MAGA Mirage: Trump & Vance’s Contradictory Conservatism
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Hey, everybody. Welcome once again to the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart, and we have today's show as another follow-up of our continuing series entitled Jon Stewart Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Talking About When It Comes to Economics. We've got a fabulous panel today that is going to delve into sort of this idea of

the right's new populism and how they're doing that. But as we know, we're only, I think now we're down to hours to the election. I think I saw somewhere it's 400 and some hours, which, you know, obviously if my calculations are correct are

I think that's three days. It's got to be more than that. The math thing is obviously a little bit of a problem for me, but the election is coming up. People are wildly stressed out. There is an awful lot that's going on. I thought of for the podcast today, we could have this discussion about economics, which I always find fascinating, or, or,

And this is for something at home and you can send in your comments. We'll talk about that at the end of the show when we're back with our incredible producers, Brittany, Lauren, and we'll be introducing our associate producer, Jillian. Or for the next 40 to 50 minutes, I will play Ave Maria and just sway slowly. Now it's a podcast. Obviously you're probably just listening to this. You won't be able to see me, but occasionally I will just mention and the hands are moving right now.

And the hands are moving left. Is anybody fainting? And we're doing it. And it's the YMCA. And it's back to Ave Maria.

What a fucking Fellini film this guy's campaign has turned into. And the idea that this is in any way close is the most baffling. You know, there were Howard Dean was not allowed to run for president anymore because he screamed a little bit too loud once. And this guy is raising money with like,

a dance marathon in front of a bunch of people in 95 degree weather who are having like diabetic coma issues and passing out and then having to get taken out by EMTs while Kristi Noem stands there scanning the crowd for a dog to shoot. Like this whole thing is falling apart

and becoming maniacal. And then you go online and they're like, Trump, he killed that rally. That was awesome. He stood up the whole time and didn't fall once. Like, this is bonkers. So we are going to recenter this utterly surreal rally

avant-garde performance art of a fucking election that we're having on that one side and and recenter it with some lovely people who are going to talk about economics and are very very smart in doing so so let let me let me get to them first but before i no let's just get to it let's get to it

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, the main event is here. We are so excited today. We've got Oren Kass, chief economist for American Compass, a think tank on economic policy and those things, and Zachary Carter, author of The Price of Peace, Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard

Canes. Oh, Canes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the economic throwdown we've all been waiting for. Three men enter and also we'll leave. Listen, let's be fair. They're really, the stakes of this are quite low. But we will actually not even leave really. We'll just

log out. But the point is, gentlemen, I'm delighted to see you guys today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. I'm really looking forward to it. What we want to talk about is there has been a, to my mind, an incredible shift in the Republican Party rhetoric

about the economy. There's sort of this idea of the mantle of populism that is being grasped by not the entirety of the Republican Party, but certainly Oren, I think your organization is kind of helping to lead this charge of a more populist, worker-friendly Republican Party. So I guess my question to you would be, how did this come about?

And how receptive have they been on it? Well, I think the Republican Party sort of had to undergo a change. I mean, we've been doing the 1980 Ronald Reagan playbook for 40 plus years now. And I think there were a lot of good things in the Ronald Reagan playbook that were good in 1980.

Reagan, I think, did a great job winning the Cold War. Cold War ends '89, '91, depending on how you want to look at it. Then the Republican Party just keeps doing the same thing anyway and we go find other wars to start even if there are no communists to fight. We find more taxes to cut even though we maybe don't need lower tax rates. We go and do free trade with China because we've already done free trade with everybody else.

All of those things, having a strong foreign policy, cutting taxes, expanding free trade, there are times when those are great policies, but they got just kind of locked in as this orthodoxy that you always do no matter what. And that passed its expiration date. And I think if you look at the problems in the country over the last 10, 20 years, it's

That set of policies just isn't responsive. You don't fix the deindustrialization of this country with yet more free trade with China. You don't fix the kind of hollowing out of the middle class and stagnating wages with yet more tax cuts. And so I think there are still people in the Republican Party who are committed to that playbook and are going to go down with that ship.

But particularly younger conservatives, older conservatives who really want to address today's problems and frankly be successful politically are going back and doing the same thing Reagan did. They're saying, how do we apply our principles to the actual problems of today? And that requires different thinking and a different agenda. And so I think that's what's happening. Yeah. No, it's interesting. And Zach, I'm going to ask you because to my mind, I think what Oren is saying, a lot of it anyway –

aligns with what people on the left might think is better. The only way I would question it, maybe you can answer to this, is when we talk about the tax cutting policy or the free trade policy, the only one that seems to have taken root to a large extent is that idea of global free trade not being, there's the new tariff plans and all that. But the tax cutting, I mean, the last Republican president, his name escapes me, it'll come. But his policy was

I'm going to do a giant tax cut. I'm going to cut corporate tax rates. I'm going to do all that. The only thing different is, was the tariffs to some extent with global free trade. How do you feel about that?

Well, to give Donald Trump his due, he also deregulated large banks. So there was there was the bank deregulation piece as well. Yes, that is that is true. But broadly, you're right, John. I mean, I have both a great deal of respect for Oren personally and a lot of admiration for the project he is trying to pull off. I think it would be really good for the Democratic Party in particular.

and the country as a whole if we had two political parties that were genuinely competing for the economic interests of uh of working people i think you know in general competition that way is an economic good but i also think for whatever reason the psychology of democratic party leaders

they kind of don't give themselves permission to do things until Republicans say it's okay. They copy the Republican Party all the time. And so I think trade is a really great example. You've had labor unions saying things that Oren says about trade for a long time. And I think the way Oren talks about trade is basically right. I'm sure there are some policy specifics we'll differ on at some point. Maybe we'll get to that in this conversation.

But, you know, tariffs have their time and place. And I think the tariffs that Donald Trump put in place in 2018 and 2019 are largely successful project. I think that's why Joe Biden continued them. And I think that's why Joe Biden also expanded the program in certain respects by applying tariffs on electric vehicles and clean technology, emerging clean technology, which I think is a good a good policy. I don't think tariffs alone.

can constitute a pro-worker policy. I think you have to combine them with a much broader agenda. But I think for the most part, that's genuinely indicative of progress. Where I differ with Oren, I think, is in how successful the broader project has been to date. I mean, I think the elite wing of the Republican- Successful in the way of getting the Republican Party to shift more towards

Yeah, yeah. I think you still have the elite wing of the party that cares about tax cuts and nothing else. And shareholders and nothing else. And if you look at most other think tanks, they disagree with Donald Trump on his trade agenda and they disagree with Oren. You know, the tax foundation, all of these conservative think tanks that I've disagreed with for years, they're still saying the same things they were always saying.

