America's Factory Reset with Adam Tooze and Sohrab Ahmari
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to the weekly show podcast with Jon Stewart. My name is Jon Stewart and it is March something. I don't know what day we're taping this. March 19th we're taping this. I don't know when it's going to air. Probably March 20th, which gives 24 hours for more shit to happen that will not be addressed in any way, shape or form on the podcast because things are moving. They're moving quickly. Ladies and gentlemen, this week we did a bit on the show.

concerning what we might consider for the Democrats, a sense of fecklessness, feckle, feckles, fecklessness, fecklessful. There are people feckful, there's a feckless, but there's really nobody who is feckful.

And maybe that's what the Democrats are looking for. Somebody feckful. You can find some feckfulness. And obviously, Senator Charles Schumer was the avatar through which we passed our frustrations, our angers, our sadness, our desperation. We passed it through him.

in attempt to raise his glasses from the lower part of his nose through telekinesis all the way up, all the way from here. I'm doing this right now. It's on a podcast, so you probably don't know. It's coming all the way. Here we go. We're urging, come on, come on, guys. Come on, you can do it.

and get them to focus. And I think we need to make clear what is being asked for here is not nihilism, it's not the kind of shut the government down, fuck all this, nobody cares, 'cause there's a great understanding.

But they themselves spoke of this was the moment of leverage, that they had been neutered to the point because they don't have the majority in the House, even though it's slim, and they don't have the majority in the Senate. They don't, you know, but the, because the senators didn't have 60, the Democrats could have filibustered to maybe extract anything. But I think the frustration is, A, you're not clear on the specifics of what they would extract if they could, right?

And B, they just fucking didn't. And look, if that was the strategy all along, let people know. Don't make a big theatrical production of choosing fighters and we're going to do this. And, you know, I think they keep counting on this very strange notion that somehow in the House of Representatives, Massey will rule the day. Like, this is all theater.

Even in the Senate, when you got, I think, I don't know how many Democrats voted for the continuing resolution, but every single one that did is not up for reelection in 2026 or retiring, which says to me that it was a, they put on a play. They're all putting on a play. Oh, sure. These 10 people reject the CR. Well, actually, we don't really know if they reject it. We just know that those are the ones that have

the political safety that they can step up and do that, that they can step up and accept the continuing resolution because it won't hurt them politically. So we don't even know what they actually think because they put on a play. And the Republicans do the same fucking thing, by the way, when they were...

going through the Senate confirmation hearings on Pete Hegseth, they put on a play. Oh, there's, there's three senators that have principled objections to this nomination. It just so happens that it was the exact number of senators that could object where JD Vance could come in and cast the deciding vote. So understand what you're watching. And I don't know if we're in act one or act two or where the fuck we are in this, but it's a play and they're putting it on and we need better than that. And, uh,

The play that's being put on now is an economic one. And I want to get, we have two guests today that I think are really, really good.

One is an economic historian. The other is, I'd say, more of a conservative center right who's got a real focus on economic populism. And we're going to talk a little bit about the play that is being put on about our economy and how it's going to be transitioned and what the reality is of how they're going to be transitioning it. So I'm just going to get to them now because they're fantastic. Fantastic.

We are going to get into it with our guests. I want to thank them for joining us. Adam Tooze, author of Chartbook, which is on Substack, and Saurabh Amari, U.S. editor of Unheard and author of Tyranny, Inc. And they are joining us today to tell us, if I may, gentlemen, and I hate to put you in this position, the future. You are my soothsayers. Adam, I'll start with you as the economist. You just put that on me. I just put that on you.

It seems evident that there is a remaking of the American economy, or at least the attempt to do so through the Trump economic policies, whether it's through tariffs and more protectionism, less government spending, these kinds of things. You know, we've had sort of two economic orders since the New Deal. We had the New Deal economic order, and then we sort of had that

neoliberalism that started with maybe Carter and Reagan and moved its way on up. Is that the end goal in your mind for what is happening here? Is this an engineering of a different kind of economy than we've kind of been accustomed to? I mean, you might think that, and that would in a sense be a continuity with the Biden team as well, because they were talking in rather similar terms. I mean, Jake Sullivan had that famous speech where he talked about, you know, new Washington consensus post-neoliberalism was all the rage. Yeah.

Right. But that was the CHIPS Act, which is basically like, oh, well- CHIPS and IRA and that. And that's the question is like, where's the beef? And if they go on talking like this, and it's quite difficult to actually put your finger on what they're doing and whether it could possibly be for real, you start wondering whether it isn't more like a facelift. It's more that Mar-a-Lago aesthetic where we all pretend to be 25. Ah.

No judgment. That's fine. You go do your thing, but we aren't actually 25. There's a way in which something like that is clearly true about the economy. There's never literally ever in history been a case of a society as successful as the US and as rich as the US

that has somehow reversed the structure of the relationship between the key bits, right? The service sector, the industrial sector, and once upon a time it would have been farming and agriculture, which I know you're into in New Jersey. Oh, very much so, sir. You can't reverse... Certainly nothing in history to date has suggested you can do that. And

The US industrial manufacturing sector right now isn't the platform from which you would expect a kind of reconquest or a transformation of all of American society. Well, do you think that, Adam, is generally this kind of reshaping done either because of a catastrophic event like the depression or the introduction of a new technology like industrialization or industrialization?

in the case of maybe that neoliberalism, the internet and a more global transportation and supply line hub? Is that generally sort of how this all starts? Yeah, technology is key here. And that's been the driver all along. And the basic story, and this is why this is also kind of ironic and weird, is that we've gotten really, really good at manufacturing an industry in the same way as we got really, really good at farming. Once upon a time, the vast majority of Americans were farmers, and that wasn't a lifestyle choice. That was because we just couldn't

feed ourselves because we were so bad at farming. We got very good at farming. And I don't know if you know, Adam, but labor costs for our farming were quite low. I can't remember why. Yeah. I mean, that's the norm, right? Because people are desperate all over the world and always been desperate. And so it's really anomalous to have rich farmers. That's a really peculiar situation to be in. Right. Well, we also had a system there where I think we made them do that. Yeah, we're

For sure. You get slave labor, you get various types of forced labor. But the story here of technological change is one that just cuts through this. The crisis story, the New Deal that you might be invoking, for instance, in the 30s, it doesn't change anything about the balance between the bits, right? So the share of industry in the US economy as a whole was 40% before the New Deal and after the New Deal and continued at that level until the late 60s.

