 Today's podcast is brought to you by WarbyParker.com. Get a free five-day home try-on at WarbyParkerTrial.com forward slash David Feldman show. Five pairs, five days, 100% free. The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad pathetic humps. Joining us in London is Rich Hall. He is the host of Rich Hall's US election breakdown on BBC Radio 4. You can listen to it at 6.30 p.m. if you are listening to us in London, England, Great Britain, and you can also download it as a podcast. Hello, Mr. Hall. How are you doing? Thank you for doing the show. Tell me about US election breakdown. Well, you know, Brits are generally misinformed or uninformed or just don't care about US elections. But I'm trying to make the effort to shed some kind of light on what they see as a complete circus. And they're just basically scared. You know, there's no, oh well, you know, let's look at everything going on and make an informed opinion. They just basically think that Trump is going to win and push some nuclear buttons and they're gone, you know. They tend to equate this thing a lot with the Brexit vote. And in some ways it's similar, you know, because the majority of British voters just went to Europe, just went screw you. We don't like the government. We don't like London. We don't like the way we're being treated. So we're out of here. And so that was policies and issues. And whereas with Trump, it's just this guy looks scary. And then, you know, they're correct that way. They have every right to be scared. But I don't think they really understand why Trump has become as popular as he has, you know. So I take that for myself to try to explain the American mindset that it's there are a lot of disenfranchised Springsteen song characters walking around, you know, you know, pretty much any Springsteen song that marginalized guy, the blue collar guy, the girlfriend Darlene in a car. That is that's a Trump supporter, even though Springsteen actually called Trump a moron. So your show, it's really funny. You have stand-up sketches and interviews. It's kind of a fictional network that comes out of Washington. Yeah, that's a fictional call-in radio show that supposedly comes from DC, but it really comes from London. There's a live audience there. When you were on it, I'm sure you heard them responding to your jokes. The number really had to be cleared by a huge raft of lawyers. Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you tell a joke in this country and then eight people sit around the table and scratch their chins and go, hmm, is this going to offend someone? Well, is it satire or is it too on the money? And then, you know. Well, your libel laws over, you're an American, but you're an ex, I don't want to say an ex-man. But the libel laws in Great Britain are much more lenient than they are in the United States, right? They are, but because it's BBT, it's taxpayer-funded. You have to pay for BBC. There's no advertisements. So, you know, somebody's paid their 100 pounds a year or whatever to watch BBC television or listen to BBC radio. They feel the need to be easily offended, you know. It's not a problem of libel. It's a problem of they worry about offending somebody's sensibilities, you know. And does that make you, does that make you? I add for it because there's this huge migrant problem of people coming over from Calais and France and a lot of kids in the last week or so have been allowed into Britain. And so they're supposed to, but some of these kids who claim they're 14, they have like crow's feet and hot shadow, you know. And either they haven't moisturized or they're not 14. So we did an ad about a triple-bladed safety razor that after, you know, after you've gotten through these clothes shaves coming into England, you only need one more clothes shave. It's a third-bladed ceremonial, but they completely got cut. They got cut because, you know, oh, you can't make fun of these poor people. You know, well, these guys are, you know, they're 30. I wanted to talk to you about your show and Nick Doody and doing content. There's so many questions that I want to ask you, but we just, I do a radio show with Ralph Nader. And we had Ted Koppel on the show and we're from Nightline, great journalist. And we were bemoaning the current state of journalism in the United States. And I asked, what's wrong with the BBC? Shouldn't we have a government-sponsored news organization much like the BBC or Al Jazeera? And Ted Koppel said, don't be too wistful about the BBC. It's not as amazing as you might think it is. I think the BBC is amazing. It's amazing the sense that as a comedian, I've made, well, the last time I actually ran into you in person, I was making a documentary for BBC about the presidential race back in January. And there's a lot, the BBC is, there's four different channels actually on television. So BBC Four, the one I made the documentary for is, there is nothing like it in America. It's like a multicultural guilt trip. There's a lot of stuff that you didn't know was going on in the world and you're going to sit down and watch it. There's a 90 minute documentary on Filipino mining disasters. 90 minutes. And then two hours of Tibetan throat music. Here's a movie about a, it's never, it fell off the back of a truck. No one's seen it. Blind Afghan goat herder chasing a postage stamp across the desert. Well, my prejudice, my prejudice is that the audiences in England, London are much smarter than they are in the United States and that they know more about American politics than we do. But you're saying otherwise, you're saying that they think Trump is going to win. I always assume that... Well, if Trump is going to win. But aren't they more informed about American politics than... Oh, they read about it, but it's not nuanced information that they get. There's a lot of newspapers and a lot of people do read newspapers. And the newspapers in this country are very, they cater to their own opinionated public. You have the Daily Mail, you have a right wing and a conservative and a liberal paper. And lots of people read them, but the stories are, they're a bit skewed toward their readership. They're not completely objective. So the news that people get kind of plays into their own sensibilities. So they will skew any story. And there are some papers here that are very supportive of Trump. There's a lot that really paint him out to be way worse than he probably is. So I can't say that they're informed just because they read a lot and people do read a lot of newspapers here. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're getting the best information. Again, I hate to belabor the BBC and my love and affinity for the BBC. But it seems to me that, and then I'll move on. This is an observation that I want to make to bore my listeners to death and to get you in a mood so you no longer want to perform comedy. In the United Kingdom, in England they had, that's where tabloid journalism started. That's where you had these really opinionated left wing, right wing newspapers and nobody knew what the truth was. And the BBC came about at the same time with the advent of radio. And it's government-sponsored news that I think is a good idea. Because that's where you have, the government settles the left-right divide. In America, you have the general accounting office and the Congressional Budget Office, and I'll shut up. But you can argue and argue and argue, but when the GAO or the CBO issues a report, everybody says that's the truth. I think the government, believe it or not, is the only, a well-run government is the only source of truth. The closest we can get to the truth, and that's why I love the BBC and I love Al Jazeera. Because it really is balanced. It's pretty balanced. They do have a mandate of appearing to be balanced. In that sense, there's no, well there is Fox News in Britain, but it's not the Fox News you get in America. Even that is a bit more balanced because the British version of both left wing and right wing is far more extreme than it is in America. How long, you used to live in Montan, I think you still have. How long have you been in England? I came here in 1998 and I did the Edinburgh Festival and then I just, I don't know, I started, I really liked working over here. You know, I will say Bruce Kraut, if they like you they really like you and they really want to laugh. They're desperate to laugh. Really miserable people. You know, when we're here in Britain and you hear it all the time, they'll go, that went surprisingly well. Like you don't know anywhere else. But we thought it was going to be crap, it wasn't as crap as we thought it was going to be so, yeah. And when they come out, they are informed and they are really ready to laugh and they're probably more attuned to the syntax of what you're saying than to the actual joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. You know, they get suspicious of everybody who is too slick, you know. And they think, oh, this seems a bit too prepared. They've just probably phoned this in and then they'll heckle you. You will get heckled. And it's to kind of throw you off your rhythm and see how you'll respond in a moment. And they do it all the time. They're not vicious, but they will, you know, they don't like anything that seems too palatable. That I appreciate because I'm anything but slick. How has it changed? Have you been aware like in the late 90s, were Americans more loved in England than they are today? No, I think they're probably more loved now. I mean, God, even in 1996 when I first got to Britain, you didn't see many people wearing trainers or hoods or sweatshirts or anything. So, you know, the Americanization of Britain has been a very slow but very inevitable creep of influence. And so now, you know, I mean, they watch all the TV shows that you see in America. They're just as crazy about them. It's a very international looking city, London is. And Britain, for the most part, is, you know, they're a tiny place. They gave away all the good parts, you know. Are we putting on a... And they really absorb pretty much anything coming in from both America and Europe and Canada. Are we putting on a show for the rest of the world? I mean, when you're away from America, is it a spectacle? What's going on here? Like, we look at Florida in the United States as a freak show. Yeah. Oh, thank God I don't live in Florida. Does the rest of the world look at America and go, this is fascinating. Thank God I don't live there. I think they have been since this election. In the last year, they have definitely... They can laugh out loud in America, you know. I think before it's always been kind of like, what the... Kind of a combination of feeling superior to America, but being jealous of what, you know, how large America is and accessible and how much choice there is. You know, Brits secretly love America, but they also love to make fun of it for whatever reasons, you know. Jealousy might be one of them. They are critical of anything. You know, Brits don't even like the French. Most Brits don't even like the people who support the football team down the street. They'll kill each other over that. They're very tribal people and very insular in a way. But they have, you know, an amazing scope for what's going on in the world. So I would say in the last year, though, yeah, this has become kind of an open... Open kind of laughing stock, you know. Not just Trump, but the whole process and the whole... The debates, you know, Brits... Brits have a very kind of long-tailored attitude to debating because they think they have the parliamentary question time every week. And it's a hoot. It's hilarious. You know, it's crazier than the debates, but I think they look at the debates and go, why are they holding back, you know? Who's Nick Doody? These things that go on every week. And even the Prime Minister has to get up there and just be hounded to death. But you can't say two words without being interrupted. Bullshit, you know. And they're all half drunk. It's hilarious. Who's Nick Doody? Nick Doody is a comedian and a writer and a very funny guy. A bit dark, but really funny. I hadn't worked with him on stage before, but I thought he'd be great for this show. And Mike Wilmot does the show a lot. We all know Mike and... He's kind of the Mike Wilmot. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of Canadian comedians in Britain. A lot. That's because of the Commonwealth. Yes. You know, one of the mistakes America makes is we make it very hard for foreigners to work in the United States. Yes. And the Commonwealth and other countries make it really easy for people to work overseas. And I think that hurts... Whenever I go up to Montreal to the festival, there are a lot of English-speaking countries, and Americans are not welcome because we don't reciprocate. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I think that, I mean, it should tell you something right there, that the best American comedy festival has to be in Montreal. And it's a cautionary tale about what happens when you build a wall and keep the ferners out. Yeah. It's not good. I mean, I'm not a big globalization freak. I think, you know, there's a race at the bottom with wages, especially when it comes to factories. But whenever I go to Montreal and I meet English-speaking comics from other nations, they're traveling all over the world, and welcomed, and Americans are not because we make it very difficult for English-speaking ferners to come to this country and perform. I mean, it's gotten so bad you have to marry an American woman in order to tell jokes here. Yeah. It's definitely a problem. I mean, there's a lot of British comedians who would love to go to America, and some have, but unless you get a sponsor, then you're not going to get to stay unless you go through some extraordinary hoops, or unless you become the Toast of Hollywood, you know? Ricky Gervais, who's not really a comedian, does quite well. And I don't think he has any problems working in America. Where are you performing tonight? I'm in the Blackheath Halls Theater, which is south London. And what is that like? So it's an old theater? Yeah, tons of, I mean, when you tour in Britain, you don't have to get up. These are some great things about working in Britain. Number one, no morning radio. You know, there's no, you don't have to go on the Clem and T-Bone show. And every town has a theater or an assembly halls or village hall or something, which is decent, it's great, you know? And then you can go 20 miles in another direction and do a completely different theater in another town. And I could tour all over, I could do a tour of Britain and never go past 50 miles, a 50 mile radius of London, if I wanted to. You know, it's, there's no shortage of places to perform. Why is that? Why is that? I'd say ideally, because people still treat comedy here as an art form and not a novelty, you know? For better or worse, it gets reviewed all the time by critics right beside a theatrical production or concert. There's tons of empty spaces, whether it's above a pub or a music hall or there's just tons of performance spaces because, you know, it goes back to all the days when people went to the theater and threw fruit and rotten fruit and stuff, you know? People loved going to the theater. It was a gladiatorial event. And it's toned down a bit now, but comedy is like that. People just like to go out and see comedy and they're not hustled into, you know, sort of laugh spots where they have to pay a cover charge and buy two drinks and the waitresses are there and you get some guy come on and do 15 minutes and then the middle act, you know, and then they kick out. It's, there's nothing. I do two hours and then there's a break and in between everybody goes out and has a beer and then they come back and sit down and it starts the second half. I know you have to go do your show. I just want to ask you about this. I started in San Francisco, which I think was an earlier iteration of what is going on now in England. I think San Francisco was ground zero for the comedy boom. It's where we had critics. It was the ground zero for the smart comedy boom. Yeah. And you know, I became a bit of a celebrity in San Francisco. You would get reviewed, you had followings and it infuriated the rest of America because they'd say, you know, everybody's, it's bizarro land here. It's everybody's a celebrity who does comedy here. And I remember as we went into the 90s, watching my friends and thinking you're abusing the privilege here. Yeah. You are, you are really not doing good work. You're being sloppy, lazy and disgusting. And this is no longer, this is a horrible thing to say. I'm making a sweeping generalization, I remember thinking you're not, it's no longer an art form. You're really taking it, you know, there were people like Jeremy Kramer and Steven Pearl, real artists and sure enough, San Francisco turned into every other city in America. Are they abusing the privilege? And I automatically assume that in England, everybody abuses the privilege eventually with stand-up and it just becomes dick jokes. Yeah. It's gone through cycles just like in America. There was a cycle that probably ended maybe five years ago. There were a chain of clubs here called Junglers, which was the most common denominator of comedy. And they were in about, I don't know, 15 different cities. And it kind of died. They went into receivership, for whatever reasons, they were getting lots of stag parties and hen parties and idiots, and there were comedians who realized they could make a living just playing that. The same way in America, there was a time you could make a living just playing all the last stops, the improvs and whatever. And that was, when it became, when a person could just be good enough just to do that, that was a sign that things were wrong, you know, things were bad. And then there was a kind of thinning of the herd. And that same thing happened here. And I think right now, there's a lot of comedians on TV. And it's kind of being watered down in a big way. Not in the local clubs, it's being watered down. It's been saturated on television. There's tons of these panel shows that they don't really do in America, but they do them here. And I did a lot, you know, I did a number of them and they're good to raise your profile, but when I go back and watch the reruns, which are