And I think, you know, one of the particular troubles for me from my political perspective is looking at the senators who agree with Oren on a lot of these issues. They don't. That would be Hawley, Vance, Rubio, that kind of thing. Charlatans. I mean, Hawley is a. What? Hey, what? What?

Holly is a fist pumping insurrectionist. I mean, he just is. Yeah, fair enough. He has a great bill about ending child labor in the products that we buy in the United States. But that bill has not gotten any serious movement. And he's January 6th guy. January 6th guy does have a tendency to undercut a lot of the policy initiatives that they might throw in there. But you're talking about... So let's start with that specifics. You said, I believe...

the word tariffs, which from what I understand is the most beautiful word in the English language, which I did not realize. That's kind of a new concept, but apparently tariff. So let's talk about tariffs. Biden kept some of the tariffs that are on there. Oren, the plan right now in the Republican Party is to levy those tariffs on almost all of our products. Would that be correct, that are coming in as imports to 10% to 20%? Is that what's being proposed?

Yeah, that's right. I think the tariffs that we saw last time around were almost entirely focused on China. And there's kind of a specific problem with dependence on China as an adversary. But that's different from the broader problem of just our trade deficit, our deindustrialization, not making things in America because you can make them cheaper in whether it's China or Vietnam. And what is the trade deficit currently? It's about a trillion dollars a year. Okay.

Look, one funny thing about economists is that many of them look at that and say, "That's fine. If anything, a trade deficit is good. It means other countries are doing work to make stuff for us and we don't even have to do any work to make anything for them."

You know, Jason Furman, who's one of Obama's chief economic advisors recently gave a speech. It's important to say this is what across the political spectrum economists have been selling for a long time. The idea is that imports are the good thing and exports are just the unfortunate work you have to do to get all the great imports.

And look, I like stuff too. I'm not saying we should go live in log cabins in the woods or whatever else. Sure. But we have to recognize that a healthy economy, flourishing individuals and families, a strong nation, it's not just about consuming cheap stuff. You also need to have good jobs. You need to be able to make stuff for the rest of the world.

and we have abandoned that. Worse still, when you don't make that stuff, it's not like the rest of the world sends you stuff for free. What you send back instead is assets. We send back ownership of our companies. We send back IOUs, treasury bonds saying, "We will pay you some other day." We're basically just running up the national credit card to get all this cheap stuff.

And so the idea behind broader tariffs is to say, look, it actually matters whether things get made here or not. And our economy has to basically put a finger on the scale to say, all things equal, we would rather have stuff made here.

Which I think is exactly, I think the question is going to be, what's the best way to get to making stuff here? Because I think you're right. Making stuff here means that we have jobs and there's a relevance to what we do and that we're getting wages. The question that I would have, and Zach, maybe you can help answer this, is when I look at tariffs, rather than the United States, maybe government running up the credit card, it's basically a tax on working people.

that, you know, if let's say a tariff is increases, you know, a thousand dollars on whatever product it is, you know, and that's money's going to go to the United States treasury and it's going to help us pay down the deficit and all that. But that money is actually going to be a tax on the goods for the consumer. Is it not? So isn't it, you know, we talk about redistribution of wealth all the time. Isn't a tariff just another

sort of regressive tax on working people who are going to be paying that extra money for that product directly into the treasury of the United States. So isn't that just, isn't that just a tax? The answer is sort of, uh, all right. Well, that,

Tariffs do have costs. They do have costs. And you're right, they are a tax. They are paid by, at least in the short term, consumers. How much of the tax is paid by consumers depends. I mean, I think you often hear people discuss tariffs as if you have a 10% tariff that automatically raises prices by 10%. That's just not true. It depends on the industry. It depends on all sorts of other variables that are involved.

As we saw with the 2018 and 2019 Trump tariffs, there were costs to those. But if you looked at the economic discourse when Trump was calling for them, there was all of this apocalyptic rhetoric about how we were going to have a recession and inflation was going to soar. And it just didn't.

you know, there were the prices of some goods did rise. Well, but he did though, he had to subsidize our farm workers with billions of dollars. Like it's not, it's not as though there aren't other factors that go into the tariffs that the government ends up paying out. I would say it also doesn't directly just go into our coffers and help bring down our deficit.

That's exactly right. There are costs, but they are not necessarily determinative costs or insurmountable costs. And the question is whether the costs are worth it as they are for any other tax or any other policy. I mean, we don't, at least on the progressive side of the economic spectrum, we don't say that an income tax is illegitimate because it's a tax on labor, right? We say that there are things that are legitimate.

or valuable that can come from an income tax that we want the public to provide. So it really depends on the industry, the sector, where within the supply chain that the tariff is being applied, and then what you're trying to get out of it. I think in particular, tariffs on steel and aluminum make a lot of sense because you've

you do need some basic industrial parts in order to make other things. That could be a national security issue. Yeah. I mean, that's true. I mean, I think some of the rhetoric around this with China specifically is too hawkish and sounds too aggressive. I don't think there's any reason why the United States, for instance, has to be the only player in a lot of these industrial sectors. But I think it would be healthy for the world economy, for the United States and China to both have industrial sectors. And we got to get in a war with somebody.

I mean, if we're going to run out of people to get into Warwick, we might as well start moving there. But you also have problems if you tax intermediate goods. I mean, you can make it harder and more expensive to produce things in the United States. So it depends on how the tariffs are applied. But we're talking about trying to reinvigorate the manufacturing base and to create a

broader, more resilient supply chain, as we saw in the pandemic, all those things. So my question would be, why tariffs? Why not either subsidies or investment? Tariffs aren't the only way. And rather than set off some sort of global trade war that might even put the use of the

the dollar as the world's standard currency at risk, aren't there ways to do this like we did with chips and other things? Isn't there a way to do this that's sort of less confrontational, provocative, and still provides the benefits, Oren? Come on, Oren, just admit it. Okay, we've got to take a quick break. We will be right back.

