Annie Lowrey on America’s punitive safety net, and how we can fix it.
Andrew Yang Podcast
Andrew Yang & Audacy
4.8 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2020
⏱️ 102 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Annie Lowrey, author of Give People Money and staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Andrew to discuss on-the-ground indicators of how the economy is doing, the multiplier effects of giving people cash, why the social safety net is so difficult to use, and policy changes that could make the safety net less punitive.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mAOr0WN4k08
Annie Lowrey - https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey | https://theatlantic.com/author/annie-lowrey
Andrew Yang - https://instagram.com/andrewyang | https://twitter.com/AndrewYang
Zach Graumann - https://instagram.com/zachgraumann | https://twitter.com/Zach_Graumann
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | our safety net, it was constructed to be difficult to use, |
| 0:05.3 | and low and behold, when you had a real crisis |
| 0:08.0 | in which people need to use benefits |
| 0:11.3 | or safety net programs, |
| 0:13.0 | that then the systems can't contain these people. |
| 0:17.8 | And just in general, I think that the government |
| 0:22.0 | is dysfunctional for a lot of reasons, |
| 0:23.9 | but one of the ways in which the government is dysfunctional |
| 0:26.6 | is that it doesn't have a very good customer service |
| 0:29.8 | orientation, things like doing your taxes |
| 0:33.3 | are really confusing. |
| 0:34.3 | So miserable why, yeah why? |
| 0:37.2 | Right? |
| 0:38.2 | Because I think it's in a lot of ways intentional, right? |
| 0:41.4 | We don't want the government to work very well, |
| 0:44.2 | or at least a lot of people. |
| 0:45.0 | I want it, I want it to work well, Annie. |
| 0:46.8 | I'm not going to do it. |
| 0:48.6 | You do. |
| 0:49.6 | We know one of the things that comes out of that |
| 0:51.6 | is that in many ways interacting with our government |
| 0:54.9 | reduces our interest in and confidence in government |
... |
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