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Transcript
Rob Johnson:
Welcome to Economics and Beyond. I’m Rob Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Rob Johnson:
I’m here today with my friend Bob Borosage. He’s a contributing editor to The Nation magazine and the co-founder of the Campaign for America’s Future, which I had the good fortune of serving on the board of for several years.
Rob Johnson:
He lives in Washington, DC. He’s been at the center of progressive politics for many, many years and we’re approaching the inauguration of the Biden presidency, amidst the turmoil and chaos that’s taken place around the Capitol building and I wanted to spend some time talking with Bob about what’s happened and what needs to happen to help America get back on track.
Rob Johnson:
Bob, thanks for joining me.
Robert Borosage:
My pleasure. Good to hear your voice.
Rob Johnson:
Well, we’re in this cauldron now. I think everybody … How would I say it? Knowing that there was a lot of dissatisfaction on a lot of different sides, in many ways, people were quite clear that Donald Trump … I know John Shields wrote a book called Trump’s Democrats, which talked about what happened during the George W. Bush/Obama and Clinton years that fostered the turmoil, but it really hit a flashpoint on the storming the Capitol.
Rob Johnson:
I’m curious how you explain what happened, how you see what happened that day, and what signal does that send to our incoming president and his cabinet about where we need to go to restore confidence?
Robert Borosage:
Obviously, a signal of how divided the country is and how impassioned and angry a good portion of it is, and then the question is what do you see as the cause of that? It’s pretty easy to take the position, “Well, this is Donald Trump’s contribution.” He’s been spreading hate and division and then he spread the lies about the campaign and roused his people to come to the Capitol and sent them off to sack it.
Robert Borosage:
The tendency is to focus on him and his impeachment and his punishment but I think the reality is the anger will continue, Trump ought to be punished, but even when Trump is punished, the anger is not going to go away and the rage doesn’t go away because it comes from, in significant degree, the middle class, which has been savaged over the last 50 years of the conservative era, 40 years since 1980, where we’ve had an entire working class that’s really been displaced and gone from jobs that, at least, for the white working class gave them a modicum of security, healthcare, retirement, decent pay. They could send their kids to college.
Robert Borosage:
Now for a huge number, that’s no longer true. Healthcare is increasingly unaffordable, college is out of reach for their kids unless they go into massive debt. Their wages are down and inequality is at obscene and growing levels.
Robert Borosage:
Trump ran four years ago against the elite consensus that had created those conditions and he was quite explicit in his campaign and in his inaugural, indicting the establishment, saying their victories are not your victories, they’ve prospered while you’ve suffered and this is going to change.
Robert Borosage:
Now, of course, the promise that it would change was a lie. He did, basically, traditional Republican policies to the extent he did anything and continued to do the race bait politics that has been the foundation of the Republican Party.
Robert Borosage:
He did take on the trade stuff a little bit. He did take on the elites and keep sticking a middle finger in their face. There was a whole range of people who believed he was their champion.
Robert Borosage:
When Biden ran and Biden ran against the pandemic and the total mishandling of the pandemic by Trump and on a “return to normalcy” as he put it, I think the real challenge for Biden is there is no going back to normalcy. He faces unbelievable cascading crises, the pandemic, of course, the collapse of the economy, the climate change, which is intense, the racial upheaval. If you think you can go back to that elite consensus, you’re utterly wrong.
Robert Borosage:
The question is, even with very slim majorities in the House and, basically, a divided Senate, can he find the way to lay out large things that have to get done and develop both the Congressional majorities and the popular support that allows, at least, some good portion of it to get done. It’s not going to be an easy task. That’s for sure.
Rob Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, how does the foreign policy play a role here? There was very, clearly, as Dean Baker has shared with the audience on this podcast, a period where American multinational corporations, finance, and what have you, allowed, what you might call, a connection and opening and globalization, particularly with China but throughout the emerging world.
Rob Johnson:
During that period, the disruption, the displacement, in the realm of manufacturing, in the widening of income distribution, was accompanied by tax cuts for the wealthy and the powerful. Then when Trump came in, he blamed it on the Mexicans and the Chinese, essentially, as opposed to the lack of response in what you would call adjustment assistance to the changing shape of the American economy.
Rob Johnson:
I had meetings in China with some of the very top people in their government. They said, “We are large. The per capita income in China is one-fortieth of what it was in the United States in the late 1980s. The convergence was going to create profound transformation. But we were powerless to affect how the American government treated their people in response to that.”
