The Realignment Ep. 25: Oren Cass, Introducing American Compass

[Music] horn cast welcome to the realignment thank you for having me thanks for coming well it's a natural fit so Oren I understand they are here to make an exclusive announcement to this podcast introducing American compass tell us a little bit about it yeah thank you we are very excited to be launching American compass is a new organization whose mission is to restore an economic consensus that emphasized the importance of family community and industry to the nation's liberty and prosperity and and so in my mind it's really bringing conservatism back to the right of center at America so when you say restore something that's suggesting something went away what happened well you know if you look back both at American history generally and and at the right of Center in America our thinking about economics used to be much much more nuanced and sophisticated than the kind of market fundamentalism that we now call conservative I mean if you go all the way back to Alexander Hamilton and his report on manufacturers right through the American system through the tariffs of the 1800s through you know the highway system the space race Reagan everyone understood that markets are an incredibly powerful tool that that organizing our society around them in a lot of ways is incredibly important and valuable and protective of Liberty but also that they have their limitations that there's a role for government as well and somewhere over the last couple of generations we really lost that and and I would say it's it's really the libertarian wing of the party that essentially got to set the economic agenda and they have some good points too but but I think they've led us astray and what's funny is I'm listening to you know in an opening statement where you talked about what you're about it shouldn't seem controversial but each one of those things actually is an incredible I wanted to highlight this for the audience it's a heretic ille de Parcher from the last thirty years of economic consensus let's start I guess with a few specific let's talk a little bit about globalization now we've worshiped at the altar of globalization now for 30 years anybody listening knows that I'm inherently skeptical of many of the so-called benefits we've received what do you see is the downsides to globalization which have been neglected by the right in particular over the last 30 to 40 years I think the core of the case for globalization is economic growth it's all about specialization how do we do each thing where it can be done most cheaply and therefore have the most cheapest stuff for everybody to consume and you know I'm not anti growth I I like having lots of stuff to consume - I think we should recognize that's incredibly important we have iPhones yeah iPhone iPhones are great but if that's all you value and of course everyone say well that's not all we value but if your economic models value or that and your policy analysis values only that and you say well we might create winners and losers but we'll just have to what we will compensate the losers somehow we'll send them a check we'll retrain them we'll figure out a way to get them to college you end up frankly getting what you wanted I think my view is that it when we look at the real challenges we have in this country they're not a failure of our policy they are exactly what we said we were going for exactly it's working as exactly as it's working as it was planned and it's funny if you go to academic economists they'll be very confused that everybody's upset now because if you go read the actual you know I can sure those no this is exactly what we said this is we thought we'd all agreed this is what we were going for and the reality is that certainly at the political level it was never communicated properly and to the extent it was I don't think it was necessarily what the American people said they wanted or certainly it's not turned out to be what they wanted because the reality is that in addition to it being nice to have a lot of cheap stuff and and that sort of consumption lens you have to have a production lens as well you have to recognize that all of us as individuals as families as communities drive a huge amount of our of our self-worth of our satisfaction with life of the behaviors and incentives that build healthy families and communities a lot of that comes out of being a productive contributor of having something you can do and globalization the assumption that globalization is going to make everyone better inadvertently in a sense just just ignores that and and a lot of people are paying the price so something that I think someone who supported the consensus would say is that weather may be fair we over we rent a few too many Thomas Friedman columns and thought this was going to be great but at the end of the day this was inevitable at the end of the day we were going to have a world where China was going to produce goods for less than we produced them the internet was gonna flatten communication so it means that we work at us and we focus on our own country is are you trying to tell a different story when it comes to the economic choices we made definitely I don't think any of it was inevitable I I think it's certainly inevitable that China was going to rise as an economic power and become you know a stronger competitor but but the thing you have to step back and look at is the extraordinary imbalances that we have in the system you know when people talk about free trade it's it's really important to realize that the word trade is in there the premise is you're supposed to it's a two-way street right and you're supposed to trade stuff and so if if you had China rising and and and becoming this incredible competitive producer of lots of stuff which they traded to us for all sorts of things that we produced and and sent to them that could have worked out great there could have been all sorts of things that we used to make here and now they make here there but other things that we could now make for them and what's gone wrong is not the the growth and expansion of the international system the rise of countries like China what's gone wrong is this economic model model that's it doesn't matter what gets made where or frankly whether you're making anything at all and