0:00

I'm Akuri Estrlovski, and the host of

0:02

a new podcast from The Economist called

0:04

Next Year in Moscow. For

0:06

many Russians, Vladimir Putin's full scale innovation

0:09

of Ukraine. Also felt like an

0:11

attack on their own country's future. Hundreds

0:13

of thousands flat. I've

0:15

been talking to this new exiles. Because

0:18

their stories help bring to life the mystery

0:20

of why the senseless will begin and

0:22

how it might end. Next

0:24

year in Moscow from the economist is out now on

0:26

your pod job. Join me today and

0:29

start

0:29

listening. How we work in this

0:31

country is changing, and

0:33

there are a lot of competing narratives

0:35

that attempt to explain why. For

0:39

example, in January, it was

0:41

announced that America has the lowest unemployment

0:43

rate since the spring of nineteen sixty

0:46

nine. But around that time,

0:48

we were also hearing this. Google's

0:50

parent company Alphabet announcing today

0:53

it will cut twelve thousand positions.

0:56

The tech giant's biggest ever round

0:58

of layoffs come during the same week

1:00

that Microsoft and Amazon also announced

1:02

job cuts Zoom announcing it

1:04

will lay off thirteen hundred

1:07

workers that's around fifteen

1:08

percent of its workforce. Media

1:11

companies are laying off workers too.

1:13

EVEN CONSUMER GIGIANS LIKE WALMART

1:15

AND PEPSY ARE REPORTEDLY TRIMING STAFF.

1:17

MARG ZUCKLER HAS CALLED THIS THE YEAR

1:20

OF Efficiency Sources,

1:22

again, telling Bloomberg that thousands

1:24

of employees can be cut as soon as

1:26

this week. There are plenty of jobs in this

1:28

country. The problem is many of those

1:31

jobs don't pay a livable wage

1:33

and many leave workers without crucial

1:35

benefits. This

1:37

explains why we're seeing high profile

1:39

strikes and calls for unionization across

1:42

industries, from Amazon to

1:44

public museums, to Starbucks,

1:47

to academia. Part time staff say

1:49

they haven't received a raise in over four years

1:51

into the low wages, forces them

1:53

to take on multiple other

1:54

jobs.

1:55

Quite literally, the university does not

1:57

exist without part time faculty. Nebraska

1:59

harden and six pro union coworkers

2:02

were terminated. Starbucks says the

2:04

workers broke company policy when they did

2:06

a press interview in the

2:07

store. We are here because we

2:09

know the New York Times has nothing without

2:11

its guilt. And every last one of

2:14

us desires to earn a memorable wage

2:16

and to receive the benefits that we deserve.

2:20

These collective efforts are part of a

2:22

struggle to secure a social safety

2:24

net. But in a country that

2:26

preaches the importance of making it

2:28

on your own, how effective can

2:30

these efforts b. I'm

2:34

Sean Illing, and this is the gray

2:37

area. My

2:50

guest today is Alyssa Court.

2:52

She's an author of non fiction books

2:54

articles, and poetry. And

2:56

she also co founded the economic hardship

2:59

reporting project.

3:02

Much of courts work centers around

3:04

the decline of the middle class in America.

3:08

In her latest book, boot strap. She talks

3:11

about this as well, but she also zooms out

3:13

and looks at the history of our country.

3:15

And they'll pull yourself up by the bootstrap

3:18

mentality that has defined and divided

3:20

it for so long. So

3:22

I invited her onto the show to talk about

3:24

all that.

3:26

And we started with the myth at the center

3:28

of our national story. The American

3:31

dream. To

3:35

me, the most talk eighty six elements of the American

3:37

dream, or is this idea that we have

3:39

to succeed on our own steam?

3:42

That if we're going to participate in

3:46

the economy, if we're gonna participate in

3:48

professional lives, if we're gonna be

3:50

solvent, it's all on our own

3:53

and we've made it on our own if we're successful

3:55

and if we're struggling

3:58

financially, it's our fault too.

4:00

And I think my hope with this book

4:02

is to say that there's other

4:04

possibilities for what we could see as

4:06

the American dream. And even the initial

4:09

iteration of the American dream in nineteen thirty one

4:12

when it was coined was more expansive than

4:14

that. James Truslow Adams

4:17

coined the term and he was a historian and

4:19

a writer. His view of the American dream

4:21

then had a lot more of a communitarian feel

4:23

than it's come to implied. So this is

4:26

this amazing line from Treslow Adams. The original

4:28

American dream had always been about quality and

4:30

spiritual values. He complained

4:33

Money making and material improvements were

4:35

mere extensions of the material basis

4:37

of existence. This is a person who coined the American

4:39

dream who's writing this. Back then, it was

4:41

closer to the American dream that I'm

4:44

thinking of. Part of

4:46

what happens with these ideas the

4:48

American dream, the self made man,

4:50

pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, is

4:53

they get distorted in this

4:55

country over decades. So

4:57

they mean something different, and they

5:00

take on a kind of toxicity. And so,

5:02

yeah, I think there was an American dream out

5:04

there It's just not the one that

5:06

comes to mind first.

