 137 00:11:58,679 --> 00:12:03,240 a couple of billion works went on, created a global labor prop and both 138 00:12:03,399 --> 00:12:09,759 communist China, communist Vietnam, post protectionist Mexico. They all decided, well, 139 00:12:09,799 --> 00:12:15,759 we're going to try to lure these factories from the US and so all 140 00:12:15,799 --> 00:12:18,720 of these southern conservatives who used to be Democrats, now many of them are 141 00:12:20,080 --> 00:12:22,279 Republicans, and I'm going to Texas. They thought, oh, we were 142 00:12:22,320 --> 00:12:26,759 so clever. We lured these factories away from the Northeast and the Middle West 143 00:12:26,799 --> 00:12:31,559 and the Great Lakes because of our lower wages. Boom, they go to 144 00:12:31,639 --> 00:12:33,320 Mexico, they go to China, you know, they go to Bangladesh, 145 00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:39,000 they go to Vietnam. So you literally, in my view, you cannot 146 00:12:39,159 --> 00:12:46,559 have a middle class or a prosperous working class unless you have limits on the 147 00:12:46,639 --> 00:12:54,240 ability of your corporations to replace American workers with foreign workers who have lower wages, 148 00:12:54,440 --> 00:12:58,519 regardless of their union status, even if they're unionized, if their wages 149 00:12:58,519 --> 00:13:03,799 are lower, why would you have your factory in the events right, and 150 00:13:03,879 --> 00:13:07,039 your section on H one B, I think is super helpful in understanding how 151 00:13:07,279 --> 00:13:11,840 our immigration system distorts the value of labor in and of itself. Can you 152 00:13:11,919 --> 00:13:16,480 talk a little bit about why these tech companies you're right about Apple, Facebook, 153 00:13:16,519 --> 00:13:20,200 Google, Intel. We obviously have Chips reassuring that's happening right now, 154 00:13:20,279 --> 00:13:26,000 and it's been a struggle they say to higher American workers to do some of 155 00:13:26,080 --> 00:13:28,480 the high level work at the chips factories. But what can we learn from 156 00:13:28,720 --> 00:13:33,600 their reliance on H one B visas and how it relates to this broader problem. 157 00:13:35,279 --> 00:13:39,960 Well, you can learn that practically everything that comes out of Silicon Valley 158 00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:48,360 about labor is a lie. The words and in the to use an old 159 00:13:48,399 --> 00:13:56,360 choke, we are told that unless you have this constant importation not of legal 160 00:13:56,440 --> 00:14:05,279 immigrants are not legal immit, it's legal immigrants are legal permanent residents who LPRs, 161 00:14:05,519 --> 00:14:09,399 that's the technical term. They come here. They have a green card, 162 00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:13,639 They can work anywhere in the US. If they're mistreated by their boss, 163 00:14:13,720 --> 00:14:16,960 they can go to another job. They have every right of an American 164 00:14:18,039 --> 00:14:22,480 worker, except for citizenship. Only when they become citizens can they vote. 165 00:14:24,159 --> 00:14:28,120 But other than that, they have equal labor rights. In H one bs 166 00:14:28,840 --> 00:14:35,559 who are in the tech sector, a's and H two vs in the low 167 00:14:35,639 --> 00:14:41,919 wage sector are in denture servants. They are not free workers. They are 168 00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:46,320 service They are bound to their employer, and their employer is either a big 169 00:14:46,399 --> 00:14:54,519 company directly like Apple or Microsoft or JP Morgan Chase, or in many cases 170 00:14:54,679 --> 00:14:58,679 it's a body shop, you know it's and it can be an American consulting 171 00:14:58,759 --> 00:15:05,120 f they call themselves concerted sulting firms. They're basically temp agencies. They're their 172 00:15:05,120 --> 00:15:09,480 global temp agencies. And a lot of them are Indian because just as a 173 00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:13,000 matter of accident, after the Cold War, India is now the most populous 174 00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:18,000 national earth, surpassed China, and they're the huge pool of the English peapers. 175 00:15:18,960 --> 00:15:24,840 And so these Indian body shops began renting these indentured servants to American tech 176 00:15:24,919 --> 00:15:28,039 corporations. And I know a lot of them. Many of them are talented 177 00:15:28,120 --> 00:15:33,720 people. The vast majority are not super geniuses. We're not talking about Albert 178 00:15:33,759 --> 00:15:39,120 Einstein and Alexander Graham Bell. Some of them are entrepreneurs, some of them 179 00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:45,720 are right, but they're overwhelming the vast majority of h wins come from one 180 00:15:45,840 --> 00:15:52,000 country, India, and they're overwhelmingly like seventy five young males in their twenties. 181 00:15:52,120 --> 00:15:56,639 Now, that should set off a warm pats, right, So Silicon 182 00:15:56,759 --> 00:16:02,519 Valley's trying to tell us that these young men, mostly these young South Asian 183 00:16:02,559 --> 00:16:07,960 men who have college education, sometimes think of the college education and us on 184 00:16:07,039 --> 00:16:11,159 a chief eason and then they convert it to an h and go to work. 185 00:16:12,120 --> 00:16:19,240 We're told that they are vastly more brilliant than any Americans, and Americans 186 00:16:19,279 --> 00:16:23,919 are so stupid, you couldn't possibly have a tech industry without, you know, 187 00:16:25,080 --> 00:16:29,960 all of these indentured servants from one country, Indian. Now, the 188 00:16:30,039 --> 00:16:34,200 curious thing about that is the entire tech industry was built between the nineteen thirties 189 00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:42,600 and the nineteen eighties by either Native orn Americans or in some cases you had 190 00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:48,320 brilliant European immigrants, you know, who were fleeing from Hitler or fleeing from 191 00:16:48,360 --> 00:16:55,480 Song, But we didn't have Like what happened? Did the United States becomes 192 00:16:55,559 --> 00:17:02,120 stupid? Did the IQs of American engineering students go down suddenly in nineteen eighty 193 00:17:02,480 --> 00:17:06,799 No, it's it's in this case it's not necessarily cheap label, although, 194 00:17:06,839 --> 00:17:12,079 as I point out, the h onebs are cheaper than either American nationals or 195 00:17:12,160 --> 00:17:18,519 for that matter, legal permanent residents from the same country from India because you 196 00:17:18,559 --> 00:17:22,880 don't have to provide them health benefits. You don't you know their contractors, 197 00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:26,759 they're not. They lack all of these labor rights. The real reason is 198 00:17:26,799 --> 00:17:33,720 they can't complain. They can't complain because the nature of an INDENTUREUS servant under 199 00:17:33,759 --> 00:17:40,799 these guests worker visas is if you get fired either by the body shop or 200 00:17:40,960 --> 00:17:44,920 by a company you're working for directly, like one of these big tech terms, 201 00:17:45,720 --> 00:17:48,880 you lose your ability to remain in the United States. You have to 202 00:17:48,960 --> 00:17:55,119 go home to your country. That has an enormous intimidating effect. Can you 203 00:17:55,200 --> 00:18:00,720 imagine being bound to your boss so that if you quit you cannot get another 204 00:18:00,839 --> 00:18:04,680 job in the United States. You have to literally leave the country if you 205 00:18:04,759 --> 00:18:11,000 are fired or if you resign in protest. And this is something that Adam 206 00:18:11,039 --> 00:18:14,279 Smith, the Great class equip will put it out too. He said, 207 00:18:14,559 --> 00:18:21,200 even if cost was not a factor, employers would prefer slaves to free workers. 