Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. And welcome to the politics guys with your host, Jay Carson and Michael Baranowski.

Welcome to the politics guys. I'm Michael Baranowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.

My guest today is Lane Kenworthy, professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego.

His research focuses on social policy, including poverty, inequality, and economic growth in the United States and other rich countries.

He's the author of many academic articles and six books, including Social Democratic America,

and most recently, How Big Should Government Be, Co-authored with John Bakija, Peter Lindert, and Jeff Madrick.

Professor Kenworthy, welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot. I'm happy to be here. You know, I came, I first came across your work a few years

back when I saw your book Social Democratic America. And right away, I was struck by the title

because social democracy certainly doesn't seem to describe the America that I know. And so I was struck by the title because social democracy certainly doesn't seem to describe the

America that I know. And so I was wondering, is that more of a descriptive title or a prescriptive one,

would you say? I would say that it's a prescriptive one and also a predictive one.

So I, let me step back and say what I think social democracy means or consists of.

It's a term like any other that means different things to different people. I use it to refer to a country's economic system that's mainly capitalist, so mostly private ownership and market-driven,

but that's complemented by an expansive and generous set of public insurance programs, meaning both transfers and services.

And also, I should say, and this distinguishes contemporary or what you might call modern

social democracy from its counterpart of a generation or so ago, there also tends to be a

commitment to a high employment rate.

And so part of what the public services and also the transfers are oriented toward or geared toward is trying to ensure that you have a lot of people in paid work.

So does that characterize the United States? Well, you know, not so much, but certainly more than in the early part of the

20th century.

So if you think about a hundred years or so ago, we're a very, very different country,

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