Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/25/22: Student Debt, Midterm Outlook, Ukraine Aid, Dems Agenda, Essential Workers, & More!

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about student debt cancelation, midterm election forecast, Ukraine military aid, Liz Cheney's next move, why movies have declined, midterm campaigns, college industrial complex, & essential workers!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E005CD6DBFF6D47 Max Alvarez: https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/the-work-of-living/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. More big policy news. More big election news. So we got the big Biden long-awaited and anticipated student loan debt relief program. We can give you all of those details and the political debates around it.

Also some very interesting results from the primary elections and the special elections that happened on Tuesday. Dan Marans and I broke that down yesterday, but there's even more that we're learning today that we're going to get into as well. Casually, while you weren't looking and while there was no debate, apparently we're sending another $3 billion to Ukraine. Yes, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's happening. We'll talk about it.

Package number 15? 9,000. Anyway, get into that. Liz Cheney's next plans, also some polling showing exactly which voters she would draw if she were to run as an independent or president. No big surprises there. And Matt Damon with some very interesting comments on the movie industry, which has sort of like broader cultural implications. Very interesting there.

Max Alvarez is going to be here in the flesh on the show. He's got a new book out, so can't wait to talk to him about that. Before we jump in, live show. We still have tickets? Live show. Very few tickets, unfortunately. Let's go ahead and put this up. Well, I guess fortunately.

Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Very smattering few of tickets that are left there. Jump on it, guys, if you want to come. In the description. That's right. Go ahead and make your plans. It's going to be fun. Somebody did email me asking me about accommodations.

Let me just say this. I don't know a damn thing about accommodations. We haven't even made our own accommodations. Haven't even made our own accommodations. Tell us where we should stay. So if you have a recommendation for where the best place to stay in Atlanta, and food recommendations, always looking for food recommendations. Oh, definitely send us.

Send those in. I would love to see them. Yes, indeed. Okay, let's get to the big announcement. Yesterday from the President of the United States, let's go ahead and throw the Twitter announcement up on the screen. So after much anticipation and many false starts. Took a year. if you did not receive Pell Grants, and your income is under $125,000, so it's means-tested, $20,000 if you went to college on Pell Grants. I think that was the part that was really quite surprising to people that hadn't been reported or speculated before. And of course, Pell Grant

recipients disproportionately sort of like working class and lower income. Jeff Stein has all the details here. He's really, you know, one of our friends over at The Washington Post. He's really been on top of reporting this out very effectively. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. He says, to summarize, $10,000 for most borrowers, $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients, only for under $125K individually, $250K jointly. Aim to cap undergrad loan payments at 5% monthly income. That's actually really sweeping and significant change. Previously, that had been at 10%. That was a policy that was set by the Obama administration to try to make student loan payments more affordable. Grad loans, Parent PLUS, are eligible. And also, significantly, that student loan debt payment

moratorium is going to be extended one final time until after the midterm elections. Some smart politics there. Those payments will restart on December 31st. I'm a little bit shocked that they were intelligent enough to make that move. But you know what? They've been surprising me lately with a couple of actually intelligent moves. Let's go ahead and listen to how the president sold this yesterday. Is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans? Is it fair to people who in fact do not own multi-billion dollar businesses and see what these guys give them all? Is that fair? What do you think? What about people who paid their loans?

Will provide real benefits for families without meaningful effect on inflation. Let's be clear. I hear it all the time. How do we pay for it? We pay for it by what we've done. Last year, we cut the deficit by more than $350 billion. Let me give you a couple more of the numbers here, and then we can talk a bit about this. So the estimates are this will entirely wipe out the student debt balance of about 33% of loan holders. You have about 43 million people who will benefit in total,

and it wipes out about half of the student loan debt of more than 50% of loan holders. So listen, you guys know my position. I think it should all be canceled and college should be free. So it's not as far as I would go. But I have to say, I mean, in terms of the way Biden framed this and the way that he went about it, it was quite feisty and it was very not neoliberal. So there's the neoliberal flourishes here, the means testing and those

sorts of things. But embracing outright debt cancellation truly is a sort of ideological, philosophical break from the Clinton, Obama-style neoliberalism that's dominated for decades. That is absolutely. So I mean, I'm personally against this policy layout. And as I've always said, I have absolutely no problem with debt cancellation, even in terms of the how will you pay for it. Most of this is completely fake and has been absorbed by the college industrial complex of which I consider myself a major enemy of. For politically, you know, I'm honestly not sure. Ideologically, I think it's a good thing in order to make past that and to understand that, first of all, look, Joe Biden himself is one of the people and one of the reason why that we are even in this situation. You know, if we'll remember, student debt is one of the only debts

that you can't act, that you can't discharge even upon death, where they can garnish your family's wages, thanks to Mr. Joe Biden, Senator Joe Biden from the state of Delaware. But politically, honestly, I've been turning this over my head, Crystal. On the one hand, yes, there are college educated liberals. Disproportionately, those people are, you know, going to be Democratic voters. On the other, you know, only 37% of the U.S. population went to college. Even amongst Gen Z, younger voters, it's like 40-ish in terms of how many people are going to graduate. In general, 25% of the people who enter a four-year college degree never do graduate. So the vast majority of the public did not go to college.

And, you know, this could piss a lot of people off. Now, I don't agree with the whole, how are you going to pay for it? But there's a stark headline that I did see, I think, in the Wall Street Journal. This is about $2,000 per American taxpayer in terms of relief. Once again, I think student debt and the way that it is currently structured is immoral. I think the colleges are criminal. I think the entire debt system is insane. I think it drags down wages. College wage premium has gone down. It prevents people from getting married. It prevents people from buying a house. I completely accept and believe in every single one of those things. But I do question the political wisdom as it was in 2020, given where the economy is, given also just the fact that at the end of the day, this is zero sum in a way. Some people are

getting a break and some people are not getting a break, especially when we have 20-year high of credit card debt. So if you're younger and you have a lot of credit card debt and you didn't go to college, I don't know. I mean if I had a – to be clear, I also should put this on the table. I didn't have any student debt. God bless my parents who paid for my college. So you should always take that with a grain of salt, whatever I say. I didn't suffer the same emotional burden.

I'm looking at it dispassionately, and I could see it going both ways. I generally don this. I mean, effectively, you had politicians from both parties that destroy the working class, send jobs overseas, bust unions, and make it very, very difficult to achieve any sort of middle class stability. Yes. Then what do they offer as a response to that? They say, go to college. This very individualistic bootstrap, if you want to get ahead, this is the path. And we're going to help support this loan industry so that you can go and you can get a college education. And so pushing people in that direction has led to an entire generation, mostly millennials and now Gen Z, that were overwhelmingly loaded up with debt. It has, you see the implications of this in terms of the stats we always look about, look at the very small percentage of wealth that millennials hold.

It's like six, 3% of total wealth that millennials have versus boomers have 60%. The late dates of being able to get married, the inability to buy a home. A lot of that stems from this massive debt load that our leadership class told people to take on, that that was the right thing. And oftentimes you're making these decisions. I mean, I literally was applying to colleges when I was 16 years old and taking on this debt when I was 17 years old. You have no real frame of mind.

Right. So these people are like, you're an adult when you do this, et cetera. I mean, these are young people and they have been told by everybody that this was the path to take. So that's number one. I think morally the case is very sound and very just

and I don't think it's like a populist position to be like, young people deserve to be loaded up with mounds of debt for their entire life. And I know that's not your position whatsoever. I also don't buy this idea, even though I fully acknowledge that this is a very incomplete approach. And, you know, personally, again, I think that public university and community college and trade schools should be free. I think you should cancel all the debt and make college available universally to everyone. That way it is a universalist policy that benefits everyone. But we have to act in the realm of the possible right now.

And this is what Joe Biden can do with his executive power without having Congress to make those broader reforms. I also think there's a lot of bad faith in the people who are like trying to make this class based argument, which I understand of like, okay, this is going to benefit people who went to college and it's not going to benefit this other group. But those same people are also not offering like a policy that would benefit everyone. They just want to do nothing, right? And they're used trying to weaponize this class division in order to be against this thing that would be good for,

again, 43 million people would benefit. And 90% of those beneficiaries make under $75,000 a year. The last thing that I'll say here is sort of like a conservative argument for it. First of all, there are potential direct economic benefits that would accrue to the nation as a whole. Annual home sales, one estimate was, would rise by $300,000. GDP could be lifted by around $100 billion. So it could be significant in terms of the overall economy. And then I thought this was really interesting.

Makes a lot of sense. There's a negative correlation between student debt and small business formation. So if you're also someone who, you know, believes in small business formation, believes in entrepreneurship, that debt that is laid on students right from the jump really, really harms their ability to go out and create and start their own thing. And a lot of the people who are, you know, who are sort of the most sympathetic cases here and Pell Grant recipients, et cetera, a lot of people started college, got loaded up with the debt, didn't finish or got the four-year career and still had to go out and work at Starbucks or work in the Amazon warehouse. So I think there's a little bit of a caricaturish view of who student

loan debt holders are. Yes, it's not everybody. And yes, the majority of Americans still do not complete four-year college, but you have a large percentage of working and middle-class people who will benefit from this policy. And, you know, I don't think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is on the table. This is possible to achieve. And so that's why I ultimately support it. Yeah, I completely get that. And I understand. My problem with this is that I think this has probably killed it for a generation. And that from this point forward, I mean, I have a lot of this breakdown in my monologue, but you cancel 10K debt, outstanding debt will return back to today's levels in four years.

