06/25/2021 - The Putative, Possible, Potential End of the Pandemic

DAN RICHARDS: Hi there. I'm Dan Richards. I'm the producer of Mark and Carrie. If you like this show, check out the Watson Institute's other podcast, Trending Globally. Each week on that show, we talk with leading experts about some of the biggest issues in politics and public policy today.

Just the other week, we actually had Mark on the show. It was Earth Day. And he and I talked about why we are even farther than we think we are from really curbing the worst effects of climate change. It was kind of depressing but also a little funny. If you listen to this show you'll know what I mean. We'll put a link to that episode in the show notes, or you can listen by subscribing to Trending Globally wherever you listen to podcasts. Again, that's Trending Globally. All right. On with the show. Thanks.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, hello there, Professor Blyth. It's been a while since I've seen you. I've missed talking with you.

MARK BLYTH: Dr. Nordlund, it's a pleasure as ever. Yeah, it has been a while. My excuse is twofold. I discovered in me that I was just utterly exhausted. And I just needed to stop doing things for a while. I think everybody feels this, this sort of-- the putative possible potential end of the pandemic is kind of making everyone kind of--

[APPREHENSIVE GROAN]

There was that. And then of course, the European soccer championships started, which meant everything else has to stop, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Right.

MARK BLYTH: So we're now having a two-day break on that one. So this is precisely why we're having a conversation at this point.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But I noticed in your lull that you actually were quite busy producing a bunch of op-eds and, of course, following your Twitter feed as well. So it wasn't so much of a break but maybe like slower than usual for you.

MARK BLYTH: I've definitely dialed back on the Twitter. I haven't actually been doing-- maybe two posts a week for the past couple of weeks, definitely pulling it back.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I see. I see. I--

MARK BLYTH: Which has been great.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. Well, especially Twitter. I've been busy buy and trading Dogecoin, so trying to beat my--

MARK BLYTH: It's Doggy Coin.

[LAUGHTER]

Look at it. It has a dog on the front, and it's D-O-G-E. No, it's Doggy Coin.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But I like it. It adds flair to it to say doge, like going to some fancy place.

MARK BLYTH: I hope that a doge is actually like a medieval Italian count's footstool, something like that.

CARRIE NORDLUND: [LAUGHS]

MARK BLYTH: Hey, pass the doge.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes. Speaking of medieval footstools, the G7 took place yes last week.

MARK BLYTH: Oh, that is your best segue ever. That was really good. The medieval footstool--

CARRIE NORDLUND: --known as the G7.

MARK BLYTH: Yes, exactly. So the big one, of course-- let's get to business-- is the crackdown on tax avoidance, or rather the realization that the story that states have been telling themselves for the past three years-- that unless you treat capitalists as the worst type of snowflakes and give them everything that they want and allow them to never pay taxes, you'll never have any investment in your economy and you'll end up basically as a failed state-- probably isn't true.

Because all it ends up doing is what they call base erosion, where the tax base of every country goes down and ends up in the coffers of Apple and Google and pharma companies, who then stick it in the Cayman Islands and then never pay tax on it. And eventually, because of the pandemic in part, they're like, oh, we spent all that money. At some point, we might want to pay some of it back. Who's got the cash? Oh, it's you guys. Yeah, you've been hording it for 15 years. Cough it up.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Do you think, though-- so I think this was the same week time-- time is so elastic-- is that when the ProPublica article came out that the richest Americans were paying 0.001% tax? I mean, big surprise. Americans are hypocrites as they push for that while not taxing-- or allowing all these loopholes to remain unclosed.

It feels like there's a lot of political happiness around pushing the tax stuff. But is there really any implementation of that? It doesn't feel like that there's any real desire to put that in book and actually start enforcing it.

MARK BLYTH: So I think there's two forces pushing on. So the first one is Sunak, the British finance minister, signed the G7 agreement and said, yes, this is it. We need to do this, blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah. And of course you don't trust them as far as we can throw them because back in Twenty-Ten, I think it was, then-Prime Minister David Cameron made more or less exactly the same comments and then proceeded to cut British corporate tax, right?

And Sunak immediately went home and started talking about how British banks needed to be exempted from this new tax because it's a critical sector, right? Oh, come on. Really? That's where the money is. So there's every reason to be cynical.

