We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jasnski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and to the premium
version of our website as well. Today we are joined by the once in
future Federalist Radio Hour guest or In Gass is back. He's, of course,
the executive director over at American Compass, which is out with a remarkable
new handbook, what's called Rebuilding American Capitalism, a handbook for conservative policymakers.
It's in the weeds but also very helpfully, very good on first principles and
principle in general. So, or In, thanks for stopping by to talk
about the Oh, thank you for having me. Yeah, of course,
in full disclosure, I'm an American Compass member. But that side, you
know, there's there's a lot in this to agree with. So I guess
my first question, or In is why socialism and why Now I'm kidding,
I'm kidding, but that that is like the the retort that you get constantly,
um from you know, folks that maybe don't even consider themselves libertarian,
maybe they consider themselves conventional conservatives. But look at the project that you've undertaken
over at American Compass and that is fleshed out comprehensively in this handbook, and
say, this is not limited government. This does not fit neatly within you
know, the scope of limited government as it's was conceived by the fusionist project
of the last half century. So I know we've covered all of that on
previous in previous conversations on this podcast, but or in just that basic question
as you review all of the work that you put together in this handbook,
Um, why is it, you know, fundamental part of a conservative vision?
Well, I agree, I think it's exactly the right question, and
it's been something that's really been interesting for us to grapple with as we put
this together because you know, it's sort of the culmination of the first three
years of our work at American Compass. And what was really fun from sort
of the inside working on it was seeing how much our own thinking has really
developed as we've actually done the research, as we've done the policy development,
to the point where now we really have answers to a lot of questions that
that you know, we couldn't have had initially. We couldn't have had any
of this when when we started, because I don't think anyone's thinking on the
right of center had had developed in this way. And this the sort of
is it socialism question that you raised is it's it's exactly the right one,
and it's why we ended up, you know, choosing to title this Rebuilding
American Capitalism because the more work we've done, the more we've realized that what
what so much of this comes down to, and from our perspective, where
a lot on the right have gone so wrong is in how they understand what
capitalism is. And you see, you know, they're they're very direct quotes
from people like you know, former Center pat to me from from Ambassador Nikki
Haley that sort of put forward this idea that capitalism is literally just another word
for freedom, and this idea of the free market is just just what is
out there before any before public policy or government or anything gets in the way,
and that as soon as you do anything beyond that, you know,
as Haley famously said, you're sort of you're on the path to socialism.
And what we've come to understand as we, you know, research the history
of America's economic development, as people looked at what is and isn't working in
our economy today, that that sort of kind of absolute ludhist libertarian concept of
freedom isn't capitalism at all. It's it's it is not what Adam Smith was
talking about. It's not a model that has ever worked anywhere, and it's
clearly not working here today. And so for us, the project is really
to go back and figure out, you know, what, what did the
classical economists mean by capitalism, what did it mean when it was working well
in America? And why isn't it working today and so And in that respect,
then it is the ultimate conservative project to recognize that there is this incredibly
valuable thing that we maybe took for granted but shouldn't have, and we have
to figure out how to strengthen those institutions and guard rails that that provide the
basis for human flourishing. Yeah, I have to say the one policy area
that I feel like is way too unfamiliar to myself and probably to the right
in general, partially because there just aren't a lot of people on the right
who thought differently about this not you know, there are a million different factors
to the blame for that. But you have a section here with essays from
Julius Crime and the great Caleb or on financialization, and I really really think
what they write about. So much of this is tied up in it the
kind of culture war red meat conversation about ESG. There's so much that seems
to go right back to this question of financialization. And wanted to start there
by, seeing Warren if you could tell people, if they've never heard the
term, a little bit about what financialization refers to, and then a little
bit about what Julius and Caleb are sort of prescribing going forward. Yeah,
financialization is. It's funny. People will people will do entire seminars on on
what does financialization mean? But you know, the way we think about it,
and as a starting point, it's just the idea that an increasing share
of our economic activity starts to happen in financial markets, and that whereas in
the you know what I would say a proper sense of capitalism, we think
financial markets are important, but we recognize there a means to an end.
