Economic Update: Economics and Red States: Arlie Hochschild

Summary

Podcast Summary: Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff - "Economics and Red States: Arlie Hochschild" (September 30, 2016)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Economic Update features host Richard D. Wolff and special guest sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. Wolff begins with economic news updates and transitions to an in-depth interview with Hochschild about her acclaimed book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. The episode centers on understanding the emotional and cultural roots of right-wing sentiment in America, particularly in southern "red states" like Louisiana, and explores possibilities for bridge-building across the political divide.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Economic News and Announcements (00:00–29:58)

• Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Leadership (03:00–07:00):

  • Wolff discusses Corbyn’s secure and growing hold on the UK Labour Party, highlighting a global shift away from establishment politics:
    • "The old establishment ... is in deep trouble, losing supporters at an accelerating rate with people looking for alternatives." [06:45]

• Uber and Lyft Unionization (07:00–13:00):

  • 14,000 NYC Uber and Lyft drivers seek union representation, mirroring historic labor movements in the taxi industry.
  • Wolff frames the "gig economy" as a retread of old capitalist strategies to avoid labor protections:
    • "This old capitalist story is being rerun in what claims to be a new industry..." [12:59]

• Kentucky’s State Pension Lawsuit (13:00–17:00):

  • Kentucky’s public pension system faces underfunding and a landmark court ruling allows retirees to sue for mismanagement.
  • Wolff warns of a broader crisis in public pensions:
    • "It is already a crisis in Puerto Rico. It's a crisis in Illinois. It is a serious problem..." [16:59]

• Health Insurance Costs & ACA (17:00–26:00):

  • Despite the Affordable Care Act, 10% of Americans remain uninsured; costs have doubled for employer-based coverage since 2004.
  • The cost of ACA plans is rising faster than wages:
    • "If your wages go up by 2.5% and the cost of medical care ... goes up by 9% ... the sense so many Americans have that they keep falling behind ... is a correct understanding of the economic realities." [25:27]

• Wealth Inequality and 2016 Election Debate (27:00–28:55):

  • Wolff points out neither Clinton nor Trump addressed global inequality:
    • "The 62 richest people in the world together have more wealth than the bottom half of the population ... neither candidate spoke about it." [27:49]

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2. Interview with Arlie Russell Hochschild (29:58–57:20)

Introduction (29:58–31:30)

• Wolff introduces Hochschild’s credentials and her new book, noting its relevance to the 2016 political climate.

Research Motivations and Method (31:31–34:40)

• Hochschild describes her quest to understand the rise of the American right, especially among southern whites:
  • "I live in Berkeley, CA ... My friends, my husband ... agree with me ... and then I turn on the radio ... and I felt disconnected. I didn't get it." [31:39]
• She embedded herself in "the super South," particularly Louisiana, to explore the "red state paradox:"
  • "The poorest states...that also receive more federal dollars in aid than they give in taxes, so resistant and hostile to the federal government ... I didn't get that." [33:18]

Case Studies and Personal Stories (34:41–40:21)

• Story of Lee Sherman, a former factory worker involved in toxic waste dumping, who went on to join the Tea Party despite being harmed by deregulation:

  • "I'm scratching my head. I don't get it. ... I'm seeing many people cannot breathe clean air, cannot drink clean water, but they're against regulators and government." [37:32]

• Hochschild’s method revolves around taking down her "political alarm system," approaching with empathy.

Analysis: Why Distrust Government? (40:22–45:04)

• Hochschild identifies three barriers to trust in the state among her interviewees:
  1. Perception of Government as “the North”: Seen as outside, judging, and culturally alien.
  2. Captured State: The state serves corporate interests, especially oil and petrochemicals; government is essentially "do-nothing" and has been "bought off."
  3. Intersection with Personal Economic Strategies: As family finances strain, there’s anger at taxes funding ineffective governance.
  • "People feel ... grateful to the company. ... Meanwhile, the state’s job is to regulate these industries ... but [it’s] not doing its job at all." [42:57]

The "Deep Story" (45:05–51:04)

• The "deep story" for the right: hardworking whites feel stuck waiting for the American Dream, while others (blacks, women, immigrants, even animals) are seen as “cutting the line” with government help.
  • "The deep story is a story that feels true ... you're waiting in line for the American Dream ... and then you see someone cutting ahead ..." [45:44]
• Barack Obama symbolizes favoritism toward those “line cutters,” deepening the sense of alienation and resentment.

