 So you you guys all know I'm not Bob Murphy, right? You're still gonna stay here. You're not gonna leave. Okay So anyway, I'm Patrick Newman. Thank you for attending The title of my talk is America 2021 the threat of progressivism. Okay, so I gave a talk on the progressive era and sort of our current climate political climate earlier in the summer in June in Birmingham, Alabama and I posed the question are we on the cusp of another progressive era because what I was trying to Sort of show was how since March when the world sort of bottomed out in the economy cratered unemployment shot up to around 20% Industrial production fell we later found out that in the second quarter real GDP declined at about an You know an annualized rate of 33 percent, which is which is really bad. That's sort of like great depression bad In how the government was passing all of these policies the stimulus checks the CARES Act the Federal Reserve's very expansionary monetary policy all of the the lockdowns and in local ordinances and so on etc etc a very sharp increase in government intervention and I was trying to compare it to The progressive era of the early 1900s and show how well we were sort of mirroring mirroring this this this this Massive increase in government intervention and we are on the cusp of this So fortunately the economy has gotten a little bit better Unemployment has gone down to about you know 10% you know only you know 10% or something like that You know only Industrial production has gone up a little bit and this is you know You can't really argue at all that this is from expansionary fiscal or monetary policy at all You know this is just simply from allowing the economy to at least partially Reopen so it's amazing what will happen if you literally practice a hands-off policy You know you allow businesses to open and they'll actually produce goods. It's quite it's quite incredible you know if you just let them sort of do their job basically and You know so we've been experiencing that and you know If this will continue throughout the rest of the year And really you know next year a lot of that it kind of depends on what the government's gonna do What's gonna happen in the election? You know the situation doesn't look pretty either way I mean I think though that we're on we certainly you know You could see some very seismic changes happening in November and that could spill over Into what's gonna happen and that the 2020s really? 2021 is in really February 2021 Sort of like the last You know, you know you during the Great Recession when you passed a lot of big federal laws You know you could see another progressive era Okay, so really a threat because these policies are a threat to our economic freedoms to our You know Economic well-being to our personal liberty to our sanity to our Lee I definitely know my sanity to our you know our Psychological state of mind, etc. I mean these are things that could really cause a very serious A lot of serious problems So it's why I said sort of the threat of progressivism, right? And you sort of imagine you know what I try and sort of visualize is you have this this great sort of mighty Progressive juggernaut basically coming so everyone having their mind of what a juggernaut is or at least what you think a juggernaut is You know, it's sort of like you know, it's just this careening. It's this giant machine sort of unstoppable Consuming everything in its wake right and you know, it's sort of lumbering ahead to America And you know, how do we how do we stop this? Okay? Now, okay, we talk about a progressive juggernaut. You know I've already given very Vivid imagery and hopefully you see me there with like some sort of sword and a shield or something trying to stop it I'm an economist so I can make unrealistic assumptions, right? So, you know, what exactly we mean by progressive because you know, who wouldn't want to be a progressive you think of the word It means progress who wouldn't want to progress? You know human civilization would want to increase material well-being for people would want to make people happier I mean, that's the word progress right, you know, certainly by that simple definition I you know, no one says well, I'm a I'm a regressive. Yeah, I'm actually regressive I want to I want to decrease living standards for everyone, you know make things worse off. Yeah, I'm sort of a reactionary You know, it doesn't really sell well, right, you know, unfortunately though, that's not what the word means That's not what I'm trying to say that the word means because certainly progressives would like you to believe That's what the world word means. Okay, Murray Rothbard talks about that a lot in his book the progressive era, which I'll be discussing Word changes sort of controlling the meaning of words like liberal like what originally meant libertarian classical liberal You know, it's what we have to describe it now now means something very very different, you know What Jeff was describing would really be considered a federalist in the original description of the of the word in the 1770s early 1780s and that you want a decentralized relationship between the states and the government But that's not what federalists meant. All right, then federalists basically meant nationalists, okay And then you call the opposition anti-federalists. That's another thing Rothbard talks about and conceiving liberty No one wants to be called an anti-federal. You just sound negative. Are you got anti? I know and no one likes that, right? So what we really mean by progressive what I mean by progressive what I mean to say by a progressive era or a progressive juggernaut is cronyism Okay, so cronyism is when the government passes policies not in the public interest They might say it's