You like financial markets because they help bring capital to productive uses, not because
we all benefit when you know, high frequency traders on Wall Street are coming
up with super cool algorithms to earn extra money. And what we've seen in
the American economy in recent decades is a real shift to basically financed for its
own sake. I mean, we've seen a larger share of economic economic activity
happening in financial markets. We see a much larger share of the economy's profits
going to financial markets. We see financial markets taking a lot more capital out
of the real economy instead of investing it into the real economy. We see
more and more of the top business talent going to work and venture capital and
private equity and hedge funds instead of building the businesses that would actually use capital.
And so so all of that together is sort of the picture of financialization.
And you know what folks like Caleb and Caleb Or and Julius Crime who
wrote for this handbook really emphasize, and I think it's so important to recognize,
is that you really can distinguish the productive from the unproductive. Right,
I mean, I think one of the sort of knee jerk reactions on the
right of center as soon as somebody starts talking about bad things happening in a
market is to say we, well, like, who are you to decide
or you know, how how should we judge what is good and what isn't
and and those turn out to be just really sort of shallow objections. We
really have a very rich vocabulary and ability to understand what we want to see
financial markets doing. What it looks like when capital from savers is actually brought
to a product of use invested in ways that create things in the real world.
And it's pretty easy to conversely see when that's now what's happening at all?
When you just have piles of paper assets going around in circles, creating
a lot of paper wealth for people, but not actually creating any prosperity in
the country. And so I think it's a key piece of what has gone
wrong with capitalism, where if the easiest way to make money is to do
that stuff, then then that's what people will do. The invisible hand can
just as quickly push everybody off into trading bitcoin as it can push people toward
doing something useful, and so for policymakers it's it's a real challenge what do
you do and the best ways to make a profit in the economy, aren't
the kind of things that are actually going to produce social value. And one
of the wildest things is hearing people like Nikki Haley, who was on the
board of Bowing talk about markets in the way that she talks about them and
to pivot in a very maybe unexpected way, but when it makes sense to
me at least be thinking about just having a conversation with someone about how they
they're gonna, you know, their friends are gonna keep shopping at, for
instance, Target, you know, social conservatives going to keep shopping at Target,
because what is the alternative is it Coals where they have the same problems
as Walmart, where they probably have the same problems. None of these corporations
are responsive to market forces in the way that you would expect them to be.
And you know, you might have someone like ruevek Roma Roma Swami out
there talking about how it's about ESG, but I think ESG is symptomatic of
something in and of itself that goes to the question of financialization. So to
maybe put that question in a discernible way, if you were talking to a
presidential candidate or about how they should you be thinking about policies, you know,
not just whining about out bud light or target, but thinking about policies.
Would financialization be a part of that? Oh? Absolutely, And I
think you know a lot of the things that you just highlighted are they're sort
of the second order consequences of financialization because one of the things that we get
with financialization is this incredible sort of disaggregation of ownership. And what I mean
by that is it's not actually clear who owns a company at this point,
right, we have we have the sort of Milton Friedman sense that you know,
shareholders own companies, and shareholders want to earn, you know, make
money, and therefore managers are responsible to make money for shareholders. And and
that's maybe fine as far as it goes. I mean, we could talk
about whether that was useful or not in nineteen seventy when he wrote it,
but if you look at the economy today, you know, let's take I
like using Apple as an example, right, Okay, So Tim Cook is
the CEO of Apple. Who is he accountable to, Well, he's accountable
to his board of directors, who are supposed to be elected by the shareholders.
But the shareholders if you look at who actually holds the most Apple stock.
It's these large institutional investors. It's black Rock and Fidelity, it's mutual
funds. If you look behind that and say, okay, but who gave
their money to those people? A lot of times, almost half of US
stocks are now owned by foreigners. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with a
foreigner, but people in other countries don't necessarily have the same interests as as
Americans do. And in fact, in a lot of cases that foreign money
is in sovereign wealth funds. So it's actually, you know, the Chinese
government or the Saudi government that technically holds holds the shares. So are they
the people who Tim Cook is accountable to? And what you start to realize
is two things. First of all, well, that's not really who we
want an American CEO to be accountable for capitalism to work. And this is
where we sort of started the conversation, what do you need for capitalism to
work? Well, you actually need the owners of businesses, the people with
the capital to want to be doing things that are also going to be good
for the country. And if those aren't aligned, then the system's not going
to work. So that's one huge problem. And the flip side is there's
a sense in which Tim Cook isn't really accountable to anybody at all. He
really cares a lot about what his friends think of him. He cares a
lot about which conferences he gets invited to, and he cares a lot about
making sure that the board, which is mostly his friends and the people at
the conferences, think he's doing a good job. And so when you see
these ESG initiatives, when you see the extent to which socially progressive causes are
now front and center, even at the expensive profit, what you're seeing I
think is it is in part a consequence of financialization. It's a consequence of
the way capitalism is supposed to work, with actual people being accountable for the
decisions and companies being replaced by this vague set of abstractions that pretty much leaves
managers kind of free to do whatever they want. The watched Auto Wall Street
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Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. And this seems like a vast,
almost impossible task, the task of reigning all of this in. Where
would a let's say, a Republican president, actually a democratic president too,
will just open it up to everyone since it should, you know, theoretically
be appealing to everyone. But what would a democratic president, Republican president,
or a congress frankly that was interested in dealing with some of the stuff start.
