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TRANSCRIPT
TRANSCRIPT
Discussion between Professor Richard Wolff and
Victor Davis Hansen of the Hoover institution.
FEBRUARY 5TH 2025
Version 1 ... February 2025
- S-01 ... Introduction
- S-02 ... How the Left Can Defeat Donald Trump
- S-03 ... Why Kamala Harris Lost the Election
- S-04 ... Is Victor Davis Hanson Wrong About the Elites’ War on the Working Class?
- S-05 ... Did West Coast Elites Cause the LA Wildfire Disaster (Is Victor Davis Hanson Wrong?)?
- S-06 ... Why Richard Wolff Enjoys Tucker Carlson
- S-07 ... Why Unemployment Tanked Harris in the Election
- S-08 ... Deep Seek, The Chinese Phenomenon
- S-09 ... The Astonishing Story of How China Came to Dominate Elon Musk Over Electric Cars
- S-10 ... Donald Trump’s Huge Misunderstanding About Tariffs
- S-11 ... Richard on Donald Trump’s Contradictions About Immigration
- S-12 ... The Marxist Truth About Why Immigrants Are a Gift to the United States
- S-13 ... Why Trump’s Policies Will Increase Illegal Mexican Immigration and Drug Trafficking
- S-14 ... Should Trump Make Canada the 51st State?
- S-15 ... How Elites Rejected Donald Trump and Created the Man He Became
- S-16 ... Why Donald Trump Wants to Take the Panama Canal (And the Actual Best Reason to Control It)
- S-17 ... How the BRICS Are Drastically Outperforming the American Economy
- S-18 ... Is There a Fatal Contradiction in Trump’s Climate Policy?
- S-19 ... How Will AI Affect China and America’s Economic War?
- S-20 ... Why Trump Thinks We Should Conquer Greenland
- S-21 ... How Elon Musk is Only an Unsuccessful Bureaucrat
- S-22 ... On China’s Number One Global Priority
- S-23 ... Some Key Lessons from Marx’s Kapital
- S-24 ... What Marxists Learned from the Failure of the Soviet Union
- S-25 ... Donald Trump and the Gulf of America
- S-26 ... On How History Will Overwhelm Trump In the Next Four Years
- S-27 ... Why We Should Expect More of the Same from Donald Trump
- S-28 ... On His Hope For a Brighter Future From the Left
-
S-29 ...
-
S-30 ...
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
This 'Index of Contents' is the one used by Professor Richard Wolff in the presentation of a conversation he had with Professor Robinson Erhardt in early February 2025.
My work in the development of TrueValueMetrics over a period of several decades overlaps the work that Professor Wolff has done though the two starting points are very different, as also the intellectual journey, not to mention very different practical experiences!
The discussion lasts for more than 3 hours, covering a very wide range of issues that relate to a lot of what is going on around the world at the present time. Some of the discussion reflects my perspective ... and quite a lot does not. I like Professor Wolff even though many of his views do not fit with my own perspective on how the world systems should be managed! He is, however, a whole lot better than many others, including many at the pinacles of power in the modern day!
Peter Burgess
Introduction
0:00
he didn't sit down with the head of Panama to discuss the canal or the head of Denmark to disc he announced he
announced and he's made a career out of being the Naughty Boy and the working
class loves it because they felt abandoned which they had been the
Democrats are as responsible for Mr Trump as anybody else and Mr Trump won
because he managed this symbolism very well I am naughty I am not of that
establishment I hate them like you
do we last spoke on the show a few months ago just before the 2024 election
and at the time the crucial word you used to describe Donald Trump was
irrelevant and I believe you should correct me if I'm mistaken that the point there was
1:06
that he was just going to be some sort of blip in history and I'm wondering if
now in 2025 you're still feeling that he's
irrelevant yep I am I don't think
that uh I don't think he has a clue I'm
I'm mostly Amazed by the collection of people he has brought with
him because I don't I wait for somebody in that group and that that may still
emerge but I wait for somebody who seems to me at least to have a
sense of a strategic perspective that understands
the basic problems and comes up with a plan of how to deal with it I'm not expecting a plan
2:01
that's foolproof a plan that can't fail nothing like that but just a kind of
coherent assessment of what the problems are connected to a coherent plan the the
economic problems faced by the United States now are incredible in their
multiplicity in the their seriousness in how many of the problems have not been
addressed for a long time uh but I don't see other than verbiage
the verbiage is endless sort of an explosion of verbiage but I don't see it
so I don't think whatever he does is going to make much of a difference to
what's going on here and there will have impact horrible in some cases perhaps
beneficial in others but as a comprehensive assessment of the problem and the strategy well I don't see it and
3:01
so I my conclusion is that the hodge podge of policies and that's what it is
a hodge podge of mutually contradictory weird
proposals that are much more two things continuations of what
worked for him as a candidate plus doubling
down on where he got himself into trouble seems to if I can discern a
strategy that's it what worked to get me in should work to keep me going a big
mistake and doubling down where I didn't succeed before or where I've been P got
push back doesn't strike me as a brilliant move either it's a kind of mechanical response to somebody who
hopes that this approach will somehow work people have been asking me and and
4:00
the image I like is Donald Trump was told that there is this thing in
football called a Hail Mary pass that's when the the quarterback in a tough
situation just leans back and Hees the ball downfield as far as possible tells
his uh Confederates on the team those that are responsible go into this
direction go to the left corner let's hope you're where the ball comes down or where it bounces into your and
you know sometimes that works is it possible that what Mr Trump does will
actually produce the outcome he tells us it will sure it's it's not a zero
possibility but then we don't miss Mr Trump because that's almost true for anybody who would certainly would have
been true for Mr Biden or kamla Harris or anybody else it's not a coherent and
I'd be glad to explain how and why that is but it is it's a strange
5:05
amalgam of contradictions and the only reason I
have to say that is because the media in this country want
to give him as a new president or a returned president the benefit of the doubt or maybe some leway or the first
100 days this and so they don't do what they should do I think that will
change as the impacts of what he does become clearer but for the moment no you
said a lot of things that I want to get back to such as this hodg podge of strategies and and his cabinet picks but
was stepping back for a moment one of the things that I've really come to enjoy doing on the show Even though many
listeners seem to hate it is discuss both sides of an issue and so my last
6:03
interview was with Victor Davis Hansen of the Hoover institution and we talked about Trump and the election and what to
expect going forward and that's one of the topics that you and I are going to discuss before I tell you some of the
things he thought which I expect you might disagree with I would hope so I am
curious to hear why you think after the fact now Trump won the election and
Harris lost Harris made a strategic choice to be the
continuation of Joe Biden I understand what many of the considerations were
that led her to make that decision and when I say her I mean the Entourage
around her that helps her make strategic decisions uh which all candidates have
and I think you know if I had to pick a single thing what the American people
7:04
want is change an awful lot of them want change and Mr Trump not by the programs
he comes up with so much but the Bluster the The Bullying the the over-the-top
language the the endless symbolism and so conla Harris undercuts
this by in insisting Under Pressure that she
is the continuation of Joseph Biden that was a mistake Biden was nothing Biden
was same old same old you know B and by that I don't mean Democrat you know it's
like George Bush or Clinton or Obama it's just it's it's
what a majority of Americans in different ways and for different reasons
they don't want more of that they want something than else and I think you know
8:02
in a country like ours which has its cold war Legacy which I would Define as
follows a liberal consensus on both sides the kind of
moderate Republicans and the usual Democrats um moving steadily to the
right both of them in the aftermath of the Great Depression in a program I
would call the UN doing of the New Deal which they did together um what the lesson was to the
S-02 ... How the Left Can Defeat Donald Trump
8:35
mass of people is there is an establishment we have Tweedle Dum and
Tweedle D we oscillate between the Republican and the Democrat nothing much changes and if you do want to change the
only allowable place is to go to the right because the left was anathema the
left was evil we had had we had a purge of people on the left after World War II
9:04
very serious we didn't have a comparable Purge of people on the right the American people were taught there's
really two options this consensus and the right you see that in
many European countries too you've developed it they copied you know you developed this core
middle but if people don't want to Middle anymore and begin to ask themselves what else is there what they
what they've had what has been available is the rightwing alternative so they go
there if you develop a serious left-wing alternative then you're going to see
which is going to shock people but it shouldn't you're going to see that a good percentage of those who went to the
right will go to the left because that alternative is more attractive to them
and the best example we see right now is France the people in France who are in
10:00
power the big block in the assembly majority Block No that's wrong plurality blocks
it's not a majority is the left it put four parties together ran them as a
unified party and ends up the largest Block in the assembly to the shock and
the end of Mr macron's career for sure Etc and there's no reason to believe
that that's unique to France you see a right-wing in France to show the point
but it's not big enough the left wing is bigger over nobody should be surprised I
wouldn't be surprised if that happened here but for that to happen there has to be one of the things that was foreclosed
in this country which is a leftwing because it was rendered the
evil communist other for so long that nobody has the nobody has had yet the
key to bring the existing left into a position where it could be an
11:04
alternative change from the consensus so Mr Trump sits there all
alone another way to understand it which is consistent is to see
that in the second part of the undoing of the New
Deal the Democratic party succeeded in attracting
the support and the money of a large number of American Mega
corporations they had always favored the Republicans they still do if you look at where the money goes it's very clear but
the Democrats were able to get Silicon Valley portion of them and
others and that that was an existential threat to the Republicans because if the Democrats can
continue to get the unions the women the
12:03
minorities disproportionate number of of workingclass people and they get the
money the Republicans are done what they can get given their history you know the
the Christian conservatives the white supremacists and so on they're dead they
they lose and they did one election after another so they made the decision
or rather Trump did on the people around him okay if an end run of the Democrats
was to get some of our supporters the money we've got to do a comparable end run around them which we will we'll
start talking to the working class we'll outdo the Democrats with the working
class the way they have outdone us with the financial supports we used to count
on to be a viable political operation and that's what happened Mr Trump
talks you know going to bring back jobs here and he's going to get rid of those
13:05
awful immigrants that contest and Destroy and eat pets yes that's that's
right I forgot it's already several months old um but no look at the
symbolism he has an airplane in which he has a helpless group of apparently
Colombian immigrants here puts them in shackles their crime is their immigrants
which in most parts of the world is not a crime it's not even clear it's the crime here that would have to be
determined unless the old premise of innocent until guilty has been absorbed
too and he dumps them on a Runway at an airport in Colombia I mean
what you didn't sit down with the Colombians to work you just dumped them
14:00
on and the answer is yes he didn't sit down with the head of Panama to discuss the canal or the head of Denmark to he
announced he announced this this is Naughty Boy this is Naughty Boy and he's
made a career out of being the naughty boy he's upset that he's treated like a naughty boy and then acts like a naughty
boy which is not all that unusual among naughty boys so that's what we had
symbolically and the working class loves it because they felt abandoned which they had been
the Democrats are as responsible for Mr Trump as anybody else and it should be
understood for the historical moment that it is and I think Mr Trump won
because he managed this symbolism very well I am naughty I am not of that
establishment I hate them like you do they have abused me personally just like
you this and kamla Harris Can you know she would have had to develop a different
??? 14:00
??? in a country like ours which has its cold war Legacy which I would Define as
??? follows a liberal consensus on both sides the kind of
??? moderate Republicans and the usual Democrats um moving steadily to the
??? right both of them in the aftermath of the Great Depression in a program I
??? would call the UN doing of the New Deal which they did together um what the lesson was to the
S-03 ... Why Kamala Harris Lost the Election
15:11
Persona a different projection she didn't do that I'm not privy so I don't know what
her calculations were but I think they were wrong I think she lost the election
not because Mr Trump became more popular but because her side became less so and
so the the votes you know there were fewer voters and blah blah blah and he was able to make inroads among young
voters and black voters more than enough to and he only won by one and a half% of
the vote you know he he has to create the Mandate verbally because he doesn't have it in
reality whe but you with him you never quite know whether whether he grasps the
boundary between the fantasy and and the B and the reality or whether he really
16:01
thinks as other presidents have that he can now create the reality it conveniently conforms to how he would
like it to be this you know a lot of people make that mistake before we
return to this Narrative of change which I find very compelling and I guess it might actually be involved in this
conversation in this this coming question and also Victor Davis Hansen who I just mentioned you referred to
Union and in our last conversation you anticipated that the Unions would be in
support of Biden and I wanted to ask why then for instance a union like the long
shoreman's Union ended up going for Trump well the unions have been on
decline in this country if you look at membership was not the only measure but
it's an important measure they've been on decline for half a century I mean that has put them in an
impossible situation they their traditions in this country had to do
17:05
with servicing your members you know filing grievances uh
representing your workers with the employer getting better wages working conditions and that takes time and
energy and staff and the only way you pay for that
is if you have members who pay dues so if you're losing membership for 50 years
and the line is literally I mean a little blips but it's basically a line
of 50-year decline I believe their Peak was in 1955 or around there and it's
been downhill ever since in the private sector which is the major part of our economy union membership is 7% or less
of the labor for that means 93% of private employees are not represented by
a union well the unions are bankrupt then they don't have them where are they going to get the money to sustain the
18:04
staff which could provide the services that could sustain the union when you
put that together with the post depression roll back of the new
deal I mean remember 1947 is crucial it's the passage of the Taft heartley
act whose whose Provisions most people don't know but you really want to go
back if you're interested and look at them there are things such as if you're a communist you can't be a leader of a
union well hello friends Communists are the people who usually lead unions and
do so in a militant way who else would you expect I mean Communists with a
small C whether or not they're members of a Communist party and even bigger
than the tartle ACT said anything won by a union at a
19:03
workplace any wage increase any working condition Improvement has to be given to
everybody working there whether they join the union and pay dues or not I
mean what yeah and by the way not just shame on the on on on the employer class
for having come together to support these bills which why they pass but also the unions themselves
did they not understand what this would do to them did it take 50 years of
observing the results the answer is they accommodated
to the conditions they faced and those conditions were a
society that had gone through a trauma the collapse of its own capitalist
system in the Great Depression and the decision of the employer class that what had happened
there must never be allowed to happen again what happened there was the mass
20:03
of people cut an alliance with Mr Roosevelt and got their social security
we talked about this last time and and all of that Social Security unemployment
compensation the 10 million or 12 million workers hired by the government
all of the money for that was taken from the rich the corporations and the rich whose taxes were raised and who were
required to loan what they didn't pay in taxes okay they don't want that ever
happen again and they went to work with a kind of unanimity and a kind of
commitment that comes out of being frightened badly frightened by what they
observed yeah this is hard to get across to Americans but
what what for those people they observed was the equivalent of what Europeans
observe oberved with Nazis marching through their streets a a shock a shock
21:04
a horror for many um a re shifting of the way you think
about the world and yourself in it and they made a decision very impressive
to and They carried it through they demonized the left look many of the people hauled
before the house on American Activities Committee believe it or not that's what it was called not my language they chose
an unamerican Activities Committee you they were going to decide what's
American and what isn't and they were going to punish imprison Deport all
kinds of things they did with those who were deemed unamerican uh they went after the the
Coalition that produced a new deal it was a coalition of the democratic party
Mr President Roosevelt the union movement which he
22:03
encouraged led by the CIO which was then the dominant union experience and there
two socialists and one Communist party that was the New Deal coalition people interested in civil
rights or women wanting the end of sexism found their places within those
institutions Socialist Party communist part labor movement and that had to be smashed to bits and they went
systematically what was the weakest link of that Coalition the Communist party
because that could be linked to the great new enemy our former Ally right
you had to develop a theater and that theater shaped the American political
Consciousness I remember when my son was um of an age to go to college one of the
places he wanted to look at was the University of Chicago so my back them up and we went
to Chicago so that my son could you know go around and they had a little program like they usually do for for prospective
23:07
students and there was an existing student who took us around showed us the campus and at one point my son cuz it's
my son said well are there political groups asking with all
the all the open honesty and N that a
17-year-old would have and the Young man who was taking us around it was very nice and very helpful said yes we have
everything from the then he me mentioned a right-wing Young Americans for Freedom
a right-wing group all the way over to the Democratic party and for him and for everybody else
that was it that was politics there was nothing further left
or same way of saying it further left to takes you out of the conversation into
24:01
the area of scary dangerous evil for that and the young man in the
University of Chicago very American had absorbed that without understanding what
he was doing he absorbed the whole country is that and that's why when this
era of capitalism is over as I believe it to be
um and the dominant position in the United States is over as I believe it to be and you turn in with the horror of that
the fear of what that means well then you go to the right because that's the
alternative to what you have had all along and you feel the need for a break
Mr Trump plays that theme endlessly I'm new I'm different I'm going to I'm going
to I'm with the verbiage and the the the hyper you know 400 president itial
orders each having to reverse them the next morning could didn't think it through look at this you it's a
25:04
spectacle but it's a spectacle that has its real Roots again I'm just keeping track of
all the things we're going to be coming back to I I assume that a big portion of our conversation will be about the end
of the American Empire and where we are with Trump right now but now I I would
S-04 ... Is Victor Davis Hanson Wrong About the Elites’ War on the Working Class?
