The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Private Affluence and Public Squalor: Social Injustice and Economic Misery in America Paul L Nevins

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Private Affluence and Public Squalor: Social Injustice and Economic Misery in America Paul L Nevins Privateaffluenceandpublicsqualor.com Amazon.com Are the values that Americans collectively hold destroying the American Dream? The answer to that question depends upon the answers to some very specific questions. What do we as citizens of the United States believe we owe to one another as citizens? What is the purpose of government? What is of the role of the private enterprise? What is the meaning of equal opportunity? To what extent should purely economic concerns be regulated in the public interest? The answers to these questions reveal our values and define the role that each of us chooses to play as a participant in our country’s political and economic affairs. As the role of government in the economic life of the nation has become increasingly diminished, the effort to create a market economy that is unfettered by public oversight and regulation has emerged triumphant—to the detriment of the values that we should share as citizens.

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He is an attorney. I should mention as his title and he has written a book that is out called private affluence and public squalor, social injustice and economic misery. In America, I think he just described my bank account book Book is out May 23, 2024. We're going to get into some of the deets of him and you can find out his valuable insights and everything he knows, or at least, you know, what we can squeeze into a half an hour. Paul L.

Nevins has been a trial attorney in private practice since 1982. He w he is admitted to being in the Massachusetts bar. Did I say that rightly? No, I had some fun with it. He's been in the federal court for Massachusetts and First Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association and the National Employment Lawyers Association.

He's also a member of the American Bar Association and served on its National Advisory Committee. Although a sole practitioner, he's been involved in extensive, complex civil cases through his legal career. In most cases, he has prosecuted claims as a plaintiff's attorney on behalf of employees who have been victims of age, sex, race, disability discrimination, et cetera. Early in his career, he represented the prevailing plaintiff in Denton v. Boilermakers Union

and a race discrimination case, which George Wolf found a continuing civil rights violation that permitted the plaintiff to roll back his statute of limitations with respect to damages. That's hard to do folks, if you don't understand that legalese. Once you pass that statute of limitations, it's hard to get that. But if you've been bad, the courts punish you, or at least usually that's the idea. In concept, OJ Simpson, both standing. Anyway, welcome to the show, Paul.

How are you? Paul Lugavere Thank you very well. Did you get the joke that I said that you admitted being in the bar? It says you were admitted to the bar. Paul Lugavere I got that, yes. I had some fun with that. Paul Lugavere Do you remember Shakespeare who said, first kill all the lawyers. But he meant to ask me the compliment.

Did he, did he ever study law? Like, why did he have that? Why was he scarred that way? Did someone hurt him? It was satirical. The thought back then was that if anybody could oppose the British monarchy, at least it would be lawyers. Yeah. No one likes, no one thinks attorneys are important until they need one. I agree. But I love law and I love attorneys as long as they're not suing me, the ones suing me, but I've learned a lot from them.

And law is important in our world. Give us your dot coms so people can find you on the interwebs, sir. Give me your dot coms, your websites, wherever you want people to look you up on the internet. Private affluence and public squalor dot com. So give us a 30,000 over you, what's in this book, Private Affluence. I've, I mean, aside from being a lawyer, I've obviously, like many lawyers, I'm a disappointed academic. I actually started graduate work at NYU, finished a master's there. It was in a doctoral program, but it was interrupted by the Vietnam War. And when I returned to the doctoral program,

it was pretty clear that most of my colleagues were teaching part-time adjunct faculty. There weren't any jobs in the academy. So I changed careers. I immediately became a teacher at the Boston Public Schools for 12 years and was active in the Boston Teachers Union, AFD, AFL, CIO, and went through all the race wars, busing, desegregationregation, cheer their desegregation committee. And then given those experiences, I thought it was time to change careers. So I enrolled at Suffolk university law school and became an attorney. What made you want to do that?