Trump as “Rescuer” (51:05–52:35)

• Trump is perceived as someone who doesn’t shame white blue-collar workers and “tells it like it is” against their perceived competitors.
  • "He’s saving them from shame. ... Paradoxically, he who shames everyone is sort of carved out a little area of non-shame." [51:38]

Building Bridges & Empathy (52:36–57:20)

• Wolff asks how critics of capitalism can build bridges to those Hochschild studied.
• Hochschild stresses the need for genuine interpersonal understanding and empathy:
  • "You have to come with an openness. Take your own alarm system off ..." [53:58]
  • "It's changed me because I see more possibility for crossover." [54:30]
• She and Wolff find hope in shared concerns (campaign finance, environment):
  • "One guy I spoke to said: 'Let’s get money out of politics.' He is Tea Party ... He wants to get money out of politics. Okay, campaign finance reform, we've got that one." [54:44]
• Hochschild’s prescription: face-to-face engagement, shared activities, and mutual listening as the basis for a "new national conversation":
  • "We're stuck in media enclaves and technological enclaves and geographic enclaves ... and I think something good could happen." [56:04]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Richard D. Wolff on the Gig Economy:
  “This old capitalist story is being rerun in what claims to be a new industry, a gig economy, and all the other fancy phrases.” [12:59]

• Arlie Hochschild on Method:
  “First, take my own political alarm system off … so that the purpose of talking is learning, is getting curious. And for climbing what I came to call an empathy wall to the other side so I could understand ...” [33:42]

• On the Red State Paradox:
  “Why throughout the country are the poorest states ... so resistant and hostile to the federal government? I didn’t get that.” [33:18]

• On the Deep Story:
  "The deep story is a story that feels true. ... you're waiting in line for the American Dream ... and then you see someone cutting ahead..." [45:44]

• On Trump’s Appeal:
  "He is providing a shame-free avenue for whites should they need [government programs]. ... He's saving them from shame." [51:38]

• On Cross-Political Bridges:
  "It's changed me because I see more possibility for crossover." [54:30]

• Richard Wolff’s Closing Thought:
  "The opportunities to build something in the United States across these stylized red, blue differentiations is enormous. And we're barely at the beginning." [56:13]

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Important Timestamps

• 03:00–07:00 — Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party
• 07:00–13:00 — Uber/Lyft drivers unionize, history lessons on labor
• 13:00–17:00 — Kentucky pension fund lawsuit and implications
• 17:00–26:00 — Health insurance trends, ACA, and rising costs
• 27:00–28:55 — Stark wealth inequality and lack of debate focus
• 29:58–31:30 — Introduction of Arlie Hochschild
• 31:31–34:40 — Research motivations; moving beyond "blue enclaves"
• 34:41–40:21 — The case of Lee Sherman and conflicted Tea Party environmentalists
• 40:22–45:04 — Dissecting distrust of government; the “captured state”
• 45:05–51:04 — The "deep story" and the emotional logic of the right
• 51:05–52:35 — Trump, shame, and symbolic rescue
• 52:36–57:20 — Building dialogue and empathy; closing reflections

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Episode Tone and Style

Throughout the episode, Richard Wolff maintains his critical, explanatory style, making complex economic subjects approachable, while Arlie Hochschild brings warmth, empathy, and narrative skill to her sociological storytelling.

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For Listeners:
This conversation is a must-listen for anyone trying to understand the emotional roots of America’s divisions, and for those interested in creating constructive dialogue beyond traditional political fault lines. Hochschild’s fieldwork and insights, coupled with Wolff’s economic analysis, illuminate the human stories beneath the headlines.

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Transcript

[A]

Sam. Saint gonna change.

[B]

