#232 — Inequality and Revolution
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
155.28088
Summary
Jack Goldstone is a sociologist and professor of public policy at George Mason University, and is one of the world s leading experts on revolutions and the social and political variables that produce them. He focuses a lot on economic growth in a global economy, and on the effects of population change on growth, and how all of this feeds into the causes and outcomes of revolutions. In this episode, we talk about how the combination of these factors contribute to political instability and hyper-partisanship in the United States and around the world, and what we can do about it. We also talk about what it means to be a revolutionary, and why it s so important to understand the underlying causes of political and economic instability. And, as always, I never want money to be the reason why someone can t listen to the podcast. If you can t afford a subscription, there s an option at Samharris.org to request a free account, and we grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. You ll get access to full episodes of the podcast for as little as $1.99 a month. You ll need to subscribe to The Making Sense Podcast to access the full episodes, and you ll get 100% access to the full episode archive, as well as access to all the podcast episodes that are mentioned in the podcast on the Making Sense blog post on the blog post. and all the other podcast episodes on the website of Making Sense. Thanks for listening to the Podcast! Sam Harris - make sure to check it out and tweet me if you re listening to this podcast and/or to let me know what you think about the podcast? and what you would like to do with it! - Sam is looking out for the podcast! Timestamps: 1) What do you think of it? 2) What would you d like to hear from me? 3) Do you have a question or would you want me to add to the next episode? 5) What you d have me know about the next one? 4) would you like to add it in a tweet me in the comments section? & so on and what s your thoughts on it's a tweet or a tweet or something like that I d like me to be included in the making sense of this post? I ll be listening to that? And so much so I d love to hear your thoughts or a shout out?
Transcript
00:00:10.380
Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber
00:00:14.280
feed and will only be hearing partial episodes of the podcast.
00:00:18.340
If you'd like access to full episodes, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org.
00:00:22.980
There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher, along with
00:00:30.000
And as always, I never want money to be the reason why someone can't listen to the podcast.
00:00:34.980
So if you can't afford a subscription, there's an option at samharris.org to request a free
00:00:39.480
account, and we grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked.
00:00:47.080
Okay, well today I'm speaking with Jack Goldstone.
00:00:52.220
Jack is a sociologist and a professor of public policy at George Mason University, and he's
00:00:59.340
one of the world experts on revolutions and the social and political and economic variables
00:01:09.140
He focuses a lot on economic growth in a global economy and on the effects of population change
00:01:15.720
on economic growth and how all this feeds into the causes and outcomes of revolutions.
00:01:21.320
And I must say, I was very impressed with how clearly he frames these issues.
00:01:28.460
And we talk about many of the relevant variables here.
00:01:31.680
Inequality of various kinds, wealth inequality included, failures of social mobility, changes
00:01:39.160
we might make to the tax code, new norms around social responsibility that we clearly need.
00:01:44.940
I probably don't have to remind you that a few short weeks ago, we witnessed the Capitol
00:01:52.480
stormed by a mob whose diverse interests and commitments certainly included an intent to overthrow
00:02:05.900
So, talking about the prospect of revolution at this point in American history doesn't seem
00:02:18.940
And I'm convinced that we really need to keep all of the trends that are leading to this
00:02:24.580
level of political instability and hyper-partisanship in view.
00:02:29.160
And this conversation is an excellent place to start.
00:02:32.120
So now, without further delay, I bring you Jack Goldstone.
00:02:47.840
So, before we dive into the matter at hand, how do you summarize your background?
00:02:53.480
What are your, what's been your professional and academic focus?
00:02:56.900
Well, academics would call me a sociologist, but my study is long-term social change.
00:03:04.560
I've looked at revolutions and social protests and changes of regime and government from about
00:03:14.140
And this gives you an expertise that seems excruciatingly relevant at the current moment in American life.
00:03:24.220
Really, globally, it seems relevant, but I think I want to focus on our own country here.
00:03:31.340
Well, we can go wherever in the world you'd like.
