Global Trumpism is a systemic, transnational phenomenon not limited to the right wing, spanning anti-austerity movements on both the left and right across Europe and the United States. (2:17)
Milanović's Elephant Chart highlights that while emerging market populations and the global top 1% have seen major income growth, the Western working and lower-middle classes experienced near-zero real income growth over recent decades. (33:28)
The post-1970s neoliberal macroeconomic regime effectively created a 'creditor's paradise,' turning populist politics into a debtors' revolt against stagnant real wages, flatlined purchasing power, and ballooning household debt. (30:31)
The rapid ascent of the asset-light platform economy concentrates capital returns among platform owners while providing minimal physical assets, shrinking labor headcounts, and precluding the return of traditional mid-century manufacturing jobs. (40:07)
Detailed notes
## Background
Published on YouTube by the Watson School of International and Public Affairs on September 29, 2016, this lecture features Brown University political economist Mark Blyth speaking as part of the Watson Institute Student Seminar Series. Designed for undergraduates and the broader university community in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, the series addresses American democracy and the underlying dangers and opportunities of the political moment through the lenses of history, contemporary global politics, and economic affairs.
## TL;DR
Political economist Mark Blyth argues that the rise of Donald Trump and concurrent European populist revolts are systemic international reactions to thirty years of neoliberal economic order rather than isolated cultural anomalies. He demonstrates how the shift from postwar Keynesian full employment to an investor-dominated macroeconomic regime broke labor's bargaining power, suppressed real wages, and substituted debt-fueled consumption for genuine income growth. Center-left parties abandoned their traditional working-class bases to pursue affluent asset owners, igniting a widespread 'debtor's revolt' against a creditor-friendly system that concentrated gains among global elites and emerging markets while hollowing out Western labor. Dismissing nostalgic promises to restore mid-century manufacturing, Blyth concludes that resolving this stagnation requires structural corporate tax enforcement, social insurance against technological automation, and large-scale public investment in green infrastructure.
## Atmosphere & style
The presentation crackles with energetic, plainspoken urgency, blending rigorous macroeconomic analysis with sharp Scottish wit and irreverent classroom delivery. Blyth commands the room with rapid-fire historical anecdotes, economic theory, and gritty, street-level illustrations that dismantle comfortable partisan narratives on both the left and right. The atmosphere feels intellectually unvarnished, darkly humorous, and intensely prescient, offering students a candid post-mortem of modern capitalism that balances analytical bite with conversational directness.
## Bulletin
- [02:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=137s) Global Trumpism is a systemic, transnational phenomenon not limited to the right wing, spanning anti-austerity movements on both the left and right across Europe and the United States.
- [33:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2008s) Milanović's Elephant Chart highlights that while emerging market populations and the global top 1% have seen major income growth, the Western working and lower-middle classes experienced near-zero real income growth over recent decades.
- [30:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1831s) The post-1970s neoliberal macroeconomic regime effectively created a 'creditor's paradise,' turning populist politics into a debtors' revolt against stagnant real wages, flatlined purchasing power, and ballooning household debt.
- [40:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2407s) The rapid ascent of the asset-light platform economy concentrates capital returns among platform owners while providing minimal physical assets, shrinking labor headcounts, and precluding the return of traditional mid-century manufacturing jobs.
## Key takeaways
- [03:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=189s) The rise of populist insurgencies encompasses both European right-wing nationalist parties and anti-austerity left-wing movements like Syriza and Podemos.
- [10:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=602s) Attributing populism entirely to racism ignores a quarter-century of industrial decline, falling real wages, opioid addiction, and dropping life expectancies in working-class communities.
- [11:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=703s) Populist voting strongly correlates with local exposure to Chinese import competition and loss of control in daily work life.
- [13:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=829s) Center-left political parties abandoned their industrial working-class base in favor of affluent urban professionals, offering cover for the defenestration of working-class prospects.
- [21:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1304s) Post-war Keynesian full-employment policies broke down when the absence of unemployment disciplining labor led to rising wages, industrial conflict, and 1970s stagflation as predicted by Michał Kalecki.
- [24:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1449s) The post-1970s neoliberal counter-revolution elevated consumer self-interest over worker solidarity, offshored manufacturing, and handed macroeconomic management to technocratic central banks.
- [27:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1668s) Household consumption over the past three decades was sustained through private debt rather than real wage growth, setting up an unsustainable debt trap when deflation struck.
- [33:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2008s) Milanović's Elephant Chart and Piketty's r > g formula explain how asset owners outpaced the general economy while Western middle and working classes saw flat real income growth.
- [37:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2272s) Promises by political figures to bring back mid-century manufacturing jobs are structurally unrealistic due to continuous capital substitution and the realities of modern foreign supply chains.
- [40:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2454s) The Eurozone's structural design forces consumption-oriented member states into permanent internal deflation and fiscal austerity under the 2012 Fiscal Compact.
- [46:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2798s) A Trump administration would likely be constrained by constitutional checks and balances, producing traditional conservative tax cuts and defense spending while directing acute harm toward undocumented immigrants and minorities.
- [54:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3251s) Silicon Valley's Universal Basic Income models risk serving as an ideological pretext to dismantle traditional public healthcare, housing, and social safety nets.
- [55:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3351s) Extreme offshore wealth accumulation and corporate tax avoidance distort the historical balance between market cash allocation and democratic voting power.
- [01:11:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4296s) Central banks are exhausted after years of low interest rates and quantitative easing, requiring a return to democratic fiscal policy and public infrastructure investment.
- [01:23:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=5035s) Addressing technological displacement requires robust corporate tax enforcement, comprehensive social insurance against automation, and green public works programs.
## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4s) Introduction to the Seminar Series and Mark Blyth
The event opens with an introduction to the second installment of a seven-part bi-weekly seminar series hosted by the Watson Institute, running at the somewhat unusual evening slot of 7:00 to 8:30 PM on Tuesdays, right through election night. The organizer notes that while the initial goal was to host an intimate, participatory discussion, the sheer level of interest in Mark Blyth demanded a significantly larger lecture hall. Future speakers are previewed, including Margaret Weir discussing inequality, Democrats, and Republicans.
Mark Blyth is formally introduced as a Professor of Political Economy, Political Science, and International and Public Affairs at Brown University, holding joint appointments with the Department of Political Science and the Watson Institute. Originally from Scotland, where he completed multiple degrees before emigrating to the United States, Blyth earned his PhD from Columbia University, taught at Johns Hopkins University, and has spent seven years on the faculty at Brown. The host underscores Blyth's deep scholarship on the global economy and his prescient analysis of the international precedents shaping the 2016 election cycle. Joking about Blyth skipping parts of the previous night's presidential debate, the host notes he arrives untainted by the media frenzy that erupted since 10:37 PM. The planned structure allocates roughly thirty minutes for Blyth’s presentation, followed by an hour of audience Q&A, wrapping up by 8:30 PM.
[02:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=137s) Defining "Global Trumpism": A Shared International Phenomenon
Taking the stage with a large wireless slide clicker and adjusting to the bright stage lighting, Blyth dives straight into the concept of "Global Trumpism." He explains that the term began as an internet meme and hashtag after he gave a four-minute interview segment in Athens, Greece, with the local news outlet *AthensLive* earlier that summer, just as observers anticipated another Greek crisis. In that clip, Blyth remarked that "the Brits are out" regarding Brexit and observed that the political dynamics driving Donald Trump were worldwide. The video exploded online, garnering 1.2 million Facebook shares and over 100,000 views on YouTube.
Blyth stresses that the underlying movement is fundamentally systemic rather than isolated to a single candidate or country: “Trumpism's global.” It extends well beyond Trump as an individual, does not belong solely to the political right, encompasses significant left-wing movements, and reflects a broad fragmentation of traditional party systems across Europe and the wider world.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Spectrum of Global Anti-Establishment Politics
accDescr: Diagram illustrating the ideological divide of global populist movements into right-wing and left-wing factions.
subgraph Populism["Global Political Discontent"]
direction TB
Right["Right-Wing Nationalist Parties"]
Left["Left-Wing Anti-Austerity Parties"]
end
subgraph RightWing["Right-Wing Figures & Parties"]
FN["National Front / Marine Le Pen (France)"]
SD["Sweden Democrats (Sweden)"]
Finns["True Finns (Finland)"]
LN["Lega Nord (Italy)"]
GD["Golden Dawn (Greece)"]
Fidesz["Viktor Orbán (Hungary)"]
end
subgraph LeftWing["Left-Wing Figures & Parties"]
Syriza["Syriza / Alexis Tsipras (Greece)"]
Podemos["Podemos / Pablo Iglesias (Spain)"]
Linke["Die Linke / Katja Kipping (Germany)"]
M5S["Five Star Movement / Beppe Grillo (Italy)"]
Labour["Labour Party / Jeremy Corbyn (UK)"]
SNP["SNP / Nicola Sturgeon (Scotland)"]
end
Right --> FN & SD & Finns & LN & GD & Fidesz
Left --> Syriza & Podemos & Linke & M5S & Labour & SNP
```
[03:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=189s) The "Trumpets": The Nationalist Right in Europe
Blyth quizzes the audience to identify prominent right-wing figures across Europe—playfully dubbing them "the Trumpets"—to show that Donald Trump's rhetoric is neither unique nor unprecedented. Working across the slide, the audience and Blyth identify:
- **Marine Le Pen** (*Front National*, France): "Le Pen the younger."
- **Sweden Democrats** (Sweden): Blyth dryly observes that "they're not democrats and they like being very, very Swedish."
- **The True Finns** (Finland): A party that holds the balance of power in the Finnish parliament and wields major nationwide influence.
- **Lega Nord** (Italy): Originating in Lombardy, representing northern Italian regionalism and nationalism.
- **Golden Dawn** (Greece): The far-right neo-fascist organization.
- **Viktor Orbán** (Hungary): Described by Blyth as the head of state who "basically is a dictator inside the EU."
Looking at the full roster, Blyth argues that when comparing Trump's policy positions and racial provocations to these politicians, "these guys, they make Trump look normal, some of them." Many are hardline nationalists who do not merely contest elections; several are actively governing or directly shaping state power.
[04:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=269s) The Left-Wing Counterpart and the Limits of the "Racism" Explanation
Blyth pivots to demonstrate that this political rupture is not confined to right-wing reactionaries; an equally potent left-wing insurgent wave has emerged across Europe. Audience members identify the figures on his next slide:
- **Alexis Tsipras** (*Syriza*, Greece): Current Prime Minister of Greece.
- **Pablo Iglesias** (*Podemos*, Spain): Whose party commands 20% to 25% of the Spanish vote, producing legislative deadlock and preventing a coalition government.
- **Katja Kipping** (*Die Linke*, Germany): Representing the radical left flank; Blyth explains that postwar German politics has traditionally operated on an imperative where the center-right and center-left collaborate at all costs to halt any potential "red-red-green axis."
- **The Five Star Movement** (Italy): Polling consistently between 20% and 25% across two consecutive elections.
- **Jeremy Corbyn** (Labour Party, UK): Described humorously by Blyth as "Comrade Corbyn," engaged in an internal party takeover to sweep out Blairite centrists and reshape the organization into a traditional socialist party.
- **Nicola Sturgeon** (Scottish National Party, Scotland): Who explicitly builds her governing legitimacy around being an uncompromising anti-austerity administration.
Blyth points out that while both sides channel deep voter dissatisfaction with the status quo, their fundamental principles conflict: one side is avowedly racist and exclusionary, while the other is explicitly anti-racist and internationalist. This stark ideological variation raises the central analytical dilemma: is the global surge simply about race and xenophobia, or is there a far deeper economic structure at work?
[06:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=377s) "Gary from Gary, Indiana": The Economic Narrative of Dislocation
Blyth outlines the prevailing culture war surrounding the interpretation of Trump: mainstream commentators often reduce the entire phenomenon to pure bigotry, whereas the structural economic account tells an entirely different story. To illustrate the economic thesis, Blyth constructs a composite profile of an industrial worker:
- **1989 Seniority:** A man named Gary lives in Gary, Indiana. By 1989, having logged a decade of union membership, he earns seniority, becomes a line supervisor, turns thirty, gets married, and pulls down $30.00 an hour in real wages.
- **Industrial Flight to the American South:** Well before China entered the picture, factory equipment and manufacturing moved south to low-wage, non-union states like Texas and North Carolina.
- **NAFTA and Town Decimation:** The signing of NAFTA triggers the departure of his plant and its entire network of local suppliers. The tax base collapses, property values tank, and public school funding deteriorates.
- **Retraining Failures:** Promising retraining programs to turn factory hands into computer programmers never materialize because state governors prioritized tax cuts over worker development.
- **Downward Mobility:** Gary bootstraps himself and takes a call center job at $15.00 an hour. Five years later, that call center is outsourced to India.
- **Low-Wage Service Work:** Nearing retirement, Gary works grueling shifts for $11.67 an hour at Walmart, the largest employer in the United States.
- **Threat of Automation:** Gary reads constant headlines warning that his remaining job will soon be automated away by robotics, while Wall Street investors and tech startup executives—who received massive bailouts—stand to amass fortunes holding the robot patents.
When political candidates show up every four years peddling identical campaign slogans about better jobs and greater security, Gary finds that life only gets progressively worse. He is presented with an establishment candidate on one side and an erratic outsider on the other: “So he has a liar on one side and a bullshit artist on the other.”
[09:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=540s) Testing the Narrative: Brexit, Demographics, and Anti-Immigration Data
Blyth introduces empirical research that complicates the purely economic reading of populism, using the United Kingdom's Brexit referendum as a test case. Although many analysts framed Brexit as a straightforward "revolt of the have-nots" who had been crushed by globalization, detailed voter data reveals significant anomalies:
- **Core Voter Motivations:** While "taking back control" was the primary slogan cited by Leave voters, anti-immigration sentiment was the direct runner-up.
- **Cross-Class Voting Patterns:** Both wealthy and impoverished constituencies voted heavily in favor of Brexit. If globalization-driven economic deprivation were the sole causal variable, affluent areas would not have cast ballots to leave the EU in such large numbers.
- **Generational Divergence:** Voter turnout skewed heavily toward older cohorts, who consistently register substantially higher rates of anti-immigrant and xenophobic attitudes than younger voters across Europe.
These demographic findings suggest that while the economic collapse of the working class is undeniable, cultural grievance and anti-immigrant sentiment operate as powerful independent drivers that cannot be explained by economic hardship alone.
[10:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=602s) Racism, Authoritarian Preferences, and the Counter-Factual
Poll after poll across Europe shows a distinct rise in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment. Mark Blyth points to the electoral humiliation suffered by Angela Merkel's party in Germany and the concurrent rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), an essentially single-issue anti-immigrant party. Polling data in both the United States and Europe reveals that voters drawn to these movements display distinctly authoritarian preferences. When asked standard sociological questions regarding child-rearing and social order, they consistently prefer hierarchy, patriarchy, traditional gender roles, and structured authority. Underpinning these attitudes in the social-psychological literature is the micro-foundation of status loss: the motivating grievance is not necessarily absolute poverty, but the acute feeling that one was once "top dog" and is no longer. This perceived displacement fuels resentment and aggressive responses that get coded along racial and gender lines, leading many commentators to conclude that the phenomenon is simply pure racism.
However, Blyth argues that economists pushed back against this single-factor explanation by introducing an obvious counterfactual. If the entire political earthquake is attributable solely to racism, one has to accept that twenty-five years of stagnating or declining real wages, the shuttering of industrial cities, endemic hopelessness, the opiate epidemic, and the collapse of life expectancy and upward mobility for the lower-middle and upper-working classes had absolutely zero political effect. Discarding material conditions entirely is an implausibly strong claim. As Mark Blyth puts it: “Because if it's all racism, that's an incredibly strong claim about the lack of efficacy of economic issues.”
- Polling across Europe and the U.S. links populist voting to authoritarian values: strict hierarchy, patriarchy, and fixed gender roles.
- The social-psychological model emphasizes "loss of status" rather than simple absolute poverty as the catalyst for racial and cultural scapegoating.
- The counterfactual posed by economists highlights twenty-five years of declining real wages, deindustrialization, opioid addiction, and dropping life expectancy among the working class.
---
[11:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=703s) The Economic Drivers of "Trumpism": China Shocks, Control, and Health Inequalities
Once economics is understood as broader than simple annual income snapshots, clear systemic patterns emerge across both sides of the Atlantic. Support for "Trumpism" on a global scale correlates strongly with exposure to Chinese import competition—specifically in local areas whose domestic manufacturing or service jobs were directly displaced by trade with China. It also tracks closely with sharp health inequalities; poorer, sicker populations disproportionately break for insurgent parties of both the right and the left. Crucially, the support correlates with pervasive job insecurity and a loss of personal agency. Blyth notes that British labor surveys classifying occupations into ABCD tiers show that among lower and upper manual workers (the C and D categories), the share of workers reporting a "good deal of control" over their daily jobs dropped from 30% a decade ago to just 9% today.
Blyth illustrates this profound disempowerment by referencing conditions in modern logistics hubs, such as Amazon warehouses where workers walk eleven miles a day and are subjected to strip searches upon entering and leaving the facility. Technological disruption compounds this vulnerability, as jobs most susceptible to automation are stripped of security. While acknowledging that many supporters of parties like the French National Front or the Finns Party (True Finns) are overtly racist—and that Donald Trump employs dog-whistle variations of the same rhetoric—Blyth insists that analysts must examine how economic distress and racial grievance actively feed into each other rather than treating them as mutually exclusive forces.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Economic and Technological Pressures Driving Populism
accDescr: Diagram illustrating how trade shocks, technology, and disempowerment fuel populist voting.
subgraph MacroPressures["Structural Pressures"]
A["Exposure to Chinese Import Competition"]
B["Technological Disruption & Automation"]
end
subgraph DailyLife["Lived Experience of Workers"]
C["Chronic Low Wages & Stagnation"]
D["Job Insecurity & Loss of Control<br>(British C/D control down 30% to 9%)"]
E["Severe Health Inequalities"]
end
subgraph PoliticalOutcome["Political Realignment"]
F["Status Loss, Racial Grievance & Resentment"]
G["Populist Support<br>(Trump, Brexit, AfD, National Front)"]
end
A --> C
B --> D
C --> F
D --> F
E --> F
F --> G
```
- Support for right-wing populist insurgencies tracks regions directly exposed to trade shocks from Chinese manufacturing and import competition.
- Occupational autonomy has collapsed: British survey data shows workers in C and D job classifications reporting control over their work plummeted from 30% to 9% within ten years.
- Physical working conditions, such as walking eleven miles a day and undergoing entry/exit strip searches in Amazon fulfillment centers, exemplify the visceral indignity driving worker revolt.
- As Mark Blyth emphasizes: “Trumpet support, as I like to call it, right across Europe correlates incredibly strongly with areas that are subject to Chinese import competition.”
---
[13:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=829s) The Brexit Data and the Excuse of the "Soft Left"
To demonstrate how economic data can be selectively misread, Blyth examines the conflicting analyses following the UK's Brexit referendum. Immediately after the vote, a chart went viral plotting local authorities—analogous to Rhode Island municipalities like North Providence, East Providence, and Providence—by their recent changes in real earnings against their Leave vote. Because the scatterplot showed no discernible correlation, commentators claimed it proved that economics played no part in Brexit. Yet on the very next page of the exact same study, a plot of absolute hourly wages told the opposite story: individuals earning £8 an hour had a 70% to 80% likelihood of voting Leave, whereas those earning £18 an hour (roughly $35 to $40 an hour) had only a 30% chance. The issue was not short-term income fluctuations, but chronic, generational wage suppression.
Educational attainment presents an identical mirror image: having Level 4 qualifications (equivalent to community college or higher) strongly predicted voting Remain, whereas having no formal qualifications strongly correlated with voting Leave. Because higher education acts as a reliable proxy for higher income, better health, and geographical insulation from economic shocks, these variables snowball together. Blyth asks why elite discourse is so invested in presenting the phenomenon as purely cultural racism while scrubbing out economic causality. He argues that this false dichotomy serves an ideological purpose: it provides political cover for center-left parties that spent decades presiding over the erosion of working-class living standards.
Mark Blyth explains the political convenience of this narrative: “The only reason I can really think that people want to do this is because it allows the soft left, who have been implicated in basically, I will call the defenestration of working class prospects over the past 25 years, a get-out excuse.”
---
[15:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=952s) Are We Going Back to the 1930s? Kierkegaard, Fascism, and Macroeconomic Regimes
Addressing the widespread historical analogy that contemporary politics is simply a replay of the 1930s—replete with the collapse of democracy, financial ruin, and the rise of a new Hitler or Mussolini—Blyth questions whether history operates on an identical loop. He recalls that during the Great Depression, broad disillusionment with corrupt, ineffective politicians led populations toward authoritarian corporatism. In fact, Italian fascism was widely admired in the West; Benito Mussolini was featured in *Life* magazine, and in 1934 the single most frequent foreign visitor to the White House was Mussolini's son, consulted because Italy was cartelizing northern Italian industry to buffer against external price shocks. The United States drew directly on those models when drafting the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to fix wages and cartelize domestic industry, demonstrating how mainstream those corporatist ideas were at the time.
Yet Blyth rejects the simplistic claim that Donald Trump is just Benito Mussolini reborn and that the West is condemned to repeat the 1930s. Drawing on the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, he notes that time is an irreversible process of becoming: once you experience a moment, you inherently close off other possibilities, meaning you cannot genuinely relive the past. Instead of literal historical recurrence, Blyth suggests looking at the structural breakdown and replacement of "macroeconomic regimes." Moving past conversational uses of the word "regime"—from failed diet regimes and Muammar Gaddafi's political regime to Kate Middleton's reported £22,000 beauty regimen—he defines a macroeconomic regime as the underlying institutional wiring of an economy: how a society systematically organizes corporate governance, infrastructure, retirement, skills, and labor market training.
- During the New Deal era, the National Recovery Administration adopted policies mirroring northern Italian fascist industrial planning; as Blyth remarks: “What did they try and do in the NRA? Cartelize American industry, set prices and wages. We were stealing from the fascists.”
- Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy of becoming explains why historical moments cannot simply repeat: “So the fact that you've lived the past means that, really, you cannot relive the past.”
- The "varieties of capitalism" literature highlights structural contrasts between regimes: the U.S. relies on general skill acquisition with firms providing in-house training absent unions, whereas Germany runs an integrated training system co-managed by big labor and organized industry.
[19:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1163s) Hardware, Software, and the Keynesian Code
Mark Blyth introduces a computing metaphor to explain how political-economic regimes function and transform. If institutions form the underlying "hardware" of capitalism—which was built one way from the 1940s to the 1970s and structured very differently after the 1970s—the ideas, programming, and economic policies running on top of those institutions serve as the "software." Changing the way a system operates does not always require inventing new institutional hardware from scratch; rather, ruling elites rewrite the software that dictates how the system is managed.
Around 1943 to 1944, with the Allies anticipating victory in World War II, Western governments committed themselves to maintaining full employment, largely because failing to deliver it would allow the Soviet Union and communism to present an attractive alternative. To deliver full employment, policymakers required a new economic program, and they found that code in John Maynard Keynes. Highlighting the famous aphorism usually clipped out of context, Blyth reads Keynes's full passage to explain why this economic philosophy prioritized current intervention over abstract equilibrium:
> “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we're all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons, they can only tell us when the storm is long past that the ocean will be flat.”
Blyth stresses that Keynes understood deep recessions—depressions—as fundamentally psychological phenomena where business expectations become depressed. If an investor experiences a brief downturn after two good years, behavior remains stable; but when stagnation drags out over several years, expectations sour. An individual capitalist decides not to build a factory because customers lack purchasing power. When every business owner reasons the same way and sits on cash, they collectively produce the very collapse in investment they were guarding against. Keynesian policy was designed precisely to break this psychological deadlock: government spending enters the breach to turn short-run expectations around, driving investment back up.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Keynesian Psychological Loop
accDescr: How prolonged downturns cause an investment collapse and how Keynesian intervention breaks it.
subgraph Slump["The Stagnation Trap"]
A["Prolonged Recession"] --> B["Depressed Investment Expectations"]
B --> C["Capitalists Sit on Cash"]
C --> D["Aggregate Investment Collapses"]
D --> A
end
subgraph Fix["Keynesian Software"]
E["State Deficit Spending"] -->|"Resets Expectations"| B
end
```
---
[21:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1304s) Kalecki’s Warning: The Built-In Feature of Full Employment
While Keynesian policy conquered postwar economic thought, Polish economist Michał Kalecki published a succinct seven-page critique of Keynes's 383-page framework. As Blyth paraphrases, Kalecki favored full employment and recognized the necessity of saving capitalism from the communist threat, but he warned of a structural flaw inherent to running full employment as a permanent policy goal.
Under permanent full employment, labor shortages steadily drive up both the reservation wage at the bottom and the median wage across the economy. To fund these higher wages out of profits, employers must raise prices unless productivity increases exponentially. Raising prices to sustain wage bills sparks persistent inflation—a dynamic Kalecki predicted as early as 1943. Furthermore, Kalecki realized that when workers know they can move costlessly from job to job without fear of destitution, capital loses its disciplinary hold over the shop floor:
> “And he also said something fascinating. And he said, once you do this, capital investment, they no longer have the whip hand. They can't discipline labor.”
By the 1970s, Kalecki's predictions materialized across the Western world. Workers engaged in widespread strikes and sit-downs because employers could no longer threaten them with joblessness. Britain suffered through the 1979 Winter of Discontent, while in Australia, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam found his government buffeted by surging inflation on one flank and rising unemployment on the other. Caught between declining profits and escalating wage demands, the investor class watched their returns erode, unable to discipline a militant workforce.
- Kalecki's 1943 critique diagnosed that running full employment indefinitely eliminates the threat of unemployment, stripping capital of its primary disciplinary weapon.
- When firms try to restore profits by passing rising labor costs into consumer prices, workers strike to defend their purchasing power, creating a self-reinforcing wage-price-strike spiral.
- The 1970s marked the breaking point of this model, characterized by industrial unrest and stagflation throughout the industrialized democracies.
---
[24:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1449s) The Investor Class Strikes Back: The Post-1970s Counter-Revolution
Faced with declining profits, continuous labor unrest, and high inflation that ate away returns, the investor class refused to sit idle. As Kalecki had also foreseen, business mobilized to fund an intellectual and political counter-revolution designed to dismantle the Keynesian consensus and rewrite the system's software from the ground up:
> “You're going to fund a market friendly revolution. You're going to change the way that people think about the economy. You're going to appeal to the self-interest of consumers and individuals rather than as workers and members of unions.”
To strip labor of its leverage, corporate and political leaders fundamentally altered the rules of the economy:
- **Breaking organized labor directly:** Signals such as Ronald Reagan crushing the PATCO air traffic controllers' strike in 1982 established an aggressive precedent against union resistance.
- **Globalizing production and supply chains:** Capital offshored manufacturing—first relocating domestic plants to anti-union right-to-work states like Texas, and eventually moving operations overseas to China. If workers threatened to strike, firms could simply shut down and relocate, dropping labor's bargaining power to zero and inaugurating wage stagnation for 60% of the workforce.
- **Deregulating finance:** Removing cross-border capital controls allowed money to move frictionlessly across the globe while labor remained fixed in place.
- **Empowering technocratic central banks:** Monetary policy was removed from political control and handed to independent central bankers mandated solely to combat inflation at all costs.
- **Squeezing supply chains:** Global production networks were re-engineered around razor-thin contractor margins and ultra-cheap foreign labor, funneling massive rents back to parent corporations—a structural model exemplified by the extreme profitability of companies like Apple.
---
[25:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1526s) A Tale of Two Regimes: 1940–1970 vs. The Neoliberal Era
Blyth contrasts the regime constructed between 1940 and 1970 with the one established over the subsequent thirty years. The postwar Keynesian era was a debtor's paradise. Anyone holding a mortgage in the late 1960s or 1970s with a 7% fixed interest rate saw the real burden of that debt cut in half when inflation climbed to 12%. The banks—and by extension the equity-owning investor class—absorbed the loss, effectively subsidizing debtors. In this period, labor's share of national income reached historic highs, corporate profit shares bottomed out, unions wielded enormous leverage, markets remained tightly bound within national borders, finance operated within a heavily regulated post-New Deal straitjacket, central banks functioned merely as dependent check-cashing bureaus for national treasuries, and elected parliaments retained real authority.
Three decades after the neoliberal counter-revolution, the institutional landscape inverted completely. The modern economy operates under secular disinflation: despite major global central banks injecting roughly $13 trillion into the money supply following the 2008 financial crisis, consumer inflation failed to materialize. As demonstrated by economists Thomas Piketty and Branko Milanović, capital's share of national income has soared to record highs while labor's wage share has plunged to historic lows. Strike activity flatlined into nonexistence, rendering unions functionally dead. Markets expanded across the globe precisely so capital could escape domestic labor demands. Technocratic central banks took supreme control over macroeconomic management—making figures like Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen far more influential over the economy than elected officials—while parliaments and Congress devolved into weak, venal, and widely despised institutions.
| Dimension | Postwar Keynesian Regime (1940–1970) | Post-1980 Neoliberal Regime |
|:--- |:--- |:--- |
| **Price Environment** | Sustained inflation; debtor's paradise | Secular disinflation / deflationary pressure |
| **Income Distribution** | Labor share at record highs; corporate profits low | Capital share at record highs; wage share at record lows |
| **Labor & Unions** | Strong, militant, high strike frequency | Weak to unconscious; strikes virtually vanish |
| **Market Scope** | National and bounded | Globalized supply chains; free capital mobility |
| **Financial Regulation** | Post-New Deal regulatory "box with a lock" | Deregulated, globally mobile capital |
| **Central Banks** | Dependent check-cashing agencies for Treasuries | Independent, highly dominant technocrats (e.g., Janet Yellen) |
| **Legislatures** | Exercised real policy authority | Perceived as weak, venal, and self-destructive |
---
[27:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1668s) The Stagnation Engine and the Credit Card Band-Aid
This structural transformation underpins the political instability of the present day, generating populisms of both the left and the right. In an economic order characterized by near-zero interest rates, systemic disinflation or deflation, and an inability of workers to compel employers to raise pay, wage growth stalls for the vast majority while economic gains pool at the top.
Blyth presents the central contradiction confronting working households: in the absence of real wage gains, average citizens—particularly in the United States—were forced to find an alternate mechanism to maintain their living standards. Rather than relying on growing paychecks, households bridged the gap by accumulating private debt, keeping their heads above water through credit cards and consumer borrowing.
[28:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1715s) The Debt Trap, Deflation, and the Center-Left’s Abandonment
In a credit-fueled economy, households levered up on the standard life-cycle consumption model: you take on debt when you are young with the expectation that rising real wages will allow you to pay it down over time. Instead, wages stagnated for over thirty years, trapping working-class families in revolving cycles of debt. While the absolute dollar volume of debt is concentrated among the wealthy, the punishing, life-altering consequences fall squarely on those at the bottom of the income distribution who lack the cash flow to service it. This dynamic created an entire sub-economy of payday lenders, predatory interest rates, and loan sharks. When deflation enters the picture, this imbalance becomes catastrophic: falling price levels increase the real value of fixed debt obligations, meaning creditors demand repayment in money that buys more, while debtors who have not seen a raise in decades are mathematically incapable of paying.
Faced with this structural bind, the traditional political protectors of the working class—the center-left—completely abandoned them. Beginning in the 1980s and accelerating through the 1990s and 2000s, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), New Labour in Great Britain, and the New Democrats in the United States pivoted toward affluent, asset-owning voters. These parties decided they no longer needed labor unions or poor constituents who turned out to vote at lower rates; instead, they chased campaigns funded by the winners of modern financialization. To rationalize this abandonment, political elites spun comforting narratives about deindustrialized communities magically reinventing themselves as tech hubs. As Blyth observes, this is pure fiction: capital and educated elites flow to Los Angeles, New York, or Washington, D.C., rather than investing in struggling rust-belt cities.
“So everybody starts moving up and the bottom 20% just get dumped,” Blyth summarizes regarding the center-left's migration away from its working-class base.
- **Wage Stagnation vs. Revolving Credit:** Families compensated for flat wages by continuously revolving consumer debt rather than paying down balances.
- **Deflationary Mechanics:** Fixed debt contracts in a deflationary environment shift real purchasing power directly from debtors to creditors.
- **Geographic Inequality:** Elite university graduates from institutions like Brown migrate to major coastal metros (New York, Los Angeles, D.C.) rather than distressed former industrial hubs like Cleveland or Baltimore.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Center-Left Political Realignment
accDescr: Diagram illustrating how stagnant wages and deflation led to the center-left abandoning the bottom 20 percent.
subgraph Economic["Economic Squeeze"]
A["Stagnant Wages (30 Years)"] --> B["Revolving Consumer Debt"]
B --> C["Deflation Increases Real Debt Burden"]
end
subgraph Political["Political Realignment"]
D["Center-Left Parties<br>(New Democrats, New Labour, SPD)"]
D -->|"Pivots to"| E["Asset Owners & Affluent Voters"]
D -->|"Abandons"| F["Bottom 20% & Labor Unions"]
end
C --> F
```
---
[30:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1831s) The Debtor’s Revolt and the Fall of the Center-Left
The abandonment of the working class has precipitated an existential crisis for center-left parties across Europe. In Germany, the SPD's vote share collapsed to just 19 percent in Baden-Württemberg; in the United Kingdom, Labour suffered a crushing defeat when working-class voters migrated en masse to the right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP), while in Scotland, where a viable left alternative existed, former Labour voters backed the Scottish National Party (SNP). In response to the rise of authentic left-wing insurgencies like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, or Jeremy Corbyn's takeover of the UK Labour Party, the established center-left sought to neutralize them immediately. When Alexis Tsipras took office in Greece, the German Social Democrats were the first to insist on strict austerity, metaphorically holding his head underwater, while New Labour figures launched aggressive character-assassination campaigns against Corbyn.
This widespread upheaval represents a generalized debtor's revolt against a three-decade-long "creditor's paradise." Because the rewards of the global economy were heavily skewed toward capital, political discontent has erupted in both left-wing and right-wing forms, both racist and non-racist variants. Across the board, these movements advocate re-nationalizing economic policy, ending austerity, and rejecting free trade and supranational structures like the Eurozone. Strikingly, when one examines the actual policy documents of seemingly disparate forces, their economic diagnoses converge. If one sets aside the Front National’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and looks strictly at their economic platform, it mirrors the economic programs of Donald Trump and Syriza.
“So what you have is a kind of debtor's revolt against the world that we've built over the past 30 years, which is a creditor's paradise,” Blyth argues.
- **Electoral Wipeouts:** The German SPD collapsed to 19% in Baden-Württemberg; British Labour lost its traditional working-class strongholds to UKIP and the SNP.
- **Establishment Backlash:** Established social-democratic elites actively undermined insurgent left movements (Syriza in Greece, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK) rather than accommodating their anti-austerity policies.
- **Shared Economic Platforms:** Across the ideological spectrum, populist movements prioritize economic re-nationalization, protectionism, and opposition to the euro and international trade agreements.
---
[33:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2008s) The Elephant Chart and Piketty’s Inequality Generator
The structural driver of this global backlash is illustrated by Branko Milanović’s global income distribution model, known as the "Elephant Chart." At the bottom of the distribution, absolute poverty saw some income growth—such as citizens in Chad moving from $0.40 a day to $3 a day—while the massive middle of the distribution, dominated by China and East Asia, experienced explosive gains from industrialization. At the far right end, the global top 1 percent captured an enormous share of total income. However, right around the 59th to 67th percentile—representing the working and middle classes of the United States and advanced Western economies—income growth formed a deep trough, registering almost flat over thirty years. This stagnant cohort forms the volatile electoral pool that can break toward Trump on the right or Bernie Sanders on the left.