Welcome friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs, our incomes, our debts, those of our children and those coming down the road to meet us whether we want it or not. Unless, of course, we do something about it. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life and I currently teach at the New School University in New York City. As has happened a good bit, I opened the program with some announcements of interest I hope to many of you, so bear with me very briefly as I go through them. They all have to do today with our website, something we update every day, we maintain at absolutely no cost available to you 247 and I hope you make use of them the first one is democracyatwork.info and the second one is rdwolff with two Fs.com Here are some special things that these websites will make available to you if you visit them. The first if you go and you look at democracyatwork.info calendar, you will see a listing of events where I'll be speaking in various parts of the United States, sometimes with guests that have been on this program, sometimes on my own. And if I come to your area it would be a good time for us to meet and I would love to meet you. In the coming weeks I will be in the Bay area in California, October 2nd in Oakland, October 5th in San Francisco. A week or two later I will be in the Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Florida area, speaking at a university and speaking also as a guest of WMNF, etc. In that area. So if you're interested, all the particulars are [e-mail] calendar. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor or an endorser of this program, please visit the same website, democracyatwork.info sponsor to learn about how you can do that and how we can work a relationship with you around that kind of support. And finally, a new one as an extension of the democracyatwork.info website. I'm excited to be able to announce the forthcoming launch of Co Op Talk, a news blog dedicated to the advancement of worker cooperatives and as an alternative way to organize business from the top down, hierarchical capitalist way that we discuss so much on this program. Co Op Talk will be rolling out original content aimed at showing how and why worker cooperatives are a feasible solution to our current economic system. We are looking for volunteers. We are looking for people involved in co ops who might like to share their stories and their struggles with with us. We want to become the go to place where news about analysis of discussions around worker co ops will be featured and a place where people who are academics studying it, who are people who want to start such a co op. This is a place we hope you will go to learn to find friends and advisors a general all purpose devotion to the worker co op as an institution. If you're interested in getting involved in any way, please email the person in charge, Paul Sliker at and here's the following address blog blog blogemocracyatwork.info. once again, any questions, thoughts, volunteer anything about this project Co op talk should be sent to blogemocracyatwork.info all right, let's turn then to the updates for this final part of September 2016. Having talked about him for a while, I now want to report on the latest regarding a fellow named Jeremy Corbyn. C O R B Y N as many of you know, he is often referred to as the British equivalent of Bernie Sanders here in the United States. There is of course a difference and the difference is all important that Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist contesting for the leadership of the Labour Party in Great Britain, was elected by a majority of 59 plus percent last year and that has changed British politics for a long time. But many in his party, those associated more with the Tony Blair type of leadership of the Labour Party, were very upset by Mr. Corbyn's rising to the top of the Labour Party. By the way, done with the entrance into the Labour Party of hundreds of thousands of new members, mostly young people who hadn't been involved in British politics at all until that time. Anyway, the struggle inside the Labour Party came to a head with another election that was finally decided about a week and a half ago. And guess what? Despite the effort of those associated with Tony Blair, the right wing, if you like, of the Labour Party, not only did Corbyn win again, but he won with a larger majority than than the first time around. He got 62 plus percent of the vote to his opponents, 38%. What does this mean? It means that the Leadership of the 2nd Most Important Party in Great Britain is now firmly in the hands of the equivalent there of what such a victory by Bernie Sanders and his supporters might have meant here in the United States. And therefore it's something to think about because it's another sign that the old establishment that has governed places like Britain, Western Europe, North America, Japan is in deep trouble, losing supporters at an accelerating rate with people looking for alternatives. Where these people will find their way is yet open. We will have to see and we will be monitoring it. But these folks, like Jeremy Corbyn in England, are becoming a beacon for all kinds of disaffected voters and citizens in that country. And that is going to change world politics, not only the politics of a country like Great Britain. Second update for this week. Very interesting. 14,000 drivers for the car services Uber and Lyft here in New York City have signed cards that they wish to be represented by the Transit Workers Union here in the United States and in New York City. This is a sign that is extremely important. It's a sign that the fantasy, which is all it ever was, that these new car services like Uber or like Lyft and there are others where some kind of technological event is put to rest. They weren't technological events. True, they were using software and apps in a new way that was somewhat different from the dispatching done by cab companies for decades before. But they weren't really about the new technology since the cab companies have now adopted that kind of technology and are using it pretty much themselves. What it was always about was an attempt to get around trade unions. So I want to recoup that history so no one makes the mistake again. In the early days of cab companies, there was a problem. Everybody got involved in the cab business. It was easy. You just had to know how to have, how to get a driver's license and drive a car. And ipso facto you could offer taxicab services and many people did. It was a chaotic industry full of little individual and not so little group activities. Not much care was taken, who the driver was, how competent he or she might be, what happened if there was an accident, etc. So pretty quickly complaints began to rise. Riders were injured, riders didn't like the attitudes of the driver, driver was unable to manage the job real well, etc. Etc. And then there was gouging of prices, etc. So guess what happened? Driving became difficult. Companies that had a lot of drivers began to squeeze the drivers and the drivers reacted by forming unions. This story is as old as capitalism has been around. The workers to defend themselves, formed the union and the customers to defend themselves, demanded that the government get involved because they were taking too many risks riding in these cabs, that the driver may not have been trained enough, there may not have been insurance in the event that there was an accident, et cetera, et cetera. Make a Long story short, the government got involved to make sure that taxicab riding was safe to for the public. And the way they did that was to pass a whole lot of rules. The driver had to be vetted, the car had to be insured, there had to be all kinds of inspections to make sure the car was safe to drive in, etc. Etc. And it was also at that point that the unions emerged and put pressure on the government to make sure that the union could organize, these workers, could approach them and say, look, if you would rather be protected by a union, we're here. You can do it. And a deal was struck, as happened so often. A deal between the workers and their union and the companies running the cabs and the government. And here's what was done. A price was established for a taxi ride, a price that was sufficient for the company to make a profit, for the workers to earn a decent living and to have proper benefits, and for the public to have the assurance that the ride was safe, the driver was properly trained, etc. And so it was for decades. This worked out perfectly well. What Uber and Lyft represent is an attempt to get away from this arrangement. They would offer the ride more cheaply. They would offer it under different circumstances. And how were they able to do that? Because they had the new app and the new technology. Not at all. That didn't make much of a difference. What they had was drivers who were not part of a union, at least not yet, and whom they could treat in that manner, cutting their wages, cutting their benefits. And they weren't governed by the government's rules because they weren't technically a taxi company, they were a riding service. So their drivers, who knows how much training they got, who knew whether they had proper insurance. And all that has happened since they began is they've made a lot of money, they've made high profits because they don't pay their drivers very well, because they don't have to pay the costs of what the government regulations demand of the taxis, etc. Etc. And now that's changing. Why? Because people are having problems with Uber and Lyft. What problems? The very problems they had with taxis way back when. And the end result is governments are getting more involved in regulating the Uber Lyft type of service. And the workers are joining unions, like the 14,000 in New York joining the ATU this last few weeks. And I just wanted to make sure everybody understood how this old capitalist story is being rerun in what claims to be a new industry, a gig economy. And all the other fancy phrases. Next economic update has to do with the great state of Kentucky. Kentucky maintains a retirement program for local and state employees, of whom there are currently covered 355,000 citizens in the state of Kentucky. There's something called KRS, Kentucky Retirement Services. That is the agency of the Kentucky government whose job it is to collect from everybody's paycheck who works for a state or local entity a portion of their weekly pay and to invest it so as to accumulate pension funds so that when folks reach the age of retirement, 65 or so, they can get the pension. That was part of why they took the job. That was part of how they planned out their lives. Well, it turns out that these retirement services, and this is true in every state in the union, get into very cozy relationships. I'm choosing my words here carefully. Cozy relationships with investment companies, stock brokerages, banks. Why? Because if you can get a contract with the retirement services in a state, you can make very big fee income by managing how to invest all that money that is taken from all the public employees. And you can sometimes get even corruption. Can you imagine in which monies are given to people for investment that may not be invested very well because the people doing it are mostly interested in those fees and not at all concerned about how well the investments do because they get the fees. Either way, what is at stake is whether or not the state in question can honor the pensions owed to and promised to the state employees. So it was very interesting when a community in the northern part of Kentucky, Fort Wright, to be specific, went into court claiming that the Kentucky Retirement Services had made imprudent investments and also illegal investments, and that they were worried that the pensions would not be funded by for their citizens who were working for the government of Fort Wright, Kentucky. And it went all the way up to the highest court in Kentucky, which decided. And that's why it's on my agenda today, which decided, and I believe this is a first in America, that the retirement services are not immune from lawsuits, that they can be questioned, they can be challenged to see whether they are in fact managing the money for the employees of the state and local government the way they were supposed to. It is my guess that many communities in many states across the country who should be worried about the condition of their pensions. Let me remind you, for example, that the largest fund within the Kentucky system is badly underfunded. That is, it doesn't have anywhere near as much money as in it as would be necessary to meet the obligations it is legally required to meet. And that is not unusual. It is already a crisis in Puerto Rico. It's a crisis in the state of Illinois. It is a serious problem of what has happened to the pensions of Americans that they thought were securely managed and safe in state governments, and it turns out, not so much. Next update, I want to report to you about health insurance, something Americans are very, very concerned about, and rightly so. And I found a very interesting summary of the situation in the Consumer reports magazine for November 2016. So if you're interested in the details behind what I'm about to report to you, the that's where you can go to that November issue of Consumer Reports and get the details. But here is the crucial information. First of all, even though President Obama and others have spoken about the improvement of the health insurance situation in the United States and there has been some improvement, the reality is that as I'm speaking to you today, and based on statistics from the Kaiser Family foundation, one of the most respected sources of statistical studies of American health insurance and American health services, According to them, 10% of the American population remains without any medical insurance at all. That's 32 and a half million people for the richest country in the world, or at least one of the richest countries in the world. That's an extraordinary statement to make and tells you something about how far we have come, or better not come. But even more important for most Americans is what has happened to the amount of money they have to spend as individuals to get medical insurance. 49%, roughly half of the American people get their health insurance from their employer. That is, it comes with the job that they have. So half of our people get insurance in that way. What do they pay out of pocket? How much is it costing them? And here the statistics that I'm about to report to you really should make your hair stand on end in terms of the implications for our society. In 2004, according to the Kaiser Family foundation, family coverage, which is what most workers have cost the family, $2,600 a year. That was the outlay the family had to make that covered the deductibles the CO pays, things like that. 2015, roughly 11 years later, the last year for which we have statistics that had risen from the 2,600 in 2004 to get ready $4,900, it had doubled the amount of money in 10, 11 years that a family has to pay, the half of Americans who have health insurance at their job had doubled. This has to extraordinarily stretch family finances, since you can be very sure that their income did not double over those last years. It didn't come anywhere close to doubling. And by the way, it's the same for individuals. If you didn't have a family policy, your individual policy cost you $550 in 2004 and $1,071 in 2015. In other words, 32.5 million Americans have no health insurance at all. Half of Americans have a health insurance. The cost to them has doubled in the last 10 years. We are not taking care of the medical needs of our people anything like we could, we should, and that other wealthy countries like us do. And people have been wondering about the statistics that we're not using medical services the way we did as a nation 10 years ago. Well, here's a big people who have high co pays, people who have to shell out huge amounts of money for health insurance, figure out every good reason and quite a few bad reasons not to go to the doctor when they need it and thereby risk these diseases becoming more difficult, more costly, and more problematic for their health than they had been before. Last point on this. The Affordable Care act provides yet another way for people to get health insurance if they don't have it on their job, but they really need it and they want to pay for it. So I looked into what the rate story is there too, and what I found, again thanks to the Kaiser Family foundation, is the in 2016, the average monthly cost to be covered under the new Affordable Care act, what's often called Obamacare, was $257 per month. In 2017, this is scheduled to go to $281 a month. So in one year, the basic average cost under the Obamacare plan is scheduled to go up 9%. Statistics currently indicate that the average wage of the American working people will go up between 2016 and 2017, if they're lucky, by two and a half percent. So if your wages go up by 2.5% and the cost of medical care for those with the greatest trouble getting it goes up by 9%. You understand that the sense so many Americans have that they keep falling behind economically is not that they're misinformed. It is an honest and a correct understanding of the economic realities that they face. Okay, before we make our break in the middle of our program, which is coming up in a couple of minutes, I wanted to remind you again, please make use of our websites democracyatwork.info and rdwolff with 2F's.com. we maintain them for your use. There's no charge whatsoever they're available any and all times of every day. And in particular, I want to remind you of our exciting new service which is going to be called Co Op Talk and which you can access by going to blogemocracyatwork.info and that we invite you to partner with this new service to provide us with articles, news, information, debates, analyses, anything having to do with how worker co ops are growing, how they offer an alternative to the economic system we live in and the problems that it has, many of which we elucidate and discuss on this program. This is a new service. Paul Sliker has taken charge. We are very grateful to him for doing that. You can reach him at blogemocracyatwork.info and we invite you to become part of, to write for, to send material to, to volunteer for Co Op Talk at our website. Last item for which we have time today. Over the last few days, much excitement has been devoted to the first debate of the presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I am not going to say anything about the details of it. The press is full of that. You don't need me for that. I would like to say one thing which is one of the central economic problems of the world today is a level of inequality that takes us back to ancient Egypt and the pharaohs. According to Oxfam in England, as I've reported on this program, the 62 richest people in the world together have more wealth than the bottom half of the population of this planet, three and a half billion people. Since the 62 richest people in the world are mostly American citizens, we as a nation have a particular responsibility to do something about that kind of inequality. Neither candidate spoke about it, dealt with it, offered anything remotely like a solution for it. And that says more for me about the election and the campaign than anything that was discussed between them. Thank you very much for your attention. Please stay with us. We will have our usual short mid program break and then we're going to have an extraordinary interview about a new book by a person you will want to learn more about and read more of in the time to come. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

[A]

Angels watching over me with smiles upon their face Cause I have made it through this far in an unforgiving place it feels sometimes it feels too deep For a girl like me to climb But I must knock those thoughts right down I do it in my own time I don't care I'm halfway there On a road that leads me straight to who knows where I Tell you what I have found that I know who won. I'm just upside down, ain't got no care? I ain't got no room. I think I like living upside down. Upside down? Watching people scurry by, rushing to and fro. Oh, this world is such a crazy place. It's all about the go, go, go. Sometimes life can taste so sweet when you slow it down. You start to see the world a little differently when you turn it upside down. I don't care I'm halfway there and I'm just soaking of the magic in the air. I tell you, Living upside down, living upside down. You gotta slow it down but then you pick it up. Come on.

[B]

Welcome back, friends, to the second half of Economic Update. I want first of all to welcome my guest. I'm very excited. This is a person whose work I follow and whom I've known for pretty much the entirety of my adult life. So let me first welcome her. Arlie Russell Hochscheil. Thank you for coming, Alan.

[C]

I'm delighted to be here.

[B]

So let me tell everyone who Arlie is and then we'll jump right in. Arlie is one of the most influential sociologists of her generation. She's been a professor of sociology at UC Berkeley for many, many years. She's the author of nine books, including the Second Shift, the Time Bind, the Managed Heart, and the Outsourced. Three of her books have been named as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and her work appears in 16 languages. She's the winner of the Ulysses medal as well as Guggenheim and Mellon Grant's, and lives in Berkeley, California. I asked her to come on this program to talk about her latest book. This is called Strangers in Their Own Land, Anger and Mourning on the American Right. It is a book that is getting a great deal of attention and for good reason. So without more ado, let me turn to Arlie and say, let us begin this discussion by telling us what your book is about and why you undertook to write a book like that.

[C]

It's about the growth of the right wing in America and why, what are the feelings that have animated this growth? Why are people voting for Donald Trump? I didn't begin five years ago with Trump on my mind, but that became clearly the question because, you know, I live in Berkeley, California, which is a political enclave. It's a place of progressives. And the people I talk to, my friends, my husband, all agree with me. And then I turn on the radio, I look at television and I see there's Fox News and the O'Reilly program. And I felt disconnected. I didn't get it. I just didn't understand. So I thought five years ago, I'm going to get out of my enclave and go as far as I can possibly reach into an equal and opposite enclave. And so where had the right grown? It had grown most in the South. Okay. I would go south. Among whom had it grown the most? Among whites. Okay. I would talk to whites, among them, many religious whites. Okay, religious whites, south. But where in the South? Well, I found in 2012, the proportion of whites voting for Barack Obama was 50% in California, it was 30% in the south as a whole region, and it was 16% in Louisiana. Louisiana was the super South. Okay. I would go talk to whites, older, religious, in Louisiana. And there I brought with me a question, many on the minds of many progressives, what I think of it as the red state paradox. Why throughout the country are the poorest states, the states with the worst education, the worst medical care, the worst health, the most disrupted, troubled families, and the lowest life expectancy, states that also receive more federal dollars in aid than they give in taxes, so resistant and hostile to the federal government didn't get that. And then Louisiana was like an exaggerated version of the red state paradox because there it is this year, the poorest state, 44% of the state budget comes from federal dollars. And, and it's mostly Tea Party. So I thought, perfect, this is what I don't get. And I thought, how do I get to it? First of all, I take my own political alarm system off. That's my method. Just take it off. Not forever, but for getting to know people, so that the purpose of talking is learning, is getting curious. And for climbing what I came to call an empathy wall to the other side so I could understand, I was forever sliding back. This was an effort, you know, and people helped me. Actually, in the end of five years, I had talked to 60 people, 40 of whom were deeply right wing and really gotten to know very closely a number. And I'll tell you about that.

[B]

You lived there for extended periods of time.

[C]

I paid repeated visits and in between times I skyped and I, I emailed and called. One guy was always calling me, you know, how you doing, sugar? He was big Tea Party. And that particular guy had worked for years as a pipe fitter and who checked leaky pipes. He worked for Pittsburgh Plate and Glass and he had had terrible accidents and he was given the job of at dusk taking the pollution, what they called the abottams, which was toxic waste. This was Ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride and very toxic. And spilling it in public waters, that was the. The job this man had. His name is Lee Sherman. He felt bad about it. He felt terrible about it. The company was telling him, this is your job. And he did his job. And he said, look, I hate to tell you, but I was very good at not being noticed. And then he told me, and the name of this chapter in the book is Something Good. Because he told me about a bird that had flown while he was dumping this toxic waste for ppg. This bird had flown over and plummeted as if it had been shot. And he put some stepping stones out, went out with his gloves, picked the nearly dead bird up, brought it back. He said, I was brought up on a farm. I knew about birds. Blew into the bird until the bird was resuscitated. And then he said, he put it on the hood of his truck and the bird flew away. He said, so that was something good. So I felt moved by these people. This person, later he was. Just to finish his story, he was. Got sick. His legs didn't move because he had been poisoned by these chemicals. He was put on medical leave and then fired for absenteeism.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Okay. As a guy who had no love for PPG or the private sector, but who became an environmentalist, he joined a movement I learned a lot about because Louisiana is one of the most polluted spots in the state, in the nation, in the world, and very under regulated. He's now Tea Party. He's now a member of the Tea Party. So I'm scratching my head. I don't get it. I still don't get it. I've gotten really up close. I'm looking at the environment. I. I'm seeing that many people cannot breathe clean air and cannot drink clean water, but they're against regulators and government. Government is terrible. So this was the dilemma. And it got bigger before it got smaller. And talking with a number of people like Lee, I came to realize, I began to ask myself, so what's. What does a state mean to you? And I found the federal state. I found three big barriers to trust of the state. One was, we were in the south, it was the North. Federal government's the north, and even the local government is representative of the North. So watch out. They're going to wag their moral fingers at you and say you believe the wrong things. And by the way, they feel that liberals are wagging their moral finger once again. So now we have the wrong politics, too. And the Wrong social attitudes, and we're hated. We're deplorable. So the first thing is that the government was an instrument of the north. So that was one cause of the distrust, but not the main one. I think the next one is very interesting. This will be interesting to you, Rick, because I asked another person. This was a conversation with a man, quite likely. His name is Mike. Why is it you hate the state when actually the companies have done the damage to you? Because he had a similar thing. He lost his whole home and community because of a drilling accident. And the Texas Brine, the company that had drilled into the bayou and led methane gas to rise up and earthquakes had never been seen before, appeared, and lawns began to tilt. The whole community in bayou Corn sinkhole, as it's now called. Everyone had to leave. And I interviewed this guy while he was staying in his house. He was still there. There was methane gas. It was monitor in his garage.

[A]

And.