25:25
like to take this narrative you've given about the election being explained by a
desire for Change and the inability of Harris and the Democratic party to provide that I'd like to connect that to
what Victor Davis Hansen said and see if you see any resonance between the two ideas the way that Victor accounted for
the election is he sees it I think as part of a larger culture war between on
the one hand what he referred to as the B Coastal left-wing intellectual Elite
26:05
and then on the other side a more common folk that is simply
competent minded and down to earth and cares about skills and and success and
doesn't care about ivy league degrees and has spokes people like Mr Hanson and
has spokes people like Mr he is a farmer has well he is he is uh so on the one
hand too I have four tomato plants yeah go ahead on the on the one hand
I I see this as connecting to your idea of change as well because presumably the
right wants change from this obsolete uh left ruling class but I
wonder how if you see a similar culture war of foot at all no I I I see people
like him really trying and stretching to construct such an idea but in my view
27:07
that's because it doesn't work and they're worried about where all this might go and this is a much for them a
much happier story than the one I tell they they don't want to deal with a declining Empire they don't want to deal
with a capitalism that doesn't work they want this to be all in the realm of the
bad people on the coasts with their Evil elitism versus the men
and women of the soil this game has been played by left wiers too this is a very
old way of thinking he may not know it but I could give him references if he
wants about you know where this game has been played before I don't think the elites whatever that quite means on the
coast have the power or the understanding to play the nice role of
bad guy that his his construct assigns to them and you know I understand what
28:05
he's doing it's all over the place he I'm sure he didn't claim he was the origin of this Insight he repeats it and
for me it's it's empty it even if you believed it you'd have to then explain
why do we have people on the coast who do what they do say what they say
Advocate what you've have to explain it what is there something in the air in California and New York make them
attract I mean stop what is this and it it becomes dangerous because
if it in the in the in the hands of people less scrupulous than I hope Mr
Hansen is this can become you know a rural against Urban an educated against
uneducated that that's where this goes in the hands of many and and he will
bear responsibility because giving a veneer of respectability to this way of
29:04
thinking is cheap in the end no I like to ground what I'm saying in what's
actually happening in the economic realities of the United States that you
know there are certain for example there are certain industries that are still viable in the
United States many Industries aren't why not because
capitalists who make these decisions made the decision to
relocate their P their businesses overseas or those same capitalists made
the decision to automate okay so a whole lot of Industries
left and much of the unhappiness of the people in The Middle on the country is
because that's what they left from where whereas the industries that
still can function for all kinds of reasons because there're service Industries you can't have a service
30:06
industry in China serving people in America because this industry has to be where the people are otherwise it
doesn't work so we didn't we exported manufacturing we didn't export services
with some exceptions the industries that are still viable here high-tech they
went to California for all kinds of reasons long ago so they can expand they
can hire more everybody can go live you know in San Jose or in the environment
but that's not because the however lovely California's climate it's because these are industries that are
still viable as leadership Industries in World capitalism located here that
leadership by the way is leeching away last week we all got a lesson when
deep seek showed us what can be done by those nasty Chinese folks in the way of
31:03
the high-tech AI Revolution it's not going to be dominated by the United States that's what that's what the
lesson is but that's we're going to watch what what is the story The Hansen
of this world are going to tell us about China's arrival they're going to tell us
sadly that the Chinese copied a lot of the United States
which is true but irrelevant the newcomer always copies
the old one when the United States broke from Britain you know what the Britain charged the United States with for the
whole 19th century stealing our technology which had its grain of Truth it always does but this sudden there
still you know this is oh how awful what you're really revealing is you you don't
know anything about your own history or what are you doing it's and becomes cheap and it slides
32:01
into well I'll leave that to the audience to figure out where that stuff
slides to so I understand the effort to make this a
culture war is in my judgment an attempt to distract
attention from other dimensions which not only explain the story better but
help us understand why that culture War even exists what is its origin its cause
otherwise you start with a culture War what is that how are you going to ground
that and and by the way I don't know Mr hon but that kind of argument then
becomes grounded in stories of of
Education the the political complexity of the United States that I've been talking about was not significantly
different from the political orientation of my classmates at Harvard Stanford and
33:04
Yale so that's supposedly the elite but they were as
cruess about the leftwing as most Americans were because they were affected by the same culture war against
the left that came out of World War II you know
the most famous economics professor at Harvard at my time was a man who with a
big reputation named Joseph Schumer you may have heard his name Joseph Schumer had a prize student
at Harvard named Paul Sweezy I was hoping you'd say Rick wolf no no Paul
Sweezy the the they're older than me I was young just arriving there Paul
Sweezy was who himself was a graduate of Harvard who was a member of the Rockefeller
34:02
family the right one and so he perfect he's mat Harvard
getting his degree comes from the wealthy and he's the air apparent to
Joseph shumer at the end of the 1940s Harvard fires
him he's teaching already they fire him they're not going to let him replace
shum Peter as sh Peter wanted no why
because he had become a Marxist in the 1930s as so many had and Harvard under
the gun and the pressure had no more backbone then than it has had recently
with its other leaders that had dumped when the when the wind politically
changed and where did Sweezy go he left Harvard and went to New York City
and founded a magazine called the monthly review which still exists using money given to him by
35:07
Albert Einstein who wrote the editorial in the first issue of monthly review
which was entitled why I am a socialist right all of that all of that
that's the culture War but for people to think that culture War didn't come out of the history of this very bizarre
so for I I don't as a proposition I don't take it serious as an interesting phenomena of how you
avoid this is the continuation of the the taboo on the Marxist or the leftist
way of opening up a question it's it's an approach that that will not debate in
Europe is quite different then the right has to debate the left it's too hard
they can't just dismiss it they try in good American copying try to do
36:01
because they Envy what the United States can do to its working class because you can't do it there right Europeans have a
National Health Service Europe doesn't allow the death penalty European
universities are mostly free yeah you can't do to the working class there and
their capitalists are envious but other than that the culture War stuff cannot
be pursued there the way it is here because it doesn't have this history you mentioned I mean as as an economist you
Did West Coast Elites Cause the LA Wildfire Disaster (Is Victor Davis Hanson Wrong?)?
36:34
tend to support a lot of your arguments with reference to economics absolutely
right and Victor's background at least in part is farming so it was natural for us to talk about the California wildfire
disaster because he could at at length explain exactly what's going on with
California's water but the way that he accounted for this situation and I bring it up just because it's still quite
37:00
topical is that you have a situation where the government is at the hands of this by Coastal in this case West
Coastal Elite and they're ideologically captured and incompetent and their mismanagement is what led to this
tremendous disaster or at least seriously contributed to it whereas if
you had had people closer to the soil or closer to the water in charge this This
Disaster would not have expanded to the proportions it has
um taken out but this is simple minded in this what is this as an analysis bad
people made bad decisions okay but why are those bad
people in a position to do that and why did they make the bad what what where's
it what kind of an analysis this not analysis this is saying there something really
38:00
bad happened and I'm going to tell you who's responsible okay
uh can we get beyond that could you okay you pointed at Jack or at what is it the
elite well how did they get to be the elite who didn't get there why did that
happen come on this is not an analysis this is substitute you don't need an
analysis you got the bad guy I don't have to understand why any of this happened I got the by the way you know
that's our Criminal Justice System well we get the bad guy we put him in jail
see yeah Jack you know what the recidivism right in the country is that guy in jail going to come out and you
know what jail is going to do and make him worse you're not solving any problem has jail solved our crime problem we're
a Crim ridden soci everybody has a gun that was supposed to solve the problem didn't you what are
39:02
you doing that Mr Hansen can sit and again I don't know him and I bear him no ill
will but to sit and talk like this don't doesn't he feel the need if
he's going to make the bad guy be people in California who have been incompetent
really you think incompetence is all on one side of the legend here and if they are incompetent how
come they're in this position to do these things as such big incompetence I
mean the the questions that this kind of line of thinking opens up that are not admitted or addressed or to make you
wonder wow wow and again I'm I'm getting closer to
taking offense because there are ugly versions of this
which are racism you know that also pins a whole
40:03
lot of associations on some group well what I noticed Mr Trump said that the
problem with immigrants is they do crime and then his own FBI had to release the
statistics that the crime rate among undocumented immigrants is lower than
the crime rate among natives which would have been the reasonable presumption any anyway why because if you're an
undocumented immigrant you want to keep as far away from the police as I mean
come on my parents were immigrants I'm also personally affected by this and this by
the way Mr Hansen knows that this country has a history serious history of
racism of blaming people for all of of badmouthing every immigrant wave that
came here the English did it to the Irish the Irish did it to the Italian I could go
41:01
on and we all know that we really do we invented the melting pot because
we were so upset by what the reality was okay and still is in large parts of the
country so what are you doing the culture War means you're inventing yet another what
there's something you know these people who live in California have their incompetent oh what what is
racism those dark skinned people they're not they're like children should I
rehash our American South this is a dangerous way of thinking I don't think
he means it my suspicion is like most of people like that he's ignorant of of
this country's history because if he weren't he'd be much more hesitant about
talking like this knowing where it comes from and where it might go it doesn't
42:01
need some nice close to the soral farm or to give it valid validity it's very
dangerous I do think that Victor is a very careful thinker and he's not here so yes for sure I can't speak for him
but when I next speak with him I will certainly raise some of these points to
to it to get his opinions that's what I if I were in a room with him right right right right of course and but before we
move on I am curious to hear I mean I take it I assume I I know that you're somebody who likes to hear both sides of
S-06 ...Why Richard Wolff Enjoys Tucker Carlson
42:32
an issue who likes to think about things care I want to learn are there any right-wing thinkers out there today or
political pundits or commentators who you do find to be genuinely insightful
and interesting I don't know what generally quite means uh genuinely I yeah no I I I
don't know what it means and I'm no Jud of how genuine they are but
43:01
um the the guy who used to be on Fox News and then was kicked off and then
now Tucker Carlson yeah for example I think sometimes he's very good really yeah you like Tucker well like might be
a strong word no that's why I said genuine how genuine I don't know but I
find it interesting that he sometimes is able to
say do a piece of analysis very close to my own um from which I have learned and so
you know he does it in his way it's not quite the way I do it but he alerts me
to a relationship that I didn't give that much weight to so I'm grateful I'm grateful to anybody who teaches me so he
has on occasion taught me I mean other times he says things that I find
laughable and no interest you know other than the pathology of this kind of
44:01
thinking that's why I don't know about genuine or general but he he's one from
whom I have learned and when I when I play with the internet and I come across right I usually stop and listen and try
to see how they construct for for example these days I'm
very interested in people whose work uh I have a occasionally learned
from as they in my judgment slavishly admire Trump in a kind of lopsided
enthusiasm that they don't normally show to anything including ideas and
personalities on the right but for Mr Trump they have really a almost an
adoration that makes them stop being as critical as I know they have been in
other circumstances I assume that will fade it after a walk maybe not but I have always made sure to look
45:04
at that point of view to listen to it I do that in you know I'm interested
in Europe particularly so I've paid attention to the right-wing Marina Leen
I read her work sometimes her statements the uh in Germany your deuts I you may
remember I read French and German so those things are accessible uh to me and
I make sure to when there's a character who comes to my attention Victor Orban
in in Hungary um mostly though the leaders of these
countries are they're not very it's not an impressive group put it that way uh
there are some exceptions but not many and among the contending
46:00
politicals um the most sophisticated discussion of
the French and German as far as I can tell I mean to take
seriously uh Mr Storer in England is is an effort there's nothing there just
there's nothing there I it just but it I don't want to be unfair I
mean it's no more or less and Mr Biden so something I find funny is that the
one reason I asked you about right-wing thinkers is I'm always looking to I'm
looking for for new and and interesting guests and I thought you might mention somebody I hadn't heard of but you
mentioned Tucker Carlson which is uh funny to interpret that obviously this wasn't your intention as an invitation
to have Tucker Carlson on the show no but but he do you know he doesn't need
exposure he doesn't need opportunity because he writes his own and he
47:01
right now I'd like to ask just two more questions about the election before we
move on from the election and these are things that have come to mind as you've been speaking I remember that your wife
is a therapist yes and I also know that you have some interest in psychoanalysis
yes and you have mentioned a couple of times in this conversation that involved
in Trump and his policies is this hodg podge of contradictions and what this makes me
wonder is whether you think that there's something that psychoanalysis as a form of cultural
analysis might tell us about the election is there something going on in America's
subconscious that led them to that led people to vote for Trump some sort of
contradictory sure I the reason I focus on
48:02
economics is not that I'm an economist it's I'm an economist
because I became fascinated by the economic dimension of things
so I would like to say that it's not you know the old joke if you're a carpenter
then everything looks like a nail it's not that it's that the economics and I
can tell you just for myself as I as I went through when I arrived as a
freshman in college I wanted to be a
biochemist that was my intention I had been a science kind of person in high
school and I wanted to be and my first semester was all math physics
chemistry second semester biology um so here I am an economist I obviously
49:01
didn't do that didn't make that my career and that's
because I discovered that the questions I
had about the economic system which came out of my
life my family my conversation particularly with my father and so on
and that those most questions were never answered by the
teachers that I would say and I think I mentioned this to you before that those
teachers either didn't know the answer which was often the case or they did and either told me
rarely or showed me more often that they really didn't want me to
pursue this in the class with my hand up I was a good student I got all a and
blah blah my parents made sure of that uh so I had the teachers were friendly
50:05
to me they weren't wasn't oppositional um a couple of exceptions
but not many they were afraid and I think the fear in their
eyes which I pursued by going to their offices and just sitting one on-one with them where they told me what they were a
I realized that was right I saw fear and they told me well that they were afraid
they didn't want this they wouldn't mind talking with me in their office but and then they basically explained to me what
I verified later anyway that and this is Harvard so you might think it wasn't
you'd be wrong it was not good for your career this you they were concerned they
don't know how a conversation in which I ask questions dealing with Marxism and
they answered them would lead students to begin to say oh not teacher without meaning the teacher any harm but the
51:05
students would chitchat and and all that they were afraid and I
think my interest combined with their unwillingness or
incapacity to answer them drew me into the F so if you ask me
why do I focus on economics because the environment in which I was educated
couldn't handle it it was a taboo you know it's like saying to someone why are
you interested in sex if they're honest they'll tell you whatever the manifold
reasons might be one of the reasons is is a big taboo and when they ask
questions Aunt Louise freaked out or their father told them to go talk to the mother and vice ver all the we all know
this and that's that's part of why we're interested in Saints because it has been
52:02
handled in the bizarre ways that our culture does that I'm I'm interested in
economics because I think it helps explain things but much more important
it's the missing thing in the explanations otherwise we're stuck with
