Factually! with Adam Conover - The Economic Fallout of COVID-19

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

What’s worse than a pandemic? The economic consequences on the poorest Americans. Indi Dutta-Gupta of the Georgetown Center on Poverty & Inequality talks with Adam this week about how the pandemic has affected those already struggling with poverty, and how things look moving forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Factually. My name's Adam Conover. And let's keep talking about the pandemic. But how about this? Instead of talking about the medical side, like we did just the other week with Derek Lowe, when he gave us all the insight into the vaccine, check out that episode if you missed it. It'll give you the lowdown. Let's talk about the economic fallout. Now, see, the story of the pandemic, according to commercials or, you know, the news or the smarter living section of The New York Times, all that sort of media is that the pandemic

has, quote, changed how we work. Right. No shit. We used to work in places, you know, workplaces, offices. But now so many of us are working at home over Zoom. Right. That's the story. And we see articles about the challenges. Oh, do you put on a, do you wear a button up shirt? Oh, what's the dress code? How do you take care of your kids? And, you know, these are real challenges. I can say as a Zoom work veteran, I can say it sucks. I've been running a writer's room over Zoom. It's certainly a lot worse than doing it in real life. It's a hard way to make a TV show. It's probably a hard way to do anything. But the truth is, if you're working from home like I have been, you're actually incredibly

fortunate because for all the attention that white collar workers have gotten from the media, it's the other parts of society that we need to worry about more. The truth is, the economic and social fallout for an entire enormous fraction of America has been massive and will be massive. We are talking about an economic tidal wave that could be truly devastating. Let's start with jobs. Some estimate that the real unemployment rate is now around 11%. Now, unemployment rates, those are numbers that can get dodgy sometimes. The unemployment rate that you normally hear is a little rosy. This is a real unemployment rate. So how do we think about that? Well, here's one way to put it. That rate is higher than at any

point during the Great Recession. Not just that. It's actually worse than at any point since World War II. And 12.6 million Americans are now collecting unemployment benefits compared with 1.7 million a year ago. While there have been gains in employment from a few months ago, the situation is still dire. And as time goes on, the more job losses that we hoped would be temporary are going to become permanent. Those jobs are going to go away for good, right? I mean, think about all the jobs that, for instance, are in the hospitality industry. Think about how many more meetings, even after the pandemic lifts up, will continue to be conducted over Zoom and how many jobs in hospitality, low wage jobs that employ blue collar workers, those folks who

are struggling to make ends meet, how many of those jobs will be permanently lost? Low-wage workers have taken the biggest hit during the pandemic. This is really cruel irony. These are also often the workers that we now recognize are essential. We depend on people like grocery store workers to keep our society from collapsing, to keep food in our bellies.

And to do that, we have to put them at risk of coronavirus in their workplaces. Literally, in order to keep society functioning, they're at risk of contracting this deadly disease. So the real issue isn't just, you know, oh, it's tricky getting to work over Zoom, is that the coronavirus and the lack of new government support to prevent this economic fallout is putting us on the precipice of an ever spiraling catastrophe that disproportionately affects those already struggling. And you can see the pain wherever you look. Colleges are reopening, many of them remotely. Some students are going back just fine,

but low income college students are dropping out or worse, never even enrolling because they don't have good enough internet service to take classes remotely. Then there's the more than 5 million Americans who have lost their health care this year, a loss that's worse than any year on record. Then there's hunger. A whole one fifth of America has been food insecure since the pandemic began. That means they haven't been able to get enough food to eat to feed them or their families. 20% of America has been in that condition and we're guaranteed to see a rise in homelessness. There are 22 million Americans behind on their rent. And sure, there have been, you know, different cities, states, and the feds have passed little bills to try to, put a temporary moratorium on evictions subject to some conditions.

If you go to the courthouse, you got your receipt and says, I couldn't pay this month, but then maybe you'll get a reprieve. But a temporary eviction moratorium doesn't solve anything if unemployed tenants have to pay for all of their missed months when it expires because they still haven't been able to work. So again, we're talking about an explosion in the number of people who are suddenly going to have nowhere to live. And this, to be clear, isn't just bad for the people immediately affected. All right. Even if you want to be as selfish as possible and not give a shit about other people, I encourage you to give a shit. But if you don't want to, well, I have a message for you because this is still going to be bad for everyone. Because if low income Americans can't work, well, then the entire country works less well for everyone else. Think about it. If an entire segment of society is unable to afford a place to live, afford food, afford transportation to their job, where are they going to go? What is going to happen to all the jobs that we rely on them to do?

What is that going to mean for the future of our cities? I mean, we're talking about something approaching a near total societal breakdown. It's a moral and national failure if we allow this to happen, and it will redound back upon us. Now, believe it or not, though, as dire as things seem, this could have been much, much worse. The massive CARES Act, with its $1,200 one-time benefit and $600 in extra weekly unemployment benefits, stopped as many as 17 million Americans from falling below the poverty line. That's a triumph. But the extra unemployment benefits have expired.

The Trump administration has ordered an extra $300 a week on employment, but that is going to apply to fewer workers and it'll only last for six weeks. So federal inaction is guaranteeing basically more and more suffering and more and more folks falling below that poverty line, falling below the ability to support themselves because of this pandemic. Beyond the hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths, we are looking down the barrel of another calamity. So what do we do about it? What policies can change this awful status quo? Well, to discuss, our guest today is Indy Dharagapta. He's the co-executive director of Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, and he's also a law professor. He has literally spent his career studying the problem of poverty

and what can be done about it. Please welcome Indy Dhanagapta. Indy, thank you so much for being here. Adam, it's a pleasure to be here and discuss this really important topic. Yeah. So, look, the pandemic's affected a lot of different people in differing ways, you know, in unequal ways around the country. We've heard a lot about, you know, the differing medical outcomes for people of different backgrounds, people of different social classes in ways that we're unhappy with, or at least I'm unhappy with. But let's talk about the economic fallout.