What was it that drew you to that profession? I mean, it came out of a working class family and my father actually was a Boston cop, grammar school graduate, but he told me if he had ever had a choice, he would have preferred to be somebody like Perry Mason and would have been a criminal defense attorney. That kind of inspired me, but also coming out of the background in which I was raised in Boston, I had a certain commitment to social justice though. I thought the legal career would be an opportunity for me, especially after 12 years, to make a difference.

Pete Slauson Was there, and I know you kind of answered my question, but I want to dig just a little bit more. Sometimes there's a crisis moment or there's a moment where attorneys experience the law in action or maybe they see something or experience something that then interferes with rights and it kind of gives them this kind of fire to go, I see why this is important and I want to pursue this. Was there any sort of the moment like that for you? Yeah, there were a number. I had, I mean, initially I began because I needed trial experience as a criminal defense attorney.

So I represented a number of minorities and basically poor people who needed court appointed attorneys. And it was pretty clear to me that in a lot of respects, the playing field was heavily tilted against them, no matter who they were. And some of them had very legitimate defenses and some of them also had been treated very badly on the civil side. That inspired me. Coming out of my union background also, I was very determined to pursue concentration

employment law litigation because I thought that individuals in our culture, particularly those in protected classes, for example, age, I think has always been a very significant problem in our culture. Tremendous number of people who are older, we get over 40 in our culture, many are told, you're too old, you can't learn new tricks, we'll give one. And these are people who were often displaced

if they lose their jobs between 40 and 65, for example. There are many dead meat, I mean, they can't qualify for social security, if they're not disabled, they have nothing else, and they have reduced to menial jobs in our economy. You know, that was kind of a desperation of me. I had a lot of age discrimination cases as well as some race discrimination cases.

And you know, you and I are both old dudes. We got a lot of experience under our belt. I imagine some of the, those civil rights and things were, were a lot of that what you were seeing maybe back in the errors of the days when civil rights were still being really fought. I think they're still being fought today. I don't mean to be dismissive of that, but you know, there was kind of a lot of Martin Luther King and things going on back in those days and race riots and, you know, people

trying to resolve these issues. There absolutely were. And I mean, I strongly supported civil rights, but I had an interesting glitch also. As I was in law school, still teaching, we had as a result of desegregation, as I said, I'd been very extensively involved in chairing the Boston Teacher Union's desegregation committee, Judge Garrity was hearing the Boston desegregation case. And I always thought, as a kind of white working class guy, that desegregation was badly mangled and went back to decisions by the Burger Court, the United States Supreme Court, the Milliken I and Milliken II that basically said,

if there's a problem of segregation, the city itself and the surrounding suburbs are not responsible liable. They already imposed an order in Boston that basically pitted working-class whites against working-class blacks, which I thought was a recipe for disaster. And I said so on a number of occasions. Ironically, in 1982, as I'm getting ready to graduate from law school, I'm still teaching at the time, the city of Boston told the federal court they were suffering a budget shortfall. I said, no, that's nonsense. That's not happening. But no one ever investigated it.

So, Garrity then handed down an affirmative action hiring order. I was one of 710 white teachers who were hired in the 1960s, 70s. We were basically very progressive people and all of us were laid off. I ultimately got my job back, but I'm reminded that, you know, sometimes these remedies are heavy handed and they hurt the wrong people. And I think that was one of the kind of dividers that is pitted in our culture right now.

We're in class whites against working class blacks and others, which I think is very unfortunate. Yeah. You know, we've, we've had Eddie Glad jr was on the show with us today. He wrote about Baldwin. You know, we talked about, you know, what a lot of ball, James Baldwin, I've had, Eddie Glad Jr. was on the show with us today. He wrote about Baldwin. You know, we talked about, you know, what a lot of Baldwin, James Baldwin, I should say, talked about back then and how it's interesting we're still having the same conversation we're

trying to resolve in a positive way and, or argue in a way for some people. Yeah, it's, it's, I, you know, I, I'm disappointed. I had I had always hoped like when we elected Obama that maybe that would help, you know, but, you know, systematic racism is endemic in every feature and level of society, discrimination, sexual race, you know. I think our biggest problem is we have these things called human beings running around and they're horrible people for the most part, not, not always, but if we could just get rid of them, we might have some peace around here. We might. And I think the issue we've never been able to face is race is endemic in our culture.