5:08

Well, as a piece of cultural propaganda,

5:11

the American dream is an incredibly powerful

5:13

thing. It's been very, very effective at

5:16

how did it sort of become what it's

5:18

become, how did it morph into. This,

5:21

you know, do it on your own fantasy that

5:23

it is today?

5:25

Well, I sort of look at that over the

5:27

nineteenth century and the twentieth century.

5:29

I mean, politically, everyone

5:32

from Herbert Hoover to Reagan,

5:34

to Donald Trump. So even including

5:36

Clinton, you know, they were invested in the

5:38

idea end of welfare as we know

5:41

it. That woman in Chicago was

5:43

the way that Reagan described so called welfare

5:45

queens, which turned out to be one person.

5:47

Right? She was like a single hookster

5:50

that had been then turned into this yeah.

5:53

Like a whole army of people

5:55

who were cheating the welfare

5:57

system, but it was used to privatize

6:00

to demonize welfare. That

6:02

was just like this sort of like prop, right, that

6:04

was gendered by the Reagan administration.

6:06

Yes. Has a kind of, like, non human

6:09

symbol for entitlement Yeah.

6:11

Also, I don't wanna beat around the bush here. It was used

6:13

to scare white

6:15

Americans with the idea

6:17

that their tax dollars were being given

6:19

to poor black Americans. Absolutely.

6:22

It's totally racist. And, you

6:24

know, and it continued with the Clinton. Administrious.

6:26

Like, it wasn't, you know, a thousand points of light

6:29

like Bush won. We're, again, we're supposed

6:31

to depend on philanthropy and volunteerism

6:34

rather than a welfare

6:36

state. So when I think about

6:38

the American dream, two

6:40

things Illing to mind. The first is

6:43

this idea that every generation

6:46

can live a better life than the last

6:48

one. And that is very obviously

6:50

not True anymore. There was a book

6:52

in two thousand and nineteen by an author

6:55

named Steven Brill. I interviewed him for

6:57

Vox. The book was called tailspin, and

6:59

he lays out all the stats to

7:01

distill the story. And they

7:04

were really staggering. And I just if you'll

7:06

bear with me, I just wanna state a

7:08

few of them. You know, in the last

7:10

fifty years, a child's chance

7:12

of earning more than her parents

7:14

has plummeted from ninety to fifty percent

7:17

Earnings by the top one percent have

7:19

almost tripled. Middle class wages

7:21

have basically been frozen for thirty, forty

7:24

years. Drug addictions and self

7:26

inflicted deaths are at a

7:28

record high. We have one of the highest

7:30

infant mortality rates in the industrialized

7:33

world. And on and on and

7:35

on. And I'm sorry for the laundry list

7:37

of stats, but I just I think it's important

7:39

to paint a picture here because if the American

7:41

dream is some kind of baton

7:44

that each generation passes

7:46

down to the next

7:47

one? Well, it's been dropped very

7:49

clearly. Yeah. I mean, you're I guess

7:51

Steve was mentioning Raj Chetti's

7:54

research on this, on mobility and opportunity.

7:57

He found that someone born in the nineteen

7:59

forties had a, like, ninety

8:01

two percent chance of equaling

8:04

or bettering their parents lot. And

8:07

somebody born in the nineteen eighties, it was, like,

8:09

fifty percent or lower. And that

8:11

made sense to me, you know, not only for

8:13

this book, but my previous book squeezed. Where

8:16

our families can't afford America because I felt

8:18

like this describes this middle

8:20

precarious, this precarious middle class that

8:23

I've experienced people I know I've experienced and

8:26

it's not being able to live

8:28

as your parents lived. And there's

8:30

something fundamentally exposing

8:33

and kind of awakening

8:36

about that when you're a middle aged person, let's

8:38

say, and you you look at your life and you're like, whoa. I I

8:40

have not My life is not as

8:42

comfortable as my parents. It doesn't have the same quality

8:44

of life. But, like, in twenty

8:46

twenty one, CEOs were paid three hundred and ninety

8:48

nine times as much as typical workers.

8:51

They made on average fifteen point six million

8:54

in twenty twenty one that's in the middle of the

8:56

pandemic. Right? So, there's

8:59

a reason for this absence

9:01

of mobility.

9:02

I just think this gets at a

9:05

really important divide

9:07

one that's not often even

9:09

articulated or discussed,

9:12

but it should be. You know, this this question of

9:14

the role of luck. In our lives.

9:16

And this idea that we achieve

9:18

successful loan, I mean, I don't wanna you go

9:20

over this in the book, you know, this is a very

9:23

predominant view on the right. I think

9:25

everyone will remember the scandal

9:27

that was Obama saying

9:30

that if you've been successful, you

9:32

didn't get that on your own. If you're successful,

9:34

somebody gave you some help along

9:36

the way. And that was the kind of sacrilege.

9:39

For a certain kind of libertarian or certain kind

9:41

of conservative. And

9:43

it's just so much turns on whether or not

9:45

we're willing to accept the role of

9:47

luck. In our lives.

