Scottish moral philosopher and political economist (1723-1790)
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On today's episode, Acton's director of programs and education, Dan Churchwell, speaks to Philip Bunn, assistant professor of political science at Covenant College. They discuss his Acton Lecture Series presentation “The Heart of a Machine: Technological Threats to Liberty in Adam Smith and Beyond.” Subscribe to our podcasts Acton Lecture Series Philip D. Bunn
Everybody has spent time daydreaming about what they'd do if they suddenly came into a lot of money. We imagine all the ways we could make our lives better. “I'd buy this. Go there. Support that.”. But we're not entirely selfish. We also imagine the ways we'd make other people's lives better. We're big-hearted, generous people, we just don't have the money to do what we want to do. We definitely would if we could. But would we though? If you're new with us, let us know how we can be praying for you, we invite you to fill out an online Connect Card by visiting https://southhillschurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/91550—If you are looking for what is next for you, we invite you to fill out an online “Next Steps” card by visiting https://southhillschurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/672517To give with us select the Give tab on the Church Center App or visit https://southhills.org/giving/ and select the Corona Fund or Corona BOW Fund—Visit our Linktree to find out more about everything mentioned in today's message or follow along with the message slides:https://linktr.ee/SouthHillsCorona —To RSVP for On-Campus Events select the Events tab on the Church Center App or visit https://southhills.org/corona/
KGMI's Dianna Hawryluk and Adam Smith chat about the 2025 Farmers Day Parade in Lynden, the Safety Fair at Barkley Village, Community Crafting at FrinGe Brewing in Ferndale, Stemma Brewing West's grand opening, and Bob Schneider performing at the Wild Buffalo.
The 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith is often called “the father of economics,” and sometimes “the father of capitalism.” IDEAS contributor Matthew Lazin-Ryder examines how Smith's name has been used and abused to both defend and attack free-market economics since his death.
• Philip J. Stern, Empire, Incorporated. The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2023), by. • Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (Penguin, 2023). Adam Smith wrote that, “Political economy belongs to no nation; it is of no country: it is the science of the rules for the production, the accumulation, the distribution, and the consumption of wealth.” However Adam Smith regarded the science of political economy, in practical terms, one is quite hard pressed to find a case where governments—be it an empire, republic, or nation—were completely left out of the picture. At least, that is how it's been historically. Questions about how people and other types of entities organize and generate capital, AND the role that governments play in all of this, fill libraries. The ramifications of the dynamics and rules surrounding money have proved so consequential—and increasingly so, in our increasingly technologized world—that it is no surprise that historians have devoted much energy to the study of political economy. Political economy, in the broadest terms, is the subject of our conversation today. Today on History Ex we put two recent books that bring important perspectives to these questions in conversation with each other. Today's books both deal with entrepreneurial endeavors, usually “abroad”, or beyond the Metropole. While Philip Stern's examination of early modern British corporations explains the myriad ways private initiatives sought government legitimacy and became entangled in the business of governance during the age of empires, Quinn Slobodian trenchantly reveals how some entrepreneurs and ideologues seek to escape governments in the age of nation-states. Our authors find points of convergence as well as divergence in aims, methods, and outcomes of the people at the center of their books. Stern and Slobodian discuss methodologies and chronologies, the ideologies that animated their actors, how memory and history were mobilized in promoting various visions; they probe the historian's perennial challenges of disentangling ideologies from interest, explain how similar actions in different historical contexts can demand different interpretations; and more. Listen in! Philip Stern is an associate professor of History at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. His work focuses on various aspects of the legal, political, intellectual, and business histories that shaped the British Empire. He is also the author of The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, 2011) and many other scholarly works. Quinn Slobodian is a professor of the history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. He is also the author of the award-winning Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018), which has been translated into six languages, and a frequent contributor to the Guardian, New Statesman, The New York, Times, Foreign Policy, Dissent and the Nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
• Philip J. Stern, Empire, Incorporated. The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2023), by. • Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (Penguin, 2023). Adam Smith wrote that, “Political economy belongs to no nation; it is of no country: it is the science of the rules for the production, the accumulation, the distribution, and the consumption of wealth.” However Adam Smith regarded the science of political economy, in practical terms, one is quite hard pressed to find a case where governments—be it an empire, republic, or nation—were completely left out of the picture. At least, that is how it's been historically. Questions about how people and other types of entities organize and generate capital, AND the role that governments play in all of this, fill libraries. The ramifications of the dynamics and rules surrounding money have proved so consequential—and increasingly so, in our increasingly technologized world—that it is no surprise that historians have devoted much energy to the study of political economy. Political economy, in the broadest terms, is the subject of our conversation today. Today on History Ex we put two recent books that bring important perspectives to these questions in conversation with each other. Today's books both deal with entrepreneurial endeavors, usually “abroad”, or beyond the Metropole. While Philip Stern's examination of early modern British corporations explains the myriad ways private initiatives sought government legitimacy and became entangled in the business of governance during the age of empires, Quinn Slobodian trenchantly reveals how some entrepreneurs and ideologues seek to escape governments in the age of nation-states. Our authors find points of convergence as well as divergence in aims, methods, and outcomes of the people at the center of their books. Stern and Slobodian discuss methodologies and chronologies, the ideologies that animated their actors, how memory and history were mobilized in promoting various visions; they probe the historian's perennial challenges of disentangling ideologies from interest, explain how similar actions in different historical contexts can demand different interpretations; and more. Listen in! Philip Stern is an associate professor of History at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. His work focuses on various aspects of the legal, political, intellectual, and business histories that shaped the British Empire. He is also the author of The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, 2011) and many other scholarly works. Quinn Slobodian is a professor of the history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. He is also the author of the award-winning Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018), which has been translated into six languages, and a frequent contributor to the Guardian, New Statesman, The New York, Times, Foreign Policy, Dissent and the Nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
• Philip J. Stern, Empire, Incorporated. The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2023), by. • Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy (Penguin, 2023). Adam Smith wrote that, “Political economy belongs to no nation; it is of no country: it is the science of the rules for the production, the accumulation, the distribution, and the consumption of wealth.” However Adam Smith regarded the science of political economy, in practical terms, one is quite hard pressed to find a case where governments—be it an empire, republic, or nation—were completely left out of the picture. At least, that is how it's been historically. Questions about how people and other types of entities organize and generate capital, AND the role that governments play in all of this, fill libraries. The ramifications of the dynamics and rules surrounding money have proved so consequential—and increasingly so, in our increasingly technologized world—that it is no surprise that historians have devoted much energy to the study of political economy. Political economy, in the broadest terms, is the subject of our conversation today. Today on History Ex we put two recent books that bring important perspectives to these questions in conversation with each other. Today's books both deal with entrepreneurial endeavors, usually “abroad”, or beyond the Metropole. While Philip Stern's examination of early modern British corporations explains the myriad ways private initiatives sought government legitimacy and became entangled in the business of governance during the age of empires, Quinn Slobodian trenchantly reveals how some entrepreneurs and ideologues seek to escape governments in the age of nation-states. Our authors find points of convergence as well as divergence in aims, methods, and outcomes of the people at the center of their books. Stern and Slobodian discuss methodologies and chronologies, the ideologies that animated their actors, how memory and history were mobilized in promoting various visions; they probe the historian's perennial challenges of disentangling ideologies from interest, explain how similar actions in different historical contexts can demand different interpretations; and more. Listen in! Philip Stern is an associate professor of History at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. His work focuses on various aspects of the legal, political, intellectual, and business histories that shaped the British Empire. He is also the author of The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, 2011) and many other scholarly works. Quinn Slobodian is a professor of the history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. He is also the author of the award-winning Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018), which has been translated into six languages, and a frequent contributor to the Guardian, New Statesman, The New York, Times, Foreign Policy, Dissent and the Nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The U.S. government has tallied the economic impact of major natural disasters going back to 1980. State and local governments used this data for budgeting and planning. But last month, the administration retired its Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters disaster database. Today on the show, we speak to Adam Smith, the architect of the program, on the work he did and what might be next. Related episodes:How much is a weather forecast worth? (Update) (Apple / Spotify)How ski resorts are (economically) adjusting to climate change (Apple / Spotify)For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
On today's episode, Acton librarian Dan Hugger speaks with James Otteson from Acton University 2024. They discuss Adam Smith and what he tells us about the role of business in society. Subscribe to our podcasts Acton University Acton On-Demand James Otteson | Mendoza College of Business
"Asking is hard. Once you realise there's an interesting question to develop answers to, it is even harder." – Growing up in Istanbul, Turkey, shaped Daron Acemoglu's life and career in many ways. It sparked his interest in politics and social sciences and led to a research career investigating the differences in prosperity between nations. Today Acemoglu is exploring the future of AI and how we can use it in the best possible way. In a conversation with Adam Smith he discusses his thoughts on the topic as well as sharing his advice for young researchers, including how to decide which research question to go for. Through their lives and work, failures and successes – get to know the individuals who have been awarded the Nobel Prize on the Nobel Prize Conversations podcast. Find it on Acast, or wherever you listen to pods. https://linktr.ee/NobelPrizeConversations © Nobel Prize Outreach. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What happens when a man stops running from pain and starts facing it? In this raw and powerful episode, Smith sits down with Ben Hill, a former client and now a successful positive psychology coach, to unpack the journey from emotional avoidance to personal ownership. Ben opens up about being abandoned by his father as a child, a wound that led him down a path of seeking validation, numbing emotion with food and alcohol, and chasing success in a career he hated. Eventually, the pain of staying the same became greater than the pain of change. What followed was a radical turnaround: He removed alcohol. He faced his emotions head-on. He walked away from a ‘safe' job and built a purpose-led coaching business helping others do the same. This episode covers the cost of emotional suppression, the reality of becoming sober, the courage to walk away from comfort, and the resilience required to build something real. In this episode, we explore: – The emotional impact of fatherlessness and how it shapes adult behaviour – Why success and self-destruction often go hand-in-hand – The real reason alcohol becomes a crutch and how to break the cycle – What it takes to leave a career you hate – Building self-worth from the inside out – How Ben now helps others break free from the same patterns Connect with Ben: LinkedIn – Ben Hill Website – Ask More Coaching Get in touch with Smith & Mayhew : hello@agameconsultancy.com Adam Smith From depressed and suicidal to the happiest and fittest he's ever been, Adam Smith's self-development journey hasn't been easy but it has been worth it. Today, he's a qualified mindset coach in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and a certified Time Line Therapist®. Adam has coached many high performers, using NLP to rewire his clients' thoughts and behaviours so they can destroy limiting beliefs and engineer the change needed to excel. Connect with Adam Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-smith-high-performance-coach/ Adam Mayhew Adam Mayhew swapped burnout and binge drinking for ultra marathons, CrossFit and sobriety. A registered nutritional therapist specialising in performance nutrition, Adam supports everyone from office workers to athletes to build healthy eating habits. Using science (and never fad diets, quick fixes or gym bro culture) he helps clients target their problem areas and confidently master diet, training and lifestyle. Connect with Adam Mayhew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-mayhew-nutrition-coaching/ To find out more about Smith & Mayhew: https://agameconsultancy.com/about/
The integrity of girls’ sports over the weekend took a big blow as transgender athletes beat out girls at high school competitions all across the country. Enumclaw High School is on high alert after two suspects broke in. Former socialist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant announced she is running for Congress against Adam Smith. // LongForm: GUEST: Guy Benson on the antisemitic terrorist attack in Boulder and how media covered it so poorly. // Quick Hit: Trump wants SCOTUS to strike down a lower court judge’s block on government layoffs. Justice Kavanaugh hinted that the court might issue a ruling on the constitutionality of bans on a very popular rifle.
Send us a textCongressman Mike Quigley is in his 9th term representing Chicago's North Side and Lakefront as a Democrat in the House. He made waves last year after the first presidential debate as one of the first elected Democrats to publicly urge President Biden to step aside as the party's nominee. In this conversation, we talk through what led him to speak out, the reaction from the White House and his colleagues, and why he believes it's an important conversation for the party to have now. We also discuss his path in politics as a staffer, as a reformer on the Cook County Board, winning a 20+ candidate '09 special election to replace Rahm Emanuel in the House, favorite moments during his tenure, what he's learned visiting Ukraine, and what Democrats need to do to better connect with voters.IN THIS EPISODEGrowing up in a conservative, blue-collar household in in the Midwest...The teacher who made an impression on his politics and the advice he continues to quote today...Learning both theory at the University of Chicago and practical politics while cutting his teeth in Cook County politics...Why he lost his first race for office and how he turned a loss into a win a few years later...A decade on the Cook County Board as a reformer taking on the Chicago machine...How he won a 20+ person special election in 2009 to replace Rep. Rahm Emanuel in the House...Initial impressions and surprises in his early days in Congress...Two members who served as his mentors...Some of the work he's done in the House he's most proud of...Why Ukraine matters and what he's learned by traveling to the country several times...Why he was one of the first Democratic elected officials to call on President Biden to step aside as the '24 Democratic nominee in the aftermath of the debate...Reactions from colleagues and constituents after going public with his concerns about President Biden...Do Democrats have a larger problem of too many older Democrats refusing to retire and make way for younger leaders?Thoughts on how Democrats can better connect with voters...His favorite Chicago Blackhawks' memory and excitement for the new Chicago Pope...AND John Anzalone, big cats, Rod Blagojevich, burning your mortgage, cannon fodder, Frank Capra, Carol Stream, Forrest Claypool, Walter Cronkite, Paul Ehrlich, Sara Feigenholtz, John Fritchey, William Fulbright, Mary Gatey, Gabby Giffords, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Hansen, Kasie Hunt, Mark Kirk, John Lewis, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Vladimir Putin, Robert Redford, Branch Rickey, FDR, Paul Ryan, Helen Schiller, Glenn Schneider, Michael Sheahan, Adam Smith, spring chickens, John Stroger, Larry Suffredin, Studs Terkel, Harry Truman, The Weiner Circle, Gary Williams, working for the pension...& more!
