Proud of the realignment of the podcast last year especially for those who have not been following that that you take a look at the episodes of last year those conversations with secretary of state mike pompeo and Mike Gallagher and others with an Excellent Program with their ability to bring out topics and to move the argument along we went to thank them for that we are happy to launch this Years Program as many of you know is a prolific writer with a dozenf books and cofounder of the new American Foundation toy encourage from Walter Russell mead a professor at the university of texas and important for tonights conversation the author of the new class war faith in democracy from the managerial elite was just published today so we are just here at the launch congratulations. A direct line between the new class war and that which best exemplified the next American Revolution and whether you agree witham this interpretation of politics since world war ii to demonstrate thatst serious effort that never ending cycle of clashes which is exactly what the realignment podcast seems toli explore also joining us is jd vance was the premier guest the author of the bestselling highly influential book hillbilly all edgy and recently cofounded a Venture Capital firm investing in people and technology and also a visiting fellow at aei i have only started i have only read his book if you havent its an important discussion that they would say is outside of the bubble at the beginning of the book to say pluralism is the cure im not sure if that is a throw down to a room full of people in washington dc but we are pleased to start from that discussion. Wens will take questions later in the program and email those to event at hudson. Org as we get to that part of the program so that this will not be a problem so please join me to welcome michael and jd vance if you have any questions am sure you will be sick of hearing us talk so with that marshall start us off. From the managerial elite what is class war . It is a conflict of quasi hereditary classes your parentage is associated with a particular structure or occupation and we think we live in the mayor craddick system but if you look at what i argue is the fundamental transatlantic society its not aftertax income you are much more likely to get a diploma if your parents have a diploma so i argue that in europe as well as the United States both sides of the atlantic are similar enough to make the robust generalization. That as europe has become more multiethnic in the United States is more secular what you see is the divide socially and politically between the thirds majority. Do you agree with that because for several years now it seems like you are suggesting thatt class status matters more than income then to explain how Society Works to the average american has a hbachelors degree of an income 60000 per year the average High School Graduate with no higher edge of education is 37000 so there is a correlation but unlike in the past where class status was ownership of property if you were ebenezer scrooge Small Business owner, the elites in the western world today their wealth and power and status comes from a large Bureaucratic Organization it could be a law firm or a nonprofit and access to those lucrative positions is largely determined by education. One of the common retort is why is it education . Saying a plumber could make 100,000 if they were rich. Based on your own experience how do you see that in American Society . I largely agree with mike. So what is true i 95 percent agree with that. What is mostly true about that iaccount if you go to a suburb of ohio and then the people that work there without the spouse and the children and between that firm and the Majority Shareholder for example. So there is something about the way Educational Status confers and reinforces and its truly important in our society. They cannot earn their living off of capital appreciation. So there is a way to call the professional managerial class and that of the 91st percentile. Of the managerial class who are these people and the transatlantic sense and the transatlantic sense different classifications one that refers to the small subsection and these tend to be people where you set your own hours, lawyers and doctors and professors or podcast host. [laughter] work from home basically. So they are three classes the working class , professional managerial class and professors than the capitalist. And i reject this. I followed james was an early conservative of the 19 forties who wrote the book the managerial revolution who argued the independent Owner Operator was a capitalist but also ran his own business supersede all that by the 19 twenties by corporate managers but he also included in the managerial class government officials, career civilil servants, academics and in a passage that few people not note, he said career military which would become more and more important over time. And the deep state which he was a part of he worked for the cia a lot. So i have a broader definition than a lot of people. But again, when you contrast with the working class, that is changing its nature because of the changing composition of jobs loss of manufacturing through outsourcing but also productivity growth. If you look at the United States according to bureau of labor statistics almost all were created in three sectors of hospitality, retail and healthcare. According to the Us Government all but the top ten jobs that were created only registered nurse requires any education beyond a High School Diploma so the story that we are told that the jobs of the future require education, actually they dont. Americans and their counterparts in europe are underpaid. They are not overeducated but they are underpaid because they lack Bargaining Power from 40 or 50 years ago. So what we have not quite understood yet is the war so we know there is an educational system. We can buy the idea but where is the war