allowing those imbalances coming to the system and in fact you you will find people who argue that the imbalances are a good thing if you can get right a trade deficit means people are sending you stuff and you don't even have to send anything back now technically we are we're sending them back io u--'s we're sending them back ownership of our corporations in our land but if you don't have to send stuff back people tell you like well that's great but they're the Patsy not us we got stuff and we didn't even have to make anything and this is a good pivot to I think another thing you've highlighted which is the higher education system because part and you said this in your earlier answer part of what the response to globalization was we'll retrain people or re-educate people more people go to will go into higher and that will make up for this transition but obviously in a couple different levels that hasn't really worked out what's your sort of articulation on that issue well I think it's a mistake that we made on two levels one is is when we said okay look maximising specialisation everywhere that's gonna be terrific because you know China will specialize in some things and will specialize in some things and but it turned out that we ended up specializing in things that only one segment of our population could actually do productively and obviously that's an oversimplification about yeah acidly complex economy we specialized in that so the the the comparative advantage of this podcast is oversimplification the but but the reality is we took a whole massive segment of our economy that was particularly suited to providing stable productive well-paid employment to less educated workers we said well we just we just don't need that and either well we'll just redistribute to them or well we'll just we'll retrain and and turn them into the kinds of workers that are going to thrive in our new economy and the reality is that there is no evidence that we have any idea how to do that and in fact we have been failing miserably at it I think one of the most stunning things to look at up with this incredible push toward college for all over the past couple generations you look at the share of of people who earn a BA by the age of 25 hasn't budged more than a pointer to in 40 years so we are pushing more people into college but we are not allowing we are not producing a society of college graduates most young Americans still don't know and even a community college degree yeah and and actually many of the ones who do enter man may exit and even the ones who do and exit with a college degree they're burdened with a huge amount of student debt right on and what is that doing to the shape of their lives well that's right they have a they have a lot of student debt and and the other huge thinking mind even those who come out the other side of this system about 40 percent of them end up in a job that doesn't require a college degree anyway so if you kind of March through all the steps I have like all the fortunate fifth which is out of a kind of a cohort of people moving through our education system you take all those who don't even finish high school let's not forget we've still got almost 20% don't finish high school and a bunch you do but I've kind of been slid through then you've got roughly a fifth who don't even go to college you've got a fifth who go and drop a dropout and then you've got a fifth to finish but end up in a job that didn't require a degree and they've only got one in five who actually went high school college career if you go high school college career the student debt is actually very manageable by by and large of course they're exceptions but the data suggests that the burden is not getting higher than it's been in the past and particularly if you're someone who's earning a lot more in that high school college career progression the debt tends to be sustainable the student debt crisis we have is is the people in those other segments who we pushed into the system and either didn't finish or got a degree that didn't actually create economic value for them and so you know the incredible thing is that we've taken this approach that says well the college degree is is the end-all be-all we owe it to everyone to push them as far as we can and we're gonna do that even if for every person that actually works for we create many more casualties along the way and and so what you're describing is all of those casualties along the way and let's tie let's tie this together which is that the loss of a job through globalization the student debt load that you carry the you know the going through the higher education system maybe not finishing all of this carries immense social cost and you talked in the beginning about the family now the you know one of the what are the greatest impediments for some young people is a debt is a debt load that's upon you you make an economic rational choice not to start a family or get married because you have to make discrete choices in order to pay that off same with globalization and the loss of a generally well-paying job that doesn't require a medical oh that can put you in the middle class doesn't require a college degree and when we have closures if the bottom falls out from in communities and it has a huge impact on the family let's discuss how economic policy and family policy tie themselves together and what a new right can think about it in terms of that way yeah I think you're exactly right about how the these issues all intersect and and just acknowledging that is itself a critical step for the new right and for so long the right-of-center has real on this dichotomy between economic issues and cultural issues and whatever problem you bring up the instinct is to say oh that's a cultural issue like well like what are you gonna do politics is downstream from culture that's sort of generic exactly I'm gonna have to say are you gonna are you suggesting the government save the souls of its citizens exactly and why are you being right now Sagar episode 1 of this pod no need to specify there are many possibilities the and and as with so many things there are some truth to that we shouldn't and and this is why I came just for a moment we talked about what American compass is focused on in restoring this consensus it's not throwing out the right of