work at the level of your representation I want to hold Mr Hanson but the way you
representative which I assume is the perfectly reasonable way of doing it
that I don't want to work at that level that that that's for me that's not serious
stuff and by the way Tucker cson sometimes really goes after the
economics you and you can see that even even today what did I see today oh yeah
coming here in the taxi there was a little ad a poit iCal
ad bust the slogan was bust big
53:03
Pharma okay I found that interesting I am agreeing with I would I
would like to bust big farmer too but I'm surprised that somebody raised the
money to do this sort of thing okay that's sort of interesting and I I have
noticed in some right-wing pieces I've read a immense hostility to Big
farmer a hostility which the rightwing didn't use to do but it's doing it now
yeah what's what's that they've just that's an allowable area yet to watch the inauguration of Mr
Trump and to see immediately in the front row of the people sitting behind him the billionaires of our time not the
governors not the Supreme Court Justice who who's who is the celebrate and their
54:00
achievement is they have a lot of money and they're going to be with this President he wants them there that's why
they're there they want to be there and he wants them there this is very
interesting and so he can go after big Farmer they don't stop him they
don't they carefully avoid going there but big farmer is not that far from big
high tech which is what coming next anyway and we'll see how Mr Trump deals
S-07 ... Why Unemployment Tanked Harris in the Election
54:32
with it since economics is I mean naturally it keeps coming up I the the
last thing I wanted to ask about this election specifically is whether you
also account Beyond this large scale change narrative for the outcome of the election with an appeal to economic
factors like I know inflation for instance plagued Biden for very long time but are there other economic
55:00
factors that you think really contributed to Trump's Victory oh sure my goodness yeah I don't think inflation
I mean inflation played a role but it shouldn't be yanked out of the
context of everything else
um the job prospects for young for millions of young people in this country
are awful there aren't jobs I mean even in my field my students people that I sit
on doctoral committees and I I have to examine a student and I have to make a decision whether he or she gets their
PHD or not for whether this dissertation is acceptable the students that I it's
harder and harder for them to get decent jobs I if I had time I know give you a
lecture but the cast rophy of higher education in this country when I went to
56:00
graduate school I I never questioned of course
I'd get a job being a professor that's what people with phds from fancy
universities could that if they wanted it I might not get the job of my dreams
be professor at this school or sure but that I would have a problem having an
income and it never it never dawned on me and that's not because of me it
didn't dawn on my fellow students either we never talked about it we never worried about no not at all zero my
students obsess about it that's a radical difference and most of my students cannot get the kind of job I
had all of my adult life I taught two courses a semester two semesters a year
and got paid a salary that I could have a wife which I had and two children which I had still
57:04
have and you know and I never thought about
it and I I enjoy good food and wine I like to travel I I have tastes that cost
money and I always had enough you know I'm not super rich but that's all gone
my students worry how they'll live in terms of income what
kind of work they will be able to get many of them are adjunct professors who teach a course over here then they run
across town teach another there's no time to write there's no time to do
research there's barely enough time to kind of keep up with yeah which by the
way is a diminution of our education system serious it means large numbers of young
people are being being educated by folks that are exhausted I wasn't exhausted I
58:01
had time to read and prepare my lectures very precious to me I learned as any
teacher who's honest will tell you you learn much more when you're a teacher than you ever did when you were a
student I had that opportunity most of people like me don't have that
opportunity anymore so that's a very serious problem problem
it's only for two or three million people that are the folks who teach in colleges and
universities but that's not an unimportant part of an economy I would argue it's spectacularly important I
don't know if you're aware or if your audiences but we have more and more colleges and universities that are
closing every month why because their economics is
impossible right they they can't get the students because the students are
increasingly unwilling to load up with the debt without which you can't go to
59:02
college anymore wasn't my case most of my fellow students didn't I did I had to
borrow my family had no money but most of the students around me didn't their
families had enough money to pay mine didn't but I never worried I
didn't have to borrow that much and I never I knew I would have a job which would all allow me to pay off my debt
which is exactly what happened to me I expected it I got it that's all gone now
that's all gone China is opening a new University once a
month wow that's a big Stark difference yeah a very Stark difference and you
want to know I don't know if you know the Deep seek story that's a little entrepreneur could you tell it yeah for
S-08 ... Deep Seek, The Chinese Phenomenon
59:51
sure deep seek has come up with a better way of moving the artificial
intelligence Revolution forward and it exploded into the public awareness in
1:00:06
the middle of January or the second half of January of this year
2025 and the Breakthrough came in in a small
company owned and started by an entrepreneur who's the CEO of the little
company called deep seek with the S capitalized so it's the word deep and
then Capital seek um and he explains that he
hired new graduates of some of the new technical universities in
China he doesn't say but clearly the message is they're fresh they're new and they're
cheap because one of the things that he came up with was a compe
product basically think of it as a search engine for how to go through vast amounts of data super
1:01:05
quick to come up with what AI can do which is a paragraph or a paper or an analysis
it's crude but it it does a lot of the preliminary research that anybody has to
do in any field it's being used now for example to do diagnosis you feed into
this machine the 27 characteristics of a patient who comes with a pain or
something and you get better diagnosis because basically you can mine the
history of that of those symptoms and see when they all occur together what
the three most likely diseases and that just saves an enormous is very helpful
and they have comparable applications in many other fields are use it myself I've
begun to use it recently oh W yeah you can you can have an idea of a
1:02:02
relationship in economics between I know an interest rate and exports and you say
what is the relationship between and the Machine gives you an answer now there are holes in it there are mistakes in it
but it gives you a very nice place to start then you fix the holes and you
correct the errors it's as if you had a gra a very good graduate student and said go get me
everything on this which is what I mean I've been in that position I told the grad go get me this right and you very
quickly discover who's the better graduate student who isn't because one of them comes back in two days with a
wonderful and the other one comes back in two days and says how do I do this anyway
um so it's a small company and for a tiny fraction I
believe five or six million dollars they have done something that is the equivalent of what costs billions in
1:03:03
Silicon Valley and you know it the stock market
the biggest company in the United States and the stock market recently was a company called Nvidia you may have heard
of it it lost 600 billion let me do it again $600 billion dollar of value oh
gosh in one day wow when this was publicized it turned out the public the
publicity was that over the last weekend it really was this last
weekend more people downloaded that program which by the way is available for free from this little
company than anything else on the whole Apple system Apple app they bought it
from the App Store you know so everyone in America I now know 20 people that are
using that's fast all these things go they're not using the ones from California they're using that one cuz
1:04:01
for them I mean California is still producing these things and there will be
comp it's not over there the one in China has flaws also it's not that it's
just another sign if you needed it where the competition is coming and since
that's the remaining Dynamic industry of the United States to see it there wow
now you know before and I will be using that example now to make my arguments
before and I believe the last time you and I spoke the example was electric
vehicles you know that was where the Chinese but that's an old industry the automobile industry AI is the newest of
the new explosive Industries and the Chinese are right there neck and neck
doing it I mean it's just and then when you hear he's taking advantage of all the universities opening up I think the
1:05:00
American economy is in terrible difficulty and that the and that the
crisis of our time which includes Mr Trump is that the response is
denial self delusional denial which is not surprising I I have a certain
compassion for it it's hard to be alive at a time when your
Empire is dying is hard if your economic system is full of problems really is that conversation
S-09 ... The Astonishing Story of How China Came to Dominate Elon Musk Over Electric Cars
1:05:32
we had about the electric vehicles was a couple of episodes ago and we're we're reaching a lot of new listeners now and
on top of that I found that whole story incredibly fascinating because we think
of the automobile as an American invention if there ever was one and we
think of ourselves as being on The Cutting Edge of their development even now with electric vehicles in Tesla so
for those of our listeners who aren't familiar with this story just are we not dominating electric vehicles anymore
1:06:04
what's going on you know the most I will I'll be happy to do it but the most important
thing about it is that interested
intelligent thoughtful people like your audience and like you don't know it that
order to worry you okay here it is 15 years ago the automobile
industry began a competition who could come up with the best electric vehicle
because it was understood and generally viewed that's the future of the automobile industry we are in a
transition for ecological reasons and cost reason blah blah blah we're moving
away from fossil fuels that make our car is run gasoline and we're going to go to
Electric okay that was a
1:07:03
consensus why because there were very few voices there were but very few
voices which were drowned out in the United States pushed aside the way these folks usually are which said that this
was fundamentally irrational that what the country needs
is mass transit why because the indiv idual vehicle is a
ridiculous way of organizing Transportation most cars spend most of
every day sitting somewhere this is nuts what are you doing yeah it's in your
garage it's in the street it's in the parking facility what are you doing so that for 20 minutes a day or maybe even
an hour a day you're actually in there but the rest of the them sits there what
you can even see that the understanding carefully that we now have bicycles here
1:08:02
in New York City loads of them all over every few blocks there's a bunch of and when you need a bicycle you get a
bicycle you pull it out it's automated you drive around and you stick it back in one of the holders and that way a
terribly amount of waste is avoided we're not building millions of bicycles
cuz we don't need millions millions of people want to bicycle will provide it
20,000 will do it very nicely because I'll take it for the hour I need it and put it back in and John will come and
then Mary will come and we'll share we have a mass transit system for bicycles
just like we have here in New York City a Subway with a fantastic invention it
takes many more people at infinitely lower cost nobody gets injured or once
in a blue moon by a Subway no you it's just it doesn't pollute it it's
infinitely better to do mass transit do it beautifully do it elegantly people
1:09:05
say to me what would that mean I say go to Europe to get on train Tokyo go to toy go to Tokyo I'm familiar with Europe
you go the trains are magnificent you have even the the super fast ones you know why the United States is so far
behind will leave aside although fascinating anyway 15 years ago let
we're gonna do the electric car stupid because you're replacing the private car
with another private car but at least better than fossil fuel it'll be electricity
run okay Tesla is one of the early pioneers and makes Mr Elon Musk a
household name and and Rich very rich but uh General Motors works on it
Ford works on it Toyota works on everybody works on But Here we are now
15 years later the Chinese have automobile company they work on it too
1:10:02
but they win they win the competition the best car best electric car and truck
at the lowest price is made by the byd corporation precisely unknown in the
United States for a simple reason they're not permitted to come here if
you go to Europe today and you go on the highways you'll see byd vehicles all over the place why Mr Biden first Mr
Trump put a 27% tariff on electric vehicles from
China and then Mr Biden while he was still president raised it to
100% so if you want to get a byd electric car say it cost
$30,000 if you're an American company or an American individual you would have to
come up with 30 grand that goes to China to buy the car and 100% another 30 grand
1:11:00
that goes to Uncle Sam as a tariff costing you 60,000 what does this mean it means that
Americans won't buy the Chinese car cuz it's 60 Grand and they can get for 45 or
50,000 a Tesla or a GM this is a a
tariff that protects Tesla and GM what that's why it's there
but it denies to the American people access to the best electric
vehicle at the lowest price and now let me explain very briefly why that is
stupid okay American companies compete
with companies in the rest of the world American companies that make shoes if there are any left American companies
that make anything they need trucks for example they need a truck to bring the inputs to wherever they carry out
1:12:02
production and they need trucks to take the output to wherever it's sold right
so trucks are wide widely used input here in America by American companies
and everywhere else in the world but everywhere else in the world is now going to be able to get the best quality
electric truck for3 ,000 whereas their American competitor could only get the
best electric truck if they paid 60 which they won't they'll buy an inferior
truck and still pay more than their competitor pays for the superior truck
and you know what that means American companies are going to lose the
competition and eventually lay off the workers since they can't sell their
products that have been too EXP expensively produced so you're protecting the
workers at GM and Ford but at the expense of not only many
1:13:07
other American workers but I can tell you as a mathematical Economist we
cannot know whether the jobs we protect in the automobile industry won't be
overwhelmed by the jobs we lose as a result of this tariff
S-10 ... Donald Trump’s Huge Misunderstanding About Tariffs
1:13:25
okay we live in a society which I may Jump Ahead in the in our conversation in which we allow a
president to do two remarkable Mr Trump two remarkable thing one to constantly
Miss speak about tffs by now it's intentional because I'm
going to hit the Chinese Chinese people don't pay our tariffs we do the Tariff
is a tax on Imports all right that means the
Republican party for a hundred years the party advocating tax cuts has become
1:14:07
overnight a party championing taxes namely tariffs that really ought to make
people what's going on here but he slides out from that by
having large numbers of Americans all the polls show it think that the Tariff
is paid by the people over there non-american it isn't no is real simple
it isn't but number two he never tells you what are
the you know how do I put this what are the negatives what are the side effects
of a tariff now tariffs have been around for centuries there is an immense
literature in economics about tariffs there's nothing new about it there's is
nothing unheard of if you spend if you take a course in in international trade
1:15:01
in any economics program that I'm familiar with and I'm familiar with a lot of them I've taught this materal you
teach it there's an segment of the course about tariffs and what you do is you teach when are tariffs used what do
they achieve what are the problems what are the negative and positive and
they're both side effects but we have have a president who talks about this is
a winwin winwin situation this is moronic it doesn't understand the
literature which never says that it doesn't understand even what it is doing
and it's a continual fooling of the people into thinking that you know we're
going to resore you know bring industry back because when they make it too expensive for them to yes there'll be
some of that but there'll be all these other things which the literature is full of because it's these are lessons
1:16:00
that have been learned by people who did this all of this is magied away it's
it's a stunning and you know that Mr Trump he doesn't understand it it's
clear to me because if he did the level of lying I maybe he's capable of it but
I'll give him the benefit that I find that hard to understand but that the me New York Times and the
others you know Paul Krugman writes for the New York Times he's a Nobel PR and
his specialty is international he knows come on and many many like him
know what but there's this America and that's the again the legacy of the Cold
War you don't get even this weird Trump
character because these are often liberals that I'm like they they can't bring
1:17:00
themselves to be reasonably critical that may change but for the moment I'm
I'm here explaining the economics of tariffs to
people I do it all the time because they ask all the time and they're all you should see them in the audiences you
know they're all that that's because I'm telling them something that they don't
know and that's not their fault that should be what what are you doing is why
are you doing a tariff when you know that yes you will protect the jobs of
the immediately affected but there are all these other con
what it's like announcing I'm taking over the Panama Canal you can't do that
because of the ramifications what do what are you you been denouncing Mr Putin for 3 years that he invaded
another country and took something that isn't his you just announced you're going to do that what what do you think
1:18:06
that do has you don't have to worry you just m the tough gu stop this isn't
serious but with him this
exaggerated Bluster got in the election because it's a naughty boy and he's
being a naughty again and the whole world is more naughty and it
works but man those negative side effects they
don't go away because you pretend they're not there that's like the little child and I did this with you I'm sure
the little three-year-old confronts the scary doggy in the park and he or she
puts their little hands in front of their eyes because they think if they can't see the dog it won't be there
