 Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining us. My name is Andres Martinez. I'm the editorial director of Future Pense, which is a collaboration between Slate Magazine, New America, the think tank, and Arizona State University, where I also teach in our Cronkite School of Journalism. And as Angela mentioned, as we're getting started, this is part of a series that we're doing. It's called Social Distancing Socials, where we're trying to engage with followers and folks more rather than less in this time of when we're all on virtual house arrest. Because the issue of how technology is impacting society in our lives has never been more acute or relevant and interesting. And speaking of, so when it comes to interesting, I have to say today's social is very indulgent on my part because I'm using work as an excuse to bring together two of my favorite people and some of the more interesting thinkers I know, and then being able to share it with our audience. So it does feel very indulgent, particularly since I know the two of you are also incredibly busy. But if I threw a dinner party, you probably wouldn't come. But I'm so glad to have this work to talk to you guys. So first I want to introduce, I don't know if it's to your left or to your right, depending on your screen, but in the sort of orange top is Leon Krause, who is so many things. I mean, I think I could spend one hour just we would burn up the hour talking about all the various things you do. I feel like there are like a dozen Leon Krause roaming around, you know, roaming the earth because you do so many things. But Leon, for those of you who don't know, has done a lot of podcasts with slate, writes a column for slate, also writes a column for the Washington Post. But we won't mention that. He is one of the Leon Krause is also the news anchor of K-Max, which is like one of the coolest call station signals or whatever you call those things for the Univision broadcast in Los Angeles, which has to be, I think, one of the most watched local newscasts anywhere in the world, or at least it was before Leon showed up. I don't know if it still is. But Leon also is a very well known great radio personality in Mexico before he picked up and moved to LA a while back. There's a very serious Leon Krause out in the world who also writes about the history of soccer. So that's so many Leon Krauses. Anyways, thank you so much for being here, Leon, with us. Thank you, Andres. And then we have Charles Kenney. Charles is, I should look at your formal title before starting to just describe you randomly. You're the senior fellow and director of technology and development at the Center for Global Development. I first became a Charles Kenney fanboy when I read an article you wrote, I believe it was in foreign policy back in the day, talking about the power of television to be a messenger for public health improvements and awareness and the messaging that would go into soap operas in Brazil and India, I think it was in terms of public health messaging, which seems very relevant to today's conversation. And then as a result of that and other engagements that we had, you were a fellow at New America. And now you're at the Center of Global Development. I think your fellowship in New America was one way to rescue you from a thriving successful career at the World Bank. But one of the things that's very popular these days are these apps that calm people. You know, they're meditation apps. And if you have trouble sleeping in times of anxiety, you can download these apps. I would suggest that instead of downloading one of those apps, if you ever feel anxious about the state of the world, just call Charles Kenney and he will soothe you and put you at ease. And so at the end of this broadcast, we will share with folks Charles' cell phone number so that you can do that. It doesn't matter what time zone you're in, just call Charles. Charles wrote, has written several books. One of the books that he wrote that's very apropos of the conversation today, the title was Getting Better, Why Global Development is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More. Most recently, you wrote, close the Pentagon rethinking national security for a positive some world. But I want to start the conversation, Charles. Help us set the scene. We're supposed to be talking about, you know, how humans have never had it this good. And can we still say that? And, you know, those of us who are fortunate to be able to work from home are kind of on lockdown. So doesn't seem like the best of times. But kind of remind us why when you think of global development and the sort of grand sweep of history, which is how you tend to think of things and one of the reasons I admire your work so much, kind of remind us why we have it so good right now. So I used to write a piece pretty much every year, some time between Thanksgiving and New Year's saying, this is the best year ever. And I could keep on writing the piece because it kept on being true. If you look at global poverty, the proportion of the world who lives on less than a dollar 90 a day, which is a kind of the World Bank standard for absolute extreme poverty used to be most of the world. And now it's at least last year, it was below 10%. If you look at infant mortality, child mortality has been dropping dropped by about two-thirds just between 1990 and 2015. You look at the levels of violence worldwide they've been dropping over until recently the number of people living under a democracy was going up sort of choose your measure and it was heading in the right direction. I should say though that in the last few years I've stopped writing that yearly column on how this is the best year ever. Predating Covid, frankly we'd seen at least a flatlining and some reversal in global trends towards democracy. And this year, sadly, I think it is very clear we're going to see reversals in probably global life expectancy, certainly in global poverty. So maybe you don't want to call me up for soothing advice anymore. I would say though still that this pandemic is already has affected