constantly on, it's just a lot of people just sitting around making jokes at each other's expense and it's not, you know, it's not a career, but there are people who make their careers just doing these panel shows. And that's got to, by the wayside, pretty soon because there's way too many of them. It's like anything else, if it's successful, it jumps on and then they ruin it. Last question. Okay. You've seen the Comedy Central roasts, right? Yeah. Could they air them in England? People do watch them here. But in terms of, they're so offensive. Can you get a word? Yeah, I think, yeah. You know, I'm kind of offended by them. I mean, I'm not offended by anything, but I just kind of see, I see it for what it is and what it is is a platform where people can talk about the next day and go, oh, did you hear what so-and-so said? You've got to see it. And then you go back and you watch it and within that context, yeah, it's fine. You know what this is going to be. It's going to be just as filthy and as low as you can possibly go, which is, you know, if you're a comedian who does that, that's got to be exhilarating. That's, you've got to work just as hard to do that as you do to perform to any other kind of crowd, you know? But I think Brits here kind of would, they don't really, they really know when you're not punching upwards. They really respond to that. You always have to punch upwards as a comedian. And they see a lot of that as, oh, come on. So when Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld complained about the politically correct movement and how they can't play colleges because of it, isn't the politically correct movement and comedy a favor? By creating taboos, by saying you can't say this, they're creating the tension that you need for comedy to thrive, right? Exactly, yeah. The more walls that people throw up and the more you figure out a way to get around them, you know? And that's what comedy is. You know, it's always me. I mean, just from watching you, one thing that you do is to create, you set up a tense, sort of, well, the setup is, you set up a tense, pretense. Yes. You kind of put the crowd go, uh-oh, where is this going? And then boom, you know, and by creating that tension, the relief of saying something which is, oh, that was actually smart, or that's not where I thought it was going, or, okay, you know, I see what he did there. He made us think something really bad was coming, and then he underplayed it, or he underplayed something and then turned around and said it on its head. It's just, you know, it's sort of that dynamic between the setup and the punchline that no matter what kind of joke you do, you have to, the more you can, you know, the more you can distance, you can put between those two and pay it off. The more people are just, it's like, wow, he just, he just, it's like a little haiku, you know? Well, we need polite company. If we don't have polite company, then you can't be funny. Then you're just talking about your bow movements and your sheets, which, you know, Rich Hall is the host of Rich Hall's US election breakdown on BBC Radio 4. Please download it here in the United States and listen to its hysterical, and God bless you for the work you put into it. I mean, there's sketches and it's a live audience and it's, there's nothing like it in the United States. Garrison Keeler used to do something remotely. Okay. But this is great. You'll come back, I hope? I'll be back in January. Okay. I'll buy you lunch. Okay, I'll look for you. Have a great show tonight. Thank you, Rich. Thanks, David. Thank you. You're on The Boundary Economist, the PhD, and a comedian, and he is the force behind Proposition 732, act now on climate change and our listeners in Washington, the state of Washington, should vote yes on it. He joins us via Skype, I believe, in Seattle. That's right. Welcome to the show. I'm going to keep mispronouncing your Ram. Your Ram? Your Ram. Your Ram. Don't you start talking about Ram. You're an economist and a comedian, and comedians are pretty much saving the world. You want a state carbon tax, as I understand it, in Washington, correct? That's right. That's what Initiative 732 is all about. How is that going to change the planet? I mean, Seattle is probably getting its energy from Idaho, from coal plants in states where they don't have carbon taxes. First of all, there's parts of the state that get some electricity from coal plants in Montana. We also have a fair amount of hydro, but the carbon tax actually applies to the carbon content of imported electricity. So that's covered, as well as other fossil fuels burning petroleum products and natural gas, but really the way that this is going to make a difference is by setting an example for the nation and for the world that you can do kind of policy in a smart business-friendly economy-friendly, budget-friendly way. And the way that we do that with Initiative 732 is by having a carbon tax, a tax on fossil fuels, but then we use the revenue from the carbon tax to reduce the state sales tax by a full point to fund an earned income tax credit benefit for low-income households and to reduce some business taxes for manufacturers. So really, this is going to be a shining example to the nation and to the world of how to do this kind of policy in a good way. When President Obama first took office, there was talk of something called cap-and-trade. What is the difference between cap-and-trade and a carbon tax? They're a lot more similar than they are different. They're both ways to put a price on carbon, so you'll sometimes hear the phrase carbon pricing as sort of an umbrella term that covers both carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. You can do either of them well. You can do either of them badly. California has a cap-and-trade system. The East Coast states have a cap-and-trade system for electricity. Europe has a cap-and-trade system. We're working on a carbon tax here in Washington state. British Columbia has a carbon tax. So I would assume Washington state does not have a cap-and-trade, correct? That's correct. We do not have a cap-and-trade system. There's