 Beth, do you want to start to record? Sure, so I'm going to try to share my screen. I have a little PowerPoint. Is that OK? Sure, great. All right, so here we are with Vicki, again, the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement, who presents these community discussions once a week at Invenitum, we hope. And we are at the Association of Africans Living in Vermont on January 6. And we're going to introduce Jane Nodell, who's a PhD in economics. That's right, Jane, right? That is correct. OK, I was wondering if it was in something else as well. But anyway, PhD in economics. And you got that from Stanford, didn't you? Yes, I did. And now she is a professor at UVM in economics. And she's going to talk to us tonight about the economy of the country and whether or not the United States can continue to print money, which I guess is fiat money, largely, not grounded on anything particularly, and whether that has any consequences for our economy and for the future of the United States. So Jane, thank you for coming. And let's continue. OK, thank you so much for having me. The host needs to allow me to share my screen. OK, Beth? Can she hear you? Beth is muted, I think. Spotlight. OK, now I think I've got it. Yeah, great. Yeah, here it is. You're seeing it? OK. Very well done. So let me just figure out how to do the slideshow from the start. All right, so I'm very happy to be here tonight with you to talk about what's been happening basically over the last year. And Sandy was saying the question is, is there a limit to the US government's ability to print money? So here's my take on it. And I'm just going to talk for the first part of the talk, mainly about exactly how has money created and what's been happening over the last year. And there are a few numbers, but not a whole lot. And one really magic number, though, is $3 trillion. So in the year of 2020, in just one year, the money supply increased about 75%. That's a huge number. And it's an unprecedented in the history of modern capitalist economies. So increase from $3 trillion in March to $7 trillion in December. So when I say money supply, I'm talking about the Federal Reserve notes that some of us of a certain age continue to carry around in our pockets. And the money that's in our checking accounts, that's what I'm talking about here, the money that we actually use to buy goods and services and to make payments. In the fiscal year of 2020, which ended in October 1 of this year, the US, the debt of the US government increased by $3 trillion from $24 trillion to $27 trillion and is now about as big as the US economy. And the balance sheets of the Federal Reserve banks, the Federal Reserve is the central bank, and it has 12 banks that are geographically located across the country. Their balance sheets also extended by about $3 trillion. And their balance sheets are now about 35% of the size of the whole US economy, which again is a big, unprecedented number. So you have this explosion in the federal debt and explosion in the size of the Federal Reserve banks. So did the US government print all this money? So literally speaking, no. And I think we all understand this, but I think it's good to walk through the mechanics of money. Yes. And try to be clear in our thinking about what the federal government does and what the Federal Reserve does. There is actually one kind of money that the US government makes, and that's coin. Paper money is created by the Federal Reserve, and the money that's in our bank accounts is all created by private commercial banks. And it's very deliberately set up this way because we don't think, or the people that have been running the country all these years, doesn't think that it's a good idea for the federal government to actually finance itself by being able to print money whenever it wants to spend. Now, there are governments at different times in the history of the world that have had that power, and it usually hasn't worked out very well from the point of view of having kind of a stable prices and some kind of sense of stability in your monetary system. So we've divested up. I asked that question. So what kind of a country would that be? Is that like China? China does not do that. There have been some Latin American countries that where they had a hard time taxing, raising additional taxes, and the government still wanted to supply or carry out certain activities. They would just basically print the money. OK. OK. Well, also the hyperinflation of Germany in the 1920s. Yeah. OK. But the money creation process in 2020 was definitely driven by the US federal government and the Federal Reserve working in a kind of pretty close partnership. So the role of the US government in the money creation process is to spend and borrow. You know, you've heard of borrowing and spending. I'm going to be spending and borrowing. OK. So in the fiscal year of 2020, the US government, as I said, had a $3 trillion deficit. In the previous fiscal year, the US government had a deficit of $1 trillion. OK. So number one, it's pretty unusual, not a great idea for the federal government to have a big deficit at a time of business cycle expansion. You normally kind of are used to having deficits when there's a contraction, there's a recession, and the government