center there's there incredibly important contributions and insights there that that should be at the foundation of what we believe but it's it's gotten diluted and lost in these sort of overtime evolving viewpoints that Georgia just a knee-jerk well it's just a cultural problem has nothing to do with economics that's what I love about what you're saying Oren which is that at the beginning it was what will have globalization will have retraining and all that but what comes first the globalization the same thing with amnesty I'm gonna see always comes first and the promises of restriction and I'll you know the reforms they they're said they never actually materialized and then eventually it comes to the point where you get the globalization and then it's an Tyco they're anti-government senses make it so that they're against the retraining in the first place actually yeah I agree if your promise but I won't disagree of how you sort of articulated it because I actually don't think the right was talking about job retraining yeah I don't think the right was talking about higher education policy I mean I think something that's important to note here is that a lot of the right is that a pretty distinct lack of interest in public policy questions so I actually don't think public and politicians in the 1990s we're going around saying we're gonna pass free trade deals here as NAFTA hears increased low-skilled immigration but we have this policy program for you I guess what do you what do you think of what do you think cuz I think that was a something that the you know the central Averell yeah approach them but how is the how is the right articulating this story of globalization well so I think you're exactly right Marshall that on on the retraining kind of questions the the assumption was just the growth solves the problem the rising tide lifts all boats yes there will be disruption but disruptions actually good I mean when the strange sleeping like disruption is necessary in many ways for economies somehow we've got ourselves into position where kind of disruption is is a good thing for the person who's disrupted and you sort of demonstrate your merit by celebrating the loss of a job which is not how economics actually works or politics right not the most popular political program political but but I think more importantly not how economics works the and so you're right that there is this sort of assumption that you know this is just gonna kind of take care of itself now the the one exception which i think is also kind of a glaring misfire was on education where it become very fashionable to say well education is a civil rights issue of our time right the the it was not that we don't do anything it was that well if we have a sufficient education system we will prepare everyone for the new economy and therefore we don't need to worry about what's happening in the economy what the market is doing at all and what I find so fascinating about that is is if you just step back for a moment and coming back to this idea of kind of restoring all rights and consensus if you step back for me to say guys I have I have the plan here's what we're gonna do we're gonna put a building in every town in the country we're gonna staff them with three million public sector unionized people we're gonna give it a budget bigger than the Department of Defense and we're gonna tell every family to send their kid there every day for six hours and that is going to be the key mechanism that overcomes any environmental difference is natural differences between people and insures everyone is prepared to be an effective oversight that's the least conservative possible conception of how people work how society operates what government can do and yet that is what we we placed all our bets on I for any any slower listeners that was our public school system yes sorry I shouldn't call these are the smartest people um yes if if my mic broke up for a moment there I was talking about the public school system and so it it it put our whole package the right-of-center packaged together very nicely well we've got the globalization we've got the education and it gives us an excuse to bash teachers unions and it all fits and conveniently requires absolutely no sacrifices or trade-offs by anyone who are the winners and kind of people on the commanding heights of the economy of politics of the culture and and everyone was very happy to go along with that frankly a decade or two into an awful lot of evidence starting to crop up that it was not actually working for most people let's talk about stagnating wages so this has been another topic I think people who I think people who aren't a part of these into her right debates the talk about wages has changed over the past ten years I think that sort of in the 2000's and before it's about minimum wage laws are just bad and that's where the conversation stops where wages aren't stagnating what do you think about that debate there are two elements to it there's the kind of do we even care question yeah and and then there's the more descriptive well what is happening question I I think I'm the do we care question the folks across the political spectrum would always have said you know rising wages are important wages those that can support a family are important but again the right-of-center view was that that this just inherently happens that the self-regulating market if left to perform delivers that yeah and that is an ideology that was delivered that was developed between 1950 and 1970 in a time when that was true and so as a description of a moment in time it's fine as a as a universal truth it has no value well what yeah I mean has it even borne out let's look at the evidence you've extensively in your book and I never heard you talk about it since 1970s onward about wage growth tied to economic growth it appear ëadd especially like where we are right now with our economy that's right and so you know depending there there are a lot of very technical debates about how exactly do you measure whether wages have risen which inflation index do you use I think the fairest reading and and you know is it an apples to apples comparison of one of the people then to the people now I think the fairest reading of the sort of 1970s to current period is that there has been some wage growth but