But there's another side of this, which is kind of the populism hasn't gone away thing. And what we're beginning to see now-- we'll talk about this later when we talk about the state of the economy-- but as I said repeatedly over the past six months, all the stuff about, well, there's going to be this huge boom because all this pent up savings is going to be there. Yeah, but the savings all with the rich, and they don't spend money on normal stuff. They just swap houses, which is why our housing markets have gone mental. And this is true everywhere.

So they haven't solved the underlying problems of wage growth, inequality, et cetera. They need new revenues to basically plug fiscal gaps and do stuff. So it's a question of how long can they deny the very thing that they know to be true, that they're going to have to do something on taxes?

CARRIE NORDLUND: And the weekend FT, there's their How to Spend It magazine, which in that world, there's been no pandemic. There's no one that makes less than $50 zillion a year. And just flipping through the pages is exact-- because their audience is for the super rich. And I think last week's was about buying your superyacht. And so just to your point about the super rich, the pandemic has been boom-boom times for buying your superyacht and going to some private resort in Bermuda for a zillion dollars. And then we see the pattern continuing in never-ending cycle.

MARK BLYTH: Well, hopefully it ends, in that sense. This is a first step, and they have committed to doing it. There's lots of reasons for doing it not just on the fiscal side or the redistribution side for governments. If you're an investor, what's been going on for years and years is that you're investing in these highly profitable companies. But what if these highly profitable companies are profitable simply because they're really good at tax dodging? And what happens if you take that away, right? Are these such fabulous companies?

So from a value investors point of view, raising the veil on all of this might actually be really good to do this. But as you say, there's no reason to believe them. There's no reason to believe them at all.

CARRIE NORDLUND: To continue with the cynicism-- that's the thread through all our podcasts-- the other thing that came out-- or the other mainstream that seemed to come out of G7 is China. And there's this delicate balance between the countries that are-- they have big investments with China, and then the US, putting their necks out there to try to get some G7 partners to really condemn what China is doing.

And it didn't seem like there was a lot of traction between any of the other countries. And the US really tried to condemn a lot of China's behaviors and activities. Germany certainly wasn't going to do that.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, but the Germans are utterly mercantilist. So long as they're selling BMWs, they don't give a crap. And the new leader who's going to succeed Merkel has basically said this. Even the election manifesto that the CDU has put out so brilliantly, sort of contradictory, and it talks all the green stuff and then immediately talks about basically how the export-led model is great, and we need more fiscal consolidation. It's like I want all these contradictory things at once, and I'll have them.

No, real surprise is France. France, and to a certain extent the United Kingdom, have been very critical of China on the human rights issues, et cetera and were warning about supply chain vulnerabilities. The EU has this concept it wants to play with, at least, called strategic autonomy, which is directed really at China. Essentially it's like, please stop buying our tech. We'd like to keep ourselves.

So there was that movement towards the American position. But then the Germans and the French both broke ranks and the interesting one was why the French were doing this. And the basic-- the gossip mill says the following. We like Biden. We like Biden's version of tough engagement with China. We shouldn't turn a blind eye to sort of locking up millions of people, et cetera, et cetera. But we can't trust America not to elect Trump or Trump plus.

And then when we do, we really don't want to be attached to that bandwagon. So we need to have our own set of relationships with China grounded in whatever principles or lack thereof there are because we just can't trust you guys not to whiplash us around a corner we don't want to go to.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Mm-hmm. You did have that sense of the world just being happy that the US is there represented by an adult who had experience and knew what it is that they were doing. And they were going to at least say the right things but that just happy to have a partner. And that seemed to be the overall running theme, that it was success for the US, just because someone showed up and didn't fall over their shoelaces.

But you also did have there what's going to happen in two years or three or whatever the election brings us. And are you trusted? Or is this going to be exactly as you said, such a quick about face? Yeah. I also-- I thought it was interesting in the bigger picture just kind of following this very superficially that Biden, the first two foreign dignitaries that he welcomed to the White House was prime minister from Japan and the South Korean president. And so thinking about, again, the role-- the position that the US is taking against China.