allows its spending to increase in order to kind of stabilize, try to stabilize people's incomes and limit the depth of the recession. But during the Trump administration, they actually adopted had a very, you know, who gives a damn about the deficit kind of approach to taxing and spending. So we went into this thing with a big deficit, and then we tripled it as a result of the pandemic. So to cover this gap, the US government did not print money, but they issued more debt. The debt in the form of bills, which are very short-term maturities, notes and bonds. So those are just three different words all for government debt that has different kinds of maturity, OK? So it grew up to $27 trillion. Now, $6 trillion of that is actually held within the federal government and affiliated entities, meaning the Fed. But in any event, that leaves you like $21 trillion out there being held by somebody outside of the federal government and the Fed, which is about equal to the size of the US economy. And again, the last time we reached that was like World War II. So we're kind of in the economy, macroeconomy, that very much looks like the World War II economy. You look at the explosion of money and debt. OK. So what's the role of the Fed? What the Fed does is they've got these 12 banks, Federal Reserve banks. They're buying financial assets. They're expanding their balance sheets. And then they're doing that. They're creating liquidity for banks. Because the way that the Fed buys things is that they just create money in the form of deposit accounts at Federal Reserve banks. OK. They also create cash. They literally produce these notes and maintain the stock of currency. But for the most part, they don't really buy the debt with currency. They're buying it just by electronically saying, there's this much more money in your account. In other words, they actually make a computer transfer of a figure to us. They say to another bank, now you have $1 trillion to spend or to loan out. Exactly right. Exactly right. So the banks keep their deposits at the Fed. And the Fed will just credit the bank whatever asset the Fed bought from the banks. So the US government issues more debt. OK. So that's the US Treasury is conducting these auctions. And the Federal Reserve banks buy some of that debt. And banks and other entities, like foreign governments, foreign central banks, large financial institutions buy this debt. There is a lot of demand for US government debt right now. And I'll get back to this kind of the end, because it is an important issue. But essentially, the way it works is the US government issues the debt. The Federal Reserve banks buy some of that debt. They create liquidity for banks, making possible for the banks to buy the rest of the debt. Then the US government has more money in its checking accounts with the banks. And then it spends that money. Under the CARES Act that created the direct benefit to households, the $1,200 checks, the money for businesses under the Paycheck Protection Program, the money that went to state and local governments, went into health care, all that. The US government spends that money, and then it ends up in our checking accounts. And that's the expansion of the money supply happens as the US government spends the money that it got from borrowing. So now back to the question. I'm curious, is there a limit to this process? Can this just go on and on? So I don't know if anyone's heard of this thing called modern monetary theory? Yes. MMT, yeah. So those folks tend to think this can go on forever. And who are those people, professors, bankers? Yeah, they're professors. Like there's a group at University of Missouri, Kansas City that's really the hotbed, if you will, of MMT. And they're kind of left economists, and there's a lot of debate that's going on among left economists about modern monetary theory. But some people are kind of like, yeah, this is it. We can carry out all of our ambitious ideas about what the federal government should be doing and not worry about taxing. We can just pay money to do all this stuff. And others kind of do not agree. But there's a big debate going on. So I do think that there are limits. One is the ability of the US government to continue to issue all this debt, because somebody has to buy that debt. There is reduced willingness to hold US government debt. That means that they might be able to issue the debt, but only at higher interest rates, which is going to increase interest rates for all of us. Or they can maybe sell the debt, but it's going to reduce the value of the dollar against the euro and the Chinese currency and all that stuff, which does affect us, because it means we buy a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff we buy is imported. And that if the value of the dollar goes down, it will increase the price of that. So the US government maybe can keep issuing the debt, but we're going to feel it a lot more at some point in the future than we're feeling it today. This year, the government issued $3 trillion of additional debt, and interest rates actually went down because of all the liquidity that the Fed kind of flooded the system with. The 2020 was a very unusual year, because we were in a very uncertain economic environment with the pandemic. This is