America's Factory Reset with Adam Tooze and Sohrab Ahmari

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Episode: America's Factory Reset with Adam Tooze and Sohrab Bhargava
Release Date: March 20, 2025

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Introduction

In this thought-provoking episode of The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, host Jon Stewart engages with two distinguished guests, Adam Tooze, author of Chartbook, and Sohrab Bhargava, US editor of UnHerd and author of Tyranny, Inc., to dissect the evolving landscape of the American economy. The discussion delves into the historical context of economic policies, the impact of technological advancements, and the political dynamics shaping the future of the U.S. economic order.

Economic Reshaping and Historical Context

Jon Stewart opens the conversation by critiquing the perceived fecklessness within the Democratic Party, using Senator Charles Schumer as a focal point for the party's frustrations and strategic shortcomings. He asks Adam Tooze whether the current economic policies signify an engineered shift from previous orders like the New Deal and neoliberalism.

Adam Tooze responds by questioning the substance behind the Biden administration's initiatives such as the CHIPS Act, suggesting they may amount to superficial changes rather than a transformative economic strategy. At [05:35], he remarks, “If they go on talking like this and it's quite difficult to actually put your finger on what they're doing… you start wondering whether it isn't more like a facelift.”

Sohrab Bhargava adds historical depth by tracing the Hamiltonian tradition, emphasizing the foundational policies of tariffs, canals, and banks that historically shaped America's manufacturing prowess. He challenges the notion that the current sectoral mix of the American economy is immutable, arguing that it stems from deliberate policy choices rather than inevitability.

Manufacturing, Protectionism, and the Working Class

The discussion transitions to the role of manufacturing in the U.S. economy. Stewart questions whether protectionist measures under the Trump administration can effectively rebalance the economy. Adam Tooze counters by highlighting the limitations of boosting the manufacturing workforce, noting that increasing it from 7% to 10% of the workforce would require significant changes without a broader social vision.

Sohrab Bhargava underscores the importance of manufacturing not just for economic reasons but also for national security and community stability. He points out that manufacturing jobs are more amenable to unionization, which can empower the working class and foster more equitable labor relations.

Technological Advancements and AI

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Stewart raises concerns about whether the push to modernize manufacturing through technology could lead to superficial gains rather than substantive employment opportunities. At [21:36], Adam Tooze states, “Manufacturing isn't done in the same way that it used to be done,” highlighting the challenges of maintaining a robust industrial workforce in the age of automation.

Sohrab Bhargava echoes these sentiments, emphasizing that while protecting existing manufacturing jobs is crucial, automation limits the potential for substantial workforce growth. He advocates for a balanced approach that includes higher wages and innovation to support sectors like healthcare and education.

Political Dynamics and Social Democracy

The interplay between economic policies and political ideologies is a recurring theme. Tooze introduces the concept of social democracy as America’s version of the New Deal, which was a negotiated compromise between labor and capital. He contrasts this with the Trumpian approach, which he views as a “double attack” on both the professional managerial class and organized labor.

Sohrab Bhargava further elaborates on this by describing the Trumpian strategy as "Hamiltonian means by Jacksonian ends," indicating a protective stance on manufacturing coupled with populist, often destructive methods. He critiques the reduction of government capacity and the undermining of institutions like the National Labor Relations Board, which are essential for balancing labor-market dynamics.

Future Visions and Potential Upheavals

As the episode progresses, Stewart probes the guests on the feasibility of rebalancing the economy without causing significant social upheaval. Tooze posits that without a comprehensive social and welfare bargain akin to the New Deal, the economy's restructuring efforts might fail to address the underlying issues of inequality and labor disempowerment. He warns of a potential future marked by polarization and the erosion of middle-class stability.

Bhargava shares a somber outlook, envisioning possible labor unrest and strikes reminiscent of the early 20th century if current trends continue unchecked. However, he remains cautiously optimistic, hoping that democratic resilience and strategic leadership can avert drastic disruptions.

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a reflection on the lack of cohesive vision within current economic policies. Stewart summarizes the guests’ consensus that while protectionist measures and technological advancements are steps in a new direction, they are insufficient without broader social reforms. The conversation underscores the urgent need for strategic leadership to foster an inclusive and equitable economic future.

Notable Quotes

• Adam Tooze [05:35]: “If they go on talking like this and it's quite difficult to actually put your finger on what they're doing… you start wondering whether it isn't more like a facelift.”

• Sohrab Bhargava [11:52]: “The Hamiltonians stop that. And then when we say canal, it means infrastructure, which today might mean different things than canals, right.”

• Adam Tooze [21:36]: “Manufacturing isn't done in the same way that it used to be done.”

• Sohrab Bhargava [31:28]: “They put on a play. Oh, there's these elements…”

Final Thoughts

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart masterfully navigates the complex interplay between historical economic policies, contemporary political strategies, and the disruptive forces of technology and globalization. Through insightful dialogue with Adam Tooze and Sohrab Bhargava, the episode sheds light on the precarious balance required to reshape the American economy in a manner that is both sustainable and equitable.

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Note: This summary omits advertisements, introductions, and outros as per the guidelines, focusing solely on the substantive content of the episode.

Transcript

[Jon Stewart]

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Probably March 20, which gives 24 hours for more shit to happen that will not be addressed in any way, shape or form on the podcast because things are moving. They're moving quickly. Ladies and gentlemen, this week we did a bit on the show concerning what we might consider for the Democrats, a sense of fecklessness. Feckle. Feckles. Fecklessness. Feckless foal. There are people feckful. There's a feckless. But there's really nobody who is feckful. And maybe that's what the Democrats are looking for, somebody feckful. If you can find some feckfulness. And obviously Senator Charles Schumer was the avatar through which we passed our, our frustrations, our angers, our sadness, our desperation. We passed it through him in attempt to raise his glasses from the lower part of his nose through telekinesis all the way up, all the way from here. I'm doing this right now. It's not a podcast, so you probably don't know. It's coming all the way. Here we go. We're urging. Come on, come on, guys, come on. You can do it and get them to focus. And I think we need to make clear what is being asked for here is not nihilism. It's not the kind of shut the government down, fuck all this. Nobody cares, because there's a great understanding. But they themselves spoke of this was the moment of leverage that they had been neutered to the point, because they don't have the majority in the House, even though it's slim and they don't have the majority in the Senate. They don't, you know, but the. Because the senators didn't have 60, the Democrats could have filibustered to maybe extract anything. But I think the frustration is, a, you're not clear on the specifics of what they would extract if they could, and B, they just fucking didn't. And look, if that was the strategy all along, let people know, don't make a big theatrical production of Choosing Fighters, and we're going to do this. And, you know, I think they keep counting on this very strange notion that somehow in the House of Representatives, Massie will rule the day. Like, this is all theater. Even in the Senate, when you got. I think, I don't know how many Democrats voted for the continuing resolution, but every single one that did is not up for reelection in 2026 or retiring. Which says to me that it was a. They put on a play. They're all putting on a play. Oh, sure. These, these 10 people reject this. Cr. Well, actually, we don't really know if they reject it. We just know that those are the ones that have the political safety that they can step up and do that, that, that they can step up and accept the, the continuing resolution because it won't hurt them politically. So we don't even know what they actually think because they put on a play. And the Republicans do the same thing, by the way, when they were going through the Senate confirmation hearings on Pete Hegseth, they put on a play. Oh, there's, there's, there's three senators that have principled objections to this nomination. It just so happens that it was the exact number of senators that could object where J.D. vance could come in and cast the deciding vote. So understand what you're watching. And I don't know if we're in Act 1 or Act 2 or where the fuck we are in this, but it's a play and they're putting it on, and we need better than that. And the play that's being put on now is, is an economic one. And I want to get. We have two guests today that I think are, are really, really good. One is an economic historian. The other is, I'd say more of a conservative center. Right. Who's got a real focus on economic populism. And we're going to talk a little bit about the play that is being put on about our economy and how it's going to be transitioned and what the reality is of how they're going to be transitioning it. So I'm just going to get to them now because they're fantastic. We are going to get into it with our guests. I want to thank them for joining us. Adam Tooze, author of Chartbook, which is on Substack, and Sora Bamari, US editor of UnHerd and author of Tyranny, Inc. And they are joining us today to tell us, if I may, gentlemen, and I hate to put you in this position, the future. You are my soothsayers. Adam, I'll start with you as the economist.

