 Welcome to economics and beyond. I'm Rob Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with Zachary Carter Senior reporter at the Huffington Post covers Washington economic policy the White House and Who is the author of? An exciting new book the price of peace money democracy and the life of John Maynard Keynes Zach thanks for joining me. Thanks so much for having me Rob Well, you've been a pillar of Insight and how do I say bearing witness to all the machinations and craziness and Ideas and turbulence related to this American political economy for many years. So you've been a good friend of Institute for New Economic Thinking not so much in catering to us But just being a voice and a beacon who's out there that I'm inspired to read and to Suggest to others. Well, thank you, Robert. You're my best was that Let's talk maybe right now. We're near the end of May 2020 and this pandemic COVID-19 has just rolled through and Let us say the conventional wisdom doesn't feel well anchored any longer There's a great deal of emotion and anxiety about what the future pretends And I'm curious just kind of wide open. What are you seeing? What frightens you what inspires you? And what do you what what would be your call to action to our listeners? Well, I'll be honest, you know, I'm a In-veterate optimist. It's one of the things I like about about Keynes when I read him somebody who lived through periods of immense of people and almost constant crisis He never he never lost his faith in the belief that tomorrow could be better than today But I don't like a lot of what I see around us today. I I see a Country in the United States that has become so deeply unequal economically that it appears to me to be politically bordering on ungovernable The type of social breakdown that we've been witnessing even before the election of Donald Trump and and the outbreak of this pandemic things like The the upheaval in Ferguson, Missouri the Freddie Gray riots That the fact that life expectancy declined in the United States for the last two years that it was measured because of deaths of despair predominantly among Lower-income white men things like opioid overdoses and alcoholism to me suggests that we have a society in which working people have become decoupled from the interests the governing interests of of the political system and that that to me seems very you know, just morally troubling on its face, but also Politically politically unstable. I don't see how we get through major crises like like this pandemic Without a great deal more of people We really are living in different societies, you know that the decline in life expectancy that's happened over the last two years is Is not a broad-based decline Wealthy people are living longer than they've ever lived in the United States so the society is really breaking into at least two different kinds of Social universities, maybe maybe more depending on how you pursue the divisions among among race and class But certainly there's a there's a sort of breakaway wealth group at the very top which has unique access to the political system and the unique ability to See its interests implemented in public policy while the vast majority of people in the country are simply not taken seriously by that system and I think I Think that is that is very troubling what I do think is promising is that in the Democratic Party primary in 2020 even though the progressive wing of the of the party ultimately was was trumped by Joe Biden who represented very openly the sort of more moderate cautious. We might call them centrist wing of the party The those ideas that the belief that That that bold and ambitious action is necessary in order to avert the kinds of Disasters that we see unfolding in in our communities every day Or is necessary that idea seemed to be I think Something that Democrats accepted. I think they were just a little bit too afraid to embrace them in in this particular election So so you see things that you see pulling data on on something like Medicare for all It's it does very well among Democrats. It actually does pretty well among Republicans too The idea that there needs to be some sort of systemic change in the United States in order to fix these problems that we Can't just sort of muddle through that muddling through will actually lead us straight into disaster I think is has become sort of the conventional wisdom among the general public even if it's not the conventional wisdom Among the political class and now it's there's a huge gap there and finding a way to make that Conventional wisdom for normal people become the conventional wisdom for people in power is quite difficult But it means that the case is not hopeless and if there's anything Any lesson from the life of John Maynard Keynes? it's that things can always get worse, but they can always get better and and you have to you have to cling to those Those pop those glimmers of hope Because because you don't really have any other choice Ultimately tomorrow is coming whether you like it or not and you can either try to make it better Or or you can bear your head at the sand and I think Keynes was somebody who was always trying to seize the moment in In the most ambitious way possible Well, you and I are mutual friends of of Guy Saperstein and his gang and I remember Carol Avedon had a Offering on the listserv that we we both explore About a gentleman named Stuart Zekman who used to be a musical artist and He was