like an economy that nobody understand. No one's ever lived with an economy like this. So we have no idea where this thing is headed. And in an environment like that, everyone wants to hold safe assets. So that's kind of been a benefit for the federal government, and I would say for us as people who live in the United States. We have benefiting from that directly. The other limit is like the inflation question. When you have this kind of growth in spending, growth in money, there's the ability to increase spending, which probably at some point will take off. Now, it hasn't been a problem this year because none of us can live normally therefore we can't spend the way we used to spend. So that takes care of the problem. But there's also been a lot of, there is a lot of excess capacity in unemployed people, unemployment people, unemployed people. So this is an environment where creating a lot of money won't be inflationary. At this moment. At this moment. Moving into the future, there's all this liquidity in the system that the Fed is gonna have to figure out what to do with it. Do you try to take it out? Because it does pose the potential for inflation in the future. We're in a deflationary economy right now where most, the policymakers are more concerned about deflation than inflation, right? So again, this wasn't a limit this year, but this year was not a normal year. So. Can I stop you for a moment? I'm not certain that anybody who'd be hearing you understands that inflation is rising prices, right? Thank you, Sandy. Yes. And deflation is declining prices, correct? That's right. That's right. And it's been a long time since we worried about and really worried about inflation. But we still, it's always hovering there as a potential problem for our economy. So my closing thoughts are that I would say that this year, the federal government and the Federal Reserve really responded very quickly and vigorously to the pandemic crisis. They acted facts and they acted big. The US is singularly privileged in many ways. It encountered really no limits to the expansion of government debt. No limit to the growth, how fast the Fed's balance sheet should grow. Other countries do face these limits. Our power comes from our size, still a very big economy. And the fact that the US dollar is still a reserve with primary, what we call reserve currency for the global economy, meaning everyone wants to hold dollars. All the central banks in all the countries, you look at their balance sheets, they're gonna hold dollars. Or they're gonna wanna hold dollar denominated assets such as US government debt to hold as a reserve, meaning if they need to liquidate, they need some money quickly, you want it in dollars. And this supports the demand for the US government debt that's been issued. But should be, is it right? Is it wise for us to assume that the US will always enjoy this privileged position? I think it's not. I think that's likely. So the really the answer to the question is, can the US keep printing all this money is how long will the US enjoy our privilege in this area? And will we take corrective action in a timely way, which is probably not likely. Yeah. Okay, anybody else have questions or thoughts, Ian? Ian. Yes, please. I suppose my perception here is that there is debt everywhere. And debt is generally considered to be a good idea. I mean, it allows people to have credit cards, it allows them to have mortgages as individuals. And then a small business really depends on having loans that allow it to start up, get going and that's considered good. Now, state government pretty much has to balance the books every year except that they can issue bonds, which is, but those are a rather constrained kind of debt at state government level. But federal government, the way you've just outlined it, Joan, made it very, very clear. I think that was a really nice presentation. It sort of fits into the same picture, but with some special circumstances, I think the main ones that you outlined would be the federal government finds it very easy to get debt, at least as you point out for the time being, but also has control over the money supply so that it can sort of manipulate the value of the debt. But we do come back to generally debt as considered good. I mean, Anna, you said this is unprecedented, but I think the nearest rival is the post-war period while there may be a Second World War and immediately afterwards when the government held huge amounts of debt, which was steadily paid off. Well, I grew up in the UK, which in the 1950s had very, very large debt, but the economy was sort of pretty much booming as a result. So, you know, the way I'm viewing this is can we universally say that debt is good? You know, Reaganomics, I suppose, was the one that really brought it into the interview in this case of the federal government, that, you know, tax cuts and debt would be good and we'd have a trickle-down economy from a booming economy. So, yeah, I guess that's a long explanation of where my question is coming from, but can we say that debt is universally a productive thing, a good thing? I can't imagine that it is, but I can't figure it out. What about that, Jane? What about it? Yeah, I guess I wouldn't say that it's universally a good thing because we