Paul Krugman with Samantha Bee: Arguing with Zombies

so much thank you so much for being here thank you so much for inviting me to do this with you thank you for doing this very excited to talk to you yeah we have one after an ominous tone there anyway okay and make sure you write good questions on those cards we want them real long and really wonky okay now you we know each other a little bit I just learned that we're basically neighbors yeah and one of my neighbors is in the audience here tonight hello jack okay but we know each other a little bit because you've been on my show a number of times but not with you not with me but most especially in a piece on the subject of Arthur Laffer who I know you must have just admires so greatly he's one of the more likeable you know sure Oh wrong about everything but kind of like okay now this is your 28th book what is wrong with you what are you what are you trying to accomplish here you make us look bad it's an interesting question because I I had no idea by the way that it was 28 last track after it's not something you do collections of stuff and then occasionally something big - right and and then text books that's you know are they in in real life you know all these books that actually try to change the world for the better as one thing but textbook sizzle is my wife and I co-authors of the third best-selling principles of economics textbook which is known and housed as known in house as you can always 401 K so there we are anyway and you're big in Spain you just told me backstage that you're yeah I don't know what they love they only ever touch my books on the sides of buses that's about that's glorious yeah okay we have something else in common the President does not like you I learned that president is not like you and I don't think you like him yeah thank you care for him it's uh I have to say well all right you know it it's so easy to make fun of or or disdain or fear Trump and I actually tried to not do too much of that because other people are doing it but the idea that amidst everything else that's going on that he would take our time to personally tweet against me sure I mean that's it's it's a huge compliment in a way in a way I'm occupying a lot of obsessed with you you occupy a lot of his brain space yes rent-free is okay what happens in a day I mean I can answer this question for myself but he's tweeted about you all quite a bit so you were on his mind what is a day for you when that arrives in your life I I've learned especially in these days of Twitter but even before that with with email and so on you just have to develop a very off you know let it roll off you if you know if you're if you're writing and if you're a public figure like thank yourself you're getting the media in any form if you aren't getting lots of hostile mail and and people saying nasty things and calling you names then you're probably wasting your time and so you don't you don't let it get to you you just sort of okay there's another one it's alright it doesn't contain something that feels like an actual threat then never never read the responses to your tweets never read the response you don't read that that's right you're not read them and and let it go I mean it's a I look at the numbers because I want to be it I want to be sure that people are interested if you send something out and there's only a handful of comments then you then that's that's a bad sign that means you've been to milquetoast but the but otherwise it's it's not it really doesn't I think I can say this honestly that I really don't actually feel anxiety or upset at anybody Trump or anybody else saying nasty things about me it sort of just comes with the territory that's great it does yes I agree that was like that was a clap for me as well you can't you can't really do your work if you're distracted by that yes okay so let's talk about arguing what zombies I read it I loved it it's great have you all do all have a copy okay well no I'm saying um when you began writing this book did you start out with a certain theme in mind what did you wish to accomplish with this book well the the title actually it started actually started with the title because that was the because I feel like they so this there's a lot of old columns and they're mixed in with a bunch of new material it really picks up from about 2004 you know after after the 2004 election and so on and one of the constant themes that I have is is that bad arguments just don't go away they just keep on coming back and I actually I stole the term zombie ideas from a obscure paper about Canadian health care of all things but it but it was so perfect health care with you okay but zombie you know the it's a perfect term the zombie idea is is an idea that should have been killed by evidence it's just clearly wrong demonstrably wrong but it just keeps on shambling along people's brains and so this is us we're a somatic tour of the zombie ideas that that distort the way we talk about our problems and and why do these zombie you know what why are these zombies so unkillable and that's kind of how it's so it's structured by theme but it's it that's the fundamental thing is it's about understanding what it is we're arguing about because that's we are we do we do not have a lot of good faith arguments in modern American politics right there are things that you can legitimately argue about there are people with whom I can disagree but respect but most of what goes on is not there most of that is various kinds of zombies and cockroaches was just a little bit different and okay what does a cockroach idea versus zombi idea is an idea that shambles along lurches forward eating people's brains what's a cockroach cockroach idea is one that you seem to be able to get it rid of for a little while then it comes a but it comes back yes you kill it but it's 1,000 eggs if you think you've gotten