9:50

In two thousand twelve, this

9:52

group that United for a fair economy found

9:54

that over sixty percent of the Forbes

9:56

four hundred of Americans

9:59

were already well off when they began

10:01

their careers. We have to remember this

10:03

that a lot of the people they don't start

10:05

on third base. They start on second

10:08

who are considered successes in

10:10

this country. And I think that was crucial for

10:12

me when I was writing this to bring that point

10:14

home.

10:15

It's just amazing when you really think about it how

10:18

we really are not responsible for

10:20

the most important facts about

10:22

ourselves. When we're born to

10:24

whom we're born, the environment in

10:26

which we're raised, our genetic gifts

10:28

and limitations. You know, we don't choose any of

10:30

these things and yet they

10:33

determine so much of our lives.

10:35

And we have this conservative narrative

10:37

about success that emphasizes

10:40

hard work and grit

10:42

and skill. And then there's this

10:44

liberal narrative that emphasizes structural

10:48

constraints and privilege And

10:50

it's very obvious to me that neither one of these

10:52

is entirely correct.

10:55

The binary is the problem. And

10:57

I just want to be super clear about this because

10:59

I I can imagine a

11:02

lot of people being annoyed if I don't clarify this,

11:04

and that's okay even if they're they're gonna be annoyed, no

11:06

matter what. But Look matters

11:08

great deal. Right? I think it's maybe the most important

11:10

factor, but talent and hard work also matter.

11:12

I just happen to believe and you can tell me what

11:14

you think. That the

11:17

moral hazards of overemphasizing hard

11:19

work, talent, and grit are

11:22

enormous, you know, because who

11:24

needed social safety net say,

11:26

if the least among us are just victims of

11:28

their own laziness

11:31

and lack of abumption. You

11:33

could see how that could lead to some really

11:35

disastrous policies that

11:37

justify and reinforce a lot

11:39

of needless

11:41

suffering. Illing you also have to look at

11:43

gender and race. Right? If you have women

11:45

making eighty three cents on the dollar still

11:48

and women of color make even less than

11:50

that on the men's dollar, that

11:52

is not an equal playing field, you know.

11:54

No matter how much gumption you

11:56

have, if you're woman and especially if

11:58

you're a woman of color, you're statistically gonna

12:00

be paid less than a

12:01

white man. Right? So think we need to,

12:03

like, look at those structural forces too.

12:05

Right. It is very hard. For

12:08

people to just pull themselves up

12:10

by their bootstraps. The world's little more complicated

12:12

than

12:12

that. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, by

12:15

the way, started out as just like a joke.

12:17

It was just an idiom. Try to think

12:19

of how to pull yourself up by your

12:20

bootstraps. It's like you lie on your back,

12:22

you're like skiing, like with my

12:24

boots don't even have straps. No. But

12:26

but they did, and this is thing. I I

12:28

looked in this. They did and in

12:31

the nineteenth century, the

12:33

wealthy had people to help them pull them

12:35

on. There was a device

12:38

that was used. There was a machine to help

12:40

people pull their boots on too. So again, the wealthier

12:42

people could pull their bootstraps on,

12:44

their boots much more easily. But

12:46

working men all had these boots. And how

12:49

do you pull yourself up? You're like, so

12:51

it was an absurdity that then

12:53

became this really serious thing.

12:55

People started to, you know, like, oh, yeah. We're gonna

12:57

pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And

13:00

there are many mythologies launched

13:02

by

13:03

that. And I the important point for me about

13:05

the the whole pull yourself up by that bootstrap

13:07

myth? Is that it just even if there's

13:10

a nugget of wisdom and

13:12

some useful message of self empowerment

13:14

in it, In the end, what it becomes

13:17

is a justification

13:20

for the persistence of gross inequities.

13:22

Instead of calling it a moral failure

13:24

of our society becomes the moral failure of

13:26

an individual who made

13:29

choices, bad choices, and that is

13:31

the reason he or she, they ended

13:33

up in their predicament. And that is just,

13:35

I think, a really crude way to

13:37

look at the complexity of social life and

13:39

how people end up, where

13:41

they end up. And why some people

13:43

succeed and why other people fall through the cracks.

13:46

What is

13:47

the right way for you to to

13:50

think about self reliance? I mean, it's something

13:52

I struggle with myself, you know. And think

13:55

on the blue state liberal side,

13:57

we, I'll just say, we we have our own

13:59

form of bootstrapping. I'm

14:02

pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, and it has more

14:04

to do with self actualization. I just

14:06

think that, like, instead of saying,

14:08

oh, you haven't worked hard enough. We say,

14:11

you haven't become yourself fully, which is

14:13

where this kind of corporate mindfulness comes in

14:15

and this culture of resilience

14:17

and grit that's psychological. It's not

14:20

just about hard work from the outside.

14:22

It's like doing the work psychologically

14:25

on the inside. So you're well enough

14:27

so you can excel. And I think

14:29

that itself is another pressure that a lot

14:31

of people put on themselves. You know, like, why

14:33

am I not breathing well? And,

14:36

you know, why why I kinda clear my head

14:38

at work after my boss screams at me? You know?