When really rapid technological change and the global redivision of labor kicked in, where the Japanese learned to make cars, which Americans would buy. And there was that shift. So I think what history does and what policy does is set the terms under which capital and labor, amongst other players, transact within the frame, if you like, that technology provides.

And New Deal was very favorable to organized labor, which is why I think middle-class America looks back to it with nostalgia. That was the Treaty of Detroit. And neoliberalism broke that. And it's in a sense now as though they want the promise of the middle-class lifestyle of the 50s without the power relations, which would be powerful organized labor, that actually made that possible. Wow. Okay.

And all of this suggesting somehow and feeding off the idea that America's got to make things and if it doesn't make things, it's somehow just floating free and without substance. Thank you for that, Adam. Saurabh, I want to ask you, that's such an interesting – so the idea is sort of the different bits that we have and the relationship between capital and labor.

And what I think Adam is referring to is that idea that the neoliberalism kind of advantaged capital to a certain extent through these technologies. So is the idea here, without union power to sort of rebalance this equation, right, between capital and labor, is the idea that protectionism rebalances those bits?

How do they plan on rebouncing it? To my mind, I would agree with the basic premise, financialization and capital should not be advantaged in the way that they have. And I think it puts an imbalance. So is the question here just how they're trying to rebalance it? Yeah. So I agree with Adam in the sense that what we see is too often under the Trumpians, but also under the Biden administration. These two, as Adam pointed out, have actually been in a kind of continuity and

The Biden administration came in and kept the tariffs against certain Chinese goods, in fact, expanded them to electric vehicle components and so on. So there's this broad

attempt by the American ruling class to try to have a different political economy. And I agree that what they're doing, including under Trump too, is not enough. Where I disagree is the idea that the sectoral mix of an economy between, you know, agriculture, services, manufacturing, and so on is impossible to change or re-engineer because it's

In a way, the tradition that I look to, the Hamiltonian tradition, it wasn't inevitable that the US would become an industrial superpower, a manufacturing superpower. It was a result of policies advanced by the Hamiltonians. And when I say the Hamiltonians, I don't just mean Alexander Hamilton himself, although he laid down the vision, but a series of...

political leaders who advanced it. Well, break that down a little bit then. Is that, are you talking about sort of a central, a federalized system, central banks, a way of, you know, government intervention and creating markets? Yeah. The triple foundations where you can summarize them in kind of one word terms as

Tariff, canal, and bank. Talking about the early republic's economy. Tariff being, of course, an attempt to protect America's nascent manufacturing sector from the manufacturing superpower of that time, which was Great Britain. And the Brits, as Hamilton knew well, really were determined to turn and maintain America as a kind of backwater, a swampy backwater that was a resource pool for them, and that would be a captive market for their manufacturers. In

In fact, in 1721, the British Board of Trade declared, quote, that the colonies lacking their own manufacturers will always remain dependent on Great Britain. So knowing that, the Hamiltonians said, no, we're going to protect our nascent industries with tariffs by protecting also the sort of maintaining industrial workers' trade.

trained, competent industrial workers in the country. But not just that. And that's the part where I think the Trumpians are getting it wrong by just doing tariffs. He also did, you mentioned the bank, which is ensures the steady flow, disciplined flow of credit and the idea that the financial system should serve the real economy. That is, it's not we don't have finance for its own sake.

And that's why banking for much of the country wasn't nearly as important as it is today. Wall Street now plays this overweening role in the economy. The Hamiltonians stopped that. And then when we say canal, it means infrastructure, which today might mean different things than canals. Right. Apparently, no, today it still means canal as we're about to take over Panama. But Saurabh, I don't know if you know this, but you may have stumbled into, if I may, the sequel to Hamilton.

I think Hamilton to the economic foundation, maybe not a rock opera, but I think it would be, it'd be wise. But so this gets us back to, and maybe we're backing off for a bit, but laissez-faire economics is sort of the doctrine, the invisible hand. And I think we've never actually had it, have we? It's not a real thing. I don't know if the French have a word for a very visible hand.

But the hand is always visible. It's just a question of where we decide to place it. Would that be accurate, Adam? I think that's right. And I don't disagree with Zahrab in his analysis of the 18th and 19th century. My question is really about the relevance of that analysis to the 21st century and the world that we're currently in. And the question really is, sure, we know from many cases, not just the American one that

you can engineer on the upswing, if you like, an increase in the share of your manufacturing industrial sector. Most recently, the Chinese have done it to truly spectacular effect. The question is whether a mature and rich society like the American one can or even should want to do that.

Now, this doesn't mean that America can't cherry pick individual sectors and say, we'd really like to have more competence in chips. Fine, absolutely, you can do that. You can go after that. But that shouldn't be confused with a vision for society as a whole or the economy as a whole, let alone a kind of fix for the situation of the American middle class, which is how this is so often badged and sold in American politics today. There's a national security case for diversifying the source of memory chips and processes and so on.

But there isn't, to my mind, a realistic social vision, which is why I raised the Mar-a-Lago and facelift thing, because it's not real, right? How dare you, sir? How dare you say those faces aren't real? Well, you either go down that or you go down the Tonka Toy kind of hardhat vision of the economy, which Joe Biden was addicted to. I mean, he just loved the picture of himself in a manufacturing plant, however run down, however 1980s.

he wanted to be there. And they are both kind of visions, right, of an American, well, they're a past projected into the future. And I don't think they're helpful, right? Because I think they're misleading as to what would actually help the American working class, which is healthcare, childcare. You know, those are the things where you could actually affect tens of millions of people. Hell to the yes, sir. That is my language. So let's stop for a second. I think what we're agreeing is

A, governments always make different choices, whether it's through infrastructure, economic policy, monetary policy, where they can influence the direction and capabilities of the economy that which they're trying to build. Everybody makes choices of how they're going to stimulate the economy. The second thing is the Trump administration very clearly.

is re-engineering how that economy works through their tariff program, and I imagine through deregulation and other sorts of more libertarian aspects to it. I guess the question that maybe we need to ask is, is it necessary? I would say that, yes, we have a real issue of inequality within our economy. We have a real issue, as Adam talks about,

in terms of what the government actually delivers to people, is this the answer to the very real imbalances that we're seeing, Saurabh? - Yeah, so with all this talk of plastic surgery, I'm reminded of Michelle Welbeck, the French novelist who said, you know, the prevalence of plastic surgery is a sign of sexual generosity.