know that there is predatory lending that happens, where borrowers are induced to really borrow more than they is wise for them. Products are not clearly explained. You know, the subprime mortgage crisis was too much of some kinds of debt and not enough of the other kind of debt that really would have allowed people to maintain sustainable home ownership, right? Right. So, I just think some kinds of debt, you know, is okay, but I wouldn't say that's always a good thing. But in general, it's obviously been, you know, it's hugely supportive of, you know, increasing standards of living, you know, broadly speaking. Okay, can I ask, when we grew up though, there was no such thing as credit cards ever that I understood. There was no credit really in the 50s for an ordinary working-class family, not that I recall, including mortgages. People didn't get mortgages easily at that point either. You'd have to have a lot of money to buy a house in the first place. But I have another question. Okay, so if the United States, if it does the stimulus package, for instance, and if the Democrats succeed in giving us all two grand, say, which I hope they do, would that, I think that's more in the nature of relief rather than a stimulus because isn't it true that if people have 2,000 bucks, they're gonna go out and spend it, maybe, maybe. But if there's nothing to buy because there's no real productivity, then in other words, if there's no supply and people have demand, doesn't that mean that inflation will result? But I don't know how productive the American economy is at this moment. Is it even? Yeah, I think that's a great point, Sandy. I mean, I agree they should definitely do the $2,000 stimulus. But is it more in the nature of relief when it comes to... It is relief, and there's been a lot of research done about what have people done with their checks. And many people have saved it. Yeah, they're right, right. They've saved it or they've paid off debt. But that's okay. I mean, people got to do what they wanna do. It was best for them, that's fine. It doesn't all necessarily get back into the economy. All right. But obviously, the lower income people are probably spending more of their checks because they're just so much more on the margins. But if there's nothing to buy eventually, I mean... I think this is not coming back. Does it require growth in some ways to avoid inflation or not? Overall, we're not seeing so much shortages right now. That could change. Right, that could change. Like for instance, Franklin Roosevelt, when he was creating welfare programs in the 30s, he also at the same time after 1938, 1940, he was creating a warfare state. And so doing massive growth would seem to me in the economy. Is that correct or not? And therefore, full employment too. Definitely. And the United States seems operating on this idea that we're not gonna have full employment for a very long time because of the shutdowns. I think that's right. I mean, before the pandemic, the unemployment rate was very, very low. Low, I know it. And actually, we started to see increases in wages. We started to see increases in wages for people who typically lag behind. So like the black-white wage grab was getting smaller and the more an expansion goes on, then in order to keep producing, the firms have to go and actually hire the people they didn't wanna have to hire. Right, right. So the economy was actually doing, from a labor market point of view, it was really starting to improve. And I would say we were pretty close to full employment before dropping out of, people were coming into the labor force that had been discouraged workers. That's all good. All good things. And we need to get back to that. But we're not going to, it doesn't seem to me. Or are we? I mean, is there any plans of the Democrats to actually open up the economy? I haven't heard any. No, I think it's all, you know, after the pandemic. Right. It's all driven by health. Yeah, Robin, you had to put, you know. So, you know, I was thinking that the argument that if there hadn't been the pandemic that Trump would have, might have won a certain form because up till then the economy was very good. But my question is about the so-called, and I'm forgetting the word BRICS, the BRIC Nations, the Brazil, what is it, Brazil, India, China? Russia, too. Russia, too. Joining together and getting off the dollar. And, you know, I keep reading about that happening and how terrible that would be for the United States. Is that likely or not? I think it's a great question. I think that, God, I mean, I don't really know, but it does require collective action, right? Among a group of nations. But it would be in their interest to do that because then it would, to the extent that they could supplant with one of their currencies, United States, and if they'd be formed a block that kind of had some economic cooperation going, then they could create the kind of policy space for themselves that the US currently only enjoys. Now, I mean, one could argue that other countries have benefited by our being able to undertake all these policies, but, you know, I think that they would be better off having some more independent ability to move on their own, right? Not wait for the US government, US economy to kind of, to wag the