Rob Johnson:
Now there are others now in a more modern time talking about intellectual property rights and so forth and, as Dean says, we’re now hawkish on China but it’s not about labor conditions and environmental conditions. Our hawkishness is more focused on, how would I say, the intellectual property rights of pharmaceuticals, entertainment companies and what have you.
Rob Johnson:
You have a US/China kind of symbolism of discord that Trump amplified. You have lots of long-term pain. How does Biden look to Asia, places like China/India, and integrate that with what is happening … Now in going forward, in light of the distress, can we make win/win climate agreements with China as a Biden administration, which I would say would be being a steward of the world and the future of our children, or will he be viewed as weak or capitulating to the Chinese and all those other insinuations among the enraged?
Robert Borosage:
Well, the question first is what does Biden want to do? He’s brought in for his foreign policy team, the people who have been very skilled, very smart, very experienced and involved in all of the ruinous policies of the last decade. These are the corporate free traders, these are the interventionists who believe America is the indispensable nation that has to basically police the world, these are the people who were for going into Iraq on the Democratic side, who were for going into Syria or Libya, et cetera, et cetera.
Robert Borosage:
All of them basically have said in various writings, well, mistakes were made and we’re reconsidering where we were and we understand that we have to have a different policy now but America is still the indispensable nation. We must sit at the head of the table. We are threatened by China and Russia so we’re gearing up to do build military forces in the Pacific and to confront Russia for its temerity in the Ukraine, et cetera. We can [inaudible 00:10:46] two ways. We can both have the Cold War with China and do climate agreements with them.
Robert Borosage:
Well, I think how that settles out is going to be critically important. It really is about what America’s policy is not what China’s policy is. One, are we the indispensable nation and we’re going to continue endless wars around the world or are we going to shut them down and not pretend to police the world and have much more of a policy of restraint?
Robert Borosage:
Two, do we gear up for this cold war with both Russia and China at the same time or do we decide that we ought to find the common ground we ought to have on nuclear weapons and on climate, particularly, and follow that? Instead of blaming China for our trade policies, will we, in fact, create our own industrial policy, our own social welfare policy, our own conditions around research and investment to develop a more vibrant manufacturing sector, which is all policies we could do and must do on our own. They have nothing to do with what China does or our relationship with China.
Robert Borosage:
Those questions about how Biden chooses and how the people around him choose are really still open and unclear, because if they’re loyal to their record, they are really out of step about where the country needs and, hopefully, they have, in fact, have had a conversion, although, there’s every reason to be skeptical of that.
Rob Johnson:
Well, obviously, the pandemic has created the need to support society with a very significant amount of fiscal capacity. On the horizon, as you mentioned in an earlier part of this presentation, is the challenge of climate change.
Rob Johnson:
Yesterday, I happened to hear a very interesting conversation between Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Orszag and former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, where Robert Rubin said if you look for how to create or mobilize the fiscal capacity, that we need for all these things, including the ongoing pandemic and, potentially, climate, we should look at the performance of our healthcare system, because it’s not producing according to WHO and others, a very high quality but it is many tens of percent more expensive and, obviously, the government with Medicare/Medicaid paid for some of that.
Rob Johnson:
There could be fiscal capacity created to devote to these social ends but they involve very profound transformations in political economy. I guess I would throw in the military industrial complex and nuclear modernization when, supposedly, the Cold War is over as another chapter in what I’ll call rent-seeking pressures, to use fiscal capacity for things that are not as, what you might call, nourishing to the body politic and helpful, therefore, in calming things down and putting us back on track. How do you see Rubin’s suggestion or how the Pentagon is to be dealt with and what scope is there for rising to these challenges in what we might call a Green New Deal?
Robert Borosage:
Well, Biden, of course, is committed to an expansive investment agenda around alternative energy and reconstructing America in a much more green and efficient infrastructure. That’s the commitment. He won’t use the term Green New Deal because he’s worried about Republicans having besmirched it. Basically, been committed and recommitted himself last night when he laid out his programs saying he’s going to come back with a green investment infrastructure as the second stage.
Robert Borosage:
The question you raise about healthcare and about the military industrial complex is really about the kind of entrenched corruption and the entrenched interests that dominate and distort our policy. Our healthcare system is about twice as expensive as that of the European countries and serves less people and has worse health results. It’s because Big Pharma and the hospital complexes and the private insurance companies take out a huge amount of money in profit and in administrative fees and keep us from having an efficiently run system, whether it’s Medicare For All or a national healthcare system or an all-payer system with different forums.