BOXING: Commentators Adam Smith and Seán Ban Breathnach with Galway Bay FM's John Mulligan at Kieran Molloy's staredown
Author and financial expert, Chris Whelan, joins Keith as they explore the intricacies of the housing market's potential future. Chris drops an intriguing prediction of a possible 20% price correction. They dive deep into the complex world of real estate, examining the pandemic's significant impact on mortgages and economic trends. The conversation reveals the behind-the-scenes challenges of the housing market, from government interventions to the nuanced effects of interest rates and forbearance programs. They unpack the struggles in commercial real estate, particularly highlighting the unique challenges in markets like New York's rent-controlled properties. Chris's new book "Inflated: Money, Debt, and the American Dream" promises an insightful journey through America's economic transformation, tracing how the nation evolved from an agrarian society to a global economic powerhouse. Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/556 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review” For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai Keith Weinhold 0:01 Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, what's the state of the housing market for the next five years, and could what's happening in the foreclosure market affect it? I see relative housing market price stability. My guest sees cracks. This could be somewhat of a debate today, then two great new cash flow and real estate markets in the same state that we're helping your portfolio with on get rich education, mid south home buyers, I mean, they're total pros, with over two decades as the nation's highest rated turnkey provider. Their empathetic property managers use your ROI as their North Star. So it's no wonder that smart investors just keep lining up to get their completely renovated income properties like it's the newest iPhone. They're headquartered in Memphis and have globally attractive cash flows and A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and now over 5000 houses renovated. There's zero markup on maintenance. Let that sink in, and they average a 98.9% occupancy rate, while their average renter stays more than three and a half years. Every home they offer has brand new components, a bumper to bumper, one year warranty, new 30 year roofs. And wait for it, a high quality renter, remember that part and in an astounding price range, 100 to 180k I've personally toured their office and their properties in person in Memphis, get to know Mid South. Enjoy cash flow from day one. Start yourself right now at mid southhomebuyers.com that's mid south homebuyers.com. Corey Coates 1:56 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education. Keith Weinhold 2:12 Welcome to GRE from Edison, New Jersey to Edinburgh, Scotland, where I am today, and across 188 nations worldwide, I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are back for another wealth building week on get rich education. Today's guest came to me recommended. It came from a guest that we've had on the show here before, Jim Rickards and his daughter Ally Rickards. His name is Christopher Whelan. He has a distinguished background. Comes from a prominent family, and he's the author of a new book that just published a few weeks ago. His father, Richard Whelan, was the biographer of Joe Kennedy, and was advisor to presidents and Fed chairman and today's guest, his son there, Chris. He has done a lot of work in DC. He lives just north of New York City today. So I guess coming recommended from Jim Rickards and learning a few things about today's guest helped me want to host him on the show. So though I'm just meeting him for the first time right here on the show, as it turns out, I learned that he has mentioned on other channels that real estate prices could correct down 20% and fall back to 2020 levels. I absolutely don't see how that's possible in any way. I'm going to bring that up with him, so we'll see. This could turn into somewhat of a debate. Like I said last week, I believe that significantly falling housing prices. That's about as likely as grocery store prices falling back to 2020 levels. Yes, I am in Edinburgh, Scotland today. It's my first time here. My mom, dad and also my brother's entire family came over from the US to meet up. It's been great. We're taking in all the best sites, Edinburgh Castle, other castles, the Scottish Highlands, Loch Ness, though I don't believe in any Loch Ness monster at all. I mean, come on, what a hoax. And we're seeing some other sites, though it didn't really interest the others, which I could understand. I visited the home where Adam Smith once resided, and I might put my video about that on our get rich education YouTube channel, so you could check that out over there. Of course, Adam Smith is considered the father of modern day economics for his work on supply versus demand and the GDP concept, the invisible hand, concept, much of that work conveyed in his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776 as for the present day, let's meet this week's guest, including me, meeting him for the first time. I'd like to welcome in a first time guest. He's the author of a widely acclaimed new book. It's named inflated money, debt and the American dream. It just released, and the book couldn't be more timely with the multitude of challenges related to inflation, many involving the housing market in his earlier books, he's been known, frankly, for just telling his readers the truth. He's worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in politics and as an investment banker for more than 30 years. Today, he runs Whalen Global Advisors. You've seen him on CNBC in the Wall Street Journal, and now you're hearing him on GRE Welcome to the show. Chris Whalen. Chris Whalen 5:43 Thank you, Keith, appreciate your invitation. Keith Weinhold 5:45 Whalen is spelled W, H, A, l, e, n, if you're listening in the audio only, Hey, Chris, we're in a really interesting time in the economic cycle. We all know the Fed has a dual mandate, high employment and stable prices. What's interesting to me is, late last year, they cut rates by a full 1% and this is despite inflation being above target. Makes me wonder if they care more about high employment and they're rather willing to let inflation float higher. What are your thoughts? Chris Whalen 6:18 I think historically, that's been the case. You know, the dual mandate Humphrey Hawkins, that drives the Fed's actions today was a largely socialist compromise between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Democrats wanted to guarantee everybody a job after World War Two, the legislation was really about soldiers and people who had served their country in many, you know, places around the world, for a long time, and then you would have the depression. So you had a whole generation or more of people that were looking for help when they came home. And that's what this was. But today, you know, there's another mandate, which is called keeping the treasury bond market open. We saw it was during COVID in 2020 President Trump got up, declared that people didn't have to pay their rent or their mortgages, and then didn't do anything. There was no follow up. At the time, folks in mortgage industry kind of looked at each other funny for about 60 days and said, What's going to happen? Because they have to advance principal, interest, taxes and insurance to protect the house. The first rule in mortgage finances protect the asset. But it all worked because the Fed dropped interest rates to zero and we had a boom. We refinanced two thirds of every mortgage in the United States, and that cash flow allowed the finance forbearance for millions of Americans. Now the unfortunate part, of course, was home prices went up double digits for six years. So why we had no affordability today? So, you know, it helped, but it certainly didn't help in some ways, Keith Weinhold 7:48 mortgage loan forbearance back in the COVID era about five years ago, where you could basically just skip your mortgage payment and then they increase the overall duration of your loan period. Chris Whalen 8:00 That's right. So you know, your government market, your conforming market, were falling. They also had various schemes, state forbearance for non agency loans. Nobody thought at all about the multifamily sector and the developers that didn't get paid for two years. And we're feeling the impact of that. Of course, today, that's probably the biggest pain point in US economy today is commercial real estate and multi family real estate, and neither one of them involves a consumer. So it gets no attention at all. You read about it in the specialty press, but that's about it. Keith Weinhold 8:34 And by talking about multi family not affecting the consumer, you're just talking about who's on the owner side there? Chris Whalen 8:40 precisely if all of the consumers have problems, you'd hear about it, and you do, especially in some of the blue states. I live in New York, so we have some of the more aggressive rent stabilization, rent control laws in the country. And they go back to World War Two. They go back almost a century, Keith Weinhold 8:58 right? It's those people in the one to four unit space in residential real estate investing that really got the help there. Chris Whalen 9:06 Well, at least, you know, the world didn't end. Imagine if all of those people had gone to foreclosure. The industry wouldn't have done that. Of course, they would have thrown up their hands and cried for help. But the point is, they made it work. But the cost of making it work that zero interest rate regime that the Fed put in place is still being felt today. If you look at banks which typically have prime large mortgages on their books, the loss given default is zero. Home prices are so high that if somebody actually goes to foreclosure, they sell the house, they pay off the loan easily, and there's usually a large residual left, which would go to the homeowner. So today, you know, if somebody gets in trouble, we do a short sale, we do a deed in lieu, and off they go. And that's why the stats don't show you the pain that many American families are feeling today, because about 60% of all payoffs of one to four family mortgages are people who. Are exiting the market, they're not going to buy another house. So what that means is that the cost of home ownership, or whatever other factors are involved, has made them make the decision not to go to another home mortgage. Keith Weinhold 10:13 Yes, we have this historically low affordability that's beginning to be reflected in the home ownership rate. It's trended down from about 66 to 65% recently, we continue to be in this environment here, Chris in the one to four unit space, where those existing homeowners are in really good shape. They have record high equity levels of over 300k A lot of them have their home paid off. About 40% of American homeowners own their home free and clear, and of the remainder, those borrowers, 82% still have a mortgage rate of under 5% and of course, that principal and interest payment stays fixed. So even if there's economic hardship, it's pretty easy for people to make their payments and stay in their homes. Chris Whalen 11:02 Well, it certainly is for most of the marketplace. If you look at the bottom 20% the FHA market, also the VA market, there's a little more stress there. There's still an awful lot of people who are in various types of forbearance in that market. That's going to end in October. So the Trump administration is pushing most of the rules back to pre COVID approaches for delinquency, for example, what we call the waterfall. And what that basically means is that if an FHA borrower gets in trouble, they'll have one shot at a modification where they lower the loan cost and stick part of the loan out the back to be paid off when the house is sold. If that doesn't take, if they don't re perform, then they're going to go to a foreclosure. We just ended another program for veterans. You know, they had three weeks notice, so now you're going to see a lot of veterans going to foreclosure. Unfortunately. Keith Weinhold 11:56 yes, this administration is basically making sure that people are responsible or resume their payments. We've seen that student loan repayments needing to resume as well. Most foreclosure rate types are still pretty low, but yes, FHA foreclosure rates are higher than those for conventional loans. Chris Whalen 12:15 Yeah, the interesting thing is, the veterans delinquency rate is half of the FHA rate, and even though people in uniform don't make a lot of money, they pay their bills. Yeah, it's quite striking. Keith Weinhold 12:25 Why don't you talk to us more about areas where you see distress in the housing market before we talk about more inflation? Chris, the Chris Whalen 12:34 key areas of housing stress at the moment are commercial real estate that has become underutilized. COVID drove a lot of this, but also the fact that industries could change their work practices. It could have people work from home. Look at housing. We sent everybody home in 2020 while we increased headcount by a third to address a surge in lending volume. It was insane. I gotta tell you, we were hiring people that we didn't see for months that changed the business model assumptions for a lot of industries. A lot of them moved out of blue states and went down to Florida and Texas. In the mortgage industry particularly, and so we have a lot of older real estate particularly, that is suffering. It has dropped in terms of appraised values. You also have higher interest rates and higher cap rates, that is to say the assumption of returns on the part of investors. So that hurdle has made a lot of these properties impaired, essentially. And then the other subclass is older multifamily properties. Think about those beautiful old apartments in the middle block up on the east side or the west side of Manhattan. They're not big enough to be viable, and so they have become this kind of subprime asset class, much in the way if you recall the signature bank failure, they typically bank these sorts of real estate properties, and now there's nobody that wants them. I think you're going to see some very specific pain coming out of HUD, and also Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because they bank some of these smaller properties that really aren't bankable by commercial banks. That's what it comes down to. If you're going to read about this and hear about it a lot in the commercial market over next several years. And again, you know, the losses on bank owned multifamily properties today are averaging 100% so that means that there are a lot that have more expenses than simply losing the full loan amount. And you know, if you want to have a bank loan, they're not taking these properties. They don't want them, right? So the bank, REO rate, if you look at the data from the FDIC, is zero. And what that tells you is that they can't sell the properties they don't want them, because if they take ownership, the city's not going to let them abandon the property. They'll have to keep it and maintain it. It's a tough situation. This is. Has evolved over the last 20 years or so, because consumer incomes have been kind of stagnant in real terms. But the cost of operating a property in New York City is not going down. It's going up quite a lot, and the legislation we've seen from Albany doesn't allow owners to recapture expenses, doesn't allow them to renovate apartments. So if I have a rent stabilized apartment, I'll use a real example, in a beautiful building on Central Park South right, to renovate a unit that's been occupied for 20 years, new kitchen, new bathroom, sir, everything services. That's $150,000 so if I'm the owner and I can't recapture that cost. What do I do? I lock the door, I gut the apartment, and I lock the door, and I hope that the laws will change in the future, because I can't rent it, my insurance underwriter will not allow me to rent out an apartment that's not brought up to code. That's New York law, but the folks in Albany don't care about that. We have some really unreasonable people in positions of authority, unfortunately, in some of these states, and you talk to them about these issues, and they don't care. They just pander to consumers, regardless of whether or not it makes sense or not. And that's just the way it is. Keith Weinhold 16:15 Those evil landlords, quote, unquote, most right evil. They're just mom and pop investors that are trying to beat inflation with real assets, and they have real expenses. Rent Stabilization basically just being a genteel term for rent control, which gives no one an incentive to improve a property for sure Chris Whalen 16:35 and it reduces the availability of housing ultimately, because nobody builds. You see that in New York right now the home market is pretty tight, up to the conforming limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so you figure a million, 1,000,002 here in New York. But above that, it's quieted down quite a lot. There's compression in some of the higher end homes. And you know, if you go down south, you see a different problem, which is over building. They didn't want to build here, so they went down to the Carolinas and Texas and Florida. There's a huge amount of both multi family condo type developments and single family homes too. But above that average price level way above half a million dollars. Keith Weinhold 17:15 Sure, it's made this dynamic where things have been flip flopped in the Northeast and Midwest, where the populations aren't growing very fast, those markets have been appreciating more than those in the high growth southeast, all coming back to supply. They're not bringing on enough new supply in the Northeast and Midwest, Chris has just laid out a few reasons for that, due to this high regulation. And then in the southeast, a high growth area, even though that's where people are moving, we're not getting much appreciation there, because you're able to build and that supply is able to keep up with demand. Well, Chris and I are going to talk more about the housing market and about inflation. When we come back, you're listening to get rich education. Our guest is Chris Whelan, the author of a great new book. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold. the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your pre qual and even chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. While it's on your mind, start at Ridge lendinggroup.com. That's Ridge lendinggroup.com. You know what's crazy? Your bank is getting rich off of you. The average savings account pays less than 1% it's like laughable. Meanwhile, if your money isn't making at least 4% you're losing to inflation. That's why I started putting my own money into the FFI liquidity fund. It's super simple. Your cash can pull in up to 8% returns and it compounds. It's not some high risk gamble like digital or AI stock trading. It's pretty low risk because they've got a 10 plus year track record of paying investors on time in full every time. I mean, I wouldn't be talking about it if I wasn't invested myself. You can invest as little as 25k and you keep earning until you decide you want your money back. No weird lockups or anything like that. So if you're like me and tired of your liquid funds just sitting there doing nothing, check it out. Text family to 66866, to learn about freedom. Family investments, liquidity fund again. Text family to 66866. Kathy Fettke 19:45 this is the real wealth network's Kathy Fettke, and you are listening to the always valuable get rich education with Keith Weinhold. Keith Weinhold 20:00 You welcome back to get rich education. We're talking with the author of a great new book, Chris Whelan, it's called inflated money, debt and the American dream. Chris, I see the residential housing market and their price points as being resilient. I'm kind of looking around and seeing if you have any places where you think that there are any cracks in that? I've heard you talk elsewhere about a housing price correction. Were you talking in the one to four unit space? And how do you think that could happen? Chris Whalen 20:31 I didn't come up with that idea. I did a biography of my good friend Stan middleman, who's the founder of freedom mortgage. It's a real rags to riches story of a successful entrepreneur, a great guy, by the way, is a beloved man in the mortgage industry. And so what he believes is that cycles are about a decade in terms of human behavior. And he says misery on the eights, which is kind of a cute way of saying it. And what Stan is basically saying is you eventually see so much price appreciation that affordability goes to zero. You run out of buyers, is another way to put it. And then once the Fed gooses it, he thinks we see an interest rate decline this year next year, perhaps you get rates to run a little bit. You get volumes to jump the way they did last summer. You remember, in the third quarter, we had great volumes in the mortgage industry, carried everybody through to the end of the year, and then after that, he says, we get a price correction, maybe back down to 2020 21 levels. So we're talking about a 20% price correction, and we're talking about the loans that have been made in the last few years being underwater. That's something we haven't talked about in a long time. We haven't talked about that since 2008 so I think that Americans inevitably have to see some kind of a correction. What the Fed did was wrong, what they did was excessive. I write about that in the end of my book, but unfortunately, the result is home prices that have galloped along, and eventually you got to reset it. Part of its supply coming online. Part of it is simply, like, I say, you run out of buyers, and when it's simply that purchase buyer who is either all cash or happens to have the deposit, and that's all you have. And there's no flexibility for people that want to get into the market. You know, that's tough. I could recall Paul Volcker years ago, we were talking about that in the book too. He ratcheted down home prices. He raised interest rates so much that home prices went down, and a lot of builders went out of business who had had a lot of snls go out of business, and, you know, the previous decade. So that was a tough time. We didn't even start to do that this time around, because they were afraid to the Fed is worried about keeping the Treasury market open, so they are afraid of deflation, which unfortunately means you don't get those opportunities to get into the market. I remember my parents, when I was very young, they would buy busted homes in Washington, DC. It was a great way to make a lot of money, and in five years, the House would double. That's the kind of market Washington was Keith Weinhold 23:05 in my opinion, I don't see how there could be any substantial residential home price correction. Historically that happens when there's a wide swath of homeowners that get into financial trouble, like I was talking about earlier, the homeowner is in great financial shape today. In fact, since World War Two, we've only seen home prices drop substantially during one period. That was that period around 2008 and that's when we had conditions that are opposite of what they are today. We had loans underwritten with liar loans. We had an over supply of homes, like I was saying earlier, inflation can't touch one's principal and interest payment. We're still under supplied with homes. Most experts don't think we'll get that into balance for at least five years. I really don't see how home prices could fall substantially. I also don't see how they could rise substantially, like, say, 10% due to that low affordability, but I expect continued stability in prices? Chris Whalen 24:02 Well, we'll see. I'm not as sanguine about that, because a lot of people feel house rich on paper, but when the bottom of the stack is really hurting as it is now, FHA delinquency rates really are in probably the mid teens. You don't see that yet in the middle with the 727, 40 FICO type borrowers. But I think over time you could, and if, again, it depends on the economy and some other factors, but I'll tell you right now, you're already seeing a correction in the hyad