Yeah, So I think there's there's a few different ways to get at
the problem. You know, one is to go straight at the financial legislation
itself and say, you know, we are going to separate productive from unproductive
activity on Wall Street, and we're going to discourage the unproductive activity. So,
for instance, many countries have what's called a financial transaction tax, Basically,
if you have to pay an extremely small tax every time you do a
trade, then trading for its own sake that doesn't create real value becomes unattractive
pretty quickly. London has a financial transaction tax, Hong Kong has a financial
transaction tax. These are perfectly compatible with deep, well functioning financial markets.
They just put a finger on the scale for doing useful things instead of useless
things. So you can do that. You can have a lot of rules
that specifically target private equity funds and hedge funds and require them to, for
instance, disclose what they're actually doing, what their performance actually is, so
that they're not just taking a lot of public pension money and not accomplishing a
lot with it. You can change tax laws so that right now we actually
give a preference to borrowing. So if you raise money by selling stock and
sort of the traditional capitalist model, you have to pay taxes on all your
profits before you can give any profit back to your sharehol holders. But if
you borrow money, you can actually pay your interest back to the back to
your creditors before you have to pay taxes on it. So there's there's a
tremendous amount of activity that's just going around borrowing money that's going to be at
a tax advantage basis, and then turning around and using the borrowed money to
buy back shares and return more money to shareholders. That way, these this
kind of financial engineering if you want to be nice, or manipulation, if
you want to be less nice. Again, it's just it's not good,
and there's no reason we can't say it's not good and have laws and a
tax code that that reflect that. So there's stuff we can do directly on
financialization, and then just quickly on kind of the you know, the ownership
side or the the issues with ESG and so forth. I think it's really
important that we can think about how we want capitalism to work. Who do
we think should be making the decisions about how a business operates. And that's
something that for conservatives in particular, that question at first sounds really strange,
like well, wait, wait a minute, that's like, that's not a
question we're supposed to be allowed to ask. There's supposed to just be some
clear, true market answer, But the reality is that there isn't. In
fact, when you think about all of the people who have a stake in
a company, you know, if if you are one of those people who
have lended money to the company, you're expecting to get back interest payments,
but you don't have any say on how the company operates. On the other
hand, if you're somebody who bought stock in the company, we see you
as the owner, and we say you do decide how the company operates.
But those two questions of who's entitled to the profits of the company and who
gets to make the decisions for the company, those are two different questions,
and any legal regime has to decide how you want to you to be that
up. So I think one thing that's really important to think about is who
are the groups who should get to have a say in making decisions about how
a business operates. Obviously shareholders are one hugely important one, but I think
it would be a good idea to say only some shareholders really count. And
you see this in some companies that have different classes of shares. I think
it would make a lot of sense to say, you know, if you're
an actual, identifiable American person who owns stock in a company, you should
have a say in how the company operates. But if you're an ambiguous investment
vehicle, that is invested through a different investment vehicle that has put its money
in black Rock, that has then put its money into the company. Yeah,
you can still have a share of the dividends, but actually you don't
get a vote. Sorry. And on the other hand, you know who
maybe should have a vote? Workers? Maybe workers should have a vote.
And so starting to think about that and actually realizing we get to decide as
a nation and through our policymakers, how we want capitalism to work, and
recognize we need it to work better, I think is exactly where conservatives should
focus. There's a somewhat famous chart that is actually goes back to AEI.