Of course, the South Korean president has an election coming up this spring. But thinking about that positioning and just the prioritizing of having those countries come first to the Biden White House I thought was interesting, with the rhetoric coming out of the G7.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, absolutely. But ultimately, again, think about the position of South Korea. If you look 10 years down the line, let's assume that China has been politically powerful enough to essentially cover Taiwan, get access to its ship foundries without formally annexing it. South Korea's a strategic dependency dependent on us security.

Let's roll out some even more hypersonics and carrier killers and all the rest of it. It effectively renders the US fleet unable to effectively protect Korea. They're not going to go screw China. And also, China's ultimately their growth markets. It's not the United States.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, I know.

MARK BLYTH: So there's a parallel here that people are making, the Cold War, the new Cold War. And it's similar because you had this regime. You didn't like what they did on human rights, and they're very different so on and so forth. And those parallels are there. But it's also a very different United States, right? It's older, right? It's more divided. It's not a sort of dynamic country out there defending freedom with a coalition that's willingly forming behind it. It's in a sense railing against the darkness of its once great self. And I think people are beginning to sense that.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I have a question for the political economist. Why isn't there a G9 that includes China? Has there ever been talk of that?

MARK BLYTH: It's a really good question, actually. The G groups really just emerged in I think it was the '70s of sort of informal groupings of the then West Germans having a fireside chat away from the prying eyes of the press. And then it became formalized in the sort of series of junkets of G7. There's a G10. There's a G20. There's a G30.

So I don't know if you need specifically a G9, right? China has representation in other bodies. But ultimately you can divide the world into three blocks. One is internally self divided, which is the EU, which has no clear foreign policy, the United States, which only seems to have the ability to invest in itself domestically when it can declare a security threat externally. So this is the Enemy-of-the-Month Club. We've seen this with Russia. We saw it with Japan in the '90s. And now we're going to see it with China for the next decade.

And then you've got China itself doing whatever China is doing on a very different set of timescales and set of purposes. So that's kind of the splintering of the global order. No amount of G summits is going to change this.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. I thought it was just interesting that these are the world's biggest economies. And I thought, well, isn't China like a pretty big economy, too? So just coming at it from that angle. Of course, the big connected to but not part of the G7-- because they got kicked out, which is Russia. So there was a G8, and then they got kicked out-- was the Biden-Putin summit in Switzerland.

And I don't know if you caught the press conference. But I just thought it was so interesting because Putin was in some hotel conference basement, beige walls, looking like he just come out of the Russian winter. And Biden is this beautiful Swiss Alps background, sun shining. He had to take off his jacket because the sun was so hot, with his sunglasses. It was just two backdrops of very different leaders.

But I also thought it interesting because that Putin-- that Russia lost sort of that visual to the US. And I don't know how that was negotiated, but Biden went last and so was really able to control the message and leave things the way he wanted to.

I don't know that anything really that great came out of it except that we didn't go to war with each other. And we promised to talk more. But I just thought the visuals from you were really interesting.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah. I missed that one, as I don't usually watch these things, as you know, so I totally missed that one. You know what came out of this? It was a photo op for Putin to prove the Russia's a big country. The comment that Obama made about them being a regional power really pissed them off. So that puts him back on a sort of a bilateral stage that basically says, I will do so much with China. I will do so much with Russia.

And there's kind of the EU, which really means these days talking to the Germans. The UK are a nice sideshow. I'm back. I'm relevant. That's all this really is.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. He starting to let his-- I don't know if he's changed hair stylists. But there's a little gray in his hair. So he's starting to look a little aged [INAUDIBLE] whatever number of years he's been leading the country.

MARK BLYTH: It's been a while.

CARRIE NORDLUND: It has. Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: He was a KGB officer in East Germany when there was an East Germany, right? So that's how long that kid's been around the block.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Anyway, let's talk about COVID.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, we can't get away from it. So I think the US will be 67%, very close to the 70% that Biden administration said they wanted to be for not full vaccination, but at least all adults have one shot by 4th of July. So we're almost there. Of course, the delta variant, the biggest-- very worried about the delta variant for those in states where you only had one dose, which is I think one of the reasons why the UK has extended their lockdown to mid July.

So it's-- but of course mostly it's red states have low vaccination rate, less than 50% for one dose. So I think the delta variant is for us all to be eyes on and how that-- especially in the South. That's what I'm trying to get at, is what that looks like in the South in the next coming weeks.