And it's always been an issue. And, you know, the debates when Harris is running against Trump and so on, the question always became clear. Is it ever possible for a woman or a black, no matter how well qualified they are, to possibly prevail, Hillary Clinton also? The answer probably is no, because a lot of people don't want to admit,

they're really undisclosed bias, all right, sometimes unconscious bias. I know that Kyle Atty. one of the things we've always insisted that juries be pulled on and also highly look at some videos in terms of unconscious bias, because it's a real problem for all of us. We know you have to go back and you know, what's going on here? Is it something I don't understand or something missing? Oh, yeah, it's interesting where we're at. Now, the title of your book,

Private Affluence and Public Squalor, Social Injustice and Economic Misery, does this still fit? I want to make sure, I kind of went off a tangent because I try and plumb the book first, but is this fitting into the narrative that's inside the book that we've been talking about so far? Dr. Craig P. Coutts It kind of does. I mean, the title actually comes from John Kenneth Galbraith, who in his 50s wrote a title book,

The Affluent Society. And he bemoaned the existence at that time of what he saw as increasing squalor in the public sector. But yeah, so what I've been able to trace through my career is that our economic system has continued to change drastically. And in my book, I alleged for the worse, because unfortunately, our system hasn't regulated antitrust, monopolies, oligopolies, and fewer and fewer people have amassed enormous amounts of wealth.

One point I make, for example, in my book is that, you know, just quote from it, that in 2021, the top 1% of Americans had a combined net worth of $34.2 million, $30.4% of all household wealth in the United States. The bottom 50% of the population held to be at $2.1 trillion combined, or 1.9% of all wealth. So that's a pretty startling statistic. And there's another one that basically goes back to 2014 has been updated. Back in 2014, the top 25 hedge fund managers in the United States were more than

all kindergarten teachers in the United States. You know, my contention is if we're going to really look at polarization, one of the things we have to look at is this huge economic divide because it's pitted hardscrabble whites against hot scrabble blacks and everybody else. And they're all trying to stay afloat, but you know, the difficulty is becoming greater and greater. All of us with children realize grandchildren that their prospects aren't as sanguine as when you and I were youngsters. Yeah, it's interesting how we kind of hit this peak moment and it was a very short peak moment

and it was actually, there was actually a lot of anomalies that were attached to it. You know, GIs returning from home with huge amounts of savings, house buying assistance and rightly so. I mean, they put their lives on the line. And then of course, you know, this sudden sort of Levittown expansion, suburban pavement of America that kind of came from all that. And it really wasn't a post-war anomaly that flooded the savings of all that time into the thing.

And suddenly everyone had two cars, two car garage, the picket fence, yada, yada, yada, this perfect life. And I think there's some incorrect data on how that lasted. Some people think it lasts for a long time. And I think it was a blurb on the screen, but people got attached to that. And it seemed to get taken away from them over the challenges that came after that and some of the economic issues and, you know, seeing the world suddenly turned global as opposed to, you know, just America being the you know seeing the world suddenly turn global as opposed to

just America being the ruling class in the world. And I think you put your finger in those important issues. I mean certainly one of the issues was that I don't blame the University of Chicago but I will the School of Economics and Law which basically said that the antitrust doesn't need to be regulated you know it's fine in monopoly, it's not going to hurt anyone. And I think that's been just proven by all the data. But the other part, I think, is globalization. We've all heard the term, the earth is, the world is flat and so forth. Part of the problem was, you go back to Reagan and then Clinton, when Dick Gephardt was Speaker of the House, he was very strongly, whenFTA was being negotiated. It was necessary to have some fear, reciprocal trade agreements.