14:40

That should be something that I'm able to do.

14:43

So that's part of the thing I am trying to critique

14:45

in this book too. It's not just about

14:47

class mobility, it's about internal

14:50

Illing, that somehow that that's our fault or

14:53

problem

14:53

too, like, if we're not psychologically stable.

14:56

Well, for me, it's tough, you know, because, like,

14:58

I do think there's an imperative to deal with

15:00

the society we have not

15:02

the society we want. And in the society

15:04

we have, it is probably wise to be as self

15:06

sufficient as possible. But then

15:08

again, that mindset is precisely what

15:10

prevents change. Well,

15:12

I I don't know if it's wise to be as self sufficient

15:15

as possible. So in the book, I talk about

15:17

something I call the art of dependence. And

15:19

what I mean by that

15:21

is we should start thinking of dependence

15:23

as not just

15:25

codependence. Right? Not just a Illing,

15:28

an emotional weakling, an economic weakling.

15:30

But something that takes skill

15:32

and craft, that it it takes grace

15:35

to take care of

15:37

someone or be taken care of in a way

15:39

that doesn't harm either

15:42

party. It takes skill to

15:44

get, you know, welfare payments. It does.

15:46

I've talked to lot of people who've tried to get

15:49

snap and welfare and Medicaid. You know,

15:51

it takes skill to navigate those systems. It

15:53

takes skill to live

15:55

as a disabled person. It takes

15:57

skill to be a parent. It takes skill to be

15:59

a child. And so I feel like

16:01

that reframe to

16:03

me is that's really mindful. Like that's true

16:06

mindfulness to be able to be like, oh, the

16:08

part of my life that's dependent is

16:10

also conscious and

16:13

something of a kind of power. There's power

16:15

independence as well as independence.

16:17

Yeah. think that's right. I mean, yeah.

16:20

I wanna try to connect

16:22

all of this to the political and

16:24

economic situation we're facing today,

16:26

which was made

16:29

possible in part by some of these

16:31

foundational knits you're sort of

16:33

pulling apart. And I think

16:36

you and I have a shared interest in

16:39

finding the spaces for solidarity

16:41

because that's the only real basis for democratic

16:44

action. And you know,

16:46

the reason I'm always talking

16:48

about class, class, class is

16:50

because I do think it has the most potential for

16:52

solidarity across all of our

16:55

divides, especially now, given

16:57

what's happened to the middle class. And your

17:00

twenty eighteen book squeezes

17:03

very much about what

17:05

you call the middle per carat.

17:07

And before I say much more about that, maybe

17:09

you can define that term for

17:12

the audience because obviously it's also part of

17:14

your new

17:14

book. So guys standing had

17:17

come up with the term to procure it. I don't know,

17:19

like, maybe a decade ago. And

17:21

what he meant by that was the proletariat.

17:24

Right? The famous Karl Marx, proletariat, the

17:26

working class. Crossed with precarious.

17:29

So that's where we get the word precarious. And when

17:31

I started to report squeezed, I was seeing

17:34

a precarious middle class. Which yeah.

17:36

Indeed in bootstrapped them, like, advancing some

17:38

of that. There's some of the similar threads in that

17:40

way. There are people who are adjunct

17:42

professors or accountants,

17:45

graphic artists, you know, there's like a world of

17:47

people, journalists who are

17:49

now living job to

17:51

job. Highly contingent, fighting

17:54

to be in unions, fighting for healthcare,

17:57

adequate healthcare, have no

17:59

long term security. Often

18:01

work for many different companies, many

18:03

different colleges, let's say, or many different

18:05

corporate comp you know, I was talking to someone who's actually

18:08

looking at lawyers who work now. In

18:10

this middle per carat situation, which is kinda

18:12

interesting who are doing document review,

18:14

working for multiple different firms. If

18:17

majority of people, don't have

18:19

job security, don't have economic

18:21

security, that's a potentially

18:23

a way that we can connect across class

18:26

lines.

18:26

Yep. I think that's right. And I love the

18:28

term culture workers.

18:30

Yeah. That you use. Right? from

18:32

adjunct professors to museum workers

18:35

to graphic artist to

18:36

journalist. I called them black turtleneck workers.

18:39

Actually, I had written about these museum

18:41

uprisings. It was for the New Republic

18:43

recently, and the new school and

18:45

the UC system. And,

18:48

you know, my publisher, HarperCollins. They've

18:50

been on strike either

18:52

unionizing or doing actions.

18:55

And I thought that that was something that

18:59

could thread all these communities together and

19:01

then thread them together with Amazon

19:03

workers and Starbucks and REI

19:05

and all these other nascent unions.

19:08

It was pretty moving to be on the picket line

19:10

with one of these Union uprisings.

19:12

This was at the new school and have all the truck drivers

19:15

honking for art

19:17

professors, you know, who are tap dancing

19:19

in performance art kind of a

19:21

garb. And then you had, like, the fresh direct

19:24

truck, you know, honking and so on. And I was like,

19:26

this is yeah. Every sentimental bone

19:28

in my body. I was like, this is what it what life

19:30

should be like. But this is how we

19:32

began. That was the sentence I kept having

19:34

in my head.