in the public interest, which we'll talk about but it's really to benefit special interests. It's to benefit connected corporations and businesses politicians and bureaucrats you know Intellectual so academics technocrats policy makers etc. And so you think of labor unions or other activists What I like to call agitators of personal agitators of strife basically, okay? So and they're benefiting these concentrated groups at the expense of the public overall Okay Now of course what they do is you can't sell anything like that. You can't say well Actually, I'm only you know running to just benefit myself and my you know my my connected businesses my other donors All right You're not gonna win the public's gonna get out their pitchforks, right and drive you out of office or whatever sort of Government position you're in you know instead you have to cloak it in this public interest rhetoric You have to say well, you know you have it is these policies are benefiting the public They're making us all better etc. And so on so you think of something like the paycheck protection program, right? It was you know ostensibly to provide for people when they're struggling, right? Because they can't work so you know you're a business except you can apply for these these loans and so on it's got this very public interest You know you're sort of mantle this description and then in reality you find out a couple months later There's a bunch of you know attorneys and wealthy doctors and and other sorts of rich companies that you know Didn't really quote need the money But they had the political net connections the connections with banks to be able to get in line first It's very clear cronyism, right? So You have this public interest, you know, you have this stated public interest and of course, how do you do it? Well, that's a very crucial group one of the groups. I just mentioned you have the intellectuals that help you they sort of spin You know, they did the intelligentsia they sort of spin the apology. They say well, it's benefiting It's in the public interest, right? And in reality, they're just sort of getting a cut on the side Okay, so that relationship that cronyism that I was speaking about between intellectuals and the government etc That's something known And Jeff sort of referenced this that's something known originally as the alliance of throne and altar, right? So how does the king how did the king back in the day sort of Get the public to support all of his policies, you know to pay their taxes to go fight for him to give up some of their Land some of their resources etc. Well, you had the priests who said the king was divine He comes from God. You have to listen to him Worship the king is literally larger than life in many ways because he was given all the food So he'd literally be like a giant back of the day. He'd be like 511 or something, right? So I'd be pretty tall back then which have been cool And instead he said, you know, the priests say this instead Well, the king will give him some taxpayer money that build a nice church gives him a cushy jobs Sort of cozy sinicures, right? And nowadays we have the intellectuals do that So they are in their state universities in their nice jobs there, you know the term for that is tenure We you know that you have the Comfy think tanks policy analysts, etc advisers the politicians and they sort of spin all of these Justifications for these various interventions these acts of cronyism. They say it's not cronyism. They say it's progressivism All right, and that's how these policies sort of get supported. Okay, so that's what I mean by Progressive it's really sort of crony Okay, that's the idea. So you think of are we on the cusp of another progressive area? You say are we on the cusp of another era of cronyism when I say America 2021 the threat of progressivism I say America 2021 the threat of cronyism. Okay So, you know, all right, I mentioned that now what I want to try and do is sort of compare some of the progressives of today 2020 with some of the progressives of the past 1920 or 1900, okay, and sort of show how they're similar you sort of name some names you show they came Actually from sort of similar backgrounds or similar motivations similar types of policies and how it's really you know There's not a whole lot different kind of in many ways. It's very similar. All right So who are the progressives of the past? All right these people that Your average, you know social studies teacher or your history professor would say, you know, they were the they were the great Champions of the public interest and etc. Well, you know, who were these men and women? Okay, well, you know, they actually came from a fairly homogenous background, okay They wouldn't really pass the diversity test today. They all came from New England. Okay, they were Yankees Okay, what that meant was you basically were the descendants of the Puritans All right, and you live the New England or you emigrated to Western New York to the Midwest, etc Okay, and you had a intense sort of from the second great awakening of the 1830s you had an intense sort of even, you know, just just an intense fiery religious Aspect to your thinking so religious itself isn't bad being you know Christian etc. Evangelical not saying that But it's the idea that you need to remake the world Okay, you need to stamp out sin if you want to save yourself you have to save others Okay, sort of a post millennial pietist. I guess is what Rothbard would describe them as okay So had this fiery drive to change the world and you're either with them or you're against them So first you prohibit alcohol consumption Okay, you make schools read, you know, teach from a certain bible, etc You try and control the education system. All right, and