00:03:38.240
Maybe we should start at least acknowledging the global nature of the phenomenon we're going to talk about,
00:03:45.920
and then we can talk about the American scene specifically.
00:03:49.580
But we've seen that there's been a rise of populism and anti-globalism, nativism.
00:04:03.720
What do we know about the sources of this kind of political instability and loss of social cohesion generally?
00:04:13.300
What are the kinds of variables you think about when you try to understand these trends?
00:04:19.780
Well, let me give you a general and then circle around to what's happening in the globe today.
00:04:24.840
In general, across the centuries, there's a pretty persistent pattern,
00:04:29.820
and it goes back to some of the wisdom that Roman leaders shared among themselves.
00:04:34.680
And that is, when you work for honor, and the richest and most powerful members of society
00:04:41.800
try to enrich and make their society as a whole stronger, the society flourishes.
00:04:48.960
On the other hand, when the rich and powerful simply try to protect and extend their own wealth
00:04:53.460
at the expense of others, the society sooner or later collapses.
00:05:03.180
But the answer is, when a country gets rich and elites are in competition with each other,
00:05:10.420
they often fall back on just kind of keeping score with how they do compared to their peers.
00:05:16.380
And they think, well, the rest of society will just go on.
00:05:21.820
And so, then you get people trying to accumulate more and more wealth to protect it from taxation
00:05:27.740
and to prevent public services from being fully funded.
00:05:32.600
And all of that leads to the rest of society growing more and more angry
00:05:37.220
because they have a sense that they're falling behind, they're being left out.
00:05:41.740
The government no longer is watching out for them.
00:05:49.060
And they look for ways to let that anger out, usually joining some radical or extremist movements.
00:05:54.620
So, that was a wonderful summary of a very depressing landscape.
00:06:00.760
To bring it to the U.S. context here, how much do you view Trump and the four years we've just experienced
00:06:08.860
as a mere symptom of these underlying problems and the problems themselves were evident in 2015 and before?
00:06:19.760
And how much do you view him as an exacerbator or cause of these problems?
00:06:31.220
And in fact, the underlying cause, and this is why it's a global phenomenon,
00:06:36.200
has more to do with the changes in technology and society that we've seen in the last 30 years.
00:06:45.020
One is that the big post-World War II generations, what we call the baby boom in this country,
00:06:54.460
they came of age in a time when manual labor was the key to the economy.
00:07:03.340
They got wealthy or at least made stable, good incomes doing that.
00:07:09.260
And there was respect for people who made things and built things and did things with their hands.
00:07:14.080
But as the baby boom got older, they found the rug pulled out from under them.
00:07:20.120
The economy started to shift in the direction of finance, high finance, loans, credit,
00:07:27.100
management of securities, grew bigger and bigger from like 5% of the economy to 15% of the economy.
00:07:35.020
And the other thing that grew, of course, is the digital economy, which we're all familiar with and which we all enjoy.
00:07:40.900
But the digital economy doesn't employ that many people.
00:07:44.240
And it certainly doesn't give its rewards and respect to people doing manual labor.
00:07:49.800
And so for the baby boomers, the life that they expected, the respect, the dignity that they had in work, they find is disappearing.
00:08:01.360
The prospects for their children, if they can't get into university, which is increasingly expensive and difficult, have diminished.
00:08:12.300
At the same time, we've seen a reduction in the life quality and life prospects for those, especially in kind of the smaller towns, rural areas that were the farming, manufacturing heartland.
00:08:25.320
Now, the big metro areas have continued to thrive, but the big metro areas have their own issues.
00:08:33.200
They have to deal with the issues of racial justice, discrimination, managing diversity.
00:08:40.140
And that's another source of anger for those who feel that as immigrants, perhaps, or as people of color, society doesn't grant them dignity and respect either.
00:08:50.960
And so you have both on the left and the right these kind of widespread feelings that, wait a minute, all the rewards of society seem to be going to a very small group.
00:09:00.680
And they also seem to be taking over all the institutions, and they seem to be rigging everything in their favor.
