I read something recently that I want to get your thoughts on.
The left's greatest enemy is not the right but the hard left.
The right's greatest enemy is not the left but the hard right.
The lunatics of your own side make you look much sillier than the opposition ever could.
Maybe, but what I am most interested in right now is not left or right.
What I am focusing on right now is that, in an unprecedented way in American history, we have more income and wealth inequality, more concentration of ownership, more billionaire control over the media and our political system than we've ever had in the history of the United States.
And you add all that together, that's what's called oligarchy.
And that's the fight that I am engaging in right now.
We should not be living in a nation where so few have so much wealth and power, while at the same time Chris, you got in the richest country on earth.
60% of our people, got it?
60% are living paycheck to paycheck.
They're struggling to pay for healthcare, for childcare, for education.
Housing is off the charts.
Very few young people can afford to buy their own homes.
And parents having a hard time even affording to buy decent quality food for their kids.
That's the reality I'm focusing on right now.
What's the story of how we got here?
Good question.
Uh...
Here's a, let me throw out a statistic and we go from there.
In the last 52 years, you got it?
Go back to 1973.
All right.
It would have been 31.
All right.
Yeah.
I would have been right.
There has been an explosion in technology, correct?
Correct. explosion in worker productivity.
So how's the average worker doing with all of that increase in worker productivity and technology?
They're doing really much better now than they did back in the early seventies.
Not In fact.
Real inflation accounted for weekly wages for the average American worker is lower today than it was back then.
That's an extraordinary statistic.
And, at the same time, according to the RAND Corporation, we are seeing a 75 trillion transfer of wealth.
Okay, you with me?
From the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
So what you have seen throughout that period is the very wealthiest people becoming much wealthier.
All of the gains of worker productivity, increased worker productivity, et cetera, going to the people on top.
And today, tens of millions of working class families are struggling to put food on the table for their kids.
I want to show you a chart. uh, in a second.
So this tracks the price of consumer goods and services over the last 25 years.
Broadly speaking, prices have increased by about 74 since 2000, but the actual numbers vary wildly depending on what type of good or service it is.
So consumer goods, toys, TVs, housing, got housing in there.
Uh, Consumer goods like toys and TVs have gotten over 50% cheaper.
TVs are nearly 100% cheaper.
But critical categories like healthcare, education have skyrocketed by 200%.
Housing is in there too.
One potential interpretation is that the less legislation that you apply to an industry, the more the free market is allowed to take over, the cheaper the things become.
Even new cars haven't got that much more expensive.
So this is price changes.
What do you make of that?
I don't.
Yeah, look, to me...
When I look at the economy, I look at what does a family need to do well.
Okay, let's just go through.
What are the basic needs of life?
All right, everybody, right?
Rich, poor, young, old needs healthcare, correct?
In America, by the way, we probably spend three times more per person on healthcare than you do in the UK.
Hmm.
Okay.
What are the outcomes like?
UK has its problems, but it depends.
I think, again, talking off the top of my head, I don't think there's all that much difference.
In terms of international outcomes, I don't know just the UK.
The United States does not do particularly well.
We spend twice as much per capita as the average OECD country.
We live three or four years shorter lives.
We have 85 million Americans who are uninsured or underinsured.
We don't have enough doctors.
Even if you have decent insurance, sometimes it's hard to find a doctor not enough dentists, not enough nurses.
So we have a very broken and dysfunctional healthcare system.
Bottom line, it is enormously expensive.
And if Trump gets his way, by the way, what the shutdown is all about, it will become much more.
So that's what the book that I wrote deals with.
All right.
Second of all.
All right.
So you've got health care is a basic need.
What else is a basic need?
Housing.
Both of us would like to have a roof over our head.
Now, you tell me somebody your age. in the United States, average young person.
How old are you?
37.
All right.
Take me back to 35, 30 years of age.
That person could afford a housing in the United States?
No, they can't.
Amazingly enough, when I was a kid, before all this technology and all this increased worker productivity, a young married couple could afford their own home.
So the cost of housing is off the charts.
It's not just that we have 800,000 people who are homeless in America.
That's a tragedy.
You got 20 million households who are spending over 50% of their limited income on housing.
And that's insane.
So you're spending 40, 50%.
You don't have much left over for anything else.
All right.
So you had a healthcare disaster, housing, a disaster.
What about education?
You got a young kid.
Do you have any kids?
No, not yet.
All right.
Well, as soon as you have a young kid and you look for childcare, you're going to find out.
It is very expensive.
All right?
You will find that if you're going to send your kid to college in the United States very, very expensive.
Interestingly enough, way back before the 60s, do you know how much...
Tuition costs in very good quality public colleges and universities in the United States.
I'm going to guess like 10 grand.
No, it was free.
Like it was in the UK, by the way, right?
You got great universities.
It's going to be free, right?
Yeah.
I did two degrees in the UK and came out with less debt than one year of university education in America.
There you go.
All right.
So you got education, which is very expensive.
And food is a whole other issue.
You can get cheap food.
But one of the crises we have in terms of healthcare is obesity in the United States, leading to diabetes, other problems.
And a lot of that has a lot to do with junk food, sugar, et cetera.
Good quality food.
Go to the grocery store.
Look for organic, decent quality food.
Very expensive.
All right.
So those are the basic necessities.
Now, the flat screen TVs are cheaper.
Fantastic.
Good.
Cars, cheaper.
Good.
That's cool.
Great.
But in terms of the needs of the average American family.
Uh, And the point that I want to make, and I'll make it over and over again why is this happening?
This is the richest country in the history of the world.
Tens of millions of people should not be struggling to put food on the table or pay the rent while the people on top, the oligarchs, have never had it so good.
So is it an increase in costs? or a decrease in earnings?
It is that over the last 50 plus years, earnings for the average American worker have been pretty stagnant.
Right.
But you understand my question, right?
Because you have your outlay, which is determined by the price of the things you're buying, and then you have your availability to spend, that which is determined by how much you want.
The problem essentially is wages have been stagnant.
Mm-hmm.
Housing costs gone up, healthcare costs gone up, education costs gone up.
You're right on this chart as well.
I'm looking at food, food and beverage, and that's nearly 100% more than 2000.
