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The Ezra Klein Show

Elizabeth Warren on What We Get Wrong About Inequality

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One lesson of covering policy over the past 20 years is that whatever Elizabeth Warren is thinking about now is what Washington is going to be talking about next. So when I read Senator Warren’s new book, “Persist,” I read it with an eye toward that question: Where is Warren trying to drive the policy debate next? And two answers emerged. First, toward a truly pro-family progressivism, one that puts children’s well-being and care at the center of the agenda. And second, toward a view of inequality that puts wealth, not income, first, and builds a whole different set of economic priorities atop that analysis. Warren was a policy wonk before she was a politician, and that’s the kind of conversation we had here. We discuss the drivers of the rising costs of child care, the stagnation in women’s labor force participation, whether universal day care discriminates against stay-at-home parents, Warren’s plan for fixing America’s housing crisis, whether billionaires are a policy failure, the distributional effects of canceling $50,000 in student debt, the social philosophy behind Warren’s tax proposals, how markets can be channeled toward progressive ends, the coming technologies that excite Warren, and much more. Recommendations: "Heart of Fire" by Mazie Hirono "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" by Toshikazu Kawaguchi "John Rain" Book Series by Barry Eisler You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and RogĂ© Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Ezra Client and this is the Ezra Clancho.

0:20.0

Let me just start the show today with a claim that is going to sound bold by I think is obvious.

0:24.6

Elizabeth Warren is the single most important policy thinker and doer of this generation.

0:29.9

If you go back decades now, the research she did and then the way she promoted it and sold it,

0:36.4

and then got it passed, has completely changed how we both view and make policy, particularly economic policy.

0:43.8

So the two income trap, which is a book she published in 2004 back when she was an academic,

0:48.3

it tilted the axis of the Washington economic debate and moved the focus from this pretty narrow lens

0:55.5

of wages and overall economic growth that it dominated in the Clinton era towards this deeper analysis

1:01.3

that we now take for granted on the affordability and precarity of a modern middle class life.

1:06.7

A lot of the modern economic debate is built on that.

1:09.6

Of course, that research was built on her work on bankruptcy, but it also fed into her work on financial regulation.

1:16.4

She proposed this entire new way of thinking about and then structuring consumer protection,

1:22.4

and then she made this move.

1:23.7

It policy won't almost never make. She got those ideas passed into law.

1:27.5

It went from an article in the journal democracy to a new federal agency that she set up and ran

1:34.0

the consumer financial protection bureau. It's just wild.

1:37.1

And then when the Senate Republicans wouldn't confirm her to run it permanently,

1:41.5

she ran for and won a Senate seat in Massachusetts.

1:44.4

She became then a member of the Democratic Senate leadership team and a presidential candidate.

1:49.4

The closest analog to this in recent American politics is, I don't know, maybe Pat Moynihan from New York,

1:54.9

but it's a pretty unique career and it's by no means over.

1:58.4

So in recent years, Warren has led in pushing antitrust back into the conversation.

...

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