```
Global Income Growth (The Elephant Chart)
Relative
Gain (%)
^ [China / East Asia]
| /\
| / \ [Global Top 1%]
| [Chad: / \ /\
| $0.40 -> $3] / \ / \
| _ / \ / \
| / \ / \ / \
| / \______/ \ /
| \ [US Middle /
| \ Class Dip] /
| \____/\______/
+---------------------------------------------------------->
0 59-67 100
Global Income Percentile
```
This structural wage squeeze is further reinforced by Thomas Piketty’s formula, $r > g$, which dictates that the rate of return on capital assets ($r$) consistently outpaces general economic growth ($g$). Blyth illustrates this using his personal experience owning real estate: a condominium he bought in Boston delivers a real annual return of 6 to 7 percent without any active labor or improvements, all while the broader economy expands at barely 2 percent. As high-net-worth investors and foreign "princelings" flood into urban real estate with luxury sports cars, asset owners capture outsized gains, while wage earners remain tethered to low aggregate growth.
“Welcome to the inequality generator,” Blyth remarks regarding the fundamental gap between asset returns and economic growth.
- **The Elephant Chart Dip:** The 59th to 67th percentile of the global income distribution captures the stagnant median wage earner in advanced Western economies.
- **Bipolar Populism:** The squeezed Western working class provides the core voting base for both populist right nationalism (Trump) and insurgent democratic socialism (Sanders).
- **Piketty's Equation:** Asset returns running at 6–7% real versus economic growth of ~2% mathematically guarantees the compounding concentration of wealth among asset owners.
---
[35:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2156s) Diagnosing Trumpism: Racism, Threat Perception, and Deportation
Addressing the political commentary surrounding Donald Trump's base, Blyth questions the utility of diagnosing Trumpism exclusively as racism or dismissing his supporters as a "bucket of irredeemables." If one-third of the electorate is written off as incorrigibly racist, there is no viable democratic policy solution: a society cannot simply tell millions of its citizens to disappear. Emulating Canada's successful multicultural institutions is exceptionally difficult and cannot serve as an overnight administrative fix for domestic civil polarization.
Furthermore, public anxieties are severely warped by skewed threat perceptions that media institutions amplify for commercial gain. For instance, an American is statistically more likely to be attacked by a shark on dry land than to be attacked by a Muslim terrorist on U.S. soil; nevertheless, voters act on their subjective fears rather than mathematical probabilities. Finally, on the issue of immigration, Blyth highlights the political hypocrisy surrounding mass deportations. While Trump’s proposal to deport 11 to 11.5 million people finds no modern precedent outside of totalitarian regimes, mainstream Democratic administrations have also carried out aggressive enforcement that often goes unremarked by liberals.
“The last person who did 11 million deportations was Joseph Stalin,” Blyth states when contrasting Trump’s immigration proposals with historical precedent.
- **Policy Dead End of Moral Condemnation:** Labeling one-third of the electorate as irredeemable racists offers no realistic path for democratic governance or social stability.
- **Distorted Threat Perception:** Media amplification drives outsized public fear of terrorism despite statistically negligible odds of an attack compared to absurd scenarios.
- **Deportation Realities:** While Trump proposed deporting 11 to 11.5 million undocumented immigrants, President Barack Obama oversaw approximately 3 million deportations over his eight years in office.
[37:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2272s) The False Promise of Bringing Manufacturing Jobs Back
Mark Blyth begins by noting the harsh reality of immigration policy: Donald Trump’s aggressive rhetoric often obscures the fact that “he's actually just doubling what Obama's already done,” leaving undocumented immigrants living under profound insecurity. Turning to the economy, Blyth observes that infrastructure investment and redistribution have returned to the political mainstream. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump propose major infrastructure bills, which the United States desperately requires given that the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates one-third of all bridges are structurally unsafe. With the federal government able to issue long-term debt at historically low or effectively negative interest rates, borrowing to build for the next half-century is an obvious economic step that either candidate will likely pursue.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Structural Automation and Labor Displacement
accDescr: Diagram showing how technological disruption and capital-labor substitution render traditional factory job promises impossible.
subgraph Promises["Political Rhetoric"]
A["Campaign Promise:<br>'Bring the good factory jobs back'"]
end
subgraph Reality["Economic Realities"]
B["Global Arbitrage:<br>Foxconn sweatshop conditions abroad"]
C["Capital Substitution:<br>Robotics & automation replace labor at margin"]
D["Displacement Spread:<br>High-skill engineers replaced alongside low-skill workers"]
end
Promises -->|"Fails against"| Reality
B -.-> C
C --> D
```
Where Blyth breaks sharply with the political consensus is the bipartisan campaign promise to revitalize domestic factory employment. He faults Trump, Clinton, and Bernie Sanders equally for peddling an illusion:
> “We're going to bring the good jobs. No, you're not. That's simply not going to happen.”
Blyth stresses that industrial production has fundamentally changed over the past thirty years. Traditional manufacturing hubs like Gary, Indiana, no longer exist; the modern foreign equivalents of those manufacturing workers labor for nineteen hours a day in city-sized Foxconn complexes with virtually no labor protections—conditions the United States cannot and should not replicate. Furthermore, capital continually substitutes for labor at the margin. Even in export powerhouses like Germany, which suffers from a shortage of skilled engineers, overall headcounts in manufacturing and engineering are steadily falling as automation advances. Highly skilled professionals are just as vulnerable to being automated out of work as unskilled laborers. Nor is taxing multinational corporations a straightforward fix when Congress is funded by those very interests, leading instead to tit-for-tat regulatory fines, such as the European Union fining Apple $13 billion while American regulators hit Deutsche Bank with a $14 billion penalty.
- One-third of all American bridges are rated unsafe by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
- The U.S. government can issue sovereign debt at historically low or negative real interest rates for twenty-five to thirty years.
- Capital continually substitutes for labor at the margin, shrinking industrial headcounts even within world-class engineering economies like Germany.
- Attempts to tax global capital frequently devolve into regulatory retaliation, illustrated by the EU's $13 billion fine against Apple and the U.S. Department of Justice’s $14 billion settlement demand against Deutsche Bank.
---
[40:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2407s) Digital Disruption and the Asset-Light Economy
To demonstrate how completely the nature of work has transformed, Blyth highlights a slide circulating from a tech conference illustrating that digital disruption is no longer a future forecast—it has already materialized. The modern economy is dominated by platform giants that generate massive market valuations without holding physical assets, employing large assembly workforces, or carrying inventory.
In this disembodied, platform-driven landscape, classical promises to bring back stable mid-century working-class jobs are completely untethered from modern realities:
> “Now, what does it mean to bring back the good jobs in that kind of world? It's gone. It's different.”
- The world's largest taxi company (Uber) owns no taxis.
- The largest accommodation provider (Airbnb) owns no real estate.
- The largest telecommunications companies own no telecom infrastructure.
- The most valuable retailer (Alibaba) holds no inventory.
- The most popular media owner (Facebook) creates no original content.
- The fastest-growing banks hold no physical cash.
- The world's largest movie house (Netflix) owns no brick-and-mortar cinemas.
- The largest software vendors (Apple and Google App Store) do not write the apps they distribute.
---
[40:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2454s) Europe’s Structural Crisis: The Euro and the Olive Oil–Butter Divide
Turning to international politics, Blyth argues that while "global Trumpism" exhibits both right-wing and left-wing variations across Western democracies, Europe faces a far more acute and insoluble crisis than the United States. While Trumpism in America might prove to be a temporary phenomenon, Europe's fundamental architecture is crippled because the euro itself is structurally broken.
Historically, cultural analysts joked about the division between the Protestant North and Catholic South, marked by the culinary "olive oil–butter line" (evoking an old *New Yorker* cartoon of diners asking, *"Remember when they used to give us butter?"*). Today, Blyth explains, that cultural frontier has mapped directly onto a toxic trade divide between net-exporting and net-consuming nations.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Eurozone Imbalance and Fiscal Compact Dynamics
accDescr: Flowchart illustrating trade surpluses in Germany/Eastern Europe imposing austerity on Southern European consumption economies under the Fiscal Compact.
subgraph SurplusBloc["Surplus Export Core"]
DE["Germany"] -->|"Offshores parts production"| EE["Eastern Europe<br>(Romania, Poland)"]
EE -->|"High-tech, low-cost supply chain"| DE
DE -->|"Exports finished goods"| US_CN["Global Markets<br>(US & China)"]
end
subgraph DeficitBloc["Consumption Periphery"]
South["France, Spain, Italy<br>(Domestic consumption economies)"]
end
Germany restructured its manufacturing supply chain by offshoring component manufacturing into Eastern Europe. Countries like Romania possess highly educated workforces with formidable mathematical and engineering training inherited from Communist-era technical academies. As a result, German automakers can source precision parts—such as Mercedes-Benz transmissions built in Romania—at one-third of German labor costs before final assembly, yielding massive export windfalls when sold to American and Chinese buyers.
However, accounting identities dictate that external surpluses in one region necessitate deficits elsewhere. Large consumption-driven economies like France, Spain, and Italy cannot devalue their own currencies to regain competitiveness because they share the euro. Compounding the damage, European leaders enacted the 2012 Fiscal Compact:
> “Which is insanity. Which basically bans fiscal policy in the eurozone.”
Because European treaties forbid member states from running offsetting deficits, Southern and Western European nations are forced into permanent internal deflation and austerity budgets to subsidize the export bonanza of Germany and its Eastern European satellites. Blyth points out that this structural trap directly fuels far-right movements like the National Front in France. He notes that he plans to confront Marco Buti, the Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs at the European Commission, directly on this issue during an upcoming public interview at Brown University, warning that if European technocrats fail to reverse course, the entire monetary union will collapse.
---
[44:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2679s) Secular Stability versus the Rise of Political Buffoons
Examining macroeconomic forecasts, Blyth addresses the concept of secular stagnation—the condition of structural global demand shortages driven by excess savings. Asia and China maintain massive savings surpluses, and Europe has similarly pivoted toward aggressive export-driven savings. The United States remains the sole global engine of consumption; if American households suddenly embraced thrift simultaneously, the global economy would collapse into a deflationary spiral.
Yet Blyth offers an alternative, cautiously optimistic view for the United States: secular stagnation could settle into a durable, scaled-down version of 1950s stability:
> “Project our at 2%, just 2% economic growth, but with practically negative interest rates and very, very low inflation, that compounds over time. That's not a horrible story.”
Under this "secular stability" scenario, low inflation, subdued commodity prices, and constrained financial speculation combine with modest wage growth and productive infrastructure spending to provide an economic baseline capable of defusing Trumpism in the United States.
In Europe, however, where the euro's institutional architecture blocks such stabilization, political instability will fester. Blyth warns that economic precarity on both sides of the Atlantic has cleared a path for cynical opportunists across the political spectrum—pointing to Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump in the United States as figureheads of a rising cohort of opportunistic political buffoons who will say or do anything to capture power.
[46:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2798s) The Unraveling Machine and the Global Rise of "Fools"
Wrapping up his prepared lecture, Mark Blyth argues that the economic architecture constructed over the past several decades is ultimately unraveling. The issue is not merely the political collapse of center-left and center-right parties; the system itself is structurally unsustainable. Running a hyper-competitive, disaggregated global supply chain on a consumer base that has "levered up the wazoo" to compensate for decades of stagnant real wages has finally reached its breaking point. Confronted with this exhaustion, central bankers and technocrats have run out of ideas. The entire global financial community hangs on trivial Federal Reserve decisions—debating whether interest rates will move up by a quarter of a point—while central banks bumble along, doubling down on quantitative easing (QE) simply because they do not know what else to do.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Unraveling Growth Model
accDescr: Flowchart showing how stagnant real wages, leveraged debt consumption, and policy exhaustion lead to political volatility and the rise of populist politics.
subgraph Economy["Economic Foundations"]
A["Disaggregated Global Production"] --> B["Stagnant Real Wages"]
B --> C["Leveraged Consumption / Debt"]
C --> D["Structural Exhaustion / Debt Wall"]
end
subgraph Technocracy["Technocratic Impasse"]
D --> E["Bumbling Central Banks\n(QE & 25 bps rate debates)"]
end
subgraph Politics["Political Repercussions"]
E --> F["Erosion of Technocratic Credibility"]
F --> G["Rise of Insurgents & Populists"]
G --> H["Renationalization of Politics\n(Left & Right)"]
end
```
Blyth warns that this policy paralysis creates fertile ground for political insurgents. When the technocratic elite running the global system appear utterly clueless, the door swings wide open for demagogues. Across Europe and North America, this dynamic manifests as a demand for the re-nationalization of political authority. While the right-wing version frames this through the exclusionary language of nation, homeland (*la patrie*), and the indigenous *people*, the left-wing variant adopts an anti-plutocratic, class-oriented internationalism that nevertheless insists on regaining local, sovereign democratic control over runaway globalization. Summarizing the thesis of his talk before opening the floor to questions, Blyth puts the stakes bluntly: “Because if it looks like the people who run the world don't know what they're doing, then that's when these fools get their chance.”
- **The debt trap:** Households borrowed relentlessly to paper over flat wages, creating an unsustainable consumer foundation for global manufacturing.
- **Central bank paralysis:** Debates over a quarter-point rate adjustment or open-ended QE substitute for real structural policy.
- **The ideological split on national control:** The right rallies behind border security and ethnic nationalism, while the left organizes against global plutocrats, but both demand an end to unconstrained globalization.
- **Long-term perspective:** Blyth underscores that global Trumpism is not a sudden accident, but the culmination of economic trends spanning thirty to seventy years.
---
[48:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2932s) Constitutional Checks and What a Trump Presidency Actually Looks Like
Following enthusiastic applause, the moderator praises Blyth for depersonalizing the 2016 election and analyzing deep underlying trends rather than daily campaign drama. The first question from the audience comes from a student wishing to put a "more negative" spin on recent economic history. The student recalls how the Clinton boom ended with the dot-com crash and argues that Clinton-era deregulation paved the way for the 2008 financial crisis; under Obama, a fragile stabilization was achieved, raising the worry of what happens if Donald Trump is elected and dismantles the cobbled-together recovery. Blyth immediately quips at the student's pessimism: “Hey, you must be on the left!”
Addressing the mechanics of a hypothetical Trump presidency, Blyth downplays fears of total institutional collapse, pointing to the constitutional design of the United States. A president cannot unilaterally draft and pass legislation; that power resides strictly with Congress. If Republicans retain the House and Senate under a President Trump, Blyth expects conventional conservative policies alongside symbolic expenditures: a surge in defense spending, standard upper-income tax cuts, and massive fiscal spending on low-quality infrastructure like a border wall. Yet he dismisses the wall as an absurd economic boondoggle aimed at a nonexistent problem, pointing out that net Mexican migration had already dropped to levels not seen since 1961.
Similarly, Blyth expresses skepticism that Trump would ever enact sweeping trade tariffs against China. Because American giants like Apple account for an estimated 30% to 40% of the value of Chinese exports to the United States, placing punitive duties on Chinese goods would directly alienate powerful corporate titans and disrupt domestic consumers. The real, catastrophic impact of a Trump administration would not be the radical overturning of corporate globalization, but the acute human harm inflicted on vulnerable populations. Blyth emphasizes: “The only thing he's going to do is make life really, really uncomfortable and scary for people who are undocumented, or immigrants, or minorities, or anything other than the politically mainstream right or authoritarian.”
- **Constitutional gridlock:** A president cannot introduce bills; executive power is constrained by legislative initiative.
- **Immigration realities:** Blyth notes that migration flows have reversed, making a multi-billion-dollar border wall a theatrical, wasteful public works project.
- **Corporate supply chains:** High-profile American multinationals manufacture in China, effectively lobbying against disruptive tariffs on devices like the iPhone.
- **The human toll:** While macroeconomic continuity remains largely intact, domestic deportations could realistically double or triple.
---
[51:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3115s) Dodd-Frank and the Invisible Armor of the US Economy
Pushing back against the premise that post-crisis regulatory stability could easily be erased overnight, Blyth delivers an impassioned defense of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Rather than mounting a direct, head-on political confrontation against Wall Street titans like Jamie Dimon—who can deploy hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying firepower to ensure any crusading lawmaker ends up “elected dogcatcher of southern Arkansas”—the authors of the bill chose bureaucratic asymmetric warfare: "death by 2,200 pages."
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: Dodd-Frank Asymmetric Regulation
accDescr: Diagram showing how 2,200 pages of rules, compliance mandates, capital ratios, and bonus escrows shrink Wall Street profitability from within.
subgraph Mandates["Regulatory Enclosure"]
A["2,200 Pages of Rules"]
B["Escrowed Executive Bonuses"]
C["Higher Capital Requirements"]
end
subgraph Enforcement["Operational Friction"]
A & B & C --> D["Army of Compliance Officers"]
D --> E["Internal Leverage Squeezed"]
end
subgraph Outcome["Systemic Impact"]
E --> F["Proprietary Trading Yields Fall"]
F --> G["Safer, Smaller, Less Profitable Wall Street"]
end
```
By imposing exhaustive reporting rules, forcing firms to escrow executive bonuses, lowering internal leverage limits, and mandating massive capital reserves, Dodd-Frank fundamentally crippled Wall Street's old, high-risk profitability model. Investment banks have been forced to hire compliance officers by the thousands just to sign off on everyday transactions. The financial sector has steadily shrunk as a share of the economy not because of dramatic public trials, but because the business of speculative financial engineering was made unprofitable and boring.
Beyond financial reform, Blyth emphasizes the structural durability of the broader American macroeconomy. The panic over federal deficits is overblown: the United States can comfortably issue 30- and 50-year Treasury debt at negative real yields because global investors seek security above all else. Similarly, high-end real estate demand in American cities remains robust because wealthy international elites—particularly Chinese investors anxious about insecure property rights in their home country—view the US legal framework as the ultimate safe harbor. Reflecting on this institutional inertia, Blyth argues: “Trump cannot undo the demand for my condo in Boston from Chinese investors.”
- **Bureaucratic attrition:** Dodd-Frank used compliance mandates and capital reserve requirements rather than high-profile trust-busting to defang big finance.
- **Compliance boom:** Financial institutions have redirected massive payroll resources toward legal compliance, driving down the margin on high-risk proprietary trades.
- **Sovereign debt strength:** Global demand for US dollar liquidity allows the federal government to issue long-dated paper at negative real interest rates without triggering a sovereign borrowing crisis.
- **Foreign capital flight:** Capital inflows from emerging markets seek safety under American property rights regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
---
[54:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3251s) The Silicon Valley Fantasy of Universal Basic Income
The session turns to technological disruption when an audience member from San Francisco asks about the growing enthusiasm among Silicon Valley technocrats for a Guaranteed Basic Income (or "mincome"). The questioner voices deep skepticism, wondering whether UBI is merely a temporary patch or, worse, an ideological vehicle for gutting the traditional social welfare safety net. Another attendee from the Bay Area chimes in to describe the pervasive sentiment within Stanford's intellectual circles: the tech vanguard celebrates the disappearance of traditional wage work, openly arguing that society should simply take 10% off the top 1% and distribute it so citizens can pursue creative leisure inside the "sharing economy" of Uber and Airbnb.
Blyth does not dispute the philosophical appeal of decoupling human survival from wage labor, admitting that a post-work society is an attractive concept in the abstract. However, he immediately punctures the utopian Silicon Valley narrative by highlighting the political impossibility of its funding mechanism: redistributing the wealth of the ultra-rich. The technocrats assume the top 1% will willingly surrender substantial revenue, ignoring the reality that the wealthy have spent decades perfecting the art of tax avoidance and political capture.
To expose the absurdity of expecting voluntary or seamless redistribution from the American plutocracy, Blyth shares a favorite anecdote he uses when addressing conservative financial conferences. He asks audiences of wealthy Republicans to raise their hands if they supported Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. When numerous hands go up across the room, Blyth cuts straight through partisan posturing to reveal the economic bottom line that actually unites the donor class: “What was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate? 9%.”
- **The Silicon Valley UBI thesis:** Tech leaders advocate using small wealth transfers from tech monopolists to replace disappearing industrial and service employment.
- **Welfare state concerns:** Critics worry that a lump-sum cash grant will be used as a political pretext to dismantle public healthcare, housing, and social safety programs.
- **The sharing economy delusion:** Stanford technocrats romanticize precarious gig-economy work like driving for Uber as liberating leisure.
- **The revenue roadblock:** Wealthy elites possess the political leverage and legal structures to keep their effective tax rates in the single digits, making the redistribution needed to fund UBI unfeasible.
[55:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3351s) Tax Injustice, "Treasure Islands," and Global Wealth Shelters
Mark Blyth contrasts the tax burden of ordinary working citizens with the privileges enjoyed by wealthy elites like Mitt Romney. While an elite financier pays roughly 15% on capital gains and utilizes corporate shell structures in Delaware, Arizona, and the Cayman Islands to push their effective rate down to eight or nine cents on the dollar, Blyth notes that an ordinary high earner faces a 33% rate. Factoring in state and local taxes, he points out that an American professional can end up paying German rates of taxation while receiving what he bitterly characterizes as “third world public services.” This discrepancy creates a profound sense of unfairness, yet it rarely matures into mainstream political dialogue because pursuing the issue demands radical redistribution centered on a simple premise: pay your goddamn taxes. While the wealthy claim they pay the lion's share of tax revenues by raw dollar volume, Blyth insists they are actively cheating on the margin and owe vastly more to society.
Citing Nicholas Shaxson's book *Treasure Islands*, Blyth highlights the staggering magnitude of untaxed private wealth hidden across global havens. Beyond offshore bank accounts, the ultra-wealthy employ freeports, art warehousing, and foreign corporate conduits in jurisdictions like Ireland to decouple income from any domestic social obligation. Blyth stresses:
> “So if the Community Chest agreement is, 'you made it here, you pay your taxes,' well, we're making it everywhere and we're not paying any taxes.”
- The book *Treasure Islands* estimates that approximately $29 trillion is stashed in offshore tax havens by global elites.
- Wealthy individuals reduce effective taxation to roughly $0.08 to $0.09 on the dollar, whereas standard middle/upper-middle domestic earners pay upwards of $0.33 plus state and local levies.
- Tax sheltering mechanisms span state-level incorporation loopholes (Delaware, Arizona), offshore jurisdictions (Cayman Islands), and tax-free physical assets like fine art warehouses.
---
[57:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3436s) Technological Disruption, the Labor-Leisure Tradeoff, and Robot Returns
Blyth shifts focus to what he identifies as the core philosophical question of modern capitalism: why should we work? Standard economic theory posits a fundamental labor-leisure trade-off, dictating that as a society accumulates wealth and improves productivity, its people ought to work less rather than endure chronic insecurity, declining wages, and longer hours. Examining Silicon Valley's platform economy, Blyth professes admiration for Uber's operational efficiency, punctual service, and clean vehicles—contrasting it with traditional city taxis that smell “like nine people who've been murdered in the back of this car.” Furthermore, Uber disrupts the predatory municipal taxi medallion system, which historically operated as a financial pump extracting rents from poor immigrant drivers earning below minimum wage in tips.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Automation and Capital Concentration Flow
accDescr: Diagram showing how technological automation concentrates returns among tech platform owners while displacing labor.
subgraph Disruption ["Technological Automation"]
A["Driverless Tech / Robotics"] --> B["Eliminates ~8 Million US Jobs"]
end
subgraph Concentration ["Capital Ownership"]
B --> C["Returns Flow to Tech Monopolies<br/>(Uber, WhatsApp)"]
C --> D["Top 1% Captures Enormous<br/>Share of National Wealth"]
end
subgraph Remedy ["Historical Precedents & Solutions"]
D --> E["Antitrust & Firm Breakups<br/>(19th c., Bell/Telecoms)"]
D --> F["Democratize Returns to Robots<br/>(Redistribute Property Rights)"]
end
```
The darker consequence surfaces with full automation: if Uber successfully deploys autonomous vehicles, an estimated eight million driving-related jobs across the United States will be wiped out overnight. Under an economic and ethical doctrine where human survival is contingent upon wage labor, society faces an existential crisis if those workers are no longer needed. Because the proceeds of technological leaps flow exclusively to the owners of platforms like Uber and WhatsApp, wealth concentrates exponentially within the top 1%.
Historically, societies responded to such extreme concentration by breaking up monopolies through antitrust measures, just as governments dismantled trusts in the late 19th century and broke up the Bell telecom monopoly in the 1970s. Blyth argues that rather than relying merely on a universal basic income, the underlying property rights of robotics must be restructured so that technological surpluses are broadly shared. Blyth articulates the ultimate goal:
> “Because I wouldn't care if you replace me with a robot if I got to go fishing instead.”
While human-centric occupations like elder care nursing—currently the fastest-growing job in the United States—cannot realistically be handed over to machines, millions of routine roles will disappear. Blyth observes that the global economy can easily generate an abundant surplus with merely 10% of the population working, making redundant production (such as every sovereign nation building its own redundant car models) economically senseless.
- Fully autonomous vehicles threaten to eliminate approximately 8 million transportation jobs across the United States.
- Historical antitrust interventions broken up excessive corporate concentration in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and the telecommunications sector (Bell System) in the 1970s.
- Elder care nursing represents the fastest-growing job sector in the US, remaining resilient to automation due to the necessity of physical human contact and trust.
---
[01:01:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3661s) China's Capital Flight, Purges, and the US "Barbell" Economy
When an audience member asks how China's slowing economic growth impacts the global trajectory, Blyth references former PIMCO bond manager Bill Gross, who described investing in China as "faith-based investing" because nobody can truly verify official GDP numbers or bank balance sheets. Blyth turns to an explosive finding relayed to him by political scientist Jason Sharman regarding an internal Bank of China study. The study revealed that approximately 11,000 senior Communist Party officials had expatriated over $100 billion of illicit capital out of China over a 15-year span. Although the report was suppressed, officials briefly published it online for just 98 seconds—long enough for outside researchers to capture the data.
```mermaid
flowchart LR
accTitle: China Anti-Corruption Paradox
accDescr: Flowchart illustrating how anti-corruption crackdowns remove informal property guarantees and trigger capital flight into US assets.
A["11,000 Top Party Officials Expatriate $100B"] --> B["Government Launches Massive Anti-Corruption Purge"]
B --> C["Informal Protectors ('Buddy Cianci' System) Removed"]
C --> D["Absence of Independent Courts Leaves Capital Insecure"]
D --> E["Accelerated Flight to US Dollar Assets & Real Estate"]
```
This staggering outflow explains skyrocketing real estate valuations in major Western property markets. Blyth explains that the Chinese government's aggressive anti-corruption crackdown carries an unintended systemic side effect. In an authoritarian framework lacking independent courts, corruption functioned as an informal guarantor of property rights:
> “Corruption is property rights guarantees in a system where you don't have independent courts.”
Drawing a comparison to Providence's infamous former mayor Buddy Cianci, Blyth remarks that businesses historically did not appeal to the courts; they went to "Buddy"—meaning the local Party apparatus acted as their insurance policy. With local Party patrons being systematically purged by Beijing, nervous domestic investors find themselves without legal recourse or protectors, providing an urgent incentive to smuggle capital out of the country and funnel it into safe assets in the United States.
Blyth illustrates America's structural hegemony through Mel Brooks' famous line, "It's good to be the King," depicting the United States as an unrivaled "barbell economy":
```
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ THE BARBELL ECONOMY │
├───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┤
│ Global Boom Periods │ Global Turmoil Periods │
├───────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ Global optimism rises │ International crisis hits │
│ ↓ │ ↓ │
│ Investors borrow USD │ Foreign assets liquidated │
│ ↓ │ ↓ │
│ Deploy capital abroad for │ Capital repatriated to USD │
│ higher emerging returns │ as ultimate safe haven │
├───────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┤
│ Outcome: US asset values and real estate rise either │
│ way, insulating the domestic center from abroad. │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Looking at long-term macro effects, Blyth notes that China's heavy savings behavior feeds into a persistent global savings glut, suppressing aggregate demand, depressing inflation, and keeping global interest rates pinned near zero. Even if China were to experience a severe economic hard landing or political instability, Blyth gauges its overall weight as equivalent to roughly two German economies combined. When asking whether the collapse of two Germanys would derail the global system, Blyth answers with the mixed German expression "*jain*"—yes and no.
- An internal Bank of China investigation documented that 11,000 top echelon party members fled the country with an estimated $100 billion over a 15-year period.
- The report was mistakenly left public on the Bank of China website for only 1 minute and 38 seconds before being scrubbed.
- China's overall economic weight in the global framework is placed in perspective as being roughly equivalent to the size of two German economies.
[01:05:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3903s) Financial Optionality and Monetizing Daily Life
A participant in the seminar suggests that any constructive alternative to violent revolution requires a fundamental revolution in ideas—rethinking freedom, work, and the market. Under modern conditions, the virtuous Adam Smith ideal, where honest effort reliably yields fair rewards, no longer exists. Mark Blyth agrees and frames the problem around the allocation of property rights and the rise of digital platforms. Platforms like Airbnb, which books more lodging capacity than all the world's hotel chains combined, operate by constructing financial options over private property. Every homeowner or tenant is granted an option to monetize their living quarters, yet the overwhelming bulk of the economic return accrues not to the asset owners, but to the proprietary brand and platform owners sitting at the apex.
Blyth notes that financial optionality is rapidly enveloping every conceivable underutilized asset, from automobiles to houses, and even intimate goods. Recounting a conversation from the previous evening with economist Branko Milanović about the strangest things subject to web-based options, Blyth notes that people can now rent high-end lingerie brands like Aubade and Chantelle online, extracting cash from expensive garments that would otherwise sit unused in a drawer. The structural danger is that while technology allows individuals to strike options on everyday items, platform monopolies capture the surplus value. Society faces an explicit choice: either democratize technological infrastructure so that creators and users retain the bulk of the returns, or let platform monopolies monopolize the gains. As Blyth warns: “Or you let the owners take the lot. And if you do that in an already winner-takes-all world, that gets ugly very, very quick.”
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Platform Monopolization vs Democratization
accDescr: Flowchart contrasting proprietary platform extraction with open democratized alternatives.
subgraph Proprietary["Proprietary Platform Model"]
A["Underutilized Assets<br>(Homes, Cars, Media)"] --> B["Monopolized Platform<br>(Uber, Airbnb)"]
B --> C["Vast Majority of Rents to Platform Owners"]
B --> D["Residual Fractional Return to Asset Owners"]
end
subgraph Democratized["Democratized Alternative"]
E["Community Assets & Services"] --> F["Open-Source / Public Platforms<br>(Plex, Municipal Ride-Sharing)"]
F --> G["Zero Monopoly Rents Extracted"]
F --> H["Full Economic Value Retained by Workers & Public"]
end
```
[01:07:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4067s) Democratizing Property Rights: Plex, Open Source, and Postcapitalism
To illustrate an alternative logic of technology, Blyth recounts a personal story about his Australian friend Brett, an advanced IT specialist who remotely managed General Electric's cloud operations from his home in Providence. Brett arrived at Blyth's house carrying a six-pack of beer and a three-terabyte hard drive containing 1,500 high-definition, pristine digital movies. He installed the free, open-source media platform Plex onto an older Mac computer, converting it into a personal cloud server. Blyth marvels at the capability: while waiting at Los Angeles International Airport, he can use an iPod over public Wi-Fi to tap directly into his home server and instantly stream any film exactly from where he left off. Had a consumer sought an equivalent media setup through traditional retailers like Best Buy, it would have cost thousands of dollars; instead, because the developer released it freely without asserting monopoly rents, the utility is available to everyone at zero cost.
This dynamic extends into non-monetized sharing practices like Couchsurfing, as well as municipal counter-models. An audience member points out that when the city of Austin, Texas restricted Uber, local residents built an open-source, non-profit ride-hailing alternative where drivers kept 100% of their fares instead of surrendering a 30% cut to a corporate headquarters. Blyth enthusiastically embraces the Austin model as the true democratization of property rights: “You don't have to take anything away from these guys, you can just build alternative platforms.” He points to British journalist and economist Paul Mason’s book *Postcapitalism* as the seminal work analyzing how collaborative, zero-marginal-cost models might resolve modern economic contradictions. Mason highlights the core dilemma of modern post-industrial society: advancing automation increasingly eliminates the need for human labor, yet cultural morality still maintains that anyone who does not work is worthless.
- Airbnb controls more lodging capacity than the entire global hotel industry without owning the physical properties.
- Luxury lingerie rentals (e.g., Aubade, Chantelle) serve as an extreme case of turning dormant possessions into web-brokered options.
- The open-source Plex media server provides commercial-grade streaming without corporate tollbooths.
- Austin's citizen-built ride-sharing app replaced Uber's 30% commission with a zero-fee model for drivers.
- Paul Mason (*Postcapitalism*), former chief economics correspondent for Channel 4, argues that the sharing economy must decouple human dignity and livelihood from traditional wage labor.
[01:11:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4296s) The Limits of Monetary Policy and the Abdication of Fiscal Power
Turning to macroeconomic stagnation, an audience member asks about the exhaustion of monetary tools: with interest-rate tweaking and quantitative easing (QE) yielding diminishing returns, how can societies actually reignite economic growth? Blyth traces the failure directly back to the market-friendly revolution of the 1970s. That paradigm deliberately stripped parliaments and Congress of macroeconomic discretion, delegating operational control of the macroeconomy to independent, unelected central bankers like Alan Greenspan on the assumption that elected politicians would always pander to voters and stoke inflation.
Blyth attacks this technocratic arrangement as fundamentally flawed. Central bank governors possess only two basic, blunt tools: altering the price of money (interest rates) and buying or selling financial assets. Blyth challenges the foundational logic of the institution: “Why are they charged with and given the responsibility for producing growth, which is an organic outcome of the personal decisions of millions of individuals who have nothing to do with the central bank?”
Rather than overloading central banks with responsibilities they cannot meet, Blyth insists that democratic governments must revive fiscal policy. For a quarter-century, Congress has abdicated its fiscal duties, focusing exclusively on tax cuts and irrelevant legislation while public assets disintegrated. He compares today's policy paralysis to the 1950s, when federal fiscal authority built the interstate highway system, contrasting that achievement with modern decay, such as John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) remaining a national embarrassment and the crumbling streets of Rhode Island: “...if the roads in Providence are the norm for the richest country in the world, God help us.” The session pivots as an audience member prepares to ask how much of this economic and structural reality Donald Trump actually understands, to which Blyth quips that there are only unfair answers awaiting.
[01:14:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4446s) Accidental Politicians and the Limits of Ignorance
Responding to an audience question about whether Donald Trump's lack of conventional knowledge makes him an "accidental" politician, Mark Blyth argues that most politicians are accidental by nature. To illustrate, he brings up his favorite historical example: Harry S. Truman. Blyth paints a vivid picture of Truman as a four-time failed haberdasher who was genuinely petrified of his domineering mother-in-law, a brilliant poker player, and a political machine figure elevated through corrupt patronage who nonetheless ended up saving the New Deal. Truman did not know everything, but he knew his place, focused on what mattered, and delegated the details to figures like George Marshall. Ronald Reagan operated similarly, and Blyth suggests Trump fits that mold.
Blyth cautions that he actually worries much more about political leaders who think they know everything—pointing to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Jimmy Carter. When political leaders believe they are omniscient, they embark on complex projects they do not genuinely understand. Knowing one's own limitations is a far healthier trait in statecraft, even if Trump cannot be directly credited with self-awareness.