I don't know how that applies to manufacturing. Is that one of the books behind you, Saurabh? Is that what's sitting on that bookshelf? I definitely have some Welbeck in the back. All right. But, you know, here's what I'd say is that so the reason that the Hamiltonian tradition, again, not just Hamilton himself, but I would include Abraham Lincoln and his economic advisor,

Henry Charles Carey and Teddy Roosevelt, and especially the FDR and the New Deal order, they all emphasize manufacturing. It goes back to Hamilton himself said for the safety and independence of national life, you need kind of manufacturing independence, something that we encountered recently.

In 2020, during the pandemic, when we realized that from basic components for many drugs to personal protective equipment for our first responders and so on, couldn't produce that on our own because we'd offshored so much manufacturing. And I heard you railing against offshoring, John, in your conversation with Senator Sanders as well. I don't care for it.

So I would say, look, there is something special about manufacturing because the period of lowest inequality in American history, the New Deal order, did coincide with an industry-led economy. Manufacturing was about nearly a third of the U.S. GDP in 1950, down to about 10% today.

Now, I don't know how much Adam agrees with this or not. I think that that wasn't the result of, you know, world historical deterministic inevitability. It was a result of concrete policy choices where in the beginning of the 1970s, we decided to favor, you know, finance over the real economy. And this kind of addiction to cheap labor began where, you know,

not just through offshoring, but also lots of immigration and so on, we disempowered the American working class. And of course the anti-union thrust of American policy that really took off under Reagan. So there is something about manufacturing, for example, the NYU sociologist Vivek Chibber is a Marxist, but lots of other scholars as well have shown that manufacturing jobs

are easier to unionize, certainly than service sectors. There's something about the proximity of workers in a regular stable hours during the day, and even the kind of geographic proximity that factory life creates compared to gigafied labor. Even the Biden administration was as friendly as you could get to organize labor, but the union density, the share of workers that

covered by collective bargaining was so low now and also listen their infrastructure investments were enormous they just couldn't build any of it all right gonna take a quick break we'll be right back

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And we are back. So there's questions here that arise for me.

One is, are we fighting a conventional war when everyone else is using drones and lasers to rebuild something, creating a kind of, will it be a facade? Will it be a Potemkin village? Because even if you replace manufacturing jobs, manufacturing isn't done in the same way that it used to be done. Part of what lost manufacturing jobs was globalization and the fact that capital can travel and labor can't. Part of it was, hey, man,

I can pretty much build a robot to do what 50 of you do. So will we be capturing something real? So the first question to Adam, are we fighting the wrong war?

Yeah. Are we making Abrams tanks and everyone else is making something more modern? Just put some numbers in the picture here. There are 160 million people working as employed people in the United States, 170 million people in the workforce as a whole. So there's 10 million self-employed. There are 12 million people working in manufacturing, tightly defined. If you add 8 million in construction, that gets you to 20 million for industry.

Now, that is not a base from which you can transform American society, right? What was it in the 50s, Adam? Do you have a sense of the percentage? As a share of employment- Yes, yes. It was closer to 30%. Okay, so now it's closer to 10%. Less than 10%. 7% in manufacturing narrowly defined, right? Realistically boosting it. By a couple of million would be a huge success and it would take you closer to 10% than we currently are at, right? So you can't

There are two different projects. There is the fulfillment of the Hamiltonian project of sovereignty and independence and security, which requires certain technological capacities. There are industrial communities that exist that should be defended and developed and supported in ways that are appropriate. But then the big challenge surely has got to be to deliver on something closer to a new deal, shall we say, for want of a better word, social and welfare bargain, for

for the 20 million people that work in healthcare, for the 17 million people that work in leisure and services. And that is a holistic bargain which can't any longer be based around the male breadwinner model of the UAW duking it out with GM and Ford and Chrysler in Detroit in the 40s and 50s. This is a highly diverse, very feminine workforce

which has to continuously think the problem of childcare organically with the problem of their working conditions. That's where progressive politics to my mind needs to focus not on the, yes, it's the last war that the promise of retaining industrial jobs for that classic industrial working class is not a bad goal, but it's not to be confused with the project of actually supporting progressive change for the majority of Americans.

In the industry itself, John, amen to everything you've just said. The Chinese are discovering this, right? The cutting edge of Chinese EV production is not four-disc tens of thousands of workers. It's not even like the Foxconn plants that make the Apple phones. They're these dark factories with hardly any workers operating hyper-sophisticated robot machinery, which churn out the cars at unbeatably low cost.

So the Chinese themselves are going to discover this problem of the disconnect between manufacturing and industrial success and the share of people that can be employed and the social model that goes with that. It's three layers here that are continuously conflated. So that's such an interesting way that Adam has just framed it, I think. And it's

It does beg the question then, how do you create this Hamiltonian model, which I think is what we're talking about as kind of an ideal of balance. You're talking about infrastructure and monetary policy and these other bases. What would that look like? Adam's probably right here. We couldn't rebalance our manufacturing sector or blue collar jobs to be 30%.

of the economy and create that really stable middle-class infrastructure. How do we create that really stable middle-class infrastructure in this while also really

realizing that there's an AI chat bot right now taking over The Daily Show. Like, how do we square that? Yes. So a couple of points. I want to address Adam's point. I think it's right that manufacturing share of the GDP can go up somewhat.

But that doesn't necessarily translate into huge gains in terms of the manufacturing share of the workforce precisely because of automation. I think everyone in this space recognizes that. The first thing I'd say is, first of all, the jobs that are currently in manufacturing are worth protecting. I meet once a month. There's like a kind of gathering of manufacturers who've committed to manufacture only in the United States.

And they will tell you that, you know, Chinese dumping threatens their current employees, which are significant numbers. You know, would that get us to 30 percent manufacturing if all these jobs were protected? No. But let's be clear, though, there's not a sector of American jobs, though, that are not worth protecting.