You know, my life's certainly been disrupted. But, you know, at the same time, I'm part of a class of white-collar professionals who has been able to, like, hey, we're all working from home, right? All the commercials you see on TV. Oh, now that we're all on Zoom all the time, things sure are different. But it's not that way for a lot of people in America, it strikes me. And yeah, I mean, what's your view of it? in America, it strikes me. And what, yeah, I mean, what's your view of it? Yeah, that's exactly right. Virtually every inequality that we had in this country before the pandemic is being exacerbated now. So whether that's, you know, working class versus, say,

white collar jobs and workers, or, you know, even gender, race. We're seeing that not just in health outcomes, but even in labor market outcomes. But fundamentally, I think one of the things that this pandemic highlights is that a lot of the economic hardship we've always seen in this country is a choice. We also acted in some ways quite boldly and for at least a few months did a lot to help stabilize families, businesses and communities. But unfortunately, now I think, you know, the low hanging fruit of returning to work in certain occupations and other sort of economic outcomes are mostly going to be gone. And we have a long road ahead. And, you know, let's hope we rebuild in a way that's far stronger than we were before. You say it's a choice. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, absolutely. Look, people often struggle in how they think about poverty in America. Should we see it as a reflection of individual America. Should we see it as a reflection of individual failing?

Should we see it as a reflection of structural factors and decisions? And when you look at the history of poverty in the United States and you sort of really study it, as I have for most of my career, the thing you find is that by and large, it's structures that explain a lot of what's going on. What do I mean by that? I mean, you know, really, whether there's a recession or not, which obviously is not any particular individual's fault, at least not any particular individual who loses their job, is a huge driver of poverty, right? Other countries who are similarly wealthy often have dramatically lower poverty. There's no evidence that the people there either work harder or better educated. In many cases, they actually work fewer hours and

are less well-educated. And in this pandemic, we even made a choice of getting money out the door on a temporary basis, of course, to stabilize the finances of many families who lost earnings, who lost jobs. And we probably blunted a lot of the potential growth in poverty. Now, of course, a lot of that was driven by policies that have sort of expired or done their work and it's behind us. So I'm quite anxious about what's gonna happen

going forward. But you think about why you see high rates of poverty among particular groups, and it's very clearly tied to policy decisions, you know, from mass incarceration to decisions to keep our minimum wage low for so long. And we could go on and on. Well, I want to come back to those choices in a little bit, but I want to first just talk about the problem and make it really vivid for us. Because, you know, again, I feel like issues of poverty are under

reported in the media right because the media is really aimed at an affluent audience so much so so much of the hardships are like oh geez isn't it hard to watch your kids while you're also working your pr job right from over zoom like that kind of thing and we miss the story of all the other folks who it's much much harder for. So I wonder if you could give us a view of that. How are folks who are really suffering economically, what does it look like for them? And what's your worst fear about where things are going to go? Yeah, those are great questions. I mean, look, first of all, just so folks have a sense of what we mean by poverty, by sort of official federal poverty line, we're talking about annual income of just under $13,000 for an individual and around $26,000 for a family of four, kind of regardless of where you live.

So we're talking about a pretty meager threshold. And the measure itself is outdated in many ways and has flaws, but it gives you a sense that we're talking about folks who are really, really struggling. And there's lots of hardship above the poverty line. There's nothing magical about that threshold, to say the least. So, you know, what are their challenges, right? You know, they're literally choosing between out-of-pocket medical costs and food. They're skipping meals. They're not able to make utility payments,

rent payments. They're relying on public transportation that may have been shut down or shrunk dramatically to get to wherever they need to go for either work or for schools. they are often caregivers themselves. And so in some cases now, you know, maybe their school is, has the option of taking their kids, but also has an online option. And the Department of Labor has put out guidance that says, if you have the option of sending your kids to school, you got to do it, or else we're not going to keep paying you pandemic unemployment assistance, this program that was meant to help people left out of the unemployment insurance system. So just, you know, there's so many struggles. And my worst fear, Adam, is that we don't learn from this crisis. I mean, we are so fortunate as a country that people didn't look at the Great Depression and

say, okay, that was a one-time, one-off event. And instead, they established the social security system, right? They established old age, survivors, disability benefits, unemployment insurance benefits, and we can go on and on. But how fortunate are we that we had those systems and structures in place, not just for this pandemic, but really for the subsequent generations? Yeah, but by contrast, you know, what happened right before the Great Depression was the what is often called the Spanish flu. Right. And we had plenty of warning for that. This pandemic was going to come, or at least we knew that it was the type of thing that could occur. And, you know, here in California, we know earthquakes are coming. So we earthquake

proof the buildings. Hopefully we've done a good job at that. We did a bad job of pandemic-proofing our society. And so, I think we have examples of both in American history. That's very true. I worked in Congress as a staffer on unemployment insurance before during an absolute 2007-2009 financial crisis. We used to call it the Great Recession, which I no longer use that term because this one that're having now is at least deeper. Right. And we were so worried what we saw after, you know, states gutted their unemployment insurance systems after by and large, they gutted the administration, they gutted the benefits. had generations where you could at least count on 26 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits in many instances. And then for the first time in history, coming out of that incredible recession we had over a decade ago, what did we see? We saw states cutting back to a maximum of 12 weeks of benefits, 14 weeks of benefits, making it less and less generous. So there's nothing that's