And that power was really lost. So we opened up GATT and everything else through a variety of countries, including China, without any attempt to say, wait, we're going to have at least a level playing field where, you know, we're not suffering the disadvantage. And that hasn't, that never happened. And, you know, although I may disagree the disadvantage. And that hasn't that never happened. And you know, although I may disagree with President Trump, he's right about issues when we look at Europe, for example, they've got a bad tax. So they they impose that 20% tax on any automobiles

imported to Europe. So there are no courts or no Buicks or no Lincolns driving around Europe. We don't have, you know, that kind of punitive, we don't have that kind of punitive, we hadn't had that kind of punitive tax. So it created a very unlevel playing field. Yeah, and we've done the same too. I mean, it's a, you know, I think Biden imposed the ban on the Chinese electric cars, which are far better than our American cars

and have better features and are far cheaper. You've seen the BYD cars, these brand BYD and other electric cars, like they can jump. They can literally jump the car. The car can do a bunny hop, fill with features. So we've all kind of been in this game mode of, you know, protecting our localized geographical industries. I would give you that there's a resonance that goes farther back that's led to a lot of these injustices and economic issues that go back to the liberalism of Reagan. And a lot of that comes actually out of Nixon and Johnson. A lot of this is founded from Johnson flipping unions to the Democrats by signing all that

legislation that helped poor people. And literally they flipped from being the Republicans and being someone who didn't support black people to a party that flipped and did, which left a chasm with the Nixon era and the Republicans because they lost all the unions. And so then Nixon had to come with a great Southern strategy. They of course attack colleges, same thing with Reagan because of the war. And so a lot of this economic down, you know, I'm still waiting for my check from Reagan on those trickle down economics. I should be here any day now.

I'm holding my breath. And so you can kind of see a lot of this, the patterns that come from the origin of some of this stuff. Yeah. When I was a young, we had a Republican Senator here, Lever Salstal, our nephew's family, but he received significant labor union support because in fact, he strongly supported unions. One of the other trends that I talk about in my book, which I think is relevant in terms of our recent economic history too, was the passage of Taft-Hawley back in 1947. Harry Truman vetoed it. It was passed overwhelmingly by a new Republican Congress. And what that did was it totally deindustrialized the North.

The Northern industries, the Rust Belt developed, and all those industries migrated to the South. They opened up right to workshops, which decimated unions. But the other thing that entrepreneurs discovered with that is if they could move to the south and successfully evade unions, they could do even better ultimately if they moved to the third world that have no regulation whatsoever. Yeah. And in fact, that's where we ended up. Yeah. Reagan's idea was to break the unions, which were funding the Democrats, by moving jobs overseas. So he came and said, hey, we'll make it easier for you to move overseas.

You'll break the unions. You won't have to deal with unions overseas. And then we can keep getting elected. I've been a Republican full disclosure, I've been a Republican, I've been a Democrat. Now I'm a uncommitted voter. What's it called? I've seen all sides. I'm an independent voter.

I think that's the way it is. But you know, I'm critical of everyone I vote for. In fact, I'm overly critical. Well, I am also. I think it's healthy. It's very healthy. Please do that Americans. It's not a football team. We all die. We're all riding the same lifeboat. So if you punch holes in it, we're all going to sink together, which is what's happened. So you ask a lot of questions in the book. What are the values of Americans collectively hold that are destroying the American dream? What do we as citizens of the United States believe in each other as citizens? I think a comment I made about the

boat is important. You know, I often say on the show, my quote, we are all stewards of democracy. It is up to each one of us. And it's not just about the vote. It's about every day. You need to read the paper. You need to hold politicians accountable. You need to, when they lie, when they cheat, when they steal, you need to hold them accountable. Like I said, I'm abusive almost to a level of anybody I've ever voted for. About half the time I'm going, okay, I approve of what you did there. Could have been per better, but I understand you, we got to make compromises. And then the other half of the time, I'm like, you idiot. So I'm not in any cults. There's some

other questions you asked, what is the purpose of government? What is the role of private enterprise? What is the meaning of our equal opportunity, public interest, et cetera, et cetera. I'm just kind of throwing those out if you want to pick up on any and tease them out a little bit for people. I think one of the interesting issues we have is how we identify ourselves. It has to do with the issue of values. I mean, we have, for example, watching, for example, current inhabitants of the White House and the supporters, they basically describe themselves as conservatives. And Reagan's people describe themselves as conservatives.