So every single person who is – so we're at $1.8 trillion. This is going to knock us down to approximately $1.25 trillion. We'll be back at $1.8 trillion in four years, which effectively means every single person who's currently in college right now in a four-year degree institution, those people who are not going to be beneficiaries of this policy, after the last freshman today graduates, we're going to be right back where we started. So it's like, oh, then what? That just argues for doing more. Yeah, but it's not going to happen. And then that's the issue, which is that I just genuinely believe this has killed it,

politicized it, and made it so that we are not going to reform the college degree. And look, I mean, I think this is where we have to be honest. College administrators and college people in general are the base of the Democratic Party, like to its most core, the most reply guy people that exist online, especially graduate institutions. And to destroy this behemoth, you have to effectively bankrupt a large percentage of the most reliable Democratic voters. I just don't think that's politically going to happen from a left case. It's just not possible. If it's not politically going to happen anyway, you may as well provide a little bit of relief to 43 million people in the meantime. And, you know, listen, I'm not a big believer in the Democratic Party, although I have to say that they have surprised me a few

times now. They've surprised me now with the CHIPS Act, with the Inflation Reduction Act, and actually maybe their most surprising gangster move was inserting with the Inflation Reduction Act, and actually, maybe their most surprising gangster move was inserting into that Inflation Reduction Act while no one was looking this like, this rebuke to the Supreme Court. Yeah, it's very interesting. So, you know, the Supreme Court struck down the EPA's ability to regulate carbon and they were like, you have to legislate this. And Democrats snuck that provision into the Inflation Reduction Act while Republicans weren't paying attention. So they have surprised me a couple of times here. But, you know, at this point in the electoral landscape, and I'm actually talking about this a little bit in my monologue, it's not crazy to imagine the Democrats hold the House

and pick up a couple seats in the Senate. In which case, if you pick up, if you win the Pennsylvania seat versus us, and you win the Wisconsin seat versus Ron Johnson, which is probably the more difficult of the two, definitely the more difficult of the two, and you hold everything else. And right now the polls have them in that position. Then you don't have to worry about Manchin and Sinema. And then, you know, Biden has said before free community college was something that was really important to him that he actually cared about. Well, then that actually is back on the table. I also want to say that, you know, one of the other things that they do here that goes beyond the headline, okay, 10K or 20K if you're a Pell Grant recipient debt relief is the fact that they made it more affordable for everyone blanking across the board by limiting student debt payments

to 5% of income. That is a more sweeping change. They also have in here some things about trying like more transparency around costs and whatever. I think all of that is ultimately kind of- The colleges don't care. Kind of meaningless. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like in the Trump administration, they did this hospital thing, hospital pricing transfer. It did absolutely nothing. So I don't have a lot of confidence in that, but it is a broader reform, this 5% income limit for people. And this actually could make a difference. There's a program in place right now where if you're a public servant, you can have your debt discharged. I think it's 10 years. exists, but is so mismanaged and disastrous that almost no one can make use of it. So actually

making that useful would be a big difference. Let's go ahead and put up the cost estimates, just so we can give you some of the details in terms of the numbers here. So one of the estimates found that this could cost $300 billion. This is actually before they added in the $20,000 of forgiveness. So they're updating this to see one thing that, so on the one hand, it could be more than this. On the other hand, it's also important to keep in mind that a lot of this debt was never going to get paid off. A lot of, you know, borrowers, I think it's like a one out of five borrowers was already in default. You have 90% of borrowers right now who say they are not prepared for student debt payments to restart. So, you know, the reality of the situation is, especially with that Obama-era program that limits the amount that you have to pay in, a bulk of this debt was probably never going to be paid ultimately.

This is all fake. And that's why I also get frustrated about who's going to pay. Listen, this is all BS. It's a lot like Social Security. If you're my age, you're patient with Social Security, good luck trying to collect

when you're 65. I think we all know this is not going to happen. Probably going to take a haircut of like two thirds. This is also probably the exact same thing. So in terms of the collective future

and the actual numbers, I don't disagree with you. I see people trying to make it like you're going to like directly pay for it right now. That's not how the government works. I'm always going to argue that type of idiocy. Politically, though, not a terrible point for the Republicans to hammer home.

So I really just think that it comes down to and this is also, by the way, my problem with free community college. I don't think most of these people deserve jobs at these colleges. I think it's all fake. I think they're full of it. I mean, I've been reading very interestingly in my monologue about the number of diversity, equity, and inclusion staffers. They're getting paid full salaries, all based on tuition bloat, which is funded by a lot of these student loans. I mean, I think the

fact is, is that you have to burn the system basically to the ground all the way to 1992 era of when this was actually affordable, accessible. That's when around 20-something percent of the U.S. population was going to college. I think that's frankly probably about right. Well, what what happened in part is that these colleges became like businesses. They are. Look at LSU. They have a lazy river going through their campus. I'm sorry. That's insane that the taxpayers are paying for this. Well, and that is the thing is like they became like businesses. There was an effort starting in California with Reagan actually to really strip a lot of the state funding. So then they had to go out into the market and like attract and market towards students. And guess which students they want to attract.

They want to attract wealthy students who can donate and who can, you know, like fill up their coffers. And so they created all of these. There's administrative bloat, but it's also all these like luxury amenities, the lazy river, the fitness palaces, all this stuff. So, I mean, it's, you know, it comes, it ultimately part of that is that the state took a step back from having a direct interest. And so there was no incentive to keep costs under control. When California universities, which were, you know, and still are some of the best in the

nation, when their funding was significantly stripped, then that totally changed the economic model and landscape. So I completely agree that's a problem. I just don't think that the fact that you're not solving every problem right now isn't a reason to do what we can do at this point in time and give people a little bit of relief. I hear what you're saying. Let's go ahead and go to this next piece about how they are justifying this in terms of the sort of legal backing. It's interesting because, Sagar, and maybe you looked into this more, it seems like there are two potential justifications for this.

So the memo they put out cites a post-9-11 law that allows for debt cancellation in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency. They're saying the COVID pandemic is that emergency that justifies the use of this. It's called the Heroes Act of 2003. It fairly directly, it says it authorizes the secretary to, quote, waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs if the secretary deems such waivers or modifications necessary to ensure at least one of several enumerated purposes, including that bars are not placed in a worse position financially because of a national emergency. There's also, you know, presidents, including Biden, including Trump, including Obama, for a long time have used this Education Act legal justification to give selective student loan debt relief,

like the public servant program that I was talking about before, you know, service members. I think there was a provision from Biden this year, if memory serves correctly, specifically targeted disabled service members. So it's been used in the past to grant debt relief, just not in quite as wide scale of a fashion. It's really weird that they chose to go with the HEROES Act because there's actually a provision under Obamacare, which is probably more legally justifiable and sound. So Obamacare had a federal student loan takeover as part of its actual pay for in terms of how they were going to make it go forward. And there are provisions within Obamacare that actually allow the president to go and to cancel debt, or at least to take and federalize the program in a much more direct manner. So I think it's incredibly odd that they went with COVID as the reason to do

so. And actually, from what I understand, this could phase a real problem at the Supreme Court if it goes up there. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This isn't just from here. I've asked around in the legal community, and apparently this is pretty sound, which is that the Supreme Court may actually reject it because, and this can look at it under the same scrutiny of which we'll recall the CDC eviction moratorium. You remember that Kavanaugh was like, hey, CDC, you can't just use COVID as a reason in order to extend this. You need to go and enact this program through Congress. I'm going to allow this to go on for, I think it was like 60 days or something like that. Well,

eventually what happened is the 60 days expired. Congress did not ultimately pass it until the Supreme Court came through and actually struck it down. And there was some sort of detente that was reached. This actually could have the same problem. And I think that's also part of the problem with this, with the COVID justification, which is that at the same time, I mean, here's the thing, they're ending other programs like Title 42 down at the border saying, oh, well, actually, we're going to end this because the COVID pandemic is slowing down. But we're also going to declare a public health emergency and use it to cancel student debt. Look, I understand that people who are recipients of this policy don't care whatsoever. But I'm just saying, you know, we have found out the hard way in the past that using novel interpretations

of the law, while it can be cool, does not necessarily stand up. And so this could very, very certainly go all the way up to the Supreme Court. I think it's really strange that they went this way and not with the Obamacare. Obamacare gives them a much more direct statute in order to do this. They probably did it because this is a faster way and less administrative in order to go about it. Oh, really? But here's the thing. I mean, from what I understand, they've been looking at this for a year.

So, like, why didn't you just use the better legal just— I mean, I had really sort of given up on— Biden promised this very directly on the campaign. Yes. I think he just said it to Bernie Sanders as well. He repeatedly, you know, talked about at least—he would say at least $10,000 in student debt relief. And so I think that's how, ultimately, progressives were able to sort of shame him into really taking action here because, obviously, he was a little bit like, you know know this isn't a neoliberal kind of thing to do like direct debt relief looking at

something and saying okay the problem is people have too much debt we're just gonna cancel some of that debt is a very not neoliberal thing to do the typical neoliberal approach would be like let's have a tax credit let's have an incentive let's have a program credit. Let's have an incentive. Let's have a program. So in that way, even though, again, I would like to see more, it is a real sign, again, of a sort of break with the neoliberal order, which is remarkable given that Biden was not just like a participant in, but a real architect of that neoliberal order throughout his career and also, you know, certainly during the Obama administration. But in terms of the legal justification, I'm going to let other people who are more versed in this do the deep analysis. All I can say is that presidents have routinely used the authority that they have to grant student loan debt relief. Yes, it has not been this broad and this sweeping, but most of the analysis that I've read says that this is on relatively firm legal footing.

Then again, it's not like the Supreme Court really is like honestly parsing through the law and precedent and whatever. They're trying to come up with the justification for whatever they ideologically want to do. So I don't want to bet on that, but I'm very much in favor ultimately of the president doing things that are good and that. But I'm very much in favor, ultimately,

of the president doing things that are good and popular. And if they get challenged in court and the court wants to say, we're going to take this away, then okay, we'll go down that road. But so ultimately, we'll see what happens here. The last thing that I wanted to note that I thought was interesting in terms of the sort of bigger conversation,

Ryan Cooper had a good piece that said, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen, this last article, Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness is a good start, which is kind of how I think about it too. He points out, and this is crazy, and this goes to the stupidity of the neoliberal approach to doing things.