but by the time they're four or five years old they have learned the lesson you can do that the doggy is still there
1:19:02
Mr Trump and this country are engaged in levels of denial that I look at and I go
wow what is going on in a society that would do this what why self-d delude what what
what possible and if we as I believe or I hope we do talk about the internal
contradictions of the economic program of Mr Trump then you'll see that this
this is what I've just told you it's all over the place not just with tariffs but with
deporting immigrants in Sonia you know the secondary consequences here ought to
make any rational government
stop and the fact that this government isn't stopping well draw the
1:20:03
conclusion let me try to illustrate the the contradictions
S-11 ... Richard on Donald Trump’s Contradictions About Immigration
1:20:10
internal craziness of what is being proposed and I'm going to do that in two
ways I'm going to use what we in economics call supply and demand
analysis I'm very simple-minded uh approach we teach students as a
beginning to understanding economics and then I'm going to also use the marxian economics idea of
surplus which gives you insights that the supply and demand apparatus uh
doesn't Okay the President
says and has already in the first weeks of his administ rtion Illustrated
dramatically that he is going to deport
1:21:04
undocumented immigrants of which the Homeland
Security Department of this country says we have somewhere around 12 million 10
to 15 million somewhere in there okay let's take a look at what
this might mean mostly these are undocumented
immigrants are young people of working age yes some of them bring children when
they come but most don't and some of them bring their elderly but most
don't these are young men and women who can travel through the desert and take
the hardships that are involved in coming here for many
so they arrive here and they take the worst
1:22:05
jobs and by worse jobs I don't just mean those that are poorly paid although
that's the majority of them I mean jobs that are
dangerous jobs that are irregular jobs for
employers that are highly unscrupulous much of the
time and the reason they have those jobs is because unlike a native born worker
they will never go to the police to complain if they're made to work without
protective gear or they're made to work too many hours or they are made to work
without being given the pay that they were promised or when they undertook the job employers know that they can get
away with this cuz they've been doing that forever for time in Memorial which
1:23:06
means that the The Immigrant is particularly profitable as
an employee because you can rip them off basically and that's one of the reasons
that the United States has always welcomed employees because the employers
knew you could do things with them you couldn't otherwise I could go on you also cram
these people into the worst neighborhoods with the lousiest housing again because they cannot and
will not complain they will not demand what is
legally available to them for fear that it will blow their cover and they will
be hassled by the police the police don't treat them very well again for the
same reasons and so on so I'm not going to mention what it
1:24:05
means to Target these people many of whom have spent years at
the bottom of the jobs pyramid in the United States what it means exactly ethically
or morally to pick them up off the
street put them in shackles which is being done now and dropping them in
Mexico or Colombia or wherever you you can impose that there how this
squares with Christian Jewish Muslim or any other
religious system I know of I leave to the mysteries of our human beings are
are religious uh extraordinary but I'm not going to focus on that here's the supply
1:25:02
and demand you are reducing the supply
of labor you're literally taking people who had offered and delivered labor effort
brains and muscles eight hours a day or more across the United States millions
of them are being withdrawn from the labor market so the supply of workers is
being cut you know if you're G to get rid of 10 million people it's going to make an
impact on the other hand you're going to impose
tariffs meaning that Goods produced
abroad will no longer purchased by Americans because they become more
expensive Mr Trump has said and by the time this airs he may well have imposed
1:26:05
25% tariffs on both Canadian and Mexican goods and again I'm not that's what he
said and and he had he had promised to do that earlier so did it
consistent um that violates the treaties that were initially signed by
Mr Clinton the NAFTA and then Rewritten and resigned by Trump himself in his first
presidency with a new name but it's basically a common market between the United States Canada of the north Mexico
to the South and it meant it meant that Goods could move between them without
tax no tax being applied by any of the three countries to any of the other he's
abrogating that he's not having a conference to discuss it he's not having meetings with the leadership to talk he
1:27:02
unilaterally abrogating which is the politest way you can put this violating
would be another term this treaty with our two
neighbors interesting move MH I'm not going to talk about that I'm going to assume it goes through in one form or
another the United States is the major market for both of those
countries therefore this is a big blow to them because they're going to see the
demand for their exports to the United States drop because an American has to
pay his own government the American government the Tariff the tax and that makes it more expensive in the matter I
just went through with the electric car from China so it's gonna hurt them and
and Mr Trump never discusses the hurt done to
them deals with them as if they're bad bad people and says this is all done because
1:28:04
they allow fentel to come for through their countries into the United States
notice the bad guy is the one who allows the the movement not the country to which the
movement is directed because Americans buy and consume that stuff on a record
level nope none of that interesting no Mr Trump
says it's also he admits to resore America right because if it's too
expensive to bring the OB object from Canada in or from Mexico in the hope is
the Hope is that the producer will come back to the United
States make it inside because then there's no tariff it's applicable all right I'm not going to
discuss the obvious and I'm glad you're smiling because it really is childishly obvious
1:29:07
that a a producer in Canada or Mexico
would be nuts to come here right away because he doesn't know how long Mr
Trump will stay with this policy he doesn't know whether it'll Disappear With when Mr Trump disappear appears so
and it's very expensive so we also don't know whether the company affected like this will leave
Mexico and go across its Southern border into Guatemala another place which doesn't have a tariff but then it can't
risk doing that because Mr Trump will put the Tariff on against Guatemalan
Goods so let's assume that some some reassuring takes by some
companies at the margin will come in to the United States and produce here at
1:30:00
home the ostensible goal and purpose of all of this that would mean an increase in the
demand for labor because those companies instead of hiring Mexican and Canadian
workers by coming back would be hiring American War which is the ostensible
purpose okay let supply of labor is going down and the demand for labor is
going up what is that supposed to do with demand and Supply analysis answer
it's going to raise wages a lot why because you can't rip
off American Born workers the way you rip the so you're going to have to pay
wages you never thought you'd have to so wages will go up in the United
1:31:00
States whoa now let's take it two more steps and we're
done why would capitalists Across America who supported mys
Trump welcome that the cost of Labor is
going up and eating into their profits see
contradiction but we're not done because when Mr Trump imposes a tariff one of
the results the textbooks are full of this is called
retaliation other countries can put tariffs just like we can which means
American companies who export are going to have the same problem they're not
going to have a market the way they used to because the other the countries retaliate they put a tariff on goods
from America and they and they've said it if you take if you tariff us we will
1:32:01
retaliate so the companies will have higher wages to pay and why they can't
sell the way they used to that's a onew punch right in the nose of the employer
class they're the ones who gave him the job that's not his job in their minds
how's he going to handle what I just described what what not only that but if
you put a tariff and the prices go up what the literature teaches is that
the protected companies the ones who like it that you put a tariffs so your Canadian competitor can't compete with
you anymore and your Mexican competitor can't what you induce the American say
great I ra my prices cuz even if I raise them 10% they've stuck the Canadians
with 25% tariff everyone's going to have to pay me my 10% more because still
1:33:01
better than the alternative they can get you know what that means they're going to get an
inflation is it possible that other things which I don't have the time but I if you want to we can go there that
other things will neutralize what I just said that's possible that's what I meant by a Hail Mary pass what he's doing is
ridiculous economically and so maybe his rejoiner
or someone who's smarter than him might be able to do is to say yes but if this
this and this and this happen well that and that's possible it's always possible
it's not the logical thing to expect and to expect it from someone who
never mentions any of these things even though as I hope I've showed you they're
as simple as I apple pie there are no mystery here there's nothing complicated
and the literature about these things is full of all of this not a word of what I
1:34:04
just said with to you is original to me not at all so all I can tell you is with this
level of contradiction at the basis of what is being proposed here you're
looking at a really strange phenomena unfolding
S-12 ... The Marxist Truth About Why Immigrants Are a Gift to the United States
1:34:24
now let me show you from another from a marxian economics perspective another remarkable thing
which also touches American history and which I'm really interested in conveying
to your audience a working AG
immigrant which is what most of the undocumented immigrants in the United
States today are is a gift to the United states it is
a subsidy to the United States it is very weird to be ejecting this
1:35:04
gift it it really is like a neighbor bringing you a lovely apple pie and and
while they're there you're saying oh thank you and then you throw it in garbage I mean whoa that's bizarre what are you doing
right why do I say that well
take a 20-year-old Guatemalan young woman comes across the
border an enormous amount of money has been spent on that 20-year-old young
woman before she crosses the Border in Texas and enters the United States as an
undocumented immigrant she has had to be fed fed for
20 years that cost money money she's had to be clothed for 20 years what cost
money she's had to be sheltered she had to be educated to a certain amount whatever they have where she comes from
1:36:05
those are enormous expenses every society has such
expenses for the citizens before they reach working age think of it this way
when they work they they produce they create value
until they work they absorb it that's what we do for our
children Guatemala picked up the cost the United States had no cost we
didn't feed them we didn't raise them nothing the Guatemalans did that for
free from the American point of view not from them they had a real expenditure
they had to produce the food clothing and shelter that they gave to their children we didn't as a we get them only
when they're ready to work now in it marks in theory when they work let's assume they're paid $10 an
1:37:05
hour maybe I should assume $725 because that's the minimum wage in
this country the federal minimum wage they get paid
$725 per hour it's clear and easy to show that
for most of them in an hour they produce by their labor either a greater quantity
or a better quality of an output whatever they're hired to do you know fold laundry wash your car uh
whatever which means now I'm using the marxian system they produce a surplus
mhm no one is going to hire them for $725 unless doing so makes the employer
more than $7 that's the rationale Marx worked this out so I have
to give him credit otherwise I would be acting as though I had figured this out which I didn't um so the
1:38:09
Immigrant brings to the United States a Costless
worker who immediately goes to work how else are they going to survive producing
a surplus for the employer who hires him a better Surplus proportionally than
he could get from a native born worker which is why he hired him
okay this is an enormous gain to the United States
economy not a loss a gain dwarfs all the rest of the
BS right does he does this work get drunk sometime absolutely do they
occasionally commit a crime of course FBI tells us they commit crimes less
1:39:02
than native born which I'm not surprised because they're undocumented and they can't risk it so this is a
subsidy the uni here comes the history the United States's greatness as a
capitalist system over the last century was dependent upon its ability
to absorb wave after wave of the subsidy
to this economy represented by immigrants deporting them is a sign of
weakness deporting them means you can't get the
subsidy it's the equivalent of having high-tech get billions of subsidy from
Washington and saying oh no thanks don't want it woo never going to happen no
company would be so stupid and we're not stupid to what's going we can't we can't
1:40:07
do anymore what we once did what we once did was to say to the Immigrant come
here yeah we'll give you the crappiest jobs yeah we'll stick you in the ghetto
slum neighborhoods yeah yeah yeah yeah but but
but within a reasonable amount of time 2 years 5 years 10 years we'll be bringing
in another wave and they will be slipped in under you and you will be able to
rise the crappiest jobs will now be given to them the new immigrants you
will be able to go to the next level a nicer neighborhood a better school better apartment and all and not only
that we'll make a mythology about it it'll be called American
1:41:02
exceptionalism and it will focus on the remarkable social Mobility that can be
achieved Horatio aler from poor immigrants you will write all of that
theater we can't do it anymore we can't we're going to have to
persuade Americans native born to live in the
crappy housing to accept the crappy job no more Horatio aler
mythology as so and you know what that's about that's the weakness of American
capitalism that's the end of the Empire and the profits it made it's the because
the dollar isn't the universal currency anymore it has to share that role with
with the the Japanese Yen or the Chinese Yuan or the European Euro it it's
1:42:00
over the Empire is finished but we can't say it we can't
face it we can't talk about it as a nation the president is acting like he's
going to tell on taking green Greenland and I'm changing the name of the Gulf of
me what What Child is theater visit and so go back to the beginning of our
conversation that's why all this is irrelevant because it's so detached from
what is actually at stake here it is so full of the blust I'm going to C this
we Europeans ask me why to focus on the Tariff and I say to them you know I want
to do the whole analysis I don't usually have the time you give me the time for which I am grateful but
the short answer to the Europeans is when he was the president the first time everything he tried to do was blocked in
1:43:01
you know by the Democrats or by lawsuits or by this or one of the few things he
could just do is a tarff because Congress some years ago passed a law
giving the president this odd power to use this tool unilateral he doesn't have to get
anybody's permission he can just do it right so he realized that so the answer
to why he's using tariffs is because he can not because it's the right tool not
because it's the best tool it's because he he can be Mr Trump throwing
Thunderbolts like Zeus you know in in mythology so that's why we have we're
all talking about tffs we as a culture we don't know anything about it the
thing people are saying if I were a nastier person I would have a field day
just mocking the officials who keep talking about ter starting with Mr Trump
1:44:04
because it's all the behavior of someone the speech of someone who doesn't know
what they're talking it's not even I don't blame him he he doesn't know anything he shouldn't speak about what
you don't know because it's going to it's going to come back and haunt you and it will it will you know the
Canadians are now going to have to react and the Mexicans react and I haven't
even gone into that with you Mexico let's do that just one more Mexico we
S-13 ... Why Trump’s Policies Will Increase Illegal Mexican Immigration and Drug Trafficking
1:44:36
are going to deport mostly the Mexico Latino undocumented immigrants which is
the largest group and most of those will go to Mexico
okay let's do the simple economics those people had jobs here in the United
States and one of the things they did with their wages low as they are was to send the portion back to their families
1:45:03
in Mexico to help care for their children they left behind to help care
for their elderly they left behind those things are called remittances in
economics but when you have millions of people then they become an important
part of your economy many of the Villages of
Mexico will be seriously impacted by the end of the remittances which will happen
when that immigrant who sent them is deported he won't be working anymore or
she won't and won't be able to send home that's going to hurt the Mexican economy
number one now number two a tariff much of the industry in Mexico
sells to the United States they're going to suffer terribly by the closing of the American
Market because Americans are not going to pay those tariffs to get those mixes by this includes basic things like home
1:46:04
appliances automobiles large numbers of automobiles in America for General M
come from Mexico where they are produced or assembled so Mexican industry is going
to be hurt in its exports to the United States
and so they're going to have to lay off Mexican workers which will increase
unemployment and now the last part but the returning deportees will make that
unemployment that much worse remittances stop exports hurt and a flood of people
with no jobs Mexico is a poor country this is impossible you're going
to create you think you have a problem with the drug gangs of Mexico
now you're going to produce I maybe Mr Trump's hidden agenda is to Annex all of
1:47:04
Mexico and make it the 52nd state after he takes Canada maybe look and maybe
he'll be forced into that by the very consequences of what he's doing he is savaging
Mexico and that's we have I don't know a Thousand Mile border with Mexico ago is
that a very smart thing to do most people wouldn't think
so where's the conversation there is none there is none the closest you get
are the statements of Mrs Shin Bal the new leader of Mexico who's got some courage and is
pushing back the Canadians folded but not the Mexicans so we'll see but talk
about contradictions H I hope I've given you a flavor of some of them a recurring idea
S-14 ... Should Trump Make Canada the 51st State?