so many lives in so many terrible ways and we haven't responded to it nearly as well as we should have done. I'd still say we're responding to this pandemic better than we have in the past previous pandemics. So even sort of in the bad times we're doing a bit better than we used to when it comes to responding and trying to limit the harm and the suffering worldwide. So a lot of the progress in recent years and I'm thinking about maybe the run up to the UN development millennial goals that were established at one point that we were countries were supposed to hit in 2015 and I can recall a few years back talking to you about those and those were certain measures and objectives about the eradication of extreme poverty or its reduction and so forth and some of the indices that you were talking about which I and I hear you that recently they had been starting to plateau so maybe sort of that sort of triumphal sentiment needs to be tempered. But there was a lot of debate around the fact that you know for better or for worse the progress that we were that we were seeing and perhaps it's somewhat uneven distribution was attributable to globalization right that's this amorphous term that we often throw out there globalization we kind of all have a sense of what it means but maybe we don't quite define it as precisely as we should sometimes but I want to like pivot to Leon and and ask you to think to reflect on on the state of globalization today you are kind of one of the you have a front row seat and you're a chronicler of Los Angeles which is this teeming amazing kind of daily symphony of all the things that we think of when when it comes to globalization whether it's the Cambodian donut shops or you know all the places you can get from Oaxaca the thriving port of LA and Long Beach that that that funnels through so much of the trade for the entire country you know the daily that the nightly flow of all those flights going off to Europe well up until recently and and Asia and LA has sort of this amazing metropolis that in some ways is like the second most important Mexican city arguably and yeah we're in Salvador and city and Salvadoran city and so you know you're living this this kind of chaotic wonderful somewhat sometimes horrible you know whatever you want to adjective you want to use you're living and chronicling and you did it with it with a great book la mesa where you talked about the the latino you know immigrant experience in LA so when you think of this moment that this pandemic coming in the aftermath of a full rethink of globalization in some places do you think that we're in for a a regression a retreat from globalization or are we going to kind of kind of think you know what we're more interdependent than ever before and five ten years from now are we going to see more coordinated responses to our economic life and responses to crises like this i mean it's a big question but i eager to hear from you on that well uh andres uh first of all uh allow me to apologize for my dogs who are pretty noisy they they they have stopped already so i think we should be good um it's it's uh it's a good description of los angeles what you what you've just uh shared with with us uh it truly a fascinating place uh for me the the the the capital of latin america in the united states with all the respect to my friends in in in miami and the experience of living here has been a fascinating one for sure uh i i would begin by saying that it's it's hard to argue that that we have never had it this good when when 16 million americans we we just learned recently are applying for unemployment benefits and um but i'm an optimist i i agree with charles that the overall trends uh don't lie and that the humankind is is uh still heading in the right direction but there are questions that uh that should should should should linger and should occupy our attention and one of them is uh is immigration um you you you mentioned the work i've i've done in los angeles with uh with a large immigrant community here with la mesa with this experiment of a community-oriented journalism and i've i've i've recently been been writing about how the united states has been responding to to the to the immigrant community's hour of need in this crisis as we know there are uh 11 million undocumented immigrants in the united states uh they pay over uh 11 billion dollars in taxes uh every year as well and yet the government's historic uh unprecedented uh stimulus package simply ignored them did not provide one cent of faith for them uh it provided support for for uber drivers which is a great thing uh for the first time but for the undocumented workers that uh for example make up uh 40 percent of the country's um agricultural industry nothing zero not one cent and i think that this presents a a real uh dilemma uh that goes to the heart of your question about globalization uh it's it's it's a moral and economic dilemma at least for the united states um i do think that it's interesting that the government has uh recognized the work of these people as essential during the emergency or or at least of those people who work in the in the fields and the food processing industry because they are essential uh ideally for me the pandemic should help us uh realize just how essential the work and presence of immigrants in a society like ours really is uh the idea that the immigrants are unnecessary is is a privacy it's a fantasy but the question remains will this realization lead to a more sensible approach to immigration or to a nativist backlash i i have been interviewing a couple of people um recently for for for a column i'm writing and one of them is the the head of the the main association of mexican entrepreneurship in los angeles and he told me that of course he's worried about unemployment he's worried about the current situation um in the short term but mostly he says what concerns him the most is that this will trigger a larger nativist backlash that will strengthen the populist position that trump came to power uh on and uh and and we will we will enter a new a new face of