Very generous people, but they are actually stingy grinches. You are a very generous person, but you like to pretend that you are stingy grinch. All of which i say because i know were going to have a very heated conversation here. You dont agree with . All of my views and i cannot be more for it. Im excited as well and while i dont agree with everything in the book, found it to be a really fascinating of so many working class people. You did just tremendous reporting for it. So lets get right into first. You start with an easy question. What inspired you to write this . After doing your first book about the news industry, the media, and how that had changed from a working class profession, an elite profession . I see how this follows logically from that, but could you tell us more about process of actually writing this book . Absolutely. So in my first book, bad news how woke media is undermining democracy, what i found was was that the main characteristic of our news media, which is suffering from just historic lows and trust was not that it was polite sickly partizan, but that it was made up of the over credentialed college elites. A class divide has come to define American Life and our news media is much on the side of. One of the halves of that divide the College Educated and as i was writing that book, i to understand something that i think is really fundamental about and yet totally misunderstood and its this rabi american are much more united than we are and that include us on all of the issues that media and our politicians are divided on, issues like guns and abortion and race and health care. These are all issues that the parties are super divided on, but the American People are not. And because our media is weighted in favor of the elites and the interests of the elites, we dont hear from the working class. And it was that insight that the vast majority of americans who are more united than divided have affected really been deplatformed from American Public view that made me want to write a book that really explored who is the american working class . Do they still have a fair shot at the American Dream . How do they see their in america and would america look like if we centering their voices so define some terms. How do we actually define the working class . Is it simply people who dont have College Degrees or are in a certain income below a certain income threshold, do they work certain jobs . What do mean when you say the working class . This is such an important question and the answer is it is very difficult to define. Im going to tell you how i define it in a minute. But first, a word on difficulties. You know, we know, for example, that there is a big overlap between income and culture and class but these things dont map very neatly to each other. Im sure all of us know in our lives an electrician or a plumber who makes maybe more money than we do right, although that is obviously a classically working class job. Another problem is that people parents have a college education, are often more to have access to that of education and thus to the american. How do we define it intergenerationally . How do we define it in terms of income . Also robby as you know, americans think of this as a classless. And so though we have come to defined very much in class terms as argue in second class americans dont necessarily themselves as working class. And so having this conversation involves many steps of definitions and and qualities and life, culture and region. What might considered working class in some parts of the country would be considered middle class in other parts of the country because the cost of living so radically different between lets say los angeles and then Something LikeWest Virginia. Right. The way that i eventually ended up defining class. And its a little clunky bear with me but its people who work in a job that do require skills. You learn in college who are not of the top 20 . So im not talking about rich plumbers, right . Im talking about people who effectively are working in working class jobs, jobs that require physical labor or other things that you dont necessarily learn in college, although of the people in my book have a College Degree who have been locked out of the top 20 , thats the kind of clunky that i felt most, the kind of people that i feel have been sort of erased from public view. And also it was a good proxy for the phenomenon that im trying to describe, which is that divide and the chasm separating out the fortunes of people who have a College Degree who are much more likely to become, who live much longer, who are able to retire and dignity versus the working class, whose lives have become increasingly characterized by precariousness. Well, lets talk about that. How do you think their lives have changed over the last 100 years . I when you think of, you know, we to romanticize the past a little bit or at least i think people romanticize the past they oh, you know things were so much better in say the or i guess now were now were far enough along maybe maybe im romanticizing like the eighties in the nineties, the time of my childhood. But then it used to be a time where people could work, save, afford houses, a car, acquire material wealth, move up in their possessions and then leave a Better Future for children. Has that actually changed in last half century or more . Well, we know that 1971 was the high watermark. Working class wages and that productivity and profit continue to skyrocket. But working class wages stagnate did and with inflation today theyve fallen. So theres a very objective way to measure you know, the rate of Home Ownership has actually not significantly its around 63 . But if you separate out the working class its