a cap-and-trade system in California, and this is really hard for people to understand, and that's why I contacted you because you're a comedian and comedians know what it's like to lose an audience, so you have to make it interesting. There's a cap-and-trade in California, which means the state Environmental Protection Agency is measuring carbon output of cars. Any industry that produces carbon... All right, let me take this, David. So it's a permit system. So polluters have to have permits, and then you reduce the number of permits that you give out every year in order to reduce pollution. I think that the simple semi-cometic, semi-memorable way that I like to try to describe it is that a carbon tax approach like what we're doing in Washington state is simple and transparent. You can describe it with a haiku. So my carbon tax haiku for Washington state is fossil CO2, $25 per ton, revenue neutral, meaning that the money that comes in from the carbon tax is reducing existing taxes. The cap-and-trade system, like what you see in California, is, I would argue, a little bit more like Tolstoy's War and Peace, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad, right? War and Peace is generally recognized as one of the best novels I've ever written. It's just complicated. But behind it all, the way that the cap-and-trade works, the best way to think about it is it's kind of like an oddly shaped kind of carbon tax. That's the way that we describe it. My co-author, Grady Klein and I in our cartoon Introduction to Climate Change, that your listener should think about it, is a cap-and-trade system, is a weirdly shaped kind of carbon tax. Help me out here, because I'm not as smart as you. War and Peace was not a haiku, right? That's correct. I would assume if you're an oil company or a refinery, you get a permit and you're limited, like Chevron has a refinery in the Bay Area and the permit to release carbon into the atmosphere. That's correct. Either directly through their refineries or through the products, the gasoline, et cetera that they sell. That permit is issued by the State of California, right? That's correct. And they would be allowed how many tons of carbon per year with their permits? So each permit is good for one ton of carbon. And you have to turn the permit in when you actually burn the carbon. You have to buy more permits next year. Hang on, let me try to understand this. Are their government regulators going to the refinery and doing a meter reading on how much carbon you're producing? Oh, absolutely. Although it's actually easier than that because there's sort of a set amount of carbon that comes from burning different types of fossil fuels. So when you burn a gallon of gasoline, 19.6 pounds of CO2 goes up into the atmosphere. So you don't actually have to... You don't have to go around and check people's tailpipes or even... You don't have to go to where the fossil fuels are actually being burned. Okay. You can just track them when they come into the state in the same way that the motor gasoline tax is applied, for example. Okay, so when you say CO2, that's carbon dioxide? Yes, carbon dioxide. Methane, is that carbon? No, that's a separate... That's not included in the carbon cap, is it? Some methane is included in California's cap and trade system because it covers greenhouse gases more broadly, the principal one being carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. So you can cover those in the same sort of way. Okay, but a carbon tax implies just carbon, not methane, right? That's correct. Our carbon tax and the British Columbia carbon tax only apply to the carbon content from burning... the carbon dioxide created from burning fossil fuels. It's not impossible to imagine a greenhouse gas tax that would be more general than a carbon tax. That would cover other greenhouse gases like methane, but carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is something like 85% of the greenhouse gas issues, so there's a... Aren't they finding out... Here's what something... I'm going off the rails here, I apologize. But aren't they finding out now recently that methane is more dangerous for the environment, that it traps heat far better in CO2? And why are we just learning that now? No, no, no. Well, scientists have known that for a long time, so... No, why am I just learning? Why am I so stupid? No, it seems to me... That's a better question. No, it seems to me that I read this year that... I do have a Starbucks name. My Starbucks name is Jerome. Okay. It seems to me that this year, they discovered a relation to fracking because fracking releases a lot of methane, and they suddenly... First, they discovered this year that... Oh, you know what? Fracking is a lot more dangerous because it produces methane. We have to control the methane. And I am absolutely certain that scientists are saying that up until recently, we had no idea how dangerous methane was. We had... Obviously, they've never been in a car with my son, but they had no idea that methane trapped the heat the way it does. And I remember reading that and going, now you're telling us this? No, no, no, no. So here's the deal. Scientists have known about methane and methane being the greenhouse gas for a long time. The news is that methane concentrations in the atmosphere have relatively recently been increasing faster than people expected. And that's because of fracking. Part of that is certainly because of what's called fugitive and methane leaks from fracking. So I think this is a news story, not because the science of methane is new. I mean, scientists have known for a long time that per ton or per molecule, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It's just that previously, it wasn't that big of a deal because we didn't see that much methane in the atmosphere. And now we're seeing more, but it's still worth keeping in perspective is that, first of all, the number one problem is fossil fuels and burning fossil fuels. And second of all, one of the major sources of methane, I mean, natural gas is basically methane. So one of the major sources of methane emissions is fossil fuel