that is not only looking down upon the working class to benefit themselves the book is not a Conspiracy Theory but the elders of science and there isnt San Francisco where the rulings class gets together its just it is unevenly distributed among social groups and h dividuals pursue their own interest even though there is no coordination to say the class is doing it but is just the loss of individual actions. If you look at Public Policy from the 19 nineties to the present, globalization. So the unwillingness to acknowledge there are tradeoffs with investment. And then this constant propaganda free trade hits everybody. That there are winners and losers. But that policy that is step one that benefits the winners and it is taboo. So one of the institutions to make sure there is equal Bargaining Power. Ted the late fifties. That is primarily the right to work story saying right to work is primarily globalization. The church classic institution the essential fabric ensures and the direction of the culture and there are some policies implement that culture and has fallen off the cliff since the fifties. And those where the working class children grew up in stable and healthy happy rooms that that formation or dissolution has dropped substantially and family stability has maintained more or less the level of the fifties or sixties. All of these are necessary to ensure they could live happy lives but have a meaningful stake in society to disappear or become substantially weak. So there has been class war. From. That perspective i agree but yet the critics that you are apology one apologizing inflating anxiety for racial resentment citing the mit study and those that are most likely to support donald trump and Bernie Sanders. That is the case then why would they be supporting somebody like Bernie Sanders . Talking specifically about the economic anxiety piece. There were these three narratives of the uprising so one is a spontaneous eruption of neonazi racism maybe that was manipulated by Vladimir Putin from the kremlin and he triggered a wave of boys from brazil white nationalists that is a partisan alibi its not a serious story. The other is about money or rising inequality. And it goes down from the 19 twenties and goes up again. If it is just about money to have aftertax redistribution to give them checks and they will be happy. That it is about power. Power is independent of money to influence your life in society and in that governmental realm and libertarians get upset with me but there is economic power in the marketplace you do not have Bargaining Power there is cultural power in the media. If you dont like the offer you have for your children on tv or movies you cant goal found your own movie studio or social media platform. That is power. On the basis of the american creed the idea that you could not trust concentrated power of any kind. They didnt have media back then. And then to diffuse power and checks and balances in and of itself. So itss all about money so if we centralize and give a 500dollar tax credit then you should be happy. Im not a fan of economic anxiety is much more complicated and difficult than that not having a good job or decent wage but looking outside your door and now every single store is closed up that your friend has died of the Opioid Epidemic ago but its about this feeling of losingsi agency and power of your own life. The point that i make about this that the trump mode of voters were motivated by pure racism they are just bad people dont have to consider care about their concerns. So about the trumpet so is that it was also heavily related and the rise of the depths of despair from romney to trump from 2016 that a member of the elite actually calls at the Opioid Epidemic killed a whole lot of people that if we are not talking that that they have been looking for the past two decades. That the white majority is shrinking and, in those economic factors how do we handle that cracks that there is a big cultural shift going on. It has to be managed in a particulare way and never felt once in my life that you want people who feel like they themselves are assimilating people who have been here for multiple generations to assimilate as well. One of the problems we talk about it in economic terms , but unless you are thinking about the metrics of assimilation are trying to manage and control that for the f overall population i do think that inflames the cultural or ethnic tensions that is true there is no good example from a society that has a large number of outsiders you can blame that on racism then you have to manage it and deal with it and suppress that in a certain way so talking about culture we stop trying to manage it and to build a unified nation and i like that it brings allied benefit a lot of benefit that you can call that social strife which we have seen inn America Western europe is much worse example. 100 years ago 1920 id political social and fight one di divide with White Americans dissent so because of the battle of the rural whites and the ethnics you have prohibition between the catholics and the protestants but that multiculturalism why should the european immigrants speak english cracks the european diaspora had collapsed in most of the big cities. By the seventies the average White American was of british and non british dissent. We hear this about the rising nonwhite majority counting every descendent with the Nonhispanic White will be nonwhite for the next 200 years. Latinos lose spanish is the primary language outside of their group at exactly the same rate as irishamerican German Italian americans did one century ago. So this racial polarization politics is greatly exaggerated and those and Nonhispanic Whites and 29 percent but that is not enormously polarized. Let shift to the discussion to the criticism of populism for those who advocate for populiste policies is that you are just shouting at the system and dont actually advocate for anything. You