describing his disaffection towards the centrist Democrats in a podcast and He had Cited an anonymous article. I think Ben Smith had written About a Democratic leader saying well, you know the Democratic Party can't go to that progressive place anymore because the population Doesn't believe in government. It's not Lyndon Johnson. It's not Franklin Roosevelt at this juncture but what Zekman did Was he went in the aftermath of reading that article to look at the Gallup polls and What he found was that most Democrats did as Was surface reported Have great skepticism about governance But what he also found is the reason they were skeptical is they thought that government had been captured By powerful corporate interests and wealthy oligarchs. This is 2011. This is in the shadows of the bailout During the Obama years as the Republicans were taking over the House the Senate and eventually the White House so I say I guess that notion of Confidence in Expertise governance or what we might call a crisis of representation has built building for quite some time And it's not a secret, you know, I think I think the Democratic Party leadership ignores that That that sense among people at its own peril There's sort of a weird disconnect in American politics today where There are very well established views that are extremely mainstream About about how the world works and what's going right and what's going wrong And and they're they're shared by people on the left and the right and and in the center I think but within the Democratic Party establishment, there's You know the people who actually lead the party day-to-day people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer There there is a consensus that Democrats Don't get things wrong and that everything is It is is the fault of Donald Trump and has sort of the problems in our society sprang to life in January 2017 And have just accelerated from there and I think You know, it's hard to argue that Donald Trump hasn't made things much much worse I mean, we're living through this pandemic, which is you know, it's a biological problem But it's essentially a political problem other countries that have implemented better responses to this virus are not suffering the kind of economic damage the kind of human damage that that that we are suffering but I think the election of Trump himself and is a reflection of the the political and social despair that people feel about about their ability to To to even you know, get attention from people in Washington And I think that's been reflected in the way that the coronavirus You know rescue or bailout packages. However, you want to describe them have been have been negotiated. There was a very quick package that was that was Approved in late March that provided trillions of dollars in funding for corporate America with essentially no strings attached and You know not not nothing for working people. There was an expansion of unemployment insurance of $600 a week Which is you know, it's real money for people, especially if you lose your job no one's gonna turn down an extra 600 bucks a week, but It was not an attempt to look at the world and say, okay Given that we have a you know, a sort of once in a generation Maybe once in a century crisis on our hands How do we make sure that this that this society does not come apart? Because of this crisis what who are the people we want to protect most there was sort of a Instinctive turn to a handful of policies that people put in place in the you know the 1980s or the 1990s that okay Well, we want to boost unemployment insurance So it's not a bad idea But but why are we letting people get laid off in the first place? There's no guarantee that when this crisis is over these companies that have laid these people off are gonna hire them back The fact that unemployment is gonna go is already clearly over 20% probably going to 25% very soon There was an opportunity to say let's not Let these people have their job relationships with their employers be be severed there wasn't and if you weren't gonna do that There was an opportunity to say okay Let's create a new social safety net that ensures that if people do have that job relationships severed They they're in a condition where they can they can access the basic elements of a good life indefinitely Not just for two or three months the way that it's it's It's been implemented under under that package and now of course You know we're entering what Democrats are calling phase four, but it's you know It's just essentially an attempt to do over that that botched response. I think in March and we'll see what happens, but We still don't see big ideas on the table. We see things like a trillion dollars for for state governments It's important give them money so that you know cops and firefighters and teachers don't get laid off. That's that's good but But it's not going to save us from a depression and it's not going to lift us out of a depression And I think the idea that we're going to bounce back from this very quickly I think is a deep misunderstanding of human psychology I think we're we're going to be dealing with the after-effects of this disaster For years if not decades to come people are going to remember this and it's going to resonate through our political system In ways that many of us simply cannot expect right now Now I sense that you're right in one of the things That for instance my research director Tom Ferguson works on is the is