transport and fracking and things like that. So a lot of this... No, actually, it's cows. It's meaty. Are you a meat eater? I eat meat on occasion. Okay. And you're right that cow burps also contribute methane to the atmosphere, but... More than cars do. That if people switch to a vegetable diet, we could all drive 16-wheelers. Did you know that? Well, so... But let's go back to... Would it be helpful to have a vegetarian diet? Yes. The number one thing that we need to do is reduce fossil fuel emissions. And a bunch of the emissions that you're talking about that come from agriculture and meat are from the fossil fuels that are used to grow the grain that's fed to the cows that the whole nine yards there. So fossil fuels is the number one thing we need to focus on. But if you did switch to a vegetarian diet, you'd be... That would help as well. Or I'll tell you what I do is I switch to a mostly vegetarian diet. So I'm not insane about... I eat meat every once in a while, but it's sort of on special occasions as opposed to... Like a murderless Monday. Yes, except... Right. There's a limited number of carbon that you're allowed to produce in the state of California. And they keep reducing it each year. So the permits become more expensive, I would assume. Right? Supply and demand. Right? Probably. So they're traded. In other words, you buy a permit to release carbon. You switch the way you manufacture your shoes so you're not producing that much carbon. And you say, you know what? I'll sell this permit because I'm not using all my carbon. Right? Yep. And then there's an open market where people are trading carbon the way you would trade a stock. Is that the idea behind cap and trade? Yes. So it's creating a brand new market that traders can... That's correct. All right. And how is that working out? I mean, is there... It sounds like the subprime mortgage. Well, okay. So let me give you an analogy. One of the places where cap and trade systems have worked really well is in fisheries. So you have overfishing. And to limit overfishing, what governments have done, including the U.S. government in Alaska and other places, is issue a limited number of permits to catch fish each year. So each permit is good for it to catch a ton of fish. And then you have to get new permits next year. And then you limit the number of permits you give out in order to maintain a sustainable fishery. That's the idea anyway. And the permits are tradable. So if your boat breaks down, you can sell your permits. If you find a great fishing spot, you can buy extra permits. And those systems in fisheries around the world have worked very well. And cap and trade for carbon emissions is the same idea, except that instead of trading fish, you're trading the right to emit carbon dioxide. Is this something Wall Street is behind and is salivating over? Is somebody getting rich off cap and trade? I would assume, you know, they're always trying to invent new ways to pass paper back and forth and collect commissions. Who's getting rich off this? Well, it certainly is a little cumbersome in terms of there are folks who make money from the markets. There's a lot of folks who are involved in the regulatory oversight of it. I'm not sure I would say that anybody is getting rich from it. I mean, like, I'm being serious here because I don't understand cap and trade. And when I turn on CNBC, I'll see orange futures, oil futures, and carbon futures. That's right. That's for cap and trade systems. Are there people that can get rich from it? Sure. I mean, if you had a magic ball that could tell you what the price of permits was going to be in 10 years, then you could get rich just like you could get rich if you knew what the price of Microsoft stock was going to be in 10 years. So could you tell me... I'm not trying to be difficult here. You're an economist, right? I am an economist. And a comedian. And I'm a comedian. Okay. I could go online today and buy carbon futures. Is that what you're saying? I could go to Charles Schwab or eTrade and start buying and investing in carbon futures. I think that's true, yeah. And what you're buying is the right for people to emit carbon. That's correct. Well, wouldn't the price of carbon always be going up if the government is fixing the number of permits? It's like taxi medallions. In New York City, you have taxi medallions. And it's an artificial mark until Uber came in. It was a nice thing that they had going. They would buy a taxi medallion for, let's say, $500,000 that gave you the right to own a yellow taxi in Manhattan. And the price would go up each year because there was populations increase and there's a demand for more taxis and the medallion became more valuable. And it was artificial. The supply and demand was artificial because the city determines how many taxi medallions are out there. Isn't cap and trade artificially priced? If they're limiting the number of permits, then are... Well, okay. But remember that the basic idea is that there's a market failure. So the reason why we have a cap and trade system or a carbon tax or a carbon price of any sort is that there are these external costs. So when you drive your car and you turn on your lights, there's most of the time some carbon dioxide that's created from burning coal, oil, natural gas. What I don't understand is you're getting a permit. Chevron gets a permit to produce carbon, right? That's correct. And that permit, the right to produce carbon is then in cap and trade is traded as current, almost like an asset. So Chevron needs to turn in one of those permits every time it sells a metric ton of carbon's worth of motor gasoline or burns a ton of metric... a metric ton of carbon dioxide's worth in its refineries. And if it doesn't have enough permits in its own wallet, so to speak, it can go out onto the market and it can buy extra permits. So there is a market for it, yes. And that would be a carbon... and that's what on CNBC when they talk about carbon futures, that's what they're buying. Actually, yes. Don't they just make it complicated so we surrender? Well, there are arguments out there actually that the reason