And I think the reason they do so is it's a lack of understanding of labels. And I think labels are kind of important because you can't understand who we are unless we know where we came from. We are a liberal democracy by definition. So we don't have, by definition, conservatives in this culture. We might have liberals who feel the country's going in the right direction or whatever, but they're not conservatives. Conservatism goes back to the ancient Greeks.

And if we want to find out where conservatism exists today, it's in the Vatican. It's in Catholic social teaching, which when many Americans read it, they say, God, that's really radical. How could they do that? It's not radical. A conservative is communitarian.

We're basically emphasized, we're all part of one, a body politic, we owe to one another. By contrast, liberalism says in its courses form, each of us is an individual, separate atom, and we compete against one another, and society is purely contractual, and if we don't like it, we can walk away. And that's not a prescription for healthy society. So that's part of what I address the issue of values. If you want to find conservatives, you go to the Vatican, you look at Catholic social teaching. You do want to be able to contrast it to them. And then you could look at, you know, by another example contrast

is European social democracy, which was also a reaction against liberal culture. And they came up with a different prescription, but it was communitarian also. One thing you find is both Catholic social teaching and social democratic teaching, they share pretty similar critiques of unbridled market capitalism. I mean, I don't think anybody today in the world stands up and says, we should have a top-down commanding economy like China. But people realize there's got to be some kind of regulation. I often quote Elizabeth Warren, who basically said as a a capitalist supporter, that, you know, capitalist bill of regulation is theft. And sometimes we think we see that, especially looking at cryptocurrency right now, for example,

going on. Yeah. I mean, oligarchy, we're seeing some interesting patterns in our government. I think we have more billionaires running in government right now than ever before. That's a fact. And, you know, we've had a lot of people on the show, they've written about Russia, the oligarchy, how it developed, how the kleptocracy works, where Putin hides his money in place, the billionaires and they basically control the country, steal the wealth and, and you're in bread lines. And I don't know, right now ships are coming from China, so I'm getting ready for the Maduro diet and bread lines.

Half a joke, not half a joke. But what I like about your book and when I look at the questions that are provided and some of the details that I'm seeing is this is a conversation that we used to teach people in school called civics. And these used to be, I was taught civics in school, I'm sure you probably were too, but this was one of the things that was dumped on the agenda, I'm not gonna point fingers, Republicans, that to destroy school and education, number one, so they could create religious schools. And part of it was because of Brown versus Wade. A lot of people don't

understand that school vouchers are about racism. People don't want their kids going to school with mixed race. So they've been pushing this. You just saw Skotus had the case before to make the first publicly funded with public funds, private religious school. And there's this push to theocracy. When you understand certain billionaires like Betsy DeVos and her father from the Nixon administration and what they do with the center of financial policy and what they do when they write them in the Heritage Foundation for Fox News, the scripts of right wing media, you kind of understand the hidden hand of what they're in there. And a lot of them really want a theocracy.

They don't believe, you know, this is why they want 10 Commandments on courthouse steps. They want an American ISIS where there is no constitution, there is the Bible and the 10 Commandments, and you live and die by that and are punished in court. That's their utopia that they want. And they pushed it. You've seen it, the, you've seen the judges they put into SCOTUS and it's kind of interesting how that's playing out right now, cause they're doing some things I didn't expect from some of them. But you know, if you buy an RV for him, I guess you can get whatever SCOTUS really

you want. Anyway, that's a joke of the one gentleman there on the SCOTUS board, but I like how you're bringing this to the thing because this used to be a narrative we had in schools and we don't have the civic side. I have an entire chapter in the book on the decline of civic education. When we look at the data in terms of Americans, what they can, well, we can begin with lots of these like literacy levels. Majority of Americans could not read the New York Times because it's above their, it's written at a central grade UNESCO level, it's too complicated