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All right, we're back. Well, let me say three things about it. One, just to go back to the point about kind of is this regressive to who pays the tax? I think it's actually a great point and a very fair concern. I do think it raises a broader issue, though, which is that the model we've been pursuing economically in this country is basically let's have an economy that generates ever worse and less equal outcomes.

And then let's make up for that with an ever more progressive tax base and ever more sort of transfers to, quote, compensate the losers.

Oh, man, are you speaking my, I can't even believe this, but boy, are you speaking my language. If you wanted to reverse the idea of supply side economics and take out corporate subsidies, which are somehow the American way, and yet any money that goes to workers and get workers, you know, look, we've become an investment economy since supply side rather than a labor economy. If you want to change that,

I'm so with you. And I do want to change that. For purposes of the tariff discussion, my point is just rather than evaluate the tax code and say, wait a minute, we need this to be more progressive. The thing about a tariff is, and refocusing on the manufacturing economy, is what if we actually had an economy that generated better outcomes?

That if it happens to be that a tariff isn't the most progressive tax, but the end result of it is actually better jobs and higher wages and more productivity growth for your typical household, that's the goal. And so I think we have to focus on it in those terms.

The other thing I just wanted to throw out there quickly, the dollar is a reserve currency, I think, is actually, you're sounding a little bit like Larry Summers there with your- Whoa, how dare you, sir? At long last, have you no decency? I would ask you, why do you want the dollar to be the reserve currency? The dollar of the reserve currency is great for Wall Street and terrible for typical workers in the manufacturing sector. I meant that more as a tool for the United States as far as the rules-based order. It's a different conversation, really.

The one I want to have, though, is we talk about those externalities about why shouldn't we just have a better manufacturing base in America? Well, the problem with that is capital travels and labor doesn't. Most of the rules that we've put in place empower corporations to find the lowest watermark as far as labor and goods, right?

And so to suggest that, well, if we just make that a little bit more painful for them, they'll come back. But it doesn't change the general rules that capital is able to travel.

And so it's always going to try and find that. And by the way, even within the United States, we may be upset with Vietnam and India and Mexico for undercutting American workers. But South Carolina does the same thing. You know what I mean? Like if you're a right to work state, you're undercutting states that have unions. So, Zach, can you can you speak to that a little bit about, you know, isn't this still not addressing the core issue?

I think you have the point about capital flight there. I think you need both carrots and sticks. Part of the problem is that the rules are just not very good. I mean, one way to keep capital from leaving is to ban capital from leaving. I mean, you can have laws and regulations that keep investment in the country. Another way is to make it more worthwhile for capital to stay in the country. And that is to a very great extent what Joe Biden's economic program has been about. I mean, the Inflation Reduction Act,

is a bit mistitled because it's basically a domestic industry bill. Infrastructure. The basic idea is that we're spending a lot of money on green infrastructure and essentially paying industries to start factories here and also protecting them through tariffs from foreign competition to some extent. So there's, I mean, I think...

The bill changes, but it looks like there's going to be about $2 trillion in domestic green tech investment under the Inflation Reduction Act that it will eventually support about 4 million jobs. And the jobs so far look like they're pretty good jobs. I mean, they're...

High-end manufacturing jobs are called high-end manufacturing jobs because they pay better. But also we're seeing unionization rates going up. More workers have organized in the last couple of years than they have in decades in comparable numbers. - But still quite low compared historically.

Well, the overall unionization rate is low historically, but for the first time in a long time, those numbers are turning around and turning around significantly. Part of that's having a National Labor Relations Board that actually does its job. I mean, under Democrats and Republicans for decades, they just haven't. Biden's got a very good NORB. Part of that is also because when you make things in the United States, there are knock-on effects with regard to

to development and innovation that economists generally don't like to talk about for whatever reason. When we talk about innovation in the United States, it's sort of like that can only happen with more education. The only way to get better ideas and to create new things is to have more people going to school. I'm in favor of having more people going to school. I think a college degree should be free for everybody who wants one. But a lot of innovation comes from just making stuff.

and learning how to make stuff and having corporate leaders and engineers and people like that get ideas because they see something being made and secondary and tertiary products that become useful and become useful to make here because other things are being made in the same area. So I think

And that is that is something that corporations do because it is profitable once you have the manufacturing center established. So I think one way to keep capital in the United States is, in fact, to expand manufacturing. I don't see how you do that without some form of trade protection.

But I don't necessarily think a universal 10% across the board tariff is the right tool. It might be a little too blunt. I think you have to look sector by sector, industry by industry to look at how you do that. But the way that we're working with green tech, we're in green energy where we know that's the next

That's the next big thing. I think in the United States, we tend to, because we're so stuck in the 90s, we tend to think that computers and the internet is the technological frontier. That's the technological frontier from 2000. Technological frontiers right now. Catching rockets that are falling from space with little pincers. That seems to be, we're all going to go...

But we're still talking, one of the things Oren and Zach that we're still putting band-aids on, well, maybe 10% tariffs will help get a manufacturing base and help the workers, or maybe an infrastructure program will help get the workers. But these are still knocking around, I think what is the core issue, which is we don't have a labor valued economy

we have a capital valued economy and we can make those little pinches here and there but it has to work in concert with how do we get workers to have more agency

Within this, because it's still at the stick and carrot level as though we are at the mercy of the type of economy that we want to have. And so how do we empower a more labor friendly one, Oren?

I think you've sort of put your finger on the issue very well. And it's the way that we think about it at American Compass. We describe what we're trying to do as rebuilding American capitalism. Because the initial question is like, do you like capitalism or not? Right? You could say, screw capitalism. I've got some better idea. Or frankly, I'd be a little skeptical. But even capitalism is a little too broad. Because we tend to think, oh, free market capitalism. But we haven't had that.

Ever. In this country, ever. The government picks winners and losers all the time. That's the point I was going to make is that capitalism, if you go all the way back to Adam Smith, for instance, people think the invisible hand is like this magical force he was describing that just people pursue profit and everything works out.

And that's never been the case. And that's not what people like Adam Smith thought. What Adam Smith said was actually literally in the paragraph where he describes the invisible hand, he says, first of all, you have to assume that people are going to prefer investing domestically to investing in foreign countries. Then you have to assume that the things they're going to do are going to be the things that employ the most people and produce the most output.