There's not a sector of jobs, you know, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's education, whether it's healthcare, whether it's, you know, it's really important. I agree. I agree. But, you know, I mean, there are jobs to protect right now in this, in the sector because of its other dimensions of its national security dimension. The fact that, again, to go back to this idea that the Hamiltonian model sought to bind capital to place, to political community. That's right. And now capital travels and labor doesn't. It's just the way that things have been designed. Right. And, but,

Because of the capital investments involved, the manufacturing, the local factory boss is a lot more, I mean, he might be a jerk and you have to fight him with unions. And I'm all for that. As Adam knows, I'm a pretty, for someone who's of the center, right, I'm all for, you know, trying to boost our union density and all that. But still he's connect, he or she is connected to the local community in a way that Wall Street or distant, you know, Silicon Valley tech firms are not.

But okay, so if we try our best to increase the manufacturing share of the workforce, that will hit a limit. However, let's try at first, because the thing is, if we get to the point where we break corporate America's addiction to cheap labor, especially through offshoring,

it will force them to pay higher wages here locally or to innovate. Right now, the current kind of globalization model that we're hopefully transitioning out of incentivizes them not to actually do labor-saving technologies, but to try to do the same things with cheaper and cheaper labor. Finding more and more countries to exploit, which by the way,

We do in the United States. I mean, South Carolina, right-to-work states do the same thing that globalization does to America to states that have unions. I mean, Michigan gets decimated by maybe Mexican plants, but also by right-to-work states in South Carolina and...

you know, and tax in all kinds of other places. But just to finish this point, and I agree with that, you know, I welcome our robot overlords, like let's bring them over. And if we're going to have like a full luxury automated communism, let them be our robots, you know, and then, you know, you have an economy that can,

pay more for its caretakers, for the kinds of workers that Adam mentioned, that the strength of the manufacturing sector can absorb higher wages in Burger King or in home health care and all those other sectors. But they won't. You see that the sectors where labor cannot travel, fast food, health care, where communities must have them in there,

Look at how hard they fight to depress their wages. And I'm not just talking about the people who run those businesses. I'm talking about the Fed. The Fed raised interest rates in part because of what they called wage inflation. Overheating. Overheating. But it wasn't overheating on profits. It wasn't overheating on supply chain constriction. It was, holy shit, are we paying these people 15? What? No, no, no, no, no. Raise the rates.

depress the labor market. That was the cudgel they used. Yeah. And it's always service sector inflation is what really causes the financial markets to panic. And so the sector inflation is driven by labor costs.

So, that goes hand in hand with wage increases for the lowest paid American blue collar workers, blue collar in the widest sense. But I mean, in fairness to the Fed, they ran this baby as hot as they dared, right? For as long as they dared. This is not a by central banking standards. This was an experiment in risk, which of course more centrist Democrats like Larry Summers attacked from the very beginning and the GOP rode in on in an utterly cynical way.

during the campaign, denouncing inflation and everything else. Whereas you're saying, John, this has been, like it or not, believe it or not, a good time for the least well-paid American workers. A lot of the inequality of the 70s and 80s has been closed up by rises in their wages. Not at the super top. Obviously, the billionaires are better off than ever. But within the workforce, there has been a modest closing of the gap.

Let me ask you a question about, you know, there is a real effort right now. And again, this gets us back to the Trumpian, which is remove the federal government from everything, unleash the powers of laissez-faire capitalism, and that will close these gaps of and inequities. But there are so many externalities in terms of, and I think we've, when

When they keep pointing back to this gilded age of a more libertarian economy, well, that was a volatile disaster. So I'm not quite sure where, you know, where is it that they're taking? They're certainly not taking us back to the capitalized days of Hamiltonian central politics.

Everyone was farming in that period. 80% of Americans were farmers in the Hamiltonian period, right? Right. This policy seems to be taking us back more to 1870. You're really... It's great. I mean, this is a good exercise. The 1890s? That's what I'm not sure of. Sure.

huge waves of migration, the '93 to '96 recession, the 1907 recession, 2021, and then the big kahuna. And then the big one. The Great Depression, like the most dynamic economy in the world by all means, but the worst governed, the most unstable, incredible inequalities. Patronage, corruption. Class war, the Ku Klux Klan, the whole, that is the, this is what we want. Saurabh, what is their vision? What economy, what's the analog to this?

So the way I'd put this is that they're pursuing Hamiltonian means by Jacksonian ends. Now, let me explain that. By the way, both are in my wallet right now. Yeah, that's exactly right. I just want to make that clear. May there be ever more of them. But, you know, Arthur Schlesinger, the great New Deal historian, described the New Deal project as,

as Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends, meaning using big government, using sort of directing markets and so on and so forth for the Jeffersonian ideal of a kind of prosperous, relatively egalitarian order. Of course, the Jeffersonian vision didn't include African-Americans in its

Right. But still, the idea was to use this kind of big state interventionist model to achieve the small-R Republican Jeffersonian model. So now I think if you want to use these kind of categories, the Trumpians are coming in. They have, I think, Hamiltonian ends in mind. They want a manufacturing-led economy, et cetera, et cetera. But they're using the methods of Andrew Jackson, of course, the co-founder of the Democratic Party, who believed in breaking things.

He thought that the Second Bank of the United States was a vehicle for entrenched northeastern elites, and in some ways it was. So Hulk smash. He broke it. But the results, it didn't redound to the benefit of those people. It actually, as Adam knows better than I do, his war on the Second Bank,

immediately resulted in inflation and a depression as a result of like wildcat banking, lots of, you know, messy, uh, small banks, et cetera, et cetera. And the U S really didn't stabilize its financial system for nearly a century until the establishment of the federal reserve. So I see some of that kind of contradiction in the Trumpians. I like, I like some of their protectionist, uh, efforts and so on, but I find the, uh,

Frankly, the Elon Musk Doge stuff, really disturbing and really contradictory to... You need state capacity if they want to do stuff like that. You need workforce development.

By the way, unions can be a part of workforce development. They're very good at it, as we know. Unfortunately, what they've done is they've crippled the National Labor Relations Board, which I find very disturbing. Lots of regulators that do good things, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that would have regulated Elon's own ex if he wants to turn it into a payment app. Sure. Yeah.