the Tremendously important role of money in politics. So whether you call yourself Democrat or Republican Or whether you think you're the least worst The responsiveness to Concentrated wealth and big corporate interests Is the precondition for survival? And I know your peer at pro-publica Jesse Isinger's just put out reports where he should talks about how The consequences of the bailout is all kinds of small businesses are going out of business Unemployment at the level that you just described And at the same time most of the private equity firms that were leveraged to the Hill are Up 40 to 60 percent in their stock price So there's a whole lot of Which am I called? Distributional ramifications from the structure of this bailout, and I do think Perhaps after This dreadful experience is behind us people will go back and scrutinize that and I'm fearful in one respect that that will deepen despair and I've used on this podcast the analogy Franklin Roosevelt with the new deal escaped the depression and Confidence faith and gratitude towards governance went up. So by the time he was ready for war preparation For World War two. He had a lot of trust and license What I see now in Washington And it's this started with the bailouts of 2009 and the what Joe Stiglitz calls when the polluters got paid I See a despondency to you party occupy Wall Street, and it just keeps moving and Then this recent episode I I'm concerned That people Will be what you might call susceptible to despair and potentially authoritarian rule Because they have no faith That the process we call our democracy can be at all representative broadly representative and responsive and and How would I say if we poisoned? The people's belief in our Republic We're in a very dangerous place And you know, I think John Maynard Keynes really spent his life worrying about that exact problem. I think the Conversion of Keynes into a sort of deficit therapist the guy who said You know the guy who you learn about an econ 101 courses who says you got to spend money in a recession in order to get out of the doldrums Has has sort of robbed a lot of his thought of this political and moral Content. He was somebody who was absolutely terrified of the march of authoritarian governments in In areas of upheaval. He said he could see that after World War one There was an intense energy for right-wing authoritarian politics that were that was was growing not only In in Germany, but but around the world and we forget this before you know when FDR took took office in 1932 there was a very very significant right-wing fascist movement in the United States that FDR was working very Coagulately consciously to put down so the idea that when when you enter a state of dysfunction that the state will lose its legitimacy and people will will feel a sort of thirst for a demagogue and And a dictator is something that you know, I don't think that's even unique to Keynesian thought I just think he's one of the one of the people who was able to put that idea into a particularly powerful and emotionally compelling set of terms over the course of his career and Ultimately his economics everything that he's working on from 1919 until his death in 1946 Is is aimed at averting this rise of authoritarian politics and and I just I don't think That our politicians have the same sense of urgency about this or the same recognition that about what is happening and it's it's a remarkable thing for me to say because Democrats are going around saying every day that Donald Trump is a is a dangerous authoritarian who's in cahoots with international authoritarians And I think they're right about that but they they do not seem to be governing as if that were the case and And they do not seem to have ideas about how to deal with The slide toward authoritarianism that I think is happening in among the American pop public They make they made you know, it only takes one spark, right? They could they could change their minds tomorrow and and we could start seeing some great legislation and And turn things around I think the pandemic is certainly not good for Donald Trump's reelection prospects But I would not rule out the prospect of him being reelected so I I think There's this sort of weird moment which I would be I think would resonate very deeply with John Maynard Keynes where there's the world is obviously dissolving into chaos and crisis and yet the leaders are looking around and saying well why don't we why don't we have some refundable tax credits for job training and These these are just not the solutions that that are it's like they've been indoctrinated in a set of thinking that That makes them incapable. Yeah, it's not that they're evil people They just don't literally don't know how to grasp the world that they're living in and yet They're the people we have to turn to for solutions Yeah, well There's a senior fellow currently at Inet Jeffrey man who's from British Columbia and he wrote a book on Keynes called in the long run were all dead Great, and the I agree in the last chapter. It's called revolution after revolution and in that chapter what I what I really admired Was that Jeff had started? the book With a skepticism about Keynesian policy and to just paraphrase counter-cyclical macro stabilization Has its place in mitigating unemployment or Keeping the economy on the rails But Jeff was worried that within what you might call the micro political economy structure the corruption and the