dog. The euro is also a potential real challenge, challenger to the dollar. How? How? You know, as a reserve currency. So if... What does that mean as a reserve currency? A reserve currency is, they have all these, every country has a central bank that, you know, manages the monetary systems of their countries. And all those central banks hold currencies in their portfolios as to kind of anchor their own currencies or to kind of, in case they need, their government needs some money, you know, you're gonna have something, some ready form of money. So they're holding a lot of dollars, okay? So something like half of all the currency that is outstanding in the US currency is held outside of the country. And that's all just paying for us, you know, maintaining a level of spending as a country that exceeds our income. We run these, you know, big trade deficits and we're paying for them with the debt and the current US currency that the rest of the world is willing to hold on to. As a measurement against their own currency? Just as an asset, just as an asset. All of us have, you know, we have our little portfolios, we have our money in the bank, we might have a little retirement account. And that's what I mean when they're portfolios, but their portfolios are huge. Yeah, right. So when you're talking about debt, to whom do we owe the money also? Is it fair to say that the Chinese, we owe them a lot of money or not? We do, but people tend to overstate that. It's, I think the last I looked at of the money that of the debt, the 21 trillion that is held outside of the federal government and the Fed. Mm-hmm. Okay. I think that last day I saw the People's Republic of China own maybe 20% of that or something like that. Mm-hmm. Banks, financial institutions hold a lot of the US government debt all around the world. Mm-hmm. Banks, insurance companies, investment banks, they hold a lot of the debt. And what does that mean in the end? What does it really mean for the US economy? As long as they wanna continue holding the debt, we're fine. But when won't they? Well, I mean, you know, if, so things have happened, came close to happening that could have caused financial institutions to dump their US government debt. And that's whenever there's a big showdown in Washington about the debt ceiling. Mm-hmm. Okay. So one of the crazier things that they've ever done is to have a debt ceiling. Which means what? That there's, what does that mean? It means by law, the US debt cannot exceed X some number. Okay? So then the US government is going along, you know, and it's starting, it is issuing more debt. It just in the routine business is always issuing debt. The US government debt is never gonna be completely retired. Forget about it. And there's no even reason to think that it needs to be. But then as they approach the ceiling, then there's like, oh, shoot. Now we have to like muster a majority around raising the debt ceiling. Mm-hmm. Okay. Which can sometimes be hard, as you know, to get a majority in Congress to agree on anything. Right? So then if they don't raise the debt ceiling, then the US government starts to prioritize who it owes money to and starts to default on some of its obligations. Right. Okay. So when it starts to do that, and it has happened, should it ever happen and go on at any length, then people would say, forget it, you've just, you've just blown it. Mm-hmm. And? Because the reason why we hold this debt is that we have zero worry about it being repaid on time. Mm-hmm. Because the United States has been good about that, would say, right? Yeah, we have never defaulted. Never? Never. And other governments have, maybe? Oh yeah, there's been sovereign debt crises, yeah. Oh yeah, like in Argentina, maybe, and right? At least, you know, all these places. I mean, where they had, they had to work something out with their borrowers, you know, with their lenders, I mean. Right. And the austerity regimes get imposed and all that. Right, like in Greece, you mean? Yeah. Right, yeah, right. Ian, Ian, on mute, yeah. Yeah, please, another question, which is relating to going back to, can the government keep printing money? At one time, I guess it wasn't printed, it was gold, and at one time it was gold and silver. So there were these sort of tangible current, tangible valuable metals that were used as currency. And that was, I think that's almost disappeared, except perhaps for the gold standard as a standard between the value of international currencies. But so, why did we give up precious metals and go with $20 bills? Well, you know, Ron and Ron and Ron Paul are interested in reinstating the gold standard. The conservative, the libertarian types and conservatives are very interested in restoring some kind of a standard. I think that when we had a gold standard, it prevented the United States from spending a lot of money because, or printing a lot of money, because you could only print the amount of money that you had gold in Fort Knox for. So you had gold and said that the United States would say we have this amount of gold, we can now issue this amount of paper money. But it limited then the amount of money that the United States could print. They didn't like that very much. And I think that we went off the gold standard in 1973, right, Jane, around