The Daily Signal - Ep. 292: What the Booming Economy Means for You

Episode Date: September 10, 2018

On today’s show, we feature an interview with Eli Pariser, a guest you might not expect to hear on The Daily Signal Podcast. Pariser is the former executive director of MoveOn.org and founder of Upworthy. You’ll want to find out what this progressive is saying to conservatives.Also on today’s show:* We speak with Tim Doescher, co-host of The Heritage Foundation's podcast "Heritage Explains," to discuss the most recent jobs report and other economic trends. Doescher writes a monthly column for The Daily Signal about the latest economic numbers.* Our favorite letters from you. Don’t forget, your letter could be featured next week; write us at [e-mail] or call 202-608-6205.* And this week’s good news story: remembering Rich DeVos, a philanthropist who changed the lives of so many.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts.If you like what you hear, please leave a review or give us feedback. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, September 10th. I'm Rob Lewy, editor-in-chief. And I'm Jenny Malta Bono, contributor to the Daily Signal. On today's show, we'll discuss the booming economy. The latest jobs numbers are out and it's more good news. So, why aren't you hearing more about it in the media? The Heritage Foundation's Tim Dessor joins us to explain. We also spoke with Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn.org and founder of Upworthy.

You'll want to find out what this progressive is saying to conservatives. We'll also share your letters and an inspiring story about Rich DeVos, a great philanthropist whose charitable giving improve the lives of people around the world. President Trump tweeted last week, quote, the deep state and the left and their vehicle, the fake news media, are going crazy. And they don't know what to do. The economy is booming like never before. Jobs are at historic highs. soon two Supreme Court justices and maybe declassification defined additional corruption. Wow, exclamation point.

And the latest job numbers are giving the president even more to brag about. More than 200,000 jobs were added in August, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.9%. We're joined by the Heritage Foundation's Tim Dessier, who writes a monthly column for the Daily Signal about the latest economic numbers. Tim, it's great to have you on the show. I also want to compliment you on your excellent podcast. It's called Heritage Explains. And each week, Michelle Cordero and you feature a policy expert who breaks down a big issue. So today we're talking about the economy.

And I want to get your take on the most recent jobs report. Well, thanks so much for having me here. It is such an honor to be on the Daily Signal podcast. It's a dream come true. This jobs report is another barn burner. It really is. 2001,000 jobs and a near record low unemployment rate of 3.9%. We are seeing numbers that experts couldn't have predicted. In fact, it broke expert predictions. And so it's a strong number.

It's a good number. And it points in all the right directions. Tim, one of the things that you repeatedly hear from President Trump is the failure of the news media to give him the credit that he believes his administration deserves for the policies that they've enacted, whether it be a deregulatory environment or the tax cuts. Do you think that that's a fair criticism of the press? I think the numbers speak for themselves. They really do. If you look at this recent report, African Americans are seeing record, record low unemployment numbers.

Hispanics are near record lows. Teenagers, the unemployment rate is down. You're seeing positive gains in various sectors, including wholesale trade and professional business services. Mining is up 104,000 jobs since a record low before Trump was elected. So these are numbers that are positive. Manufacturing, while there was a slight loss this month, is seeing huge gains throughout his presidency. These are promises kept. These are promises kept by President Trump.

And he sticks to the message and he continues to put his head down and power through. I think you're going to continue to see more of these great numbers. You already alluded to this a little bit, but youth unemployment is at a record low since 1966, I believe, and that's the 16 to 24 age group. What does that say to you? It says to me that a couple things. One, there's good jobs out there. Two, that states and local municipalities are doing a good job of communicating to young

adults and kids that they may not have to go to a four-year institution, that they can be trained in a skill in a trade and go right from high school into employment. As I said, the number is down one percentage point from last year, from 13.8 percent unemployment to 12.8 percent. Now, that might not seem like much, but it's a good trend that was not moving for a very, very long time. So right now, it's a great, great time to be a teenager or a young adult. thinking about getting into the job market because not only are there a bunch of jobs out there, in fact, there are more jobs than people able to take them, but that also means that wages are rising, too. Well, Tim, let's jump right into that because that was a big takeaway from this August report.

The biggest increase in wages growth since the recession nearly 10 years ago, many people weren't expecting that number. And you've been in the unique position to travel around this. country, to go to county fairs and to interact with Americans outside of the Beltway here in Washington. What does this mean for American workers? There's so much good going on in terms of new ability to generate wealth for Americans. Not only are we seeing the tax cuts taking effect, people seeing more money in their paychecks because of the tax cut. We're also seeing bonuses. We're also seeing raises. And we're also seeing the...

that, again, these wages are steadily increasing. Now, I don't, I think that this is a modest increase this past month. It's a 10 cent increase, 77 cents over the last year, or a 2.9% increase. Now, remember, that's just keeping up with inflation. So we need to still see more. There still needs to be more raises in wages in order to attract more people into the labor force. There's a lot of people out there maybe that want to work, but don't see it. as enough of a motivation to get in the workforce.

