Overtime – Episode #596: Nancy MacLean, David Leonhardt

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Are we on?

You're on.

Fucking awesome.

Okay.

David, what is your long-term prognosis for our economy?

Ah.

Wow.

That was a generalized softball

or hard ball, whatever.

I don't know.

What What is my long-term prenesis for our economy?

Let's see.

I'm worried about our economy.

I mean,

when you look at what's happened to living standards for something close to the majority of American people,

they've really stagnated.

And I actually think that's behind so much of what we've been talking about here.

Why do people

believe crazy stuff, right?

Like the pedophilia stuff.

Well, you know, if

if I made less money than my parents and I was less healthy than my grandparents and I looked around my community community and it was filled with all kinds of social problems like opioid addiction, I'd be pretty angry.

And I might be tempted to believe all kinds of bad stuff because the things that the experts were telling me didn't really conform to what was going on in my life.

And so I'm looking backwards, not forwards there, because the real answer to the question is no one knows what the long-term prognosis for the economy is and don't trust anybody.

But we have problems we haven't had in a very long time, like inflation.

Yes, so and certainly we have been running up the debt, but not the levels that we have in recent years where we just sort of went, oh, numbers don't mean anything.

I remember when

in 2008, when we passed, or was it 09 when Obama first got in and

the bill to bail out the economy was like $780 billion and they were like, well, we can't go to a trillion.

That would just freak people out.

And now they write it like it's the dinner check.

I don't know where that leads.

I don't know if that's and I don't know.

But we are in highly unusual conditions.

I think it's worth saying that.

I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic.

We're not in the middle of a Biden.

We're not in the middle of one.

And

it's debatable as to whether we should have lost our shit to that degree.

And there are also people who say lockdowns didn't really change anything.

But I think what David was getting at was the deep long-term structural problems in our economy, which President Biden was seriously trying to address, and every other Democrat in Congress, except Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema.

The one thing I agree with Joe Manchin on is: if you don't like me, elect more Democrats.

So I hope that what we have seen will not depress turnout for 2022 and beyond, because we really need it.

All of the things that were in the Build Back Better bill, so many of them were so popular and so vital.

I mean, the pandemic revealed, just to take one, that we have a child care crisis in this economy.

I mean, women just hemorrhaged out of the workforce because they were trying to raise their kids at home, they were trying to deal with all these issues, and they couldn't take it anymore.

So, we have that's just one index of many, many deep structural problems that we have that Democrats have tried to deal with, and they're being blocked by this crazy Republican Party that's caught between its rich donors like the Cokes and this inflamed base that believes in widespread pedophilia.

But I think it is important to pull out the lens and look at some of the larger issues that are at stake.

And I think David did a really nice job.

Let me ask this: it's kind of anecdotal,

but

so if the answer is taxing the rich more,

I'm going to own up to it, I'm rich,

and I don't feel that bad about it.

I appreciate HBO's generosity all these years.

So, how could it be that, like for I can't remember the last year when I paid

less than half of what I make to the government?

I pay more than half

because it's 39% federal and out here 13%, and that's without

fees and getting solar hooked up and

billionaire because billionaires was just exposed with the effort to get to a 20% billion.

Because they're only paying

a billion dollars.

Do you have a kit that I could

a year, while the rest of us Schmoes are paying a thousand?

Is that what it is?

I'm just

going to

pay taxes on the Washington Post.

I've slipped from y'all.

The Washington Post is excellent.

How can I pay so much in taxes and yet still so much of the country is living paycheck to paycheck?

I mean, if the answer, I don't know how high they can go.

I think the two things are, I have no doubt you're paying a lot in taxes.

I mean, I wouldn't mind if I didn't also have this other thing on my shoulders, which is so many people are suffering and can't even make a living, which I want to help.

The two things I would say are: one, rich people pay a lot less in taxes as a share of their income than they used to, than they did in the 50s and 60s and 70s.

It's my accountant.

No, it's the law.

It really is.

And two.

Dude, I'm not married.

If you look at how rich people have done.

Because that one's not on the table.

If you look at how rich people have done, even after taxes, over the last few generations.

And not just rich people, upper-middle-class people as well.

People like university professors and journalists at national publications, they've done fine, and even after taxes, and working class people haven't.

Okay.

All right.

What are the thought panel's thoughts on Elon Musk becoming Twitter's single largest shareholder?

I'm for it.

Do you think his influence will have a positive or never negative impact on the platform?

I loved hearing from the

employees who had worked with him, under him in previous capacities, who were saying, oh my God, you know, I mean, he has shut down conversations before.

Will he be able to do this here, et cetera?

I'm not a big person.

Wait, wait, who's shut down conversations?

Elon Musk.

Where?

In his company.

It was, I don't know, again, this, I think, was this New York Times today?

You know, you read,

I read only respectable publications, I can assure you.

It sounds like you only read publications that you already agree with.

Not true.

Amazon.

It figured me out because I read so much conservative stuff.

I read all the wackos on the radical right.

Read my books.

You will see that I read their stuff in close detail.

Yeah.

You can get me on the other stuff.

You can call me the humorous thing.

My honest reaction to the Elon Musk news are we're going to have to read Donald Trump's tweets again soon.

That was my honest, that was like my huge reaction.

Which is a tough one, because once they took Trump off Twitter, things did get better.

