Maps. What on the man anytime, unfiltered cspan. Org coronavirus. Good evening and welcome to upton Institute Foreign policy center. Im john walters, since the operating officer and i like to welcome our audience here at our pennsylvaniaavenue headquarters. And our defense audience to our first ever podcast taking that is both live and march 2 season of the premier of the podcast of the Second Season of the realignments hosted by hudson media fellows Marshall Marshall kosloff. We are proud of the realignments. The podcast launched last year and i recommend especially for those of you who havent been following it , if you take a look at the results from last year, particularly the conversation with secretaryof state mike pompeo, josh only , chris armani, mike gallagher, mike doran and others. Its an Excellent Program partly because of the 2 people who put it together and their ability to bring up topics and to move the argument along so we could be proud of the work that theyve done and i want to thank them or that and we are happy to launch this years program. With michael lind who is as many of you know a prolific writer, more than a dozen books, cofounder of the new America Foundation with hudson on ravenel. English fellow in strategy and statesmanship, walter russellneed. Michael is a professor at lyndon b. Johnson school of Public Affairs at university of texas and important for tonights conversation, he is the author of the new class war, saving democracy from the managerial ellie. Which you can purchase that, just published today so we are here at the launch, congratulations michael on that new book. Theres a direct line between the new class war and the work that michael has done and has been pursuing since the 90s. Maybe best exemplified by his book the next American Revolution the new nationalism and before the american resolution area the next american nation, new nationalism and the fourth American Revolution. Whether you agree with his interpretation of western politics since world war ii has worked demonstrates a serious effort to understand the causes of and solutions to a seemingly neverending cycle of clashes and shipping coalitions which is exactly what our realignment podcast takes to explore. Also dont joining us is jd vance who fittingly was the realignments premier guest. Jd of course is the author of the bestselling and highly influential book hillbilly elegy, a powerful account of family, community and america. He recently cofounded a Venture Capital firm investing in people and technologies working to solve significant challenges, also a visiting fellow at aei. I only started his book, i have a horse read jd vances book which if you havent, you should. Its an important discussion of a part of america that maybe someone like Charles Murray would say is outside the mobile of the elite classes. At the beginning of michaels new book he says demagogic populism is the symptom of technocratic media a liberalism is the disease, democratic pluralism is the cure. Im not sure if that is a throwdown for this evening but we are pleased to start from that discussion and to take on that issue which is health. We will take questions later in the program and you can email those two events at hudson. Org and we will get them up to marshall as we get to that part of the program so send them along, i know everybody here is technically sophisticated so this will not be a problem. Without any further ado, please join me in welcoming michael, michael lind and jd vance. [applause] michaels going to be available after the talk to sign books so if you think its great, take a second to get those out area and just to reiterate if we have any questions, its events hudson. Org. At this point ill speak for you. With that marshall, let me start us off. The book is called the new class war saving democracy from the managerial ellie. Lets defined terms, whatis a class war . The class war is conflict among quasihereditary classes where your parentage is associated with a particular structure of occupations. And we think we live in meritocratic system but if you look at what i argue is the fundamental cleavage in modern transatlantic society which is educational, its not a matter of mere aftertax income, theres , youre much more likely to get a diploma if one or both of your parents have diplomas which are kind of the degrees of nobility. And if both of your parents did not. So i argue that in europe as well as the United States i think both sides of the atlantic are similar enough now to make robust generalizations. That would have been the case 40, 50 years ago but as europe has become more multiethnic, as the United States has become more secular theres convergence and what you see is arguably this widening divide, socially and politically to the College Educated and the more or less 2 3 majority which does not have even a bachelors degree. You agree with that because you interpret what youre saying it seems like youre suggesting unlike in previous eras last status is denoted by Education Matters more than income in terms of explaining the way our society works. Yes and number the average american who has a bachelors degree has an income of about 60,000 here. The average High School Graduate with no Higher Education is about 37,000 so theres a correlation. But unlike in the past, where class status was based on ownership of property, whether you were a feudal landlord or you were and enemies are screwed mole business owner, you were the Owner Operator of a business. The elites in the western world today largely, their wealth and their power and their status tends to come from their position in a large bureaucratic organization. India corporation or law firm, it can be a nonprofit. It can be the military and access to those lucrative influential positions is largely determined by education area. I think