19:44

What role did the COVID-nineteen pandemic

19:46

play in these strikes? And

19:48

is remote work Illing a wealth gap.

19:51

Alyssa and I will discuss after a quick

19:53

break. Support

20:04

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21:07

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21:09

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22:21

I

22:21

don't know if the pandemic was a tipping point.

22:23

I don't know if the financial crises of late

22:26

were also part of a tipping point.

22:28

I don't know. I mean, you seem to think that the per carat

22:30

has been radicalized by somebody's conditions.

22:33

I mean, you call it the dystopian social

22:36

safety net. Right? Which is hell of a way to put

22:38

it, but more importantly, I think it captures

22:40

something really important and perverse

22:44

that was revealed during the

22:46

pandemic. You know, in the throes of the pandemic,

22:48

there were all these feel good stories about

22:51

nonprofits and citizen stepping

22:53

up to solve basic human

22:55

welfare problems that shouldn't

22:57

exist in first place. But they do because

23:00

we've organized our society in such a way as

23:02

to guarantee that they exist. And

23:04

so people had to step up to fill that

23:05

hole, but Again, maybe there's

23:08

an opportunity there to change the social

23:10

safety net. Didn't

23:11

you find it sort of shocking? Don't

23:12

find one shocking. When the pandemic started,

23:15

you're like, wow, nobody is nobody

23:17

is helping us. I mean, you

23:19

know in your conscious mind that that's how our

23:21

country is organized. But it felt

23:23

like pretty startling. It was hard

23:25

to not take it personally.

23:27

Howard Bauchner: Yeah, no, I think

23:30

it's one of those moments that just

23:32

reveals a truth that's always there,

23:34

but easy to ignore when

23:36

times are normal, whatever that means.

23:39

But it definitely exposed

23:41

some of these you

23:42

know, what was the term people were using? Frontline,

23:45

essential.

23:46

That whole period sort of revealed

23:50

who actually is important? In

23:52

our society, like like the people that actually

23:54

perform the services and the

23:56

care and the duties that make life

23:58

possible that really keep this thing rolling.

24:01

And those were the people in the professions that

24:03

felt the most pain

24:05

in that moment. And many of people who,

24:08

to borrow term from David Graebur, do bullshit

24:10

jobs you know, we're much less impacted

24:13

by the pandemic, and there was just a a kind

24:15

of core injustice in

24:17

that. Yeah. I almost sometimes

24:19

I start to see remote work as a

24:21

way to pay kind of satiate

24:23

or opiate. The upper middle

24:25

per carat. Right? Like, not the middle

24:28

middle per carat, but people who could, like us,

24:30

have quasi virtual jobs

24:34

And this was gonna keep us quiet.

24:36

We're gonna be in our state of quietism, in

24:38

our homes, zooming with our colleagues.

24:40

And maybe this

24:42

would continue as it has for many years and

24:45

that would in some way placate not

24:47

widely well paid middle class

24:49

workers. You know what I mean? Now they get to work

24:52

at home, they get more flexible hours.

24:54

So you're not actually paying them more, giving them more

24:56

job security, but you're letting them have these

24:58

benefits that they would

25:00

had to fight for before. It reminds

25:02

me of this line from Barbara Aaron Reich. She

25:05

wrote that Americans can't actually afford

25:07

the rich. Which I I love that. They

25:09

drive up cost for everyone and require huge

25:11

amounts of cash to sustain their

25:13

lifestyles. So to me, that's

25:15

part of what we're talking about too. I mean, it's

25:17

It's an insight that goes at least as

25:19

far back as Aristotle. Right? But, like,

25:22

you can have rich people and you

25:24

can have poor people. But

25:27

you absolutely have to have a

25:30

sustainable robust middle

25:32

class for your society to

25:34

be viable in the

25:36

long term. And if you get

25:38

to point where you just have very, very rich people

25:40

and everyone else, that's a problem.

25:43

And that's not sustainable. And we seem to

25:45

be the history of the last half century is the history

25:47

of inching

25:49

more and more to that reality. This

25:52

is part of my hope with my book

25:54

and the polemical part of my book is that if you

25:57

if you puncture every CEO who says I

25:59

did it myself, Illing, say, Michael

26:01

Bloomberg. Do you remember?

26:02

Oh, yeah. He was like, I did this myself,

26:05

and I it was great because Bernie Sanders was like,

26:07

I think your workers would say it differently. You

26:09

know, just to constantly remind these

26:12

people who are making so much more than their

26:14

workers, just the basic fact

26:16

that they did not do it themselves. If you have

26:18

twenty thousand, eighty thousand

26:20

workers. If you have five workers, you haven't done it

26:22

yourself. You

26:23

know?

26:24

Yeah. Yeah. There's a sympathetic way

26:26

to understand why people who

26:28

benefited from a lot of luck and a lot of

26:30

privilege prefer to tell different story.

26:32

You know? I mean, the stories we tell about ourselves

26:34

are never complete and even

26:37

if you're enormously Illing.