00:09:09.780
We need someone to fight back against everything being rigged.
00:09:12.860
And that leads to the attraction of kind of the populist strong man who says, I alone can fix it.
00:09:20.360
And produces really an almost quasi-religious devotion to someone who presents themselves as a savior, as a national symbol of regeneration.
00:09:31.060
Now, Donald Trump came along and, with all the skills of a pro-wrestling television celebrity, donned the mantle of hero and was very successful in that.
00:09:43.320
But, of course, he had counterparts in other countries, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, Erdogan in Turkey, Boris Johnson and the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom.
00:09:56.480
You know, the details vary, but in each case, it's not been the leading edge economically of the society that's been driving change.
00:10:07.140
It's been those who feel frustrated that they are not benefiting as much as those leading edge elites that they see.
00:10:13.940
I think you wrote in a piece that you published with Peter Turchin that, and I'm quoting you,
00:10:22.340
inequality and polarization have not been this high since the 19th century.
00:10:26.840
I think we're probably going to want to focus on wealth inequality, but what are the important measures of inequality?
00:10:36.120
And is there anything other than wealth inequality that is a major driver of this problem?
00:10:43.940
Well, there certainly are many inequalities besides just inequality of wealth, and inequality of wealth is probably not the most troubling.
00:10:52.600
Oh, interesting. That's great, because my assumption coming into this conversation is that wealth inequality is really the elephant in every room now.
00:11:02.100
And so, yeah, please fill in the gaps in my knowledge here.
00:11:10.360
We had the Rockefellers and the Carnegies build up huge amounts of wealth.
00:11:14.700
But when they did so, other parts of society were benefiting as well.
00:11:19.880
That is, the railroads and the oil industries employed lots of workers and gave them opportunities.
00:11:26.180
What we've had in the last 30 years with the rise of finance and digital fortunes is the rich getting richer while everyone else stagnates or grows very slowly indeed.
00:11:41.300
And it's more the differences in opportunity, in social mobility, in access to what I would call middle-class amenities, a safe neighborhood, good schools for your children, medical care, the ability to have a varied diet.
00:12:00.300
Those things have, even though the price of a color TV has gone way down, the price of a new automobile has gone way down, the things that are essential to quality of family life remain competitive and therefore expensive.
00:12:15.960
And in many settings, increasingly beyond the reach, both of young people and people who don't have college degree professional positions.
00:12:24.540
Now, wealth inequality harms society if those who are wealthy use that to get control of government policy and steer that wealth in ways that benefits themselves.
00:12:38.260
If they are generous with the wealth and use it to endow museums, universities, to invest in new businesses, to rehabilitate districts, then that's fine.
00:12:50.040
So a lot of it has to do with how wealth is deployed and how income and opportunities are distributed.
00:12:58.380
And it's the fact that the use of private wealth and the distribution of opportunities really seems to have diminished for large portions of the population, maybe 30% to 50% in many of the advanced Western countries.
00:13:12.420
And so you have a lot of that anger, you know, the yellow vests in France, people in Chile who rioted against their government, people in Brazil who rioted at the cost of bus fare going up.
00:13:24.600
These are people who feel like they're just getting by and every imposition upon them is increasingly pushing them over the edge.
00:13:31.980
So fundamental psychological fact here, which is certainly an unhappy one, is that per people's personal judgments of well-being are generally comparative.
00:13:44.660
So that even if by any absolute measure everyone was getting better off, if the difference between the most fortunate and the least fortunate is continuing to widen, then that is seen as a source of real grievance and frustration,
00:14:04.480
even if virtually everyone has a smartphone in their pocket that not even the President of the United States could have managed to get 30 years ago.
00:14:15.660
On some level, we seem to be doomed to dissatisfaction, no matter how good things get for everyone,
00:14:24.560
if things are getting better and better and better faster for a subset of the population.
00:14:31.380
I mean, at least it seems like something like that structure is part of our legacy code.
00:14:41.920
People always feel down and out if they see others doing better than themselves.