MARK BLYTH: So in a sense, it's kind of like nature's running a natural experiment on anti-vaxer beliefs.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. No. 100%, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Right? That's pretty much it, right? So Rhode Island I think is close to 80%, if I got this right, in terms of vaccination coverage. So basically it's pretty much not here anymore. And yet it's still popping up in those pockets that are part of the 20%. And this is a variant of concern, as they call it. and is more infectious, et cetera, et cetera.

So if you're basically just taking a very blase attitude to this, or alternatively even hard core one of I don't think these things work or I think they're dangerous or whatever, then this is what happens. And if at the end of the day, we come through this summer and it turns out that the figures in these states where you've got low vaccination is actually no worse than the states that are vaccinated, then that's going to push our politics in a very interesting direction.

If, on the other hand, what it results in is basically a bifurcation, whereby these states are much heavily hurt and the more vaccinated states are not, that will suggest another set of politics. But either way, we're not getting rid of the politics of COVID, even if we're slowly emerging from COVID.

CARRIE NORDLUND: So one interesting part of this-- so I went to New York City for the first time since February of Twenty-Twenty. And I was out for dinner. And it was pretty slow. But the waiter said that they were having real trouble finding any workers and that they had cut down their hours. So now they're only open like Wednesday through Saturday and that it was because of unemployment benefits.

So A, I thought it was interesting that in New York it was straight to these particular talking points, which frankly are Republican talking points that unemployment benefits are too high. And so I think that by the end of July, there'll be like 27 states or something like that will have ended those benefits early. But I was doing the math on this, Mark. And it was $300 extra per week that the government is giving you. So in Rhode Island, this would mean that your total weekly benefits would be $640. So per month that's like, whatever that is, $2,000.

MARK BLYTH: $2,600.

CARRIE NORDLUND: And average rent is $2,000 right now in Rhode Island. So you have like $500. I guess the math, too, I thought, wow, they must be getting some huge sum of money.

MARK BLYTH: No, particularly in New York.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: No, this is-- I mean, I'm totally with you on this. It's like, go look at the actual numbers that people have got. There's undoubtedly some people who are in very low-wage states, the deep South, whereby this is an income-- you're getting paid more than you would in your job. Why would you go to work? It's perfectly rational, right?

Not in New York. How the hell are you going to pay the rent? So how else do we think about this? A lot of this is job dislocation. So a very interesting piece I read about this, one of the reasons you're having problems finding waitstaff is because huge numbers of waitstaff are quitting. The reasons they're quitting is because they're going back-- they're being told that they have to work a double shift. They're not getting paid double time.

And all the customers are horrible and rude and demanding and in some cases, violent, right? It's almost as if we've been desocialized after being stuck in the house for a year. And nobody knows how to behave anymore. Think about what's going on in aircraft, et cetera. So people are just refusing to take these jobs, right?

The idea that these are like-- if you've been told, come back into work. By the way, you've got to work an extra 10 hours a week. You're getting the same standard rate, and everybody's going to be abusive. Now, why would I want to do this, right? Second thing is a lot of people, particularly people who are higher up the income distribution, not the ones that are on unemployment, but they're quitting.

You've heard about this mass quitting phenomenon. These are 50-year-olds that basically have accumulated a bunch of assets, maybe of a two-earner couple. And one of them's just like, do we really need to do this anymore? So they're evacuating themselves from the labor market. So there's lots of reasons why this is going on. But particularly in rich states, the idea an extra $300 bucks a week is going to make the difference-- if you're a wait staff in New, York you make $300 bucks on a shift, right? Why would you want to drop that and for $300 for a week? It literally makes no sense.

So again, it's great that these states are going to end all this unemployment by the end of July in this following sense. Because if it really is the case that it's just people being lazy, in other words, rational, because they're being paid more, then obviously the unemployment in those states is just going to disappear. I very much doubt that's going to happen.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, and your point about it being a dangerous job, about people being violent, that's what we've seen so much of, is people yelling at the person taking the order. And also it's summer. And so there's also where's daycare? And where's childcare for people? Schools are now shut for the summer.

MARK BLYTH: None of these things that come back on, right. None of these things have come back on. It's this idea the sort labor is a fungible good, like it's just a lump of labor. And there's a certain amount of labor in the economy, and it isn't showing up. And it's like, no, that's not how it works, right?