1:48:01
in the conversation at this point is that Trump is the Naughty Boy and as I I
think I've brought this up in many of our past conversations because it's impossible to avoid that you
are probably the most gifted rhetorician and natural natural thespian since you
mentioned leader that I've met in my life and this is something a skill set that both of you the two of you have in
common and maybe maybe that's why I see it in them you know it's visible in
everyone but yourself yeah that's funny and Victor Davis Hansen enter again as
long as we're using theater parlons and we spoke about some of Trump's
rhetorical tactics and he I maybe would use maybe he would be okay with the
phrase naughty boy but he thinks of Trump's rhetoric as extremely skillful
1:49:02
and useful and he appealed to the art of the deal and made cases for why some of
these moves you've discussed were extremely useful and I think these are
still very topical uh talking points and they're funny and interesting so i'
since you've mentioned them I'd like to go through them them one by one first what is the motivation behind or idea
behind suggesting that we should make Canada the 51st state why would Trump
say that is it useful was it skillful did it produce
anything no I don't think so for me I don't see any
again I I would be interested in someone like Mr Hansen if he could show me why
that is a skillful strategic move I don't see it I see this as Bluster that
1:50:03
Mr Trump has discovered that this Bluster is effective and I think there's
a psychological reason I think he speaks for an awful lot of people
who are frustrated in Americans I'm talking about frustrated bitter
angry and yet don't have the time the energy the interest
the education to do very much with their anger so they Bluster to you know over
one too many beers you know these Canadians they are whatever you know it
it normally would it wouldn't be taken as as much but when he
blusters it validates their Bluster and that's his function I think
that's what he doing he may be aware of I don't know if he's aware of it I might guess this he is you remember early on
S-15 ... How Elites Rejected Donald Trump and Created the Man He Became
1:51:06
in his career he liked to say I could go out on Fifth Avenue and
shoot someone and people would still applaud what I'm doing he he stumbled onto
a connection his own life and that of large numbers of people
they vibrated together he was dismissed by the upper
echelons of American corporate Society he was you know a gifted child that is
the father left a lot of money to the kid his father who had real estate in
Brooklyn and left the chunk of money to his son so the claim that he worked hard
to make his money is silly and that was used against him a lot he
1:52:03
suffered from that he's none too bright and so he didn't do very well in school or he is bright and he you know spent
time grabbing parts of anatomy and drinking too much uh and so there wasn't
much there he got out of the army by his b own
Spurs doesn't look very good and the ruling Elites didn't there were his
crudeness his he didn't learn at the University what so many people do how to
act I had to learn that it was important to get a tweed jacket when I went to
college it was important to get a tweed jacket with a leather patch over here
whether I needed it or not I learn I learned how to speak if you think I
speak well I did I learned how to my parents are immigrants they were not adepts at the English language I didn't
1:53:03
speak English until I was five you know I spoke German and French um
but I did learn a certain way of acting a certain way of presenting myself I
don't think he ever did he was naughty in various ways as you grew up and was
therefore an outsider and and bitter about it not able to break in you know
um an associate you know his daughter marries the son of another real estate
dealer who's in jail H this is not what is this this is very
strange uh um so I I think he's
belligerently angry at an establishment that excluded
1:54:04
him and that gives him a solidarity with masses of Americans who are also bellig
belligerently angry at another establishment that they feel rejects him
and they get a lot of that and I don't deny that for a minute there are an awful lot of people
who like Mr Hansen live in the world of the elites and and they feel one one
group is problematic because they think they are the elites and the other group is problematic because they think
they're oppressed by an elite I disagree with the analysis out of which both
positions come I I have no idea what Elite
means if if you're talking in the gener realities it's usually presented I don't know what what what it means people in
California and New York work in different Industries have
1:55:02
different communities and see the world somewhat differently than if you live in Arkansas or Tennessee I I get that has
always been true in this country I don't you know recasting it as it's a game I I
understand why you play it I understand the purpose of it I I don't like it cuz I know where it can go well may not go
there I hope not but I know where that can go that's that's a little bit for me
like listening to someone
explain Larry Summers remember him he's been on the show okay he got himself
into a lot of trouble yeah when he was the president of Harvard gave a speech where he explained
why women can't do something science as well as men now in my humble opinion
that's real stupid uh since I don't admire him I don't mind saying that's real
1:56:04
stupid but it it lost him that position it hurt him
badly uh but the interesting question for where would this come what are you
doing what are even if you believe that what are you doing
talking like that don't you have a you don't know enough about American culture
to know that this day and age in this Society you can't do
that right I mean it says something about you that you are way out of touch
with the invi you know what it it's
astounding that a that is the qualific ation to be bounced out of harbard not
because you don't do economics not because you can't run Harvard and of course you can but this is a level of
1:57:04
some word insensitivity obtuseness out of touch inness that really disqualified me
Whoa by the way he said other things that you could also maybe you know them go after him about or it now it's
possible I don't know him personally so but it's possible he's naughty too that
there's a part of him that wants to be able to say such a thing and it leaked
out he maybe wasn't all that careful I don't know I don't even know what he thinks about it in retrospect but it's
another example of Wow and his mistake unlike
Trump's Trump discovered the audience that responded positively
poor Larry didn't he delivered that dumbness to the
wrong audience in the wrong place at the wrong time and he got punished for it Mr
1:58:06
Trump had he tried that Bluster up at Harvard would have been shot down you
know or Yale or any of the other places no no he understood where he go look where he is
now his base is the South part parts of the Midwest and those kinds of folks
around elsewhere but he learned who his supporters were and he went there you
know earlier he didn't understand that he earlier he was a Playboy in New York
you know his excitement was going to the Playboy club his excitement was being a
junior member of the rich in New York City he hated being Junior all the time
which I get and the naughtiness was inre encouraged by that so he was
angry about being excluded and then was NY which assured
1:59:01
his exclusion and he was trapped in that contradiction without the ability you
know I don't know if he can spell contradiction let Al use it analytically
but as a as one of the Senators whose name I forget once said there is no
intelligence requirement to be a senator yeah it's a good one well the the the
S-16 ... Why Donald Trump Wants to Take the Panama Canal (And the Actual Best Reason to Control It)
1:59:26
second of these rhetorical topics that I wanted to address you've already mentioned but I think it might also be a
good opportunity as a throwback to some of our earlier more pedagogically focused episodes for a bit of a an
economics or a trade lesson but what is the Strategic importance of the Panama
Canal for us and why would Trump make the hint well they're not hint
the claims about taking it as he has been well I can I'll give you the
2:00:00
answer but I'm not at all sure that the answer I'm giving you is why Mr Trump
did this and I'm genuinely concerned not to be misunderstood on that point I can
make a better case for what he did than he has so far made okay interesting that
so my here's my suspicion why he did it because it
[Music] is a way of being naughty and tough you
know Jimmy Carter I believe 1977 signed the documents that gave the
canal to The Sovereign independent country of Panama okay so it violates so
he's naughty he's violating the rules he's the the rule breaker the new rule maker
he you most Americans had no idea that there's an issue there right number one
2:01:05
what what is the big issue there the only issue that I can
see is part of an anti-china
agenda the number one country that uses the Panama Canal is the United States
the number two country is China because they're number one and two
in a whole lot of areas there's one too China has built not
surprisingly a bunch of Port facilities on either end of the canal you know
buildings and bought land and have establishments there Chinese companies
and who may or may not be part of the Chinese government
so American companies began some years ago to be a
2:02:03
little bit worried about what is going on in these Chinese
companies which comes out of a fantasy that's what I think it is that the
Chinese are a
aggressively moving into position to cause difficulties for the United
States I don't think that's true uh I do think that the American
Empire is declining and that the Chinese either are going to be the next
Empire or if we're lucky will be the sponsor
for a genuine multilateralism will we'll see we don't know yet and I don't know yet but I know
no one else knows yet either I do know that the United States
2:03:02
everywhere is trying to stop slow constrain and constrict
China the containment policy that they believe worked on Russia has now been
adapted or extended to apply to China That's why they held back the chips
which didn't succeed because of what happened with deep seek all right that's why
they all of a sudden got interested in Taiwan again that's why the seventh
fleet is in South China Sea [Music]
um so here the president can show he's doing something against China look the
problem is the United States ability to slow down and stop China has
so far proven to be zero they can't do anything um I want to remind people who
2:04:06
might question this leading government spokesmen and
women have been saying for at least 10 years if not
longer that we need need to put more we the
Americans need to put more pressure to constrict and constrain China didn't use
those words but that's what it amounted to why because the
expectation this is sort of the official line the
expectation in the minds of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon when they
went to China ended the refusal to recognize the government of China
let's remember the communists come to power in 1949 and and Kissinger and Nixon go to
2:05:00
China in 1970 early 70s okay so whoa that's a long time when you pretended
they're not there you would not send an ambassador you would not receive an ambass all of
that what that meant was that the Japanese and the Europeans got to do productive and profitable trade with
China Americans were excluded they didn't want that anymore and so okay
open up that was the real reason then the the the BS official was this is going to
help integrate China into the world economy moving it closer to the liberal
democracy that we have it's hard for me to repeat this nonsense but it's the
official line we were all supposed to wait for China there to come around when
it came time to bring them into the World Trade Organization which was necessary for the
2:06:00
benefits to American companies of being able to deal with China the same BS was we
recycled by letting them into the World Trade they would become more like us
which of course means freedom democracy apple pie and baseball
okay um good things absolutely
uh starting 10 or 15 years ago it became
clear particularly to the kind of American politician who came to be known
as a neocon uh for good reason um began to
realize that this strategy wasn't working
that it was enabling China to grow like
blazes economically but it wasn't becoming more like us at all the Communist party was
2:07:06
still the the the controlling political element it managed the state and the
state supervised a hybrid economy one half private capitalist Enterprise one half
government own owned Enterprise which is more or less the way it is now uh and the New York h
decided and used Clinton Obama and Biden to
articulate they persuaded them or so they became the Democratic Center
championed by Clinton um
that China was a a net enemy it that we bringing them into the World Trade
thing was too good for them number one and number two
2:08:06
wasn't doing which by the way some of them were honest enough to say regime change you know a liberal Democratic
parliamentary system and so it became
necessary to constrain and constrict and limit and punish and hurt
them um and because of the legacy of the Cold
War again sitting down with this Chinese to try to say
look you're declining Empire we're a rise Empire we can come to blows over
that Lord knows human history gives us examples or we can try to find a way to
share the planet let's at least try this sharing the
planet after all the last quarter of the 20th century
2:09:06
was a time when both the United States and China experienced pretty good
economic growth together um the
neocons Mash that they didn't didn't want that kind of talk then we have to
Crystal Clear like with the Soviet Union and remember the Soviet Union conveniently implodes in 1989 so there's
the see the success it worked Reagan was able we defeated them okay so we have a
plan how to do it doe to the Chinese what we did to the Russians it worked
with the Russians it should work so the they're very upset now it didn't it
didn't they didn't change anything now of course with half a brain you might
2:10:01
have said to yourself China went from one of the
poorest countries on Earth in 1949 to a superp power economically
speaking in 30 to 40 to 50 years what incentive would would there
be for the government of a country that had that record to change itself are you
talking are you crazy that's their success they give that up would what you
know it it's it's crazy it's a crazy thing to imagine that that would happen
um and it didn't happen so they don't know what they that they made a mistake
in their strategy Americans can't do that
made a mistake no never make a mistake like Mr Trump he's in that way he's not
nor never he always doubles down or tells us another story but that's not
2:11:02
unique to him so the Panama Canal is a way to hit
the Chinese that's all it it says um we may close it we may not let
you through now could they do that anyway sure what's the point so here
comes the theater holding back China is a complicated game because it's only half
