The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Crypto Bros Want Biden to Fuck Up the Economy

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

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Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have an excellent show. Justin Wilfer is a professor at University of Michigan and a New York Times contributor. He's going to talk to us about what is actually happening with the economy and kind of blow our minds when he gives us his take on what to really look at instead of what the news cycle keeps telling us to look at. But first, we're going to talk to Sarah Longwell, who's the CEO of Longwell Partners and the publisher of the bulwark.

Welcome to New Abnormal, Sarah Longwell. Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. I'm very excited because I'm very depressed. And I'm hoping that you could make me feel better. This is what I do. On Wednesday, I think, oh God, this is so awful. Everything is so terrible. But I know that my guests will make me feel better because that's their job on the podcast.

That's so much pressure. And with the world as it is, I'm not positive I can achieve that, but I will do my best. But really, you do do these focus groups. You are seeing Republican voters. What the fuck, man? So, yeah, listen, I do focus groups. I've done hundreds at this point.

I'll tell you why I started doing them. So when I'm a, there was a lifelong Republican. And when Donald Trump got the nomination and then he won an American election, as he did in 2016, I was confused. I was like, what is going on? I was so certain, first, that the Republican Party would not nominate a guy like Donald Trump. But of course, I understood that, okay, there's this massive field. There's a bunch of Republicans fragmenting the normal Republican vote.

Trump, you know, is all alone and his burn it all down lane. He sneaks through fluke of history. But then when he won the general election, I was like, I got to understand what's happening. My background was in communications. And so I did focus groups from time to time to understand people. And so I started to just out of sheer curiosity, started doing these focus. groups with people who had voted for Donald Trump to ask why. And, you know, I mean, the number one answer was, I didn't vote for Donald Trump. I voted against Hillary Clinton. And so it was the kind of

negative polarity type thing that we've seen increasing in our politics. But I continued with them. And over time, what I saw was that Republican voters were changing. That Trump, you know, Trump sort of got in, you know, he was, he found a niche in the party because there was an existence kind of demand for somebody like him and a kind of rot, I would call it, a populist nationalist streak that's always been there. But then over time, right, like people get more and more desensitized to Trump. And you could hear them starting to rationalize more and more the crazy things he did. And to the point now where a lot of people who I think even four years ago would have said,

well, look, I don't like him. You know, now they would say, no, we need somebody like him. We need somebody to be strong. And when you say WTF, like what's happening here, the more I talk to people, the more it's become clear that there's this, this what I call the Republican triangle of doom. And it's the symbiotic and toxic relationship between Republican voters, right-wing infotainment media, and the politicians. So politicians, voters, media, and they're just in a feedback loop with each other that creates literally an alternate reality. Like, I think that people have a difficult time understanding. what's going on with the Republican Party because they're like,

how do the people believe this? Wait, 70% think that the election was stolen? That's a lot of Republicans. How can it be like that? And I'm telling you it's because there's just a whole ecosystem in which people exist that creates kind of a different reality. Okay, I get that and I've like gone to CPAC been sent by your organization, in fact. You know, so I've seen that there are people for whom conservative media is the only media.

And they live in a completely isolated bubble. Let's just get back into this idea for a second. Who leads this? Is it the conservative media? Is it the voters? It doesn't strike me. It feels like the politicians, these Republican politicians, are sort of just trying to catch up. Yeah.

I mean, they can be a lagging indicator, right? The great example that's really easy for people to follow is the insurrection, right? And another one would be when the Access Hollywood tape came out. Both of these follow the exact same pattern. This thing happens. And the politicians express disbelief, outrage. I mean, if you remember during the insurrection, that's when Lindsay Graham said, I've had enough I'm out. Mike Gallagher, congressman from Wisconsin is on TV that whole day just out of his mind.

Just, you know, rip shit. Like, this is crazy and terrible and all these things. Kevin McCarthy condemns it. Nikki Haley goes on record with the Atlantic about this is it. You know, you've got a bail at this moment. And then what you see is that right-wing media, I'm not sure which in the chicken or the egg here. That's why I have to call it sort of a toxic triangle. And there's a reason that the politicians come in.