But it's only food, all right?
I don't know what you know.
The cost of McDonald's has been going up or down, but junk food is still reasonably cheap.
But we do have a nutrition crisis in America.
Really, we do.
And a lot of our kids are eating cheap junk food, which is going to impact their health.
So if we're talking about decent quality food, pretty expensive.
So what this book that I wrote is about and I hope people will read it is asking questions.
I think we don't ask enough.
And that is again why, in the richest country in the history of the world, we have so much income and wealth inequality, so many of our people are struggling, and why we have a political system which is also dominated by big money interest in both political parties.
What's the problem with consolidation of power?
Typically coming from the world that I used to come from, which was business.
You get economies of scale.
You centralize things.
You don't have as many problems when it comes to communication.
But it seems like in this situation, consolidation of power is an issue.
Well, in some cases, you have... efficiencies, right, due to scale.
But on the other hand, when you have a handful of large corporations owning and controlling what is produced and engaging more or less in price fixing, we got some serious problems.
I'll give you in terms of concentration of ownership.
Today you have three major Wall Street firms BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard that combined, when you combine the three of them, are the major stockholders in 95 of American SP corporations.
That's a lot of power in the hands of very few people.
So what we are talking about is not just income and wealth inequality, and I consider that to be a very serious issue.
It is power.
Power.
You know, just yesterday I spoke in Washington DC To a couple of hundred thousand people as part of the No Kings rallies that took place all over America.
Main stage of Glastonbury.
Pardon me?
Main stage of Glastonbury.
Yeah.
And you know the theme of the day is that in America we took on the British a few years ago and saying no more kings.
What democracy is about is individuals, to as great a degree as possible, having the power to control their own lives.
Not a president. and not a bunch of oligarchs.
And unfortunately, that's the direction we're moving.
Something that we both agree on is that socialized healthcare should be available to everybody.
What do you make of Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about fixing healthcare?
I think this was a surprise.
Well, look, her politics are like Totally different than my politics.
I don't know.
I don't think I've ever met him.
But I'll give her credit for at least having done what very few Republicans today are doing having the guts to stand up to the Republican leadership and Donald Trump.
And one of the things that worries me most about what's going on politically in the United States today.
And this is a new phenomenon.
You know, when you got a Democrat president, Democrats rally around the Democrat and get Republican Republicans rally around Republican president.
Nothing new about that.
But what you're seeing today is almost the Stalinist type allegiance in the Republican Party.
Real fear that if you buck the president, you are in trouble, that Musk and his billionaire friends are going to primary you.
I'll give you one example of this.
There's a guy named Tom Tillis.
I don't know if that name means anything to you.
Tillis is kind of your He's a nice guy.
He's a kind of average conservative Republican.
So when Trump's big, beautiful bill you're familiar with that which I consider to be a terrible bill gets passed, is brought up, Tillis looks at the bill.
He's from North Carolina.
He looks at the bill and he says, you know what?
It's going to be a disaster for the people of North Carolina.
Hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their health insurance.
Costs are going to go up.
I can't support this.
This is a United States senator running for reelection, okay?
Within hours, Trump is all over social media denouncing this guy.
Billionaires are saying, you're finished.
We're going to primary you.
And a day later, this guy says, I'm out of here.
I can't take us, you know?
So what you have right now in the Republican party is a cult of the individual, where very few are prepared to differentiate themselves from Trump.
And to her credit, Marjorie Telegreen has been willing to do that.
Was there not a soft equivalent of that when you ran as well on the other side?
There is.
Look, the answer is in general, yes, but not give you an example of that.
You know, when Biden was president, Biden's a friend of mine.
But his policies toward Netanyahu and to funding that horrific war in Gaza which has caused so much destruction to the Palestinian people.
I took them on.
And I was out there, and this was a very important issue of foreign policy.
And I took them on, along with others, and said, you know what, Mr. President, you're dead wrong.
Stop funding the Netanyahu war machine. which is causing so much death and destruction in Gaza.
And on other issues, we took them on.
So in general, it's not surprising.
You have a Democratic president, Democrats will support him, or Republicans.
But this is new.
This kind of it reminds me I don't know how familiar you are with this you know when Stalin was the leader of the USSR, remember.
Yeah.
And they used to have.
He used to give a speech and all these guys would stand up and they would applaud.
And everyone looked around to see who would be- No, I would stop first.
That's right.
Or you stop first.
You're in trouble right now, like Saddam Hussein, isn't he?
So it's kind of what you got.
Everyone has got to praise Trump.
Oh, he's great.
No, he's not great.
He's fantastic.
No, he's not fantastic.
He's the greatest gift to humanity.
Give him a Nobel Prize to be the greatest human being in the history of the world.
And they keep going on and on and on.
They're afraid.
Anyone says anything critical, they are in trouble.
The moneyed interests will go after them.
They'll lose their next election.
Do you think Trump would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize if this plan in the Middle East works?
Look, thank God.
Well, we've got some not so good news literally today that the fighting seems to be erupting in.
We all hope. that peace is established, but no.
And I got to tell you something, Chris, it does bother me, this getting credit.
Here is the reality.
Under Biden, under Trump, American taxpayers have spent over 20 billion on in providing military aid to Netanyahu and his extremists.
That's across both administrations?
Yes.
Right.
I mean, we've only been in, Trump's been in power for what, seven months?
No, a little bit more than that.
Eight months.
But Trump has also, you're right, most of it was Biden, but Trump has continued the policies.
What's been the result of that?
The result of that is, in an area of 22 million people, you have 160000 people who have been wounded, 65000 people who have been killed, mostly women, children and the elderly.
That is 10% of the population of Gaza has been killed and wounded.
And up until a few days ago, people were literally starving to death because of Israeli blockades of humanitarian aid.
No one in this country deserves a Nobel Peace Prize who has been part of that.
And Trump has been part of that.
Even if they're bringing it to an end?
Well, look, I'm delighted that it's coming.
Hopefully that it is coming to an end.
But you don't deserve.
What we do need to do is to re-examine foreign policy and make sure that taxpayers in this country are never put in that position of having to support such an atrocious regime as Netanyahu's and what he's doing in Israel.
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Should APAC be forced to register as a foreign lobby, do you think?