Robert Borosage:
We have one of the most inefficient systems and costly systems because of those interests. Let me just give you an example of that, which I’m sure you know of. When George Bush passed the prescription drug benefit in Medicare, the Congress put into that bill a prohibition on Medicare for negotiating bulk discounts on drugs, which every other country in the world does.
Robert Borosage:
We spend a lot of money inventing these drugs, public money. We give them to these private Big Pharma companies. We pay the highest price in the world for the same drugs that we helped develop because the other countries demand bulk discounts. We are prohibited by it.
Robert Borosage:
Now the guy who was the chair of the committee, Billy Tauzin, put that in, retired the next year and took the job, a million dollars a year, as the chief lobbyist for who? For Big Pharma for the drug companies.
Robert Borosage:
The corruption is pretty blatant. It’s not just partisan. Democrats campaigned for two cycles, “This is an outrage”, which it surely is, “We’re going to change this. We’re going to reverse it” and when Obama came in to do his healthcare reforms, the first deal Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, cut was with Big Pharma to keep the prohibition on Medicare negotiating bulk discounts so that Big Pharma would not lobby against the healthcare plan.
Robert Borosage:
It’s not an accident that these things don’t work. It’s the same thing with the military industrial complex. We’re now spending more on the military than we did in real dollars, inflation adjusted dollars, than we did at the height of the Cold War under Ronald Reagan. That is nuts. The Soviet Union is no more. The Warsaw Pact has collapsed. China is, yes, of course, growing and getting more powerful but it has no global aspirations. It’s trying to build its own area of power in the South China Sea. Otherwise, we’re just chasing terrorists around the world and keeping unending wars in places like Afghanistan that have no purpose as far as anybody can tell except we’re not prepared to get out and lose the war.
Robert Borosage:
We’re wasting untold amounts of money but, again, you have this very powerful corporate complex, plus the Pentagon, as a lobby on sustaining those resources and you’ve got an ideology about it as America as an indispensable nation and, of course, both parties are part of it. The Pentagon budget keeps going up, even though it is now obscenely bloated, incredibly inefficient and corrupt, and draining both resources and attention on things we don’t need and will never use, I hope.
Rob Johnson:
I think you make a good point, which is those incentives to follow onto the rent-seeking, the lobbying, the campaign contributions and what have you, is something that all of the representatives are subjected to. I used to work, as you know, in the United States Senate and I once talked to a senator, who I won’t name, and he said, “The biggest problem with this job is that I spent 75% of my time raising money to do policies that I don’t believe in in order to survive.”
Rob Johnson:
Both Democrats and Republican candidates are subjected to what you might call that force field of incentives. How do we get to a place by where you can get a legislature to enact a law, which makes all of the incumbents more vulnerable to challenge because the incumbents can sell policy to raise their war chests whereas challengers only have, what you might call, that out of the money option of getting in office and then making good on the promise ex-post? How do we get this system to be more responsive?
Robert Borosage:
Well, I think there’s only two wars and they’re both external to the Congress. That is, you have to have a rising militant, angry, populist movement that is demanding change, particularly, among other things, in the way we fund our elections. Then you have to have the elite that is funding these things that one half of 1% that I think provides 60% of all campaign finances, you have to have them sobered enough about the instability in the society that they decide it’s time to make big changes and they use their money to get their legislators to do things that they might otherwise not do. Both on substantive policy and on strengthening and reviving the democracy.
Robert Borosage:
We’re not there yet. We’re getting close. The pressures and the fear of instability in the system ought to be making the wiser people among the elite alarmists and, certainly, you’ve seen the increasing movements and disruption on both left and right, both progressive movements and reactionary ones, that are expressions of the anger that this rigged system is creating. You know, maybe there’s a possibility.
Robert Borosage:
Just as a footnote, one of the most exciting things about the Bernie Sanders campaign was that in two cycles he demonstrated that a progressive candidate with a clear forceful, populist agenda, could raise in small donations enough money to be financially competitive against the big donor-funded candidates. In this last round, he raised more money than the other candidates with small donation.
Robert Borosage:
If you could get Congress to pass matching funds for small donations rather than large donations, you could have Congressional candidates and Senate candidates and presidential candidates all able to compete in a relatively even way with the big money, given that possibility. It would be, needless to say, very important in terms of opening up the possibility of reform for that to happen.