The federal government already spends about 15% more on all of its various indirect higher education subsidies than the sum total of all tuition at public colleges and universities. So the money is already there. So it's just a way of saying like the way we're doing this right now, writ large, is really stupid. It's really not cost effective. And there is definitely a lot more to be done. I think also before we move on, we should probably address the inflation debate on this. Oh, yes. Yeah, actually, that's important. Because, yeah, this is one of – I think this is one of the more salient critiques of taking this move right now.

You know, Larry Summers and Jason Furman, former Obama economists, are very aggressively saying, like, this is going to be inflationary. This is the wrong thing to do at the wrong time. The thing that – so there's two problems I have with that analysis. Number one, people are already not paying their student loans. Payments. It's been inflationary since we paused it in March of 2020. So it's like, I mean, we're not really changing the baseline right now. People are still not going to be making those payments until December 31st. But I also, and we've talked about this a lot, I really object to this idea that number one, inflation is primarily driven by the fact that

people got a little more money in their pocket. I don't deny that that had an impact, but the bigger problem is the energy prices skyrocketing. The bigger problem is the supply chains. The bigger problem is corporate price gouging. And so I really object to this almost like sociopathic idea that is ascendant among elite economists and among the Fed, that the only way we can deal with the inflation issue is basically by crushing the working class and forcing a recession and making them feel a lot of pain. Yeah. I mean, so here's the thing. It's actually a terrible way in order to boost the economy. You want wanted to boost the economy. As we said, frankly, it's a deflationary move if you make people start paying their payments back in the future. So in a way, we've already had the

inflationary move by pausing student debt relief or student payments for the last two years. True. It's complicated. More what I would say is I generally have no idea. I mean, will it actually impact consumer spending? There's not really a whole lot of evidence either way that by pausing it that we did boost consumer spending and that by taking it away and then restarting payments that we won't ultimately see a wash. So I think it's probably 50-50. We'd be better off, like, doing a hell of a lot more in the oil markets if you really wanted to. Like, if you want to solve inflation, we should, you know, or, hey, listen, you know, you could end certain sanctions on Russia. That actually would probably have way more. Or we could pressure the crown prince in order to, you know, I don't know if people know this, but only a couple of days ago, the crown prince in Saudi Arabia said that they were going

to cut oil production despite promises to Biden. That is going to have like 10x more of a impact than a lot of this will. In general, I think it'll be a wash. That being said, politically, I have no idea. I mean, I do think a lot of people are going to get pissed off by this. And I don't think we should underrate the boomer. I mean, there's a lot of boomer people who, look, I don't agree with their analysis. I guess I understand where they're coming from. They're like, well, when I was in college, I had a janitor's job and swept my way through. Listen, I mean, college costs has ballooned since then. It's just simply not the case. But a lot of these people just don't want to hear the truth,

which is that colleges probably have exploded by 2,000 to 2,500 percent in terms of costs since they were there. But they're just not going to accept that, and so they are going to be angry. So politically, I could see them, you know, in the same way that a lot of Republican messaging around consumer spending and checks being the major cause of inflation, I could see this kind of falling within that trap. But it's all a political watch. I don't know. But checks ultimately were massive political benefits to the parties that gave them out, right?

And you have a lot of people beyond the $43 million who will directly benefit. You have a lot of people who will sort of benefit indirectly who maybe are helping with those payments or who are the boyfriend or the girlfriend or the husband or wife of the student loan debt holder or the parents or grandparents who are, you know, have had to kick in at times to help their kids to be able to shoulder this burden. So to me, I think, you know, nobody knows for sure how the politics of this will play out, but I'm a lot more confident that material politics ultimately are a good thing, that the people who benefit from them, you know, are much more likely to then come out and vote, have a reason to vote, have a reason to feel loyalty to that party. And it's hard for me to imagine people being like single issue voters,

being pissed off that someone else got a benefit that they didn't directly benefit from. But it's obviously multifaceted. Yeah. No idea. For sure. All right. So let's talk about the midterms. Nice segue there.

So we had some very interesting results this week in the primaries and also very interesting results in terms of this New York special election that we have been looking forward to for quite a while now, because this district in upstate New York is as sort of evenly divided and swingy of a district as it possibly could be. This is a district that went by a point and a half to Biden. It's been represented by Democrats. It's been represented by Republicans. Upstate New York is also one of the areas where Democrats were getting shellacked as like, you know, canary in the coal mine for previous midterm disasters. So everybody's watching this really closely.

And you had two candidates who were both pretty strong, both established politicians in the area that represented significant parts of the district. And the Republican in particular, Mark Molinaro, was seen as a very good candidate. He's more of a moderate Republican. He's tried to sort of like have a moderate stance on abortion and other issues. He represents and has for a long time one of the more significant areas in the district. So it was expected, and he did. He would outperform in that county. But ultimately, the Democrat really defied the polling here and ended up pulling off a clear victory. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Pat Ryan, this Business Insider piece says he wrote a wave of fire, anger and indignation over abortion and guns to secure a major special election victory for Democrats in New York.

When I checked the margin last night, it was right around two points that Pat Ryan had won by. They're still counting some of the late absentee ballots, but it looks like he outperformed by a little bit how Biden did in the district, which is, you know, quite encouraging for Democrats. So let's put this next piece up on the screen in terms of kind of putting the pieces together of all of these recent special elections. This is from Dave Wasserman. So in every single post-Dobbs special election, so not primary, special elections, the Democrats have overperformed and the Republicans have underperformed. The trend is also very similar across these districts in terms of the more liberal parts of the districts are just really showing up in droves, sort of like white college

educated voters, very animated, very much showing up to vote in ways that oftentimes, and this is also interesting, the polls are not predicting. So again, in this district, you had polls up to election day that had the Republican up by as much as eight points. And so, you know, the fact that Democrats are outperforming the polls is also unusual. Usually it's the Republicans that do that. So, um, Sager, it is seen as like a very interesting indicator of where things are. Yeah. You sent this piece this morning from the New York times. We don't have it made because it literally just came out this morning, but it's very interesting. So on average,

Republicans carried the four completed districts by 3.7 percentage points compared with Trump's 7.7 edge in the same districts. The results are not just worse, they're actually straightforwardly poor. Republicans need to fare better than Donald Trump, who lost the national vote by 4.5 points, to retake the House. So they're underperforming by three. They actually need to overperform significantly. They need to overperform to retake the House, let alone contemplate winning the Senate.

So look, still a couple months to election day. We don't know. I think we could say definitively at this time that Democratic enthusiasm is much higher than it was in the past. And also, I think that it does seem that there is a very activated constituency, which showed up big time in 2018 and in 2020. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that Florida turnout was actually higher last night in the Democratic primary than in the blue wave of 2018. You had 1.5 million votes in the 2022 primary compared to 1.52 versus 1.51. So the fact that it even comes close to what we know was a major Dem wave in 2018, in terms of turnout, right, that means that this is significant.

We should also say, though, what else happened in 2018? Well, Marsha Blackburn and a bunch of Republicans also did win their Senate seat. So it's not like it was a massive, you know, it's not the massive wave that people made it and Republicans did still keep control of the Senate. So it's still possible. One of the interesting things in blue states was that it was like purple areas went more blue, but red states became more red.

So it's possible that this could actually flip things a little bit more in that way. I know that doesn't necessarily make sense, but if you think about it, it kind of does. That's actually, that's what they're seeing in these districts is in the rural areas, the Republicans are outperforming the Trump margins, but turnout is lower. And it's in those more liberal parts of the district where people are showing up in droves and handing these large margins to Democrats. So look, I mean, and that is the, we'll get to this, that is sort of what the Republicans are banking on is maybe these special

elections aren't representative of what the electorate will look like in November. But I saw Josh Barrow and his sub stack was making an interesting point that it's not just that Democrats are super motivated by dobs and abortion. It's also that some of the new Republican coalition is kind of turned off by the GOP extremism. This isn't the issue that they signed up to be a part of in the Republican party. Donald Trump, even though, you know, he's the person who put these people on the court that effectuated this outcome, he really downplayed the more sort of religiosity component in his campaign in 2016 and attracted people into the coalition who maybe previously had been turned off by this, you know, hardcore evangelical messaging. And so now

that that's back at the center of the party, you have some Republicans who are like, eh, I'm not feeling these people as much as I was maybe like six months ago. Some of us may have said that and we're laughed out of the room. Some of us have been, yes, you've been making that point for a minute now. Maybe four years, whatever. It's okay. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, which only highlights this point even more, which is that new Pew Research polling

actually shows the economy remains the top midterm issue, but shows that abortion has ranked from 43% in March to 56% in August in terms of salience. So top salience, August, 77% economy, 62% guns, 60% violent crime, 56% abortion, more so even than energy policy. Personally, I think that's kind of crazy. But listen, voters are who they are. So to have a 13% jump and to have that also come at the very same time of overperformance, that's obviously going to have a major impact at the ballot box. And this always comes to the more maddening parts of midterms. Midterms, yes, are a referendum on the national mood and all of that.

But in general, it really is like whose base is more going to turn out? A lot of people don't vote in the midterms. That's true. What is the midterm performance? Maybe like on a bad year, 50%. On a good year, like 75%. But it never even comes close. I don't even think it's close.

It might not even be 75%. I think 50% is more like in the good years. Right. So that's what I'm saying. So a lot of people just don't vote. Most of them are old. So if you can get people who are younger, people who are more like fence-sitting type liberals and fence-sitting Republicans to not go, fence-sitting liberals to go, then you can actually significantly change the results.