So one way to do that is to just say, hey, I'm going to pay more for the same job. I'm going to pay more to attract better talent to this. And that's what we need to see more of. Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us. And you all can read more about issues like this at dailysignal.com. Even better, subscribe to our morning bell email newsletter. We created the morning bell to be your one-stop source

for credible news reporting and insightful commentary on the issues that are shaping the agenda. You can subscribe today and get it delivered to your inbox each weekday morning. Sign up now at dailysignal.com. Just click on the connect button at the top of the page and subscribe today. We'll be right back with this week's interview. We're joined on today's show by Eli Pariser, a guest you might not expect to hear on the Daily Signal podcast. Eli is the former executive director of moveon.org and the founder of Upworthy. Now Eli's political views are very much different than mine.

And yet he's someone who, like me, values reading and engaging with people who have different beliefs. So, Eli, let me ask you to kick things off. Why is that important to you? Well, I don't really think you can sustain a democracy without it. And I think that's for two reasons. One is, you know, that thing that we learn about in civics class of like the marketplace of ideas and the sense that as citizens we need to grapple with different ideas to come to our own conclusions about what's right and what's good. But I think the second piece is, you know, sort of more on a human level,

like, it's really hard to make decisions that benefit all of us if we don't know what the experiences of other people are like. And so I think of it both as kind of this, there's a rational component, but then there's also just like understanding who we're in a country with and what their problems are and what their lives are like is really important. And if we don't hear those perspectives, then it's really hard to know how to. address them. You wrote a popular book called The Filter Bubble several years ago, and in it, you addressed some of the very issues that executives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter are now testifying about before Congress. Can you explain to our listeners why you wrote this book?

Well, you know, I came up in this early part of the, like, blogging world where there was a sense that the Internet was going to decentralize everything. And everyone would be able to communicate with everyone. We wouldn't have to deal with gatekeepers anymore. more, you know, the power of editors was on the wane and, you know, it was going to be this brave new world where everyone was empowered. And what I saw happening was that that really wasn't the story, that we had these new gatekeepers. And they weren't editors, but they were code. But they were doing that same work of deciding who gets to speak, who doesn't get to speak, who gets to be heard, and what posts come up before which. and that we weren't really thinking about how much power existed in that code to shape what people get to see.

And so really, I wrote the book in 2011 to try to start a conversation about how we feel about that power that these companies wield and how we feel about the way that they're wielding it. What are the decisions that they're making about what gets to be seen and what doesn't get to be seen and are those decisions fair? And to follow up on that, what is your solution? how do we pop the filter bubble us? I wish I knew. I mean, you know, part of it is baked into our society. I don't think this whole thing is driven by technology. We live in communities that are more, you know, one culture or one party than ever before.

So it's not just about technology, but I think, you know, a big piece of the answer is getting people together in groups that are kind of cross-cutting. So one of the best places for cross-cutting political discourse besides this podcast that we're having right here online is sports bulletin boards. And the reason is that, you know, if we're all Red Sox fans or Yankee fans, that identity supersedes our political identities, and we can kind of have an honest conversation about how we feel without having to feel like are very identities at stake. And so thinking about are there places where, you know, there are other identities that supersede our political identities

and give us permission to disagree, that's one of the areas that I would look at. And what do you make of some of the recent things we've seen happen here in Washington, President Trump, obviously, taking to Twitter to criticize Google and others for what he deems as unfair bias, members of Congress calling these executives before them for hearings, polls that show just vast differences in how conservatives and liberals view these things.

Are we heading toward that direction? Are we moving farther away from where we need to be? Well, you know, and I'll say, I mean, obviously, I come from a progressive viewpoint, but I think there's pieces of it that are right on in the sense that you do have a few big companies making decisions about what gets seen, that are still pretty opaque to most people.

And most people don't understand why things get to be seen. And to some extent, the rules by which they get to be seen just aren't good rules. It isn't necessarily the case that what gets the most likes or clicks is the most important thing for everyone to see. On the other hand, I don't personally believe that it's a result of political bias by Mark Zuckerberg, pulling the lever, I think you can explain what people are seeing and feeling without kind of going to, you know, what I would view is kind of a conspiracy theory. So I think the diagnosis that there's something really shifting in how we are communicating with each other and these companies kind of have this very mysterious gravity in the middle of all of that,

that seems totally right. I just wouldn't necessarily say it's due to a particular kind of animus. Based on your own personal experience, what are some of the biggest misconceptions about conservatives that liberals have and vice versa, in your opinion? Well, I mean, this is sort of a cop-out because it's general, but, you know, I find that it's very easy to forget the values that drive other people, especially on the other side. and that most people do have sort of values that supersede their partisan allegiances. So I'm someone who cares about opportunity. I'm someone who cares about freedom. You know, those are things that we can share, even though we may disagree about how you might go about that.