Rob Johnson:
We come back to the financial sector and we live in a world now where, how would you say, very, very low interest rates, as you have an aging population, their retirement benefits are being compressed and [inaudible 00:24:02] what they call the real economy, meaning the non-financial economy, starts to invigorate. It’s not going to push those rates back up. Do you see things related to how the financial sector or the governance of the financial sector is operating that are candidates for a reform that would contribute to the reinvigoration of confidence in our society?
Robert Borosage:
Well, here I’d be wise simply to turn that question back to you, who knows a lot more about the financial sector than I do, but let me just make one comment here, which is the low interest rates now, even before the pandemic, with unemployment very low, the low interest rates are an opportunity. They’re the reason Biden feels confident that he can put out a trillion dollar pandemic plan and the reason I think you can get Republicans to support what they always said they were for, which is a trillion dollar infrastructure, hopefully, green infrastructure, rebuilding.
Robert Borosage:
It opens up fiscal space because the interest rates are so low to do things that previously were just ruled out of order, that we couldn’t afford them. The low interest rates now provide this opportunity and it’s an imperative to meet climate, to make our economy work, to revive a manufacturing sector, to revive a middle class. It’s imperative that we make those public investments in a wise, bold, and creative way.
Robert Borosage:
I think that will be the test of this administration and the next administration and it was the test for Trump in some ways and he failed it completely. He never put forth an infrastructure plan, despite his promises to do so. He had no sense of an industrial policy or investment in research and development that would be important. Of course, he was a climate change denier and just perverse in those regards.
Robert Borosage:
Now Biden, at least, is saying the right things. He’s going to face immense resistance from conservatives in the Senate, both in the Democratic Party and in the Republican Party, and that’s going to be a central fight of the next years. As a society, we’ve got to get this right and take advantage of the opportunity that these interest rates provide us or this economy is going to continue to decline.
Rob Johnson:
Another area that’s on the horizon and a guest I had on the podcast recently, [inaudible 00:26:55], is working on, is the enforcement of antitrust, particularly, related to the large scale internet monopolies, the concentration of what you might call the channels through which we receive information and the, what you might call, editorial role that these companies like Facebook and Google are able to undertake.
Rob Johnson:
We’ve just seen a very interesting film in recent months called The Social Dilemma on Netflix. Somebody said to me, “The punchline of that film was you’re wrecking the minds of children and you’re fostering a civil war between adults by only telling each side what they want to hear in order to boost advertising revenue.” How do you envision the governance of that technology/information sector and the role of antitrust in improving the structure and performance of the American society?
Robert Borosage:
I do think that we’ve seen the danger of it when all of the tech companies stripped Trump of his platforms, which, certainly, he deserved on the one hand but on the other hand, the power to do that and to deprive a president, a political figure, of his ability to reach out to the public independently, is an incredible power to put in the hands of very concentrated companies.
Robert Borosage:
I suspect you’re going to see bipartisan support for aggressive antitrust to break these companies up and to, at least, have competitive platforms. That isn’t the end of the problem, however. The problem is that the algorithms that they use to sell advertisement really have perverse effects.
Robert Borosage:
When the QAnon people were talking about militant conspiracies, Google was putting next to their tweets ads for military supplies, for guns and ammo and camouflage and what have you. They were making money out of the ads but the society pays a huge price for that kind of reinforcement.
Robert Borosage:
The social media reality underneath it, which is disconnected people finding communities of interest that become consuming and distorting is a problem no matter how big the platform is. I’m not sure how you solve that. I’m not sure how we get in front of that. In the old days, we had the Fairness Doctrine in the national media but I can’t imagine how that would apply to social media. I don’t know how we get there.
Rob Johnson:
Yeah. If you were sitting in the cockpit of the Biden administration, we’ve been what you might call touring the menu of malfunction, dysfunction or rising challenges, what would you prioritize in the first 100 days to reinspire confidence that we’re getting back on the right track?
Robert Borosage:
Well, I think he started out right. Go big on trying to get the pandemic dealt with, get the vaccine out, help workers who have lost their jobs or taking cuts in hours, their pay, protect homeowners and renters from being thrown out of their homes and losing their property, give aid to the states and localities that have just been crippled by the lack of tax revenues because the economies have been shutdown, do the return to schools in an incredibly safe way with teachers vaccinated and kids with greater protections.