> “And sometimes, it's better knowing the limits of your ignorance.” — Mark Blyth
[01:15:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4523s) Markets, Democracy, and the Orthogonal Clash
An audience member named Kevin raises a multi-part observation regarding global Trumpism, asking about the tension between political democracy and the economy, and how leftist politics stripped of class analysis causes backlash. Kevin points to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) because investor-state dispute mechanisms allow foreign corporations to sue sovereign states, and highlights how the European Central Bank holds a technocratic chokehold over elected governments in the eurozone.
Blyth cuts to the core of the problem: markets and democracy operate on fundamentally conflicting logics. Markets allocate resources based on cash, whereas democracy allocates power based on votes. Historically, the mechanism that reconciled these two opposed systems was progressive taxation. However, that equilibrium collapses when the wealthy stop paying their fair share. When states avoid confronting tax avoidance, they run deficits, accumulate debt, and generate an antagonistic dynamic between creditors and debtors. Unlike the post-war era of the 1940s and 1950s, when people actually paid their taxes, today's system breaks down into financial confrontation.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: The Tension Between Market Allocation and Democratic Allocation
accDescr: Diagram showing how cash-based market allocation and vote-based democratic allocation conflict when taxation fails to bind them.
subgraph Allocation["Allocation Principles"]
M["Markets<br>(Allocates by Cash)"]
D["Democracy<br>(Allocates by Votes)"]
end
subgraph Bridge["Stabilizing Mechanism"]
T["Progressive Taxation"]
end
subgraph Breakdown["Fiscal Failure Dynamics"]
TaxAvoid["Tax Avoidance & Skimping"]
Deficits["Deficits & Piled-up Debt"]
Conflict["Creditor vs. Debtor Clash"]
end
M <-->|"Orthogonal Principles"| D
M --> T
D --> T
T -->|"When avoided"| TaxAvoid
TaxAvoid --> Deficits
Deficits --> Conflict
```
> “The simplest way of thinking about it is, markets allocate through cash, and democrats allocate through votes.” — Mark Blyth
[01:17:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4671s) Identity Politics, Polarization, and the Heartland Backlash
Kevin follows up on how corporate neoliberalism promotes diversity while presiding over drastic income inequality, life-expectancy drops among white working-class men, and economic polarization—creating an opening for right-wing backlash. Blyth agrees that this dynamic is not unique to the United States and points to France, calling out the French police forcing Muslim women to remove burkinis on public beaches as "insane" micro-policing of the worst kind.
Turning to the American domestic scene, Blyth analyzes the controversy over the Obama administration's Justice Department intervening in gender-neutral bathroom ordinances. Blyth explains that for the administration and advocates, the issue was fundamentally about civil rights, autonomous personhood, and preventing individual states from defining who counts as a person. However, he shows how easily legitimate civil rights causes can be weaponized in the heartland: to ordinary working-class voters facing severe economic distress, Washington appears obsessed with regulating public restrooms. Blyth observes that throughout history, every struggle over rights and representation—including women's suffrage—has been mocked and made to sound absurd by opponents before becoming accepted reality.
> “So at any moment in time, issues of personhood, diversity, control, etc, can be made to seem ridiculous, regardless of whether they are or not.” — Mark Blyth
[01:20:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4856s) Is "Global Trumpism" Really Just Western Trumpism?
An audience member asks whether "global Trumpism" is a misnomer, arguing that East Asia has not exhibited the same radical populist movements despite decades of stagnation in Japan and intense competitive pressures in South Korea. Blyth agrees that Japan is completely unique (*sui generis*): it possesses the world's oldest population, who absorb public spending by buying domestic government bonds and pass them down as intergenerational assets. Drawing on an economic model he once saw, Blyth jokes that Japan is on a long, deflationary glide path where the aging population will slowly consume the nation's entire capital stock until everyone dies at age 305, aided by zero immigration.
More broadly, Blyth explains that East Asian economies feature hierarchical, patriarchal, and historically authoritarian structures with dominant political parties deeply embedded in civil society, making bottom-up populist uprisings much harder to launch. However, he notes that populism still surfaces through state figures, citing Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and the nationalist rhetoric adopted by Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) after its brief fall from power. Blyth concludes by conceding that the phenomenon he is diagnosing is overwhelmingly a Western crisis, admitting with a laugh that he coined the phrase on the fly during a media interview in Greece simply because he was feeling lazy, only to watch it turn into a viral hashtag.
> “I just happened to call it 'global Trumpism' because was in an interview in Greece and I was lazy.” — Mark Blyth
[01:23:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4996s) A Hypothetical Senate Platform for Rhode Island
As the seminar nears its conclusion, the moderator prompts Mark Blyth to take a final question from an audience member who previously asked one earlier in the evening. Blyth scans the room to see if anyone else wants to jump in first, but with no other hands raised, he jokingly relents. The audience member pitches an imaginative political scenario: noting that academics rarely seek elected office, he asks Blyth to imagine launching a campaign for a United States Senate seat representing Rhode Island. Blyth interjects with a wry chuckle about building a movement “from that power base,” while the questioner asks him to lay out four or five core platform planks that would be both politically winnable and economically sensible.
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Blyth's Three-Plank Policy Platform
accDescr: Flowchart showing Mark Blyth's hypothetical policy platform: corporate tax enforcement, rethinking work amidst automation, and massive green infrastructure investment.
subgraph Taxes ["Plank 1: Universal Taxation"]
T1["Eliminate loopholes & shelters"]
T2["Target transfer pricing & Double Irish"]
T3["Restore corporate share from 2% toward 1970s 20%"]
T1 --> T3
T2 --> T3
end
subgraph Automation ["Plank 2: Rethinking Work"]
A1["Robots meet low pay & high inequality"]
A2["Build massive social insurance"]
A3["Universal stabilization akin to national healthcare"]
A1 --> A2
A2 --> A3
end
subgraph Climate ["Plank 3: Green Infrastructure"]
C1["End climate denialism"]
C2["Massive public investment program"]
C3["Abate warming & prevent sea-level rise"]
C1 --> C2
C2 --> C3
end
T3 --> C2
```
[01:23:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=5035s) Corporate Taxes, Automation, and Green Public Investment
Blyth immediately offers three sharp policy planks instead of five, centering his vision on fiscal fairness, technological disruption, and climate infrastructure:
1. **Universal Taxation and Closing Corporate Loopholes:** Blyth insists on absolute compliance with zero loopholes. “Right, first one, everybody pays their taxes.” He argues that he would even entertain lowering statutory rates if it led to an increase in actual revenues collected. Highlighting the dramatic historical shift in tax burdens, Blyth notes that in the 1970s, corporations accounted for roughly 20% of total tax receipts, whereas today they pay around 2% in real terms due to aggressive offshore tax shelters, transfer pricing schemes, and structures like the "Double Irish Dutch sandwich." Declaring an emphatic "Basta!" to corporate tax dodging, he insists that everyone must contribute without exception.
2. **Re-evaluating the Necessity of Work and Hedging Automation:** Blyth challenges traditional assumptions about employment in an era of robotics and artificial intelligence. “Because if you're about to basically add robots into a mix of already high inequality and low pay, you're asking for trouble.” He compares the need for comprehensive social insurance against labor disruption to nationalized healthcare: just as universal healthcare saves money overall by preventing costly emergency room visits, establishing a robust safety net and rethinking work cushions society against the catastrophic costs of untreated economic fallout.
3. **Massive Public Investment to Combat Global Warming:** Blyth calls for a sweeping public works initiative targeted directly at climate change mitigation. Taking a comedic shot at political denialism, he jokes that anyone who still claims global warming is a Chinese hoax ought to be shoved into a bag, tied up, and beaten with a stick until they stop. He ties the three planks together, noting that collecting corporate tax revenues to fund flood-abatement infrastructure would keep Boston Harbor from rising five feet—which would conveniently protect his own condo, currently being paid down by a Chinese investor, ensuring he makes out like a bandit in the end.
The session concludes on this self-deprecating punchline, and the moderator leads the room in a warm round of applause thanking Blyth for the evening's lecture and discussion.
- **Historical tax shift:** Corporate contributions dropped from approximately 20% of total tax intake in the 1970s to roughly 2% in real terms today.
- **Tax avoidance tactics targeted:** Transfer pricing, offshore cash stashing, and international tax loopholes such as the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich.
- **Automation risk:** Introducing advanced robotics into an economy marked by wage stagnation and extreme inequality without comprehensive social insurance creates destructive social casualties.
## Notable quotes
> [30:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1831s) So what you have is a kind of debtor's revolt against the world that we've built over the past 30 years, which is a creditor's paradise — Mark Blyth
> [01:15:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4523s) The simplest way of thinking about it is, markets allocate through cash, and democrats allocate through votes. — Mark Blyth
> [01:01:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3661s) Corruption is property rights guarantees in a system where you don't have independent courts. — Mark Blyth
> [01:23:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=5035s) Because if you're about to basically add robots into a mix of already high inequality and low pay, you're asking for trouble. — Mark Blyth
> [11:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=703s) Trumpet support, as I like to call it, right across Europe correlates incredibly strongly with areas that are subject to Chinese import competition. — Mark Blyth
## Mentioned
Mark Blyth, Donald Trump, John Maynard Keynes, Michał Kalecki, Branko Milanović, Thomas Piketty, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ronald Reagan, Harry S. Truman, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Alexis Tsipras, Jeremy Corbyn, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Janet Yellen, Alan Greenspan, Mitt Romney, Paul Mason, Nicholas Shaxson, Søren Kierkegaard, Watson Institute, Brown University, Syriza, Podemos, Die Linke, Five Star Movement, Labour Party, Scottish National Party, Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), UK Independence Party (UKIP), Front National, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Apple, Amazon, Walmart, Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Alibaba, Deutsche Bank, Dodd-Frank Act, NAFTA
## Video description
Skip ahead to main speaker at 2:17
Watson Institute Student Seminar Series - American Democracy: The Dangers and Opportunities of Right Here and Right Now
Designed especially with Brown undergraduates in mind, but welcoming all members of the University and wider community, this seminar series meets in the weeks both before and after Election Day to analyze what's truly at stake in this election. In the context of American history, contemporary global politics, and current issues in U.S. social, political, and economic affairs, guest speakers will set before the seminar participants the essential issues and then facilitate probing discussions. The seminar's goal is bear witness to a historic election, illuminating the "dangers and opportunities of right here and right now."
Mark Blyth is the Eastman Professor of Political Economy and a Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs.
Mark Blyth argues that "Global Trumpism" is not an isolated American aberration or a purely cultural reaction, but a systemic transatlantic revolt against a decades-long macroeconomic regime that suppressed wages and substituted private debt for real income growth.
The Transatlantic Fracture Across Left and Right (2:17)
Blyth contends that Trumpism reflects an international breakdown of traditional party systems across advanced Western democracies rather than an exclusively American or conservative phenomenon. Insurgent movements span the ideological spectrum: the nationalist right includes France's Front National, the Sweden Democrats, Italy's Lega Nord, and Hungary's Viktor Orbán, while an equally potent left-wing rebellion includes Greece's Syriza, Spain's Podemos, the Scottish National Party, and Jeremy Corbyn's takeover of the UK Labour Party.
While the two wings conflict fundamentally on cultural tolerance and nationalism, Blyth points out that both channel identical voter outrage against elite consensus. Both factions advocate re-nationalizing economic policy, ending fiscal austerity, and rejecting supranational arrangements like the Eurozone or investor-friendly free trade pacts.
Economic Dislocation Versus Pure Cultural Explanations (13:49)
While mainstream analysts often reduce populist voting to racial resentment and authoritarian personality traits, Blyth argues that cultural grievance cannot be separated from decades of structural economic decline. Support for insurgent candidates strongly correlates with regional exposure to Chinese import competition, dramatic health inequalities, and acute disempowerment in the workplace, where manual workers have seen their control over daily tasks collapse.
Examining the UK's Brexit referendum, Blyth highlights how selective data interpretation obscured these economic roots. While short-term changes in earnings showed little correlation with voting patterns, absolute hourly wages proved decisive: individuals earning £8 per hour had a 70% to 80% likelihood of voting Leave, whereas those earning £18 had only a 30% chance. Combined with education levels as a proxy for economic security, the data demonstrates that chronic, generational wage suppression anchors the populist revolt.
From Postwar Full Employment to the Debt Trap (25:26)
To explain the current crisis, Blyth contrasts two distinct historical regimes. Between 1940 and 1970, Western economies ran a Keynesian model prioritizing full employment. However, as Polish economist Michał Kalecki predicted in 1943, permanent full employment stripped capital of its shop-floor disciplinary power, ultimately driving inflation and squeezing profits during the 1970s. In response, business funded a counter-revolution that broke unions, deregulated cross-border finance, and globalized production chains to permanently suppress labor costs.
This counter-revolution produced a "creditor's paradise" characterized by secular disinflation and stagnating wages. As mapped by Branko Milanović's "Elephant Chart," the real incomes of Western middle- and working-class cohorts (the 59th to 67th global percentiles) flatlined for thirty years. To maintain their living standards, households were forced to accumulate consumer debt. When center-left parties like New Labour, the German SPD, and the New Democrats abandoned their working-class bases to court affluent professionals, indebted voters were left trapped in deflationary debt, triggering a generalized debtor's rebellion.
Technocratic Exhaustion and the Asset-Light Economy (46:38)
Blyth argues that technocratic economic management has reached exhaustion. Central banks have injected roughly $13 trillion post-2008 but possess only the blunt tools of interest rates and asset purchases, rendering them incapable of generating organic growth. At the same time, political promises to restore mid-century factory jobs collide with an asset-light platform economy—exemplified by Uber, Airbnb, and Facebook—where market value concentrates in digital networks that employ minimal assembly labor.
To break this impasse, Blyth maintains that democratic governments must revive fiscal policy rather than deferring to unelected central bankers. He advocates aggressive tax reform that eliminates corporate tax havens—pointing out that corporate shares of tax receipts dropped from roughly 20% in the 1970s to around 2% today—paired with major public infrastructure investment and universal social insurance to buffer workers against ongoing automation.
Blyth concludes that while the United States could theoretically stabilize under a low-growth "secular stability" baseline backed by low borrowing costs and infrastructure renewal, Europe remains trapped in a more dangerous crisis due to the rigid, creditor-dominated architecture of the Eurozone. He also concedes that "Global Trumpism" is primarily a Western phenomenon driven by specific political and economic institutions, leaving open whether advanced democracies can reconstruct their fiscal and welfare frameworks before public trust completely unspools.
## Background
该视频由沃森国际与公共事务研究所（Watson School of International and Public Affairs）于 2016 年 9 月 29 日发布在 YouTube 平台上。内容属于该研究所面向布朗大学本科生及公众举办的“美国民主：此时此刻的危险与机遇”系列学生研讨会第二讲。主讲人马克·布莱思（Mark Blyth）教授在 2016 年美国大选前夕，深入分析了选举背后的核心利害关系、历史先例以及全球政治经济影响。
## TL;DR
布莱思教授在讲座中指出，“特朗普主义”绝非美国孤立的政治现象，而是全球范围内传统政党体制碎裂与民粹主义抬头的体现，欧洲的极右翼与激进左翼同样经历了这种剧烈震荡。他驳斥了建制派将民粹浪潮全盘归咎于“种族主义”的政治推诿，强调其根源在于新自由主义体制推行三十年来导致的工资停滞、去工业化创伤、极度依赖私人债务以及紧缩政策的恶果。从 1970 年代滞胀危机对凯恩斯主义的瓦解，到当前“债务人反抗”与央行货币政策失灵，布莱思梳理了宏观经济体制的周期性崩溃。他呼吁必须告别单一且乏力的货币干预，转向严打避税、重构劳工社会兜底以及应对气候变化的大规模公共财政投资。
## Atmosphere & style
整场讲座充满苏格兰式的辛辣幽默、机智讽刺与学院派严密逻辑的奇妙碰撞。布莱思讲课毫无沉闷拘谨的学究气，他手持翻页器在台上踱步，信手拈来生动贴切的生活比喻和市井粗话，瞬间将高深莫测的宏观经济学与制度变迁讲得通俗透彻、妙趣横生。讲座现场笑声与掌声接连不断，台下精英学子在被布莱思无情拆穿阶层特权与认知盲区的同时，深刻体会到直面社会崩塌现实所带来的思想震撼与紧迫感。
## Bulletin
- [02:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=137s) “全球特朗普主义”并非美国孤立现象，欧洲多国正同步出现传统政党碎片化以及激进左翼与极右翼民粹势力的全面崛起。
- [13:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=832s) 主流建制派常将选民叛离单维定性为“种族主义”，以此掩盖过去数十年温和左翼在去工业化与工资停滞问题上的推诿失责；然而统计表明，时薪 8 英镑底层的脱欧支持率高达 70%-80%，远高于时薪 18 英镑群体的 30%。
- [21:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1304s) 战后凯恩斯主义“永久充分就业”体制因劳动力短缺推高保留工资与通胀，最终引发生产者利润崩溃；资本阶级随后推动新自由主义改革，通过全球化外包、金融去管制与央行通胀死磕等手段彻底瓦解了工人的议价能力。
- [27:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1668s) 欧美底层工薪阶层在长达三十年的实际工资停滞中依靠信用卡及次级贷款维系体面生活，当前的不满本质上是遭遇通缩与债务压迫后的“债务人反抗”。
- [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2400s) 欧洲相较美国面临更深重的结构性困境，原因在于欧元机制与 2012 年《财政契约》锁死了顺差国（如德国/东欧）与逆差国（如南欧）的财政调整空间，永久紧缩正不断催生极端政治力量。
## Key takeaways
- [02:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=137s) 特朗普现象是跨大西洋政治经济危机的集中缩影，欧洲既有勒庞、欧尔班等极右翼，也有希腊激进左翼联盟和西班牙“我们能”党等反紧缩左翼，二者均根植于底层对建制体系的强烈绝望。
- [06:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=377s) “印第安纳州加里的故事”生动展现了普通蓝领如何在本土制造业南迁、北美自由贸易协定签署、培训承诺落空及呼叫中心离岸外包的连环打击下跌入沃尔玛低薪深渊，彻底失去对政客的信任。
- [10:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=602s) 虽然民粹支持者普遍伴随地位丧失感与威权主义偏好，但中国贸易冲击、工作控制权丧失（从 30% 降至 9%）及健康阿片危机等底层经济因素才是根本诱因，绝非单纯的文化偏见所能解释。
- [13:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=832s) 英国脱欧公投的收入与教育梯度表明，底层无文凭低薪劳动者对退欧的支持呈绝对压倒性态势，温和中左翼将选民一概斥为种族主义，旨在洗脱其推行新自由主义伤害工人的历史责任。
- [21:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1304s) 米哈尔·卡莱茨基早在 1943 年就预言了凯恩斯主义的死穴：长期充分就业将使资方丧失规训劳工的工具，工资推升物价诱发恶性通胀，并最终导致投资阶级“用脚投票”并颠覆制度规则。
- [24:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1449s) 新自由主义重写了宏观经济软件：以打击通胀为由将权力移交非民选央行技术官僚，借助跨国供应链与去监管摧毁工会谈判筹码，使全美 60% 劳动人口陷入长达数十年的实际薪资停滞。
- [25:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1528s) 战后体制是高通胀下的“债务人天堂”，而新自由主义体制则演变为反通胀下的“债权人天堂”；普通家庭被迫依赖信用卡等高杠杆工具维持消费，底层沦为发薪日贷款掠夺的对象。
- [33:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2010s) 米拉诺维奇的“大象曲线”印证了欧美蓝领与传统中产在过去三十年全球化中成为绝对输家；叠加皮凯蒂所提出的资本回报率显著超越经济增长率（r > g），无资产工薪阶层被体制性甩开。
- [37:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2272s) 政客竞选时许诺“把体面的制造业好工作带回本土”完全是脱离现实的神话；现代制造业在富士康模式与自动化工业机器人的主导下，边际劳动力使用量注定永久性减少。
- [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2400s) 欧洲的核心死结在于不可调和的欧元区失衡：以德国为核心结合东欧低廉高技术工程师的外贸顺差网络向中美疯狂出口，而缺乏独立货币与被《财政契约》禁止财政扩张的南欧内需国被迫承担永久紧缩。
- [48:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2932s) 美国宪政体制的物理约束使总统缺乏独立立法提案权，特朗普即便当选也很难全盘颠覆经济制度，其政策空间主要局限在扩大军费、修筑象征性边境墙、富豪减税及加剧脆弱群体的心理恐慌。
- [51:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3115s) 长达 2,200 页的《多德-弗兰克法案》通过繁琐的资本与合规要求，实际上成功实施了金融去杠杆并削弱了华尔街的暴利运作模式，证明美国深层官僚监管机制具有很强的制度惯性。
- [55:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3351s) 硅谷倡导的全民基本收入（UBI）面临富人实际有效税率过低的死穴；全球多达 29 万亿美元资产藏匿于离岸避税天堂，若不改变跨国资本避税套利机制，大规模再分配便无从谈起。
- [01:05:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3903s) Uber 与 Airbnb 等平台资本主义的本质是将全社会的汽车与房产转化为金融看涨期权并从中抽取暴利；未来社会的救赎途径在于通过开源协作等手段实现技术资产产权的民主化。
- [01:11:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4296s) 央行货币政策已达极限且无法凭空创造内生增长，解决长期停滞的真正钥匙在于打破新自由主义对财政工具的自我阉割，由国家主导基础设施的大规模长期投资与跨周期建设。
- [01:15:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4523s) 市场与民主遵循两套正交且冲突的分配逻辑（钞票决断 vs 选票决定），以往调和二者的累进税制随着资本全球避税而破裂，最终导致巨额主权债务及债权人与债务人之间的阶级对抗。
- [01:23:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4996s) 马克·布莱思提出其替代性施政纲领：堵死一切离岸避税漏洞以重塑税制公正、建立应对自动化冲击的劳工社会保险以重新思考工作价值，以及针对气候变化与沿海基础设施展开大规模公共投资。
## Detailed walkthrough
### [00:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4s) 系列研讨会开场与主讲人介绍
主持人向到场的观众致谢，并介绍了本次活动是沃森国际与公共事务研究所（Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs）举办的七场系列研讨会中的第二场。该系列讨论安排在隔周的周二晚间 7:00 至 8:30 这一稍显不寻常的时间段举行，甚至会持续涵盖到大选当夜。研讨会的初衷本是进行一种小规模、重在参与的亲密座谈，但由于主讲人是马克·布莱思（Mark Blyth），现场不得不换到容纳更多人的大教室。主持人预告两周后玛格丽特·韦尔（Margaret Weir）将前来探讨不平等现象以及民主党与共和党的议题，而今晚的主题则是布莱思教授带来的“全球特朗普主义”（Global Trumpism）。
主持人简要介绍了马克·布莱思的学术履历：他是沃森学会与政治学系的政治经济学教授，在故乡苏格兰完成前期的学位后赴美，于哥伦比亚大学获得博士学位；随后他曾在约翰斯·霍普金斯大学执教，并在布朗大学任教已有七年之久。布莱思教授在全球经济领域拥有深厚的学术造诣，并且对当下的选战及其在全球范围内的影响与历史先例进行了大量深入思考。主持人打趣道，尽管布莱思昨晚并没有完整收看总统辩论，但这恰好让他能够免受昨夜 10:37 以来各种媒体噪音的干扰，以纯粹的学术视角切入核心议题。讲座预计进行半小时，随后将留出约一小时用于问答互动。
- **系列讲座性质**：共 7 场，隔周二晚间 7:00–8:30 举行，覆盖整个大选周期（包括选战之夜）。
- **后续主讲安排**：两周后由玛格丽特·韦尔（Margaret Weir）主讲不平等与两党政治。
- **主讲人背景**：布朗大学政治经济学教授，曾就读于苏格兰，哥伦比亚大学博士，曾任教于约翰斯·霍普金斯大学，在布朗大学工作 7 年。
---
### [02:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=137s) “全球特朗普主义”的兴起与欧洲极右翼图景
马克·布莱思登台并调试了无线翻页器和麦克风后正式开讲。他提到“全球特朗普主义”如今已经成了一个小型网络梗（mini meme），甚至一度成为社交媒体上的标签。这一切源于他初夏身处希腊时的一段经历：当时外界普遍预计希腊危机将再次爆发，他接受了当地媒体 Athens Live 的采访。在那段 4 分钟的采访切片中，布莱思谈到了英国脱欧等一系列事件，未料该视频在 Facebook 上获得了高达 120 万次的转发分享，后续被搬运至 YouTube 也有约 10 万次播放。布莱思指出，这一现象之所以引发巨大共鸣，是因为他指出了一个核心本质：“特朗普主义是全球性的，绝非特朗普一人的独角戏。”
布莱思强调，这种现象不仅发生在右翼，也同样波及左翼，其根本标志是欧洲及其他地区传统政党体系的严重碎裂化。为了向现场观众证明特朗普现象绝非美国独有，他展示了一张欧洲右翼政治领袖的图谱并邀请观众辨认：
- 左上角是法国国民阵线（National Front）的小玛丽娜·勒庞（Marine Le Pen）；
- 紧随其后的是瑞典民主党（Sweden Democrats，布莱思戏谑道他们既不民主，而且极其强调自己的瑞典血统）；
- 下方是芬兰人党（True Finns，正统芬兰人党），该党不仅在芬兰议会中手握权力平衡的关键筹码，在全国政坛也颇具影响力；
- 旁边是意大利的北方联盟（Lega Nord）；
- 左下角是希腊极右翼政党金色黎明（Golden Dawn）的领导人；
- 右侧则是匈牙利总理维克托·欧尔班（Viktor Orbán），布莱思直言他“基本上就是欧盟内部的一名独裁者”。
布莱思指出，如果对比特朗普在政策声明和种族议题上的出格作风，欧洲这些右翼政客的表现会让特朗普显得像个正常人。更严重的是，他们手段极其硬核，并且在部分国家已经真正执掌了政权。布莱思对这种蔓延的极端政治态势评价道：“These guys, they make Trump look normal, some of them.”
---
### [04:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=269s) 欧洲左翼的对应异动与两翼的分野
在展示完右翼阵营后，布莱思向观众抛出反问：如果这一波政治动荡同样存在一个“左翼版本”，大家是否相信？随后他展示了另一张由欧洲左翼政治人物构成的图谱：
- 希腊总理、激进左翼联盟（Syriza）领导人阿列克西斯·齐普拉斯（Alexis Tsipras）；
- 西班牙“我们能”党（Podemos）领导人巴勃罗·伊格莱西亚斯（Pablo Iglesias），该党在西班牙选民中长期保持 20% 到 25% 的民调支持率，这也直接导致西班牙政局僵持无法组阁；
- 德国左翼党（Die Linke）联合领导人卡佳·基平（Katja Kipping）。布莱思补充解释，长期以来德国政坛的核心主轴就是无论中右还是中左翼，其首要目标都是联合起来阻止“红-红-绿”（社民党-左翼党-绿党）联盟上台，而卡佳·基平正是该联盟中最左侧的关键角色；
- 意大利五星运动（Five Star Movement）的核心人物，该党在两次大选中同样斩获了 20% 至 25% 的选民选票；
- 英国工党领袖“科尔宾同志”（Jeremy Corbyn），他正在党内发动一场针对布莱尔派（Blairites）的“内部政变”，试图将工党彻底重新塑造成符合其激进左翼立场的政党；
- 苏格兰民族党领导人妮古拉·斯特金（Nicola Sturgeon），她将反紧缩（anti-austerity）立为政府的核心执政招牌。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 欧洲反体制政治力量的两翼分布
accDescr: 展示选民不满情绪在欧洲政坛分化出的极右翼与激进左翼阵营对比
subgraph Discontent["选民不满情绪的迸发 (Voter Discontent)"]
node_root["全球性政治碎片化"]
end
subgraph RightWing["极右翼民粹阵营 (公开种族主义/民族主义倾向)"]
R1["法国：玛丽娜·勒庞 (国民阵线)"]
R2["瑞典：瑞典民主党"]
R3["芬兰：芬兰人党"]
R4["意大利：北方联盟"]
R5["希腊：金色黎明"]
R6["匈牙利：维克托·欧尔班"]
end
subgraph LeftWing["激进左翼/反体制阵营 (明确反种族主义/反紧缩)"]
L1["希腊：阿列克西斯·齐普拉斯 (激进左翼联盟)"]
L2["西班牙：巴勃罗·伊格莱西亚斯 (我们能党)"]
L3["德国：卡佳·基平 (左翼党)"]
L4["意大利：五星运动"]
L5["英国：杰里米·科尔宾 (工党重组)"]
L6["苏格兰：妮古拉·斯特金 (反紧缩主张)"]
end
Discontent --> RightWing
Discontent --> LeftWing
```
布莱思总结分析道，左右两翼的相似之处在于它们都是底层选民对传统体制强烈不满的集中爆发；然而它们在政治诉求上却大相径庭——一方公开宣扬种族主义与排外，而另一方则高举反种族主义旗帜。布莱思由此提出核心设问：“Now, what if I told you there was a left wing version of this?” 这表明动荡的根源远非单纯的“种族偏见”所能概括，背后必定隐藏着更深层的结构性推手。
---
### [06:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=377s) 经济受损者的叙事：印第安纳州加里的故事
在剖析全球特朗普主义时，布莱思指出了当前关于“如何定性特朗普支持者”的文化战争：许多人将一切归结为纯粹的种族主义，但在此之前，关于特朗普的崛起还有一个强有力的经济受损者叙事。为了直观展现这一机制，布莱思虚构了一个具有代表性的人物小传——“印第安纳州加里市的加里（Gary）”：
1. **黄金时代的巅峰**：1989 年，加里在工会工作了 10 年，年届 30 结婚成家，刚升职为具有资历的流水线主管。他的实际工资达到了每小时 30 美元，生活安稳优渥。
2. **本土制造业外迁**：工业资本逐步向南迁移。布莱思强调，掠夺美国去工业化产能的最早并非中国，而是美国本土的南部各州（如得克萨斯州、北卡罗来纳州）。加里最初并未在意这种流失。
3. **自贸协定与经济崩塌**：随后《北美自由贸易协定》（NAFTA）签署，加里所在的工厂及其整个供应链配套工厂在一夜之间化为乌有。加里所在的小镇遭遇经济海啸，人口外流，税基萎缩，公立学校每况愈下。
4. **再培训承诺的破产与服务业下沉**：加里奉行自力更生原则，试图再找工作。官方承诺将失业工人重新培训为计算机程序员，然而当时的州长一心只想推行减税政策，直接砍掉了再培训预算以兑现减税红包。加里被迫进入客服呼叫中心工作，时薪骤降至 15 美元。
5. **离岸外包与彻底沦落**：五年后，加里所在的呼叫中心被公司从印第安纳州整体外包到了印度。到了晚年，加里只能在美国最大雇主沃尔玛（Walmart）从事繁重、超时的工作，时薪只剩下极其微薄的 11.67 美元。
加里每天在报纸上读到的，都是自动化和机器人即将取代一切低端劳动力的恐慌报道；而华尔街那些拿着纳税人救助资金的高管、硅谷的优步（Uber）创始人和科技新贵们却能通过掌控机器人专利从中大发横财，底层蓝领工人则被无情扫进历史的垃圾堆。在经历了数十年来每一位政客四年一次轮番兜售“选我会有更好工作、选我会更安全”却让生活一年比一年更糟后，加里彻底对体制丧失了信任。布莱思生动地刻画了加里在面对政治选择时的绝望心态：在虚伪的说谎建制派政客与招摇撞骗的大忽悠之间，他宁愿去选特朗普。布莱思尖锐地指出加里的处境：“So he has a liar on one side and a bullshit artist on the other.”