And if that's the case, right, if you have that alignment,

then their pursuit of profit will also advance the public good. And so that's sort of capitalism working. If you have an alignment where the things that earn the most money for businesses are also things that work out well for workers and for the country. But wouldn't you say, I mean, as far as conservative economic thought is, wouldn't you say Milton Friedman is the one who kind of took that invisible hand and then perverted it to this idea that, because you said something very interesting there, which was,

the public good. We have entirely lost that as part of our empowering of corporatism. And so how do we pull that back into if the party that you're trying to convince is the one that

Really, their economic king, Friedman, is the one who kind of perverted that into saying corporations really don't have – public good has nothing to do with it. Right. No, it's exactly the right question. The fascinating thing about people like Friedman and Friedrich Hayek is the other great example is they were not conservatives. Friedman would have told you he's a liberal.

Hayek, in fact, has a very famous essay called Why I Am Not a Conservative. Oh, that one I haven't seen. Yeah, that one doesn't get as much play. It's a wonderful essay. But this is the point is that the Reagan coalition took these guys who today we would call libertarians and took that free market ideology in the context of fighting the Cold War and said, this is going to be what conservative economics stands for.

but it's not actually very conservative in all sorts of ways. The fight that's going on within the right right now and where I'm quite optimistic is actually, wait a minute, let's go relearn what it would mean to have conservative economics. That's where someone like Marco Rubio gave a wonderful speech on common good capitalism.

the question of how do you reorient capitalism toward the common good? It's obviously something that Senator Vance has talked about a lot. See, this blows my mind because have the conservatives in any way talk to their judges or talk to the people that excoriate capitalism for public good? Because that would be those, what are they, ESG funds, the things that people invest in that might create public good. So, Zach, when you hear the rhetoric of

using capitalism as not just necessarily a tool for public good, but including public good as part of the mandate of capitalism. Boy, if you bring that up in a debate, most people on the right would accuse you of socialism.

I love the rhetoric and the narrative that Oren has, I think, successfully injected into this sector of the Republican Party. I think it's a really difficult thing to have achieved, and I think it's really quite impressive. Two points, Cass! I mean, the way Oren conceives of the economy is very similar, I think, at this level to the way that I conceive of the economy. Adam Smith, he was very explicit saying...

the economy has to work for the largest class. He was a class-based thinker of, of people in society. And that class is the working class class. Um,

That's not the way that Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek conceived of free markets operating. I mean, Jennifer Burns just did a very fawning biography of Milton Friedman where she called him a conservative. The whole premise of the book is that he's a conservative. And the idea is because free markets can be used to create essentially inequality in an elite dominated society.

economy. Friedman is a conservative and Jennifer Burns likes that. So she says that's good. So I think this, even at the intellectual level among conservatives, this idea is still being disputed and it's very hard to move that ship around. But this is theory in practice, Zach. In practice, if you look at the majority of the court decisions that have come down from the judges that have been appointed by Trump and other conservatives,

It makes it harder to form unions. It makes it harder to form class action lawsuits. It makes it harder to get industrial protections for workers. At almost every turn,

The theory of capitalism working for workers and the practice of what we are instituting are utterly at odds. And even among the people, you know, the practitioners in the Senate who use this rhetoric, they are often at war with themselves. And the rhetoric is linked up to, I think, just frankly, racist demagoguery. I think if you look at J.D. Vance's performance in the debate a couple of weeks ago,

You know, he tried to pin the 50 percent or so rise in housing prices since the pandemic on immigration. Economists can disagree about the economics of immigration. I think to some extent the studies there are pretty inconclusive.

But there's been an increase in the total U.S. population since the pandemic of less than 1%. The idea that immigrants are somehow responsible for a 50% rise in home prices over that period is just transparently ridiculous. And I think it's obviously ridiculous to think

to people who aren't already predisposed to having a great deal of vitriol towards immigrants. And so I worry that when push comes to shove with some of these characters, that the thing that matters for them is not going to actually be the interests of working people economically, but an attempt to pin problems on immigrants in the service of elite interests, elite economic interests. - Okay, we've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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Okay, we're back. Oren, it brings up an interesting point. You know, when we talk about immigration, so what you're talking about is kind of this larger project. You're looking at a larger time horizon. These tariffs can help to recenter an American manufacturing base, which can reinvigorate kind of the American working class base. It can raise wages. As we go along, we will shrink jobs.

that trade deficit and all those things. It's kind of looking at it on a time horizon. There may be some short-term pain on tariffs, right? Which may bring costs up or may be a little bit of a regressive tax. And then when we talk about immigration though, we don't have that time horizon. And I think most people that think about immigration is,

Maybe there's going to be a little short-term pain. We get a rush of people and we're not quite sure resources and allocations and all those things. But ultimately, it will be a net

positive because not only are they workers, but they're also consumers. They're also going to be creating new businesses. As they get settled, I think it's shown that the second generation of immigration is very much a net positive for the American economy. So why don't we view immigration with that same time horizon? Why so much vitriol on that side, especially from the right?

when you're trying to also show that reinvigorating our working class labor base is a time horizon project.

It's an interesting question. I guess it seems to me to get the issue a little bit backward. Probably. I do that a lot. Well, let me tell you what I think about it is that I think if you were to look at the immigration issue as a static moment in time and say, okay, somebody enters the country today and here are these follow-on effects down the road, like you said, I think there are a lot of positive things you can say about it.

The problem as an ongoing policy is that what we've been doing in this country for 40 or 50 years now is essentially kowtowing to a corporate lobby that every time the labor market gets tight, screams, oh, we need more immigrants. I mean, my favorite moment from the vice presidential debate was when Tim Walz tried to cite what the US Chamber of Commerce had written in the Wall Street Journal as support for his stance on immigration.

And so what frustrates me is that all of this rhetoric about focusing on the interests of workers, not what corporations want, goes out the window as soon as we actually focus on the reality of what it takes for a tight labor market. My favorite example of this is the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, put out a very interesting paper on what they called the, quote, whole of government approach to worker power.

And it didn't mention immigration. It had one footnote saying, oh, immigration is really complicated. You know, we're not going to get to that. We don't want to get into that. Yeah. So I like fair point. You know, there's only so much room in the PDF. You wouldn't you wouldn't want to go on too long there. And so immigration is obviously a very complicated issue. But.