Robert Borosage:
The first thing to do a big agenda around that, I think he’s started and I think that’s very important. He says he’s going to come back immediately with a second agenda to deal with rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and doing it in a way that goes to renewable energy and energy efficiency. That could create millions of jobs, good jobs, and if you can get it through the Congress, which is not clear, I think that’s a great second step.
Robert Borosage:
At the same time, there’s a set of things he could do with executive orders that would I think be very important like making all government contractors pay a $15 minimum wage, have paid family leave, have sensible employment policies, allow workers to unionize, and use the power of federal procurement, by executive order, to get a huge portion of our economy providing a model and operating in a way the entire economy ought to operate.
Robert Borosage:
The irony of this period is that the progressive agenda that’s been put out by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the Congressional progressive caucus and others, is incredibly popular. If you did the $15 minimum wage, if you did the workers’ bill of rights, if you did Green New Deal and being really aggressive on investment and the pandemic and keeping people home in the midst of this pandemic, those are all popular things that give you a shot, even if they’re defeated in the Congress, give you a shot to win the argument in the next election, and create the majority that would actually allow you to do real change. That’s how I would start.
Rob Johnson:
The sense I guess that many people have is that given the turmoil that President Trump raised … I guess I’m asking a question, which is like is there a fork in the road now where the fear that was injected into many of our minds in light of the storming of the Capitol, does that create an urgency to restore order or does that create, what you might call, a willingness to tolerate a more authoritarian response which takes us further away from a tranquil, contented rebuilding of trust?
Robert Borosage:
Well, trust is hard to rebuild in a tranquil way at this point. Its very worrisome, this connection between cracking down on demonstrations and the line between legitimate demonstrations and the violent ones that have to be policed. It’s very hard for the authorities to do that. It’s a very easy excuse to suppress dissent once you have violent demonstrations. I think that’s a significant worry.
Robert Borosage:
The sense that the society is reeling out of control, that law and order doesn’t work, that now seems to be expressed on both the right and the left, is a kind of real problem because the reaction to that is likely to be an even more authoritarian reaction.
Robert Borosage:
I think these are very perilous times. I wish that Biden were starting this period with a new hand, that this was a new age that he could come forward with positive programs as he did the other day and he could have the argument around that.
Robert Borosage:
If I had my druthers, the Congress would have censored Trump in both houses and gotten down with it before the new administration started. Instead we’re going to start with the Senate spending half of its time on a positive program and half of the time on whether they convict Trump and impeach him. Now he deserves to be impeached, he deserves to be convicted, but if it gets in the way of gaining popular momentum for a positive agenda, I think that’s a real danger.
Rob Johnson:
I try sometimes to imagine if I was a law enforcement officer, we’ve concentrated a great deal on individual freedom in the ethic of the United States and I think we’ve seen some of the side effects relating to the pandemic when I don’t have to wear a mask if I am out on the street, increases the likelihood that you’ll become infected. In other words, we affect each other.
Rob Johnson:
Similarly, the question of guns I have the right to defend myself but do you have the right not to be shot by me? Take that to a law enforcement officer, he’s got a career defending a system, which has been increasing inequality, despair, what Angus Deaton and Anne Case called the diseases of despair, suicide, opioid addiction, and the like.
Rob Johnson:
You’re seeing people worried, increasingly, about the opportunities for their children and as they despair, they have guns. Now you’re a law enforcement officer in an unsustainable incoherent system and you probably become afraid and want to protect yourself.
Rob Johnson:
We even saw some law enforcement officers supporting or egging on or joining the invasion of the Capitol the other day. I guess what I’m saying is I don’t want to demonize law enforcement but I think that will be one hellish role to play in our society unless the underlying becomes, what you might call, repaired and, as we’ve been talking about, the incentives among elected officials, other than the fear of what’s opening before our eyes, have not been sufficient to move us onto that healthier trajectory.
Rob Johnson:
What can you do for law enforcement now? People are talking about defunding the police. I’m not sure I want no police with all kinds of people running around with guns in the street either.
Robert Borosage:
Well, the word you didn’t mention in this is race, of course, which [crosstalk 00:39:39].
Rob Johnson:
Yes. Well, I was going to come to that next.
Robert Borosage:
We’ve got to massively reform a police system and a justice system that is systematically racist. Some of that is changing the laws we have, changing the stupidity about drug laws, et cetera, that put police in ridiculous situations. Some of that has got to be changing who the police are and the way that they’re trained, et cetera, because as we’ve seen in these different cities, the level of venomous racism in the police force is a really frightening thing.