it is on the order five to ten percent total over over decades and you know that's the thing that always puzzles me is that it's especially on the right of Senator people take the argument like well if I can prove that they're not technically stagnating because they've actually gone up a tiny bit like checkmate and and and that's just bizarre to me the the question here isn't whether they're technically up five percent flat or down five percent the question is in an economy you know where GDP per capita the the total amount of value per person is is way up where where people with college education of seeing dramatic wage growth where the costs of things even after inflation like housing and health care where those are going way up is the average worker participating in that getting the benefits of it able to keep up with it and whether the insurer is plus 5% zero or minus 5% could not matter less the answer is no and this is a key thing the hint that you hinted on earlier which is that the key thing about the post seventies story is that the economy transition towards a service economy through a variety of choices it was a society that preference certain forms of financial and economic activity over others so obviously the question is in you know are you a person who lives on the coast or a person who was part of that one-fifth that had a successful college education your wage is obviously sort of went up the question is if you're a person who were average or maybe didn't win the system what is your situation look like and I don't think the right isn't particularly good at focusing on that sort of set of people yeah that's right you know we when we're doing this well we talked about the median so the person kind of half above half below I think it's important to emphasize that it's it's not even about the median I mean in our politics when we think about what we should care about what represents a crisis you know the health care system and and uninsured Americans isn't a problem because most Americans have no insurance right something is should be of concern to us and is politically salient when even a fairly small fraction of the population is facing it and the question is you know first of all just because we should care that there are millions of people facing these problems but also politically because it's not just the total number it's do you know somebody is there someone in your family is there someone in your community that's because that affects you too even if your own wages are doing okay and so I think the standard we have to hold ourselves to again it's not did the median wage go up 2% or down 2% but is there a significant share of our population who not only has not shared in the benefits of what's been going on in recent decades but has really been hurt by it and is falling behind and if the answer is yes then we have to we have to say that we should want to do something about it and it's they're not just hurt by it economically right Oren this is the last thing we really want to get into it gets with you it's about life expectancy it's about when they're hurt by it there are real costs to this deaths of despair in this country are up drug overdoses are up suicide is my workplace suicides one of the highest since it's been measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are very real human costs to the downside of these policies and yeah let's talk about that about the immorality of discarding the very real human effect of the economy and the way we structured in the discrete policy choices we make on our citizens lives well this this is a really important point and it goes back to this this idea that it's not just economic problems and cultural problems and I think it's something that we've we've become more attuned to in recent years is to recognize that when you have these kinds of economic trends affecting people again the idea was well okay they might lose but we'll just redistribute to them right we're gonna have a better safety net and it turns out that that is not a substitute I mean again that that someone has to explain this to the right of center like this is this is conservatism 101 obviously that is not a substitute and yet right-of-center economic orthodoxy became well as long as the overall pie is growing you can make whole anybody who gets left behind and what we've learned is you can't and and to your point there there's the the deaths of despair and the effects that we're seeing in people's health in in substance abuse more broadly there's there's what has happened to entire communities and the loss of vibrancy in those communities the collapse of communities there's effects at the family level and suppression of family formation and increasing family dissolution and so for me at the end of the day the the the place where the rubber meets the road is with kids with the next generation and you know if nothing else the right of center has tried all the way through to maintain this commitment to opportunity not necessarily equal opportunity I don't know I don't they will say that but I don't know what equal opportunity even means but opportunity that that wherever you are you know whoever whoever your family is where you're born that that you're going to have opportunity in our society and I think the reality is that putting away wage or income inequality put that to the side the social inequality that we've built up the the difference in your chances in the strength of your family the health of your community your interaction with people of different economic backgrounds that is now so divergent for young people depending on whether they are in one part of the economy or the other that that I think that is ultimately where the the conversation has to has to end in a sense and we have to say that's not acceptable and and that's something and and again the right-of-center would always have said yes we care about that it's just the policy agenda that that flowed did not respond to it so something we do a lot here is sort of focus on the past because it's important to tell these stories understand where we got there but something I think we want to do is sort of there's a clear story here of how from the 70s 80s on libertarianism especially in economics took sort of precedence first leaked you define for us just in it like for