making it less and less generous. So there's nothing that's inevitable here. I mean, this is really about elections. This is about policymakers rising to the moment and understanding that there's nothing that protects us from another crisis. It could be a terrorist attack like we have experienced, unfortunately, in this country. It could be hurricanes. It could be wildfires right where you are. We are just not sort of ready to deal with disasters and crises in these countries. Yet we know that they're guaranteed. We absolutely know that there's going to be hurricanes. You know, we know there's tornadoes. We know there's floods. And we're just not prepared for it, but we also know what to do. So that gives you some optimism, right? I'd love to dwell a little bit on the

unemployment system that you talked about, because, you know, I think that often gets classified under the negative label of welfare. Whenever people say welfare, they're talking about these programs in a negative way. But like, I've come to understand unemployment as it's almost this this essential like economic lubricator that like if people instantly become destitute as soon as they lose their jobs and they don't have any cushion at all, that's bad for the economy overall. And so gutting those systems, making them work less well. I mean, you're the expert. Tell me about it. Yeah. No, first of all, Adam, I got to say, I've been part of a group of folks who've been working on ideas to strengthen or reform the unemployment insurance system for over a decade. And one of the sort of jokes we always say is that we should make UI, that's short for

unemployment insurance, we should make UI sexy again. And I think you might've just done it because I never thought about it as a lubricator, but in a sense it is an economic lubricator, right? I didn't mean it that way. But I will say there's something to it because the program helps people in those times when there aren't enough jobs, when they're involuntarily unemployed, it keeps them attached to the labor force. So there's a lot of people when the economy is doing well who can get a job, but they may have some disabilities, maybe mental health challenges, and then the economy is not doing so well and they can't get a job. I bring up this group because in many cases they can then qualify for disability benefits,

which is a great thing. And we have incredibly high standards to qualify. Yet it would be much better if they qualified for unemployment insurance in many instances and could keep a great thing and we have incredibly high standards to qualify. Yet it would be much better if they qualified for unemployment insurance in many instances and could keep looking for work. It sort of finances that job search, among other things. So unemployment insurance really had two major sort of insights driving it when it was created as part of the Social Security Act. One is it would absolutely help families with partial earnings losses or full earnings losses by giving some extra money,

never making them quite whole in the past. And two is it would stabilize the economy because you're giving money to folks who need to spend it. And they don't, they're not going to go on a trip, you know, to Europe to spend it. They need to spend it

just to survive in their local community. So you have huge stimulant effects for unemployment benefits. And remember, people are basically paying into the system. A lot of people don't realize this because their employers technically make the payment. But by and large, the research shows that most of those payments made by employers into the unemployment insurance system are actually passed on to the workers in reduced compensation. So this is something that people have a right to really, by and large. And yet we don't really focus on it until we need it. And unfortunately, sometimes then it's too late to make sure the system works.

So, you know, a lot of policymakers are sort of quietly dismantling their unemployment insurance systems, trying to lower their taxes to fund the systems in response. And you've seen what's happened in states like Florida. It's just absolutely cruel and devastating. In the middle of a pandemic, people waiting in line to get unemployment insurance benefits. This makes absolutely no not even sure we were that smart. Well, let's talk about that because the experience that people had, I had so many people in my life saying,

oh, I'm trying to get through to the unemployment office, even here in California, not just in Florida. I can't get through, busy signal. They say they'll call back. They don't. I get to a mailbox and it's full, et cetera. And this is to receive the crucial government unemployment payment that is supposed to be paid to pretty much all Americans. And that is because of the gutting of these unemployment systems. Like this is this is specifically policymakers are trying to

lower tax burden. And so they just like made these unemployment systems work less well. They just like cut the staff at the unemployment office and made them all use fax machines instead of email or something. I mean, yeah, look, I don't blame any any family. I don't blame any business. I don't blame any community for being unprepared for a pandemic like this. On the other hand, federal government states, they have some responsibility. You know, people have known about these risks. We've experienced all possible pandemics. You know, we had to contain Ebola, obviously, many years ago. The U.S. has its own

history, the H1N1 flu virus, which sort of originated here, actually. So I think that we can make a strong case that what happened here was, yes, we were collectively flat footed. But you look back and you think about the decisions that were made and whether anyone thought about a pandemic or not, we just weren't even prepared for a mild recession. And that policymakers across the country have to take responsibility for. We've been warning about this for a long time. And we've seen that states have gutted their unemployment systems. They have absolutely gutted the administration of it. The federal government also has a responsibility to fund. Un administration has fallen short there too. But that doesn't really explain the incredible variation across states. I mean, some states have done better than others. And that's by and large, that sort of decision that governors and legislators made. Why did they

make that decision? You know, they thought, hey, we'll be more competitive to attract businesses if we lower unemployment insurance benefits. But there's really no evidence of that. And, you know, to the contrary, in many cases, unemployment insurance, you know, it keeps people don't know this, but it also attaches people to employment services, to workforce development, to job training and preparation. It's not just about offsetting their income losses, though that I think is the central purpose and should always be so. So you're saying that when the policymakers, when the lawmakers and the governors cut unemployment

insurance rates, they do it in order to say, OK, businesses are going to come to our state now because, oh, they're really going to want to come to Arizona or wherever else. Pull that out of a hat. I don't know their policies, but they're going to want to come to Arizona because wherever else, pull that out of a hat. I don't know their policies, but they're going to want to come to Arizona because we've got the lowest unemployment rates. And I don't know, Dell is going to like build a new warehouse or whatever it is in Arizona because they have to pay. It's a tax incentive. And you're saying there's no evidence that businesses even do that, like that works as a principle. Yeah. I mean, on top of, yeah, basically what happens