---
### [08:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=535s) 经济阶级诉求与文化/种族偏见的交织辩论
在讲完加里的经济学叙事后，布莱思话锋一转指出：加里的故事完全是纯粹的经济受挫逻辑，其中甚至没有任何种族色彩；然而，大量针对特朗普支持者的实证调查却揭示了更为复杂的现实。
为了抽离出特朗普本人的个人争议，布莱思以英国脱欧（Brexit）公投作为参照案例进行了对照剖析。在脱欧公投发生时，媒体与学界最初同样盛行一种叙事，将其定性为“一无所有者的逆袭”（revolt of the have-nots），认为是那些在全球化和贸易协定中被剥夺的底层贫困人群发动的反抗。然而，当对脱欧选票的微观数据进行解构时，真实情况却颠覆了这一单维度的解释：
- **核心诉求**：选民提及最多的主观诉求是“夺回控制权”（taking back control），紧随其后的决定性因素则是强烈的“反移民情绪”（anti-immigration sentiment）。
- **贫富区域分布**：公投中不仅贫困落后地区支持脱欧，大量富有区域同样把票投给了脱欧阵营。如果是单纯的贸易受损者反抗，这种富裕阶层的脱欧狂热便无法得到解释。
- **年龄鸿沟与偏见**：投票率最高的群体是老年选民。民调数据一致显示，贯穿整个欧洲，老年群体的种族主义倾向和排外情绪普遍显著高于年轻人。
布莱思由此总结，虽然去工业化的经济创伤真实存在，但脱欧与特朗普浪潮的背后同样交织着非经济层面的文化焦虑与移民排斥：“And that seems to be basically not about economics.” 这一矛盾恰恰构成了理解全球民粹主义浪潮的核心难点。
### [10:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=602s) “全是种族主义”还是经济在起作用？
欧洲各地的民调显示，反移民和反穆斯林情绪正持续高涨。在德国，安格拉·默克尔领导的政党遭遇惨败，而德国选择党（AfD）迅速崛起，这本质上是一个反移民的单一口号政党。对美欧选民的深入调查揭示，支持这类政党的人普遍具有强烈的威权主义偏好；面对育儿方式或社会情境的标准问卷时，他们反复表现出对等级制、父权制以及刻板性别认同的依恋。在社会心理学文献中，这种现象的微观基础通常被归结为“地位丧失感”——问题不在于你实际上变得有多穷，而在于你曾是不可一世的“头号人物”（top dog），如今却风光不再。这种挫败感诱发了归咎与攻击反应，并迅速转化为种族与性别层面的编码，于是主流观点常常得出结论：“归根结底，这全都是种族主义。”
然而，经济学家的反驳随即而来：如果这一切纯粹是种族主义，那么这种断言实际上彻底抹杀了经济问题的效力。Mark Blyth 反问道：“整整25年的实际工资停滞甚至下降、整座整座城市的关闭、绝望感、阿片类药物成瘾、中下阶层与工薪阶层预期寿命及人生机遇的崩溃，难道真的毫无影响？”一旦意识到经济学指涉的不仅是绝对收入，分析就进入了全新的维度：
- **中国进口竞争的冲击**：在全欧洲，对右翼民粹候选人的支持度与遭受中国贸易冲击的地区呈现惊人的正相关——无论是制造业还是服务业，只要当地产业面临来自中国的直接替代，对这类政党及其保护主义政策的支持率就极高。
- **健康不平等**：身体状况堪忧或身处贫困医疗劣势中的人群，不仅更容易投向右翼政党，也同样更容易转向激进左翼。
- **工作控制权的丧失**：在英国对从事低技能体力劳动与一般体力劳动（C、D职业分类）工人的长期调查中，十年前还有 30% 的受访者表示对自己工作拥有相当大的控制权，如今这一数字断崖式下跌至 9%。工人们深感彻底无能为力，正如在亚马逊仓库中每天必须步行11英里、进门与出门都要接受脱衣搜身般的极端屈辱环境。
- **技术颠覆与长期低薪**：受自动化和技术颠覆最严重的工种往往最为朝不保夕，这些力量交织在一起，催生了全球范围内的“特朗普主义”支持潮。
Mark Blyth 直言：“我毫不怀疑支持国民阵线（National Front）或正统芬兰人党（True Finns）的很大一部分人就是种族主义者，他们对此直言不讳；特朗普或许只是使用了更多‘狗哨政治’的隐语版本，但本质并无不同。但经济因素至关重要。”
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 经济创伤与社会心理反应链
accDescr: 展现长期经济破坏如何通过贸易、技术与不安全感转化为威权主义与排外情绪。
subgraph 经济结构破坏
A["长期经济停滞与去工业化<br>(中国贸易冲击 / 技术颠覆)"]
B["工作无保障与控制权丧失<br>(控制感从 30% 降至 9%)"]
C["健康恶化与阿片类成瘾危机"]
end
subgraph 心理与政治表达
D["地位丧失感<br>(不再是 Top Dog)"]
E["威权主义偏好与替罪羊归咎<br>(反移民 / 种族与性别编码)"]
F["民粹主义政治崛起<br>(特朗普 / 脱欧 / 欧洲右翼)"]
end
A --> D
B --> D
C --> D
D --> E
E --> F
```
### [13:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=832s) 脱欧投票的真相与中左翼的“脱罪借口”
为了厘清经济与种族的纠缠，Mark Blyth 以英国脱欧公投的数据为例进行了剖析。在脱欧结果公布后，媒体上广为流传着一张左侧图表：该图以地方行政区为单位，横轴展现实际薪资的变化率，结果显示薪资变动与脱欧得票率毫无关联。这张图迅速走红，成了建制派宣称“脱欧与经济无关、纯粹出于种族与排外”的铁证。然而荒谬的是，在同一份研究报告的下一页赫然印着另一张图：如果把视角从短期的“薪资变化幅度”转向长期的“绝对工资水平”，就会发现时薪 8 英镑的底层选民，有高达 70% 至 80% 的概率投票支持脱欧；而处于收入顶端、时薪达到 18 英镑（约合每小时 35 至 40 美元）的选民，支持脱欧的概率仅为 30% 左右。
这种统计规律在受教育水平上体现得更加彻底：拥有4级及以上资格认证（相当于社区学院及以上学历）的人群比例与脱欧支持率呈极强的负相关，而没有任何学历文凭的人群则呈完美的镜像对称正相关。高学历意味着高收入、生活在医疗资源优渥的社区，而底层选民则长期陷入低薪、健康恶化与去工业化的困境。面对为什么主流舆论执意将民粹主义完全归因于种族偏见而彻底排除经济维度的现象，Mark Blyth 犀利地揭示了建制派的政治动机：
> “我能想到的唯一原因，就是这样做能让温和左翼（the soft left）获得一个逃避责任的借口，而他们在过去25年里实际上参与了对工人阶层前途的‘开窗抛弃’（defenestration）。”
- **收入梯度的脱欧倾向**：时薪 8 英镑阶层的脱欧支持率达 70%-80%，时薪 18 英镑阶层则降至约 30%。
- **教育与阶层的强关联**：高等教育文凭持有率与退欧支持率呈严格负相关，文盲或无资质群体则完全反转。
- **政治推诿机制**：指责选民“全因种族主义”，使得执政数十年的中左翼政党得以洗脱自身推行新自由主义政策、牺牲工人阶级利益的历史责任。
### [15:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=952s) 重返1930年代？克尔凯郭尔与“宏观经济体制”
在当下经济危机与民粹主义抬头的背景下，左翼舆论场盛行一种末日叙事：“我们正在倒退回1930年代，另一个希特勒即将出现，另一场世界大战近在眼前，威权主义正在全面卷土重来。”这种历史对照看似言之凿凿：1920年代经历了惨烈的金融危机和深重衰退，底层民众深受伤害，认定民主制度已彻底失效、政客皆被寡头收买，最终将票投给了墨索里尼等独裁者。Blyth 指出，在1930年代，墨索里尼一度登上《生活》（Life）杂志封面，甚至在罗斯福推行新政初期的《国家工业复兴法案》（NIRA）时，1934年造访白宫最频繁的外国访客竟然是墨索里尼的儿子。当时意大利法西斯政权正全力将北部工业卡特尔化以抵御经济冲击，而美国的新政制定者试图做的也是卡特尔化美国工业、统制价格和工资——“我们当时实际上是在抄法西斯的作业”。
然而，这是否意味着历史正在简单重演？特朗普是否就是墨索里尼的翻版？Blyth 搬出了丹麦哲学家索伦·克尔凯郭尔（Søren Kierkegaard）来否定这种肤浅的类比。引来台下哲学爱好者的会心笑声后，他解释道，克尔凯郭尔认为未来永远是一个“生成”（becoming）的过程：你只能在当下的瞬间体验它，而一旦体验发生，其他潜在的未来走向便随之关闭；正因为我们已经经历过过去，我们便绝不可能重新经历过去的同一时刻，历史无法机械重演。
为了科学把握这些巨变的方向与烈度，Blyth 提出应当使用“体制”（regimes）这一概念框架。他风趣地列举了各种体制的滑稽例子——有人尝试过的节食体制（diet regime，结果统统失败）、卡扎菲式的政治体制（同样走向覆灭）、甚至凯特王妃花费两万两千英镑的美容护理体制（beauty regime），随后将话题引向核心概念：“宏观经济体制”（macroeconomic regimes）。在比较政治经济学中，这常被称为“资本主义多样性”（varieties of capitalism）：
- **技能与培训模式的差异**：美国体制倾向于通用技能培训，企业在内部完成特定技能培训且工会毫无话语权；德国体制则由工会直接深度参与并主导职业培训体系，依托大企业与大工会的有机协同。
- **底层管道系统的运转**：宏观经济体制本质上是不同国家在制度上构建经济体的方式。它探究的不仅是表面政策，更是整个经济的“下水管道系统”（plumbing）——各项制度究竟如何协同为技能培训、退休养老、公司治理和基础设施建设提供融资与支撑。
### [19:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1163s) 资本主义的“硬件”与凯恩斯主义“软件”的编写
马克·布莱思（Mark Blyth）在剖析当代政治经济体制的演变时，提出了一个极具穿透力的电脑软硬件比喻：资本主义的制度构架如同电脑的“硬件”，一旦硬件按特定方式组装成型，你就可以在上面运行完全不同的“软件”——即经济学思想、规划理念与运行规则。从1940年代到1970年代的资本主义，与1970年代延续至今的资本主义，两者在底层机构上的变化或许有限，但真正发生巨变的，是指导系统运转的思想软件与操作代码。
回溯到1943至1944年，盟军在二战中胜局已定，战后西方世界必须对“充分就业”作出坚定的政治承诺。之所以必须这么做，首要的政治现实就是：如果西方资本主义国家不做，“苏联人就会替你做”，共产主义是悬在头顶的真实威胁。为了匹配这一政治目标，经济学系统被重写了代码，而这套新软件的缔造者正是约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯（John Maynard Keynes）。凯恩斯曾有一句家喻户晓的警句：“长远来看，我们都死了。”布莱思特意读出了这段话的完整原句，用以阐明这套全新经济代码的核心：
> “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we're all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons, they can only tell us when the storm is long past that the ocean will be flat.”
凯恩斯之所以只关注短期，根源在于他对“严重衰退”（Deep recessions）的独到洞察。严重衰退之所以被称为“萧条”（Depression），是因为整个社会的投资预期陷入了极其沮丧低迷的病态心理。一个人如果过了两年好日子，遇到两天坏日子，不会改变对未来的剧本；但如果过了两年好日子后接着熬了一整年的萧条，对未来的预期就会发生根本动摇。当衰退持续长达五年时，任何理性的资本家都会拒绝建厂投资，理由极度直白：“因为根本没人买东西。”然而，当所有资本家都抱着同样的心态把现金死死攥在手里、拒绝投资时，他们反而合力促成了自己原本最想避免的投资崩溃。凯恩斯的整套理论——包括政府借贷、赤字开支与公共刺激——本质上就是一种打破恶性循环的“心理学魔术”，通过在短期内扭转市场预期，强行拉动私人投资回升。
### [21:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1304s) 卡莱茨基的致命预言：凯恩斯体系的“内生漏洞”与1970年代大危机
然而，波兰马克思主义经济学家米哈尔·卡莱茨基（Michał Kalecki）早在1943年就发表了一篇仅仅7页的批判文章，直接刺穿了凯恩斯近400页巨著的软肋。卡莱茨基坦言自己完全赞同充分就业的初衷，尤其在大萧条之后，面对共产主义阵营的外部威胁，即使作为左派，他也希望拯救资本主义。但卡莱茨基冷峻地指出：将充分就业作为永久政策目标，系统迟早会走向自我瓦解。
布莱思在讲台上模拟了政策制定者的天真幻想：大家都有工作，工资优厚，消费旺盛，宛如人间极乐。但高工资的钱从何而来？只能来自雇主的销售收入与商业利润。一旦全社会长期保持充分就业状态，市场上几乎没有剩余劳动力，底层的“保留工资”（Reservation wage）和全社会的中位数工资就会随着时间推移被不断推高。企业如果不能维持超额的利润增长，为了应付不断暴涨的用工成本，唯一的求生之道就是大幅提高商品售价。用涨价来支付工资，其必然结果就是1970年代席卷全球的恶性通货膨胀。不仅如此，正如布莱思所强调的那样，资本家在充分就业体制下彻底失去了规训劳动力的“皮鞭”（Whip hand）：
> “And he also said something fascinating. And he said, once you do this, capital investment, they no longer have the whip hand. They can't discipline labor.”
工人可以毫无成本地随时跳槽，动辄发起罢工和静坐抗议。到了1970年代，卡莱茨基的预言分毫不差地全面应验。在英国，爆发了垃圾堆积如山、公共服务瘫痪的1979年“不满之冬”（Winter of Discontent）；在澳大利亚，高夫·惠特拉姆（Gough Whitlam）政府在失业与通胀的双重巨浪中飘摇沉浮。劳工可以随意罢工索要更高薪酬，企业只能被迫涨价，物价上涨反过来进一步侵蚀工人实际工资，激化出更多罢工潮。通胀侵蚀一切利润，面对这种局面，整个投资者阶级（布莱思半开玩笑地指着台下前排的学生说，就是台下坐着的这些未来的资方精英）彻底被激怒了：“他们不赚钱了，通胀在啃噬利润，劳工在瓜分利润，资本家根本捞不到哪怕一美元。”
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 凯恩斯体系向1970年代滞胀危机的演变机制
accDescr: 展示充分就业政策如何引发劳工谈判权上升、工资推动物价、通胀与罢工循环，最终导致投资崩溃与资本阶级反扑。
subgraph FullEmployment ["战后凯恩斯主义政策 (1940s-1960s)"]
A["战后政治承诺: 永久充分就业"] --> B["劳动力极度短缺 / 资方丧失纪律工具"]
B --> C["工人工资与议价能力持续攀升"]
end
subgraph StagflationCrisis ["1970年代系统性危机"]
C --> D["企业为保利润被迫大幅涨价"]
D --> E["恶性通货膨胀 (Inflation)"]
E --> F["实际工资受侵蚀 / 引发更大规模罢工"]
F --> G["利润暴跌 / 投资阶级罢工 / 资本崩溃"]
end
subgraph CapitalCounterattack ["资本的反击与软件重构"]
G --> H["资助亲市场意识形态革命"]
H --> I["里根/撒切尔新自由主义全球体制"]
end
```
### [24:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1449s) 资本反扑与新自由主义“软件”的全面重构
面对利润空间的全面溃败，投资者阶级采取了卡莱茨基所预言的终极反击：出资发动一场彻底的“亲市场政治革命”（Market-friendly revolution），彻底重写社会的底层运行软件。这场革命的战术目标明确而致命：
1. **重构意识形态主体**：不再把大众视作有集体议价权的“工人和工会成员”，而是唤醒并诉诸他们作为孤立“消费者和个体”的自私本能。
2. **铁腕击溃有组织的劳工**：最具标志性的是罗纳德·里根在1982年铁腕粉碎美国空中交通管制员工会（PATCO）大罢工，彻底打断了美国工会的脊梁骨。
3. **全球化产业链与资本外逃**：一旦劳工胆敢抗议，资本立刻拔锚撤资。布莱思模仿资方的强硬口吻指出：“你现在再罢工试试看？你要是敢罢工，我立马拔腿走人。我先搬去得克萨斯，然后再搬去中国。”工人的议价能力在瞬间被砸到归零，全美60%劳动人口长达数十年的工资停滞正是由此拉开序幕。
4. **金融去管制化（Deregulation）**：极度放宽跨境资本流动限制，让资本可以在全球范围内光速游走，而劳动力却被牢牢锁死在本土国界之内。
5. **政策移交技术官僚**：将宏观经济大权全面移交给独立央行与非民选技术专家，给他们设定唯一死命令：不惜一切代价打击通胀，甚至在通胀根本不存在时也要打通胀，打得越狠还要给他们颁发勋章。
6. **全球化生产压榨利润**：通过打造全球供应链，将极度微薄的微利留给供应链上的代工企业与极其廉价的海外劳工，而母公司则攫取天量暴利。布莱思反问道：“为什么苹果公司能赚得这么盆满钵满？这就是原因所在。”
对于资本家利用产业链外包剥夺本土工人谈判权这一致命转折，布莱思给出了极其辛辣的点评：
> “So your ability to demand a wage increase just goes to zero. And at that point in time, that wonderful stagnation in wages for 60% of the economy started.”
### [25:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1528s) 冰火两重天：战后三十年与新自由主义三十年的体制对照
布莱思在黑板前对比了两个时代截然相反的运行模式。从1940年到1970年的战后体制，对普通老百姓而言是一个“债务人的天堂”。在1960年代末或1970年代买房的人，名义房贷利率可能是7%，但通胀率高达12%，每过一年，你的实际房贷就被高通胀生生吞掉一半。这笔账最终由谁买单？由银行买单，进而由持有银行股权的投资阶层全额埋单。当时的市场以国家主权为边界，金融业被锁在后罗斯福新政的严格监管牢笼中，央行只是财政部的“支票兑现所”，政令完全从属于民选政府，议会真正手握大权。劳工占国民收入的份额达到历史巅峰，企业利润跌至谷底，基尼系数极低。
然而，经过三十多年亲市场软件的重写，世界被彻底颠倒过来：
| 制度特征 | 战后凯恩斯体制 (1940–1970) | 新自由主义体制 (1980–至今) |
|:--- |:--- |:--- |
| **通胀环境** | 持续高通胀（债务人天堂） | 长期反通胀/通缩倾向（债权人天堂） |
| **国民收入分配** | 劳工收入份额达历史最高，企业利润历史最低 | 资本与资产所有者份额达历史巅峰（皮凯蒂/米拉诺维奇），工资份额历史最低 |
| **工会与罢工** | 工会强大，劳工动辄罢工抗争 | 工会濒死或彻底失去意识，罢工率几近于零 |
| **贫富差距** | 贫富差距历史极低 | 贫富分化历史极高 |
| **市场范围** | 国家主权边界内的国家市场 | 无边界的全球化统一市场 |
| **金融与监管** | 金融业处于新政强监管箱子中，无法任意妄为 | 极度自由化，金融资本掌控霸权 |
| **央行角色** | 依附于财政部的附属出纳机构 | 执掌宏观经济命脉的超强核心机构（如珍妮特·耶伦） |
| **议会/代议政治** | 议会拥有实质权力和政策掌控力 | 议会与国会被视作软弱、腐败、自毁且遭人痛恨的无能机构 |
布莱思指出，2008年金融危机爆发后，全球主要央行向金融系统注入了相当于13万亿美元的天量流动性，但实体经济中几乎没有引发任何通胀，这一反常现象恰恰证明通胀机制已被彻底摧毁。与此同时，公众对代议政治的敬畏荡然无存，民众普遍将目光投向了非民选的技术官僚。布莱思一针见血地描绘了这种政治权力的异化：
> “This is why we care about Janet Yellen. Janet Yellen runs the economy, as far as most people are concerned.”
### [27:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1668s) 增长死胡同：工资停滞与靠信用卡支撑的生活
在这张展示体制断层的幻灯片前，布莱思揭示了全球出现极左与极右“特朗普主义”（Trumpism）的深层根源。在新自由主义这套新软件的统治下，整个世界陷入了极低利率、极低通胀乃至系统性通缩的泥潭。中央银行无法拉高通胀，普通工人除非碰上不可思议的超大规模充分就业，否则根本没有任何机制能强迫雇主加薪。工资陷入绝对停滞，经济增长带来的全部丰厚红利通通流向了金字塔尖的极少数人，所有收入不平等的图表都在这一时期直插云霄。
在讲座该部分的尾声，布莱思向在场学生提出了一个看似矛盾的致命问题：在工资停滞、甚至无法指望加薪的残酷世界里，尤其是美国等西方国家的广大普通家庭，究竟是靠什么手段在长达三十年的时间里维持住原有的生活水平与中产消费体面的？
随着布莱思揭晓那个冰冷的答案，整场讲座步入了核心矛盾的死穴：
> “Credit cards.”
普通工薪阶层并不是靠实体工资的增长过日子，而是靠着无休止膨胀的消费信贷、房产次贷与信用卡借贷，强行打肿脸充胖子维持生活水准。这一依赖私人债务掩盖分配矛盾的脆弱机制，直接为日后的系统性金融海啸与民粹主义怒火埋下了引信。
### [28:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1715s) 信用卡国家、通货紧缩与中左翼政党的背叛
Mark Blyth 将美国描绘为一个“信用卡国家”（credit card nation）。在这个社会里，底层民众通过借贷来维持消费，他们之所以不断加杠杆，是因为理论上认为人的生命周期存在消费波动，先借贷消费，未来随着工资上涨便能还清债务。然而残酷的现实是：“工资本就没涨过，所以你只能不断倒卡滚账，让债务越滚越大。”尽管从统计上看，大部分债务总额掌握在富人手中，但债务带来的惩罚性后果却全落在了根本无力偿还的底层群体身上，催生出发薪日贷款（payday lenders）、高利贷等金融掠夺体系。
一旦遭遇通货紧缩，局面就会彻底恶化。通缩使债务的实际价值大幅上升，物价下跌意味着固定金额的合同具有更强的购买力。债权人急于收回资金，而三十年没有涨过工资的债务人根本还不起。此时理应充当底层保护伞的中左翼政党——德国社民党（SPD）、英国工党（New Labour）以及美国的“新民主党人”（New Democrats）——却在 1980 至 2000 年代彻底抛弃了他们。这些政党嫌弃工会与穷人，认定底层选民根本不会出来投票；为了筹集高昂的竞选资金，他们转而迎合有资产、有投票意愿的优胜者阶层，将全社会底层 20% 的人群弃之不顾。
精英阶层还常常编制童话，声称经济会自动调整，那些衰退社区未来会华丽转身变成“科技中心”（tech hubs）。Blyth 毫不留情地戳破这种幻想，指出资本根本不会流向那些地方。他当场反问台下布朗大学的精英学生：“你们上次去克利夫兰是什么时候？对吧，你们根本没去过，事情就是这么简单。”布朗大学的学生毕业后只会涌向纽约、洛杉矶或华盛顿特区，绝不可能去克利夫兰或巴尔的摩。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 通缩陷阱与中左翼政党的选民背离
accDescr: 展示底层薪资停滞叠加通缩导致债务爆发现象，以及传统中左翼政党倒向富裕阶层的全过程
subgraph DebtTrap["债务危机传导"]
A["工资停滞 30 年<br/>底层靠借贷维持消费"] --> B["物价进入通货紧缩"]
B --> C["债务实际价值暴增<br/>债权人强势逼债，债务人无力偿还"]
end
subgraph PartyShift["政治抛弃链条"]
D["传统中左翼政党<br/>(SPD / 新工党 / 民主党)"] --> E["迎合有资产阶层<br/>筹集高额竞选资金"]
E --> F["底层 20% 被系统性遗弃<br/>衰败工业区沦为经济弃地"]
end
C -.->|"求助无门"| F
```
- 底层工人被迫依靠掠夺性发薪日贷款和高利贷生存。
- 精英阶层声称锈带能转型为“科技中心”是脱离现实的谎言，缺乏任何实际投资支撑。
### [30:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=1833s) 中左翼崩溃、债务人反抗与跨越左右的民粹浪潮
在传统左翼政党背叛其核心选民后，金融危机的冲击催生出各路民粹主义力量：希腊的激进左翼联盟（Syriza）、西班牙的“我们能”党（Podemos），以及苏格兰的苏格兰民族党（SNP）。这些运动本质上具有强烈的民族主义色彩，试图夺回国家对经济的主权，抵御全球化的侵蚀，并且欧洲的左右翼运动大多将脱离欧元区视作摆脱危机的共同诉求。与此同时，欧洲传统中左翼遭遇了毁灭性溃败，例如德国社民党在巴登-符腾堡州的选举得票率暴跌至 19%，而英国工党的大本营工人阶级转投了带有种族主义色彩的右翼英国独立党（UKIP）；苏格兰选民则全面流向作为真正左翼替代者的 SNP。
面对新左翼力量的崛起，传统中左翼机构极力打压。正如 Mark Blyth 所形容的那样：“当中心左翼看到新左翼冒头时，他们只想在浴缸里把他们活活掐死。”希腊的齐普拉斯（Alexis Tsipras）刚一上任就遭到德国社民党铺天盖地的打压；当科尔宾（Jeremy Corbyn）接管英国工党时，新工党建制派立刻对其发起大规模的人格抹黑，指控其为反犹主义者和种族主义者。
在宏观经济层面上，当前这场危机与 1970 年代截然相反，如今演变为一场“债务人反抗”（debtor's revolt）：“还不起、不想还，那就把票投给那个能吹响号角的人（Trump/trumpet）。”过去三十年建立的体系是一个“债权人天堂”，如今全社会对利益分配失衡的不满爆发为左右两条宣泄途径。Blyth 指出，如果把法国国民阵线（National Front）、特朗普以及希腊左翼联盟的经济纲领放在一起对比，过滤掉极右翼关于种族和移民的言论，“只看他们在经济层面的主张，它们其实惊人地相似。”
- 传统中左翼面临惨烈的选举溃败（如德国社民党在地方选举跌至 19%）。
- 英国蓝领工人因缺乏工党保护而流向极右翼的英国独立党（UKIP）。
- 齐普拉斯与科尔宾等体制外左翼均遭到本党建制派或欧洲中左翼盟友的扼杀。
### [33:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2010s) 大象曲线、皮凯蒂不等式与特朗普主义的根源
谈及深层根源，Mark Blyth 引用了布兰科·米拉诺维奇（Branko Milanović）著名的“大象曲线”（Elephant Chart）来解析全球收入分配。全球化让全球最贫困人口（如非洲乍得，日均收入从 40 美分提升到 3 美元）获得了一定增长，而最大的赢家是以中国和东亚为代表的新兴市场群体。然而，大象曲线在第 59 到第 67 百分位数处剧烈下探，这里恰恰对应着美国底层及中产阶级中位数收入群体。这群人的实际收入三十年来几乎停滞，而全球最顶端 1% 的超级富豪却卷走了绝大多数增量利益。正是这一处于收入谷底的庞大群体构成了反抗主力，若有左翼选项他们可以转向左翼（例如伯尼·桑德斯的受挫），没有时他们便倒向特朗普。
同时，托马斯·皮凯蒂（Thomas Piketty）提出的 $r > g$（资本回报率大于经济增长率）更是这一不平等结构的制度加速器。Blyth 结合自身经历幽默地拆解了这一机制：他在波士顿好地段投资了一套公寓，虽然自己平日开着大众汽车并已搬到普罗维登斯居住，但那套公寓每年能带来 6% 到 7% 的实际资产增值。他直言不讳地说：“我什么都没干，没去装修它，也没付出任何劳动，它的年化回报率就是 6% 到 7%；而实体经济的增长率只有 2%。如果你只拿工资，你分到的就是那 2%；如果你坐拥资产，你拿到的就是 6% 到 7%——欢迎来到不平等生成器。”
针对特朗普主义是否会长存，Blyth 驳斥了将支持者一概斥为“一窝不可救药的种族主义者”（bucket of irredeemables）的简单道德定性。如果将三分之一的选民直接打成种族主义者并将其排除在政治之外，绝不是严肃的公共政策。现实中消除外部族群威胁感知极其困难，尽管在统计学上“一个人在美国陆地上被鲨鱼袭击的概率都比遭遇穆斯林恐怖分子袭击要高”，但在意识形态偏见的媒体煽动下，公众的感知与事实严重脱节。而在移民问题上，特朗普宣称要驱逐 1100 万到 1150 万人，历史上只有约瑟夫·斯大林执行过如此规模的人口驱逐；但 Blyth 随即讽刺道，民主党人也无需自鸣得意，因为“奥巴马在其八年任期内实际上也驱逐了 300 万人”。
- 大象曲线表明，过去三十年全球化最大的相对受害者正是欧美发达国家的蓝领与传统中产阶级。
- 资本回报率（约 6%-7%）常年压制经济实际增长率（约 2%），导致无资产的工薪阶层被体制性甩开。
- 特朗普驱逐 1100 万移民的主张在近代历史上仅斯大林曾付诸实践，而奥巴马政府在八年间亦遣返了多达 300 万人。
### [037:52] 驱逐移民、基建神话与无法挽回的传统制造业
Mark Blyth 直言，关于驱逐无证移民的强硬言论实际上不过是在巴拉克·奥巴马既有政策基础上的翻倍，这解释了为何全美的无证移民群体深感不安。然而转向经济层面，他探讨了是否还有其他解法。眼下，财富再分配与资本性支出重新回到了政治议程之中。希拉里·克林顿与唐纳德·特朗普都誓言要在基础设施上大举投资，而美国确实迫切需要基建：根据美国土木工程师学会（American Society of Civil Engineers）的数据，全美三分之一的桥梁被认定为存在安全隐患。如今国家可以以长达 25 年的负实际利率借款，借此契机修建未来 50 年所需的基础设施理应是显而易见的选择，因此无论大选谁胜出，基建工程大概率都会推行。
但荒谬之处在于竞选承诺的另一面。希拉里、特朗普，甚至包括伯尼·桑德斯，都在兜售“我们将带回体面的好工作”这一承诺。Blyth 对此毫不客气地反驳道：“No, you're not. That's simply not going to happen.”（不，你们带不回来。这根本不可能发生。）现代工厂的生产模式早已不是三十年前的面貌，像印第安纳州加里（Gary）那样的老式工业城镇已经不复存在。如今承担类似岗位的工人们，是在像富士康（Foxconn）那样规模如小型城市一般的厂区里，在极其严苛、缺乏劳工权益的环境下每天工作 19 个小时；美国根本不可能也不应该把这种工作搬回国内。
从技术机理上讲，资本在制造业边际上不断替代劳动力，生产流程对人工的需求注定越来越少。即便像德国这样拥有顶级工程师和强大出口能力的国家，虽然面临熟练技工短缺，但其工程制造与出口部门所雇佣的绝对人数随时间推移也在不断缩减。机器自动化剥夺的不只是低技能穷人的生计，高技能工人同样难逃被替代的命运。至于另一条所谓“向大企业和富人征税”的方案，现实阻力同样巨大：富人拥有巨额财富与政治权力，绝不甘愿被加税，更何况整个国会早已被这批人买通。欧盟对苹果公司（Apple）开出 130 亿美元的罚单，作为报复，美国监管机构转头就对德意志银行（Deutsche Bank）处以 140 亿美元的罚款，这种监管博弈根本无法解决底层就业的根本困境。
- 全美三分之一的桥梁被美国土木工程师学会评为不安全，基建翻修刻不容缓。
- 借贷成本处于长达 25 年的极低甚至负利率区间，提供了罕见的低成本融资窗口。
- 自动化与机器换人不仅威胁非技术劳动力，高技能出口与工程岗位同样面临资本对劳动力的替代。
- 欧美跨大西洋监管博弈升级：欧盟对苹果公司罚款 130 亿美元，美方随即以 140 亿美元罚单反击德意志银行。
---
### [040:00] 数字化颠覆与“黄油-橄榄油线”背后的欧洲困局
随后 Blyth 展示了来自前一周某场行业研讨会的幻灯片，揭示数字化颠覆并非未来猜想，而是已经落地的现实：全球最大的出租车公司没有一辆出租车（Uber），最大的住宿提供商名下没有不动产（Airbnb），最大的电信话务企业没有自己的通信基建，最具价值的零售商没有实体库存（Alibaba），最受欢迎的媒体平台不生产任何原创内容（Facebook），成长最快的新型银行没有实体货币储备，最大的电影分销巨头名下没有一家影院（Netflix），主流的移动软件巨头也并不自己编写各类应用（Apple / Google）。在这样一个轻资产平台通吃的世界里，政治家高呼“带回传统好工作”完全是脱离现实的天方夜谭。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 欧洲经济失衡与制度锁死结构图
accDescr: 展示以德国和东欧为代表的出口顺差国与南欧消费逆差国在欧元区机制下的矛盾
subgraph SurplusGroup ["顺差阵营（北部与东欧）"]
DE["德国核心制造业"]
EE["东欧供应商 (罗马尼亚/波兰)<br/>高素质工程师 / 共产主义时期数理底子 / 1/3劳动力成本"]
GlobalMarket["全球消费市场 (中美等国)"]
DE -->|"转移供应链"| EE
EE -->|"整车组装出口"| GlobalMarket
GlobalMarket -->|"带来巨额外贸顺差"| DE
end
subgraph DeficitGroup ["逆差阵营（南部消费国）"]
South["法国、西班牙、意大利等国<br/>内需消费主导 / 无法单独贬值货币"]
Compact["2012年《财政契约》<br/>禁止财政扩张与赤字托底"]
Austerity["陷入永久性紧缩与经济收缩"]
South -->|"签署并受制于"| Compact
Compact -->|"强制推行"| Austerity
end
SurplusGroup -->|"会计恒等式：顺差必然对应逆差"| DeficitGroup
Austerity -->|"激起民意反弹与政治极化"| Populism["民粹主义抬头 (如法国国民阵线)"]
```
面对民粹势力的全球蔓延——即“全球特朗普主义”（Global Trumpism），其既有左翼版本也有右翼版本。Blyth 指出，相较于美国，他对欧洲的前景要悲观得多。他甚至认为特朗普在美国可能只是一阵“过眼云烟”（flash in the pan），但欧洲则彻底陷入了系统性泥潭，而其核心死结正是极左和极右民粹政客都看穿的病因：欧元是一场灾难。
欧洲传统上存在两条分界线：一是北部的新教徒与南部天主教徒之分；二是幽默的“黄油-橄榄油线”（看餐桌上抹黄油还是蘸橄榄油就能分清南北纬度）。而如今，这条文化分界线精准映射出了全球贸易的赢家与输家。德国通过将整个零部件供应网络转移至东欧（如罗马尼亚），完成了其局部的“东欧全球化”。东欧国家保留着共产主义时代留下的扎实数理与工程教育底子，那里的工程师能以仅为德国本土三分之一的薪资完成同样高水准的技术工作。美国人开的梅赛德斯-奔驰（Mercedes-Benz），其变速箱很可能就是在罗马尼亚制造组装完毕后再运往海外。德国与东欧组成的生产网络向中美市场疯狂出口，赚得盆满钵满。
然而，以法、意、西为代表的“橄榄油区”国家属于内需消费型经济体，无法玩转这种重度出口的游戏。在国民账户恒等式下，一国的外部顺差必然对应其他地方的赤字。如果这些国家拥有独立货币，大可通过货币贬值或宏观调整来缓冲冲击；但欧元将大家捆绑在一起，加之 2012 年签署的《财政契约》（Fiscal Compact）近乎荒唐地剥夺了各国的财政政策空间。顺差国不消费，逆差国又被禁止扩大赤字，南欧只能以永久性的财政紧缩来强行压制国内经济。Blyth 警告称，迫使法、西、意民众勒紧裤腰带搞永久紧缩，来成全德、波、罗向中美出口发财，最终必然激怒选民，彻底引爆像法国国民阵线（National Front）这样的极端政治力量。对于即将到访布朗大学进行对话的欧盟委员会经济与金融事务总司长马尔科·布蒂（Marco Buti），Blyth 表示必须要当面质问这一长期制度性死结。
- 平台经济颠覆传统产业形态：全球最大交通、住宿、媒体、零售提供商均以零资产、无库存或去雇佣化模式运作。
- 供应链转移重塑欧洲格局：德国借助东欧（如罗马尼亚）低成本、高技能的工程人才，打造极具杀伤力的外贸顺差机器。
- 2012 年《财政契约》从制度上锁死了欧元区各国的财政自主权，使南欧深陷被动收缩的陷阱。
---
### [044:39] 长期停滞、美国的缓冲垫与“政坛小丑”时代
随后 Blyth 转向了长期停滞（Secular Stagnation）理论。该理论认为全球有效需求不足，普遍储蓄过度，从而将全球利率压至极低水平。亚洲（尤其是中国）有着庞大的储蓄盈余；如今依靠出口顺差的欧洲也在疯狂储蓄；全球唯一还在过度消费而不储蓄的大型经济体只剩美国。如果美国也开始储蓄，根据凯恩斯主义的“节俭悖论”（Paradox of Thrift），全球经济将因总需求断崖而彻底崩溃；某种意义上，正是美国人管不住自己的消费欲才勉强维系了世界运转。
从乐观的视角看，这种低利率低通胀的环境未尝不可持续。近期就业报告已经出现薪资增长的苗头，若美国能维持哪怕仅仅 2% 的年化经济增长，在极低通胀和接近负值的实际利率支撑下，通过复利增长也能创造出一种类似 1950 年代缩水版的“长期稳定性”（Secular Stability）。虽然这种状态乏味无趣——金融资本无法大搞投机把戏，大宗商品价格受抑，通胀低迷，但它足够让人安稳生存。只要政府足够明智，抓住极低利率窗口大搞基础设施投资拉动经济，美国完全有能力消化并击败特朗普主义。因此，特朗普现象在美国更像是一段短暂的插曲。
最后，Blyth 谈及当下的政治人物生态，将其与英国的鲍里斯·约翰逊（Boris Johnson）相提并论。他严厉批评道：“There's a class of politicians now which can only be described as buffoons, opportunistic idiots. And they will do anything and say anything.”（现在的政坛出现了一批只能被形容为小丑、投机白痴的政客，他们为达目的可以不择手段、信口雌黄。）Blyth 坦言，无论是特朗普、英国脱欧阵营的右翼头面人物，还是形形色色的左翼政客，骨子里都充斥着极度投机主义的色彩，这是整个当代代议制政治共同面对的恶化现实。
- “节俭悖论”制约全球经济：全亚洲与欧洲均处于储蓄盈余状态，若非美国维持净消费与逆差，全球经济将陷入收缩瘫痪。
- “长期稳定性”假设：2% 的适度增长配合负实际利率与基础设施投资，足以构成对抗民粹主义的经济护城河。
- 鲍里斯·约翰逊与特朗普被 Blyth 归类为典型的投机型政客，反映出跨大西洋两岸政治精英“小丑化”的普遍趋势。
### [46:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2798s) 不可持续的全球化体系与盲目摸索的宏观政策
Mark Blyth 指出，当前全球经济体系正走向全面瓦解。这不仅体现在中左翼与中右翼政党传统支持盘的崩溃，更在于这套体制在经济层面上根本无法维系：一个超高竞争度、极度紧张、高度碎片化的全球生产网络，其需求端完全建立在过度举债（levered up the wazoo）的普通大众之上——底层大众通过不断借贷来填补长年停滞的实际收入，而这条借贷链条如今已经彻底碰壁瘫痪。面对此种困局，建制派精英与政策制定者毫无头绪，所有人都茫然地盯着美联储，争论着“到底加息还是不加息？加 0.25 个百分点？还是不加？”Blyth 嘲讽道，这简直荒谬透顶，四分之一点在眼下的系统性危机面前根本无足轻重。从手足无措地推出量化宽松（QE）到如今盲目维持，精英层处于一种“磕磕碰碰、晕头转向”的状态，而这恰好给边缘极端力量创造了崛起窗口。
