0:00

The future of America is

0:02

in your hands. This

0:06

is not a movie trailer, and it's

0:08

not a political ad, but it is

0:10

a call to action. I'm

0:12

Mila Atmos, and I'm passionate about unlocking

0:15

the power of everyday citizens. On our

0:17

podcast, Future Hindsight, we take big ideas

0:19

about civic life and democracy and turn

0:21

them into action items for you and

0:24

me. Every Thursday, we talk

0:26

to bold activists and civic innovators to

0:28

help you understand your power and

0:30

your power to change the status

0:33

quo. Find us at futurehindsight.com or

0:35

wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi,

0:39

I'm Nyla Budu, host of One

0:41

Big Thing for Maxios. Every week,

0:43

I talk to leaders you know or

0:45

need to know in business, politics, and

0:47

culture. We're not going to be changing the world

0:50

if we don't take some risks. We can't live

0:52

burying our heads. This technology is here.

0:55

We're going about it the wrong way because we don't know

0:57

the stuff to go for. Interviews, ideas,

0:59

and context all in 20 minutes

1:02

or less. That's one big

1:04

thing from Axios. Find us

1:06

every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.

1:10

The thing we know about economic

1:12

security is that it works, that

1:14

people, when they have it, are

1:16

able to have so many more

1:18

options, are able to start

1:20

the business, participate in democracy, be part

1:22

of their family. That is the cost

1:24

of not investing

1:27

in families, of not guaranteeing

1:29

economic security in America. And

1:32

I literally think the price is

1:35

as significant as democracy itself.

1:46

What could go right? I'm

1:48

Zachary Carabell, the founder of The Progress

1:50

Network, joined as always by Emma Varvalukas,

1:52

the executive director of The Progress Network.

1:54

And what could go right is our

1:56

weekly podcast where we look at, oddly

1:59

enough, what could go right, given that so many

2:01

people are so much of the time asking the

2:03

question of what could go wrong. Let

2:05

us pause for a minute and take a deep

2:07

breath and ask what it is that's going on

2:10

in the world that could go well. And one

2:12

of the great challenges of our day is what

2:14

we do about our various safety nets in terms

2:16

of health care and welfare

2:19

and housing and education. So we're

2:21

going to talk today to someone who has written

2:23

a compelling brief

2:26

for why there should be a set

2:29

of basic guarantees for

2:31

every American. What is

2:33

it that we should be saying that

2:35

everybody who lives in this affluent society

2:38

should have? So who are we going to talk to

2:40

today, Emma? So today we're going

2:42

to talk to Natalie Foster. She's the

2:44

president and co-founder of the Economic Security

2:46

Project. And her work focuses generally on

2:48

economic security, as the title might suggest,

2:50

the future of work and the new political

2:53

economy. As you mentioned, we're going

2:55

to talk to her today about her

2:57

book, which is called The Guarantee Inside

2:59

the Fight for America's Next Economy. She

3:02

served as digital director for President Obama's

3:04

Organizing America. And they were a key

3:06

player in winning transformative health care reform

3:08

that we all might know as the

3:10

ACA, the Affordable Care Act. Ready

3:12

to talk to Natalie? Absolutely.

3:16

Natalie Foster, thank you so much for joining

3:18

us today. You have a new book out

3:20

called The Guarantee, and it's

3:22

actually many guarantees. It's not just the

3:25

guarantee. It's like the guarantee

3:27

of guarantees. Same. But tell

3:29

us what the things are and then expand on

3:32

why'd you write it and why now. Yeah.

3:34

Well, it's really lovely to be here. So

3:36

thanks for having me. I mean, the

3:39

idea of reflecting on what could go

3:41

right is exactly what this book is

3:43

trying to do. So it's really an honor

3:45

to be here. You know, this book

3:47

is about envisioning the

3:50

economy that we deserve in America, envisioning

3:52

the economy that we deserve in

3:55

the richest nation on earth, in the

3:57

richest moment in history. And

3:59

it's naming a framework, a North

4:02

Star, that I'm calling

4:04

the guarantee framework, and

4:06

argues that every American's basic

4:09

needs should be met. And

4:11

the stakes couldn't be higher for that

4:14

given the era of

4:16

disruptions we're in, artificial

4:19

intelligence, climate chaos, more

4:21

important than ever that we raise the floor

4:23

for people in this country and

4:26

that we can do it. And there's proof of concept

4:28

for how to do it. And the

4:30

book introduces us to a lot of

4:32

the architects who have laid the groundwork

4:35

for these guarantees in

4:37

America. So let's

4:39

go over the guarantees. So I'm

4:41

going to list them and then if you want

4:44

to double tap, let's say a phrase that someone

4:46

used in a previous podcast episode that Zachary and

4:48

I went really crazy on. If you want to double

4:50

tap on any of them, feel free. So there's childcare,

4:53

a home, income floor, dignified work,

4:55

family care, college, and a downwind

4:57

at birth. Where would you like

4:59

to start? First is sort of

5:01

the big idea that it's a framework. And let

5:03

me explain sort of why. The last 45 years

5:07

of economic policymaking have really

5:09

been summed up by three

5:11

tenets, total faith in

5:13

the market, zero faith in government, and

5:15

people left pulling themselves up by their

5:17

own bootstraps. That's been the

5:20

economic orthodoxy of my entire

5:23

lifetime. Frankly, I'm not sure

5:25

I thought the American economy

5:27

could look any different than that, but

5:29

it turns out it can. It has

5:31

historically, there have been moments like the

5:33

New Deal where government played a very

5:35

different role in creating

5:37

the middle class and supporting people.

5:41

And it can again. And I believe we're

5:43

at a moment of transition where the last

5:45

45 years of

5:47

economic policymaking have left us

5:49

brittle, have left us in debt, and

5:52

have perhaps brought our

5:54

democracy to the brain.

5:56

And we are at a crossroads. And I think

5:59

the last few years years have shown us

6:01

a different economic policymaking is possible. And

6:03

so what I do with these seven

6:05

guarantees is show the proof

6:08

of concept. I have spent

6:10

the last eight years, heads down,

6:12

building the income guarantee. My colleagues

6:14

and I formed economic security project

6:16

right after the 2016 election

6:19

with Donald Trump being elected to

6:22

build on this big idea that there should

6:24

be an income floor in America. It's an

6:26

old idea and had a

6:29

surge of momentum during that

6:31

period of time. And so we started

6:33

the economic security project to help turn

6:35

that momentum into actual money in

6:38

people's pockets. And so as I put my

6:40

head up, I looked around and realized it

6:42

wasn't just the income guarantee that had had

6:44

so much progress. It was a whole host

6:46

of guarantees. And so you listed them out

6:49

beautifully and we can talk about any one

6:51

of them. But the point is simply to

6:53

illustrate a march toward a new economic

6:55

paradigm. You know, we had on this

6:57

podcast, Alyssa Quarter wrote this book, Bootstrapped.

7:00

I was just thinking about it because

7:02

you referenced the bootstrap part and also

7:04

the bizarreness of that particular metaphor and

7:06

that no one can actually physically pick

7:08

themselves up by their bootstraps. It's sort

7:10

of physically impossible, which was known at

7:12

the time, but then it became kind

7:14

of a stand in for hard

7:17

work, resilience, follow all those things.