is that, yeah, states say, what can we do to compete with our neighboring states? So you see, especially in Southern states, a huge drive to gut the unemployment insurance system, which has left them particularly ill-equipped here. And mind you that a disproportionate share of people of color, specifically Black Americans live in these Southern states. And that's not a coincidence. We actually see this in program after program. The larger the African-American share, in many cases, of your population, the more that states who have flexibility over certain federal-state partnerships like unemployment insurance will gut those programs. I mean, similarly, when you look at the states that have been reluctant, you know, it's only about a dozen left who have been reluctant to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. You know, you see these sorts of patterns. But, yeah, not only is there not evidence of that, again, look,

unemployment insurance plays a really crucial role, even when, let's say, we thought that the economy before the pandemic was doing all right. Well, for some people, it certainly was. And the labor market was tighter than it had been in a long time. For some people, it certainly was. And the labor market was tighter than it had been in a long time. There are always pockets, right, where in some community there's a mass layoff, a firm closes down. And unemployment insurance was always important. It's important during good times. It's important during bad times.

And it, as we know, can prevent people from retiring early, from filing for disability benefits. It can help improve the quality of the job matches in some cases that they might have with employers and more. So at the end of the day, it was just really short-sightedness and we knew better, but some policymakers went the wrong way. Well, let's talk about the, you spoke about how the payments that were pushed through the beginning of the pandemic did effectively blunt the the, you know, immediate impact of the recession. Talk about why that is and what that meant to people. The six hundred dollars a week of extra unemployment services, the stimulus that people were getting. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, absolutely. So we're cutting checks, $1,200 for a lot of adults, $600 for many qualified children, $600 on a weekly basis. We were doing $600 to augment any unemployment benefit. We created a whole new

program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which acknowledged really that we leave out a huge chunk of workers from our unemployment insurance system. So it complemented it. So we're talking about tens of billions of dollars, basically a week in additional spending that happened that wouldn't have otherwise happened. And unfortunately now with all of that mostly behind us, we're already seeing families exhaust what limited savings they had. Most families would have struggled in the U.S. Most families would have struggled with a $1,000 emergency. That makes sense. You know, we've had sort of meager wage growth for decades, especially for working class folks, but even some middle class folks.

And some costs like health, education, and some others have risen. And those are, you know, sort of basic needs. So they've risen a lot. They've risen a lot. Exactly. And so what did this do? I mean, there's a lot of research suggesting it really blunted the growth in poverty. It doesn't mean that there wasn't growth in hardship. There absolutely was. I mean, we left out some groups of immigrants, including some mixed status families from the benefits. We left out older youth. We left out older dependents, like, you know, say, Adam, you know, one of your parents live with you, like we didn't and you file taxes with them, like they didn't get the extra economic impact payment recovery

rebate. So we did leave a lot of people out. There's still a lot of hardship, and especially now, you know, the $600 weekly unemployment benefit increase ended in late July. So I'm really worried. And I think that there's obviously some important CDC action on evictions. We'll have to see how that goes, but it's not going to cover everyone who needs it. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think policymakers had a choice, which was to, you know, temporarily reduce economic activity to save lives and give us time to figure out how can we build an economy amidst this virus. And meanwhile, let's just get people the money they need. The U.S. government

can borrow unlike any entity in the world, really. And the interest rates are extremely low right now. The reality is if they borrowed money right now and spent, you know, the $15 billion or so a week we were spending on the $600 weekly benefit increase, it would basically pay for itself. That's not always the case, but right now it really would. And so it's really tragic to see that policymakers haven't come together and negotiated and acted on a bipartisan agreement for more stimulus. It took us 84 months after the last recession to create enough jobs to offset the loss of jobs then and the growing labor force. I don't think we want to wait 84 months again. And we're in a deeper hole than we were then.

Well, and so I want to ask you this next question in two ways. With those payments running out, right, what does that look like for, you know, the people who are relying on those payments, right? Like, on the ground for them, what are they facing, right, over the next couple months? going to be on our economy? Not just, you know, I'm interested in the humanitarian piece of it, which is that I don't like to see fellow Americans suffer when they don't have to. But also, isn't it true that that suffering is bad for the economy at large as well? Yeah. I mean, look, there's two ways that allowing, in some cases, almost manufacturing suffering amongst us can harm our economy right now. I mean, one is, of course, that the spending that would have happened won't happen. And our economy depends heavily on consumer spending. And some of these families, of course, will, you know, apply for other supports. They'll find in some cases they're eligible, things like, you know, California, CalFresh or Snap elsewhere.