Gee, why would he have done that? In a completely self-interested way. So, I mean, that's the Jacksonian part. And the problem with the Jacksonians is they harness populist anger with the economic order, but it redounds to the benefit of other elements of capital, you know, and that's the problem with the Trumpians. And by the way, it's an exercise they're doing explicitly. All right, we got to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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Okay, we're back. Adam, this gets to the central contradiction of kind of where we're talking about. So this is a thing that...

In many ways, they fetishize the working man, right? They pay great homage to the values of the working man. But who is in there smashing around the economy? It's not the working man. It's not people with an understanding of unions and all those other things. It's techno billionaires who want to create and look their vision for the economy. Let's be honest.

is very clearly not a bottom-up infrastructure. It is a gig economy run by overlords that are AI-infused. They have a, I think, dystopian vision of what work and relevance means. I don't think they're talking about the kind of societal tentpost economies that you guys are talking about. So address how that central contradiction plays out, Adam.

I think to make sense of this is a fascinating conversation. I think we need two extra terms. One is social democracy, which I quite like this reading of the New Deal as Jeffersonian goals by Hamiltonian means. But another way of thinking of the New Deal is it's America's effort at social democracy. In other words, an organized bargain between

American workers and capital. And the fact of the matter is that a very large slice of America, particularly in big cities, loves social democracy. They really like that vision. They really like social insurance. They like the LaGuardia vision of well-managed cities. They like the Wisconsin, Minnesota, California. There's lots of different variants of it, but it's essentially recognizable as American social democracy, like in Europe.

And the partners of the New Deal Democrats in doing this were the professional managerial class. In other words, folks like us.

And I read Trumpianism and the Musk element within it as a double attack, right? In the name of the working class, which is largely non-existent and not in the room, de facto, their immediate victims are civil servants, public servants in federal government doing things like weather forecasting. By the way, demonized. Demonized as educational statistics. Somehow they're not the working class. Somehow they're not the middle class. No, they're not the...

But in many cases, they're not the working class. They are actually university-educated middle-class people. American class language is confusing. But they're being portrayed as a criminal element, like, "You bastard testing our water for fecal matter. How dare you, sir?" Exactly.

How dare you? This is like some kind of a racket. Right. And that is how I read this current moment as a double attack, effectively continuing the

undermining of the real conditions for working Americans, but with a novel element of a really no holds barred attack on the PMC, on the professional managerial class. And that includes big corporate capital, which has its DEI and its ESG agendas, none of which they're down with. And it's done in the name of a kind of entrepreneurialism, which is Jacksonian, which is about breaking things and seeing what happens next.

But by the way, let's also be clear. There is no real ESG, DEI ethos in any of this. That was all wallpaper and gilding and tinsel. But it was wallpaper that was held in place by tens of thousands of people whose job it was and who did believe in it and whose careers were actually owed to it. It's a real thing. And who are real people? Who are real people and talented. And there were elements of that story that actually worked, right? Affirmative Action was a program that actually transformed American society for the better.

And so we can't let go of that. But that I think is the double element that's at work here. And I would agree with you, John, that the vision that someone like Musk holds out is, I just don't think we've ever quite seen... I go back to Jules Verne and late 19th century sci-fi where you've got some bad villainous business guy who's got an island and a submarine and a rocket. Yeah.

And the crazy thing is he has an island and a submarine and a rocket. We're going to iRobot here. He's got like thousands of satellites. It's insane. So, Rob, is the end game here a sincere, is this gold leaf on a shit box? What exactly is the plan here if the tariff regime, which is going to be extraordinary if carried out,

can only boost our manufacturing base by a million jobs, which are real, right? But certainly doesn't rebalance the GDP in any significant way, especially given financialization and the way that that dominates the economy. Is this sincere or is it cover to do something slightly more insidious?

I mean, it's with all these things. I think it's, it's a mix and we, you know, we should be careful about the Trumpians as a whole, because there are very serious internal divisions between them. There is definitely the Lex Luthor like, uh,

kind of techno overlords. Who, by the way, all do have the Lex Luthor. No, I mean, Bezos literally looks- There are a lot of stocky bald dudes in the techno- Sphere. Sphere. But then you've got Bannon, who is much more, I think, fire brandy populist.

And is that the trick they're pulling? Is it we're using a populist Trojan horse, but inside that Trojan horse is a cadre of bald guys with AI? Is that what we're dealing with? At least in some dimension, insofar as the, that's called the tech right or the techno billionaires are asserting the, you know, an ever greater role in the Trump administration. It's to the, to the detriment of its populist elements. Some of whom,

You guys might disagree. I think there are very sincere people into kind of what this called the new right, et cetera, who don't share that view and they don't want that. Don't doubt it. I've spoken to guys like Oren Cass, who I think are very sincere about it. Like very good faith, very interesting ideas. I think there's a lot of guys over there like that. But I just want to address the PMC thing a little bit because I sort of have the same reading that the Jeff Bezos types of the world have.

anger at the PMCs because the PMC are people who manage working class people in a way that the, the working class people don't come into contact with Bezos. By the way is also Jeff Bezos. Like let's, let's be clear, like Amazon factories, like these are the people who are managed by PMCs and Jeff Bezos is one of them. Right. And so, I mean, it's very telling that for about a decade, the way that the Bezos types of the world, uh,

legitimated their power was through kind of woke language, DEI stuff. My favorite example, John, you probably know it, is there was this podcast put out by REI, the outdoor sports chain, right? Yeah. Where the podcast, it was...

It was a company podcast and some lady came on and said, hello, my name is so-and-so. I'm proud to serve as your diversity and inclusion chief. I use she, her pronouns. And I just want to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the traditional lands of the Ohlone people. By the way, the topic of this podcast is why you shouldn't join a labor union. Right? Okay.