that's right and so yeah so so the zombies and it's that's what really you know so yeah you know tax cuts pay for themselves that's a zombie to ultimate zombie ideas that you think are really front and center in our current discourse okay so the to the the ultimate zombie in American political discourse is that that taxes on taxing rich people does terrible things and cut those taxes and wonderful things will happen and everything yes so that's that's the and and the tax cuts will pay for themselves watch all that money trickle down right watch and watch the revenue gusher from the shore a booming economy then probably the the other one is that any attempt to protect the environment will destroy jobs and and you know make us they'll be grass growing in the streets of all our cities if we try to stop air pollution from killing people so those are the probably the two most important zombies but there are others the myth that taxing the wealthy will be destructive to the economy why is that why is that zombie impossible to kill why is that impossible okay this is Upton Sinclair it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on is not understanding it the there's a very very well financed network of you know right-wing media organizations think tanks and so on it doesn't really take for billionaires it doesn't take a large investment of their money to keep afloat substantial number of people prepare to defend the indefensible endlessly when it's in their interests so it's really it's all about about basically hired guns promoting ideas and if the evidence says that they're wrong never mind that's not what they're they're not in the business of getting things right mm-hmm okay is the is the Trump tax cut in your opinion the biggest scam in history I mean did you expect them to lie so boldly about this plan I thought it was gonna be hard you know even okay so the Republican my Republican Party has developed an amazing talent each successive Republican president manages to make his predecessor look good that's an incredible talent and so if you go back to the bush tax I want to do my show thar gonna trade I'm gonna write 28 books and you're gonna host my shirt all right but but if you go back to the bush Europe they felt at least a little bit of restraint they they didn't claim that the tax cuts would pay for themselves they claimed that we had a budget surplus which was mostly an illusion but anyway but that there was money to give away and it was so they had excuses that were not quite as blatant and they also of course didn't have as long a record of tax cuts having failed to deliver on their promises for them for somebody to come along in 2017 after the Bush years after the failure of tax cuts in Kansas after everything that happened and say once again tax cuts they're gonna pay for themselves that's a and for essentially every Republican in Congress to go along with that including supposed moderates like Susan Collins that's amazing that's a level of hutzpah that's really kind of hard to credit even for me right yes I mean it's done so little for ordinary Americans they basically they've stopped talking about it yeah they really don't talk about the terrace caucus yeah yeah I mean you've huge I mean basically cut corporate taxes in half that's roughly what the way it's worked out and we've gotten no corporate investment is actually down it so none of the money is going for any of the alleged purposes it's just being used to buy back stocks and pay dividends and so that's that's a prayer I mean I was a I thought it was going to work badly but the it's worked worse than even I imagined oh that's very bad yeah that's a very that's very unsuccessful okay well I wanted to talk about the condition of the economy because there are endless stories and tweets about how the economy I mean just from a single person about how the economy how it's great it's doing and how well the stock market is doing but who precisely is the economy doing so great for I think I have a guess okay look let's be clear it low unemployment is a good thing yes the fact that people can find jobs it's a really good thing and that's we weren't heading this wave for quite a while but it is definitely the case that unemployment has continued you know which began declining in 2010 continued its decline under Trump and that's a good thing now wages have not done much of anything so if we're waiting for some reversal some end to the long long stagnation of ordinary workers wages we ain't seen that yet that's not happening the stocks obviously are way up you know that's moat the the vast majority of stocks are held by a very small part of the population so that's really nothing for most people and it's it's not you know better than not better to have some growth but it is you know considering the rhetoric during Obama's second term the economy grew in an average rate of 2.4% sent in the two years since the tax cut the economy has grown at an average rate of 2.6% that doesn't look like the sort of stunning triumphs that these people are talking about so it's it's I don't want to pretend they don't want to say that that is it's don't want to make this into a into a dystopian economy it's not it's better to have full employment than to have mass unemployment but it's nothing great for ordinary workers right there are always okay we're in you know the middle of already a very contentious election season that started in 2014 and will go to Eternity right it will never ever end your god help us all okay they're always so many there are a million questions about the fiscal side of a progressive agenda like how are we gonna pay for this social safety net obviously the most tenacious line of questioning most often comes from people who would never interrogate the idea you know of a tax cut for the wealthy and in your book you wrote economic justice and economic growth aren't