It's on eight Ideas. I'm sure you've seen it. We're in where you
see the price of goods over the last like thirty years, and the very
heavily subsidized but essential industry is a housing, healthcare have shot up while the
price of consumer goods TVs, electronics, etc. Have plummeted. And this
is I mean, obviously very very sad visual. But it depresses me because
I wonder whether you know the libertarian skeptic who would say, what we really
need is a consumer base that you know, sorry, you know if consumers
aren't interested in buying American If consumers aren't interested did in paying a little extra
more for their their you know, cheap Amazon goods, Um, then you
know it doesn't matter. You can take all of these financialization steps and the
market is still going to produce the same result. And you know, there
are a million different rebuttals to that. But one thing that does worry me
is, you know, do we have a culture? Um? You know,
what did John Adams say? Our constitution was for moral people? And
there are other quotes from the founding that have expressed a center a similar sentiment.
Do we even have a culture or that would support you know, desirable
market ends or is that also what you're trying to do with the family policy
in the handbook? It has to be both at the same time. I
think we have a culture that that would support it, and I think it's
important to recognize the sort of ways in which the cultural and economic issues are
are intertwined. Um. You know, I think one bad habit that a
lot of us on the right center have gotten into is to look at problems
out there in the world and not want to have government involved in them,
and therefore declare it's a culture problem. And implicit in that phrase it's a
culture problem, which anyone who's spent time in right of center circles has heard
frequently is that it may be a culture problem, but it's almost never only
a culture problem. There are always dimensions both in terms of what is influencing
the culture that that public policy plays an important role in, and and then
there are elements of it that really are a direct result of public policy.
And so, you know, I think that point about kind of well Americans
just want cheap stuff is a perfect example where, yes, other things equal,
people like to choose the cheaper thing. And obviously we have a very
consumerist culture in America. But let's recognize the role that public policy plays here
in a couple of respects. One one piece of it is just that there's
a collective action problem. I can believe as as strongly as I want that
America would be better off if we produced more things domestically and there was more
domestic demand for manufacturing and we had more of that investment here. But which
thing I personally buy at Walmart has no effect on that. So I can
sort of personally in a like you know, virtuous signaling sort of way,
go and spend more money if I want. But we have a collective action
problem, and you know, it's really good at solving collective action problems government.
That's in some respect the premise of government is to identify collective action problems
that we actually want to solve, and so for conservative it's to sort of
predisqualify public policy from solving these problems. It's basically circular, and you can
just break that circle and say, well, no, actually, given the
things that we care about and the outcomes we want, we should want government
to play a role here. And it's absolutely valid to recognize that we should
have a preference for, for instance, making things here and creating jobs here,
even if that does mean that some things are more expensive. So there's
that piece of it, and then I think there's there's the broader way in
which we have to recognize that that public policy has created this this market system
that says essentially the only goal in all cases is to consume more stuff as
cheaply as possible. I mean, that is fun. That is the core
of the economic philosophy that we've been operating under. And an economists will tell
you that bluntly, they'll say, well that easy, in fact the purpose
of economics, and so that is an enormous opportunity for conservatives, and I
think one that most Americans would prefer to what they have been hearing to say,
Well, that's actually a really lousy way to do things, and most
of what actually matters in life is not cheap stuff, and there's a real
opportunity here to do a lot better. Right. There's the sort of oft
misconstrued truism from Andrew Bribert. The politics is downstream of culture, which of
course never precluded the idea that culture is as is also a downstream of politics,
as are not mutually exclusive things. I want to ask. We've talked
about labor policy before on a sort of thirty thousand foot level. There's a
lot of good stuff in the labor section here from Jonathan Barry and others.
Is it I'm thinking of this in the context of the last month's immigration debate,
which you waited bravely into as well and took all kinds of buck again
from the libertarians. But is it short of a total to overhaul just just
thinking of the politics of the possible, Can labor be bolstered without also bolstering
a giant, you know, anti family political interest group, a giant open
borders political interest group. When you think about the fact that s the sciu
UM, you know, believes in amnesty and essentially you know, the consequential
open borders at the that would be downstream of that, is it possible to
do that without overhauling the entire system and also not benefiting you know, these
these groups that also would would undercut you know, the wages at the ends
when it comes to you know, what you and Michael Lynn talk about with
wages and family policy as well. Well, I think there are sort of
two intersecting issues there that are really interesting. One is to your point that
labor, as we talk about it in America today, meaning you know,
big labor unions like the SEIU, is actually doing a terrible job of representing
American workers. And if you look at the issues that these labor unions choose
to focus their energy on, the overlap with issues preferred by the Democratic Party
is basically perfect, and the overlap with issues that matter to American workers is
basically random, and so on the one hand, that's that's obviously a huge
problem, but It also, on the other hand, speaks to a huge
opportunity. There's a tremendous amount that could be done in the field of labor
law in terms of how organizations representing workers operate, that could be doing so
much more for workers than these unions are today. And so in the labor
context, if you look at, for instance, in the book, the
set of policies we talk about, they're all focused on exactly that idea.