But it's a terrible, it's bad for free speech,

and then they're going to go somewhere, and then the resentment, and then the idea that, well, you know, the people who are ganging up against us, the media and big tech and big government, I mean, that's the convoy.

You know, those convoys in Canada and all over the world, people are like, what are they so upset about?

Like, it's hard to delve into that, but it's some sort of thing.

Yes.

I don't want to provoke you to use your Second Amendment rights on me, but this is one of these moments where I wish I had my pocket copy of the Constitution because so much of the discussion of free speech in this country is not informed by the text of the First Amendment, which protects us from Congress, from government taking away our free speech rights.

But we don't have to listen to all speech that we disagree with, that's unpleasant, that's obnoxious.

Like when I was a kid, like my mom taught me.

Who decides what's obnoxious?

I could read it.

No, but I'm just saying,

a private employer can fire someone for anything.

You know, if you don't have a union contract, a private employer can fire you because they don't like the color of your hair or the way you smiled or, you know, what shirt you wore.

They can fire you for anything.

I'm not sure they can do that anymore.

They actually can.

Unless it's discrimination, Unless it's been outlawed by law.

They can.

But my point is that there's a difference between government shutting down speech, as we're seeing in these Republican-controlled states that are saying

don't say gay, you know,

teachers can't talk about the truth of American history, all of this stuff.

That is deeply alarming.

But if I decide something's not funny and I walk away, or I think a book is obnoxious, I don't have to buy it.

Like, that's my freedom.

And their free speech is to say those things, but they don't have a right to force people into listening.

Well, it's a no, of course you don't have to turn on the TV if there's something you don't like, but that's different.

I mean, and we live in a different age where Twitter is the market, the public square now.

If you deny someone's right to speak on Twitter, you're basically saying you don't have free speech rights.

I mean, that's where it is.

We're not living in 1980 anymore.

This is a different world we live in, where social media controls this.

So, social media is sort of a,

well, I mean, it's living in a space that's not exactly a publication, but it's not exactly a private company either.

It's tricky.

And that's what we have to do.

It is.

That's why it's so tricky.

Because, I mean, CBS and ABC and NBC and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, I think they fit the description you just gave of Twitter.

Let's go back 50 years ago, right?

When those media dominated the public discussion.

Right.

But they didn't air lies about election fraud.

Right?

You couldn't turn on Walter Cronkite and hear, like, actually, Barry Goldwater won the election, right?

But that's now what you get on Twitter.

I understand, but Twitter also said you couldn't, they banned you talking about whether coronavirus came from a lab.

And it may well have, and even the Biden administration admits that now.

We don't know where coronavirus came from, but there's no reason to think it couldn't have emerged from a lab.

They had a lab in Wuhan that was studying coronavirus.

And you couldn't even discuss that.

That's outrageous.

I think that's what Elon Musk wants to fix at Twitter.

I think tricky is too much.

So what's the context, though, also of elderly Asians being just randomly attacked on the streets?

It has nothing to do with that.

Well, the president of the United States was calling it the China virus.

Every virus has been called from the place it came from.

I could list you 10 different viruses.

Ebola virus, the West Nile virus.

MERS was Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome.

They were all named from where they came from and Spanish flu.

Nobody ever gave a shit.

Suddenly, it was about racism.

But you agree Trump was Trump.

Of course.

Trump always makes everything worse.

We can't use that as the standard.

But to say that we can't, but I mean, talk about indoctrination.

To say that you can't talk about whether the virus came from a lab because it was in Asia and that's somehow anti-Asian racism, that's insane.

To connect to that.

I don't think I'm saying that either.

I think you know.

Oh, I thought you were.

Well, you brought it up.

No, but it is back to balance.

But I I think that actually thinks there's a common thread there, right?

Which is I think a lot of liberals saw conservatives doing really wacky stuff about on COVID, right?

Like not taking the vaccine, right?

And so they...

Demanding ivermectin from tired person.

And also lied about ivermectin and said it was only a horse medicine and it wasn't.

That's also a half-truth.

Most liberals would have told you ivermectin was horse dewormer when it's been prescribed millions and millions of times for humans.

That sort of thing.

I could never trust anybody because I only get half the story.

Well,

I think the mistake that liberals are making here is liberals say they see conservatives doing something that is outrageous and wrong, and they basically say, well, then there's nothing wrong with us going totally in the other direction.

And I think that's true on both of these things.

And I actually think it ends up hurting progressive ideals, right?

So yes, the racism that Asian Americans experienced in this country was absolutely horrific.

And Donald Donald Trump and members of the Republican Party fomented that racism, right?

And

they are partly responsible for those attacks on Asian Americans.

Calling that out is incredibly important.

Saying that you can't discuss the lab leak hypothesis.

I don't believe that.

No, I know you don't.

I know you don't.

But there are definitely a lot of people who are not going to be able to do that.

That's what Twitter did.

You can't discuss it.

That doesn't do anything to combat Asian American racism, right?

Just as wearing a cloth mask to keep yourself from getting chinned in doesn't actually protect people who are immune to compromise.

And I just think it's really important that liberals are supposed to be the people who believe in science and ideas, and I think they often do.

Just make sure you keep that theory and you don't decide that if conservatives are saying it, it has to be wrong.

And I'm going to go in the other direction.

And I'm not talking to you.

Look for truth.

Right.

We will.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, both.

Really fun.

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