00:14:45.860
But people compare themselves mainly to other people they encounter in their own life.
00:14:52.260
So if you're living in a subdivision or an urban neighborhood,
00:14:56.580
you don't really care whether the guy living on the 70th floor of the penthouse has a gold bathtub or a porcelain bathtub.
00:15:07.240
You don't care whether he's keeping an 80-foot yacht in the harbor or a 50-foot yacht.
00:15:14.140
What you care about is whether you're going to be able to move into a better house when you get married with room for your kids,
00:15:20.440
whether the people down the block or on just the other side of town who you see are somehow able to afford things that you can't afford anymore,
00:15:31.260
that you thought you or your parents could afford.
00:15:35.260
There's always a degree of comparing ourselves to others.
00:15:38.940
But it doesn't have to be the kind of, well, there will always be people richer than me, so I'm always going to be unhappy.
00:15:46.620
As long as people feel that they're getting better, that they're getting ahead in their own lives,
00:15:52.460
and that the progress that they're making is reasonable compared to most of the people they see immediately around them,
00:16:00.180
Most people are not quite as prone to torment themselves with the envy of the rich as you might think.
00:16:06.440
Otherwise, there wouldn't be as much of a happy market for watching all those tales of the rich and famous.
00:16:11.540
Those are like fairy tales that people hope will come true, but they don't actually hurt people's feelings.
00:16:17.740
What hurts is if in their day-to-day lives they feel stuck,
00:16:21.400
if they feel that they can't live the way that their parents did or that they expected to do 10, 20 years ago,
00:16:28.560
and they've been working hard to get ahead, and it just hasn't happened.
00:16:32.760
So the circle of comparison is tighter than I suggested there,
00:16:38.320
but it seems like this structure travels with us at every level of success in society.
00:16:47.080
So you have billionaires who currently feel like they haven't made it financially
00:16:53.900
because they can compare themselves to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk,
00:16:57.840
and you have people who have tens of millions of dollars who feel poor by reference to billionaires.
00:17:06.560
And there's something insidious about this because, as you say,
00:17:10.560
if they were deploying their wealth in extremely pro-social and generous ways,
00:17:17.000
it wouldn't represent a kind of toxic capture of resources.
00:17:21.000
But I think if people feel they haven't made it, even when they have a billion dollars on some level,
00:17:28.040
and they're keeping score with reference to the people who have 10 or 100-fold more resources than they do,
00:17:45.560
Or at least it prevents the formation of norms that we should have,
00:17:50.600
which is people should see that one of the main reasons to be wealthy
00:17:55.280
is to be able to help other people and produce the kind of society that we all want to live in, right?
00:18:02.660
And not to allow that kind of abundance to become just a magnifying glass
00:18:10.020
for the light of self-concern to be even more concentrated.
00:18:17.360
I think, you know, if we think about the elites having become more cosmopolitan
00:18:23.320
and traveling to the same conferences and the same ritzy resorts
00:18:28.500
and really being cut off in some ways from their society in which they grew up,
00:18:36.820
Not that long ago, the rich might have lived in the fanciest part of town,
00:18:41.400
but they attended public festivals and they attended church in the same town
00:18:48.060
and in some of the same buildings and institutions
00:18:50.300
as the other people who lived in that community.
00:18:53.700
And the way the rich wanted to be remembered was as benefactors, as generous,
00:18:59.900
whatever they were in their private lives, in their public lives,
00:19:02.920
they wanted to be seen as people who were pillars of the community.
00:19:07.140
And that phrase, you know, the pillar of the community seems to have gone out of fashion.
00:19:13.100
We used to talk about it being, you know, harder for a rich man to enter heaven, right,
00:19:18.160
than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
00:19:20.740
The religious idea was virtue and honor were to be found in helping your fellow men.
00:19:27.380
And today, I think Joe Biden actually believes in the ideal of public service.
00:19:31.600
He is more interested in making 350 million Americans better off than making himself better off.
00:19:39.300
That has diminishing returns for him, but he will go to his grave delightfully happy
00:19:50.840
I'm glad it's back in the presidency in the United States, and I hope it can spread.