incompatible in fact we have had that before can we have that again when can we have that yeah so it's all about the politics I mean we we we know that we can do it look describe those times well okay no so for a generation after World War two we had growth that was very widely distributed a much much more even distribution I mean I grew up in that era that was an era in which middle managers and well-paid blue-collar workers for basically comparable salaries when there were really really rich people didn't exist I mean there must have been a few but they were not prominent on the on the scene in which a quarter of the of the workforce was unionized and even though workers weren't parts of unions were were effectively protected by fear that the the that unions would come in if they were now mistreated we had you know top top tax rate of 91% under that socialist Dwight Eisenhower and the economy throw thrived but I think it's also important to realize that it's not just our own history and if you want to say well but that was a different world something technology blah blah blah look at you know look at European countries look at Denmark which has first of all two-thirds of the workforce is unionized so unions in the market Denmark is a socialist hellhole that's right heard it was really funny they there was a period once for some reason FoxNews decided that Denmark was a socialist hellhole yeah running stuff and it just so happened that I was in Denmark okay it's real hellhole of cute seaside villages and no the point is and everybody has health it has health care wages are substantially higher for most workers than they are here there's a lot of support for families with children and they do fine it's not a poor country they have slightly lower GDP per capita than we do which is entirely because they take more vacations than we do right they're there their output per hour is exactly the same as ours but they just take more vacations well I'm from Canada originally and I'm always intrigued by those arguments and was intrigued when people and they do do it often conflate social democracies and socialism yeah you know that's the that's the secret you keep on seeing these polls that say that young Americans favor socialism and what's really happened is that after all of these years of the right-wing saying that anything you know if you if you don't want poor kids to starve that's socialism if you don't want if you don't want rich people to if you want rich people to pay sometimes as that socialism at certain point people start to say well in that case I'm a socialist right exactly I mean can't can we do a social safety net is exactly as you say in the book it's liberating you I mean listen I live here now I'm a citizen of the United States I love it I'm in this fight like I love it here you know I'm not going back but I will say just culturally people don't walk around with that 150 pound backpack that they that's invisible that they don't even know about that's just like oh god I hope nothing goes wrong with my health one day God knows into the future what could it look like that's right and and it's helped right now they there is the it is in fact the case that at least for now that if you lose your job you can probably get a subsidized the policy under Obamacare and and you can't be denied because of a pre-existing condition but that's something that we you know it's a recent achievement that we got it by the skin of our teeth and it's crazy no other advanced countries like that in Canada health care is guaranteed Canada can is actually a little bit by the set European standards Canada is kind of stingy but it still has far far more aid to family as far they just the you know the basics of life are much more reliably they're this constant fear that if you take one wrong step and you plunge into the abyss which is the norm in America it just doesn't exist anywhere else in the advanced world it's just not something that you have to think about on a day-to-day basis it allows you in life I think to take a few more risks to take an extra day off we have there's a day off in Canada that's just called family day and it's just like hey man why don't you take the day off and hang out with your kids like wow it's inconceivable here everybody's working so hard all the time that's right it's it's and it seeps through even to the elite right and India which is the least of our concerns but it so happens I think this general fear or this anxiety level what are the only its gonna be okay well they're actually not because this anxiety level translates into a general rat-race feel to American society which i think is our there are a lot of things I'm very American I love this country but there are that's one of the things that is really something it's hard to explain to people from other advanced countries can see you're so rich why do you live like this right mm-hmm yes well what are many of the problems here be more solvable if people just paid their taxes or if we had a robust system for actually collecting the taxes that are owed well we you know historically we've been pretty good we usually the us used to be especially good at getting compliance with income taxes but there's much more just plain tax cheating than they used to because the IRS has been starved of the resources straight-out evasion tax avoidance which is evasion but except it just happens to be technically legal is a big deal and particularly we used to get a lot of money from corporate taxes and now that you know the corporations have found that they just had their wreaths cut quite a lot but even before that there was an awful lot of legal but but legal but MRO hanky-panky causing you know although the profits earned in the United States to somehow disappear and materialize in the Bahamas or in Ireland and and that's so we could just by actually closing the loopholes and