Robert Borosage:
On the other hand, what you said is exactly true. If you’re an African American mother or a Hispanic mother or a white mother, and you live in an impoverished neighborhood, you want authorities to enforce the law and to keep the streets safe and you don’t want your sons and daughters to be trying to get to school in the midst of gang wars and shootouts.
Robert Borosage:
Disarming or defunding the police, which is the burlesque of what the position is, isn’t where the great bulk of the people in our urban areas, it’s not what they would think of. In fact, the kind of individual, “I’ll enforce the law myself” is probably much stronger in rural areas where the police are not much of a presence and so people have their own guns and think they’re going to defend their own doors.
Robert Borosage:
We’ve got to have more sensible gun laws. It’s grotesque that in the pandemic that one of the greatest growth markets has been the sale of guns. We’ve got to have an effective police force that’s not an occupying force but is part of the community. We’ve got to replace the stuff that Reagan wiped out in terms of mental health facilities and capacity that helps people who are mentally unstable and doesn’t treat them as people to be shot.
Robert Borosage:
There’s a whole range of reforms that are packed into this. I think you’re right. If I were a policeman, I’d be worried I’m going out on the street and I’m under-armed, that they have AK-47s and I’ve got a pistol on my hip. I’d be damn worried about my own life and et cetera. It adds to the tension of any of these situations when there’s fear on both sides.
Robert Borosage:
You know, hopefully, the sacking of the Congress and the violent assault on the police officers there will be a sobering moment for the country and we can both go forward with reforming police and in reestablishing authority for reformed police forces and respect for law officers in a way that has clearly been eroded over the last years.
Robert Borosage:
You know, Rob, just to push on that a little bit, one of the things about a market fundamentalism, which is what we’ve had in both parties over the last 40 years, where there’s this belief that the market will solve all problems and that individualism is the greatest good and that greed and you keep score by how much money you have, one of the problems with that ethic of overwhelming, the Protestant ethic or any religious morality or any other kinds of limits or any sense of a common good, other than the Adam Smith notion that if we’re all really greedy and individualistic then our collective individual interests through the market will miraculously become the common good.
Robert Borosage:
What that system does over time is it undermines completely this sense of community, this sense that we, in fact, do have a common stake, the sense that we have a respect, one for another, because we’re all in this together.
Robert Borosage:
The pandemic I thought was just a kind of classic example of that where you’ve got to have healthcare for everybody because those people who don’t get healthcare are going to put everybody else at risk. You’ve got to have the ability of all workers who are sick not to go to work because if they have to go to work because they have no paid sick leave, they’re going to get their other employees sick. You’ve got to have everybody responsible enough as part of a community to wear masks and to socially distance, otherwise, those protective measures don’t work and the pandemic continues to grow.
Robert Borosage:
Of course, what’s happened in this society is exactly that where we’re now at 4000 deaths a day and hoping that we have a technological response called the vaccine that will get us out of this because we don’t have a communal response that can overcome the individualism and the selfishness and the arrogance that is the ethic of a market fundamentalism.
Rob Johnson:
Yeah. It’s a very … We’ve talked about how treacherous things are psychologically but it’s a very treacherous time when you think about the institutional organization of society and the unfettered free market is not a deity, the market is a tool, and the results of that experiment are hiding in plain sight and they’re not nearly as good as advertised.
Rob Johnson:
Then you look on the other side and we’ve talked about the ways in which the state is captured, the ways in which laws, regulations, enforcement, appointments and so forth are driven by money power and its not surprising that a lot of people have no faith in governance.
Rob Johnson:
In your last comment here, you’ve kind of gone to a different place, which is it’s not maintaining whatever our ethic is and reforming the institutions, what I gather you’re suggesting is that we need to change the ethic so the goals that we have evolve and then the institutions become brought into line. If we keep pointing at the same places, we’re not going to hit the bullseye.
Robert Borosage:
Yeah. This is a chicken and egg problem, obviously, but clearly we’ve got to have … When you have this market ethic and market fundamentalism, which now has failed most Americans, and you still have the vestiges of a democratic system, we still have elections, even though they’re dominated by money, we still have the possibility of voting for change, and we still have the rights for free speech and the possibility of demonstrating to demand change, the only way that this thing works is that the democracy is able through the institution of the state to call the private interests and the private greed, et cetera, back into account and to rebuild this sense of limits or semblance of limits and sense of community.