How do we get back to a labor movement that is actually focused on advancing
the interests of workers, because because that's something I certainly think conservatives should support,
and by the way, historically that that's a lot more what the labor
movement was. I mean, if you go back to the origins of it,
you know, folks like like Samuel Gompers Um. He was militantly nonpartisan
and insistent that that if labor unions became partisan, affiliated with one party,
it was going to be a disaster for frankly, a lot of the reasons
we now see it being a disaster. I mean, all the way through
the fifties, Um, certainly you had very kind of bipartisan or nonpartisan orientation
of labor unions and their commit their connection to political parties. Richard Dixon had
had a great relationship with UM with with union leaders. It's it's really only
in recent decades that we've ended up with kind of labor as synonymous with the
Democratic Party. And so actually fixing that should be a piece of labor reform.
And that's saying that we talk about just saying labor unions can't be political,
just like you know, nonprofits can't be political. I mean, that
doesn't mean you can't advocate for things. Obviously, American Compass is a great
example. We are a nonprofit. We spend all of our time advocating for
things, but we're sure as heck not to allowed to raise money for the
Democratic Party or raise money for the Republican Party. And so putting those kinds
of constraints on worker organizations and saying, you know, again, as with
nonprofits, if a worker organization wants to set up a pack and raise money
for it, by all means, but let's keep that separate from the core
economic role that that workers need those organizations to play for them. So so
that's one piece that we really focus on in the labor policy context, and
then the other that's that's broader, and I think you just said goes exactly
to um. You know, Mike Linda's tremendous work on this is do book
Hell to Pay is fantastic on this point. Is there's just a basic way
in which, as part and parcel of what we were just talking about with
with our consumption culture and economics as just a discipline of maximizing cheap stuff and
consumption, a huge piece of that is that we're a cheap labor culture that
informal economics in the way our policymakers approach things. You know, sure they'll
say good jobs, you know, fair wages, whatever else, but at
the end of the day, they actually treat labor like just as a commodity,
the same way they treat oil or would. And the idea is the
more of it is that we have, the cheaper it is, the better
off will be. And if you just want to have lots of cheap stuff,
that might be true. But a huge piece of what we are arguing
for a American compass, and again what I think should be core to a
conservative vision of capitalism is that labor isn't like wood or oil. I hate
that I have to say that, but this would actually be a controversial point
in especially right of center economics. We actually want labor to be expensive in
some respects. What could be better for American working families than for labor to
be expensive. And so that shift in mindset and recognizing that high wages can
be a good thing, especially you know, speaking of those who have have
lower wages today, getting those wages up, that has to be a priority,
even if it makes stuff more expensive in some cases, and that is
just not something that policymakers have taken seriously for or really since the onset of
globalization, you know, thirty or forty years ago. I'm doing the Devil's
advocate thing here because I mostly think it's fun, but it's also just it's
helpful, I think because some of our listeners who might still be on the
libertarian maybe conventional conservative mindset, who see them, well, they they've already
they've already turned off the podcast there, John God, or they're hate listening,
but they maybe see this stuff is like being reflectively opposed to their version
of conservatism. But all that is to say, how do you um make
goods more expensive and then also encourage people to have more children? Bigger families,
like they're What they would say to that is, well, you're making
it more expensive to have bigger families. Well you're also asking the government to
subsidize having bigger families. But why does this sort of all actually really work
together, um for the sort of ecosystem. Yeah, that it's a really
good question, and I think it goes to, you know, a point
that's that's been lost also in a lot of the recent debates around inflation.