one of the comments retorts that is why is it education is the great denotative class. Michael and i were speaking this morning talking about a plumber and set up a number could make 100,000 and the rich. Based on yourexperience, how do you see that cleavage in american society. I think i largely agree with mike and first of all let me thank you both for doing this. Next time you have on please tell me what. But i think that whats true about mikes account, i dont know that i 100 percent agree but like 95 percent agree to what seems to be mostly true about that account is that if you go to a suburb in Cincinnati Ohio and you go to a Plumbing Firm and you go to the guy who owns the firm and you go to the people who work there. And then you go to the clerical staff , theres something much more similar about that group of people, about their spices, about their children and there is between lets say the owner of the Plumbing Supply firm and a person who is a majority or large shareholder at google for example so i do think that theres nothing about the way in which Educational Status both converters those sort of reinforces and signifies class status as its really important in our society and of course most people do not, the gross majority of people cannot learn their living off of Capital Appreciation so there is this weird way in which what mike called the professional managerial class is of internally coherent even though it might not have the sort of person at the 91st percentile of the income scale is not going to have the same income as a personat the 99. 9 percent of the income scale. To tie a bow on this on the managerialclass, people throw it around on the progressive left. Who are these people in particular, you characterize them as a large bureaucratic organization. Its corporate elite or is it just the transatlantic sense, what is it that defines them as aclass . There are different definitions read the left has something it called the pnc, professional managerial class which refers in my mind is simply a small subsection of the managerial elite these tend to be people in the professions where you more or less set your own hours, lawyers, doctors, more in the past and present professors, podcast posts. If you can work from home basically. Go this progressive theory is there are three classes, theworking class, professional managerial class, broadcasters and professors and then theres the capitalists. Up there and ireject this. I followed James Burnham , the trotskyist and early conservative movement. Of the 1940s wrote the book the managerialrevolution. He argued that the independent Owner Operator who was the catalyst but also ran his own business had been superseded already by the 1920s in the us and in europe by corporate managers but he also included in the managerial class government officials, career civil servants, academics and in a passage that few people note in the managerial revolution in 1940 he said the career military, the uniformed military which would become more important over time as one of the most organized, long before the deep state which he was kind of part of because he worked for the cia a lot and the ensuing decade. So i have a broader definition of that and a lot of people but again, its if you contracted with workingclass, the workingclass is changing its nature because of the changing composition of jobs. Through loss of manufacturing through outsourcing also just through ordinary productivity growth. Manufacturing has shut a lot of jobs and if you look at the United States according to the bureau of labor statistics almost all of the new jobs are created in numerous receptors read its leisure and hospitality, leisure and healthcare. And according to the Us Government of the top 10 jobs that are being created in numerical terms, only registered nurse requires any Education Beyond High School diploma, so the story that we are told at davos and aspen and not here obviously is the jobs of the future require an advanced education. Actually they dont. Americans and their counterparts in europe are underpaid. They are not overeducated in my argument in the new class war is the underpaid Bargaining Power of the kind that they 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Thing that i haventquite understood yet from the conversation is the war part. We can buy that theres an educational system that preferences people of degrees we can buy the idea of Certain Industries over others but wheres the war . A war suggest theres a group of people, the elite not only looking down on the workingclass trying to harm them to benefit themselves. Im curious what your take on that is. The book is not a Conspiracy Theory. Its not the protocols of the elders of zion and i dont think theres some secret office in washington or new york or San Francisco where the committee of the ruling class gets together. Its just that when power is unevenly distributed among social groups , and individuals pursue their own interests , the result even though it is not, theres no coordination is going to look as though the class is doing it its just the result of lotsof individual actions. If you look at Public Policy from the 1990s to the present , globalization. One of the things that just amazes me as a student of politics all my life is the unwillingness of people to acknowledge that there are tradeoffs with trade. With immigration, with investment. That different groups of some society, some benefits and some loose and theres this constant data propaganda, freetrade everybody. Immigration benefits everybody and you just think this is totally unrealistic. There are winners and there are losers area that part of the war. The policy that benefits both winners is the one that is just, the only one that is definitive in public and the one only one you here that becomes taboo to discuss the