the audience really what is economic conservatism then if we're rejigging the stool if we're saying we need to go back to something key just define what it is and then we'll sort of apply it to different policy questions so I don't think there is a definition of it right now which I realize is a cop-out so I'll say more than that but but I think it's important to realize how atrophied the muscles of conservatism are in trying to think about economic questions after for 40 or 50 years just deferring to the the libertarian or kind of market fundamentalist view that the self-regulating market will take care of whatever economic challenges we might have and so in my mind the the core of the economic consensus that we want to return to is the idea that economic growth isn't just this kind of variable in a mathematical formula and there's a number of other variables you tweak and outcomes the economic growth and then everything else you like in life comes as long as you have economic growth it's actually the reverse it's that economic growth is the emergent property of the healthy society that those actual social institutions that conservatives have always emphasized the importance of whether that is the family the context in which young people are raised the community the commitment to work and the idea that you know being a productive contributor to society is core to people's identity in their and their obligation you know that there are obligations as well as rights that that those are actually at the core of economic policy that those are the things that you want to get right if you want to have a flourishing economy it's not a separate sphere it's there that it goes there back to the earlier point you're making Sawyer which is the connectivity of this intersectional it oh no and so if I had one more thing about that it comes back to this question of disruption that we touched on a little bit earlier which is that disruption is absolutely necessary to growth and to progress in a society and we should again not want it but recognize its necessity and accept it but but I think economic conservatism would recognize that disruption is is essentially one half of the equation that disruption isn't good for its own sake disruption is good if accompanied by the recycling of disrupted things into something new and better and and just put a fine point on this is a very popular right-of-center talking point to say like well don't forget the agricultural wrote you know industrialization and if we hadn't done that you know everyone would still be working on farms and instead only 2% you don't want ever to go back and work on farms do you and the interest will no of course not but let's be clear if the mechanization of Agriculture had thrown 98 percent of people out of their farm jobs and there had been nothing else for them to do they had just sat at home and waited for the two percent waited for the two percent to come around with the tractor full of food that would not actually have been progress what what made industrialization successful wasn't the disruption per se it was that we had an economy that was generating new and better opportunities and and that's what we're missing and that's what conservatism would actually step back and say you know disruption is a necessary element of the system but there's nothing conservative about just celebrating disruption for its own sake yeah we actually need to see the society that is supporting and generating the new and better opportunity and I just want to pin something on this point here because offer some - I I think it'd be good for you to offer some toolkits for conservatives especially politician to trying to talk about this issue so I like how you said at four feet because I think there was sort of this swath of people in 2012 2013 2014 who had run around saying things that the GOP is the party of uber or whole-food sort of like trying to talk with his economic policy questions in a way that was sort of incoherent and most certainly didn't win votes what would you tell her - them because they're obviously trying to struggle through articulate in this sort of space so how how should they articulate these issues like who isn't where the party of well ubers just a company and what you have to step back and and ask is what are our markets doing and and this is you know we have this funny kind of a tie climbing now we're quick like are you Pro market and and that's such a straight like pro market is no generic binary thing where you are either pro or anti market markets do lots of wonderful things and they're also things that markets don't do it all and whether the things markets are doing they are doing wonderfully comes down to the parameters within the market operates and so the the metaphor or analogy or simile I don't know which is which whichever one it is that that I think is really helpful in thinking about this and and that I'd love to see conservatives adopt and talk about is here's a comparison to the world of sports and that if you think about how professional sports works we set up these competitions and the competition isn't the end unto itself if you are an owner of a basketball team you don't make money because your basketball team wins I mean maybe you do a little bit but by-and-large you make money because your basketball team is entertaining yes the reason that we like basketball is because it's entertaining but the way that we have set up this entertaining product is not to tell the players go be extremely entertaining we have said we are going to set up a competition within which which you must do your best to win the result of which will be entertainment for everybody else and and a lot like that the point of market isn't profits for their own sake whether uber is making a lot of money or a little money tells me nothing about how we're doing as a society mm-hmm the question is whether the competition within which people are competing and pursuing profit is set up in a way that it is spilling over the benefits we actually care about what are the benefits we care about well we want to see innovation and new goods and services that make people's lives better we want to see the creation of productive opportunities that allow people to contribute to their society and in return support their families we want to see