enforcing the laws we have that's worth several hundred billion dollars a year for a lot of stuff they've effectively been gutted I mean people they're you know I feel like it's a story that's come up in my workplace to do a story about how the poor you know the poorest counties in Mississippi are being audited at the same rate as oh no we're more we're we're auditing people getting Earned Income Tax Credit which is to help the working poor are much more likely to be audited then then then business people then wealthy people actually not necessarily people with fake businesses that they used to shelter their income and they could disappear from the tax rolls right so and that's a deliberate decision we've actually deliberately encouraged lawlessness on taxes let's talk about your intellectual hero Paul Ryan the amount of grief I got but very very salty verbiage in the book concerning Paul Ryan well yeah I mean uh it's it was interesting cuz I back in 2010 first time I wrote him about him I called him a fluently flim-flam man he was he was a phony and it was so obvious and but the sort of Beltway media establishment has decided that he was the model of a serious conservative and he didn't want to hear about it even though it was right in front of your nose I think at this point most people have figured it out that he that he always was a phony but it just tells you something I don't know I mean it wasn't even I mean not only was it flim-flam it wasn't even good flim-flam it was so it was so obviously the the the the the faking of the numbers was clumsy I mean did I offend this is my sense you know yes you're gonna be a crooked this be a smart crook yes he's got an incredible PR team yes that's what I'm saying he pushed through that terrible tax cut and then as a final F you stuck his tail between his legs and fled the party rather than stand up to the president I do not like why has he been held up to such great heights because he really was considered like the intellectual beating heart of the party why was he held up to those Heights people just want to believe that there are still people left in the GOP ever making sense there is still not quite as much as there was but there's still this convention that the parties are symmetric that there that the ideologies metric yes there are dishonest conservatives but there must be dishonest liberals that are equivalent and if they're honest liberals then there must be serious honest conservatives so there was a slot that had to be filled here is the serious honest conservative and were Paul Ryan his genius if you like was he was able to play that part just well enough to get slotted into that role even though took about five minutes of reading his actual plans to realize that that he was not in fact the character that he was playing but the but that was it it was very very clearly that people were looking for there was there had to be somebody like that right and in fact there wasn't but Paul Ryan played to that desire yes he was like central casting yeah yeah so I mean I assume that he's retreated and then he's gonna write a book about like I tried to talk to Trump just a book called I tried and then he runs for a president I don't know I I'm not sure that we'll hear from him again but who knows what do I know but the but it was the most amazing thing because it was as plain it was the clearest thing I've ever seen in the u.s. politics was that this guy was a phony and yet every I got a tremendous amount of grief for for for saying that for saying it's certainly for saying it too soon what was the grief that you got oh just you know lots of angry op-eds denouncing me letters if I go to very few elite dinner parties but when I did people would say why are you so hard on that nice guy Paul Ryan you're like well I don't go to dinner parties anymore that's right I cook you learned how to cook yes I'm actually bad at that oh good what's your favorite thing to make I want to know oh no and that's critical stuff okay toaster oven broiled salmon is fantastic I like it when did recognizing reality become seen as a liberal position anyway that's just me yeah I mean but really no I think I think that is a intentionally or not that is kind of a quote from the book yes so I and no well because you you have look modern Republican Party is a is something new Under the Sun in u.s. politics I think maybe in world politics it's a party that has been pulled off in this direction by a combination of money cynical political calculation and you cannot be a good modern Republican without denying reality and so if you're if you're acknowledge reality it used to be there was about values all right if maybe it's depending on how much redistribution you wanted to do from the rich to the poor you could legitimately say well I'm a conservative I don't think we should do very much of that but nowadays in order to be a Republican in good standing you have to believe that tax cuts pay for yours for themselves you have to believe that climate change is a hoax you have to believe a whole lot of things that are sort of obviously not true and so if you do say that they're true then me just just right now I I've been seeing you know screenshots of Fox explaining that John Bolton is a left-wing radical I'm a head exploded okay you have said you said in the book to be honest I wonder whether I'm wasting my time talking about any issue other than climate change there's a strong economic dimension when discussing the issue of climate change what is your role as an economist in contributing to that debate okay so I'm not a climate scientist I do read climate scientists and I think I I do think my detector is reasonably good I mean I know what I know when actual I know what actual science sounds like and so I can tell though you know what it but the main thing is that what I can do is talk about how much does it cost