for them. A huge number of Americans can't name more than one or two justices in the Supreme Court. You question them on a whole variety of issues in terms of Congress, Article 1, Executive Article 2, Judiciary Article 3. They have no answer. They don't understand. And you're right. When I went to high school in the 60s, we had robust, not only American history, but

principles of democracy, civic education courses. And we debated all those issues and we learned them. And I think to the extent to which we've gone to vouchers and tried to move away from public education, it's hurt all of us. I think the other thing that has hurt our culture is we really don't have any sheer sacrifice any longer So I was not happy about being inscripted into the military out of graduate school But you know I adjusted to the army, but the one thing I realized was

Once we got rid of that the Pentagon was quite happy as was the welfare through warfare industry Because once the military became entirely volunteer out of some kind of mind we could wage wars forever nobody's sharing the sacrifice and control of that. And now we read some of the data where a lot of young people interviewed said, if you were conscription will reintroduced and you were given a choice of Peace Corps, whatever, what would you do? I don't think the country reflection. Yeah.

You'd, you'd have the college campuses rioting and all the stuff you saw during the Nixon administration. I think you saw some pushback during desert war and even the private military. You know, Bush with Iraq and Afghanistan created this whole private military with President Cheney from Halliburton filling their pockets from... I love how an ex-CEO of Halliburton leaves Halliburton and then enriches Halliburton and then goes back to them. What a, what a concept.

It's almost like it might be happening today. Anyway, Bitcoin, anyway, yeah, you talk about a lot of these things and I think it's real important. Can we touch a little bit and tease out on your book, The Politics of Selfishness? Because somehow in 2025, kind of feeling the kind of feeling like some of that might be going on as well would be pertinent. Well, that basically, you know, critics who disagree with me basically, you're blaming all the travail in the United States on John Locke's notes. It's the interpretation of John Locke's philosophy of individualism, which was incorporated into our

constitution. Is that rugged individualism? Was that the quote or the reference, if I recall? John Locke Yeah, the politics of selfishness. So, basically, the argument was that John Locke's philosophy in England was an attempt to condone the power of the monarchy and after the glorious revolution. So, the issue there was that it was still based and rooted in a communitarian tradition that came out of the Middle Ages, so it was nuanced. In the United States, it became kind of taken over in whole cloth and adopted and really kind of metastasized into this philosophy of rugged

individualism. We don't have any controls. We can do whatever we want. And, you know, I suggested back when I wrote that, that that's the root of pot of our political paralysis, that we can't work in common concert together because we're constantly fighting one another. It's a war of every man against every man. Well, the rocks predecessor, Thomas ops. And I know this from being a Republican because during that age, there was always this, we need to just have people have a Republican rugged individualism and you know, you need to, everybody pulls their stuff up with a Bruce steps. And I was a Republican saying the same thing because I grew up poor. I started businesses

and then became, you know, wealthy and even by today's means. And so I was like, I did it. So everyone else can voting for George Bush. Um, and what I didn't, you know, I was, I was kind of in my own bubble because I live in my own private Idaho, Utah, 97% of people are white. And I wasn't, I hadn't been exposed to in my life. You know, I grew up in California. I, I was exposed to everyone in California's friends with everyone. I didn't get that racist sort of I was exposed to everyone in California, friends with everyone. I didn't get that racist sort of element. I, you know, I lived in the melting pot of people that's healthy.

And, but, so I didn't have a lot of experience in seeing how a lot of poor people lived, a lot of people that, that either had made bad choices in life and, and shouldn't suffer indefinitely for them. I mean, that's the reason we have a bankruptcy course so that people can start over, we can't throw them away. You mean, that's the reason we have a bankruptcy course so that people can start over. We can't throw them away, you know, welfare and all those sort of things. And so I kind of bought into that rugged individualism. I'm like, you know, if I could do it, cause I mean, I'm a stupid kid and still am stupid, if I can do it, somebody else can, but not everyone has the same