the bottom half, no. And there's a supply problem here, which I agree with you on. It's going to keep those home price is pretty firm. And even where I am in New York, for God's sake, Keith, there's no construction here. So we just had a house across the street from me go from million one. I live in Sleepy, hollow New York, and you know, this is typically around the conforming limit for prices for most of these homes, and it went for 150 $1,000 over the ask, it was crazy. Went in two weeks now, during COVID, we saw this sort of behavior, and we thought, Well, okay, you had zero interest rates. I got a 3% mortgage, by the way, awesome. But here we have a situation when markets cooled down a lot, and yet the lack of availability is really the driver. So in that sense, I agree with you, but I do think the high end could correct rather substantially. Keith Weinhold 25:24 And of course, in multi family apartments, that's different. That's where values in a lot of markets have been depressed by more than 30% they were subject to those interest rates being jacked up, and we're still going to see balloon loans mature and people default on those in apartments. The pain is not over with air, but at some point that's going to bottom out, and that'll be a buyer opportunity in apartments. Chris Whalen 25:47 Well, the thing is, new stuff is going fine. It's what happens is when the new gets built, the older assets down the road get discounted. That's really what's going on. People love new as you know, these kids love a new house, as opposed to an older house. Keith Weinhold 26:02 Yes, that'll help reset the prices in the new market when you can compare those to what existing values are. Well, Chris, talk to us more about your new book and what the overall thesis of the book is in these critical times. Chris Whalen 26:16 Inflated is meant to help people understand how our country went from agrarian, sleepy, isolationist America in the 1900s to being the dominant economy in the world and the provider of global money. We talk about how we got here. We talk about Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt and many other characters. Obviously, we had to talk about Andrew Jackson, who is now embodied in our president, Donald Trump. We try and frame how this is all going to evolve in the future. And my thesis is basically the global currency role is something you get during or after a war. We took the baton from Great Britain after the First World War, and then by the end of World War Two, everybody in the world was broke, except for us. It was last man standing. And so rebuilt the world. We let everybody take advantage of us, and now President, who's saying, Nope, we got to change this. I think if it wasn't Trump, it would be somebody else. To be honest with you, Americans are tired of high inflation. They're tired of some of the other costs that come along with being the global reserve currency, so we try and frame all of this in an understandable way. And I particularly talk about housing during COVID and how that all really, I think, changed things for many Americans. Home ownership has been one of the basic ways we create wealth in this country, and the fact that we didn't have an opportunity for people to get in cheap with a fixer upper or a house that was foreclosed. You know, I think it's unfortunate, but the system just can't tolerate it. We've gone in 2008 and then in 2020 through two very significant crises when the government bond market stopped working. So we talk about that as well. Keith Weinhold 28:03 I don't predict interest rates. I think it is really difficult to do you mentioned earlier about the prospect for lower interest rates coming. Everyone wants to know about coming. What's your outlook for the future of interest rates and inflation for just say the next five years? Chris, Chris Whalen 28:19 I think interest rates will drop. That is to say what the Fed controls, which is short term interest rates. In the next year or so, we'll have a little bit of a boom as a result. But I think the concern about the federal deficit and US debt, the volatility caused by President Trump's trade strategy, and just general I think a sense of uncertainty among investors is going to keep long term interest rates higher than we saw during COVID And really the whole period since 2008 the Fed bought a lot of duration and took it out of the market, so they kept rates low. They're not going to do that as much in the future. I don't think they'll buy mortgage securities again, they are very chastened by that experience. So if they don't buy mortgage backed securities, and if the banks don't become more aggressive buyers, and I don't think they will, then you know, the marginal demand that would drive mortgage rates down is just not going to be there. Banks have been holding fewer and fewer mortgages and mortgage backed securities on their books for 35 years. If you look at the growth in the industry, the dollar amount of one to four family mortgages hasn't changed very much. So when you look at it that way, it's like, you know what's wrong? Two things. They want to only make mortgages to affluent households. They want to avoid headline risk and litigation and fines and all of that. And I think also, too some of the Basel capital rules for banks discourage them from holding mortgages and mortgage servicing rights, which is an area I work in quite a lot. Keith Weinhold 29:55 It seems to me, like increasingly, the powers. It be the United States government just won't let the homeowner fail. They want to do so much to promote home ownership over the long term, we see relative ease with getting a mortgage. We've seen lower down payment requirements during other times, including COVID. We see the government jump in with things like mortgage loan forbearance and an eviction moratorium for renters. They just don't want to let people lose their homes. It just seems like there's more propensity to give homeowners a greater safety net than ever. Well, Chris Whalen 30:29 we've turned it into an entitlement. Yeah, and Trump is changing that at the federal level. The states, the blue states, are going to continue to play that game at the state level, and they can even have state moratoria. But what's going to happen, and I think sooner rather than later, is you may see the federal agencies start to tier the states in terms of servicing fees, simply to reflect the cost. It takes over 1400 days to do a foreclosure in New York. Gosh, that is a big problem. You can lose the lien in New York now, it takes so long. So I think that, you know, from an investor perspective, from a developer perspective, it's not an attractive venue. That's just the reality. Then you even California is as progressive and as activists as it is, you can still get a foreclosure done very quickly using the trustees. It's just a totally different situation. If there are complications, you can get into a judicial foreclosure, which will take longer. But still, California works. New York is deliberately dysfunctional. We have people in the state legislature who are in foreclosure themselves, and they keep passing these laws. So, you know, I think at the federal level, you're going to see it roll back to pre COVID, but I will say that forbearance, both with respect to the agency and conventional market and private loans, is kind of the rule. Now we work with the borrower much more than we would in the past. It's it is really night and day. Keith Weinhold 32:00 Chris, your new book has gotten a lot of acclaim. Let us know anything else that we should know about this book, and then if we can get it in all the usual places Chris Whalen 32:10 you can buy it at Barnes and Noble Amazon. I have a page on my website, RC, waylon.com, with all the relevant links. But the online is the best way to get it. Most of the sales are on Kindle anyway, but well over 90% are online, so we don't have to worry about physical books. I think we'll be doing some book signings in the New York area. So we'll definitely let you know about that. Keith Weinhold 32:33 One last thought is that the rate of inflation means more to a real estate investor than it does to a layperson, maybe five times as much or more, because when we borrow for an income property, our asset floats up with inflation. That part's really just a hedge on inflation. Our debt gets debased by inflation, which is really a mechanism for profiting from inflation over time. And then, thirdly, our cash flow tends to go up even faster than the rate of inflation, since our principal and interest stays fixed, so real estate investors can often be the beneficiary of inflation. It's sort of strange to go root for a force like inflation that can impoverish so many people. But what are your thoughts with respect to real estate investors and inflation? Chris Whalen 33:19 Well, you know, it's funny when Jerome Powell at the Fed says that they have a 2% inflation target, my response is, well, we better have at least 2% inflation if we're going to make commercial real estate work. Commercial real estate went up for 75 years after World War Two. I can remember when I was in the rating business at Crowell bond ratings going to see some of the banks here in New York, their multifamily books had only seen the equity underneath the asset go up and up and up. In other words, the land ended up being 90% of the value, you know, 1520, years after the purchase and the improvements were almost worthless simply because the land appreciated so much. Now that has changed since COVID. A lot of commercial real estate, particularly has gotten under a bit of a cloud. You've seen falling prices. However, in parts of the country that are growing where you have a positive political environment, positive economic environment, you're still seeing fantastic growth in both commercial and multifamily markets. So I think being very careful and patient in doing your homework in terms of picking venues is more important now than ever before. You know, I'll give you an example. Down in Florida, we're building new malls every day. The mall down the road that's 15 years old. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's 15 years old. And so the price discounts that you're seeing for existing assets are rather striking. Same thing down in the Carolinas, down in, you know, Atlanta, and going down to the Texas growth spectacle, I'm always astounded by what's going on in Texas. They built so much in that whole area around South Lake, out by the airport. It, they're going to basically subsume used it. So, you know, in those markets, you have great opportunities, but you also have over building. And so we're going to see some cycles where they're going to be deals out there for projects that maybe were a little too ambitious have to get restructured, and astute investors can come in and do very well on that Keith Weinhold 35:20 like we often say around here, in real estate investing, the market is typically even more important than the property itself. The name of Chris's new book, again, is inflated money, debt and the American dream. It has an awful lot of intersections with real estate investors and how they can play inflation. Uh, Chris has been a terrific conversation about the real estate market and larger market forces. It's been great having you here on the show. Chris Whalen 35:47 Thank you, Keith. Let's do it again. Keith Weinhold 35:49 Yeah, some good insights from Chris, a smart guy. And gosh, what a really sad state for rent stabilized apartments in New York City, where landlords of some of those properties, they would have to spend sometimes hundreds of 1000s of dollars in order to bring them up to code, but then they couldn't charge enough rent to offset those expenses due to government intervention and price fixing, so landlords just lock up the property vacant. And this sort of harkens back to when we were talking about some of this last year, when we had documentary film maker jen siderova on the show with her film called shopification, and it was about how rent control slowly makes neighborhoods fall into disrepair. All right, Chris and I had some difference of opinion there on the prospects for a home price correction. I think I made most of my points. He did, though, talk about running out of home buyers. If I have him back, maybe I'll pick up right there. More buyers are baked into the demographics, like I think I shared with you one time the US had its highest ever birth rate years between 1990 and 2010 more than 4 million births per year for a lot of those years. Just to review this with you, you might remember that 2007 was the US is peak birth year. Add 38 years to that for the average first time homebuyer age, and that housing demand won't even peak until 2045 and it will continue to stay high for a few years after that. So that's where the demand is just going to keep coming from, just piling on. And when I say that loan conditions have eased for American homeowners, like I did there during the interview, of course, what I'm talking about is the long term. I mean, lending conditions got more rigid after 2008 and with the adoption of Dodd Frank. What I'm talking about is, before the Great Depression, it was most common to have to make 50% to 60% down payments on property, and you had to repay the entire note in five to 10 years. I mean, can you imagine how that would hurt affordability today and then later, by 1950, 15, year loans were the common one. I mean, even that would impair affordability today. Today, 30 year loans are the common one, and you can put as little as 3% down on a primary residence. A lot of people don't know that either. It does not take 20% on a primary residence. So that's what I mean about the relative ease of credit flow today. Now, Chris has knowledge about other parts of the real estate market that I don't for his work inside DC and in other places like the foreclosure market. We talked about some of that right after the interview. For example, He was letting acronyms like NPL roll off his tongue, and I had to ask him what that meant. That's a non performing loan. Check out Chris's new book. Again, it's called inflated money debt in the American dream. And again, his website is RCwhalen.com and Chris also has a great sense of history, which we didn't get into, longtime real estate guys radio show co host Russell gray and I will discuss monetary history here on the show soon. Like I said, I'm coming to you from Edinburgh, Scotland this week, even if you don't see great sites, you know, it's interesting just walking the historic streets here, if you're an American that's visited here before, you surely know what I mean. And I told you that I'd let you know, the current real estate transaction I'm involved in is paying $650 a night for the hotel here in Edinburgh. Yes, that's a lot. I've actually paid less for fancier places in Dubai, but this hotel here is on the Royal Mile. Of course, I could have found less expensive accommodations elsewhere. Speaking of less expensive, here's an announcement. And we have new investment property providers at GRE marketplace, two of them, the markets are both in Oklahoma, and they are Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma as a state, is known for landlord friendly eviction processes and legal systems, kind of the opposite of New York. So this makes your property management more predictable. Now, when we look at this city, OKC has the lowest priced new single family rentals. I can think of it under 160k Yes, that really puts the exclamation point on inexpensive and favorable rent to price ratios often exceeding 1% which is obviously attractive for cash flow, meaning a 150k single family rental could yield over $1,500 in rent. There's high rental demand in certain sub markets. We have scouted out those exact places for you in the OKC metro, like Edmond Moore spelled M, O, O, R, E, and Midwest City, all supporting consistent rent income, though it was once really oil dependent, OKC has diversified economically, reducing your risk tied to commodity cycles and ok sees local economy that's supported by industries including aerospace, energy, health care and logistics. Then there's Tulsa. Tulsa has the highest cash flowing new build duplexes, perhaps anywhere in the US that I know about. On the single family rental side, a lot of Tulsa investors can find properties under 150k with monthly rents again exceeding 1% of the purchase price, clearly ideal. So yes, both Oklahoma City and Tulsa are now on GRE marketplace. You can either visit the pages and see them there, or one of our qualified, experienced GRE investment coaches. Meet with them. They can help guide you to the very best deals and show you the specific property addresses available right at this time for whatever best meets your needs. If you're looking to either start or expand to another market and you seek cash flow, you really need to consider Oklahoma. Yes, it is free to have a strategy session with an investment coach, whether that's for Oklahoma or other investor advantage regions. I often like to leave you with something actionable. You can start at GREinvestment coach.com start book a meeting for a free strategy session remotely. That's at GREinvestment coach.com, until next week, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream. Dolf Deroos 42:51 Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Advice, opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC exclusively. Keith Weinhold 43:14 You know, whenever you want the best written real estate and finance info, oh, geez, today's experience limits your free articles access and it's got pay walls and pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers. It's not so great. So then it's vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it's to the point because even the word abbreviation is too long, my letter usually takes less than three minutes to read, and when you start the letter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate video. Course, it's all completely free. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream letter. It wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be easier for you to get it right now. Just text gre to 66866. While it's on your mind, take a moment to do it right now. Text, gre to 66866. The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, getricheducation.com.
"...Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness..."This week, I'm reflecting on a quote by Adam Smith from The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759.Reflection question:As we show generosity to wealthier donors, are we also cultivating a character of humble modesty and equitable justice?Reflection on quote:Last week, we talked about generous love to various categories of people: those poor, those wealthy, and those peers. As we show generosity to our donors, we can fall into a trap. While we are no longer concerned with ordering society by class distinctions, Smith challenges us to take the path of humble modesty and equitable justice as we fashion our behaviors towards our donors. This work has entered the public domain.What do you think? Send me a text. To explore fundraising coaching deeper and to schedule an exploratory session, visit ServingNonprofits.com.Music credit: Woeisuhmebop
Welcome to the first of our bonus episodes "Sort Your Shit Out With Smith". As well as our regular longer form Wednesday episodes, we now release extra shorter content on Mondays. Listen out for Master Your Mind with Mayhew next Monday. In this inaugural episode Smith tackles the myths around imposter syndrome, procrastination, and perfectionism – and why these are often just shiny labels hiding low self-esteem. You'll learn how to challenge your beliefs, change your language, and use curiosity instead of criticism. Plus, we unpack why saying “I've got no confidence” is about as useful as saying “I'm useless”. If you want to get in touch, please drop the lads a line : hello@agameconsultancy.com Adam Smith From depressed and suicidal to the happiest and fittest he's ever been, Adam Smith's self-development journey hasn't been easy but it has been worth it. Today, he's a qualified mindset coach in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and a certified Time Line Therapist®. Adam has coached many high performers, using NLP to rewire his clients' thoughts and behaviours so they can destroy limiting beliefs and engineer the change needed to excel. Connect with Adam Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-smith-high-performance-coach/ Adam Mayhew Adam Mayhew swapped burnout and binge drinking for ultra marathons, CrossFit and sobriety. A registered nutritional therapist specialising in performance nutrition, Adam supports everyone from office workers to athletes to build healthy eating habits. Using science (and never fad diets, quick fixes or gym bro culture) he helps clients target their problem areas and confidently master diet, training and lifestyle. Connect with Adam Mayhew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-mayhew-nutrition-coaching/ To find out more about Smith & Mayhew: https://agameconsultancy.com/about/
When everything falls apart, everybody calls out to God. We beg Him for help, guidance, miracles. We promise we'll do things His way if He'll just put us back on the right path. But when life is good, a lot of us don't even think about God. We're doing fine and don't really need God. At least not like we used to. But is that true? We've all seen stories of successful people blowing their lives up. How do we keep from being one of them? If you're new with us, let us know how we can be praying for you, we invite you to fill out an online Connect Card by visiting https://southhillschurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/91550—If you are looking for what is next for you, we invite you to fill out an online “Next Steps” card by visiting https://southhillschurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/672517To give with us select the Give tab on the Church Center App or visit https://southhills.org/giving/ and select the Corona Fund or Corona BOW Fund—Visit our Linktree to find out more about everything mentioned in today's message or follow along with the message slides:https://linktr.ee/SouthHillsCorona —To RSVP for On-Campus Events select the Events tab on the Church Center App or visit https://southhills.org/corona/
Acts 28:17-31 | Adam Smith
Acts 28:17-31 | Adam Smith
KGMI's Adam Smith and Dianna Hawryluk chat about the Youth PRIDE Parade in Bellingham, a celebration of the Sehome Hill Arboretum, the 309th Annual Car Show at Bellewood Farms, and Lipstitch performing at Bar Two Eleven.
Trigger warning: This episode includes honest discussions about suicide attempts, mental illness, domestic violence, and trauma. Adam Smith's story is unlike anything you've heard - and exactly what so many men need to hear. Sectioned at 11. In prison by 21. Found unresponsive in a car after trying to end his life. This could've been the end - but it wasn't. Instead, Adam's journey is one of remarkable survival and a relentless mission to make his pain count for something. In this episode, Adam speaks with raw honesty about growing up in care, wrestling with addiction, and living with autism and mental illness. But also about rising - becoming a chef, starting The Real Junk Food Project, and then Surplus2Purpose, and feeding millions with food others deemed worthless. He doesn't sugar-coat any of it. There are no easy answers. Just grit, compassion, and a deep belief that lives - like food - should never be wasted. You might not have lived Adam's life. But if you've ever felt lost, numb, ashamed, or like you don't know where you fit in the world, there's something here for you. This episode is about survival - but also about honesty, connection, and how we begin to move forward, even if we're still broken. This is not just Adam's story. It's a mirror for anyone who's ever struggled and needed a way through. [If you can relate to Adam's experience and need immediate help, you can call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK, or the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US or Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia. Otherwise, as always, we also recommend that you speak to a GP or mental health professional.
