Hey Nick, how do I describe you?

Your benevolent plutocratic overlord? as such Nick you have been the inspiration for one of our favorite questions to ask our guests

That's right is the benevolent dictator question.

What would you do if you had no political or economic constraints to solve a problem?

And in celebration of our 100th episode today we are doing a special episode which is a best of our benevolent dictator answers.

Yeah, that should be interesting.

I'm Joe Stiglitz,

University Professor at Columbia University and my book People Power and Profits,

Progressive Capitalism for an age of discontent, just got issued in paperback.

If you were a benevolent dictator, would you just make the states hall?

Yes, we had a program that I argued back in 2008 and I did the same now where basically the federal government says we will make up for the loss of revenue as a result of this economic downturn.

Plus, your additional expenditures

for dealing with unemployment and the health care associated with COVID-19.

We're not giving you a free ride.

If you may have had problems with your pension funds

in the past, that's your problem.

But we will take care of you because we the federal government didn't

succeed in maintaining the economy of full employment.

We are ultimately responsible for that.

And we didn't do what we should have stopped

the spread of the disease.

And so you're confronting that problem.

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