I mean, the examples are legion. And it just shows you that kind of the PMC left did do harm because it associated, it blended some legitimate economically redistributive policies that I would support with a bunch of nonsense that ordinary people like got really frustrated

fed up with. Right. Would roll their eyes in. And it's, it's amazing now that like the same Bezos who was at, who marched at the forefront of kind of the black lives matter column five years ago is now issuing dick tots to his, you know, newspaper that he owns the Washington post editorial page saying, you know, don't be so woke. Yeah. Isn't it telling that it's the same guy, but,

I guess my point is that the corporate entries into that world have always been for the most part bullshit. Now we can talk about it. The DEI to me, it's not about giving people jobs who don't deserve them. It's about expanding supply lines into fields, right? Underserved areas where you can develop new talent. It's about investing in emerging markets of people who've been traditionally, it's actually about creating more competition, right?

taking out the monopolies that have existed in the labor market in almost every industry. But man, anybody who ever watched, you know, somebody rap a McDonald's breakfast song understands corporations are

are usurping any culture that they can get their hands on that they think will give them a legitimate entry into another market. Yeah, I disagree. I think that for the most part, it was about making the C-suite, making it more diverse, but not really changing the power dynamics between the C-suite and the assetless majority. That's my point. My point is it's- I get that, but I just put a more negative spin on it even. Yeah.

Another way of reading this would be less manipulative, and it would be more optimistic in the sense that these changes are happening in American society. Women are going to college at rates never before seen. They dominate in many parts of education. DEI, as far as they're concerned, is not some sort of concession. It's just

Companies getting real. No, they're trying to constrict it is what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. And they were flexing around it and trying to figure out what their positioning is in relation to it. I think at that level, the same is true about the American working class. It's a large percentage of women and it's incredibly diverse. Right. And so like woke strategies of recognizing that diversity are just realism.

And by the way, to that point earlier about like the social programs. So there's always been this sort of thread through social programs that that is somehow that the people in those situations are there because of a lack of virtue, right? They are there because they are taking advantage of a system.

the majority of people on those programs are working poor. They're working their asses off. They're doing one job, two jobs, three jobs, you know, working at Walmart and still having to get SNAP benefits. Like this is not a problem of desire and intrepid spirit. It's a system that would rather protect people

you know, the billionaires last 20 billion, then help somebody get their first thousand. That's the, to me, that's the system that has to be realigned. And is any of this that we're doing here actually realigning that system?

I would just put the emphasis on class, genuinely, as opposed to these other identitarian dimensions. Because in a very real way, lots of those kind of DEI, woke cultures, practices, et cetera, cashed out as, you know,

hey, you haven't gotten a meaningful raise in nearly two generations. Your healthcare is lousy, et cetera, but take solace. Your boss is a disabled trans woman. I see it as much more, I think, cynical than Adam does, but

Um, I think if we just do a, uh, focus it on class, because by the way, all these identitarian divisions are management strategies as well. You can divide the working class and, and they do it all the time. So I'm, you know, like, again, I'm of the center, right. But when I listened to, uh, Senator Sanders, especially the Senator Sanders of circa 2015, 16, I'm like, oh my God, I really, this was good. Um,

Um, and, and how, what a tragedy it was that, for example, he said, uh, you know, he called for all sorts of antitrust measures and Hillary Clinton said, yeah, but would breaking up the banks, um, you know, end systemic racism. No, it doesn't, but that's not the problem it's supposed to address. And it was telling that she kind of ganged up on him using that rhetoric. Gaining potential there. Adam, do you see, so is there opportunity here in this, uh, rebalancing for, uh,

Look, I think the New Deal came about, to be frank, as a kind of revolution insurance. I mean, I think that the powers that be saw the socialist revolutions. They saw communism taking hold. They saw these various countries that refused democracy.

to understand the discomfort and pain that the majority of their people were going through, if they didn't take meaningful efforts to fix that systemically, they were going to find themselves head in a bucket. It was the French Revolution. So again, that's probably a more cynical view of viewing the New Deal.

This doesn't seem to be rebalancing that discomfort in a meaningful way. But I think democratic policies fall short of that as well. What it sounds like to me is people get mad because they pay taxes and they don't get healthcare. They have to still buy insurance. And even when they buy insurance,

They don't get health care. They just get like this pass that says, well, maybe if we agree to give you that MRI, you'll get the health care. But actually, it's still you're going to have to pay in a deductible. Isn't that fundamentally what's wrong with this? No, I mean, I basically agree with you. As late as the 1970s, there was still that fear that if unemployment went really high,

There would be something akin to social upheaval. And in parts of the world in Europe, for instance, in Italy, in Great Britain for a time, it did actually look that way. '68 was a working class uprising in much of Europe at that time. But that fear is no longer and that's part of the just grotesquery of the current moment. And Trump's inauguration with just the lineup of incredibly rich men as a kind of ostentatious display.

And insofar as we can point, I mean, part of my argument a minute ago was there is a social pressure. I mean, I think it's going to be really interesting to see in the long run how gender rights, how issues around reproductive freedom and so on play out in American society, because I don't think the conservative agenda will work. It's not a threat of a revolution, but it is a huge polarization in politics we're seeing around the world between men and women. And in the end, that may tell.

The question now is what does the PMC do? Because they are a much larger group than manufacturing industrial workers. And by the way, much more at risk of the AI revolution. And very at risk of the AI revolution and now under a hugely politicized attack. And I'm not saying, I'm not predicting that there's going to be kind of a revolutionary upsurge of elementary school teachers.

But that would seem to me to be the kind of piece of the puzzle. And the question, of course, is where the Democratic Party is. Why is it not leading? I don't understand. So that was interesting, Adam. So you mentioned a Democratic Party. Now, I wasn't aware there still was one of those. Is that- Yeah, well, good question. Have you noticed? I had no idea. I had heard something of it. It had been whispered in the wind. Yeah, once upon a time, right? That there was this Democratic Party. So, you know-

center right, how do they address... I'll give you an anecdote and you can respond. I spoke to one of these AI super beings that's creating, owns the thing. And I said to him, industrialization raised the level of standard of living, but it was really disruptive. And then the internet revolution and globalization was really disruptive, but industrialization took 150 years

The globalization was over 30 to 40 years as this disruption occurred. AI's disruption, the timeline is much narrower. It could be five years, it could be 10 years. But that disruption, look at how volatile the disruptions were for globalization. Look at how volatile the disruptions were for industrialization. Are you worried that we won't be able to manage the collateral damage to jobs,

to lives through this. And by the way, that is as long as, I mean, that was the length of the question, like that pedantic. And, uh, he goes, no, I think we'll be good. So there, it doesn't seem like they're taking the concerns that we are discussing in any way. Seriously. Is, is that your sense of what this new order is? Uh,