Today, Thursday, May 29 on Urban Forum Northwest:*Congressman Adam Smith (D) 9th CD, Ranking Member House Armed Services Committee is dedicated to building an inclusive community, which means creating jobs and making our communities affordable and safe for all. Ensuring access to quality education and healthcare.* Attorney Lem Howell, Civil Rights Attorney, Emeritus comments on the state of political affairs in the USA today and elaborates on the "Constitutional Crisis" that he has analyzed. He will comment on the court actions repealing the desires of President Donald Trump.*Washington State Senator Bob Hasegawa (D) 11th-LD was responsible for advancing funding for the Charles Mitchell Reparations Study by placing the $300,000.00 in the senate budget that passed unanimously in the senate. Former Representative Attorney Jesse Wineberry, Sr Co- Founder, Washington Equity Now Alliance (WENA) played a key role in Senator Hasegawa's funding request.*Congressman Hank Johnson (D) GA-04 ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet along with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Re-Introduced Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency (SCERT) Act. As a part of Congressman Johnson's ongoing effort to protect and bolster the U.S. Supreme Court's independence, impartiality and accountability.Urban Forum Northwest streams live at www.1150kknw.com. Visit us at www.urbanforumnw.com for archived programs and relevant information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This week's Midweek Extra is a Season Review Special, diving into an anything goes chat about last season and what it has meant to our contributors. John Gibbons is joined by Adam Smith, Mo Stewart and Adam Melia. Download SAILY in your app store and use our code TAW at checkout or go tosaily.com/taw to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase Subscribe to The Anfield Wrap for more reaction to all the news and events that matter to you… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this episode, Smith and Mayhew explore the teachings of Epictetus — a former slave turned Stoic philosopher — and why his 2,000-year-old advice might be exactly what modern men need. We break down what true freedom means, how to stop reacting to everything around you, and how mastering your mind gives you a shot at real peace, purpose, and resilience. We unpack five key principles, from detaching from outcomes to being the gatekeeper of your thoughts. There's practical reflection, some tough truths about booze, responsibility and self-sabotage — and yes, a story about a grown man who got so drunk he literally lost a hotel, his dignity, and his underpants! Spoiler: it wasn't the bartender's fault. If you want your question answered on a future episode, please drop the lads a line : hello@agameconsultancy.com Adam Smith From depressed and suicidal to the happiest and fittest he's ever been, Adam Smith's self-development journey hasn't been easy but it has been worth it. Today, he's a qualified mindset coach in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and a certified Time Line Therapist®. Adam has coached many high performers, using NLP to rewire his clients' thoughts and behaviours so they can destroy limiting beliefs and engineer the change needed to excel. Connect with Adam Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-smith-high-performance-coach/ Adam Mayhew Adam Mayhew swapped burnout and binge drinking for ultra marathons, CrossFit and sobriety. A registered nutritional therapist specialising in performance nutrition, Adam supports everyone from office workers to athletes to build healthy eating habits. Using science (and never fad diets, quick fixes or gym bro culture) he helps clients target their problem areas and confidently master diet, training and lifestyle. Connect with Adam Mayhew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-mayhew-nutrition-coaching/ To find out more about Smith & Mayhew: https://agameconsultancy.com/about/
Tonight on The Last Word: Donald Trump condemns Vladimir Putin after Russia strikes Ukraine. Also, Trump attacks judges in a Memorial Day post. Plus, Trump escalates his fight with Harvard University. The Trump trade war undercuts American battery makers. House Republicans pass a bill that would cut Medicaid funds from Planned Parenthood. And Trump delays 50% tariffs on EU goods until July 9. Amb. Michael McFaul, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Norm Ornstein, Laurence Tribe, Michigan State Rep. Joe Tate, Rep. Adam Smith, Carrie Baker, and Betsey Stevenson join Lawrence O'Donnell.
KGMI's Adam Smith and Emma Toscani broadcast live updates as the 2025 Ski to Sea teams make their way from Riverside Park in Everson to Hovander Homestead in Ferndale.
"Most people aren't addicted to their phone, they are addicted to escaping themselves" Welcome to the first of our bonus episodes "Master your Mind with Mayhew". As well as our regular longer form Wednesday episodes, we now release extra shorter content on Mondays. Listen out for Sort your Shit out with Smith next Monday. In this inaugural episode, Mayhew dives into the overlooked power of stillness in a world drowning in distraction. From the sneaky grip of phone addiction to the irony of self-help overload, he explore how overstimulation is quietly sabotaging mental clarity, purpose, and peace If you want to get in touch, please drop the lads a line : hello@agameconsultancy.com Adam Smith From depressed and suicidal to the happiest and fittest he's ever been, Adam Smith's self-development journey hasn't been easy but it has been worth it. Today, he's a qualified mindset coach in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and a certified Time Line Therapist®. Adam has coached many high performers, using NLP to rewire his clients' thoughts and behaviours so they can destroy limiting beliefs and engineer the change needed to excel. Connect with Adam Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-smith-high-performance-coach/ Adam Mayhew Adam Mayhew swapped burnout and binge drinking for ultra marathons, CrossFit and sobriety. A registered nutritional therapist specialising in performance nutrition, Adam supports everyone from office workers to athletes to build healthy eating habits. Using science (and never fad diets, quick fixes or gym bro culture) he helps clients target their problem areas and confidently master diet, training and lifestyle. Connect with Adam Mayhew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-mayhew-nutrition-coaching/ To find out more about Smith & Mayhew: https://agameconsultancy.com/about/
Did Jesus really spit in a disabled guy's mouth? It seems wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start. Is Jesus ridiculing or demeaning this guy? If He was trying to help or heal him, couldn't He have chosen something a lot less embarrassing? Was Jesus just being a jerk? How do we make sense of this? If you're new with us, let us know how we can be praying for you, we invite you to fill out an online Connect Card by visiting https://southhillschurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/91550—If you are looking for what is next for you, we invite you to fill out an online “Next Steps” card by visiting https://southhillschurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/672517To give with us select the Give tab on the Church Center App or visit https://southhills.org/giving/ and select the Corona Fund or Corona BOW Fund—Visit our Linktree to find out more about everything mentioned in today's message or follow along with the message slides:https://linktr.ee/SouthHillsCorona —To RSVP for On-Campus Events select the Events tab on the Church Center App or visit https://southhills.org/corona/
KGMI's Adam Smith talks about the Stones Throw Brewery Block Party, the Children's Art Exhibit in Fairhaven, the Whatcom Memorial Day Parade, Fairhaven Fest on Sunday, and Polyrythmics at the Wild Buffalo.
Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people's language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial working classes, is rooted in a critique of capitalism. She should probably read the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy's excellent new book, Capitalism and its Critics, which traces capitalism's evolution and criticism from the East India Company through modern times. He defines capitalism as production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets, encompassing various forms from Chinese state capitalism to hyper-globalization. The book examines capitalism's most articulate critics including the Luddites, Marx, Engels, Thomas Carlisle, Adam Smith, Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes & Hayek, and contemporary figures like Sylvia Federici and Thomas Piketty. Cassidy explores how major economists were often critics of their era's dominant capitalist model, and untangles capitalism's complicated relationship with colonialism, slavery and AI which he regards as a potentially unprecedented economic disruption. This should be essential listening for all Democrats seeking to reinvent a post Biden-Harris party and message. 5 key takeaways* Capitalism has many forms - From Chinese state capitalism to Keynesian managed capitalism to hyper-globalization, all fitting the basic definition of production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets.* Great economists are typically critics - Smith criticized mercantile capitalism, Keynes critiqued laissez-faire capitalism, and Hayek/Friedman opposed managed capitalism. Each generation's leading economists challenge their era's dominant model.* Modern corporate structure has deep roots - The East India Company was essentially a modern multinational corporation with headquarters, board of directors, stockholders, and even a private army - showing capitalism's organizational continuity across centuries.* Capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and slavery - Industrial capitalism was built on pre-existing colonial and slave systems, particularly through the cotton industry and plantation economies.* AI represents a potentially unprecedented disruption - Unlike previous technological waves, AI may substitute rather than complement human labor on a massive scale, potentially creating political backlash exceeding even the "China shock" that contributed to Trump's rise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. A couple of days ago, we did a show with Joan Williams. She has a new book out, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." A book about language, about how to talk to the American working class. She also had a piece in Jacobin Magazine, an anti-capitalist magazine, about how the left needs to speak to what she calls average American values. We talked, of course, about Bernie Sanders and AOC and their language of fighting oligarchy, and the New York Times followed that up with "The Enduring Power of Anti-Capitalism in American Politics."But of course, that brings the question: what exactly is capitalism? I did a little bit of research. We can find definitions of capitalism from AI, from Wikipedia, even from online dictionaries, but I thought we might do a little better than relying on Wikipedia and come to a man who's given capitalism and its critics a great deal of thought. John Cassidy is well known as a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's the author of a wonderful book, the best book, actually, on the dot-com insanity. And his new book, "Capitalism and its Critics," is out this week. John, congratulations on the book.So I've got to be a bit of a schoolmaster with you, John, and get some definitions first. What exactly is capitalism before we get to criticism of it?John Cassidy: Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question, Andrew. Obviously, through the decades, even the centuries, there have been many different definitions of the term capitalism and there are different types of capitalism. To not be sort of too ideological about it, the working definition I use is basically production for profit—that could be production of goods or mostly in the new and, you know, in today's economy, production of services—for profit by companies which are privately owned in markets. That's a very sort of all-encompassing definition.Within that, you can have all sorts of different types of capitalism. You can have Chinese state capitalism, you can have the old mercantilism, which industrial capitalism came after, which Trump seems to be trying to resurrect. You can have Keynesian managed capitalism that we had for 30 or 40 years after the Second World War, which I grew up in in the UK. Or you can have sort of hyper-globalization, hyper-capitalism that we've tried for the last 30 years. There are all those different varieties of capitalism consistent with a basic definition, I think.Andrew Keen: That keeps you busy, John. I know you started this project, which is a big book and it's a wonderful book. I read it. I don't always read all the books I have on the show, but I read from cover to cover full of remarkable stories of the critics of capitalism. You note in the beginning that you began this in 2016 with the beginnings of Trump. What was it about the 2016 election that triggered a book about capitalism and its critics?John Cassidy: Well, I was reporting on it at the time for The New Yorker and it struck me—I covered, I basically covered the economy in various forms for various publications since the late 80s, early 90s. In fact, one of my first big stories was the stock market crash of '87. So yes, I am that old. But it seemed to me in 2016 when you had Bernie Sanders running from the left and Trump running from the right, but both in some way offering very sort of similar critiques of capitalism. People forget that Trump in 2016 actually was running from the left of the Republican Party. He was attacking big business. He was attacking Wall Street. He doesn't do that these days very much, but at the time he was very much posing as the sort of outsider here to protect the interests of the average working man.And it seemed to me that when you had this sort of pincer movement against the then ruling model, this wasn't just a one-off. It seemed to me it was a sort of an emerging crisis of legitimacy for the system. And I thought there could be a good book written about how we got to here. And originally I thought it would be a relatively short book just based on the last sort of 20 or 30 years since the collapse of the Cold War and the sort of triumphalism of the early 90s.But as I got into it more and more, I realized that so many of the issues which had been raised, things like globalization, rising inequality, monopoly power, exploitation, even pollution and climate change, these issues go back to the very start of the capitalist system or the industrial capitalist system back in sort of late 18th century, early 19th century Britain. So I thought, in the end, I thought, you know what, let's just do the whole thing soup to nuts through the eyes of the critics.There have obviously been many, many histories of capitalism written. I thought that an original way to do it, or hopefully original, would be to do a sort of a narrative through the lives and the critiques of the critics of various stages. So that's, I hope, what sets it apart from other books on the subject, and also provides a sort of narrative frame because, you know, I am a New Yorker writer, I realize if you want people to read things, you've got to make it readable. Easiest way to make things readable is to center them around people. People love reading about other people. So that's sort of the narrative frame. I start off with a whistleblower from the East India Company back in the—Andrew Keen: Yeah, I want to come to that. But before, John, my sense is that to simplify what you're saying, this is a labor of love. You're originally from Leeds, the heart of Yorkshire, the center of the very industrial revolution, the first industrial revolution where, in your historical analysis, capitalism was born. Is it a labor of love? What's your family relationship with capitalism? How long was the family in Leeds?John Cassidy: Right, I mean that's a very good question. It is a labor of love in a way, but it's not—our family doesn't go—I'm from an Irish family, family of Irish immigrants who moved to England in the 1940s and 1950s. So my father actually did start working in a big mill, the Kirkstall Forge in Leeds, which is a big steel mill, and he left after seeing one of his co-workers have his arms chopped off in one of the machinery, so he decided it wasn't for him and he spent his life working in the construction industry, which was dominated by immigrants as it is here now.So I don't have a—it's not like I go back to sort of the start of the industrial revolution, but I did grow up in the middle of Leeds, very working class, very industrial neighborhood. And what a sort of irony is, I'll point out, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to play golf on a municipal golf course called Gotts Park in Leeds, which—you know, most golf courses in America are sort of in the affluent suburbs, country clubs. This was right in the middle of Armley in Leeds, which is where the Victorian jail is and a very rough neighborhood. There's a small bit of land which they built a golf course on. It turns out it was named after one of the very first industrialists, Benjamin Gott, who was a wool and textile industrialist, and who played a part in the Luddite movement, which I mention.So it turns out, I was there when I was 11 or 12, just learning how to play golf on this scrappy golf course. And here I am, 50 years later, writing about Benjamin Gott at the start of the Industrial Revolution. So yeah, no, sure. I think it speaks to me in a way that perhaps it wouldn't to somebody else from a different background.Andrew Keen: We did a show with William Dalrymple, actually, a couple of years ago. He's been on actually since, the Anglo or Scottish Indian historian. His book on the East India Company, "The Anarchy," is a classic. You begin in some ways your history of capitalism with the East India Company. What was it about the East India Company, John, that makes it different from other for-profit organizations in economic, Western economic history?John Cassidy: I mean, I read that. It's a great book, by the way. That was actually quoted in my chapter on these. Yeah, I remember. I mean, the reason I focused on it was for two reasons. Number one, I was looking for a start, a narrative start to the book. And it seemed to me, you know, the obvious place to start is with the start of the industrial revolution. If you look at economics history textbooks, that's where they always start with Arkwright and all the inventors, you know, who were the sort of techno-entrepreneurs of their time, the sort of British Silicon Valley, if you could think of it as, in Lancashire and Derbyshire in the late 18th century.So I knew I had to sort of start there in some way, but I thought that's a bit pat. Is there another way into it? And it turns out that in 1772 in England, there was a huge bailout of the East India Company, very much like the sort of 2008, 2009 bailout of Wall Street. The company got into trouble. So I thought, you know, maybe there's something there. And I eventually found this guy, William Bolts, who worked for the East India Company, turned into a whistleblower after he was fired for finagling in India like lots of the people who worked for the company did.So that gave me two things. Number one, it gave me—you know, I'm a writer, so it gave me something to focus on a narrative. His personal history is very interesting. But number two, it gave me a sort of foundation because industrial capitalism didn't come from nowhere. You know, it was built on top of a pre-existing form of capitalism, which we now call mercantile capitalism, which was very protectionist, which speaks to us now. But also it had these big monopolistic multinational companies.The East India Company, in some ways, was a very modern corporation. It had a headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the city of London. It had a board of directors, it had stockholders, the company sent out very detailed instructions to the people in the field in India and Indonesia and Malaysia who were traders who bought things from the locals there, brought them back to England on their company ships. They had a company army even to enforce—to protect their operations there. It was an incredible multinational corporation.So that was also, I think, fascinating because it showed that even in the pre-existing system, you know, big corporations existed, there were monopolies, they had royal monopolies given—first the East India Company got one from Queen Elizabeth. But in some ways, they were very similar to modern monopolistic corporations. And they had some of the problems we've seen with modern monopolistic corporations, the way they acted. And Bolts was the sort of first corporate whistleblower, I thought. Yeah, that was a way of sort of getting into the story, I think. Hopefully, you know, it's just a good read, I think.William Bolts's story because he was—he came from nowhere, he was Dutch, he wasn't even English and he joined the company as a sort of impoverished young man, went to India like a lot of English minor aristocrats did to sort of make your fortune. The way the company worked, you had to sort of work on company time and make as much money as you could for the company, but then in your spare time you're allowed to trade for yourself. So a lot of the—without getting into too much detail, but you know, English aristocracy was based on—you know, the eldest child inherits everything, so if you were the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, you actually didn't inherit anything. So all of these minor aristocrats, so major aristocrats, but who weren't first born, joined the East India Company, went out to India and made a fortune, and then came back and built huge houses. Lots of the great manor houses in southern England were built by people from the East India Company and they were known as Nabobs, which is an Indian term. So they were the sort of, you know, billionaires of their time, and it was based on—as I say, it wasn't based on industrial capitalism, it was based on mercantile capitalism.