opportunities, not everyone has the same. I certainly, you know, had my fair share of people who tried to help me back, but I certainly didn't have any sort of race discrimination that was holding me back and sabotaging me the indemnification of racism and civil stuff, you know, it goes, it's so deep into American culture. You know, we're separated by freeways and

subdivisions that were redlined by banks and, you know, all this stuff that's created a mess. You know, even religion was separated. You know, Martin Luther King famously said, you know, we can't even pray together on Sunday as white people. And so, there's a lot of this. And I was lucky enough that 9-11 made me wake up and go, why do people in the world hate us? I had this, I had this panacea idea or utopian idea that America is great and everyone loves us and we're just

so cool. And then I'm like, why are they flying shit in our buildings and stuff? We're that cool. I thought we were the cool kids on the block, but evidently people hate us and why. And so then I started studying the world. I started studying nature and, and try and understand why human beings were, you know, the way they were. And it opened up my worldview and it got me away from that whole concept that, you know, there are people that grow up poor and, and indiscrimination and it's hard to get out of it.

It's hard to get out of slums. It's hard to get in not slums, but, you know, uh, places that are largely poor. There's no jobs, there's no support, no education. You know, you're really subject. What's the word I'm looking for? You're really sabotaged from all different levels. And every time you try and get up or out, you're, you're, you, you can be attacked and you know, there's, you know, you get pulled over for, you know, your turn signal doesn't work right or something. And then, you know, off you go and we fill the

jails that a lot of that came from the liberalism of Reagan, you know, first thing he did in office is he took away all the support welfare systems and increased the police. And then of course, Clinton didn't help, you know, we're bashing both Democrats and Republicans through your people. Clinton didn't help by, you know, making the, was it three strikes law? I think it was, or something, or whatever that enactment was that really created the megaplex of the industrial prison complex we have in America. Yeah.

I think in terms of either the whole issue of rugged individuals, most of us think back who, you know, survive relatively well in life. Along the way, some one or two people helped us, gave us a leg up. Yeah. And that became critical. I can think back even to my, you know, high school education, a couple of people catered my aid and so forth. They were invaluable.

And then back to as we round out the show, this has been a great discussion. I can sit and talk with you for hours on this. high school education, a couple of people, K to my eight and so forth. They were invaluable. As we round out the show, this has been a great discussion. I can sit and talk with you for hours on this. I love your insights. And this is something a lot of young people should be aware of. You know, you can't fix what's going on now unless you look at the history and understand it. And then from there, you can map forward. And map forward and you can't fix something if you don't adhere or take for it. There's a saying I always say in the show from my quote, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history and thereby we go round and round.

So, we've got to learn from our history and it's important that you're asking these questions because these aren't seated in education nowadays with an intent for that to know. Because if you don't understand the value of law, your rights, the rule of law, the constitution, it's easier to dominate you and turn you into oligarchy. Or yeah, that explains the Elon Musk thing. We round out the show. anything more you want to promote, any consulting or hiring you as an attorney, future books, things of that nature, et cetera, et cetera? Robert Lipsitz No, I just, you know, I do think that,

you know, the issue of inequality is a major one in our culture that has to be discussed. And the other thing, you know, from my experience as an attorney, issues of discrimination in our culture, they're pretty pervasive and they're often unconscious. And you know, my 43 years, it wasn't just discrimination itself that became an issue, but what I discovered was that how people were treated in terms of protocols, things that were supposed to be followed, generally evaded. And I had a number of cases where we couldn't prove the underlying claim of race discrimination or age discrimination.

