Who’s Afraid of the Common Good?

Summary

The Josh Hammer Show

Episode: Who’s Afraid of the Common Good?
Date: August 4, 2026
Host: Josh Hammer
Guests: Oren Cass (Chief Economist, American Compass)

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Newsweek’s Senior Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer investigates the resurgence of the “common good” as a central idea in American politics and conservative thought. Set against the backdrop of 2026, Hammer analyzes whether prioritizing the common good is compatible with the American tradition in the face of libertarian individualism and critiques from both the Left and Right.

The discussion features Oren Cass, a prominent New Right economist, who unpacks the roots, misconceptions, and necessary trade-offs of orienting public policy toward collective welfare. The episode also tackles pressing issues like inflation, the impact of the war with Iran on the economy, the politics of AI and data centers, and notable developments in current elections.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Resurgence of the “Common Good” in Political Discourse

Timeframe: [00:30–03:42]

• Hammer describes a renewed focus on the “common good” in American conservative debate, reminiscent of the early Trump era and “fusionism” (the attempted melding of libertarian economics with traditional conservative morality).
• Highlights the failure of fusionism, quoting Henry Olson that traditional social mores merely became “the handmaid to liberty.”
• Trump’s rise in 2016 is likened to a “hurricane” exposing the flaws of hyper-globalization and unmoored individualism:

  “He came in much like a hurricane which exposes the rot in the old buildings... He exposed the downsides of hyper-globalization when it comes to things like free trade absolutism.”
  — Josh Hammer [03:01–03:19]

2. The “Common Good” in American Political Tradition

Timeframe: [03:43–07:13]

• Hammer refutes claims that the common good is inherently socialist, fascist, or un-American, citing the U.S. Constitution’s Preamble and Federalist Papers as evidence of the concept in American founding thought.
• Points out the concept is not exclusive to Catholicism; it’s present across Jewish, Protestant, and secular frameworks.

  “I’m an observant Jew. I believe in the common good.”
  — Josh Hammer [07:13]

Quote:

“Those ends of governance are more about the health of the whole, the health of the community. We might call it even the common good.”
— Josh Hammer [06:04–06:08]

3. Fusionism, Individualism, and the Roots of the Debate

Timeframe: [02:29–03:42]

• The post-WWII conservative movement’s tilt toward individualism and market fundamentalism faced criticism for sidelining the common good and social cohesion.
• Hammer summarizes critics: some wrongly associate “common good” with dictatorships or European imports, but the American tradition encompasses both liberty and collective responsibility.

4. Biblical and Hebraic Foundations for the Common Good

Timeframe: [08:25–10:00]

• Hammer draws on his own religious background and upcoming book to argue that the concept of covenant and collective holiness in the Hebrew Bible is an American inheritance.

  “A kingdom of priests and a holy nation. This is the concept of collective holiness, not individual holiness... the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
  — Josh Hammer [09:19–09:41]

5. Proper Orientation of Markets & Limitations of GDP-Driven Policy

Timeframe: [10:28–12:38]

• Hammer argues economic health is not synonymous with GDP growth; metrics like GDP do not capture the moral or communal well-being of society.
• Calls for channeling markets toward the ends of virtue and community, not just economic efficiency.

  “Metrics like GDP are not the end all, be all of how we measure the health of society... putting regulation is important, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
  — Josh Hammer [11:46–12:16]

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Interview with Oren Cass: “Common Good” and the New Right

6. Oren Cass on the “Common Good” versus Libertarianism

Timeframe: [14:13–20:20]

• Cass explains that the common good is “a fundamentally American concept” deeply embedded in the republic’s founding.
• Critiques the libertarian drift within GOP policy:

  “You have an entire generation of folks who have committed their lives to arguing that the best thing you can do for the country is borrow from the future to cut taxes. And that is not consistent with the common good. But they are quite committed to it.”
  — Oren Cass [16:10–16:36]

• Refutes the strawman that belief in the common good requires religious (especially Catholic) affiliation—it's broader and inclusive.

Quote:

“There’s this logical fallacy... all chickens have feathers, but not everything that has feathers is a chicken. In Catholic social teaching... there is strong... emphasis on the common good. It does not therefore follow that if you are interested in the common good, you have to be a Catholic.”
— Oren Cass [17:47–18:13]

7. Critique of Hyper-Individualism and Market Neutrality

• Cass outlines how the belief that “everyone pursuing their own self-interest will aggregate up into the best thing for everybody” leads to a society where many feel “adrift... without the kinds of guardrails... that people need.”
• “I think libertarians are perfectly right to notice the trade-off. They are just taking the, I think clearly wrong side of it.”
  — Oren Cass [19:45–20:20]

8. The New Right and the Policy Project

Timeframe: [21:15–23:56]

• Hammer and Cass describe the New Right’s agenda as a recalibration away from “hyper liberalization, hyperglobalization,” and unconditional deference to big business and markets.
• Cass is optimistic that younger conservatives and emergent leaders are moving conservatism away from outdated libertarian dogmas.