I mean, obviously, you know the country has had a major inflation problem
over the past couple of years. Um. You know, the rate has
certainly come down from the you know, eight nine percent that we were facing,
but it's it's still well above two percent um. But but the striking
thing is that that although economists like to sort of say, well, you
know, wage growth is too high and a labor shortage and these wages are
driving inflation, if you actually look, wages are growing slower and inflation is
rising. So so real wages, the sort of value that people are earning
that they can they can buy in the market, Um, those real wages
are declining, um. And and it's it's other things. You know,
Hey, what about corporate profits m that appear more to be sort of driving
the inflation. And so it's it's certainly true that over the last couple of
years we've seen a situation that's that's very difficult for working families in a lot
of cases. But if you think about a hypothetical situation, you know,
let's say we actually got serious about enforcing our immigration laws and created a tighter
labor market for lower wage workers in particular, and they started seeing their wages
rise as a result, and that some of that was being passed on to
consumers, Well, the wages would rise a lot faster than prices rise because
that low wage labor is only one piece of all the costs that go into
the stuff. Right, if you think about the you know, even something
that we think is really labor intensive product, like say, you know,
let us in the supermarket, well maybe ten percent of the cost of that
let us is actually the low wage labor on the farm. So if you
dramatically increase the earnings of lower income households because there's actually real, real demand
for their work in the labor market, their wages will go up a lot
faster than prices go up, and they will be better off as a result.
Now, who won't be better off as a result is some of the
higher income folks who have benefited from very tight labor markets for a long time
and have gotten lots of wage increases. Um. Their wages might rise less
quickly than prices rise. But frankly, I'm okay with that. I find
it very funny that for decades, while we had a labor market where you
know, high wage workers for seeing a lot of demand for their labor,
their wages were going up, they were doing better, and low wage maker,
low wage workers weren't. You know, Everybody said, well, that
that's just the market working. That's that's just that's the trends, and that's
inevitable, and what can you do about it? If you contemplate a world
where lower wage workers are actually the ones with significant power in the labor market
and there are real, you know, real real lack of workers available there,
and their wages are the ones that start to go up, um,
then everyone screams and says this is an economic crisis. And I just don't
see why. It seems to me that that that that is a perfectly that
outcome is perfectly consistent with how markets are supposed to operate, and again it's
the sort of outcome that we should be expecting capitalism to deliver if capitalism is
actually working well. It's one of the interesting things about the Michael Lend book,
and obviously he's not a conservative, but to the extent that right makes
arguments about inequality, even by other names, it's typically cultural reasons, right,
that there's this sort of elite cabal, which basically there is that's pulling
the strings. But because of socioeconomic stratification, there's also this cultural stratification.
And I think all of that is important. But something I like about the
handbook. That I liked about the new Lend book is that it makes this
argument. You know, there's there's something wrong about the stratification period, and
it has to do with the market not valuing labor fairly. And of course
the libertarian would say, well, it's fair if that's what the value is.
But we know that we don't sort of work in this perfect Randy and
lab under perfect Randy and lab can So why actually the handbook starts with this,
um, why is it that this inequality is worth addressing through policy?
Means? Well, inequality is I think a huge issue that everybody should take
seriously, but again, frankly, especially conservatives. I mean, this is
this is one of these places where it's really important to recognize that libertarians are
just not conservative. Um, you know, I think, for instance,
there's also a lot of work done by by the folks at AI trying to
show that well, you know, if if somebody's earning the same amount they
were earning in nineteen seventy, well then that means they're just as well off
as they were in nineteen seventy. They have the same amount of stuff,
It doesn't matter what it shouldn't matter what's happening to everybody else around them.
And that's obviously ludicrous. I mean, partly it's it is a it reflects
a total failure to understand human nature and reality, which are things conservatives pride
themselves on trying to do well. But it's also a failure to recognize where
value comes from and how we experience things in life. That if if you're
thinking about buying a present for your kid, and in nineteen seventy you can
afford the same bike that all the other kids are going to be riding around,
and in twenty twenty you can buy that same bike for your kid,
but everyone else has, you know, bikes that are I don't know what's
different about bikes these days. I'm sure there are much cooler things, that's
sure. Whatever, And because now it's the twenty twenties and we're supposed to
tell that person like, well, I don't understand what the problem is.