But it's not going to be the same. It's not going to be enough. We're talking about a fraction of the money that they were getting otherwise. Same with general assistance or temporary assistance for needy families. So that's going to burden states, by the way, too, who are now going to have to deal with a whole new set of challenges and other programs with growth and applications. And at the end of the day, they're going to have to deal with a whole new set of challenges and other programs with growth and applications. And at the end of the day, they're going to have to cut back. I mean, some of them may have access to credit, and that's not going to necessarily be a great option either. So they're facing some dire possibilities, and you're going to see meals skipped, you're going to see reduction in spending that's going to shrink the economy. But that's just one way. And that's, you know, an urgent pressing way that not getting money to families who are struggling right now is

going to hurt our economy. The other is that one thing we know with certainty is that children, especially who grow up in very low income households, and I just mean just because of the income, that they struggle a lot later in life. So we learned, for example, when we introduced the SNAP program or food stamps at the time, you know, about half a century ago in a robust way that it had long term benefits where the kids were healthier and they sort of did better as adults. And you see that in program after program. We've seen that when, you know, in some tribal reservations, a casino opens and they give, you know, payments to all members of the tribe. You know, it's not that the tribe members had to do something to qualify for the payments per se. What happens? The kids do better in school. What could possibly explain that? You see this in sort of experiment after experiment or,

you know, sort of natural experiment after natural experiment. When you have really low income, you know, it's just hard. You described, Adam, earlier about all the hoops you might jump through just to apply for benefits. Just imagine the stress in that household. I know parents, whatever their income, try to protect their kids from stress. And one of the things I always tell people is, look, people don't, they need money. They need good public services and goods. And government can't solve all the problems, but we can definitely transfer adequate money in these sorts of crises and more to help stabilize families. And there's good reason to think that it might even pay for itself for taxpayers. And it certainly has a real meaningful return for society overall. Well, I really want to get into those questions of the effect that poverty has on people,

on their lives, how it affects different people differently. But we got to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Andy Degupta. We're back with Indy Dedegupta. So I'd like to, yeah, I'd like to talk more about how poverty affects people. First of all, how does it affect different groups of people differently? Like how, let's talk about, let's bring racism into the conversation. That's, that's something that is another theme of the year. How does systemic racism cause poverty to impact different people differently or more intensely? Yeah. I mean, look, systemic racism is to me, if not the most fundamental driver of poverty, one of them. There's a couple of reasons why.

One is it leads to policies like mass incarceration, segregation. You know, we've got a situation now where Black families typically have one-fifth the liquid wealth and one-tenth the overall net worth of white families. You know, a lot of wealth is passed down from generation to generation. So you can really trace a lot of our challenges back to systemic racism, both in the policy decisions that are made and they're just a lived reality and experience of a lot of groups of color, including, you know, especially a lot of immigrants, not just undocumented immigrants, but even those here with status. But you see this, again, in just policy after policy. So let's just take the unemployment insurance system we were talking about before. You know, in many ways, it disproportionately excluded for generations

black workers. Some of it arguably was for sort of administrative reasons. They were disproportionately in agriculture early on. And there's some history suggesting that policymakers didn't think they could sort of get the data they needed. But in many cases, policy after policy, they're excluded for that reason. And another thing we know is that when Americans sort of perceive a program as disproportionately helping people who are not quote unquote like them. And particularly we see this by race. Study after study shows that they oppose it. So if they believe that, especially white Americans, if they tend to believe that a program helps black folks and other people of color, they're more likely to oppose it.

Now, to be clear, the country's changed a lot. And there's a lot of evidence now, too, that, you know, some people might feel that way, but then other people, they don't get turned on by those sort of racially motivated attacks. Mitt Romney tried this actually on Obama, feels like a lifetime ago, saying, oh, President Obama was trying to give some flexibility to our welfare program to states. And it was actually geared more toward red states and flexibility he wanted to sort of provide them. Mitt Romney attacked President Obama and said he's gutting the welfare system. And sure enough, when those ads were tested out on folks, what researchers found is that people who were already kind of more, frankly, racist would tend to move towards Mitt Romney after seeing the ads. But the upside here, which I think is important, is that people who are not so racist or wary of the sort of often racial and racially motivated appeals

that some policymakers make to argue against the generosity of these programs. But I think it's also important to know that, you know, there's a growing share of Americans who arguably are quite turned off by that sort of rhetoric and argument. Yeah, it's complex. I mean, Yeah, it's complex. I mean, that's a real phenomenon. And I've been thinking a lot about how there's the argument that if you want to extend a program and have it be long-lived, well, that's why you should extend it to everybody. That's why

Social Security is everybody gets Social Security. Nobody wants it to be cut. But food stamps are easy to cut because food stamps are somebody else's. I don't get food stamps, so cut those. But don't you cut Social Security because I get that. So if you have everybody receiving a benefit or everybody participating in a program is a good way to put it, it's a much more long life, which makes me understand

some of the logic behind Medicare for All as a program, for for us as an approach to health care um versus uh you know uh means testing where you're you're means testing a particular program well then that's something where you can always adjust the means later and you know say okay well let's give it to a little bit fewer people a little bit fewer people versus something that you're you're giving as a benefit to everybody uh that's like i don't, that's not news to like people who like you who spend your careers thinking about these things that we have thinking about it, but it is like a new way for me to think about how to think about these programs. I mean, yeah, I hear you. I mean, I think it's actually surprisingly complicated because there's a lot to it. This idea that, you know, programs for people

in poverty are quote unquote poor programs. And you see that with cash assistance in particular, which has largely been gutted in the last 25 years or so. But on the other hand, let's take a program like unemployment insurance. It's actually supposed to be a social insurance program, sort of a contributory program. And not only was it gutted by states, which might tell us something about federal state partnerships and how the federal government needs to set very strict, strong guidelines. Yeah. But also, you know, believe it or not, there's a huge push among some members of Congress, some of the most conservative ones, after the last recession to bar wealthy Americans from getting the benefits. And then similarly, you know, Social Security, which I think has lots of strengths and has been extraordinarily resilient for a lot of reasons, it hasn't expanded or grown nearly as much, believe it or not, as some targeted programs. So Medicaid,

obviously, because of the Affordable Care Act and the expansion has actually grown dramatically. And a lot of that, I think, of course, is driven specifically by that expansion in 2010. But so has SNAP over the years overall. And so have the working family tax credits, which a lot of people don't know about. But the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit especially is much more targeted than the child tax credit, sorry. But the working family tax credits, EITC and CTC, have grown a lot. California is moving close to even expanding it to a lot of immigrants who have been left out in the past. And part of that is the tension here, I think, Adam, is cost. So universal programs are just going to be costlier, right? It doesn't mean we shouldn't do them. And to the contrary, it's the right thing to do in many cases.