really fallen drastically. And thats because so many more people are going to college. About a third of americans go to college. And so it would make sense that that rate would hold. But it is increasingly a privilege. You need a College Degree in order to. Enjoy. Now, again, this is not across the nation. You can be pretty poor in West Virginia and own your own home. The American Dream is paradoxically doing better for working class in red america simply because if you define the American Dream, a middle class life as having a sort Home Ownership component to the way that the vast majority of americans do housing blue america has just become completely. We can get into the reasons why and the solutions for that, which really i think like because they are theyre all market driven. That was the that was the solution i like the vest. You ended with that one. We will definitely to that so a little bit more on this though because. I know people will say who maybe dont necessarily disagree with on on a lot of your premises is in the book but i think right some of the wages dont it doesnt it depend a little bit if were counting like how you know the average wage of the household actually fewer people in it now so its like the number cars owned per person in the household. I think larger the the actual again material goods in the house even for relatively not as welloff people have Internet Access and laptops and tvs are cheaper than ever and theres more to be. Air conditioning and indoor way more likely are in, frankly, than in a lot of our even european peer countries that we think of as, yeah, they take care of everything. They have smaller they have smaller apartments and homes and dont have as much access to those things. So a lot of that has better even if the wages maybe not kept up the way wed like them to. And then of course, well talk about. Right, all of the sort of labor intensive Services Like education and health care that have gotten way, way less affordable. I totally agree on those. Yeah. So i think the point i would make is this is not a book about the poor, although there are people in the book who have 1 to 3 jobs who work and work and work and o poor, our having to call the Electric Company and beg forbearance and create a payment plans and so forth. Driving around in cars, no windows because they cant afford to fix them. But this is a book, the working class. So people can afford flat screen tvs, but you cant afford to buy a home to put it in and you have nothing to leave to your and your children have fewer possibilities than you. And our downwardly mobile if you cant afford health care which i know were going to agree on if you cannot afford to retire and you dont have a home to retire to it seems me that theres something and forgive a ball in an elite class that has taken all of those things for granted saying its okay with me that the woman who comes to clean my home will never be able to stop working until the day she dies. Even though her work is so much more physically demanding than mine, right . Its not about People Living in boxes, the streets without plumbing. Its the fact that the elites are hoarding the American Dream for themselves while relying on the labor of the working class who no longer access to those things. So i think lets define the American Dream, right . So we can talk about what the thing that has become unaffordable are these people what they want . I mean, rob, it brings tears to your eyes. How modern, what their desires are and. I hope people will read the book because there are so many people in this book that i want you to meet. I want you to hear in their own words, because these people are resentful. They are simply hopeless, and their desires so modest what they want, how do they define American Dream . So the majority of people i interviewed would say it means the ability to own your own home at, some point to retire and dignity to have your children have at least as many choices as you do, and to have Adequate Health care. I mean, these are such modest things. Unfortunately, we sold out the working class. Who could use to be able to in the seventies and rely on being able to afford those things if work hard and in exchange we gave them a flat screen tvs and i think you can see why that to them seems sort of like not a great bargain. And i want to emphasize your book is just so impressive in of the number of people you interviewed in these working class people, but in vastly circumstances, it really is a very impressive live work of of reporting. This is not just an op or an economics paper about what you think are the right solutions. It is it is substantively a very series of interviews with these fascinating people that i learned a lot from. And people should definitely it. Can i ask you how you about your reporting process is im interested as a journalist how did you how did you meet these people and can you talk to us more about that . Yeah, that was definitely the hardest part for us all. Thank you for saying that. I so appreciate that. I wanted to interview people who i felt were representative, not just their stories, but a larger trend or a larger group of americans, but also people who are interesting in their own. So it was a sort of that was the biggest challenge. I did about 100 interviews from which i think about 20, 23 people who are deeply profiled in the book and. The way i chose the people was i first went to this wonderful professor at Brigham Young university. Joe, who has a team of research assistants, grad students. And what he will do is he will allow journalists me to hire them out to create a quantitative analysis. So they took the American Census survey. I asked for them to compare 2020 to 2000 so i could see