to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and there it's really clear that it's not that hard that even ten years ago it looked like it was manageable and now technology has been our friend I mean there's been absolutely spectacular progress in renewable energy in fact so much so that really coal which is the single worst thing coal is dying even without a climate policy because it can't compete with wind and solar and so it takes only a little bit of additional government policy to make a huge difference in in the prospect for the planet and it's an incredible tragedy that we're not doing this because right now everything everything except the politics is lined up for us to be able to solve this problem before it it solves us but I'm afraid that it we may not get there in your book you call it the the in your book you say that there's depravity in climate change denial and I really appreciated that can you elaborate on that sure if your take imagine a person let's call him mr. Koch [Laughter] who has a lot of money some of which not all of which is tied up in the value of assets like coal mines that we should not that should be abandoned because we shouldn't be doing this you're and you're not stupid you have to understand at some level that that will possibly dooming civilization by continuing to to burn fossil fuels at the rate we're burning them and you're willing to take that risk with civilization for the sake of avoiding some reduction in your vast fortune that sounds pretty depraved to me and that's that's really where we are at this point in the debate great you began your career studying international trade what do you think of Trump's thinking on trade wars and tariffs okay so let me give you a maybe what people don't expect which is that I think it's it's stupid but I don't think it's all that damaging international trade is one of those things that people love to dwell on because for a variety of reasons but partly because it sounds fancy and important you know global a global Oney as people used to say or actually I used to own long ago my parents gave me a sweatshirt that they applicate across a global schmoeville and that's in LA and they say because every time you're fine and off to someplace they and we ask you what you're talking about I say is global schmoeville so so it's it's an exaggerated subject now Trump comes in with this his own version of this exaggerated view of how important it's not this trivial the international trains a big thing but the idea that it's it's the be-all and end-all whether it's this immense force for good or this immense force for evil as Trump things it is it really isn't so what Trump has done I think in in a way the worst thing about his trade wars is not the damage that's doing to the global economy though it is doing some clearly it's creating uncertainty it's disrupting supply chains and all of these and I can start to jargon my way all the way across this hall but the but the worst of it is that the United States is making a mockery it happens that international trade is is one of the great triumphs of international diplomacy we've created a rules-based system not a rigid one where countries can never do anything but one in which there are procedures there are essentially international course that adjudicate disputes it's it creates a degree of certainty and what Trump has done is to basically rip all of that up and make us effectively a lawless nation on when it comes to international trade which spills over onto other things so he's made us we are no longer a reliable partner we everybody now knows that the United States will rip up its agreements on the whim of some guy in the White House and that's God I have spillover effects to everything we are just not a country people can trust anymore and how do you see that bearing out for the next year well you know it's are you good at you're good at defining things no it's okay I mean a lot of what's happened I mean I the trade Ward actually has done I'd say more damage than I thought it would because of the uncertainty and the it's looking a little bit like Trump is getting reaching where I thought he might reach which is to declare victory a surrender so effectively that's what he did on NAFTA you know the created the new NAFTA which is almost indistinguishable from the old NAFTA just stuck his name on it and on China although the tariffs are still in place basically the reports say that the Chinese are actually sort of can't believe that they got away with so few concessions and so that's a lot of what's happened but then again you never know what's coming there so there might he may be about to slap tariffs on German automobiles which are a threat to national security which we know I can understand that but that's a but but so the it's not clear where there'll be another round of damage but so far I think we've probably seen most of the it probably shaved a couple of a couple of tenths of a percentage point off growth in the past year okay are there battles that you have taken on in which you feel that you have made a difference Social Security oh one can you talk about that yeah boy I can't because the darkness I can't see the how many I think that friend are people who probably remember that so we had this election in 2004 I don't yeah and and it was it was an election it was an election that was largely about terrorism and the illusion of victory in Iraq and also about gay marriage as I say in Bush was elected as the nation's defender against gay married terrorists and and then he immediately turned around and said I now have a mandate to privatize Social Security and a lot of people thought he was gonna get it because they've been winning a lot of stuff and a few people said no we're not gonna do that and so I was certainly writing a lot about this is a really really bad idea now what I did pales in comparison with what