7:19

And then rewards will come

7:21

your way, which I guess was sort

7:23

of the embedded promise of whatever we now call

7:25

the American dream. Frankly, this idea

7:27

of an American dream is kind of a,

7:30

in many ways, a much newer concept doesn't

7:32

mean people weren't living it in the 19th

7:34

century. It just means that by the time

7:36

that idea solidified an American culture of the

7:38

20th century, it was already a bit of

7:40

a romantic fantasy, but that isn't

7:43

me. Let's talk a little about

7:45

the income part or more. Interestingly,

7:47

you write a lot in the book

7:49

about the promise of the new deal.

7:52

And you write kind of eloquently about how

7:54

that was a framework, which we

7:56

largely live with today, meaning all

7:58

the institutions, the new deals. continue

8:00

to be Washington departments or institutions

8:02

and many of the institutions of

8:05

the Great Society as well, meaning

8:07

that's our framework, just like

8:09

the National Security Standards of Post 1945 framework. I

8:13

want to plunge into something in

8:15

this, and I guess this is

8:18

my own set of questions and

8:20

biases of guaranteeing basic human rights

8:23

seems to be absolutely essential for a wealthy society.

8:26

The idea that you need an

8:29

incredibly complicated bureaucracy to distribute it

8:31

is far less obvious than if anything,

8:34

you could have a system of complete

8:36

guarantees and a much smaller government.

8:39

What do you make of that particular equation? Again,

8:41

I kind of feel like we're diving in a

8:43

little bit. This is my big question in all

8:46

these things. Couldn't you have all these guarantees and

8:48

less government rather than all these guarantees and more

8:50

government? Yeah, I mean, the point of the book

8:52

is to name the North Star and it really

8:55

deliberately does not get into the

8:57

inter the tensions within how we

8:59

get to each guarantee. I talk

9:01

about one way to guarantee things might

9:03

be the public option. This

9:05

idea that government should create a

9:07

low cost, high quality option that

9:10

sits inside the private market. We

9:12

have public golf courses, we have private

9:14

golf courses, we have public libraries, we

9:16

have bookstores. And that might be a

9:18

way that you guarantee that you

9:21

get to the guarantee, a public

9:23

option for housing being I think

9:25

one of the new surges of

9:27

guarantee energy that I see growing.

9:30

And in that case, you wouldn't

9:32

necessarily have larger bureaucracy per se,

9:35

you would just have what it

9:37

takes to ensure that that product

9:39

is in the marketplace. So

9:42

I don't think I'm philosophically

9:44

opposed to what you're saying. I

9:46

think it's just a matter of how we

9:48

get there. Well, this might be a

9:50

good segue into guaranteed income. I think there's

9:52

no way a few different terms, right? Like

9:54

a lot of people know from Andrew Yang,

9:56

universal basic income. It's the same thing, right?

9:59

Well, I think it's a good thing. I think that

10:01

universal basic income is arguing that

10:03

everybody should get a check no

10:05

matter how much money they make. And

10:08

a guaranteed income might be means tested,

10:11

meaning it might go to the people

10:13

who need it the most, the big

10:15

idea they're being guaranteed. So

10:17

I think what I track in

10:20

the book and what I see a

10:22

lot of promise around is guaranteed income

10:24

that would start by going to families

10:26

that need it the most in the

10:28

United States, like the child tax

10:30

credit did, which was a guaranteed

10:32

income for families with children.

10:35

It was a big part of the Biden plan that

10:37

was supposed to stabilize the economy in

10:39

the aftermath of the pandemic. And

10:42

for six months, every parent in America who made under

10:44

$400,000, which is about 90% of

10:48

parents in America received checks

10:50

with no strings attached. But

10:53

that made a big difference. It wasn't universal. It

10:55

was focused on people who needed the most. So

10:57

that is the difference. But to your point, I

10:59

think what they share in common is this idea

11:01

that it's cash with no strings attached. People don't

11:04

have to stand in long lines and apply for

11:06

it. They don't have to prove how

11:08

they spent it or show up to take tests

11:10

or pee in a cup or any of the

11:12

things that the current safety net

11:14

requires, but that it's simple and

11:17

it comes on a regular basis. So

11:19

the one US experiment that I'm

11:21

most familiar with, and there have been a

11:23

few, was the city of Stockton under Mayor

11:26

Tubbs. And I believe you were pretty involved

11:28

in that as well, which was heralded as

11:30

kind of a microcosm, a laboratory of what

11:32

would a universal basic income program actually look

11:34

like if you pick people and send them

11:36

money. And then it

11:38

all became very politicized. And I'm not entirely

11:40

sure what the conclusion was of that, but

11:42

maybe you could walk us through what the

11:45

real world experience of that was and how

11:47

much one could extrapolate from it. Yeah,

11:49

I think it's actually pretty extraordinary.

11:51

You have this young mayor,

11:54

who at the time was one of

11:56

the youngest mayors in America, who himself

11:58

grew up in poverty. And goes

12:01

away to Stanford comes back to

12:03

Stockton California and says I want

12:05

to do something that will eradicate

12:07

poverty in my city. And

12:09

we teamed up we have the economic

12:11

security project teamed up with michael early

12:14

on i actually sat next to him

12:16

at a conference and

12:18

i was calling around to city at the time

12:20

trying to find a man who would demonstrate this

12:22

idea because the time there was a

12:24

lot of research a lot of white

12:26

papers and a lot of

12:29

sort of cool detached ideation around

12:31

the idea that does not

12:33

get you policy you need to

12:35

open up the political imagination and

12:38

prove that it's possible and

12:40

to demonstrate what it would look like

12:42

and so that is in fact what

12:44

mayor tubs did and he set

12:46

up about eight years ago and announced i'm

12:49

gonna do this in stockton. And

12:51

i'm going to demonstrate what an income

12:54

for would look like here in the

12:56

city and so for two years a

12:58

hundred and twenty five families received five

13:01

hundred dollars a month with

13:03

no strings attached. They were families

13:05

who made at median income level

13:07

or below the wide

13:10

swaths of stockton which is a very

13:12

diverse city about an hour and

13:14

a half away from the area. And

13:17

it was studied closely by researchers who

13:19

are at the university of pennsylvania

13:22

and the conclusions were after

13:24

two years of people receiving

13:26

five hundred dollars a month with

13:28

no strings attached. That people

13:31

were stressed they

13:33

had more room to breathe in their

13:35

life and the people who

13:37

would receive the money actually found. Fulltime

13:41

employment at double the rate than

13:43

the people who did not and

13:46

that is because people had time to invest in

13:48

themselves and invest in finding a job

13:50

that was meaningful to them are closer

13:53

to home or on a managerial track.