208 00:18:21,240 --> 00:18:25,279 Adam Smith was not a big fan of employers he said, And the 209 00:18:25,359 --> 00:18:32,039 reason is the human love of domination. Right. Employers don't like but he 210 00:18:32,079 --> 00:18:36,319 workers bargaining power. They don't like bargaining power. Yeah, they don't like 211 00:18:36,440 --> 00:18:38,720 somebody says, either treat me better or raise my wages, or I'll quitn't 212 00:18:38,720 --> 00:18:42,039 work for the other guy. Well, a great thing about slavoring an interest 213 00:18:42,079 --> 00:18:48,960 servitude is you can't You literally cannot quit. The most fundamental economic right is 214 00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:53,359 the ability to quit your job and get another job in the same country. 215 00:18:56,799 --> 00:19:00,640 And that also it strikes me that consolidation along the lines of what Matt Stoller 216 00:19:02,240 --> 00:19:06,480 has been on the show writes about, especially at tech sector sector, has 217 00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:11,160 hurt the competition also that you would rely on as an employee. What's the 218 00:19:11,279 --> 00:19:15,480 point of picking up and going to another shop if the shop is either owned 219 00:19:15,519 --> 00:19:21,079 by the same place or in a duopoly where it's operating exactly like the other 220 00:19:21,160 --> 00:19:22,599 company. That seems that it has to be a part of it too. 221 00:19:23,519 --> 00:19:30,880 It's a very minor part comparative nice labor. And the reason is and the 222 00:19:30,039 --> 00:19:37,000 anti trust school associated with some smart people Leadakon and Matt Stoler in Beryland. 223 00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:40,839 I know, I know most of them, the very bright people but I 224 00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:47,599 think they exaggerate the ability of individual workers to play companies off against each other, 225 00:19:47,720 --> 00:19:52,400 particularly in concentrated industry. So in the Democrats, unfortunately it picked up 226 00:19:52,440 --> 00:19:56,160 one. I say unfortunately because it's just it's not real. That is, 227 00:19:56,599 --> 00:20:00,440 let's change my janitor example. If you have if you're a chan editor and 228 00:20:00,759 --> 00:20:06,039 you work for Facebook, and now the Justice Apartment breaks up Facebook into five 229 00:20:06,119 --> 00:20:10,759 facebooks, okay, and each of the five facebooks has half a million employee 230 00:20:10,839 --> 00:20:15,640 us, all right, has the janitor's bargaining power really gone up then much? 231 00:20:15,759 --> 00:20:22,720 I say no? But what if you have a system of sectoral collective 232 00:20:22,799 --> 00:20:29,880 bargaining where the representatives of the janitors meet with the five facebooks, the baby 233 00:20:29,960 --> 00:20:33,640 facebooks, and have multi employer collective bargaining, which we don't have in the 234 00:20:33,759 --> 00:20:38,799 units except for railroad workers and a few others, but it's commonplace and other 235 00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:42,680 parts. And then you simply say, okay, for the next couple of 236 00:20:42,799 --> 00:20:48,039 years, here's the starting salary of the intrigued janitor, right, here's the 237 00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:52,640 vacation time, and here are the benefits that would do vastly more for the 238 00:20:52,759 --> 00:20:59,640 janitors than breaking up Facebook into five baby facebooks. Let me like, throw 239 00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:04,119 another example out there, because I remember when Marco Rubio was opposing or supporting 240 00:21:04,119 --> 00:21:07,880 actually the union done in Bessemer, the Amazon warehouse union don in Bessemer, 241 00:21:07,960 --> 00:21:11,480 that was trying to form. His argument was essentially that you could see this 242 00:21:11,599 --> 00:21:17,160 coming down the pike with cultural issues, that if let's say a Christian Conservative 243 00:21:18,079 --> 00:21:21,400 didn't want to work for a company that betrayed its values like Amazon, they 244 00:21:21,440 --> 00:21:26,119 should have the ability to sort of bargain collectively and in an environment dominated by 245 00:21:26,440 --> 00:21:29,640 ESG, if you want to go somewhere else, you don't pick up shop 246 00:21:29,759 --> 00:21:33,119 and go somewhere else for political reasons, you don't want to work for an 247 00:21:33,119 --> 00:21:36,839 employer. And I'm saying it's a smaller issue because I don't think this happens 248 00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:41,559 that often yet. But say you wanted to in an environment dominated by ESG, 249 00:21:41,799 --> 00:21:45,160 I think it would be really hard to find another employer. And I 250 00:21:45,160 --> 00:21:52,559 guess I'm curious as to what to change the day. Yeah that's right from 251 00:21:52,599 --> 00:21:57,440 Google, Google. Yeah. Well, look, in the nineteen fifty the 252 00:21:57,559 --> 00:22:04,519 most powerful person apart from the president in the unionized workplace was the shop steward. 253 00:22:06,559 --> 00:22:08,359 If you felt you'd been mistreated, you went to the shop steward and 254 00:22:08,599 --> 00:22:15,000 he or she complained, you know, to the boss. In today's corporations, 255 00:22:15,039 --> 00:22:19,559 the most powerful person is HR. HR works for the management, right, 256 00:22:22,039 --> 00:22:27,480 HR, the human relations person is the hatchet man or hatchet woman of 257 00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:32,920 the boss. Right. So it's just surreal, Like if you have a 258 00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:36,640 problem, you're supposed to go consultant HR, and then HR says, well 259 00:22:36,839 --> 00:22:41,839 you're fired, right, we reck then you de terminated, you know. 260 00:22:41,079 --> 00:22:47,680 So so that's that illustrates the total act of bargaining power and people are for 261 00:22:48,240 --> 00:22:52,880 things which if they were represented by labor. So for example, I remember, 262 00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:57,039 remember there's a biker who shot the finger at President Trump, remember this 263 00:22:59,559 --> 00:23:03,319 video, and she was fired by her. See, that wouldn't happen because 264 00:23:03,599 --> 00:23:10,559 if the labor representatives were hated Trump and were liberal, they wouldn't you know, 265 00:23:10,640 --> 00:23:14,160 they had to represent these people. That's their job, right right. 266 00:23:15,039 --> 00:23:18,759 There was a hearing with Howard Schultz. I think this was on the Senate 267 00:23:18,799 --> 00:23:22,839 side, so obviously the former CEO of Starbucks. Well, I think he 268 00:23:22,960 --> 00:23:26,079 joined back again because they were having some trouble after he left. But Republicans 269 00:23:26,319 --> 00:23:30,279 treated him so interestingly. This is a guy who's been union busting for I 270 00:23:30,319 --> 00:23:33,839 don't know a year or more now, he's been on essentially a listening tour 271 00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:38,400 that turned into a union busting tour. But he got harsh treatment from Democrats 272 00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:44,480 and then a tongue bath from most Republicans basically who were fawning over him for 273 00:23:44,599 --> 00:23:47,519 being a champion of the free market, for creating jobs, etc. Etc. 274 00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:51,200 And I just want to ask you about this. This really gets at 275 00:23:51,200 --> 00:23:56,359 the premise of your book. If we live in a country where CEOs are 276 00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:03,480 paying horrible wages and Republicans are convinced that because of the full slate of ESG 277 00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:07,079 and DI, they are bad people. They are you know, chrony capitalists, 278 00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:11,759 they are cultural Marxists, all of the names that the right will throw 279 00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:18,440 at this current crop of CEOs. Why do they not also extend that same 280 00:24:18,839 --> 00:24:23,720 skepticism of their treatment of their own workers when it comes to wages to those 281 00:24:23,799 --> 00:24:29,279 CEOs. Because Howard Schultz, for instance, his bathroom policy, there's a 282 00:24:29,279 --> 00:24:33,640 great quote in Jacobin I returned to all the time put his workers in a 283 00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:37,759 position where they were asked to behave like unpaid social workers, untrained social workers. 