But if you're going to have a food assistance program, you can imagine why it might make more sense for it not to be universal. Now, other countries, of course, don't really have food assistance programs. They just go straight to cash. And that's been just a huge problem in this country. We have just gutted access to cash. So we partly do it through these tax credits, but those come once a year as a lump sum. So, you know, they don't help you quite as much throughout the rest of the year. And, you know, some people are left out of it. So I think that at the end of the day, we can make hybrid programs and other programs stronger, whether they're targeted or whether they're universal, but we just need a stronger federal role. I mean, states just, first of all, they see

themselves often as in competition with each other, and that can be quite helpful in some cases and quite harmful in others. When it comes to benefits, it's quite often harmful. And the second thing I would say is that when you give states a lot of flexibility, we just see these patterns of systemic racism where the states that are either more homogenous or just generally have less of a history of hostility towards supporting, especially Black folks, but immigrants as well, and other people of color in many cases, are the ones that are going to be the most meager. So I think that we have to, you know, think really hard about that and how we can get around it. And in my judgment, when you brought up the Great Society, it just reminded me of Head Start, which,

you know, basically skipped the states. And that was the decision made in part because there was fear that states would administer it in a racially disparate way. So instead, it goes kind of straight to the communities and community-based organizations. And maybe that's the answer for some programs. But in other cases, I think we just need strong standards at the state level or programs that kind of puncture us. Maybe they need to be nationalized. I don't know that there's a strong rationale anymore for states to be the ones administering it without really very strong federal protections like the SNAP or CalFresh in California or food stamp program offers. Because when you leave it up to the states, they end up or many of them end up administering them in discriminatory ways. That makes a lot of sense to me. As we're talking about solutions and what would be some ways to improve the way we do things, you mentioned that food versus cash dichotomy. We've talked about on this show, on my television show, Adam ruins everything. Many times the efficiency of cash giving versus in-kind giving always in a charity context. We

had the one of the founders of GiveDirectly on who explained to us, you know, when you're trying to help people give them money so they can decide what best they need rather than giving them a cow or giving them, you know, a school voucher or something like that. Give them money and then they can decide what they need tomorrow, you know, and give them the same amount of respect that you have for yourself. And I love that argument. I think it's wonderfully counterintuitive and intuitive once you come to understand it.

And I think it makes a lot of sense. And I noticed a similar dichotomy to what you're describing where, yes, so much of our aid is we've got housing assistance programs. We've got food assistance programs. We've got unemployment insurance. You know, all these different things where if you need this, the government will provide it specifically. Would it be better to simply give cash to people? Is that a better system in your view? give cash to people? Is that a better system in your view? Yeah, that's a great question, Adam. I think it's a fundamental one that we all have to sort of answer collectively. And, you know, I have a very unsatisfying answer,

which is that I completely believe that we need to do both. And what do I mean by that? I mean, we have a crisis in this country where, you know, people don't have enough money for diapers or menstrual products. Do I want the government getting in the business of either producing those things or, you know, providing them directly? By and large, no. I mean, of course, like schools and public restrooms should have menstrual products. But, you know, if people need that at home, you know, I think people need cash to be able to make those decisions. If people need that at home, I think people need cash to be able to make those decisions. On the other hand, you've got stuff like child care or K-12 education. We made the choice not to voucherize that in the first place.

We built public schools throughout this country, and I think they've had huge payoff throughout American history. And now I think public schools are increasingly essential in many ways in communities, even beyond the education of students, but their standards are incredibly high. It's obviously uneven throughout the country, but by and large, it's been a hugely worthwhile investment, if not just the right thing to do. Would I trade that for cash? No, I would not. You know, clean water. Local communities got to provide clean water. Do I want people to go buy purified water everywhere? No, I want to make sure that the water coming into every faucet and every tap is clean. So people need cash. Yes. But people need public goods and public services as well. very much not substitutes for each other in many cases, in my judgment. You know, I don't, I, public transit, you know, we need to build public transit. I mean, you have an LA and I know, you know, you all have a bus system, a train system, you know, how you can imagine, I'm sure anyone who's ridden on it out there can imagine how it could be improved and could have huge benefits for everyone, right? And then again, you know, we have families who all they can get is SNAP or food

stamps or CalFresh out there. And when you think about that, how are they going to buy toilet paper? You know, how are they going to buy a chair to sit on? What happens if their fridge breaks down? And so we can't continue, I think, as a country, if we believe, frankly, in freedom. I don't think we can continue to allow people to persist with no cash. So I think it's really a both and. And it really just depends on what it is that you're providing. Even housing. If we had a housing policy that helped us desegregate this country based on sort of how we built housing, how we helped people who couldn't afford it get it, then it makes a lot of sense not to just give cash. On the other hand, if,

you know, we didn't worry about that and our housing policy is otherwise just to, you know, get people housing and we don't care about the other sort of outcomes, then maybe it does make sense to give something closer to cash or cash. So I think we really just have to think through it need by need. I love this argument because you're saying, yeah, if you're trying to help people with assistance, sure, cash should be a part of that because it does enable those folks to go get what they need. But that doesn't mean the state shouldn't be involved in building public goods that we can't build individually.