13:56

And those are some of the findings that

13:58

come out of stock. doctrine, notably

14:01

the room to breathe and

14:03

the decrease in anxiety and

14:06

stress. And then the

14:08

idea is that this is on top of

14:10

any other benefits that a family

14:12

might qualify for from the state or federally,

14:14

is that right? Exactly. That

14:17

it sits alongside wages, that it

14:19

is on top of, you know, any

14:21

sort of housing vouchers or

14:23

supplements that people get, that it's

14:25

just cash that people can use

14:29

each month. Whether it be a

14:31

transmission that breaks in the car, that

14:33

prevents one from getting to work, whether

14:35

it be paying the final bit needed

14:37

to get to the rent check that

14:39

comes due every month, or

14:42

whether it be buying athletic uniforms

14:44

for kids right at

14:46

the start of the season when the kids,

14:48

you know, need the uniform. Everything as simple

14:50

as that that families who have a lot

14:52

of disposable income take for granted. And

14:55

so many families in America, it's about four

14:57

in 10 families in America, cannot pull together

15:00

$400 in an emergency if

15:02

they need to. And that's when it becomes

15:04

much harder. So the pushback, both

15:06

from conservatives and I think a lot of whatever

15:09

people in this vague thing

15:11

we call the center, is

15:13

where's the money going to come from to do that? Like

15:15

if you're going to send everyone a check, who's

15:17

going to pay for those checks? Now you

15:19

could say, which is more of a

15:22

progressive answer, that there is a X

15:24

amount of wealth at the top, whether

15:26

it's billionaires or centimillionaires or corporations that

15:28

is not taxed

15:30

commensurate to their

15:33

use of a commons that they somewhat free

15:35

ride on. And therefore, there's kind of money

15:37

at the top that could be

15:39

otherwise used or collected. I

15:41

suppose it's questionable whether there's even sufficient money

15:44

at the top to redistribute enough to get

15:46

to your UBI. But I think there's the

15:48

question of A, where does it come from?

15:50

B, should it come from there? And C,

15:53

back to Emma's question, should or should not

15:55

that be in conjunction with altering the rest

15:57

of all the very against the

15:59

rest? spending that we already

16:01

do messily. My vision of

16:03

the Freedom Dividend is that it's universal

16:06

and an opt-in but if

16:08

you opt-in then your forgoing

16:10

benefits that are accruing from

16:12

certain other programs. So if

16:14

you're receiving housing benefits and heating benefits

16:18

and SNAP and some other things then you would

16:20

look at it and say like do I prefer

16:22

a thousand dollars cash to these benefits. So

16:25

you are having people choose

16:27

between the existing benefits they

16:29

have or the thousand dollars. Yeah.

16:32

And that would enable you to wind down

16:34

some of those other programs. It would reduce

16:36

enrollment and subscriptions. America

16:39

always finds a way

16:42

to pay for what America deems important

16:44

and the question is not how do

16:46

we pay for it but how do

16:48

we get the political well needed to

16:51

really modernize the social

16:53

contract for the new age

16:55

in which we live.

16:57

The truth is that there is

17:00

reams and reams and reams of

17:02

research on how we can generate

17:05

the revenue needed to frankly

17:07

see all the guarantees in

17:10

America much less the income

17:12

guarantee from reports that the

17:14

National Economic Council puts out

17:16

to think tanks like the

17:18

Roosevelt Institute. An example is

17:21

a small fee on high-frequency trading

17:23

that would generate you know billions

17:26

and billions of dollars a year.

17:28

So there are a number of ways that

17:30

it could be paid for. The question is how do

17:32

we generate the political well

17:34

and I frankly wrote this book

17:36

to invite economists and policymakers

17:39

and others to the table

17:41

to help answer the question

17:43

of how we would get

17:45

there. That said I'll

17:47

also say that with the

17:49

income guarantee specifically we now

17:52

have this experience of really

17:54

a national experiment in America

17:56

with the child tax credit the expanded

17:58

child tax credit. Meaning that

18:00

nearly every parent in America received a check.

18:04

And we in America fared

18:06

better than so many other countries

18:08

who dealt with the same set

18:11

of economic forces during the pandemic,

18:13

during the supply chain crisis, during the

18:15

start of the Ukraine war, and

18:18

whose economies have bounced back in

18:20

less of a robust way.

18:22

And I think it's largely because we

18:25

did things like the child tax credit.

18:27

We invested in families. We sent people

18:29

stimulus checks. We canceled student debt. And

18:31

we made sure that it was really

18:34

a middle out economic recovery, which changed

18:36

the trajectory of this country. Well,

18:39

I guess that's an interesting fall to the

18:41

political will question, right? Because if what you

18:43

say is true, like we did come out

18:45

of a period and you talk about this

18:47

in the book during COVID, where a lot

18:49

of the normal rules of operation got juggled

18:51

around and the federal government did vastly different

18:53

things than it had done, you know, the

18:55

decade prior. And yet coming

18:58

out of that, the architects of

19:00

this juggling that apparently has led us

19:02

into good economic fortune does not seem to

19:05

be rewarded politically. People don't seem to be

19:07

excited about it the way that there was

19:09

energy around it for Occupy Wall Street, for

19:11

instance. So how do you explain that? What

19:13

does that look like to you? Why

19:16

do we have the vibe session? Yeah.

19:19

Yeah, I think it's a really good

19:22

question. You know, I think that people

19:24

see the economy as a proxy for

19:26

politics. And what they're really saying is

19:29

I'm very disappointed in

19:31

politics today in America. And

19:34

I think that a lot of what

19:36

we're talking about holds well

19:39

on both sides of the aisle.

19:41

So if you just take the

19:43

child tax credit, for example, you

19:45

see a significant support among Democrats

19:47

and you see a pretty good

19:49

support among Republicans, particularly Republican parents

19:51

who received the tax. And

19:54

when you point to this is an elected official

19:57

who brought you these child tax credit

19:59

tax. support for that

20:01

elected official goes up significantly.