I'll explain it. But so there's this chicken or egg. which either both the voters, there's a base level of voters who say, wait, no, the election was stolen. These people are defending democracy. And I'm on their side. And there's a media, right, ecosystem that's there for that, that is willing to, like, engage and express that outrage with them. And pretty soon, there's, like, a real chatter. And then so then, Republican politicians think, oh, no, the fever didn't break. Oh, oh, no, they're on Trump's side. Oh, I better reposition. I better recalibrate. But what happens is that then when politicians, you know, who are perceived to be more serious people,

well, when they start to say, well, you know what, the election was stolen and what these people did was patriotic, then there's another segment of voters that start to become convinced, well, if the politicians are saying that it was stolen, now I'm more convinced. And so what happens, that's why it's symbiotic, right? And it clears on to each other. And then more politicians say it, they go on more right-wing media. And over time, you get to a place where 70% of the Republican Party believe something. Tell me where this ends. Where does it end? I don't know. I can tell you where we're going. I think that Donald Trump is more likely, in my mind, to be the 2024 nominee than Joe Biden is to be the 2024 nominee for the Democrats. I think that if the Democrats don't figure

out a way to pull out of this nosedive, that the chances of him winning the election fair and square with the majority of support for the American people is not at all unrealistic. I think that the green shoots that I think there's a lot of my never Trump or Trump skeptical friends on the right like to think that they're seeing. I'm not as optimistic about them as some others. There's kind of an argument going on and never Trump land right now over like a Yon dissantis future. Can you explain that? Yeah, yeah. Well, I just have a real problem with the idea that the future for the Republican Party requires us to get on board with somebody like DeSantis. who is basically, if Trump is a band that you hate and makes your ears bleed, and then they're like,

hey, well, if you don't like him, you want to listen to this tribute band? Like, that's what Rhonda Santos is. And so, like, I can't understand for one second why that would be appealing. But Yonkin is different. Like, I can understand why Yonkin would be appealing to people who are like, let's get back to normal and to push past Trump. You know, we've got to have people like Yonkin. There is a problem, though, with candidates. who cannot tell voters the truth about things.

Simple things like whether or not the election was free and fair. And for me, I don't, until we have politicians who are willing to say, the sky is blue, and I'm sorry if you think it's green, but it's actually blue, and I've got to tell you that. Until we have that, like, I don't think our politics starts to get back to a sane place. I think as long as the litmus test, and, like, you know, there's people like Matt Lewis or other friends of mine on the sort of never Trump right who are like, Well, this is unfair because it's a catch-22 because any politician who completely disavows Trump can't win. And for me, therein lies the problem. I'm like, okay, well, that is a problem.

Then that speaks to the sickness that is going on with Republican voters. And until we have politicians who are willing to like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger, this joint, we're not going to get back to a place where we have a healthier politics and we're going to get what? We have to accept that you've got to lie to people about whether or not an election was stolen. in order to win a Republican primary, which, by the way, Yonkin didn't actually win. There's like a weird, they did like a weird thing in Virginia to avoid a real primary. And if they had held a real primary, this is a place where the Republican nominee was Corey Stewart a few years ago, Mr. Confederate flag, banned mosques. And so, you know, if Amanda Chase had been the nominee, Terry McCallough probably

still would have beaten her by nine points. Anyway, so where does it end? I'm the resident optimist over at the bulwark. I hate to not have an optimistic take. The slide that I have seen the way that, and just take Liz Cheney getting pulled out of leadership. Those things, those are really bad signs. Those are not signs that we're getting back to a healthier place. It is a sign that we are, we are silencing and excommunicating from the party, people who are willing to just tell basic truths about the election. And so I think that there's that John McCain line, you know, it's always darkest before it's pitch black. I just think we have like further to go down before we hit the place of fever-breaking,

reckoning. Oh, am I making you feel better? Am I cheering you up? Yeah, a lot better. Thank you. We have a lot of people on this podcast. We have seven guests a week. And we have a lot of really smart academics. And they are all really worried. Like, we have yet to have a smart academic on here who isn't really fucking worried. You know, you're reflecting what everyone smart is saying. I'm curious to know, like, do you feel that the Republican voters you're talking? are more, like, do they, I mean, don't they understand that Democrats are like giving them things or do they just not want them? I mean, is that like, you know, with a child tax credit or, I mean, do they understand any of that? Like, I'm always shocked that, like,

Democrats can work so hard to give people things and people can just not want them. Yeah, I mean, I will tell you, having been. on sort of the Republican policy side, my entire career, not a big fan of, you know, massive spending packages. I always just thinking to myself, man, Democrats' job is so easy. So all they got to do is give people stuff and then people like them. But they don't. That's not true. And I'm actually been watching this with a kind of wonderment as I do the focus groups and I talk to independent voters, voters on the right, even some Democratic voters. You know, I'll say, you know, the COVID relief bill. the Democrat, Joe Biden walked into office and spent almost $2 trillion on COVID relief.