rot would never be rooted out Because the depth of despair would be anesthetized by counter-cyclical How do I say support for the economy and so you'd trail along Through the debt years and through the decades and the society would never face that intensity of Crisis which would make it repair itself but in the last chapter Jeff says And this is after the election of Trump. I believe late 2016 early 2017 he was finishing the manuscript and What Jeff says is I thought about it and maybe I had too idealistic of view And I'm using my own phrase here of Democracy small d democracy is a corrective thing and maybe what happens in that deep Despair that I thought would be the catalyst to a reaction Is that the wisdom of crowds becomes the madness of crowds? And as he was seeing what was unfolding he's Canadian, but he was watching the United States He openly admits that he changed his mind and That Cain's sensitivity to what you might call the continuity of social fabric and The deformity of democracy that prolonged despair could bring to the surface Did that that it was by far the better alternative to engage in that stabilization and I know your your book is so sensitive to Cain's it's kind of in my reading through it the the briefing Or the what I would call the the briefing we get about Cain's at different points in time is outside of That hydraulic Cain zianism that mechanical Cain zianism that's associated with the my alma mater MIT and you know the Samuelson solo crowd and It it just it feels to me like he's a much more Vital Spiritual artistic creative and times frustrated person from reading your work and and I think that's just I mean you and Robert Skidelski are really sharing What a great man looked and felt like You know, I have a ton of respect for for both Jeff van and Robert Skidelski I've never met Jeff, but I I talked with Robert or his lordship, I should say over the course of Writing this book and I think there is There is a sense in which John Maynard Cain's Has more in common with contemporary poets than he has with contemporary economists Cain's in or otherwise. He's somebody who thinks about society's problems in this very holistic social and moral way And the mathematics of his economics are I won't say they're an afterthought because of course he majored in and In mathematics at Cambridge. That's what he studies as an undergraduate There wasn't the economics program at Cambridge was just getting started when he was at Cambridge to the turn of the 20th century But he's somebody who is concerned about the great problems of his day and in his day the great problems are Are our war and depression? So he's she's trying to come up with ways to solve these problems that don't involve violence because he's essentially a pacifist Which is you know a remarkable thing for somebody who? Was that the chief of British War Finance during two World Wars to be but I think it's still the case that he was a sincere pacifist. He did not believe in violence or war and he He believed that economic policy was it was sort of an extension of diplomacy was it was a way of creating Offered the opportunity to create social harmony both at home and abroad and And this makes him a deeply optimistic person because he thinks that if we just get it right on the way resources Are are acquired and distributed that war and Deprivation can be cured that the idea of poverty and frankly the idea of serious inequality He's not an egalitarian because he ultimately thinks that if you if people are well enough on if they can have the elements of a Good life then then who cares about serious inequality? But but they need to be they'd have the elements of a good life available to them But he believes that these are things that that are within the capacity of the political system to solve as as early as the 1930s which is Frankly a remarkable thing Because the 1930s the world is mired in the worst oppression that anyone has ever understood or or or or certainly been able to recollect It's not totally clear even they've been able to measure economic deprivation in this way before So I think if Keynes were around today, you know, he he would be talking about Dealing with the pandemic because because it's obviously a medical and and and healthcare emergency But he'd be thinking about the big problems in the world He wouldn't be talking about deficits and dollars and and and and debt and and accounting Standards he would be thinking about what do we do about climate change? What do we do about inequality? What do we do about declining life expectancy? These are these are matters of grave social importance that that threaten the stability of democracy and for him You know, he's he's he's kind of a fancy guy, right? He's not He's not a working-class Joe He wants to preserve the nice things that he likes about living in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London It's turn of the century So that means you know being able to drink champagne while a great artist gives you a haircut That means that means hanging out with Virginia Woolf and talking about books. It means E. M. Forster You know giving you drafts of his book before it's published It's thinking about art and letters and ideas all the time And he does not want that lifestyle to be jeopardized by political unrest And and he believes that if we do not find some way to democratize That way of living that he enjoyed at the turn of the century Then then there will be