From the perspective that we're talking about it here, what it means for capitalism to work well, what it means to have an economy focused on serving workers well, telling corporations, sorry, no, there is no kind of cavalry of incoming cheap labor to meet your needs. You actually have to make things work with the people here.

I think has to be part of that picture. And it endlessly perplexes me. I mean, in political terms, I understand it. But as a conceptual matter, I think it's very hard to defend this idea that

well, we're just going to forget everything we care about, about how we think the economy works, what would be good for workers, because heaven forbid we enforce our immigration laws. But is that because you think it depresses the wages of workers to have the immigrant senior? Because I think that's the thing Zach was saying, and Zach, correct me if I'm wrong, you were saying that it's a little muddled as to whether that happens. Yes, it's, well...

It's unclear. This is a 19th century idea. It goes back to particularly John Stuart Mill and like a lot of- Thank God you added Mill there. Yeah. And like a lot of 19th century ideas. I mean, I think a lot of the intuitions persist and the evidence is really not terribly clear. But even Oren's talking about something that's a little bit more complex about where that

that immigration is a give to corporate America in the same way that cutting corporate taxes might be, you know, goes along with the same plan that we're capitulating to that. I'm not sure where Trump's deportation plan fits into that. I want to agree and disagree with Oren on this one. I think it's, it is, it is a complex issue. Um,

I don't think it's impossible that immigration could put downward pressure on wages for various reasons. There isn't a whole lot of empirical evidence to back that up. I don't think it's totally ridiculous, though. But I will say, if you look at the last couple of years, for instance, where last year we had the highest

foreign-born population in the United States in history, we did not see wages plummet for American workers, and we did not see wages plummet for American workers at the bottom of the income ladder. Since the pandemic, real wages are up. That's even accounting for inflation, even accounting for the cost of living. People are taking home more than they were before the pandemic. And in particular, the biggest gains have been made at the bottom of the income distribution. So it may be the case that

that immigration does put downward pressure on wages, but whatever it is, I just don't think it's so much that it can't be overcome with other policies. And if there are benefits from immigration that we see for our society, like, I mean, I would give the example of New York City being the greatest cultural center the world has ever known.

I think largely because it is a home to so many people from so many parts of the world, then there isn't an obvious reason to me why immigration should be the first thing you turn to when you're trying to improve the livelihoods of workers. Even in an era of high immigration, as we've seen in the last few years, we have seen workers' benefits.

So respectfully, when I hear Zach say that, all I can think of is the folks I hear saying, well, gosh, in the year after Donald Trump's tax cut, median household incomes rose especially sharply, and that proves how good tax cuts are. I mean, you can do this sort of...

quite arbitrary cherry-picked argument as much as you want on each side. And there's no share of partisans who do. One of the things I think is so great about this conversation we're having, at least until you get to the immigration question, is we're actually stepping back and thinking structurally about how does capitalism work? What does it take to make it work? And the reality is that people's wages will go up under one and only one condition. And that's if employers have to offer a higher wage to get the workers that they want.

That is how raises happen. And so we have to focus on that. But let's talk about that because I think that's a great point. When we talk about the structural thing, and immigration and all those things do play into it, and it's a very complex thing. There's no question in my mind, though, that the field is tilted to corporate profit. We talk about, well, the only way that we can help American workers is if we get their wages up. But maybe that's not the only way.

Because when you look at how does a shareholder economy protect money for management? Well, it is wages, but it's also bonuses. It's also stock buybacks. It's a seat at the table. It's making those people the shareholders. So in a capital-based economy where clearly, if you look at Wall Street and the stock market,

Capital is through the roof and has tremendous gains, and labor has not had any of those kinds of gains. So maybe aren't we looking at how to remunerate labor in a really narrow way, which is you've got to find a way to unionize, to become your own lobbyists.

and force companies to give you a better hourly or yearly wage when what we should be looking at are ways to elevate labor to the table so that they can partake in not just the labor economy, but the investment economy? Wouldn't that be another way to change the dynamic of our capitalist system? Elizabeth Warren has talked about this, I think, quite eloquently.

the idea that you want to have some sort of participation for labor at the corporate oversight level. So giving labor a seat at the table on corporate boards. Also having corporate boards do something. I mean, corporate boards...

Stock buybacks, that's something. Well, and that's basically what they do. I mean, good management in the United States, the culture of management is basically find ways to fire people, find ways to cut costs and leave innovation to somebody else. Someone else will figure that out.

And so corporate boards just rubber stamp CEO paychecks and stock buybacks, cash outs to shareholders, essentially. So I think having a serious set, having a serious securities and exchange commission that cares about corporate oversight and having some labor representation on corporate boards is a good idea. Not just as observers. That's what's been offered. Right. You can sit there, just don't say anything. Right.

Right. But I, you know, I also think part of the problem, I don't think antitrust can explain all of the world's problems, but I do think the problem of bigness has become, and of concentration has become a pretty serious problem in it, particularly in, in sort of cutting edge sectors of the economy, like the tech sector. And I think when these companies are insulated from, from competitive pressures as, you know, Google, Apple, et cetera, are Amazon, you know,

Microsoft.

It creates an environment where it's quite easy to stop worrying about making new things and coming up with new and better ideas. I mean, if you look at what Google has been doing with AI, for instance, the quality of Google's search engine has declined significantly over the past year with these nonsense AI responses. The type of innovation they're coming up with just isn't very valuable. I mean, Facebook is trying to come up with new ideas to put computer screens on your face. I mean, these are just not...

great ideas. That's not the only thing. So I think you do need some competitive pressure at particularly in cutting edge sectors of the economy. Well, disruption is clearly harder and harder the larger companies get. But that gets away a little bit, Oren, and I want to get back to that larger idea of how do you think about an economy that is incentivized to allow workers to benefit at the same rate?

as capital. Because when you think about it, so many decisions have been made in America over the last 40 years, as you say, that reduces the power of workers. Basically, the government saying, I wish you guys had better lobbyists because corporations are killing it. We got Citizens United. Money is speech. They can throw all the money they want into all these different things. They can control. Congress is too dysfunctional and inept.

to in any way counter corporate power. Workers though, hey man, you just got to get better unions. Oh, and by the way, we're going to make that a lot harder for you. And even within the United States, there's going to be right to work states and you can't do it. So how do you, as someone who is influential with the right, get them to consider those dynamics, tell their judges, tell their legislators, and reconfigure this in a more labor positive manner?