  “The people leading the conservative movement, the people leading the Republican Party, are going to be people who just laugh at the Wall Street Journal editorial page rather than take it seriously... these are actually questions that we have to ask and an obligation that policymakers have to play a role in the shape that our economy takes.”
  — Oren Cass [23:06–23:40]

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Economic Discussion & Current Events

9. Inflation and the War with Iran

Timeframe: [24:35–30:03]

• Hammer asks Cass about recent inflation trends and the impact of the war with Iran.

• Cass: “Core inflation measures continue to look quite healthy... All of the return to higher levels of inflation that you’re seeing in recent months are a function of the war in Iran... It is clearly and obviously a function of the choice the administration made.”
  — Oren Cass [25:28–29:07]

• Cass doubts that any late-year dip in inflation would shift electoral outcomes:

  “The American people are far too smart to be fooled by that... attitudes toward the economy get pretty baked in five, six months before an election.”
  — Oren Cass [27:52–29:00]

10. AI, Data Centers, and Political Economy

Timeframe: [30:03–34:20]

• Hammer discusses public skepticism around AI and job loss due to expansion of data centers.

• Cass points to a sudden, recent shift in public opinion against data centers—rooted less in land or resource use than in distrust of Big Tech, negative ethical impacts, and failures to deliver broad societal benefits.

  “I think there’s a much more fundamental, to some degree ethical concern... people actively wish social media had never been invented... generally what you’ve seen from Silicon Valley is an attitude that bluntly, they don’t care about the rest of the country... The American people are saying, no thank you.”
  — Oren Cass [31:24–34:00]

• Hammer ties it back: “AI, like any technology, must ultimately be oriented towards justice, human flourishing, and the common good.” — Josh Hammer [34:20]

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Primary Day: The Political Map & The Left’s Contradictions

11. Key Races in Michigan and Wisconsin

Timeframe: [34:51–36:43]

• Updates on heated primaries:
  • Michigan: Abdul El Sayed (Dem) vs. Mike Rogers (Rep).
  • Wisconsin: Francesca Hong emerges as a significant DSA candidate for governor.

12. Progressive Contradictions and Cultural Conflict

Timeframe: [37:05–43:31]

• Critiques figures like Hasan Piker and policies like requiring ID for city-run grocery stores but opposing voter ID laws.
• Points out perceived hypocrisy in progressive reasoning, relating it to lack of real principle and an aversion to American tradition.

  “So apparently in the eyes of the DSA lab left, you don’t need an ID to vote... And yet you need an ID to shop in a socialist grocery store. Make it make sense. But you can’t.”
  — Josh Hammer [43:25–43:31]

13. Thanksgiving and the American Identity

Timeframe: [38:39–40:38]

• Democratic candidate Francesca Hong is pressed on a past call to “cancel Thanksgiving,” and subsequently gives an evasive answer.
• Hammer makes this a symbol of what he sees as progressive hostility to American traditions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “There is no common good case for a strongman dictator. But there is such thing as a case for the common good more generally.”
  — Josh Hammer [04:29–04:32]

• “If pornography is popular, then the GDP of Southern California goes up. Pretty simple. Does that mean that Southern California is better? No, it means that it is morally sick.”
  — Josh Hammer [11:44–11:53]

• “The people leading the conservative movement... are going to be people who kind of just laugh at the Wall Street Journal editorial page rather than take it seriously.”
  — Oren Cass [23:30–23:37]

• “They hate the United States of America. They hate it. Make that argument and Republicans, I think, will actually do just fine this November, folks.”
  — Josh Hammer [44:38–44:40]

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Important Timestamps

• [00:30] Common good re-enters American conservative conversation
• [05:53] Preamble to the Constitution and the ends of governance
• [08:25] Biblical and Hebraic roots of the common good
• [11:13] “Two Cheers for Capitalism” – orienting markets toward virtue
• [14:47] Oren Cass on the American tradition and libertarian dogma
• [25:28] Cass on inflation and the Iran war
• [30:28] Cass on public scepticism toward data centers and tech
• [34:51] Primary day updates: Michigan and Wisconsin
• [38:43] Francesca Hong on Thanksgiving controversy
• [43:25] Hammer on contradictions in progressive ID policies

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Conclusion

This episode of The Josh Hammer Show offers a deep dive into the philosophical, historical, and policy-focused debate over the common good in American public life. Rejecting simplistic binaries, Hammer and Cass argue for a return to community-oriented politics while warning against both statist collectivism and radical libertarianism. Set amid breaking news, current elections, and economic headwinds, the show anchors today’s policy fights in centuries-old questions of virtue, responsibility, and the meaning of America. The episode is peppered with pointed critiques of progressive contradictions and closes with a call for conservatives to champion tradition and common sense on the electoral stage.

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Transcript

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The common good is back at the

center of our national conversation.

Don't look now, but the year is not 2019. The year is 2026. Why are people suddenly talking about the common good? What is the common good and is

it reconcilable with the American political tradition? I've got lots of thoughts, as you can probably surmise.

I'm Josh Hambur and this is the Josh Hamburger.

Warren Cass of American Economist will join us later in the show today to talk about the common good and also talk all things economy.

Also, it is election day in lots

of states across the country, Michigan, Missouri and elsewhere. We have our eyes closely on that. All that a little bit later on in today's show. But for now, we're going to talk about the common good. We're talking about the common good because people are talking about the common good.

It was all the rage on social media this past weekend. I had a little bit of memory

historical whiplash, actually, because this whole conversation about the common good versus hyper individualism

libertarianism feels very much like a throwback

to Donald Trump's first term in office.

2018, 19, 2020, the David Frenchism debates. These were all the rage in Reisner

politics a number of years ago.

And I weighed in pretty extensively in those debates at that time. You see the Post World War II conservative movement beginning in earnest in the 1950s with the establishment of publications like the National Review, like think tanks like the Heritage foundation and so forth, started to veer into a more individualistic, libertarian leaning direction. That's not to say that there were

not more traditional moral and social conservatives

who believed in the nation, who believed in the health of the community, the health of the whole.

Of course there were. For instance, you had Russell Kirk, who

was right there at the beginning in

the telling of this tale alongside National Reviews founder William F. Buckley.

And ultimately a lot of this culminated in what the political theorist Frank Meyer referred to as fusionism. We discussed this recently with Henry Olson

of the Ethics Public Policy Center.

Fusionism was this idea that you will

Somehow fuse together libertarian economics with moral and cultural traditionalism.

The problem, as has Henry Olson mentioned

in an essay a few years ago,

is that traditional social mores ended up just being the handmaid to liberty. Which is why Donald Trump came in

like a wrecking ball in 2016.

And he came in much like a hurricane which exposes the rot in the old buildings, does not necessarily build, but

the hurricane exposes what the weak foundations are.

And he exposed the downsides of hyper

globalization when it comes to things like free trade absolutism.

Has free trade absolutism been amazing when

it comes to reducing consumer prices on

Amazon.com, sure, you can import whatever you

want from China and elsewhere.

Has it been equally amazing for places like Toledo, Ohio? And frankly just the general ability of the American heartland to produce things like physical things and to have durable, resilient supply chains? No.

The obvious answer is no.

So around then this whole intellectual infrastructure, magazines think saying, started having this conversation as to what is the common good. And the response to this day of a lot of folks is that the common good is a socialist concept. Some of them say that it is a fascistic, a totalitarian concept. And in the ever mild defense of the libertarians, there are some people, not the brightest bulbs, who do sound at times like this when they talk about the common good. For instance, there's been a bizarre attempt to try to resuscitate the legacy of Francisco Francois. The fascists.

Like the actual fascists who governed Spain in strong man fashion for well probably almost half of the 20th century.

There is no common good case for a strong man dictator. But there is such thing as a case for the common good more generally. And a lot of folks say that this is anathema to the American tradition. They say, oh, America was predicated upon individualism, upon individual liberty. We, after all, we hold these truths to be self evident, don't we? Well, listen, it gets a little more complicated than that as the case may be, the guy who actually wrote those words, that we hold these truths to

be self evident, that all men are

created equal, well that was Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, for what it's worth, definitely had his upsides. But he was not even present at the drafting of the constitutional convention in 1787. He was actually gallivanting off in pre

revolutionary France as the late great Gertrude

Himmelfar, the former wife of Irving Kristol,

the great concerted intellectual.

As she once said, it was quote, the clearest sign of providence intervening in American history.

The clearest sign that God is Watching over these United States that Jefferson was

not at the convention because he would have taken it in a radically Francophilic pro revolutionary fervor. But that's not the American tradition. How do I know that? Well, we can look at things like the Preamble of the Constitution which actually says what the ends of governance are. What are we here to actually do? Well, the preamble says, we the people of the United States, in order to

form a more perfect union, establish justice,

ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common

defense, promote the general welfare, and secure

the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain, establish this Constitution. Those are not hyper individualistic aims, are they? Those ends of governance are more about the health of the whole, the health of the community. We might call it even the common good. This very phrase, the public good, actually appears, I believe it's six times in maybe the single most famous of the Federalist Papers ever written, James Madison's Federalist number 10, which he drafted in 1787.

In fact, elsewhere in the Federalist Papers,

in federalist number 57, Madison argues that the aim of every political constitution is or ought to be first to obtain

for rulers men who possess most wisdom

to discern and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society. There are a lot of folks who are looking at this conversation saying, ah, there's no tradition of common good thought in America. That's a European import. Some say this is, that this is purely Catholic thought. But they say that the Protestant, perhaps the Jewish tradition sees it differently. Not true. I'm an observant Jew. I believe in the common good.

I want to continue this conversation in just a moment, but for now I

want to tell you about a late

great friend of mine, a man who

definitely believed in the common good.

And that was my late friend, Charlie Kirk. You know folks, we're living in a

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Charlie and I talked about this many times.

He believed fundamentally that faith is not the kind of thing that just goes with you to the pews over the weekend. Rather, it should imbue and form every act that you take on a day to day basis. It shapes how we engage the culture with conviction, humility and purpose.

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Now, there are some folks, as I was saying before the before the Angel Studios advertisement, there are some folks who say that the talk of the common good is a foreign European. There were times a Catholic import. But I'm writing a book right now. It's my second book. It's titled Covenant and How the Hebrew Bible Made Christian America. There are all sorts of Hebraic Old Testament concepts that were indispensable to the

building of this country.

It's a very common theme here on the show. One of the most foundational is the idea of covenant. The original covenant with Abraham.

And covenant appears all throughout the scriptures,

Old Testament and New Testament alike. More generally, this notion on the health of the whole, on the common good of society is all throughout biblical thought. A lot of folks think common good

and they associate in their, in their

head Aristotle or the Greek philosophers Aristotle

and Plato, and then ultimately brought into the modern ish era by Thomas Aquinas

and, and Augustine and various other Catholic teachers. But In Exodus, chapter 19, verse 6, God says to the Israelites assembled at the base Mount Sinai, quote, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. This is the concept of collective holiness, not individual holiness, but how you, how you need a community, you need a nation to achieve a certain level of holiness. In other words, you take every individual's holiness and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is the entire notion in modern

political parlance, when we speak of the

common good, there is a good that is attained at a communal, collective or at a national level that surpasses the aggregate summation of all of our individual goods. So I really kind of had to, had to weigh in on that because it's been all the rage over the past few days. I want to clarify that when folks talk about the common good, don't do your enemies work for you. Again, if you're making the quote unquote common good case for Francisco Franco, the

fascist bane, or God forbid, if you're

making the quote unquote common good case for communism, fascism, Stalin, the Nazis God forbid. Then you are a freaking moron. You're a moron. There's no other way to say it. The right approach to question the political economy. I mentioned Irving Kristol and his wife

Gertrude Himmelfarb a few minutes ago.

Irving Kristol wrote a book about a half century ago called Two Cheers for Capitalism. What that means is not three cheers. Hip hip, hooray. Just two cheers. Hip hip. Why? Because capitalism is fundamentally a force for good. Innovation, freedom, competition, reduced prices, ingenuity, hard labor, own the fruits of your labor.

Going back to John Locke, frankly, going

back to the Bible, these are all good things. However, the market must be channeled and properly oriented towards the actual ends to which we ultimately constitute governments among men. Those ends are things like living in harmony with our creator, living lives of virtue, things like that. The example I always give is San Fernando Valley in Southern California, the home

of the pornography industry.

If pornography is popular, then the GDP of Southern California goes up. Pretty simple. Does that mean that Southern California is better? No, it means that it is morally sick. So you see, metrics like GDP are not the end all, be all of how we measure the health of society. It's very simple heuristic to try to understand this concept. So yes, putting regulation is important, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. As with so many of the questions that the American founders fundamentally had this right. They rejected monarchy and dictatorship for republicanism. They rejected laissez faire fundamentalism, and they also rejected socialism. What did they put in its place? A common sense market, nationalist economy. That's the way I think about this, folks. Don't give the libertarians what they want, but also don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We're gonna go to a quick commercial break, folks. We'll be joined on this side by Orencast to continue this conversation as to what is the common good. We'll be right back with orencast.

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[Josh Hammer]

Welcome back.

So we are going to continue our

conversation on the common good.

What is this? And is there reason or is there not reason to be afraid of of it? And other topics as well. And we are going to bring on to have that conversation. Oren Cass. Oren Cass is a return guest here at the Josh Hammer Show. You can follow Oren on Xrencast. He's the chief economist for American Compass. So Oren, welcome back to the program.

This conversation as to what is the common good and is this tradition of

the common good reconcilable? Is it consistent with Americanism as it has historically been understood? It all erupted from what I could

tell over the past week.

I'm not entirely sure, frankly, how that happened, but it did.

It happens to be a debate that I have waited in on a lot over the years.

I think you have as well.

So talk to us about your understanding of this notion of the common good

and how it sits into the American political and historical tradition, if you will.

[Oren Cass]

Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. It's great to see you, as always. And I think this is, as you said, a topic that has burst onto the scene, whether through coordination or mere coincidence, over really just the past few days. It's something on the right of center within conservatism, especially within the new right folks have been talking about forever. I think I often point people back to then Senator Marco Rubio's speech at Catholic University back in 2019 on what he called common good capitalism. And even the phrase draws especially on the tradition of Catholic social teaching. At the end of the day, it is a fundamentally American concept. And it goes back, I think, to the founding of our republic, which is the notion that there is some interest in the well being, not just of yourself as a consumer, but of the community of the nation that we all have an obligation to contribute to and that we all ultimately benefit from. And so it's in all of those respects, I think, the least controversial and most broadly embraced concept possible. The issue is that it conflicts very much with a lot of things that libertarians would assert, and a lot of things that have then gotten kind of, I would say, somewhat inadvertently baked into Republican economic dogma and public policy and politics, especially over the last 30 or 40 years, that, for one thing, has not worked out very well, is not popular, and is finally being pushed back against. But you have an entire generation of folks who have committed their lives to arguing that the best thing you can do for the country is borrow from the future to cut taxes. And that is not consistent with the common good. But they, they are quite committed to it.

[Josh Hammer]

You can follow Oran on X at

Orencast, you know, or.

I think a lot of folks have this strawman vision of what the common

good, what the public good is in their mind. They tend to associate it with Thomistic thought, with Thomas Aquinas, with Catholicism, and it's just not the case. So I'm a religious Jew. I believe in things like the common good and things like the covenant. The covenant and the common good, I think, are actually historically not identical, but highly analogous concepts.

And the American founders, who are overwhelmingly Protestants, wrote this prolifically.

Federalist number 10 talks about the public good six times. Madison says in Federalist 57 that it is the goal of government to elect individuals who will discern and pursue the common good.

So I'm not entirely sure at what

point we lost sight of the common good, of the good, of the whole,

as the end all, be all of

governance, and certainly frankly, also for the economy. So in your telling of the tale,

how did this weird dichotomy emerged whereby

you had a lot of these folks

who are saying that the common good is statism, it's socialism. At what point did.

Did this start to just dissipate and this kind of easily caricatured libertarianism start to rise up in its place?

[Oren Cass]

Well, I think you got the exact issue here at the heart of it, which is there's this logical fallacy that I always think of as the all chickens have feathers, but not everything that has feathers is a chicken. Right? Where it's certainly true that in Catholic social teaching, in these various other religious traditions, there is a strong and I would say entirely justified and beneficial emphasis on the common good. It does not therefore follow that if you are interested in the common good, you have to be a Catholic or from a particular religious denomination. The various religions that probably most. I'm not a sufficient scholar to say all, but it's hard to anticipate a serious religion that. That doesn't take seriously a notion like the common good. But you can be entirely secular, as you said, you can be a political theorist writing the Federalist, and you care about the common good as well. I think where it broke down, where the opposition to it came from, is when people started asserting that actually the best thing for the society is simply for everyone to pursue their own rational self interest. That is that we don't need to have a politics that actually asserts some common good and orients people toward it. We simply can be entirely neutral onto what is good for people, what is good for communities, what is good for the nation and everybody pursuing their own self interest will aggregate up into the best thing for everybody. And so it's this sort of, I would say, kind of, you know, neutered politics that, that tries to disclaim any role for us as a political community in defining what we want. The result being that, you know, for a subset of people who are able to very well optimize their own lives for exactly what they want, they have much more freedom, many fewer constraints. But for the mass, vast majority of people who, you know, deeply benefit from living within a society, within communities that are oriented to some common good and that orient them toward that common good, you know, they, they end up in many ways adrift, without the kinds of guardrails, without the kinds of forming institutions that people need. And so there's no question there's a trade off there. I think libertarians are perfectly right to notice the trade off. They are just taking the, I think clearly wrong side of it, right?

[Josh Hammer]

And life is all about trade offs.

Statesmanship is all about trade offs. There are any number of examples of this when it comes to social policy, economic policy, every policy has trade offs. It's kind of just Public Policy 101 folks chatting with Oren Cass, who's the chief economist, economist of American Compass or in your organization. American Compass, which I've been proud to be involved with essentially since its earliest days, is really one of the leaders of trying to intellectually flesh out the broader New Right project that you alluded to at the beginning of our conversation. And I think about this as trying to have a consolidationist agenda that is trying to not put back into the bottle, because putting Pandora's box back into the box is not always easy, but

at least trying to slow the momentum

and turn back to an extent some of the excesses and pitfalls of hyper liberalization, hypoglobalization, when it comes to free trade absolutism, when it comes to a highly deregulated antitrust agenda and various other public policy proposals as well.

I want to ask you, Warren, about

the broader state of the New Right project. It's a project that I have signed up for and have been very much a part of, as you certainly been a leader as well. But so much of the conversation, especially online, gets pulled into these deeply non substantive, conspiratorial directions.

Do you find yourself optimistic about the

actual substantive component of the New Right project, or has it been so deeply clouded out by so much of the online chatter and noise?

[Oren Cass]

Well, I'm very optimistic about the long term direction of what I think you've rightly called sort of the substantive New Right. Because fundamentally, what I think we see happening in our politics is that sort of, as you said, easily caricatured libertarianism rejection that there even is a common good, that that had been shaping the right of center, that had been kind of infecting conservatism over the past generation, is clearly on the wane. I think Donald Trump's election in 2016 obviously marked an important break with what people thought was this completely. What's the word for an impenetrable fortress, I guess, sort of political dogmatism. And it turned out, actually, no, that's not what everybody wants. And there's a lot of space here to rethink things. You know, as with any political movement, as I think we're seeing with both on the left and the right, as you've always seen in history, on both the left and the right, you have kind of radical fringes, you have bad ideas, you have, you know, people who want to get attention that in turn draw an enormous share of the media attention in ways that are not helpful at all to the substantive project of governing in America. But at the end of the day, you do have people who are are focused on governing America, who are focused on shaping our politics. And so the ideas that animate them ultimately determine the direction that our politics goes. And I think what you're seeing, and based on where younger conservatives are in particular, what you will continue to see, is that the people leading the conservative movement, the people leading the Republican Party, are going to be people who kind of just laugh at the Wall Street Journal editorial page rather than take it seriously. And do not take for granted that globalization and free good. Do not take for granted that our immigration policy should focus on bringing in as much cheap labor as possible. Do not take for granted that mergers are always efficient and bigger companies are always better. That's not to say that in every case, the answer is more regulation and bigger government. But that these are actually questions that we have to ask and an obligation that policymakers have to play a role in the shape that our economy takes.

[Josh Hammer]

It's very well said folks. You can follow Orencast on xrencast. We're going to a quick break on the other side or in return for a conversation about the economy more Stay stay with us for much more with Oren Cass.

[Ryan]

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[Josh Hammer]

purchase necessary bgw Group Void prohibited by law. See terms and conditions 21/ welcome back and Oren Cass returns. He is the chief economist for American Compass. Follow him on xrencast or and I

want to get to your actual day

to day job which is that of chief economist of a public policy institution. And I want to just get your thoughts as to the question of inflation in Iran to kick off our conversation. So the inflation monthly numbers very hotly debated topic of course. How do you actually measure inflation? What is the correct and most authentic way to actually gauge inflation? It is nowhere near the Biden Harris era catastrophic highs. I believe it reached 9.1% in summer 2022. So we're nowhere close to that.

But certain it is, it is stubbornly

clinging the 3.5 to 4% range, give or take depending on how you measure it.

Is your sense that the price of crude and the war with Iran is having a major impact on this or

is this more of an ancillary factor because it was still in the 3% range prior to the war of memory serves. So what is the relationship between the current conflict and the inflation metric?

[Oren Cass]

It's a great question and we actually have a very good way of looking at this, which is that economists look both at the overall or change in the price level, but then they also look at what's called the core price index. So they actually exclude food and energy and look at what's happening everywhere else. And so if you want to know what's happening in the core American economy versus what's being driven by say oil prices, you can look at the core inflation measures and what we see is that core inflation measures continue to look quite healthy. They had actually come down well below 3% and are sort of of headed to the 2% that I think has traditionally been the Fed's target. All of the return to higher levels of inflation that you're seeing in recent months are a function of the war in Iran, are a function of rising energy prices. And of course, to some extent that then does flow back into everything else as well. So even within your core measures, at the end of the day, if it's more expensive to manufacture things, if it's more expensive to transport things on the roads, if it's more expensive to keep your supermarket heated or cooled, the price increases are going to show up a little bit everywhere. But I think there's very little sign that we had a problem independent of the war. And so that's certainly one of the frustrations with that policy that the administration has been pursuing.

[Josh Hammer]

And if the war does find a way to wind down, to be clear,

no one exactly knows what that looks like in practice. Since Trump is clearly at times publicly struggling with this question as to how to wind it down, is there any

chance that there could be such a

short term impact on the inflation price of goods metrics to potentially give the President's party, the Republican Party, a boost

at the polls in November?

Because right now I think that a lot of folks on the right are worried about the midterms and the economy is always looming. Above all, Jimmy Carville fundamentally had it right. It is always the economy, stupid. And in virtually every election, the exit polls show the exact same question.

And I kind of personally sympathize, Oren

feel for the President because he clearly wants to find some viable way out of this Iran situation, but he needs

to make it stick. And he ultimately also needs to get inflation and more importantly, people's confidence in the economy up.

So is there any way that this could actually resolve itself neatly before November, or is that just too tight a timeline?

[Oren Cass]

Well, look, it's certainly possible that some agreement is struck that you have traffic flowing smoothly through the strait, that gas prices come back down to where they were before the war, or at least much closer to that level. When that happens, you will see that then show up in things like the inflation data. I think the reality is bluntly that the American people are far too smart to be fooled by that. Right. No one is going to look, no one's going to say, like, wow, look at that, prices came down between August and November. That must be because the President's doing a great job, traditionally speaking. I think the conventional wisdom here is that attitudes toward the economy get pretty baked in five, six months before an election. If you're looking at sort of which economic measures tend to be most correlated with which election outcomes in this case, I think part of the challenge is you have such a massive unforced error. I mean, even if you have, you could hypothetically have an oil crisis that had nothing to do with US policy and typically the party in power would pay a political price for that anyway. In this case, it is is clearly and obviously a function of the choice that the administration made that we are facing this situation. I think everyone would like to see it. Well, I shouldn't say everybody. There are people who are super fired up for intensification of the war for whatever reason, but I think the vast majority of people would like to see it wind up as quickly as possible. But at the end of the day, the cost that was imposed will be the cost that was imposed. And that cost is certainly in more money that people had to spend than they otherwise would have had to spend. That price is certainly in actual expenditures on munitions. That price is in just the complete distraction of Washington, of the administration from the things that the American people wanted to see the President working on. And you can't get that back. And so I think, yes, my guess is that there will be a political price to pay for that. And it is frankly a deserved political price.

[Josh Hammer]

Now I want to switch gears a little bit. Oren, ask you about the topic of AI actually, which is a topic that is all the rage in so many

of my social and professional circles. This question of data centers keeps on

coming up over and over again and I'm hardly an expert on the topic. I'm kind of trying to feel on my way around this in real time. Perhaps you can actually even help me. My instinct, Oren, on the data center question is as follows. And you'll tell me if my instinct is right or wrong.

My instinct is that but in the abstract, the data center issue is not

a massive problem insofar as so much of the Internet infrastructure, the cloud thing of aws, Amazon Web Services, it all needs data centers.

However, there are all sorts of secondary

and tertiary concerns there when it comes to job loss. When it comes to some more of these popular sentiments, I think a lot of new right folks might feel inclined to do.

And then there's all sorts of ethical

questions about AI as well. So for instance, here in Florida, our Attorney General James Ruth Meyer is quite literally suing ChatGPT for giving advice. I believe the fact pattern was a teenage girl how to harm herself some terrible situation like that.

So there's all sorts of ethical issues

in addition to the job loss concerns there. I'm curious what your general view of the data center issue is, is it a problem? The polling shows that the American people are very skeptical frankly of the explosion of data centers. Is that sentiment justified?

[Oren Cass]

I'm glad you asked. This is actually something I'm doing a bunch of work on right now. So I have many thoughts. I'll try to consolidate. You know, I think the starting point on this is to notice that until very recently, data centers were popular. In fact, as of last year, 36 states had tax incentives on the books for data centers. It was something you had a ribbon cutting for. And you can see in the polling data, in fact, people's enthusiasm for having data centers built near them flipped from neutral to outright positive to massively negative really over the last 12 months. And so the idea that there's something inherent to a, a data center or its land usage or electricity or water, that's what motivating people, I think is just impossible to square with the actual track record. I think complaining about those issues is the legal mechanism that we have in our society, for better or frankly, often for worse for obstructing a project that you don't like. But it's pretty clear to me that what people don't like isn't the building on the outskirts of town that pays massive property taxes. It is the thing in the building which is the AI. And to some extent I think you're right. There are concerns certainly about job loss. But I think there's a much more fundamental, to some degree ethical concern and just broader sense that technological progress has not been benefiting people for some time. Particularly the kind of technological progress brought by Silicon Valley has been things that you see in polling. People actively wish social media had never been invented. Right? People see the big tech giants as exertions, exerting totally inappropriate power in the economy, in our politics. And generally what you've seen from Silicon Valley's an attitude that bluntly, they don't care about the rest of the country, they don't need the rest of the country. And now all of a sudden they do, and they're showing up and saying, hey, actually we really need to use the rest of the country to bring about our vision. But people don't like their vision. The faces of this people like Sam Altman, Elon Musk are terrible spokespeople for it. They are some combination of out of touch to outright creepy. And so American people are saying, no thank you. And frankly, it's a tragedy, it's a problem. I mean, the economic opportunity here, the national security necessity for being in the lead on this stuff for building the stuff is enormous. This but I think in many ways it's encouraging to see the so called masters of the universe who are used to just doing whatever they want, can't do that anymore. They are going to have to face this reckoning and persuade the American people that what they are doing is actually going to provide benefits broadly and to

[Josh Hammer]

bring our conversation full circle. In closing, Oren, I guess I would also argue that AI, like any technology, must ultimately be oriented towards justice, human flourishing and the common good, which are the traditional goals of of public policy from A through Z. Unfortunately, folks are out of time. Oren Cass is the chief economist for American Compass. Follow him on X orencast. Oren, we appreciate your time as always, sir. Have a great rest of your day.

[Oren Cass]

It's great to see you. Thanks Josh.

[Josh Hammer]

Folks, we're going to one final break. We'll be right back with some closing thoughts after this.

Welcome back. So today is primary day all across the country, Michigan has this heated Senate primary between Abdul El Sayed and Haley Steven Stevens. The third candidate dropped out a little while ago and all signs are pointing towards an Abdul El Sayed romp in the state of Michigan. He looks like he is set potentially,

potentially to be the first Muslim city

member of the US Senate. However, however you have Mike Rogers, who is a longstanding centrist establishment politician from

the state of Michigan.

He is the Republican nominee and he is right there ready to take on Abdul El Sayed. The polls on this are actually interesting. So Rogers currently leads over Abdul El Sayed, but trails at times significantly to Haley Stevens. But all indications are that Michigan Democratic primary voters do not particularly care about this.

They're going to go with with Abdul

El Sayed, who is now interestingly calling himself he's actually saying that he's not a socialist. He's actually saying that he actually believes in capitalism, which is really interesting because he never felt compelled to say that until now because he has a long history of attending and being invol involved with the DSA and various other far left socialist causes. And there's something of a little bit of a momentum swing happening there in the industrial Midwest in the Rust Belt when it comes to this. This DSA style of democratic politics is actually not just even in the state of of Michigan.

Wisconsin is now is now entering the public national picture as well because you

have Francesca Hong, who looks like she

could be the next governor of Wisconsin unless unless there's a Republican elected, of course, which is always possible. But Francesca Hong is going to put up a real fight. If nothing else, be the next governor of the Badger State.

And this woman is a full fledged.

A full fledged dsa.

Crazy. So Hasan Piker.

Hasan Piker, who said that America deserved

9, 11 and that Mao Zedong was one of the great politicians of the

20th century while he was just in

Wisconsin campaigning for Francesca Hong, just like

he was in Michigan campaigning for Abdul

Aside, you see, they all make the same rounds over and over and over again. Here was Hasan Piker in Wisconsin campaigning

alongside Francesca Hong for governor of Wisconsin.

[Michael Moore]

The reason why I brought up Michigan, the reason why I brought up Michigan is because I think it was Michael Moore in 2016 who said Michigan's not a swing state and neither is Wisconsin. These are not swing states. They've been turned into swing states because they've left you behind. But we are going to bring back the working class to both Wisconsin and to Michigan. A Republican will never be elected in this state ever again once our movement is done.

[Josh Hammer]

Well, not really.

Actually, if you look at the history

of these states, a lot of them actually were swing states.

You have a guy like, I don't know, Gerald Ford, iconic Republican president from

the state of Michigan. Michigan.

You know, it wasn't that long ago, frankly, that there were plenty of Republicans elected statewide in both Michigan and Wisconsin. In fact, last I checked, Ron Johnson is still the sitting senator from Wisconsin.

Ron Johnson, who is one of the

better members of the Republican caucus. He's no switch. Ron Johnson is actually a very good senator.

He was on, he was on his best, actually, last Wednesday during the already infamous Rand Paul Anthony Fauci showdown.

I happen to like Ron Johnson quite, quite a bit.

In any event, speaking of Francesca Hong, she was on CNN where Kaitlan Collins, the anchor, was asking her whether or not Thanksgiving should be canceled. Yes, this is a real question asked to a viable Democratic candidate in one

of the nation's most important swing states in the year 2026.

You can't make this crap up. Here was Francesca Hong on CNN with Kaitlan Collins.

[Francesca Hong]

One thing that they brought up as well was a post from you in 2021 where you said Americans should cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. The post has been deleted. Republicans have been highlighting it. Do you still believe that Thanksgiving should be canceled?

I'm a chef and one of the first meals that I made that was for the community when I was 16 was a Thanksgiving meal. Now, I, I always think my hospitality background and owning a restaurant for seven, eight years that bringing folks around the Table. To share conversation and build community is always a good thing. But Thanksgiving is also a time that's incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve. And the position that I'm running for right now, and I think my background, background as a chef will actually help me become a better governor that's able to bring more people to the table.

[Josh Hammer]

Okay, so. Didn't really answer the question, did she? But more importantly, I want to emphasize the point and the fact that we are talking about whether Thanksgiving should be canceled. And this gets at the biggest point

of all here, which is this.

These people hate America. Thanks Thanksgiving. Thanks freaking giving. You know, the very first version of which was celebrated in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, in the year 1621, a year after the Mayflower landed. They were so grateful that they were there and that the. The crops, the food was bountiful and that they were alive, that they wanted to thank God Almighty for it. A sentiment that George Washington ultimately codified

as part of the American tradition in

his Thanksgiving proclamation just a few months after he was sworn in as the nation's first ever Commander in Chief in 1789. They don't like that. They don't like the Senate. They don't like the Supreme Court. They don't like the Electoral College. What do they like? Oh, yeah, they like it when they win. That's the only principle that matters. We saw this, of course, in Maine with the Grand Plattner saga as well. In theory, Democrats should have been amongst the first to call out Graham Platner for being a womanizing cad, for being an alleged sexual assaulter and rapist, credibly

accused, I might argue.

After all, it was Democrats who were loudly bleeding at the height of MeToo believe all women. Which they kind of sort of maybe did, at least until it was politically inconvenient to do so. And then they said that we oppose Nazis.

That's why we're anti fascists.

Except the guy who has a Nazi tattoo, too. You see, principle doesn't mean anything to these people. All that matters is power. Power qua power. You see, there is such thing as the common good.

Take us back to earlier conversation.

But when it comes to the left these days, the quote unquote, common good is just the good for the American

left and all their various beneficiaries and

all their various affinity groups and interest groups and all of the above. So, speaking of the lunatic left, like, I couldn't help but not notice that Zormandani is back in the news as well.

So Zormandani is continuing his rollout of

these New York City owned grocery stores. They're going to put one in each of the five boroughs. I don't even know how much you'd have to pay me to make it to the Staten island municipal owned grocery store. But. Okay, and what he is valing Zorman Donnie, is that the prices will be 30% below market.

Okay, so Econ 101. What could possibly go wrong with this picture? Okay, so you're going to undercut the competition. Those markets will, will have to, will have to either cut prices and therefore

the suppliers will then no longer sell. They'll go out of business. These people need to pick up an economics textbook. Okay, okay, that's. That, that, that's two tiers of capitalism.

Three tiers.

How many? However many chairs you want to call it. It's just common sense. But the funny thing is this Mamzani, as part of getting access to these 30% discounted grocery stores, is issuing a requirement to show a valid ID to show you live in New York City. Yeah, that's right. So apparently in the eyes of the DSA lab left, you don't need an ID to vote. In fact, that's racist.

How dare you propose that despite the

fact that a large majority of black

people and Hispanics all support this policy.

They say it's racist. Joe Biden famously said in 2021 that Brian Kemp's very mild law in Georgia

was Jim Crow on steroids.

And yet you need an ID to shop in a socialist grocery store. Make it make sense. But you can't. Because this is just who they are. There is so much, so much opportunity

here for the right, for Republicans when

they, when they get back from the

August recess, which is what Congress is on. The House already on there. Senate will about to be there after they confirm Todd Blanche, Attorney General.

There is so much here in those final two months, that two month stretch, September and October into the November election elections, pound the crap out of these commies. Not literally, but proverbially. None of it makes sense. The Red Green alliance, the alliance between Marxism, feminism, Islamism. It doesn't make sense. Idaho required for commie grocery stores, but not for voting, doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense. And at its core, they hate the United States of America. They hate it.

Make that argument and Republicans, I think,

will actually do just fine this November, folks.

That's it for today's show. Have a great rest of your evening. We'll be right back.