then this spreads to economic intervention Because what happened in this is exactly like the progressives of today is that they became secularized All right, so they all got their phds back in the day. They got their phds from Germany So in the late 19th century, they went to the bismarck second Reich All right, the bismarcking welfare state They got their phds at these big job, you know, I'm excuse me at these large schools the state schools, etc In Germany back then it was very anti free market anti theory very pro interventionists, right So all these, you know, all these new academics, right, they come back to America. They say wow, this is great You know, this this this is this is awesome. We now need to change the world. We now need to make sure we need to Pass all sorts of regulations. We need to centralize economic activity. We need to create what's known as the fourth branch of government The administrative state Okay, the the my least favorite branch of government Okay, it's the one that doesn't even it's not even supposed to exist, but it does And so they had this intense desire to now Teach everyone else how to behave. Okay. They were also intensely elitist Okay, they believed in eugenics the idea that you could control the labor supply To improve the overall quality so you could basically drive out the unwanted people in society You use a minimum wage to unemployed immigrants or other, you know, less desirable elements of society. So immigrants from eastern and southern europe Africans south americans asians, etc. Those all interfered with the The the the the yankee basically so the yankee was the elite, you know control everyone else All right And of course they wanted to spread this across the world, you know, they thought big right So you think of wilson wilsonian democracy, right? You now need to go invade europe and so on so Hopefully as i'm saying this, you know, you're kind of thinking okay. That's not so much familiar to today Um, do you think all right at least going through some of the big characteristics, you know, the yankee the pietists they're Very academic They're elitist They're also a bunch of foreign interventionists So the only way you could really describe this is they were sort of pestiferous busy bodies They wanted to interfere in everyone's life Tell them how to behave because they knew what was better for you Okay, in terms of economics You know, what were the actual sorts of policies that they were supporting again things sort of very similar to what you hear about now Right, you had the two groups You could say the two types of economic philosophies the and sometimes they were working together Some as they were clashing the people in those groups. You had the corporatists and the socialists Okay, the corporatists were those large progressive businesses And intellectuals and politicians They didn't like the free market these businesses are trying to achieve achieve monopolies Okay, but they're unable to due to the Market competition new competitors coming in cartels breaking up and so on So they wanted the government to pass all sorts of new regulations create new trade commissions To basically clamp down on this various types of competition price competition product competition, etc All right, so things like the federal trade commission the federal reserve system All right, the interstate commerce commission What later became the food and drug administration and so on all of the regulatory commissions Uh, I don't like, um, there's not many I do like but anyway These are all the very problematic regulatory commissions and they wanted to Basically have the government create Sort of cartels that would be able to administer society This is actually the original form of fascism And it's no surprise that many of the progressives were enthusiastic permanents of musilini's italian Fascist state in the 1920s. Okay. Now the other group is the socialists Okay, the people who really vehemently anti big business. They wanted to break up big business through antitrust. They wanted to pass all sorts of Radical redistribution Of wealth. So back then, you know, the radical income tax, right? Very stringent sort of labor laws, etc And the corporatists liked those and they could shape those laws to their advantage So they'd fall more on their competitors, etc But they had this real, you know, the socialists who have this real big sort of Drive to change Uh, the world right into sort of remake the economy vehemently anti capitalist very anti money, etc So if someone like a theodore roosevelt is a classic corporatist All right, or a morgan partner george w perkins is a corporatist a William jennings brian a louis d brandeis. Maybe there's some names you're familiar with those are the classic socialists or populists okay In sort of the combiner of both groups would sort of be like a woodrow wilson All right He's sort of able to lean to one group and lean to another and he was able to kind of get them to work together To accomplish their goals. So they get all enriched themselves at the expense of the average consumer the average taxpayer Uh, the public so on and so forth okay, so Uh, yeah, these those are sort of some of the uh the progressives of the past and What they wanted to do They passed all sorts of various laws regulatory commissions. I just mentioned the income tax Right, they only said the income the income tax is only going to apply to the 1% Okay, we know how that turned out All sorts of various environmental laws labor laws, etc in the early 1900s All right in these were a threat. They were they slowed down economic growth They hurt personal liberty, especially in world war one, which is one the progressives were really running the government So on and so forth. Okay, so