It really is all a function of do I that's the hardest to turn out, is young people who will disproportionately benefit from this and are overwhelmingly supportive of the move. So that's part of why I feel like in midterms, when it's a turnout game, when it's just about like firing up your people, it probably will be a benefit to them, but ultimately we'll see. Now the flip side here and the cautionary note, which I mentioned before, this is from Dave Wasserman. Let's put this up on the screen. Democrat successes in these specials have been fueled by high engagement in college-heavy enclaves like Lincoln, Nebraska, Rochester, Minnesota, Ulster County, New York, and Ithaca, New York. Pockets not all that representative of the larger fall electorate. So that's what Republicans are kind of hanging on to

at this point, that, you know, these special elections, they're not really representative. You're going to have, and it is true in a special election, you're going to get even smaller turnout than you ultimately will in the midterm elections. So we're going to have more of our people show up and it's going to be a different landscape. They're holding onto that and they're holding onto, you know, the macro metrics, the fact that, and these are, you know, these are hard trends to overcome. The fact that you have an unpopular president and it basically has never happened before that you have a president. In fact, I think it literally has never happened before that you have a president who's mired at 40% approval rating and their party picks it. It's literally

never happened before. So it's not like that's a small thing to take a look at. Is it enough, you know, the Dobbs decision and these other factors to sort of overcome the long thrust of history? Hard to say. And then, of course, you continue to look at the economic numbers, the fact that, you know, so many people feel we're in a recession. So many people say inflation is their number one issue and they trust Republicans more on the issue. The fact that you have 74% of the country saying that we're on the wrong track. Normally, you would look at those metrics and say it's a wrap. Like there's nothing Democrats can do.

And yet it seems like in poll after poll, the generic ballot now tied with Democrats actually have a tiny bit of an edge in terms of the generic ballot, in terms of these special elections, in terms of abortion shooting up as an issue, you have these indicators that it is going to be a much more closely fought battle than it looked like it was going to be pre-Jobs. So while all this is happening and the bottom is falling out from the Republicans' massive red wave dreams, where is the man who is charged with making sure Republicans secure a majority in the Senate? Senator Rick Scott, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. He's not just, this says Rick Scott's ill-timed Italian vacation. As you were pointing out, it's not just that he's in Italy. He's literally on a super yacht in Italy. Very clear that

somebody on his side leaked this to Axios, right? Who's like pissed off about the fact that he is nowhere to be found, is apparently not engaged in the fact that, you know, things are kind of, the wheels are coming off. There's always been criticism of him that,

you know, he's more interested in his own vanity than being a team player. And the really funny thing here, because this is the guy, he's the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The other thing that's really funny here is that he had sent out a tweet literally the week when he is on the deck of this super yacht in Italy. He sent out this tweet that said, another week of President Biden vacationing in Delaware versus working at the White House. If he loves to travel so much, I've got some suggestions as to where he should go next. And he's got like the border, the southern border listed a bunch of times. So he's criticizing Biden for vacationing in Delaware while he is on a super yacht in Italy. He is literally has his staff tweeting about Biden

while he is on. Imagine being shameless enough to do that. I can't. I honestly can't. I mean, it's just amazing. Next level. Yeah. How is this even possible? And look, I just think the fact, look, a lot of people go to Italy. A lot of middle class folks.

I would love to go to Italy. I've never been. Not a big Euro guy. Been to Italy a couple times, as we discussed. It's fine. Positano, cool. Haven't seen that before. More what I'm saying is that he goes there, gets on this super yacht, is not engaged in the midterms, and criticizing Biden for going to the gate.

It's like, come on, man. This is completely ridiculous. Also, here's what he says. Quote. This is his response. Senator Scott took a couple of days to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary with his wife and family, a trip that was planned more than a year ago. They always say that. And this is what I always say to these folks. Rick Scott, you're worth

$100 million. You could retire. You can go and live your life on that yacht. Go do the super yacht all you want. None of us would care. I mean, you know, outside of the fact that, you know, Medicare fraud and all that. But that's a separate conversation. Fine. You go live your life as a rich guy. You chose to sign up for the U.S. Senate and you chose furthermore to elevate yourself to the top

of Republican chances. Is it so much to ask that you do your job? Is it so hard? I can't even dream of the idea of taking a vacation from the show if we were about to go into a major thing like this. It'd be insane to consider it. So it's like, this is one thousandth as important as supposedly is what these guys say. So first of all, he's on the vacation. What did we also talk about, Crystal? This guy is being called on for an audit because they burned through a couple hundred million dollars where over the last six months drained their bank accounts. No discernible effort, reason. It's not like the polls are going on that well.

And now they need cash, hardcore. A leaked tape of the GOP chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, actually just came out this morning, where it was fed to a political reporter, where she sent a tape to donors. She was like, hey, we need cash to contest the Senate. Like now, immediately. Wow.

Part of the issue too, Trump is sucking up all this money out of the Republican base. They're not giving to the NRSC. They're giving to Trump in order to, quote, fight back against the FBI. And he doesn't give a damn about the midterm elections at all. No, definitely not.

So he could care less about whether they win or not. And then you've got all of these candidates who have never run before, who don't know how to fundraise, No, definitely not. kind of like weird freaks that inhabit this city who apparently like dialing for dollars with rich people all day long. Like it is a fricking grind. And so I think a lot of these folks thought that they could just like show up, go to the, you know, go to the event, send out some tweets, do a Fox news appearance. They didn't know that what a campaign really is for these candidates is sitting on a phone in an office begging for dollars day in and day out. And should our system be that way? No, it's horrific that that is the way that it is. It's terrible for the candidates and it's really terrible for the country. But yeah, especially

since a lot of these candidates are behind the eight ball in terms of the polling, they're behind, they need to have a cash advantage going into, you know, post-Labor Day when things really ramp up because they've got to sort of flood the airwaves and make the case to overcome the negative ratings that they have accrued over this period when Democrats have sort of been aggressively out there prosecuting the case against them. So early on, the NRSC had a big cash advantage. It looked like they had this huge war chest, that Democrats were going to be in a really poor position. And now we're in a place where they are pulling ads from the airwaves in critical battleground states.

And we're in a place where they're having to spend money in states like Ohio, where they never thought that they were going to have to come in with a rescue plan. And it's a lot of money, too. I think it's like $28 million or something that Mitch McConnell's having to put into Ohio in order to try to make sure that J.D. Vance ultimately wins there, which I fully expect that he will. But I'm sure they did not go into this year thinking they were going to have to spend tens of millions of dollars to get J.D. Vance across the finish line in Ohio. No, they certainly did not think that at all. Okay, let's go ahead and talk about Ukraine, some major developments there. Ukraine celebrating its Independence Day and the United States celebrating that with, let's put this up there on the screen,

$3.6 billion in new military aid to Ukraine to mark their Independence Day on the six-month anniversary of Russia's invasion. Just for context, for those who are wondering, as my own personal bugaboo, this is more than every country in Europe in military aid that has sent them in total, save for the UK, which has sent 4 billion. So we are in this single distribution of our promised 40 billion have sent more in this one package than every single other country on the European continent, except for the island of Great Britain. So, okay, doesn't seem fair to me. Seems kind of interesting. What have we gotten for it? It's kind of interesting. You know, I was looking this morning, Crystal, Lucas Tomlinson over at Fox News using the Institute for the Study of War, which, you know, full disclosure, is like a very hawkish organization. And even they are showing in their maps, the front line has not moved in the last two months

of the war. In fact, the front line in terms of plus and minus for Ukrainian forces is some 174 square miles, which is about the size of Rockland County, New York. So we are in a full-blown stalemate over the last two months. Ukraine is promising this new counter-offensive. Nothing is materialized as of yet. And in fact, it's always very interesting to me to watch the New York Times and the way that they message to their voters. As we said before, previously, Ukraine is making all these propaganda videos, like, we're striking Crimea. And everyone's like, oh my God. They're making course. They're like, hey, just so everybody knows, these are very symbolic strikes. Majority of their Russian

ammo is not actually there. And this morning, the exact same thing. They say, quote, long war looms, officials say, despite Ukraine's defiant message. And so that defiant message, and honestly, unfortunately, I think Zelensky is trying to manipulate our population with this. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that Zelensky is saying, quote, Russia's war will end in Crimea. And he actually declared victory over Russia on their Independence Day in their message. Now, listen, again, I commend the Ukrainian forces. They've done better than anybody on earth expected them to do so. But thinking that, A, that this is victory, to have a static front line over two months in which you're engaged in a major war with

great power, that's probably not going to be good for you in the long run. And then second, you know, our population thinking that there is some grand counteroffensive coming in which Russia will be driven all the way back to their territory and out of Crimea, that's not going to happen. I mean, I don't possibly understand the brain of anybody familiar with military affairs, including the U.S. military and the U.S. State Department, who think that's going to work? So we're in a strange position. The global economy has obviously suffered. Geopolitics seems unable to grapple with the ongoing frontline, you know, static, really grinding war, which is not good for Ukraine. Every day that they fight, they lose money. They lose, you know, I mean, their 30 percent GDP contraction every day that they fight, they lose money. They lose, you know, I mean, they're 30% GDP contraction.

Every day that they fight and continues requires more aid on our part. And I continue to ask, I'm like, what is this aid doing? From what I can tell, it has not enabled any major counteroffensive. Are we just going to keep funding them to hold the line? Because, okay, like, when does it end? You know, which, so if they push back 10 miles, now what? I mean, if they gain 10 miles, is that, I mean, now we're getting into First World War territory. Right.

Of what's worth it and what's not. I went and tried to dig into more details about this aid package. Yeah. You know, more details about if there was any political debate about it, what that debate looked like. And it's barely a side note. Oh, no one's talking. You literally. This is the only show you'll ever hear about it.