those widespread across the country and diffuse not just concentrated in a few places and if we see markets in which people can compete and generate a lot of profit without generating those spill overs then the response can't just be well that's how markets work because that's that's a nonsensical thing to say markets work the way they are designed so the way that we set them up to work and so you know the sports now to use fun because in fact over time you have to change the rules of sports I mean people game the system they find ways to win that are not entertaining whether that's hack-a-shaq or the Houston Rockets who I can't stand or know in baseball with the three true outcomes everyone's getting bored of home runs strikeouts and walks and so over time you raise the mound you lower the mound you know one point the NCAA banned dunking because Lew Alcindor was too dominant and then later they realized actually this would be a better product if you could dunk and so if we're seeing our mock market operating in a way where the players competing within it are succeeding on the terms we've set but it's not generating what we actually need as a society then we can't just applaud the success for its own sake and say well we said we wanted people to pursue profit so and don't I don't so there you go what we're getting at here is it just occurred to me it almost answers Marshalls question from earlier what distinguishes economic conservatism from economic libertarianism maybe it is is that the economic conservatism acknowledges the man-made features of the market itself and doesn't look at it as a wholly spontaneous order which cannot be touched and meddled in what do you think I I think that's exactly right and a corollary of that is I think the economic libertarian sees the free market as the ends whereas the economic conservative sees the free market as a means and families community stability that's right what what we are actually trying to achieve is the good society and good life for American citizens and we think having free markets is going to advance that but we are pro market to the extent that markets are advancing that any question for you we should be as socialist if it was true that family and community outcomes were better you're implying something if if if family communes were better over the long run so I think and and this is you know one thing I would say look Hayek went too far in certain areas hyukoh said a lot of good yeah not throwing everything out let's be clear Hayek observations about the the pitfalls of social point of central planning not just in the economic sphere but in the social and political spheres over time are hugely relevant and so yes hypothetically if it were in fact the case that a socialist system was in fact politically and socially sustainable and stable and generated better outcomes for families and communities then the fact that it took a different approaches to markets shouldn't disqualify it now just to emphasize there are a lot of things that do disqualify it but but that's the level of which to ask the question is okay what are what are the tactics and tools that actually are going to achieve what we want in the long run so Oren one thing out before we get to how the right should move forward with go I want to here actually just a brief how did you come to these positions because I think this is important for people to know you used to work for Mitt Romney Oh in many ways you know embody the antithesis of this in 2012 you can correct me or check mine a check me on that if I'm wrong he's kind to come to represent a GOP of the old and now you're talking very much of the GOP of the new I find myself nodding to everything that you're saying how did that happen what was the reckoning moments for you well I think it's important to keep in mind when you're when you're talking about Mitt Romney and his campaign that I think you're right in your characterization of sort of the central message and theme that was presented at the same time if you step back did you come up with makers and takers I have that I cannot say I came up with makers and takers at the same time probably West's step back then zoom in and look at what he was saying about an issue like China yeah I mean he said virtually everything Donald Trump ever said about China and that was not from some strategist saying hey you should hit China that was more from his business background saying wait a minute the things economists and pundits are asserting about free trade do not map with how the world actually works so you know certainly I think he was more sophisticated in nuance than he's given credit for myself you know I think I kind of come to this from a very strange path because I didn't move up through the kind of standard political channels I was myself a management consultant earlier on in my career then kind of went to law school when everyone else was going to business school and and ended up having the chance to work for then Governor Romney but found myself much more trying to grapple with and understand and synthesize policy ideas from that side than from the well here's the ideology that you come up through the system imbibing and so I think I probably from the beginning had a more heterodox view than your typical campaign staffer but for me a really formative experience was working on this China issue where it literally started from Romney saying we need to have something to say about China we can't just be well doesn't matter what China does because free trade is great and so I went off as the staffer responsible for figuring that out and bringing stuff back to him and going across the kind of right-of-center economic policy advisor landscape it was impossible to find anyone who had thought deeply what I would describe as deeply about the issue or had a more nuanced or sophisticated view or was willing to acknowledge the kinds of issues that that Romney was raising and frankly that if you just looked across the country were obviously true I mean one of the funny things is that this was two years before the China shock research came out and we now sir just sort of just take for granted well of course one of the facts we know is that trade with China hasn't been good for everybody but at the time even trying to say that but well that's just actually our