Look, APAC has been playing a horrific role.
That's a good question.
I don't know I don't know the answer to that.
They're an American organization, probably not.
But they have.
One of the reasons that, until very recently, you have seen so many Republicans and Democrats support Netanyahu is precisely because of the money.
The tens and tens of millions of dollars in APAC is spreading all around in both political parties.
You're seeing that change now because sentiment in the United States is saying what we have done in Gaza is unacceptable.
And you're seeing even moderate type Democrats saying excuse me, thank you, I don't want your money anymore.
That's a good thing.
Is that rare?
Rare for somebody, anybody within government to refuse money?
Yeah.
In that sort of a way?
It is, yeah.
I've spoken to Who was the guy that founded Belvedere Vodka and Talenti Gelato?
Dean... Phillips?
Yes, thank you.
He was on the show last year.
And he was telling me about what it's like to be inside of government and you're spending two to one, three to one time, raising money and kissing babies and whatever it is.
Extended foreplay.
But the raising money, I don't know.
Each person does it differently, but he is right in saying that politicians in both parties spend A an enormous amount of time on the phone or at fancy fundraising dinners or cocktail parties, parties raising money.
That's number one.
Expensive cocktail parties.
Exactly.
So instead of sitting down and saying, all right, how are we going to deal with the major crises that we're facing?
They're busy raising money.
But number two, by and large, they raise money from very wealthy people.
And therefore, if you're a billionaire and you're going to give me a whole lot of money or you set up a super PAC, you know what?
When I get elected, I'm going to say, hey, thanks.
What do you need?
I'll do it for you.
And that is, into my mind, one of the great crises facing America today.
We have a corrupt campaign finance system.
And we have got to get rid of this Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which basically allows billionaires to establish super PACs.
If you're a billionaire, you could put hundreds of millions of dollars into a super PAC.
Elect whoever you want, defeat whoever you want.
You know, Musk spent, I think, 270 million to help elect Donald Trump.
Does anybody think that that is what democracy is supposed to be about?
I don't think so.
What can be done with regards to this?
I don't think anybody really says the amount of money that gets thrown around with regards to consolidation of power and impact is great for democracy.
It makes it much more like a financial version of the hunger games than it does the best policies and the best candidate with the most competent team being able to win, uh.
But it seems endemic and locked in and bizarre and, unfortunately for you guys, kind of American.
Give me nuts and bolts, grow some corn.
What do you do?
It's not really hard.
You got to do two things.
And by the way, you're right.
This is other countries and other countries.
Money plays a role, but not like here in the United States.
Uh, so we can learn from other countries through and through, even into the buying elections.
Right.
Right.
I don't hear anybody saying, I love how much money is in politics.
No, I don't hear that either.
So what do you got to do?
You got to get rid of this terrible Supreme Court decision, and we can do that.
And you have to move to public funding of elections.
So what does that mean?
Right now, today, an incumbent, I'm an incumbent, all right?
I have a tremendous advantage over you.
I know everybody, right?
This is not me, by the way.
I don't raise money that way.
Senator X, okay?
If you want to challenge Senator X, the likelihood is the incumbent can raise a lot more money than you can.
So what you say?
You move to a system which says all right, if you is a challenger, it can show that you have a certain amount of support.
You can get a $5 donation from 5,000 people in your district or whatever it may be.
All right.
You will then be eligible for public funding, which is, by the way, exactly what's going on right here in New York City.
Mamdani who, with a little bit of luck, will become the next mayor of New York City, receives public funding.
So he's not out, you know, hustling money.
There's a limit to what he can get.
Point is, if you are running against me, I should not be able to raise 10 times more than you.
You should have as much money as I do.
Now, people say, oh, public funding.
Yeah, you want the taxpayers to fund all these politicians.
Well, that's better than having Elon Musk and the other billionaires funding politicians, in my view.
Can you explain to me how the left is split up at the moment?
Progressives, liberals, leftists, Democrats, centrists, populists.
There seems to be splinter factions inside of the left that, first off, I don't understand.
And secondly, don't seem to exist in quite the same way on the right, although I may be wrong.
Well, Trump has played a profound role in transforming the Republican Party.
And, as I said, there are differences of opinion, but most Republicans are afraid to stand up to Trump.
All right, here's what you got in my view.
Others will disagree with me.
Cut this pie up for me.
Cut this birthday cake up.
That's a big cake you want me to cut up.
I can't cut it into that many slices, but this is what I'll tell you.
You got a democratic establishment.
All right?
Democratic establishment.
And these are folks who deserve, in my view, credit for, over the last 30 40, 50 years, pushing this country in some very important directions in terms of women's rights, in terms of the right of women to be able to control their own bodies.
That's under attack right now, but many of these folks fought that fight.
Civil rights, you know, making sure that we do our best to end bigotry in this country.
We don't judge people by the color of their skin or where they were born.
And we've made some progress in that area.
Gay rights.
You know, we have made enormous progress.
The idea that, you know 30, 40 years ago, nobody would have dreamed that we'd have something called gay marriage today.
Democrats, I think, deserve a lot of credit for that.
But back in the 1970s, some geniuses in the Democratic Party said, you know what?
Republicans get all this money from the rich and large corporations.
Why the hell don't we do the same thing?
So they started reaching out to corporate America and the wealthy.
And what then began to happen is that when Back in the 60s, the 50s, certainly under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 30s, the Democratic Party was known.
You may like them or not, they were known as the party of the working class in this country.
You worked in a factory, you're a low-wage person, you voted Democrat.
Hmm.
And starting in the 1970s, the Democrats started talking about other issues, important issues, but not the needs of the American working class.
They supported trade agreements NAFTA, permanent normal trade relations with China, which resulted in the loss of thousands of factories in America, millions of good-paying jobs.
They did not fight effectively for healthcare.
They did not fight effectively for for education cost of education went up in this country, housing et cetera, et cetera.
And what evolved over that period of time is to where we are today.
We're actually more working class people are voting for Donald Trump than voting for the Democratic candidate.
And in my view it's not because working class Republicans like Trump's idea of giving a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1 or throwing millions of people off of healthcare.
It's because they feel the Democratic Party has abandoned them.
They don't see an alternative to Trumpism.
Do you watch tennis?
I love the game, but I got to, no, I'm not.
You understand the idea of an unforced error?
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
How much of this do you think is an unforced error?
It's not unforced.
Well, come on.
I mean, we're talking about.
You just said there that the left has largely abandoned most of the things they were supposed to stand for.
That's taking money.
So look, if you, if I say to you, if I say to you, Chris, look, man, I can fund your campaign.
You don't have to knock your brains out talking to people standing up fighting for working class people.
I'll help fund your campaign.
Okay, Bernie, that's great.
Thanks.
So it's not unforced.
You're taking money.
You're becoming beholden to the people on top rather than the working class of this country.
So I wouldn't use the word unforced.
I think it's a tragic error.
And what you're seeing right now is a significant change.
Split.
You talk about the divisions.
The major division right now is the establishment who wants to continue receiving money from wealthy individuals super PACs.
You're seeing it playing out right here in New York City with Mondani.
Okay.
Here you have a guy who, in my view and I'm strongly supporting him is running a brilliant campaign.
I think few would deny that, whether you like him or not.
He has, last count, some 80,000 volunteers knocking on doors in the city right now.
And some of the major leaders of the Democratic Party refused to support him.
Why is that?
Why would you not support a guy who's running an extremely exciting campaign mobilizing the grassroots?
You would think that's exactly what you want to do, right?
If you're a politician, you want to get people involved.
Well, the choice is Mamdani is antagonizing the ruling class of New York City.
Do you see some of yourself in Mamdani?
Yes, except he's smarter than I am, more articulate than I am.
Yeah.
In fact, I'm very proud.
Both he and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez worked on my 2016 campaign.
So they got some experience running around the country.
Presumably also got some experience feeling what it's like to go against the grain of the Democratic Party and to see where some of the pitfalls are as well.
Do you feel like, do you think America's ready for socialists?
Like AOC and Mamdani?
Really?
Do you think the country's ready for that?
The answer is yes, but then you've got to define what we mean by socialism.
And, you know, you come from the UK, so that word is not quite as frightening, right?
No one here is frightening.
All right.
This is what I think.
I think the media and some politicians make a big deal about the divisions that exist in America and they are real, all right.
Uh, does a woman have a right to control her own body?
I think yes.
A majority of Americans think yes.
There are a hell of a lot of people who do not think yes.
There's a division there.
What about guns?
Do I think you have right to have a semi-automatic rifle in your back pocket, despite the fact that you beat your wife and you did all you know?
Blah blah blah, blah.
No, I don't.
You know, I think we need sane, common sense gun control legislation.
Other people do not, et cetera, et cetera.
So there's some real divisions.
I believe that regardless of your sexual orientation, you have a right to get married.
A lot of people do not.
But you go out, Chris, and you say to people, is the American healthcare system working?
What do you think people say?
No, no.
Do you think everybody in America should be entitled to healthcare as a human right?
Yeah, I do.
Okay.
Now the argument then comes do you do a British type system and the UK the national health system?
That has its problems.
Do you do a Canadian type system?
There are various systems around the world.
Okay.
But every single one of them has this feature.
In the UK, no matter who you are, you got healthcare as a right.
Is that true?
Okay.
Same thing in Canada.
Same thing in all of Europe.
And yet in America we got so many people uninsured or underinsured and we're spending, in the case of UK, about three times per person more than you do.
Canada, maybe twice as much.
So what the American people say?
Yeah, give us a healthcare system.
Guarantees healthcare to all people that's cost-effective.
There is no division.
That is what the American people want.
If you ask the American people that, at a time when we have massive income and wealth inequality and here's a fact you tell me I'm going to throw it back to you, all right.
I think this is like pretty crazy.
Maybe I'm alone.
A good friend, Elon Musk, now owns more wealth than the bottom 52% of American households.
What do you think?
Feels extreme.
Yeah, right.
That's it.
It is extreme.
That one man should own more wealth than over half the households in America sounds a little bit crazy.
To make a comment on the way that Musk's wealth has worked, at least in the past.
He has basically burned everything that he has in order to restart companies over and over again.
PayPal got spun up.
No, no, no.
Okay.
We can talk about Musk.
This is not even, I'm not, this is not even, I don't like Musk, but this is not a criticism.
Really?
All I am talking about is this one fact whether you love Musk, you don't like Musk, whoever it may be.
I think it's kind of insane. that we have a system where so many people are struggling.
This guy owns more wealth than the bottom 52%, and he's on his way to become a trillionaire.
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What do you make of his new compensation package?
What, giving them a trillion dollars?
I mean, the stretch goals are unbelievably stretch.
It's a robot in every house, electric vehicle in every corner.
And this is a serious question, right?
Because a trillion dollar package sounds absurd, especially given the fact that you've just Trotted this stat out about 52.
You got a lot of presumably's there.
I want to talk about your presumably's.
Get stuck into my presumably's.
All right.
Let's start off.
Is Musk a brilliant guy?
Yeah.
Is he an incredibly innovative guy?
Absolutely.
But I don't care whether he is the world's nicest person, the world's worst person.
I happen not to believe that anybody should have that much wealth when so many people are struggling.
All right.
That's what I believe.
And I think that gets back to a fundamental issue as to why I am a democratic person.
A socialist.
You work hard.
Somebody works hard.
They make some money.
God, great.
You're rich.
Terrific.
But there should be a limit.
You want a billion dollars?
Fine.
Do you really need $50 billion, $100 billion?
What do you need?
Where does the watershed line start to kick in for you?
I think most people get by with a billion dollars.
Okay.
Bernie's spidey sense begins at $1.52 billion.
Okay.
Right.
All right.
But now you ask the next question.
You say, and it's a very, your point is very well taken.
And let me paraphrase it a little bit you're saying all right, this guy, Musk and others coming up with these extraordinary ideas going to transform our world, correct?
All right.
Now, here's what we have to take a deep breath and ask ourselves.
This is a very serious issue that we are not discussing.
There was a poll done a couple of years ago by the Pew PEW Research Center.
They're quite reputable.
And this is what they did.
They asked the American people a very simple question.
This is two years ago.
They said, do you think.
People like you your middle class, your working class, your rich, whatever you may be were better off or worse off, are better off or worse off today than they were 50 years ago.
You got the question?
What do you think the answer was?
What did people say?
Most people would say no.
Right.
So we gotta think about that.
In the last 50 years, we've seen just, right?
Computers, 50 years ago, there weren't computers.
Cell phones, flat screen TVs, driverless cars all of these things great advances in medicine, right?
You got cancer today, there's a chance you could be treated, certainly in a way you could not have 50 years ago, right?
Good things.
All right, you tell me.
Why would?
And the answer from Pew that research was 58 of the people said I think life was better for people like me 50 years ago.
Why would they say that?
And what does this have to say with what Musk is trying to do into the future?
Is that a good question?
Yeah, it is.
The interesting thing there you bring up a good point, which is ease of entertainment is a number of different opportunities for people to be able to interact with the world around them, to learn to be able to relax, et cetera, et cetera.
So if people do think that they are worse off now remember this is people feel that they're worse off.
That's good.
Intergenerational competition theory suggests that you compared with where your parents were at your age, but it's not where your parents were.
It's where you think your parents were.
I know that.
Fair enough.
And when we've got comparison from social media, we're seeing the best of everybody else's lives.
We see the worst of our own from a front row seat.
Very good.
Fair point.
And, and yeah, good old days.
Well, the good old days were not necessarily believing quite so good.
Interesting point on that.
Uh, No one ever thinks that they're living through a golden age.
No one ever actually believed.
Golden eras only exist in retrospect.
That's right.
All right.
Well, I don't know how many golden ages we've had.
I wonder if we'll look back in 50 years time and go, oh, the roaring 20s.
The reason I raised this issue, why do I raise this issue?
Because the point you made is that Musk and others are moving very rapidly to transform our way of life, correct?
Okay.
Why are they doing that?
Do you think Mr. Musk is saying that I want to improve life for ordinary people?
My goal is to make it, make...
Wipe out poverty in America.
Make healthcare available to all.
Lower the cost of housing.
That's what I'm working on.
The answer is I don't think so.
Does it matter about what his intentions are?
Yes, it does.
Because what matters is what the goal is.
What ends up happening?
So the point that I made and you know you made a fair point, that you know 50 years ago.
We're judging today.
Blah blah blah, blah.
But I think there are a lot of people today who are very, very uncomfortable with society as it exists.
Right, one of the reasons basically, is economic.
If you have 60 percent of people living paycheck to paycheck, they're struggling.
That's tough, all right.
If you worry, which is likely the case, that your kids are going to have a lower standard of living than you do, that hurts as well, but it is.
It is not just economics, as important as that is.
Something else is missing.
And I think Musk and his friends will make that situation even worse.
In a broad sense, we are losing what might be called a sense of community.
All right.
You know, of relating to each other as human beings.
And I worry very, very much about kids who spend their lives on the Internet, whose best friends are somebody at chat box, and what that means.
And that is, if Musk gets his way, that is only going to intensify.
Now, what does it mean?
We talk about robots, all right?
I happen to believe that we should rebuild manufacturing in America.
And I oppose many of these disastrous trade policies that cost us a lot of jobs.
But what does that mean If robots are going to do the work.
So it's good that we produce stuff in America.
It's important for the supply chain.
Good.
But ain't going to be jobs.
Now there are people, including Musk, including Bill Gates you know, smart people know a lot about this stuff who really think now others disagree with them, who really think there's going to be an incredible loss of decent paying jobs as a result of robotics and AI.
That a lot of entry-level jobs, kids graduate college, you're not going to move up the ladder.
Well, that first job may not be there because AI has taken that job.
Is that a good thing?
I mean, should we, what most people say is, We're creating an efficient society.
It's great.
We're going to have AI, robotics doing everything.
Yeah, well, the operation was a success.
Unfortunately, the patient died.
Question on that.
Have you looked into the current birth rates of the U.S. much?
Right.
So this has been a very unpopular, as you can imagine, campaign of mine.
I think that it's something that is a creeping crisis.
Why is it unpopular?
Because it is very right-coded, because it's very family values-coded.
It is...
I've been accused of slipping my right-wing conservative, heteronormative talking points in under the guise of not wanting the population to go down.
What's your perspective on the birth rate in the U.S.?
I think it's of concern.
Look, I come from Vermont, and we are one of the oldest states.
Our birth rate is very low.
I happen to think that as the father of four, Father of seven.
Above 2.1.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
You're contributing.
You know, that having kids is a beautiful thing.
You know, that makes us human.
I mean, I just think, you know, it's part of what being human is about.
I talk to a lot of young people and they're saying Bernie, you know we can't.
Bernie, do you know how much childcare costs?
On my salary, we can't even afford to have kids.
Yeah, yeah.
And there's truth to that.
There's some truth to it, but the poorest countries have the most children.
Well, there are other reasons for that.
I mean, you know, in poor countries, the children end up... Extracted for labor.
Yeah, I understand.
I think...
But I think that is about, and I'll tell you something else, which you may not agree with.
They're saying, look, I worry about climate change and I worry about- Oh, that's silly.
No, it is not silly.
No, worrying about climate change is not silly.
Worrying about climate change for your children is very silly.
No, I don't agree.
All I'm saying is that is... Let me just... Can I... On that.
So, South Korea.
The birth rate of South Korea at the moment, for every 100 current South Koreans, there will be four great-grandchildren.
96% decrease over the next 100 years.
Right?
The US is, we're going to peak probably 2090, something like that.
The world population is going to hit 9, 10, might just bounce off the bottom of 10.
And it is going to go like this.
It is going to be precipitous because you cannot create any more one-year-olds, right?
It's impossible.
Demography is destiny, as they say.
Climate change is a concern and it is something that we should apply attention to.
The timeline that that occurs on. is nowhere near the same as birth rates are.
Birth rates are going to happen this generation and next generation and next generation.
It is a reason that I think that many young couples are hesitant about having kids.
Question, just one final bit on that.
Do you think it would be useful to educate people on the imbalance in terms of the immediacy of birth rate decline and what that's going to mean for the future of the economy, for what their quality of life is going to be like, when you compare the sort of timelines of parts per million?
Parts per million in the atmosphere, CO2, global warming, et cetera, et cetera.
The bottom line is I think we should create a nation where people want to have kids, enjoy having kids.
I'm really glad to hear that.
And that's not to say that was surprised.
No, not at all.
It doesn't surprise me.
But it does surprise me to hear it sort of coming from that side of the aisle.
I don't think that the Democrats have done a fantastic job being pro-family values over the last four years or so.
There was a vasectomy station outside of the DNC.
Three vasectomies outside of the DNC.
People want vasectomies, they should have vasectomies.
I know, but you understand the message.
Once again, he's a very proud father of four and a grandfather who enjoys his kids very, very much.
I think it's a natural part of being human.
And we want to create the conditions where families feel good about having kids.
And it's families feel good.
Which is really important, right?
What is the sense?
So there are some hard, objective facts, and there are also this sense.
How are they interpreting their life?
How are they comparing it to those around them?
The reason that I brought up the birthright thing was that you were talking about AI robotics, outsourcing of work.
There is this odd we want to bring manufacturing back to the US, but if you have a decreasing population, who is it?
And an increasingly aging population, there is this strange.
Well, one of the ways that we can fix this is by outsourcing things to AI.
As somebody who's spent a good bit of time thinking about birth rate decline, I have a big problem with that, because you are now putting into the hands of five companies 10 companies, five in robotics, five in AI.
That is oh, the entire economy now hinges on.
And who says that your power is supposed to be on all the time?
Who says that you're supposed to get?
That is a level of centralization that I don't think we've even seen before.
That's right.
That's all I am saying is that Mr Musk and his friends are making incredibly large investments, to the tune of hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, into robotics and AI.
I don't think that their motives are to improve human life.
And I think we are going to have to have a real debate about how we handle this issue.
Now, one of the things, for example, is that if we're going to see an increase in worker productivity, It seems to me that we should lower the work week from 40 hours to at least 32 hours.
Let workers benefit from that without- Would that be a four-day week?
Is that how you do it?
Exactly.
Yeah.
I think that would take the pressure off a lot of families who today are living under a great deal of stress.
Second of all again, I think it's absolutely imperative that we guarantee health care to all people as a human right, that we live in a country where nobody is working for starvation wages, that we raise the minimum wage to a living wage, that we make sure that education is available to all people, regardless of their income.
We did it 70 years ago.
We had free public colleges and universities.
We could do it today.
So all I'm saying is we are looking at a transformational moment In the world and in this country as a result of robotics and AI.
We cannot let a handful of multi-billionaires make the decisions for us.
It feels like an intersection.
It feels like a crossroads.
I would agree.
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I often think about everybody believes that their moment in history is the one, right?
Everybody sort of thinks that this is a very important moment, that we're on the cusp, because everything that's new is new.
And, uh, Maybe this is just me repeating something that everybody said every generation previously.
It really, really does feel precipice-y for me.
I agree.
And you're right, maybe I said that 50 years ago as well.
But I think, for a variety of reasons, and I'll tell you the reasons later that I think this is an extraordinary moment.
I think climate change is real.
And I think if we don't get a handle on it, I worry very much what kind of quality of life our kids and future generations will have.
I think that's real.
Number two.
I worry very much not only about oligarchy.
And again, that's what this book is about.
In the United States, it's taking place all over the world.
You know, I was stunned.
I keep going back to the UK, get you from there.
But you got to, in the UK, great, beautiful nation.
Something like 35% of your kids are living in poverty right now.
Do you know that?
I mean, that's extraordinary.
A modern developed country like the UK, your countries like Saudi Arabia, where you got a family with a trillion dollars Qatar, UAE enormous wealth and power.
Latin America, the guy in Mexico, one guy owns more wealth than the bottom half of that society.
So what you are looking at is a world, and I touch upon it a little bit in the book, not thoroughly.
A little bit is a few thousand families.
So we've got 8 billion people in the world today, something like that.
You got a few thousand families that have unbelievable economic and political power over this world.
So you talk about this moment.
Never before, I do believe, in world history have so few had so much wealth and so much economic and political power.
That concerns me.
And what you're also seeing throughout Europe and here under Trumpism is a lot of people are giving up on democracy.
All right.
And one of the you know, the event that we did yesterday is simply to point out that you got a president who is authoritarian, wants more and more power in his own hands and is prepared to arrest his political opponents, to take power away from universities, from law firms, from the media suing the media.
And this is a very dangerous trend, not only in the United States.
You're seeing the growth of right-wing extremism all over Europe as well.
So I worry about that in terms of the moment that we're living in.
You mentioned before gay rights, women's bodies, ability for people to get married, immigration.
In retrospect.
How much of an own goal for Democrats do you think the focus on identity politics has been?
I'm sorry, how much I believe?
An own goal or an unforced error has the focus on identity politics.
Again, you use the word unforced.
I think it has been- Let's go with own goal.
Okay.
This is what I think.
I think fighting to make sure that women can control their own bodies and are not second-class citizens enormously important.
The need to end all forms of bigotry in this country, enormously important.
But you can chew bubblegum and walk at the same time.
You can fight for women's rights and fight for an economy that works for the working class of this country, not just the billionaires.
It's not either or.
The Democrats have been strong on those social issues, identity politics.
But they have not been strong in standing up for the working class in this country.
I think that the focus on identity politics.
Unless the Democratic Party has a sane answer to questions around immigration crime, trans activism DEI, I think it's going to be difficult to get the electorate to resonate.
I mean, look at the, what was the most powerful ad that was run during the campaign?
Kamala is for they, them, Trump is for you.
Why did that resonate so much?
Well, you're raising another question.
I don't know.
Maybe you know the answer.
How many people are trans in America?
Do you know?
It'll be less than a gay and that's between one and three percent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A tiny, tiny number of people.
So why is so much attention?
I'll tell you why.
Glad you asked that question.
What do demagogues always do?
Them and us.
That's right.
All right.
So here you have a country.
We have massive income and wealth inequality.
We got 60% of people struggling to put food on the table.
You got a climate crisis.
You have the United States.
In recent international exam, our kids were 37th in the world in terms of math and science, falling far behind China in terms of their educational attainments.
I have a healthcare system falling apart, etc.
Sane people that you may disagree with me on an issue, but we put them on the table right.
Okay.
Do we have healthcare crisis?
Yeah.
Yes.
What's your idea?
Here's my idea argue it out.
Let's do it.
Correct or not?
Correct.
Got a housing crisis.
All right.
That's what Democratic with a small d. That was not what was focused on.
I know.
That is what real, with a small d, democratic politics is supposed to be about.
How do we work together to solve those problems that you and I and others recognize as real problems, right?
Okay.
What does Trump do?
Come on, just on that.
It doesn't need to be about what is it that Trump was focused on.
This, to me, feels like an own goal.
The focus was so much.
This wasn't being made up out of nowhere by the Republican Party.
This seemed to be things that were being said by the Dems and the focus that was...
Well, first of all, I am not going to argue with you as to whether or not the Democrats have, by and large, turned their backs on the economic needs of working people.
To focus on other issues?
Yes.
I've been making that point for quite a while.
And the other critique of the Democrats is they have refused to recognize the severity of the crises that we face.
As you and I speak, there's real pain in this country.
People are really struggling.
It's kind of a double whammy right that you are focusing on something which only affects a minority of people, which is pretty horrendous in terms of messaging, which doesn't seem to resonate in the same way.
And also, there are all of these problems that would be really good.
If you address them.
Yeah.
And probably would resonate with more people, which is why I mean both me and you agree on this, which is it does feel an awful lot like the Democrats are out of touch with the working class.
And is it surprising that they lost ground with them?
The answer is, I think, after the election.
And I worked very hard for Tom Larrison.
After the election, I said something to the effect that we should not be surprised that after the Democrats abandoned the working class of this country, the working class abandoned the Democrats.
And I believe that to be true.
I would say that there's good news out there.
And you're seeing again with Mr. Mamdani here in New York and elsewhere.
Some people are catching on that we got to deal with that reality.
But I want to get back to Trump because you talk about, you know, there's these ads that success.
What demagogues always do, what do they do?
It's them and us.
You take a powerless minority, right?
In the 30s in Germany, it was the Jews, it was gypsies.
In this country, historically, it has been blacks and gays.
You take a people and you say, you can't afford housing.
You're not making it up.
You know whose fault it is?
Hey, Chris, you know whose fault it is?
It's the undocumented.
I'm not convinced.
Well, maybe the undocumented thing.
Actually, yes.
If you were going to say the trans side of stuff, which was the ad that we're talking about in particular, I think the finger was being pointed at Kamala.
Rather than being pointed at the group.
It wasn't these people, this group of people are who's wrong.
She was focusing.
And they took that out of you know.
Do you think?
How many times during her campaign did she talk about that?
You know, you take something.
A thousand hours of someone talking, they're going to slip up every so often.
Yeah.
Or you say one thing and you take it out of context.
But the point about demagogues is they do not address the real problems facing the overwhelming majority of the people and They demonize.
I mean, you listen to some of Trump's speeches.
And I was, you know, I heard them.
I was there at the State of the Union, you know, a few feet away from him.
The horrible and ugly things he says.
You know, they're rapists, they're murderers, they're drug dealers.
Truth is, the crime rate in the undocumented community in America is lower than it is for Native Americans.
You know, they're hardworking people.
All right.
Should they, you know, etc., etc.
But what he does successfully is takes people's frustrations and points them to a powerless minority.
And that's kind of a horrific thing to do.
Do you agree with the activists calling to abolish ICE?
No, not right now.
But do I believe, on the other hand, that you should have ICE now running amok, knocking down doors, dragging people?
I mean, this is America.
People with masks around themselves, often in plain clothes, picking people up off the street, throwing them in vans and, in some cases, deporting them to Sudan.
Really?
Is that really America?
So, you know, we need to have sensible—what we need and what we have needed for decades—
Since Ronald Reagan, in fact, is a sane, comprehensive immigration policy.
So I think what ICE is doing right now under Trump's directive is horrific.
And it is part of this movement toward authoritarianism.
It's not dissimilar from sending the military into Portland, Oregon or Chicago wherever you're sending them to control a rebellion really.
I'm not aware that the people of Portland are trying to overthrow the United States government.
I saw a video from what looked like maybe the subway in New York of some guy that didn't look to have official credentials holding up a subway, flashing a light toward what must have been the driver and trying to accost some person that maybe didn't look like they were fully American in terms of heritage.
But I don't think was in a ICE official uniform.
What is this?
Because in the UK, there's this meme of citizen arrest.
Have you ever heard of that?
Right.
What's happening?
What is that?
Look, if you have people and sometimes they have masks, sometimes they don't.
No one disputes the fact that they are picking up people who are American citizens, right?
But in this country, you have a history of due process.
If I think you're guilty of something, you get arrested.
You have due process, your right to an attorney, a right to defend yourself.
Is this a grassroots thing?
And then what?
I have to answer your question.
If you have...
Government agents do it.
Somebody else comes along and says, hey, they're doing it.
You're under arrest.
Really?
And you're seeing some of that as well.
And that is vigilantism and fright.
Right.
OK, it's it's amateur bounty hunter.
Yes, exactly.
OK, I want to talk about something that's really important to me.
So.
You're big into inequality, as am I. I grew up as working class as is possible.
The only thing that was famous about the town that I grew up in in the UK is it had the highest teen pregnancy rating in the UK.
And then it lost that.
So it didn't even have that anymore.
Fatherlessness.
Boys who grow up apart from their biological father are about two times more likely to land in prison or jail by age 30.
Fatherlessness is a better predictor of incarceration than race or growing up poor.
Young men are more likely to end up in prison or jail in the US than they are to graduate from college if they are raised in any society.
Non-intact family setup, regardless of family income.
Children in intact families are about half as likely to be diagnosed with depression.
What do you make of that?
I make it to be a serious crisis.
And I make it, I believe in family.
And I believe we have got to create the conditions for young people to be good dads and good moms and to raise health each other.
Thinking about some of the groups that you've brought up today.
One of the ones that's obvious in its absence is men.
Why have the left tended to not talk about men's issues, do you think?
That's a good question.
And I think I mean we start with.
I think the underlying issue is that for a very long time, women were second class citizens in this country.
And people were saying does it make sense that you have women who cannot become police officers soldiers carpenters governors, presidents of the United States?
And that's wrong.
If we believe in equality, we want to give everybody an equal opportunity.
So I think there was that focus on that.
I think the issue you're raising is getting more discussion, and it needs far more.
Is that what we have seen right now?
And I was on a plane coming from Washington back to Vermont, sitting next to a woman and she's visiting her daughter at the University of Vermont.
And we're chatting and she mentioned to me that something like Over 60 of the college of the kids in her daughter's class were women.
Correct.
Okay.
Two women for every one man completing a four-year college degree, basically.
All right.
Not a good situation.
That's a bigger gap than when Title IX came in 50 years ago.
All right.
In the other direction.
This is a serious issue.
And I think...
It is not incompatible to say that we believe in women's rights, the right of women to control their own body, that we don't want women to be second-class citizens, but say the same thing.
Of course.
We want our young men to be able to have all of the opportunities that they deserve as well.
And there has not been the kind of focus on that that I think needs to be.
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Do you know Richard Reeves?
He does the American Institute for Boys and Men.
I have heard of it.
Yeah, he wrote of boys and men.
So this is just a passage from an article he wrote a little while ago.
I just want to get you to react to this.
Suicide rates among men under 30 have risen by 40 since 2010 and are four times higher than among young women.
Male suicides account for as many deaths as breast cancer.
Men are less likely than women to go to college or to buy a home.
They're more likely to be lonely and more vulnerable to addiction.
Young white men from lower-income homes are worse off than their fathers on almost every economic and social indicator.
There is a bigger gender gap on campuses today than in 1972, when the government passed Title IX to prevent sex-based discrimination in education.
But today, the disparities in college enrollment and performance are the other way around.
There is no strong evidence that young men are turning against gender equality, but they have turned away from the left because the left has turned away from them.
The problems of young men are not the confections of reactionaries.
This is a story of elite neglect, not voter chauvinism.
The Democrats have failed to address these issues.
Under the Biden administration, the Centers for Disease, Center Control and Prevention has refused to acknowledge the gender disparity in suicide rates.
The White House Gender Policy Council has not tackled a single issue primarily facing boys and men.
There have been initiatives to promote women in STEM and construction, but nothing about encouraging men into teaching on men's health.
There is women's health research initiatives, but no office on men's health.
The Democrats and progressive institutions have a massive blind spot when it comes to male issues, and this was exposed in the election.
At worst, men are seen as not having problems, but as being the problem.
That was Richard.
He's as policy wonky, DC, fluffy.
I agree with much, not all what he's saying.
I think, look, here is the issue.
The world in the fight for women's equality, the world has changed.
All right.
50, 60 years ago, men were the breadwinners in most households, right?
Men were the bosses.
Men made the most money.
Men were the governors.
Men were the presidents.
Men were the senators.
It was a man's world.
That's changed.
And the fact that we have fought and achieved more equality for women is a positive thing.
I agree.
All right.
But you're suddenly seeing, and I think half of what he says is very true.
You're suddenly seeing men feel, does anyone give a damn about me?
What's going on in my life?
Good.
We want women's equality.
What about me?
Have we paid enough attention to that?
I think we have not, and I think we need to do a better job.
I don't believe that everything that Reeves is saying is accurate.
I understand.
I was watching that now infamous interview that you and AOC did on CNN last week.
It was infamous?
Was Fox Television picked up on it?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it's just gone everywhere.
It's gone everywhere, right?
What was infamous about it?
But this is what we're talking about.
And then you kind of blew through when it was asked, is this going to be a challenge?
That wasn't what I was interested in primarily.
What I thought was real interesting was she said the reason that Republicans have appealed to young men is a dangerous way.
They are able to radicalize and target and exploit a generation of young boys in particular, away from healthy masculinity and into an insecure masculinity that requires the domination of others who are poorer browner, darker or a different gender than them.
Do you think Democrats have done a good job of giving men a positive vision about themselves?
She's saying that this is an insecure masculinity as opposed to a healthy one.
You know, I'm not a great expert on this.
I think this is a real issue.
Yeah.
And I think we've got to pay a lot more attention to it.
I'm interested in.
After however long you've been doing this, what keeps you up at night the most after all?
This time, i would imagine, i'll tell you what, and literally it does.
I don't sleep well, that well anymore.
I worry about the future of this country and whether or not we will be a democracy.
I worry about a president who is a megalomaniac, who is a pathological liar and who is working at the service of oligarchs who want more and more wealth for themselves.
That is precisely what keeps me up at night.
And that is why I'm working as hard as I can to stop Trumpism in this country.
Are you hopeful about the future?
Uh, on Mondays, I am.
I see some very hopeful things.
Yesterday, you know, we had some 7 million people coming out all over this country, in small towns, big cities, to say no to COVID.
No kings in America.
On the other hand, there are ominous trends which I worry about.
I think, you know, and it's not just men, but it is the world is changing rapidly.
So fast.
And people are worried about AI and robotics and losing their jobs.
They're worried about putting food on the table.
They're worried about climate and other issues.
And you got a president out there who's taking advantage of that and saying, you know what?
What you really need is a strong guy.
I'll take care of everything.
We really don't need a democratic form of society.
That worries me very much.
I wonder what the appropriate way to counterbalance that is, in three years' time to two and a half years' time.
Well, I think we have got to develop a strong system grassroots movement in this country to understand that under our constitution, power rests with the people, not with a guy who wants more and more power for himself.
But this is...
You talked earlier about.
Maybe every generation says this is the most – this is a very pivotal moment in American history.
The American people are decent.
I've had the privilege and the honor of being in every state in this country.
I've talked to literally millions of people.
We are a good people.
Most people believe in justice.
Most people are not bigots.
Most people believe in democracy.
Most people believe in that we should have an economy and a government that work for all of us.
It's going to take a lot of work to bring that about.
But that's what I do.
On that note, I think I got to get going.
Senator Bernie Sanders, ladies and gentlemen.
I appreciate you.
Well, thank you very much, Chris.
I enjoyed it.
If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom reading list.
It is 100 books that you should read before you die.
The most interesting, life changing and impactful books That's chriswillx.com slash books.
