This Isn’t Your Grandpa’s Joe Biden

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Biden’s economic policy isn’t what you would have expected from his long career. That’s true in the legislation he’s backing, which is bigger and bolder than anything we’ve seen from him before, but it’s even truer in the appointments he’s making and the theories he’s embracing. On everything from antitrust to inflation to employment to power, Biden is reflecting a new strain of progressive economics thoughts — one that wants to direct markets, not just correct them. Felicia Wong is the chief executive of the Roosevelt Institute, one of the think tanks that’s been central to building the new progressive economics that Biden has picked up. She joined me for a conversation on Biden’s theory of the economy, how antitrust thinking has changed, whether Jerome Powell should be reappointed chair of the Federal Reserve, whether progressives need to reckon with Amazon’s wild popularity, what kind of inflation problem we have and much more. Mentioned: “Socialists Will Never Understand Elizabeth Warren” by Henry Farrell Book recommendations: Undoing the Demos by Wendy Brown The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin Difference without Domination by Danielle Allen and Rohini Somanathan 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. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé 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 Mr. Klein and this is the Ezra Klein Show.
0:20.4	There's been a lot in the Biden administration's economic agenda that has surprised me.
0:25.3	Some of that has gotten a fair amount of attention.
0:27.2	The fact that his legislation is bigger, that it's more ambitious, that the price tags
0:33.1	he is willing to work with are far beyond the things Joe Biden ever considered at any
0:37.9	other point in his career.
0:39.7	People know about that.
0:41.8	But to me, the really striking thing has been the personnel.
0:45.6	The appointments he's made, the regulators he's putting in key positions, they speak to
0:51.2	a very different approach.
0:53.3	This administration is taking to the way it governs and shapes markets.
0:57.4	And I do want to hold on that word markets for a minute.
1:00.1	It's really, really important.
1:02.0	This is not just an administration that is more liberal in terms of building new social
1:07.1	insurance programs or building new public options for things.
1:10.0	It is an administration that simultaneously believes in markets but wants to use them much
1:15.0	more aggressively to achieve public goals.
1:19.1	And that's a pretty big phase shift building on a decade or you could argue decades of changes
1:25.2	in progressive economic thinking.
1:27.7	So to have this conversation, I wanted to bring on Felicia Wong, the CEO of the Roosevelt
1:31.5	Institute.
1:33.0	Roosevelt is a new-ish economic think tank.
	...

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