We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

I'm Emily Gisinski, Culture Editor here at the Federalist.

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We're joined today by Michael Lindt. He is of course a contributing editor for Tablet Magazine and a senior fellow at New America.

He is also a germane to our conversation today. The author of Hell to Pay, How the Suppression of Wages is Destroying America that Book is out on May 2nd.

Thank you so much for joining us, Michael Lindt.

Thank you for having me.

Of course, I think this book is fantastic, provocative, so interesting, and lands on a fairly cohesive theory of the case for why we look around and wonder what's going on with not just our economy but our social fabric.

So I want to start with the one of the epigraphs.

You have a Frederick Douglass quote in the sort of gilded age era. I think it's from 1871, where he writes,

Sheep Labor is a phrase that has no cheering music for the masses.

Those who demand it and seek to acquire it have but little sympathy with common humanity.

Can you tell us a little bit more about why that quote resonated as you were putting this book together?

Well, when I was behind my new book, Hell to Pay, is my experience in addressing audiences of Republican conservatives, progressive Democrats, centrist independence over three decades.

In one line, I find always works with every audience, right?

We're likely.

And that line is people who work 40 hours a week should be paid enough that they do not have to depend on welfare.

And that's just the unanimous applause line in any audience, ideologically or politically.

That is not the system we have.

We have a system in which as substantial part of the population,

and it varies depending on the welfare program.

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