284 00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:44,279 Why are Republicans not thinking of Howard Schultz in that framework instead as the 285 00:24:44,400 --> 00:24:48,000 sort of again the Randian champion of free markets. How has that transition not 286 00:24:48,079 --> 00:24:57,000 taken place yet? Well, complete hostility don't organize labor stirning rests historical in 287 00:24:57,079 --> 00:25:03,839 the Republican Party. Let me read you from the Republican National Platform in nineteen 288 00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:08,319 seventy two. Okay, the nation's labor unions, comprised of millions of working 289 00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:14,200 people, have advanced the will being not only of their members, but also 290 00:25:14,319 --> 00:25:19,359 our entire free enterprise system. We have the Republican Party reaffirm our strong endorsement 291 00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:26,720 of organized labor's key role in our national life. Nineteen seventy six, Gerald 292 00:25:26,759 --> 00:25:33,400 Ford, Free collective bargaining remains the best way to ensure that Americans receive a 293 00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:37,240 fair price for their labor. Which is the thing of my book is the 294 00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:44,599 Republican National Platform. And the Republicans at that time were not were much less 295 00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:48,880 working festival. They were more of the party of CEOs in big business. 296 00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:55,319 But they understood, as a result of the depression in World War two, 297 00:25:55,400 --> 00:26:00,599 in the Clone War, that you can not have national unity, particularly in 298 00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:07,720 competing with postile great powers like Nazi Germany then and Soviet union in China today, 299 00:26:08,039 --> 00:26:15,160 if your elite class is trying to crush the workers and grind them down 300 00:26:15,279 --> 00:26:18,000 and pay them as little as possible. So there was a sense in the 301 00:26:18,079 --> 00:26:22,000 business community, in the Republican business community in the middle of the twentieth century. 302 00:26:22,039 --> 00:26:26,720 And these were not liberal people necessarily, they were not necessarily thrilled them 303 00:26:26,839 --> 00:26:30,119 unions, but they said, look, we're going to collective bargaining as part 304 00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:34,000 of American life. If you go back to the nineteen twenties, Calvin Coolidge 305 00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:40,799 was always being paraded around by Amity Schleiss and other terians as a model of 306 00:26:41,039 --> 00:26:45,960 free marketeer. Not only was he a protectionist because he thought that American workers 307 00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:49,640 should not have to compete with cheap foreign labor, but also he signed the 308 00:26:49,839 --> 00:26:56,279 Railway Labor Act, which is one of the major forms of a basis of 309 00:26:56,359 --> 00:27:00,440 collective bargaining in the United States. I mean that was news reason. It 310 00:27:00,599 --> 00:27:07,519 is actually more enlightened in one respect than the National Labor Relations Act, which 311 00:27:07,599 --> 00:27:11,799 covers most workers outside of transportation, and that is the Railway Labor Act allows 312 00:27:12,039 --> 00:27:19,000 multi employee bargaining. It allows all of the unions in an industry to negotiate 313 00:27:19,079 --> 00:27:23,119 with all of the employers at once, with binding results on all. Now, 314 00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:29,960 why is this better for business? It means less disrupted Under the National 315 00:27:30,039 --> 00:27:34,160 Labor Relations Act system, Not only do not unionize all of the employers in 316 00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:38,519 a field at once, you don't even unionize an entire national company if it 317 00:27:38,599 --> 00:27:42,559 has different establishments. So have you ever wondered about that? Like, why 318 00:27:42,599 --> 00:27:48,880 don't they just unionize Amazon? Why are they unionizing one Amazon warehauts? Because 319 00:27:48,039 --> 00:27:53,319 under our nineteen thirty five National Labors Act, you do its site by site, 320 00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:59,839 unionistic And this is a terribly adversarial, disruptive system. I'm not defending 321 00:27:59,839 --> 00:28:06,240 it by any means. It's bad for business. If it's extremely disruptive, 322 00:28:06,319 --> 00:28:08,880 you have strikes and tickets and all of that. Now suppose they went, 323 00:28:10,039 --> 00:28:15,480 suppose you unionize one firm or one warehouse at that firm, At that point 324 00:28:15,559 --> 00:28:22,079 your rivals can pay lower wages and undercutting same distance. Right, So A 325 00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:26,599 you going to do it properly, You should do it at the sectoral level, 326 00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:30,039 at the industry level, not firm by firm. But as I said, 327 00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:36,119 we have a perfectly good example of this. The Railway Labor Act covers 328 00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:42,279 railroad workers, transit workers, and airline workers curiously enough as a multi employer 329 00:28:42,359 --> 00:28:48,640 bargain. Nobody's ever heard of it, and it was signed and pushed by 330 00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:56,920 Calvin Coolidge, mister rock ribbed Conservative Republic. So if you look at it, 331 00:28:56,079 --> 00:29:00,759 as I've done in an part of the for American compus, if you 332 00:29:00,839 --> 00:29:07,359 look at Republican platforms, the nineteen eighty platform has the usual proctorgaming language. 333 00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:11,039 Ron Regan obviously was you know, for our union, president of the Screen 334 00:29:11,119 --> 00:29:19,400 Actors Union, vote exactly and in eighty four. In the nineties it changes, 335 00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:23,920 And so why does it change? And my interpretation is you've got this 336 00:29:25,119 --> 00:29:30,680 influx of ex Southern Democrats who had come from the right wing of the Democratic 337 00:29:30,759 --> 00:29:34,440 Party when it was part of the rights of everybody else's they were segregations, 338 00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:41,680 and these ex Southern Democrats like Tom Delay and the rest, they flooded into 339 00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:48,240 the Republican Party and they brought the Southern syst that we can lure factories to 340 00:29:48,359 --> 00:29:53,519 our states by being, you know, paying low wages, low minimum wage, 341 00:29:55,119 --> 00:29:59,480 low worker rights. Now unions and some subsidies, sub subsidies, exacting 342 00:29:59,519 --> 00:30:03,519 purpose cities. And in the long run, I would argue that is economically 343 00:30:03,599 --> 00:30:10,160 suicidal, as many of these southern and western low wage states found out, 344 00:30:11,039 --> 00:30:15,759 because there's always a country outside of the US that it can give you more 345 00:30:15,839 --> 00:30:19,200 subsidies and pay lower wages. Yeah, exactly. It's