it truly is a threat of sort of the threat of the past Okay, a classic progressivist intellectual was someone known as richard t. Eli Okay, it's fairly, you know, very very religious very sort of fiery He said, you know, god works through the state The state is religious in its essence. So you had to stamp out sin. You had to correct the world All right supporting all these various interventions and so on So those are the people sort of running the government back then, okay Now who are the modern progressives? Who are the people we have to look forward to now all the people I named They're they're they're long gone. You know, they've been dead for for for many years, right? So the progressive now All right, they're not Yankee But you could say at least they congregate in new england Right, you know around all the ivy leagues All right in in boston and where are they also congregate? Where did they spread out sort of in yankee fashion? All right, they spread out to the cities the big elite cities new york city washington dc seattle san francisco Los angeles the rest of the country is this is the flyover states sort of like where you go if you're going to vacation somewhere If you've got to travel across the country from la to new york or something like that. Okay They're no longer religious But they still have that in the sense that That that that drive to to remake the world to shape it According to how they see because the religion is no longer some particular type of christianity You know, the religion is egalitarianism or it's really the state It's the state will take care of you the government can solve your problems Big brother can take care of you right, you know, we can all the government will will solve our problems We will use the government to sort of usher in a new epoch or a new era All right They didn't go to germany for their phd's, but they're certainly credentialed They've got elite degrees elite phds and other sorts of Graduate degrees from the elite ivy leagues in the california state schools and so on you also got university chicago right in chicago there Um You know they they have this intense sort of elitism Or what may be called The medical term is known as ivory tower syndrome So they know what's better for you than what you know, right? They've got the degree You know they got their phd from from an established place so on and so forth So they have that they have that drive Right, they have that they have that you know that that that that intense sort of academic credential or they can sort of boss around the world They don't believe in eugenics, but they're still heavily elitist and that they want to try and now shape The world in a just the laborer supply is sort of teach people and indoctrinate people to believe a certain way Right sort of the egalitarianism the woke ism the social justice the the general See change in schools and thinkings etc that collectivist sort of idea For the collective is greater than the individual they have that and of course everyone else is equal except for them Right, you know, you've read the stories of various high-profile politicians in prominent areas They're saying oh everyone's got to wear a face mask or you can't work out the gyms are closed But then like they're able to get a secret little gym or they're able to get like a little uh Table in an italian restaurant in new york, right? So i'm not naming names, but people know who i'm talking about right um And uh, so they they they have you know, they're better than you right and they want you to know that they're better than you Okay, and they're also very interventionist. It's no surprise now that many leading neoconservatives foreign policy hawks are all progressives Okay supporting sort of this all right america has to take this Leadership position in the world and that leadership position always comes with spending more money So of course justifies higher taxes and government borrowing in federal reserve monetization of the debt and so on and so forth okay In terms of their economic ideologies, you still have the conservatives in the so excuse me the uh, the corporatists in the socialists Right the corporatists of today. There are those connected with wall street in big tech So amazon alphabet the company the google facebook Uh apple microsoft uh uber so on and so forth right where they Support safety regulations internet regulations etc. That's going to hurt their competitors more than they will All right that they have the comparative advantage In uh working around so the tech companies clearly their employees can work from home or more easily from home amazon You know not saying they've been intentionally, you know pushing the coronavirus But they certainly benefit their business goes up from these lockdowns etc. You know you ever you buy everything from amazon now um You know and they these large companies even the restaurants etc They can retool their facilities to have the face mask mandates or they have the the the the shields or you have the All right, you got the little things on the ground or you got to stay six feet apart If not, you know, you're going to spread the plague and so on so they have these Uh, they have that advantage uh that that they they can suffer the compliance costs, etc So they don't want to break have anti-trust break up their companies, but they support sort of Federal laws regulating their industries You know the big tech companies got big through the free market But now they want to use government intervention to sort of cripple their competitors Okay And of course you have the socialists So the people who are supporting these ridiculously grandiose ideas like the new the green new deal All right, we're costing an astounding 93 trillion dollars overall