the Vietnam War with Richard Nixon, I think. I think in 71, I mean, it was a progressive process, but to get, Ian, so your question you're asking is exactly what I'm really interested in right now in my own writing and research. Because when you had commodity money, money, money minted from silver or gold, right? Then the basis for trusting the money was in part the fact that, well, I can always go and melt this coin and get and sell the gold or sell the silver and get some value for this thing, right? So then when we get paper money, there's no material value to the thing, right? And so why did we, I mean, what did it take to really switch to this like fiat money, which we have now? And there was the sequence of phases, so there's an Intermediary Affairs where you say, well, the issuer of this paper money promises to give you so much gold if you show up and ask for it on demand. So that kind of sustained, and it was still quasi based on something real, right? But over the decades and the centuries, you're completely severed from it because I think that, as Sandy says, it was a constraint on expansion. The capitalist economy was organized around the idea of expanding. Always. Always, and so that principle is gonna, when it finds things in its way that prevents the obstacles, it's gonna find a way to get around it through institutional change or stuff like that. But I think that when this happened, back in the 17th, 18th centuries, it's a very interesting moment because the paper money had to be something very odd, right? For people, yeah. Yeah, had to be like, what? So after I, if I ever figure it out again, I'll let you know when I came up with it. Well, why did people even accept it as a means of exchange, you know? Why would people accept paper money? It's worthless really in the end, correct? It just, it means that you can buy a certain amount of money, a certain amount of goods. And that's it, right? Yeah. But you can't go to Fort Knox and turn it in anymore for gold. No. But for us, today, why do we trust all these banks that hold our money? I don't. Well, I mean, A normal person, you mean? The, I can't comment on that, Sandy. The government has set up things like deposit insurance, the Fed to help us not worry so much about, you know, what's gonna happen to this bank, you know? So there's institutions a society has created to try to build confidence in money. And you always need to have those institutions over time. It's gonna, the form of the institution changes, but they will be there. So. Okay, anyone else have any thoughts? So what's the state of the US economy at this moment? Do you think is it, what's happening? Well, it's a faltering, you know, it's very much tied to the condition of the virus, the cases. How so? Well, when the cases started going down, you know, in the like summer and fall, economy picked up. But now it's gonna, we're gonna, the news are like now we're kind of back to contraction because as people pull back, there's less spending there for less GDP. Gross national product? Gross national product, gross domestic product, restaurants, travel, all that sector is gonna be down. So we, you know, I think that the consensus of economists, I know I can't disagree, is that we have to manage the pandemic, get the vaccine out, you know, keep trying to get the cases down, get everybody vaccinated before, and that's gonna happen before it comes back. And if that doesn't happen, I mean, this is what I've been concerned, I've been concerned even on a local level and maybe because you're so familiar with local politics, maybe you could sort of calm my worry. I think that the local economy is also in trouble because of the shutdown of businesses and the shutdown of small businesses in particular. You'll notice that big business is off the charts with profit, right? But with the, but what? Some of it. Right, but with the shutdowns of small business isn't the city of Burlington and therefore all cities getting less in tax revenues or not? Well, I think we'll know, I don't really know, Sandy. I mean, I'd be curious to know, we'll know more like in June when the city starts to put its budget together because I don't have current, you know, since I'm not there right now, I don't really know what's going on with revenues but I haven't heard that like property tax revenues are significantly down. So I think that it's okay but the commercial sector will definitely be down. Yeah, that's basically what I'm worried about. And doesn't that mean that unemployment will be up? Unemployment, again, in hospitality and travel and all that stuff. Certainly not healthcare. No, but who pays for that in a way, you know? Will we all do? Sort of, yeah, except I would guess that the hospitals also are facing financial problems as well, right? Okay, anyone else? Beth, that's all we have for Jane. We all understand all that stuff. I don't understand it exactly. I just wanted to go back to your second slide and make sure I understood. You said the US government issues debt, right? Right? Yeah. And the only control on that is you said at the time that Congress sets the debt ceiling, is that really the only, is that the way it's put in check? Well, I mean, it's managed through the budget process, right? Where they set out every year