There were a couple of little, like, you know, like an AP bulletin about it. It was like two paragraphs long. And that's almost literally what you can find about it. It says it will include, the greatest detail we have is that it will include air defense systems, artillery systems, munitions, counter unmanned aerial systems, and radars, according to the White House. That's about the extent of what you're going to get from this, let alone the issues we've talked about before about tracking these weapons and where they actually- What does that even mean? Aerial systems? What? Right. Exactly. Well, yes, exactly. And so, you know, this is what I've always objected to is

in the beginning phases of this war, there was obviously like wall-to-wall media coverage, totally understand. It's a massive media, you know, it's a massive event in global world affairs. We cover it extensively and try to continue to cover it as much as we possibly can. Well, that coverage has fallen off. And so now there's just very little awareness of what we're even doing. And there's certainly no one out here asking, what next? Like, where does this lead? Okay, we give them this $3 billion in arms.

It's package number 14, 15, 16. I don't even know at this point. What is the goal with this? Where is this headed? What are we going to do next? What would constitute success? Because the previous goalpost had been the last massive major package. It was like, all right, this is going to enable the Ukrainians to launch this counteroffensive where we're going to really see the benefit of us providing them with all of these

arms, including these sort of like mid-range missiles. Let's go. Let's see what they can do. This is kind of like sink or swim moment. And then it hasn't panned out. And yet we're like, let's just send you $3 billion more because why not? I mean, I really feel like this is an area. I genuinely don't know what the White House's plan is here. I guess it's just to continue indefinitely providing billions of dollars in aid, which both parties completely sign off on and don't raise any sort of a fuss about in spite of the fact that some of these people pretend to care about big spending, etc., etc. When it comes to this, there's no questions whatsoever.

And Zelensky, in addition to saying, you know, it began with Crimea, it will end with Crimea, which is a very maximalist position, frankly, highly unrealistic position. He also said, we are prepared for the war of attrition. So in the same time that he's saying we're strong enough to achieve this massive maximalist victory, he's also saying don't expect it anytime soon. And then as we covered before, and I think it's really important to keep our finger on the pulse of what's going on in Russia too, after the assassination of the daughter of this significant Russian intellectual, the reporting is that the hardliners have been strengthened by this. And as much as Putin's actions have been extreme and inhumane and aggressive and all of that, there are people within Russian elite circles who want him to go much further, who want him to strike government buildings and defense ministry buildings in Kiev, for example, who want to use this assassination as sort of rallying call to declare a broader war and a broader mobilization of the Russian public. So he's starting to be put under that pressure at home as well, which, you know, matters and creates a further sort of

instability and a further chaos element in terms of what's going to happen next. Yeah. And, you know, I think that that is the key. Also, what people are—there is rumor going around that Russia is looking to stage referendums like they did in Crimea, in, you know, eastern-occupied Ukraine. Look, I mean, I don't think anybody can doubt what exactly the referendum is going to be, whether the people want it or not. Although people do like to downplay Russian support in some of these regions. In those regions, yeah. Anyway, I have no idea what those people actually want. What I do am relatively certain of is that some referendum would say, yeah, we want to be part of Russia.

And that would give them pretext either to escalate the war, because that would mean what? Which would mean that then it's a war on sovereign Russian territory, as they consider it, not Ukrainian territory, which could increase Russian support domestically, give Putin a pretext for hardliners in order to increase the military campaign. That could be the next phrase. And again, you have Ukraine's own military saying our hardest days may yet lie ahead. And so again, to what end? For what? What are we willing to accept? What do we want to see? Are we ever going

to have cheap gas ever again? Are we ever going to restore some stability to the global natural gas markets? I mean, every day that this drags on, the continent of Europe is bleeding in terms of natural gas. Again, check this morning, it's like an 80% increase in terms of natural gas futures. My friend Joe Weisenthal over at Bloomberg is calling this the return of European austerity, just in terms of the level of money that's being siphoned out of the economy. Trade deficit in Germany. We have not seen the continent this destabilized since like 2012. And I don't know if people remember this. The Eurozone crisis was very real and had major bleed over

effects into our economy. I mean, there were all those protests, remember, in Greece and Spain. You have a crazy unemployment. It took a long time to climb out of that hole. And we seem to be very much back in that situation. So just always put that on the table. Okay, let's talk about Liz Cheney. This one is hilarious. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen.

Liz Cheney compared herself to Abraham Lincoln and to running for president. And what do we got here? Well, YouGov, first time to actually test her just as an independent candidate. If Liz Cheney were to run for president, Donald Trump, according to this poll, would get 40% of the vote. Joe Biden would get 32% of the vote. And Liz Cheney would get 11% of the vote, showing actually that she takes a significant chunk away from Joe Biden in terms of the popular vote, Crystal. So it's actually Democrats and crossover Dems that would be the ones who are most likely to come over. Now, something tells me that if Cheney were to do something like this, that she would not face, Crystal, the same level of ire that a Jill Stein faced in 2016 or of like a Ralph Nader because she's so heroic. And, you know, people think. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe you're right.

I don't know. I do see a lot of. I do think people would freak out if she. So if she actually ran. Yeah. I do think there would be a liberal resistance freak out if she ran.

Because yeah, this poll, when it's just Biden versus Trump, Biden wins 46-42. Yes, exactly. And then when you introduce Liz Cheney, this is predictable because our politics is the dumbest thing ever.

The only issue that apparently matters is where you stand on the question of how you feel about Donald Trump. And so even though, as we've said a million times and everybody else has as well, she voted with Trump 93% of the time.

She is on board with all of the conservative stuff. The fact that she criticized him over January 6th makes Democrats love her and makes Republicans hate her and nothing else matters whatsoever. And it is the dumbest possible state of affairs. Yeah, I could not agree with that more. Let's go

and put the next one up there on the screen, which is that Liz Cheney now says there will be a new political group that targets Trump allies. Interesting. So it's not actually about Trump. This is why I always thought she was so full of it. She'd be like, well, no, Ron DeSantis is bad too. I'm just like, okay, you're just a Democrat. It's fine. But if you really did care about getting rid of Trump, you would want to elect somebody who has crossover appeal with people who are MAGA and people who are possible Cheney supporters. That's basically the whole case for a DeSantis 2024. And she says that that is not in the cards. So she's now launching this political group of which we're certain is

going to be what? Raised dramatic money from democratic organizations, the Reid Hoffman types of the world, who have all already discussed backing her in some sort of presidential campaign. And it does, I think, just demonstrate where her core constituency is. Now, sadly though, sadly, this is working in terms of elite opinion. Elite opinion has somehow convinced that Liz Cheney is a real political force in the Republican Party. Look no further than MSNBC on Sunday. Let's take a listen. Liz Cheney is coming for all of them. of that interview, she went after Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and other these these other guys who

know better than this MAGA act that they're putting on just to, you know, appeal to the to the rabid MAGA base. She's like, you all know better. What are you doing? And she has the credibility to do it. She is a Cheney. You cannot question her conservative bona fides, for goodness sake. She voted with Trump for 93 percent of the time in Congress. She's a Cheney. So like they can't come for her the same way they try to go after others, because the day that someone calls Liz Cheney a rhino, you just have to laugh in their face because that's the weakest argument possible. So Liz Cheney unleashed. I'm here for it. And the Republicans, she's going to be a thorn in their side for the immediate future in these midterms and going into the presidential election. And I don't think they're ready for her.

Oh, my God. Is Michael Steele hosting that show? Apparently. He's probably filling in there. What is how can you possibly the level of delusion that this requires? But, hey, she works for the Lincoln Project. They built Democrats out of hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020. And as we have proven decisively on Rising and here as well, their ads had a negative effect in terms of actually working against Republicans. So I don't think you should be taking any advice from these folks. election deniers who I, as we've been covering, some of these people in some of these states are like a true threat and very disturbing in terms of democracy. Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, people in Arizona, all this stuff. Okay. I am all for it. I would love to see a project that was

actually effective at doing that. I just don't have a lot of confidence that Liz Cheney and her group is going to be able to pull it off. Of course. And it comes back to, and so that's why, you know, this analyst, I mean, she just sounds kind of silly because ultimately, as much as you would love to imagine that some sort of, like, conservative track record might mean something and where you stand on policy might mean something in politics. Come on. It's just not reality.

We were talking about this with regards to labels, and you were like, America first, now just me. It does not mean anything other than just how you feel about Donald Trump. And so the minute that you're on the wrong side of the issue of how you feel about him and all of his conspiracy theories and January 6th and, you know, all of his, and the FBI raid now is the new one to add to the list. If you're on the wrong side of any one of those issues, it doesn't matter what you say on anything else. You're a rhino. You're dead to them. Done. So, you know, I just think it's sort of, again, I'm fine with targeting election deniers. I would love to see it. I would love

to see it be successful. Am I confident that Liz Cheney and her crew will have an effective result in that regard? No, I am not. Yeah, I completely agree with that. Okay, let's move on. So I found this clip from a YouTube show that I hadn't heard about before where they basically like interview celebrities. In this particular one, they were eating hot wings with Matt Damon. It's called Feast and... Yeah, it's like First and Feast. Okay. And so it's brilliant. They have 11 million subscribers, so they're doing something right over there. Kind of cool, actually. But what's interesting is this clip. It actually went viral on Twitter, but I really think it

is amazing. And I've been thinking a lot about the movie business lately, and Matt Damon gave a very, like, cogent and really fascinating view as to why pop culture just seems so stagnant and not able to create movies which we used to think of

as, like, art, as, you know, not major blockbuster, but the types that could either become cult hits or, you know, just really take chances. So here's what he had to say. So I think a scenario lots of viewers can relate to is sitting on the couch on a Friday night, going through the streaming services, cycling through the movies and thinking to themselves, they're not making movies for me anymore. As somebody who's been intimately involved in movie making for 30 years, what are the macro Hollywood conditions behind that sentiment? Well, so what happened was the DVD was a huge part of our business, of our revenue stream.

