Joseph Moore: The Despair Industrial Complex

Summary

The Gist – “Joseph Moore: The Despair Industrial Complex”

Date: May 4, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Joseph S. Moore, author of How to Get Rich in American History

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Gist features historian and author Joseph S. Moore, whose new book How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice that Worked and Didn’t explores the evolution of financial advice through American history. The conversation delves into which financial strategies transcended time, the nature of economic anxieties, the recurring “despair industrial complex,” and the tendency of every era to both panic about and mythologize prosperity. The episode concludes with a critical analysis by Pesca of the Iran nuclear deal and the negotiation approaches of both parties.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Evolution of Financial Advice in America

(06:36–11:38)

• Origins and Methodology:
  Moore, a history professor and “liberal humanities” academic, describes how his personal experience with near-financial disaster during the 2008 crisis sparked a scholarly and practical investigation into the history of financial advice. He realized his deep historical knowledge hadn’t insulated him from bad economic decisions, prompting him to merge personal experimentation with academic research.

• Quote:

  “I started out with the naive idea that there must have been some golden era when it would have been all wise and reasonable. That turned out to be wrong.” — Joseph Moore (10:34)

• Anecdotes:
  Moore recounts renting out every room in his house, emulating one of the most common mortgage-payment strategies from previous centuries—essentially “Airbnb before Airbnb.”

  “One in three families who owned a home [pre WWII] was renting out rooms. After much machination... I ended up doing the same thing.” — Joseph Moore (12:03)

• Financial Fads and Follies:
  Past financial manias (e.g., canal building, “duck money”) were as common as today’s get-rich-quick schemes. “Speculitis” (the urge to speculate) recurs every generation.

• Quote:

  “There is a next big thing in every generation. And every generation is told to invest in the next big thing. And every generation usually loses most of their money doing that.” — Joseph Moore (15:08)

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2. Debunking Golden Age Myths

(11:55–20:05)

• No Timelessness:
  The stock market, now seen as a bedrock for long-term wealth, was not always a winning choice; for much of US history, bonds outperformed stocks. Many “timeless” investing rules are recent inventions.

• Crazy Currency:
  19th-century money was ephemeral and issued by thousands of entities—advice then was “spend it as fast as you can,” which made sense in an era of unstable banknotes (“shin plasters”).

  “There were 10,000 separate types of money in America by the Civil War, and over a thousand issuers of currency.” — Joseph Moore (20:12)

• Working Conditions and Poverty:
  Moore highlights the material hardships of the past—a typical American owned “one and a half shirts” in 1870 and worked 60+ hours per week.

  “We’ve kind of created this illusion of the past that it was better back then. Yeah, it was significantly harder back then.” — Joseph Moore (22:25)

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3. The Despair Industrial Complex: Then and Now

(23:11–28:34)

• Perpetual Economic Panic:
  Concerns about “the American dream being dead” are perennial, not unique to young people today. Moore cites examples from 1676 (Bacon’s Rebellion), 19th-century speeches, and bestsellers predicting Baby Boomers’ penury in the 1980s.

• Quote:

  “At every point where there is a microphone of power...they are rewarded for saying, ‘things are broken and I can fix it.’ There are no clicks for journalists, there are no votes for politicians, and there is no tenure for academics for saying, ‘things are pretty good right now.’” — Joseph Moore (25:35)

• Optimism as an Asset:
  Research by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau indicates that the best predictor of financial health isn’t inheritance but a positive attitude and the habit of saving.

  “History clearly teaches optimism has outsized rewards.” — Joseph Moore (28:21)

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4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On home economics:

  “My family is what ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ would be if no one used drugs or drank booze.” — Joseph Moore (06:36, quoting from his book)

• On room rentals and historical Airbnb:

  “At any given time in American history prior to World War II, one in three families who owned a home was doing it.” — Joseph Moore (12:10)

• On advice from the past:

  “The primary advice grandparents would give their grandchildren about money was whatever you do, spend it as fast as you can and don’t save it.” — Joseph Moore (19:07)

• On the myth of a lost American dream:

  “I call it the Despair Industrial Complex or big Whoa. I mean, it's—I could find people saying the American dream is dead several hundred years before I can find the phrase the American dream.” — Joseph Moore (24:24)

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5. Iran Nuclear Deal Analysis — The Spiel

(30:59–41:38)

• Pesca’s Critical Take:
  Shifting away from the Moore interview, Pesca analyzes a BBC conversation with former State Department negotiator Wendy Sherman about the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA).
• Key Arguments:
  • The US negotiating team (Obama administration) “really, really, really wanted a deal” and adjusted positions accordingly when Iran’s Supreme Leader shifted conditions.
  • The interview reveals how the US repeatedly accommodated Iranian demands; quite often, clauses were dropped simply because Iran wouldn’t agree.

  “The Ayatollah says something extreme, and the Americans have to accommodate that extremism...They had to give up the clause.” — Mike Pesca (33:59)

  • Pesca suggests that while Trump’s approach was “pure folly,” the US was a “tepid, tepid card player” unwilling to wield leverage effectively.