20:03

So we know that the

20:06

support is there. I think it's getting

20:08

through the malaise of the moment. And

20:10

that is the work to do over

20:12

the next several months as we march

20:14

down toward a November election. History

20:23

doesn't repeat itself, but it often

20:25

rhymes. That may be a

20:27

Mark Twain quote, but it's just as true

20:29

today is when he originally said it. My

20:32

History Can Beat Up Your Politics is a

20:34

podcast that compares and contrasts history to the

20:36

current events of today. Host Bruce Carlson has

20:38

recently done deep dives on fascinating topics like

20:40

the fall of the Soviet Union, which sets

20:42

the stage for today's geopolitics, the man who

20:44

was in prison and still won a million

20:47

votes for the presidency, and the mystery behind

20:49

George Washington's involvement, or lack thereof, in the

20:51

Bill of Rights. My History Can Beat

20:53

Up Your Politics offers deep context to all

20:55

these historic stories, especially those that you may

20:57

think you know well, and is particularly adept

21:00

at relating them to current events. So don't

21:02

miss out. Listen to My History Can Beat

21:04

Up Your Politics on all platforms. The

21:07

government of Kenya pledged to end gender-based violence

21:09

by 2026. The

21:11

Ministry of Health in Uganda is trying to

21:14

eradicate yellow fever. It's ambitious to make these

21:16

kinds of pledges, but it is much harder

21:18

to achieve these lofty goals. Are these leaders

21:20

really delivering on these promises for women and

21:22

girls? Tune into a new

21:24

season of the hidden economics of

21:26

remarkable women, a podcast from foreign

21:28

policy, as reporters across Africa meet

21:30

courageous women holding leaders accountable in

21:32

various sectors, including healthcare, startups, and

21:35

the government. Listen to Hidden Economics

21:37

of Remarkable Women wherever you get your

21:39

podcasts. You

21:43

know, one of the waves of

21:46

malaise that I think we don't look at

21:48

enough, and what I'm

21:50

going to say now is clearly debatable, but interested

21:52

as to how you would debate it, you

21:55

write in the book at one

21:57

point that America's social spending, housing,

21:59

some basic... education, public education,

22:01

is a meager social spending. And

22:04

it struck me for many years

22:06

that in many ways the United

22:08

States compared to Western Europe, compared to

22:10

Canada, compared to Singapore, Taiwan, manages

22:13

to kind of have the worst of all

22:15

possible worlds in the way we approach social

22:17

spending in that we

22:19

spend an immense amount of money

22:22

on healthcare, housing, and all these

22:24

other things, emergency room medicine. We

22:27

demonize safety nets, we have a portion

22:29

of us. We

22:31

have an ineffective but extremely bloated bureaucracy

22:33

that distributes it. And so we end

22:35

up both having an incredibly expensive safety

22:38

net that doesn't make people

22:40

feel safe, that doesn't function effectively

22:42

as a net. And in that sense, we're

22:44

neither like some countries that just say, you

22:46

know, you're poor, you're poor, sorry, whenever, you

22:49

know, this is how you were

22:51

born into a system of you're just poor.

22:53

And that that part of the continual roilingness,

22:55

which you see each time the federal government

22:57

attempts to address healthcare, both in the

22:59

90s, and then again, with the Affordable

23:02

Care Act, and then even

23:04

with the Republican attempts to, you know, demonize

23:06

Obamacare and repeal it, meaning for all the

23:08

demonization, it's not like they actually could repeal

23:10

it or replace it. That explains some of

23:12

this massive opposition to whatever

23:14

we call a safety net on the right,

23:17

and also massive discontent with the safety net on

23:19

whatever we call the lab. Yes,

23:22

yes, I have finished reading Jen

23:24

Palka's book recoding America, where she

23:26

talks about really how we start

23:28

to get at a government that

23:31

works by expanding state capacity and

23:33

taking seriously user generated

23:35

government services. And

23:38

I feel like it's a real clarion call

23:40

for people that want to see government work.

23:43

But zooming out, I'd say that, you

23:45

know, we as a

23:47

nation have lost the sense that

23:49

so many of these things are

23:51

public goods. But instead we view

23:53

them as individual investments to make.

23:55

So take college, we've shifted

23:57

from the idea that it is good

24:00

For society to has an educated

24:02

populace and you have people to

24:04

dig into the big questions of

24:07

the time. And instead treat as

24:09

an individual and best match where you take

24:11

out tens of thousands of dollars of debt

24:13

a year. To. Have.

24:16

Ah, and he doesn't have to be that way. Same.

24:18

Thing is true for housing. The same thing

24:21

is true for health care that costs of

24:23

those things have skyrocketed and people have sold

24:25

or to. That on their own,

24:27

Baxter's not even a synthetic should be

24:29

a safety net to use. Or that

24:31

it should be a public died that

24:33

we and Bastion and Society and that's

24:35

funny thing is starting to change. You

24:37

know? one of the things we saw

24:39

during the Pandemic. With. Not just

24:42

here is more Section Eight

24:44

housing Vouchers. To go try and

24:46

find a landlord who will take down

24:48

and a apartment that will work for

24:51

your. Family was like more of the same

24:53

we said you know at we're going to

24:55

buy hotels that sit empty and America and

24:57

we're going a movie on housed In and

24:59

we're going to give people their own room

25:01

and exceeded their room and we're going to

25:03

do all of that over the course of

25:05

weeks. For gonna do all of that over

25:07

the course of months. And that was

25:09

the man on the moon. Spirit that

25:11

I want. To see on problems

25:14

feel intractable like housing that I think

25:16

will cut through the Malays. Were talking

25:18

about and reinstall the trust in what's

25:20

possible to the point you're making. So.

25:22

I wanna go back a little bit. What

25:24

you're talking about the City College and since

25:27

like one of my biggest Bugaboo is on

25:29

the left than a supremacists, they're saying that

25:31

I do graduate college with tens of thousands

25:33

of dollars and said so. I don't say

25:35

this from a lack of sensitivity to the

25:37

issue about by my Bugaboo is that they

25:39

so much focus specifically on the laughs about

25:41

canceling student loans and to mean says a

25:43

band. Aid over. A problem. The

25:45

by the ministry announced his latest

25:47

round of student debt relief Wednesday

25:49

More than six billion dollars will

25:52

be cancelled for three hundred and

25:54

seventeen thousand borrowers who enrolled at

25:56

any Art Institute campus. between two

25:58

thousand four in two thousand seventy President

26:00

Biden and the Education Department say the

26:03

art institutes a now defunct

26:05

system of for-profit art schools

26:08

knowingly misled prospective students with

26:10

inflated salary expectations. This

26:12

brings the total amount of student loans forgiven by

26:14

the Biden administration to almost $160 billion. There's

26:18

a limit to what the government can do

26:21

vis-a-vis private universities, but I have to wonder

26:23

about why the left is not spending the

26:25

energy talking about funding public universities. Or maybe

26:27

there are other ideas out there that I

26:29

haven't considered. And why is it always a

26:32

canceling that you'll then just have to cancel

26:34

again and again and again in the

26:36

future? Yeah, I just couldn't agree more.

26:38

And so the guarantee I look at in

26:40

the book is the guarantee of debt-free

26:42

college, that we have to make an

26:45

investment in this as a

26:47

public good. And I show how much progress

26:49

we've actually made. So in the

26:51

book, I trace the story of Astra Taylor, who

26:54

makes a bunch of films and documentaries

26:56

and then teams up around the time

26:58

of Occupy with David Graber. And they're

27:01

talking about canceling debt, medical debt,

27:03

student debt. And so they started to buy it

27:05

on the secondary market and cancel it,

27:07

you know, raising thousands of dollars

27:09

to cancel millions of dollars of debt. It's

27:11

very inspiring work, but it's all a drop

27:13

in the bucket. Right around that

27:16

time, student debt in America hits

27:18

a trillion dollars. It's much higher

27:20

now, but that was an

27:22

extraordinary moment. And she

27:24

realizes we have to be organized.

27:27

So starts the Debt Collective, one

27:29

of the many organizations fighting for

27:31

debt-free college. And from

27:33

there, an idea that was almost laughed out of

27:35

the room during even

27:38

an Obama administration, the idea

27:40

of canceling debt, becomes

27:42

a Rose Garden event in the Biden

27:44

administration. As millions and millions of dollars

27:47

of debt get canceled, you know, it's

27:49

bandied about in courts, but it is

27:51

certainly the desire of the

27:53

administration to cancel the debt, which is

27:55

a step toward debt-free college. And to

27:58

the point you're making, there is... all

28:00

kinds of promise programs that start to

28:02

grow during this period, which start to

28:05

get at free community college, free four-year

28:07

college. And there's more and more of

28:09

an emphasis on that than there has

28:11

been in the past. So there's still

28:14

a long way to go to reinvesting

28:17

in public education in a

28:19

way. You know, there was a time in America

28:21

where high school was not a right and high

28:23

school wasn't free. And it certainly wasn't for everyone.