And, you know, when I'm in kind of full-on blue partisan mode, I can kind of lose sight of what those values are. But I think that's actually the way back to constructive problem solving as saying, like, Wait a minute. What are we actually trying? Where are we trying to go? What kind of society we're trying to have? We'll have some disagreements. But actually, there's some places where people really do agree and we could make some good headway together. Well, and that leads me to my next question and final question here. We've been talking a lot about civility in our country. The passing of John McCain, obviously, brought a lot of this to the forefront and just who he was as a person. And I personally been listening to Arthur Brooks' podcast on a Vox Media Network in which he talks about the art of disagreement.

Now, he says that it's not that we disagree too much, but that we've forgotten how to disagree well. So what does it take in your opinion to make that happen? Well, you know, I would draw a distinction between civility and tolerance. And so to me, you know, politeness can actually be the enemy of real disagreement because, you know, we have feelings and we have principles. And sometimes actually sort of being polite and smiling and shaking hands gets in the way of. actually having the real conversation that's authentic, and everyone kind of walks away feeling a little bit like, you know, that was, that was, you know, bull. And so, so I think, to me, I'd be less concerned about, you know, the difference I would draw between civility and

tolerance is civility can mean, at one extreme sort of being nice. Tolerance is, I respect you as a human being. I believe that you have a right to be in this conversation. And we're going to take that as the basis of our conversation. And then, like, let's get into it because that's a sign of my respect is that we're willing to disagree. So that's kind of how I would think about what we're looking for that we haven't quite found yet as a society. Well, and on that point, I couldn't agree more. So Eli Pariser, thank you so much for joining the Daily Signal. Thanks for having me on.

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Each Monday, we feature some of our favorites, both on this show and in our Morning Bell email newsletter. Ginny, what's in the mailbag this week? First up is Karen Callaway of Florida, who writes, Dear Daily Signal, absolutely make the tax cuts and jobs act permanent, as Adam Michelle and Parker Shepard and Kevin Dyeratna write in their commentary. That is the only way we will be partially assured that the tax cuts will not be repealed. Look how hard it has been to convince Congress that it needs to get out of our pockets and lives. Give control of the states back to the states. The federal government is supposed to keep

the country safe from all outside sources, and at this point, the entire left and some on the right haven't gotten the memo. And Ed Kubitsky writes, quote, the significant thing to note here is what this means to me and my family. In my home state of Texas, it says we save $1,181 per year, on average. So in a standard pay year, That is the equivalent of me getting a 56 cent an hour raise. I'll take it. And if you want to see how much you're saving because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, visit the website Taxes and Jobs.com. There you can find a breakdown of each congressional district.

Your letter could be featured on next week's show. Send an email to letters at daily signal.com or leave a voicemail message at 202-608-6205. Next, we'll share this week's good news story. Ginny, we lost an American icon last week. Rich DeVos co-founded Amway with Jay Van Andal and later owned the Orlando Magic Basketball team. He was also a supporter of the Heritage Foundation. DeVos might be best known for his success in business, but it's his charitable giving that will have a lasting impact in the United States and around the world.

That's one of the reasons we want to celebrate his life on today's show. And it certainly is a life to emulate. DeVos and his wife Helen made a decision to set aside 10% of their income for the causes they believed in. That totaled more than $1 billion to major projects at churches, schools, hospitals, and arts organizations. Here's a clip of Rich talking about his commitment. I first made $150 a week. We were, Grandma said, we've got to put $15 in this envelope. That's the Lord's money.

It's not our money. It was all the Lord's money, but that was what he was going to be given back. And so that's how we began. And so all the money we've been able to give away since came out of that tithing business. Now, we've been able to do a lot more than a tithe because we've gotten so much. But therefore, the allocation of that money was always set aside. The wonderful part of when you learned to do that is that we never felt like we gave up any money. Because if you don't claim the money, then you never have to give up the money.

Much of DeVos's giving supported Christian organizations and spreading the gospel. He helped distribute Christian films worldwide and support Christian schools. Children were a big part of his life, and that's reflected in his donations. Ginny, I am blessed to have heard him speak at Heritage several years ago to our full staff, and he was truly inspiring. We will certainly keep his family in our prayers. We're going to leave it there for today. The Daily Signal podcast is broadcast from the Robert

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