a political upheaval That will that will take those away and the upper-class will will brew the day reap the whirlwind whatever You know metaphor you want it you want to pick? It will ultimately become In it will become impossible people to enjoy the kind of lifestyle that he enjoyed at that point in time But as he gets older Particularly by the end of World War two. He just does not believe in economic scarcity He thinks that we have we have the ability to feed everybody to clothe everybody to house everybody And the trick is is is how to make sure that everyone actually is clothed and fed and housed And and make sure that they they're not only Not only their their subsistence needs are met but their their ability to enjoy Life is uh is guaranteed and he feels like if people have that They're not going to revolt they're going to feel tied to each other. They're going to feel bound to each other in a Political way and democracy will be able to do its work But if you deprive people of this and you have some people who are To borrow a phrase from george orwell more equal than others In the democratic system and you are going to sell a great deal of discontent And I think I think is what we're seeing today one one of the things I sense From reading you were your work is that here is canes with all of his artistic friends what I'll call an a be a bohemian elite rather than an establishment elite and his freedom of imagination to depart from What I'll call the conventional wisdom or the reinforcement of that people cite is his general theory which before it was hydrolyzed and and I would say people like paul davidson have illuminated that side the the radical uncertainty the Lack of what am I called continuity of structure and all kinds of things but but you have this man who's It's almost like He walks his own walk to his own drummer And Where does that come from? Well, that ability not to conform Sure. First, let me say that paul davidson is a real unsung hero in the history of kanesian thought because paul davidson a lot of the ideas in my book are are elaborations on the ideas that paul davidson has been writing about since the 1970s and And paul is a really He's just a very important thinker In this history who who never has fully I think been appreciated or awarded for the work that he's done He's been marginalized by the economics profession because his ideas frankly just didn't fit the needs of of the Has it to say has it to say corporate establishment because I think it's really more of a more of the Financialization of the economy that took place over the 80s and 90s. It's not just that it's corporate Is that it became financialized Um, and and so the economics profession just didn't didn't reward people like paul And I think it's really important to give someone like paul has do At at this moment where I think I think the kanesian ideas that that paul Had had teased out were are are are more ascended I think for kanes himself there is There is a certain sort of middle-class rebellious spirit to him. Uh, I I Perhaps i'm just projecting on to him. But uh, you know, I grew up in the the suburbs of northern virginia And I played in punk rock bands. I was not you know, a son of deprivation or poverty I you know, I I didn't have drug addict friends in urban new york or something but I I played in punk rock bands because I I sort of identified with people who were um Trying to change the system in some way and I think kanes has a certain similarity There was no punk rock at the turn of the 20th century But you know, he he grows up. He goes to eaton which is one of the You know most elite and prestigious british boarding schools and then he becomes you know a very illustrious student at cambridge university at kinks college and I think that experience for him It allows him to understand his own uh I think privilege is a word that's thrown a lot thrown around a lot today in progressive politics, but it's it's sort of It makes him feel like The world is something that he can change. He has the ability to um to shape it to his to his will which is sort of an arrogance of youth and of uh And and of a certain position in society that you get So he's convinced that he can make the world a better place and that the world will listen to him from a very early age Uh, but he is then disappointed deeply disappointed by his attempts to do that particularly during world war one and and afterwards so uh, he has just immense confidence in himself as a result of his social position um But he also is surrounded by artists all the time and these are people in bloomsbury who are who are critics of the The existing social orders of people like lytton strachey and virginia wolf who think that The social order of the early 20th century is is kind of rotten and corrupt. They think that it is uh it's stuffy and restrictive and and it's It prevents free expression and good ideas and what bloomsbury ends up doing is Is ultimately I think celebrating a particularly elite Way of a way of life, but it does so by rebelling against elite privilege against Against elite norms and and it makes canes somebody who is capable of understanding I think much of much more of the sort of social Continuum than most people can he can understand Working people and he can understand the elite at the same time and it makes his thought I think much more compelling than it would be otherwise and I since there that I'm always reminded of my good friend