28:25

And that was a movement that said, no, we

28:28

want kids in this country to go to four

28:30

years of high school. And we did it. And

28:33

there's no question in my mind that we can

28:35

do it again with college if we continue on,

28:37

you know, this path we're on. Yeah,

28:39

I mean, we could probably have a whole

28:41

hour-long conversation about all the vagaries of student

28:43

debt. There's also, in some sense,

28:45

there's multiple different issues of

28:47

student debt. The most egregious one, really,

28:50

is not under 25-year-olds going

28:52

to four-year colleges. People

28:54

going to for-profit schools who have

28:56

full-time jobs and have been kind

28:58

of lured into a questionable

29:01

degree at very high prices with very

29:03

high interest rates that are then backed

29:05

up by the government, which

29:08

also disproportionately affects people of class

29:10

and minorities, meaning that people go

29:12

back for the two-year for-profit associates

29:14

degree, proportionally tend to be either

29:16

African American or Hispanic or from

29:18

a lower income, where that debt

29:20

becomes absolutely unsustainable as opposed to,

29:22

and using Emma's or other

29:24

guinea pig here, somewhat more

29:27

affluent four-year elite colleges where, you know,

29:29

there's a huge difference about, like, going

29:31

to Harvard and having $15,000 or $20,000

29:33

of student debt and being 30 years old, working full-time, and

29:38

going to the University of Phoenix or whatever the

29:40

current version thereof is. And I

29:43

feel like to some degree, because it's

29:45

easy in politics to talk about this

29:47

as one problem, mostly because

29:49

we're not used to our

29:51

politicians talking about anything in

29:53

terms of sophistication or complexity,

29:56

that all these things get lumped in a way that

29:58

isn't particularly healthy to solving. the problem. I

30:01

think you're absolutely right. Tressie McMillan-Katem

30:03

writes a lot about the

30:05

dangers of private colleges

30:08

in her book, which I pulled from a

30:10

lot for this book. And

30:12

in some ways, the private colleges, which to

30:15

your point, I think have had, you know,

30:17

about 80% of their funding coming from

30:19

taxpayers. Not just private for-profit

30:21

colleges. Private, thank you, for-profit

30:24

colleges, yes, funded through, you

30:26

know, Pell Grants and other

30:28

student loan support that government

30:30

gives, are stepping into the

30:33

void of a guarantee. If

30:36

we had a guarantee of college in

30:38

America, like so many developed countries do,

30:41

then you wouldn't have a need for

30:43

the for-profit colleges. And

30:46

our current Vice President, Kamala Harris, when

30:48

she was Attorney General of the state

30:50

of California, sued the Corinthian

30:52

schools, which is one of the

30:55

most infamous private for-profit

30:57

colleges out there where you saw

30:59

government take action. And

31:02

they, in response, you know, pulled out

31:04

of California. And then that is one

31:06

of the first instances of student debt

31:08

cancellation was the cancellation of those debtors,

31:10

they were called the Corinthian 15, who

31:13

fought for years and years and years in the courts and

31:16

legislatively to make the point that

31:18

you're making, that this is a

31:20

predatory way of educating people in

31:22

America. And by the way, that's

31:24

a really important point, which I know you make in the

31:26

book, but just for people listening to remind

31:29

people of these

31:31

hidden government guarantees that currently

31:33

exist. There are within our

31:36

system, as it has evolved

31:38

and accreted over decades, multiple

31:40

guarantees that exist that we don't really

31:42

recognize as such. And the student loan

31:44

one is indeed a guarantee, right? It

31:46

is a federal government saying that in

31:49

the absence of students being able to

31:51

pay the lender, the government

31:53

will make those lenders whole. There's

31:56

no more guarantee than that, right? That's the ultimate.

31:58

If it's not money spent, you know... Fannie

32:00

Mae and some of the ways in which we

32:02

underwrite housing finance, same thing. There's an embedded guarantee.

32:05

Doesn't necessarily help those who can't qualify for a

32:07

mortgage, right? Because it's a guarantee of a loan.

32:09

But the more that you can remind people of

32:12

that, again, or the more that people can be

32:15

made aware of the multiple guarantees

32:17

that we currently fund, even

32:19

if we don't recognize or identify them as such,

32:22

I think the less it seems some

32:24

sort of, yeah, it wouldn't be great

32:26

if everybody had anything and everything and

32:28

much more. We could do such

32:30

a better job and potentially even spend way

32:33

less money providing all these things, some of

32:35

which we provide covertly and badly, some of

32:37

which we don't provide at all, but

32:40

many of which exist in some

32:42

bizarre form or another through some

32:44

government agency, state or federal. Yeah,

32:47

the guarantees are actually foundational

32:49

to capitalism that

32:51

to function businesses in this

32:53

country enjoy a number of

32:55

guarantees for bankruptcy protection, to

32:57

courts that work to the monetary system.

32:59

There's so many guarantees built in to

33:02

capitalism. So I'm arguing let's just extend

33:04

it to the people. Hey,

33:17

it's Emma. They say you should learn something

33:19

new every day. It's good advice,

33:21

but with so much to do in your daily life,

33:23

how are you going to make the time to learn

33:25

and stay curious about our world? Well,

33:27

with everything everywhere daily, you can

33:30

easily make that goal an actual reality.

33:33

Everything ever daily is one of the world's

33:35

most popular daily education podcast and a top

33:37

three history podcast. In about

33:39

10 minutes, you can learn something new every

33:41

day. The show covers history, science,

33:43

geography, mathematics, and technology, as well

33:45

as biographies from some of the

33:47

world's most interesting people. Fans

33:50

of the show are so passionate that you don't

33:52

work to join the completionist The

33:54

group of dedicated listeners who have listened to

33:56

every single one of the shows more than

33:58

a thousand and counting. episodes. All

34:01

the episodes are informative, interesting, and best of

34:03

all, always under 15 minutes. So

34:06

go ahead, learn something new every

34:08

single day with everything everywhere daily.

34:11

Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or

34:13

wherever you get your podcasts. Hey

34:16

everybody, I'm Scott Schaeffer. And I'm Marisa

34:19

Lagos. We're the host of Political Breakdown,

34:21

a show that pulls back the curtain

34:23

on the people and forces driving politics

34:25

in the Golden State from KQED in

34:27

San Francisco. And

34:29

now ahead of the 2024 election,

34:31

we are bringing you even more.

34:34

More conversations with the top movers

34:36

and shakers of the state capitol

34:38

and in national politics. But

34:40

the dyslexia was the greatest gift that ever

34:42

happened to me. Nothing was wrote, nothing was

34:44

linear. I had to work around things, work

34:46

differently, see the world differently. And I say

34:48

that to young people and say, know how

34:51

important your participation is.

34:53

And I think it's the time for this

34:55

generation to put forward new voices. More reporting

34:57

with analysis. It's been a very

34:59

good session for organized labor. Hot labor summer.