That's just as good a bike as in nineteen seventy. Like, obviously that
is going to that has different value for the consumer if we want to think
about it in consumer terms, and obviously it's it's going to be toxic to
our to our social fabric. And so so I think, you know,
there's one question. There's there's the empirical question of what has happened to inequality
and how much worse has it gotten? And certainly, you know, all
the data says it has gotten worse. There we have long debase about how
much worse, but other things equal, it should be something that conservatives are
focusing in intensive attention on and trying to understand what is it about our market
that is leading some people to to accrue such sizable gains and other people to
really be left behind. Because exactly as you just said, there's not some
law of nature that says, you know, investment banking is like a way
more valuable thing than like construction. I mean by most standards, like well,
gosh, the person building houses is actually building houses, and you know
they're in awful lot of ways. That's a more pleasant thing to be doing
all day than than than the work and investment banker does all day. But
given our current market conditions, the market, the investment banker accrues a lot
more income, and so it's worth asking how do we feel about those market
conditions, and are there places where we've made public policy choices that have amplified
that that set of disparities, and where other other choices might might instead damp
in such disparities. Because I would rather live in a world that that recognize
that those two workers, you know, certainly one is not working harder than
the other, necessarily one is not of hiring intrinsic worth than the other,
And so I'd like to live in a world where they can both support their
family, leasing middle class security at least, right it shouldn't be so controversial,
but here we are. The last question I have for or In is
whether you think the primary field and on the Republican side is shaping up as
a responsive kind of group to some of these new policy ideas which are organized
really to reflect what is now glaringly obvious about the Republican base. And I
know you had some of these realizations earlier than a lot of people working on
the twenty twelve Romney campaign and looking into domestic policy from that vantage point,
it's early in twenty twenty four. You're launching this in fact on Capitol Hill
later this month, with you know, the handful of a really strong handful
of members of Congress who have been responsive to these ideas, to these new
ways of thinking about things. Do you sense that the Republican primary field is
moving in that direction? Do you sense, and let me just to ask
about one particular candidate, that Donald Trump is moving in that direction? Well,
you know, Donald Trump is probably the one who's been furthest in that
direction already on a lot of these economic questions. I mean, I think
one thing that that was he's a big Michael Lynd fan. Everybody knows that
he's you know, if you think about what he represented in the twenty sixteen
primary compared to all those other candidates, Um you know he was. He
was really the one who was at least willing to challenge a lot of these
orthodoxies that the old Right had had sort of hammered home for so long.
And um, you know, I think you when we were talking about financialization,
you sort of said, you know, one thing is just complaining about
it, that it's another to actually do something about it, which which is
certainly true from a governing perspective, but in politics, an awful lot of
it is is talking about the problems and what problems somebody chooses to emphas size
and so, you know, having a willingness to look at what's going on
in America today, you know, whether you're talking about twenty sixteen or now
in twenty twenty three, and say, you know, the real problems here
are things like inequality, like low wage labor, like globalization, like um,
you know, a totally broken immigration system, like financialization. These talking
about that set of things is a totally different, uh message and steat of
commitments to make to voters as opposed to the old right model of like well,
I'll tell you what the real problems in America are is like too much
you know, regulatory uncertainty, for job creators, UM and and and so
you know Trump, Trump was there first, and I think in this field,
you know, he's obviously not talking about a lot of policy at this
at the moment, but it's it's safe to say that relatively speaking, he
will be further to this side. I think the really interesting question, as
as as you pose it, is what's what's going on with everybody else?
And you know, one thing that that's interesting to look at is there really
is now this different way of of approaching economic policy what we could at American
Compass called conservative economics, that that rejects the sort of libertarian dogmas of the
old right and says there there is a new way to talk about this stuff
and think about it and and address it. And you know, so a
lot of the project of this whole rebuilding American capitalism project, between all the
policy proposals, you know, you've been mentioning along the way, that we
have a whole host of outside experts who we asked to write commentaries for different
pieces of it. I think we have about two dozen different folks from from
all over the right of center, um, who are are sort of contributing
their thoughts. And I think it reflects just the breadth of of UM folks
doing work on these kinds of issues now. And then, like you said,
well, we'll have a really great set of UM of elected leaders coming
to participate in the launch event. And you know Senator Rubio, Senator Cotton,
Senator Vance, Senator Young. UM folks like this I think are at
the leading edge on these issues. The primary field. I think it's harder
to say at this point where they'll be there are there are clearly some who
are are not there. Nikki Haley is in the field and determined to show
what would happen if you sort of you know, had a time machine and
could grab a you know, I don't even know if we fair to call
her from ten years ago, it might be more like a nineteen eighty six
Republican U but not even I mean, it's worse than that. Well that's
fair. And as I like, you know, Reagan actually had a far
more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of this stuff than she seems to UM. But
so so you know, there you have that lane UM and and then I
think in between there there are going to be a bunch of candidates who are
really sort of trying to figure it out as they go. Um And,
like you said, you have a you have a base of voters that that
does not want to hear uh frankly for what what Nicky Haley is saying.