the trends developing in the last 20 years. And they did a breakdown of who is the american class. So i had this kind of eagle eye Data Analysis of how many people are there, how much they making, where do they live, where are the Home Ownerships highest industries have the highest levels, Home Ownership and all of this is in book. And then i went and looked for people who were represented of of those trends that i saw so that i wouldnt be picking and choosing and cherry picking. I really wanted to combat my own confirmation bias in terms of what i was looking for and honestly i was very surprised by lot of the findings in the book. One of the most surprising was i didnt interview a single black man who was planning to vote for joe biden. And at the time i thought well, thats weird. But now when you look at polling, it makes a lot of sense. That is a huge trend developing among voters of color who are working class are defecting from the democratic party. Thing that i was very surprised to find was. I really thought that the thesis was going to be, you know, that the American Dream is totally inaccessible to the working class. Not true. That is not so the Skilled Trades still provide a very foundation for working class americans to achieve the American Dream, which is why it is outrageous, robby, that we give 200 billion a year to fund higher universities and colleges and only 1 billion to vocational training, which was gutted under president obama in favor sending people to college. Its totally unforgivable, because that is one of the pathways to the American Dream that has just been intentionally shrunk down. Yeah, lets actually talk about this at greater length. I think this is an area of agreement. Us, frankly, if theres a villain in your book it seems to me to be the College Diploma and very deservedly so that emerges that the kind of worst off are people who attempted or felt pushed or encouraged to get a College Degree, who took out loans, get it, and then either ended up getting a degree in something that doesnt render you particularly employable or you can not even as nearly as close to a vocational kind of trade or people just didnt finish college and then they still have the debt theyre the worst off of all, but our policies have explicitly encouraged this this choice that ends up just being an extra hoop so many people to jump through that cost them money before they can qualify for work and what what it seems to me and correct me if this a misperception that a lot of these these people who youve profiled who struggle to find good paying, regular who often will have a job for a period of time and then have to go take a different job. Part of it is because theyre competing with people who do have College Degrees, the College Degree doesnt really help them do the job better because they have this extra credential and im all for competition. But this a competition that would necessarily right even in a free market. This is a competition. Is that happening because theres a massive to people who jump through the hoop but theres massive encouragement they have to end up paying it back afterward but its this perverse and distorted incentives that are forcing people down a path that doesnt actually make them more productive or better workers. It takes up more of their time, money and energy and then makes them taking jobs for people who didnt have the opportunity to do, who would be perfectly fine in those jobs no notes was thats thats perfect. I agree with that. And that is how working class people, when they talk about the diploma divide, there are people in the book who really wanted to go to college and couldnt afford it. One person, especially cyrus, he would have been an amazing lawyer. But most of the people i profiled had no interest in going to college. They really, really valued and god dignity from the working class that they did. But youre that some had been pushed to go to college and all had been told in high school that youre a loser if you dont go to college and this is for the dumb losers and it is madness. It is madness. It is not only infuriating, like you said, that these people have Student Loans for jobs that dont require College Degree. If they dropped out. And by the way, though, we know that 50 of College Graduates are underemployed void, meaning they are also doing jobs that. You dont require a College Degree to learn the skills, although infuriatingly they are still making more money than people who go to college trying to do those same. Exactly. Like you said, robby, its absolutely infuriating. And the thing is, is we actually needore Skilled Trades folks. There is a huge dearth of trades folk in america and instead of encouraging that and giving thanks to these people for doing these jobs that we, the College Educated, would rather not do and they are happy to do, we have instead devalued those jobs in them for doing them and then made them pay less and less and less with every year as we plundered the middle class and our jobs paid more and, more and more. And that is the direct of democratic policy 100 . I mean, i dont think they did this, you know, out of some evil, although i do think that they thought that the more people went to college, the more people would vote for democrats, which is true, you know, they simply thought this was way of the future. They didnt realize that we will always need people to change the diapers of our elderly. Were always going to need people to do we are always going to need truckers. We are always going to need people to clean toilets. And the fact is there are americans who get a lot of dignity from doing those jobs. But because the College Educated elites would rather die than do those jobs, they decided that they