And if you ask people, well, what did you think about that? Did you get something out of that, whatever? People say things like, not only is it not a net positive. They'll say things like, yeah, you know who got that money? Businesses got that money. And I didn't get that money. I don't think it found its way to me. Not only do they not appreciate it. They resent, and I see this all the time, people resent the other people that they feel like got the money. You could be talking to a group of people and then they'll say like, either they didn't need the money. And so they just think it was wasteful government spending or they do need the money, in which case they don't feel like they got enough and they feel like other people benefited more than they do. I am deeply suspicious of the theory that giving people stuff.

Now, you know, if you believe that this is how you materially improve people's lives and even if they don't reward you for it politically, it's still the right thing to do. Like, okay, that's a theory. but if you think they're going to reward you for it politically, I think that is not as much the case, especially when there are cross-cutting issues. I just think culture Trump's policy all the time. But let me just, I'll just knock Democrats for a second, though. It is criminal that people do not know about things like the child tax credit.

Like Donald Trump came into office, ripped off a bunch of executive orders, and then walked around the country saying, look at all this red tape, look at the economy, taking credit for like a beautiful day. Like he just would take credit for absolutely everything. He made sure his name was on the checks that he passed out. Name on the checks.

Yeah, that's right. Name on the checks. And you know what? Democrats don't do any of that. Their messaging operation, their ability to communicate to people and say what they're doing for them. Like, Republicans are going to vote against this stuff, including infrastructure. And then they're going to show up at all the ribbon cutting ceremonies and tell the people

that they did that and people will believe them because the Democrats just aren't sort of owning this stuff. and then we can get into other messaging issues, like the fact that a lot of these, you know, bills that you say are going to help people, like all people will know about them is the price tag. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's a really good point and also really, really fucking depressing. I mean, we had a Democratic senator on here who I love, who's like my friend.

And he said, you know, I said, you guys have a messaging problem. And he said, no, if we do good stuff for people, they'll appreciate it. And I was like, what world do you live? I was like, I was like, We do good stuff. Yeah, that's right. Like, we are big bird, and they're trying to cancel us for telling people to get vaccinated. Are you worried about, like, the dissent into violence? Yeah, I am. I'm worried about the way that people fetishize violence right now, political violence. There's a real, there is just a real fetidization. I was thinking about it with Kyle Rittenhouse, where, you know, there's certainly a way to look at, like, old school conservatives. So, Conservatives in the world that I kind of came up in would have had this like circumspect position, I feel like on Kyle Rittenhouse, where they would have said, look, it was really lamentable that he felt the need to grab a gun and walk into this situation. And that is not okay. And we should not be doing that. That being said, there is still, from a legal standpoint, you could say it's defensible that he was in a, he was defending himself in that situation. That is a different position to hold than the one that I'm seeing all over Twitter from all sort of all over right wing Twitter. which is like, this guy's a hero. And it's not like Randos doing this. It's like the Senate candidates for Ohio, like J.D. Vance, you know, where they really are just like, they lionize this person and say that this is exactly how we want, you know, our young men to behave. And I think, well, that's an insane message. Why are we fetishizing this guy? Like, it was, he was a terrible decision making. That's different from whether he goes to jail for murder. But, like, that wasn't good. We don't want more people doing this. So, you know, I hear it all the time in the focus. where I'll say. So one of the things I hear a lot is we'll be, we'll be talking about January 6th.