real because in the last 40 years the Chinese not only grew but the American
dependency on China also grew for goods and services look the the what you have to
pay an American worker is much less than it would have been if you could not
unload cheap Chinese consumer goods on
everybody your pants your shirt your your car your toaster your shaving
2:12:01
equipment it's all made in China or was still most of it is that cheapens the cost of living for
workingclass people which allows you to pay them less money because they can still go to the mall and pick up at
Walmart or Target all of that junk which comes from China
and which is distributed in America by Walmart and Target you marriage made in
heaven now those two companies have to be very careful never to say that but if
you look at it it's no secrets easy to show Walmart and China Walk hand in hand
for the last 50 years they need each other dreadfully Walmart is against all these
tariffs it doesn't want to have to charge the people who go to Walmart more money because it knows who those people
are and it knows what this all means now that's true for Dollar General and
2:13:00
dollar stores and all the rest of it so American strategies always split you
have to posture punish constrict and constrain but you have to also deal with
the realities of the and the Chinese know that the Chinese are gambling the
time is on their side they keep grow this year I like to tell this to people
because Americans don't know I would say since Trump's election
S-17 ... How the BRICS Are Drastically Outperforming the American Economy
2:13:33
even before but since Trump's election the chorus of articles in places like
the financial times the Wall Street Journal and so on talking about the
really great performance of the American economy is amazing to me what are you
talk 2.8% maybe that's the best of the various estimates they're many quite
lower but 2.88% United States GDP grew
2:14:05
in 2024 the year just ended that's according to the IMF which
is a pro-western institution that's their number there're is good or better
than anybody else who does this kind of number the same IMF says that this year
in 2024 the growth in China 5%
double in India 7% triple what India and
China are the two Central players in something called The Bricks the gap between the bricks and
the G7 that's the American AG is therefore growing as it has every one of
the last 25 years you're not in great shape if that if that Gap app is growing
you're not or at least let's put it this way it's very odd to talk about what a
great shape you are and leave discussion of this out because from this angle it
2:15:05
ain't so great but we live in a country where it
was necessary I want to remind you I'm sure you noticed but the whole last two years of
the Biden Administration the following phenomena
really irritated people the economy all the economics
people were were doing great the president doing great but poll after
poll of the American people said the economy is a number one problem we have
so there was Article after article which went like this why are the American
people misunderstanding the reality of the
economy and there were lots of advice to the Democrats be careful you're going to get hurt in the election you've got to
2:16:00
make people understand just the idea that the PE that the economists might be
looking at the wrong thing and the massive people looking at something else and that that would explain why they had
a different no could not raise the most obvious why you had to make one side or
the other stupid so the mass of the people are ill
informed inadequately what are you doing you have the greatest control over mass
media of any society and you have for a long time if the masses don't get it
what's the matter with your system you've gotten to believe everything else you need you you can't get this they
couldn't and they couldn't break out of it and it did hurt them in the election but I'm here to tell you that the
American economy is in terribly difficult
2:17:00
conditions and now the anxiety that he's provoking this
particularly with I'm cutting back I have a a good friend a woman who
works in a shelter in New York City several hundred people live in this
shelter and they were going to close this coming
August she explained to me yesterday it has been moved up till March because the
government money is dry up and then they had a scare last week when he issued that order because some official in
Washington told them they might have to close this next week dumping several
hundred people onto the streets of New York City at this time of year at this time of
year so they can join the others sleeping in the subway tunnels of New York City and also since a number of
2:18:01
these people have fairly serious emotional or mental
problems who know New York my wife my wife will not go in the subway anymore
she's afraid she's afraid of random physical
violence which particularly affects women um you know this a person's not
even about to steal who just comes up and bashes you in the head with a Breck or something because you remind them of
their mother or their cousin or some bad moment in their lives or something you know it's just whoa so I could give you
endless statistics but it's an economy in a lot of trouble and here again the notion of
irrelevance it's not that what he does has no impact it does but there's no link
between a concerted strategic approach to a clearly
2:19:05
defined logical Target that's why the naughty and the
theatrics seem to be mostly what this is about poking liberals in the eye you
know being a offensive in your language being dramatic I'm taking the canal I
want Greenland screw NATO screw Denmark and all of
this what's it for I he's not going to help the situation with any of those
countri Denmark Europeans I can assure you are up in arms that for
them they never heard of this a member of NATO is basically taking the property
of another member of NATO the whole point of NATO was not to have this you
know they used to tell each other how they have to love each other and take care of each other because of the big Russian bear that bearing down on
2:20:03
them what happened to the Russian Bear you know why are you and so the fear this is a whole
another conversation we ought to have this is the end of Europe as a
major player in the world economy and that has not happened for centuries and
people not to understand that that is going to be a traumatic feature of the
of our lives in the years ahead are not not understanding what's going on these
the turmoil inside these countries the loss of the war in Ukraine the end of
NATO all of these things are happening and meanwhile Europe
has no role in the Innovative economy of the future it's all the United States
and above all China and deep seek happens in China it
2:21:02
doesn't happen in Germany or England or and those economies if Germany is in
recession now it its GDP is negative
shrinking used to be the engine of Europe the you know in German it's
called vfts V you know it's the economic Miracle you know Germany coming back losing the two
world wars and now it's it's a basket case it
can't function and you know the irony it's their
americanism that killed them when the United States decided to have this war in Ukraine to
set zalinsky up to fight the Russians with American money and American weapons
they demanded the falty of the Europeans to provide money and to
2:22:01
provide weapons which they did and since the military prospects
weren't so good they waged a sanctions war against Russia the most important
part of which was Europe's refusal to continue continue to buy cheap oil and
gas from Russia which is the world's second greatest source of cheap oil and
gas and to make the point clear remember they cut the can they cut the
underwater uh pipeline okay so who's the biggest user
of cheap oil and gas Germany turns out v v was because you
had cheap energy which nobody else could compete with because the Russians provided it at dirt cheap prices you
2:23:01
take so they refused they had to turn them for their energy to the World Market including the
United States which now ships huge quantities of liquefied natural gas to
the Europeans at a much higher price the Germans can't compete the German
industry is leaving Germany for the first time in 60 years the the number
one company in Germany Volkswagen is closing factories and laying off
thousands of workers and therefore having enormous conflict with the powerful
Union what's going on here is it possible the whole world asks that the
Americans and the Europeans couldn't see that when you punish
Russia with sanctions that stop you from buying oil and gas that they will find
someone else to sell it to and maybe the bricks that they're part of would have
2:24:05
the shinese and the Indians buy the O and gas which is what happened that they didn't see
it is the level of denial and delusion so deep that we're going to see one
horrific miscalculation like this after
another everywhere in Europe it is understood that the war in Ukraine is
being lost except here before we return to
some of those other rhetorical flourishes of trump I would like to talk
about two domestic policy that I think really nicely bring
together some of the other things we've been talking about like oil Gas Energy competition with the bricks that are
2:25:01
really trouncing us and even the LA wildfires and that is Trump's climate
change policies because I mean here are the the here's
the sort of tangle that I see one uh it seems like climate change I mean some
S-18 ... Is There a Fatal Contradiction in Trump’s Climate Policy?
2:25:22
people on on the right for instance don't believe that there is any right but it might prove an existential
issue for us as evidenced by La again ostensibly but then on the other hand as
far as economic competition goes it seems like some of our competitors aren't beholden to the
same climate change measures that we've been taking in the United States and so
repealing them might better enable us to compete with the countries to whom we're
seeding our dominance there's a risk that the climate people are right
2:26:05
and that the rising temperature of the oceans and pollution levels are very
dangerous for our future there's a risk they're right there's also a risk that the people who
don't believe any of that are right I agree I don't know first of all I'm not
such a scientist I'm not up on all of that I see a risk on both
sides but I must say it seems obvious to me that we'd be better
off not risking that the right wing is correct let's take the other one let's
do the steps we think will help because if they if it's right it's
our existence rather than than play Russian roulette with the right wing and
say well it's not certain so let's not worry about
2:27:04
it what what why would you do that I don't understand and when you
look at who's spending the money to convince everybody then it becomes obvious doesn't it it's Exxon and mobile
and all the U is the rightwing together with the big businesses that are funding
them so for me oh boy so on the one hand we have alarmist scientists I get it and
they may be alarmist Beyond what's appropriate that's possible I understand there's a risk that that's
wrong but on the other hand I see self-interested corporations promoting
something that holds on to the profit of their fossil fuel foundations uh and people who are saying
it might be wrong but I'm saying yeah it might be wrong but wouldn't we be better off taking steps to deal with it than
2:28:05
not I don't get I don't see what reputation there is to this so I end up
with the people who want to do stuff about it who want to limit our and since
I see it dovetailing with other things it I think the private car is a
ridiculous notion we oughtn't to do that the single largest polluter of air is
the automobile exhaust so you know for me let's have public
transportation let's go back to the collective housing we once had back at the end of World War II and that was a
serious project here in the United States let's take the steps that would
mitigate global warming and all the of it because that's the
lesser the path that makes more sense and in order to say that I don't have to
2:29:00
denounce the people who are skeptical about all of it I I understand Bas it's
Bas is to be skeptical I don't like the lineup of who's telling me to be SK
skeptical but I I understand the Skeptics may be right I don't want to get into position where I know
scientific that I'm not going there my liberal friends do that they don't need me and I don't agree with them anyway
about it does it for me that's Mr Trump has made his decision he
panders to the fossil fuel he panders to the audience that those companies have
created for him the because the establishment politically adopted at
least a public commitment to climate control attacking the establishment
works if he attacks you know he attacks this is the elitists in California who
2:30:00
give a about all of this you know he's he is a one trick
pony Mr Trump you could see it when they had the awful American Airlines army
helicopter crash in Washington DC few days ago and Mr Trump has to talk About
It by blaming the diversity equality
inclusion movement for having created the inadequate airport management you
know extra you know it it's it that goes back to Victor Davis Hansen and Los
Angeles Wildfire response the same idea that it's this leftwing ideological
captured incompetence that has caused a lot of should air traffic
controllers yeah as I said it's a one trick point it this is an attempt to
make it look when you asked me earlier why do I do economics I showed you
2:31:08
that I hope I did I hope I showed you that I'm not arguing that economics is
more important than anything else I don't believe it is I never had mhm I
focus on it no question but not because it's the most important thing I focus on
it because it was the excluded taboo issue and that Drew me and I still think
that's the Americans are afraid of thinking and talking about the economics
of things because of where it takes you and what it where the political end of
that conversation is I think that's why they they hold back from it
but Hansen that's a different AR he focuses on you know these elitism or
2:32:00
the because he really thinks that's the key item he he actually think the key
item I don't think the economics are the key item of anything but I am
struck by the exclusion of the economic dimension of
things it's it's extraordinary and I I'm going to talk about that because you
don't want to I I think that has something to teach us and I'm going to
stress that but I'm not going to say this is the cause so if anthon and I
were were debating he would say this is why it happened and because you the elite and then not me I'm not going to
no no didn't bad it was this you know well if you're ever in the the bay
area again maybe I could arrange I go there every I go to the Bay Area as
often as I can I really find it a wonderful place I like that City I admit
2:33:02
I like the climate I like the ocean I like it's just a people are very
friendly it's a very attractive place for me but New
York City is also even don't have those qualities you know I like New Orleans I
like New York I like San Francisco the other thing I I wanted to bring up
S-19 ... How Will AI Affect China and America’s Economic War?