Robert Borosage:
Can it do that? It’s very hard at this point because we’re so far down this road and it’s such an unequal society and we’re so plagued by racism that allows us to see others as others, it gets very hard. There’s nothing that’s going to save this in the marketplace and there’s nothing that’s going to save it from very rich people investing their money. The only thing that’s going to save it is the majority of Americans through the democracy calling the marketplace back to account. That’s going to require governance that works not for the few but for the many and that’s, as you say, a total sea change from where we are.
Rob Johnson:
You’ve covered a lot of ground, Bob. I’m just curious. Are there other dimensions? Are the schools … Michael Sandel from Harvard recently put out a new book called The Tyranny of Merit and the idea … I always refer to the great thinker and author Jane Jacobs, who’s last book in 2004 was called Dark Age Ahead, and in that book she wrote a chapter called Credentializing Versus Education.
Rob Johnson:
Are we getting to a place where education, where if you will, Lewis Powell and the Powell Memo have accomplished what they wanted and where education is not, itself, a source of invigoration and evolution? It’s a source of conformity and credentializing, in a way that constricts the imagination and the will of the people to evolve in light of new challenges or evidence that our existing systems aren’t producing what we need.
Robert Borosage:
Well, clearly, we’re a long way down that road. You have the change party, the Democratic Party, with a coalition now that brings together the well heeled and the well educated, who think of themselves of the winners in the meritocracy with the working and poor people who are disproportionately people of color, and who they offer, that well heeled class offers identity politics to them. “We’ll give you the equal rights and an opportunity to be a lawyer or a doctor or an Indian chief” and as long as you adhere to a very constricted set of views.
Robert Borosage:
I think we’re not completely there. Again, the universities are still dominated by progressive voices in the social sciences but we’re a long way down that road. A corrective to it, to the meritocracy being simply a way to reinforce the oligarchy, to reinforce the elite, has got to be … It will come only I think when the elite is sobered enough about the ruins around us and the upheaval that they start to get worried that they better make this thing work better for more people, otherwise, it’s not going to last.
Rob Johnson:
As you look on the horizon, private sector, political leaders in the United States, intellectuals, who do you see as the visionaries, the stewards, the beacons that you would encourage young people to go to the library or Amazon dot com or YouTube and pay attention to?
Robert Borosage:
Well, that’s an interesting and difficult question. I do think there’s a new generation of economists that are breaking down the assumptions and [inaudible 00:52:59] of the elite consensus, the Washington consensus that offer scope for different kinds of thinking.
Robert Borosage:
I think there are young voices, I guess, I would count much more on not older and wiser people but on young voices and on young energy who, in their enthusiasm and youth and idealism and impatience, can create the energy that just adds to the impetus that the thing has to change. If the new generation, which is right now the largest generation and the most diverse and the most liberal in its attitudes, it doesn’t continue to drive real change and move not only to carry the banner of Me Too and Black Lives Matter but as Black Lives Matter has done, to carry an economic agenda that works for workers of all kinds.
Robert Borosage:
We’re going to count on them to make this happen and their leadership that now exists or is emerging because I think the older generation has maybe some advice to offer but it doesn’t have the sterling clarity that youth has at a time when fundamental change is needed.
Rob Johnson:
Yup. Well, I think, how would I say, it’s a difficult time to find those beacons of hope but I think in this anxious period, defining a vision forward and a direction forward is an essential part of the healing.
Robert Borosage:
Who are the two or three moral leaders that you would name by name as people who offer a sense of vision and hope and moral [inaudible 00:55:19] reason?
Rob Johnson:
Well, it’s across a spectrum. In close to the economics profession, I would probably say [Amarcha Sin 00:55:31] has explored many of these issues with great detail and sensitivity. I think that there’s a woman, Kathryn Tanner, she used to be at Yale, she’s a theologian, she’s now based at I believe the University of Chicago. I think that Martha Nussbaum has stirred the drink in a lot of the contours of social science and its relationship to the humanities in a way that’s illuminating.
Rob Johnson:
My friend at Wayne State University, Jerry Herron, who has been in the laboratory of the decline of what I call the divorce of Detroit by America and seen all the pain and ramifications of that. I think Michael Sandel, go back to his book Voltaire’s Bastards, and about the nature of how reason is misused.
Rob Johnson:
There are a number of people who I think do a wonderful job with poetry or literature and rather than naming any particular artist, I would refer people to a woman named Maria Popova, who runs an online website called Brain Pickings, which seems to me to be extremely deep and broad in its awareness of people like William James or Jack Kerouac or Muriel Rukeyser, who wrote a wonderful book The Life Of Poetry, but Maria tends to bring these things together on her website and each day as the events unfold, as the feelings unfold, she seems to understand how to not just exhaust you with the catalog but point you right at what is germane right now.