And people have like, there's no through line on January 6th. People either think it was no big deal, or they were patriots who showed up to defend a stolen election, or they'll be like, that wasn't, that was Antifa, that was Black Lives Matter. And there's a lot of that, people saying that was Antifa or Black Lives Matter. And what I kind of say, like, well, why do you think that? One of the things they say is, well, if it was, if it was Republicans, they would have guns. And look, I'm, I'm from central Pennsylvania. I come from places where it is much more casual to have guns, just like in your house, in your living room, like in a gun case, you know, hunting rifles and things like that. But there's lots of like safety culture around that too. Right. And I just think

like the Oathkeeper stuff and there's this sense of like we've got to get our guns, when do we get to use our guns. It's being normalized. And the problem is it used to have a political culture that would tamp that stuff down, that would run from that stuff. They wouldn't gin it up. And now you've got a political culture that says, oh, yeah, let's just juice this. So anyway, am I worried about it? I'm worried about it. Look, can I, I'm just going to make one quick pitch for optimism, though. Yeah, please.

So doing all the focus groups, people always ask me, they're like, how can you stand it? How can you, like, listen to people? They're so crazy. The thing is, is actually, like, people are great. Right. I actually hear people say great stuff all the time. And they are often, like, wonderful neighbors and good parents. and good parents, and they, you know, teach special education at their local school or they're

involved in their church. And so now that doesn't mean that they're being good citizens right now. I think that there's, look, there's light and dark and all people, and you can animate people's worst impulses or you can animate their best impulses. And right now, the Republican Party has found a winning formula in animating their worst impulses. And as so has right-wing media. but I'm just sort of convinced that there's enough, like, good infrastructure in people, not to, no pun intended, that if somebody could figure out how to lead in an optimistic, like, look, I'm not like going to sit around and lament Joe Biden, but I do think that part of what I was excited about for Joe Biden, I ran a whole campaign, Republican voters against Trump and, you know, found all these Republicans who wanted to support Biden and made testimonials out of them and, or they, you know, they made testimonials and we amplified them. Is uniting the country stuff? Like, I really wanted to see that.

I really wanted to see somebody come in and try to speak to our greatest aspirations and the things that unite us. And it can sound cheesy. And maybe we're all really cynical, but I still believe that that stuff matters. And that you have to just talk to people and relentlessly, like, you have to provide an optimistic vision, right? Like, you're saying you're depressed and me saying, I don't have that much good news to offer. Like, we're in a bit of a slough of despond as a.

country. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. There's a ripe opportunity for somebody to come in and, like, remind us what's great about America and speak to the goodness in all of these people and give an aspirational pitch. And it's not happening yet. Right. But there is a place for it. And I think that's a really good point. And optimism can win. And I think, like, we should just take that with us so we don't kill ourselves when it gets dark at four o'clock in three hours. Thank you so much, Sarah. That was great. That's it. Yep. That's it. Please come back soon. Hey folks, if you haven't heard, every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program.

Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you'll support the Beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal.

com. Justin Wolfers is a professor at University of Michigan and the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, as well as a contributor to the New York Times. Welcome to the new abnormal, Justin. Yeah, thank you. We have been trying to get you for a long time, so this is really fun for us. and also I've read a number of articles. And, you know, I'd like to think of myself as someone who sort of understands the economy a little bit. What is going on? You know, the economy, like all of us, has been through a pretty traumatic past couple of years, which requires some pretty extraordinary adjustments.

And just like each of us in our own homes, has done the best we can and made adjustments where we can. There's a few parts of our lives that just haven't been quite as smooth. And that's sort of the macroeconomic story. So the thing I want to talk to you about is the first thing I think we have to talk about is inflation. Inflation is the thing that's making people feel the economy is bad. But it doesn't necessarily mean the economy is bad. Inflation is sort of complicated, actually. So, you know, if inflation's 5%, but your wages are going up at 5% to compensate, then everyone would feel

okay. The problem is it's all a little bit more stop-start than that. So at the moment, prices are moving a little bit ahead. it's likely that wages will catch up a bit. And then there's a psychological aspect to all of this, which is the truth is my wages might go up 5% this year to make up for the rise in the cost of living. But as a person, I think my wages might go up 5% this year

because I did a fantastic job. Right. And my boss really appreciates the awesome effort I put in. And I think that inflation is stealing that 5%. So many of us sort of misattribute what's happening to our wages. And that leads us to resent the inflation. monster. That's why populists who want to foster resentment say inflation is eating a way out or stealing your living standards. But realize rising prices throughout history almost always have gone

hand in hand with rising wages. We want to keep the benefits for ourselves even if, you know, it's a psychological misattribution. So interesting and clearly so right. It's spooking a lot of people because I know it's spook in the New York Times because I read an article in the New York Times this morning, which sounded very spooked. If economists wanted to say, like, inflation is at 6%, we want to lower it right now. What could they do? The classical answer to that from a non-pandemic economy

would be if you raise interest rates, choke off the economic recovery, then people feel poorer. To the extent that inflation is too many people, people trying to buy more goods than are available and that putting pressure on prices, you choke off the recovery, people are going to buy less stuff.