it's I think so 346 00:30:19,319 --> 00:30:25,519 important to make that point because we don't exist in this perfect like free market 347 00:30:25,640 --> 00:30:29,119 lab setting. It's just not how the world works anymore. And I wanted 348 00:30:29,119 --> 00:30:32,240 to actually ask you about that with the Walmart example, is such a good 349 00:30:32,279 --> 00:30:37,240 one, or any of these huge multinational corporations. It's so different from the 350 00:30:37,319 --> 00:30:41,400 old days where you know, maybe you had a factory town and hey, 351 00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:45,319 the guy who ran the factory lived in town, had to show his face 352 00:30:45,359 --> 00:30:48,960 in church, had to show his face at those institutions of civil society that 353 00:30:49,279 --> 00:30:55,799 have been crippled. So I guess how much of this also relates to the 354 00:30:55,920 --> 00:31:00,720 spreading. You know, Tim Cook's responsibility to the factory workers in shinjong Uh 355 00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:04,400 that doesn't really exist because he doesn't ever have to interact with them, He 356 00:31:04,519 --> 00:31:07,720 doesn't know them, he can't put a face of the name for the most 357 00:31:07,759 --> 00:31:14,720 part. So how much of this also is us grappling with the rapid expansion 358 00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:18,079 of some of these countries across the globe, or companies across the globe. 359 00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:27,759 Well, Henry claimed Frick was Andrew Carnegies h henchman deputy for Carnegie Steel. 360 00:31:29,119 --> 00:31:33,640 Right. Uh, you know he was nearly assassinated by an anarchist during a 361 00:31:33,759 --> 00:31:37,240 labor riots at Arnarchy Steel Plan. And like as you say, in those 362 00:31:37,359 --> 00:31:42,640 days, Uh, you know, Frick's mansion was on the first town near 363 00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:48,720 the factory. The capitalist could literally be attacked in right the workers right, 364 00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:53,039 Uh, if they're in South China, what are they gonna do. They're 365 00:31:53,039 --> 00:31:57,920 gonna like riot against China and then the communist states. Uh. And and 366 00:31:59,279 --> 00:32:02,079 you know Tim Cook in these other CEOs who've all shored all of this production. 367 00:32:02,559 --> 00:32:06,799 They let other people do the dirty work for them. And what that 368 00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:09,240 does to the economy in the United States when you all shore a lot of 369 00:32:09,319 --> 00:32:15,920 your production. Well, let's be clear. When they say most manufacturing jobs 370 00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:21,160 are never coming back, we should hope that's true, because we should hope 371 00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:24,880 that we have highly robotic, automated production in the future. That would be 372 00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:30,079 a good. Nevertheless, Okay, let's say, is it better to have 373 00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:34,799 a robot factory in the US or a sweatshop in China? From the point 374 00:32:34,799 --> 00:32:39,440 of view of the majority of Americans who've always worked in the services. At 375 00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:44,559 its peak in the twenty century, only about a third of Americans work in 376 00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:50,759 manufactory. Everybody else work in agriculture services. So in real life, farmers 377 00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,960 went into the service and a few of them became factory workers, but there 378 00:32:54,039 --> 00:32:59,920 was never a factory worker of matulity. But nevertheless, having factories in your 379 00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:06,359 city or county set makes a huge difference. So let's say we have two 380 00:33:06,519 --> 00:33:14,640 counties. One county. The major business is international business consultants, and they 381 00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:17,160 work from their home or from the little office. Uh. And they do 382 00:33:17,319 --> 00:33:23,240 everything, you know, for foreign companies, and they get payment, you 383 00:33:23,319 --> 00:33:29,279 know, through the banking system from overseas. So they then send that money 384 00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:35,559 on you know what rich people spend money on. They have caterers and dog 385 00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:39,480 walkers and so on. So you get this very stratified kind of class system 386 00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:45,519 with with you know, this service sector elite and then a bunch of you 387 00:33:45,599 --> 00:33:51,160 know, fairly menial many of them are to serve maids and gardeners and pool 388 00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:54,640 boys and chauffeurs and so and that have become sure society. So the county 389 00:33:54,720 --> 00:34:00,720 next door, it has a factory that employs only a few people, but 390 00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:06,279 it makes let's say, mufflers or global automobile companies, doesn't make all a 391 00:34:06,319 --> 00:34:10,760 card. It just makes them muffling using advanced robotic equipment and a few employees. 392 00:34:12,599 --> 00:34:15,559 Well, that means you have to have warehouses, you have to have 393 00:34:16,559 --> 00:34:21,480 you know, business insurance, you have to have infrastructure, need highways, 394 00:34:21,599 --> 00:34:30,239 you need maybe rail lines or access to seaports. And the workers who work 395 00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:37,679 in those selary occupations are going to be fairly well paid. So why are 396 00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:40,639 they well paid. It's not because they're more skilled in the dog walker in 397 00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:46,639 the jounty next door. It's because money is pouring into this county. Every 398 00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:52,880 time they make a muffler and they sell it in Africa or Asia to the 399 00:34:52,039 --> 00:34:55,239 rising middle class. Even if it's not an American company, even if it's 400 00:34:55,239 --> 00:35:01,400 fokes by time, Urbins or something. Money comes into the county and you 401 00:35:01,480 --> 00:35:06,519 know, maybe the CEOs and the shareholders live in Majoia, California, but 402 00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:09,320 some of that money is going to leak. It's going to leak into the 403 00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:15,800 county. That's the difference between what economists called the traded sector and the non 404 00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:22,920 traded service sector. The non traded sector is consists of goods and services where 405 00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:29,280 they have local customers and locals. So think of home house construction, or 406 00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:36,400 let's say a harrison The audience of the consumers of a harrisonon are limited to 407 00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:38,159 people who have been driving distance of the Hairsalona and the Harmans. Right, 408 00:35:39,599 --> 00:35:49,719 the potential customer base of the same town's muffler factory are two or three billion 409 00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:57,400 Chinese and Indian and African car drivers in the right. So having the traded 410 00:35:57,519 --> 00:36:02,400 sector in your economy's like having it's pumping money in from the rest of the 411 00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:07,119 world where most of the demand will be in the future. One thing I've 412 00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:12,880 really appealed to me about this book is how you're able to sort of trace 413 00:36:13,039 --> 00:36:17,039 a lot of the different cultural problems that ail us and that you know, 414 00:36:17,119 --> 00:36:23,199 the sort of post Trump und autocracy has developed a new interest in. Even 415 00:36:23,199 --> 00:36:27,559 though, of course, you know, Charles Murray Timcarney had had written about 416 00:36:27,599 --> 00:36:32,199 them for a while before some of the elite media stumbled onto them. You 417 00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:37,000 really are able to trace a lot of them to specifically the wage issue. 