“Because if it looks like the people who run the world don't know what they're doing, then that's when these fools get their chance.”（因为如果治理世界的人看起来根本不知道自己在干什么，那正是这群蠢材获得机会的时候，Blyth 说道）。伴随这种失控，全球经济一体化可能面临实质性大倒退，传统政党政治格局被彻底重组，欧盟极可能沿着出口国（如德国）与消费国（如南欧）的裂痕走向分裂。无论是左翼还是右翼，所有新兴民粹政党都在呼唤“政治重新国家化”（re-nationalization of politics）。右翼诉诸国家、祖国（patrie）和本土人民的民族主义叙事，指责外来者；左翼则采取偏向国际主义与阶级批判的视角，将矛头对准全球富豪阶层（global plutocrats），但其最终诉求同样是夺回国家控制权、对抗全球化。如果这些力量在世界范围内形成临界规模（critical mass），未来的走向将充满不可预测的动荡。Blyth 总结道，特朗普绝非偶然的个人现象，而是经历 30 年乃至 70 年制度演变而形成的“全球特朗普主义”（Global Trumpism）的重要一环。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 全球化体系崩溃与政治再国家化逻辑
accDescr: 展示生产与消费脱节如何导致建制派政策失灵，并最终推动左翼与右翼的民粹再国家化浪潮。
subgraph EconCrisis["经济与政策困局"]
A["碎片化全球生产网络"] --> B["靠过度借贷支撑的消费端"]
B --> C["家庭负债触顶与增长停滞"]
C --> D["央行政策失效<br/>(微幅加息/无休止QE)"]
end
subgraph PoliticalFallout["政治后果与回潮"]
D --> E["建制派统治能力遭受信任危机"]
E --> F["政治再国家化浪潮"]
F --> G["右翼: 民族/祖国叙事与排外"]
F --> H["左翼: 反对全球富豪与夺回本土主权"]
end
```
---
### [48:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2932s) 问答开始：宪政体制对特朗普执政能力的物理约束
在全场掌声中，主持人称赞 Blyth 完成了一项不可思议的分析——将混乱的大选现实剥离个人攻击的浮躁表面，以严谨的学术视角厘清真实的历史经济趋势。随后进入问答环节，一位自称持更悲观态度的观众提问：从比尔·克林顿离任时的互联网泡沫破裂与随后的轻微衰退，到左翼普遍批评克林顿时期去监管政策埋下了 2008 年金融危机的祸根；奥巴马执政八年来好不容易让局势稍微稳定，如果特朗普真的当选，是否会把好不容易拼凑起来的政策成果彻底撕毁？
对此，Blyth 给出了出人意料的冷静预判。他直言，就算特朗普当选，在实际经济制度层面上也“翻不起多大风浪”。因为美国宪法体制最精妙的设计，就在于总统本人根本没有立法提案权（cannot introduce legislation）。
“He can hum, he can haw, he can jump up and down. He can throw his toys out of the pram. He can do whatever he wants. But he cannot actually write a law. Only Congress can.”（他可以支支吾吾，可以上蹿下跳，可以像巨婴一样大发脾气，他爱怎样就怎样；但他根本写不了法律，只有国会才能立法，Blyth 如此评论）。
即便共和党横扫参众两院并拿下白宫，国会与特朗普之间能达成共识的议题也极为有限：
- **低劣的基础设施建设**：比如耗巨资去修筑一道巨大的“愚蠢边境墙”。Blyth 直斥其荒唐，因为所谓“墨西哥非法移民潮”在现实中根本不存在——当前的净人口流动早已反转，回流墨西哥的人数多于涌入人数，非法入境规模已跌回 1961 年的历史低点，“伙计，他们根本不在那儿，筑墙纯属政治作秀的巨额财政支出”。
- **扩大军备开支**：国会极乐意为闪闪发光的新式军事装备大笔拨款，推动财政赤字扩张。
- **贸易保护主义难以兑现**：在华对美出口的企业中，有 30% 至 40% 是像苹果（Apple）这样的美国本土跨国企业。特朗普深知自己的基本盘利益所在，绝不可能冒着激怒全美消费者和苹果 CEO 的风险，对 iPhone 强加高额关税。
- **针对脆弱群体的政治成本**：尽管体制能卡死立法，但总统的行政裁量权会让无证移民、少数族裔以及所有非极右翼威权支持者的生活变得极度恐惧，驱逐出境的人数可能翻倍甚至翻三倍。
- **常规富豪减税**：毫无疑问会推动新一轮减税方案，但绝大部分红利依旧会流向顶层 1%，而“这只是美国过去 30 年一直在干的常规操作（de rigeur）而已”。
---
### [51:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3115s) 多德-弗兰克法案的隐蔽威力与美国基本盘韧性
面对提问者对制度稳定被逆转的担忧，Blyth 进一步反驳，指出外界低估了美国监管体制的顽固韧性。以饱受争议的《多德-弗兰克法案》（Dodd-Frank Act）为例，Blyth 认为它是近年来最成功的政策之一，其成功的奥秘就在于“用 2,200 页纸慢慢耗死华尔街”（death by 2,200 pages）。如果一名国会议员试图与杰米·戴蒙（Jamie Dimon，摩根大通 CEO）或高盛（Goldman Sachs，Blyth 戏称为“吸血乌贼”）展开正面决斗，华尔街只需从口袋里掏出 10 亿美元雇佣游说大军，就能让该议员政治生涯终结，到头来“能在阿肯色州南部选个抓狗官就算走运了”。政客中唯有伊丽莎白·沃伦（Elizabeth Warren）这样极其精明强悍的人物才敢直面巨头，绝大多数议员既无能力也无胆量。
因此，监管者采取了官僚式迂回战术：用 2,200 条细则彻底埋葬华尔街。法案要求第三方托管（escrow）高管奖金、强制大幅提高资本充足率、强行压低杠杆率，并强迫所有交易配备合规审查。Blyth 打趣道，台下的年轻人如果想进金融圈，现在合规岗（compliance officer）正处于疯抢状态。其直接结果是，由于无法利用超高杠杆放大收益，金融机构原有的商业盈利模式大幅缩水，整个金融行业被迫去杠杆并走向萎缩。这种将金融业关进合规牢笼的长期机制，让系统整体变得更加安全。此外，美国宏观经济依然维持着坚固的基本面：
- **主权债务无违约之虞**：美国能以负利率轻松发行 25 年、30 年甚至 50 年期国债，市场上根本没人真正担忧美国联邦债务的违约风险。
- **资产避险需求超然独立**：特朗普无法阻挡海外资金配置美国核心资产的狂热需求。例如波士顿的公寓依然深受中国投资者追捧，因为他们高度担忧本土产权安全，急需在美国确立受法律保障的私有财产权，这种底层资本动力完全与白宫由谁掌权无关。
---
### [54:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3251s) 硅谷的技术颠覆幻想与全民基本收入的税收死穴
随后，一位居住在旧金山的观众将话题引向技术颠覆（technological disruption）与硅谷推崇的“全民基本收入”（Guaranteed Basic Income / Mincome）。该观众质疑，硅谷技术官僚将基本收入视为解决自动化与失业的灵丹妙药，但它充其量只是一张止痛创可贴，最坏的结果甚至可能沦为拆解传统社会福利国家的开端。另一位在湾区及斯坦福大学学术圈旅居 18 个月的观众随即补充：硅谷流行一种极客式的乐观论调，认为“技术取代劳动是件大好事，因为人类本来就不该受劳役之苦；只要向最顶层的 1% 征收 10% 的财富再分配，大家就能在 Uber 和 Airbnb 构成的共享经济里自由支配时间”，这种激进甚至带有反资本主义色彩的想法是否具备可行性？
Blyth 认同这种愿景在理论上的诱人之处，但他随即切中要害指出：所有基本收入乌托邦的根本死穴，在于“你到底怎样才能把钱从富人手里掏出来”（the problem is getting your hands on the cash）。Blyth 分享了自己在面向共和党和华尔街金融听众演讲时屡试不爽的经典互动：
- 他会当场询问台下听众：“你们当中有多少人投票支持了米特·罗姆尼（Mitt Romney）？”
- 每次都会有大批听众举手。
- Blyth 紧接着追问举手的原因，并澄清这绝非党派偏见或道德公正审判，而是抛出一个冰冷的财务事实：“你们知道顶级富豪米特·罗姆尼当年的实际有效税率（effective tax rate）是多少吗？只有 9%。”以此揭穿了寄希望于向顶级阶层顺畅抽税来维系基本收入的幻想。
### [55:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3351s) 税收避税、离岸财富与分配不公
马克·布莱思（Mark Blyth）直言不讳地指出了当前税制的不公。像米特·罗姆尼（Mitt Romney）这样的超级富豪，只需缴纳 15% 的资本利得税，并通过在特拉华州、亚利桑那州和开曼群岛设立避税所和注册公司，实际税率只有 8 到 9 美分每美元（8%-9%）。相比之下，布莱思自己每赚 1 美元就要缴 33 美分（33%）；如果算上所有的州税和地方税，他缴纳的是德国水平的高税率，得到的却堪称“第三世界的公共服务”。这种巨大的不公平虽然还没完全演变成主流政治议题，但一旦成为核心议题，就足以支撑起激进的再分配诉求——即最直白的“把该死的税交了”（pay your goddamn taxes）。
富人常辩称自己缴纳了税款的大头，布莱思对此驳斥道：“从总量来看确实如此，但你们在边际税率上严重作弊，你们欠的税远比交的多得多。”他引用了调查记者尼古拉斯·沙克森（Nicholas Shaxson）的著作《金钱暗流》（*Treasure Islands*），指出全球富豪藏匿在避税港的离岸财富高达 29 万亿美元，这还没算上艺术品仓储等其他隐秘的藏富手段。如果社会契约的基石是“你在哪里赚钱，就在哪里纳税”，而如今跨国资本在全世界赚钱却几乎不缴税（例如爱尔兰、波兰的避税操作），那么追回这 29 万亿美元的逃税款将能进行极其庞大的社会再分配。
- **实际税率悬殊**：富豪通过避税架构实际税率仅约 8%~9%，普通中产及专业人士（如大学教授）综合税率高达 33% 以上。
- **离岸隐藏财富规模**：《Treasure Islands》估计全球避税天堂藏匿的资金达 29 万亿美元。
- **跨国避税套利**：企业与富豪利用不同司法管辖区（如开曼群岛、爱尔兰等）完全切断了纳税与社会生产地的绑定关系。
---
### [57:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3436s) 自动化、平台资本主义与“我们为什么还要工作”
布莱思将话题引向更深层的问题：人类为什么还要工作？经济学中最基础的概念是“劳动与闲暇的权衡”（labor-leisure trade-off）——随着社会越来越富裕，人类理应工作得更少，而不是变得越来越朝不保夕、拿着更糟糕的薪资去加班更长时间。造成这一逆转的根源在于技术背后的产权分配。布莱思以 Uber 为例：他非常喜欢 Uber 的服务，车随叫随到，没有传统出租车那种糟糕的气味，而且相比传统出租车牌照垄断者对贫困移民司机的残酷抽成，Uber 让司机拿到了更高比例的收入。然而，一旦 Uber 研发出自动驾驶汽车，全美瞬间就会有 800 万个就业岗位被抹去。
如果不提供全民基本收入（UBI）等补偿，这 800 万人该何去何从？资本主义的伦理建立在“人人必须工作”的前提上，但如果系统根本不再需要这些人呢？Uber、WhatsApp 以及未来掌握机器人技术的极少数赢家，将拿走所有的回报，导致 1% 的群体占据国家财富的绝对大头。布莱思主张，历史上的解决方式就是反垄断（反垄断法案、拆分贝尔电话等），而今天的应对之道是“将机器人的收益民主化”（democratize the returns to robots）。尽管短期内很多需要人际情感连接的岗位（如全美增长最快的护老院护士，没人放心让机器人搬动自己的老奶奶）无法被取代，但大量可替代岗位的劳动者已经被逼入绝境。布莱思总结道：“在全球只需 10% 人口工作就能生产出超级过剩财富的世界里，我们为什么还要勉强人人去上班？”
“如果你用机器人把我替换掉，而我能拿着收入去钓鱼，我根本不在乎，那太好了。”——马克·布莱思
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: Automation and Wealth Concentration Flow
accDescr: 自动化技术导致资本所有者通吃、就业毁灭与最终需要反垄断拆分并共享收益的逻辑流。
subgraph TechDisruption["技术颠覆与劳动力挤出"]
A["自动化 / 自动驾驶技术成熟"] --> B["瞬间消灭数百万岗位<br>(如 800 万专职司机)"]
B --> C["劳动者陷入无工可作<br>与收入断绝困境"]
end
subgraph WealthConcentration["财富高度集中"]
A --> D["所有经济回报归于平台与资本所有者<br>(如 Uber、WhatsApp)"]
D --> E["1% 的群体掠夺大部分国家财富"]
end
subgraph PolicyChoice["应对路径"]
C & E --> F{"传统反垄断与产权再分配"}
F --> G["拆分科技垄断巨头"]
F --> H["将机器人的收益民主化<br>(全民分享自动化红利/基本收入)"]
end
```
---
### [01:01:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3661s) 中国的资本外流、反腐机制与美国的“杠铃经济”
现场听众提问中国经济增速放缓对全球格局的影响。布莱思援引著名债券投资人比尔·格罗斯（Bill Gross）对中国投资的评价——“基于信仰的投资”（faith-based investing），因为没人真正知道 GDP 和银行系统的底层真实数据，但机器只要还在轰鸣运转、商品还在源源不断送往沃尔玛，系统就维持着脆弱的平衡。布莱思指出，中国当下最值得关注的核心现象是惊人的资本外逃。政治学家杰森·沙曼（Jason Sharman）曾告知他一项中国银行几年前完成的内部优秀经济研究，该报告由于数据过于惊人本不应公开，却被误发在官网上短短 1 分 38 秒便被外界截获：报告显示过去 15 年间，共有 11,000 名高层官员和党内人士卷走了 1,000 亿美元外逃。
这解释了为什么西方城市的公寓楼价暴涨。为了遏制这种流失，高层展开了大规模反腐。但在一个缺乏独立司法系统的体制中，“腐败”实际上扮演着产权保护担保人的角色——投资者不靠法院，而是靠当地的书记和官员（布莱思将其比作普罗维登斯腐败的前市长巴迪·西恩西 Buddy Cianci）来解决争端并充当保险单。当这些地方“保护伞”在反腐中被整肃，投资者便失去了最后的制度庇护，唯一的避险选择就是加速把钱转往美国。这种反腐客观上在短期内加剧了资本外逃与不稳定。
然而，美国在全球体系中扮演着独特的“杠铃经济”（barbell economy）角色：
- **两头通吃**：全球经济景气时，投资者在美借出廉价美元去海外博取高收益；海外局势恶化动荡时，资本迅速清算回流美国换回美元，导致美国资产（如公寓地产）在无论好坏的情况下都能被推高。
- **全球储蓄过剩与通缩压力**：中国的高储蓄倾向加剧了全球“储蓄过剩”（savings glut），导致全球总需求不足、缺乏通胀，并长期压低了长期利率。
- **冲击可控性**：布莱思认为，即使中国发生硬着陆，从经济体量上看其核心产出大约相当于“两个德国”。两个德国崩溃虽重创全球，但也并非彻底无法承受。
“在健身房你能举起很重的杠铃，是因为两边配重完美平衡；而美国是全球唯一的杠铃经济体。”——马克·布莱思
### [01:05:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=3903s) 共享经济、金融期权化与产权的民主化
一名听众提问指出，面对当前的经济困局，除了暴力革命之外，必须迎来一场思想层面的革命——重新思考自由、工作以及市场美德的本质；因为亚当·斯密（Adam Smith）所设想的那种“诚实努力工作便能获得丰厚回报”的高增长良性经济模式已不复存在。马克·布莱斯（Mark Blyth）接管了这一论点，并将其核心归结为我们如何处理“财产权”（property rights）。以 Airbnb 和 Uber 为例，Airbnb 出租的客房规模已经超过了全球所有传统酒店的总和。从金融角度看，这些平台实质上是在全球每一处不动产上创造了金融“看涨期权”（financial options），房主可以通过行权将闲置生活空间变现。布莱斯半开玩笑地提到，他前一晚与经济学家布兰科·米拉诺维奇（Branko Milanovic）探讨在网络上见过最奇葩的期权化资产是什么，米拉诺维奇的回答竟然是“内衣”——诸如 Aubade 或 Chantelle 等昂贵内衣平时常年躺在抽屉里，如今网上居然有人出租它们。然而问题的实质在于：整个社会把汽车、住房等一切资产都期权化了，但真正的暴利却全部流向了拥有网站品牌与平台规则的顶层掌权者。
面对这种赢家通吃的失衡，布莱斯提出了两种走向：要么让平台寡头攫取一切，导致社会矛盾急剧恶化；要么实现“技术的民主化”，让资产拥有者保留绝大部分收益。布莱斯以身边的极客朋友布雷特（Brett）为例——布雷特在普罗维登斯的家中远程管理通用电气（GE）的云计算平台，一天他提着一打啤酒和一个 3TB 的硬盘来到布莱斯家，把一台旧 Mac 电脑改造成了 Plex 媒体服务器，里面存有 1,500 部高清电影。布莱斯在洛杉矶机场用 iPod 连接 Wi-Fi，就可以随时远程点播家里的任何一部电影并精确续播。如果去百思买（Best Buy）购买这套商业解决方案需要花费数千美元，但 Plex 开发者却选择向全社会免费开源。布莱斯指出，正如沙发客（Couchsurfing）不涉及金钱交易一样，共享经济原本蕴含着巨大的积极潜能，关键在于我们要选择互利共享，还是任由提取暴利的平台中介垄断特权。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 平台垄断与民主化共享经济模式对比
accDescr: 对比传统平台资本主义与民主化开源平台的收益分配结构
subgraph PlatformCapitalism["平台资本主义模式 (Uber / Airbnb)"]
A1["闲置资产期权化<br/>(住房、车辆、日用品)"] --> B1["中心化中介平台<br/>(抽取高达30%佣金)"]
B1 --> C1["绝大部分利润流向所有者与资本家"]
B1 --> D1["劳动者/资产提供者获得边缘报酬"]
end
subgraph DemocraticCommons["民主化替代模式 (Plex / 开源叫车平台)"]
A2["社区开源协议与平台"] --> B2["点对点直接共享与交易"]
B2 --> C2["100% 服务收入归劳动者所有"]
B2 --> D2["零抽成或极低运维边际成本"]
end
```
- 现场观众补充了得克萨斯州奥斯汀（Austin）的真实案例：在当地政府立法限制 Uber 运营后，市民自主编写并推出了开源免费的拼车应用程序，彻底取消了 Uber 原先抽取的 30% 中介费，将全部收入交还给司机，实现了技术与产权的实质民主化。
- 布莱斯对此表示高度认可，并推荐了英国记者兼经济学家保罗·梅森（Paul Mason）所著的《后资本主义》（*PostCapitalism*）。布莱斯总结道：“最终我们并不需要所有人去从事传统工作，但我们的伦理却坚称不工作者毫无价值；梅森试图解决的正是如何打破这一困境。”
- 谈及寡头垄断与平台民主化的抉择时，布莱斯警告说：“Or you let the owners take the lot. And if you do that in an already winner-takes-all world, that gets ugly very, very quick.”（“要么你任由资产所有者拿走全部利润。而如果你在一个本就赢家通吃的世界里这么做，局面很快就会变得极其难看。”）
---
### [01:11:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4296s) 货币政策的黄昏与被遗弃的财政工具
随后有观众提问：既然微调利率与量化宽松（QE）等常规货币政策的效果已经越来越弱、近乎失效，那么激发经济增长的替代工具和政策选项究竟在哪里？布莱斯回应称，西方社会自 1970 年代以来掀起了亲市场的新自由主义变革，核心逻辑就是剥夺国会和议会的经济治理权，防止政客为了拉选票而制造通货膨胀，转而将整个宏观经济全权托付给以艾伦·格林斯潘（Alan Greenspan）为代表的央行技术官僚。布莱斯直言这种制度安排荒谬绝伦：央行官员手中仅有两个极其简陋的工具——调高或降低货币价格（利率），以及买入或卖出资产；然而全社会却把创造经济增长的重任硬塞给他们，而经济增长本质上是由数百万与央行毫无关联的普通人自主决策所产生的有机结果。
布莱斯疾呼，我们早已“迷失了方向”（lost the plot），真正应当问责的是过去 25 年里无所作为的国会与财政当局。国会议员们数十年来沉迷于给富人减税和起草无关痛痒的荒诞法案，却彻底废弃了国家的基础设施建设职能。美国在 1950 年代曾凭借强大的财政魄力建成了遍布全国的州际高速公路网络，而如今不仅纽约肯尼迪国际机场（JFK）简陋破败得沦为“国家耻辱”，就连布朗大学所在的普罗维登斯市，其道路坑洼不平的惨状也根本配不上全球最富裕国家的地位。布莱斯强调，世界不需要更多无用且浪费时间的孤立货币政策，而是需要货币政策与积极的财政扩张深度配合。就在布莱斯阐述完基础设施与财政投资后，现场一名学生举手抛出了全场最具张力的问题：在布莱斯过去一个小时所讲解的错综复杂的政治经济结构中，唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）究竟能懂得其中的多少？
- 央行调控的局限性：中央银行只有调节利率和买卖资产两项职能，无法凭空解决生产率停滞与有效需求不足等结构性顽疾。
- 财政投资的历史与现状：战后美国曾主导了具有远见的全国公路网建设，如今却在基础设施维护上严重缺位，导致公共交通设施与地方道路陷入深度老化。
- 谈及央行行长们无法承受之重时，布莱斯尖锐地反问：“Why are they charged with and given the responsibility for producing growth, which is an organic outcome of the personal decisions of millions of individuals who have nothing to do with the central bank?”（“为什么要把创造增长的责任强加给他们？增长分明是由数百万与央行毫无干系的人根据个人决策而产生的有机结果。”）
### [01:14:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4446s) “意外政客”的历史传统与无知的边界
面对有关唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）是否属于“意外政客”的提问，马克·布莱斯（Mark Blyth）指出，这并不意味着特朗普对此一无所知，因为历史上绝大多数政客本身就是时代的意外产物。布莱斯举出自己最喜欢的意外政客——哈里·杜鲁门（Harry Truman）为例：杜鲁门曾四次开男装杂货店破产，对强势的岳母怕得要死，但牌技极为高超，完全是依靠腐败的党派政治机器被推上高位，可他最终却挽救了“新政”（New Deal）。杜鲁门并不需要精通一切国家大事，他只需要清楚自己的位置与重点，然后将具体细节全权交由乔治·马歇尔（George Marshall）去处理。特朗普和当年的罗纳德·里根（Ronald Reagan）在本质上就是这种模式的延续。
布莱斯反倒对那些自命不凡、认为自己无所不知的政客感到担忧，例如比尔·克林顿与希拉里·克林顿夫妇，以及当年的吉米·卡特（Jimmy Carter）。政客一旦自以为无所不知，就会着手推进自己其实根本无法理解的政策。正如布莱斯所评价的：“知道自己无知的边界，我认为对于执政者而言实际上是一件非常、非常健康的事情。”（“And sometimes, it's better knowing the limits of your ignorance.”）尽管人们无法指责特朗普具备这种自我认知，但布莱斯强调，过于自负往往比不求甚解带来更严重的治理灾难。
### [01:15:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4523s) 民主与市场的根本冲突：钞票票决与选票分配
现场听众凯文（Kevin）抛出了关于全球特朗普主义的深层矛盾：一方面是政治民主与现代经济之间的断裂，例如伯尼·桑德斯（Bernie Sanders）和伊丽莎白·沃伦（Elizabeth Warren）反对《跨太平洋伙伴关系协定》（TPP），揭露外国公司（如加拿大企业）可以通过投资者与国家争端解决机制起诉主权政府，而欧盟内部的技术官僚和欧洲央行（ECB）也对民选政府构成了实质性控制；另一方面则是左翼政治脱离阶级分析后，多元化倡议可能引发反弹。布莱斯肯定了凯文的观察，直言这精确地描述了当下的核心困境。
布莱斯用极其凝练的政治经济学逻辑剖析了这种张力：市场的底层分配原则依靠“金钱”（cash），而民主制度的底层分配原则依靠“选票”（votes），两者在逻辑上是完全正交、彼此冲突的。过去维系这两者的关键纽带是累进税制，但这一机制生效的前提是人人都照章纳税。然而，当富人和资本开始偷税避税、削减公共税负时，国家财政就会出现巨额赤字。政府为了回避增税的政治压力，选择以发债代替征税，从而积累起庞大的主权债务。债务催生了债权人与债务人之间的阶级对立与紧缩博弈。布莱斯指出：“最简单的理解方式是，市场通过现金来分配，而民主通过选票来分配，它们是正交的原则。”（“The simplest way of thinking about it is, markets allocate through cash, and democrats allocate through votes.”）如今这种制度性对抗重新爆发，只是因为我们告别了20世纪四五十年代人人都老老实实纳税的时代。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 市场与民主的分配冲突
accDescr: 展示市场依靠金钱分配与民主依靠选票分配的矛盾，以及税收纽带断裂后导致的债务动态
subgraph 分配原则的对立
A["市场原则：依靠现金/资本分配"]
B["民主原则：依靠选票/权利分配"]
end
subgraph 维系纽带破裂
C["传统桥梁：累进税制"]
D["资本避税与减税"]
end
subgraph 衍生后果
E["财政赤字与债务堆积"]
F["债权人对峙债务人（紧缩与民粹冲突）"]
end
A <-->|"根本矛盾（正交逻辑）"| B
A & B --- C
C -->|"税基流失"| D
D --> E
E --> F
```
### [01:17:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4671s) 多元化、身份政治与美国腹地的文化脱节
围绕种族主义反弹与多元化政策，凯文指出新自由主义统治下资本在全球肆意流通，导致包括底层白人男性在内的普通大众收入两极分化、预期寿命下降，而建制派民主党人却似乎觉得“只要顶层精英里有足够比例的女性和非裔，经济两极分化就完全可以接受”。布莱斯回应称，这种身份议题被政治极化利用的现象不仅发生在美国，在欧洲也普遍存在——例如法国警察在海滩上强行勒令穿“布基尼”（Burkini）穆斯林泳衣的妇女脱掉衣服，堪称最荒谬的微观警察国家行为。
在美国本土，奥巴马政府司法部全力介入的“中性厕所”（gender-neutral bathrooms）争议便是最鲜明的案例。从法理和民权的角度看，这一斗争具有重大的象征意义：它关乎选民权利、人身尊严以及“国家是否有权裁定谁是人、谁不是人”，每个人理应享有自主决定去哪里上厕所的基本权利。然而，这一崇高议题在美国腹地（heartland）的大众眼中，呈现出的面貌却完全变了味——普通劳动者只会震惊于华盛顿的政客居然整天在为“谁能在哪间厕所小便”大费周章。布莱斯打趣道，正如自己有时和妻子斗嘴时会开玩笑说“你下一步还想要什么，投票权吗”，任何合法的权利诉求在历史上的某些特定时刻都可以被反对者描绘得极其荒诞可笑。布莱斯直言：“因此，在任何特定时刻，关于人格、多元化和控制权的问题，无论其本身是否合理，都可以被描述得荒唐可笑。”（“So at any moment in time, issues of personhood, diversity, control, etc, can be made to seem ridiculous, regardless of whether they are or not.”）
### [01:20:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4856s) 东亚例外论与“全球特朗普主义”标签的诞生
现场听众提问指出，既然日韩等东亚国家在过去20年里也经历了经济停滞与萧条，为什么这种极端激进的民粹主义浪潮主要爆发在西方，而没有在东亚普遍蔓延？布莱斯赞同这更像是一种“西方特朗普主义”，并具体分析了东亚体制的独特性：
- **日本的独特人口与债务滑行道（Sui Generis）**：日本拥有全球最老龄化的人口，民众一旦拿到资金就会购买本国国债；由于极度排斥外来移民，且视国债为代际资产，日本的老人最终会把债券留给子女，直到整个社会的资本存量被漫长而缓慢地消耗殆尽。这构成了一条极为奇特且漫长的“通缩平稳滑行道”。
- **东亚传统政治与社会结构**：日韩等经济体历史上具有高度的等级制、威权传统、父权结构，以及与公民社会深层绑定的强有力执政党组织，激进民粹主义的生存土壤较难成型。
- **新兴民粹的边缘显现**：尽管体制存在压制力，类似苗头在亚洲并非全无踪迹。例如菲律宾的罗德里戈·杜特尔特（Rodrigo Duterte）正是典型的右翼民粹产物；日本自民党（LDP）在经历失去政权的挫折后重返执政，也拿出了更加激进的国家主义与民族主义修辞。
布莱斯在结尾幽默地道出了这个讲座标题的真实来历：他当时在希腊接受采访，一时偷懒随口造了“全球特朗普主义”这个词，结果被媒体人打上了 `#globaltrumpism` 的推特标签并疯狂传播。布莱斯笑着总结道：“这完全是一个西方故事，绝对是。我只是因为在希腊接受采访时偷懒，才随口把它叫做‘全球特朗普主义’。”（“This is totally a Western story, absolutely. I just happened to call it "global Trumpism because was in an interview in Greece and I was lazy.”）一个即兴发明的词汇，就这样阴差阳错地演变成了一个正式的政治学分析概念。
### [01:23:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4996s) 假如参选参议员：马克·布莱斯的竞选纲领
在问答环节接近尾声时，主持人示意这将是当晚的最后一个问题。一位此前曾提问过的听众站起来抛出了一个假设性问题：学者很少直接竞选公职，但假设布莱斯要以罗德岛州为政治基本盘竞选联邦参议员，他会提出哪四到五项既合理又具有胜选希望的竞选纲领？面对这个半开玩笑的提问，布莱斯随即给出了三项核心政策主张，涵盖税收体系、自动化与劳工保障以及应对气候变化的公共投资。
```mermaid
flowchart TD
accTitle: 布莱斯的施政纲领构想
accDescr: 图表展示了马克·布莱斯设想的三个核心竞选施政方向：税收改革、自动化与工作重构、气候变化公共投资。
subgraph S1["税收改革"]
A["人人纳税，杜绝避税漏洞"]
A --> B["打击离岸藏匿与转移定价"]
end
subgraph S2["劳工与自动化保障"]
C["重构工作定义与社会保险"]
C --> D["防止机器人加剧不平等"]
end
subgraph S3["气候基础设施投资"]
E["大规模公共投资减缓变暖"]
E --> F["保护沿海基建与私人资产"]
end
B --> E
D --> E
```
布莱斯列出的第一项政策纲领是彻底整顿税收制度。他强调原则非常简单：“每个人都必须缴税，没有任何例外，没有任何豁免。”甚至只要能真正提高税收净收入，他愿意考虑降低名义税率。布莱斯指出，在20世纪70年代，企业税占美国总税收的20%，而如今扣除各种扣除项后，实际缴纳比例只有微不足道的2%。各大跨国公司利用离岸账户隐匿资产、转移定价，大搞诸如“双爱尔兰加荷兰三明治”（Double Irish Dutch Sandwich）之类的避税花招。对于这种现象，布莱斯直截了当地斥责道：“胡扯，够了，打住吧！我们受够了。”
第二项纲领是严肃重新思考我们是否必须强迫所有人工作，以应对自动化与机器人技术的冲击。布莱斯指出，如果在一个贫富差距已经极其严重、薪资持续低迷的环境中硬生生加入机器人替代劳动力，无异于自找麻烦。这就好比将医疗保险国有化一样：当全民都获得兜底保障时，反而能省下巨额开支，因为大家不必走投无路时挤爆急诊室。面对自动化浪潮对劳动者的冲击，布莱斯总结道：“在对受害者实际遭遇毫不关心的情况下推行这些变革所带来的破坏性成本，根本无法承受；你需要在这方面提供大规模保险，并且必须以极具创造性的方式来思考它。”
第三项纲领则是被政界长期忽视的大规模公共投资计划，全力应对全球变暖。布莱斯幽默而尖锐地表示，任何继续声称全球变暖是谎言、是虚构阴谋的人，都应该直接被“塞进麻袋用棍子痛打一通”。他分析称，通过征集税收并投入减缓气候变化的基础设施建设，不仅是拯救环境，而且具有极度现实的经济回报——至少它能防止波士顿港口水位上升五英尺，从而保住他那套正由中国投资者支付30年按揭的公寓房产不被淹没。布莱斯自嘲道，从根本上说，拯救地球也是一项“利己”的投资。在全场观众的笑声与掌声中，主持人宣布讲座圆满结束，全场向布莱斯致以热烈掌声。
- 70年代企业税贡献了总税收的20%，如今实际贡献仅为2%左右。
- 自动化背景下对劳工的社会兜底机制被比作全民医保，能从根本上遏制极端社会成本。
- 应对气候变化的基础设施投资能有效防止海平面上升对沿海城市房产造成毁灭性打击。
## Notable quotes
> [01:15:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4523s) The simplest way of thinking about it is, markets allocate through cash, and democrats allocate through votes. — 马克·布莱思
> [01:14:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4446s) And sometimes, it's better knowing the limits of your ignorance. — 马克·布莱思
> [44:39](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=2679s) There's a class of politicians now which can only be described as buffoons, opportunistic idiots. And they will do anything and say anything. — 马克·布莱思
> [01:17:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY&t=4671s) So at any moment in time, issues of personhood, diversity, control, etc, can be made to seem ridiculous, regardless of whether they are or not. — 马克·布莱思
## Mentioned
Mark Blyth, Donald Trump, Margaret Weir, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Alexis Tsipras, Pablo Iglesias, Katja Kipping, Jeremy Corbyn, Nicola Sturgeon, Angela Merkel, Søren Kierkegaard, John Maynard Keynes, Michał Kalecki, Ronald Reagan, Gough Whitlam, Janet Yellen, Branko Milanović, Thomas Piketty, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Marco Buti, Boris Johnson, Bill Clinton, Jamie Dimon, Elizabeth Warren, Mitt Romney, Nicholas Shaxson, Bill Gross, Jason Sharman, Buddy Cianci, Adam Smith, Paul Mason, Alan Greenspan, Harry Truman, George Marshall, Jimmy Carter, Rodrigo Duterte, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, National Front, Sweden Democrats, True Finns, Lega Nord, Golden Dawn, Syriza, Podemos, Die Linke, Five Star Movement, Labour Party, Scottish National Party, Alternative for Germany, Social Democratic Party of Germany, UK Independence Party, Apple, Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Foxconn, Deutsche Bank, Walmart, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, General Electric, Plex, Dodd-Frank Act, NAFTA, Fiscal Compact, Treasure Islands, PostCapitalism
## Video description
Skip ahead to main speaker at 2:17
Watson Institute Student Seminar Series - American Democracy: The Dangers and Opportunities of Right Here and Right Now
Designed especially with Brown undergraduates in mind, but welcoming all members of the University and wider community, this seminar series meets in the weeks both before and after Election Day to analyze what's truly at stake in this election. In the context of American history, contemporary global politics, and current issues in U.S. social, political, and economic affairs, guest speakers will set before the seminar participants the essential issues and then facilitate probing discussions. The seminar's goal is bear witness to a historic election, illuminating the "dangers and opportunities of right here and right now."
Mark Blyth is the Eastman Professor of Political Economy and a Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs.