00:19:55.620
But that's what successful societies, frankly, rely on.
00:19:58.860
If the richest and most powerful turn their backs on public welfare,
00:20:04.420
then democracy doesn't make sense for people anymore,
00:20:07.580
because why should they vote for a government that ignores them
00:20:11.280
and that concentrates its benefits on the rich?
00:20:14.280
So if we want to restore and rejuvenate democracy,
00:20:17.280
we need governments that function to provide broad general benefits again,
00:20:21.700
not that simply exist to help those who have the best positions
00:20:40.380
To think of oneself more and more as a citizen of the world,
00:20:49.360
and whose circle of moral concern has extended beyond the borders of one's country
00:21:12.200
you know, in some beleaguered place in sub-Saharan Africa
00:21:20.620
It's, in fact, it's just a recognition of, you know,
00:21:23.220
one should be more moved than one tends to be by the greatest need,
00:21:28.620
and kind of accidents of geographic distance are just that.
00:21:36.980
And, you know, if you tell me my neighbor's daughter fell down a well,
00:21:41.060
well, then it's going to occupy all of my attention,
00:21:43.820
and you tell me that there's a genocide raging in Sudan or some other place,
00:21:50.900
just like my neighbor's daughter, have been killed,
00:21:56.140
that I'm going to switch the channel when it appears on the evening news, right?
00:21:59.580
So that seems like a bug in our code rather than a feature.
00:22:07.960
or at least flagged as a source of political liability as cosmopolitanism,
00:22:13.600
is just an acknowledgement that so many of our problems are global now,
00:22:22.660
and so many of our opportunities are global, right?
00:22:25.660
It's just that, you know, we are, we're struggling to build a global civilization
00:22:31.360
and so our thinking on many points should be global,
00:22:34.020
and it's actually all to the good that we wind up going to conferences
00:22:38.360
where people from all over the world bring their best ideas and network.
00:22:43.780
And yet, one externality of that trend, it sounds like,
00:22:48.640
is the complete erosion or near-complete erosion of the very principles
00:22:54.920
that would make a single country like our own work as a democracy.
00:23:04.200
Let me try and talk about cosmopolitanism in a way that avoids,
00:23:09.480
I hope, some of these concerns about where do you do the most good.
00:23:13.240
If you have a family, and you're living in a house,
00:23:17.040
and as you say, your neighbor's daughter fell down a well,
00:23:20.540
well, of course, you're going to go help your neighbor and rescue the daughter.
00:23:27.480
On the other hand, let's say you hear that someone all across town,
00:23:36.020
and you certainly would like to help if you didn't have any other priorities at home.
00:23:40.780
But if your own daughter is upstairs sick with a fever
00:23:46.300
maybe she's just gotten out of surgery or she has a very high fever,
00:23:50.000
you're not going to leave your own daughter who is sick
00:24:00.400
Now, when you asked me about different types of inequality,
00:24:05.380
Let me talk about one that's really down to earth,
00:24:14.720
was one of the only rich countries in the world
00:24:18.520
where life expectancy started going down between 2015 and 2018.
00:24:27.760
It indicates that our society was suffering from illness.
00:24:45.760
I contribute money to medical charities overseas
00:24:53.340
it is important to recognize we're all part of a global community.
00:24:56.440
But we cannot neglect people who are really suffering,
00:25:01.500
who are losing years of life here that they shouldn't be losing.
00:25:06.040
And as I say, that was going on even before Trump was elected.
00:25:09.940
It's part of the reason I think he was elected.
00:25:12.600
You can look at the vote for Trump against counties
00:25:15.460
that had declines in life expectancy in the prior few years,
00:25:21.800
It's one of the best predictors of Trump kind of voting as a protest
00:25:26.620
because you're unhappy with conditions in your community and your life.
00:25:34.220
it's only if people say that they think their country,
00:25:40.020
the United States, is fine and we can look beyond that.
00:25:47.760
but not if it blinds you to what's going on right in your own home.