And technology has just made that obsolete. And so the movies that we used to make, you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theater because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release. And six months later, you'd get a whole other chunk. It would be like reopening the movie almost. And when that went away, that changed the type of movies that we could make. I did this movie behind the candelabra and I talked to the studio executive who explained it was a $25 million movie. I would have to put that much into print and advertising,

right? To market it, what we call P&A. So I'd have to put that in P&A. So now I'm in $50 million. I have to split everything I get with the exhibitor, right? The people who own the movie theaters. So I would have to make $100 million before I got into profit. And the idea of making $100 million on a story about like this love affair between these two people. Yeah, I love everyone in the movie, but that's suddenly a massive gamble in a way that it wasn't in the movie, but that's suddenly a massive gamble in a way that it wasn't in the 1990s when they were making all those kind of movies, the kind of movies

that I loved and the kind of movies that were my bread and butter. Perfect explanation, I thought. It was really interesting. And, you know, it made me really sad because Damon just made one of my favorite movies in a long time, which was The Last Duel. And flopped. Flopped massively. Really? Yeah, it was a great movie, which was The Last Duel, and flopped, flopped massively. Really?

Yeah, it was a great movie. It was directed by Ridley Scott. What's it about? Oh my God, it's so cool. So basically, it's a movie about the last major duel fought in France that was sanctioned, and it's told, so I don't want to ruin it, but basically, Matt Damon, his wife, is raped by another character who's in the movie, and she maintains she was like, I was raped. And he's like, no, she's lying. It was consensual. Anyway, what leads to is a combat duel between the two men. But the movie is told from the perspectives of all three. And it's set in medieval France. So it's really long. It's a genuine like character

drama. It's amazing performances. But the problem was is that they spent like $100-something million on this movie, and it didn't make any of its money back. It made like $30 or $40 million. And I listened to a couple interviews with Damon and with Ridley Scott, and they're like, yeah, you know, we tried. We tried to make this great movie. But at the end of the day, it's probably just not going to happen. And from this point forward, that type of a major gamble of a –

it had all the ingredients. It had Matt Damon. It had the guy from Star Wars. I'm forgetting his name. Anyway, from Girls, Star Wars, et cetera. Adam Driver, that's his name. It had Adam Driver. Ridley Scott, one of the greatest directors in all of Hollywood, had a massive budget, like $100 million marketing, flopped right on its face. It's a character drama. And at the end of the day, you have this amazing, fascinating timepiece movie. It'll probably just, and Ben Affleck also co-wrote it and starred in the movie. It will never be made again, a movie like that.

Instead, they'll make Fast and Furious 24. Yeah, Fast and Furious 24. So they just go back to the well of what they know. Born Five is the next time we'll probably see it. Right, yeah, true. I do like those movies. I love those movies too. I love them. But I liked seeing

Matt Damon as a medieval French warrior. Jacques, you know, Jacques Legris. But yeah, it's much easier and safer to go with like this sort of cut and paste recipe of what you know works and what also is sort of like

generic enough that you can sell it to a global audience and you've covered here a lot of times um the influence that the chinese market has on hollywood now and so you have this business model that just doesn't uh make sense anymore for taking those risks on anything any movie with any sort of a sizable budget i wonder though what do you think about there was a lot of excitement around the sort of innovation within the streaming series, you know, Game of Thrones and these sort of like big budget direct-to-streaming ventures. What do you think of that piece of it?

Yeah, it's complicated. I mean, if you think about it, Scorsese's direct-to-Netflix film was a massive flop. I don't even remember what it was called, which basically tells everything. It had Robert De Niro and it had Joe Pesci. It was like three hours. It was like Scorsese unplugged.

Didn't work that well. To be honest, the major Netflix straight releases have basically been like big budget action movies, which are fine. You had that movie with The Rock. You had the latest one right now with Ryan Gosling. They did well, certainly, but they're not great movies.

I've seen some good movies on Netflix and elsewhere, but it does seem that they're much more invested in taking a murder, which you could tell the story of in two hours, and then stretching it over 12 in order to make sure. Part one. I mean, you guys know. Do I really need seven parts on this one serial? Yeah.

Maybe just one. It's okay. I mean, I also think, what's the one I liked? White Lotus? Yeah, White Lotus. Well, White Lotus on HBO. That was an amazing movie. Amazing series.

But again, that was a miniseries. That's also HBO, which has always been in boutique, kind of highbrow content. And so they have kind of a business model, though, that works. Yes. And they've had it since the 1990s. And is that basically because it's subscription? Because it was subscription. It wasn't cable.

It never went mass market. So they had Sopranos, which was their first big hit. And they kind of invented TV drama kind of as it exists today. Then they had The Wire. They have a formula there

with works. Almost everything they make is subscription. Because that's the part of the ecosystem that to me seems much better than when I was growing up and watching,

as much as I love Full House and Saved by the Bell. And I do. I love Bob Saget. And I do. But, yeah, they, you know, these, like, very rich, like, cinema level, highly written with, you know, incredible stars, like, all of that sort of stuff. That is the new, that is very different. Nothing wrong with that. And a lot better than when I was growing up.

But I also think there's more going on here than just a business model shift because you see it across different facets of our culture. Oh, definitely. Like you see it in music as well. You see it in business as well. How many times have we talked about like, you know, all these social media companies that are supposedly like the bleeding edge of innovation, whatever. They're all just like copying TikTok.

You know, the level of actual innovation. Because, I mean, again, that does come back to a business issue because companies, tech companies or any other company, they're not really rewarded for innovation and taking risks. They're rewarded for giving dividends and doing stock buybacks. And so that's what they're incentivized to do. And they use that rather than like creating new products or investing in their workforce or investing in their equipment and certainly investing in innovation. Instead, they just sort of like keep eating the seed corn. To your point, just came out news yesterday.

Blackstone is looking to purchase Pink Floyd's entire album for $500 million. Because people, a lot of old people, don't listen to new music anymore. They're just like, oh, let me fire up a Pink Floyd. Listen, Pink Floyd is fine. Don't come after me. But, I mean, you know. As someone who listens to a lot of hip-hop and rap from when I was in high school and college, I can't really talk. It'd be nice to just listen to some new music every once in a while.

I mean, I think the fact is that a lot of the movie stars in some of the best movies that were made would just never get made today. So Matt Damon made his bones on Good Will Hunting. Good Will Hunting was a massive hit. It was a cultural sensation. No way it gets made today. Yeah. Silence of the Lambs, you know, based on a book. You have these breakout performances like Jodie Foster as an adult and Hannibal Lecter.

You know, the guy wins the Oscar after spending only like 11 minutes on the screen. This stuff is gone. It's just not good. Yeah. Every once in a while, a good one squeaks through. Actually, Damon was in that movie Stillwater, which was awesome. So, like, I'm not saying it can't happen. There can be still good.

I didn't really like that movie to be honest. Really? Oh, I loved it. I thought it was cool. I thought it was a little, I don't know, character. Sure. Well, there you go, right?

Which is like, even then, like the true, like awesome, risk-taking movies that they used to make in the studio system is just gone.

And based on everything that I've read, it is probably just not going to come back for a really long time, if ever. And I think that's sad. I think that people

growing up today, you know, are basically, you get highbrow content on HBO, and then Netflix and everything else is like, is it cake? Or Formula One Season 5? Fine. I'm just saying.

You know, I want a little bit more. Didn't you? I watched, my daughter made me watch that movie, the, not that movie, the show Ultimatum. Oh, I didn't watch that one. I watched Love is Blind, of which, by the way, Nick Thompson, shout out, great fan of the show.imatum. Oh, I didn't watch that one. I watched Love is Blind, of which, by the way,

Nick Thompson, shout out, great fan of the show. Mostly I just watch HGTV. By the way, after The Altar, season two is coming out, so we'll catch up

with the Love is Blind couples. Looking forward to that very much. So I'm a victim just as much as I am. Indeed. Good to fess up. Crystal,

what are you taking a look at? We have spent a lot of time here previewing the midterm elections, learning about the candidates, digging into the polls, tracking how the ground shifted after the overturning of Roe versus Wade, but why so many factors still augur for a strong Republican performance. But I wanted to take a step back today and ask a bigger question. What is actually at stake in these midterms?

If Republicans dominate, taking the House and taking the Senate, what does that mean? If Democrats shock everyone by keeping control, what does it mean? The answer is a bit more opaque than one might hope, primarily because neither party is actually running on an agenda at all. Famously, Mitch McConnell outright told the Republican caucus and donors that the party would not be running on a legislative agenda. Axios had the report from back in December at a fancy event with donors. McConnell was asked something to the effect of, we all know what's wrong with the Democrats, but what are we going to be running on to help us win? McConnell's response was something to the effect of, with all respect, that's not what we're doing, according to a source. He has stayed true to his word. Although Kevin McCarthy and Rick Scott did make some noise about

a potential Republican agenda, McConnell has effectively won the argument. Candidates across the country have largely stuck to attacking Biden, highlighting the damage of inflation, and avoiding any discussion of abortion, like the plague. As I mentioned on Tuesday's show, the one thing they have made very clear they're super excited about is launching a whole series of Benghazi-style investigations. McCarthy himself declared after the Mar-a-Lago raid, quote, Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar. Rand Paul took the occasion of Fauci's retirement to announce, quote, Fauci's resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in

concerning the lab leak. And just about everyone has said they are eager to spend endless amounts of time probing the dealings of Hunter Biden. It actually goes even further than that, though. Document preservation requests have already gone out to those involved in the January 6th probe and officials involved in Afghanistan withdrawal and to Twitter over the collapsed sale to Elon Musk. So yeah, I think these investigations are pretty much it in terms of the GOP agenda. This is what they'll be focused on. Now, they'll probably also do some conservative virtue signaling bills like the federal version of the Stop Woke Act or something like that.