they adopt a budget with a certain amount of spending and a certain amount of projected tax revenue. Right. So in many years they, you know, in fiscal year 19, they adopted a budget that had a $1 trillion deficit. They by policy decided to spend a trillion dollars more than they were gonna take it. So this is, I mean, it's a congressional decision. Yes. Okay. Wow. What did you say, Beth? I didn't hear you, I'm sorry. It's a congressional, it's Congress who decides this every year. And why do they decide that? Why don't they decide to live within their means? I mean it, why? Do they want, they just want to keep spending out? You know, is that right? Just like a household that's gone out of control? If they, okay, because they can't see any spending that they think is unnecessary, right? They all want to deliver from like as a political economy thing, they all want to deliver for their constituents, right? Right. High level of environmental protection, a high level, you know, as much affordable housing as they can do, as much, you know, support for new energy, you know, there's all kinds of things that's been money on, you know? Weapons. Sorry, sorry. Weapons. Weapons. Yeah, military weapons. It's a huge buildup in the defense budget. We didn't hear any debate about that, right? I mean it was, it was like, yeah, okay. I mean, Trump made a deal with, and the Democrats did a deal with Trump, which is we'll support your defense buildup if you'll support our domestic spending buildup. And there's like, okay, works for me. Right, recently they did that because then he turned around and vetoed the defense bill, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm talking about like in fiscal 18, 19, like during his presidency, that was how the budgets were put together. It'll be interesting to see, but now with that, you know, we have a, the Biden administration comes in. My prediction is that we're gonna see all of a sudden a lot of talk from the Republican side about deficits and how the debt's too big and how we need to kind of get a handle on this stuff. Which they weren't doing apparently, right? I mean, they allowed, you know, the... Well, plus I mean, to close that gap, let's say all the spending is good spending. I know this is a big assumption. Right. And then to close the gap, you have to raise taxes. Who wants to go to their constituent and say, I increased your income tax? They will though. Even though Trump did, but in a backdoor way so that people couldn't really see what he did. How so? Through getting reductions and things like that. Right, right. He cut taxes for the wealthy there, but did he actually increase then taxes? For middle-class taxpayers, certainly in states like California and New York, when they could no longer deduct their state and local income taxes, their tax hit increased. Okay, all right. Okay, anyone else? Wealthy upper middle-class people in blue states. So we're not gonna cry a river for them, but their taxes did go up. Well, anyway. Was that beneficial to the economy? Because you mentioned also something interesting. So that when Trump says that the economy was improving under him before the pandemic, that's really true, correct? By many measures, that was true, yes. And what was the measure? The measure was by unemployment and less unemployment. Is that the measure that you would use as an economist? I would look at the unemployment rate, but the amplified one that takes account of the number of marginally attached workers and discouraged workers. So that unemployment rate came down and wages increased at the bottom of the wage ladder. Those people's wages were increasing more than the rate of inflation. So their real wages were actually going up. But wasn't that set in place basically by Obama? I mean, Obama got it moving in a very positive direction. And I'm just wondering whether what do you think, do you think Biden will put more taxes on the rich? I think he will. You do? I think he might. He needs to. Of course he needs to, but Willie is a different question. I mean, that's where his big donations came from was from the very wealthy. I mean, if he's circling back to what we're talking about here, I mean, I'm going to change my answer because if he can still issue debt and do what he needs to do without raising anyone's taxes, he's going to do that. Oh, wow. There's something non-functional about that, ultimately. Okay, so what did, okay, but isn't he the candidate that got more support from the very wealthy, more donations, more support from the really large capitalists in this country by donations? So why would he be the person that would tax them more? Well, he would need, I mean, he would need to say something about why he needs to tax them, right? So if he needed to tax them in order to pay for a universal income program, something like that. I actually think it's something that could be on the agenda because what's happened this year with the CARES Act where the US government has sent checks to people. Right, right. I mean, they've never done that. Right. You know, it's always been, well, you know, we'll give you some food stamps, we'll give you a housing voucher. If you're worthy, we're going to tell you, we're going to help you, but in ways that, you know, you have to use it for