35:01

Hot labor summer, it's turning out to be

35:03

a nice fall as well. More

35:05

politics with personality. I've sweat election day

35:08

my entire life. We

35:10

hear that. Political Breakdown daily. Every

35:13

weekday, we'll break down what's happening and

35:15

why it matters. With news that

35:18

informs, surprises, and maybe even inspires

35:20

you. Political Breakdown goes

35:22

daily starting January 8th. So

35:35

Natalie, let's talk about one of the other guarantees,

35:37

which is the endowment at birth. I feel like

35:39

this is one that is not talked about that

35:41

often. So can you walk us through that?

35:44

Yes. So this is one of

35:46

the newer ideas, a guaranteed inheritance

35:49

or a baby bond, as

35:51

it's colloquially called. And

35:53

this is building on the work of Derek Hamilton, a

35:56

professor at the New School who's done a lot of

35:58

thinking about the nature of the world. of

36:01

wealth inequality, the racialized

36:03

implications of wealth inequality, the

36:05

fact that you know a white family

36:07

has eight times the wealth of a

36:10

black family in America and in

36:12

some places that is Atlanta,

36:14

white family has 46 times

36:16

the wealth of a black family in America. That that

36:18

is one of the great moral stains

36:21

of this modern economy is the

36:23

racial wealth gap and

36:26

any sort of income supports whether

36:28

it be raising the minimum wage

36:30

or a guaranteed income that those

36:32

are important but will never get out wealth.

36:35

Wealth is different from income but

36:38

one of the things that would get out wealth is

36:40

a guaranteed inheritance and

36:43

the idea is that you'd create

36:45

an endowment at birth, a bond

36:47

that would accrue money over the

36:49

years and you'd target it by

36:51

income and so a low income

36:53

child when they turn 18 might have $50,000 in

36:55

their bond and a higher income

36:59

child might have $5,000 but that

37:01

it would be something that every child in

37:03

America has. That's one way

37:05

of articulating that the policy idea and this

37:09

has gone from the margins

37:11

to the mainstream. In rapid

37:13

speed you had Cory Booker

37:15

running for president on this

37:17

and the primary of ideas of 2020

37:19

and over the

37:22

course of the last few years we've

37:24

seen several states actually pass this idea.

37:26

So the state of Connecticut has

37:28

a baby bonds program.

37:30

Washington DC has passed a

37:32

baby bonds program. In California last year,

37:35

my home state, we had

37:37

a significant surplus. We were

37:39

still in the aftermath of

37:41

COVID policymaking and

37:43

Senator Nancy Skinner, a

37:45

forward-looking legislator in California, created

37:48

baby bonds in the state of California

37:51

for children whose parent died of COVID

37:53

or who are leaving the foster care

37:55

system. And so I think of

37:57

this as the laboratories of democracy. where

38:00

the idea is being worked out at the

38:02

city level, at the state level, and ultimately

38:04

can be scaled to the federal

38:07

level as part of a guaranteed

38:09

economy down the line. I'm going

38:12

to ask you a follow-up question about that.

38:14

So does that just happen automatically about birth?

38:16

Because I asked, I'm thinking about a friend

38:18

of mine that grew up with someone. His

38:20

mother definitely should have had them on

38:22

benefits, right? But she did not have her

38:24

act together to get them on benefits. So is this something

38:26

where a baby is born and

38:28

there still needs to be something filed

38:30

to get the application through? Is it

38:33

just like the baby's on register? This

38:35

is the account. You turn 18. Here you go.

38:38

That is a great question. And that gets to the policy

38:41

implementation details. There's

38:43

no reason why we couldn't automatically...

38:46

We assigned social security numbers. There's

38:48

no reason why we couldn't automatically open

38:50

accounts for children. I think most of

38:52

them today, they're really building on the

38:54

work of the last several decades of

38:57

something called child savings accounts. And that

38:59

tended to be parents, a school district

39:01

or some public entity encouraging parents to

39:04

open these accounts for their children. And

39:06

then the entity would start to put some

39:08

money in and encourage the parents to save

39:10

as well. So that's a policy implementation

39:12

question. And your point, or at least that

39:15

I'm hearing in the story, is it would

39:17

be better for kids if it

39:19

was frictionless and automatic

39:21

so that they weren't held

39:23

back by decisions parents made

39:25

18 years prior? Yeah. I

39:27

mean, this gets to this. There is

39:29

an aspect of people's dislike or

39:31

distrust of government that is

39:33

not just the proliferation of

39:36

neoliberal ideas and the virtues of the

39:38

market. And I think some of the

39:40

critique of neoliberalism has obscured the degree

39:42

to which many people's experience of government

39:45

is humiliating, particularly because of the

39:47

way in which means testing or the

39:49

way in which the interaction with the

39:52

bureaucracy, whether it's healthcare reimbursements, whether it's

39:54

getting your food stamps or qualifying for

39:56

whatever level of aid, it's a constant

39:58

like supplicant position. where

40:01

no is a potentially devastating answer

40:03

on somebody who you have no

40:05

actual relationship to. Literally

40:07

the nameless bureaucrat appears to have

40:09

the power to manifestly make

40:11

you feel small and harm your life, which

40:13

is the opposite of a safety net, right?

40:16

It's like a humiliation net or something. There

40:18

is a degree to which people simply don't

40:20

trust government because their experience of government hasn't

40:22

been trustworthy. Not just the intellectual

40:25

ideas from the Chicago School and

40:28

the kind of debates that educated people have

40:30

about what the nature of the system is.

40:32

And I do think that's something we need

40:34

to grapple with as we propose solutions is

40:36

that I don't know how that divide gets

40:38

bridged. I mean, clearly

40:40

people expect certain basics. I mean,

40:42

there was a famous, might've been

40:45

a procliferful, but I think it wasn't. Signs

40:47

at a Trump rally in 2016, you know,

40:50

government hands off my Medicare as

40:52

a kind of an example of there

40:54

are things that people of all political

40:56

persuasions expect of government. People

40:58

stop, whether they're a Democrat, whether they're a

41:01

Trumpian or Bernie Sanders progresses. But

41:03

I'm not sure you get into that a lot in

41:05

the book, but you've thought about this a lot in

41:07

terms of what's the role of government. So what do

41:10

you say to people who just don't believe government is

41:12

capable of doing anything other than making things worse or

41:15

complicated or just

41:17

incredibly intractable? We are

41:19

living in the aftermath of the

41:21

last 45 to 50 years of policymaking that

41:23

said it's government's job to get out of the

41:26

way and to leave it to the markets

41:28

to solve the problems and

41:30

people are out, you know, they're

41:32

on their own to figure out how to make it

41:35

in this world. And so we've

41:37

intentionally made it such

41:40

that government doesn't

41:42

work in so many instances and that

41:44

your experience of government is one that

41:47

you call humiliating. And that's something that

41:49

we hear over and over. Not

41:52

only that, but the story we tell is

41:54

that if you don't make it, it's your

41:56

fault. And we hear a lot

41:58

of conversation about shame. shame

42:00

for having hundreds of thousands

42:02

of dollars of debt, even though the story in

42:05

America was that was exactly what you were supposed

42:07

to do in order to go to college. The

42:09

shame of having bought a home in 2008 before

42:11

the crisis hit, and then your home being

42:16

worth a quarter of what it was

42:19

supposed to be. And

42:21

the shame of getting cancer and then

42:23

having to go to

42:25

GoFundMe in order to

42:27

afford the treatments in

42:30

the wealthiest nation honor. And

42:32

so it's humiliation and shame. And I

42:34

think it is time for a new

42:37

story. And I think the book is

42:39

filled with a few of those stories.