Doomed culture war flailings designed more for cable news than for actual governing. But as easy as it is to mock the Republicans for their remarkable candor around the fact that they are literally running on nothing, the dirty little secret here

is that Democrats are not actually running on an agenda either. Sure, individual candidates will tout their support for this or that policy, but does literally anyone have any idea what they would actually do with their power if they were granted two more years with trifecta control in D.C.? I've asked around. There genuinely seems to be no plan. And it's actually less forgivable for the Democrats. After all, they're guys in the White House. Republicans could reasonably argue that most of their agenda would be vetoed by Biden anyway, so may as well just wait till they get one of their own at Pennsylvania Avenue. What is a Democratic excuse?

Now, Biden essentially fumbled into a couple policy wins here recently, but he's never really had a vision outside of defeat Trump and then make a few moderate improvements that he can sell to a sycophantic press as being historic. He didn't actually care what those few moderate improvements were in particular, climate, health care, child tax credit, the details didn't matter to him so much as something was getting done. There's no sense of priorities, focus, or vision. Contrast that to the Republicans. When they get power, whether they advertise their full agenda to the American people or not, they sure as hell know what they're going to do with that power. But although Democrats like to pretend they're facing down an existential national crisis, they somehow lack any urgency or vision about how exactly to tackle it.

The fact that they so consistently fail to meet the moment is, of course, a loss for the country, but it's pretty politically foolish as well. Midterms are all about turnout. Which side is fired up enough to show up and back their people? Dobbs has breathed political life back into the Democrats, giving them an issue that they can legitimately scare the crap out of people with, accompanied by genuinely horrific stories of raped children denied abortions. But there's a very clear case that can be made here, that if Democrats held the House and picked up two more Senate seats, they could pick back up the crucial pieces of Biden's Build Back Better

agenda, which were dropped due to the opposition of Manchin and Sinema. All they need to do is get a big reconciliation package with significant wins is to hold their current seats and then beat Dr. Oz and beat Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. Now, granted, it's still a long shot, but they do actually have a shot now. And there is an extremely popular agenda that is on the table for the taking. They could promise to expand Medicare to include dental and vision. They could reinstate the phenomenally successful child tax credit. They could implement universal pre-K. They can advertise 10K in student debt relief, not as just a one-time get out of jail free card, but as a first step before providing free community college for everyone.

These issues are exciting to the base, and they're also extremely popular with independents. They might be the jolt Dems need to go from just avoiding a shellacking to actually making significant gains. They won't, though, because they've capitulated to Larry Summers and the right on inflation, tacitly accepting their framing that the problem was the help given to working people rather than to corporate price gouging and corporate failures in the face of supply chain disruptions. They won't also because it's just so much easier to run their standard lesser evil playbook. Making promises means someone might actually expect you to fulfill them. It is a sad commentary on our political system that both parties can get away with bracingly running on

zero agenda at a time when so much needs to be done and the horse race obsessed partisan media doesn't even notice or care. I just sort of realized like as I was thinking this through, you know, I've definitely given the Republicans a hard time. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, so are we looking at it? Well, at this point, you guys have heard my view. I'm against the current student debt cancellation unless the corrupt college industry is dealt with first. I understand all the pro arguments and don't let the perfect be the enemy of the mood. I get it. Don't prolong suffering. But to me, considering the fact that government action is scarce, that often you really only get one shot at these types of things, and this is likely to be the last student debt action for quite some time, I can see this as nothing more than akin

to the immorality of the way that we dealt with the financial crisis of 2008. In 2008, at a basic level, we bailed out the financial institutions who caused the mess that we were in, and we let the homeowners go bankrupt. Lives were ruined for a generation of which many people never recovered. Today's student debt cancellation, yes, it will help up to $10,000. It's similar. There was a weak consumer argument for bailing out the banks. Had to do so so people could get basic services, companies could get payroll, people wouldn't lose faith in the system. But at the end of the day, we all know exactly who helped the most. And the same is said for 10K student loan debt cancellation. 10K, by current estimates, touches approximately 31% of all borrowers.

That's great, certainly. But what they don't tell you is that the two-thirds who remain will continue to have to pay down not only their balances and accruing interests. What the Biden policy also does not do is deal with the students and others in the pipeline who will continue to come through the system. This is where the cancellation of 10K or any cancellation without dealing with the college industry is corrupt. If you cancel $10,000 in student loan debt, the overall level of debt will return to $1.8 trillion in literally just four years. Even if you took full cancellation, it would be back in 15 years. That is immoral. It is effectively a puny gift to

a small segment of the population, who also, by the way, happen to be disproportionately vote for the Democratic Party, and then still continually to screw the current students who are in the pipeline right before those who come before them. There's only one way to fix this. It has to be done, and it can't come later. You have to destroy the corrupt college industry. It has exploded over the last 40 years. Since 1980, college tuition and fees are up 1,200% while the CPI is up 236. So literally costs of college and fees have risen five times faster than overall inflation. In the last 20 years, it's accelerated. The average cost of private college in 2002 was $18,000 a year, $10,000 for out-of-state, $37,400 for in-state.

Today, the average cost of private college is $4,300, $43,000, $28,000 for out-of-state, and $11,600 for in-state. That means an in-state tuition degree is currently running the average person $40,000. For private colleges, it's $160,000. That costs increasing this much. The answer is actually student debt itself. And again, demonstrates the corrupt arrangement between the student debt industry, the government, and the colleges themselves. A landmark study from the New York Fed in 2017 exposed just how corrupt this bargain is. For every $1 of increase in student debt, colleges increase their price of tuition and fees by a whopping $0.60. Consider that. This is fully a wealth transfer to the colleges.

Furthermore, of the remaining 40 cents on the dollar, the vast majority of it is being profited on by the debt facilitators themselves who are making money hand over fist from interest repayments. The only person not making money is you. The case for college and debt was simple. Yes, it costs more, but you make more money over the course of your life. That is still mostly true, and it was especially true in the 80s and the 90s. But we are living in an entirely new world today. Of today, nearly one quarter of four-year college degree entries do not graduate, meaning they have debt and they don't have the premium. The rest of them have seen wages and the wage premium itself stagnate right alongside of those who don't have a college degree. In effect, no wage earners are getting raises at the same rate that the colleges are. So if the whole point of college is to help you earn more, that promise is dwindling. Yet these crooks are

charging astronomically high prices. So where is all this money going? I ask again. It's not to your education. In fact, it is to the massive enrichment of the colleges themselves, their administrators, and especially the largest banks on Wall Street. Colleges are non-profit. They are not subject to taxation. They have, in the last 20 years, effectively become wealth management funds. The total market value of college endowments in 2020 was a whopping $645 billion. Harvard and Yale, respectively, have $40 and $30 billion,

which are earning massive premiums on Wall Street, paying fat fees to venture capital funds that invest in, as well as other private equity and hedge funds. The people who service these funds are becoming genuinely filthy rich off the profits that they distribute, all of which is ill-gotten from subsidies paid by you through loans or your parents' hard-earned money. Beyond the financial institutions, who else is making a massive profit? Well, an eight-year review of 1,500 colleges and universities found that those who accept federal student loans, that spending at higher education institutions on, quote, student services and administration outpaced all spending on instruction, aka not education. Who are these so-called administrators? You guessed it. The massive growth has been funneled not only to

the administrators traditionally at colleges, but to the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion racket. In fact, over the last five years, the average university in the United States now has an average, yes, average, 45 people gainfully employed to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. My personal favorite example is at the University of North Carolina. They have 13 times more people working on campus diversity, equity, and inclusion than students with disabilities. That multiple remains between double and six at many of the largest universities in the United States, all of which are state universities.

All of these people are making bank, full state benefits off your tuition money. To recap, colleges in league with the student loan borrowers have taken millions of students for the ride of a lifetime. The current policy by the Biden administration provides measly relief to those students, while also nothing to attack the criminals who have taken their money, spent it on everything under the sun, mostly on BS diversity programs and lazy rivers, except for new instruction and research. All those people need to be brought to justice. Then student loan cancellation. That does nothing right now except for incentivize people to take out more loans with the hope of cancellation in the future,

profiting the criminals. The more loans, the more these people make. I don't think that's how it's supposed to work. I end by noting again my position. The level of student debt right now is criminal. It is immoral. It destroys families. It destroys the promise of the American dream. And if we deal with the colleges, I say wipe every scrap of it out by taxing the endowments of these universities 100% and then making it so they can never make profit again. But the current policy doesn't do any of that.

Thus, I'm against it. And I hope that you can understand how I got to this place. I just think it's very important, Crystal. And I think, frankly, a lot of people on the left... And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at

BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, the editor of The Real News and the author of the new book, The Work of Living, Working People Talk

About Their Lives and The Year The World Broke, our great friend Maximilian Alvarez. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you, man. Good to see you, guys.

I think this book is very courageous. First of all, because it's very rare that you have actual working people just directly, their voices put out into the press and shared with the world. A lot of times it's people who pretend to be conduits or speak on their behalf. And so you actually spoke with a lot of folks who might have been deemed essential workers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. What was the inspiration for the book and the reason why you wanted to take this approach? Well, thank you so much for having me on to talk about the book.