418 00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:42,840 I want to ask about the chicken and egg formulation there. I'm really persuaded 419 00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:49,559 by Mary Eberstat's book Primal screams that the kind of sexual revolution is the genesis 420 00:36:49,679 --> 00:36:52,239 of a lot of these problems. But at the same time, the sexual 421 00:36:52,320 --> 00:36:58,039 revolution is itself fueled by um, you know, capitalists who are looking to 422 00:36:58,119 --> 00:37:01,920 make a book on birth control or whatever else. So I know that's a 423 00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:06,880 little bit of a different issue. But when you start peeling back the layers 424 00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:10,239 of this onion, do you see the wage issue as being a fundamental one 425 00:37:10,559 --> 00:37:15,320 that caused a lot of these problems or do you think it's it's interacting with 426 00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:19,440 a lot of these problems and fueling them, making them worse, and vice 427 00:37:19,599 --> 00:37:24,360 versa. Well, I looked into the sociology of class in the parties and 428 00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:30,559 fifties, and and if you go back and read the scholarly literature, they 429 00:37:30,639 --> 00:37:40,119 distinguish between the poor and the working class and the lower middles these groups, 430 00:37:40,159 --> 00:37:45,719 and they refined distinctions. And the lower middle class consisted of two groups. 431 00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:51,760 They were very well paid workers. Okay, you were like an air conditioner 432 00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:57,960 installed because of tight labor markets or because there's little immigration in the fifties, 433 00:37:58,159 --> 00:38:02,320 or unions or a combination. You know, you had lower middle class lifestyle, 434 00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:07,599 right, and some of the lower middle class folks were the small business 435 00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:13,320 owners, right, So this is a class that pretty much has ceased to 436 00:38:13,440 --> 00:38:20,320 exist, and we've seen a polarization where people who would have been in the 437 00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:27,440 lower middle class, these prosperous workers have sutten down into the working class proper. 438 00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:32,000 Some of them have moved up enjoying the professional class above it. I 439 00:38:32,079 --> 00:38:36,960 don't get into the small business owners because a lot of that is, I 440 00:38:37,119 --> 00:38:42,639 do think, is your reversible technology. Technology does explain why you have staples 441 00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:47,719 instead of completely separate and were operated hardware city. I don't think we're going 442 00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:51,840 to reverse that, think it's necessary. But if you look at the labor 443 00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:55,719 side, even in the thirties and forties and fifties and sixties, the height 444 00:38:55,840 --> 00:39:01,559 of worker bargaining power through runs, the un unionized workers had a lot of 445 00:39:01,599 --> 00:39:10,440 the social pathologies they had. Divorce was rampant among people with insecure jobs, 446 00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,239 and in those days it was also desertion. It's not divorce because the divorce 447 00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:21,920 was legally difficult. Its men deserting their rights in the forties and fifties and 448 00:39:22,039 --> 00:39:25,519 sixties. You know the other I respect Mary, and she's right about all 449 00:39:25,639 --> 00:39:30,400 stuff. I tog out where I disagree with her. But there was a 450 00:39:30,559 --> 00:39:35,960 story on the right in the late twentieth century, you know, Murphy Brown 451 00:39:36,119 --> 00:39:42,679 with that character from the TV show dan Quayle back in the Bush years. 452 00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:46,320 So the idea was that, well, the upper classes in the US are 453 00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:50,719 all, you know, sort of becoming swingers and not getting married and having 454 00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:54,039 kids out of wedlock, and then this inspires you know, working people to 455 00:39:54,480 --> 00:40:00,719 immunate these behaviors. If you flash forward to the two thousand, twenty ten, 456 00:40:00,039 --> 00:40:05,639 twenty twenties, it's quite a different pattern. It's actually the educated elite, 457 00:40:06,320 --> 00:40:12,159 including the educated left wing political democratic elite. It's much more likely of 458 00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:17,679 traditional marriages and to have kids in little it's the working classes of all races 459 00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:24,039 and all parties, including white Republicans, who are having kids out of wedlock, 460 00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:29,440 never getting married, broken homes, higher levels of divorce, all of 461 00:40:29,519 --> 00:40:34,400 this. And when the scholars I'm relying on the scholarship here, they asked 462 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:42,599 them why it's almost always financial stults. You postpone marriage until you hope one 463 00:40:42,679 --> 00:40:46,280 day you and your boyfriend will have enough money that they can have a big 464 00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:50,960 wedding and have a free standing home, and all of this and it never 465 00:40:51,119 --> 00:40:53,880 comes. So in some cases they have kids out of wedlock, they give 466 00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:59,360 up, they get tired of waiting. You know. At the same time, 467 00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:04,800 if you look at falling fertility rates, a fraud issue is something we 468 00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:09,480 have to talk about now that the population will shrink at an accelerating rate because 469 00:41:09,559 --> 00:41:15,119 the total fertility rate has fallen below replacement in the US as in many countries 470 00:41:15,159 --> 00:41:20,559 of the world. If you have women who to date are the only what 471 00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:23,079 people who can have children. I know that's a controversial of you, but 472 00:41:24,079 --> 00:41:34,800 you know this scientifically. You know, if you postpone marriage and family and 473 00:41:35,519 --> 00:41:39,679 childbearing until the thirties or the forties or you know whatever, even with reproductive 474 00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:46,159 technology, that means that families fall short of their desired fertility moment. Stone 475 00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:52,679 is writing about this and he attributes a lot of the decline in so called 476 00:41:52,719 --> 00:42:00,559 achieved fertility. A lot of the reason why couples in women say