  “Iran might not have the cards, but the US is a tepid, tepid card player. It's unwilling to play the cards.” — Mike Pesca (41:08)

  • On the unsustainability of the deal domestically: if an agreement can’t survive a change in administration, it shouldn’t give benefits upfront.
• Memorable moment:
  Pesca ponders whether Iranian officials see the US as a “culture of insistence,” always giving in, and that perhaps “the real reason is that the Iranians really did win the negotiation.”

  “I could kind of prove it. There is no deal. The Iranians are doing what they wanted to before the deal, and they got all the money that was part of the deal, at least $50 billion.” — Mike Pesca (39:34)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Opening and introduction of Moore’s book | 06:36-07:22 | | Moore’s background & motivation for the book | 07:22–09:03 | | Personal financial experimentation | 11:38–13:55 | | Past financial manias & advice | 13:55–17:48 | | US economic hardship in the past | 22:16–23:11 | | Housing affordability then and now | 23:11–24:13 | | The Despair Industrial Complex and optimism | 24:24–28:34 | | Transition to Iran nuclear deal analysis (The Spiel) | 31:08 | | Pesca’s breakdown of negotiation psychology | 33:59–39:34 | | Final thoughts on leverage and deal outcomes | 41:08–41:38 |

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Flow, Tone & Useful Takeaways

The episode maintains Pesca’s signature blend of dry humor, skepticism, and intellectual curiosity. Moore’s scholarly depth and warmth shine through, especially in his willingness to test historical financial advice in real life. The tone is wry, approachable, and filled with revealing anecdotes that demystify both economic history and modern anxieties. Pesca’s later Iran analysis turns analytical and slightly exasperated, critiquing the comforting mythologies of both American exceptionalism and diplomatic prowess.

For listeners seeking actionable wisdom:

• There has never been a golden age of reliable financial advice; what works always evolves.
• Optimism and sound habits matter more to financial wellness than circumstance or inheritance.
• Every generation panics about future prospects, but progress and hardship ebb and flow.

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Summary Table: Key Lessons

| Lesson/Insight | Speaker | Quote/Paraphrase | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------|--------------|-----------------------------------------------------------|-----------| | No timeless financial formula | Moore | “What always worked was always changing.” | 10:34 | | Economic panic is perennial | Moore | “...the American dream is dead several hundred years before I can find the phrase.” | 24:24 | | Optimism outperforms inheritance | Moore | “Positive attitude combined with saving beat inheritance.”| 28:21 | | US diplomacy—too eager for a deal | Pesca | “The Americans had to accommodate the extremism.” | 33:59 | | Leverage must be credible in diplomacy | Pesca | “The US is a tepid, tepid card player.” | 41:08 |

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Listen for:
Historical debunking of financial “truths,” surprising continuity in economic anxiety, and a pointed critique of how both press and policy can magnify feelings of economic doom—often for their own benefit.

Transcript

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[Mike Pesca]

It's Monday, May 4, 2026 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca Pain at the pump and the Persian Gulf or oil should be about $60 a barrel. I mean that's what it was two months ago. Usually goes up a little bit as summer approaches. No, no, it's a buck. Oh, eight. I don't know. By the time you hear it could be a buck. Fifteen. Could be a buck oh two. And that, sir, that distance between should and is, that is the Persian Gulf. President Trump had his assurances about prices and that's why he made this analogy a couple days ago.

[Joseph Moore]

The gas will go down as soon as the war is over. It'll drop like a rock.

[Mike Pesca]

Like Iraq. Oh, that is not a good comparison.

[Joseph Moore]

The conflict in Iraq means that you are paying more at the pump.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, not that Iraq, more Iraq. But then this week on this Week, Martha Raddatz asked economist Diane Swonk about this.

[Joseph Moore]

And Diane, President Trump had also said gas prices will drop like a rock when the Iran war ends. There's no sign that that's going to happen soon. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, our next guest, a few weeks ago thought there would

[Wendy Sherman]

be a very quick rebound in energy

[Joseph Moore]

prices once the conflict is resolved. Do you agree?

[Wendy Sherman]

Well, what we usually see is when oil prices go up and gas prices at the pump go up, they go up like a rocket and they fall like a feather.

[Mike Pesca]

So not down like a rock, but up like a rocket. And I'd say it's kicking us in the teeth like a rockette who thought when promising to bring down prices in the energy market, Trump was going to rocket. I'd say maybe stay away from geology analogies on this one. They are, in fact, stone cold loser on the show today parsing lessons from an Obama level Iran nuclear negotiator. But first, Joseph Moore is by he's out with a very interesting new book, which is fortunate for us because that's what he's talking about, how to Get Rich in American History. So it's the idea of that it hasn't always been the same. The advice you hear now wasn't the advice you hear then. And by the way, the advice you hear then sometimes was suited for the times, be it the 18th, 19th or early 20th centuries. And sometimes it was just really stupid. I guess the advice now could also be really stupid. Also, as you will find in the interview, there is a personal journey in the how to Get Rich in American History by Joseph or book in that Joseph Moore got rich while writing it. Joseph Moore, up next. So lately I've been getting a little, I guess the word is intentional about my wardrobe. You know, you want to look good, but you want to be comfortable. You want to look put together. You want to be put together. Enter Quince. Quince has the wardrobe staples for spring. They have 100% European linen shorts and shirts that start off at $34. And they're all lightweight and breathable. And I should also say that the reason they're able to beat all their competitors by 50 to 80% is that they do, in fact, cut out the middleman. You always hear that, but it's true. They work directly with ethical factories. And you're benefiting me. I'm benefiting to the tune of the ultra stretch 24. Seven smart chinos. It is good that these aren't 24. Six chinos, you know, And I can't wear them Tuesdays. I could wear them every day. I'd like to wear them every day. It's like I'm getting away with something because to the outsider, they look like, I'll say dress pants to use that broad category. But to the insider me inside the pants. They are stretchy and comfortable and you know they don't feel like those hard, stiff, uncomfortable, starchy dress pants. They're fantastic. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com the gist for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q u I n c-com the gist for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com thegist on deck is built to

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[Mike Pesca]

I love Joseph S. Moore's new book. I love the idea of it. It's called how to Get Rich in American history. 300 years of financial advice that worked and didn't. And so he looks at the idea of we've always been advising each other or maybe charging for the advice on how to get rich. How has that advice changed? Great topic. And when I say I love the idea of the book, you might think, okay, but the execution, how's that? It is exquisite. From sentence to sentence. I will read two that occurred on page three and five respectively. My family is what hillbilly elegy would be if no one used drugs or drank booze. And after talking about reading financial books during the financial crisis, it felt like watching the wedding video of a couple who dies on their honeymoon. Good job. Joseph Moore. Welcome to the gist.

[Joseph Moore]

Thank you. I am so glad to be here.

[Mike Pesca]

Blunt, very blunt. So what kind of professor are you? Because it's not of economics, is it?

[Joseph Moore]

No, I am one of those liberal humanities history professors who used to assign Karl Marx on the first day of class. Right. Not because I'm an economist, but because I'm a historian. And so I was a professor of history at a university of North Carolina called Gardner Webb University, which is a lovely liberal arts college attached to a basketball program. And as all schools in North Carolina are. And after the course of the events told in the book and how I went from basically making nothing to investing, as Mark Twain said, I used to be worth nothing, and now I'm in debt by $2 million. And then eventually, somehow seeing my way out of it, I was able to retire and not be at a university more. That lasted about two years until my wife sat me down and said, I, I need you to go find colleagues, because I don't like talking about these things. And so I now teach at Kennesaw State University, which is a wonderful place. Enjoy joy the students there.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes. And so it's like the old line, I promise to marry you for better or worse, but not for lunch.

[Joseph Moore]

I like hear that one. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Joseph Moore]

My wife's was. I don't know who Foucault is, but I don't. I don't want to talk about him anymore.

[Mike Pesca]

That's a good one. Okay, so I want to break it down into two parts. Your own story, doves tales with your research. But did you get into the research of that question? We've always been giving advice. How has it changed? Was it better? Is it good now? Did you get into that through your academic pursuits or just living through the financial crisis and trying to have a little bit of money?

[Joseph Moore]

Yeah, I was the last person off of the financial Titanic in 2008. So the way this happened was I was getting a PhD in history. I was very confident in how smart I was and how much I knew about the world. And we did what everyone else said to do, which was the lesson of history is reading is throwing your money away. So you buy a house, and this is 2005. So we go off no income. We're graduate students. Right. No income. Kind of ninja.

[Mike Pesca]

You don't come from money, right? No, the hillbilly elegy is true. And you had a big hole in your trailer that you lived in that you navigated around by tacking some carpet as a warning, like a warning track for.

[Joseph Moore]

My father made $14,000 a year. And I remember the first time he got a promotion to make $20,000 a year because it's the first time I saw my mom wear a. A fun looking dress because she was going to, because they made $20,000 a year. And this was big money, right? Yeah, no, we took a. We took a staple gun to the side of the carpet and stapled into the side of the mobile home so that you could like feel if the way. If the, the floor beneath you had rotted out so you could jump before it floors, it broke. Which I was quite proud of. I'm the one who thought of that. So, no, I didn't have any money. I didn't come from money. Didn't know anything about money. I just knew that I liked history. And so I'm studying this PhD in history. Everybody says reading, throwing your money away, money away, we just nod our head. About three years later, a friend of mine at church said, hey, I need to run. I want to run a financial class. Kind of like how to family budget. Will you come? And I said, no, because I don't need that. I'm too smart for that. He said, look, I'm just worried I'm going to walk in just like two strangers and I'm going to be embarrassed. Would you just come? So I have a crowd? And I was like, oh, I'll do it for a friend. Well, they make us do a budget. We go home, we fill it out. I did not sleep the entire night. Who gave us a mortgage, right? Like, what is this? So we put our house on the market on a Monday. It's on contract by Friday. Like locked in by Saturday. Our neighbor, our next door neighbor put her house on the market the next Saturday. It never sold. We were the last people off the Titanic. And while I'm sitting there doing a PhD in history and all these big ideas and talking about how evil capitalism is, I'm looking going, how did I know so much history? But I was saved by the common sense ideas taught in church basements. And I knew I'd gotten lucky. I knew this was not anything I had done. But I also wanted to know, how on earth did I believe that? And what were people told to do with their money and how has that changed? I started out with the naive idea that there must have been some golden era when it would have been all wise and reasonable. That turned out to be wrong. Because what always worked was always changing. But I wanted to know what people were told to do with their money, why they believed it, how it changed, and then ultimately wanted to write a history that people could use, right? Like, how could you actually use the past to make better decisions in your present?

[Mike Pesca]

But did you make money from what you learned in history, or did you make money in the present and let that guide your trip through history.

[Joseph Moore]

So initially I just started researching, I mean, anything I could find, right? Like, oh, look at this boring insurance pamphlet from World War I. Like, you know, I just, I was looking anywhere I could find as a tip. This is what I'm trained to do, right? Let's go research the primary sources. Somewhere along the way, I just kind of got the idea, like, if you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Right? I'm writing this history about what people are told to do with their money, but I'm not doing anything with my money. And so I just got the idea, like, I'm just going to try this stuff out. And so if I find people doing it in the past, I'm going to do as close as I can, approximation of that in the present. So I'll give you an example. One of the most common ways people paid off their mortgage early in American history, in fact, it was probably the most common way people paid off their mortgage was renting out rooms in their house. This is Airbnb. Hundreds of years before Airbnb, it was so popular that at any given time in American history, prior to World War II, one in three families who owned a home was doing it. And so after some very, you know, some machinations of convincing my wife this was not a terrible idea, I ended up renting out every room in my house to try to like, just like, what would it be like to live with Borders? Right? So that's just one of many kind of things that, that I did to try to experiment with this. My goal was actually not to make money. My goal was to figure out what it was like to try these strategies out in our present the way they had tried it out in the past, right? As things went on, things began to kind of build and build and eventually you start learning what you're doing. And one of the biggest, one of the big movements of the 1950s, there was a big housing shortage in the 40s and the 50s. People forget about that. And one of the things that come out of that was all this, how to invest in rental property advice books that came out of the 40s and 50s. And the interesting thing about is every decade, each best selling book tells you you can buy it with less and less money. So that by 1980, they're telling people in bestselling books, not only can you buy it with no money down, you can actually kite the check at the closing table. And before the house, before the check clears, take the security deposits and Deposit them and you'll. And you'll be able to clear the check, which is, by the way, completely illegal. But there's this move.

[Mike Pesca]

So are liar loans, right. So is what the housing bubble of the office.

[Joseph Moore]

So there's like this progressive move from smart real estate investing down to like how little money can you have? And we still will. So I did that. Right. I actually went out and bought houses with no money down, which initially was a disaster, as it should be. And I would not, please do not anyone listening to this, hear that? I am saying that's what you should do. But over the course of this, I eventually realized how to actually invest wisely, smartly. And I did learn some lessons and that. That allowed me to kind of make financial progress that I would have never made as a professor.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. I think that when we think about the financial advice of the past, I don't know, maybe our conception is people were very conservative and there was some golden era. But that's not how I think of it. I think of it mostly as the mount about Mountbanks and charlatans who tried to sell us on Tulip Mania. You write about beat mania around be t around the time of Napoleon, all these manias, all these get rich quick schemes that didn't work. Was that in fact characteristic of most of the advice that you were. You were immersed in for a couple hundred years of U.S. history?

[Joseph Moore]

So there is a next big thing in every generation. And every generation is told to invest in the next big thing. And every generation usually loses most of their money doing that. The real money in any kind of like innovative part of the economy is usually made working in it, not investing in it. So, you know, there's multiple examples of this. The big one is the Erie Canal connects New York to the Great Lakes. And everyone thinks this is amazing. And now we're going to connect every other city, so Baltimore and Charleston. And like every city in America is like, we're going to have our own Erie Canal. And every one of them goes bust. Like every. They literally stop digging in the middle of the forest where they run out of money. Now the people who made money with you who are working in those. Those areas. Right. Working in these jobs that were suddenly in high demand.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Joseph Moore]

So. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Or the guy who's saying low bridge everybody down. I don't know if he got any royalties on that, but that's a good song.

[Joseph Moore]

Yeah. It's though, it's. These are the kind of things that happen every generation. Now what. What actually started there was no Financial advice, the way we think of it today, until about World War I, the idea of a financial advice industry with all these books that walk you through what to do. Before that, there was what was called improvement manuals. And this was like, how can you take what you have and make it better? The first of those were like farm manuals, but these would have chapters like Liquid Manures and Their Profitable Use or the Surprising Profit in Ducks. So nothing that you're going to find on today's bestseller Amazon list.

[Mike Pesca]

Money in them. They're ducks.

[Joseph Moore]

There's money in ducks. You'd be surprised how much money there was in ducks.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, but if the Graduate were made, then they wouldn't say plastic. You'd say ducks.

[Joseph Moore]

Get in the ducks, young man. So the. There, there's all. There's this wave of like, how can I make what I have better? The actual leaders in this are women. So every wife, every housewife manual, I say housewife. You know, we say down with the patriarchy. But if you actually look at housewife manuals, they are full of financial advice about how to take what you have and make it better. And so that's where a lot of that advice was. And then what happens is pretty much everybody knows the rules of thumb. And then there's this thing off to the side that people call speculitis. Speculitis is getting involved in stocks, which most Americans, by the way, can't afford. To buy stocks on the stock market, you had to buy a hundred shares. There was not. There were very few odd lots that were available to common people. So really, if people were in the stock market, I'm talking about everyday people, not JP Morgan, what they were doing was going into these CD bucket shops, which are basically like a hybrid of like a bar, slash, gambling den, slash, there's pornography in the bathroom. And this. So this is what you're. If you're in stocks and an average person in the Midwest, this is where you're going. And you're not actually buying the stock. You're betting on the moves. Like, I think this will tick up, you know, half a point today.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, it's like a wagers contract.

[Joseph Moore]

Exactly, it's wagering. So that was off to the side. It was not considered mainstream.

[Mike Pesca]

And also, as you write, it is true that now investing in the stock market and not trying to beat it is great advice because of the performance of the stock market since, let's say World War, before World War II. But for a lot of U.S. history, that wasn't true. Stocks were terrible or bad investment.

[Joseph Moore]

Yeah. We have this idea of stocks for the long run. Right. Like somehow stocks have always. What always is never is a very ill defined term.

[OnDeck Loan Advertiser]

Right.

[Joseph Moore]

And this comes from Siegel's book on this, and it was a fine book for its time. But what historians have now go back and done, and there's some, some really excellent, very recent research on this is they found all these stocks that got left out of his data set, which all went to zero, by the way. And so when you do the numbers and when you redo the numbers, bonds beat stocks for the whole 19th century, and they were tied until about World War II, which means stocks for the long run is true. But it's only as old as our last two presidents.

[Mike Pesca]

Mm, yes. On the other hand, the economy, you're going back to the 1800s, but the economy we live in now is not just different, it's essentially a different planet. As you say, we weren't fully an electrified country. There was no power grid until 1950. So we're really, in terms of investment, a 75 year old country.

[Joseph Moore]

That's true. Everything you're living with now is very, very new. Which, keep in mind, means that it's not been tested. Right. 75 years is kind of a rounding error in certain fields of history. So what our idea of timelessness and like all these truths are timeless. That's, that's the scary part for me, it's not investing in the stock market. I invest in the stock market, that's fine. But it's, it's the idea that it always worked, therefore it always will. So here's an example of one of the big changes that happened in the 1800s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s. The primary advice grandparents would give their grandchildren about money was whatever you do, spend it as fast as you can and don't save it. Now imagine like if my father told that to my kid, I'd be, dad, stop. Right? Like don't tell. But that made sense in that era and everyone knew it was true because money was very. The values would fluctuate up and down. They could go to zero overnight.

[Mike Pesca]

Now, but it wasn't even money as we think of it, as you.

[Joseph Moore]

Yes, yes.

[Mike Pesca]

Like we look at this paper and we'd say, is it good? Will it be good in two months? So, so legit question.

[Joseph Moore]

So to clarify what that was, it was. They were called shin plasters and banknotes and in various terms. But what it meant was there were 10,000 separate types of money in America by the Civil War, and there Were over a thousand issuers of currency, this would be. And truly, some people would issue their own currency the way somebody issues a cryptocurrency today. My favorite story of this is there's a runaway slave from Kentucky named William Wells Brown. He gets out of Kentucky, he makes it as far as Michigan. He has no money. He gets stuck, and he has nothing to do. He doesn't know how to get out. A local landlord says, hey, if you can cut hair, I'll rent you this room and you can become a barber. Which is a great idea. With only three problems. Number one, he has no scissors. Number two, he has never cut hair. And number three, no one in town has money to pay him with. He solves the first two problems. He doesn't tell anybody he's never cut hair. He borrows some scissors, but then he goes to a local printer and has the guy print money. It's like $0.06, $0.12, $0.50. And then he goes around town and basically says, this is good for this much value of a haircut at my barbershop. Can I get some food? And this starts to exchange around town so that by the end of the year, people are paying for their groceries with his bucks. Right. It becomes so trusted that he's able to eventually start trading it out for harder dollars backed by something a little better. And eventually he does make it to New York in freedom. But of course, the value of all of those dollars goes to zero.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. And so it's just based on him.

[Joseph Moore]

Exactly. And this was common.

[Mike Pesca]

Like people, He's Fort Knox in this analysis.

[Joseph Moore]

Yes. You could issue a. You could issue money backed by your wedding ring, right. And it would float around town for years. The. The reality then is like, if imagine today that your. Your employer said, okay, it's payday. We're going to issue you your payment in dogecoin or fart coin or whatever. The. There's thousands. It's not just bitcoin. Right. There's thousands of these. And you know that at any given moment, that value could plummet. And this happened to people. And so people knew, spend it as fast as you can. By 1870, that was terrible advice, because the world changed.

[Mike Pesca]

Although, as you also write, By 1870, the average American owned one and a half shirts. One and a half shirts. What they do, did they get together with the other guy with half a shirt and hope it matched?

[Joseph Moore]

Yeah, that's one of my favorite historical statistics, because now you've got to work a lot of hours to get the other half of that shirt. Right. And so. And people worked on average like 60 hours a week. 60 plus hours a week. And that's not counting women's labor. Right. Which was often, you know, above and beyond what men were doing because they're working all the time. So you're working 60 plus hours a week. The average wardrobe of a family was one and a half shirts per person. You know, there were many families and there are states in the union where there were less pairs of shoes than there were citizens. So the idea of. I think we've kind of, we've kind of created this illusion of the past that it was, it was better back then. Yeah, it was significantly harder back then. Now, that doesn't mean your life is easy, it just means their life was hard.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. Okay. So I think we know this, I hope we know this about the 1870s, about the 1940s, but now we say, you know, my grandparents can buy a house for, or my parents could buy a house for three berries. This is the, this is one of the comedy clips going around. And now it's impossible. The young kids, we have to work so many more years just to buy a house. And it's never going to happen. And that's why we're right to be dissatisfied. Assess that, Professor.

[Joseph Moore]

All right, so we do have a housing crisis in this country. Let's be very clear. Let's start there. It is, however, not the first and it is not the worst. So we have been here before. In 1945, the statistical relationship between people who wanted to buy a home and the homes available was twice the size of today's ratio. In 1981, it cost 52% of a median income to get a new mortgage. Today it's about 40%, which is still high, but it's not 52%.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. So those are bad years, but what about 1995?

[Joseph Moore]

Well, there's better years than others.

[Mike Pesca]

Right.

[Joseph Moore]

Like there are better years than others. Like I say, me saying that doesn't make it any easier on a 32 year old who's trying to buy their first home.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. But unless they have a time machine and know not to set it to 1981 also.

[Joseph Moore]

Right, right. You know, sorry. So I think one of the things we have to understand is it was often very difficult. The fact that a few generations did luck into a moment in time when they could more easily slide into homeownership is not the same thing as saying people in other times were not able to get into homeownership. And there's this, I call it the Despair. Industrial complex or big Whoa. I mean, it's. I could find people saying the American dream is dead several hundred years before I can find the phrase the American dream. In 1676. This is not 1776. This is 100 years before Hamilton starts rapping on Broadway. In 1676, the colonists of Virginia burned the Capitol to the ground explicitly because everyday people couldn't get ahead anymore.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes.

[Joseph Moore]

In the 1800s, there were speeches given all over the country saying the rungs on the ladder to success have been sawed off by the people who got it, who were there before you. In 1980. Back to this idea of the baby boomers having it, you know, for three berries and a, you know, a gallon of milk and they've got a House. In 1980, there was a best selling book and there were headlines in all the major newspapers saying it's so sad that the baby boomers will never be able to afford to retire.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Joseph Moore]

So the reason for this is that every, at every point where there is a microphone of power, except yours, of course. But like every, every point that someone is able to speak with authority, they are rewarded for saying, things are broken and I can fix it. There are no clicks for journalists, there are no votes for politicians, and there is no tenure for academics for saying things are pretty good right now. The what that results then is they are rewarded for saying it, but you are not rewarded for listening to it. And people have become, I think, largely disempowered by this constant message that it was so easy then and it's so hard now, which A isn't true and B, you need to understand why you're being told that. The question I ask people is not what type of economy would you build, but what are you going to go build in this economy? And that's a lesson that happens over and over in US History. That you can actually act on the world is an important lesson of histories. And so here's an example. Frederick Douglass, the most famous speech he gives in his lifetime is not what to the slave is the fourth of July, though that's what we teach. And I'm glad we teach it. And I have taught that, and it should be in schools. The most famous speech of his lifetime by far. Everywhere he goes, white audiences and black audiences beg him, give the speech. Self made men. And in that speech he says our motto. And when he says our motto, he means people who were just enslaved a few years ago. Right? People who did not have their political freedom at all. Our motto is go ahead. Maybe I can't become president, but I can become prosperous. This idea of go and that you can act on the world is over and over the antidote that is offered against this despair industrial kind of doom and gloom. And it's just, it's just flat out true. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which, let's be honest, is not the most pro capitalism wing of the U.S. government. Right. This is, this is the brainchild of Elizabeth anymore. Well, it did when I, when I, when I read the study. Right. They did a study.

[Mike Pesca]

That's what matters.

[Joseph Moore]

Yeah, there you go. This is Elizabeth Ward's brainchild. Right. And actually they do a lot of, they've done a lot of interesting and great work. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau did a study of 150,000 family finances and they found the number one predictor of financial wellness out predicting inheritance was a positive attitude combined with the habit of saving. If you just believed you could and you just had a handful of basic habits, you were more likely to have good financial outcomes even than from inheritance. So I think this, this idea that you can act on the world, that you can go ahead and that, that, that onus is on you to act is something we have got to reclaim. And history clearly teaches optimism has outsized rewards.

[Mike Pesca]

And we'll be back tomorrow with more of more. Joseph Moore, author of how to Get Rich in American History. So lately I've been getting a little, I guess the word is intentional about my wardrobe. You know, you want to look good, but you want to be comfortable. You want to look put together. You want to be put together. Enter Quince. Quince has the wardrobe staples for spring. They have 100% European linen shorts and shirts that start off at $34. And they're all lightweight and breathable. And I should also say that the reason they're able to beat all their competitors by 50 to 80% is that they do in fact, cut out the middleman. You always hear that, but it's true. They work directly with ethical fact accessories. And you're benefiting me. I'm benefiting to the tune of the ultra stretch 24. Seven smart chinos. It is good that these are in 24. Six chinos, you know, and I can't wear them Tuesdays. I could wear them every day. I'd like to wear them every day. It's like I'm getting away with something because to the outsider they look like, I'll say dress pants to use that broad category. But to the insider me inside they pants, they are stretchy and comfortable and you know, they don't feel like those hard, stiff, uncomfortable, starchy dress pants. They're fantastic. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com the gist for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com/the gist for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com/the gist. And now the spiel I listened to an interview on the BBC with Wendy Sherman. She was a former Obama administration nuclear arms negotiator. She served as Undersecretary of State under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal and she's been doing some interviews about how the deal went down. She was on Mehdi Hassan I really can't with Medi Hassan. If anyone heard it and want to tell me that it was actually a good interview, do let me know. I will check it out. But she was on the BBC talking to Asma Khalid, the host about the JCPOA.

[Wendy Sherman]

In 2013 things changed. Javaz Zarif became the foreign minister and he led the delegation. He had spent 30 years in the United States. He spoke perfect English, he knew us and Abbas Arachi was my counterpart and now the foreign minister. So we began much more serious negotiations than ultimately brought in this short term agreement.

[Mike Pesca]

My thoughts on the deal that you should know before I analyze this interview and her reflections are that it was worth a try. The downside was it give the Iranians a lot of money and this emboldened their terrorist proxies. I know the answer to this. I know the rebuttal from the pods have America types and David Rhodes, well, trying to withhold funding for Hezbollah and the Houthis and Hamas just wasn't part of the deal. If the deal was about that, the deal would be about that. This deal was about nuclear weapons. However, you're in the Department of State, you know that one of the reasons that nuclear weapons are bad is that they spread death and destruction. And one of the reasons terror are bad is that they spread death and destruction perhaps a bit more gradually. David Frum and Tom Nichols, who are now I guess certainly critical of what Trump is doing in Iran, but I think reluctant retroactive supporters of the deal, they do say and noted that at the time they were very, very critical of the fact that all the money was given up front. There wasn't a phase in for when the Iranians would get the money. And I know the answer to that also from listening to David Frum and Wendy Sherman, which is, yes, well, if we phased in the money instead of giving it all up front, the Iranians wouldn't have signed the deal. In fact, that's an answer to so many objections. Well, then the Iranians wouldn't have signed the deal. To which I say, well, then, okay, they wouldn't have signed the deal. And this is what this interview and others like it drove home to me, that the Americans, Obama, Kerry, Wendy Sherman, really, really, really wanted a deal.

[Wendy Sherman]

There was a point, I remember, in the Beau Rivage Hotel in Geneva, and we all came to agreement on what we thought was a set of parameters for a final deal. And soon after, the supreme leader gave a speech and set out a whole bunch of new parameters. I'm not even sure Zarif knew that was coming. And we had a very difficult meeting suddenly in Geneva with the Iranian delegation, where we had to figure out a way to meet some of what the Supreme Leader was asking for and keep the deal moving forward or not.

[Mike Pesca]

Or you could say, then we don't have a deal. I mean, the ayatollah just blew up your deal, guys. Now you're screwed. Now we're taking the deal away. Now we're changing the deal dramatically. But that's not how it happened. Listen to Wendy Sherman. The ayatollah says something extreme, and the Americans have to accommodate that extremism. They had to work with the Iranians to accommodate their obstinate leader. And of course, the Iranians knew this. They were in a great position. Their crazy guy bad cop could say anything about the deal. He probably meant it. And they could say, what are you going to do? We got to rewrite the deal. Now we'll have to draw the lines around what the ayatollah just said, because Obama, Kerry, and Sherman really, really, really wanted a deal. Now, much of the interview was marveling at how much they had to put up with to get the deal.

[Joseph Moore]

You were there for, what was it?

[Wendy Sherman]

28 days, you said, right, 28 days. Ate one meal outside of the hotel. In those 28 days, we had two dining rooms because particularly my European colleagues, my Russian colleagues, too, probably wanted to have alcohol. And of course, the Iranians didn't want that. But towards the end, Foreign Minister Zarif invited us into the Iranian dining room, and I had the best pistachio chicken of my life. Oh, wow.

[Mike Pesca]

Oh, wow. That is a lot to put up with. It doesn't seem like the Iranians had to put up with that. Much so often there was a mention of a clause that the Iranians just wouldn't agree to. So they had to give up the clause. The American and European negotiators did like the deal sunsetting in 15 years. They wanted more, but the Iranians just wouldn't agree to it.

[Wendy Sherman]

Our whole notion, and I think what President Obama understood is if we could have these very severe limits for 15 years, that that gave us time to see what else we could achieve, was

[Joseph Moore]

dismantling, just not on the table. The Iranians would not agree to it.

[Wendy Sherman]

It was not on the table.

[Mike Pesca]

So the negotiation there is negotiating with yourself or maybe the deal negotiators trying to pitch to Obama. It's okay, 15 years. It allow. It's great even. It allows us more time to cultivate relationships. No, it's just bad. It's not as good as 20 or 25 years. I guess better than 5 and 10 years, right? Every day less than 15 years is worse than 15 years. And every day more is better. Now, Sherman described the Iranians this way.

[Wendy Sherman]

Iran is a culture of resistance. And part of its national identity is this ostensible right of enrichment, which, as I said, America still does not agree to. And Iran's believing that we were trying to take away the country's right to its own sovereign sense of itself.

[Mike Pesca]

I wonder if somewhere in Tehran there is an interview with one of the Iranian negotiators. Probably not. They're being bombed and have not really a free press, so you can't get good answers anyway. But work with me here, thought experiment. An Iranian interviewer is asking questions to an Iranian negotiator. And the Iranian negotiator is saying, you have to understand this about America. America is, if we're a culture of resistance, America is a culture of insistence. Their identity is not to allow a rogue state to have a nuclear weapon. That's just not who they are. Of course, no one's saying this or thinking this. They didn't bring a sociological lens to the motivations of the United States. They didn't have to. They got the big picture correct, which is that the United States does not wish to make any sacrifices. The people don't. The leaders on behalf of the people do not. They are powerful, but they cannot endure any pain, any inconvenience, really. And the Iranians can. And the Iranians know this. The Iranians correctly see themselves as a brick wall when they're tried to be pushed against. They look at the Americans as something like paper mache. You have to understand the American Character they give in all the time. I am even withholding overall judgment on the usefulness, the wisdom of the jcpoa. But an interview like this, an historical record being documented and put together like this is extremely clarifying. I don't think it reflects that well on the process that this deal was secured. I think Trump's bluster is somewhat insane. I think his talk of cards is eye rolling. I think how Trump does things is almost all pure folly. But what I heard from Wendy Sherman does not impress me as the model to emulate. Look, there are a few reasons why Sherman might be saying this. She probably just saying it because there's a horrible war going on and she's doing some interviews to show, hey, we had a better way, we had a deal. But you could also make the case that what Sherman is doing is they think, Wendy Sherman, the deal negotiators, think they really did put one over on the Iranians. So she does public statements like this to give the Iranians an idea, wow, America thought we were really hard to negotiate with. America didn't just give in. You know, what Wendy Sherman is doing is trying to advance the idea that, you know, the Iranians won the negotiation. So the Iranians hear that and do the same thing the next time. I think the real reason is that the Iranians really did win the negotiation. I could kind of prove it. There is no deal. The Iranians are doing what they wanted to before the deal, and they got all the money that was part of the deal, at least 50 billion. Some estimates put it at double that. If you include all the oil refining which was off the table before the deal, they got it all and they're trying to break out for nuclear, which is right where they were before the deal. Now, we know the answer to this domestically, yes, yes, yes. And it's all Donald Trump's fault. I didn't say his fault. It was. I said, who won the negotiation? Clearly, the Iranians won. Now, if you want to blame it on Trump, you can. I know Team Obama does. I know most Democrats. That's very comforting or seems very logical to them. However, think of it this way. You do a deal, you know, as an American, you're part of a democracy, and you know that almost every other member of the other party opposed the deal. Some members of your own party opposed the deal. So you do a deal that can easily be torn up, as Donald Trump said. But it wasn't just Donald Trump. If you remember in 2015, the tear it up crowd included Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, Carly Fiorina, most Republicans. So that's another underexplored part of the deal. If it can't survive contact with a future administration, and that future administration has at least a 45% chance of taking power. What you can't do is give everything to your adversary up front. But you can't not because, as we heard, otherwise they wouldn't have signed the deal. They were willing to walk away. The United States was not really. Just think of it this way, please do put aside everything Donald Trump has ever said that infuriates you. Ask yourself, was this a good deal in 2013 or 2014? Wendy Sherman essentially tells the BBC, after weeks and weeks and so many resets and potential distractions, it was simply the best deal they could get.

[Wendy Sherman]

Took us 18 months to get this final deal. If we had tried to do other things, we'd probably still be negotiating.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. And that's where we are right now, negotiating. Maybe with a very different set of facts. Iran is in a stronger position than they were when Wendy Sherman spent a month in Austria. Yeah, I know. It's a bit of damned if you do and damned if you don't. And I'll acknowledge again that Trump is not doing this well. But he does have an obsession with having cards. And it is true that you have to assess who has the most leverage in a deal like this. Iran might not have the cards, but the US Is a tepid, tepid card player. It's unwilling to play the cards. So I don't think that actually puts the United States in a stronger position. And my analysis is even when negotiating the deal, the United States was so transparency, unwilling to play cards, either a military card or a we're walking away from the deal card. I'd have liked to see a greater willingness to walk away to communicate that, but to actually do it. And at this moment, I'd like to see greater prudence for if you don't walk away, exactly how you engage, either with guns or fountain pens. And that's it for today's show. Cory War produces the Gist. Kathleen Sykes runs the the Gist list. Mike Pesca, substack. Com Ben Asterz, our booking producer, and Jeff Craig edits How to Michelle Pesca is the COO of Peachfish Productions. Improve G Peru Duper and thanks for listening.