and that inflationary pressure recedes. Now, I said that's the normal script for a non-pandemic economy. In a pandemic economy, it's slightly different. One of the most important things we can do, in fact, is vaccinate the globe. When people talk about inflation, you hear wonks will talk about supply chain pressures, and no one's ever very clear what that means. But one part of that is quite literally chip manufacturing factories in Asia and all sorts of manufacturing in lower-income countries.

They get a couple of COVID cases and they just shut down for a month. And that creates all sorts of ripples. So a couple of workers come in with COVID. They shut down the factory to keep everyone safe. All of a sudden, there are fewer computer chips. Computer chips are required for automobiles. There are fewer automobiles available for sale, but lots of Americans have lots of spending power right now.

Lots of demand pushes prices up. And the important thing to realize there is the supply chain pressure there was coming from the pandemic in the rest of the world. Right. The other thing is actually the pandemic in the United States is a big deal. One of the things that's happened is the pandemic has reduced the extent of in-person interactions. Instead of going to the gym, you work out at home. Instead of going to the office, you work from home.

Instead of going out for a meal, you cook at home. That's caused a massive shift from the US economy is traditionally a service-based economy, but services are in person. People are buying fewer services today than before the pan. pandemic, but they're buying more goods than at any time in American history. And so when I said the economy's adjusting, it's really hard to all of a sudden make a whole lot more goods. And it's really hard to get them all trucked and out to different stores. This is an incredibly sharp increase in demand for one sector of the economy with an incredibly sharp decrease in

demand for the other sector. Now, if we could make in-person interactions safer, and thank goodness the vaccine is doing that and the new therapeutics, I think give us even more cause for optimism, then maybe we revert back to earlier spending patterns where we spend a lot more on services and not as much on goods. And so the current imbalances that are driving inflation will just dissipate. Oh, okay. Interesting. That's the sense in which, you know, a pandemic economy and pandemic inflation is very different than what we're used to thinking about. Some of this is this idea that if you turn on the economy, you're going to have, after having turned it off, you're going to have inflation. So there's two parts to that, though. One is, overall, if people are spending a whole

ton of money that creates inflation, that's correct. And that's the standard way of thinking about it. But the other thing is we turned off the economy, we turned on different sectors at different rates. And so in different sectors, supply and demand of returned at different rates, that creates a whole lot of imbalances. When there's in the sectors in which there's an imbalance where there's more demand than supply prices rise. That's what's happening in cars, for instance. And in the other sectors, prices don't tend to fall very much. And so that's why we see not only that the average inflation rate is high, but that average is the average of incredibly dispersed experiences with a whole lot of things like doctor's

visits not becoming at all more expensive and other things like cars becoming dramatically more expensive. So interesting. What is your prediction for inflation? Sorry, just to put you on the spot. Yeah, no. So that's not something I, you know, I don't churn out precise numbers to the second decimal place for a living. Right. I think in two years' time, we will look back on the present

discussion and say, boy, that was much ado about nothing. Yeah, well, that was really what I wanted to know. So then the other question is, and I feel like this is something, this is like a good Biden thing. We're not seeing any. I mean, this is something that seems like an enormous paradigm shift, and I'm not seeing a lot of media on it, which is this global minimum tax. Can you explain it to our listeners. Yeah. By the way, we have something fairly similar in the US, which is competition across states. But basically, you know, there's a lot of countries in the world. Each of them would like as much production, factories, jobs to be located in their countries. So you call a big company and you say, hey, if you come and locate here, we'll give you a special deal. That's how the

competition works between US states. If you remember, Amazon held a contest where they invited different cities and states to make them the best possible deal to locate their headquarters there. The same thing works around the globe. And so countries like Ireland, for instance, have very, very preferential tax arrangements. So what you get is a race to the bottom, which is if countries that compete with us start to lower the tax rates that they offer company, that they charge companies, then in order to keep companies on shore, we have to match them. And then corporate tax rates get competed down.