Well, I think it's happening. And that's something I wanted to come back to because it's come up a few times in the discussion, you know, how much change is really going on on the right. Look at the judges, look at Donald Trump, etc.,

I think it's really important to say that these things happen slowly, that the institutional change that we're talking about, especially in a political system, isn't like, oh, okay, we like that idea. Now we're all going to do that. Whether it's, if you think about the Reagan revolution, it started with Barry Goldwater in 1964. It took 16 years. If you think about the New Democrats, Democratic Leadership Council, Bill Clinton's project,

Started in the early 80s. It takes about a decade to get to Clinton-Goren in 92. And so I think what you're seeing now is this shift on the right of center that started in the middle of the last decade.

Sorry, judges have lifetime appointments. So there are going to be an awful lot of judges that were appointed. But a lot of them were appointed by Trump, to be fair. I mean, it wasn't that long ago. Certainly. But Trump himself is a great illustrator of this. Trump is not a new right figure. Trump is a sort of fascinating transitional figure or disruptor. Fascinating is probably. Disruptor. Fast something. Yeah.

Fascinating as a neutral term. I don't think there's any question that Trump is a fascinating political figure. And he obviously created...

a lot of space for a lot of people to think differently about things. But Trump is, you know, to your point, what did Trump do? He tried to repeal Obamacare and he did a big tax cut. I think he did some very good things on trade that we've discussed. But one interesting difference is when Trump came into office in 2016, he looks down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill, who's there? It's Speaker Paul Ryan.

with a big corporate tax cut and an Obamacare repeal. Let's say Trump were to win and come into office this year. Oh, did you guys feel that? I just got like a real... Did you feel that? The hair come up? Did anybody feel that? Did it get dark outside?

I think it's worth thinking about, John. Believe me, it's all I've been thinking about, Oren. If you look down, okay, what are the, where is the energy? What are the ideas on Capitol Hill today? It is very different. It is, you know, obviously, I mean, look at the distance from Mike Pence to J.D. Vance. You can like or dislike. Yeah, but Oren, to the point that it's different, I mean, Trump was on Elon Musk's podcast or wherever they were.

And the first thing they did was laugh about how Musk cut thousands of workers and what a great thing that he did. And ha ha ha, you couldn't, you know, Tesla's the only company that doesn't have a union. Ha ha ha. And, and then he talks about how he hates paying overtime. Like,

I don't know where this shift is, but Trump is by far the, you know, the biggest. Oh, absolutely. But you just did, you just did the same thing again, which is go back to, well, what does Donald Trump think? But what he thinks is the most, he is the black hole of the conservative or Republican movement right now. What he thinks is what they think for God's sakes, Oren.

The Republican Party was the most anti-communist. Putin is the enemy. And Trump is the guy who came in there and were like, actually, Ukraine's the problem and Russia's the good guy. I mean, I'm pretty sure Putin's not communist. So that's a little bit confusing. He's definitely not communist, but he's certainly not a friend to the United States. There's a war between Oren and the Silicon Valley billionaires. There just is within the party. And I want Oren to win that war.

I think that would be good for America if Oren won, but it is really not obvious to me that he's going to win. But let me say one more thing about it. I agree it's very possible that the work we're doing is not ultimately going to prevail. But I think the question is, what should it be evaluated against? And when you look out and you say, well, Donald Trump in 2024 isn't some pro-worker- But he's taken on that mantle, Oren. I think I'm talking about the difference between the rhetoric

of I'm a friend of the working man and a guy who the next week goes on a podcast and talks about how great it was that they all lost their jobs. Like to me, that's just cognitive dissonance. I don't know how you square that circle. And so other than tariffs, what of this new pro worker policy seems not dead on arrival for these guys?

But again, you're still going back over and over again. I agree that Donald Trump is the head of the party today. I think the question is, what is post-Trump conservatism going to look like? If you look beyond Donald Trump and you ask, okay, who is the generation of leaders who's going to come after him? One interesting thing about it is it's not a bunch of mini Trumps. I mean, there are many Trumps out there, but they haven't been especially successful in

I mean, if I look at Congress today, there's not one person in there on the Republican side that I can see that has a viable path to in any way criticizing Donald Trump or coming out in a variety of ways. Oh, of course, which goes exactly for the number of people who were willing to say how Joe Biden looked until he actually announced he was dropping out. That's a good point. Point. Touche. No one in either party is going to question the leader of their party. That's how party politics works. And-

We can call it out or ignore it as much as we see fit. It doesn't tell you anything about what people are actually doing and working on and what direction things are going. Right.

Orrin, it just pains me to keep having to disagree with you on this because, as I've said, I want you to win. But, you know, young Republicans, there are young Republicans who are decent people who agree with Orrin Cass. Yes, they are. They exist. Okay, they do. But there are also young Republicans. I mean, look what happened to the Ron DeSantis campaign. I mean, he had to keep firing staffers because they were saying Nazi stuff. I mean, they were putting fat...

And these were young staffers who were putting Nazi imagery in videos published to the Internet. I mean, there is an intellectual energy for Oren's project. That's real and it's true. And I think it's a totally silly mistake to ignore it. There's also a lot of pseudo, I hate to call it intellectual energy, but there is a lot of energy for this outright project.

racism and sort of romanticization of 19th century authoritarianism and 20th century fascism. It's just there. The online right is a really ugly place. And it's not clear to me that that isn't the stronger sort of rising tide or current within the next generation of Republican politics.

Yeah, I mean, I think, look, obviously I have my own biases here. But for me, when I'm listening to these conversations, I'm always struck by the sort of

strange way, and there's obviously a problem on both sides, it's very easy to focus on and elevate the kind of fringe figures. I mean, I could go on a long rant about the online left and how they've conducted themselves vis-a-vis anti-Semitism over the last year, frankly, up to and including certain members of Congress. But I don't think any of us would actually think in good faith that's a way of understanding the likely direction of the Democratic Party.