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkm2Vfj42FY)
Source quotes
[75:23] 马克·布莱思: The simplest way of thinking about it is, markets allocate through cash, and democrats allocate through votes.
[74:06] 马克·布莱思: And sometimes, it's better knowing the limits of your ignorance.
[44:39] 马克·布莱思: There's a class of politicians now which can only be described as buffoons, opportunistic idiots. And they will do anything and say anything.
[77:51] 马克·布莱思: So at any moment in time, issues of personhood, diversity, control, etc, can be made to seem ridiculous, regardless of whether they are or not.
Source quotes
[30:31] Mark Blyth: So what you have is a kind of debtor's revolt against the world that we've built over the past 30 years, which is a creditor's paradise
[75:23] Mark Blyth: The simplest way of thinking about it is, markets allocate through cash, and democrats allocate through votes.
[61:01] Mark Blyth: Corruption is property rights guarantees in a system where you don't have independent courts.
[83:55] Mark Blyth: Because if you're about to basically add robots into a mix of already high inequality and low pay, you're asking for trouble.
[11:43] Mark Blyth: Trumpet support, as I like to call it, right across Europe correlates incredibly strongly with areas that are subject to Chinese import competition.
Original transcript
[0:04] Thanks everyone for coming.
[0:06] This is the second
in a seven part
[0:09] series on a bi-weekly basis
at the slightly unusual time
[0:14] at 7:00 to 8:30 PM.
[0:16] It takes place on Tuesdays,
including election night.
[0:20] The idea was to have an intimate
participatory discussion.
[0:25] Except, for Mark Blythe bigger
rooms are necessary and will be
[0:29] [INAUDIBLE].
[0:31] In a couple weeks,
we'll have Margaret Weir
[0:34] talking about inequality and
Democrats and Republicans.
[0:38] But today, it's Mark Blythe
talking about global trumpism,
[0:42] as you know.
[0:43] Mark is professor of political
economy and political science
[0:47] and International public
affairs at the Watson Institute
[0:51] and the Department
of Political Science.
[0:54] He has studied in
his native Scotland
[0:57] a couple of degrees
before he came to the US
[1:00] and has a PhD from Columbia
and a series of faculty
[1:04] appointments at Johns
Hopkins and has been here
[1:06] for seven years at
Brown University.
[1:10] How time flies.
[1:13] He's got a lot of
deep scholarship
[1:17] on matters of global economy.
[1:19] He's done lots of thinking
about this campaign
[1:23] and the global impact
and the global precedents
[1:26] of the campaign as well.
[1:28] So he's the perfect
person for right now.
[1:30] Even though he didn't watch
all of the debate last night,
[1:32] he might be pressured to
these scholarly topics
[1:35] and will be unsullied by
all the noise that's going
[1:37] on since 10:37 last night.
[1:42] Mark's gonna have about
a half hour presentation.
[1:45] We'll have about an hour of
Q&A and have you out of here
[1:49] by about half past 8:00.
[1:52] And I think it's moment.
[1:54] My mo?
[1:54] My moment has arrived.
[1:56] Marvelous.
[1:57] Can I move the slides with
this, because this is wireless?
[1:59] Yes, you can.
[2:00] So I can do this?
[2:01] Great.
[2:01] OK.
[2:02] Good.
[2:02] Lovely, lovely.
[2:03] See?
[2:04] Win, win for everybody.
[2:05] This is my clicker.
[2:07] It is rather large,
as you can see.
[2:10] So they micced me up
so I can move around.
[2:11] Unfortunately,
you can't do this.
[2:13] You can't do this now
because it's blinding.
[2:16] So I'll be over here.
[2:17] All right, let's get
started, global Trumpism.
[2:20] This is a mini meme.
[2:22] It was even a
hashtag at one point.
[2:24] So when I was in Greece at
the start of the summer,
[2:26] and they were expecting
Greece to blow up again,
[2:28] I did an interview with
often Athens Live, which
[2:30] is a news outfit down there.
[2:32] And they took a segment,
four minute segment
[2:34] in the interview,
in which I basically
[2:36] said the Brits are out
and all that sort of stuff
[2:38] about Brexit.
[2:40] And it actually went viral.
[2:41] It got 1.2 million
Facebook shares.
[2:43] Which is insane.
[2:45] It's since been
reported on Youtube.
[2:46] It's about 100,000 views, etc.
[2:49] And I obviously said something
that resonated with people.
[2:53] One of the things I said
was "Trumpism's global."
[2:55] It's not just about him.
[2:57] And it's also not
just about the right.
[2:58] It's also about
the left, and it's
[3:00] about the fragmentation of
political parties in Europe
[3:03] and elsewhere.
[3:05] So without further delay,
let me get into it.
[3:09] So this is the first one.
[3:11] This is not unique.
[3:12] Let me show you.
[3:13] Can you name the Trumpets?
[3:17] Top left Trumpet.
[3:18] Just do it by political
party rather than name.
[3:20] Top left Trumpet?
[3:21] Marine Le Pen.
[3:22] Yes, exactly.
[3:22] Marianne Le Pen, the younger.
[3:24] Le Pen the younger.
[3:26] And then next up?
[3:28] Swedish Democrats.
[3:29] Although, they're not
democrats and they
[3:31] like being very, very Swedish.
[3:33] Guy down below?
[3:36] The True Finns,
who actually hold
[3:37] the balance of power
in Finnish parliament
[3:39] and are actually quite powerful
in the country as a whole.
[3:42] Next to him?
[3:45] Must be Lega Nord.
[3:47] Lega Nord, exactly.
[3:48] Didn't [INAUDIBLE] Lombardy?
[3:50] Used to be.
[3:51] Used to be.
[3:52] That's Lega Nord.
[3:52] That is Lega Nord.
[3:53] OK.
[3:54] So that's the Italian version.
[3:55] Then the bottom left?
[3:59] I think that's the
Golden Dawn leader.
[4:02] I'm pretty sure that is.
[4:03] That's the Greek one.
[4:05] And then on the right, that's?
[4:08] Viktor Orban.
[4:09] Viktor Orban, leader of
Hungary, the guy who basically
[4:12] is a dictator inside the EU.
[4:14] So there's a lot of this going
on, because if you take Trump's
[4:17] policy pronouncements and racial
stunts and so on and so forth,
[4:21] these guys, they make Trump
look normal, some of them.
[4:24] They're hardcore,
and they're actually
[4:26] in power in some countries.
[4:28] So that's pretty scary.
[4:29] Now what if I told you there
was a left wing version of this?
[4:35] Would you believe me?
[4:36] Let's do the lefty version.
[4:37] Who's at the top?
[4:38] Alexis Tsipras.
[4:39] Alexis Tsipras, who's
prime minister of Greece.
[4:42] And who's next to him?
[4:46] Pablo Iglesias,
leader of Podemos,
[4:49] who regularly poll
between 20% and 25%
[4:51] of the Spanish electorate, which
is part of the reason why Spain
[4:54] can't form a government.
[4:56] And then next?
[4:59] Co-Leader of Die
Linke in Germany.
[5:01] What's her name, Katerina?
[5:02] Katja Kipping.
[5:03] Katja Kipping, right.
[5:04] Basically, German politics
for the longest time
[5:06] has been organized around
an axis of whatever you do,
[5:11] the center right
and the center left
[5:12] must stop the
red-red-green axis.
[5:15] And that's basically
the left bit
[5:18] of the red-red-green access.
[5:20] Next up.
[5:24] [INAUDIBLE]
[5:26] Yes, exactly.
[5:27] Co-Leader of the Five
Star Movement in Italy,
[5:30] who also poll between
20% and 25% of the vote
[5:33] and have done so two elections.
[5:34] And then down at the bottom?
[5:37] Comrade Corbyn, who basically
is doing an internal putsch
[5:41] on the Labour Party and is
about to clear all the blairites
[5:44] and turn it once again into a
proper left wing party in his
[5:46] image.
[5:47] And then Nicola
Sturgeon, who makes
[5:51] a virtue of our government being
the anti-austerity government.
[5:55] Now, the big difference
between these ones of course,
[5:57] we can say that they're
similar in the sense
[5:59] that they've come up now, the
different expressions of voter
[6:03] discontent.
[6:04] But they're very different
on their politics.
[6:05] One of them is avowedly racist.
[6:07] The other one is
avowedly anti-racist.
[6:10] So there's actually
a variation there.
[6:12] But is it simply racism?
[6:14] Or is there something
deeper going on?
[6:17] Now, here's the problem with
dissecting global Trumpism.
[6:20] There's a mini-culture
war going on
[6:22] about how you or rather
what you think Trump is.
[6:26] And if you think, well,
it's all just racism,
[6:28] then we've got some
evidence for that.
[6:31] But probably to that,
the story for Trump
[6:33] went something like this.
[6:34] And this is my version
of Trumpism, in a sense,
[6:37] in a nutshell.
[6:37] So I like to tell
the story this way.
[6:39] There's a guy called Gary.
[6:40] Gary lives in Gary, Indiana.
[6:42] And Gary's 10
years in the union.
[6:45] In 1989, he gets seniority.
[6:48] So he's a line supervisor
with seniority.
[6:50] He's turning 30, gets married.
[6:52] Everything's going great.
[6:53] And he's getting 30
bucks an hour real.
[6:55] Now, who knows why, but
they've been moving the plant
[6:59] and equipment down
South for a long time.
[7:01] I mean, China didn't take
most of the industrialization.
[7:03] The South did.
[7:04] Texas did.
[7:05] North Carolina did.
[7:06] So they've been losing a
lot of the industrial base.
[7:08] He didn't worry about that.
[7:09] But then they signed
this thing called NAFTA.
[7:11] The plant disappeared, the
supplier plants disappeared.
[7:14] And the town takes an
enormous economic hit.
[7:17] So a lot of people move out.
[7:19] The tax base goes down.
[7:20] The schools get worse.
[7:22] And he bootstraps himself, says,
I've never relied than anybody.
[7:24] I'll get another job.
[7:25] They were meant to retrain
him as a computer programmer.
[7:27] That was what everybody said.
[7:29] But the governor
at the time really
[7:30] just gave a shit about tax cuts.
[7:31] So they just cut
the budget for that
[7:33] and handed it out to people.
[7:34] So then he ended up getting
a job in a call center.
[7:37] So he went to 15 bucks an hour.
[7:39] And then five years
later, the call center
[7:41] went from Indiana to India.
[7:43] And now Gary works in his
dotage, very hard, long hours,
[7:47] for 11.67 an hour for
the largest employer
[7:50] in the United States.
[7:51] Who is?
[7:51] Wal-mart.
[7:52] Wal-mart.
[7:52] You know the story.
[7:54] You know the narrative.
[7:55] And every day, Gary
reads in the papers
[7:57] how him and all his mates are
about to be replaced by robots.
[8:00] Because you do, every day.
[8:02] Whatever sector you're in in
the low end of the labor market.
[8:05] Automation, robotation
is going to happen.
[8:07] And the guys in
Wall Street who got
[8:09] bailed out with
everybody else's money?
[8:12] They love this.
[8:13] They're going to make
a fortune off this,
[8:15] all these entrepreneurs, Uber
guys, all the rest of them,
[8:18] they're the ones who'll own
the patents on the robots.
[8:20] And he'll be thrown on a
scrap heap with his mates.
[8:23] And the only person
that actually
[8:25] seems to articulate anything
he gives a shit about
[8:28] is this guy Trump.
[8:28] Now, he knows he's a buffoon.
[8:30] He knows he's a reality TV star.
[8:32] But he's had politician
after politician
[8:34] after politician, every four
years, showing up saying, "Vote
[8:37] for me.
[8:37] Better jobs.
[8:38] Vote for me.
[8:39] More security.
[8:39] Vote for me."
[8:40] And life's got crappier,
and crappier, and crappier.
[8:43] So he has no reason whatsoever
to believe a word they say.
[8:47] So he has a liar on one side and
a bullshit artist on the other.
[8:52] Which one gives you
more possibilities?
[8:55] Now, that's Trump's narrative.
[8:57] That's all about economics.
[8:58] There's nothing
about race in there.
[9:00] So then people started to
investigate the preferences
[9:03] of Trump supporters.
[9:04] And there's a lot of
scientific research on this,
[9:06] and I started to go
through all of that.
[9:08] So here's a few bits.
[9:09] Partly, let's get out
of the Trump area.
[9:11] Let's look at Brexit.
[9:12] So that was a really
interesting case there.
[9:14] And one of the things
that people said
[9:16] was, "oh, this is the
revolts of the have-nots."
[9:18] These are the people who've
been economically deprived,
[9:20] all the rest of it.
[9:21] But when you decompose
the vote, the narrative
[9:24] of taking back
control is the one
[9:26] that people mentioned the most.
[9:28] But right behind it is
anti-immigration sentiment.
[9:30] They don't like immigrants.
[9:32] Rich areas and poor areas
both voted for Brexit.
[9:36] So if it was simply a case
of the poor, and benighted,
[9:39] and the ones that
have been done over
[9:40] by trade deals
and globalization,
[9:42] then that would be the story.
[9:43] But it's not.
[9:43] It's rich and poor.
[9:44] So that implies there's
someone else driving this.
[9:47] What else?
[9:47] The old voted more.
[9:50] And when you poll
them, old people
[9:51] are more racist, right
throughout Europe,
[9:54] than young people.
[9:55] So they show more, and
they're more anti-immigrant.
[9:58] And that seems to be
basically not about economics.
[10:02] Anti-immigrant and
anti-Muslim sentiment
[10:04] in particular, poll after
poll is rising across Europe.
[10:07] We saw the recent humiliation
of Angela Merkel's party
[10:10] in Germany, the
rise of other party
[10:12] called AFD, the Alternative
Fuer Deutschland,
[10:15] who are basically an
anti-immigrant single issue
[10:17] party in that regard,
maybe two issues.
[10:21] The rise of the
authoritarians, when you really
[10:23] start polling these people,
both here in the United States
[10:25] and in Europe, you
find that they have
[10:27] very authoritarian preferences.
[10:29] So if you give them the
standard questions about how
[10:31] do you think kids
should be reared,
[10:33] or what do you think of
this social situation,
[10:35] they stack up time after
time as liking hierarchy,
[10:38] patriarchy-- women should
be in a certain place--
[10:40] very gendered identities.
[10:43] And there's a very
positive association
[10:45] in a lot of the social
psychological literature that
[10:47] underpins this, the
micro-foundations,
[10:49] on this notion of
loss of status.
[10:52] So it's not about how
poor you've because.
[10:55] It's the factor that at one
point, you were top dog.
[10:57] And now you're not.
[10:59] And it's partly blame, but it's
partly an aggression response,
[11:03] and that leads into a very much
more racial and also gendered
[11:06] coding, is what's going on.
[11:08] So actually, it's
all racism, really.
[11:11] But then the economists
started to come back on this
[11:13] and went, hang on a minute.
[11:14] Let's think.
[11:15] What's the counter-factual here?
[11:17] The 25 years of stagnate if
not declining real wages,
[11:22] the shuttering of entire
cities, the hopelessness,
[11:25] the opiate addiction, the
collapse of the lower middle
[11:28] class and upper working class
life expectancy and life
[11:31] chances has just no
effect whatsoever?
[11:34] Because if it's
all racism, that's
[11:36] an incredibly strong
claim about the lack
[11:38] of efficacy of economic issues.
[11:40] I mean, surely there must
be something going on here.
[11:43] And once you start to figure out
that economics isn't just about
[11:46] income, you get into a
very interesting space.
[11:49] Trumpet support, as I like to
call it, right across Europe
[11:52] correlates incredibly
strongly with areas
[11:54] that are subject to
Chinese import competition.
[11:58] So areas that are basically
exposed to trade with China,
[12:01] where they can do
what you can do,
[12:02] either in services or in
trade, very, very high
[12:05] support for these
types of parties
[12:07] and these types of policies.
[12:08] Correlates with
health inequalities.
[12:11] So if you're basically
poor or non-healthy,
[12:13] the chances are you're going to
vote for one of the right wing
[12:16] parties and also, though,
the left wing parties.
[12:19] There's two sides to this one.
[12:21] It correlates incredibly
well with job insecurity.
[12:24] So it's not the fact that
you're being paid less and less.
[12:26] It's you have no control.
[12:29] So of one example of this
from surveys of Brits,
[12:32] if you do ABCD
classifications of jobs,
[12:36] basically lower manual,
upper manual, professional,
[12:39] if you look at
the Cs and the Ds,
[12:42] as recently as 10 years
ago, 30% of respondents
[12:45] said that they had a good deal
of control over their jobs.
[12:48] And now it's 9%.
[12:51] So it's just an
astonishing feeling
[12:52] of being disempowered
and being out of control.
[12:54] And you've heard all
the stories about this,
[12:56] like walking Amazon
warehouses where
[12:58] you walk for 11 miles a day.
[12:59] You're strip searched
on the way in
[13:01] and strip searched on the way.
[13:02] I mean, these are horrible
working conditions.
[13:05] Correlates with low
income over time.
[13:07] I'm going to show you
a slide on this one.
[13:09] And it also correlates
with exposure
[13:10] to technological disruption.
[13:12] So the areas, the jobs that
have been the most affected
[13:15] by technology are the ones that
tend to be the least secure.
[13:19] And all of that feeds
together in the same way.
[13:22] So I'm trying to find a
way to understand Trump
[13:24] on a global scale
that encompasses
[13:26] the left and the
right and is actually
[13:28] attuned to both of these.
[13:29] Because I have no doubt that
a large number of people
[13:32] who support the National Front
or the True Finns are racist.
[13:35] I mean, they're pretty
straightforward about it.
[13:38] Trump maybe doing more of the
dog whistle version of this,
[13:41] but it's the same thing.
[13:43] But the economy matters.
[13:45] So how do they both
drive each other?
[13:47] What's going on there?
[13:48] How does it fit together?
[13:49] So here's the first one.
[13:52] When the Brexit vote
came out, the panel
[13:54] on the left, those dots
are local authorities.
[13:58] So North Providence, East
Providence, Providence,
[14:00] that sort of stuff and basically
change in real earnings.
[14:04] So is it the poor
people or the areas
[14:08] that are voting for Brexit?
[14:10] There's no correlation
whatsoever.
[14:11] So this went viral.
[14:13] Because this proves that it's
not the economics, right?
[14:15] The weird thing is, in the
same paper on the next page
[14:19] there's this one.
[14:21] And what does this one show?
[14:23] If you're earning
eight quid a year,
[14:25] you're 70% or 80% likely--
eight quid an hour--
[14:28] to vote for Brexit.
[14:29] And if you're at the
top end of the income
[14:31] scale, 18 pounds an
hour, so 35, $40 an hour,
[14:35] you've got a 30% chance
of voting for it.
[14:38] So if you look at it not as a
snapshot but as an over time
[14:42] problem whereby some
areas of the country
[14:44] have chronically low wages,
yeah, the economics did matter.
[14:48] So why are we so desperate
to pin it on race
[14:51] and exclude economics
or vice versa?
[14:53] That just seems weird to me.
[14:55] The only reason I
can really think
[14:56] that people want to
do this is because it
[14:58] allows the soft left, who have
been implicated in basically,
[15:02] I will call the defenestration
of working class prospects
[15:05] over the past 25 years,
a get-out excuse.
[15:08] And I'll get back to
that when we go on.
[15:12] This is another one
looking at this.
[15:13] If education and skills
are a proxy for income,
[15:16] then the economics
are still in the mix.
[15:18] So this is percentage
voting to leave the EU,
[15:20] and then the number,
the percentage,
[15:22] that has level four or
higher qualifications, that
[15:25] being equivalent to
community college or above.
[15:27] So massively strong correlation
with education level.
[15:30] And again, over here,
no qualifications
[15:32] at all, the exact
mirror opposite,
[15:34] exactly what you'd expect.
[15:36] So if you are highly educated,
you're probably earning more.
[15:40] You live in an area that's
got less health inequalities.
[15:42] You can see how these things
will snowball and hang
[15:45] together.
[15:46] An illustrator could put
up chart, after chart,
[15:48] after chart, but it shows
there is something in this.
[15:52] Now, what about
that left wing claim
[15:54] that I made, that there's a
left wing variant of this one?
[15:57] So this is the kind of a
narrative that's flying around
[16:00] in the background of all
the economic stories-- we're
[16:03] going to go back to the '30s.
[16:05] There's going to
be another Hitler.
[16:06] There's going to be another war,
the rise of the authoritarians,
[16:09] right?
[16:10] This is the [? meta-meme ?] in
the [? bag ?] of the economic
[16:13] [? arrows. ?]
[16:14] And it's a very
straightforward story.
[16:16] Back in the '20s, we
had financial crises
[16:18] and very deep recessions.
[16:20] Lots of people got
hurt and injured.
[16:22] At that period, they basically
decided that democracy was not
[16:25] doing well, that
politicians were all liars,
[16:28] they were all
bought and paid for.
[16:30] And who did they vote?
[16:31] They voted for the
authoritarians,
[16:32] Mussolini being the classic.
[16:34] The guy made Life Magazine.
[16:36] Tell you how in-house this
became during in the 1930s.
[16:41] When the United States
did its first New Deal,
[16:43] the National Industrial Recovery
Act, the number one visitor
[16:47] to the White House in
1934 was Mussolini's son,
[16:50] in terms of frequency of visits.
[16:52] Because he was busy
cartelizing the whole
[16:55] of northern Italian
industry to protect it
[16:57] against economic shocks.
[16:59] What did they try and
do in the [? NRA? ?]
[17:01] Cartelize American industry,
set prices and wages.
[17:05] We were stealing
from the fascists.
[17:07] Now what happens?
[17:08] Is it true that this
is more of the same,
[17:10] a wonderful Mussolini-Trump
juxtaposition?
[17:12] The left is losing.
[17:13] The Democrats are.
[17:15] And I mean that right
across the world.
[17:16] Democrats are losing.
[17:17] Democracy is in crisis.
[17:18] We've got these authoritarians.
[17:20] Oh no.
[17:20] We're going back to the 1930s.
[17:22] Is that the case?
[17:23] Well, no, Soren
Kierkegaard tells you why.
[17:26] So all the philosophy
buffs in here
[17:27] immediately start laughing
on that one, because why
[17:30] have you got a Soren
Kierkegaard slide?
[17:31] That's really weird.
[17:32] Kierkegaard has
this wonderful way
[17:34] of thinking about the
future, which is, it's always
[17:36] a process of becoming.
[17:38] So you cannot experience
it except in the moment.
[17:41] And once you do, you close
off possibilities of what
[17:44] other future moments can be.
[17:46] So the fact that you've lived
the past means that, really,
[17:48] you cannot relive the past.
[17:49] It's actually
impossible to do so.
[17:52] So if we take that away, then
you're left with, all right,
[17:54] but is there something
similar going
[17:56] on that we can make sense
of that will tell us
[18:00] the directionality, if not
the exact sort of amplitude
[18:03] of what these changes mean?
[18:05] And I think there is.
[18:06] So let's talk about regimes.
[18:08] So the first one
is a diet regime.
[18:10] Some of you might have
tried that at some point.
[18:12] They all fail.
[18:14] There is Gaddafi as a
classic political regime.
[18:16] They all fail.
[18:19] There's Kate's
22,000 pound beauty
[18:20] regime, which may be a success.
[18:23] I don't know.
[18:23] I can't really judge.
[18:24] and then there's a
skin care regime.
[18:26] And I'm not talking
about any of that.
[18:28] I'm talking about
macroeconomic regimes.
[18:30] So what are
macro-economic regimes?
[18:32] They are basically
the way that economies
[18:34] are built institutionally.
[18:36] And it varies across the world.
[18:37] Now, for those of you who
do some of this type of work
[18:39] or are in political
science, economics,
[18:41] there's a whole
literature called
[18:42] "varieties of capitalism."
[18:43] And basically, some countries
look a bit like the US,
[18:46] and some countries
look more like Germany.
[18:48] And that means that the way
that they do skills is one way,
[18:50] and the way that they do
training is another way.
[18:52] And so for example,
in the US, training
[18:54] is done to a general
skills level,
[18:57] and then firms do
most of it in-house.
[18:59] Unions aren't involved.
[19:00] Germany, unions run
the training system.
[19:03] It's heavily integrated.
[19:04] Big firms, big labor,
blah, blah, blah.
[19:06] Now, that's partly
what I'm getting at,
[19:08] but what I'm going at is a
more basic way of thinking
[19:11] about this.
[19:12] Which is how is it that these
different institutions finance
[19:15] skills, training, retirement,
corporate governance,
[19:17] infrastructure, [INAUDIBLE]?
[19:19] How do you do all that?
[19:20] How does it fit together?
[19:21] What's the plumbing
of an economy?
[19:23] And think of this in a sense
as a bit like a computer.
[19:25] How is the hardware assembled?
[19:27] Because once the hardware is
assembled in a certain way,
[19:30] you can write different
software on it.
[19:32] So if you think
about it, capitalism
[19:34] as a set of institutions is
very different from the 1940s
[19:37] to the 1970s.
[19:39] From the 1970s till now,
it's also very different.
[19:42] But what's also changed
are not the institutions,
[19:44] not the way that it's organized
so much as the software that's
[19:47] written on it, the ideas,
the programming, the way
[19:49] that we run the system.
[19:51] So with that in mind,
let's think about how
[19:54] regimes change over time.
[19:56] So think of that
as the hardware.
[19:58] What's the software
at work in the system?
[20:00] So let's go back to
the 1940s, 1943, 1944.
[20:05] So the Allies are
winning the war.
[20:07] There's a commitment clearly to
full employment after the war,
[20:10] primarily because if you
don't do it, the Soviets will.
[20:13] And there was an economics
that went for it.
[20:15] They rewrote the software.
[20:16] And that's John Maynard Keynes.
[20:18] You've heard the line at some
point that "in the long run,
[20:21] we're all dead."
[20:22] And this is the full quote,
and it's worth reading.
[20:24] Because, in a
nutshell, it tells you
[20:25] everything about why this
was new code, why this
[20:27] is a new software for
running the economy.
[20:30] "The long run is a misleading
guide to current affairs.
[20:32] In the long run, we're all dead.
[20:33] Economists set themselves
too easy, too useless a task,
[20:36] if in tempestuous
seasons, they can only
[20:38] tell us when the storm is
long past that the ocean will
[20:41] be flat."
[20:42] So he cared about the short run.
[20:44] Well, why?
[20:45] Because this is how he
thought about deep recessions.
[20:47] Deep recessions are called
depressions for a reason.
[20:49] Because, in a sense,
you're depressed,
[20:52] or your investment
expectations are depressed.
[20:54] If you've experienced very
good times for two years,
[20:58] and then you have two bad days,
you don't rewrite the script.
[21:01] But if you've had two good years
and then you have a bad year,
[21:04] you begin to think differently
about the possibilities
[21:06] for the future.
[21:08] And if you basically drag that
out, that short term starts
[21:10] to become longer, everybody's
investment expectations
[21:14] get depressed.
[21:14] So if you've been in a long
recession for five years,
[21:16] you're a capitalist,
let's open a factory.
[21:18] No.
[21:19] Why not?
[21:19] Because nobody's
buying anything.
[21:21] But if you think that way,
and you think that way,
[21:23] and you think that way,
you all sit on your money
[21:25] rather than investing
it, what happens?
[21:27] You bring about the very
collapse in investment
[21:29] you're trying to avoid.
[21:30] At base, it's primarily
a psychological trick.
[21:33] That was the essence of what
Keynes was trying to do.
[21:35] So the whole thing about
spending, government,
[21:37] all the rest of, it's
turning the expectations
[21:39] in the short run in
a different direction
[21:41] so that investment goes up.
[21:42] That's it.
[21:42] It's totally different.
[21:44] Now, there's a guy called
Kalecki, or Kah-lat-ski.
[21:46] Most of you have
never heard of him.
[21:48] He wrote this thing.
[21:49] This thing is a seven page
critique of his 383 page book,
[21:54] essentially.
[21:55] And he says there's a
big problem with this.
[21:56] I'm a huge fan.
[21:57] Don't get me wrong.
[21:58] Full employment and
all that sort of stuff,
[22:00] fantastic, particularly
after the Great Depression.
[22:02] The commies are a real threat.
[22:03] We want to save capitalism.
[22:05] Even I do, and I'm a lefty.
[22:06] Great.
[22:07] Knock yourself out.
[22:08] Good.
[22:08] but
[22:09] There's a problem.
[22:09] And what's the problem?
[22:10] Well, if you run full employment
as a policy goal forever,
[22:14] you're going to have a problem.
[22:16] Well, how?
[22:16] Everybody will be happy.
[22:17] People will be consuming.
[22:18] We'll have high wages.
[22:19] It'll be nirvana.
[22:20] What are you talking about?
[22:22] How do you pay for high wages?
[22:25] Um, employers pay them.
[22:27] Right, so how do they
get the money to do it?
[22:29] Well, they make more sales.
[22:31] They do it out of profits.
[22:33] And if you run permanently
full employment, then basically
[22:35] the average wage over
time is going to go up.
[22:38] And if it's running
full employment,
[22:40] it's hard to get labor,
because you basically
[22:42] have everybody employed.
[22:43] Then the reservation wage at
the bottom and the median wage
[22:47] is all going to
move up over time.
[22:49] Now, unless profits are
constantly moving ahead,
[22:52] the only way firms can get
away with this is to do what?
[22:55] Jack up prices.
[22:57] But if you're jumping
up prices in order
[22:59] to pay wages, what's happening?
[23:01] What did we call
that in the '70s?
[23:03] Inflation.
[23:04] He predicted it in 1943.
[23:07] And he also said
something fascinating.
[23:08] And he said, once you do
this, capital investment, they
[23:12] no longer have the whip hand.
[23:14] They can't discipline labor.
[23:16] Because they'll strike.
[23:17] They'll do sit-downs.
[23:18] And what else
happened in the 1970s?
[23:20] Huge industrial unrest.
[23:22] So this guy basically predicts
the bug in the software.
[23:28] Or rather, it's a feature rather
than a bug, to use the term.
[23:31] So by the 1970s, this is Britain
in 1979, the famous winter
[23:35] of discontent.
[23:36] This is Australia.
[23:37] You don't think of Australia
as being affected by much,
[23:40] but unemployment on the one
side, inflation on the other.
[23:42] That's Gough Whitlam holding
on to the raft of the economy
[23:45] being buffeted by the waves.
[23:47] And this is Kalecki's
problem-- labor
[23:49] can move costlessly from job
to job and can strike at will.
[23:52] Business can only restore
profits by raising prices.
[23:54] That eats into wages,
provokes more strikes.
[23:56] The result is inflation and
a collapse in investment.
[23:59] Because you know what?
[23:59] You're pissed with
the situation.
[24:01] You are the investor class.
[24:03] You're losing money.
[24:04] Inflation's eating at profits.
[24:06] Labor's eating at profits.
[24:07] You can't make a buck.
[24:08] What are you going to do?
[24:09] This is what else
Kalecki predicted.
[24:14] You're going to fund a
market friendly revolution.
[24:17] You're going to change
the way that people
[24:19] think about the economy.
[24:21] You're going to appeal to the
self-interest of consumers
[24:24] and individuals rather than as
workers and members of unions.
[24:27] You're going to discipline
organized labor.
[24:29] You're going to do the
PATCO Strike in 1982
[24:31] and break organized labor
in the United States.
[24:33] You're going to
globalize supply chains.
[24:35] Hey, try striking now.
[24:37] Because if you do, I'm off.
[24:38] I'll go first to Texas,
and then I'll go to China.
[24:41] So your ability to demand a
wage increase just goes to zero.
[24:44] And at that point in time,
that wonderful stagnation
[24:47] in wages for 60% of
the economy started.
[24:49] Funny that, isn't it?
[24:51] You deregulate finance
to increase capital
[24:53] mobility so that you can
move your money around
[24:55] but labor stays
in the one place.
[24:57] You hand policy
over the technocrats
[25:00] who are charged with one goal
and only one goal-- fight
[25:03] inflation, even
if it's not there.
[25:05] And give them
medals when they do.
[25:08] And then globalize production.
[25:10] Because when you do that,
you're creating supply chains
[25:13] with incredibly thin profit
margins for everybody
[25:15] in the supply chain,
very cheap labor,
[25:17] massive returns back
to the parent company.
[25:20] Why is Apple so damn profitable?
[25:23] That's why.
[25:26] Now, what does this do to
this notion of a regime?
[25:28] Well, think about
the regime that we
[25:29] built between 1940 and 1970.
[25:32] What did it look like?
[25:33] It was a debtor's paradise.
[25:35] Did anybody here take out
a mortgage in the late '60s
[25:38] or in the 1970s?
[25:40] Right, what happened
to your mortgage?
[25:42] Half of it disappeared.
[25:44] Inflation ate it away.
[25:46] You had a fixed rate at 7%
and inflation went to 12.
[25:49] Every year that
happened, somebody else
[25:50] was paying your mortgage.
[25:52] You know who was eating it?
[25:53] The bank.
[25:53] So who was actually
paying for the bank?
[25:55] The guy who owned equity
in the bank, the investor
[25:58] class, these girls at
the front, the ones who
[26:00] are funding that market
friendly political revolution
[26:02] goes, while this is awesome for
you, it's horrible for them.
[26:06] So you get sustained inflation.
[26:09] Oddly, labor's share of national
income hits an all time high.
[26:12] Of course, they're
constantly pushing, right?
[26:14] Corporate profits are
at an all time low.
[26:16] Unions are strong.
[26:17] Inequality's low.
[26:19] Markets are national--
this is crucial.
[26:21] We'll get back to this--
and not international.
[26:23] They're not unbounded.
[26:25] Finance in particular is in its
post-New Deal regulatory box
[26:28] with a lock on it and you can't
do all the stuff you could do.
[26:32] Central banks were check cashing
agencies for the Treasury.
[26:35] They took orders.
[26:36] They were dependent
central banks.
[26:38] And parliaments
actually had power.
[26:40] 30 years later,
after that big market
[26:43] friendly rewriting of the
software, what do we have?
[26:46] Secular disinflation.
[26:48] Since the financial crisis,
global central banks
[26:51] have chucked the
equivalent of $13 trillion
[26:53] into the global money supply and
there's no inflation anywhere.
[26:57] Funny that, isn't it?
[26:59] Comparable share
of income, as we
[27:00] know from Thomas
Piketty and also
[27:02] yesterday from Branko Milanovic,
is at an all time high.
[27:05] The wage here is
at an all time low.
[27:07] Unions are weak to the point of
being unconscious, if not dead.
[27:11] If you do a graph of strike
activity since the 1970s,
[27:14] it does this.
[27:15] And that's true everywhere.
[27:16] There just aren't any.
[27:17] It doesn't work anymore.
[27:20] Inequality-- very, very high.
[27:22] Markets are global.
[27:24] Why?
[27:24] Because then labor can't
piss these people off.
[27:26] It's very simple.
[27:28] Finance is strong.
[27:29] Central banks are strong.
[27:30] This is why we care
about Janet Yellen.
[27:32] Janet Yellen runs
the economy, as far
[27:34] as most people are concerned.
[27:36] How did that happen?
[27:37] And parliaments, Congress, are
not just weak, they're venal.
[27:41] They're self-destructive.
[27:43] They're hated institutions.
[27:45] Very different world.
[27:48] So here's the problem
with the current regime
[27:50] and why that produces both
left and right trumpets.
[27:54] This is the key slide.
[27:56] Think about a world in which
you've got very low interest
[27:59] rates, very low inflation,
if not deflation, systemic.
[28:03] You cannot get inflation up.
[28:05] If you can't get
inflation up and you
[28:07] have no way of
forcing your employer
[28:09] to give you a pay raise, other
than if you just magically get
[28:12] massively full employment, you
get wage stagnation and all
[28:15] the returns go to the top.