[C]

And I said, why are you staying here, Mike? You know, it's dangerous. You know, you light a match, the place could blow up. He said, well, oh, I'm looking after, you know, the neighbor's property. And then he said, no, actually, I don't want to leave. I love this community. And that's the thing about big government. It takes away community. I said, mike, it's Texas brine that's just taken away your community. Right, because it hasn't been regulated. Let's talk about regulation. So both these men are against big government, against regulation. And I'm wondering why. Because it would be in their interest, in my view, biological interest, you know, life interest, to get that. So one explanation is, oh, government is the north. But the next explanation is this. Now, these are my words, okay? And my analysis, But I tried it out on them, and they said, yeah, these are tea party people. Okay, so it goes like this.

[B]

Yeah, I'm on pins and needles. Tell us, Tell us.

[C]

Well, read the book. Read the book. That you have an oil state. A state where the oil companies and the petrochemical companies, companies dominate the economy and also dominate the state. That is, they pay for the election of officials, mainly Republican, of course. And they pay for the media. They pay for a lot. So it's what you would call a captured state. And what that means is that the state is doing things for the company. And in fact, it's almost a part of. Of the company. The company wants money. So under Governor Jindal, $1.5 billion was given to petrochemical and oil companies to come and expand around Lake Charles, because there's cheap natural gas, the product of fracking. And you have these companies that create feedstock that's used in plastic stuff. And you can do it more cheaply and make money if you come to Lake Charles. They have come to Lake Charles and they have gotten that money and they've gotten tax exemption. Okay, but with the $1.5 billion, these companies have also said, oh, yes, we've got some jobs, although they are highly automated and they import Filipina pipe fitters. So there are actually few jobs that come. And when they do come, they come three quarters from outsiders at all levels. Okay? So people think of the company. Oh, jobs. And then they think with this money, these companies have also said, well, now that we've got the money, let's give a donation to the Audubon Society. Oh, and let's give another donation to the bird sanctuary over there. And by the way, there's a third grade science thing. Let's call this, you know, some company name. Some company name. So it people feel, and in this book, I am focusing on feelings, the politics of feelings, they feel grateful to the company. Okay, you're giving me jobs, you're giving me the Orban Society. Meanwhile, the state's job is to regulate these industries and create safe conditions for workers. But the state, as now an arm of this industry, is not doing its job at all. It gives out permits very quickly. Axial just had two horrendous accidents, filled the skies with gray smoke, sent a dozen people to the emergency room. But that company has not five years later, been penalized. So the state is a do nothing state. And emotionally, it invites anger. Why should I pay my taxes to a state that isn't doing its job? It's like the state had become the complaints clerk. Okay, get mad at me because of the defective thing I just sold you. Come on, get mad at me. And they absorb the anger that people feel about their whole situation because in fact, they're not doing their job.

[B]

They have been bought off.

[C]

They've been basically bought off. So that social logic that I've just described intersects with a personal logic that you and I have long talked about, that as people's incomes flatten over the last 30 years, they first, if it was a traditional family and just dad worked, now mom works. And if they were working short hours, now they're working longer hours. And if they want to make a down payment on a house, they take a loan from the bank and they're paying interest on that loan. And all of this. And now there's those tax dollars. That'll be my next strategy for family strategy for reaching that elusive American dream that's fading. So that family strategy of, oh, let's reduce those taxes since the state isn't doing its job anyway. A social, economic logic interfaces with a personal logic. I thought that is the second reason you don't like the government. That's kind of an emotional setup, actually. And I tried that out on my Tea Party friends, and you know what they said? Is that some radical, progressive, Berkeley idea? No, I said, yeah, yeah, that's how it works. So. And the point of this book is that we cannot lose so many people who are, in fact, victims of a system, but who have given up on a good state for doing anything and who are not our enemies. And I think a lot of people on the left have said, oh, you know, terribly, can't talk to these people. And that's a giant mistake. A giant mistake. The point of this book is we really need to reach out, and there's a lot of possible common ground that is not visible to the naked eye, given the rhetoric in this. But the final reason is another and final reason that people hate this state. And that is what I came to call the deep story. The deep story is a story that feels true. And you take out facts, you take out judgments, is just what feels true. And the deep story of the right, and by the way, we have a deep story of the left. The deep story of the right is you're waiting in line. And as in a pilgrimage, at the top of the line is the American Dream, and you're waiting in line. Line is not moving, hasn't moved in a long time. You feel a strong sense of deserving. You have a work life like Lee Sherman. I was just describing, you know, it's been tough. And people, I ask them, well, did you get any vacation? Well, I got one week vacation, sick time and vacation time combined for the first five years of my place of work. Two weeks for the second five years. People love to fish and hunt, and they're not getting any time. So they're waiting in line with a sense of deserving. And then they see. What do they see? They see someone cutting a head. Well, what's that? Who's that? Well, that's a black person under affirmative action who's getting access to jobs that used to be reserved for whites. And who else is cutting that? Well, that would be women. Now, affirmative action, getting access to jobs used to be reserved for men. And who else? Well, that's immigrants and refugees and even the endangered pelican seems to be ahead of them because the government cares about it, but not me. And then they see in this deep story there's Barack Hussein Obama should be impartially supervising the line of waiters for the American dream. And it's going yoo hoo, hey, the to the line cutters. And they think, well, he's a line cutter too. How did he get to Columbia? Single mother, they weren't rich. And Harvard, my God. And so they come to believe that he is sponsoring them. He is their president and they are strangers in their own land and not represented and not seen. They feel unacknowledged. And then they see someone ahead of the line turn around and oh, you stupid southern redneck. And that's it. Then they snap. Then they say, wait a minute. So liberals and the whole establishment is all making the government into a giant marginalization machine. And that's the third reason that the state they're giving up on the state doesn't look like it's their state. It's oil state, it's the line cutter state, it's the state of the north. And they think, who else is there? There's nothing. Politics is a desert. And then who should come along exploiting that distrust? In my view, his name is Donald Trump.