Rob Johnson:
It familiarizes you with the classics. I’ve been, I would say, almost addicted, to her website for several years now and so I think that, how would I say, she plays a very, very interesting role.
Robert Borosage:
Say the name of the site again.
Rob Johnson:
Maria Popova, P-O-P-O-V-A. It’s called Brain Pickings. I think it’s Brain Pickings dot org. You can sign up for free and get a weekly … There can be a midweek dose and then a weekly dose but you can follow her on Twitter. It’s just a marvelous encyclopedia of insight.
Rob Johnson:
There are many people. I mean, my friend Alex Gibney, the documentary filmmaker seems to keep his eye on the ball in a way that I’ve always admired. We worked together on the film Taxi to the Dark Side. He has a recent film called It’s All Under Control, which is a sarcastic title because it was about the Trump administration’s control of the pandemic in contrast with the South Koreans.
Rob Johnson:
I guess there’s a mosaic … I mentioned to you in our previous conversation, John W. Gardner, who has been a mentor to a couple of my friends and advisors, in particular, John O’Neill, who wrote the wonderful books Seasons of Grace and Paradox of Success. John W. Gardner’s book that I’m reading currently is called The Recovery of Confidence. He had been the Secretary of Health Education and Welfare. He wrote a series of papers in the ’70s and ’80s, one group of 12 papers is called The Leadership Papers and I believe it’s chapter five is called The Moral Aspect of Leadership. I would say moral sensibility and wisdom related to the common good pervades his thinking and his writing.
Rob Johnson:
I don’t know. I still [crosstalk 01:00:29].
Robert Borosage:
One name I would put into this is Reverend William Barber, who was leading the [crosstalk 01:00:34].
Rob Johnson:
I was just going to … I think William Barber … What did he call it? The second or the third Reconstruction.
Robert Borosage:
Exactly.
Rob Johnson:
His book, which related to the Reconstruction, then the civil rights movement in the ’50s and the ’60s, and then the challenges before us, his poor people’s campaign. He was the keynote speaker at the INET Conference in 2016.
Rob Johnson:
You can go on the website and I will say this, it was three days after Trump was elected in Detroit, Michigan, at the Charles Wright museum and when he walked off the stage, I turned to the person sitting next to me and I said, “It’s been an hour and 26 minutes and I wouldn’t change one comma.”
Rob Johnson:
Reverend Barber is extraordinary and his sensitivity to the arts … When I was involved as a producer of a film on Aretha Franklin called Amazing Grace, we brought him to the premiere at New York Docs to give the comments afterwards for 20 minutes and he just … I still have people walk up to me and say, “I saw those comments” or, “I saw the YouTube of those comments. I can’t believe that man’s insight.”
Rob Johnson:
I don’t know. I think there are, how do I say, bits and pieces. Another person, an old friend of mine, Shep Gordon, who is the music manager of Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Kenny Loggins, they made a movie about him, Mike Myers made a movie called Super Mensch, which I think everybody should watch because you see how he struggled and how he, basically, did good throughout … He’s still alive. He’s recently a father. I should probably bring him on the podcast. The way in which he saw the purpose of life and led by example was extraordinary.
Rob Johnson:
Then I guess my final offering, because I am very interested in the arts, is I think that if you immerse yourself in listening to John Coltrane, it can’t set you back. It can propel you forward. His genius is not just technical. It’s spiritual. I know A Love Supreme stands out as a particular work but even listening to interviews before he and Frank Kofsky, he was such a soulful and constructive individual. I would have to put him in the pantheon of moral enlightenment or illumination.
Robert Borosage:
Well, John Coltrane may be a good way to end this conversation.
Rob Johnson:
Okay. Unless you have any others you want to nominate for the pantheon, I’m ready to do so. William Barber was a tremendous offering.
Rob Johnson:
Thank you, Bob. It was nice to talk with you. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and keep working hard through this inauguration and the early part of this administration. Maybe we’ll come back together and take the temperature of things again in mid-summer or so. Thanks for being here today.
Robert Borosage:
My pleasure. Take care now.
Rob Johnson:
Thank you. Bye bye.
Rob Johnson:
Check out more from the Institute For New Economic Thinking at INET Economics dot org.