But what we could show is of the 42 protocols the employer mandated and published, they failed to follow any one of them. And they suggested they were arbitrary and capricious. And I think that raised the whole issue of fear treatment and how we treat one another as a society. It is a issue we really have to engage in. Pete Slauson Yeah. And I like your concept that we all, you know, we're all in the same boat together on this. We've all rise or fall together. We're Americans, you know, the person who's supposed to be our president is supposed to

have the interests of all of us and lift the American ideal and what America has been about for the last 80 years, the shining beacon on the hill. I really shouldn't use that because that's actually not a good reference. That's a Reagan and religious reference. Being this beacon of freedom, free speech, democracy, and engendering those ideals, let's put it that way, and being a leader in the world as opposed to a follower. I think that's- Well, so we worry now that given what's going on in terms of tariffs and sanctions and tax on Harvard, other universities, research, a lot of young people,

particularly in the Boston area where I obviously live in the city, they're going to be migrating to Europe. I mean, I can't see a lot of the migrating to China for obvious reasons. But I can see a large number of migrating to Canada or to Europe. And one of the final comments I think I'd leave everybody with is we seem to forget that in Germany after that country was united by autofund Bismarck from roughly 1875, even through World War I up to through the Weimar Republic. Germany was one of the leading countries in the world in terms of medical research, scientific research, and a whole variety of other issues. Once Hitler came to power and the events that subsequently occurred, German intellectual propriety was absolutely destroyed and they've never recovered in that

respect and I'm deeply concerned that could happen here to the United States. Yeah. And that's usually what happens with nationalism. We kind of, you know, we went through nationalism back under what early FDR and you know, the thing was we don't want to get sucked into Europe's war because we, you know, we didn't like the first one and didn't travel. And by doing that, it increased the level of costs that it took to fight that war and defend democracy because we were next up on the docket. And we found that out with Pearl Harbor. And of course, the Atlantic Ocean was starting to fill with Hitler's submarines.

So it was making trade even harder. We were up next on the plate. And you think of all the men and women that died in World War II that didn't have to, if we would have went after Hitler as soon as he invaded Poland. We see that today, I think, unfortunately, with Ukraine and Europe. Yeah. I just watched the Finland, the minister, whatever the title is. Oh yeah, the president. He was just talking about how he's seeing buildup on their border of Russia and Russia, you know, Russia's just playing games where they're just like, Oh yeah, we want, we want

peace. We're willing to, you know, stop bombing. And then they're bombing more than they ever have, you know, and anybody who grew up with Russia, I, you grew up with Russia. I grew up, you know, hiding under desks, under bomb threats of nuclear war that somehow absolutely that steel case desk of lead would somehow save me from nuclear war. I don't know what there was kind of interesting fight club scene there of the fins are interesting too, because they were neutered by the Russians. They fought them hard. They had to surrender some

of the territory. Yeah, but they've learned and they, they understand who the Russians are. And I think maybe one interesting glitch with the president of Finland is apparently he's an incredibly accomplished golfer and been able to strike up a friendship with Trump and maybe that will help. But God knows if we don't pay attention to those issues also, we're going to repeat, you know, it's Santayana who said, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. And I think that's unfortunately true. Pete Then maybe I built that quote off of what I made where I may have modified it off

that where, you know, the one thing man can learn from his history is a man never learns from his history. And yeah, I mean, this is why we talk about these things. This is why you're asking the questions, your book. So wonderful discussion. We could go on an hour's an hour for first and I love having this discussion with you and I hope our audience does too because you're going to learn a lot and we need to think about these things and they're pressing in determining the future and success. I don't have children,

but people who have children and grandchildren want to see them succeed. These are important questions for them too. Give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs. Give me your dot com, your website so people can find you on the interwebs. Private affluence and publicsqwala.com. Thank you for coming on the show, Paul. I love these conversations. They're brilliant. They're in depth. I enjoyed the conversation. I wish you the best of luck in your program also. I'm going to need it in 2025.

But it's very good. Yeah. Hopefully we've been, hopefully we've been- Keeping on the line and asking a lot of questions. And educate a lot. That's what we're trying to do, share the wealth of knowledge. So share the wealth of knowledge, folks. Pick up Paul's book, Private Affluence, a Public Scholar, Social Injustice and Economic

Misery in America, which I think describes my checking account. No, I'm just kidding. It's not that bad. It's actually pretty good. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.gov, LinkedIn.com, for chest, Chris Foss, Chris Foss, one of the tick tock in all those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Thank you. And that's just us out Paul.