models say the trade is good for everybody and so realizing how disconnected the the orthodoxy was from common sense and how little it had to say about some of the issues so you say okay well if China just steals stuff from us then subsidizes it and dumps us back the back into our market hollowing out our supply chains in the process like isn't like isn't that bad and no one thought that was bad and so that really I think both reinforced for me the value of coming in and starting from first principles on a lot of questions but also really spurred my interest in this question of what is it you know I'm an ideas matter guy I don't think it's just power politics and what was the set of ideas that had led us to this set of conclusions and which of them needed to be really before we wrap I think you've given us a lot of sort of this sort of top-down here's sort of intellectual framework but what is American compass what are you going to do cuz I think soccer and I sort of talked through sort of three of the areas that the rights really focused on right now which is manufacturing especially if the coronavirus there's this whole new addition to that debate which is that wait a second we've created a system where our supply chains are dependent on China and if there's a virus everything could fall apart shocker you can't even buy a facemask on Amazon right now I challenge all listeners should go and try there's the best immigration whether we need more immigration restriction or we need more school workers and then there's some also the long-standing talk about the national debt and fiscal responsibility so what are you and what are your organization going to do to sort of think through or take action on these issues well I think there's a lot of work to be done at the sort of agenda level as you laid out you know this policy should this policy issue there's not and and certainly a lot of those are the ones we want to engage in as we've talked about so the question of how do you revitalize American industry how do you think about trade policy how do you think about sort of the role that Finance and Technology are playing in our economy versus other sectors what do you do about higher education and so certainly we will be doing research and putting on information in arguments and facilitating conversation on those topics but but what I think is really most needed and and what is the core of what we want to do is is one level depending how you think about either above or below that which is thinking about what is the economic consensus what is the existing orthodoxy I just you know again to this idea that ideas matter what is the set of ideas that has produced the wrong set of policies and and what does it take to shift you know we're not gonna replace everything a wholesale where does it take to inject back into the conversation some ideas that are really important to helping shape the way all of us work on these issues and so the you know the two ways I think we really want to do that one is I think there's there's a very people focused component I think there's there's a huge number of really interesting people with a lot of intellectual energy going down this path already and I think we really lack any sort of institutional sort of flagship Rebecca life area where the people can look to affiliate with that helps to communicate about these things you know we have to scream like new right but but was it really mean what's our vocabulary and so bringing people together actually having members actually be able to identify who's working on this what are they talking about I think it'd be really valuable and then the second is really kind of forcing difficult conversations in a sense I think there's a tremendous amount of both comfort in existing institutions with how we already talk about things and there's sort of an it's inevitable it's not a criticism to say there there's just an inertia where you build a particular coalition behind a particular set of from the one side kind of donors and supporters and on the other side thinkers and writers and and you can't just change that model to something else if that's what you're doing and so again the goal is not to replace those but it's to to try to help shift that a few degrees over time by introducing different conversations by saying well let's have the next symposium be about one of these topics instead of health savings accounts let's you know let's deregulated derivatives markets right when you know when when people get out there and just you know put out these arguments like well obviously the more who brew we have the better for the free market let's make sure there's a letter for my community precisely yeah let's make sure there's someone standing up and saying ok you know does a lot of good things works for a lot of people but also be aware of the downsides of the gig economy and the and the concerns we should have about health of the labor market and so actually shifting that orthodoxy in which our debates occur I think is gonna be really important and we will use those concrete policy discussions almost as case studies to help facilitate the discussion but what we what we would love to have done at the end of the day is not to build yet another marble building somewhere in the capital but to have actually affected somewhat the the defaults within which people in all of these institutions think and talk about these issues last thing before we go where can people find out more american compass org please sign up for the newsletter if you're so inclined we welcome your donations twitter at a mayor compass someone else already had american compass tamara compass is obviously much pithy ER and you know over the next few months we will be putting out a lot more information and content and then by the beginning of May we should really be ready to get out there with with with our own view on things so congratulations on all this horn you're doing tremendous work Oren cast also on Twitter everybody following must follow and thank you so much for joining us you guys did a great job - thank you for having me thanks for coming [Music]

Channel: Hudson Institute

Views: 3,858

Rating: 4.7818184 out of 5

Keywords: Hudson, Institute

Id: DKSVA4ffP1w

Length: 42min 47sec (2567 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2020