housing or whatever. This is like sending people checks. I mean, that was revolutionary, right? And it was good. It was a good thing. And we should probably keep doing that in some form. That's what I mean. Can you do that without busting your whole economy? Well, you can do it, you can keep going the way they've been doing it. But then if you see signs that that the world is not going to keep taking your debt, then in order to keep doing it, you have to tax people. And you have to have a redistribution through the income tax system, which is perfectly fine. Well, it won't be fine for those people who have to pay more though, right? Who are the wealthy? I mean, you have to, okay, then you have to make the case that if you want to live in a society where people have their basic needs met and can live with some measure of economic security, then you have to pay for it. We all have to pay for it. But you're making a political statement, aren't you, by saying that? Do you think that there's broad agreement in this country that people deserve to have a living wage or that they have a living at all? Do you really think there's broad agreement about that? I'm not certain that there is. I mean, look at Jane, this is a city of Burlington that's supposedly a progressive city. And yet every day I go downtown and there are people without homes, nobody seems to care about that. No, but you need the federal, and it's a federal thing. The city doesn't have- No, I know it, but put that in broad, put it like in California. I don't know if the rich really care that California has piles of people that live on the street. Do you really think there's an agreement that people deserve to live in dignity in this country with healthcare and education and a home? I'm not certain. There is that broad agreement. I guess we're gonna find out. Well, you think so? You really think that's gonna be the debate? I think there's gonna be some kind of debate coming out of the pandemic about, are we just gonna go back to the way we were? Are we gonna really have more of an ethic of care in our society, in our economy, in our politics, in our government? Well, I think that- That's the question that the pandemic has raised. Yes. I hope so. Anyone else have anything else to say or any other final comments other than thanking Jane? No? Thanks for having me. This is really fun. Okay, but Jane, that's gonna be on channel 17. So we thank channel 17 and Megan for recording it and Beth, and thank you all for coming. And AALV for providing, Grant and I are here at AALV where we have decent internet connection to be able to do this. So thanks very much and we'll see you next week. Thank you. Next week what's happening? What's the next edition here? I'll get you a copy of all of our talks. Next week is Robin. Why don't you say what's happening? She's gone. Robin. No, I'm here. Okay. I'm just eating. I don't like to have my mouth moving that way when I'm on these Zoom calls. Yeah, next week is going to be very interesting. John Royer is a member of World Beyond War and an expert on the treaty that has been passed by over 50 nations around the world making nuclear weapons illegal. Passed by my house, look at the facade. It says nuclear weapons are illegal starting January 22nd. That's when this treaty comes into force. So next week, which is the 13th, he will be speaking. We will also be bringing in the reality of the plowshares people who are going to jail now and the one from Vermont, her name is Martha Hennessey, a member of Catholic Worker and the granddaughter of Dorothy Day has gone to Danbury prison on December 14th and she will be there for 10 months for having walked into the Trident submarine base in Georgia. Georgia, that's the Georgia, right? Which is voted now for two Democrats despite having a major military complex there that pays the salary of thousands of people in that community. So he will be talking about that. The interesting thing about this person, John Royer is he is in Washington DC now as a nonviolent activist and is a member of a group. And I talked to him today, I didn't get the name of the group but you can imagine that there are groups of people wanting to be there to, you know, lessen the conflict, talk to people, get people to think about things and so on. So, I mean, it looks crazy to me right now in terms of what's happening there but I hope that next Wednesday maybe we'll spend a few minutes asking him to debrief about his experience in Washington. And Robin, one other thing Robin, you might mention that that place in Georgia was where you went to jail, right? Yeah. Isn't that where Fort? Yeah, it was also Georgia that had Fort Benning. So Fort Benning, the Trident Summary Place, Georgia is an incredible receiver of military spending and therefore has a lot of people committed to maintaining it because it's paying their salaries. So what happened is totally amazing and Stacey Abrams is a genius organizer and I'm looking forward to seeing the fallout of what happened today, the various websites. Well, thank you very much, Jane. I'm so happy to see you. Even if it's on Zoom, I haven't seen any of you actually for a very long time. Okay, thanks for being here and we'll talk next week, I hope. Thank you. Thanks, Beth. Thanks, Jenny. Thanks, Beth.