And the only winners at the end of the day are corporations that are paying less tax. And so the idea is, hey, this is a race to the bottom. Can we just all agree to stop? That's basically the idea. And the difficulty in any international agreement is how you get enforcement. And so the whole thing appears to be working pretty successfully, the process moving forward. And whether the agreement incorporates an enormous share of global GDP, it hasn't got every country in the world, but it's got most places where a company would want to locate. And so hopefully that ends that race to the bottom.

Do you think it'll work? Think and hope. You want me to distinguish between the two? No, I get where you're going with this. Look, I think on the inflation front, one thing is just to understand the state of the current headlines. The headlines are saying things like the highest inflation rate in 30 years. Well, that's true, but it's entirely uninteresting because that 30 years has been a period of unbelievably low and stable inflation. So it's a headline without a lot of substance.

The second thing is, I would just urge your listeners to, next time you hear a story about what's going on in inflation, I've seen this happen a lot. I did a Fox News hit the other day, and they began with a dramatic, you know, meat prices are up, an enormous, and heating oil is up 54% and blah, blah, blah, blah. Anytime anyone, if what you want to do is understand the general cost of living, anytime anyone starts talking about individual prices, it's because they're trying to bullshit you. Because if you want to measure what's happening to the average level of prices or the total cost of living, that's what the inflation rate tells you.

So the average cost of living over the past year, it's risen by 6.2%. Don't come back and tell me that meat rose at a faster rate than that because then I could respond with a whole bunch of other things that didn't rise at a faster rate than that. So what's 6.2%? It's enough to be of interest, but it is by no means extraordinary in an historical context. And more to the point, there are good reasons to think that this might fade out over the next couple of years, suggesting we're going to get back to the world that most of us are used to from the

previous 30 years, which is barely noticing price rises. That's really so interesting and also really important. I think there's a lot of post-pandemic anxiety. The other thing is there's entrenched interests. So it's not just that Republicans want to make Biden look bad, although there are certainly that going on. There are crypto bros for whom if they could make the case that the value of the American dollar is falling apart, then the value of their personal portfolios is going to rise enormously. Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah. And it's not that surprising that, you know, the first person to use the word hyperinflation was Jack Dorsey, who also is deep in crypto. You know, there are people who stand to make a lot of money or political capital

from making you feel enormous fear at the moment. Why is crypto counterintuitive to inflation? Literally the real hope of the crypto bros is inflation moves from the current rate of 6% to hyperinflation. A standard definition of hyperinflation is when prices are rising at an annual rate of, you know, they're more than doubling every year. If that's the case, then holding US dollars is a real pain in the ass because you need to go and spend them while they're still worth something. And so what we're seen in countries like Venezuela, real inflation, very, very high levels of inflation. In some cases, you know, a million percent inflation rates in Venezuela. Inflation comes to dominate your life. And so what you want to do then, and the problem with

inflation is holding, if it were in the US, US dollars means you're holding an asset that's becoming worthless minute by minute and you need to get rid of it very, very quickly. Right. If that were the case, what I would want is a currency that would, was not becoming worthless minute by minute, which would be any other currency, of which Bitcoin or any of the other coins would be one. Their hope is that if, in fact, Venezuela has effectively abandoned the local currency. And their hope is any country that has really severe inflation problems, previously they would often look at using the US dollar or they might look at some

of these crypto alternatives. So interesting and also terrifying. So with that, that makes me want to ask you, have a take or a deeper lens that we can look at this great resignation quote-unquote concept? Yeah. So first of all, just for the listeners, the great resignation is just the observation that it looks like workers have a lot of bargaining power right now, that those who are staying in jobs are demanding somewhat higher wages, although some of that is just an adjustment for cost of living, that despite the fact that the economy still has far fewer jobs than we had in late 2019. People are quitting jobs at very high rates. Now, this sounds kind of intuitive, but to an economist, when people quit jobs, that's a sign of optimism. It's a sign that workers aren't

scared, right? I don't like my current job. Take this job and shove it. I'm going to try something else. And so a range of indicators seems to suggest that workers just aren't scared. Now, one way of thinking about what's going on, and I see quite a lot of commentary about this is, well, we've all had a tough few years until we're thinking about what really matters and dealing with obnoxious customers who won't wear masks and will yell at me is not what I want to do with my life. There may be some truth to that, but I think that it comes back to, in fact, the pandemic recession is different than a normal recession. So I don't know if you remember the 2008-2009 recession, the financial crisis, but it was terrifying.