00:25:54.040
It really wasn't until Anne Case and Angus Deaton published their research
00:25:58.480
calling attention to the fact that life expectancy had started to go down
00:26:02.800
that it became an issue for policymakers and for the media.
00:26:07.200
It went on for years quietly in communities across America
00:26:12.760
But we could have seen the precursors of it, I believe,
00:26:15.860
by looking at changes in the distribution of income,
00:26:19.000
in the distribution of opportunity and mobility,
00:26:21.220
in what was happening to the economic base of many rural and small-town communities.
00:26:29.960
but that also means get to know parts of your own country
00:26:40.440
I spend a lot of time when I was a kid taking buses across the country,
00:26:45.580
I still like to drive when I can from the east coast to the west
00:26:54.240
Because those are the people, at the end of the day,
00:26:56.840
whose choices, as long as we live in a democracy,
00:26:59.700
those are the people whose voices and whose choices will make a difference
00:27:04.520
And we have to come together and find things that will make everyone better off
00:27:11.200
Otherwise, we get into these historical cycles of selfish elites,
00:27:17.100
and the rise of populist leaders, demagogues, and mass protest.
00:27:26.300
So I guess where I want to land here in this conversation
00:27:31.120
is with some sense of what we think we should do going forward.
00:27:37.000
I mean, it seems like we have massive problems to solve,
00:27:41.240
many of which are only exacerbating the problem we're talking about.
00:27:46.020
We have to deal with the COVID pandemic, obviously,
00:27:49.620
but the COVID pandemic has ramified and worsened various forms of inequality.
00:27:59.340
And we've begun this conversation framing it in terms of
00:28:03.820
what the most fortunate people decide to do, essentially.
00:28:09.640
You know, we've put it in terms of philanthropy and charity.
00:28:12.420
But really, the other piece here is our tax code
00:28:16.240
and the willingness or disinclination of rich people to pay
00:28:22.060
what we might think is their fair share or more in taxes
00:28:27.080
and the degree to which they're going to fight any attempt to raise taxes.
00:28:35.960
and any specific strategies we might use to redistribute wealth?
00:28:43.760
Here's what I think the psychological status quo is here
00:28:47.520
among fortunate, wealthy people at every level.
00:28:51.760
There's a sense that, you know, rather often the government is terrible
00:29:00.660
There's a basic cynicism that the government can ever do anything especially well.
00:29:05.540
And therefore, you tend to encounter rich people who think that there's some,
00:29:10.900
that this offers some argument for not paying more in taxes
00:29:15.460
because the money will be wasted or, you know, spent on some boondoggle.
00:29:19.940
Whereas in my view, it's really just, that's an argument for better governance.
00:29:23.840
By all means, point out all the ways in which government fails and is wasteful,
00:29:28.100
but that's not an argument at where you want to set the tax code.
00:29:34.900
But there is a, there's a sense that, you know, taxes are already too high.
00:29:39.940
You run into this with disconcerting frequency among rich people.
00:29:43.440
And therefore, it's only rational to want to decide to give the money
00:29:48.300
to the most effective causes oneself rather than have the government waste it.
00:29:51.860
So this is, this explains a bias for philanthropy over taxation.
00:29:56.520
But as we know, people aren't, you know, all that generous when they don't have to be,
00:30:02.960
And so the amount that people actually give away,
00:30:07.480
is a, you know, a rounding error on a rounding error of their wealth rather often.
00:30:12.920
And it's certainly not what they would be obliged to give away if we raised taxes on them.
00:30:22.840
And, you know, feel free to get into any specific ideas about how to change our tax code.
00:30:32.340
Most people would like to tear up the existing tax code and start over.
00:30:36.480
But let me say, from the point of view of my model,
00:30:38.960
there are actually three things that need to be kept in mind
00:30:42.420
as we try and pull our society back from the edge of extreme conflict and decay.
00:30:48.960
One is restoring people's trust that government can function and can solve problems.