26:39

If you've accomplished a lot, you've probably

26:41

also worked pretty hard And that's

26:44

easy to remember and focus on, you know, you don't

26:46

think about that job. You got things to

26:49

a a friend or a family connection. You don't

26:51

think about the second chances you got when you

26:53

were younger, when you screwed up. I mean, we're

26:55

just not wired to think

26:57

of ourselves that way. And that's

26:59

an impediment to throwing

27:01

off this

27:02

mindset. But as think that's part of where the

27:04

art of dependence comes in, instead of

27:06

mindfulness, let's encourage

27:08

or have this be our mindfulness where we encourage

27:11

ourselves to say to ourselves, what's

27:14

helped me get here? I've

27:16

been really moved when I see people who

27:18

credit their caregivers, you

27:20

know, word speeches where women

27:22

will say, yeah, I would like to dedicate

27:24

this to blank, my caregiver. And

27:27

I just think that that kind of thing is

27:29

very crucial. These are teeny teeny

27:31

but important ways that we can show

27:34

our interdependence and our dependence on

27:36

others. Publicly. So I've

27:38

I've sort of tried to start doing this by

27:40

acknowledging the forces that have made

27:42

me who I am. To myself

27:44

too, like, almost as a mantra.

27:59

To succeed, you'd need lots of luck and

28:01

some help from other people. We

28:04

can't legislate

28:04

luck, but how can we help workers? That's

28:07

coming up after one more quick break.

28:20

For years now, it's been very unlikely

28:22

for a big mega box office

28:24

hit to win best picture at

28:26

the

28:27

Oscars. As, like, CGI

28:29

heavy movies sort of started to dominate the top

28:31

ten, that's when you sort of started

28:33

to see that, like, the public taste and the Oscar's

28:35

taste just, like, really really started

28:38

to part ways. Like, I wish they were more

28:40

aligned too, but I kinda want the public to

28:42

maybe, like, you know, They'll see the fable

28:44

ones, guys.

28:44

Like, it's not gonna hurt you. don't know. What's

28:47

up with the Oscars and blackbusters?

28:50

This week, on Intuit,

28:52

Vulture's pop culture podcast. New

28:54

episodes, Tuesdays, and Fridays.

29:00

If there's one company whose jingles have

29:02

burned themselves into my brain,

29:04

that company is Coca Cola.

29:16

But that's not the only thing they burn.

29:18

No indeed. Coca Cola actually

29:20

contracts with a chemical company

29:22

in New Jersey to burn piles

29:25

of

29:25

cocaine. That's right. Cocaine turns

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out

29:27

that Coke's famous secret formula is

29:30

a lot weirder than you can imagine. On the latest

29:32

episode of GastroPod, we've got the Scoop

29:34

on the world's favorite beverage plus

29:36

the backstory of the drug addicted pharmacists

29:39

who invented it, find gastricard and subscribe

29:41

wherever you get your podcasts.

29:55

I had interviewed a an

29:58

economist from Cornell years ago, His

30:01

name was Robert Frank. And

30:03

he told me something that I have never

30:05

been able to forget. He

30:07

pointed out that There's

30:10

a study that found

30:12

that kids from lower

30:14

income families who scored

30:17

in the top quartile on math

30:19

test In the eighth grade

30:21

were less likely to graduate from

30:23

college than students who scored

30:25

in the bottom quartile in

30:27

math, in the eighth grade, but happened

30:29

to be born into homes in which their

30:31

parents were in the top

30:33

third of income distribution.

30:36

And in some ways, that's kind of the whole damn story

30:39

of how wealth and privilege works

30:42

in this country.

30:43

No, exactly. So what

30:46

can we do? Well, I don't know. I mean, you seem hopeful.

30:49

Right? I mean, what we can do is freaking organize,

30:51

I guess. Right? And if your reporting

30:53

is to be believed, and I obviously, I think

30:55

it is, then there is reason to hope.

30:57

Right? That there is some -- Yeah. -- you know, look, where

30:59

there's a lot of pain to go around right

31:01

now. And a lot of people are Illing. And

31:04

as Korinda says, the last several years

31:06

have been, there is a political opportunity

31:08

in that pain and suffering. Right?

31:10

For people to organize and

31:13

and realize that the interest that they share

31:15

with other people and and to

31:17

fight for better conditions, fight for

31:19

a better life, fight for a better social

31:22

reality.

31:23

Right? I mean, you you feel hopeful

31:25

I do feel hopeful, but I don't fully

31:27

know why, but I do. A

31:30

lot of the mutualism piece

31:32

of it, not just the mutual aid,

31:34

but you know, when I I looked into

31:36

what Darwin had written about mutualism

31:39

and I realized that he just frees mutual

31:41

sympathy. And he didn't just

31:43

believe in survival of the fittest. He believed

31:45

in the relationships of, like, the

31:48

ants and the and farm

31:51

and the bugs that are on the animals

31:53

back and the missile toe, which

31:55

is like a, I think, a parasite and, you know,

31:57

the plants are surrounding and the milk weed

31:59

and the monarch. It's natural

32:01

for humans. It's natural for plants. It's natural

32:04

for animals for us to be

32:06

mutual. And so there's like a

32:08

evo or biological rationale

32:10

behind some of the things that I'm arguing

32:12

for.