Like, it's not like we should stop maintaining the roads and just give people the difference in cash so they can build their own road, because that's frankly impossible. You still need some amount of, there's a government duty to provide certain basic public goods that work universally for people, like public schools, where if you just were to eliminate

public schools and say, that's an in-kind donation, we're giving people cash instead and they can go to a private school, that's going to have far worse outcomes. That is a wonderfully nuanced position, which is what I love on this show. I mean, just take the example of public schools. You know, what happens if you give people vouchers? They end up segregating themselves racially. You don't even need to give people vouchers. You know, high income people already

do that in many cases. In D.C., a majority of white school-age kids are in private schools. So public schools play a huge role in promoting democracy, in promoting integration, in helping people understand each other's lives. You're not going to get that through either vouchers or just cash. And there's just a lot, there are a lot of examples like this. And we don't do this for, you know, child care. And there's no coherent childcare system. I mean, we're having a huge disparities right now, between men and women, because of incredible unmet childcare needs. So men are going back to work and working more at higher rates, and women are disproportionately bearing childcare burdens. You know, and a lot

of that's because we've never created a coherent system. We do give people money. We do have some subsidies and vouchers, but we didn't create sort of a coherent child care system where people can say, OK, like in my case, our nursery school that we sent our kids to just shut down. We're lucky that we were able to have our youngest kid now shift to D.C. public schools in Washington, D.C., but there's no system, really, where otherwise we could have found another, you know, sort of caregiver. So, you know, again, there are a lot of things that people need, like school supplies, like, again, other countries like Canada, where I was fortunate to play a very small role advising their government on their child poverty reduction strategy, you know, they have decided that they're not going

to give people something like food stamps, and they're just going to make sure everyone has a minimal income so that they can access food. I'm not saying there are no food banks in Canada. I'm not saying that there's no role for charity in some cases. But, you know, by and large, you know, we have to think through, like, what's the role of government in each instance? And the more it feels like infrastructure, right, that kind of, it's that basic foundation that makes sense to connect with different people in the community, like education, care, and other sort of needs that we all have, I think the more it makes sense for the government to get involved in a way that's not just giving people the resources to go buy it and, you know, some sort of free, quote, unquote, free market. Yeah, I mean, it's

in its best form. The government is a is a organization that allows us to make decisions together about public goods that we all want. It's like here in Los Angeles. Hey, we can't build public transportation by ourselves. There's no you know, we can't just like, you know, I'll chip in a little bit of money to like some private corporation or whatever. We need to work on a bigger scale and, you know, in order to drill tunnels under the earth. And a government is how we do that. And we can decide, you know, what are the things that we want to put on that list? Well, we're getting close to the end here.

I have, I want to ask you sort of a personal question. You know, as someone who studies poverty, but is, you know, I assume not in poverty yourself on a day-to-day basis. How do you think about that? Because, you know, the more that I think about poverty when I am confronting it, I'm like, man, I live comfortably, right? And I live in a country where so many people don't. And what is my responsibility to that?

And how does that make me feel differently about my own life and my own luck and privilege? And that's something that I find myself wrestling with, you know, when, you know, here here in Los Angeles, you know, I, you know, on my walk home from the subway, I, you know, I pass encampments. Right. And I'm confronted with that on a daily basis. And, you know, we had a heat wave, and I'm sitting inside in air conditioning and thinking about how many people are sitting outside in 110 degrees. And, yeah, I just wonder if you wrestle with those questions, considering that you do this for a living. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my family came here with a place to stay and 80 US dollars 20 for each of the four of us. And, you know, we're lucky we had some family helped us. We had some other people we just got to know through my preschool and who helped us and school meals and other things helped me and we face other struggles later in life. But I bring that up because one of the things that I think a lot of people don't appreciate is persistent poverty is less

common than you think. Very few people will even spend five straight years in poverty. And on the flip side, poverty is actually, let's say one year of poverty or living in a household with a job loss or, you know, using one of those targeted public benefit programs is very common. The vast majority of people will spend at least a year experiencing sort of material hardship along those lines. That doesn't mean it's evenly distributed. It's really not. But I really think about our responsibility if we think that poverty is truly that floor below which we think no one should fall.

I really think about our responsibility as one of supporting the policy and policymakers that would help reduce the problem. I do think that it's possible to shrink poverty very dramatically and make the spells much shorter. It's very different to spend a few months in poverty it can be horrible but compared to a few years and you know make it more evenly distributed I mean shouldn't be associated with race you shouldn't be associated with gender I mean there's a huge challenge of LGBT youth who are often homeless and run away and have no support folks who age out of the the foster care system have incredibly high rates of poverty. And so, you know, it's something that I think we need to

really focus on policy. But, you know, you and I can't just sit here and change policy as much as we'd like on a daily basis. So what else do we do, right? I do believe that there's a role for human services providers and others, partly because I think our policy falls short, but it probably always will fall somewhat short. You know, and I think that a lot of what government does actually, aside from when it transfers resources, is actually help support these groups and organizations. So in the pandemic, for example, my family, you know, looked around and we said, who's being left out by these programs, by this policy response? And so we looked at groups like migrant farm owners. And so we donated anything small. It's not going to, you know, make a huge difference. But, you know, I always ask myself who is being excluded the most and then who is reaching that group. And even better if, you know, the group that's reaching it is led by those folks, people with those experiences who are sort of in that community. So that's how I kind of grapple with that.