00:30:54.840
The days when we looked to government to provide the interstate highway system,
00:30:59.640
to build beautiful airports, to build subways to take us to work,
00:31:03.960
to provide law and order, to provide for the national defense,
00:31:07.580
to send rockets to the moon, to develop new cures for disease.
00:31:12.720
All of these things we trusted government to do reasonably well,
00:31:16.140
and we thought they were prudent investments for the future.
00:31:18.840
But as you say, too many people now think that any dollar spent by government is wasted,
00:31:24.240
and therefore even a dollar spent on an ultra-premium whiskey for one person's consumption
00:31:30.820
is still better than letting that money be wasted by the government.
00:31:38.140
We have to say, look, there are legitimate things that government can do.
00:31:44.040
When there's a disaster, when even a rich person's land gets flooded,
00:31:48.660
or a tornado comes, they come to the government and say,
00:31:57.460
So government has to be seen as having a valid role in a complex, wealthy society.
00:32:03.900
COVID-19, obviously, a huge one that's hitting us in the face.
00:32:09.520
As the Midwest is flooding and the California is burning and the Gulf Coast is being battered
00:32:15.280
by repeated powerful hurricanes, we can't allow those things to double or triple
00:32:24.240
People have to recover a trust that government is worth funding.
00:32:30.400
The second thing is that elites have to work together to find some common ground in what
00:32:36.520
needs to be done to strengthen and improve society, as opposed to just being in competing
00:32:42.800
camps saying, this is what our group needs to do, and we don't want you to be involved,
00:32:50.100
If you have Republicans and Democrats or Tories and Socialists, whatever your divisions are,
00:32:56.840
if instead of saying, yes, of course we have differences, we're human beings, but because
00:33:02.540
we're human, we have some common needs and interests, and we have to work hard to find
00:33:06.300
them, if you put that task aside and just say, I want my group to win, we go back on the
00:33:12.100
path toward, I'm not going to raise anyone's taxes because you might spend them on things
00:33:20.240
And the other group will say, well, we're not going to raise taxes because you might spend
00:33:24.640
Instead of saying, let's have an agenda for things that we agree we need, and then find
00:33:30.120
a level of taxation that allows us to accomplish what is necessary.
00:33:34.760
So you need to have government that's trusted, you need to have elites that work together,
00:33:39.680
and then the third thing is you need people to feel the system is fair, that the taxes
00:33:43.780
that they pay are not unfair compared to the taxes that others, especially the rich pay.
00:33:49.540
One of the big problems we have with the tax system now is not the rate of taxation, but
00:33:55.800
the fact that so many assets and so much income escapes taxation altogether.
00:34:01.380
It's in offshore LLCs, it's in real estate trusts, it's in exempt inheritance trusts.
00:34:08.920
All of these things make the system unfair and give people a general hatred of taxation as just
00:34:18.120
So we need to go back to fair enforcement, clear and understandable laws, and a system
00:34:31.420
Because there's a kind of perverse, self-fulfilling aspect to this.
00:34:36.680
What can we do to increase trust in government?
00:34:41.000
You know, there really is a pervasive sense that virtually anything that can be handled
00:34:46.360
by the private sector is better accomplished in the private sector.
00:34:50.860
There are endless numbers of invidious comparisons between private businesses that have to function
00:34:56.060
by the constraints of a market and the government, you know, simulacrums of those businesses,
00:35:02.020
So you compare, you know, FedEx to the post office, say, or, you know, any business you've
00:35:09.720
So it's just, there's a sense that throwing more money at it from the government side just
00:35:15.920
gets you a business that, you know, no one would ever direct their money at if they had
00:35:23.320
How do you see us rebooting from where we currently are to a time where it would just
00:35:30.580
be expected that if the government sets itself to a specific task, whether it's a space program
00:35:35.840
or a public health emergency, it's going to do a wonderful job at that task because many
00:35:44.260
of the best people are involved and it's all well-funded and it's got its priorities straight
00:35:48.580
and it's not captured by endless layers of bureaucrats who don't understand how the world
00:36:01.660
I applaud President Joe Biden for making COVID-19 treatment and mitigation his first priority.