over the years now Of course they always say it's going to cost less because that's what you do. You can seal the cost It's like running for it's like election 101 All right They have the universal basic income All right, we're now the government is your is your is your right to stay at home and play video games all day Uh and have the government pay you so you can live, you know life You can rent the house with like four other people and do that they support these wealth taxes And of course they only say it's going to happen the 1% but remember with the income tax Because there's got to be some way you're going to pay for the Impending entitlement crisis and all of the other programs and so on and so forth So you still have these very sort of radical ideas that the corporatists would also like as long as they can make sure they benefit So they get some of those environmental subsidies They make sure that the universal basic income and the wealth tax is offloaded onto the middle class the cost at least That's what happened to social security Middle class mainly pays for social security. It's actually a regressive tax All right rich don't really pay that much for it Again, even though the common perception is the opposite, but that's how you sell that progressive cronyism. Okay So, you know, if you think of today at least Think of someone like a hillary clinton would be a classic corporatists a bernie sanders Or an elizabeth warn or an aoc would be a classic sort of socialist Right those groups, you know, who would sort of be the the woodrow wilson Kind of combining really both of those groups sort of doing the straddle back and forth, you know, what would be going on And I think it's the best You know would probably be kamala harris at least where you think of someone who's straddling both of those and is really kind of Sort of the democrat nominee Um for for president, you know something like a william crawford or a william henry harrison thing is going on biden But you know, that's kind of who you're really sort of voting for Um And you know, you think about it and this isn't just to like play partisan, you know You know or something like that, but really kind of covers all the The the the range because it's very corporate as background Wall Street and big tech have donated very heavily to her campaigns, especially in california She's had a lot of her former employees and of working for these large companies She had a former senior council left a couple years years ago now works for amazon All right a campaign manager now works for google. She's got a brother-in-law works for uber stuff like that And she's you know support those types of regulations that would really kind of entrench the monopoly Right these monopolies you might have to talk to talk, you know Inact all populists and socialists, etc. But you know, that's really kind of, you know Those companies are making sure they're getting their money's worth basically And of course also supports sort of the the socialism Of the radicals, you know, so the very enthusiastic ron of the green new deal Now climate equity act two sort of combining environmentalism with social justice things like that All right supported a $2,000 a month universal basic income during the coronavirus crisis Of course that crisis would end whenever the government would want it to end All right, so it's kind of like 2000 We've already sort of seen the opening wedge to the universal basic income with the trump bucks and all of that all right And of course the wealth tax those very radical proposals To to to to to pay for all of these Government programs and so on you know really in many ways kind of embodies that sort of woodrow wilson Sort of progressive progressivist right sort of the the threat kind of of of progressivism All right, and of course you see obviously with the continuation the progressives, you know, all of this Kamala Harris Joe Biden You know everyone continuing all the lockdowns, you know, Joe Biden's something with like a national Uh, you know face mask mandate, you know something like that and so on You know really radical proposals that a lot of these proposals, you know, it's sort of like You know again, you gotta you choose between the lesser of two evils and it's not looking good Either way, but it's really kind of like a Uh, sort of it's a threat. It's a threat to our economic well-being these programs. They're going to impoverish us They're going to wipe out savings They're going to hurt our future generations as Jeff Jeff said our children and and their children and so on right It's a threat to our personal liberty All right, you know the this a lot of the what's been going on recently You know, I don't know if you've had people affected but in terms of just depression and suicides and alcoholism and drug abuse You know, all of that will go, you know has gone up and that maybe we'd even continue to go up Uh in the in the years ahead. So it really is sort of a threat It's a giant sort of crony juggernaut where the government is is sort of trying to enrich themselves at the expense of you all right So to sort of wrap up here, I guess uh to try and combine everything and what I've what I've been saying, uh, the great sort of You think of the libertarian critic h. L. Menken once had a very funny comment about the progressives Really the puritans, but it equally applies to the progressives. He said the great puritan fear is when Someone is somewhere somewhere someone is having fun That's the great it's the great puritan fear right because if you're having fun then you can't you can't save the world So in that vein The great progressive fear right the great modern progressive fear is that some way Is not wearing a face mask. Okay. Thank you very much