I read a statistic in the Wall Street

Journal over the weekend that kind of

made me want to take out a pitchfork.

So, the net worth held by the top.1% of

households in the US reached 23.3

trillion in the second quarter this year

from 10.7 trillion a decade earlier. So

from 20 from 10.7 to 23.3 in one decade.

That's according to the Federal Reserve

Bank of St. Louis. the amount held by

the entire bottom 50% increased to $4.2

trillion from 900 billion over that

period.

So

let me just do this. What do you think

when you hear that? So I think that we

have massive increasing inequality.

We have it in at a scale that most

people are not even able to comprehend

because it's really what you're talking

about is not the real story is not about

the 0.1%. It's not even about the 01%.

It's about the 0.001%.

In other words, we have essentially the

same tax policy for somebody who makes a

lawyer in New York who's making3 or$4

million a year and somebody a hedge fund

manager or a tech billionaire who's

making a billion dollars a year. And we

have the same tax policy, in fact, a

favorable tax policy for the guy who's

worth 25 billion and makes nothing in

income every year, makes it all through,

you know, capital gains or borrowing

against his stock portfolio. In other

words, we have an accumulation of wealth

on the high end that is extraordinary. I

mean, and and it's and it's it's

something that we have no public policy

knows what to do about. As I say, you're

taxing the guy who makes $4 million and

$400 million the same. But when [snorts]

you ask about this new politics, so

let's go to a place like Sweden. Sweden

does not have a huge income inequality

problem. They've actually done a very

good job. They have very high taxes.

They have lots of redistribution. Sweden

has a major upsurge of right-wing

populism that is fundamentally driven by

culture and immigration. You say maybe

it's that we should have pro protected

our manufacturing sector better. Germany

protected its manufacturing sector. The

second largest party in Germany now is a

right-wing populist party motivated

largely by cultural issues. Maybe we

should have um coddled people with a

bigger safety net. Nobody coddles people

with a bigger safety net than France.

France's percentage the government the

state percentage of you know uh GDP is I

I forget it's like 58 55 58% highest in

the in the in the western world and you

know right now Marine Leend if the

election were held tomorrow she'd be the

next president of France. So my point is

the the income you know these income

inequalities and dysfunctions obviously

cause enormous anxiety, anger whatever

but the the age we are living in. I

would argue these things get channeled

through cultural um discontents and you

see that with immigration being the

issue that that got Trump elected and

then reelected and Trump is very smart

politically. He knows what works. A and

that tells you that there's something

going on here that we're not capturing.

An entirely materialist conception of

politics, I think, is not meeting the

moment. Well, if if I were to take this

from the more materialist left, uh I

want to spend one more moment on this. I

think what they would say is

it's that the left parties aren't

meeting the moment. So, so you I always

find it strange how much symmetry you

have in political trends across very

different countries, right? As you say,

many of those countries have they have

different tax structures, they have

different economic structures, but one

thing they all have in common is that

the left in those countries has become a

much more highly educated and usually

richer coalition. uh Petti uh with

co-authors has done a lot of work on

this talking about the Brahman left that

has sort of emerged in in wealthy

countries all across the world and and

the argument you'll hear I don't myself

totally buy it but I would like to hear

your your thinking on it is that as

these parties have become not the

working-class parties of the past but

the educated parties of the present the

highly educated parties of the present

that they became became what's called

neoliberal that they gave up on the old

class struggle and that as such the the

sort of choice on economics muddled and

that led to the class realignment that

you're talking about where you know

instead of the Democratic party winning

the working class and Republican party

winning the the rich Donald Trump won

you know most voters making less than

$50,000 a year. uh do you buy that that

it's simply the the abandonment of you

know working-class populism uh among the

parties of the left? No. And I'll tell

you why. Because you if and it really

helps to have a comparative perspective

and because so much of the time I'm

thinking about what's going on in other

countries. So look at France. France had

no neoliberal revolution. France never

had a Margaret Thatcher, never had a

Ronald Reagan. The person who was who

was president of France in that period

was Francois Mitron, a socialist. France

has never had any of the neoliberal

revolution. And yet it has perhaps the

strongest of the right-wing populist

movements. And so I think I I think it

doesn't fundamentally get, as I said,

the moment we're in. But I do think that

there's a very important point it makes,

and I try to make this in the book.

There is a so if the culture is one

piece of this class is another and this

is something we in in America find

difficult to talk about but it is as you

say the the left has become largely

populated by kind of an elite

professional class which is the new kind

of uh managerial elite technocratic

meritocratic elite and that reality has

distanced it from the working class. But

why? because of culture because they no

longer speak or understand or or

articulate the values of that working

class on cultural issues. As you know,

Ezra, the polling is very clear. The

public is very content with the

Democratic Party's positions on economic

issues. The place where they where

particularly the working class disagrees

with the Democratic party is not on its

economic policies.