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the beginning of the book, which focuses on Bolts and the East India Company, brings to mind for me two things. Firstly, the intimacy of modern capitalism, modern industrial capitalism with colonialism and of course slavery—lots of books have been written on that. Touch on this and also the relationship between the birth of capitalism and the birth of liberalism or democracy. John Stuart Mill, of course, the father in many ways of Western democracy. His day job, ironically enough, or perhaps not ironically, was at the East India Company. So how do those two things connect, or is it just coincidental?John Cassidy: Well, I don't think it is entirely coincidental, I mean, J.S. Mill—his father, James Mill, was also a well-known philosopher in the sort of, obviously, in the earlier generation, earlier than him. And he actually wrote the official history of the East India Company. And I think they gave his son, the sort of brilliant protégé, J.S. Mill, a job as largely as a sort of sinecure, I think. But he did go in and work there in the offices three or four days a week.But I think it does show how sort of integral—the sort of—as you say, the inheritor and the servant in Britain, particularly, of colonial capitalism was. So the East India Company was, you know, it was in decline by that stage in the middle of the 19th century, but it didn't actually give up its monopoly. It wasn't forced to give up its monopoly on the Indian trade until 1857, after, you know, some notorious massacres and there was a sort of public outcry.So yeah, no, that's—it's very interesting that the British—it's sort of unique to Britain in a way, but it's interesting that industrial capitalism arose alongside this pre-existing capitalist structure and somebody like Mill is a sort of paradoxical figure because actually he was quite critical of aspects of industrial capitalism and supported sort of taxes on the rich, even though he's known as the great, you know, one of the great apostles of the free market and free market liberalism. And his day job, as you say, he was working for the East India Company.Andrew Keen: What about the relationship between the birth of industrial capitalism, colonialism and slavery? Those are big questions and I know you deal with them in some—John Cassidy: I think you can't just write an economic history of capitalism now just starting with the cotton industry and say, you know, it was all about—it was all about just technical progress and gadgets, etc. It was built on a sort of pre-existing system which was colonial and, you know, the slave trade was a central element of that. Now, as you say, there have been lots and lots of books written about it, the whole 1619 project got an incredible amount of attention a few years ago. So I didn't really want to rehash all that, but I did want to acknowledge the sort of role of slavery, especially in the rise of the cotton industry because of course, a lot of the raw cotton was grown in the plantations in the American South.So the way I actually ended up doing that was by writing a chapter about Eric Williams, a Trinidadian writer who ended up as the Prime Minister of Trinidad when it became independent in the 1960s. But when he was younger, he wrote a book which is now regarded as a classic. He went to Oxford to do a PhD, won a scholarship. He was very smart. I won a sort of Oxford scholarship myself but 50 years before that, he came across the Atlantic and did an undergraduate degree in history and then did a PhD there and his PhD thesis was on slavery and capitalism.And at the time, in the 1930s, the link really wasn't acknowledged. You could read any sort of standard economic history written by British historians, and they completely ignored that. He made the argument that, you know, slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism and he basically started an argument which has been raging ever since the 1930s and, you know, if you want to study economic history now you have to sort of—you know, have to have to address that. And the way I thought, even though the—it's called the Williams thesis is very famous. I don't think many people knew much about where it came from. So I thought I'd do a chapter on—Andrew Keen: Yeah, that chapter is excellent. You mentioned earlier the Luddites, you're from Yorkshire where Luddism in some ways was born. One of the early chapters is on the Luddites. We did a show with Brian Merchant, his book, "Blood in the Machine," has done very well, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I always understood the Luddites as being against industrialization, against the machine, as opposed to being against capitalism. But did those two things get muddled together in the history of the Luddites?John Cassidy: I think they did. I mean, you know, Luddites, when we grew up, I mean you're English too, you know to be called a Luddite was a term of abuse, right? You know, you were sort of antediluvian, anti-technology, you're stupid. It was only, I think, with the sort of computer revolution, the tech revolution of the last 30, 40 years and the sort of disruptions it's caused, that people have started to look back at the Luddites and say, perhaps they had a point.For them, they were basically pre-industrial capitalism artisans. They worked for profit-making concerns, small workshops. Some of them worked for themselves, so they were sort of sole proprietor capitalists. Or they worked in small venues, but the rise of industrial capitalism, factory capitalism or whatever, basically took away their livelihoods progressively. So they associated capitalism with new technology. In their minds it was the same. But their argument wasn't really a technological one or even an economic one, it was more a moral one. They basically made the moral argument that capitalists shouldn't have the right to just take away their livelihoods with no sort of recompense for them.At the time they didn't have any parliamentary representation. You know, they weren't revolutionaries. The first thing they did was create petitions to try and get parliament to step in, sort of introduce some regulation here. They got turned down repeatedly by the sort of—even though it was a very aristocratic parliament, places like Manchester and Leeds didn't have any representation at all. So it was only after that that they sort of turned violent and started, you know, smashing machines and machines, I think, were sort of symbols of the system, which they saw as morally unjust.And I think that's sort of what—obviously, there's, you know, a lot of technological disruption now, so we can, especially as it starts to come for the educated cognitive class, we can sort of sympathize with them more. But I think the sort of moral critique that there's this, you know, underneath the sort of great creativity and economic growth that capitalism produces, there is also a lot of destruction and a lot of victims. And I think that message, you know, is becoming a lot more—that's why I think why they've been rediscovered in the last five or ten years and I'm one of the people I guess contributing to that rediscovery.Andrew Keen: There's obviously many critiques of capitalism politically. I want to come to Marx in a second, but your chapter, I thought, on Thomas Carlyle and this nostalgic conservatism was very important and there are other conservatives as well. John, do you think that—and you mentioned Trump earlier, who is essentially a nostalgist for a—I don't know, some sort of bizarre pre-capitalist age in America. Is there something particularly powerful about the anti-capitalism of romantics like Carlyle, 19th century Englishman, there were many others of course.John Cassidy: Well, I think so. I mean, I think what is—conservatism, when we were young anyway, was associated with Thatcherism and Reaganism, which, you know, lionized the free market and free market capitalism and was a reaction against the pre-existing form of capitalism, Keynesian capitalism of the sort of 40s to the 80s. But I think what got lost in that era was the fact that there have always been—you've got Hayek up there, obviously—Andrew Keen: And then Keynes and Hayek, the two—John Cassidy: Right, it goes to the end of that. They had a great debate in the 1930s about these issues. But Hayek really wasn't a conservative person, and neither was Milton Friedman. They were sort of free market revolutionaries, really, that you'd let the market rip and it does good things. And I think that that sort of a view, you know, it just became very powerful. But we sort of lost sight of the fact that there was also a much older tradition of sort of suspicion of radical changes of any type. And that was what conservatism was about to some extent. If you think about Baldwin in Britain, for example.And there was a sort of—during the Industrial Revolution, some of the strongest supporters of factory acts to reduce hours and hourly wages for women and kids were actually conservatives, Tories, as they were called at the time, like Ashley. That tradition, Carlyle was a sort of extreme representative of that. I mean, Carlyle was a sort of proto-fascist, let's not romanticize him, he lionized strongmen, Frederick the Great, and he didn't really believe in democracy. But he also had—he was appalled by the sort of, you know, the—like, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The sort of destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, both on the workers, you know, he said it was a dehumanizing system, sounded like Marx in some ways. That it dehumanized the workers, but also it destroyed the environment.He was an early environmentalist. He venerated the environment, was actually very strongly linked to the transcendentalists in America, people like Thoreau, who went to visit him when he visited Britain and he saw the sort of destructive impact that capitalism was having locally in places like Manchester, which were filthy with filthy rivers, etc. So he just saw the whole system as sort of morally bankrupt and he was a great writer, Carlyle, whatever you think of him. Great user of language, so he has these great ringing phrases like, you know, the cash nexus or calling it the Gospel of Mammonism, the shabbiest gospel ever preached under the sun was industrial capitalism.So, again, you know, that's a sort of paradoxical thing, because I think for so long conservatism was associated with, you know, with support for the free market and still is in most of the Republican Party, but then along comes Trump and sort of conquers the party with a, you know, more skeptical, as you say, romantic, not really based on any reality, but a sort of romantic view that America can stand by itself in the world. I mean, I see Trump actually as a sort of an effort to sort of throw back to mercantile capitalism in a way. You know, which was not just pre-industrial, but was also pre-democracy, run by monarchs, which I'm sure appeals to him, and it was based on, you know, large—there were large tariffs. You couldn't import things in the UK. If you want to import anything to the UK, you have to send it on a British ship because of the navigation laws. It was a very protectionist system and it's actually, you know, as I said, had a lot of parallels with what Trump's trying to do or tries to do until he backs off.Andrew Keen: You cheat a little bit in the book in the sense that you—everyone has their own chapter. We'll talk a little bit about Hayek and Smith and Lenin and Friedman. You do have one chapter on Marx, but you also have a chapter on Engels. So you kind of cheat. You combine the two. Is it possible, though, to do—and you've just written this book, so you know this as well as anyone. How do you write a book about capitalism and its critics and only really give one chapter to Marx, who is so dominant? I mean, you've got lots of Marxists in the book, including Lenin and Luxemburg. How fundamental is Marx to a criticism of capitalism? Is most criticism, especially from the left, from progressives, is it really just all a footnote to Marx?John Cassidy: I wouldn't go that far, but I think obviously on the left he is the central figure. But there's an element of sort of trying to rebuild Engels a bit in this. I mean, I think of Engels and Marx—I mean obviously Marx wrote the great classic "Capital," etc. But in the 1840s, when they both started writing about capitalism, Engels was sort of ahead of Marx in some ways. I mean, the sort of materialist concept, the idea that economics rules everything, Engels actually was the first one to come up with that in an essay in the 1840s which Marx then published in one of his—in the German newspaper he worked for at the time, radical newspaper, and he acknowledged openly that that was really what got him thinking seriously about economics, and even in the late—in 20, 25 years later when he wrote "Capital," all three volumes of it and the Grundrisse, just these enormous outpourings of analysis on capitalism.He acknowledged Engels's role in that and obviously Engels wrote the first draft of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 too, which Marx then topped and tailed and—he was a better writer obviously, Marx, and he gave it the dramatic language that we all know it for. So I think Engels and Marx together obviously are the central sort of figures in the sort of left-wing critique. But they didn't start out like that. I mean, they were very obscure, you've got to remember.You know, they were—when they were writing, Marx was writing "Capital" in London, it never even got published in English for another 20 years. It was just published in German. He was basically an expat. He had been thrown out of Germany, he had been thrown out of France, so England was last resort and the British didn't consider him a threat so they were happy to let him and the rest of the German sort of left in there. I think it became—it became the sort of epochal figure after his death really, I think, when he was picked up by the left-wing parties, which are especially the SPD in Germany, which was the first sort of socialist mass party and was officially Marxist until the First World War and there were great internal debates.And then of course, because Lenin and the Russians came out of that tradition too, Marxism then became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union when they adopted a version of it. And again there were massive internal arguments about what Marx really meant, and in fact, you know, one interpretation of the last 150 years of left-wing sort of intellectual development is as a sort of argument about what did Marx really mean and what are the important bits of it, what are the less essential bits of it. It's a bit like the "what did Keynes really mean" that you get in liberal circles.So yeah, Marx, obviously, this is basically an intellectual history of critiques of capitalism. In that frame, he is absolutely a central figure. Why didn't I give him more space than a chapter and a chapter and a half with Engels? There have been a million books written about Marx. I mean, it's not that—it's not that he's an unknown figure. You know, there's a best-selling book written in Britain about 20 years ago about him and then I was quoting, in my biographical research, I relied on some more recent, more scholarly biographies. So he's an endlessly fascinating figure but I didn't want him to dominate the book so I gave him basically the same space as everybody else.Andrew Keen: You've got, as I said, you've got a chapter on Adam Smith who's often considered the father of economics. You've got a chapter on Keynes. You've got a chapter on Friedman. And you've got a chapter on Hayek, all the great modern economists. Is it possible, John, to be a distinguished economist one way or the other and not be a critic of capitalism?John Cassidy: Well, I don't—I mean, I think history would suggest that the greatest economists have been critics of capitalism in their own time. People would say to me, what the hell have you got Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in a book about critics of capitalism? They were great exponents, defenders of capitalism. They loved the system. That is perfectly true. But in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, middle of the 20th century, they were actually arch-critics of the ruling form of capitalism at the time, which was what I call managed capitalism. What some people call Keynesianism, what other people call European social democracy, whatever you call it, it was a model of a mixed economy in which the government played a large role both in propping up demand and in providing an extensive social safety net in the UK and providing public healthcare and public education. It was a sort of hybrid model.Most of the economy in terms of the businesses remained in private hands. So most production was capitalistic. It was a capitalist system. They didn't go to the Soviet model of nationalizing everything and Britain did nationalize some businesses, but most places didn't. The US of course didn't but it was a form of managed capitalism. And Hayek and Friedman were both great critics of that and wanted to sort of move back to 19th century laissez-faire model.Keynes was a—was actually a great, I view him anyway, as really a sort of late Victorian liberal and was trying to protect as much of the sort of J.S. Mill view of the world as he could, but he thought capitalism had one fatal flaw: that it tended to fall into recessions and then they can snowball and the whole system can collapse which is what had basically happened in the early 1930s until Keynesian policies were adopted. Keynes sort of differed from a lot of his followers—I have a chapter on Joan Robinson in there, who were pretty left-wing and wanted to sort of use Keynesianism as a way to shift the economy quite far to the left. Keynes didn't really believe in that. He has a famous quote that, you know, once you get to full employment, you can then rely on the free market to sort of take care of things. He was still a liberal at heart.Going back to Adam Smith, why is he in a book on criticism of capitalism? And again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. He actually wrote "The Wealth of Nations"—he explains in the introduction—as a critique of mercantile capitalism. His argument was that he was a pro-free trader, pro-small business, free enterprise. His argument was if you get the government out of the way, we don't need these government-sponsored monopolies like the East India Company. If you just rely on the market, the sort of market forces and competition will produce a good outcome. So then he was seen as a great—you know, he is then seen as the apostle of free market capitalism. I mean when I started as a young reporter, when I used to report in Washington, all the conservatives used to wear Adam Smith badges. You don't see Donald Trump wearing an Adam Smith badge, but that was the case.He was also—the other aspect of Smith, which I highlight, which is not often remarked on—he's also a critic of big business. He has a famous section where he discusses the sort of tendency of any group of more than three businessmen when they get together to try and raise prices and conspire against consumers. And he was very suspicious of, as I say, large companies, monopolies. I think if Adam Smith existed today, I mean, I think he would be a big supporter of Lina Khan and the sort of antitrust movement, he would say capitalism is great as long as you have competition, but if you don't have competition it becomes, you know, exploitative.Andrew Keen: Yeah, if Smith came back to live today, you have a chapter on Thomas Piketty, maybe he may not be French, but he may be taking that position about how the rich benefit from the structure of investment. Piketty's core—I've never had Piketty on the show, but I've had some of his followers like Emmanuel Saez from Berkeley. Yeah. How powerful is Piketty's critique of capitalism within the context of the classical economic analysis from Hayek and Friedman? Yeah, it's a very good question.John Cassidy: It's a very good question. I mean, he's a very paradoxical figure, Piketty, in that he obviously shot to world fame and stardom with his book on capital in the 21st century, which in some ways he obviously used the capital as a way of linking himself to Marx, even though he said he never read Marx. But he was basically making the same argument that if you leave capitalism unrestrained and don't do anything about monopolies etc. or wealth, you're going to get massive inequality and he—I think his great contribution, Piketty and the school of people, one of them you mentioned, around him was we sort of had a vague idea that inequality was going up and that, you know, wages were stagnating, etc.What he and his colleagues did is they produced these sort of scientific empirical studies showing in very simple to understand terms how the sort of share of income and wealth of the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent basically skyrocketed from the 1970s to about 2010. And it was, you know, he was an MIT PhD. Saez, who you mentioned, is a Berkeley professor. They were schooled in neoclassical economics at Harvard and MIT and places like that. So the right couldn't dismiss them as sort of, you know, lefties or Trots or whatever who're just sort of making this stuff up. They had to acknowledge that this was actually an empirical reality.I think it did change the whole basis of the debate and it was sort of part of this reaction against capitalism in the 2010s. You know it was obviously linked to the sort of Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time. It came out of the—you know, the financial crisis as well when Wall Street disgraced itself. I mean, I wrote a previous book on all that, but people have sort of, I think, forgotten the great reaction against that a decade ago, which I think even Trump sort of exploited, as I say, by using anti-banker rhetoric at the time.So, Piketty was a great figure, I think, from, you know, I was thinking, who are the most influential critics of capitalism in the 21st century? And I think you'd have to put him up there on the