And, you know, I remind myself that, yeah, look, the odds of you or I ever experiencing poverty maybe at this point is low. But the odds of one of our kids, I mean, at this point is low, but the odds of one of our kids, I mean, it just, it just, you know, one accident, one disability, one injury, one mental illness, uh, away, um, one job loss, um, a lot of things outside of people's control. Uh, and so I think a lot of people don't quite appreciate that, but, um, I always remind myself of that not to, not to be selfish and a whore but to the contrary to try to see myself in everyone else yeah uh i think a lot of people do appreciate that uh sometimes i feel that there's a lot of tension in america and it's because people feel that

precarity and and they know that hey they're they're one slip away from the brink. Like you said, so many Americans don't have enough savings to, I forget the exact figure, but to withstand a surprise bill of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, don't have an emergency fund of any kind. I think people know that about themselves and about their families and people see their kids not doing as well as they did. I see that in my own family. You see the generate, you know, the American dream moving backwards and people's children, you know, not not ascending the ladder of American society, but perhaps moving the other direction. And I don't know, I often think that feeling is perhaps responsible for a lot of our social

division and social ills. I mean, that's fair. I mean, I think some people say, look, I'm on my own. This is an economy where people feel like they're on their own. But I just want to remind people that that's a choice. It doesn't have to be that way. Look, there is no sort of golden period in American history. But when it comes to shared economic prosperity, you look back at the early sort of post-World War II period up till 1973 or so, you saw widespread income growth. And, you know, some of that was driven by high rates of unionization. Some of that was driven by very sound government policies, including policies that focused on returning service members, right, and our veterans and help support them. But we did exclude a lot of people. But I just want people to appreciate and understand that economic insecurity is not some sort of natural state that we have to accept.

We can absolutely reduce it. We've done it before. We have no limit to the number of good ideas out there to continue to tackle it and address it. And ultimately, you know, our fates are much more intertwined than a lot of people appreciate. It is a very unfortunate thing in this pandemic that you're going to see huge growth in gaps in student achievement, say by race, by income. You're going to see higher income kids' parents are going to hire tutors, facilitators, whatever they want to call them, folks who are going to help their kids through school, online, otherwise. That is the sort of thing where you might think, okay, well, at least I'm doing my part. I'm educating my kid. But at the end of the day, our country has in many ways grown most when we've expanded opportunity. A huge share of economic growth that came about from the 1960s onwards was because we reduced racial discrimination in the labor market and gender discrimination, too, to some extent. Our society and each of our lives will be far more enriched if everyone has a fair shot

at, you know, becoming the doctor who will take care of you. You want that person to be the person who, in a country of 330 million, was, you know, the most sort of capable and talented. And we're just leaving a lot of that talent on the table. We can see that. And lots of research that shows, you know, who are like our future inventors. And it's so heavily concentrated among a tiny sliver of folks that are at the top because their family, their parents are, you know, raising them in certain ways.

Yeah. And exposing them to ideas and jobs and occupations and others don't get that shot. And giving them the first hundred thousand dollar seed funds. Oh, yeah. Only a hundred thousand. But yeah, exactly. And when you see what every time you've expanded opportunity in this country and reduce economic insecurity, it has paid off. And we can do this because it's morally right. I'll be frank and say that's my fundamental motivation. But inequality is so extreme in this country that almost anything you're going to do to reduce it is going to help with economic prosperity, at least in the long run. And in a recession, it's going to help in

the short run, too. And not just for other people, but for me as well, for for everyone, like reducing inequality and increasing opportunity in the world, pay family and medical leave, including parental, that would mean that virtually every kid in this country might have a chance in life to bond with a parent, to get what every study shows is really the most important attention and love and care that they need that can help set them on a more positive sort of life trajectory. Now, it won't guarantee success, but how is that not going to be good for all of us? I mean, we know it will be, right?

Like, you want every kid you come across to have the same chance that your own child has. Instead of us all thinking that we're, you know, on our own, if we thought and realized that we are in this together, it's going to be good for everyone. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, one of my relatives or anyone who, you know, created the internet, but that can be good for everyone. I mean, it wasn't one of my relatives who's going to create, hopefully, the liable and safe vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. But that's going to be good for everyone. And the more that people can,

instead of facing discrimination in the labor force, in the education space and housing, the more that people can actually sort of pursue and nurture their talents and passions, the better for everyone. Amen to that. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show to talk to us about it, Indy. Yeah, I really appreciate you drawing attention to this. I think that we don't know really what the pandemic and recession are going to do because it depends

so much on policymakers. So, you know, I'd love to revisit sometime and look back and say, you know, what did policymakers do? Did they take this opportunity to act in a robust way? Have they changed the trajectory of poverty in America? Or did we just, you know, take the easy route and sort of put on temporary bandage and continue on the path that we were on before, which was just exacerbating, you know, inequality after inequality. But I love being here and I really appreciate the opportunity. Hey, I'd love to have you back and have that conversation. So we'll plan on it. Great.

Thanks, Adam. Well, thank you so much again to Indy.agupter for coming on the show. If you loved that conversation as much as I did, hey, please leave us a rating or a review wherever you subscribe. It really does help us out a lot. I want to thank our producers, Dana Wickens and Sam Roudman, our engineers, Ryan Connor and Brett Morris, Andrew WK for our theme song. I got to thank Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible PC that I'm recording this

podcast on and that I use to stream games on Twitch every so often. You can check that out on twitch.tv slash Adam Conover. And if you're looking for a new gaming PC, hey, consider Falcon Northwest. And hey, you can find me on social media at Adam Conover or at adamconover.net. Until next time, we'll see you again soon. Thanks so much for listening. And remember, stay curious.