00:36:12.500
This is clearly a job that private industry can develop vaccines.
00:36:19.080
So getting vaccines into people's arms, making them safe is a perfect example of the type of
00:36:26.500
thing public health has been doing under government since the 19th century.
00:36:31.380
And if we have a big success, I think it'll be applauded and we'll go a long way to making
00:36:35.900
people say, you know, I'm glad the government was on the job.
00:36:40.600
Now, if the government as under Donald Trump says, well, you know, government can't do things
00:36:48.080
We'll just encourage private firms to make the vaccine and then we'll let people figure
00:36:57.860
That's why even though the vaccines became available last fall, fewer than 5% of Americans
00:37:05.720
So we need government programs that are visible and that work.
00:37:14.480
They fought bitterly against efforts to privatize it.
00:37:17.940
Sometimes people don't realize it's a government program.
00:37:20.380
They tell government, you know, keep your hands off my Social Security.
00:37:24.940
But it came to you and still does come to you through your government.
00:37:30.860
Your local government provides police protection, provides fire protection.
00:37:38.080
America has always been attached to private schools.
00:37:44.240
And the rich who feel, hey, you know, I can send my kids to private school, you know, there
00:37:51.360
That is, if you're wealthy enough, you can have beautiful private property.
00:37:59.480
You don't need to pay for public schools for everybody else.
00:38:07.780
And that kind of let them eat cake goes to what happened in Iran in the 1970s, where you
00:38:13.260
had such terrible traffic congestion that people couldn't get to work.
00:38:17.340
And instead of building more roads, the Shah's son was quoted as saying, look, if people are
00:38:22.360
unhappy with traffic congestion, you know, let them make some money and buy helicopters.
00:38:30.200
Now, we're not as extreme there, but that's the end point of where elite selfishness and
00:38:39.400
If leaders have empathy for people, if they really do work to make government benefit, not
00:38:46.100
just this interest group or that particular minority, but really help all Americans where
00:38:52.220
all Americans need it, like with public health care, like public education.
00:38:56.900
Then we get back to people seeing government as a good thing, an important part of society.
00:39:03.200
I mean, this is something I'm really quite worried about now.
00:39:06.080
I've been worried about this general topic at least since 2009.
00:39:13.940
But under COVID, it's just, I guess, the specific case that I find alarming, you know, and I'm
00:39:23.660
not alone here, is what we've seen in California with the flight of many people in tech to other
00:39:31.700
states that just by coincidence don't have income tax, right?
00:39:35.780
So many people are going to Texas and Florida, and it's an unimpeachably rational decision
00:39:42.580
if your concern is to make an immediate change in your own quality of life and to have it
00:39:53.920
You know, if you're going to be essentially paid millions of dollars a year to live in
00:39:59.920
another city that you like just as well as you liked San Francisco before it was inundated
00:40:04.400
with crime and homelessness, well, then why not do that?
00:40:12.900
And yet, it's part of the very trend you sketched out in the beginning of this conversation.
00:40:18.680
I mean, it's a mini version of cosmopolitanism, the fact that you were all so deracinated that,
00:40:25.640
So we're knowledge workers, we can work from anywhere, and COVID has really delivered that
00:40:33.980
So that what we're witnessing is just a flight of some of the most productive people in our
00:40:40.980
society and the corresponding tax base to other states that have a different tax code.
00:40:49.320
Not to get bogged down on this specific case, but I'm wondering what you think California
00:40:54.480
should do in this case, because what we're suffering from here is just the fact that
00:41:00.440
we have a tax system that can be gamed simply by crossing a border, and the barrier to doing
00:41:09.580
that is quite a bit lower than leaving the United States would be, and therefore many,
00:41:16.220
If you'd like to continue listening to this podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org.
00:41:29.780
You'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast, and to other subscriber-only
00:41:34.700
content, including bonus episodes and AMAs, and the conversations I've been having on the
00:41:40.440
The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can