No, I agree with that. And I worry about that. Listen, you said something, and I think Adam agreed, that fundamentally the New Deal order was a conservative project because it was an attempt to bring the turbulent market and all the disruption it can bring under some degree of political control, strike a different bargain between the asset-less majority and the asset-rich few. As Roosevelt himself said, if you would preserve reform, meaning universalism,

If you don't want a revolutionary scenario, give in to reform. So I think my hope in the long term to try to think dialectically is if these guys want to return to the power relations that prevailed in the 1890s, let's say,

then what you're going to have potentially is the kind of labor industrial relations that you had in the 1890s. Adam already hinted at this as well. You had mass strikes. You had violent uprisings at factories and mines and so on and railroads.

Is it possible that we're heading into several decades where we're going to see things like that between, for example, masses of people who've become kind of turned into not even a proletariat but a lumpenproletariat as a result of automation being ruthlessly pushed through without political pushback?

And is it possible that down the road that will lead to some new labor settlement, some new – whatever the true New Deal of the 21st century might be? But as much as possible, I'd like to – personally, I'd like to avoid upheaval, right? I don't want to live through the early 20th century. Yes. Yes.

I would like to avoid a violent insurrection. Is this disruption necessary, Sorab? Is it necessary? Is this a necessary step? There was a kind of, you know, everybody talks about the rules-based order, but what it feels a bit like is, I don't know if you ever watch the show Peaky Blinders, but Thomas Shelby OBE, Peaky Blinders gang leader, had a theory on power called big fucks small. And

it feels like we're moving into the big fuck small era that big powers, you know, can take advantage to go back to that idea of we extract the wealth from places we want to extract it from because we can and it's vindictive and whatever disruptions or whatever ill will it causes tough shit because big bucks small. But given that the process,

The problem is government is the only thing big enough, in my mind, to countervail multinational corporate power. And if it is not exercised with, as Adam says, an eye towards the needs of the people, and it's been defanged for a more vengeance, exploitative version of it, where does that leave us? And is that, am I painting too dark a picture of what this looks like? And I'll start with Saurabh and we'll end with Adam.

No, I share your alarm at what the sort of techno billionaires are up to. And I'm about as pessimistic as you put it. And what I put my hope in is democracy and democracy, not just as going to the... I've got some bad news, Zora. No, no, not just going to the ballot. Democracy, not as just going to the ballot box every few years, but the idea that technology, economy, all these things are not...

they shouldn't just be sort of left to their own devices. And we say, well, inevitably it's going to lead us in this or that direction, but no, we, you know, people should have political input in how AI is rolled out, how it affects labor markets, how, you know, the shape that the market takes and so on. Unfortunately, though, anything that would do that's being demolished. Right. That's what I'm saying is that is, is there going to be, I think just,

just logically speaking, there's going to be pushback. And again, the only question is, is it, you know, ferocious upheaval of the kind that I think none of us would like, or will there a kind of wisdom reign like it did in the 1930s when elites, uh,

came to realize that for the sake of social order, they need to give more, bottom line, to give more and not just fuck one way. That's my hope. Adam? I mean, to pick out the big fuck small theme, I think the economist in me says, well, does big want to fuck all of small all the time? It seems that way. So the question is like, who is it? Who becomes victimized? Well, the question I think is serious. Like, who is it that's victimized?

And at what level can resistance and resilience be built? And how far does this also involve middle-sized players predating smaller players? You were describing small town labor relations are some of the most vicious in the United States because the stakes are very high, even though it's a small pool.

And I think that's, I mean, it's an aversion of Zahrab's point about democracy. That's the content of the kind of democracy that we need to build is a democracy that faces this harsh, brutal, brutally expressed. I think the sexual metaphor is wrong. There is a predatory rapist kind of mentality to this that resists that at every level, both cultural and political. And this is where I think, you know, the agenda of feminism is crucial because it speaks to this experience of power as being fucked.

And the consent. I mean, what do they always talk about? Democracy relies on the consent of the governed. Consent. Who is it that plays along? And that is where this sort of countervailing power has to be. And sitting, you know, being employed by a big institution in a formidable city like New York,

and you imagine some person like Trump coming along wanting to fuck this town, you try. You might want to, and people have done it, but it's hard. And it's not hard because it's a place full of flaming radicals that they're trying to pay just that way. No, it's just a place full of people pursuing their own projects in relatively decent ways, quite bought into the legacies of New Deal institutions, great society institutions which work here, knowing that we need diversity,

because this is a very diverse place and we can't function without it. This is not Mar-a-Lago or Palm Beach. We can't pretend the world is different from the way it is and so we need politics appropriate to that. And that's where I have a... That's where I really don't see this spiraling off into disaster. I think of a community like New York City and think it'll take...

you know, as Adam Smith would say, there's a lot of ruin in this. Like, you know, it'll take a lot to really bring this down. Well, that is the most optimistic note we've heard so far. And I appreciate that. Adam Tooze, author of Chartbook on Substack. Saurabh Omari, US editor of Unheard and author of Tyranny, Inc. Guys, thank you so much for spending the time with us and really, really helpful and interesting. And thank you. My pleasure. Thanks, John.

So here's what I saw. I saw a guy on the center right, pretty conservative, Catholic, has those bedrock values of what you would consider to be a pretty conservative guy with a guy that is much more on the left end of social democracy and all those other things.

sitting and saying pretty much the same thing. Absolutely. That's how far we've moved into this other direction. Is that where you guys learn? What are you hearing from these cats?

Well, something that you all were talking about that really resonated with me was just the lack of vision for all of these policies. And it reminded me of the MAGA motto, which you never really determined when we were trying to revert America back to. And it's kind of the same with this economic vision. And something that we were looking into prior to this conversation was just all the justifications Trump has given for the tariffs.