just want to tear everything down. You are actually sympathetic to thatat view. To be well conducted establishments between reconstruction the civil rights revolution but when you get a condition in like at the southern example in latin america in the north and the white ethnic politicians in the northeast they represented the irish americans going against the mayflower protestant power structure. They almost always fail because the odds are stacked against the outside them and when they do succeed it is through criminality. In my own native texas we had james and his wife who succeeded each other in the twenties. They did some good things for the farmers and couldnt get any money. And all of the chicago mafia to bring in slot machines so as a populist governor with a slot machine money so every two weeks a certain portion of every state employees was deducted. It was like the atomic football with the president. And then you must have some type of reconstruction. So how do you navigate that professionalism needed to enact populist reforms cracks what you think of michaels prescription that what he proposes later on . Something im a big fan of of how you may reinvigorate with all the pressures that exist to make it more compromising so the policies are in some ways out there. That most of the details the populist compromise politics will look like are not actually there. We have to figure that stuff out. So mike and i were talking about this earlier to collect the right populist people may be o 40 percent so then you take out another 60 percent. There is a way the institutions that it is not really wellsuited we really worry that with the think tank intellectuals so the criticism there are populist policies is fair but to build those you first have to sketch out the general wayy to settle these issues. To sum up the idea is that postworld war ii their cultural and political power you could check Corporate Power on the cultural side with the censorshipns organization with that bad cultural stagnation but at the same time look at the Chinese Companies and then we say i guess tom cruise will be anti japan now. [laughter] so on the political side to be local corrupt political strongmen in thest legislature in one hand we see as corrupt and the primary system. So why does this whole status quo fall apart . The working class exercised its power by veto power. It doesnt have the resources or the expertise to come up with its own plans and that the hollywood producers but they could say no. And that they say no to a candidate. The local political bosses were important is someone you could go see in your neighborhood if you had a problem. They connected you with the state party and so then to give suitcases of Walking Around money. So the only thing worse of the local party powerbrokers is not having them. Because billionaires likes dire or bloomberg or trump can buy. Just before coming here out of curiosityc, my grandmother who grew up on a farm in Central Texas her africanamerican friends with very similar backgrounds were part of the Travis County democratic party. And then they just had a donate button National State and county to donate which tells you something about the structure of politics. It is a spectator sport unless you are a donor or a candidate. So what do your views look like politically economic orry culturally. But thereee is no victory where conservatives when everything so what does that new settlement look like. So to preface that and the new class war to have another class peace treaty the industrial capitalism is the greatest engine of economic development. You do not want the employer class but also you dont want the working class to be so powerful if we were in a different situation where the managerial class was too weak or powerful or whatever in a different book. We need to have that functional equivalent with the new class war i call them the local political entity of some kind. And secular as it becomes more secular like western europe and then to encompass all laborin organization so the unions and churches but they would serve some of the same purpose of the working class people and then to influence society. You dont have expertise so unless those are organized in the institutional. And launching into your settlement y idea what type does this require from that baked inha ideology to even consider these as a viable solution . First of all, it requires us to imagine effective government is better than no government and requires the willingness to acknowledge policies at Different Levels they do think we have undergone a weird transformation and i have grown up in this conservative publication but we made a leap to the Public Sector is always the wrong engine to do things thats a terrible way to think about the world even before you start the conversation. So my answer is i dont know if i have a very good answer and then to reinvigorate those Community Institutions or to summarize weathers church or communal to have those i can push for their interest and to advocate for their membership. But i do worry. In this book is excellent that we encourage everybody to buy im worried we are incapable of actually solving the problems. Its not that we reach this juncture five or ten years from now but undergo a ten or 15 or 20 year period of managed decline. I do think there is a way the institutions are broken. I dont know what congress does right now. Looking at the impeachment , its all very late Roman Republic ish and that worries me. I dont know what that answer is out of that conundrum but in onthink that if there is an answer we are willing to push for then we should pay attention. Thats a bleak assessment. There is a story of the economist and philosopher Adam Smith Reading the newspaper one day. And he said britain is ruined. And professor smith said no there is a great deal of ruin in the country. [laughter] more to come. [laughter] we have some really Great Questions one that we