2:33:24
right now isn't so much a a policy issue but just a a a broader domestic economic
issue going forward and one that I think your Marxist or marxian you've been
using that word analysis might be really helpful with it also connects to deep
seek automation electric vehicles and that is the role of Advan ments in AI
in the competition between China and the United States and also just the overall
health of our domestic Workforce I don't know quite how to get at what it is I would want to
2:34:06
say uh about that China has demonstrated now and I believe this is true to almost
every reasonable person whether they like China or not uh whether they
support what China is or don't they have demonstrated that
economic growth can be achieved faster in their kind of system
than it can in any other country and that is a momentous I mean
just that's a momentous achievement over the last 30 to 40
years they have consistently grown as measured by their
GDP two to three times faster than the United
2:35:00
States I must remind people even though they hate to hear it that before this
Speedy growth the Soviet Union accomplished Speedy
growth not as fast but Speedy growth so that
the painful reality so painful it can't be spoken is that the 20th and 21st
centuries demonstrated the growth potential and
the growth actuality most effectively in the Soviet
Union and China if you look at the Soviet Union as the first experiment in what I'm about
to describe as their economic system and China as the
second right Russia starts in 1917 uh China in 1949 that's quite a
2:36:00
difference but by now we have 70 years roughly 70 years the Soviet Union and
now 70 years of China and the Chinese grow faster more
spectacular than the Russian the Russian were a system of
State Enterprises throughout industry and a growing proportion of
State Enterprises in
agriculture and very little scope for capitalist
Enterprises throughout that time not zero that's an American fantasy but
small China is completely
different China made a decision
2:37:00
afterm to become a hybrid to be partly
state-owned and operated Enterprises
half and the other half private capitalist Enterprises both Chinese and
external allowed so that I think it's fair to say
that China represents a hybrid trying to
combine both the benefits of a private
capitalism Model United States and of a state-owned and operated
enterprise system example the Soviet Union they
really are a 5050
split with the hybrid of these two systems
2:38:01
overseen by a Communist party and a powerful State apparatus controlled by
that party [Music] and they've
achieved really an unspeakable story
let me give you one statistic just to get put in your head the GDP of the United States 28
trillion bucks more or less the GDP of
Russia our former Arch Enemy today is three or4
trillion no content no nothing and that was always true I only in
the Cold War Legacy mentality of the United States did Russia
Loom you know
2:39:03
Silly economic nonsense anyway that's not true with
China China's GDP now 18 19 20 trillion dollar
way different from Russia and equally so from anywhere
else Britain's GDP I don't know four five six trillion something like that
very small bigger than Russia though what bigger than Russia probably bigger than Russia yeah and and Russia fighting
NATO means Russia's fighting Britain France Germany Italy is refusing that's
but look what China has done China was one of the poorest countries on the planet in
1949 and is now number two unquestionably number two after the
2:40:04
United States and each year closing the Gap
um that is an astounding achieve is very very hard for
me not to dwell on it but one of its
components and one of the reasons it it has the achievement will go take us to
the technology issue a powerful Communist Party ruling
a powerful State apparatus supervising this
hybrid can do something quickly and
efficiently that the United States either can't do or can't do quickly and
efficiently it can mobilize the entire economy to achieve certain
2:41:05
priorities it can mobilize the government sector in its ways and the
private sector in its ways it can force them to collaborate and coordinate so
that the resources each has are brought together to attack a
problem it does not respect private profit as the
priority which is what happens here it does not believe the private has to be
given Primacy in some sense as happens here it doesn't have a government filled
with people who believe that the private is in some sense the more important the more patriotic the more deserving the
more what it doesn't have any of that in fact it has the
2:42:00
other one of the elements of Socialism or
communism that has a real effect here is that the people involved in the public
sector believe in it respect it
even value it higher than the private in recent years in China you
have seen programs punishing leading private capitalists
Jack Mah and others like that kind of dressing them
down in some cases imprisoning them but mostly culturally saying you are not yet
we will let you be a billion we will and we will let you run your
business but when you overstep in this hybrid we're going to
2:43:01
give you a a slap on the wrist or worse because you're not and there's enormous
support in the public sector for that Americans have a very hard time grasping
how different this is here in the United States just by
S-21 ... How Elon Musk is Only an Unsuccessful Bureaucrat
2:43:24
comparison the presumption is
that government is a bureaucracy full of unnecessary people
the fat so we economic fat
so Mr Trump gets a lot of support
for nominating the head of a private bureaucracy Mr musk to clean out the
public bureaucracy as if him being the proprietor of another bureaucracy didn't
2:44:04
disqualify him what why what are you doing what are you doing this man has an
enormous bureaucracy that was he has a business that spans the whole world or
multiple businesses that Spann the whole world he's got a complicated overlapping
mess of a the bureaucracy like all bureaucracy but no no no no no instead
the mentality is the private bureaucracy is efficient lean effective
it's always the public bureaucracy that isn't though that's a completely
different way of thinking about and it translates into different little
decisions along the way you know made in this office in Idaho and that office in Vermont and because of this private
profit a private public notion
2:45:03
remarkable I think it it it enabled Xi Jinping the current leader in
China to realize that the efforts of the United States to constrict and constrain
China Focus as they were on among other things artificial
intelligence meant that in order to have a
chance China could mobilize its
resources in a way that Europe could not Europe didn't have the hybrid
economic systems way too much private and they did have National Unity
too much tension among the countries of the EU so they could not mobilize not
across the public private boundary not across the national boundary so they
2:46:05
couldn't and they didn't but the Chinese who had less of some kinds of
resources than Europe if you take Europe as a total they
could and then not going to change this because it's working that's why
they are able now to compete in AI That's what the importance of the deep sea explosion was it wasn't the details
of one program versus another these are learning they call learning modules what this is about is a sign
which is by the way a number of American commentary made this and they're right they compared it to 1957
and because I'm old enough I was Al lar that I remember it
1957 was when Russia Soviet Union then sent up a man in space a
2:47:04
Sputnik uh Yuri Gagarin I remember the name of the Russian astronaut who was
there and America went crazy because the whole notion that we
were number one meant that we Americans would be the first in space and here
were not just another country that would have been bad enough but the bad country had done it you
know this is comparable it's a sign that a country we thought was far behind us
isn't and I think you've seen a kind of Quasi hysteria already in Washington as
the whole establishment reinforces itself no stop even though
the war in Ukraine is when Russia we really should be focused on
China my guess I don't know of course but my guess that if Mr
2:48:08
Trump delivers on his promise to end the war in
Ukraine he will do so in the name of focus ing on the much greater danger
represented by China the truth of it is the Chinese at
this point are not our problem because they
don't need all they want is free trade all they want is to be allowed to do in the
future who what they've done in the past it's the United States that has to have a change because it's terrified by the
growth that the Chinese have achieved and that they look likely to continue
and therefore they have to be stopped so what Americans cannot understand because
they don't want to face it is that it's not that the Chinese are aggressive it's really the reverse it's
2:49:07
the United States that's aggressive because it needs to stop what's going on
the Chinese don't for the Chinese let's go you know
they we know how to go we know how to beat you we know how to grow we do it
better than you do so just let us and the United States says we won't we're
going to stop you we going to slow you and it's almost as naked as that if you
look at the press these days and you know it's a question of
whether the Americans have the means I don't think they do and have the determination they
may have that uh to stay with this policy I like to remind them that after
Britain tried twice to punish the United States for becoming
2:50:01
independent Revolutionary War war of 1812 they gave up and they basically
worked out a deal Americans would leave them alone in the rest of the world do their British Empire and the British
would respect that the United States now had an Empire called the R Doctrine you
can take this Western Hemisphere we're taking everything else and on that basis
we can all live happily together and they didn't they didn't go to war against each other since that time okay
so why not the United States sit down with China and do more or less the same
I don't understand why that isn't talked
about and be I don't think that's because it isn't enough option I think it is and I think Americans somewhere
know that it is but for the moment they're all excited that they may have the ability just to blow the Chinese
2:51:01
away the way the Russians went away and I think that's a mistake but that's
where we sit we're definitely going to come back to China because we need to
S-20 ... Why Trump Thinks We Should Conquer Greenland
2:51:14
end this conversation talking about the ultimate fate of the United States and China is of course going to play a huge
role in that but there are still those those two rhetorical issues that I wanted to talk about that we haven't
gotten to yet and I think the first one that you mentioned in our conversation is Greenland and whether we need to take
it uh from Denmark or so what is the the context here why would Trump I mean
Greenland just seems like a non- entity I I don't really think about it that often except we fly over it sometimes on
our way to Europe why would Trump make this move was this a strategic move what
is he trying to get successful unsuccessful there are multiple factors it's never ever reducible to one it's
2:52:09
multiple saber rattling against a tiny country like
Denmark is a tasteless piece of Bluster
so I assume part of what's going on here is this it's
just Bluster it's just Mr Trump being this is something nobody would say or do
in the modern way you don't you don't have relationships between countries
handled in this way it's just not done
and so he does it so that's one thing that's going on
here number two he wants and the argument is now getting
stronger because of it he seems to want to disrupt and dismember and Destroy
2:53:05
NATO because this certainly makes NATO look like nothing
if it goes through it already makes it look like nothing that this could even
happen uh [Music] um now that's a whole conversation what
would the Lo logic be but I remind you what I said earlier I can tell you a
logic for why Mr Mr Trump might want to get rid
of um NATO but I would be articulating
something further and better than anything he has said or anyone one
speaking for him has said so I'm not sure it's a me trying to come up with a
strategic rationale I mean it would be me doing it
2:54:01
but I would have no way of knowing whether or not something like this is in the minds of the because they're not
saying anything like that so who
knows I I don't I don't see in him the Strategic
logic third there already are mil mil US military bases in Greenland they've been
there for years so the notion that this is a
security but there's not the slightest evidence that anybody else is
encroaching whatever that might mean on the US bases the Danish government has not said
a word to indicate that it doesn't want them on the contrary in the days since
Trump started they have offered more bases to the United States than they
already have uh so I don't
2:55:09
see he says it's National Security you know I have no
idea if you're looking for the chin Chinese they don't have any role there
particularly so could they come one day yeah but that's true anywhere they could come one
day and sit outside the harbor in any country on earth
I so I find it very bizarre does Mr
Trump want to have the privilege for his sons
to grab property and start building hotels and golf court in Greenland yes
you know what the argument there is which Mr Trump has articulated oh really I missed that not this time earlier okay
2:56:05
he articulated the argument that you love this climate
change which you doesn't believe it means that it's getting
warmer and Greenland will be melting its ice and more and more green land will
become livable that's a nice little contradiction yes you like that one and
he wants to be he said this he wants to build hotels and golf courses by the way
that's what you know that's what he does doesn't do it well lots of them are losing money but he does that he likes
that sort of the real estate Patrician notion of having arrived so so that
might be I mean you know he make can make sure as president that his kids get
the prime real estate rather than the shitty real estate whatever
2:57:00
um so when I make those arguments since nobody else has
expressed any interest there's no competitive you know Britain or Denmark
and nobody uh that I know of is e for green
Lin so I'm I go back to the beginning this is Mr tough
guy and if I were going to play amateur
psychologist not just for Mr Trump but for the establishment here in the United
States then I'd come up with the the following to do the four things at once
that he did I'm going to take Panama Canal I'm going to take Greenland I'm going to make
Canada the 51st state and I'm going to rename the Gulf of Mexico yeah not so
2:58:02
much that I'm going to hit Mexico with
tariffs deportation then this is classic
American politics that's National ISM it it's
it's the glorification of the nation as the power that rules the world we're
going to do this to this country and this to that country it goes
with the territory it's what a
leader should do you know
Mr Trump said at the night of the election when he couldn't claim a
mandate he talked a lot about Unity is going to presidents usually do after
2:59:01
elections there hasn't been much Unity no no there hasn't been and you can and
and there hasn't been even much talk I mean he did it the night of the election not much after that not much talk well
the country can get United around its Empire and this is we're sticking it to
panamanians Danes Canadians and mexicus he we Americans
are our leader this well that does seem like a
good strategic move if it helps bolster support for him by uniting people under
a nationalist I think you I think people are are now sufficiently I think
excuse me I think we are sufficiently weaned away from the neoliberal globalization
period when an enormous effort was made to teach us to be okay
3:00:05
with factories running away because the global economy would deliver goods and
services more cheaply than otherwise and everybody wins from the
one never true but a nice story to tell we've been weaned off of
it so now it's okay the president can give billions to this industry billions
to that industry hit the market with all of the stuff about don't tax out the
window all of the stuff about the free market don't interfere in the fre he's
interfering every day you know he's tariff is an interference in the fre me
it is the taboo the Republican taboo we W tax we
don't interfere in the free market and thereby we make your life better was
3:01:01
always but it was their you know many elections won by
Republicans were won because they promised either not to raise taxes or to
cut them they are the anti and now they've become the protax
party like they become what free market F the free market we don't like
this we don't like this we're going to interfere this way here we're going to interfere that way over there staking
countries is not leading things to the free market you are not doing that it's a
nationalist turn and it will be justified on the same grounds that nationalist turn always have been which
is threat from abroad and you can then articulate it as
fenil coming into your country that's one threat abroad or vague aggressive
actions by the Chinese which you know the Chinese go out of their way to say we don't you
know we don't want interfere in any of we just let us grow um so I I think
S-22 ... On China’s Number One Global Priority
3:02:19
China has figured out how to the bottom line how to
mobilize its resources to achieve its priority
targets and the number one priority target has been rapid Economic
Development and they've achieved it better sooner than even they imagined
nor did anyone else outside foresee or even keep up
with when I began to pay attention to the Chinese
economy which in my case was in the the 1960s and70s
3:03:05
for for two or three decades after that every piece of work and I wrote my
Master's thesis on the Chinese economy um at Stanford where I did it um
you always were told here's this the statistic you're looking for but you
can't count on the Chinese I mean they're probably making it though year in no matter what their
achievement was including achievements like going to major cities in China I
don't know if you've been and seeing that these are very modern cities with Rapid Transit that's better than that of
the United States and so on no matter what people so they needed to say that
the statistics are manipulated are are hyped
in one way or another now people have stopped doing it because I mean in the end you can see
3:04:04
what they're capable of doing it's it's they have the equivalent of of alphabet
you know Google Apple Intel all have their counterparts in China plus an
explode expion of small companies by the way I meant to mention that one of the
nice things that deep seek shows Americans who are willing to look at it
is that the notion that there's a significant difference between socialism
and communism because communism provides
incentives and commun excuse me capitalism provides incentiv
and capitalism doesn't
regulate and capitalism therefore stimulates
3:05:00
efficiency that the China if you assume it's socialist which
is what it calls itself socialism well they
obviously they're not holding back entrepreneurialism deep seek many other
is an entrepreneur deep seek as an Enterprise was formed in May of
2023 it's a one and a half year old new startup wow the the Chinese call it a
startup they borrow the American name a startup so and there's lots of companies
like that there's about 30 if I have it right about 30 companies working on
electric vehicles so it's not just be it's not Monopoly companies the way we have here it's it's actually easier to
start a business and to grow a business I can't tell you how many people that I
talk to in the United States have a an what the French called an eay fix you
3:06:01
know a fixed notion that one of the virtues of capitalism relative to
socialism is that it spawns and favors Innovation I would have been one of
those people yes it spawns and favors efficiency it all
ows entrepreneurs to the Chinese do all of that they always have but what what
where did this come from this is pure propagandistic even if it had a grain of
truth I'm not aware it does but it may that I'm not aware of it's not it's not some fixed it's
silly this guy uh who started deep sea May of 23
he had a background of technical he had a technical background but he was also
active in finance he straddled these two and he saw an opportunity and he got
together a group of engineering type recent graduates as I told you not I
3:07:03
made a little firm and went to work on a project that's what he did you know which is the story of a startup in
Silicon Valley multiplies 50 times or a thousand times whatever it is but you
have that that there too and you know it's common sense if you think about it
the Chinese prioritize economic growth they're practical people in the
same way Americans were so they said of course one of the things we have to do
is look at the United States figure out how they did it and go them one better
if we can that's everybody does that and that's what they did but they have
enough people and enough resources and enough capability to mobilize them to do
it so you know in a way they figured it out the the stilted all know socialism
3:08:06
is clunky and cumbersome the government is
everywhere it's childish well it's that head in the sand
mentality you know if things don't develop the way you
thought they would then you ought to go back to the drawing board and wonder about your
assumptions because you thought this but this happened all right socialism isn't
Innovative okay the Chinese have their the best electric cars the Chinese have
new AI the Chinese the Chinese you know they
innovated well they copy yes there was some copying going on no doubt they
stole some the technology probably but you know if you know
3:09:05
anything about history that's really not relevant everybody who can steals everybody who
can copies but the Chinese have done and the folks in Belgium
haven't and the folks in Italy haven't and the folks in Germany haven't and the folks in England haven't whoa whoa and