[Adam Tooze]

You just put that on me.

[Jon Stewart]

I just put that on you. It seems evident that there is a remaking of the American economy, or at least the attempt to do so through the Trump economic policies, whether it's through tariffs and more protectionism, less government spending, these kinds of things. You know, we've had sort of two economic orders since the New Deal. We had the New Deal economic order, and then we sort of had that neoliberalism that started with maybe Carter and Reagan and moved its way on up. Is that the end goal in your mind for what is happening here? Is this an engineering of a different kind of economy than we've kind of been accustomed to?

[Adam Tooze]

I mean, you might think that and that would in a sense be a continuity with the Biden team as well, because they were talking in rather similar terms. I mean, Jake Sullivan had that famous speech where he talked about new Washington consensus post neoliberalism was all the rage, Right.

[Jon Stewart]

But that was the CHIPS act, which is basically like, oh, well, chips and IRA and that.

[Adam Tooze]

And that's the question is like, where's the beef? And if they go on talking like this and it's quite difficult to actually put your finger on what they're doing and whether it could possibly be for real, you start wondering whether it isn't more like a facelift. It's more that mar a lago aesthetic where we all pretend to be 25, no judgment, that's fine, you go do your thing. But we are actually 25. And there's a way in which something like that is clearly true about the economy. There's never, literally ever in history been a case of a society as successful as the US and as rich as the US that has somehow reversed the structure of the relationship between the key bits, right. The service sector, the industrial sector. And once upon a time it would have been farming and agriculture, which I know you're into in New Jersey.

[Jon Stewart]

Oh, very much so, sir.

[Adam Tooze]

You can't reverse engine. Certainly nothing in history to date has suggested you can do that. And the US industrial and manufacturing sector right now isn't the platform from which you would expect a kind of reconquest or a transformation of all of American society.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, do you think that, Adam, is generally this kind of reshaping done either because of a catastrophic event like the Depression or the introduction of a new technology like industrialization, or in the case of maybe that neoliberalism, the Internet and a more global transportation and supply line hub. Is that generally sort of how this all starts?

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah, technology is key here. And that's, that's been the driver all along. And the basic story, and this is why this is also kind of ironic and weird, is that we've gotten really, really good at manufacturing, an industry in the same way as we got really, really good at farming. Once upon a time, the vast majority of Americans were farmers. And that wasn't a lifestyle choice. That was because we just couldn't feed ourselves because we were so bad at farming. We got very good at farming.

[Jon Stewart]

And I don't know if you know, Adam, but labor costs for our farming were quite low for. I can't remember why, but yeah, I.

[Adam Tooze]

Mean, that's the norm, Right. Because people are desperate and all over the world and always been desperate. And so it's really anomalous to have rich farmers. That's a really peculiar situation to be in.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. Well, we also had a system there where we, I think we, we made them do that.

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah, for sure, you get slave labor, you get various types of forced labor.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Adam Tooze]

But the story here of technological change is one that just cuts through this, the crisis story, the New Deal that you might be invoking, for instance, in the 30s. It doesn't change anything about the balance between the bits. Right. So the share of industry in the US economy as a was 40% before the new Deal and after the New Deal and continued at that level until the late 60s when really rapid technological change and the global redivision of labor kicked in. Where the Japanese learned to make cars which Americans would buy, and there was that shift. So I think what history does and what policy does is set the terms under which capital and labor, amongst other players, transact within the frame, if you like, that technology provides. And New Deal was very favorable to organized labor, which is why I Think middle class America looks back to it with nostalgia. That was the Treaty of Detroit and neoliberalism broke that. And it's in a sense now as though they want the promise of the middle class lifestyle of the 50s without the power relations, which would be powerful organized labor that actually made that possible.

[Jon Stewart]

Wow. Okay.

[Adam Tooze]

And all of this suggesting somehow and feeding off the idea that America's got to make things and if it doesn't make things, it's somehow just floating free and without substance.

[Jon Stewart]

Thank you for that. Adam Saurabh, I want to ask you. That's such an interesting. So the idea is sort of the different bits that we have and the relationship between capital and labor. And what I think Adam is referring to is that idea that the neoliberalism kind of advantaged capital to a certain extent through these technologies. Sorreb so is the idea here, if without union power to sort of rebalance this equation right. Between capital and labor, is the idea that protectionism rebalances those bits? How do they plan on rebalancing it? To my mind, I would agree with the basic premise. Financialization and capital should not be advantaged in the way that they have. And I think it puts an imbalance. So is the question here just how they're trying to rebalance it?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Yeah. So I agree with Adam in the sense that what we see is too often under the Trumpians, but also under the Biden administration. These two, as Adam pointed out, have actually been in a kind of continuity. The Biden administration came in and kept the tariffs against certain Chinese goods, in fact, expanded them to electric vehicle components and so on. So there's this broad attempt by the American ruling class to try to have a different political economy. And I agree that what they're doing is including under Trump too, is not enough. Where I disagree is the idea that the sectoral mix of an economy between agriculture, services, manufacturing and so on is impossible to change or re engineer because in a way, the tradition that I look to, the Hamiltonian tradition, it wasn't inevitable that the US Would become an industrial superpower, a manufacturing superpower. It was a result of policies advanced by the Hamiltonians. And when I say the Hamiltonians, I don't just mean Alexander Hamilton himself, although he laid down the vision, but a series of political leaders who advanced it.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, break that down a little bit then. Is that. Are you talking about sort of a central, a federalized system, central banks, a way of, you know, government intervention and creating markets?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Yeah, the trip, the triple foundations, where you can summarize Them in kind of one word terms as tariff, canal and bank, talking about the early Republic's economy, the tariff being, of course, an attempt to protect America's nascent manufacturing sector from the manufacturing superpower of that time, which was Great Britain. And the Brits, as Hamilton knew well, really were determined to turn and maintain America as a kind of backwater, a swampy backwater that was a resource pool for them and that would be a captive market for their manufacturers. In fact, in 1721, the British Board of Trade declared, quote, that the colonies, lacking their own manufacturers, will always remain dependent on Great Britain. So knowing that, the Hamiltonians said, no, we're going to protect our nascent industries with tariffs by protecting also the sort of maintaining industrial workers, trained, competent industrial workers in the country. But not just that. And that's the part where I think the Trumpians are getting it wrong by just doing tariffs. He also did you mentioned the bank, which ensures the steady flow, disciplined flow of credit, and the idea that the financial system should serve the real economy. That is, it's not. We don't have finance for its own sake. And that's why banking for much of the country wasn't nearly as important as it is today. Wall street now plays this overweening role in the economy. The Hamiltonians stop that. And then when we say canal, it means infrastructure, which today might mean different things than canals, right?

[Jon Stewart]

Apparently, no, today it still means canal. I think as we're, as we're about to take over Panama. But sor. I don't know if you know this, but you may have stumbled into, if I may, the sequel to Hamilton. I, I think Hamilton to the Economic Foundation. Maybe not a rock opera, but I, I think it would be, it'd be wise. But. So this gets us back to. And maybe we're, we're backing off for a bit, but laissez faire economics is sort of the doctrine, the, the invisible hand. And then we've never actually had it, have we? It's not a real thing. I don't know if the French have a word for a very visible hand, but the hand is always visible. It's just a question of where we decide to place it. Would that be accurate? Adam?

[Adam Tooze]

I think that's right. And I don't disagree with Zurab in his analysis of the 18th and 19th century. My question is really about the relevance of that analysis to the 21st century and the world that we're currently in. And the question really is, sure, we know from many cases, not just the American one, that you can engineer on the upswing, if you like, an increase in the share of your manufacturing industrial sector. Most recently, the Chinese have done it to truly spectacular effect. The question is whether a mature and rich society like the American one can or even should want to do that. Now, this doesn't mean that America can't cherry pick individual sectors and say, we'd really like to have more competence in chips. Fine, absolutely, you can do that. You can go after that. But that shouldn't be confused with a vision for society as a whole or the economy as a whole, let alone a kind of fix for the situation of the American middle class, which is how this is so often badged and sold in American politics today. There's a national security case for diversifying the source of, you know, memory chips and processors and so on. But there isn't, to my mind, a realistic social vision, which is why I raised the Mar A Lago and facelift thing. Because it's not real, right?

[Jon Stewart]

How dare you, sir? How dare you say those faces aren't real?

[Adam Tooze]

Well, you either go down that or you go down the, like the Tonka toy kind of hard hat vision of the economy, which Joe Biden was addicted to. I mean, he just loved the picture of himself in a manufacturing plot, however run down, however 1980s, he wanted to be there. And they are both kind of visions, right, of an American. Well, they're a past projected into the future. And I don't think they're helpful because I think they're misleading as to what would actually help the American working class, which is healthcare, childcare. Those are the things where you could actually affect tens of millions of people.

[Jon Stewart]

Hell to the yes, sir. That is my language. So let's stop for a second. I think what we're agreeing is a governments always make different choices, whether it's through infrastructure, economic policy, monetary policy, where they can influence the direction and capabilities of the economy, that which they're trying to build. Everybody makes choices of how they're going to stimulate the economy. The second thing is the Trump administration very clearly is re engineering how that economy works through their tariff program, and I imagine through deregulation and other sorts of more libertarian aspects to it. I guess the question that maybe we need to ask is, is it necessary? I would say that, yes, we have a real issue of inequality within our economy. We have a real issue, as Adam talks about, in terms of what the government actually delivers to people. Is this the answer to the very real imbalances that we're seeing? Sohrab?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Yeah, so with all this talk of plastic surgery, I'm reminded of, I'm reminded of Michel Welbeck's the French Nov novelist who said, you know, the prevalence of plastic surgery is a sign of sexual generosity. I don't know how that applies to manufacturing.

[Jon Stewart]

Is that one of the books behind you, Saurabh? Is that what's sitting on that bookshelf?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

I definitely have some Welbeck in the back. All right, but you know, here's what I'd say. Is that so the reason that the Hamiltonian tradition, again not just Hamilton himself, but I would include Abraham Lincoln and his economic advisor Henry Charles Carey and Teddy Roosevelt and especially the FDR and the New Deal order, they all emphasize manufacturing. It goes back to Hamilton himself said for the safety and independence of national life you need kind of manufacturing independence. Something that we encountered in 2020 during the pandemic when we realized that from basic components for many drugs to personal protective equipment for our first responders and so on, couldn't produce that on our own because we'd offshored so much manufacturing. And I heard you railing against offshoring John, in your conversation with Senator Sanders as well.

[Jon Stewart]

I don't care for it.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

So I would say look, there is something special about manufacturing because the period of lowest inequality in American history, the New Deal order, did coincide with an industry led economy. Manufacturing was about nearly a third of the US GDP in 1950 down to about 10% today. Now I don't know how much Adam agrees with this or not. I think that that wasn't the result of world historical deterministic inevitability was a result of concrete policy choices. Where in the beginning of the 1970s we decided to favor finance over the real economy and this kind of addiction to cheap labor began where not just through offshoring but also lots of immigration and so on, we disempowered the American working class and of course the anti union thrust of American policy that really took off under Reagan. So there is something about manufacturing. For example, the NYU sociologist Vivek Chiber is a Marxist, but lots of other scholars as well have shown that manufacturing jobs are easier to unionize certainly than service sectors. There's something about the proximity of workers in a regular stable hours during the day and even the kind of geographic proximity that factory life creates compared to gigafied labor. Even the Biden administration was as friendly as you could get to organize labor. But the union density, the share of workers that are covered by collective bargaining.

[Jon Stewart]

Was so low now and also listen, their infrastructure investments were Enormous. They just couldn't build any of it. All right, going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

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[Jon Stewart]

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[Saurabh Bhargava]

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[Jon Stewart]

FCA Group Marketing SpA. Used with permission. And we are back. So there's questions here that, that arise for me. One is, are we fighting a conventional war when everyone else is using drones and lasers, you know, to rebuild something, creating a kind of, will it be a facade? Will it be a Potemkin village? Because even if you replace manufacturing jobs, manufacturing isn't done in the same way that it used to be done. Part of what lost manufacturing jobs was globalization and the fact that capital can travel and labor can't. Part of it was, hey, man, I can pretty much build a robot to do what 50 of you do. So will we be capturing something real? So the first question to Adam, are we fighting the wrong war?

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

Are we making Abrams tanks and everyone else is is making something more modern?

[Adam Tooze]

Just put some numbers in the picture here. There are 160 million people working as employed people in the United States. 100 million people in the workforce as a whole. So there's 10 million self employed. There are 12 million people working in manufacturing, tightly defined. If you add 8 million in construction, that gets you to 20 million for industry. Now, that is not a base from which you can transform American society. Right.

[Jon Stewart]

What was it in the 50s? Adam, do you have a sense of.

[Adam Tooze]

The percentage as a share of employment?

[Jon Stewart]

Yes. Yes.

[Adam Tooze]

It was closer to 30%.

[Jon Stewart]

Okay, so now it's closer to 10%.

[Adam Tooze]

Less than 10%. 7% in manufacturing.

[Jon Stewart]

Narrowly Defined realistically, boosting it by a.

[Adam Tooze]

Couple of million would be a huge success and it would take you closer to 10% than we currently are at. Right. So you can't. There are two different projects. There is the fulfillment of the Hamiltonian project of sovereignty and independence and security, which requires certain technological capacities. There are industrial communities that exist that should be defended and developed and supported in ways that are appropriate. But then the big challenge surely has got to be to deliver on something closer to a new deal, shall we say, for want of a better word, social and welfare bargain for the 20 million people that work in healthcare, for the 17 million people that work in leisure and services. Right. And that is a holistic bargain which can't any longer be based around the male breadwinner model of the UAW duking it out with GM and Ford and Chrysler in Detroit in the 40s and 50s. This is a highly diverse, very feminine workforce which has to continuously think the problem of childcare organically with the problem of their working conditions. That's where progressive politics to my mind needs to focus, not on the. Yes, it's the last war. The promise of retaining industrial jobs for that classic industrial working class is not a bad goal. But it's not to be confused with the project of actually supporting progressive change for the majority of Americans in the industry itself. John, amen to everything you've just said. The Chinese are discovering this. The cutting edge of Chinese EV production is not for this tens of thousands of workers. It's not even like the Foxconn plants that make the Apple phones. They're these dark factories with hardly any workers operating hyper sophisticated robot machinery which churn out the cars at unbeatably low cost. So the Chinese themselves are going to discover this problem of the disconnect between manufacturing and industrial success and the share of people that can be employed and the social model that goes with that. Like it's a. It's three layers here that are continuously conflated.

[Jon Stewart]

So that's such an interesting way of that Adam has just framed it, I think, and it's. It does beg the question then how do you create this Hamiltonian model, which I think is what we're talking about as kind of an ideal of balance. You're talking about infrastructure and you know, monetary policy and these other basis. What would that look like? Adam's probably right here. I don't. We couldn't rebalance our manufacturing sector or blue collar jobs to be 30% of the economy and create that really stable middle class infrastructure. How do we create that really stable middle class infrastructure in this, while also realizing that there's an AI chat bot right now taking over the Daily Show. Like, how do we.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Yes.

[Jon Stewart]

How do we square that? Yes.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

So a couple of points I want to address. Adam's point. I think it's right that manufacturing share of the GDP can go up somewhat, but that doesn't necessarily translate into huge gains in terms of the manufacturing share of the workforce precisely because of automation. I think everyone in this space recognizes that. The first thing I'd say is first of all, the jobs that are currently in manufacturing are worth protecting. I meet once a month, there's like a kind of gathering of manufacturers who've committed to manufacture only in the United States. And they will tell you that, you know, Chinese dumping threatens their current employees, which are significant numbers. You know, would that get us to 30% manufacturing if all these jobs were protected? No.

[Jon Stewart]

But let's be clear though. There's not a sector of American jobs, though, that are not worth protecting. There's not a sector of jobs, you know, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's education, whether it's health care, whether it's, you know, it's really important.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

I agree, I agree. But you know, I mean, there are jobs to protect right now in this, in the sector because of its other dimensions, of its national security dimension. The fact that again, to go back to this idea that the Hamiltonian model sought to bind capital to place to political community.

[Jon Stewart]

That's right. And now capital travels and labor doesn't. It's just the way that things have been designed. Right.

[Adam Tooze]

And.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

But because of the capital investments involved, the manufacturing, the local factory boss is a lot more. I mean, he might be a jerk and you have to fight him with unions. And I'm all for that. As Adam knows, I'm a pretty. For someone who's of the center. Right. I'm all for, you know, trying to boost our union density and all that. But still, he's connect. He or she is connected to the local community in a way that Wall street or distant, you know, Silicon Valley tech firms are not. But okay, so if we try our best to increase the manufacturing share of the workforce, that will hit a limit. However, let's try at first because the thing is, if we get to the point where we break corporate America's addiction to cheap labor, especially through offshoring, it will force them to pay higher wages here locally or to innovate. Right now, the current kind of globalization model that we're hopefully transitioning out of incentivizes them not to actually do labor saving technologies, but to try to do the same things with cheaper and cheaper.

[Jon Stewart]

Labor, finding more, more and more countries to exploit, which by the way, we do in the United States, I mean South Carolina right to work states do the same thing that globalization does to America to absolutely states that have unions. I mean, Michigan gets decimated by maybe Mexican plants, but also by right to work states in South Carolina and, and tax and all kinds of other places.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

But just to finish this point, and I agree with that, I welcome our robot overlords. Let's bring them over and if we're going to have full luxury automated communism.

[Jon Stewart]

Let them be our robots.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

And then you have an economy that can pay more for its caretakers, for the kinds of workers that Adam mentioned. The strength of the manufacturing sector can absorb higher wages in, you know, Burger King or in home health care and all those other sectors, but they won't.

[Jon Stewart]

You see, you see that the sectors where labor cannot travel, fast food, health care, you know, where, where communities must have them in there. Look at how hard they fight to depress their wages. And I'm not just talking about the people who run those businesses. I'm talking about the Fed. The Fed raised interest rates in part because of what they called wage inflation.

[Adam Tooze]

Overheating.

[Jon Stewart]

Overheating. But they, it wasn't overheating on profits, it wasn't overheating on supply chain constriction. It was, holy shit, are these, are we paying these people 15. What? No, no, no, no, no. Raise the rates, depress the labor market. That was the cudgel they used.

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah. And it's always service sector inflation is what really causes the financial markets to panic. And service sector inflation is driven by labor costs. So that goes hand in hand with wage increases for the lowest paid American blue collar workers. Blue collar in the widest sense. But I mean, in fairness to the Fed, they ran this maybe as hot as they dared, Right.

[Jon Stewart]

For as long as they dared.

[Adam Tooze]

This is not by central banking standards. This was an experiment in risk, which of course more centrist Democrats like Larry Summers attacked from the very beginning. And the GOP rode in on in an utterly cynical way during the campaign, denouncing inflation and everything else. Whereas as you're saying, John, this has been, like it or not, believe it or not, a good time for the least well paid American workers. A lot of the inequality of the 70s and 80s has been closed up by rises in their wages. Not at the super top, obviously the billionaires are better off than ever, but within the workforce. There has been a modest closing of the gap.

[Jon Stewart]

Let me ask you a question about, you know, there is a real effort right now. And again this gets us back to the Trumpian which is remove the federal government from everything, unleash the powers of laissez faire capitalism and that will close these gaps of. And inequities. But there are so many externalities in terms of, and I think we've. When they keep pointing back to this Gilded Age of a more libertarian economy, well, that was a volatile disaster. So I'm not quite sure where, you know, where is it that they're, they're certainly not taking us back to the capitalized days of Hamiltonian central planning.

[Adam Tooze]

Everyone was farming in that period. 80% of Americans were farmers in the Hamiltonian period.

[Jon Stewart]

Right, right. This policy seems to be taking us back more to 1870.

[Adam Tooze]

You really, it's great. I mean this is a good exercise. The 1890s, that's what I'm not sure of. Huge waves of migration, the 93 to 96 recession, the 1907 recession, 2021 and then the big Kahuna and then the.

[Jon Stewart]

And then the big one, the Great.

[Adam Tooze]

Depression, like the most dynamic economy in the world by all means, but the worst governed, the most unstable, incredible inequalities.

[Jon Stewart]

Patronage, corruption, class war, the Ku Klux.

[Adam Tooze]

Klan, the whole, you know, that is the. This is what we want.

[Jon Stewart]

Sohrab what is their vision? Where, what economy? What's the analog to this?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

So the way I put this is that they're pursuing Hamiltonian means by Jacksonian ends. Now let me explain that.

[Jon Stewart]

By the way, both are in my wallet right now.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Yes, exactly right.

[Jon Stewart]

I just want to make that clear.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

May there be ever more of them. But you know, Arthur Schlesinger, the great New Deal historian, described the New Deal project as Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends, meaning using big governments, using sort of directing markets and so on and so forth for the Jeffersonian ideal of a kind of prosperous, relatively egalitarian order. Of course the Jeffersonian vision didn't include African Americans in its.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

But still the idea was to use this kind of big state interventionist model to achieve the small R Republican Jeffersonian model. So now I think if you want to use these kind of categories, the Trumpians are coming in. They have, I think Hamiltonian ends in mind. They want a manufacturing led economy, et cetera, et cetera. But they're using the methods of Andrew Jackson, of course, the co founder of the Democratic Party who believed in breaking things. Right. He, he thought that the Second bank of the United States was a vehicle for entrenched northeastern elites. And in some ways it was so Hulk smash he broke it. But the results, it didn't redound to the benefit of those people. It actually, as Adam knows better than I do, his war on the Second bank immediately resulted in inflation and a depression as a result of like wildcat banking, lots of messy small banks, et cetera, et cetera. And the US really didn't stabilize its financial system for nearly a century until the establishment of the Federal Reserve. So I see some of that kind of contradiction in the Trumpians. Like I like some of their protectionist efforts and so on. But I find the, you know, frankly, the Elon Musk Doge stuff really disturbing and really contradictory to, you know, you need state capacity if they want to do stuff like that. You need workforce development, you know, you need, by the way, and unions can be a part of workforce development. They're very good at it, as we know. Unfortunately, what they've done is they've crippled the National Labor Relations Board, which I find very disturbing. Lots of regulators that do good things, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would have regulated Elon's own X if he wants to turn it into a payment app, sure.

[Jon Stewart]

Gee, why, why would he have done.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

That in a completely self interested way? So I mean, that's the Jacksonian part. And the problem with the Jacksonians is they harness populist anger with the economic order, but it redounds to the benefit of other elements of capital, you know, and that's the problem with the Trumpians.

[Jon Stewart]

And by the way, it's an exercise they're doing explicitly. All right, we gotta take a quick break. We'll be right back. More rewards, more savings with American Express Business Gold. Earn up to $395 back in annual statement credits on eligible purchases at select shipping, food delivery and retail subscription merchants enjoy the benefits of membership with the Amex Business Gold Card. Terms apply. Learn more [e-mail] business-gold Amex Business Gold Card Built for business by American Express this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. Okay, we're back. Adam, this gets to the central contradiction of kind of where we're talking about. So this is a thing that in many ways they fetishize the working man, right? They pay great homage to the values of the working man. But who is in there smashing around the economy? It's not the working man. It's not people with an understanding of unions and all those other things. It's techno billionaires who want to create. And look, their vision for the economy, let's be honest, is very clearly not a bottom up infrastructure. It is a gig economy run by overlords that are AI infused. They have a, I think dystopian vision of what work and relevance means. I don't think they're talking about the kind of societal tentpost economies that you guys are talking about. So, so what is address how that central contradiction plays out?

[Adam Tooze]

Adam, I think to make sense of this is a fascinating conversation. I think we need two, two extra terms. One is social democracy, which I quite like this reading of the New Deal as Jeffersonian goals by Hamiltonian means. But another way of thinking of the New Deal is it's America's effort at social democracy. In other words, an organized bargain between American workers and capital. And the fact of the matter is that a very large slice of America, particularly in big cities, loves social democracy. They really like that vision. They really like social insurance. They like the LaGuardia vision of well managed cities. They like the Wisconsin, Minnesota, California. There's lots of different variants of it, but it's essentially recognizable as American social democracy, like in Europe. And the partners of the New Deal Democrats in doing this were the professional managerial class. In other words, folks like us. And I read Trumpianism and the musk element within it as a double attack, right in the name of the working class, which is largely non existent and not in the room de facto. The immediate, their immediate victims are civil servants, public servants in federal government doing things like weather forecasting, by the way, demonized, demonized as educational statistics.

[Jon Stewart]

Somehow they're not the working class. Somehow they're not the middle class.

[Adam Tooze]

No, they're not. But in many cases they're not the working class. They are actually university educated middle class people. American class language is confusing, but they're.

[Jon Stewart]

They'Re being portrayed as a criminal element like you bastard, testing our water for fecal matter. How dare you, sir?

[Adam Tooze]

Exactly, how dare you. This is like some kind of a racket, right? And that is how I read this current moment, as a double attack, effectively continuing the undermining of the real conditions for working Americans, but with a novel element of a really no holds barred attack on the pmc, on the professional Managerial class. And that includes big corporate capital, which has its DEI and its EI ESG agendas, none of which they're down with. And it's done in the name of a kind of entrepreneurialism, which is Jacksonian, which is about breaking things and seeing what happens next.

[Jon Stewart]

But by the way, let's also be clear. There is no real ESG D E I ethos in any of this. That was all wallpaper and gilding and tinsel.

[Adam Tooze]

But it was wallpaper that was held in place by tens of thousands of people whose job it was and who did believe in it and whose careers were actually owed to it. It's a real thing.

[Jon Stewart]

And who are real people, who are.

[Adam Tooze]

Real people and talented. And there were elements of that story that actually worked, right. Affirmative action was a program that actually transformed American society for the better. And so we can't let go of that. But that I think is the double element that's at work here. And I would agree with you, John, that the vision that someone like Musk holds out is. I just don't think we've ever quite seen anything. I go back to Jules verne and late 19th century sci fi where you've got some bad villainous business guy who's got an island and a submarine and a rocket. And the crazy thing is he has an island and a submarine and a rocket.

[Jon Stewart]

We're going to iRobot here.

[Adam Tooze]

He's got like thousands of satellites. It's insane.

[Jon Stewart]

Sohrab, what is. Is the end game here? A sincere. Is this gold leaf on a shitbox like what. What exactly is the plan here? If the tariff regime, which is going to be extraordinary if carried out, can only boost our manufacturing base by a million jobs, which are real. Right. But certainly doesn't rebalance the GDP in any significant way, especially given financialization and the way that. That dominates the economy. Is this sincere or is it cover to do something slightly more insidious?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

I mean, as with all these things, I think it's. It's a mix. And we, you know, we should be careful about the Trumpians as a whole because there are very serious internal divisions between them. There is definitely the Lex Luthor like kind of techno overlords who by the.

[Jon Stewart]

Way, all do have the Lex Luthor.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Like no, I mean, Bezos literally looks.

[Jon Stewart]

There are a lot of stocky bald dudes in the techno sphere. Sphere. But then you've got Bannon, who is much more, I think, fire, brandy, populist. And is that the trick they're pulling? Is it? We're using a populist Trojan horse, but inside that Trojan horse is a cadre of bald guys with AI. Is that what we're dealing with, at.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Least in some dimensions? Insofar as the that's called the tech right or the techno billionaires are asserting, you know, an ever greater role in the Trump administration, it's to the, to the detriment of its populist elements, some of whom you guys might disagree. I think there are very sincere people into kind of what this called the new right, etcetera, who don't share that view and they don't want that.

[Jon Stewart]

Don't doubt it. I've spoken to guys like Oren Cass who I think are very sincere about, who like very good faith, very interesting ideas. I think there's a lot of guys over there like that.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

But I just want to address the PMC thing a little bit because I sort of have the same reading that the Jeff Bezos types of the world used anger at the PMCs, because the PMC are people who manage working class people in a way the working class people don't come into contact with.

[Jon Stewart]

Bezos, by the way, is also Jeff Bezos, let's be clear, Amazon factories, these are the people who are managed by pmcs, and Jeff Bezos is one of them.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Right? And so I mean, it's very telling that for about a decade, the way that the Bezos types of the world legitimated their power was through kind of woke language, DEI stuff. My favorite example, John, you probably know it, is there was this podcast put out by rei, the outdoor sports chain, right where the podcast, it was a company podcast. And some lady came on and said, hello, my name is so and so I'm proud to serve as your diversity and inclusion chief. I use she her pronouns. And I just want to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the traditional lands of the Ohlone people. By the way, the topic of this podcast is why you shouldn't join a labor union. Right? I mean, the examples are legion. And it just shows you that kind of the PMC left did do harm because it associated it blended some legitimate economically redistributive policies that I would support with a bunch of nonsense that ordinary people got really fed up with, right?

[Jon Stewart]

Would roll their eyes in.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

And it's amazing now that the same Bezos who marched at the forefront of kind of the Black Lives Matter column five years ago is now issuing diktats to his newspaper that he owns the Washington Post editorial page saying don't be so woke isn't it telling that it's the same guy.

[Jon Stewart]

But I guess my point is that the corporate entries into that world have always been, for the most part. Now we can talk about it, the dei. To me, it's not about giving people jobs who don't deserve them. It's about expanding supply lines into fields right underserved areas where you can develop new talent. It's about investing in emerging markets of people who've been traditionally. It's actually about creating more competition, taking out the monopolies that have existed in the labor market in almost every industry. But, man, anybody who ever watched, you know, somebody rap a McDonald's breakfast song understands corporations are usurping any culture that they can get their hands on that they think will give them a legitimate entry into another market.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Yeah, I just, I disagree. I think that for the most part it was about making, you know, the C suite, making it more diverse, but not really changing the power dynamics between the C suite and the assetless majority.

[Jon Stewart]

That's my point. My point is.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

I get that, but I just put a more negative spin on it.

[Adam Tooze]

Even another way of reading this would be less manipulative and it would be more optimistic in the sense that these changes are happening in American society. Yes, women are going to college at rates never before seen. They dominate in many parts of education. Dei, as far as they're concerned, is not some sort of concession. It's just companies getting real.

[Jon Stewart]

No, they're trying to constrict it, is what I'm saying.

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah, exactly, but. And they were flexing around it and trying to figure out what their positioning is in relation to it. I think at that level, the same is true about, you know, the American working class. It's a, it's. It's a large percentage of women and it's incredibly diverse.

[Jon Stewart]

Right.

[Adam Tooze]

And so, like, woke strategies of recognizing that diversity are just realism.

[Jon Stewart]

And by the way, to that point earlier, about, like the social programs. So there has always been this sort of thread through social programs that, that is somehow that the people in those situations are there because of a lack of virtue. Right. They are there because they are taking advantage of a system. The majority of people on those programs are working poor. They're working their asses off. They're doing one job, two jobs, three jobs, you know, working at Walmart and still having to get snap benefits. Like this is not a problem of desire and intrepid spirit. It's a system that would rather protect, you know, the billionaires last 20 billion than help somebody get their first thousand that's the, to me, that's the system that has to be realigned. And is any of this that we're doing here actually realigning that system?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

I would just put the emphasis on class genuinely, as opposed to these other identitarian dimensions because in a very real way, lots of those kind of DEI woke cultures, practices, et cetera, cashed out as, you know, hey, you haven't gotten a meaningful raise in nearly two generations, you know, your health care is lousy, etc, but take solace, your, your boss is a, you know, disabled trans woman. I, I see it as much more, I think, cynical than Adam does, but I think if we just do a focus it on class because by the way, all these identitarian divisions are management strategies as well. You can divide the working class and they do it all the time. So I'm, you know, like again, I'm of the center, right. But when I listen to Senator Sanders, especially the Senator Sanders of circa 2015, 16, I'm like, oh my God, I really, this was good. And what a tragedy it was that, for example, he said, you know, he called for all sorts of antitrust measures and Hillary Clinton said, yeah, but would breaking up the banks, you know, end systemic racism? No, it doesn't. But that's not the problem it's supposed to address. And it was telling that she kind of ganged up on him using that rhetoric.

[Jon Stewart]

Gaining potential there, Adam, do you see? So is there opportunity here in this rebalancing for. Look, I think the New Deal came about, to be frank, as kind of revolution insurance. I mean, I think that the powers that be saw the socialist revolutions, they saw communism taking hold. They saw these various in countries that refused to understand the discomfort and pain that the majority of their people were going through. If they didn't take meaningful efforts to fix that systemically, they were going to find themselves, you know, head in a bucket. It was the French Revolution. So again, that's the probably a more cynical of viewing the New Deal, but this doesn't seem to be rebalancing that discomfort in a meaningful way. But I think Democratic policies fall short of that as well.

[Adam Tooze]

Yes.

[Jon Stewart]

What it sounds like to me is people get mad because they pay taxes and they don't get health care. They have to still buy insurance. And even when they buy insurance, they don't get health care. They just get like this pass that says, well, maybe if we agree to give you that mri, you'll get the healthcare, but actually it's still, you're gonna have to pay In a deductible. Like, isn't that fundamentally what's wrong with this?

[Adam Tooze]

No, I mean, I basically agree with you. As late as the 1970s, there was still that fear that if unemployment went really high, there would be something akin to social upheaval. And in parts of the world, in Europe, for instance, in Italy, Great Britain, for a time, it did actually look that way. 68 was a working class uprising in much of Europe at that time. But that fear is no longer. And that's part of the just grotesquery of the current moment and Trump's inauguration with just the lineup of incredibly rich men as a kind of ostentatious display. And insofar as we can point, I mean, part of my argument a minute ago was there is a social pressure. I mean, I think it's going to be really interesting to see in the long run how gender rights, how issues around reproductive freedom and so on play out in American society. Society. Because I don't think the conservative agenda will work. It's not a threat of a revolution, but it is a huge polarization in politics we're seeing around the world between men and women. And in the end, that may tell. The question now is what does the PMC do? Because they are a much larger group than manufacturing industrial workers and by the.

[Jon Stewart]

Way, much more at risk of the.

[Adam Tooze]

AI revolution and very at risk of the AI revolution are now under hugely politicized attacks. And I'm not saying, I'm not predicting that there's going to be kind of a revolutionary upsurge of elementary school teachers, but that it would seem to me to be the kind of piece of the puzzle. And the question, of course, is where the Democratic Party is, why is it not leading? I don't understand.

[Jon Stewart]

So that was interesting, Adam. So you mentioned a Democratic Party. Now, I wasn't aware there still was one of those. Is that.

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah. Well, good. Exactly. Like, have you noticed?

[Jon Stewart]

I had no idea. I had heard something of it. It had been whispered in the wind.

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah. Once upon a time, right.

[Jon Stewart]

There was this Democratic Party. So, you know, the center, Right. How do they address, you know, I'm gonna, I'll give you an anecdote and, and you can respond. I, I spoke to one of these AI super beings that's creating, you know, owns the thing. And, and I said to him, you know, industrialization raised the level of standard of living, but it was really disruptive. Right. And then the, the Internet revolution and globalization was really disruptive, but industrialization took 150 years. The globalization was over 30 to 40 years as this disruption occurred. AI's disruption, the timeline is much narrower. It's, you know, it could be five years, it could be 10 years. But that disruption, look at how volatile the disruptions were for globalization. Look at how volatile the disruptions were for industrialization. Are you worried that we won't be able to manage the collateral damage to jobs, to lives through this? And by the way, that is as long as, I mean, that was the length of the question. Like that pedantic. And he goes, no, I think we'll be good. So there. It doesn't seem like they're taking the concerns that we are discussing in any way seriously. Is, is that your sense of what this New Order is?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

No, I agree with that and I worry about that. Listen, you said something and I think Adam agreed that fundamentally the New Deal order was a conservative project because it was an attempt to bring the turbulent market and all the disruption it can bring under some degree of political control, strike a different bargain between the assetless majority and the asset rich few. As Roosevelt himself said, if you would preserve reform, meaning you don't want a revolutionary scenario given to reform. So I think my hope in the long term to try to think dialectically is, you know, if these guys want to return to the, you know, the power relations that prevailed in the 1890s, let's say, then what you're going to have potentially is the kind of labor industrial relations that you had in the 1890. Adam already hinted at this as well. You had mass strikes, you had a violent, you know, uprisings at factories and mines and so on, and railroads. Is it possible that we're heading into several decades where we're going to see things like that between, for example, masses of people who've become kind of turned into not even a proletariat, but a lumpen proletariat as a result of automation being ruthlessly pushed through without political pushback. And is it possible that down the road that will lead to some new labor settlements, some new, that whatever the true New deal of the 21st century might be. But as much as possible, I'd like to, personally, I'd like to avoid upheaval. Right. I don't want to live through the early 20th century.

[Jon Stewart]

Yes, I would like to avoid a violent insurrection. Is this disruption necessary, Sohrab? Is it necessary? Is this a necessary step? There was a kind of, you know, everybody talks about the rules based order, but what it feels a bit like is, I don't know if you ever watch the show Peaky Blinders. But Thomas Shelby obe, Peaky Blinders gang leader, had a theory on power called Big Fuck Small. And it feels like we're moving into the Big Fuck Small era, that big powers, you know, can take advantage. To go back to that idea of we extract the wealth from places we want to extract it from because we can, and it's vindictive and whatever disruptions or whatever ill will it causes, tough shit, because big bucks small. But given that the problem is government is the only thing big enough in my mind to countervail multinational corporate power and if it is not exercised with, as Adam says, an eye towards the needs of the people and it's been defanged for a more vengeance exploitative version of it, where does that leave us? And is that. Am I painting too dark a picture of what this looks like? And I'll start with Saurabh and we'll end with Adam.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

No, I share your alarm at what the sort of techno billionaires are up to. And I, I'm about as pessimistic as you put it. And what I put my hope in is democracy. And democracy not just as going to the.

[Jon Stewart]

I've got some bad news.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

No, no, not just going to the ballot, you know, democracy not as just going to the ballot box every few years. But the idea that technology, economy, all these things are not, they shouldn't just be sort of left to their own devices. And we say, well, inevitably it's going to lead us in this or that direction. But no, people should have political input in how AI is rolled out, how it affects labor markets, how the shape that the market takes and so on.

[Jon Stewart]

Unfortunately though, anything that would do that's being demolished. Right?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

That's what I'm saying. Is there going to be, I think just logically speaking, there's gonna be pushback. And again, the only question is, is it, you know, ferocious upheaval of the kind that I think none of us would like, or will there a kind of wisdom reign like it did in the 1930s when elites came to realize that, you know, for the sake of social order, they need to, to give more, Bottom line, to give more. And not, not, not just fuck one way? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's my hope, Adam.

[Adam Tooze]

I mean, to pick out the big fucked small theme. I think the economist in me says, well, does big want to fuck all of small all the time?

[Jon Stewart]

It seems that way.

[Adam Tooze]

So the question is, who is it who becomes victimized? Well, the question I think is serious. Who is it that's Victimized and at what level can resistance and resilience be built? And how far does this also involve middle sized players predating smaller players? You were describing, you know, small town labor relations are some of the most vicious in the United States because the stakes are very high, even though it's a small pool. And I think that's. I mean, it's an aversion of Zohrab's point about democracy. That's the content of the kind of democracy that we need to build is a democracy that faces this harsh, brutal, brutally expressed. I think the sexual metaphor is wrong. There is a predatory rapist kind of mentality to this that resists that at every level, both cultural and political. And this is where I think the agenda of feminism is crucial because it speaks to this experience of power as being fucked.

[Jon Stewart]

And the consent. I mean, what do they always talk about? Democracy relies on the consent of the governed.

[Adam Tooze]

Consent. Who is it that plays along? And that is where this sort of countervailing power has to be. And sitting being employed by a big institution in a formidable city like the United States, like New York. And you imagine some person like Trump coming along wanting to fuck this town. You try, you might want to, and people have done it, but it's hard. And it's not hard because it's a place full of flaming radicals, though they're trying to paint us that way. No, it's just a place full of people pursuing their own projects in relatively decent ways. Quite bought into the legacies of New Deal institutions, great society institutions which work here. Knowing that we need diversity because this is a very diverse place and we can't function without it. This is not Mara Logo or Palm Beach. We can't pretend the world is different from the way it is. And so we need politics appropriate to that. And that's where I really don't see this spiraling off into disaster. I think of a community like New York City and think it'll take, as Adam Smith would say, there's a lot of ruin in this. It'll take a lot to really bring this down.

[Jon Stewart]

Well, that is the most optimistic note we've heard so far and I appreciate that. Adam 2's author of Chart Book on Substack Sora Bomari US editor of Unheard and author of Tyranny Inc. Guys, thank you so much for spending the time with us and, and really, really helpful and interesting and thank you.

[Adam Tooze]

Great pleasure.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Thanks, John.

[Jon Stewart]

So here's what I saw. I saw a guy on the center right, pretty conservative, Catholic, has Those, you know, bedrock values of what you would consider to be a, a pretty conservative guy with a guy that is much more on the left end of social democracy and all those other things sitting and saying pretty much the same thing.

[Adam Tooze]

Absolutely.

[Jon Stewart]

That's how far we've moved into this other direction. Is that where you guys learn? What, what are you hearing from these cats?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Well, something that you all were talking about that really resonated with me was just the lack of vision for all of these policies. And it remind me of the MAGA motto, which you never really determined when we were trying to revert America back to. And it's kind of the same with this economic vision. And something that we were looking into prior to this conversation was just all the justifications Trump has given for the tariffs. And it goes from, to balance trade.

[Jon Stewart]

And spur US Manufacturing, to stop illegal.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Immigration, to stop the flow of fentanyl.

[Jon Stewart]

To balance the budget.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Like, how can it be all of these things?

[Jon Stewart]

What is the actual vision even, by the way, even trade imbalances, you know, when they talk about we've got to fix our trade imbalance, well, America buys a shit ton of stuff, like, that's going to be really hard to do. And China has a positive trade balance. And is that the economy we want? Like, what are we even talking about? So I think you're right. There's all kinds of justifications. But I think what we did get to is there is a plan. Like, that is the one thing I think they do have. We may not like it, but I think it's to go back to Peaky Blinders. Big. Fuck small. Yeah, I think that's where we're at. I mean, Jillian, did they say anything that you thought that's the kernel, that's the.

[Adam Tooze]

Well, I think it's just that, like.

[Jon Stewart]

Adam said early on, which is like.

[Adam Tooze]

This economic realignment, this pursuit of onshoring, these are not necessarily bad goals, but they're not to be confused with policies that actually advance the interests of the working class. And I think Sohrab was completely in agreement on that.

[Jon Stewart]

Right. Or, or, or we'll do it in a, a relatively small way regionally, but might not be a broader plan. Brittany, what, what's the view on Long Island? What's the view on Long island from this?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

People just want to be able to afford their, like bacon, egg and cheese, you know?

[Jon Stewart]

Yeah, it's, it's the, the provincial concerns that, that we all have. But I do think there was real agreement that the volatility of this is a Real danger for them. And that part I thought was. Was really interesting when they were talking about, like, look, this realignment is. Is probably real protectionism is one aspect of it. There are, you know, billionaire technocrats that are going through this other aspect of it, and maybe it is about reducing the deficit, but there are some volatile offshoots of this that could create some real hardship for people. And that's the thing that's. Yeah, that's scary.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Can I just say, this episode really made me want to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack.

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah. I mean, how does a bastard orphan.

[Jon Stewart]

Son of a whore. Am I wrong that that's a sequel that we don't have? The sequel is how he put together a. The. The three tent posts of Hamiltonian economies.

[Adam Tooze]

It's hard to do a sequel when. Spoiler he dies.

[Jon Stewart]

I do appreciate that. Yeah. You say you want a revolution. Well, I want. I don't. Revelation. I've only listened to it a few times. Only a couple. Yeah. Brittany, what do the people say?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

All right, we've got a couple questions for you this week, John.

[Jon Stewart]

All right, what do we got? Considering all the cuts and layoffs DOGE.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Is implementing, especially as it affects veterans, what can ordinary people do to push back?

[Jon Stewart]

Oh, Jesus, man. I so appreciate the question. And the frustration I always have is, like, that it's left to ordinary people. Like, that's the part that makes me so mad that, like, our elected representatives are there. We send them to Washington so that we're, you know, every time, you know, the hits the fan with this, there's always that question of, like. I liken it to, like, if you're at a basketball game and your team's just getting the shit kicked out of them, and in the timeout, the players just turn to the, you know, to the crowd and go, like, all right, you're in. You're like, wait, I don't. But I don't know how to play basketball. And they're like, I don't care. We're fucking. We're dying over here. Just get in there. So, I mean, look, what I would say is keep vigilant, stay on it. And when a task comes, but there has to be leadership in this that, you know, ultimately, if this gets to, you know, a veterans march on Washington, which they did do, and it was really, you know, these are real people that throughout the country stood up and said, these cuts are hurting people, they're hurting us, and very little blip. It's very hard to break through. So there has to be what we learned during the fight for packed actors, a drug, or any of those things is it takes strategy and leadership from the top that is able to empower people to particular tasks. And that has to be. That plan has to be developed. But, man, the fact that people are out there saying, what can we do? Says there's a thirst for that leadership and for direction, and hopefully it will be provided. Because, you know, the usual shit is call your congressman. But I can tell you, man, they ignore that shit unless it's really targeted and really specific to a certain date or action. And that date or action has not been articulated yet, but it will be. It has to be. And so that's where I would. I would say, but. Amen. Yeah, let's hope. Let's hope. What else I got?

[Saurabh Bhargava]

John, do you ever experience FOMO at this stage of your career?

[Jon Stewart]

Wow. No, I don't. I don't. I don't ever consider. I don't experience fomo. Forget about career in life, because I don't like doing things. That's the secret.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Yeah. Do you know what you have? It's called Jo.

[Jon Stewart]

Jo Mo John of missing out.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

It's the joy of missing out.

[Jon Stewart]

Joe. I have Jo. Do you guys get fomo? Is. Is it. Jillian, you're. You're our. Our perhaps youngest. Is that. Is that something that you experience?

[Adam Tooze]

I think I'm similar to you where I love, like, being home with my dog. That's.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

That's.

[Adam Tooze]

You know, if somebody else was doing that, I'd have a lot of fomo.

[Jon Stewart]

But you know what? That's a good point. Why is that not usually included in fomo? Like, oh, man, you sat home and watched Severance with your dog. I'd be like, oh, take me there. That's exactly why I can't get a.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Pet, because I'll never go anywhere.

[Adam Tooze]

You won't.

[Jon Stewart]

You'll never know. So, Lauren, do you need to be almost like. I find the energy to leave the house to be like. It is an endeavor I have to endeavor.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

I know. I was going to say, I feel like you have a fear of not having canceled.

[Jon Stewart]

Like, you would definitely like to be at home. Yes, I prefer that. But, Brittany, you go out there, I put it on. You know how to take it to the streets.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Honestly, I try, but at the same time, I really enjoy, like, how I spend my rent money. You know, like, staying home spent.

[Jon Stewart]

I've never heard it put that way, but I kind of like that.

[Adam Tooze]

Yeah.

[Jon Stewart]

What are you doing tonight? I'm spending my rent money. How you doing that I'm going to sit on the couch.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

I'm staying home.

[Jon Stewart]

Yeah, no, I. I actually think that's. That's great. I am and I think to sometimes people's surprise, very introverted. And I don't. Even when I was younger, the jobs I had were I bartended, I went out and did stand up comedy. So it gave me the illusion of having friends or being out. But I really, I like that it's so much more preferable to socializing. Not that I don't. There's many people that I love and I like to see sometimes and all that, but boy, inertia wise, you can always call them. But I don't think you are taking.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Into consideration necessarily how many people you talk to.

[Jon Stewart]

That's. You talk to a lot of people as far as I'm concerned.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

You need to recharge.

[Jon Stewart]

This was a cocktail party right now. I'm gonna. I'm go. I'm going back to bed. Socialize. Awkward.

[Adam Tooze]

Power off.

[Jon Stewart]

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, Brittany. How can they get in touch with us? Twitter. We are weekly show pod.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

Instagram threads.

[Jon Stewart]

TikTok Blue Sky.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

We are weekly show podcast.

[Jon Stewart]

And you can like subscribe and comment.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

On our YouTube channel, the weekly show at Jon Stewart.

[Jon Stewart]

Yeah, and do that. Because we read them. Well, we don't, but they do. Then they tell me, but generally curated so that I don't go. What? Why would they say that? As always, thank you to everybody. Lead producer Loren Walker. Producer Brittany Momedovic. Video editor and engineer Rob Votola. Audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce. Researcher and associate producer Jillian Spear. And our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. As always, is the weekly show podcast. We'll see you guys next week. Bye Bye. The Weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bustboy Productions. Team Sonic. Showtime. Big news.

[Adam Tooze]

What is it?

[Jon Stewart]

Hey, you know what?

[Adam Tooze]

I'll ask the questions.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

What is it? Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is now now streaming on Paramount.

[Jon Stewart]

Konichi.

[Adam Tooze]

What?

[Jon Stewart]

Finally.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

It's perfect for the whole family.

[Adam Tooze]

Come on, Granddaddy O. Let's do this.

[Jon Stewart]

And the best Sonic movie yet. Did you hear that, boys? Love it. 10 out of 10. No notes. Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Rated BG. Now streaming on Paramount. Prepare to be entertained. Gladiator 2 is now streaming on Paramount. You hear that crowd? It's ferociously entertaining.

[Adam Tooze]

I'm just here for the the games.

[Jon Stewart]

And an absolute triumph. Take your father's strength.

[Saurabh Bhargava]

His name is Maximus Paul.

[Jon Stewart]

Mesal Pedro Pascal. With Connie Nielsen and Denzel Washington. Strength and Honor Strength and Honor Gladiator 2 directed by Ridley Scott. Now streaming on Paramount plus rated R. Paramount Podcasts.