why... if you have a carbon tax, which is simple and transparent, and you have cap and trade, which does more or less the same thing, but in this very complicated way, there's an argument out there that cap and trade is better because politically it's easier to get folks to go along with something that they don't understand. And do you understand it? I do. But the way that I understand it is by translating it into a carbon tax. So just like, for the most part, the way that I understand Spanish is by translating it into English and then thinking about it in English because I'm not smart enough to think about it in Spanish. And so the way that I think about cap and trade is by translating it into a carbon tax. I say, okay, what is the carbon tax equivalent of California's cap and trade policy? And the answer is right now the carbon tax equivalent is approximately a carbon tax of $15 per ton of CO2. And the virtue of your plan is there is no cap and trade. Yours is just saying, let's tax carbon, make it so expensive, they have to switch to alternative fuel. Well, so it is simple, it's straightforward. The truth of the matter is we're not going to be, you know, getting off of fossil fuels like tomorrow or next year or even in the next 10 years, but we can start moving in that direction by doing things like, you know, building more wind farms and fewer coal-fired power plants, buying more fuel-efficient cars, keeping tires properly inflated, not driving too fast. There's a whole list of car pooling, telecommuting, there's a whole list of things that everybody can do. And the point of putting a price on carbon is to provide a financial incentive to sort of do more of those good things and to do less of the bad things. Okay, so vote yes on 732. It's rising in the polls. That's correct. At one point, I read about you in the New York Times, at one point we thought 732 wasn't going to pass. Where does it stand now? So for a long time, the polls showed voters split one-third yes, one-third no, and one-third undecided. And then more recently, we have been picking up a lot of the undecided voters and the no side has been losing some voters. So we still have a, you know, there's still a bunch of undecided voters out there, but we just had the first poll come out that showed that we were over 50%. And if you know anything about politics, being over 50% is good. It's rare. I hope it's not rare come November. And who was opposing? I would assume the oil industry is against this? Some national oil companies have come in and put a bunch of money into fighting it. Some of the local utilities that rely on coal a lot more than their PR people would like to have everybody believe. So that's Puget Sound Energy. Folks like that are fighting it. And then there's actually some opposition from some folks on the left who would who care about climate change but would like a different approach basically. And who are you in the pocket of? When farms, who's subsidizing your efforts? Selindra? No, I would, well... If we were to dig down deep, there's got to be some industry who supports 732, who stands to benefit financially? If you go to pdc.wa.gov, you can go to the Public Disclosure Commission and see all of our public disclosure reports. What you will find is over a thousand individual contributors who have written checks and made donations ranging from $10 to $10,000. You won't find a whole lot of money from corporations, although we occasionally get attacked as being in the pockets of corporations. Are you allowed to take money from a corporation? Absolutely. The no campaign is taking a lot of money from corporations including the big oil companies and Puget Sound Energy and other utilities that have more coal in their portfolio than they would like to admit. So I guess what I always say is you were in the pockets of some corporation or other and it's always like if our policy is so great for those folks then how come they're not giving us money? Really what you see is if you look at our PDC reports you will find a terrific grassroots organization that's pretty unusual in these days of big money politics. We gathered 360,000 signatures last year to get this on the ballot. Mostly we did that the hard way by having volunteers stand outside of grocery stores markets and on the street corner. This year we have a great partnership with Audubon Washington. They've been terrific and involved in Initiative 732 because their scientists tell them that climate change is the number one threat to birds. They're all about birds and they want the world to be a good place for birds and a good place for people who like to watch birds. What about cats? I don't know if Audubon has a specific position about cats. I think cats are killing from what I'm reading cats are killing more birds than climate change. Well okay but that's been going on for a while and the risk from climate change is that we're going to be upsetting that natural balance. I've irritated a lot of people by if you want to save the birds you should declaw your cat. You want to save the couch save the furniture, save the birds to claw your cat making it even playing field. We don't even have a cat. We're going to wrap it up. How long have you been an economist? I got my PhD in 2003 so How long have you been a stand up comic? Professionally like about eight years. And are you related to the lead singer from Shawna Na? No. You have no relation to Bowser. What's your PhD in economics and you've been a stand up comic? Why would you do stand up comedy? Isn't being an economist more fun? Aren't there better things or more lucrative things for a PhD economist to do? When you're at the comedy underground are you talking about Keynesian economics or are you telling jokes? Mostly I do colleges and corporate events. I did my chops at the comedy underground here in Seattle but now I mostly do colleges and corporate events and I also run the humor session every year at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association and everybody's invited it's going to be in Chicago this year January the 7th or January the 8th you can get the details on my website