they wanted 477 00:42:00,559 --> 00:42:02,679 to have more kids than they ended up happening. It has to do with 478 00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:12,119 the delay of marriage even if they get married twenties. Who was that as 479 00:42:12,159 --> 00:42:16,199 Elizabeth Runick right, Yes, yes, the scandalized people by by in the 480 00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:20,280 times, how old was she when she had her first kid? Like twenty 481 00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:22,039 eight or something like twenty It might have even been younger than that, but 482 00:42:22,199 --> 00:42:28,599 not not obscenely young. Well, I'm of Applachian descent. I mean, 483 00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:37,719 you know their grandmother most of my ancestors. So so yeah, So I 484 00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:44,519 think basically the whole the whole system, the family system and homeowning and all 485 00:42:44,559 --> 00:42:52,400 of that. It's basically designed for the benefit of companies that can essentially use 486 00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:59,559 they can use credentials to screen people. Right, So if you go back 487 00:42:59,639 --> 00:43:04,400 and look like when we put the Apollo astronauts on the moon, it's like 488 00:43:04,519 --> 00:43:07,360 maybe ten or fifteen percent of the population rate to college. It's like a 489 00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:12,400 lot of these people, these engineers said NASA, we're high school edrically right, 490 00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:19,199 dumber than we are now. I talked about the credential arms space because 491 00:43:19,639 --> 00:43:22,679 your parents tell you, well, you to get a good job, you 492 00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:28,760 have to have a BA at least that's true. But it's only true because 493 00:43:28,880 --> 00:43:36,119 we allow corporations to use a diploma as a screening device to weed people out. 494 00:43:37,039 --> 00:43:39,719 The truth is they may not know anything that the fact they have a 495 00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:45,440 diploma says they. And I was I've been a university teacher Harvard in at 496 00:43:45,559 --> 00:43:50,039 University of Texas, John Sumpkins. But you know, let's say you're the 497 00:43:50,119 --> 00:43:55,639 Starbucks manager and you only look at people with ba's because and I choose that 498 00:43:55,800 --> 00:44:00,679 because, first of all, you mentioned Howard Schultz, and also because the 499 00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:04,800 Federal Deserved which I put in my book says about a third of people that 500 00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:09,119 PA's are working in jobs right now that only require high school deployments. So 501 00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:15,360 the Starbucks manager thinks, well, at least we know this person completed four 502 00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:19,719 years of education, and so she or he will show up for work and 503 00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:23,000 you know, probably can learn to make coffee. Who knows right now, 504 00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:29,280 but it's less of a risk. Right. So the other thing that we've 505 00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:32,840 inherited from the old male supremacist phase that women should really be angry, in 506 00:44:34,039 --> 00:44:42,159 my opinion, is the entire it is a timetable for making partner at a 507 00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:46,400 law firm or getting your PhD and getting tenure and all that. It was 508 00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:52,760 for thirty five year old men right between verry five and forty. So the 509 00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:57,920 men had this apprentice phase in their twenties and thirties, and then either you 510 00:44:58,039 --> 00:45:01,480 made partner or you were in a second tis the rest of the life you 511 00:45:01,519 --> 00:45:06,559 didn't make the right You've made a tenure, or you did and you taught 512 00:45:06,599 --> 00:45:13,079 at school. Okay, Well, it was assumed that these men working as 513 00:45:13,199 --> 00:45:17,480 professors, as lawyers, as doctors in their twenties and thirties would be married 514 00:45:17,519 --> 00:45:24,480 with kids. And so once you made partner or made tenure or got your 515 00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:31,119 MD, at that point you've been you were supporting a wife and kids in 516 00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:37,599 a starter home and now you like moved up into the big suburban McMansion your 517 00:45:38,159 --> 00:45:44,440 law firm, right, and you take better vacations. But but when you 518 00:45:44,599 --> 00:45:52,000 when you put women in this system that was designed for married men, you 519 00:45:52,119 --> 00:45:57,000 know, in the twentieth century, before the sixties, then you basically and 520 00:45:57,119 --> 00:46:01,159 then you say you're going to post apone marriage until after you make them right, 521 00:46:02,519 --> 00:46:07,320 then you end up looking at that these statistics where an enormous number. 522 00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:09,360 I think it's like a saw a statistic like it. It's a third of 523 00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:15,239 women with college educations may never marry or have families. And now if they 524 00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:20,480 don't want to, that's fine. But if they're not marrying, they're not 525 00:46:20,599 --> 00:46:25,119 having families because they want to. But our system prevents it. Then there's 526 00:46:25,159 --> 00:46:30,840 the system that has to change and of the people, and I think the 527 00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:32,639 chicken and the egg thing is sort of non stop. Mary would probably say 528 00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:39,480 they don't want to because birth control has decreased women's bargaining power sexually, because 529 00:46:39,559 --> 00:46:44,920 men concerned to do what they want, and that puts women in a tough 530 00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:50,159 spot. But I think you're you're correct that when you look at what women 531 00:46:50,239 --> 00:46:53,199 and men say, more often than not, the financial reasons, at least 532 00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:57,840 right now are coming up and are what they're saying as silient for delaying. 533 00:46:58,599 --> 00:47:00,920 Well, this is we can equival about it, but we would agreed. 534 00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:06,239 This is a fatal social experiment. Right when most of your people of all 535 00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:09,840 classes are unhappy. Yeah, and they say I don't like my life. 536 00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:14,119 I wanted to have kids and I don't have Yeah, I wanted to have 537 00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:16,159 three kids, I want did R, I don't want to get married. 538 00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:22,840 I'm single at fifty. When much your population is miserable and they're not achieving. 539 00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:25,119 What are this is not like I want to, you know, win 540 00:47:25,159 --> 00:47:30,639 the lottery. This is like wanting to have a normal human life right that 541 00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:37,559 has its and proletarians passed right, and when even college educated people cannot attain 542 00:47:37,639 --> 00:47:43,519 this, then you don't blame the people, it's the structure that needs to 543 00:47:43,559 --> 00:47:47,719 be changed. I was reading Um Gordon Wood on the sort of small our 544 00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:53,239 republicanism throughout American history, but especially in the Founding Um last night for another 545 00:47:53,280 --> 00:48:00,280 podcast I was prepping, and it strikes me that also our conception of what 546 00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:07,039 free markets need was rooted in that Enlightenment idea of small our republican civic virtue. 