the Americans thought they could they were years ahead it turns out they're
not etc etc etc then it's time to ask
yourself you know since we've touched on Marxism
S-24 ...What Marxists Learned from the Failure of the Soviet Union
here's another parallel when the Soviet Union collap csis the first national
experiment in a socialist economy marxists were confronted with a
with a really serious problem because what was done in Russia was done in the name of Marxism we are marxists building
3:10:05
a socialist economy so the Russians had a real serious problem you fell apart
the thing you created wasn't sustainable we have the proof it's gone you know it
fell upon everybody who wasn't a Marxist piled in and said AR you failed because
socialism do the work I don't know kind of a quicky summary of the story now the
marxists either had to come up with their own alternative explanation or they'd be stuck with a
very bad result because the argument of the rest
of the world or much of it was that here is the proof that socialism isn't
Innovative it doesn't allow build the business socialism doesn't work
right and it forced
3:11:04
marxis to go back and say what did we get wrong what what did we not see we
didn't see that this experiment would fall apart not even by some outside in Invasion or
a war none of it it just fell apart we missed something we we better ask pretty
basic questions about our analytical framework Marxism or to say the same thing in
other words marxists had better come up with their own explanation of what happened or else the notion that
socialism doesn't work will kind of take the day it will have won the the
debate and so a variety of people myself included did that I spent 10 years of my
life writing a book with my colleague stepen Resnik a man that I worked with
3:12:01
also a professor of Economics like me uh we spent 10 years writing a book on what
happened to Soviet Union why did it fall apart what and what does that tell us
and the bottom line you know your audience might be interested book is available it's in print you can get it
what's it called what called Theory wrong title Theory and history
colon capitalism and communism in the USSR so
published by Routledge a big International Publishing House rout
ledge available in in English all over the world um been translated into bunch
of other languages to anyway um here's what we found just to give you
an idea of how basic we asked the question which is what I'm demanding in
a sense of people who misunderstood where the United States was going
3:13:03
relative to China we came to the conclusion
that the notion of socialism and communism had been
taken in a direction after Marx's
death by his followers that we believe
produced an unfortunate outcome and the outcome
was that socialists thought that what they were Pro about
was to go beyond capitalism in the sense of
depriving private owners of the means of production private
entrepreneurs from their position and their power in order to collectivize to make
3:14:06
the economy something the community as a whole undertakes not private
[Music] subgroups because of the contradiction simple idea that if a
private group of people are running an Enterprise they run it to maximize that
Enterprise not the needs of society and that those don't always work out and
that the society's needs can go unfulfilled because the privates don't
do what you would need to do to fill them an old idea fleshed out in the
century of writing by socialist mostly in the 19th century and so they ended up
with a tension between the private Enterprise and the state as the representative of the community as a
whole which should and Russia makes a revolution gets rid of the private
3:15:01
Enterprises and replaces them with state-owned and operated so that indeed the whole 20th
century is an endless debate between the private and the public capitalism United
States private versus socialism Soviet Union
public what we concluded make a long story short what we
S-23 ... Some Key Lessons from Marx’s Kapital
3:15:27
concluded was that Marx's Insight was not
primarily about public versus private to say the thing bluntly so the idea gets
across Marx didn't give a crap whether the in production was done by private a
public that's surprising to me that that's not what if you look through
the three volumes of capital which is really the mature work that he leaves I mean lots of other valuable stuff but
3:16:00
that's the core those three and one day you and I are going to go over that in detail absolutely I spend most of my
adult life teaching that as a as a Prof I've taught people volumes 1 two and
three of capital so for those that are interested if if if you find what I have to say about the
American economy interesting this may trouble you I'm
just applying Marxist economics don't thank me it's
Marx and if that's new and interesting to you I'm pleased but it tells us more
about what you didn't learn in your life than anything else that's been there for allall anyway if you look at volume one
which is the only of the three volumes that marks himself actually wrote volumes 2 and three occurred after Marx
was dead and gone was put together Volume Two by his colleague Frederick
Engles and volume three because rles was then dead by a German Marxist who came
3:17:02
after them named Carl kowsky so because I teach this stuff I know this stuff
right so volume one what Marx lays out there is a
critique of the capitalist way of organizing an
Enterprise not whether it's state or Pro you will not find in capital anything
about that it's not about whether state or private is better or worse this way
that that's not Mark's not interested in that never was barely wrote about the
state his work was what in capital focused on the
Enterprise if I wanted to use modern language I'd say Marx is a crit critic
of the microeconomic level of capitalism not so much the macro the micro what
3:18:02
goes on in the Enterprise and his argument there is that the capitalist
Enterprise is governed by defined by the Ju position the the relationship
between the folks who run the Enterprise the owner the top manager the board of
directors if you have a corporate form and the mass of employees that this relationship of
capitalism demonstrates that it didn't make the break from slavery and
feudalism that it thought it did Master Slave Lord surf
employer employee and that the root of the problems of capitalism are right there
that's a problem the that way of organizing
3:19:01
creates hostility animosity introduces
inefficiency on a staggering basis and then it blows
up and so if you want to make a transition from capitalism to something
really different you have to do it at the level of the Enterprise not that you don't talk about
public and private that's fine Collective individual all that that's perfectly part of a story you better
include the core and the core is have you been willing and now I'm going to
use language for Americans to point hard are you a Democrat with a small D or are
you not do you believe in democracy or do you not because if you do it has to
start in the Enterprise one person one vote everybody in the business has an
3:20:02
equal say in what happens because you're all affected by the decisions what to
produce how to produce where to produce and what to do with the product you're all affected in an Enterprise by those
decisions but in capital ISM you're excluded if you're an employee from making them those are made by the
employer as they were in fism and slavery by Lord and
Master therefore the core of socialism would have to include whatever
else it is the transformation of the Enterprise from the capitalist
hierarchical system to a worker Co-op system that was not done in Russ Russia
and it wasn't done in China either so that's the issue that's what's going to be fought
out this Century that question speaking of this Century we're we're nearing the
3:21:02
end of our conversation so I wanted to shift back toward what we can expect
going forward and I think in our last conversations our last two conversations
we've used this word prognosticator uh soothsayer and we've agreed that you're not a prognosticator
you're not a soothsayer but you do have a nor is anyone else nor is anyone else but you have a tremendous wealth of
historical information economical information and if anything gives us a hint about what's to come it's well
those are two of those things so I'm wondering maybe with particular reference to China to Donald Trump to
other Global states of Affairs what are you expecting out of the next four
years um what I'm expecting and I want to underscore I mean you're quite right but I want to
S-24 ...What Marxists learned from the failure of the Soviet Union
S-25 ... Donald Trump and the Gulf of America
3:26:33
control even what happens in Mexico and Canada so he has to be
aggressive and he has to do what doesn't matter because he can't do what does he
wants to control Central America he can't he just
can't but what he can do is insist on changing the name of the Gulf of
3:27:01
Mexico what does that do it's the same the next day after the name is changed
got the same trade the same movement of people the same set of ecological vulnerability what what what's it for
I mean it's clearly an affront to Mexicans which you have to answer again
the qu what is the oh the grand eyes you say whoa whoa this
game but you know that that's usually the sign of a weakness not a strength
this is a posturing about something that you can do even though it doesn't matter because
you don't want people to understand what you can't do it's the old Mo moment in
the western film when the Outlaws have ridden into town shot up the bank stole every nickel
in it and are riding out of town just as the sheriff arrives blade having failed
3:28:04
in His function but he says with great intensity round up the usual suspect and
he goes after the mouth what is this he's covering over over his failure the
town doesn't want him to go get the bad guys he wants the bad guys not to come in the town does and not to do the
damage he failed to do but he's going to show Mr Trump can
S-26 ... On How History Will Overwhelm Trump In the Next Four Years
3:21:56
underscore I'm not predicting I don't have that power I don't think anybody
does um I believe Mr Trump is going to be
overwhelmed by history nor is he alone in that that has happened to most other
political leaders they and often their adoring publics uh
overestimate how much they can do um how much they understand so I
expect him to be overwhelmed uh overwhelmed by the decline of the Empire which is
continuing by the mounting economic problems in the United States because of
the declining Empire in part and because we have as a nation
a level of ideological uh obfuscation I'll be polite uh that makes
it hard for Americans to honestly face their problems and and come to grips
3:23:00
with them and in some sense that's our own fault as a people
but between that and the forces at work Mr Trump doesn't have the insights and I
don't just mean him but the his group his team or whatever you want to call it
they don't have the insights that I see they don't have the tools that I can see
to deal with the problems that I can see so I think he will be overwhelmed things
will work out in a way he did not want and did not foresee that certainly
happened to Mr Biden it certainly happened to Mr Trump at the end of his first
race uh and since he's a person given to doubling down uh he tried to be more in the
second time than he was in the first time but along very similar lines only more so uh and I don't think I don't
3:24:01
think that's going to solve any of the problems except by accident now go back to what I said at the beginning he's
going to be throwing Hail Mary passes often and you
know what happens most of the time those don't work very well sometimes they do
and that's the best he can do and that's not so different from others but it it's been my experience
that the situation shapes the leader far more than the other way around and I
know that goes against more heroic Notions but um that that's that's what I
see United States is going to have to come to terms with a reduced position in
the world uh it has been doing that poorly for some years now so on one level it's
a continuation but I I am a hegelian and I
3:25:02
understand that quantitative decline at a certain point becomes a qualitative
shift you know with the old model Rising temperature of water until
it at a certain point becomes gas or the other way it becomes a solid with ice at
a certain point the adjustment downward of the American economy is going to
shake the society by imposing a qualitative uh shift I see the United
States if you want it argued a little differently as headed in the
direction of wealthy enclaves surrounded by a SE of
people in pretty tough economic circumstances that used to be the way
the rest of the world or much of it looked that's coming home to the United
States that's interesting and I don't think I think Mr Trump has cashed in on
3:26:06
that philos on that phenomena he's cashed in on the upset that this is
already creating when you get hints of all this but he is still
[Music] able to cash in on it
politically let me give you an example he can't
2-26 ... On How History Will Overwhelm Trump In the Next Four Years
2-27 ... Why We Should Expect More of the Same from Donald Trump
2-28 ... On His Hope For a Brighter Future From the Left
S-27 ... Why We Should Expect More of the Same from Donald Trump
3:28:30
do the rearing of American he can't do it every president of the last 10 has
promised to bring manufacturing back here none of them succeeded that's a
clue he's not going to either but he will tell you how he can do what they all fail to do sure you can
sure you can and if you would like I have this bridge between Manhattan and
Brooklyn that I will sell you a share in and you being a Real Estate Mogul you
3:29:04
for sure will be gullible enough to give me a few bucks for it I know so I don't
I don't think much is going to change we're going to continue pretty much as we are he is going to enjoy poking
liberal sensibilities by being outrageous with immigrants which will hurt many people by putting a tariff
which will hurt our economy in a whole host of ways when the bad results happen
he will be right there to blame somebody else so if there's a crash of airplanes
it's the bad people who want diversity and inclusion right which has gone in a
record short time from being something everybody nodded for because it's good
to now everybody's supposed to they bad bad causes air crashes no this is
childish but it's a dangerous childishness because it means you're not
3:30:04
looking at what's really quite in front of you I can see it one last point with the
Deep seek all these are I don't know if you're aware but in the day after they
came up with it their entire computer system was hacked and destroyed I mean
they'll fix it they know how but you know somebody wants to shut them down
I'll give you three guesses who it are but the first two you guesses don't count so you get one guess and
so these are attempts to stop you can't stop this you can't that's the history
of Technology you know we invented patents and copyright to try to make it illegal to slow down
what always happens which is copying and in a sense isn't that what we want we
want people to make the next step so that we can't just slow down the cancer
3:31:01
maybe we can cure it but to develop the Cure let's see what we were able to do with the you don't want people to do
that you know what that never works people find a way around that this
sanctions that we impose on Russia the world found ways around it Russia still
sells oil and gas in Europe believe it or not but the Russian gas has to go to
India and change the ship and go and there are ways around there always were and there are
now the whole thing about the sanctions was mostly for show to show Americans
look we are beating them hitting them with a F16 and we're hitting them with a we're we're losing H we're H it's the
sheriff he wasn't there that's a failure no no no look at how we're Chasing The
Usual Suspects a nation has to at some point grow up the United States has to at some
3:32:01
point kind of grow up and look at these things and not leave it to a relatively
small number of folks like me luckily I'm far from alone a lot of folks who
are willing and able to stand up and say hey there's another Emperor here who's
actually naked you know that little boy in the story we need a lot more little
boys and my hope is and it's not just my hope I see it I want to end on that
On His Hope For a Brighter Future From the Left
3:32:32
because for example the labor movement that we talked about earlier with the decline for 50 years is turning up it's
turning up it's many of us wondered if it ever would but it is is some of the
poorest paid workers some of those undocumented immigrants included are not
willing to work at Starbucks under the conditions of that employment or at
Amazon warehouses or at Fillin the blank the fast food joints they are forming
3:33:06
unions a lot of them they're having strikes they're developing new
strategies and I know it's not just among the lowest paid teachers are doing it around the country medical personnel
out in California the Kaiser Permanente People Extraordinary solidarity across
unions among workers that's for me very very hopeful and positive son my my
biggest regret about these things is only that they're not further along than they are the United States
needs a new Fresh leftwing political
party this uncomfortable coexistence inside the Democratic party with a Centrist
establishment absolutely determined to crush anything that comes from its left
3:34:04
wing whether it be Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Okio Cortez or any of the
others th this is silly this doesn't work there ought to be an
alternative Bernie Sanders when you ask him will tell you that he knows that the
people who he attracted were the people who ended up voting for Trump in large numbers well
they didn't want the establishment but going to the right was only because there was no other place to
go there Bernie was crushed by the Centrist pushed out so he didn't he couldn't
offer himself Trump did to the middle of the Republican Party namely wipe them
out what Bernie didn't try and didn't achieve if he did try okay that's an
3:35:02
imbalance that has to be faced and let's ask the question why does a country that
celebrates the freedom of choice limit the political to two was it the magic
number most other countries have more than two political parties that contest
including most of our European allies we have to we don't need freedom of choice
in politics what where's that written what what why
do we permit the two parties to make it impossible for third parties to get going which they systematically do and
many of them will tell you how they do it and I'm committed to it because we
live this strange public opinion in America that we have the nation of
Freedom we want freedom of churs just not there o it's like that when I explained
3:36:02
to my European friends why do most American cities have one newspaper we want freedom of choice we
just want one why should we have five in every village in France you can
go into the local Center as many do get your cup of espresso and sit there
reading the paper and so you pick up a copy of the paper in any French Village
and what can you get on the liberal Left End Lon their New York Times if you
don't like that you get a national wling paper called Le
Figaro and next to it on the Shelf is lity Humanity that's the daily Daily
newspaper of the French Communist party and it is not unusual to
see someone sitting there who's got all three of them they because they want to
see how the news is treated differently by the Communists and the right-wing
3:37:07
conservatives and the liberal left socialists that's what they they actually want and enjoy the freedom of
choice that Americans pretend to be committed to this is
weird it may not strike anyone but that's because it's really weird and you
haven't thought about it before and that that's a strange quality of the United States it
this this not goes back to the the beginning of our
conversation when I told you that I got into in economics because when I asked questions in college about economics I
could see particularly when it had to do with Revolution or Socialism or Marxism I could see the fear in my Teacher's
eye but I learned to respect the fear because it was better than what I often
3:38:05
found complete ignorance they couldn't answer the question they had no idea
what Marxist criticisms were they they had been so
traumatized as they were coming up in the education system that they understood Not only was it not smart to
say something Marxist it was not smart to know anything don't read it don't go
find the teacher to teach you don't don't don't amazing you're going to study
capitalism you're going to study all the people who love it and you're going to exclude all the people who don't who
find it in insufficient or bad what kind of an educate what kind of a society
does this is really how do you make it better if you don't have people with the
criticism having a conversation just showing you you know this could be better don't you want that not if you're
3:39:08
scared enough not if you have revved up the no we make fun or criticize of
societies that burn the books I used to say to my teacher I guess America
doesn't have to burn the books because you won't read them in any case and they would grin and smile they
got the joke but they didn't go read the book let me say a few things one Rick I
have been greedy and I have kept you for far too long but this has been amazing
you always managed to outdo yourself and I and our listeners
I'm sure are extremely grateful for this conversation so thank you so much I hope
so I appreciate your keeping at it I appreciate you translate or transform
all of these things into things that can be
3:40:01
understood I don't have much power but the power to affect the
conversation is the best I can do and you become a crucial partner in that
which I hope is satisfy to you as well as we do this thank you
but I mean it I really do mean it
[Music]
S-28 On his hope for a brighter future from the left
S-29
S-30
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
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