32:13

Well, that's why I think you're you're right in the book

32:15

to focus so much on some of these foundational myths.

32:18

And I know it can it can be

32:20

a little abstract to talk about some

32:22

of these But, you know, ideas

32:24

have consequences. And some of these

32:26

ideas have taken root in our culture and

32:28

they become justifications

32:31

for a lot of inequities.

32:34

And we internalize

32:36

some of these myths, and we become instruments

32:39

of their reproduction. Oh, I like that. You

32:41

just that was really good, Sean. Instruments

32:45

of their

32:46

like, No. But it's totally good. Yeah. Maybe

32:48

once every episode, I've you know, some

32:50

random nugget comes out. But you know

32:52

what I mean? Like, that's why it's important to try to articulate

32:54

them and try to connect

32:57

them. Right? Because there is a straight line

32:59

from some of these myths about, you know,

33:01

we do it on our own. We're all by ourselves. We're

33:03

not actually in fact interdependent, hopelessly

33:06

so, actually. And it's

33:08

it's important to make that connection because

33:10

I think it's necessary to

33:13

challenge and dismantle and overturn some

33:15

of these stories. If we're

33:17

going to create a world that

33:19

is better and more

33:20

fair, for everyone. Yeah.

33:22

Jesus, I feel like I'm preaching now.

33:24

Did you do, like, academic were

33:27

you a graduate in graduate school and all that? I

33:29

defended my dissertation in in twenty

33:31

fourteen, and I I talked for for

33:33

a couple years after that and doing some

33:35

writing on the

33:36

side, and then I ended up becoming

33:38

journalists and not an academic, obviously.

33:40

Yeah. Well, this is part of it. Right? Like, I felt

33:43

like I couldn't afford to finish graduation. School

33:46

because I was adjuncting and it was crazy.

33:48

I was I mean, I think part

33:50

of what you see in these books is this kind of embodied

33:52

knowledge of some of those experiences because

33:55

I I mean, which you clearly have to,

33:57

where you really wanna do right by these students

33:59

and then you're hustling from

34:02

gig to gig. AND

34:04

WHAT THAT DOES TO PEOPLE'S BODIES

34:07

TO NOT JUST THEIR MINDS OR THEIR POLITICS?

34:10

Adrienne:

34:11

YEAH, when I was adjuncting, I I

34:13

had students who were baristas that

34:15

were making more money than -- Yeah.

34:17

-- than I was. And I wanted to get married

34:19

and and have a family and It

34:21

wasn't that was a profession

34:23

that I really loved. I really loved teaching

34:26

and I really loved working with students. And

34:29

I worked really hard to have an opportunity to do

34:31

that. And it simply wasn't viable

34:33

in the end. I had to walk away because there

34:35

was just no future. For me there.

34:37

There was no security for me there.

34:40

And I'm really lucky in lots

34:42

of ways, and I use that word very deliberately. I mean,

34:45

It is more luck than anything else than I am

34:47

here right now Illing this conversation with you.

34:49

Lots of people I know. Lots

34:51

of my colleagues from

34:54

my academic days could do this.

34:56

There are lots of smart talented people who

34:58

weren't so lucky, who didn't get plucked in the

35:00

way I did, and I'm grateful for that. But

35:02

I owe enormous debt as well. So

35:04

a lot of this stuff does hit home

35:06

for me, and I'm very if it isn't clear,

35:09

I'm really sympathetic too. Your

35:11

project

35:12

here. Oh, thank you so much. But,

35:14

I mean, I'm listening to you. See, I can't

35:16

help but start reporting. And

35:18

I'm I'm listening to you and I'm thinking,

35:21

what you're good at is not just

35:23

this, but it's a you're adaptive. And

35:27

not a rule is. And that's just that's

35:29

something outside of talent and it's outside of

35:31

luck. It's like a third thing. How

35:34

to take whatever skills you have and put

35:36

into a different

35:38

framework and to be have that level of

35:40

flexibility. Yeah. I'm not

35:42

I'm not gonna be falsely modest. I do think I have

35:44

some talent and that has helped me get

35:46

here. But also I was broke when

35:48

I was teaching and I was only able

35:50

to start writing because my wife

35:52

was doing well and she was able to help support

35:55

me And if she wasn't there, if I didn't

35:57

have that help, I wouldn't be too I don't know what

35:59

would have happened to me, but I wouldn't have becoming

36:02

a freelancer was a luxury I would not have been

36:04

able to afford. Without the help I was

36:06

getting from my

36:07

family, from my partner at that time. And

36:10

I try not to forget that. Some people don't have

36:12

that. And both my books, I've I've sort

36:14

of consider them radical self help in

36:16

the sense that they're not in self help

36:18

to realize the structural issues

36:21

at hand. And also to realize

36:23

what has helped you. That's

36:25

a deep self help, the others that have helped

36:27

you. Because it frees you of both

36:30

self blame and arrogance.