list. I'm not saying he's the only one or the most eminent one. But I think he is a central figure. Now, of course, you'd think, well, this is a really powerful critic of capitalism, and nobody's going to pick up, and Bernie's going to take off and everything. But here we are a decade later now. It seems to be what the backlash has produced is a swing to the right, not a swing to the left. So that's, again, a sort of paradox.Andrew Keen: One person I didn't expect to come up in the book, John, and I was fascinated with this chapter, is Silvia Federici. I've tried to get her on the show. We've had some books about her writing and her kind of—I don't know, you treat her critique as a feminist one. The role of women. Why did you choose to write a chapter about Federici and that feminist critique of capitalism?John Cassidy: Right, right. Well, I don't think it was just feminist. I'll explain what I think it was. Two reasons. Number one, I wanted to get more women into the book. I mean, it's in some sense, it is a history of economics and economic critiques. And they are overwhelmingly written by men and women were sort of written out of the narrative of capitalism for a very long time. So I tried to include as many sort of women as actual thinkers as I could and I have a couple of early socialist feminist thinkers, Anna Wheeler and Flora Tristan and then I cover some of the—I cover Rosa Luxemburg as the great sort of tribune of the left revolutionary socialist, communist whatever you want to call it. Anti-capitalist I think is probably also important to note about. Yeah, and then I also have Joan Robinson, but I wanted somebody to do something in the modern era, and I thought Federici, in the world of the Wages for Housework movement, is very interesting from two perspectives.Number one, Federici herself is a Marxist, and I think she probably would still consider herself a revolutionary. She's based in New York, as you know now. She lived in New York for 50 years, but she came from—she's originally Italian and came out of the Italian left in the 1960s, which was very radical. Do you know her? Did you talk to her? I didn't talk to her on this. No, she—I basically relied on, there has been a lot of, as you say, there's been a lot of stuff written about her over the years. She's written, you know, she's given various long interviews and she's written a book herself, a version, a history of housework, so I figured it was all there and it was just a matter of pulling it together.But I think the critique, why the critique is interesting, most of the book is a sort of critique of how capitalism works, you know, in the production or you know, in factories or in offices or you know, wherever capitalist operations are working, but her critique is sort of domestic reproduction, as she calls it, the role of unpaid labor in supporting capitalism. I mean it goes back a long way actually. There was this moment, I sort of trace it back to the 1940s and 1950s when there were feminists in America who were demonstrating outside factories and making the point that you know, the factory workers and the operations of the factory, it couldn't—there's one of the famous sort of tire factory in California demonstrations where the women made the argument, look this factory can't continue to operate unless we feed and clothe the workers and provide the next generation of workers. You know, that's domestic reproduction. So their argument was that housework should be paid and Federici took that idea and a couple of her colleagues, she founded the—it's a global movement, but she founded the most famous branch in New York City in the 1970s. In Park Slope near where I live actually.And they were—you call it feminists, they were feminists in a way, but they were rejected by the sort of mainstream feminist movement, the sort of Gloria Steinems of the world, who Federici was very critical of because she said they ignored, they really just wanted to get women ahead in the sort of capitalist economy and they ignored the sort of underlying from her perspective, the underlying sort of illegitimacy and exploitation of that system. So they were never accepted as part of the feminist movement. They're to the left of the Feminist Movement.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Keynes, of course, so central in all this, particularly his analysis of the role of automation in capitalism. We did a show recently with Robert Skidelsky and I'm sure you're familiar—John Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, great, great biography of Keynes.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the great biographer of Keynes, whose latest book is "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of AI." You yourself wrote a brilliant book on the last tech mania and dot-com capitalism. I used it in a lot of my writing and books. What's your analysis of AI in this latest mania and the role generally of manias in the history of capitalism and indeed in critiquing capitalism? Is AI just the next chapter of the dot-com boom?John Cassidy: I think it's a very deep question. I think I'd give two answers to it. In one sense it is just the latest mania the way—I mean, the way capitalism works is we have these, I go back to Kondratiev, one of my Russian economists who ended up being killed by Stalin. He was the sort of inventor of the long wave theory of capitalism. We have these short waves where you have sort of booms and busts driven by finance and debt etc. But we also have long waves driven by technology.And obviously, in the last 40, 50 years, the two big ones are the original deployment of the internet and microchip technology in the sort of 80s and 90s culminating in the dot-com boom of the late 90s, which as you say, I wrote about. Thanks very much for your kind comments on the book. If you just sort of compare it from a financial basis I think they are very similar just in terms of the sort of role of hype from Wall Street in hyping up these companies. The sort of FOMO aspect of it among investors that they you know, you can't miss out. So just buy the companies blindly. And the sort of lionization in the press and the media of, you know, of AI as the sort of great wave of the future.So if you take a sort of skeptical market based approach, I would say, yeah, this is just another sort of another mania which will eventually burst and it looked like it had burst for a few weeks when Trump put the tariffs up, now the market seemed to be recovering. But I think there is, there may be something new about it. I am not, I don't pretend to be a technical expert. I try to rely on the evidence of or the testimony of people who know the systems well and also economists who have studied it. It seems to me the closer you get to it the more alarming it is in terms of the potential shock value that there is there.I mean Trump and the sort of reaction to a larger extent can be traced back to the China shock where we had this global shock to American manufacturing and sort of hollowed out a lot of the industrial areas much of it, like industrial Britain was hollowed out in the 80s. If you, you know, even people like Altman and Elon Musk, they seem to think that this is going to be on a much larger scale than that and will basically, you know, get rid of the professions as they exist. Which would be a huge, huge shock. And I think a lot of the economists who studied this, who four or five years ago were relatively optimistic, people like Daron Acemoglu, David Autor—Andrew Keen: Simon Johnson, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, and he's from England.John Cassidy: Simon, I did an event with Simon earlier this week. You know they've studied this a lot more closely than I have but I do interview them and I think five, six years ago they were sort of optimistic that you know this could just be a new steam engine or could be a microchip which would lead to sort of a lot more growth, rising productivity, rising productivity is usually associated with rising wages so sure there'd be short-term costs but ultimately it would be a good thing. Now, I think if you speak to them, they see since the, you know, obviously, the OpenAI—the original launch and now there's just this huge arms race with no government involvement at all I think they're coming to the conclusion that rather than being developed to sort of complement human labor, all these systems are just being rushed out to substitute for human labor. And it's just going, if current trends persist, it's going to be a China shock on an even bigger scale.You know what is going to, if that, if they're right, that is going to produce some huge political backlash at some point, that's inevitable. So I know—the thing when the dot-com bubble burst, it didn't really have that much long-term impact on the economy. People lost the sort of fake money they thought they'd made. And then the companies, obviously some of the companies like Amazon and you know Google were real genuine profit-making companies and if you bought them early you made a fortune. But AI does seem a sort of bigger, scarier phenomenon to me. I don't know. I mean, you're close to it. What do you think?Andrew Keen: Well, I'm waiting for a book, John, from you. I think you can combine dot-com and capitalism and its critics. We need you probably to cover it—you know more about it than me. Final question, I mean, it's a wonderful book and we haven't even scratched the surface everyone needs to get it. I enjoyed the chapter, for example, on Karl Polanyi and so much more. I mean, it's a big book. But my final question, John, is do you have any regrets about anyone you left out? The one person I would have liked to have been included was Rawls because of his sort of treatment of capitalism and luck as a kind of casino. I'm not sure whether you gave any thought to Rawls, but is there someone in retrospect you should have had a chapter on that you left out?John Cassidy: There are lots of people I left out. I mean, that's the problem. I mean there have been hundreds and hundreds of critics of capitalism. Rawls, of course, incredibly influential and his idea of the sort of, you know, the veil of ignorance that you should judge things not knowing where you are in the income distribution and then—Andrew Keen: And it's luck. I mean the idea of some people get lucky and some people don't.John Cassidy: It is the luck of the draw, obviously, what card you pull. I think that is a very powerful critique, but I just—because I am more of an expert on economics, I tended to leave out philosophers and sociologists. I mean, you know, you could say, where's Max Weber? Where are the anarchists? You know, where's Emma Goldman? Where's John Kenneth Galbraith, the sort of great mid-century critic of American industrial capitalism? There's so many people that you could include. I mean, I could have written 10 volumes. In fact, I refer in the book to, you know, there's always been a problem. G.D.H. Cole, a famous English historian, wrote a history of socialism back in the 1960s and 70s. You know, just getting to 1850 took him six volumes. So, you've got to pick and choose, and I don't claim this is the history of capitalism and its critics. That would be a ridiculous claim to make. I just claim it's a history written by me, and hopefully the people are interested in it, and they're sufficiently diverse that you can address all the big questions.Andrew Keen: Well it's certainly incredibly timely. Capitalism and its critics—more and more of them. Sometimes they don't even describe themselves as critics of capitalism when they're talking about oligarchs or billionaires, they're really criticizing capitalism. A must read from one of America's leading journalists. And would you call yourself a critic of capitalism, John?John Cassidy: Yeah, I guess I am, to some extent, sure. I mean, I'm not a—you know, I'm not on the far left, but I'd say I'm a center-left critic of capitalism. Yes, definitely, that would be fair.Andrew Keen: And does the left need to learn? Does everyone on the left need to read the book and learn the language of anti-capitalism in a more coherent and honest way?John Cassidy: I hope so. I mean, obviously, I'd be talking my own book there, as they say, but I hope that people on the left, but not just people on the left. I really did try to sort of be fair to the sort of right-wing critiques as well. I included the Carlyle chapter particularly, obviously, but in the later chapters, I also sort of refer to this emerging critique on the right, the sort of economic nationalist critique. So hopefully, I think people on the right could read it to understand the critiques from the left, and people on the left could read it to understand some of the critiques on the right as well.Andrew Keen: Well, it's a lovely book. It's enormously erudite and simultaneously readable. Anyone who likes John Cassidy's work from The New Yorker will love it. Congratulations, John, on the new book, and I'd love to get you back on the show as anti-capitalism in America picks up steam and perhaps manifests itself in the 2028 election. Thank you so much.John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, it was fun.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Welcome to the HB Global Employee Ownership Podcast Series. In 2025, we are placing particular focus on the mission and values of HB Global in an effort to level set for all employee owners what these mean and how each of us can exemplify them each day. These communications are intended for the employees of HB Global. We recognize that the general public will have access. The views expressed in these communications represent Bob Whalen in the context of HB Global and may not apply to broader audiences.If you have questions for Bob, we'd love to hear them and answer them in future podcasts. Feel free to submit them to eopodcast@hb-global.com.
'DAVE ALLEN v DEONTAY WILDER...' - ADAM SMITH HONEST! / FURY v JOSHUA, PACQUIAO, GBM, FISHER, TAYLOR Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this installment, Daniel and Tom push deeper into the roots of economic anxiety, the morality of money printing, the logic (and danger) of debt, and why the “Monopoly game” always ends in revolution, collapse, or war. They ask what it will really take to avoid history's bloodiest outcomes — and whether the solutions are personal, systemic, or already out of reach. SHOWNOTES43:12 Why money printing is immoral — and also unavoidable52:09 Why the end of the “Monopoly game” means collapse, war, or revolution54:26 Why emotional arguments win — but don't provide answers55:26 Is there any bloodless way out of our current economic predicament?56:04 The dual systems: Industrial age in decline, digital age on the rise59:03 Chess, cards, and elite training simulations (the structure of society)1:10:03 The baby boom, housing inflation, and the demographic crunch1:14:02 Bell curve economics vs. power law distribution1:15:43 Why money printing makes “saving your way up” impossible1:16:48 Agency, intelligence, inflation and who gets ahead1:26:40 Adam Smith, self-interest, and how the invisible hand really works1:30:06 Authoritarianism, top-down fear, and the dangers of utopian “rescue” plans1:41:25 Artificial General Intelligence, wide access, and the dawn of creative superpowers1:46:13 Creation vs. consumption — the fork in the road for personal success1:50:13 Why future careers will be plural, fast, creative loops1:54:02 Will most people embrace agency, or get left behind by hyperloops? CONNECT WITH DANIEL PRIESTLEYInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielpriestley/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpriestley/Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/DanielPriestleyWebsite: https://www.danielpriestley.com CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out Monarch Money: Use code THEORY at https://monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year! Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Netsuite: Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at https://NetSuite.com/THEORY iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACTGO when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu Mint Mobile: If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at https://mintmobile.com/impact. DISCLAIMER: Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5 gigabyte plan required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes & fees extra. See MINT MOBILE for details. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business: join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER SCALING a business: see if you qualify here. Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox: sign up here. ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast, Tom Bilyeu's Mindset Playbook —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS: apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Representative Adam Smith of Washington's 9th Congressional District, who made headlines recently for his pointed criticisms of progressive urban governance, joins us to talk about what Seattle should expect in the era of Trump.Smith believes local governance failures and missteps in blue cities like Seattle contributed to Trump's big win in 2024. But he joined Seattle Nice to talk about the aftermath. We get into the impact of Trump's MAGA agenda on Seattle and King County, including potentially devastating funding cuts to transportation, education, and social services. Smith explains why he thinks Trump's MAGA movement is a looming disaster for the region. The conversation also gets into strategic resistance to Trump, coalition building, and the complexities of running a liberal stronghold like Seattle. Smith, who has a foot in both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the more centrist New Democrat Coalition, also delves into the evolution of his own political philosophy. Finally, the Congressman explains his endorsement of Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican. Our editor is Quinn Waller. Send us a text! Note that we can only respond directly to emails realseattlenice@gmail.comHEARTH Protection: Do not let fear make your world smaller. Thanks to Uncle Ike's pot shop for sponsoring this week's episode! If you want to advertise please contact us at realseattlenice@gmail.comSupport the showYour support on Patreon helps pay for editing, production, live events and the unique, hard-hitting local journalism and commentary you hear weekly on Seattle Nice.
"When we remember, what we're doing is just making up a story that sounds plausible to us. That's what memories are." Join your host Adam Smith as he speaks to physicist Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of AI. They discuss Hinton's childhood memories and how his family legacy of successful scientists put pressure on Hinton to follow in their footsteps. Throughout the conversation it is clear that Hinton has always had a fascination with understanding how the human brain works. Together with Smith, Hinton discusses the development of AI, how humans can best work with it, as well as his fears of how the technology will continue to develop. Will our world be taken over by AI? Find out in this podcast conversation with the 2024 physics laureate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Adam Smith brings you the last in our series of special podcasts for Mental Health Awareness Week, where Premier League stars discuss the times in their careers where they've struggled with their mental health. In this episode, goalkeeper Jason Steele opens up about suffering back-to-back relegations and nearly quitting the game, to signing for Brighton in the Premier League. Jason speaks very openly and honestly about his mental health. If you've been affected by any of the themes covered in this podcast, advice and organisations that can help can be found at sky.com/viewersupport.As well as listening to us, you can also watch the interviews from this series on Saturday, 17th May on Sky Sports Premier League or find us on the Sky Sports Premier League YouTube channel.
For Mental Health Awareness Week, Adam Smith brings you the latest in our series of special podcasts, where Premier League stars discuss the times in their careers where they've struggled with their mental health. In this episode, Adam is joined by Nottingham Forest's Harry Toffolo, who opens up about a decision that he made early on in football that he feared could have finished his career. Harry also explains the impact his many loan moves had on him and his family, and how he overcame 's now settled and playing his best football at Forest. Harry speaks very openly and honestly about his mental health and problems with betting. If you've been affected by any of the themes covered in this podcast, advice and organisations that can help can be found at sky.com/viewersupport.As well as listening to us, you can also watch the interviews from this series on Saturday, 17th May on Sky Sports Premier League.
He Built An $80 Million Disaster Response In 60 Days Without the Government Adam Smith's Story When Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, one man stepped up—without orders, without funding, and without waiting for permission. Former Green Beret Adam Smith shares how he led a volunteer force of thousands, delivered over 5.5 million pounds of aid, and created an $80 million impact in just 60 days—all while government agencies scrambled. This raw and unfiltered conversation with Jeff Dudan breaks down the failures of federal disaster response, the rise of the "Redneck Air Force," and what real leadership looks like under pressure.
He Built An $80 Million Disaster Response In 60 Days Without the Government Adam Smith's Story When Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, one man stepped up—without orders, without funding, and without waiting for permission. Former Green Beret Adam Smith shares how he led a volunteer force of thousands, delivered over 5.5 million pounds of aid, and created an $80 million impact in just 60 days—all while government agencies scrambled. This raw and unfiltered conversation with Jeff Dudan breaks down the failures of federal disaster response, the rise of the "Redneck Air Force," and what real leadership looks like under pressure.