[28:17] This is all these graphs on
inequality, the whole nine
[28:19] yards, right?
[28:20] In that world, how have
people, in the United States
[28:23] in particular, but also in other
countries, not so much Ireland
[28:25] and places like that,
but in some countries,
[28:27] how have they
managed to maintain
[28:30] their standard of living?
[28:32] What did they do?
[28:34] Credit cards.
[28:35] Yes, credit card nation.
[28:36] They borrowed.
[28:37] They levered up.
[28:39] So you lever up
on the expectation
[28:40] that there's a life
cycle of consumption
[28:42] and you'll get into debt,
but your wages will go up
[28:45] and then you pay back the debt.
[28:46] But the wages never went up.
[28:47] So you just revolve.
[28:48] You just keep more and
more debt going on.
[28:50] So if you actually look
at debt across the income
[28:53] distributions,
it's actually true
[28:54] that most debt is
held by rich people,
[28:56] but the punishing
effects of debt
[28:57] are held by people at the
bottom who simply can't pay it.
[29:00] Hence you get payday lenders,
predatory interest rates,
[29:03] loan sharks, all the rest of it,
all the nice bits of finance.
[29:07] Now, enter deflation, something
really interesting happens.
[29:10] The real value of debt goes up.
[29:13] If prices are going down and
you have a fixed contract
[29:15] to get a certain
amount of money,
[29:16] that money will buy more.
[29:18] So if you're a creditor,
you want your money back.
[29:22] But if you're on the
other side of the trade
[29:23] and you haven't had a wage rise
in 30 years, you can't pay.
[29:28] Now who's the loser?
[29:30] Who's the loser
in this situation?
[29:31] Who are the political
parties that
[29:32] are meant to protect that part
of the income distribution,
[29:35] that part of the population?
[29:36] It's the center left.
[29:38] And what happened in the 1980s,
and particularly in the 1990s
[29:41] and 2000s, was those
parties, the SPD in Germany,
[29:45] New Labour in Britain,
the New Democrats here,
[29:49] basically give up on them.
[29:50] I don't like unions anymore.
[29:51] I don't like those bottom
people, the poor people.
[29:53] They don't show
up to vote anyway.
[29:55] I need resources to fight
my electoral campaign.
[29:58] I need you lot.
[29:59] I need people who
are going to vote,
[30:00] people with assets,
people who have done well.
[30:02] So everybody starts moving
up and the bottom 20% just
[30:06] get dumped.
[30:07] And then we can tell
ourselves stories
[30:09] about how it's all going
to magically adjust,
[30:11] and these communities will
be reborn as tech hubs.
[30:13] No, they won't.
[30:14] There's no investment.
[30:15] You wouldn't go there.
[30:16] When's the last time
you went to Cleveland?
[30:18] Right, you don't.
[30:19] As simple as that.
[30:19] You don't.
[30:20] Everybody who leave Brown,
where are you going to go?
[30:22] You're going to go to New York.
[30:24] You might go to LA.
[30:26] You're going to go to DC.
[30:27] You're not going to Cleveland.
[30:28] You're not going to Baltimore.
[30:29] You're not going to
any of these places.
[30:31] So what are you left with?
[30:33] Well, the traditional
left parties
[30:34] abandoned their
core constituencies.
[30:36] Who pops up in their shadow
after the financial crisis
[30:40] in a moment to stress?
[30:42] Think about Greece-- Syriza.
[30:45] Think about Spain-- Podemos.
[30:47] Think about Scotland
and the SNP.
[30:51] These are populist movements.
[30:53] These are nationalist
in the sense
[30:55] that they want to regain
control of the national economy.
[30:59] They want to shield
it from globalization.
[31:01] The one thing many of them have
in common, both left and right
[31:04] in Europe, they all
want out of the euro.
[31:07] Because they see that as the
cause of many of their ills.
[31:10] But if you look at the
vote sure of these parties,
[31:12] they are collapsing.
[31:14] The SPD got 19% in
Baden-Wuerttemburg
[31:17] in its last election.
[31:18] I mean, that's just getting
absolutely kicked in the face.
[31:21] What happened to Labour
last time in Britain?
[31:22] They were meant to
win the election.
[31:24] They got walloped.
[31:26] Basically, the working classes
voted for UKIP, the right wing
[31:30] racist party.
[31:31] And in Scotland, because they
had a left wing alternative,
[31:34] they didn't vote for
the racist party.
[31:35] They voted for the
SNP, because there
[31:37] was a genuine left alternative.
[31:40] So in that part of the
world, what you see
[31:42] is the death of the center left.
[31:44] And when the center left
see the new left coming up,
[31:47] they try and strangle
them in the bathtub.
[31:49] That's why Greece and
Tsipras was absolutely held
[31:52] under the water.
[31:53] The first criticisms of Tsipras
the minute he took the job?
[31:56] The German Social Democrats
right out of the gate.
[31:59] So what is it happens when
Corbyn takes over Labour?
[32:02] All the New Labourites?
[32:03] Massive character assassination.
[32:05] He's an anti-semite.
[32:06] He's a racist, all this
sort of stuff going on.
[32:08] Really interesting politics.
[32:10] Now, go to the other side here.
[32:11] Who are the winners
here, enter deflation?
[32:13] Well, it's the opposite of
your story in the 1970s.
[32:17] So who is it this time?
[32:18] Can't pay, won't pay,
will vote for a trumpet.
[32:22] So what you have is a
kind of debtor's revolt
[32:25] against the world that we've
built over the past 30 years,
[32:27] which is a creditor's paradise.
[32:29] So what you see is a left wing
expression and a right wing
[32:32] expression, a racist expression
and a non-racist expression
[32:36] of fundamental
discontent with the way
[32:39] the rewards of the
system have been
[32:40] skewed over the past 30 years.
[32:42] And what you see is then the
rise of populist right wing
[32:45] nationalists parties,
particularly on this side.
[32:47] It's all about
re-nationalizing markets,
[32:49] anti-austerity coalizations,
anti-globalization
[32:52] on both the left and the
right, particularly in Europe,
[32:55] and anti-trade, anti-euro.
[32:57] So if you take the website of
the National Front and Trump
[33:04] and Syriza.
[33:05] And I'm not yanking it.
[33:05] You can do this at home,
folks, if you can read
[33:08] Greek and things like that.
[33:09] But no, they actually have
an English page, right?
[33:11] But if you look at that and
filter out all the National
[33:14] Front stuff about overt
racism and immigration,
[33:16] just don't click on the
immigration link, right?
[33:18] Just look at their
stuff on the economy.
[33:20] They're remarkably similar.
[33:22] It's really amazing
when you do that.
[33:25] So why is this happening?
[33:30] This has been much critiqued,
but it's still true.
[33:33] Branko's got a reply in
The Financial Times today,
[33:35] a re-formulaiton of this.
[33:37] But this is the global
income distribution.
[33:39] It's the elephant chart.
[33:40] It's the elephant in the
room, quite literally.
[33:43] So here's where people are in
the global income distribution.
[33:47] Here is the poorest person
in the world, literally.
[33:49] And here is the richest
person in the world.
[33:51] So what's been happening?
[33:52] Well, basically,
if you are in Chad,
[33:56] you've had massive
income growth,
[33:58] but you went from
$0.40 a day to $3.
[34:01] So let's not get too excited.
[34:03] If you're up here, you're China.
[34:05] And that's where most
of the gains have been.
[34:07] So you take China,
you take East Asia.
[34:09] It's been doing really well.
[34:10] That's high growth.
[34:12] Right here, where it
starts to go down,
[34:14] 67 percentile, thereabouts.
[34:15] Actually, it's 59% percentile.
[34:17] That's the poorest person
in the United States.
[34:22] That's the American middle
class, defined median salary
[34:25] of the middle class.
[34:27] Haven't been doing
so well, have you?
[34:29] And then the people like me?
[34:31] I've been getting a
bit of the upside.
[34:32] But really, all the gains
have gone to the super rich.
[34:36] So if that's the way the
gains have been distributed,
[34:38] you borrow this to there.
[34:41] That's not just Trump support.
[34:43] You do that for
any country, you'll
[34:44] find out that's the
left wing support too.
[34:46] It's that section
of society that
[34:48] can flip either left or
right, if there's a left wing
[34:51] alternative.
[34:51] It's just in a lot
of places, there
[34:52] aren't Bernie was in many ways
the left wing alternative,
[34:55] but he was roundly defeated.
[34:57] And it's all about this.
[35:02] Piketty has another reason
for why this happens,
[35:05] the famous R is greater
than G. Really easy
[35:07] to think about this.
[35:08] I have a condo in Boston.
[35:10] I bought it at the right time.
[35:12] It's a really nice building.
[35:13] I now have princelings
driving Lamborghinis
[35:16] around the garages and all that.
[35:17] While at least they're
Maseratis, right?
[35:19] Trust me, I drive a Volkswagen.
[35:20] We moved out.
[35:21] We're down in Providence.
[35:22] Love it.
[35:22] It's great.
[35:23] Keep the place in Boston.
[35:24] Why?
[35:25] It's going up at about
6% to 7% a year real.
[35:29] So just holding it, I
mean, I'm not earning this.
[35:32] I'm not doing.
[35:32] I'm not improving it.
[35:34] Just, that's it.
[35:35] The returns that asset
are 6%, 7% a year.
[35:38] What's the rate of
growth in the economy?
[35:40] 2%.
[35:41] So if you have
wages, you get that.
[35:43] If you have assets,
you get that.
[35:45] Welcome to the
inequality generator.
[35:47] So this is baked into the cake.
[35:50] Now, you can critique R,
G, all the rest of it,
[35:52] but the fact is, that's
the way the world looks.
[35:56] Now, is Trumpism here to
stay in such a scenario?
[36:01] Well, it depends
upon the diagnosis.
[36:03] Now, this is one Rosa and
I spoke about briefly.
[36:05] And she sent me some
really helpful links,
[36:07] and I looked through them,
and I thought about them.
[36:09] And if it's all racism,
if you basically say,
[36:11] these people are irredeemables
in a bucket of irredeemables.
[36:14] They're all racist, right?
[36:15] If he doesn't win the
election, what do you do?
[36:17] Do you burn them?
[36:19] Right?
[36:19] I mean, what exactly
do you do you do?
[36:21] You just say to a third of
the electorate, no, I'm sorry,
[36:23] you're racist.
[36:23] We just can't deal with you.
[36:25] Sod off, right?
[36:26] Because that's not exactly
good public policy.
[36:29] Now, what you can do,
in an ideal world,
[36:30] is you can look to countries
that have actually done
[36:33] a much better job of this, etc.
[36:35] And we can become Canada.
[36:37] It's not going to happen, is it?
[36:38] You just know it's
not going to happen.
[36:40] Building inclusive institutions
that genuinely respect
[36:44] multiculturalism, plural
identities, gender, etc.
[36:47] it's bloody hard, even under
the best circumstances.
[36:51] And trying to do that as
a public policy reaction
[36:53] to a perceived set of racists,
I'm not sure how that works.
[36:58] You can reduce
threat perceptions
[37:00] from outsiders to insiders.
[37:02] So basically, you
can stop being scared
[37:04] of the people you're scared of.
[37:05] So statistically, the
following is true.
[37:07] You have more chance of being
attacked by a shark on land
[37:11] then you haven't been
attacked by a Muslim terrorist
[37:14] in the United States.
[37:15] It's impossibly long odds.
[37:17] But the perception is
completely different.
[37:19] And people act upon perceptions.
[37:21] So how do you detune
the perceptions?
[37:23] That's another really tough
public policy problem,
[37:25] particularly when you have an
ideologically biased media, who
[37:28] have a whole agenda in promoting
those types of diversions.
[37:32] You can always burn
immigration and deport people.
[37:34] Well, Trump wants to 11
million, 11 and 1/2 million.
[37:37] The last person who did
11 million deportations
[37:39] was Joseph Stalin.
[37:41] It's funny how we don't
make that kind of analogy.
[37:43] But just in case you're
feeling smug about yourself
[37:45] if you're a Democrat, Obama
has deported 3 million
[37:48] over his tenure over
the past eight years.
[37:50] So if Trump comes
in and hits six,
[37:52] he's actually just doubling
what Obama's already done.
[37:55] It's no wonder the undocumented
in this country feel insecure.
[38:00] And of course, after that,
I don't know what to do.
[38:03] Now, again, if it's mainly
economics, can more be done?
[38:09] Because in principle,
you can do.
[38:10] Redistribution and
capital expenditures
[38:12] are back on the agenda.
[38:13] We knew that both
Clinton and Trump want
[38:15] to spend on infrastructure, and
God knows the country needs it.
[38:18] One third of all bridges
are deemed unsafe
[38:20] by the American
Society of Engineers.
[38:22] We can definitely do better.
[38:24] We can borrow at negative
interest rates for 25 years.
[38:27] Why would you not
build everything
[38:29] you need for the next 50 years?
[38:30] So you know that
that can be done,
[38:32] and it probably will be done,
regardless of which one of them
[38:34] wins.
[38:35] But here is the weird one.
[38:36] Both of them-- and
this is where I
[38:37] fault Bernie as well for this.
[38:39] We're going to
bring the good jobs.
[38:40] No, you're not.
[38:42] That's simply not
going to happen.
[38:43] Because you don't make
stuff in factories the way
[38:46] we used to 30 years ago.
[38:47] There are no Garys anywhere.
[38:50] The people who are
the equivalent to Gary
[38:51] are working 19 hours
a in a Foxconn thing,
[38:54] which is the size
of a small city
[38:56] with absolutely terrible
rights and all of it.
[38:59] So do you really want
to try and bring that
[39:01] back to the United States?
[39:02] And technically,
capital substitutes
[39:04] for labor at the margin in
manufacturing processes.
[39:07] You need less and
less labor overtime.
[39:09] So even the Germans, who
are fantastic engineers
[39:12] and exporters, they have a
shortage of skilled engineers,
[39:14] but the absolute number of
people employed in that sector,
[39:17] in the export and engineering
sector, is falling over time.
[39:19] Because you substitute for it.
[39:21] So it's not just the
poor and the unskilled
[39:23] that are going to be
robotized out of a job.
[39:25] It's actually the highly
skilled is just as vulnerable.
[39:27] So how are you going
to bring the jobs back?
[39:30] There's another
way you can do it.
[39:31] And you could
basically do the "get
[39:32] corporates and the rich
people to pay taxes."
[39:34] Well, the problem with getting
rich people to pay taxes?
[39:38] They're also powerful
and they don't like that
[39:40] and they have all the money.
[39:41] So it's very hard to do
that, particularly when
[39:43] your Congress is bought and
paid for by the same people.
[39:46] So you can fine
Apple 13 billion.
[39:49] And then in retaliation,
the Americans
[39:52] will fine Deutsche
Bank 14 billion.
[39:56] What happens?
[39:57] And then of course,
there's the whole issue
[39:59] of technological disruption.
[40:00] Now, this is the one I've
been hinting at, robotics,
[40:03] all the rest of it.
[40:04] And that whole thing
about job insecurity
[40:06] driving all of these fears.
[40:07] I'm going to show you a slide.
[40:08] It's amazing.
[40:09] Watch this.
[40:09] This is from a conference
that happened last week.
[40:12] Guy I know who was there picked
it up on and tweeted it out.
[40:16] The digital disruption
has already happened.
[40:19] World's largest taxi
company owns no taxis.
[40:22] Largest accommodation
provider has no real estate.
[40:24] Largest phone companies have
no telecoms infrastructure.
[40:27] The most valuable
retailer has no inventory.
[40:30] Most popular media owner
creates no content.
[40:33] Fastest growing banks
have no actual money.
[40:35] World's largest movie
house owns no cinemas.
[40:38] And the larger software
vendors don't write the apps.
[40:42] We're already there.
[40:44] Now, what does it
mean to bring back
[40:46] the good jobs in
that kind of world?
[40:49] It's gone.
[40:50] It's different.
[40:51] So how does this play out?
[40:54] Because you do have
global Trumpism.
[40:56] And there is a left version.
[40:57] There is a right version.
[40:59] I'm guessing most
people in this room
[41:00] would be more comfortable
with the left version
[41:02] than the right version.
[41:03] You don't strike me as
overly racist, but you know,
[41:05] you never know your audience.
[41:07] Europe an even deeper
problem with this, though.
[41:10] And this is why I'm more
pessimistic on Europe
[41:13] than I actually am
on the United States.
[41:16] I think Trump could be
a flash in the pan here
[41:18] for various reasons
I'll go into.
[41:19] But I think Europe's
really screwed.
[41:22] And it actually has
to do with something
[41:23] that the trumpets of the
left and right in Europe get,
[41:26] which is that the
euro is a disaster.
[41:28] And here's why.
[41:30] The way they used
to talk about Europe
[41:31] as a joke was that it was
the Protestants in the north
[41:34] and Catholics in the south.
[41:35] And the other one was the
olive oil-butter line.
[41:37] So you knew what
country you were in.
[41:39] If you were putting
on butter on bread,
[41:41] you were in the north and
olive oil was in the south.
[41:45] There's a great New
Yorker cartoon from years
[41:47] ago, where two older guys
are sitting in a restaurant,
[41:49] and the waiter comes up
and puts something on.
[41:50] And the caption
is, "remember when
[41:52] they used to give us butter?"
[41:54] Just that cultural change.
[41:56] But there was the
olive oil-butter line,
[41:58] that are actually now maps onto
something very interesting,
[42:00] which is basically who exports
to the rest of the world
[42:03] and earns money and who doesn't.
[42:05] So what you've got,
basically, in short form
[42:08] is the Germans moved
all their parts
[42:10] suppliers into Eastern Europe.
[42:12] They did a globalization but
only within Eastern Europe.
[42:16] And when you get
to Eastern Europe,
[42:17] you get to a place
like Romania, you
[42:19] find that you've got very
highly skilled workers, really,
[42:23] really good engineers,
great mathematics education.
[42:25] It goes back to the Communist
era and the whole notion
[42:28] of independence that they had
then, all that sort of stuff,
[42:30] so technical schools etc.
[42:31] So you're getting
people who can do
[42:33] all the stuff you
can do in Germany
[42:34] for a third of the price.
[42:36] So if you drive a Mercedes
in the United States,
[42:38] there's a very good chance that
the transmission was actually
[42:41] built and assembled in
Romania, then shipped over here
[42:44] and bolted together.
[42:45] And it's a German car.
[42:47] So think about what that means--
technological disruption,
[42:49] supplies chains, etc.
[42:51] So if you're Eastern
Europe or you're Germany,
[42:53] you're selling to the
Chinese and Americans,
[42:55] you're making out like a bandit.
[42:56] So if you look at the
surplus of these countries,
[42:58] their export surplus is huge.
[43:00] Now, here's the problem.
[43:02] You look at France,
and you look at Spain,
[43:03] and you look at Italy,
most of Italy at least,
[43:06] they can't play that
game, because they're not
[43:08] big export countries.
[43:09] They're large
consumption economies.
[43:11] Now, if they had
their own money,
[43:13] if somebody is running
a surplus, then
[43:14] something else logically
has to be running a deficit.
[43:17] And if they had their own
money, they could essentially
[43:19] devalue or whatever.
[43:21] You can do lots of things
to protect yourself.
[43:22] But you're all sharing
the same currency.
[43:25] And they've also signed this
set of agreements in 2012
[43:27] called the Fiscal Compact.
[43:29] Which is insanity.
[43:30] Which basically bans fiscal
policy in the eurozone.
[43:34] So what this means
is that there's
[43:36] an identity in the
national accounts
[43:38] between external surpluses
and internal deficits.
[43:40] Basically, if you're
running a big surplus,
[43:42] somebody else has
to run a deficit.
[43:44] But if you don't allow
them to run the deficit,
[43:46] the only thing they
can do is permanently
[43:48] constrict their economy.
[43:50] So you're asking, basically,
the French, and the Spanish,
[43:52] and the Italians to run
permanent austerity budgets so
[43:56] that the Germans, the
Poles, and the Romanians
[43:58] can make money hand
over fist selling
[43:59] to the Americans
and the Chinese.
[44:02] Do you think that's going to
piss off the National Front?
[44:05] Do you think that
might actually,
[44:07] if it continues for
several years, really
[44:08] push them over the edge?
[44:11] And they show no signs of
peddling that one back.
[44:14] So at the end of this
month, the director general
[44:17] of economic and social affairs
for the European Commission,
[44:19] a very powerful technocrat
called Marco Buti,
[44:23] is coming to Brown
to give a talk.
[44:25] Well, not to give
a talk, basically
[44:27] for me to interview him.
[44:28] And I'm going to ask him this.
[44:30] Because this is what I see
as the long term problem.
[44:32] And if he doesn't do
something about this,
[44:34] it's game over for these guys.
[44:36] So Europe is a
particular problem.
[44:37] So it's a long
term scenario too.
[44:39] Here's the positive story.
[44:41] You'd probably heard
of secular stagnation.
[44:43] This is [INAUDIBLE] is the
latest version of this.
[44:46] There's too little
demand in the world,
[44:47] too many people are saving.
[44:49] Consequently, interest rates
etc. are very, very low.
[44:51] Yeah, I mean, really, China,
the whole of Asia saves.
[44:53] There's a huge saving
surplus in Asia.
[44:56] Now the Europeans, because
they're running an export
[44:58] surplus, and it's actually
exporting [INAUDIBLE],
[45:00] so they're saving as well.
[45:01] So the only bit of the
planet that isn't saving
[45:03] is the United States.
[45:04] What happens if the United
States starts saving?
[45:06] We're also saving at once.
[45:07] You can't save all at once.
[45:08] It's the paradox of thrift.
[45:09] You would actually
crash the economy.
[45:11] So it's good that we actually
can't control ourselves,
[45:14] otherwise the whole thing
would grind to a halt.
[45:17] But the basic story
and this one is,
[45:18] OK, let's say that that's true,
but it doesn't necessarily
[45:21] mean it's bad.
[45:22] Think about what happened
with the last jobs report.
[45:24] Think about the long
term trend of employment.
[45:26] We finally heard
some wage growth.
[45:29] Project our at 2%, just
2% economic growth,
[45:33] but with practically negative
interest rates and very, very
[45:36] low inflation, that
compounds over time.
[45:38] That's not a horrible story.
[45:40] It's a bit like the 1950s,
only scaled down a bit.
[45:44] It's kind of secular stability.
[45:46] Boring.
[45:47] Finance doesn't get
to play its tricks.
[45:49] Commodity prices are low.
[45:51] Inflation's low.
[45:52] You can survive that.
[45:53] And if you do, and
you're smart, and you
[45:55] do infrastructure
spending, you get the boost
[45:57] from all that sort of stuff.
[45:58] You can defeat Trumpism here.
[46:00] I'm not so sure about Europe,
because they're not together.
[46:03] They've got the
euro problems, etc.
[46:04] But Trumpism is a blip.
[46:07] Here's the other one-- Boris.
[46:11] There's a class
of politicians now
[46:13] which can only be described as
buffoons, opportunistic idiots.
[46:19] And they will do anything
and say anything.
[46:21] And he's one of them.
[46:22] And I genuinely believe
that Trump is one of them.
[46:24] And I genuinely believe that a
lot of the right wing variants
[46:27] are them.
[46:27] But you know what?
[46:28] The left wings can be
pretty opportunist as well.
[46:30] Let's be pretty
honest about this.
[46:32] So what's the negative story?
[46:33] Well, you know as
I said, the 1970s
[46:36] was protected by
this guy in the '40s,
[46:37] and he said this
is going to happen,
[46:38] and it's going to
be unsustainable.
[46:39] They're going to
take it all apart
[46:41] and put it together again.
[46:42] Well, maybe we're
at the point now
[46:43] that the thing that we
built is unraveling,
[46:46] not just in terms of
the collapse of center
[46:48] left party support, center
right party support,
[46:51] that basically it's
economically unsustainable
[46:54] to run this super competitive,
insanely intense, disaggregated
[46:59] global network of production
on a consumption based which
[47:03] is levered up the wazoo because
people have been borrowing
[47:06] to make up for real income
gains they don't have.
[47:08] And that's actually
hit the skids.
[47:10] And we don't know what to do.
[47:13] So everyone looks to
the Federal Reserve.
[47:15] What's the Fed going to do?
[47:16] Are they going to raise rates?
[47:17] They're going to raise
them a quarter point.
[47:18] They're not going to raise them.
[47:19] What does that matter?
[47:20] It's a quarter of a point.
[47:21] I mean, this is
utterly ridiculous.
[47:23] We're kind of bumbling forward.
[47:25] Let's do QE.
[47:26] Why not?
[47:26] We'll try it.
[47:27] Let's see if that works.
[47:28] Is it doing anything?
[47:29] Well, whatever, we'll
just keep going, right?
[47:31] So there's a kind of
bumbling and stumbling
[47:33] in policy just now.
[47:34] That's when these
guys become powerful.
[47:37] Because if it looks
like the people who
[47:39] run the world don't
know what they're doing,
[47:40] then that's when these
fools get their chance.
[47:42] And there's lots of fools out
there waiting for a chance.
[47:45] You could see a real retreat
from economic integration.
[47:49] We are seeing a transformation
of party politics.
[47:51] Check that one.
[47:52] There's a real chance the
EU could fragment along
[47:55] the exporter-consumer line.
[47:56] And all these parties,
left and right,
[47:58] want a re-nationalization
of politics,
[48:01] back to the national control.
[48:03] And in the right
wing version, that's
[48:05] the discourse of the nation,
patrie, the people, for France.
[48:09] The left wing version is a
kind of class-oriented one.
[48:12] It's more internationalist.
[48:13] Is basically about us versus
the global plutocrats,
[48:16] but it's still about local.
[48:17] It's still about
the nation, control.
[48:19] Globalization is bad, etc, etc.
[48:22] And if these guys get a critical
mass right across the world,
[48:25] if the trumpets are
blowing loud enough,
[48:27] all bets are off
as to where we go.
[48:30] So that's my take
on global Trumpism.
[48:32] This is why I
think Trump is part
[48:34] of a much bigger thing that's
been 30 if not 70 years
[48:37] in the making.
[48:39] And I could be totally wrong.
[48:40] And that's how you learn.
[48:42] So let's have a talk.
[48:44] There you go.
[48:45] [APPLAUSE]
[48:52] You've done
something miraculous,
[48:54] which is to depersonalize
this campaign moment
[48:57] and talk about real trends
in an academic way, which
[49:02] we appreciate.
[49:03] And I have a feeling
that Mark can probably
[49:06] take his own questions.
[49:07] I think I can.
[49:08] I've done this before.
[49:09] I think I've done this before.
[49:10] It's on you.
[49:11] Who's first?
[49:16] I want to put a twist
on the positive story.
[49:19] Are you making it more
positive or more negative?
[49:21] More negative.
[49:22] Hey, you must be on the left!
[49:24] So if look at the Bill Clinton
years, as he leaves office,
[49:29] we have the Dotcom Bubble burst.
[49:31] There's a minor recession.
[49:32] But then there's a consistent
argument, obviously,
[49:34] on the left that the policies
of the Clinton administration
[49:37] then led to the collapse
that we just experienced.
[49:39] And there's obviously a
degree of truth to that,
[49:41] but there's more to it, right?
[49:43] So under Obama, we've had
this stabilization going.
[49:46] You just said we have a lot
of good pieces in place.
[49:48] So then what happens in the
instance where Trump actually
[49:52] gets elected, and then we have
this undoing of the policies
[49:57] that we've been trying
to cobble together
[49:59] for the last few years.
[50:00] Then what?
[50:01] So if Trump gets
elected, I don't
[50:02] think a lot actually happens.
[50:04] Because the genius of
the Constitution is that
[50:07] the president cannot
introduce legislation.
[50:10] So he can hum, he can haw,
he can jump up and down.
[50:12] He can throw his
toys out of the pram.
[50:14] He can do whatever he wants.
[50:15] But he cannot
actually write a law.
[50:17] Only Congress can.
[50:18] So just follow this through.
[50:20] So let's say the
Republicans manage
[50:23] to take the House and the
Senate and they get Trump.
[50:26] So what is it that everybody
agrees needs to be done?
[50:28] Now, they'll do
the shittiest kind
[50:30] of infrastructure investment.
[50:31] They'll build a
giant, stupid wall
[50:33] to stop something
that doesn't exist
[50:35] called Mexican immigration.
[50:37] I mean, literally,
it doesn't exist.
[50:39] The flows are going
the other way.
[50:40] We're at the point
we were in 1961,
[50:42] and we want to build a
wall to keep them out.
[50:44] Dude, they're not there.
[50:46] They're just not there.
[50:47] But imagine that as a
massive fiscal expenditure.
[50:50] That'll happen.
[50:51] We'll build up our
nice, shiny military.
[50:53] That'll definitely happen.
[50:55] So there'll be lots
and lots of spending.
[50:57] What else will they do?
[50:58] Will they really do
trade protection?
[51:00] See, because about 30% if not
40% of the firms in China that
[51:03] are exporting to the US
are people like Apple.
[51:06] They're American firms.
[51:07] So Trump knows where
his bread's buttered.
[51:09] Are you really telling me
he's going to put tariffs up
[51:11] against the iPhone,
and piss everyone off,
[51:13] including the CEO of Apple?
[51:15] I don't think so.
[51:16] So that's not going to happen.
[51:18] He can't introduce legislation.
[51:19] The only thing he's going
to do is make life really,
[51:21] really uncomfortable
and scary for people
[51:23] who are undocumented, or
immigrants, or minorities,
[51:26] or anything other than the
politically mainstream right
[51:31] or authoritarian.
[51:32] So there's a real
political cost.
[51:33] Don't get me wrong.
[51:34] And I think the deportations
could double if not triple.
[51:37] And that's horrible.
[51:38] But in terms of
what he's actually
[51:40] going to be able to do?
[51:41] He's going to do another
round of tax cuts, absolutely.
[51:44] And most of them
will go to the top.
[51:45] But that's de rigeur.
[51:47] That's what we do.
[51:47] That's what we've been
doing for 30 years.
[51:49] So you don't think that'll
have a nasty undoing even
[51:52] of the [INAUDIBLE]
stability we've just
[51:54] started to put together?
[51:55] Well, I wouldn't
say [INAUDIBLE].
[51:57] I think one of the most
successful policies
[51:59] in recent years, believe it
or not, has been Dodd-Frank.
[52:01] And the reason Dodd-Frank's been
successful is the following.
[52:05] So let's say, for example,
I'm Goldman Sachs, the vampire
[52:09] squid, to give it its name.
[52:11] And I'm really worried
that the next president,
[52:14] if she comes in, is
actually serious about more
[52:18] financial reform.
[52:19] Now, what Dodd-Frank
has actually done
[52:21] is death by 2,200 pages.
[52:24] So if I go straight up
against Jamie Dimon, or one
[52:27] of these big guys, they'll take
$1 billion out of the pocket,
[52:30] set the lobbyists
on me, and I'll
[52:32] be lucky if I'm elected
dogcatcher of southern Arkansas
[52:35] by the end of it, right?
[52:36] You basically have to
be Elizabeth Warren,
[52:38] tough and smart, to
take these people on.
[52:40] And most congressmen are not.
[52:42] So who's got skin in the
game to take these people
[52:44] on in a frontal assault?
[52:45] So you don't.
[52:46] You bury them in 2,200 rules.
[52:49] You ask escrow their bonuses.
[52:50] You make them
raise more capital.
[52:52] You lower the
leverage internally.
[52:54] You make everybody higher
compliance officers.
[52:57] Hey, kids, if you want a job
in the financial sector now,
[52:59] they're hiring compliance
officers like bejeezus.
[53:02] Because everybody
has to have the
[53:04] give of them for every trade
that they're going to do.
[53:06] And by the way, the trades
don't make any money
[53:08] any more because they've
lowered the leverage.
[53:10] So the whole sector
is shrinking.
[53:11] The profitability of the
business model is falling.
[53:14] So all it's been incredibly
successful in that way.
[53:18] Now, that's not what we
think of in terms of success.
[53:20] But the long term thing
is, you made finance safer.
[53:23] The economy is still growing.
[53:25] You still have
positive-- I mean,
[53:27] the immigration
thing's problematic
[53:28] because we actually
need immigrants
[53:30] to continue positive
population growth,
[53:31] but put that to one side.
[53:33] We're actually solvent.
[53:34] Forget all the stuff
about the debt.
[53:35] We can float 25, 30 year,
50 year at negative rates.
[53:39] Nobody's worried about the
state of the federal debt.
[53:42] So there's a lot of
structural stuff there
[53:44] that's actually quite good.
[53:46] And I don't see Trump
being able to undo that.
[53:49] Trump cannot undo the demand for
my condo in Boston from Chinese
[53:53] investors.
[53:54] Because Chinese
investors are incredibly
[53:56] worried about property
rights at home and they
[53:58] want to have
property rights here.
[53:59] That is totally
Trump-independent.
[54:02] So I'm less worried about that.
[54:04] It's more that the politics that
go with it than anything else.
[54:11] So I have a question on the
technical disruption side.
[54:15] I live in San Francisco,
arguably the center
[54:17] of a lot of the disruption.
[54:20] And technocrats
in San Francisco,
[54:21] for the past year
or two, have really
[54:23] gotten into this idea of
guaranteed basic income,
[54:26] or mincome, as a possible
solution to this.
[54:30] And to. me, it seems,
at best, a band-aid,
[54:32] and at worst, the beginning
of the dismantling
[54:35] of the social welfare state.
[54:37] And I wondered if you
had any of opinions
[54:39] about the feasibility or
impact of a mincome policy.
[54:42] So this is one of these
ideas that have been--
[54:45] Can I actually add to that?
[54:46] Sure.
[54:46] Because I've spent the last
18 months in the Bay Area too.
[54:49] And at least the
kind of community,
[54:51] the intellectual
community around Stanford,
[54:53] has this thing of "this is
really great that we actually
[54:56] don't have enough
work for labor.
[54:58] Because none of us
should work anyway.
[55:00] We should just take 10% off
of the top 1%, distribute it,
[55:04] and everybody gets
to do whatever
[55:06] they want with their time."
[55:07] It's not a terrible solution,
if you could actually
[55:09] make it happen, right?
[55:10] Yeah.
[55:12] And so why should any
of us work anyway?
[55:13] If it's going to be a sharing
economy, if everybody's
[55:16] going to be Uber and Air BnB?
[55:19] I'm really curious
about this question
[55:21] and what you think about that.
[55:23] Because it's radical and
it's anti-capitalist,
[55:25] but it could work.
[55:27] Oh no.
[55:28] I totally agree,
but the problem's
[55:29] getting your hands
on the cash, right?
[55:30] So my favorite example
for this that I
[55:33] like to give in talks where I
bump into Republican audiences,
[55:36] which is usually when I talk
to financial conferences
[55:38] and things, is to say,
"so how many of you
[55:40] voted for Mitt Romney?"
[55:41] And quite a few
hands are going up.
[55:43] "OK, why?"
[55:44] And I don't mean this
as a partisan thing.
[55:46] I didn't mean it as
a fairness thing.
[55:47] What was Mitt Romney's
effective tax rate?
[55:50] 9%.
[55:51] Because he only pays
capital gains at 15%.
[55:54] And he basically has tax
shelters and incorporations
[55:56] in Delaware and Arizona
and the Cayman Islands
[55:58] and all the rest of it.
[55:59] And he basically pays about an
$0.08 to $0.09 on the dollar.
[56:02] I pay $0.33.
[56:03] If you add up all
my state and local,
[56:05] I'm paying German
rates of tax, but I'm
[56:07] getting-- what would I call it?
[56:09] Third world public services.