[B]

Is that how they see him?

[C]

As a rescuer, as someone who acknowledges.

[B]

Them, the ancient knight on the white horse who's going to save them?

[C]

Yes, they see him, as they're always saying, telling it like it is, because he gets to critique and shamelessly shame all the line cutters, tacitly or overtly. And if you did a kind of an iconography of shame, the things that come out of Donald Trump's mouth, it would be shame of women, shame of blacks, shame of immigrants, shame. All except for white blue collar men. They would be in the center of the circle. They're not being shamed. And by the way, the right to food stamps and social programs, he's not touching those either. So I think he's providing a shame free avenue for whites should they need them in their low wage jobs to supplement them. That would be. He's saving them from shame. They feel shamed and that wrongly shame because they are working tough jobs. So he's paradoxically, he who shames everyone is sort of carved out a little area of non shame. And it's much like right wing movements in Europe at this time too. So cut out the competitors and hold on to some parts of the state for you.

[B]

This is amazing. It's wonderful to hear you speak. We don't have much time, so let me push you on something you said to me even before we began. How do we build those of us that are critical of capitalism as a system? How do we build bridges to folks like those in Louisiana you study and write about so poetically? How do we build bridges to them about what we share so that we would have the strength to make the changes that we want and that they need?

[C]

That's a great question. It's central to this book. It's the purpose of the book. And I think there's a lot of possibility. I was listening to the earlier part of your program where you were talking about Social Security and how safe was it? And I was thinking, how would a right winger listen to that? They would say, yeah, this guy Wolf, he's onto it. Yeah, but you know, it was critical of government in a way, and so they would.

[B]

But when make my criticism of government, I always show that it's in. It's their beholdenness to the private economy that makes the government the bad thing. So that you go behind it to see what's lying behind it. Can we speak with these folks in Louisiana? If you were to and to make.

[C]

That point, yes, you could. But you have to have them in front of you. You have to have three beers, you have to go fishing. You have to come with an openness. Take your own alarm system off to begin with. You put it back on very gradually. It'll always be that people ask me, have you changed your politics? Doing all this intensive research for this book, I say, no, no, certainly not. But it's changed me. It's changed me because I see more possibility for crossover. One guy I spoke to said, let's get money out of politics. He is Tea Party. He's voting for Trump and he wants to get money out of politics. Okay, campaign finance reform, we've got that one. The environment, he said, why is that a left wing cause I don't get that. I'm trying to talk to my Tea Party friends. Not with much success, by the way, but he's trying that. It wasn't just I that was reaching over to them, they were reaching over to me. And that's, I guess the main message that we need to climb in empathy wall. We're not talking to each other. We're stuck in media enclaves and technological enclaves and geographic enclaves. And I think something good could happen. I think everybody has to get out and vote, I would say, and vote for Hillary. At this point, but that there's a task beyond the election and beyond Trump that lies ahead of us.

[B]

I like your optimism because I share it. I share it because, in part, the comments that flow into us, we get an enormous amount of email traffic to us. It's very clear that a good number of the people who write to us are not progressives in the traditional way. They're not left wing people. They've heard the program. They respond to particular issues. And it's very clear to me that the opportunities to build something in the United States across these stylized red, blue differentiations is enormous. And that we're barely at the beginning.

[C]

Barely at the beginning. But the first thing we need to do is really get to know one another and they take their alarm system off, too. And that's a great way to start. It's not an end in itself, but it's a great way to start a new national conversation to close, because we.

[B]

Have no more time. It's almost as though you were saying to us and to the audience listening and watching that a book called Strangers in Their Own Land, the folks you encountered in Louisiana might discover that they have more friends among the rest of us than they imagined. If we're willing to discover that they could be our friends, too. And that it's not just a good feeling, it's a real political possibility.

[C]

That's right. That's right.

[B]

Thank you very, very much, Arlie. I know you're giving interviews everywhere, and your book deserves it. To everybody listening here, this is a book that if you care about the political life of this country and its future, is one you really ought to read. Thank you very much. Thank you, Arlie.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

And I look forward to being with you all again next week. Time, my time, babe. Thing gonna change change, change, change, change, change change Thing gonna change.

[A]

Sam.