I'm still kind of blown away that it's out in the world now. It felt like it would never happen. But yeah, I think it's a great question. I mean, obviously, it's kind of a continuation of the work that I've been doing at Working People and now that I'm honored to do at The Real News, talking to working people about their lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles, right? And talking in depth about who they are, how they came to be the people they are, how they experience the world, what they go through at work and stuff like that. So this book, I think, really grew out of a two-part episode on working people that I did in the late spring of 2020, right? So this was like a month and a half into the pandemic. And for folks just watching, I just want to emphasize, remember where

we were at that moment. Everyone was terrified. No one knew what was going on. People were dying. It was an incredibly scary time. So I put out this call on social media for workers to send in testimonies about what they were going through. And I was overwhelmed by the responses. I ended up posting six hours worth of testimonies in a two-part episode from folks talking about what they were going through. And so Or Books thankfully reached out and asked if I would want to do a book about that. And I didn't quite know if that was going to be the case. But later that summer, the inspiration that you're asking about, I think, really came because I started to see in real time how quickly we were becoming accustomed to the things that had horrified us just months before, right? How easily we slipped into acceptance and resignation of the unacceptable

response that we had to this pandemic. And when I say we, I mean employers, I mean the government, I mean there were so many people who failed us. But I also saw that it was working people who kept us from falling into the abyss, right? I saw moments of beauty and solidarity and the great Molly Crabapple, I think, captured that in the cover of this, where she depicts, you know, people standing on their balconies, banging pots and pans in honor of frontline workers who were sacrificing to keep the world from falling apart. So I wanted to preserve this moment in time through the voices of the people who were living through it, because I knew that we were going to quickly forget about that. And I knew that we were going to be told to misremember it by people who didn't want us

to feel that visceral disgust with how workers were being treated, with how employers were ripping, quote unquote, hero pay away from actual heroes in hospitals and so on and so forth. So I wanted to make sure that we actually had some voices on the record to remind us now and for future generations what it was actually like. It was a bad time. It was a divisive time. But people don't forget, for a time, people were like, man, these people who work in grocery stores, Amazon, they were the real heroes. For a time, for a second. Women that were in the chicken butchering, striking. All those people.

No protections for them. I mean, the slaughterhouses that were just hotbeds of COVID infection and death. Horrific. It went away quickly, as you pointed out. I remember, actually, Crystal and you and Right. Horrific. It went away quickly, as you pointed out. I remember, actually, Crystal and you and I covered this vividly. It was like Mitt Romney put out that proposal on like hero pay,

which was going to increase wages for frontline workers. And I was like, yeah, we're good with that. And that was basically it. That was like six months into the pandemic. Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, given how everybody's lived through this, Max, and you continue to host your podcast and talk with people, obviously it's a very different economic and political time.

But what is the lesson for people who did live through that, who worked through that? What did they learn about their worth and about what they can demand? It's a great question. I've been thinking about this a lot, especially because I have to have a stump speech prepared now. The book is out, right? And I think that, you know, I'm constantly emphasizing that everyone here has a unique story and that's really the overarching takeaway point, right? Is that even just 10 people spoken to for an hour and a half, two hours reveals, I think in this book, right? Just how deep and complex and beautiful every human life

is. And when you recognize that, you recognize how incalculable of a loss the past two and a half years have been, right? I mean, when we look at the numbers of millions of people around the world who have died from this, as the great labor organizer Cooper Carraway told me once in my podcast, he's like, these are not just numbers.

These are fellow parishioners. These are coworkers. These are parents. These are t-ball coaches who are suddenly gone, right? Every year, my family, like so many others, watches It's a Wonderful Life, right? One of the most celebrated Hollywood movies ever. And the message of that movie is that you cannot measure the worth of one person's life and the impact that they have on each other. Now magnify that by the millions who have been lost. And I think that

so many people are still struggling to deal with that. And that's what I think is really consistent in all these interviews, right? As people were forced to confront their own mortality in a way that perhaps they never had before, that forced a lot of folks to ask, am I doing what I want to be doing with my life? Should I continue accepting being treated like crap at work, right? Should I dream bigger than just, you know, taking home enough with my paycheck to pay rent, a little bit of food and nothing more, right? Is there more to life than this? Do I deserve more than this? And I think a lot of people, brave people, working people have answered affirmatively. Yes, we do. And I think that that is connected to the number of strikes we've seen, the mass amounts of people who have been quitting, people staying at their

jobs and fighting, organizing together to demand better working conditions, better pay, so on and so forth. But the last thing to that point that I think is really, really important is the essential phrase, right? When that entered the lexicon, it did change, I think, a lot of people's minds because this system constantly tells us that we're worthless, right? That we're replaceable, expendable, so on and so forth. COVID forced the hand of this rigged economy and so on and so forth to admit that it needs us, that it needs working people. And working people did not forget that. I think a lot of people did know that. There were a lot of labor struggles that were ongoing before the pandemic ever happened. I think a lot of those are in the book,

but COVID really amplified that. It accelerated the sort of processes that have screwed working people over for so many decades, but it also gave people a sense of how invaluable they are to that system. And I think it made people realize that this system values our labor as essential, but not our lives. And so you're seeing a struggle right now between that. Well, because if you're acknowledging that these are essential individuals, at least, you know, that their work is essential, then you start to realize oh

they actually need us like this place is not this place is falling apart without us showing up and doing our thing day in and day out and I think it might have been you that I stole this from but I saw a quote from somebody that was like you know it's really quite clarifying when you realize your boss will literally sacrifice your life for like a few extra dollars in profit kind of changes your orientation towards the workplace and towards the job that you're ultimately doing. And so I agree with you that that sort of philosophical realignment and realization that came out of the pandemic is really at the core of a lot of the labor movement energy that we're seeing now. I mean, you see with Chris Smalls, it directly comes down of he was organizing his workers and protesting, his colleagues and

protesting the fact that there were not sufficient COVID protections and Amazon was straight up lying to them about what was going on in those warehouses. And that was the start of him just being, you know, a guy who's showing up and doing his thing to being one of the foremost and most important labor leaders that certainly we've seen in our lifetime. What I'm wondering is if there was a similar awareness that happened among more like white collar, more affluent individuals, because while certainly the elites didn't really mean the language about essential workers, there were a lot of Americans who really took this in and really did start to realize the contribution that people were making to make their lives easier on a day-to-day basis. And there was also a significant rise in the sort of visibility of

this work. Like you started to think about the person who was delivering your packages in a way that I think a lot of people didn't before, or who were in the warehouse that you don't even see who were packing those packages and, you know, picking and sorting. Do you think that that has shifted the landscape in terms of the public's reception to this labor movement increased energy? I think it has. I mean, I think, you know, we could have a larger philosophical kind of take on this. But in many ways, labor in this capitalist system is meant to be invisibilized. It's meant to be, as consumers, we're not meant to see that. We're supposed to be given this sort of fantasy that goods and services are just ready for purchase at the point of sale.

We don't think about the people who have made those products, the lives of the people providing those services. And that's something that has always been very important to me because I can still, to this day, walk into a Bed Bath & Beyond or a JCPenney. Actually, I don't think JCPenney exists anymore. It does. It does? Okay. It's one in our local hospital.

I was going to say, thank God. Okay. Thank God we haven't lost anything. But I can still walk into these big box stores and I can see items that have been tagged and packed by the same people in the same warehouse that I was working at 10 years ago. And I know what to look for. But if you're walking through those aisles as a customer, you said, make that visible in ways that, you know, it never had before, the world never had before. Whether it was people delivering our groceries when we were too afraid

to venture out ourselves, or we were immunocompromised and couldn't, whether it was people taking care of our children, or suddenly parents working and taking care of their children and helping them, you helping them attend school virtually. There are just so many ways that we realized how much we need each other and how much we depend on each other and how much it is flesh and blood, human beings holding the world up, not company names and shadowy buildings. It's people. It's always been people. It's people who took care of each other. It's people who made this better and less terrible than it could have been, even though it was, I think, pretty terrible. And so I hope that I've done justice to these workers in this book, and I just hope people read it.

All right. Lastly, Max, you're one of our partners, which we're very grateful for, and I think you're recording a monologue for us today. What are you looking at for people to look forward to? Well, so I'm very excited. I mean, it's a very, like, terrible subject, but you covered the UPS heat conditions that workers are enduring right now. And, like, at no other outlet that I've worked for or worked with would I ever have to be concerned that a colleague was covering the same thing as I was when it has to do with workers? And so I'm like, I'm very grateful to you for that because I'm basically recording a segment building off yours where I'm putting in big clips from three UPS workers that I interviewed on working people. And I think this is really important because you

started your monologue and I'm mentioning in my monologue, the death of Esteban Chavez Jr. in California, a 24-year-old UPS driver who died the day after his birthday in suspicion of heat conditions. That's what his family suspects. Anyway, if you watch interviews with that man's father, you can see his heart breaking in real time as he says, I used to watch my son enter a room, and I thought, that's my boy. Right. And he starts crying on camera. And like, that's what I really want to emphasize for people who are watching this monologue or your monologue, my segment or reading this book is you cannot measure the loss of a person's life. And so it's a real honor to be lifting that up with you on Breaking

Points. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're taking it because it is, I mean, especially with the climate crisis getting worse and worse. This is, you know, drivers, it's farm workers, it's factory workers, it's warehouse workers. These conditions are extremely dire. And there's a huge, I mean, this is a giant labor story too, because that UPS contract is up next year and they have been outright, very directly threatening to strike if they don't get a better contract than they did the last time around. So it could affect literally everyone out there. Max, it's always a pleasure and an honor to see you.

Congrats on the book. Very excited for you. Thanks, guys. Thanks for inviting me on to Breaking Points to do the labor segment. I really appreciate it. It's the work of living. Working people talk about their lives and the year the world broke. Maximilian Alvarez, link is down in the description and go ahead and watch Max's segment that we'll be posting. Premium subscribers, thank you so much because you guys help enable Max's work as well as our ability to elevate

these types of voices. If you could join us, we deeply appreciate it. Otherwise, we will see you all next week. Love you guys. This is an iHeart Podcast.