And so to Zach's point, I think you're absolutely right. There are huge challenges within the right of center on these issues. And it's something we work at American Compass very actively on is how do you craft a responsible and ultimately inclusive conservatism? Because you're going to need it if you're going to build a durable governing majority. Right. And I think it also, listen, to be fair, I think the fascist

Right. Or the racist right or the, you know, anti-Semitic left or the anti-Semitic right or the, you know, both parties, unfortunately, share that, you know, as well, confuses the issue, I think, of of what we're really discussing today, which is.

Donald Trump once said, I'm the only thing standing in between us becoming a socialist country. And I think the only thing standing in between us becoming a socialist country is meaningful reform to capitalism. Because if capitalism continues along the way of wealth inequality and an economy that doesn't work,

for working people, then it's upside down. And that's a recipe for disruption. I would say the reason we didn't fall prey to socialism and communism in the 20s and 30s is because of the New Deal. And I believe in the government's ability to temper some of those inequalities with positive programs. And I think we still see some of those programs today. So ultimately, that's what it comes down to.

in my mind. And so I would just say as a final question, and I've so appreciated the conversation and boy, having Zach and Oren, you two guys, so smart, but also so thoughtful and respectful of each other's positions has been amazing. What I would say is, what is that meaningful reform to a capitalist system that's further and further away from that stability that we talk about?

And how likely do you think it is? And I'll start with Zach and then Oren, you can finish. What's the one trick to save capitalism? The one trick to save us all. In the 1930s, 1920s and 1930s, the economics profession kept insisting on balanced budgets and free trade.

to solve problems that I think were largely created in retrospect by balanced budgets and free trade. And it took a new thinker. It took John Maynard Keynes coming along and giving kind of intellectual permission. The man side.

Right, to the Roosevelt administration first and then later to the British welfare state to change the way that governments interacted with their economies. I think we have to have a lot of state-led investment in order to have the economic growth and innovation that enables the pie to grow the way that everybody who loves capitalism

says that capitalism works. So I think in the short term, we have to keep spending trillions of dollars on domestic investment.

And I think you have to do that with a very strong National Labor Relations Board. And I think the results of that will be quite robust. I think you're already seeing it under the Biden administration. You know, people still say they hate the economy. I think that's largely due to housing prices. But we've seen record growth over the last few years. We've seen rising wages, even accounting for inflation. And we haven't had a labor market this good in 50 years. I mean, the unemployment rate was at or below 4% for like

15 straight months. It's now just slightly over 4%. That's largely because the labor force keeps expanding. I mean, this basically works. And if we keep doing it, I think we'll have better results. I love that answer from Zach because I think it highlights where we agree and disagree in a lot of ways. And just to say, if you're interested in the 20s and 30s, Zach's biography of Keynes is amazing. I'm waiting for the movie. Do go pick it up, listeners. I

But look, I think we agree obviously a lot on the diagnosis. We agree a lot on these kind of this structural way of thinking where I think you'll see conservatives and progressives who both really care about this stuff, you know, still disagree is like when Zach says trillions of dollars in public investment are going to get it done.

I sort of have a whole list of reasons that that makes me nervous and I'm skeptical we can do it that way. And I think where you see conservatives starting to think about things like the global tariff, right, which as Zach said, like, look, that's blunt. Maybe it's too blunt.

That's what I like most about it because I – right? Like it's in a funny way. It's the trade equivalent of raising interest rates. Well, look, it's the thing that I could see Congress actually doing and not completely screwing up. And if you did that, when we think about restricting immigration, is there some set of much more tailored policies that hypothetically would be better? Maybe. But I don't think we're likely to get that right either.

And so I think the way a lot of conservatives are thinking about it is to say, look, what is the fairly set of blunt rules and constraints that we need that are going to bring that pursuit of profit back into alignment with the common good? Because ultimately, you know, speaking for myself,

I might not sound like it sometimes, I love free markets. I would much rather have a freer market in the US, even if that means insulating it in some ways from the rest of the world, and then figure out what are the things, the point earlier that Zach was bringing up about competition in the tech space is another great example. We've said the way to make the most money in this country is to go monopolize some tech industry, and that's all venture capitalists want to go spend on.

And so you have to have a rule that says, actually, no, if you try to do that, we're just going to break it up. Right. And so I think we'll have different solutions on this stuff. But thinking in these terms and for me, the punchline at the end of the day is productivity, because I think you asked a good question. Can we have workers own more capital, participate as owners? There are some ways to do some of that.

Something it always runs into is at the end of the day, the economic reality for your typical working family is the question of, okay, what am I earning in my paycheck? And if we want paychecks to go up, the way in the long run they go up is when people become more productive. And one thing capitalism actually does do pretty well is when people do become more productive, they actually typically do get to benefit from a lot of the gain of that. But see, let me ask you a question because that –

we've become far more productive over the last 50 years. I mean, productivity is up incredibly, but wages have not increased. No. So this is the interesting point. Per capita-

it has gone up a lot. But when we look at per capita- What's the only other way to look at it? Because per capita is just the average. It's like how me and Bill Gates per capita have $50 billion. And so what we have is an economy, GDP per capita has gone up exactly as fast as those productivity gain. But what's happened, construction is a fascinating example. And we don't have to go back to the immigration debate, but it's related, I think,

productivity has been falling in the construction sector for 50 years. Productivity has been falling in manufacturing for the last decade. So you're saying it's a mislead to talk about productivity is misleading in that regard? Yeah, yeah. Just to talk about economy, why? This is exactly the point. What are we doing to ensure that the way to generate profit is by increasing the productivity and creating better job opportunities for your typical American worker? Right. Well, if I can sum up, because I know you guys got to go and all that. What it seems to me is we all agree

that we have to figure out a way to get our invisible hands to intervene in the economy so that we can create a free market through different interventions. And I think that's how we've settled it. I know we have to go, but I would like to not associate myself with that summary of the conversation.

Yeah, he agrees. I'll pass. Thank you guys both so much. It's been, and I know I've loved it. You guys are fantastic. Oren Kass, chief economist, American Compass, Zach Carter, author of The Price of Peace, Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes. Thank you guys both for being here. Thank you. Good to see you, Zach. Thank you, John. Good to see you, Oren.

Man, okay, all right. If you're listening at home, I know you're fired up because that was, I don't know what, 50 minutes of just fucking economic opiate just injected right into the vein. That's just nothing but, not opiate, that's probably the wrong word to use, just nutrition. That's what I, we're joined by our great producer, Brittany Mamedovic, Lauren Walker, and introducing...