The Father of Reaganomics, David Stockman, joins us to explore the complex world of international trade and its impact on investors. Key insights include: Challenging conventional wisdom about trade policies Understanding economic forces that drive investment opportunities Gaining expert perspective on global economic trends Stockman provides a candid analysis of current trade strategies, revealing: The true drivers of economic competitiveness Potential pitfalls of protectionist approaches Critical insights for strategic investors The episode cuts through political noise to offer clear, actionable economic intelligence for informed decision-making. Smart investors look beyond headlines to understand the deeper economic forces shaping their financial future. Resources: Check out David Stockman's Contra Corner Newsletter Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/553 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review” For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai Keith Weinhold 0:01 Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, I sit down with a long time White House occupant who was the official economic advisor to an ex president. We get the real deal on tariffs and what they mean to you. Trump gets called out and the ominous sign about what's coming six months from now, today on, Get Rich Education. Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being the flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com Corey Coates 1:14 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education. Keith Weinhold 1:30 Welcome to GRE from Brookline, Massachusetts to Brooklyn, New York and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are listening to get rich education, just another shaved mammal behind this microphone here. I recently spent some time with the father of Reaganomics, David Stockman, in New York City, and sometimes an issue so critical surfaces that real estate investors need to step back and understand a broader force in the economy. Three weeks ago, here, I told you how the second and third way, real estate pays you. Cash flow and ROA are sourced by your tenants employment and the future of your tenants employment is influenced by tariffs and other policies of this presidential administration. This is going to affect rates of inflation and a whole lot of things. Now, an organization called the American Dialect Society, they actually name their word of the year, and this year, it is shaping up to be that word, tariff. In fact, Trump has described that word as the most beautiful word in the dictionary. And I think we all know by now that a tariff is an import tax that gets passed along to consumers when it comes to materials used in real estate construction that's going to affect future real estate prices. Well, several key ones so far were exempted from recent reciprocal tariffs, including steel, aluminum, lumber and copper exempted. Not everything was exempted, but those items and some others were but who knows if even they are going to stay that way. And now, when it comes to this topic. I think a lot of people want to make immediate overreactions in even posture like they're an expert in become an armchair economist, and I guess we all do a little of that, me included. But rather than being first on this and overreacting, let's let the policy which Trump called Liberation Day last month when he announced all these new tariffs. Let's let policy simmer a little and then bring in an expert that really knows what this means to the economy and real estate. So that's why I wanted to set up this discussion for your benefit with the father of Reaganomics and I today. In fact, what did Reagan himself say about tarrifs back in 1987 this is part of a clip that's gained new life this year. It's about a minute and a half. Speaker 1 4:13 Throughout the world, there's a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. Now there are sound historical reasons for this. For those of us who lived through the Great Depression, the memory of the suffering it caused is deep and searing, and today, many economic analysts and historians argue that high tariff legislation passed back in that period called the Smoot Hawley tariff greatly deepened the depression and prevented economic recovery. You see at first when someone says, Let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs, and sometimes for a short while at work. Price, but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is first, home grown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets. And then, while all this is going on, something even worse occurs. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition, so soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst happens, markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industry shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. Keith Weinhold 5:50 Now, from what I can tell you as a listener in the GRE audience, maybe you're split on what you think about tariffs. In fact, we ran an Instagram poll. It asks, generally speaking, tariffs are good or bad? Simply that 40% of you said good, 60% bad. Over on LinkedIn, it was different. 52% said they're good, 48% bad. So it's nearly half and half. And rather than me taking a side here, I like to bring up points that support both sides, and then let our distinguished guests talk, since he's the expert. For example, if a foreign nation wants to access the world's largest economy, the United States, does it make sense for them to pay a fee? I mean, it works that way in a lot of places, when you want to list a product on eBay or Amazon, you pay them a fee. You pay a percentage of the list price in order to get access to a ready marketplace of qualified buyers. All right. Well, that's one side, but then the other side is, come on, let's look at history. Where have tariffs ever worked like Where have they ever been a resounding, long term success? Do they have any history of a sustained, good track record? I generally like free trade. Then let's understand there's something even worse than a steep tariff. There are quotas which are imposed, import limits, trade limits, and then there are even all out import bans. What do terrorists mean to the economy that you are going to live in and that your tenants live in? It's the father of Reaganomics, and I on that straight ahead on Get Rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold. you know what's crazy? Your bank is getting rich off of you. The average savings account pays less than 1% it's like laughable. Meanwhile, if your money isn't making at least 4% you're losing to inflation. That's why I started putting my own money into the FFI liquidity fund. It's super simple. Your cash can pull in up to 8% returns, and it compounds. It's not some high risk gamble like digital or AI stock trading. It's pretty low risk because they've got a 10 plus year track record of paying investors on time in full every time. I mean, I wouldn't be talking about it if I wasn't invested myself. You can invest as little as 25k and you keep earning until you decide you want your money back, no weird lock ups or anything like that. So if you're like me and tired of your liquid funds just sitting there doing nothing, check it out. Text, family to 66866, to learn about freedom, family investments, liquidity fund, again. Text family to 6686 Hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine, at Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. You can start your pre qualification and chat with President Caeli Ridge personally. Start Now while it's on your mind at Ridge lendinggroup.com, that's ridgelendinggroup.com. Hey Robert Helms 9:28 Hey everybody. It's Robert Helms of the real estate guys radio program. So glad you found Keith Weinhold in get rich education. Don't quit your Daydream. Keith Weinhold 9:48 when it comes to White House economic policy like tariffs, taxes and inflation, don't you wish you could talk to someone that's often been inside the White House. Today, we are even better. He was the official advisor to an ex president on economic affairs, a Wall Street and Washington insider and Harvard grad. Today's guest is also a former two time congressman from Michigan. He's a prolific author, and he is none other than the man known as the father of Reaganomics. He was indeed President Ronald Reagan's budget advisor. He was first with us last year, but so much has happened since. So welcome back to the show. David Stockman, David Stockman 10:26 very good to be with you, and you're certainly right about that. I think we're really in uncharted waters. Who could have predicted where we are today, and therefore it's very hard to know where we're heading, but you have to try to peer through the fog and all the uncertainty and the noise and the, you know, day to day ups and downs that's coming from this White House in a way that we've never seen before. And I started on Capitol Hill in 1970 so I've been watching this, you know, for more than a half century, actually, quite a while. And man, it's important to go through all this, but it's sort of uncharted waters. Keith Weinhold 11:04 Sure, it's sort of like you wake up every day and all you do know is that you don't know. And David, when it comes to tariffs, I want to give you my idea, and then I want to ask you about what the tariff objective even is. Now, to be sure, no one is asking me how to advise the President. I'm an international real estate investor, but I do most of my business in the US, and I sure don't have international trade policy experience. It seems better to me, David, that rather than shocking the world with new tariffs that kick in right away, it would have been better to announce that tariffs begin in, say, 90 days, and then give nations space to negotiate before they kick in. That's my prevailing idea. My question to you is, what's the real objective here? What are terrorists proposed to do? Raise revenue, onshore companies merely a negotiation tactic? Is the objective? Something else? David Stockman 12:00 Well, it might be all of the above, but I think it's important to start with a predicate, and that is that the problem is not high tariffs abroad or cheating by foreign competitors or exporters. There is a huge problem of a chronic trade deficit that is not benign, that does reflect a tremendous offshoring of our industrial economy, the loss of good, high paying industrial and manufacturing jobs. So the issue is an important one to address, but I have to say, very clearly, Trump is 100% wrong when he attempts to address it with tariffs, because foreign tariffs aren't the problem. Let me just give a couple of pieces of data on this, and I've been doing a lot of research on this. If you take the top 51 exporters to the United States, our top 51 trade partners, and this is Mexico and Canada and the entire EU and it's all the big far eastern China, Japan, South Korea, India, you know, all the rest of them. If you look at the and that's 90% of our trade, we have 2.9 trillion of imports coming in from all of those countries, and the tariff that we Levy, this is the United States, on those imports, is not high. It's higher than it was in the past, mainly because of what Trump did in the first term, but it's 3.9% now compared to bad times historically, decades and decades ago. That's relatively low. But here's the key point, if we look at the same 51 trading partners in terms of the tariffs they levy on our exports to China and to the EU and to Canada and Mexico and South Korea and all the rest of them. The tariff average, weighted average that they levy is 2.1% so let me restate that the average US tariff is about twice as high 4% around things as what our partners imposed 2% now the larger point is whether it's 4% or 2% doesn't make a better difference. That's not a problem when it comes to 33 trillion of world trade of which we are, you know, the United States engages in about five and a half trillion of that on a two way basis, import, export, in the nexus of a massive global trading system. So he's off base. He's wrong. The target is not high tariffs or unfair foreign trade. Now there are some people who say, Well, you're looking at monetary tariffs. So in other words, the import duty they levy on, you know, exports to South Korea or India or someplace like that, right? And that, the real issue, supposedly, is non tariff barriers. For instance, you know, some governments require you that all procurement by government agencies has to be sourced from a domestic supplier, which automatically shuts out us suppliers who might want that business. Well, the problem is we're the biggest violator of the non tariff barrier in that area. In other words, we have something like $900 billion worth of state, federal and local procurement that's under Buy America policies, which means EU, Mexico, Canada, China, none of them can compete. Now I mention that only as one example, because it's the kind of classic non tariff barrier, as opposed to import duty that some people point to, or they point to the fact that while foreign countries allegedly manipulate their currency, but you know the answer to that is that number one, overwhelming, no doubt about it, largest currency manipulator in the world, is the Federal Reserve. Okay, so it's kind of hard to say that there's a unfair trade problem in the world because of currency manipulation. And then there is, you know, an argument. Well, foreign governments subsidize their exporters. They subsidize their industrial companies, and therefore they can sell things cheaper. And therefore that's another example of unfair trade, but the biggest subsidizer of tech industry, and of a lot of other basic industry in the United States is is the Defense Department. You know, we have a trillion dollar defense budget, and we put massive amounts of dollars in, not only to buying, you know, hardware and weapons and so forth, but huge amounts of R and D that go into developing cutting edge technologies that have a lot of civilian applications that, in fact, we see all over the world. That's why we're doing this broadcast right now. The point is that problem is not high tariffs because they're only low tariffs. The problem is not unfair trade, because there's all kinds of minor little interferences with pure free markets, but both, everybody violates those one way or another due to domestic politics. But it's not a big deal. It doesn't make that big a difference. So therefore, why do we have a trillion dollar trade deficit in the most recent year, and a trade deficit of that magnitude that's been pretty continuous since the 1970s the answer is three or four blocks from the White House, not 10,000 miles away in Beijing or Tokyo. The answer is the Federal Reserve has in the ELLs building there in DC, not far from the White House. Yes, yes, right there, okay, the Eccles building the Fed has a huge, persistent pro inflation bias, sure. And as a result of that, it is pushed the wage levels and the price levels and the cost levels of the US economy steadily higher, and therefore we've become less and less competitive with practically everybody, but certainly a lower wage countries nearby, like Mexico or China, far away. And you know, there's, it's not that simple of just labor costs and wages, because, after all, if you source from China, you've got to ship things 10,000 miles. You've got supply chain management issues, you've got quality control issues, you've got timeliness issues. You have inventory carry costs, because there's a huge pipeline, and of course, you have the actual freight cost of bringing all those containers over. But nevertheless, when you factor all that in, our trade problem is our costs are too high, and that is a function of the pro inflation policies of the Fed. Give one example. Go back just to the period when the economy was beginning to recover, right after the great recession. And you know the crisis of 208209 and I started 210 unit labor costs in manufacturing in the United States. Just from 210 that's only 15 years, are up 55% that's unit labor costs. In other words, if you take wage costs and you subtract productivity growth in that 15 year period, the net wage costs less productivity growth, which is what economists call unit labor costs, are up 53% and as a result of that, we started, you know, maybe with a $15 wage difference between the United States and.China back in the late 1990s that wage gap today is $30 in other words, the fully loaded way at cost of average wages in the United States. And I'm talking about not just the pay envelope, but also the payroll taxes, the you know, charge for pension expense, health care and so forth. The whole fully loaded cost to an employer is about $40 an hour, and it's about $10 in the United States and it's about $10 an hour in China. Now that's the reason why we have a huge trade deficit with China, because of the massive cost difference, and it's not because anybody's cheating. Is because the Fed, in its wisdom, decided, well, you know, everybody will be okay. We're going to inflate the economy at 2% a year. That's their target. It's not like, well, we're trying to get low inflation or zero inflation, but we're not quite making it. No, they're proactive. Answer is, we've got to have 2% or the economy is not going to work. Well, well, 2% sounds well, that's a trivial little number. However, when you do it year after year, decade after decade, for a long period of time, and the other side is not inflating at the same rate, then in dollar terms, you have a problem, and that's where we are today. So this is important to understand, because it means the heart of the whole Trump economic policy, which is trying to bring manufacturing home, trying to bring industry back to the United States, a laudable objective is based on a false diagnosis of why this happened, and it is unleashed ball in the china shop, disruption of global economic flows in relationships that are going to cause unmitigated problems, even disaster in the US economy. Because it's too subtle, when you think about it, the world trade system just goods. Now, we've not even talking about services yet, or capital flows or financing on a short term basis. The World Trade in goods, merchandise, goods only is now 33 trillion. That is a hell of a lot of activity of parts and pieces and raw materials and finished products flowing in. You know, impossible to imagine directions back and forth between dozens and dozens of major economies and hundreds overall. And when you start, you step into that, not with a tiny little increase in the tariff. To give somebody a message. You know, if our tariffs are averaging 4% that's what I gave you a little while ago. And you raise tariffs to 20% maybe that's a message. But Trump didn't do that. He raised the tariff on China to 145% in other words, let's just take one example of a practical product, almost all the small appliances that you can find in Target or even a higher end retail stores United States or on Amazon are sourced in China because of this cost differential. I've been talking about this huge wage differential. So over the last 20, 25, years, little it went there now 80% of all small appliances are now sourced in China, and one, you know, good example would be a microwave oven, and a standard one with not a lot of fancy bells and whistles, is $100 now, when you put 145% tariff on the $100 landed microwave oven is now $245 someone's going to say, Gee, are we going to be able to sell microwaves at $245 they're not certain. I'm talking about a US importer. I'm talking about someone who sells microwaves on Amazon, for instance, or the buyers at Walmart or Target, or the rest of them, they're going to say, wait a minute, maybe we ought to hold off our orders until we see how this is going to shake out. And Trump says he's going to be negotiating, which is another whole issue that we'll get into. It's a lot of baloney. He has no idea what he's doing. Let's just face the facts about this. So if orders are suddenly cut back, and the flow that goes on day in and day out across the Pacific into the big ports in Long Beach in Los Angeles is suddenly disrupted, not in a small way, but in a big way, by 20, 30, 40, 50% six or seven months down the road, we're going to have empty shelves. We're going to have empty warehouses. We're going to have sellers who suddenly realize there's such a scarcity of products that have been hit by this blunderbuss of tariffs that we can double our price and get away with it. Keith Weinhold 25:00 Okay, sure. I mean, ports are designed. Ports are set up for stadium flows, not for surges, and then walls and activity. That just really doesn't work. David Stockman 25:08 And let me just get in that, because you're on a good point. In other words, there is a complicated supply line, supply chain, where, you know, stuff is handed off, one hand to another, ports in China, shipping companies, ports here, rail distribution systems, regional warehouses of you know, people like Walmart and so forth, that whole supply chain is going to be hit with a shock. Everything is going to be uncertain in terms of the formulas that everybody uses right now, you know that you sell 100 units a week, so you got to replace them at the sales rate, and you put your orders in, and know that it takes six weeks to get here, and all this other stuff, all of the common knowledge that's in the supply chain that makes it work, and the handoffs smooth and efficient From one player in the supply chain to the next, it's all going to be disrupted. But the one thing we're going to have is we're going to have shortages, we're going to have empty shelves, and we're going to have price which I'm sure that Trump is not going to start saying price gouging of a you know, right? But that's not price gouging. If you have a you know, go to Florida. We have a hurricane. Where we live in Florida and New York, we have a hurricane. All of a sudden the shelves are empty and there's no goods around, because everybody's been stocking up getting ready for the storm. And then all of a sudden, the politicians are yelling that somebody's price gouging, because they raised their prices in a market that was in disequilibrium. Well, that's not price gouging. That's supply and demand trying to find a new balance basic economics. You know, when the demand is 100 and the supply is 35 okay, but I'm kind of getting ahead here, but I think there's very good likelihood that there's going to be a human cry right before, you know, maybe in the fall or right before Christmas, about price gouging and Trump then saying, Well, I was elected to bring prices down and bring inflation under control. It's out of control because all of these foreigners raised their prices. And no, they did, and it was the tariff that did it, and all the people in the supply chain are trying to take advantage of the temporary disruptions. So I think people have to understand, and I can't say this, and I don't like to say it, because I certainly didn't think the other candidate in the last election had anything to offer in terms of dealing with our serious economic problems in this country. I'm talking about Harris. But the fact is, Donald Trump has had a wrong idea for the last 40 to 50 years of his adult life. In that core idea is that trade deficits are a sign of the other side cheating. They're a sign that you're being exploited or taken advantage of or ripped off, or it's not at all okay. Trade deficits are a consequence of cost differences between different jurisdictions, and to the extent that we've artificially, unnecessarily inflated our costs. We need to fix the problem at the source. He ought to clean house at the Federal Reserve. But the problem is, Trump wants lower interest rates when, in fact, the low interest rates created all the inflation that led to our loss of competitiveness and the huge trade deficits we have today. So to summarize, it is important to understand, do not have faith in Trump's promise that we're going to have a golden age of economic prosperity. We are going to have a economic disaster, and it's a unforced error. It's self inflicted, and it's the result of the wrong fundamental idea of one guy who's in the oval office right now throwing his considerable weight around and pushing the economy into upheaval that really is totally unnecessary. He should have done what he was elected to do, and Matt's work on getting production up and costs down, that's not going to be solved with tariffs. David, I have another important point to bring up. But before we do just quickly, are those two to 4% tariffs you mentioned earlier. Those are the tariff levels pre Trump second term correct. We could clarify that those are for the year 2023 that was the latest full year data that we have with great deal of granularity. Keith Weinhold 29:56 The point I want to bring up is there any history? That tariffs actually work. Some people cite the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act from the 1930s and that it drove us deeper into the Great Depression. And David, on the one hand, when we think about, do tariffs actually work? If Indonesia can make shoes for us for $11 why would we want to onshore