protectionism of barriers of borders and uh and prejudice and i think that the the question is is right there in the air i don't think we we have a clear answer to that still i'm an optimist but the question is is lingering there yeah it's an it's it's it's i like the way you talk about how you know there's the present crisis and and you mentioned you referenced the incredible unemployment claim numbers and and and part of what i think we're starting to you know begin to wrestle with is the current emergency and then also what will be as you put it the lingering questions and and the aftermath and um i think the immigration piece of this is really important um you know it's it's also not not only do those workers pay all that in taxes they're also sending home to mexico close to 40 billion dollars in remittances which is important for the development of north america as a whole and um the other thing that i you know i i i think we probably all all of us have been thinking about this the the fact that in previous times of national crises and mobilization and we think back to you know the us going to war and world war two and thinking of the greatest generation and i wrote a column about the about the fact that like when we think of of the band of brothers that got us through that crisis you know you picture the the soldiers in their gi uniforms the and now as you know as you reference the we're we're relying now on you know essential workers who are kind of like the frontline heroes of this battle if you want to call it a battle and you know obviously a lot of those folks are the healthcare providers and medical professionals but we also were having to realize that the the person you know shelving's the you know putting the food on the on the shelves in the grocery store the farm worker who is you know picking those crops and and the people out out and about cleaning the transit workers in new york city my gosh i mean and all of these communities are you know people who have been um maybe taken for granted if you want to put it charitably if not exploited if not underpaid you know and and the reliance that we as a society have on on that part of the population that where where immigrants are disproportionately represented i'm also it reminds me a little bit of the aftermath of 9 11 in new york where there were official figures of casualties and then there was a time lag and the numbers would would take a while to catch up because you had to add people who who you know were delivering the food in the twin towers and and some of the staff that maybe was not officially registered and you know it just kind of it was this interesting moment where we were reminded of the fact that our economy in our society somewhat hypocritically like relies to its benefit on people that are operating in the shadows um so charles i know that my migration is one of your you know core subjects in terms of thinking about uh how it affects and impacts global development and it's something that you guys at at the center for global development have done a lot of work on um so to this lingering question that leon has has posited do you worry that we're going to see this this retrenchment and in in terms of migration flows that might be prejudicial to global development again understanding that this is this pandemic isn't coming out of the blue i mean it it is happening on its own uh for its own reasons but it's happening against a backdrop where the politics were already rethinking this you know push towards greater global interdependence and integration so um you were asking you know we you were saying we sort of throw around the term globalization without thinking really you know what's in it i think one of the most important parts of globalization is the movement of ideas and ideas move most easily uh when people move with them and i i think it is just undoubtable that uh unquestionable that that one of the the greatest force behind sort of global progress is people moving around the eye around the world sharing ideas and if you look at silicon valley and the huge proportion of you know startups there that are founded by immigrants um you know that's just one example you were talking about the uh uncounted at the at the bottom uh of society and i think you know we down when we talk about silicon valley we we sort of forget about the vital role that they play to and at the moment um across the midwest you're seeing farmers you know screaming saying they can't get enough people to bring the crops in from the fields uh so i think you're absolutely right about that as to where we go in the future i think they're going to be there's sort of two competing things going on right now and a long-term trend that i i hope pushes us back towards realizing quite how valuable migration is selfishly forget forget it's impact on global development just for us in the short term you've got the fact that anybody wandering into a hospital realizes how important migrants are to the well-being of people in the united states you know a good lead percentage of everybody you're gonna meet in that hospital who's getting getting you healthier uh uh migrants on the other hand you do have uh what is a kind of um uh biological urge amongst people who face infection to get less friendly towards the other to towards other people i mean this isn't isn't just humans um you know uh animals who who who uh face lots of infection tend to be uh much less friendly towards outsiders to people they don't know uh it's something that we have inherited biologically and so it's quite easy to make somebody express more anti-immigrant views sadly uh just by showing them pictures of people with measles if you if you do that randomly amongst a sample of people uh the people you've shown pictures of measles to will come out with more anti-immigrant attitudes so there's sort of these two competing forces one is our base instincts if you will to to think about infection as being a problem uh of the outsider and that makes us more anti-immigrant on the other hand you know the fact of the matter that the people who are helping us right now who are making this situation um more bearable than it would otherwise be are migrants in the longer term my expectation is that we will move towards a greater understanding and appreciation of immigrants in this country purely on self-interest and that's because we're going to get older and we're going to want to retire and if you look at the future of the united states less so than other countries but still true in the united states we're seeing an aging population and we're going to want somebody else to do the work when we're 80 and i think this is going to be a global phenomenon and actually my guess is in 20 or 30 years we'll be talking about a migration crisis and migration crisis will be there aren't enough migrants we're going to see um an increasing global competition for the migrants that are available um you know as i say other countries have it much worse than the united states partially because they have a lower immigrant populations already um japan at the moment has gone from being a country that basically tried to keep out all migrants to being one that's desperately searching for more people to come in and work in the country china is aging as fast as europe is china and europe are both going to find themselves in a similar position uh lots of people who don't want to work who want to retire want to move on and not very many people to fill the jobs and so my guess is that in 30 or 40 years we're going to see the sea change and evidence is already there that it's happening if you look at the younger people in uh europe in the united states they're already much more pro-immigration and it's because they realize that they're going to be left carrying the can of the economy if you will uh as as older people retire and i so i'm i'm optimistic in the long term that we'll see uh a reversal of this recent nativism i admit in the short term you know how how these two different forces play out between surely a greater understanding of the role that migrants are playing in our society against our sort of base instinct to associate uh the threat of infection with the threat of the other i don't know so we thought it might be fun to throw this question to uh those of you following at home because i guess we're all at home but um to our audience uh we're going to ask this poll question long term will COVID-19 accelerate or reverse globalization i know there's there's always some danger in these binary questions but uh taking advantage of the poll functionality here uh of zoom we thought it'd be fun to sort of just get a rough sense of where you all are because i think it is an interesting question that that could go either way and in the meantime you know leon since since this conversation is is uh in terms of the fate of humans and the human race is global by nature i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about you know how you see the sort of cross border relationship with mexico and how this pandemic is playing out in countries like mexico because one i think one of the one of the universal political trends of late has been um a bit of a second guessing of technocrats everywhere you know part of the populist wave has been sort of a revolt against the kind of expert technocratic class that advanced globalization that was part of this neoliberal you know project as people are fond of now critiquing it and obviously we have a populist government in mexico that is similar in some ways very different in some ways from the administration in washington and has had its own shall we say idiosyncratic response to the uh pandemic in mexico and so and and you know this is playing out in a lot of different countries where this flavor of politics um has taken hold and you know i just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about how you see things um in terms of the cross border dynamic and what's happening in mexico and what that suggests for years to come well it's uh it's uh it's a big question i would begin by saying that i think that one of the there are a few there are a few silver linings to this horrendous crisis this emergency that we've uh that we faced in in 2020 one of them is i would i would argue the the resurgence of of experts in the the public sphere andres uh in mexico uh uh an epidemiologist is now uh commanding the stage not the president although he he has uh his daily press conferences every morning if people in red states think that um president trumps daily press conferences in the afternoon are a perfect a perfectly choreographed um act of propaganda they should tune in to mexico's morning press conference to to learn from the best um but in mexico just like in the united states we have a scientist in charge um and i'm i'm not talking i'm talking about epidemiologist ugo lopez gatel just like antony fauci in uh in in america now having said this uh let me let me uh mention another one of the silver linings that i that i uh that i think is is is uh interesting uh which is that propaganda for me uh most propaganda has become almost useless politically i mean it is more difficult to spin narrative when we are not talking about uh more abstract concepts like uh like immigration rather than the immediate terrible reality of people of people dying and i mean this means that governments will be certainly judged i would imagine uh solely on their on their competence rather than on their ability to present alternative facts through their usual propaganda channels and we see the in in mexico we see this in brazil and we see this across the world in populist populist governments uh in other words i mean not even fox news can can spin can counter the reality of thousands of americans dying so dying of of these disease and i think that's that that is a silver lining in a way reality history uh if you want to get a bit more metaphysical even nature itself is calling populism's bluff uh now they have to answer the question can you govern can you deliver on your lofty promises and as of now a number of those governments uh have failed to live up to their promise of good governance trump of course but also uh jair bolsonaro and frankly lopes over the lord in mexico um and i think that we can we can at least hope that that people in the u.s and brazil and mexico and other places will not forget or forgive this this particular particular failure that will certainly have an effect in uh not only the life of each country but of course the relationship between both countries uh thinking about mexico and the united states i i love how you put it calling uh nature's bluff um and also uh our polling question it's 46 percent of respondents feel that um this crisis will accelerate globalization 54 percent that it'll reverse so i think that is another indication that that these lingering questions are close calls and are we thinking in the short term or in the long term though well that's in the short term if you know i i guess i would probably say it's it's hitting a pause right but but yes that was a a little bit ambiguous and left up to people's interpretation um but if you have questions you can you can submit them through the q and a on the bottom of your screen um there was a question here about um whether we feel that that the COVID-19 crisis might lead to some breakthroughs in science and technology that could get us back on track of improving living standards um uh i should mention that charles wrote a great piece for future tense on slate um talking about the the search for the vaccine to spread the vaccine for smallpox in the uh uh two centuries ago and how the response was more global than some of the responses we're seeing today um but charles do you have as part of your sort of uh formerly optimistic bent a sense that you know from these great moments dire moments you know we we we can leapfrog that it that it kind of gets it's what we need to create certain breakthroughs whether it's on public health or other fronts sorry yeah so let me let me be a bit more uh characteristically optimistic uh sorry uh i'm coming through okay um uh nature was cutting me off as i was trying to be more optimistic um i think as i sort of said at the beginning that the chances are that we will deal with this pandemic not nearly as well as we should have done but better than we've dealt with any previous pandemic um uh i think already you are seeing that uh we've you know china chinese scientists figured out the rna of this thing within you know a few days is uh worldwide we've got the world health organization organizing one of the first ever sort of global trials of five different um treatments for uh uh covid including president trump's favorite the anti-ballerial um we're seeing sort of global collaboration in in uh work on vaccines i i hope that we will see you know within within maybe even if just a few months uh that we've got an effective vaccine it's going to take a lot longer than that to roll it out to everybody but that would be an important first step so i do think there's hope uh that uh you know we'll see much more rapid than in the past technological advance i mean after all between the arrival of smallpox and the arrival of the first you know of the world's vaccine the smallpox vaccine was a matter of thousands of years if we managed to do it in in a few months that's that's pretty impressive um and i think a sign of long-term global progress on the subject of globalization i saw the statistics earlier on today on us trade in various uh pieces of ppe of personal protective equipment for um medicine for protection against covid um if all you needed to deal with covid was a hand sanitizer the united states would do fantastically in autarky it produces a lot more hand sanitizer it exports a lot more hand sanitizer than the imports pretty much when it comes to every other form of ppe we import more than we export so autarky would be a fairly disastrous short-term response for the united states and i think even this administration is beginning to realize that it it the language at the sort of the start of the press conference will be we're going to defund the who we're going to put in uh uh trade barriers and you know by the end of the press conference or soon after uh that language is being rolled back and i think that is to be on point you know sort of uh their bluff is being called uh uh we can't actually deal with this thing as individual countries um the only way you can really treat an infection is a non-global issue is by completely cutting off globalization by which i mean sort of going back to the point before columbus uh uh traveled the ocean right i mean uh uh you've got to cut off all all trade uh and all movement of people and nobody really uh uh expects or wants that to happen um so we have to treat this as a global issue and while the world health organization nobody would call its record perfect i think it's done better this time than it did during the ebola crisis of 2014 um it's done a reasonable job a better job uh than we might have expected in responding to this crisis and the reason it hasn't done the better job still is it doesn't have enough power it doesn't have enough money it doesn't have enough responsibility and it doesn't have enough respect two countries notably have been ignoring what the who said china started by being uh late on uh reporting uh the extent of covid 19 and what a serious public health issue it was the united states amongst many countries has been completely ignoring who advice on travel bans uh it ignored early who um advice on effective testing china the united states a whole bunch of other countries have to give the world health organization the respect it deserves and the financing it needs to respond to future pandemics and my hope is that rationality will win out and we'll realize that there isn't really much choice out of this pandemic apart from to increase the power of global organizations like the wha optimistic realism the old charles is back uh i i i couldn't agree more i i think uh charles put it uh very eloquently i i was what while i was listening to him i was uh thinking uh uh what comes afterwards right um i i've been i've been reading up on uh on uh on the black plague and how how it began and what came afterwards and how humanity basically reclaimed the world after something that was far more horrific than what we're witnessing now including the discovery of america the renaissance so i am i am certainly an optimist but i do think that uh there is a fascinating question um to be asked what comes afterwards what kind of world uh is there waiting uh five months from now or even a year from now um and and what kind of what kind of world will we have to uh explain to our children i i i charles made me think of a moment that happened just just a year ago with one of my one of my kids we were at the airport and and and he saw me taking my my shoes off and putting them into the the machine and he looked at me uh he's very inquisitive and asked me dad please tell me why do you guys choose off when we're going to go on an airplane this is ridiculous right and i told him yes it is ridiculous but if there's a reason for that and so i told him the story of richard reed and how this guy wants to blow up an airplane by a bomb that he was apparently if i remember correctly uh he had some sort of device in one of his shoes and from that point on the world changed and every time uh an adult wants to get on an airplane he has to take off his damn shoes and put him through the machine so you know and that kind of change that that that happened after one particular episode and change the work the way we travel forever uh is just a very minor example of that we i think we have to take and put into a into a larger perspective when it comes to what what we're dealing with now what will how will the urban landscape change what industries will survive and we we have friends who work in the restaurant industry uh small medium or large uh restaurant tours um food industry professionals who are now really wrestling with uh with a with a brutal situation and that's just one industry and that is what keeps me up at night among all the things including my my my very inquisitive child what kind of world comes after this which industry survived what the landscape will be like will there will there still be middle seats on airplanes you know or will there need to be social distancing or sporting events i mean there are so many things that frankly it's not uh we shake hands it's important questions no no and i wanted to um remind it that a few years back uh you were incredibly generous with us at future tents we did a an event in mexico city um and we it was about whether technology is going to liberate us so we had some title that was already somewhat provocative because they're the sort of rethinking about the role of technology in our lives i felt like was starting you know 10 years ago 10 years ago people had this very utopian view that all these new technologies were going to solve all our problems and then more recently obviously we've seen a climate where there's been more suspicion of big tech so we had that event in mexico city that you you helped us do as a result of that we've a arizona state university has had a series of convergence lab events in mexico and and you really were were part of uh you never invited me back helping to launch though well we you know uh we've gotten more modest rolled out the big star for the first one but on that but on that question of technology um you know we've talked a lot about globalization and i feel like technology is another um elephant in the room here when we talk about you know are things getting better or worse um and obviously like if you're if you're one of the big tech companies that was feeling pressure about antitrust or some of these debates in the political arena maybe this crisis comes at a at a at a at a i don't want to say a good time but you know it it might change the topic right and obviously now we're more reliant on technologies like zoom to have these events and and people are ordering from amazon and um with all of the questions that's that remain about privacy and so forth um but i want to ask this is a question for both of you like what where do we if we've talked about globalization now where do we fit in technology in terms of our uh optimism going forward in terms of being more connected in constructive ways and and dealing with these problems or is there sort of a dystopian future around the corner that this is only going to accelerate and partly because of what technology is doing to our lives easy questions all of these so um i i'll talk about a bit of that i one of the things that i'm really worried about and now as i talk about it too is the the impact of covid so far is definitely a force for growing inequality um the people who are most likely to get uh covid are those who are providing the vital services um mainly people who are you know well paid so spring equality uh obviously the people being thrown out of their jobs uh mostly uh already at the lower end of the income scale this is going to be a huge force for inequality and the government response so far in this country i mean congratulations on the uh on the cash transfers i think that's a great move but it was way too small um and so without sort of further government effort this is going to be a force for increased inequality that is kind of what i feel about technology too going forward well which is to say uh what matters here is government now basically more productivity i think is a good thing so um uh i think that one of the big reasons that uh africa remains a lot poorer than europe is the fact that if you look at agriculture in africa a lot more of it involves people threshing by hand than in united in in europe or the united states um machines increasing productivity needs to wealth but unless you have government uh intervening doing its part uh it can lead to greater inequality um we have a bunch of tools that we really know work uh to deal with this problem one you may have heard of is called taxation uh and the fact that this is considered you know a complex and difficult issue and what are we going to do about uh inequality if if if it turns out that technology is continues to be a force for inequality we have the answers we've had the answers since you know i don't know 1800 when did they first introduce the income tax um so i don't i don't think this is rocket science i think we we we have policy responses uh to deal with the economic downsides of these new technologies uh and i think broadly they are a force for good if you deal with those uh economic downsides at least you know in terms of income and well-being um but that does leave leave aside the big and important and complex question of well what about privacy and you know uh issues like that well i mean uh i i've for for us a media journalist andres uh uh technology is a godsend right i mean what we what we have been seeing with technologies like uh the one we're using now to communicate is is fascinating and uh it it brings us it brings us together and it for me as a as a univision newscaster it makes it possible for me to broadcast from my from my home uh if if i turn the computer around you would see a couple of tripods and a couple of lights because um i've been i've been broadcasting from from home i'm completely uh i mean healthy but the the the company decided that we we we had to alternate my my co-anchor and myself uh so of course the i think technologies are force for for good uh what uh but in but in other ways i i do think that this particular crisis this emergency should work as a sort of dress rehearsal or rehearsal for the two big crises that are that are coming up i mean in the near future are here uh already one of them certainly climate change and and the other one needs artificial intelligence automation ai right i mean the the the enormous um stimulus package that the government approved is uh is very very close to to establishing some sort of universal basic basic income and uh once again the way governments react to this to this to this emergency to this crisis uh will in a way set the path to the way they will react uh to to a crisis that is inscapable because certainly the emergence of ai is is already here and and the way the way that andrew yang has become such a relevant figure i i don't think it's a coincidence and it is it will be part of the conversation uh in the in the coming years and we will have to deal with it uh one way or another um very very soon one of the questions um you know while we're on this topic um so from mia asks mia asks we saw reporting that a great number of cases in mexico were traced to some wealthy vacationers who brought the virus back after a ski trip in veil do you think we'll see the pandemic stoke class tensions in mexico ah well you know uh yes there were some people who went to veil uh and uh but that's that's that's certainly not the way the the the the pandemic began in in mexico um i i hope not i hope not i i think that that goes back to uh these these previous part of the discussion about populist governments and how they are reacting right i mean the president of mexico in an incredibly controversial uh statement said that this and you will help me translate this perfectly well andres cosai can't think of the phrase he said that the crisis fit him como anillo al dedo no to a t maybe would you know like like it really fit the moment i don't know how you can translate that it's it's like a glove i guess it feels like a glove it feels like literally it's it's it's it fits like a ring on their finger is but the idiomatic expression is like it fits like a glove that's it that's exactly right and what did he mean by that what did he mean by that does that mean that he will use the crisis to steer the sort of uh uh a cultural war class warfare that that he has used in the past uh will he grow even more uh uh authoritarian like it has happened already in hungary for example those are quest those are open questions those are open questions um just just this week he stepped up his uh his confrontation with uh with mexican um empresarios the the entrepreneurial class in mexico so i my my answer would be i hope not but it's certainly it's certainly a possibility it depends in many ways sadly of this messianic figure that we have in charge over there and how he decides to approach the crisis with his approval ratings falling i wouldn't i wouldn't be surprised if he if he tried to find some convenient scapegoats um also someone related david sasaki hello david asks uh what are the likely long-term effects of the pandemic on informal workers um we i think you both have alluded to this a bit and and charles i just curious about whether you see i mean speaking of you know taking advantage of of prices to uh affect change like are you optimistic that there might be some structural adjustments and yeah and of course it'll vary country to country but to address some of these structural and equality you've talked about taxation but the you know workers in the informal economy you mentioned uber drivers but you know these could be one-off measures or do you think we're going to see like real structural changes in how we treat certain people in our economy so uh i'm hopeful to see change i mean and one of the places i think that's most important is in in developing countries um if you look at developing countries not only uh can they not afford um the kind of health responses that we take for granted in in rich countries uh there are there are reasons for sort of optimism about the overall scale of a health emergency in developing countries because younger populations seem to be better uh when it comes to covid but there are also reasons for concern in the populations in places with bad um air pollution for example do worse and and big cities in the developing world have pretty terrible air pollution so just on the on the health side there are reasons for optimism there are reasons for fear pretty much there's no reason for optimism on the economic side the the knock on effects of of the global economic crisis that we're undergoing they're going to be big in developing countries and they're going to be big on on on health outcomes in developing countries where small declines in GDP can have a big effect on health outcomes so in the short term i really don't see much much reason for for optimism but my hope is that one of the big responses that we see in developing countries to deal with the income effects is much more use of cash transfers something that would have been impossible 15 20 years ago but you know thanks to the expansion of mobile money not least is a lot more plausible now a colleague was talking to to to a minister in garner about how many people he thought they they could reach sort of directly with cash transfers in the short term he was saying 80 90 of the population that's would have been unheard of 10 15 20 years ago so my hope is what we see is as a response to this crisis developing countries in particular putting in place broad-based cash transfers for you know when they're needed and that's becoming something that they do more and more as a matter of course of course in in in latin america recently including in in mexico and brazil we've seen things going the other way on on on those grounds that large cash transfer programs have been reduced my hope is they come back again now yeah leon do you have any anything to add on that i i i couldn't agree i couldn't agree more with with what chao is saying uh i i mean my my concern is that thinking of latin america uh and developing countries at this particular moment it really comes down to to leadership right and uh i i think there are examples of remarkable leaders in in latin america and these prices has uh uh brought them to center stage the president of peru for example has been remarkable in reacting quickly to the crisis setting up quarantine the country on the lockdown and pushing um ambitious uh economic measures i think the the the controversial president of el salvador we should be cautious uh with with his particular figure naib bukele but i think that he has acted promptly and and and with with uh uh intelligence but once again when when you when you go back to argentina has been another very good example of uh i i think in in some ways uh that the president fernandez has responded adequately but when you go back to mexico and brazil the stubbornness of both uh leaders has been just completely astounding even in the the sort of example they set in those crucial first weeks lópez orador insisting just like bolsonero and going out in public uh he's he's still traveling i think lopez orador is still going to travel this this weekend outside mexico city even though his own government is begging people to stay uh in place shelter and he flies commercial right famously he flies commercial he flies commercial and he you know he he he goes to visit uh the the the mothers the relatives of famous drug dealers uh this sounds like a joke it truly isn't he did that with el chapo's mother just recently so when you have that kind of leadership it's just mind blowing uh and in this particular moment you need serene uh smart and even humble leadership and uh in latin america as as we've seen so many times before uh the if you evaluate leaders the result is pretty uneven to say the least well i i am tempted to continue this for another few hours but i'm mindful of everyone's time and the fact that we promise that we're going to keep these two an hour but this is lived up to my indulgent expectations in terms of wanting to uh spend some time with with the two of you i should mention before before we say goodbye that uh among the dozen or so leon kraus is roaming the world one of them uh is is an important historical figure in connecting us at future tents more with mexico um we've talked a fair amount about mexico in this conversation but uh leon is part of the leadership of letras libres a magazine that was founded by your father and trica krause and letras libres has a a publishing agreement with with slate and with future tents and i was recently very fortunate to be able to edit uh one of our future tense fiction stories with guan billo a very well known uh excellent mexican author and he wrote a you know a speculative piece of fiction that looks at some of the uh you know thinks about the future of globalization there's he actually drops a reference to covet 19 in this story that is set in the sort of intermediate future it's a story in which a mexican populist leader and china have conspired to turn vast swaths of mexico into sort of a massive recycling plant for us waste waste you know the the trade speaking of globalization the trade and waste and recycling is is a fascinating story and china has obviously uh for for quite a few years was a was a net importer and and it was a great profit maximizer for them and then you know as china develops they're looking for third places to do that and so there's this wonderful story that guan has written that that's very much focused in a mexican village and looks at the sort of uh you know the local culture and the mind control technology there's involved i don't want to give too much away but we are having a conversation with guan on one of these web chats next wednesday as part of our activities of asu programs in mexico so you can follow us at at on twitter at asu underscore mx and then the future tense programming you can follow us at future tense now and next week tuesday and thursday we're having some of these socials that i think we've teed up nicely today as well on tuesday at the same hour uh four o'clock east we're doing one with the boston globe and their editorial page editor on thinking about climate change um in the wake of coronavirus with bina vincatar raman who is their editorial page editor and a future tense fellow and then thursday's uh future tense uh social distancing social will be on the question of will the coronavirus claim privacy among its victims um wow so really timely subjects but today was so much fun thank you so much charles thank you leon and thanks thanks to everybody who was able to tune in and uh please uh keep coming and uh hopefully we can we can get through this period together so thanks everybody my pleasure thanks out stay healthy guys we do