42:41

Let me tell you about Montgomery County,

42:43

Maryland. For a long time, you know,

42:45

government has left housing up to the

42:47

private market to solve. And here we

42:49

are with 6 million units short

42:52

in this country. The inability to

42:54

build in most cities for a

42:56

whole host of reasons that

42:58

we get into in the book and rent

43:02

skyrocketing. So a true housing crisis in

43:04

America and in Montgomery County, Maryland, the

43:06

Housing Authority said, we actually think it's

43:08

our job to ensure that

43:11

there is housing built in

43:14

this county that supports middle

43:16

income earners that is kept

43:18

off, permanently off the speculative market

43:20

so that it can always be available to

43:22

middle income earners and that it's good housing

43:25

and that it's housing right on a transit line.

43:27

And so they shouldered, you know, the

43:30

financial risk of building housing and

43:32

worked with private builders and did just that.

43:35

And that is government working. They now have

43:37

thousands of units that Montgomery County

43:39

Marylanders can live in. And

43:42

we're seeing housing authorities all over the country

43:45

take note and start to do something

43:47

similar. So I think we have

43:49

to look for stories of where government is working and

43:51

really support that in order

43:53

to tell a new story of an

43:56

economy that can ensure the good life.

43:58

And this has been poor and sad. about things on

44:00

a state level, but also a regional local

44:03

level, right? Because I feel like it gets

44:05

flattened a lot into blue states, red states,

44:07

or like progressive mayors or non-progressive mayors or

44:09

conservative mayors. This is working, that's not working.

44:11

But you don't actually get into, here's a

44:13

real life example of something that worked. And

44:16

like, whether that's red or blue

44:18

or whatever the sad you was, let's just

44:20

copy it. I also wanted to ask

44:22

as a kind of a piggyback onto Zachary's

44:25

question is what do you say to people that,

44:27

you know, I live in Greece, were

44:29

sort of the quintessential warning story of government

44:31

waste and the government squandering of money. You

44:33

know, we certainly had a period that reminds

44:35

me of Oprah, like, you get a check, you get

44:37

a pension, you get this, you get that. And we certainly paid

44:40

for it severely. So what do you say

44:42

to people that are afraid that we're going

44:44

to tip too far on that side of

44:46

the spectrum? Let's say you waved a magic

44:48

wand, all these guarantees came true.

44:50

There was a lot more money being

44:53

spent than there's money being spent now.

44:56

And then it turns out these things didn't

44:58

work. And we are in debt

45:00

as a nation heavily. The

45:02

thing we know about economic security

45:04

is that it works, that people

45:07

when they have it, are able

45:09

to have so many more options,

45:11

are able to start the business

45:14

they want to start, be entrepreneurial,

45:16

just participate in democracy, be part

45:18

of their family. We know that

45:20

economic security works. So the question, in

45:22

my mind, is what is the cost

45:24

of not investing in families,

45:27

of not guaranteeing economic

45:29

security in America? And I literally

45:31

think the price is

45:34

as significant as democracy itself.

45:36

Well, I think on that full-throated

45:39

note, we

45:41

will bring this particular phase of

45:43

a much longer conversation to an end.

45:45

But I would urge everyone to go

45:47

and read the book to

45:50

guarantee it's got a lot of history about

45:52

how we kind of got to where we

45:54

are. It's certainly a partisan book, but probably

45:56

in a good way. It's an honestly partisan

45:58

book. But it's a discussion. that I

46:00

think is much more bipartisan

46:02

than people think. You know, back

46:04

to that, poverty is not

46:06

a political party. No political party has

46:09

a lock on people struggling

46:11

to provide basic needs

46:13

for themselves and different people come up

46:15

with different political expressions

46:17

of that discontent.

46:20

Some people go right, some people go left,

46:23

but that core issue is much

46:25

more human and ubiquitous and

46:27

one that I think neither party

46:29

has really done a great job squaring the circle

46:31

of, certainly not a great job of squaring the

46:33

circle in a way that creates some consensus amongst

46:37

people who have similar needs and

46:39

similar challenges. So I want

46:41

to thank you for your work and

46:43

the conversation and we will,

46:45

I hope, continue it. Amanda Zachary,

46:47

thank you so much for having me on. It's been a

46:49

real pleasure to talk to you today. Thanks,

46:52

Natalie. So like so

46:54

many of our conversations, that one feels to me

46:56

like just getting started as we're coming to an

46:58

end of it, such as the nature of even

47:00

in a long form medium like podcasting. But there

47:02

is a lot more to say there. I mean,

47:04

I certainly did as I indicated at the end.

47:07

I found the book partisan in a way that

47:09

I think will turn off some people and will

47:11

absolutely energize others. She is very much a progressive

47:14

and of that and owns that and I think that's

47:16

really important in its own way, meaning kind of own

47:18

where you are a state what you believe. I do

47:21

think that there's a far greater realm

47:23

of human consensus about a lot of these

47:25

needs and issues that has

47:27

gotten so mired in the

47:29

political identities that it obscures the degree to

47:31

which these are shared issues

47:34

across states, geographies, frankly across many

47:36

parts of the world. And that's

47:38

another one of these conundrums, meaning

47:40

that there is so much that

47:42

people by virtue of where they

47:44

are economically share, where they become

47:46

so divided either by cultural issues

47:48

or by political tribe that that

47:51

gets completely obscured. Well, that

47:53

was always fun about the Andrew Yang

47:55

moment, right? That he just didn't really

47:57

fit into anyone's particular narrative. I mean, he

47:59

ran it. as a Democrat, right? He wasn't an independent.

48:02

She did create a third party and he's a

48:04

member of the Progress Network, but he

48:06

never seemed really at home

48:09

in the Democratic Party. Right, exactly. And

48:11

I think that's why he attracted people, both

48:13

who might have voted for Trump or might

48:15

have voted for Bernie Sanders. And that was

48:17

the sort of genius simplicity of the UBI

48:20

thing at the time. I also learned

48:22

recently, I read an article somewhere that

48:24

apparently UBI back in the day, I

48:26

mean, long before this moment of discourse,

48:28

it was actually a compromise between the

48:30

left and the right. So

48:33

there is a way that these things, as

48:35

you're saying, could be brought outside of partisan

48:37

lines if they're just presented in a way

48:40

as, hey, as

48:42

a person, you deserve XYZ and divorce

48:44

it from certain leftist, maybe your progressive

48:46

language. I mean, I had dreamt of

48:49

a consensus of an

48:51

extremely robust set of guarantees, a

48:53

la what Natalie Foster has written

48:55

about on the one hand, and

48:57

a real dedication to pairing back the

48:59

size of the bureaucracy that's in charge of

49:02

administering them. Because if you do have guarantees

49:04

and they are direct like UBI

49:06

or even some of the ones she talked

49:08

about in a public-private partnership way, you

49:10

presumably don't need the sheer scale of a

49:13

bureaucracy to administer because you wouldn't have means

49:15

testing in the same way you

49:17

wouldn't have all these different hurdles, much

49:20

of which cost a huge amount of money,

49:22

right? So every tax dollar that we wish

49:24

to redistribute, the more expensive

49:26

the bureaucracy is that's redistributing it, the

49:28

less percentage of that dollar actually gets

49:31

to people and needs and services, and

49:33

the more it just pays for the

49:35

system of administering it. So I

49:37

thought you could potentially have some

49:40

sort of odd middle ground of really

49:42

robust spending on the one hand, which we basically

49:45

did during COVID, and much less

49:47

bureaucracy on the other and much less red tape.