Nancy Pelosi did I mean she's really the person who saved Social Security my favorite Nancy Pelosi quote they asked when are you going to come up with your plan for Social Security and she said never it will never do for you but the the so that was but that was a case really where at least yeah there was a pretense that there was a rational argument for what Bush was trying to do which was good from my point of view because it meant that you could actually spend you know productively tear that our argument to shreds now I think what what really really mattered was that and this is one of these things I'm where people talk about bubbles and I I think that people of upper income are in a bubble they don't understand how absolutely central Social Security is to the lives of most Americans that the majority of people depend on Social Security for the majority of their retirement and that a quarter of Americans basically have nothing in retirement exceptional Social Security so you say I'm going to change this into a system of risky private accounts it turns out that people basically the nation as a whole said hell no and but that was it that was it wasn't something was the first it was the first policy debate since I started writing for the New York Times where my side actually won oh that's a nice feeling yeah do you feel like do you feel sometimes that you are just shrieking into the void with your colors oh yeah do you or do are you do you feel like you're out there changing one mind at a time you're just in there in the trenches I think it's much more a question of providing people with the arguments that move stuff so it's not that thank you it's not that uh there are a lot of people out there you know it's not that there are they're conservatives who read my column and say you know he's right and and transform at the moment what happens sometimes but not often but you can provide the arguments you can help lay the groundwork for that so that people do stuff but you know directive certainly don't want to exaggerate the importance you know only you know how many times in my life have I told a person with real power what he should be doing and have him actually do it and the answer is once and and the person in question was actually the Prime Minister of Japan so wait what did you tell the Japan to do cancel that tax increase you need you need the economy to keep on building momentum and oh great okay well thank you okay we're saving Japan okay which which zombie idea has caused you the greatest red hot personal distress and what does Paul Krugman look like when he's in a tizzy oh just like I'm making my toaster salmon and now it's burned no oh no I think that the moment when I got really closest to being horrified it wasn't the worst thing that's happened to policy or the world but there was this period around 2010 2011 when the gray tree you know we'd had the financial crisis and most of the advanced world was still in a pretty dire straits we had high unemployment here we there was catastrophic unemployment in lots of Europe and all of a sudden everybody everybody all the important people decided that unemployment was not the problem budget deficits were the problem and what we needed was fiscal austerity and that was where I really was tearing my hair out because we knew that wasn't right and it was really clear from the evidence that it wasn't right and we knew what to do and it was only time to have to continue fiscal stimulus until the economy was a lot closer to full employment and yet all the important people including them sorry to say they even even President Obama was starting to talk the austerity talk and that was that was probably the most frustrating year that I've gone through now I don't you know I don't I don't smash place beside that mm-hmm Wednesday I'm a calm person but there but but it's sort of a constant level of anxiety I don't have okay vibrating energy and stress and anxiety yeah I relate to you yeah okay tell us something about yourself that we would not expect did you invest in beanie babies and get out just before the bubble burst Oh like what no no I've written a little bit about this so some people may know this but I'm in my late 50s I discovered indie rock and so my favorite my favorite activity these days is to go to some small venue standing only I mean I was get the best seats in the house cuz there are no seats in the house standing with a beer in my hand listening to some young really good band yes I say sometimes I'm that do you recall the last standing-room-only concert that you want to oh sure just a little over a month ago cos I went to Rockwood Music Hall and saw reina del CID who which is a anybody knows very you know justjust on the early stages of their career and it's a very sort of folk group from Minneapolis and they're great a sec I was actually just reflecting to someone yesterday I wonder what all of our retirement homes are gonna look like in the future because I just think we're gonna need DJs I feel like the retirement homes of the future are gonna be much cooler than they were yeah you have needs you need like you need you need you need cool music yeah I'm not sure about the standing all night with a beer in your hand I'm sure that I'll be able to do that 15 years from you can do that you'll be there I'll come and find you okay okay do you have what gives you I'm gonna move on to audience questions in one second but I always like to ask the question of what brings you what makes you feel hopeful for the next year because I think a lot of us are not feeling that necessarily is there anything that you look to you don't have to tell me your self-care routine I know what it is now right but what does anything bring you hope and you don't and nothing but for me here I don't know I mean the year God knows no one knows what this election is going to be and and yeah so you know