who is died last year William grider who Often talked and I've mentioned it in several of these podcasts about his faith in young people And he basically Attributed it, you know, you know I guess it's a blog post on a blog he founded in 2009 To the fact that young people have fresh eyes They see what is wrong But they haven't been conditioned as to what is feasible or that which Will cost them in reputation among the powerful And so he felt that the impetus to change Came from those young eyes Well, canes lived into his 60s and I sensed he had he had young eyes from wire to wire Absolutely, and I think that's something that is almost as important as his It's at least as important as his sort of congenital optimism And and is related to it. You know, he always identified with the next generation Even when he was writing the general theory in in 1936. He said, you know, I don't really expect To persuade all of the the economists who have come of age thinking about the about economics this particular way Now that I have offered this revolution My real hope is with the next generation and in even in in the late 1930s early 1940s He's there's a really funny interview with him for a British magazine where he says, uh, you know I don't really like the communists the young communists. I mean, I think their ideas are a little bit silly But but our hope for the future lies in their political maturity He's still saying they've got to get over this communism thing But but but in their maturity, they're going to be really something special And they're there's so much more promising than what he said he calls the old Jossers Um, I've never seen the word Josser used in any other context. So I don't know if that is uh, is a particularly nasty slur or something I hope I'm not uh Throwing about some terrible British insults from the the you know the before time but um He he has a deep faith in young people and their capacity to understand And believe in the future In a way that he thinks that his generation has just become so numbed to Dysfunction and despair that they can't imagine a world in which in which Things actually work in which people are taking care of in which tomorrow is in fact better than than today And I think that that resonates to me certainly Uh in in our present day. I I feel like It is Very clear in our politics. We have a we have a sort of gerontocracy problem where uh, not not everybody who's You know over a certain age is uh, is is an enemy to progress But uh, but there are people who have just become inculcated to a certain way of doing um doing politics and making policy Which you know in their defense is the way that it has been done throughout their lifetimes But which clearly has led us Into a situation that is disastrous that anybody who is looking at the world today with fresh eyes Is going to say this is not a good state of affairs We need to do things differently And and the people who have who have been making policy over this this period in time It's not that they're incapable of reflection It's just that they don't know what else to do. They've been uh, they've been sort of conditioned in this way And I I I have a great deal of sympathy for these people. You know when I worked as a um as a banking reporter for a company called snl financial, which is now part of Standard and poor's global intelligence Um, you know, I was constantly surrounded by people talking about the uh, the sort of perspective of the financial industry on Uh on the world and so when the bailouts happen the financial crisis happened in 2008 Um, you know, I was always sort of one of the more liberal or or lefty people in the in the In the news room, but I I had a basic set of assumptions about what was possible And what could happen that changed when I left that institution I don't mean to insult that institution I think was it was a very good place to work and they're very good to me And I learned a great deal there, but but when I left and started working for huff post Uh, the basic political assumptions at huff post were totally different And and the the the the scope of possibilities what seemed like a reasonable thing was very different Um, I think this happens to people in all sorts of institutions They you know, they go off to law school and learn a certain way of thinking and this is just how it is And I think it happens in particular within the economics profession And I think canes would have been very very frustrated By the way thinking within the economics profession has ossified into this kind of Mathematical straightjacket. He did not want economists. He didn't think of economists the way we think of economists today. He He talked about them in these these poetic terms as people who were sort of like Like great enlightenment thinkers, you know, he thought the ideal economist was somebody like Isaac Newton or David Hume He did not think the ideal economist was Was somebody who was exceptionally skilled with econometric models Um, he wanted economists to be sort of social thinkers, not just uh, mathematicians and I think the mathematician of the profession over the last couple of decades Which has been enabled frankly by people who call themselves canesians people like like, uh, you know, paul sandbillson and robert solo Um, who you also were very great economists to be clear, uh, you know, I I think he would He would have been very Very disturbed by that turn in the profession and and the influence that