talked about was donald trump. The political realignment so how often we dont end up talking about it. This is one of the central communication or has he governed more as a pre trump republican. And i assume high skilled workers. And dad had less to do with Muslim Brotherhood versus Arnold Schwarzenegger or just event or a. And when you get the celebrity outsider president ssi, there are two choices. They can either govern that from the very beginning, trump became a republican he has not been one he was an independent most of his life but that is the fundamental decision that he made with the tax cut but with one exception where the president has far more discretion were much more independent than your party in congress and george w. Bush left the country obama was elected because he would end the wars but and seems to favor the ceat theatrical display of force as the alternative and the other area to bring in robert light heiser who was a democrat. Not a republican. So i think not just inferring this from his actions decided i will write a blank check to the republicans of congress on domestic policy but i will push my priorities for policy and trade. I think the first couple years of the administration illustrated it with that domestic policy is that heritage not quite ready for the reagan revolution they were blindsided over the past 15 or 20 years i dont thank you see that substantial realignment but that political peace you still see the shift so there is a weird way that policy hasnt caught up with the a politics so that specific iteration is that the china issue trump deserves remarkable credit for shifting the conversation this stuff to say how different the elite consensus was in 2014 relative to today. Also may be the front runner both economically and the credit for that narrative goes largely to the 2016 election. And most say that thats not a political realignment im not sure why itea is. One of those least that could be implemented to restore a more even balance of power. Labor naturally wants to haver a sellers market and a buyers market. So thats why and then for those restricted immigration policies. As the former Country Club Republicans are postal democrats with their children and grandchildren you would see that shift by the employer perspective. Even if you dont do anything else it is paid vacation anything that makes employers for workers can help Bargaining Power. I agree with that to give second answer is a substantial increase. And then to restart productivit productivity. Its primarily a lack of technical so may be spending to get the economy in a position today to make is incorporating the working class . Not that attempt to make those marginal adjustments and then to redistribute power and many. Se i disagree with that with the fdr parallel with those postwar settlements and having gone through war of the capital and labor as the marxist on the right. And if they can preserve their privilege with joseph kennedy. And supporting friend on Franklin Roosevelt for the new deal he said i would give way half of my fortune to keep the other half. And that post depression and that corporatism or the class compromise. The uk and the United States if you look at those that refuse to engage in that compromiseso but there is something pretty unpredictable that to reform the system as best you can that one would typically triumph. So that ongoing social media station. And how you describe that to lose power and influence. There is a radical difference of the social classes. And those that are overwhelmingly collegeeducated. And those podcast. But to exaggerate the role of media that much and with the internet and then to be mesmerized or hypnotized it through the whole Conspiracy Theory to brainwash africanamericans. That i remember back in the seventies when norman lear all in the family came out to promote liberal values for most of the people who watched it thought archie was the hero and the whole point of the show was to make fun of the collegeeducated media. To be more conspiratorial, conspiratorial, when i go to a restaurant with my family and then to recognize fundamentally the modern it Business Model is what they Call Information arbitrage. And with those revenues that they make for as long as possible and there is something very disturbing about the way it captures our attention. I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs with the productivity on their workforce working eight or nine hours maybe only working for five because they are so absorbed in their devices. E d to a lot of entrepreneurs with the productivity on their workforce working eight or nine hours maybe only working for five because they are so absorbed in their devices. I dont think thats what we are doing. So the last is education that transcends the shared interest. This doesnt share the same level of education. And that education is useful. As much as the different studies show the jobs that can be run with ba does not require anything more than a high school education. And for those that have that sense of disconnect and the perfectly respectable workingclass jobs they think they are degraded this is the status they expected. So that progressivism if professionals make more money if you give everyone a ba like a High School Diploma or ged remember he g was like the doll go aristocrat that had no money. I was skeptical there was always a debate to primarily signaling the development the most powerful advocates that has an average class size to tell the people and alumni we should triple or quadruple the average size of the Law School Class and that exclusiveness of the degree. That his social signaling. [laughter] [applause] [inaudible conversations] i have a tendency to wrote multiple times reprogramming the American Dream this is a book focused on how ai could be changing Rural Communities across america those with the phd studies from rural virginia there are seven Rural Counties talking about