views of the losers. Thats the kind of war. Classic institution that cements workingclass social fabric and it also ensures work less participants have participation in the direction of the culture and attraction of Public Policies that influence the culture. Workingclass since the 1960s and the third in the big one is the place in which workingclass children row up and stable happy healthy homes. We know thats becoming a luxury that the workingclass family formation drops substantially, professional class has maintained a low level with the slight decline where was in the 50s and 60s. All of these institutions which were necessary and ensuring workingclass people were able to live happy lives had also have a Meaningful Life has basically either disappeared or become substantially weaker. The minimum i would say is there has been a class war and its pretty clear who is losing. From that perspective i agree with all that and yet the critics and specifically in your book Michael Bennett come out and j. D. Who says you are apologizing and conflating economic anxiety which is the rightwing talking point for racial resentment but you counter that in a recent piece he wrote in the wall street journal citing in am is tea m. I. T. Study. We are most likely to support donald trump and Bernie Sanders and so if that were the case then why would we support someone like Bernie Sanders and j. D. Of course i want to get you in on that and to talk specifically about the economic anxiety that really demonizes religious up colleges him for racism. Bearers to narratives about this populist uprising with trump in the u. S. And brexit and france and so one could one is its just a spontaneous eruption of neoracism which maybe was manipulated by Vladimir Putin from the crewmen and that is triggered this wave of boys from brazil like nashville is about to overthrow democracy in the u. S. And the uk and france and so on. You can tell what i think of that area and its a partisan alibi for the loss of Hillary Clinton in germany. Its not a serious story could more serious is the story its about money and inequality and progressives in particular like to have this graph and it goes down from the 1920s and then it goes up again and if its just about money than you have after tax redistribution and you get these workingclass people checks and they will be happy. The story i tell it in the new class war is its about power. The ability to influence your life and influence your society and power exists outside of the narrow government and libertarians get upset with me for this point but there is economic power in the marketplace. You do not have equality the quality Bargaining Power between most employers and employees. There is cultural power in the media. If you dont like the offer for your children you find you are at the movies or whatever you cant just found your own movie studio. That is power and particularly for americans the basis of the american creed was in the 18th century they called for public liberty. He could not trust concentrated power of any kind. They did not media back then or political power and diffusing power and having checks and balances is good in and of itself. I think we have kind of loss this with this narrative about its all about money and if we centralized power but we give you a 500dollar tax credit for 2000dollar tax credit every year then you should be happy. I was going to say i call the crass materialistic view of economic society. With trump its much more complicated and difficult but its not just having a good job or decent wage or not have enough money to afford basic needs of looking outside your door saying a community that was driving 20 or 30 years ago or finding out yet again one of your friends or one of your kens friends has died. Its not economic in a strict sense but its about the feeling of losing agency and losing power over your own life. I make this point a fair amount but i think its important so i will make it here again. You have to understand what the purpose is of the narrative that trump voters were motivated by pure racial inside a pretty fair just racist and just bad people you dont have to care about their concerns are their worries. Those two things very substantially or about the trump vote. One is that it was really related to the china shock which david has written about. We also know was heavily related to the rise in what folks have called despaired when you see a rise in the opiate related death in the communities see a significant shift from rummy to trump in 2016. If you are focused on the fact that all these people are racist and youre not concerned about the fact that a member of the elite actually calls it an opioid adamic academic and flooded these communities with drugs drugs and killed a lot of people and if we are talking about that we are talking about trumps racism where precipitating the class war which they have been winning for the past two decades. How do we balance the race in the cultural issue . The critics point out its a true fact is, the countrys white majority is shrinking in the places that are experiencing the most anxiety are also being accosted by economic vector so how do we handle that because the one legitimate part of the critique is this idea that theres a vague cultural shift going on. Part of it as is that has to be managed in a particular way. I am married to a firstgeneration immigrant and ive never felt once in my life that we didnt belong to the national community. People who feel like they themselves are assimilating with people who have been here for multiple generations of assimilating as well. I think one of the problems with their immigration policy we talk about it in economic terms and its important to the story but unless you are thinking about intermarriage rates and talking about metrics of assimilation trying to ma