And it goes from to balance trade and spur US manufacturing, to stop illegal immigration, to stop the flow of fentanyl, to balance the budget. How can it be all these things? What is the actual vision? By the way, even trade imbalances, when they talk about, we've got to fix our trade imbalance. Well, America buys a shit ton of stuff. That's going to be really hard to do. And

China has a positive trade balance. And is that the economy we want? Like, what are we even talking about? So I think you're right. There's all kinds of justifications. But I think what we did get to is there is a plan. Like that is the one thing I think they do have. We may not like it, but I think it's to go back to Peaky Blinders. Big fuck small. Yeah. I think that's where we're at. I mean, Jillian, did they say anything that you thought

That's the kernel. That's the... Well, I think it's just that, like Adam said early on, which is like this economic realignment, this pursuit of onshoring, these are not necessarily bad goals, but they're not to be confused with policies that actually advance the interests of the working class. And I think Saurabh was completely in agreement on that. Right. Or we'll do it in a relatively small way regionally, but might not be...

broader plan. Brittany, what's the view on Long Island? What's the view on Long Island from this? People just want to be able to afford their bacon, egg, and cheese. It's the provincial concerns that we all have, but I do think there was real agreement that the volatility of this is a real danger for them. That part I thought was really interesting when they were talking about, look, this

this realignment is probably real. Protectionism is one aspect of it. There are, you know, billionaire technocrats that are going through this other aspect of it. And maybe it is about reducing the deficit, but there are some volatile offshoots of this that could create some real hardship for people. And that's the thing that's, yeah, that's.

That's scary. Can I just say, this episode really made me want to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack. Yeah. I mean, how does a bastard orphan son of a whore? Am I wrong that that's a sequel? That we don't have the sequel is how he put together the three tent posts of Hamiltonian economies? It's hard to do a sequel when, spoiler, he dies. Yeah.

I do appreciate that. Yeah. You say you want a revolution. Well, I want a revolution. I've only listened to it a few times. Only a couple. Yeah. Brittany, what do the people say? All right. We've got a couple of questions for you this week, John. All right. What do we got? Considering all the cuts and layoffs Doge is implementing, especially as it affects veterans, what can ordinary people do to push back? Oh, Jesus.

Man, I so appreciate the question. And the frustration I always have is like that it's left to ordinary people. Like that's the part that makes me so mad that like our elected representatives are there. We send them to Washington so that we're, you know, every time, you know, the shit hits the fan with this, there's always that question of like,

I liken it to like, if you're at a basketball game and your team's just getting the shit kicked out of them. And in the timeout, the players just turn to the, you know, to the crowd and go like, all right, you're in. You're like, wait, I don't, but I don't know how to play basketball. And they're like, I don't care. We're fucking, we're dying over here. Just get in there. So, I mean, look, what I would say is keep vigilant, stay on it. And when a task comes, but there has to be a leadership in this that, you know, ultimately if this gets to, you know,

a veterans march on Washington, which they did do. And it was really, you know, these are real people that throughout the country stood up and said, these cuts are hurting people. They're hurting us and very little blip. It's very hard to break through. So there has to be what we learned during the fight for packed actors, a drug or any of those things is it takes strategy and leadership, uh,

from the top that is able to empower people to particular tasks. And that has to be, that plan has to be developed. But man, the fact that people are out there saying, what can we do? Says there's a thirst for that leadership and for direction. And hopefully it will be provided because, you know, the usual shit is call your congressman. But I can tell you, man, they ignore that shit unless it's really targeted,

and really specific to a certain date or action. And that date or action has not been articulated yet, but it will be, it has to be. And so that's where I would say, but. - Amen. - Yeah, let's hope, let's hope. What else I got? - John, do you ever experience FOMO at this stage of your career? - Wow, no. I don't ever consider, I don't experience FOMO, forget about career.

in life because I don't like doing things. That's the secret. Yeah. Do you know what you have? It's called Jomo. John of missing out. It's the joy of missing out. Joe, I have Joe. Do you guys get FOMO? Is it Jillian? You're, you're, uh, are, are perhaps youngest. Is that, uh, is that something that you experience?

I think I'm similar to you where I love being home with my dog. If somebody else was doing that, I'd have a lot of FOMO. You know what? That's a good point. Why is that not usually included in FOMO? Like, oh man, you sat home and watched Severance with your dog? I'd be like,

Take me there. That's exactly why I can't get a pet because I'll never go anywhere again. You won't. You'll never. No. So Lauren, do you need to be almost, like I find the energy to leave the house to be like, it is an endeavor. I have to endeavor. I know. I was going to say, I feel like you have a fear of not having canceled. You would definitely like to be at home. Yes. I prefer that. But Brittany, you're, you, you, you.

You go out there. I put it on. You know how to take it to the streets. Honestly, I try. But at the same time, I really enjoy like how I spend my rent money, you know, like staying home. I've never heard it put that way, but I kind of like that. Yeah. What are you doing tonight? I'm spending my rent money. How are you doing that? I'm going to sit on the couch. I'm staying home. Yeah. No, I actually think that's great.

I am, and I think to sometimes people's surprise, very introverted. And I don't, even when I was younger, the jobs I had were, I bartended, I went out and did stand-up comedy. So it gave me the illusion of having friends or being out. But I really, I like that. It's so much more preferable to socialize. Not that I don't, there's many people that I love and I like to see sometimes and all that, but boy, inertia-wise. Yeah.

You can always call them. I don't think you are taking into consideration necessarily how many people you talk to. You talk to a lot of people. As far as I'm concerned. You need to recharge. This was a cocktail party. Right now, I'm going back to bed. Socialize off the list. Power off. That's what I'm talking about. Brittany, how can they get in touch with us? Twitter, we are Weekly Show Pod. Instagram threads, TikTok, Blue Sky. We are Weekly Show Podcasts.

And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. Yeah. And do that because we read them. Well, we don't, but they do. Then they tell me, but generally curated so that I don't go, what? Why would they say that?

As always, thank you to everybody. Lead producer, Lauren Walker. Producer, Brittany Mamedovic. Video editor and engineer, Rob Vitola. Audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce. Researcher and associate producer, Jillian Spear. And our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. As always, this is the Weekly Show Podcast. We'll see you guys next week. Bye-bye. The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.

March 30th on Paramount+. Name's Conrad Harrigan, family man. And if you cross my family, well, you'd better pray.

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