The economy was falling apart around us. And more to the point, none of us knew when or how or if it was ever going to get better. So if you lost your job, you were terrified. If you lost your job and you got any other job offer, you were going to take it because you couldn't see any other way forward. Now, this recession is thoroughly different, which is the plan from the beginning was we're just going to shut down the economy for a bit, then restart the engine and everyone gets back to work. The economy in 2019 was in pretty good shape, actually.

So if people expected that the economy would bounce back to 3.4% unemployment, which is historically very low, then people who lost their jobs in 2020 or 2021, simply not as pessimistic. They're not as fearful as they otherwise would be. And so if you think, well, if I don't accept this next job that comes my way, I suspect there's another one coming around the corner. That's the sort of optimism you get from the unemployed. That also leads to things like the Great Resignation. I don't need to be fearful. I don't need to hold on to my current job. I can walk into my boss's office and demand higher wages. And if he lets me go, who gives us stuff? Oh, this is so interesting. We're out of time, but will you please come back? I am looking forward to it. It'll be fun.

Great. Thanks. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, Jesse Cannon. Bye, John Fast. Here, the world is just filled with assholes. It's always darkest before the dawn. There's no dawn. There's no dawn. What are you talking about? It's dark at 4 o'clock.

That's right. To quote one Dick Cheney, never mind. It's always darkest before the dark You're going to take To go out Dick Cheney, your favorite person That's right He shot a guy in the face No, not in the face

Speaking of people who shoot people Who are the subjects of our ire today You can go first, Jesse Cannon Since you teed me up so well I'd like to send a wholehearted fuck you To somebody I said this to all the time Mr. J.D. Vance In the Trump world we always have to

distinguish with who's faking it And just kissing ass to the supporters of the Orange Man, let's call them, because I'm trying to say something nice and not say what I wanted to say. Orange Man Bad. Yes, Orange Man Bad. He has now tweeting out of Defense of Kyle,

which I call like the Sex at Dawn Defense, which him and Tucker love to do of like, they read this stupid book and they're like, it's man's duty to run and defend. They were just following their hunter-gatherer instincts. Oh, yeah, I'm a real man. I don't sit around the Harvard Club pontificating all day and burning Peter Thiel

$8 million that he spent on me. I mean, I think it's really funny because, you know, it looks like he's going to, I mean, I know the primary is a long way, but he's losing pretty bad in all these theatrics and just absolute performative moronics are going to still lose him this while he just pretends that, you know, he's a real man's man. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And I also think, like, fundamentally, if you're defending someone who killed two people and wounded a third, perhaps you're on the wrong side of things.

Who drove hours to go and hunt people? Yeah, I mean, it's like the murderers are usually not on your side. Molly, who's your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy today is a little counterintuitive. His name is Merrick fucking Garland. And now we call him fucking Merrick Garland. I honestly don't understand what's happening here, but he's got to get his shit together.

Like, if you do not enforce the law, Republicans won't follow it. Thank you for coming to my obvious stuff talk. It really is that funny thing of like when President Obama nominated him, and he was like, oh, no, this is a soft justice. He's a very measured man. It's like, yeah, that's not what we need right now. And this really sucks that they thought this was a good idea. to put him in charge.

Yeah. I mean, unbelievable. So, like, we need a, uh, someone who's going to do something. Yeah.

I mean, an Eric Holder had a fight in him. Yeah. Or just anyone. Yeah. I mean, you or I, you or I mean,

Steve Bannett'd be, uh, in shackles like, you know, I'd probably have a, number when, um, John Ashcroft,

uh, covered up that statue with the breast hanging out. Yeah. I would just hang Steve Bannon with his breast hanging out next to that, personally. Oh, okay.

I went a little too far off. Yeah, I was going to say, but that was good. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode.

Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Last Last. and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the Beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.