547 00:48:07,199 --> 00:48:12,719 And some people Marxists might argue that's always necessarily self defeating, but it 548 00:48:12,880 --> 00:48:15,480 also seems that it's it's the John Adams quote, you know, our constitution 549 00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:20,119 was meant for a moral people, and he also adds religious to that. 550 00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:23,360 But a moral people is some of that falling apart in the market, where 551 00:48:23,679 --> 00:48:31,840 you just see that that kind of we don't have that fabric that incentivizes good 552 00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:39,320 behavior from employers because we've kind of lost that consensus on what moral behavior actually 553 00:48:39,480 --> 00:48:49,159 is. Well, the link between virtue and economics in the agrarian level was 554 00:48:49,679 --> 00:48:55,559 the assumption that most citizens would be small farmers and male small farms in their 555 00:48:55,599 --> 00:49:01,360 wives, and the male farmer would be would own his own small business run 556 00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:07,440 by him and his family right be a juror, you know, to keep 557 00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:10,360 a check on the judicial system, being the militia, to make sure you 558 00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:16,880 did not make permanent military cast that could lead a dictator should And once you 559 00:49:17,039 --> 00:49:22,760 move from the ararian era to the industrial era, that that whole theory just 560 00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:27,679 kind of fall apart. And in the link between virtue, this is where 561 00:49:27,679 --> 00:49:31,119 a lot of conservatives, I think they will emphasis on the religion. In 562 00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:37,559 a let's say Swisserland, right, which was kind of an agrarian The reason 563 00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:45,920 why they were sober and industrious and not like wildly alcoholic and discipline and so 564 00:49:45,079 --> 00:49:52,159 on was because if you're a small farmer, you go bankrupt, you lose 565 00:49:52,199 --> 00:49:55,320 your farm, if you become a drug addict or a party every life or 566 00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:59,599 something like that. So there, it wasn't just a moment. There's like 567 00:49:59,639 --> 00:50:05,000 a pract people use it to be disciplined. Uh. Now, so once 568 00:50:05,119 --> 00:50:09,880 you've become a proletarian in the Romans sense, the word proletarian goes way back 569 00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:15,920 to Romans works. It means someone who has no property. Uh, you 570 00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:19,960 know, you're you're a wager, all of you your you can't live without 571 00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:22,840 selling your labor to your employer, and this becomes the majority of people in 572 00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:27,159 the US and in Western Europe and now the world, and it's going to 573 00:50:27,199 --> 00:50:30,719 be that way for centuries to come. Probably, I think it's a fantasy 574 00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:35,599 to think we're all going to go back to small businesses and small farms. 575 00:50:36,159 --> 00:50:39,159 But so then you have this problem in the wage earners. It's the same 576 00:50:39,239 --> 00:50:47,960 problem faced by slaves and serves and indenture servants. Why should I work if 577 00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:52,960 the profits are going to the pos and not to me, right, why 578 00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:58,760 should I, you know, not accidentally wreck the machinery. It's not my 579 00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:01,880 machinery, I don't it And these are not like socialist questions, is like 580 00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:08,159 as if you're infecting communist countries in communist countries in the Soviet Union, East 581 00:51:08,199 --> 00:51:12,760 Germany is my perfect recent So the Germans, I mean, you know, 582 00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:16,079 if they had this reputation from being incredibly disciplined and efficient, after a couple 583 00:51:16,119 --> 00:51:22,039 of generations of communism, East Germans workers had the reputations of being flawful, 584 00:51:22,159 --> 00:51:28,079 inefficient and result because communism turned out to be like a parody of the worst 585 00:51:28,159 --> 00:51:35,320 aspects where the Communist party was the company because the owner, right, not 586 00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:38,480 only did you have no free unions. If you disagree with the boss, 587 00:51:38,519 --> 00:51:44,760 you got shot or sent to a labor team. So you get this culture 588 00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:51,639 of sabotage and deliberate laziness and subversion. Why are you going to work hard 589 00:51:51,679 --> 00:51:54,199 in study and improve your skills if you're not going to get a raise as 590 00:51:54,239 --> 00:52:00,360 a result. And also why are you going to be personally disciplined? If 591 00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:04,480 the boss mistreats you and you only have enough money, uh, you know, 592 00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:07,480 to last until next week? Why not go get drunk on Saturday night? 593 00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:12,519 Why not have a little fun in your miserable life? You know? 594 00:52:12,760 --> 00:52:15,840 So? So I don't it is a chicken in anything, But I think 595 00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:22,880 that if you, I think the communist example shows communism took hard working, 596 00:52:23,079 --> 00:52:34,679 disciplined wage earners and turn them into lazy, subversive you know, undisciplined people, 597 00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:38,280 all right, corrupt people. If you look at all the communist countries, 598 00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:43,039 what happens when communism falls? Who takes over? Is it the pre 599 00:52:43,199 --> 00:52:46,480 labor unions? You know? Is that the churches know it's the mafia's right. 600 00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:53,480 Because the only way to function effectively in a system where the party controls 601 00:52:53,559 --> 00:52:58,559 all of the avenues upwards, an economic mobility was to be a gangster. 