it has had on the course of our politics Yeah, I um, I mean you look at today and the challenge before us And you see things like his collection of articles essays in persuasion Economic possibilities for our grandchildren. There was he was just imaginatively going fishing In a way that people Just aren't doing I I've been reading a book recently By a gentleman whose name is william It's derisiewicz Yale it's called excellent sheep The miseducation of the american elite And it's about this kind of sterile technocratic pretend value-free Way of sea and in your book that comes to the surface over and over and over and and in canes writing there is this What you might call moral reflection about what is a good life? What are our goals? Where where are we heading? My colleague at inet lin paramore just put out a wonderful article with a man named jeffrey spear on John ruskin and unto the last and and it's there are people Eugene megeher's book What's it called? something mammon it's I'll remember it, but All of these books are about this kind of what I'll call Mindset almost religious lockdown On Imagination and humanism as if you're a a romantic fool or if you're you're Coward if you actually explore what matters to human kind You know, I think with canes the two Well, I think there are three works that people should read from canes that are not the general theory to get a spirit of his To get the spirit of his his thought there's the economic consequences of the piece which is his critique of the treaty of versi that ended world war one in 1919 And then I think there's a book called essays in persuasion, which I think is now volume nine of the 30 volume seven collective writings that came to university press has available And then there's a book called essays in biography Which I think is volume 10 and his essays on people like Isaac Newton I think are just they have a sort of magical quality to them. You can just tell that that is That is the stuff that just really captivates him that captures his imagination and makes him makes him take flight and And this idea that the economist is this Is this very Narrow technical mathematical thinker is something that develops Over the course of the 20th century and becomes it becomes concretized sort of set in stone In the lit the latter half of the 20th century even when people like john keth gallbraith are are studying economics in the 1920s 1930s The economics world if you're going to get an economics phc, you're sort of a weirdo. You're you're a little more You're not quite like a philosopher, but you're you're pretty close to what I think we would call a philosophy student today And I don't mean that in an insulting way. I studied philosophy as an undergraduate too. So, you know, I I like these weirdos, but but it was a realm of creativity and experimentation rather than a realm of Let's say of orthodoxy that the orthodoxy about Economic policymaking came from government and from the financial sector, but economists themselves were sort of Freewheeling types are certainly more freewheeling types than the type of people you encounter at a American business school today. So Keynes liked that but he liked that milieu. He thought that was he thought that was cool He was a philosopher who was good at math and there aren't that many of those people. So economics was Was a great place for him But he he was concerned With societies hanging together. He was not concerned with making sure that equations balanced just so And you know, he wouldn't ignore numbers today But he would ask what what the numbers were for You know, I don't think he'd be afraid of the the deficits That countries around the world have been accruing in order to fight the coronavirus pandemic, for instance But I think he'd be very concerned about The policies that those deficits represent. So, you know during world war two He wrote a very good piece called how to pay for the war What's sort of about how to pay for the war? But it was actually really concerned with what economic distribution would look like after the war How do we finance this war in such a way that when it is over The richest people in society don't simply become richer As a result of this conflict So if you just sold bonds government bonds and the investor class would would reap all of the benefits from From that debt accumulation up for the war and working people would get nothing He was able to sort of process multiple social problems at the same time through the same Policy mechanism and he was also willing to change his mind if it didn't work out He didn't say, you know, well, this is this is just how the world is. This is the policy that I I prescribed we have to stick to it by hooker by crook. He would he would change his mind and I think that flexibility On on technical policy questions is something that is very admirable But he was not flexible about his vision for society He really never loses sight of this idea that everybody can be part of Bloomsbury And that that is the world that you want to you want to fight for And I frankly find it a very difficult vision to argue with Who doesn't want to go to the museum every day? Who doesn't want to have their hair cut by virginia wolf While drinking champagne that sounds wonderful to me Yeah for everybody it should be but yes Well, I I I mispronounced The book I was referring to was the enchantments of mammon how capitalism became the religion of modernity by Eugene Macarra her