which is standupeconomist.com It's the only part of the economic association meeting that's free and open to the public and I always tell folks that economics you know you come for the whole meeting it's three days it's January 6th through 8th the humor session is going to be on Saturday night January 7th and the whole convention is kind of amazing it's 10,000 economists from all over the world who converge on one city for a long weekend and it's just wild. What is more of an exact science being an economist or being a stand up comic? That sounds like a trick question. The answer is being a stand up comic. Okay fine. Right you can quantify success as a stand up comic you can measure the decibel levels of a laugh you know whether or not you've Yeah but you know what you have the same kind of problem because in comedy sometimes it's hard to figure out why people are laughing and in economics sometimes it's hard to figure out okay so GDP went up or GDP went down and why did that happen so you have the same kind of challenges in terms of figuring out causality Supply side economics doesn't work. It's a failure, right? The Laffer curve trickle down and yet you can still make money being an economist selling that to the republican party I mean like Paul Ryan is able to sell this nonsense and people consider him like a serious mind even though it's a lie so let's back up the Laffer curve idea in the extreme the idea was that if you cut taxes cut tax rates you'll actually get more revenue because people will work so much more you'll get so much more economic activity that you'll get more tax revenue even though the rate is lower that does not appear to be true in the real world you can talk about it in theory and draw napkin about it but in the real world that doesn't seem to pan out if you think about it as the underlying idea of well if you have tax rates that are too high then there's an impact in terms of reducing work effort and economic activity I think that that idea is plausible like the Eisenhower years the Eisenhower years were a disaster because tax rates were as high as 80% in the economy nobody worked during the Eisenhower years probably Eisenhower did no I mean it's been proven that he did play a lot of golf but they had high taxes during the 50s and the economy was pretty good a lot of jobs but that was the end of world war 2 and we were the only super power that's correct but Paul Ryan before you go Paul Ryan's a fool he's just taking money from the richest 100% and selling phony, Einlandian Straussian economic theory that's been debunked it now appears that he was a fool for taking the position of speaker of the house because he was but hasn't Milton Friedman been debunked Milton Friedman had a whole bunch of ideas and some of them are still okay and some of them are not okay in terms of the way economists tend to think about them shouldn't Andrea Mitchell divorce Alan Greenspan for destroying our country I didn't even know they were married see and I don't even have a PhD in economics and I know who Alan Greenspan is that's because I apparently I they don't teach that I let my subscription to us weekly for economists I let that lapse Alan Greenspan was a fool the idea that there's actually a free market the free market doesn't exist there are concerns about I think there were risks from deregulation that were not fully appreciated by folks like Alan Greenspan but the idea that there's a free market and that you can measure our animal spirits in a controlled environment just doesn't exist the government is constantly either inadvertently or consciously changing the market there's certainly government involvement in lots of economic activity but the fundamental idea if you go back to Adam Smith and the invisible hand and all that stuff the fundamental idea that there's something to the idea of what you might want to call regulated capitalism which is to a large extent the economic model that we have here in the U.S. and a lot of other countries have from Europe to China I would argue where a large portion of economic decisions are made by individuals and firms who are acting to pursue their own self-interest as opposed to being guided by government authority to tell them what to do I think there's still a lot to be said for that idea and in fact you know the whole point of carbon pricing whether through a carbon tax or through a cap and trade system is to try to get that capitalist economy working to reduce carbon emissions you know because whether you like capitalism or you hate capitalism capitalism is a very powerful force in the world and we'd rather have it working to help us reduce carbon emissions than working in the other direction. I hear clicking sound are you playing online poker? No sometimes I just get enthusiastic when I start talking about Adam Smith. I hear clicking are you a compulsive gambler I have a theory that economists really you're really smart right? You have a PhD? I do have a PhD. I bet you're like addicted to online poker and every penny you make is put into e-trade and lost on ridiculous trades. That's my theory. I can tell you for a fact that that's not true because I put a fair amount of money into the yes on 732 campaign that money did not go to online poker. You know what they say by getting a PhD though you learn more and more about less and less until finally you know everything about nothing. My theory about doctors and smart people is they always end up broke because they're smarter than everybody so they're suckers for bad investments bad ideas because they figure they look at somebody who has a lot of money and they go I'm smarter than this guy I don't have any comment. I have no comment on that. I think the best way to get rich is to be stupid that's my that's my I feel like there are challenges with that path also. You know what every rich person I've ever met is stupid and just lucky like Trump but he's not rich that's the problem. Hey thank you. You're on? Did I get it right? You're on? You're on? Yes on 732.org Good luck to all of us November 8. Thank you. I hope you come back. Right on. Thanks for the invitation.