602 00:52:59,440 --> 00:53:02,199 And so I don't I don't blame these inner city kids. I still live 603 00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:07,719 in Washington, DC. I would see this right like you know what you 604 00:53:07,079 --> 00:53:10,960 see as a teenage guy with four hundred dollars speakers. I mean, I 605 00:53:12,079 --> 00:53:16,400 understand this psychological right that is, you know, we tell people, oh, 606 00:53:16,519 --> 00:53:22,280 well, you know you're born to this uh working poor family, but 607 00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:24,320 if you study real hard, you get married, etcetera, etcetera. Well, 608 00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:28,440 then YouTube can be like a partner of film of sex. Right, 609 00:53:28,559 --> 00:53:31,280 But he knows that's not true. Right. The only way you get out 610 00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:38,000 of that milieu in our presence system is you become a pop star or a 611 00:53:38,079 --> 00:53:45,320 basketball celebrity, or or a gangster. Right. So, so I think 612 00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:52,719 you can actually change culture institutionally. Just happened with single uh so Singapore of 613 00:53:54,400 --> 00:53:58,159 old now a party friend of mine knew it, but it's part of my 614 00:53:58,199 --> 00:54:05,400 invasion in nineteen fifties third world country people you know spit and defecated in the 615 00:54:05,559 --> 00:54:08,519 streets, and you know, just they slept outdoors. It was like San 616 00:54:08,519 --> 00:54:17,440 Francisco today or leak one who comes to power as authoritarian state and outlaws public 617 00:54:17,559 --> 00:54:22,440 spitting. You know, it's the broken windows, stry But at the same 618 00:54:22,599 --> 00:54:25,159 time, so he did all of these, you know, very conservative singing 619 00:54:25,840 --> 00:54:30,159 public order things and anti crimes, but at the same time they had these 620 00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:36,840 these multi year plans where they would raise the minimum wage every four or five 621 00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:43,599 years to force businesses either to go out of business or to work productive and 622 00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:46,360 pay their workers. So I think the chicken and the is you have to 623 00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:52,519 have to have the chicken, and you have to have jobs that pay decently 624 00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:59,039 and that pay a living wage, and maybe you know, have family benefits, 625 00:55:00,239 --> 00:55:04,480 and then you have family values. But if you preach family values to 626 00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:09,400 a couple where there are part time workers, you know, they don't know 627 00:55:09,519 --> 00:55:14,159 what their scheduled is next week. Both of them are paid so little that 628 00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:17,920 they even as individuals, they can't play off without welfare. Then I just 629 00:55:19,280 --> 00:55:22,559 I think that's only half of the story. I have one quick policy question 630 00:55:22,679 --> 00:55:25,039 left. I could keep it doing this all dimensions, so generous with your 631 00:55:25,079 --> 00:55:30,360 time. Is there a Is there a smart immigration solution to what you've been 632 00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:35,079 writing about a lot lately, including in this book the birthrate problem, something 633 00:55:35,119 --> 00:55:37,920 that's definitely concerned too. I know a lot of our listeners and conservatives in 634 00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:40,599 general, is you know, we talked about h nbs we are going to 635 00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:45,440 need if we want to compete. Well, maybe maybe I'm wrong on that 636 00:55:45,559 --> 00:55:51,039 premise. I would argue that we would need a more robust population to compete 637 00:55:51,079 --> 00:55:53,920 with other countries on our own. But is there a smart immigration solution to 638 00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:59,639 that problem or is the problem you need to have Americans specifically start having more 639 00:55:59,679 --> 00:56:06,039 babies. Well, realistically, we need both because given our low fertility, 640 00:56:06,199 --> 00:56:13,039 Now, even if you raised a somewhat with making family formation easier, it's 641 00:56:13,039 --> 00:56:15,960 still not going to be replacement level for generations. So we need some degree 642 00:56:15,960 --> 00:56:21,360 of immigration. Uh. You know, my view is that we should be 643 00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:27,960 selective. We should favor high skilled inmigration within limits. We don't have a 644 00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:31,760 shortage of poor people. We don't have a shortage of illiterate people. And 645 00:56:32,519 --> 00:56:37,119 I am a descendant of illiterate Swedish peasants, and you know, Scotts and 646 00:56:37,159 --> 00:56:42,159 Irish tenant farmers and someone must you know, are one way or the other. 647 00:56:43,199 --> 00:56:46,079 But I would not want you know, millions and millions of poor Swedish 648 00:56:46,079 --> 00:56:51,360 peasants entering the labor market in the year twenty twenty three. That's just where 649 00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:57,239 the developed society with a welfare state. So I think our immigration policy should 650 00:56:57,480 --> 00:57:00,880 discourage low skilled, low wage ination, the best thing that can happen and 651 00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:06,280 conservative likeness because the government doesn't have to have necessarily all these other policies. 652 00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:09,239 If we have a tight labor market for ten or twenty years, it will 653 00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:16,400 do wonders to prime reducing poverty in facing families. It's employers who constantly say, 654 00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:21,559 oh, we're running out of workers. They're not running out of workers. 655 00:57:21,639 --> 00:57:27,079 They don't want to raise wages in those fields. If they raise wages 656 00:57:27,119 --> 00:57:30,679 in those fields, they'd find plenty of American ms. But even when you 657 00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:36,519 have skilled workers, and I'm in favor of bringing more skilled people, I'd 658 00:57:36,559 --> 00:57:39,639 love to see a brain frame from Europe, in Asia and Africa and South 659 00:57:39,679 --> 00:57:45,199 America to the US. But they have to have labor rights. They cannot 660 00:57:45,199 --> 00:57:52,079 be h one nights, not being interest servants. So one Britain, Canada, 661 00:57:52,079 --> 00:57:58,519 Australia they have was called a merit system of emigration, where the government 662 00:57:58,639 --> 00:58:02,239 chooses the future properly the country. Google and Apple and Microsoft do not, 663 00:58:05,119 --> 00:58:09,480 so you get points. It's a points if you speak English. That's if 664 00:58:09,559 --> 00:58:13,960 you have a college education, that if you have particular skills, that's a 665 00:58:14,119 --> 00:58:17,039 point, and then then you're admitted. And once you're admitted under the points 666 00:58:17,079 --> 00:58:22,159 system as a skilled immigrant, then you have all the rights of American worker. 667 00:58:22,239 --> 00:58:23,960 You're not going to drag down through their wages. You can quit your 668 00:58:24,039 --> 00:58:29,519 job and do whatever you want to. Hopefully you get a you aspired a 669 00:58:29,559 --> 00:58:37,159 cizenship as soon as possible. So so I think our immigration polishy should create 670 00:58:37,239 --> 00:58:45,360 time leader markets at the low end and continue to welcome skill the workers, 671 00:58:45,400 --> 00:58:52,639 but not in as indentured servants as free legal permanent residence with the Green courts. 672 00:58:52,559 --> 00:58:55,559 Sounds good to me. The book is called Hell to Pay, How 673 00:58:55,599 --> 00:59:00,039 the Suppression of Wages Is Destroying America. It is out on May second. 674 00:59:00,199 --> 00:59:05,400 Michael Lynde, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you appreciate 675 00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:07,760 it. Of course you've been listening to another edition of Federalist Radio Hour. 676 00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:10,639 I'm Emily Jashnski, culture editor here at the Federalist. We will be back 677 00:59:10,679 --> 00:59:15,440 soon with more. Until then, he lovers the freedom and anxious to send 678 00:59:15,559 --> 00:59:22,719 fry All right, what are you wrong