And what what I see at some level Is this What do I call illusion of free markets as Bernard Harcourt called it in his famous title This this mechanical deference, it's what Charles kindleberg called Something like I can't remember what it is. He had a word or a phrase like a fallacy of concreteness That people are acting like they can Stabilize society by pretending that the economy is just a machine And I don't I don't quite know You know, I'm very fond of the philosopher john dewey and charles sanders pierce and those pragmatists Oh, yeah played around with the notion of uncertainty and I remember What was the name the quest for certainty was the name of dewey's book But it illuminated all of the Horrid side effects that are analogous to following a demagogue Because you want to believe until such time That their charade is unmasked And I I've got a quote that I I use Very often now Because I think we are in transition. I think A particular religion has failed And we've got to kind of sail out into the fog together And this gentleman rc zaner at oxford university He said loss of faith in a given religion does not by any means imply the eradication of the religious instinct It really means it merely means that the instinct temporarily repressed will seek an object elsewhere What I'm hopeful about in zack. I I'm this is really a question I'm hopeful That the pain and the tragedy Of this pandemic Will propel us To see better what matters and define a less icy mechanical fascination with material consumption and How do you say redefine what the good life is? You know, I think I think the key is for the young The the young are Are the people who are looking to the future with a sense of of sort of Optimism by necessity They're going to inherit this world whatever it is whether they like it or not And so they have to think about it as a place that can be better than what we're living in now because this is Clearly intolerable And I think young people are capable Of of establishing The political conditions that enable a better world to come to fruition and frankly, I don't think that You know, I have a very dim view of the people who are in power in both republican and the democratic party at the moment, but I don't think that those people are Are riding the zeitgeist. I don't think that that is the trajectory of Of human thought and of human action. I think I think I think the kids have it right and I spend a lot of time you know talking at universities with younger people and and This is this is a really terrific Younger generation that's coming up. I'm a millennial and 37 years old And so I'm past the point where I get to claim You know the the advantages of youth I I'm I'm pretty pretty well into middle age at this point But I got to tell you young people in on college campuses In high schools who are thinking about these ideas They are ready to do something bigger and better than what our generations have done And and I think they can do it. I I genuinely think they can because I don't have any choice Yeah, either they're gonna do it or we're going to see mass death Well, I hope you're right and and zack. I would you may be 37 years old. That looks like youth to me, but uh Standing here is 63, but I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you to go back to an old song All right, if you're if you're feeling old my back pages by bob dillon I was so much older than i'm younger than that now In this book that you've written You're rising to the occasion It's it's almost a beautiful coincidence because I know you didn't see the pandemic coming when you wrote the book But what we need are beacons What we need are models of the way forward a way of mind of what greatness and vision constitute And you painted a beautiful portrait Of a fascinating man and so I think I think You've got young eyes And uh, and I think I think you're a big contributor Well to the to the world that we need and to the To the pathway forward because you both I I read this quote From muriel ruchizer about there's kind of two types of traditions There's the people like melville who point out what's wrong and there's the people like wall whitman who teach us how to dream And you do both of those things beautifully Oh, well, that is a very high compliment. I don't know if anyone's ever compared me to wall whitman and Herman melville before rob But I don't take it Now you you're in that framework and uh, and in this book I know like I mentioned our friends with guy saperstein and all the group Uh, they were just overjoyed our mutual friend rjs cow Got you on for a podcast right away and he was effusive and your Your reviews reviews are deservedly strong and enthusiastic And that's true even within all the establishment media right now So you've you've tickled our fancy And you've rung our bell And I want to thank you for being here with me today And making a difference. All right. Thanks so much rob. I really appreciate your time You know, we'll we'll talk again before too many months pass about the time your book tours are over And though they they may all be electronic for a bit of time, but uh, I'm sure we I'm sure My audience will want to see us come back and compare notes in the not too distant future I'm sure I'll be able to rank another book out of this so we can talk about that if if not for that all right Take care. Thanks. Bye. Bye And check out more from the institute for new economic thinking at inet economics.org