[56:11] So I can't vote for that.
[56:14] That's just unfair.
[56:16] So there's a fairness question.
[56:17] But it hasn't really
become a political topic.
[56:20] Because if that
becomes the issue,
[56:22] then you can make an
argument for that type
[56:24] of radical redistribution,
which is essentially
[56:26] "pay your goddamn taxes."
[56:28] And given that you've
got most of the money,
[56:29] don't tell me you pay
most of the taxes.
[56:31] You do in volume terms, but
you're cheating on the margin.
[56:34] You owe a hell of a lot more.
[56:35] So there's a wonderful book
called Treasure Islands.
[56:38] And the estimate
in that is if you
[56:39] go to all the tax havens where
all the Mitts in the world
[56:41] have all their cash stored,
and this is just those bits.
[56:44] There's other places, like art,
warehousing, and all that sort
[56:46] of stuff you can hide wealth.
[56:48] $29 trillion.
[56:51] I'll say that
again-- $29 trillion.
[56:55] That's a lot redistribution
you could do.
[56:57] And all of that
is basically money
[56:59] that people have avoided tax on.
[57:01] So if the Community
Chest agreement
[57:04] is, "you made it here,
you pay your taxes,"
[57:06] well, we're making it everywhere
and we're not paying any taxes.
[57:09] Hence Poland, Ireland and
all that sort of stuff.
[57:11] So you can see the
beginning of movement
[57:13] on this, particular
on the corporate side.
[57:15] That's there.
[57:16] But let's get to the
heart of the matter.
[57:18] Because this is really it.
[57:19] Why should we work?
[57:22] I often think that
economists forget
[57:24] that the most basic thing
you learn in economics
[57:26] is the labor-leisure trade off.
[57:28] As we get richer as a society,
we're meant to work less.
[57:32] We're not meant to
be more insecure,
[57:34] working for crappier
waves more and more hours.
[57:37] So why is that happening?
[57:39] Well, it's actually about the
property rights behind it.
[57:41] So let's go to San
Francisco for a minute.
[57:43] Uber is fantastic.
[57:45] I think Uber is
absolutely brilliant.
[57:47] I love it.
[57:48] I love the fact that when you
need to get to the airport,
[57:50] they actually show up.
[57:51] I love the fact that it doesn't
smell like nine people who've
[57:54] been murdered in
the back of this car
[57:57] before I get in it, which
is your average city taxi.
[58:00] And I love the fact that
all even if these guys are
[58:03] basically ripping
off the drivers,
[58:05] a much larger proportion of
what they're actually earning
[58:07] goes to them than rather it
goes straight to medallion
[58:10] holder who holds the license
that's basically a money
[58:14] pump from basically
poor immigrants
[58:16] who are earning an equivalent of
less than minimum wage in tips.
[58:19] So I love it.
[58:19] It's great.
[58:20] Let's say Uber gets
driverless cars sorted out.
[58:24] You'll eliminate 8 million jobs
in the United States like that.
[58:29] Now, unless you're going to give
them some kind of compensation,
[58:32] a basic income or anything like
that, what exactly do you do?
[58:36] Now, this is where it gets more
into the ethics of capitalism,
[58:39] because essentially
we have a system that
[58:41] says you need to work.
[58:43] Everybody needs to work.
[58:44] But what if you don't need them?
[58:46] And this is a way
bigger problem.
[58:49] Because all the returns
go to the guys at Uber.
[58:51] All the returns go to
the guys at Whatsapp,
[58:53] whoever gets robotics sorted it,
all the returns goes to them.
[58:56] That 1% is going to become
basically an enormous chunk
[59:01] of national wealth.
[59:02] It's going to go to
increasingly fewer people.
[59:04] Now, what we tend to
do in those situations
[59:07] is we bust up the firms.
[59:09] So go back to the 19th century.
[59:10] Go back to the
early 20th century.
[59:12] Anti-trust.
[59:13] Even in the '70s, Bell,
telecoms, the whole lot.
[59:16] When it gets too concentrated,
when the returns are going
[59:19] all one way, we tend
to step in and actually
[59:22] break up the firms, redistribute
the property rights, whatever.
[59:25] That's what you
really need to do.
[59:26] You need to democratize
the returns to robots.
[59:30] If you do that, then
it's sustainable.
[59:32] Because I wouldn't care if
you replace me with a robot
[59:35] if I got to go fishing instead.
[59:37] Right?
[59:37] That would be fine.
[59:38] And There's still
a lot of things--
[59:40] forget the hype-- that
robots simply can't do.
[59:42] What's the fastest growing
job in the United States?
[59:47] Elder care nurse.
[59:50] Would you trust a robot
to lift your nanna a bit?
[59:53] Not going to happen, is it?
[59:55] Not in a long time.
[59:56] So there's still a lot
of actual human contact
[59:59] jobs which really can't be
technologically disrupted.
[60:01] But there's a hell
of a lot that can be,
[60:03] and they tend to be the
people who are already
[60:05] in that slice of the cake.
[60:06] They're pissed off, both
the left and right parties.
[60:09] So you're raising
exactly what the right
[60:11] issue-- why do we need to work?
[60:12] So it's more than basic income.
[60:15] It's actually about
we can produce--
[60:17] we can produce a super
mega surplus for the planet
[60:20] with 10% of the
population working.
[60:22] China can literally make
everything that we need.
[60:25] Why are we bothering?
[60:27] Why does every country in
the world need to make cars?
[60:29] Why do we need to have
so many different types,
[60:31] if ultimately you're
just going to have
[60:32] a few self-driving
models that will take you
[60:34] from here to there, and you
can call them up on your phone?
[60:36] So this is way bigger
than just those issues.
[60:39] So they're exactly
the right issues.
[60:41] I don't have an answer,
but that's definitely
[60:43] what the question needs to
be-- why do we need to work?
[60:46] I ask myself that every morning.
[60:49] Usually, when I've been
out the night before.
[60:51] "Why do I need to work?"
[60:55] Next?
[60:57] Are we all done?
[61:01] Yeah, one question
regarding China.
[61:03] China's economy is
now slowing down.
[61:05] It has less growth.
[61:06] How does this affect your
overall story and the future
[61:11] as you see it?
[61:13] I mean, I don't pretend
to be a China expert,
[61:14] but I look at it this way.
[61:16] The guy who used to run
Pemco, what's his name again?
[61:19] The big bond trader?
[61:21] Bill Gross, Bill Gross had
a lovely phrase about China.
[61:25] He called it
"faith-based investing."
[61:27] Because you don't know
what you're doing, really.
[61:29] I mean, they could
be ripping you off.
[61:32] Do you believe the GDP figures?
[61:33] Well, if you don't
believe the GDP figures,
[61:35] do you believe the
banking figures?
[61:37] Does anybody actually
know what's in the banks?
[61:39] No, but it keeps going.
[61:41] It keeps going.
[61:41] Somebody's making money.
[61:42] Somebody's making stuff.
[61:43] It's ending up in the Wal-mart.
[61:45] The system continues.
[61:46] So this is a very,
very different system.
[61:49] What's interesting about
China for me just now
[61:51] is the sheer amount
of capital flight.
[61:53] So Jason Charmin recently
sent me a report.
[61:56] I haven't had a chance to look
at it, but he told me about it.
[61:59] So there was this
piece of research
[62:00] that was done by the Bank
of China a couple years ago.
[62:02] And it was just this
fantastic economic study.
[62:05] And it was so beautifully
done that they
[62:07] wanted to give it an award.
[62:08] The only thing was that
they couldn't publicize it
[62:11] because the findings
were so explosive.
[62:14] But somebody didn't
get the memo.
[62:16] So they gave it
an internal award
[62:17] and posted it on
the Bank of China
[62:19] website for one
minute and 38 seconds.
[62:23] Just long enough for somebody
to find it and copy it.
[62:26] Here's what it
said-- 11,000 members
[62:28] of the party in the top echelons
have expatriated 100 billion US
[62:32] dollars and run off with
it over the past 15 years.
[62:36] That's the numbers.
[62:38] Holy shit!
[62:39] That kind of explains
why condo's going up.
[62:42] Now, in order to stop that,
the government correctly
[62:45] says "dude, you do that
anymore, we're done."
[62:49] So you have a massive
corruption crackdown.
[62:52] Here's the problem with
the corruption crackdown.
[62:54] Corruption is property
rights guarantees
[62:56] in a system where you don't
have independent courts.
[62:59] That's how it works.
[63:00] This is Buddy
Cianci land, right?
[63:01] Basically, you didn't
go to the court.
[63:03] You went to Buddy.
[63:04] Buddy sorted it out.
[63:05] Buddy's the Party.
[63:06] Now, the Party's your
insurance policy.
[63:08] The Party is your partner
in crime at the local level,
[63:11] and now the Party's
being purged.
[63:13] Which means, as an investor,
you don't have courts,
[63:16] you don't have a protector,
you don't have recourse.
[63:19] Where do you want
your money to be?
[63:23] Right here.
[63:24] So perversely, until
they absolutely
[63:27] clean up the entire
system, which is
[63:29] an "if you ever
get there," you're
[63:31] actually creating the incentives
to de-stabilize it further.
[63:34] So that could be what we're
seeing as part of the slowdown.
[63:38] This here's the wonderful
thing about the United States.
[63:40] And it's the old Mel
Brooks line on this one.
[63:43] "It's good to be the King."
[63:45] Because the United States
is a barbell economy.
[63:47] Have you ever picked
up a barbell in a gym?
[63:49] The reason you can
lift a lot of weight
[63:51] it's because it's perfectly
balanced on both sides.
[63:53] And the United States is
the only barbell economy.
[63:55] When things are going
well everywhere,
[63:57] people come here
and borrow dollars
[63:59] and put them outside, because
you get a higher return.
[64:02] When things go to hell
in a hand basket there,
[64:04] you liquidate everything,
turn it into dollars,
[64:06] and bring back home, and my
condo goes up either way.
[64:11] So I don't worry-- I worry
about China for lots of reasons,
[64:14] but I don't worry
about it for this,
[64:15] in the sense that it will just
trundle along and blah, blah,
[64:18] blah.
[64:19] The long term story on this
one is it accelerates it,
[64:23] because China saves.
[64:24] So you are in a
global savings glut.
[64:26] That's feeding into basically
insufficient aggregate demand
[64:29] at a global level.
[64:30] It's also leading into
basically a lack of inflation
[64:33] in the system, which, is
keeping long term rates down.
[64:36] So it's all pushing
in that one direction.
[64:38] I don't see-- even if China
had a very serious hard landing
[64:43] and political problems etc,
economically it's significant
[64:46] but it's really about
the size of two Germanys.
[64:49] So if two Germanys
blew up, would that
[64:51] derail the entire
global economy?
[64:54] Eh, jain, as the Germans say.
[64:56] Yes and no.
[64:58] So.
[65:01] Just to continue to
push the discussion,
[65:03] I really think it's
worth underlining
[65:05] that any response to this that
isn't just violent revolution
[65:09] is going to have to be
a revolution of ideas
[65:11] in a [INAUDIBLE] way.
[65:13] An d revolution of ways
of thinking about freedom,
[65:15] thinking about work, thinking
about the relationship
[65:18] between-- because
you're not going
[65:19] to get-- one way of
summarizing what you've said
[65:23] is that you're not going
to get the high growth
[65:26] virtuous Adam Smith preferred
version of the economy,
[65:30] where honest hard
work, you come to it,
[65:32] everything is rewarded
if you're just
[65:34] going to put in the
effort-- you're not
[65:34] going to get that anymore.
[65:35] So the question is, what
do you replace that with?
[65:38] Do you replace
that with changing
[65:41] the nature of what it means
to be virtuous in markets,
[65:44] and that that might mean that
some of us take more leisure
[65:46] and that means
that we share more?
[65:49] Or are you going to
get the boots and the--
[65:53] Well, again, it
comes down to what
[65:55] we do with properly rights.
[65:56] So let's go back to Uber or
Airbnb is another example.
[65:59] So Airbnb rents out
more hotel space
[66:01] than all the hotels put
together, which is incredible.
[66:04] Now, what they've done
is they've actually
[66:05] created options, in
a financial sense,
[66:08] on every piece of real
estate in the world.
[66:10] And it's up to you whether
you cash in the options.
[66:12] So you can use them to basically
monetize your living space.
[66:17] That's amazing.
[66:18] And it's not a bad deal for you.
[66:20] But where do most
of the returns go?
[66:23] Back to the guy who
calls the website,
[66:25] who basically has the brand.
[66:28] So you're creating
a world in which
[66:30] you've got financial
optionality over everything.
[66:33] So cars, houses,
I mean, anything
[66:35] that you've got as an asset
but you don't use all the time,
[66:38] essentially you can
rent it out on the web.
[66:41] My favorite example
for this, when
[66:42] I asked Branko Milanovic--
we were talking
[66:44] about this last
night-- I said, what's
[66:46] the weirdest thing you've ever
seen that you get options on,
[66:49] optionalities on the web.
[66:51] And he said "lingerie."
[66:54] You can rent lingerie on
the web, which I just find
[66:58] really weird and disgusting.
[67:00] But apparently you can.
[67:02] Think about it.
[67:02] If you're buying
Aubade or Chantelle,
[67:04] that shit costs a lot of money.
[67:06] It spends most of its
life in the drawer.
[67:09] Why not rent it out, I guess?
[67:11] You know, you can do that.
[67:12] What about disease?
[67:14] You can wash it.
[67:14] I don't know.
[67:15] I don't do this.
[67:16] I'm just saying.
[67:17] So basically, we can create
options over everything.
[67:20] But the people who are
striking the options,
[67:22] the returns are all
going back to the people
[67:24] at the top, who are
doing these firms.
[67:26] So we've got to decide
what we do with this.
[67:29] Either you democratize
the technology,
[67:31] in which case
everybody who's got
[67:33] it keeps most of the returns
and a small residual of anything
[67:37] goes back to the owners.
[67:39] Or you let the
owners take the lot.
[67:41] And if you do that in an
already winner-takes-all world,
[67:43] that gets ugly very, very quick.
[67:45] And I think it really
comes down to that.
[67:47] Now, I'll give you an
example of how this can work.
[67:49] So I've got a mate called Brett.
[67:51] He's an Australian.
[67:52] And he runs GE's cloud from
his house here in Providence.
[67:56] Shh.
[67:56] Don't tell anyone.
[67:58] He's a super tech
computer guy, right?
[68:00] And he shows up at
my house one day
[68:02] with a three terabyte
hard drive and a six pack.
[68:06] And I'm like, OK, what
are we going to do?
[68:08] And he says, that little
old Mac you've got,
[68:10] that little computer there,
can I do stuff with it?
[68:12] And I was like, OK.
[68:13] What are you going to do?
[68:14] He plugs in his hard drive.
[68:16] He gave me 1,500 movies.
[68:19] That's nice.
[68:20] OK.
[68:20] I ask him where he got them.
[68:22] 1,500 movies, all HD, perfect
copies, the whole lot.
[68:26] He says, do you mind if I
turn this into a Plex server?
[68:29] What?
[68:29] Yeah, go ahead.
[68:30] Anybody ever heard
of a Plex server?
[68:31] Anybody know what
a Plex server is?
[68:33] Right, this is incredible.
[68:35] I'm sitting in an LA
airport with an iPod
[68:37] on a Wi-Fi connection.
[68:39] I can go back to my
home computer, the one
[68:42] that he's just been pratting
around with, and press an app,
[68:46] and I can pick up watching
any one of those 1,500 movies
[68:50] wherever I want at exactly
the point I left off.
[68:55] And I can do that will
all sorts of media.
[68:58] Now, think about if you went
into Best Buy and you said,
[69:01] I want this system.
[69:02] That would have cost you
thousands of dollars.
[69:06] Plex is free.
[69:07] Anybody can get it.
[69:09] it's the simplest
thing in the world.
[69:10] Just go to the
appstore, get Plex,
[69:13] download it onto
your computer, start
[69:15] archiving all of your movies.
[69:16] It turns it all
into digital files
[69:18] with this wonderful interface.
[69:19] And then you can do
the most amazing stuff.
[69:22] Now, why is that not monetized?
[69:25] Why isn't their a
firm called Plex
[69:27] which is allowing
when to do this that
[69:28] has the monopoly rights on it?
[69:30] Because the guy who wrote
it went "here, take it.
[69:34] it's free and
everybody can use it."
[69:37] And there are so many
consumption goods now
[69:39] that are like that,
and increasingly so.
[69:42] So what's happening is the "I
can make money off the option
[69:45] that I'm writing." "I'm
exercising the option
[69:48] you're writing on your house."
[69:49] That's becoming less common.
[69:51] What's actually becoming
common is just stuff's free.
[69:53] So think for example,
Air BnB-- couchsurfing.
[69:57] No money is exchanged.
[69:59] And you can actually get a room,
a bed, the whole sort of thing.
[70:02] So there is a positive aspect
to the sharing economy.
[70:05] It's all a question
of how much we
[70:07] want to share versus how
much we want to give options
[70:09] to the guy who's
got the [? PIN. ?]
[70:11] That's really what
it comes down to.
[70:15] [INAUDIBLE]
[70:17] Oh, sorry.
[70:17] I just had a quick
follow-up to that.
[70:19] I think regulation can really
influence that as well.
[70:24] You mentioned Uber earlier.
[70:25] In Austin, the city
in Texas, recently
[70:28] decided to prohibit Uber
from operating in their city.
[70:32] As an alternative, a group
of people living in Austin
[70:35] created an open source
free application
[70:38] for finding rideshare Uber-like
rides, where there is no 30%
[70:43] to Uber.
[70:44] All of the money
goes to the driver.
[70:46] And that's the direct
result of regulation
[70:48] that caused that
to be democratized.
[70:50] Yeah, and that's exactly
democratizing property rights.
[70:52] It's not about expropriation.
[70:54] You don't have to take
anything away from these guys,
[70:56] you can just build
alternative platforms.
[70:58] And then people migrate
to those platforms
[71:00] because everybody's winning.
[71:01] So you can totally do that.
[71:02] And that's actually a
really positive side.
[71:04] One book that goes into
this, the only book I
[71:06] know that goes into this is Paul
Mason's book, Postcapitalism.
[71:11] It's a very good book, actually.
[71:12] He's a British
journalist/economist.
[71:15] He used to be the chief
economics correspondent for one
[71:17] of the main news
channels, Channel 4.
[71:19] And he wrote this book
called Postcapitalism.
[71:21] And it's all about exactly
how the sharing economy
[71:23] might be the only
thing that can save us,
[71:25] because ultimately, we do
not need people to work,
[71:27] but we have an ethic that
says if you don't work,
[71:29] you're worthless.
[71:31] So how do you
square that problem?
[71:33] That's what he's
trying to solve.
[71:36] Monetary policy is less
and less effective.
[71:40] Tweaking interest
rates [INAUDIBLE]
[71:44] and quantitative easing doesn't
really work much anymore.
[71:46] What are the alternatives?
[71:48] How do we stimulate growth
and what are the other tools
[71:53] and what are the other options.
[71:55] Go back to that thing
I said about starting
[71:57] in the '70s you have this
market-friendly revolution
[71:59] and you basically disempower
Congress, parliaments,
[72:02] and you don't want
politicians to run things,
[72:04] because they'll
generate inflation.
[72:06] You want people like
Greenspan to basically run
[72:09] the economy for you.
[INAUDIBLE] Why?
[72:12] I mean, can we just stop and
think about this for a minute?
[72:14] Why is a technocratic
appointee, who
[72:17] has nothing more
than two tools--
[72:19] raising and lowering the price
of money, buy and sell assets.
[72:22] That's it.
[72:24] Why are the charged with
and given the responsibility
[72:27] for producing growth,
which is an organic outcome
[72:30] of the personal
decisions of millions
[72:33] of individuals who have nothing
to do with the central bank?
[72:37] I think we've lost the plot.
[72:39] First of all, it's unfair
to charge these institutions
[72:41] with these things.
[72:42] They are missions that they
cannot fulfill with the tools
[72:44] they've got.
[72:44] You could give them more tools.
[72:46] That would be one
way of doing it.
[72:47] But another way would be to
actually look at Congress,
[72:49] which is the fiscal arm.
[72:51] Because there's more than
just monetary policy.
[72:53] There is also fiscal policy.
[72:54] And say, where have you
been for the past 25 years?
[72:58] Oh, that's right.
[72:58] You were too busy cutting
taxes, and then writing
[73:01] ridiculous laws
that didn't matter.
[73:04] Can you stop doing that?
[73:06] Could we maybe do
something like we
[73:07] did in the '50s, when we
built the entire highway
[73:10] network of this country?
[73:12] Could we maybe do something
about making JFK less
[73:14] of a national embarrassment?
[73:16] There's lots of things
we could be doing.
[73:18] And it can be done if
Congress decides to do it.
[73:21] So do we need more
monetary policy?
[73:23] No, we need them all to
stop doing what they do.
[73:26] It's just a waste of time.
[73:28] Or get better tools
that are more effective,
[73:31] and work jointly with
fiscal authorities.
[73:33] But we've given up on fiscal.
[73:35] We just think it's a bad idea.
"Politicians can't run things.
[73:37] Why would you want
them to do that?"
[73:39] Nobody's saying they run
things, by basically,
[73:41] if the roads in Providence
are the norm for the richest
[73:44] country in the
world, God help us.
[73:51] I'm thinking--
[73:52] Behind first, Kevin.
[73:53] I'll get to you in a second.
[73:54] He had his hand up first.
[73:55] This may be an
unfair question but--
[73:57] There's only unfair
answers coming.
[73:59] No, no, no.
[74:00] All the information
that you've provided
[74:01] in that past hour, how
much of that do you
[74:04] think Donald Trump knows?
[74:06] Oh, good question.
[74:07] He doesn't have to
not know any of it.
[74:09] Does that make him accidental?
[74:11] Well, it makes most
politicians accidental.
[74:13] Here's my favorite accidental
politician-- Harry Truman.
[74:16] So Harry Truman is literally
the accident of history.
[74:19] A four times failed
haberdasher with
[74:21] a domineering mother-in-law he
was absolutely petrified of,
[74:24] but a tremendous poker player,
a machine politician who
[74:28] was put in there by totally
corrupt practices, who ended up
[74:31] saving the New Deal.
[74:33] Now, did he know everything
he needed to know?
[74:36] No, he just knew, "this
is where I need to be.
[74:39] This is the stuff I need
to pay attention to.
[74:41] And I'm going to let
George Marshall deal
[74:43] with the details."
[74:44] And that was pretty
much what he did.
[74:45] Trump is just a version of that.
[74:48] Same as Ronald Reagan was,
if you want another example.
[74:52] In fact, I actually
get really worried.
[74:53] This is one of the things
that actually worries me
[74:55] about both of the Clinton.
[74:56] It also worried me
about Jimmy Carter.
[74:59] Well, I'm not old enough
to worry about him,
[74:59] but you know what I mean.
[75:00] That when politicians
think they know a lot,
[75:03] they start to do things that
they don't really understand.
[75:06] And sometimes,
it's better knowing
[75:09] the limits of your ignorance.
[75:10] Now, you can't accuse
Trump of that, right?
[75:12] But knowing the limits
of your ignorance
[75:14] is actually a really, really
healthy thing in a governor,
[75:17] I think.
[75:18] So I don't worry about that.
[75:23] Then Kevin.
[75:24] I was thinking, well, two things
about the global Trumpism.
[75:29] One, the relationship
of, in particular,
[75:35] the political democracy and
the economy and the other issue
[75:40] about diversity and
how that can be.
[75:45] I tend to tarry in
leftist politics.
[75:49] If it's devoid of
any class analysis,
[75:52] it can be sometimes problematic
and lead to a reaction.
[75:56] But the democracy, you have
Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth
[75:59] Warren going in against
the TPP and pointing out
[76:03] the instance of a Canadian
company suing the Americans,
[76:06] or [? Uruguay. ?]
So in other words,
[76:09] it undermines democracy, not
only our own, but of others.
[76:13] And Trump saying this
is turning the country
[76:16] into a cooperation of some sort.
[76:18] And with the European Union,
the democratic deficit
[76:22] and the central bank
having pretty much
[76:25] a chokehold over democratically
elected governments.
[76:29] So that kind of contradiction.
[76:31] And then left, at
some point, some
[76:32] wanted a democratization of
the European institutions,
[76:35] and others saying, no,
that's not possible.
[76:40] It's all technocratic, right?
[76:41] It's all technocratic.
[76:42] It's capital control.
[76:43] We have--
[76:44] We just go with that.
[76:45] Do something otherwise,
that it's a fool's errand
[76:48] to try to democratize it.
[76:50] And when it comes to the--
[76:51] Just one second.
[76:52] Kevin, is there a
question coming?
[76:54] Well, no, just if
you can elaborate
[76:56] on the relationship
between political democracy
[76:59] and its limitations.
[77:01] You're doing it.
[77:02] You're doing a great job.
[77:03] I mean, you're actually
describing the very thing
[77:05] you want me to describe.
[77:06] I mean, these are all great
and germane examples of it.
[77:10] It surrounds us.
[77:11] I mean, that's basically it.
[77:13] The simplest way of
thinking about it
[77:15] is, markets allocate
through cash,
[77:19] and democrats allocate
through votes.
[77:21] And they're our
orthogonal principles.
[77:23] And the way that we tie
the two principals together
[77:26] is through taxation.
[77:27] But that only works if
everybody pays their taxes.
[77:29] So if you're not, and
you're skimping on it,
[77:31] you're going to end
up with a deficit.
[77:32] That means you're
going to pile up debt
[77:34] because you don't really
want to deal with the fact
[77:35] that you're not
paying enough taxes.
[77:37] So you generate
debtors, which means
[77:38] you generate
creditors, which means
[77:40] you generate these dynamics.
[77:42] So that's the basic
confrontation.
[77:43] It always have been.
[77:45] It's just that back
in the '40s and '50s,
[77:47] people paid their taxes.
[77:49] It was different world.
[77:51] And the follow-up, the
other issue about diversity
[77:53] and the reaction,
the racist reaction
[77:55] in part, but somehow
because there
[77:59] is that idea of the
[INAUDIBLE] Republicans.
[78:02] There's some racism
there, and neoliberal,
[78:05] at least before
Trump, that capital
[78:08] should have its free
reign throughout the world
[78:11] But the Democrats
as well, capital
[78:12] should have free reign
around the world.
[78:14] But we need diversity.
[78:17] But if that free reign leads
to income polarization,
[78:20] and in a good part
of the population,
[78:22] including white males, their
life expectancy going down,
[78:26] do they really feel-- the
Democrats feel like, OK, you
[78:29] can have all this
income polarization as
[78:31] along as the top
equally has its share
[78:35] of women, and
African-Americans and so forth.
[78:37] But you can get a
reaction to others
[78:39] who feel like, wait a minute.
[78:41] I mean, this plays into
the right wing thinking.
[78:44] It's not an American phenomenon.
[78:46] I mean, you can find examples
of this in France, etc.
[78:49] I mean, France is actually
very weird on this one.
[78:51] To me, the truly
offensive one is
[78:52] actually, think about this--
French cops are walking up
[78:56] to women on beaches and ordering
them to take their clothes off.
[79:00] I mean, that's just insane.
[79:02] I mean, really?
[79:03] That's micro-policing of
the worst possible type.
[79:07] But let's take an issue.
[79:09] So here's an issue that I think
I understand what's going on.
[79:12] So the whole struggle
that was there that
[79:14] seems to have
abated a little bit
[79:15] over gender-neutral bathrooms.
[79:18] Now, why is it that Obama's
Justice Department is
[79:21] spending time on bathrooms?
[79:23] Well, because there's a bigger
issue at stake behind this.
[79:26] It's symbolic of
something else, which
[79:28] is, you can't allow states to
start saying who's a person
[79:31] and who's not a person.
[79:33] That's utterly ridiculous.
[79:35] And it's just weird that
this comes to a head.
[79:38] Because it's really
about voters' rights.
[79:39] It's really about
identity politics.
[79:41] And it's about, basically,
rights of self-respect,
[79:44] and you're an autonomous
person and you can damn well
[79:46] pee where you want
to pee, right?
[79:48] And that's awesome, right?
[79:49] But think about how it
plays in the heartland,
[79:52] to use that term.
[79:54] So let me get this straight.
[79:55] What is it these crazy
people in Washington
[79:57] are concerned with now?
[79:58] Bathrooms?
[79:59] Who gets the pee in bathrooms?
[80:01] Are you kidding me?
[80:02] So of course you can
play this both ways.
[80:05] You can make the
most empathetic,
[80:08] reasonable, and
legitimate, let's say
[80:12] identity issue, of
representation, democracy, etc
[80:16] sound ridiculous.
[80:18] That's part of politics.
[80:19] There's nothing new
in this whatsoever.
[80:21] I mean, one of the
ones that I say
[80:22] when my wife and I
are chatting away
[80:24] and we start snapping
at each other,
[80:26] I'll say things
like, "what do you
[80:27] want next, the right to vote?"
[80:29] Right, you know?
[80:30] But that, back in the
day, that was a real--
[80:32] you're not going to
give women the vote.
[80:33] What are you thinking of?
[80:35] that's unthinkable!
[80:36] Right?
[80:37] So at any moment in time,
issues of personhood, diversity,
[80:41] control, etc, can be made to
seem ridiculous, regardless of
[80:44] whether they are or not.
[80:45] And that's part and parcel.
[80:46] There's nothing new in this.
[80:48] It's just another
version of struggles
[80:49] that have been going on
for a very long time.
[80:52] It just happens to
be about bathrooms.
[80:56] So for a global
Trumpism, it seems to me
[80:59] that it's actually more
like a Western Trumpism.
[81:01] Oh yeah.
[81:02] Because we don't really
see that in East Asia,
[81:05] because we don't really have a
lot of those radical speaking
[81:10] people in populist movements.
[81:12] Do you think that's-- what do
you think is the reason behind
[81:17] East Asia not experiencing
a similar kind of movement,
[81:19] even though Japan and Korea have
an obsession for the past 20
[81:23] years.
[81:24] No, no, absolutely.
[81:25] Great question.
[81:27] So Japan and Korea,
I mean, Korea's
[81:29] had a tough time through
competition and productivity
[81:31] and stuff.
[81:32] I mean, there's not really
been a recession in the way
[81:34] that Japan has been.
[81:35] Japan's a fascinating case,
because it's totally unique.
[81:39] You've got the oldest
population in the world,
[81:41] and if you give them money,
they buy government bonds.
[81:45] It's brilliant.
[81:46] And then, when they eventually
die at the age of 305,
[81:50] they leave them
to their children,
[81:52] because they actually
think they're
[81:53] an intergenerational asset.
[81:55] So what that means is there's
a deflationary glide path.
[81:58] I saw somebody draw
for Japan once.
[81:59] And I was like, here's the
capital stock of the country,
[82:02] and here's time.
[82:03] And eventually, they're just
going to eat the entire capital
[82:05] stock of the country.
[82:06] And then everyone will
die at the age of 305.
[82:09] But it will be a very
long, slow glide path.
[82:12] And given that they are the
world's worst at immigration,
[82:15] so the economy is
going to shrink,
[82:17] it's a very weird place.
[82:18] So you can kind of
explain Japan sui generis.
[82:21] But I think the bigger point
is this-- the East Asian
[82:23] economies were traditionally
hierarchical, authoritarian,
[82:27] quite patriarchal, very
strong political parties
[82:31] with deep roots in the civil
society and civil society
[82:33] organizations.
[82:34] It's very hard to get that
kind of populist crap going.
[82:37] Because the populists
beware themselves
[82:39] creatures of the state.
[82:41] So think about Marcos
in the Philippines.
[82:44] You have a new populist.
[82:45] What's that?
[82:45] You have a populist.
[82:46] Yeah, and you have a
new populist running
[82:47] in the Philippines right now.
[82:48] And Duterte is exactly this.
[82:50] Exactly.
[82:51] But even in Japan,
think about the way
[82:52] that the liberal
party, the LDP, was
[82:55] kicked in a touch 15
years ago, and came back
[82:58] with a much more aggressive
nationalist rhetoric.
[83:02] So you see fringes
of this coming up,
[83:04] but it is different in kind.
[83:06] This is totally a Western
story, absolutely.
[83:09] I just happened to call
it "global Trumpism
[83:10] because was in an interview
in Greece and I was lazy.
[83:13] And then somebody
went #globaltrumpism
[83:14] and there you go.
[83:15] It's a thing.
[83:16] You're stuck with it.
[83:17] So that's that,
but great question.
[83:19] That was really good.
[83:20] Mark, make this
the last question.
[83:22] OK.
[83:23] Last one?
[83:23] I've had this gentleman before.
[83:24] Anybody else want to
come in, just in case?
[83:26] So he gets the last one?
[83:28] Or I've got it.
[83:30] No!
[83:31] Go on, go on, go on, go on then.
[83:33] Go on then.
[83:35] So scholars don't often
run for political office.
[83:38] Mhm.
[83:39] But you're going to be the
next campaigner for a senate
[83:43] seat from Rhode Island.
[83:45] Give us four or five--
[83:46] From that power base.
[83:48] Four or five planks in your
platform that you think
[83:50] would be both
winnable and sensible.
[83:55] Right, first one,
everybody pays their taxes.
[83:58] No exemptions, no
inclusions, and I'll
[84:01] even consider cutting
rates if we can actually
[84:03] increase the take.
[84:05] Everybody pays-- no exceptions.
[84:07] Back in the 1970s, corporates
paid 20% of total taxes.
[84:11] Today, they pay
2% in real terms.
[84:14] It's stashed abroad.
[84:15] It's hidden.
[84:16] It's transfer priced.
[84:17] It's a double Irish
Dutch sandwich,
[84:19] all this sort of stuff.
[84:21] Nonsense.
[84:22] Enough.
[84:23] Basta!
[84:23] We're done with it.
[84:24] So that's number one--
everybody pays their taxes.
[84:26] Number two, we really
need to think about
[84:28] whether we need people to work.
[84:31] Because if you're about
to basically add robots
[84:33] into a mix of already high
inequality and low pay,
[84:36] you're asking for trouble.
[84:38] And it's a bit like basically
nationalizing health care.
[84:40] At the end of the day,
everybody saves money
[84:43] because everybody isn't showing
up to the emergency room.
[84:46] The costs, the disruptive
costs, of doing this stuff
[84:50] without any real regard
for what actually happens
[84:53] to the casualties, forget it.
[84:56] You need massive
insurance on this,
[84:57] and you have to think
really creatively about it.
[85:00] And the third one is-- and this
is the one we never talk about,
[85:03] is we really need
to be serious--
[85:04] and this could be a massive
public investment program.
[85:07] And it's the one
we should really
[85:08] do-- something to try and abate
the effects of global warming.
[85:12] So anybody who, from
this point on, says it's
[85:14] a hoax, it's caused by
the Chinese government
[85:16] or whatever, you
put them in a bag,
[85:18] you tie the bag up with a
stick, and you beat them.
[85:22] That's it.
[85:22] If anybody says
it, get in the bag.
[85:25] Done.
[85:25] That's it.
[85:26] So that would be
platform number three.
[85:28] And then, if you
raise the tax revenues
[85:30] and spend on infrastructure
which would actually
[85:32] abate global warming, it would
mean the Boston Harbor wouldn't
[85:35] actually rise by
five feet, which
[85:37] means that my condo, at the
end of its 30 year mortgage,
[85:40] which is being paid off
by a Chinese investor,
[85:43] would have all come to me, and
I'd make out like a bandit.
[85:46] So ultimately,
it's self-serving.
[85:49] Join me in thanking Mark for
a [? stimulating evening. ?]
[85:53] [APPLAUSE]