49:50

That would satisfy the right, shrinking the size

49:52

of government. A much

49:54

more robust set of safety nets directly administer

49:56

would satisfy the left and you could have

49:58

sort of a consensus around where

50:00

we are going forward. I'm still surprised

50:02

that that hasn't coalesced as such. I

50:04

don't think it's really the moment for

50:07

coalescing as far as politics on the

50:09

national level, but... Are we in an

50:11

anti-coalescing moment? What's the opposite of coalescing?

50:13

We're in an atomizing moment.

50:15

I think we're in a non-coalescing moment. I

50:17

think we're definitely in it. Well, we're in

50:19

an...not an atomizing moment, but a two-group moment

50:22

and nobody wants to be in the groups. So

50:25

atomization would be better, actually. We'll

50:27

save that for a more idealistic future, which

50:30

we can talk about in the depths of

50:32

our future's fair. Okay, so let's look

50:34

at some of the... No, I'm with you then. Let's look at

50:36

some of the headlines of the week, shall we? Yes.

50:39

All right. So, progress news for

50:42

this week. Let's start with some

50:44

green energy transition figures. The

50:46

International Energy Agency is forecasting that

50:48

in 2024, one in five cars sold

50:53

worldwide is going to be electric, which

50:55

doesn't sound like that much until you also know that

50:57

in 2020, it was one in 25. Wow.

51:02

So an astounding uptick in the last

51:04

four years of electric cars. Wow. In

51:07

the US, Bloomberg reported that there's

51:09

now one fast-charging EV station

51:11

for every 15

51:14

gas stations. So not a lot,

51:16

but more than you might expect. Yeah,

51:18

that's always been my, along with a

51:20

gazillion other people's main

51:22

issues slash question of, you know,

51:25

where do you charge if you're

51:27

driving longer distances? Now,

51:29

it is also true in the United States

51:32

and in most parts of the world that the

51:34

vast preponderance of people in their cars stay

51:36

within something like a 60-mile or 50-mile radius

51:39

on a regular basis. And therefore, you

51:42

know, 300-mile range for a plug-in vehicle

51:44

is vastly more than

51:46

adequate for any daily needs, meaning you're never going

51:48

to expend a daily charge before you get somewhere.

51:51

But in larger open space countries

51:53

where people actually are going to do

51:56

drives of 2, 3, 4, to

51:58

spend a lot of time in the future. charging issue definitely

52:00

becomes much more acute. Well, I

52:03

guess nobody wanted to put a bunch of money into

52:05

charging stations and then it turns out that no one

52:07

wanted to buy electric cars. It's a little bit like

52:09

which comes first, the chicken or the egg. Right, the Catch-22.

52:11

Like, I don't want to buy an electric car without

52:13

a charging station. I don't want to build a charging

52:15

station unless you're going to buy an electric car. So

52:18

that clearly is working itself out as the

52:21

demand accelerates and the need increases.

52:23

I think the number was between 8,500 and 9,000 of the fast charging

52:25

EV stations in the states now.

52:29

It's more than I would have expected to be honest.

52:31

Yeah. There's a really fascinating piece

52:33

in the Atlantic that I would love

52:36

to point people to, which is about

52:38

how the prospects of someone finding a

52:40

bone marrow transplant donor

52:42

has changed dramatically

52:45

and probably with almost

52:47

zero notice. There was a drug,

52:49

I believe in the 90s, but they had

52:52

not realized that it could be used for

52:54

this until relatively recently. It's called cyclophosphamide. And

52:56

essentially what it does is that you define

52:58

an exact match for a blood marrow donor,

53:00

and this drug allows them to open up

53:03

their prospects. So if they take the drug,

53:05

the transplant can happen regardless of whether the

53:07

bone marrow donor only has, let's say, three

53:09

out of the ten markers needed rather than

53:11

ten out of ten. So if

53:14

somebody doesn't find an exact match or they

53:16

have one exact match in the entire world,

53:18

it used to be like that's a

53:20

game over, and that is no

53:22

longer the case, which is pretty amazing. I

53:25

mean, even when you were an exact match,

53:28

you still had to take intensive

53:30

amounts of drugs to make

53:32

your body not reject the transplant

53:35

as a foreign alien. I've had

53:37

two friends who had rare diseases,

53:39

both of whom had transplants and

53:42

then both of them died because

53:45

their body didn't accept it. So even when

53:47

you found that exact match, which was rare,

53:49

it was almost always a sibling or a

53:51

relative. It's very hard to find an exact

53:53

match, kind of randomly in the universe. If

53:56

we get to the point where we are

53:58

both able to expand meaningfully,

54:00

the number of

54:03

donors and also reduce the

54:05

body's natural tendency to attack. That's a

54:07

total game changer for all of this.

54:10

Yeah, I don't know if there have been

54:12

advances about drugs to help you not attack

54:15

the foreign object. I do know

54:17

what's been so wild about like the pig kidney

54:19

transplants and the pig liver transplants and all that wild

54:21

stuff that they've been up to in the last year or

54:23

so. And those patients actually surviving

54:25

for a few months would suggest to me

54:27

that they've been able to figure out something

54:30

that has been a bit of a game

54:32

changer. But I don't know. I

54:34

don't know. That's a big question, Mark. It's just

54:36

like one of the other many

54:39

examples of radical

54:42

breakthroughs, medical breakthroughs. This is an

54:44

area we should probably do a

54:46

show this year on this where

54:48

the promise of artificial intelligence just

54:50

being able to go through multiple

54:52

scenarios, different proteins, different ways the

54:54

body reacts. The promise of

54:56

that as an enhancement tool to making

54:59

these discoveries is really substantial as opposed

55:01

to all the other areas where people

55:03

are worried about the risks of AI.

55:06

Absolutely. Not to mention,

55:08

you know, the mRNA, personalized

55:11

cancer vaccines. Now they're finding

55:13

that there might be long

55:15

acting drugs that you

55:18

can take for HIV, tuberculosis and other

55:20

diseases. There's just a vast field of

55:22

medical breakthroughs that I think doesn't get

55:24

a lot of play outside of the

55:26

science world. Yep. I

55:28

want to thank all of you for listening

55:31

to this week's episode of What Could Go

55:33

Right. Please send us comments if you have

55:35

them and suggestions. We'd like this to continue

55:37

to be as much as

55:39

possible a conversation with you, not just

55:41

between us that you're listening to. Please

55:45

sign up for the Progress Networks

55:47

newsletter, What Could Go Right, conveniently

55:49

named, same title as

55:51

the podcast and you can sign up

55:54

for that on your mobile device, on

55:56

the Progress Network page or on your computer.

55:59

And it's free. end of this week. So we

56:02

will be back next week. Thank you, Emma.

56:04

Thank you all for listening. We'll talk to you soon.