an activity like that? That is a good deal for us. And then, on the other hand, you have someone like Nvidia, the world's leading semiconductor company, they announced plans to produce some of their AI supercomputers entirely on American soil for the first time recently. And you have some other companies that have made similar announcements. So that's a small shred of evidence that tariffs could work. But my question is, historically, do tariffs actually work? David Stockman 30:44 That's a great question, and there's a huge history. And you can go back all the way the 19th century, where Donald Trump seems to be preoccupied, but what he fails to recognize is that they worked in the 19th century because they were revenue tariffs. It wasn't an effort to, like, bring jobs back to America. We were booming at the time. Jobs were coming to America, not leaving, and it was the federal government's main source of revenue. Because, as you know, prior to 1913 there was no income tax, right? So that was one thing. Okay, then when we got into the 20th century and host World War Two, it became obvious to people that the whole idea of comparative advantage, going all the way back to Adam Smith, and that enhanced a global trade where people could specialize in whatever their more competitive advantage is, was a Good thing. And so we had round after round of negotiations after World War Two that reduced tariff levels steadily, year by year, decade by decade. So by the time we got to the 1990s when China, then, you know, arose from the disaster of Mao and Mr. Dang took over and created all the export factories and said, It's glorious to be rich and all these things is we got red capitalism. But if we start in the 1990s the average tariff worldwide, now this is weighted average on all goods that are bought and sold or imported and exported, was about 9% and there were have been various free trade deals done since then. For instance, we had NAFTA, and the tariffs on Mexico and Canada and the United States went to zero. We had a free trade deal in 212 with South Korea. This never comes up, but the tariff on South Korean goods coming the US is zero. The tariff on us, exports going to South Korea is zero because we have a free trade agreement, and it's worked out pretty well with South Korea. Now we're not the only ones doing this. Countries all over the world. The EU is a total free trade zone in economy almost as big as the United States that used to have tariff levels between countries. Now it's one big free trade zone. So if you take the entire world economy, that 9% weighted average tariff of the early 90s, which was down from maybe 2025, 30, pre World War Two in this Smoot Hawley era, was down to 2.25% by the time that Donald Trump took office, the first time around in 2017 now 2.25% is really a rounding error. It's hardly when you have $33 trillion worth of goods moving around, you know, container ships and bulk carriers and so forth all around the world, and air freight and the rest of it, rail. 2% tariff is not any kind of big deal, as I say in some of the things I write, it's not a hill of beans. So somehow, though 45 years ago, Trump got the idea that tariffs were causing a problem and that we had trade deficits, not because our costs were going up owing to bad monetary policy, but because the other guy was cheating. Remember, this is Trump's whole view of the world. It's a zero sum game. I win, you lose, and if I'm not winning, is because you're cheating. Okay? In other words, I'm inherently going to win. America's inherently going to win unless the other guy is cheating. Now, Trump sees the world the same way that I think he looked at electrical and plumbing contractors in the Bronx, you know, in the 1980s and 1990s when he was developing his various Real Estate projects. These are pretty rough and tumble guys. It's a wild, easy way to make a living. So there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of pretty rough baseball that's played that mentality that the other guy is always trying to screw me, the other guy's always cheating, the other guy's preventing me from winning, is, is his basic mentality. And it's not Applicable. It's not useful at all to try to understand the global economy. Try to understand why America's $29 trillion economy is not chugging along as strongly and as productively as it should be, why real wages are not making the gains that workers should be experiencing and so forth. So he ought to get out of this whole trade, tariff trade war thing, which he started, I don't know how he does, it's a little late, and focus on the problems on the home front. In other words, our trade problem has been caused by too much spending, too much borrowing, too much money printing on the banks of the Potomac. It's not basically caused in Beijing or Tokyo or Seoul or even Brussels, the European Union. And we need to get back to the basic and the real culprit, which is the Federal Reserve and its current chairman, Paul, if he wants to attack somebody, go after the Fed. Go after Paul. But ought to give them a mandate to bring inflation to zero and to stop fooling around with everything else and to stop monetizing the public debt that is buying government debt, take care of your own backyard first before you start taking, yeah, sure, yeah, exactly. You know, I've been in this for a long time. I start, as I said, I started on Capitol Hill. There have been a lot of protectionist politicians, but they always argued free trade is good, but it has to be fair trade. And you know, we have this example in our steel industry, for instance, where we producers abroad are competing unfairly for one reason or another. But the point I'm getting to is they always said this is an exceptional case. Normally we would go for free trade, but we got to have protection here. We got to have a temporary quota. Even when I was in the Reagan administration, we had a big argument about voluntary quotas on Japanese car exports, and I was totally against it. I thought the US industry needed to get its act together, get its costs down. Needed to get the UAW under control, because it had pushed wages, you know, way, way, way too high terms of total cost. But they argued, yeah, well, you're right, but we have to have 10 years in order to allow things to be improved and adjusted and catch up. So this is only temporary. This is just this. Yes, this is protectionism, but it's temporary. It's expedient that we can avoid and so therefore we'll make an exception. But there is no one, and most of these people were, you know, in the payroll of the unions, or they were congressmen from south to South Carolina going to bad for the textile industry, or congressman from Ohio going to bat for the steel industry, whatever, but there was no one who ever came along and said tariffs are big, beautiful things, and we need to have permanent high tariffs, because that's the way we're going to get prosperity back in United States. It's a dumb idea. It's wrong. It's disproven by history and people. Even though Trump has done a lot of things that I like you know, he's got rid of dei he's got rid of all of this green energy, climate crisis nonsense, all of that that he's done is to the good when you come to this basic question, how do we get prosperity in America? The answer is, through free market capitalism, by getting the government out of the way, by balancing the budget and by telling the Fed not to, you know, inflate the economy to the disadvantage that it has today. That's how you get there. And Trump is not a real Republican. Trump is basically what I call a status. He's for big government, right wing status. Okay, there's left wing, Marxist status, then there's right wing status. But you know, all of this tariff business is going to create so much corruption that it's almost impossible to imagine, because every day there's someone down there, right now, I can guarantee it at the, you know, treasury department or at Commerce department saying, but we got special circumstances here in terms of the parts that we're making for aircraft that get assembled in South Korea or something, and we need special relief. Yes, every industry you're doing is putting in for everybody's going to be there the lobby. This is the greatest dream that the Washington lobbyist community ever had. Trump is literally saying he put this reciprocal tariff. You saw the whole schedule. That he had on that easel in the White House on April 2, immigration day. It was called Liberation Day. I called it Demolition Derby Day. There was a reciprocal tariff for every single country in the world based on a phony formula that said, if we have $100 million deficit with somebody, half of that was caused by cheating. So we're going to put a tariff in place closes half of the difference. I mean, just nonsense, Schoolboy idiocy. Now it is. I mean, I know everybody said, Oh, isn't it great? We've finally got rid of the bad guys, Biden, he's terrible, and the Democrats, I agree with all that, but we replaced one set of numb skulls with another set. Unfortunately, Republicans know better, but they're so intimidated, apparently buffaloed by Trump at the moment, that they're going along with this. But they know you don't put 145%tariff on anything. I mean, it's just nuts. David, I feel like you're telling us what you really think and absolutely love that. Keith Weinhold 41:04 Interestingly, there is a Ronald Reagan clip about tariffs out there in a speech that he gave from Camp David, and it's something that's really had new life lately. In fact, we played the audio of that clip before you came onto the show today, Reagan said that he didn't like tariffs and that they hurt every American worker and consumer as Reagan's economic advisor in the White House. Did you advise him on that? David Stockman 41:27 Yes, I did. And also I can give you a little anecdote that I think people will find interesting. Yeah, the one time that he deviated in a big way from his free trade commitments was when he put the voluntary export quota on the Japanese auto industry. That was big. I don't remember the exact number, but I think it said they couldn't export more than 1.2 million cars a year, or something like that the United States. And the number was supposed to adjust over time, but we had huge debates in the Cabinet Room about those things, and at the end of the day, here's what he said. He said, You know, I've always been for open trade, free trade. I've always felt it has to be fair trade. But, you know, in this case, the Japanese industry came to us and asked for voluntary quotas, so I didn't put up a trade barrier. I'm only accommodating their request. Well, the Japanese did come to him and ask. They did, but only when they were put up to it by the protectionists in the Reagan administration who, on this took them on the side, you know, their negotiators and maybe their foreign minister. I can't remember exactly who commerce secretary and said, If you don't ask for voluntary quotas, we're going to unleash Capitol Hill and you're going to get a real nasty wall put up against your car. So what will it be? Do you want to front for voluntary quotas? Are we going to unleash Congress? So they came to Reagan and said they were the Japanese industry said they're recommending that he impose voluntary restraints on auto exports. That was just a ruse. He wasn't naive, but he believed what you told him. He believed that everybody was honest like he was, and so he didn't understand that the Japanese industry that was brought to meet with him in the Oval Office had been put up to, it been threatened with, you know, something far worse, mandatory quote is imposed by Congress. But anyway, it's a little anecdote. What happened? On the other hand, he continued to articulate the case for small government sound money. We had deficit problems, but he always wanted a balanced budget. It was just hard to get there politically. And he believed that capitalism produces prosperity if you let capitalism work and keep the government out of the marketplace. And there is no bigger form of intervention and meddling and disruption in the capitalist system, in the free market, in the marketplace, than quotas on every product in every country at different levels. They're going to have 150 different countries negotiating bilaterally deals with the United States. That's the first thing that's ridiculous. They can't happen. The second thing is they're going to come up with deals that don't amount to a hill of beans, but they'll say, we have a deal. The White House will claim victory. Let me just give one example. As we know, one of the big things that Trump did in the first administration was he renegotiated NAFTA. And NAFTA was the free trade agreement between Mexico, Canada, United States. Before he started in 2017 the trade deficit of the US with Mexico and Canada combined with 65 billion. And he said, That's too big, and we got to fix NAFTA. We have got to rebalance the provisions so that the US comes out, not on the short end of the stick 65 billion. So they negotiated for about a year and a half, they announced a new deal, which he then renamed the United States, Mexico, Canada agreement, usmca, and, you know, made a big noise about it, but it was the same deal with the new name. They didn't change more than 2% of the underlying machinery and structure, semantics. Well now, so now we fast forward to 2024 so the usmca Trump's pride and joy, his the kind of deal that he says he's going to seek with every country in the world is now four years into effect. And what is the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico today, it's 230 5 billion okay? It's four times higher now than it was then when he put it in place. Why? Because we have a huge trade deficit with Mexico. Why because, you know, average wages there are less than $10 an hour, and they're $40 an hour here. That's why it has nothing to do with a bad trade deal. It has to do with cost differences. Keith Weinhold 46:27 David, this has been great, and as we're winding down here, we have a lot of real estate investor listeners tell us what this administration's overall policies, not just tariffs, but overall policies, mean for future employment, and then tell us about your highly regarded contra corner newsletter. David Stockman 46:45 Well, those are that's a big question. I think it doesn't mean good, because if they were really trying to get America back on track our economy, they would be fighting inflation tooth and nail to get it down to zero. They would be working day and night to implement what Musk came up with in the doge that is big spending cuts and balancing the budget. They're not doing that. They're letting all these announcements being made, but they're not actually cutting any spending. They would not be attempting to impose this huge apparatus of tariffs on the US economy, but they're not doing that. So I'm not confident we were going in the wrong direction under Biden, for sure, and we're going in an even worse direction right now under Trump. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, I put out a daily newsletter called David stockman's Country corner. You can yes signers on the internet, but this is what we write about every day, and I say A plague on both their houses, the Democrats, the Republicans. They're all, in many ways, just trying to justify government meddling, government spending, government borrowing, government money printing, when we would do a lot better if we went in the opposite direction, sound money, balanced budgets, free markets and so forth, so. And in the process, I'm not partisan. You know, I was a Republican congressman. I was a budget director of the Reagan administration. I have been more on the Republican side, obviously, over my career than the Democrats, but now I realize that both parties are part of the problem, and I call it the uni party when push comes to shove, the uni party has basically been for a lot of wars abroad and a lot of debt at home, and a lot of meddling in the economy That was unnecessary. So if you look at what I write every day, it tries to help people see through the pretenses and the errors of the unit party, Democrats and Republicans. And in the present time, I have to focus on Trump, because Trump is making all the noise. Keith Weinhold 48:59 100% Yes, it sure has kept life and the news cycle exciting, whether someone likes that news or not. Well, David, this has been great. In fact, it sounds a lot like what Reagan might have told me, perhaps because you were a chief economic informant for him, smaller government, letting the free trade flow and lower inflation. Be sure to check out David stockman's contra corner newsletter if you like what we've been talking about today, just like it was last year, David, it's been a real pleasure having you on GRE today. David Stockman 49:30 Well, thank you very much. And these are important issues, and we've got to stay on top of them. Keith Weinhold 49:41 Oh, yeah. Well, David Stockman truly no mincing words. He doesn't like tariffs. In summary, telling GRE listeners that the problem with trade imbalances is inflation attack that instead quell inflation, don't impose tariffs. A lot of developing nations and China have distinct advantages over manufacturing in the United States, besides having the trained labor and all the factories and systems in place, think about how many of these nations have built in lower costs they don't have to deal with these regulatory agencies, no EPA, no OSHA, and not even a minimum wage law to have to comply with. And here in the US get this, 80% of American workers agree that the US would benefit from more manufacturing jobs, but almost 75% disagree that they would personally be better off working in a factory themselves. That's according to a joint Cato Institute in YouGov survey. It's sort of like how last century, Americans lamented the demise of the family farm, yeah, but yet, they sure didn't want to work on a farm themselves. Now there are some types of manufacturing, like perhaps pharmaceuticals or computer chips that could likely be onshore, because those items are high value items. Their value can exceed the cost of being produced in the USA, but a lot of these factory goods, not again. If these topics interest you do a search for David stockman's contra corner, or you can directly visit David stockman's contra corner.com. Big thanks to the father of Reaganomics, David Stockman on the show this week. As for next week, we're back more toward the center of real estate investing. Until then, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream. Y Unknown Speaker 51:42 nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC Keith Weinhold 52:02 You know, whenever you want the best written real estate and finance info, oh, geez, today's experience limits your free articles access and it's got paywalls and pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers, it's not so great. So then it's vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters. And I write every word of ours myself. 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Did Jesus really tell people to hate their mom & dad? I thought we were supposed to love everyone. How does this fit with all that “love your enemy” stuff? Is Jesus really commanding us to hate people? What are we missing? Why is He using such harsh language? And why in the world would you bring this up on Mother's Day? If you're new with us, let us know how we can be praying for you, we invite you to fill out an online Connect Card by visiting https://southhillschurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/91550—If you are looking for what is next for you, we invite you to fill out an online “Next Steps” card by visiting https://southhillschurch.churchcenter.com/people/forms/672517To give with us select the Give tab on the Church Center App or visit https://southhills.org/giving/ and select the Corona Fund or Corona BOW Fund—Visit our Linktree to find out more about everything mentioned in today's message or follow along with the message slides:https://linktr.ee/SouthHillsCorona —To RSVP for On-Campus Events select the Events tab on the Church Center App or visit https://southhills.org/corona/
In Episode 1 of I'm in This Movie, Chelsea introduces the series concept and once again finds an excuse to talk about her favorite movie, Back to the Future! Adam Smith's review for Back to the Future on Empire Contact Chelsea Instagram - @ChelseaLeeH17 Letterboxd An American Workplace | A Retrospective The Office Podcast Crossroads of Destiny | An Avatar: TLA Universe Podcast Cinescope Instagram - @cinescopepodcast YouTube Website Email thecinescopepodcast@gmail.com
Tariffs are back in the headlines—so what should Christians make of them? Economist Dr. Kenneth Barnes joins us to unpack how trade policies, rising prices, and global tensions intersect with our everyday work and Gospel witness. In a world where economic headlines stir fear, we explore how the gospel reframes our perspective and response. This timely conversation will challenge you to think biblically about policy, productivity, and peace. Do you like The Faith & Work Podcast? Be sure to subscribe! Now available on iTunes and Spotify. HIGHLIGHTS On Economies of Mutuality "That has also uniquely given us the ability to create technology. And that's important because it's technology that ultimately creates wealth. And so what we do with that and how we treat our neighbors... all comes down to our means of exchange. And if our means of exchange is fair, if it's just, if it's genuinely relational and mutual, everybody benefits." On God's Vision for the Economy Ross Chapman: "If you had to summarize God's vision for economics in a sentence or two, what would it be? How could you make that as clear and understandable based on scripture? What would you say that is?" Dr. Kenneth Barnes: "I would say: Just Flourishing." RESOURCES Download the Episode Transcript Here Books By Dr. Barnes: NEW - Sabbath as Resilience: Spiritual Refreshment for a Stressed-Out World Redeeming Capitalism Economic Wisdom Project Free Denver Institute Download - Deep Rest: A Study of Sabbath Harvard Study on Flourishing - Explore the 6 Dimensions of Flourishing QUOTES “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations “God doesn't need your good works, but your neighbor does.” - Martin Luther DICTIONARY OF TERMS Worker par excellence: being an example of excellence; superior; preeminent Egality: a state of being essentially equal or equivalent; equally balanced Abberation: a departure from what is normal, usual, or expected, typically one that is unwelcome "Bretton Woods Agreement":The creation of a fixed currency exchange rate pegged to the gold standard Macheavellian: cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous, especially in politics Prescient: having or showing knowledge of events before they take place Impetus: the force or energy with which a body move נוּחַ (nuach): The Hebrew word meaning "to rest" or "to be at rest". It can also imply settling down, remaining, or finding repose.
For a long time, Republicans and many Democrats espoused some version of free-trade economics that would have been familiar to Adam Smith. But Donald Trump breaks radically with that tradition, embracing a form of protectionism that resulted in his extremely broad and chaotic tariff proposals, which tanked markets and deepened the fear of a global recession. John Cassidy writes The New Yorker's The Financial Page column, and he's been covering economics for the magazine since 1995. His new book, “Capitalism and Its Critics: A History,” takes a long view of these debates, and breaks down some of the arguments that have shaped the U.S.'s current economic reality. “Capitalism itself has put its worst face forward in the last twenty or thirty years through the growth of huge monopolies which seem completely beyond any public control or accountability,” Cassidy tells David Remnick. “And young people—they look at capitalism and the economy through the prism of environmentalism now in a way that they didn't in our generation.”
For a long time, Republicans and many Democrats espoused some version of free-trade economics that would have been familiar to Adam Smith. But Donald Trump breaks radically with that tradition, embracing a form of protectionism that resulted in his extremely broad and chaotic tariff proposals, which tanked markets and deepened the fear of a global recession. John Cassidy writes The New Yorker's The Financial Page column, and he's been covering economics for the magazine since 1995. His new book, “Capitalism and Its Critics: A History,” takes a long view of these debates, and breaks down some of the arguments that have shaped the U.S.'s current economic reality. “Capitalism itself has put its worst face forward in the last twenty or thirty years through the growth of huge monopolies which seem completely beyond any public control or accountability,” Cassidy tells David Remnick. “And young people—they look at capitalism and the economy through the prism of environmentalism now in a way that they didn't in our generation.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices