In this episode of The Future of Liberty, Mitch Daniels speaks with journalist and author Matthew Yglesias about affordability, the social safety net, and the conditions required for economic dynamism in a free society. Their wide-ranging conversation examines housing, energy, transportation, education, and entitlement policy, with attention to the “sacred cows” that often shape political debate and influence approaches to reform.
In this episode of The Future of Liberty, Mitch Daniels speaks with journalist and author Matthew Yglesias about affordability, the social safety net, and the conditions required for economic dynamism in a free society. Their wide-ranging conversation examines housing, energy, transportation, education, and entitlement policy, with attention to the “sacred cows” that often shape political debate and influence approaches to reform.
Intro (00:02):
Welcome to The Future of Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund, hosted by Mitch Daniels.
Mitch Daniels (00:18):
I am especially delighted to welcome today's guest, whom I have read for a very long time, and found one of the more interesting, less predictable voices in our national conversation. And therefore, because he's somewhat less familiar to many of the viewers of this program, I'm going to ask our guest, Matthew Yglesias, with thanks for your being with us. Tell us a little about who you are.
Matthew Yglesias (00:49):
Hi, I'm a writer and a journalist in Washington, DC. I've been here the past 22 years. I started at a small progressive magazine called The American Prospect. I've sort of been on the progressive side of things for most of my career, but maybe a little bit more of a heterodox person than some. I was the co-founder of the website Vox.com in 2014. I left there in 2020, and started my own Substack. I've been writing there, and I'm very interested in Liberty Fund's work of rebuilding what I think of as the kind of lost liberal center of American politics.
Mitch Daniels (01:29):
As I mentioned, you somehow find a way to know about, learn about, and then inform the rest of us about an astonishing variety of subjects. I just want to illustrate that very briefly for this audience, if they haven't been prescient enough to be reading you already. Just taking a few of those, why should we not sweat the issue of water and data centers?
Matthew Yglesias (01:55):
This is just very over-hyped. Data centers use tiny amounts of water compared to agriculture, basic lawns, anything like that. It's just a very over-discussed subject.
Mitch Daniels (02:07):
Why should Maine start taxing its tourists? Wouldn't that be counterproductive to a major industry out there?
Matthew Yglesias (02:16):
Well, I think that there is an underwritten opportunity there to lower the tax burden on the actual residents of Maine and try to leverage their strength in the tourist economy into a more overall balanced growth.
Mitch Daniels (02:31):
You've written rather recently that maybe debate is overrated. At an organization that thought that was part of our mission, should we be having second thoughts?
Matthew Yglesias (02:44):
You know what? I think that Liberty Fund does a lot of events that are focused on what I would say is discussion, rather than debate. In debate, where you have two people up, and there's going to be a winner. A lawyer in a court is not trying to get to the truth. They’re trying to win the case. That's what I don't like about debate.
Mitch Daniels (03:06):
You seem to have it in for animal protein, you think that it has deleterious effects on our environment. Now, I'm speaking to you from a home of animal protein, so convince me that we've made a bad bargain there.
Matthew Yglesias (03:23):
My father-in-law manages a ranch. I have a great deal of respect for the people working in this field. I eat a good amount of animal protein myself, I'm not against it, but the ecological footprint of ranching is very large. It takes a lot of land to grow the feed and to feed the animals. There's a lot of downsides to this kind of thing. I think that we should look forward to trying to develop technologically superior alternatives that have a smaller footprint, that leave more space for nature. This is how humanity has bettered itself in many fields across the world. We're not there yet, I don't want to ban meat, I don't want to stop people from eating meat. But I want to continue exploring all alternatives.
Mitch Daniels (04:04):
Fair enough. Maybe just one more question, one that’s very current at the time of this taping, even if it may not be by the time the episode airs. You’ve suggested that a way out of the gerrymandering issue, which has recently resurfaced across the country, is proportional representation. Could you briefly make the case for that?
Matthew Yglesias (04:28):
Sure. A state the size of Indiana, most states could elect its House delegation at large, via proportional representation. So a heavily Republican state like yours would send one or maybe two Democrats. An inverse state would send one or maybe two Republicans. Texas, California, you might need to split them into two or three spots, to avoid it getting too large. But then you would represent, A, you would have less of this bitter feuding about gerrymandering that is tearing people apart. But you would also represent the reality of American political opinions, which is, we have Republicans in California and New York. We have Democrats in Indiana and Texas. And we ought to have a Congress that reflects that, so that people can have regional alliances around aspects of geography, but also their ideological and their partisan views.
Mitch Daniels (05:21):
So I hope that from this little selection our views can see a few of the subjects that your readers are treated to on a regular basis. But before we move on, how in the world do you produce all that you do on such a dizzying array of topics? These aren't six paragraph blogs. They're lengthy, well-thought-out, and researched. Do you have a team that helps you, or are you a one man band?
Matthew Yglesias (05:54):
It's all AI. No. I do, I work with a few people. I've got an editor. I've got a copy editor. There's a writing fellow who works with me, who helps with some research. But I've always been somebody who writes quickly. And I came along at a particular point in time when the technology was changing, and we shifted from a world where journalists really had to fight with their editors for column inches, to one where editors wanted somebody to fill the boundless inventory of the internet. It's something that I'm well-suited to, I feel fortunate to have come around at a time when that was a big opportunity. It's been a difficult time for this industry, I'm sure you and your listeners know that, but it's been good to me so I feel grateful for that.
Mitch Daniels (06:37):
Well, thank you. I hope maybe we've recruited a few new readers and subscribers here.
Matthew Yglesias (06:43):
That would be fantastic.
Mitch Daniels (06:45):
If folks are paying attention, they'll have that reaction.
(06:49):
Let me move to what I think interests me most about your work, Matthew. You, as I see it, and please feel free to correct me, are in many ways seeking to tug, or as you progressives like to say nudge, your fellow travelers closer to what I suppose you would call the center on a number of issues, without altering in any material way the principles on which those views are based. So let me ask you about a few of these.
(07:30):
So housing is on a lot of people's minds. You have talked about zoning, and changes that you think, as what we call today, blue states and cities should be making. What's that case, and how are you doing?
Matthew Yglesias (07:46):
This has been a big one for me, land use and zoning. There's a lot of regulatory restrictions on house building in all kinds of places in the United States, but it's particularly severe in coastal states where there's older cities, there is less available land around. There's water, things like that. And housing has become incredibly expensive. This is something I've been writing about for over 10 years now, trying to get people to see the case for a lighter touch regulation, and less devolution to local governments.
(08:24):
I think we've made a good amount of progress. There is some important legislation that the governor of California signed earlier this year. The new mayor of New York, who is quite left wing, has talked about a need for change here, he has said that one of the things he's changed his mind on is sort of embracing the idea of a private sector role in housing. We've also had great bipartisan initiatives in Arizona, Texas, and Florida. Some move for change in Connecticut, very important legislation in New Hampshire, which is a blue state but has a Republican legislature.
(08:57):
So things are happening here. It's tough. You have progressive-minded people who don't like the market, and you have conservative-minded people who don't like the idea of change, cities, or density. But I think that housing is worrying more and more and more people. And it's also just an interesting space, where people actually are working together across party lines, at a time when, you know as well as I, things are more bitter on so many levels than they've ever been. However, this is something where there's a lot of good cooperation happening.
Mitch Daniels (09:32):
Can you say the same thing about rent control?
Matthew Yglesias (09:35):
I do not think rent control is a good idea. I think there's some signs of rent control gaining ground. I think a rent control statute passed in Washington State. We'll see what happens elsewhere. It failed in a ballot initiative in California, just a couple of years ago, so I don't think there's as much juice in that, electorally, as some people on the left think. But I mean, this is definitely a topic where I'm concerned that we are unlearning some of the wisdom of the past.
Mitch Daniels (10:06):
So the political buzzword of the times is affordability, which no one doubts is salient as a way to get people's attention, and convince them that you're concerned about the same things they are. But in terms of prescription, it's less clear that those who are wielding it from the left have an answer, or in fact are not a large part of the problem. Through taxes, and regulations, and so forth. So say a little word about that, I've got a couple of specifics to ask about, but in general, isn't this a difficult dance for your allies to learn to do?
Matthew Yglesias (10:44):
I mean, it's an interesting topic, right? We had inflation, several years ago, it was quite high. Then the rate of inflation came down a lot, but a lot of voters wanted prices to fall. I think those of us who are knowledgeable about economics understand why it's probably not possible to engineer a general fall in the price level, but President Trump promised that he would do that. He won the election on the basis of that promise. He, of course, has not been able to deliver on it. And so now Democrats have this kind of free shot at just kind of punching him, and saying, "Oh, prices are up. You said they'd go down."
(11:26):
I don't really know that anybody has an answer for what to do with it. You know, you've been in practical politics, and I have not. And you've also been on the more wonky end and things like that.
(11:43):
So there's an intricate dance between the politicians who have their slogans, their campaign promises, they have their stuff they feel like they need to deliver on. And then, hopefully, you've got some people on the staff who can give them some cautionary notes about what's really achievable, what's really realistic. Because I don't want to see people getting into price controls as kind of a desperate gambit to force the price of things down. We should try to be thoughtful about how we can make housing, higher education, whatever else it is, more quote unquote "affordable" to people. But prices are important.
Mitch Daniels (12:23):
Well, the history of material progress in our country has been that prices have risen almost linearly. When they fell, it wasn't a pleasant experience. But of course, the trick is to have real incomes grow faster than prices, and that's been the case. And matter of fact, it's still the case.
Matthew Yglesias (12:43):
Right. What's puzzling about it is, you want to say, "Okay, the way we make life more affordable is that incomes rise faster than prices." That happens most years of American history. It happened this year, it happened last year. So it's a little hard to know exactly what it is the voters want here. We should try to have good economic policy. I agree with that. It seems like talking about affordability resonates a lot with people, but it's harder than some of the campaign hacks realize, to understand exactly what it is we want to do.
Mitch Daniels (13:25):
You pointed out recently that there are several sacred cows, that was the verbiage you used, that progressive advocates of greater affordability will need to confront. I will just pick two that I thought were particularly interesting. One was the successful effort in many Eastern states to stifle natural gas pipelines, often in the name of adhering to renewable portfolio standards and related policies. That is an unpredictable stance for someone on your team to raise. Could you talk about it?
Matthew Yglesias (14:08):
Yeah. I mean, I think that this is a big one. I think people are generally aware, natural gas production in the United States has grown enormously over the past 15 years. That has made it a lot cheaper. This is the cheapest form of fuel in most cases. It's strongly complementary with renewables. You have a lot of states doing a mixture of either wind and gas, or solar and gas, depending on their natural resources.
(14:35):
The Northeastern United States does not have the pipeline capacity to fully take advantage of this gas. And so, we have gas that is coming in on ships, which is more expensive because of the need to liquefy and then re-gasify it. It also competes on global markets. There’s a lot of reliance in the Northeast on home heating oil, which is a more expensive way to heat homes than gas or electricity.
(15:04):
And this is something that Governor Hochul, in New York, is confronting. I mean, I think reality ultimately bites, if you are the governor of a state. You can have whatever ideological commitments you want to have, but you need to do things that work. Most people in politics, though, have safe seats in Congress or in state legislatures. And if what their interest group people want them to say is, "We don't need pipelines. We can do everything with solar and wind." That's what they say.
(15:34):
And this is something Democrats really need to think hard about, particularly in the Northeast, because the Northeast is very progressive, but it is also not sunny and it's quite crowded. If you look at the parts of America that are well suited to large scale renewable construction, it's really not there. It's not New York, it's not Massachusetts, it's not New Jersey. And if you honestly care about affordability and reducing pollution in a realistic way, you're going to have to reach the conclusion that Governor Shapiro has reached, that Governor Hochul has reached. Which is that we need more pipeline construction.
Mitch Daniels (16:14):
This may have been what you meant by pollution, although some of us think that's a misnomer, in the CO2 context. But ironically, the biggest contribution to the American reduction of CO2 has been the substitution of natural gas for coal, I believe.
Matthew Yglesias (16:32):
Yes. Gas for coal substitution has reduced carbon dioxide emissions a lot. It has reduced particulate air pollution more, to the extent that you switch to electric cars, or even to electric home heating. Even if the electricity is largely coming from natural gas, that generates less pollution. They're called combined cycle turbines and power plants that are just much more efficient. I have a little gas furnace in the basement of my house. It's great, it keeps the house warm. It's obviously not the same kind of state-of-the-art technology that a power plant would buy.
(17:12):
And so, if you want to talk about realistic progress on environmental goals, which is I think particulates and climate, gas has been good. It's not the ultimate solution for all the dreams that one might have for the universe, but it is cleaner than the status quo, and it is affordable.
Mitch Daniels (17:37):
Here's a sacred cow many of your readers were probably thinking about for the first time. Two-person crews on trains, and other modes of transportation.
Matthew Yglesias (17:49):
Oh, this is a fun one.
Mitch Daniels (17:49):
Yes, it is. Enlighten our viewers.
Matthew Yglesias (17:53):
This is pretty obscure. Anyway, New York City, we're talking about the subway or freight trains? What are we talking about here?
Mitch Daniels (18:02):
Well, I think you were talking about freight trains at the time, I guess it applies in both contexts.
Matthew Yglesias (18:08):
We've done them both, but for freight trains, there was a rule. This has gone back and forth in the rulemaking, Obama to Trump, to Biden, back to Trump. A push to say, safety regulation is going to require two person crews on freight trains. This pushes up the cost of operating freight trains. The safety benefit is very marginal. Shifting freight onto trucks and off of trains is less safe. Trains are very safe, sort of inherently.
(18:45):
There's a parallel issue in New York City, which is that they use two-person crews to operate subway trains. That's very rare. They don't do it that way in Chicago. They don't do it that way in Philadelphia. They don't do it that way in Paris. There's a handful of Japanese train lines that operate on that basis, but all those Japanese cities are investing in going down to one person or zero person operations.
(19:11):
And I mean, these are small things, but they matter. If you are going to have politics oriented around, you could call it growth, you could call it efficiency, you could call it affordability, whatever it is, really you got to look at these rules.
Mitch Daniels (19:30):
So talking about mass transit in the larger sense, viewed from out here in the provinces, it looks like a terrible deal that we need to finally give up on. Nobody's riding it. Fewer people are riding it than whatever makes it sustainable, even in the densest areas. Four states, New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey I think, collectively rake in half of the money that we spend on this. Is America at large ever going to get a good deal for this money, or should it not be devoted to other purposes?
Matthew Yglesias (20:12):
I mean, I think mass transit is very important to New York City, and the suburbs of New York City. It's a little bit important in Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, maybe Philadelphia. And it doesn't really matter elsewhere, in America. I get that people living in the heartland might feel sort of angry or resentful about that. We also do a lot to support agriculture. We do a lot to support rural telecommunications, etc.
(20:46):
You know what, something that I've always been interested in journalistically, and I don't know if anybody's ever really done politically. Is open up the cap of all of the inter-regional transfers that exist in the federal government, and try to understand what it nets out to. Because we have an incredible number of programs, whether it's transit subsidies that are shifting funds to urban areas, or agricultural subsidies that are shifting funds to rural areas, the net transfer is much smaller than the gross transfer. And there should be some way to cut it down, and essentially hold harmless any given kind of place. Just rethink how fiscal federalism is supposed to be functioning, kind of comprehensively.
(21:39):
You know, this is like. The kind of stuff that blue-ribbon commissions should be doing, you could co-chair one. Because I don't think anybody knows the answers. It's easy to hyperfixate on some particular issue that you don't like, or that your constituents don't benefit from. And say, "Ah, we're wasting so much here." There's like a special subsidy program for home heat in cold areas. There's a flood insurance program that's really good for Florida, but isn't helping anybody else out there. The people ask, what are we doing? What is the purpose of all of this?
Mitch Daniels (22:18):
You wrote another excellent column recently, I think it might even have been the title, it's certainly a direct quote, "American students are getting dumber."
Matthew Yglesias (22:29):
Yes.
Mitch Daniels (22:30):
That is so well documented I won't ask you to elaborate on it, but I bring it up because just like mass transit, two person trains, and permitting gas pipelines and so forth, you're taking on the core. A core, at least financial pillar, of the Democratic Party. And that's the unions, which despite their continued decline as a percentage of Americans they actually represent, are still a major, major political factor. So can a new, more centrist Democratic Party coexist with this part of its base, even though it separates from it in that way?
Matthew Yglesias (23:25):
Well, one of the other things I have written about is the real decline in Democrats’ ability to win union members’ votes, which is something we have clearly seen. This reflects, in part, a kind of narrow approach to labor union politics.
(23:44):
There was a big bailout of the Teamsters Pension Fund, which happened during the Biden administration. Then the Teamsters Union didn't endorse Kamala Harris. The reason they didn't endorse Kamala Harris isn't because Democrats didn't help out the Teamsters Union, it's because she was unpopular with rank and file Teamsters. Who, like everybody, cares about many different issues. Maybe they agreed with Trump about immigration, maybe they agreed with Trump about transgender. Who knows? They're people. She was very unpopular with the members, so they didn't support her. I think that suggests, well, what did you spend those billions of dollars on the Teamsters Pension Fund for? It's a very cynical approach to politics, that isn't delivering the benefit that it's supposed to deliver.
(24:36):
And President Obama fought a lot with teacher unions, particularly in his first term, about management of The Race to the Top Fund, teacher quality, assessments, and other things like that. Teachers loved him. He did great with teachers, and in getting their votes, because he had the kind of values that most teachers agree with. And so, they voted for him. You don't need to intermediate all of this stuff through these kinds of layers of union politicking, I think. We'll see what happens.
Mitch Daniels (25:12):
So if we can posit that American students are in fact getting dumber, is there a way for them to get smarter that is consistent with a degree of union control that exists in most states?
Matthew Yglesias (25:25):
I think one of the most successful examples we have seen is early reading education. Strong phonics programs implemented in Mississippi and Louisiana have produced good results. These are not unions’ favorite policies, but they are also not their least favorite. Randy Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers has become quite favorable to this approach. So I am somewhat optimistic about this kind of reform, at least in a narrow sense.
(26:02):
I assume you will disagree with me about this, but I don't think that the results of unregulated school choice initiatives, of the sort that they have in Arizona and Ohio, have been very successful. You have public funds without real accountability in those states, and you get bad results of a different kind there.
(26:24):
The obvious question to ask about education is this. I am the parent of a ten year old, who is in fifth grade. The AI revolution is unfolding all around us. Right now, the way this is being handled at his school, and in our family, is that he is on an island, largely segregated from AI. He is doing his work with a pencil. He is learning to write, to read, and to do math, and that all seems appropriate in its own way. But clearly, he is going to have to learn how to work with artificial intelligence. At the same time, artificial intelligence can be used to cheat on homework, which is already happening among college and high school students across the country. We are going to have to completely rethink how we assess students, and also how we teach them, because there should be far greater teaching and learning opportunities here, not just new ways to cheat.
(27:31):
And that's going to require a great deal of flexibility from our institutions. I think we're going to need states, and governments, to focus on how we assess outcomes. Because we need to think about, how do we distinguish between using AI to learn and using AI to cheat? Which is a hard problem, it seems to me.
Mitch Daniels (28:01):
When I taught a history course for several years at the university, I did the exams in blue books. I did it because I was a dinosaur, but suddenly I feel enlightened.
Matthew Yglesias (28:17):
Yeah. I mean, that's going to be the future, right? And it hurts my hand just to think about it. I mean, I remember those tests, and it's brutal and my handwriting is terrible.
Mitch Daniels (28:27):
And an issue which comes around every so often, and is back in front of the nation now, at least many would like it to be. Is the concept of a universally guaranteed income, universal basic income. You took, what I've learned, is a typically objective and fresh-faced view of that. You said you found the results disappointing. Why?
Matthew Yglesias (28:57):
So there was this study done at a program out of California, and they gave randomly selected people some extra cash, to see what would happen. And not very much happened. So I think it's disappointing.
(29:12):
The reason I find this disappointing is that we have strong research evidence, for example from the rollout of the SNAP program. While it is not quite cash, food assistance is fairly flexible and allows people to purchase a wide range of necessities. That program produced good outcomes. Low income families and children ended up significantly better off as a result of receiving additional resources. We saw similar positive results from the Earned Income Tax Credit when it was introduced, as well as from the Child Tax Credit. These programs are work conditioned, but they still provide meaningful financial support to low income families. When we see that something is helping people, it is reasonable to hypothesize that providing more assistance might help even more. At the same time, we also know that many things in life exhibit diminishing returns. It is possible that we are now near those diminishing returns when it comes to income support for low income families. That, too, is an empirical reality.
(30:08):
I think in terms of universal basic income as a concept. This is something that I hear about in an AI space. Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk are all saying they think that working for a living is going to be obsolete in 5 to 10 years. That poses a lot of gigantic questions for human society, and what we're going to do. I don't know what you do about something like that, because to me it sounds a little depressing to think everybody is just sitting around, cashing our UBI checks. But I don't know. It's the march of progress, also.
Mitch Daniels (30:57):
The two examples you mentioned are, to the extent that they have been successful, and I think that is fair to say, food stamps and refundable tax credits. Both of these programs, however, either require work or historically have done so. That, I think, is what troubles many people about proposals that would effectively free individuals from the obligation to work. I understand why the new masters of the universe in a winner-takes-all economy look at their vast fortunes and conclude that, if those fortunes are to remain intact, they will have to subsidize everyone else. But how humane is a world like that?
Matthew Yglesias (31:43):
I think that's an excellent question. Bill Clinton said, "If you work hard, and play by the rules," blah, blah, blah. And that's a sort of old-fashioned Democrat sense. And George W. Bush said he wanted to be a compassionate conservative. So that's kind of a circling of a similar ideal landscape, that we want to make sure people are okay, and not necessarily limited to the market earnings. But we want them to be doing the work that we kind of expect of society. And that's where EITC and CTC were both made more generous across both of those administrations. I think it was when you were serving in the Bush administration that SNAP eligibility expanded quite a bit, as a part of a farm bill. So that's sort of a politically sustainable track that I think works, and has helped make a rising tide that lifts all boats.
(32:57):
But these questions about the future are just, they're difficult ones. It breaks my brain. I was at a Liberty Fund conference, and I was talking to one of your colleagues. It kept coming up. There was an AI guy there who was like, "Well, if we believe in liberty and dynamism in the future, there's not going to be any human labor. There's just robots going to Mars." And, in my gut, that sounds depressing to me. But I also feel like I don't know if it's a right wing or a left wing view, it's beyond the normal contours of the politics that we've had throughout my lifetime to think about, "Do I want to say we need to regulate the economy to preserve a sense of meaning in people's lives?" That feels off to me. And yet if the government's going to regulate anything, for any purpose, surely human beings having meaning in their life would be important.
Mitch Daniels (34:08):
Let me ask you about a matter that some of us think is probably even more imminent than the transition you just talked about. I'm very curious to know, once again, whether people of a progressive mindset can come to grips with it, or be led to. And that's saving the safety net. It's been the easiest political cudgel for a long, long time. Anytime somebody even mentions changing, especially the two big entitlement programs, they get their head lopped off. That can't go along much longer. My view has been that we will have to deal with this, and that Democrats are more likely to succeed in doing so, but how might that happen?
Matthew Yglesias (35:03):
This is an interesting case, and one where politics has changed quite a bit. Twenty years ago, this issue sat at the center of political debate. The George W. Bush administration wanted to make changes to Social Security. Later, Paul Ryanpushed for reforms to Medicare. Even the Obama administration floated its own ideas, including efforts toward a so-called grand bargain. When Trump entered the Republican primaries in 2015, he effectively said, “Just give up on this.” He won that argument within the party, and it proved electorally successful. In doing so, he eliminated what I think had been the Republican Party’s greatest electoral vulnerability. At the same time, it ushered in a new kind of politics that feels unhinged and unbalanced in many ways.
(36:04):
And yet, interest rates are not that high. If you had asked me ten years ago what it would look like after running through the fiscal choices made over the past decade, I would have said that interest rates would be through the roof, that Wall Street would be in an uproar, and that everyone would be saying something had to be done. That has not quite happened.
(36:34):
Bill Clinton moved on deficit reduction in 1993 because he wanted to get interest rates down. I mean, it wasn't abstract, or completely ideological. It was the practical realities of the situation. Obama sort of wanted a deficit deal, sort of didn't, definitely wanted to be seen as somebody who wanted a deficit deal. But he didn't get it. And ever since Trump, it's just been completely off the agenda.
Mitch Daniels (37:10):
Let me turn to what may be the most important area where, if you or others are able to nudge your allies, they would be wise to take your advice. You have talked about cultural issues and the need for greater moderation. You have written, in effect, that people genuinely care about crime, about unrestricted immigration, and about related concerns. I am tempted to say that many of your colleagues have been remarkably slow learners. For well over a decade, it has been obvious that this has been a vulnerability in Democratic politics. What interests me is this. As obvious as the problem is, and as often as it has now been stated, can people who genuinely feel superior bring themselves to a place of real empathy and understanding for people they see as less educated, less sophisticated, and so on?
Matthew Yglesias (38:22):
I'm a great believer in the power of practical politics, in that regard, to bring people around and to do what they want to do. I think people do want to win, ultimately. And there's only one way to do it, really. You have got to be in touch with folks, and listen to what it is they think, and what it is they want.
Mitch Daniels (38:42):
But people will see through artifice.
Matthew Yglesias (38:46):
Well, that's what I mean.
Mitch Daniels (38:48):
It will have to be a genuine acceptance.
Matthew Yglesias (38:51):
I mean, that's how it always is, though.
Mitch Daniels (38:54):
Yeah.
Matthew Yglesias (38:54):
You’ve got to find the people who are genuine, and put it up there, and go and do it. You have plenty of examples of politicians who run ahead of their party in the right states, because they have the right kinds of values. And it's a question of, do sort of elite actors understand the situation, and understand what is going on?
(39:20):
I think Democrats were sold a kind of bill of goods about Donald Trump’s appeal in the Midwest and the Great Lakes states, and it never made much sense to me. The idea was that his success there was all about trade and so called economic populism. I always pushed back on that by saying, look at Mike DeWine, look at Rob Portman, look at Mitch Daniels, and look at others who have succeeded in these states. Some of them may have embraced populism, but many have not. What they practiced was fairly normal politics in a region where people hold social and cultural values that differ somewhat from those on the coasts.
(40:17):
I am probably one of the most out of touch people on the planet. I grew up in Greenwich Village. My father is a novelist and my mother is a painter. I went to Harvard and later moved to Logan Circle. I do not really know anyone in what people call real America. And yet, the reality is incredibly obvious. I meet people like this all the time. Democrats in my neighborhood who also went to Ivy League schools, or something similar, but who are originally from Ohio, Indiana, or Kansas. They grew up in the suburbs of mid-sized, middle American cities, and yet they will express the most preposterous ideas about the people they went to school with, or about their parents’ friends. These are otherwise completely competent people. If you put them in a room with the people they grew up with, they know exactly what those people are like and how to talk to them.
(41:16):
But you can get into these incredible ideological bubbles, and you see it. You see it on both sides. You see it as people use the internet more, rather than interacting face-to-face, you can go to Mars in totally insane ways. But I think that reality has a strong pull on the electoral system.
Mitch Daniels (41:40):
One more, Matthew. You wrote recently a typically well-reasoned, fact-based column about the fact that autocracies generally underperform in terms of economic growth. Now you had a certain kind of autocracy, I think in mind, in writing that.
Matthew Yglesias (42:02):
Yes.
Mitch Daniels (42:03):
But granting the basic point, many of us at a place like Liberty Fund would say the most autocratic regimes of all, and the most hostile or unsuccessful at producing growth, are the socialist or collectivist nations that we've seen. Is that not equally true?
Matthew Yglesias (42:33):
This depends somewhat on how you assess the People’s Republic of China and similar cases. But the central point of the research, which I think is both valid and important, is that countries that perform well tend to have strong private property rights and the rule of law. Countries that perform poorly, by contrast, are ones in which people are subject to the whims of political leaders. In those systems, there is little stability and little ability to focus on running a business or building a life. Everything revolves around pleasing those in power. Systems like that do not function well. In recent history, they have often been associated with left wing ideological assumptions, though they can arise from other directions as well. That is why it is important to help people understand, or perhaps rediscover, what is valuable about the American system.
(43:48):
I think that when I was younger, and when you were in the White House, we were having very vigorous political debates about the direction of the country in terms of what should our budgetary priorities be, what should our tax rates be? To some extent, what do we want to do with energy? But I don't think that we were questioning the fundamental underpinnings of the idea of the American system, in the way that we are a lot, now. And it makes me worried, and it's made me more interested in getting to know and work with people of a more classical liberal bent, of trying to understand how can we work together to sort of bolster the concepts of a free society conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, that has been an incredible force for good in the world over many, many years. And that I feel like, you know, there's a populist tendency to throw overboard these days, that I'm hearing more and more of, and that I think should really disturb us.
Mitch Daniels (45:08):
You have wisely anticipated my last question, which many of us are very curious about, because I think it's not improbable that folks who look at the world in the general way that you do, are likely to lead this country at some stage before too long. And the question is, can the prescriptions of the left be reconciled with a free society? Can we preserve the range of freedoms and liberties and personal dignity that some of us think are at the core of the American experiment? Persuade me we can.
Matthew Yglesias (45:53):
I mean, listen, I think that the kind of existence of a social safety net and redistributive taxation is not only compatible with the core of personal liberty, but has in a lot of ways been its best guarantor. That we have a lot of instability in a free society, and in a dynamic economy. We have a lot of cases where individual people lose out as a result of technological change, as a result of trade, things like that. And human beings' natural first impulse is to say, "We need to put a stop to that. We can't allow this change to happen, because it's going to be bad for my career. It's going to be bad for my job. It's going to be bad for my town." And somebody else can say, "Oh, well, I have this chart showing the long run progress of humanity since 1750, and the line goes up." But that doesn't do you any good if it's your kids' future, right? It's the factory that you work at.
(46:57):
The synthesis I am aiming for, and the one I think works best, is a system in which economic institutions ensure that the floor rises as the economy grows. That is why programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and a Social Security system that is adequate, rather than excessive in some cases, are so important. They offer an alternative to a politics of “get what I can, grab what I can, block this or that special interest.”That is my optimistic case for left-right collaboration and for the future of liberty, as we like to say.
Mitch Daniels (47:40):
Well, I speak for a number of our viewers who, first of all, are fans of competition in all its forms, including the competition of political ideas. Thank you for your contributions to these. As someone who believes that, at some stage, there will be a different leadership in this country. I hope that whoever that, from your side of the tracks, I'm hoping that whoever that is has been reading you and listening to you, Matthew.
Matthew Yglesias (48:11):
Well, thank you. That's very kind.
Mitch Daniels (48:12):
You've been very, very gracious with your time, and we thank you as we thank the viewers of Future of Liberty.
Matthew Yglesias (48:20):
Thank you.
Mitch Daniels (48:20):
We will see you at the next best opportunity.
Matthew Yglesias (48:26):
Thank you so much.
Outro (48:27):
The Future of Liberty has been brought to you by Liberty Fund, a private educational foundation dedicated to encouraging discussions of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.