I'll be like this like everybody else right up until the end I mean the if you step back a little bit I I do think in a lot of ways we are a better society in spite of all of these things we are a better society than we were I mean I've been at this for a long time and it's sometimes hard to remember how back even during the Reagan years how much just raw casual racism homophobia there was and it wasn't until sometime in the mid 1980s that that a plurality of white people thought that interracial marriages were okay so you know we're we're a vastly more tolerant open society than we used to be and that's probably the thing that gives me the biggest hope great okay I'm gonna ask audience questions now yes that's lovely all right these are already these are very good I'm gonna read them as is will Bloomberg alter the primaries or election god knows he's pouring so much money he's pouring so much money although to his credit a lot of it looks less like promoting Mike Bloomberg than promoting the Democratic yes I I will give him that and now I do I I find myself in rooms where there are lots of people who who think that might Bloomberg would do you agree choice for president but those are the the people in those rooms are consists almost entirely of of men and grey suits with seven figure rings yeah so so I I don't I don't really take him very seriously as a presidential candidate but who knows yeah I think he has pledged to take all of that money and push it in that's right yes it's less of an ego trip I mean it is a you go trip but it's not an uncontrolled ego trip so he's doing a Super Bowl ad and we made a fake Super Bowl ad for him tomorrow that will Errol okay very very good I'll try to watch it I think that he will enjoy it and maybe maybe it'll become I don't know it's actually great good okay Bernie not to toot my own horn toot toot okay Bernie or Warren plans what is the difference okay war in terms of goals in terms of being very progressive then similar Warren has actually thought it through Warren actually does does the does the homework she's a thinker she not just the thinking she's also actually very good at picking the right people if you look at the cast of people who've actually done her plans it's amazing Bernie it's a lot more casual as numbers don't actually add up it's a really you know it's Sanders it's much more of an attitude than an actual set of plans now okay and I'm gonna get some grief I get a lot of grief from the Bernie people some they're little there's a little bit of a I don't want to start a fight here so I start that fight let me say that in practice I don't think I actually don't think it makes a whole lot of difference if any Democrat wins and takes the Senate good with if if they don't take the Senate then you've been nothing but if any Democrat wins what will actually emerge will be something far far more modest than Bernie's plans probably far far more modest than Warren's plans which I think she acknowledges that it's we're not good Medicare for all that's not going to happen in the next four years massive a massive increase in government spending in taxes it's not going to happen in practice you're going to get something that's basically a hopefully a greatly enhanced Obamacare more aid to families substantially more progressive agenda and that's gonna happen I think with any of the candidates because even the centrists are actually way to the left of where Democrats were ten years ago so my guess is that the actual policy agenda of a Biden administration and the Sanders administration would be almost indistinguishable I do think that it behooves us all to really practice getting behind one candidate well there are times rules I cannot do you don't know which party I favor listen but I can times can't do an endorsement well that's another issue I know nothing I was not involved in that no but the but no I mean the point is you do need to realize that on on the one hand if even if you think that the you know if you're a centrist and you think that the Bernie Sanders agenda is way too aggressive don't worry about it it's not it that's not going to be what actually happens and even if you are progressive and you think that Joe Biden is much too centrist for your taste the fact of the matter is he'll be far more progressive obviously than the current administration far more progressive in fact than the Obama administration was because the Democratic Party has changed so it you should nobody I think who supports with the general thrust of where the Democratic Party is these days should have any qualms about supporting any of the candidates in the general election they're all going have you any theories about why farmers factory workers and other blue-collar workers continue to support Trump despite the fact that his economic policies hurt them the well first of all just race I mean it's a it's if you nothing in American politics makes sense without without talking about race you know the the original sin of America colors everything and I think that is actually according to political science people that that is the dominant thing the racial antagonism is what predicts votes and it's and Trump has sort of given people license to say things believe things that they didn't want to before there's a little bit of also just a kind of the people want someone who so I see another old line right for to any complex problem there is a solution that is simple clear and wrong and Trump is Trump is is full of that kind of thing and so and it takes a look it takes quite a while you know the fact that matter is the manufacturing it's it's odd that the the very things that Trump said he was gonna really help are the parts of the economy that are doing worse so the the economy as a whole is you know pretty good employment but manufacturing employments is declining the so he hasn't actually managed to bring that and of course in the case of the farmers it's been devastating but they among other thing I think it's actually hard for people to admit how big a mistake they made in voting for him right so you know if you're a farmer who's that Trump is going to bring that they have the real America she's funny all my neighbors going bankrupt and I'm not doing too well but you cannot quite bring yourself to to admit that you were snookered as badly as you were and that's the Opera and you don't like it you stand at the end anyway because you're like well this was expensive yeah I didn't I didn't like it but oh yes you guys really tried hard yeah okay it was very glitzy are there economists with and I should write it down I guess we're almost a time or I don't want to go over but we did start a tiny bit late are there are there economists with points of view that contradict yours when you respect or admire or are they just wrong sell out your friends that's my ad at the end not I mean there are different levels there are there are no economists none of the economists who think the tax cuts pay for themselves are people I respect but we can have real they'll I think there are issues that are real disagreements I mean I Ben Bernanke and I disagree about the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy he thinks it works better than I do I obviously take his views very seriously right I don't I think I'm right but God knows that you know they I could very well be wrong in saying that there were people there are I'm if I single somebody else out everybody at don't sing but there but there are there are people there Economist's who are self-identified Republicans although some of them have actually renounced that lately but but who I think do really really good work on things like urban development transportation economics so there's plenty of stuff but on the core political issues the stuff that really matters taxes climate policy no I'm afraid that there are the people if people I disagree with are not they're just not in the same business I'm in they're not even trying to get the facts right they're just trying to to serve a political agenda and whatever you know some people would say that about me but it any true the fact things I'm actually trying to get it right right okay great okay what listen this is a good question what lesson did you learn from observing and talking with the Obama administration that the next Democratic president should know okay don't listen to Wall Street I was it was the one place where I really felt that there was a problem was that the that Wall Street guys had too much influence with Obama and company and not you know not a nefarious buyout although it is a little disturbing how many Obama officials ended up going to work for Citigroup or whatever afterwards but but more that finance industry types they tend on on average to be pretty smart to be sophisticated kind of interesting to talk to they have terrific tailors and so they're and so they're very impressive in conversation and they gave terrible advice and and the Obama administration was not nearly hard enough on the bankers and so I was five I was part of Obama's personality he is that kind he very moderate soft-spoken articulate that plays with him and so we would there were meetings where people like Joe Stiglitz and me you know scrappy frumpy professors were arguing for a harder line on the banks and then there were people from Wall Street and guess who came across as more impressive in those meetings right so but but Joe and I were right and there you have a great tailor don't sell yourself short but but the so that's I mean I think of any future Democratic administration it's going to have to to watch out because it's not gonna have a hard time Democrats not gonna have a hard time understanding that that coal industry executives are not his friend Frank but it may be a little bit harder to understand that sophisticated socially liberal bankers from New Yorker also not their friends right okay that's great okay I'm gonna ask one last question I think I'm gonna wrap it up this is a good one what will it take to increase worker wages again a lot has to do with power so unions I mean rebuilding a union movement is a tremendously important thing America where a quarter of the workforce was unionized was a very different place the if you ask why our Scandinavian countries so much less unequal than we are the fact that they have over 50 percent unionization matters Latin and unions depend a lot on the political environment if you make it easy for them to organize and make it illegal to to to engage in its suppression of union organizing efforts that makes a huge difference minimum wage can matter a lot as well and this is one of those cases where we have overwhelming evidence that up to a point I mean I even I wouldn't call for a $30 an hour minimum wage but it's overwhelming that they're raising the minimum wage to at least 13 and probably 15 is is no problem at all no job losses and it not just it's not just the minimum wage workers that sort of cascade of the scale just generally who want political power to be on the side of workers in their bargaining with employers and that could make a huge difference great I think this was great I want to thank all of you thank you so much for talking to all of us thank you just wonderful I want to wish you luck on your 1,000 97th book tour that you've been on books are available in the lobby it was a pleasure talking to you please come on my show again and talk for like an hour oh I'll take it thank you [Applause]

Channel: The 92nd Street Y, New York

Views: 96,821

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, paul krugman, samantha bee, economics, tax cuts, donald trump, politics, arguing with zombies

Id: jLpwMAHX8Xw

Length: 54min 51sec (3291 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020