The young and associate producer and researcher, Jillian Spear. Jillian, let me, I'm going to start with you, Jillian. The reason I wanted you to be on with this one, for those of you who don't know at home, I don't know anything about any of this stuff. Jillian, on the other hand, knows everything about all this stuff and then researches it and sends me documents spelled out phonetically. Sometimes. That I am able to not necessarily understand, but at least pronounce. Jillian.

You were the driving force behind the foundations of understanding this conversation between Zach and Oren.

Did it in any way clarify things for you? Did it meet any expectations? Did you want to strangle me at any point during the conversation to say, that's not right? Never, never. No, I thought it was great. I mean, I think what's so striking is the areas in which they agree and disagree. But I think Zach, he sort of repeatedly kept saying that he wants Oren to win this battle within the conservative party. And I think that's because he thinks that

Orrin winning will mean that this will be the starting point for compromise with the left. And I just don't think that that's the case when you see that these Republican senators that are most in line with Orrin's ideology are the same senators that are so fundamentally obsessed with

you know, owning the libs, for lack of a better word. Gen six, immigration. Yeah, he's got a cadre of very hardline guys that are supposedly the populist movement. I'll tell the one thing, though, that I thought derailed us a little bit from the left was the talk about racism and immigration and those... Because...

While it is obviously a strain that is infecting a lot of these different things, I do think it's a bit of a conversation stopper. Well, I think it's like one thing that always kind of sticks out to me is that with especially around the conversation with immigration, it's like purely by coincidence, our economic policy aligns with the idea that we want to deport immigrants.

11 million immigrants. And that's just because that's the way the math works out. And we're tired of giving into corporations. Yes. The math is mathing. Yes. But I, I'd never heard it framed that way before. Like we've got to deport 11 million evil or Exxon wins. Like it's, that was the one where I was like, Hmm.

We can't just raise the minimum wage. But that's a great point, Jillian. And I also thought it was interesting that when he talks about all those things of realigning this capitalist economy, the only one

that seems to be under consideration are tariffs. And that to me is just, you can pick that or invest in infrastructure in the United States. No, that'd be too hard. Right. That's the thing that did that. Something that stood out to me was at the end where he said that pay would go up once we all started being more productive. I can't wait for that. I got to say, and I understand the per capita thing, but the idea that we're just not

productive enough. And that's why, and by the way, when AI comes in, that's the whole point. You know, there was a quote, we ran it on the show, you know, AI is this idea that, oh, it's going to take over and we'll have time to paint. And that's what they're saying to us. What they're saying to corporate leaders is AI will give you the opportunity to increase productivity without the tax of labor.

which is mind blowing. That's basically like saying like your workers are dragging you down. And of course, GDP has gone up and wages have gone up, but wages as a percentage of GDP has fallen. Right. And hasn't gone up nearly as much as investment capital and all that. So that's the whole point of it. And productivity has been uncoupled from wages for decades, for 50 years. Jillian, why didn't you jump in? All right.

What do we got? Anything else going on there? Yeah, we have some listener questions for you. Two listener questions. Come on, let me hear it. I will start with the first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This person says, I live in Virginia, not far from the College of William and Mary. John, what was your favorite memory attending there? Oh, that's a great question. Also, is college really as necessary to make it to the middle class in America as the cost of tuition would make it seem? Oh.

Wow. That's okay. Let me start with the first one. My favorite memory of William & Mary is there was this day where I drove away. And as far as education being necessary for a middle-class life, I don't think that's true at all. And now as education, like the buy-in to the American dream is now like $125,000 or $150,000 to get yourself a degree. It's so out of whack.

And they force kids into this idea. We have to find a way to, again, it's all part of what we're talking about on there, of the society is completely upside down right now. And we have to find a way to empower people

to get themselves to a sustainable life without this idea that the buy-in is going to put them in debt for 20 years. I mean, the whole thing is fucking crazy. Yeah. I mean, can I just say, I didn't graduate college. I went, but then didn't graduate. Spoiler. And I seem to think I'm doing just fine. You're doing great. But you're also like,

if I may, and I'm not, I don't say this to embarrass you, but like you're exceptionally talented. It's very sweet. Like that you shouldn't have to be in the same way that like you shouldn't have to be LeBron James to get out of Ohio. Right. People are blamed for not achieving that middle class dream as like a function of their own laziness or their own vice. Absolutely. And I just think, I,

I just think it's systemically we are in real trouble. Just because you don't have a college degree doesn't mean that you're less than anybody else in this room. We're lucky to have you wherever you came from. What else? Do we have another? I partially brought Jillian here because I think we can all contribute to a pressure campaign to get her on Jeopardy. So Jillian is...

like brilliant. And you took, what did you do? You took the jeopardy online test. I did. And then I had an audition. Wait with, with, with buzzers. Like, no. So that's the next round. I hate to threaten a venerable syndicated television institution. You are making a terrible mistake by not having Jillian Spear be on your program to light that shit up. She will, she will light that shit up.

I'm going to say this. The answer is

A show that is a venerable institution that challenges the mind and the state of knowledge that people have, but is somehow missing out on having Jillian Spear on it for no apparent reason. What is a chicken shit television program? Cowards. Come at me. Come at me, Jeopardy. There you go. You got Jeopardy? You want a piece?

at me. Is that a, is that a thing to say? Gosh, I hope this works. Hit me up on, uh, all our socials. Oh, great segue. We are weekly show pod on Twitter, Instagram threads, and Tik TOK. We are weekly show podcast. And please like, and subscribe our YouTube channel, the weekly show with Jon Stewart. Uh,

Thanks very much. As always, come back and join us again next week. We'll have another program for you. Lead producer, Lauren Walker. Producer, Brittany Mimetevic. Video editor and engineer, Sam Reed. Now, for those of you regular listeners, you know that Rob Vitolo is our normal engineer, but he just had a baby. Yay, Rob. A baby. Congratulations to Rob and his family. Audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce. Researcher and associate producer, Julian Spear. And our executive producers, Chris McShane and Katie Gray. Thanks again, and we'll see you all next week.

The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions. What do you know about the Lioness program? Are you a lioness? I run it. From Taylor Sheridan comes the Paramount Plus original series starring Zoe Saldana. I choose the asset. I choose the cover. I build the plan and I run it.

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