36:33

Yeah. Right. I mean, I can can take pride in the work

36:35

that I've done and also be enormously grateful

36:37

the help I received? And this is why I really like the end

36:39

of your book, you know, because you talk about one of

36:41

the things that needs to change, is that

36:43

we just we have to get past this discomfort

36:45

with with talking about money and

36:47

privilege because discomfort and

36:50

the silence it breeds is

36:52

a barrier to

36:55

change. You know, poor people in our

36:57

country are made to feel shameful, further

36:59

condition, and rich people are often too prideful

37:02

to admit that they had help

37:04

and all of that undercuts the sort

37:06

of cross Illing solidarity

37:09

we really need. To be politically effective.

37:11

It also separates people. Yes.

37:14

So it separates people, not just politically,

37:16

but psychologically. I think it breeds

37:18

dishonesty, you know, I try personally

37:21

to sell people where I'm at with,

37:24

you know, economically, I'm not sure I'm always great at

37:26

it, but Illing it brings people I mean, in

37:28

my last book squeezed it was, like, being

37:30

able to be, like, oh, I really have gonna have trouble

37:32

affording day care

37:35

at this time by myself could

37:37

then bring two families

37:39

together. And again, I think that was another

37:42

thing that people saw during the pandemic where you

37:44

had a lot of remote schooling and people pulling

37:46

resources and that forced to kinda honesty,

37:48

like who needed to pull resources and who didn't.

37:50

Right? But I think that's positive.

37:53

Those parts are positive and the

37:55

secrecy around economic

37:57

stability and instability. I mean, we have, like,

37:59

the right on both sides, what's allowed us to

38:02

be who we are and then what's held us back

38:04

Well, I

38:04

thought the group that you report on in the end

38:06

of the book, the patriotic millionaires I

38:08

had never heard of

38:10

of these people before, but I think

38:12

it's pretty cool. And, yeah, you should just

38:14

say what they are. Yeah. I'd love to.

38:17

So the Patrik millionaires, it's part of

38:20

radical philanthropy, I'd say. It's not

38:22

just them. There's this subject place called Soledair

38:24

and there's something called resource generation, and

38:26

there's there's others. But they

38:29

want others to know the

38:31

tax write offs they get, how the

38:33

preferential treatment that wealthy people and

38:35

people with the states in

38:38

our tax system, and they also

38:40

want to change tax law

38:43

more than just to give away their money

38:45

because philanthropy, well,

38:47

it's often commendable. It often also

38:49

does go to pet causes. So you have

38:52

extremely wealthy people giving to their children's

38:54

private school or to their local

38:56

park, which is fine, but that doesn't

38:59

exactly help majority

39:01

of people or even causes

39:03

that are really in need of resources. So

39:06

that's thepatriag millionaire and one

39:08

of them Chuck Collins as somebody that I came

39:10

across through my work at EHRP and

39:13

he gave away his fortune as a young

39:15

man. This

39:16

is the guy that that heir to the Oscar Meyer,

39:18

weir, Fortune, or the hotdog thing with him. Yeah. Yeah.

39:20

Yeah. And has lived this whole life

39:22

of is a kind of class trader

39:25

who has Illing to popularize and

39:28

democratize that kind of

39:30

exposure of privilege

39:33

and and the necessity of

39:35

better tax law. So I thought that

39:36

was, like, really great. I've talked to a lot of

39:39

those folks. Well,

39:40

he's a citizen in the truest and best

39:42

sense of the word. I mean,

39:44

some of them post their tax

39:46

forms, their own tax forms online. Which

39:48

I just thought was

39:49

like, whoa. That is literally putting your

39:51

money on your mouth in. That's

39:52

pretty radical. I don't I don't think I'm gonna do that

39:54

to to to no question. No. But

39:59

that's a kind of transparency that is helpful.

40:01

Right? Because then, again,

40:03

when you're a precarious person

40:05

who's indulging in self blame about you

40:07

know, why you're not able to

40:10

buy your kids better presents than

40:12

Christmas. You can see

40:14

how much more your tax in

40:16

relation to your income than somebody like

40:19

that guy. Yeah. Well, a recurring

40:21

theme on this show, it seems

40:23

in in recent months has

40:25

been the power of stories one way or the

40:27

other and how fidelity to bad

40:29

ones can lead to a lot of misery. And

40:33

that understanding seems to undergird

40:36

so much of your work in in this

40:38

book in particular and

40:40

That's what I dig most about it, apart from all the

40:42

great reporting you've done, so I commend

40:44

you for that.

40:45

Oh, thanks a lot. Yeah, Sean, this is awesome.

40:48

I've really enjoyed this conversation. The book

40:50

is bootstrapped liberating ourselves

40:52

from the American Dream. Alyssa

40:54

Court, this was a pleasure. Patrick

41:16

Boyd engineered this episode. Alex

41:19

Overington wrote RT Music, and

41:21

a m hall is the boss. As

41:24

always, let us know what you think about this

41:26

one. You can send us an email at the gray area

41:28

at box dot com. And if you

41:30

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41:32

share it with your friends on all the socials.

41:35

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41:38

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