Where I feel bad now we're using Nicky Haley as as the stand in for
for a whole side of the right of center. But she's a she's a
very effective one. So um And. But but then there are also a
lot of folks who I think obviously look at at what Donald Trump represents for
the party and says, well, that's that's not quite what we want to
run back again either. Uh and and so I think it's gonna be really
interesting to see who chooses to try to fill the area in between those those
two poles in a sense in different ways. And the work we're doing is
intended to sort of provide the off the shelf material that says, you know,
most of a primary isn't wonky economic policy, but you do have to
have a theory of the case and a worldview. And we think this is
the one that is it is going to be where conservatism heads in the medium
term. And we'd love to love to see folks starting as soon as possible,
I lied, and now I have one more quick question. It could
be like subject for an entire podcast in them itself. But I think if
I'm not mistaken, correct me, if I am, would you were quoted
in the New York Times, New York or New York Magazine, one of
the New York Things saying that conservatives seem to perhaps be on the verge of
rethinking citizens united. And as we're having this conversation, that's in the back
of my mind because so much of this is difficult, especially with the Prime
Mary Um you know, ahead of us right now, to imagine, you
know, even if in their heart of hearts you can sit down and explain
to Nicky Haley what's going on with bud Light and Target and break numbers down
and all of that, even if they wanted to, uh, the sort
of financial winds political winds are blowing in a different direction from where their bases.
Is that Am I remembering that corrictly correctly? Is that is that an
or in cast quote? It is now and now now I'm trying to remember
where it was also so New York, so you know, or or regardless
the I think it's a it's a really important point because um it it again.
You know, in some respects, you could see it as just a
sort of esg or woke capital related issue, right like, oh, conservatives
don't like what corporations are saying right now, so now you know, they're
going to rethink whether corporations should be allowed to say it. But in my
mind it is much closer to one of these sort of core issues about capitalism
and reflective of the way that really for the last ten or fifteen years,
conservatives are taking note of the way that various assumptions that that we were taught
that we could just make about how great everything would always work out in the
free market doesn't necessarily hold. And one of those is it's it's not specifically
the problem that, well, what if a corporation, you know, takes
a position on Pride month that you don't like. It's it's a much broader
question about how democracy works. And you know, I think democracy and capitalism
are these sort of two parallel ideas that that conservatives rightly cherish and are you
know, should recognize, and our rocket recognizing are are really hard. And
they take the right set of rules and they take the right set of institutions.
Uh. And and so when it comes to the marketplace of ideas or
the political sphere, um, you know, suggesting that that that corporations are
sort of going to play in an effective and constructive role, UM doesn't doesn't
necessarily seem true. And now there are a lot of reasons that that conservatives
did like Citizens United. It's a fascinating and kind of really complicated legal question,
but I think it's all of a piece of the way that that um
that a lot of people on the right are waking up to the reality that
if if we want to have America working well, um, we are going
to have to have some rules. Yeah, it was I remember seeing that
quote and it was, um very affirming to borrow some language from the left
because I've been thinking something similar and I was like, well, if Orne
thinks it, then it must be okay, or it must just be socialism.
It's somewhere on the road to socialism. I don't know how far.
Well. You should make sure to take a look at this handbook. It
is so fascinating, there's so much in it or and people can find that
on the American Compass website. Yes, American Compass dot Org. I'm sure
there will be a big button right in the middle. There you go.
It's called Rebuilding American Capitalism, a handbook for conservative policymakers. Or in casts,
the executive director of American Compass, the author of Once and Future Worker,
or we appreciate you stopping by, Emily, Thank you so much.
You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist for radio hour. I'm Emi
Logicianski culture editor here the Federalist. We will be Baxton with more. Until
then, Members of Freedom and anxious for the Front