People work their schedules into particular sets of arrangements. And if those arrangements no longer pertain, you can't do the job anymore. There's a whole bunch of that going on.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, I like your point about it being rational versus you're lazy and just playing video games all day, right? Of course, there will always be that stream of things. But the rationality of $300 extra, It does not make enough sense for me to go throw myself out there during the midst of what-- I mean, the pandemic is still on.

MARK BLYTH: What about the Supreme Court? They've been busy.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, thank you for that. June is the time, right? So the court will start to release most of their decisions. And there were two big ones this week. This week it's a busy week for decisions. On Tuesday, there was the freedom of speech case, which was the high school student. And she had posted Snapchat videos after not making, I think, the cheerleading team and had--

MARK BLYTH: She basically had spoiled brat meltdown.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, and posted it.

MARK BLYTH: [LAUGHS]

CARRIE NORDLUND: And so the question was whether the high school could censor her speech-- it was off campus-- and whether the high school-- because they ended up suspending her. So the court came back and said that there-- but it was a very narrowly written decision, in that the court said that the high school violated her free speech but also said that this can't be used for bullying or threatening behavior.

But this is one of those things that it's so narrowly applies to this case. I don't know that it can be applied to a wider version of this. And I think the court was very nervous also because the average age of the court is 9 billion to do much more other than for this particular case.

MARK BLYTH: So I sympathize with the court in trying to struggle through this one and not just because I'm also 9 billion years old at the point. So let's think about cyber bullying, right? Clearly we don't want cyber bullying to go on. Cyber bullying happens because of networks that emerge in school but largely take place outside of the school.

Should schools be able to police cyber bullying? You'd hope so. Because if you leave it to individual parents, they're just not privy to the networks, right? But should they then be able to basically moderate the speech of people outside of the school environment? Well, the answer is no.

That's a really hard one to work with. And that's another where these sort of digital technologies and social media enable types of activity which fall between the cracks and can be deeply harmful. So if you bully someone in school, teachers and principal can take care of it, even if most of the time they don't.

Bullying out of school on a digital forum? That's a tough one. You'd want them to be able to do something about that. Like if you're the cheerleader of bullying that drives someone to attempt their own life, there should be consequences for that. But where does the locus of that lie? Does it lie in the school? That's an interesting and open question.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well and I think to take it to higher education, universities are terrified of this, in that they know that they want to protect the student. So student to student, I don't know that they really know what to do in terms of bullying. But I think if a student were to bully you or threaten you on Twitter, the University is really in a tough spot.

If you were to threaten a student, that's very clear. But what you do when a student is threatening or accusing a professor of something that isn't true? I mean, this is when I think you really don't know how to protect their-- where their protections are, especially when it's from student to a professor or administrator or whatever.

MARK BLYTH: Mm-hmm, absolutely. So there was another case, though. There was the farm workers organization case.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes, I will admit I didn't follow this one.

MARK BLYTH: So see, it shows what we're interested in.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: So this is the one I followed because basically what it's about is under the law as it stands because of a prior ruling, the Supreme Court allows organizers to go on to the land of farmers a certain number of days of year and effectively organize. And what they did was reach back to basically 100-year-old precedent of well, if you do that, you need to give them compensation. So there was very much a party line vote, 6-3, conservatives basically lining up to protect capital and denigrate labor's right to organize, once again.

But there was an interesting caveat in this that came from Barrett, who said, we're not actually saying that our compensation has to be high. I believe she actually said it could be $50. So it depends on how this one's going to play out when it comes, gets tested in the lower court versus this. So it could be if you want access to my land to organize workers-- and this also applies to factories. It'll be generalized from there to offices, et cetera, right? You have to pay me compensation because, in a sense, you're taking my asset and you're using the time of my asset, so you need to compensate me.

Well, if that's fair market value, then organizing in a big company is going to cost a fortune. No union can ever cross the threshold. If it's $50, fine, it's tokenism. Then what's the ruling for? So again, it's another one where it's like even though the ideological side of this one was much clearer, the consequences are hard to modulate.

So the $50 comment really shows sort of like, oh, actually we understand where this is going. Unions will never be able to go, OK, maybe we don't want to go quite that far. Let me throw this $50 comment in here and hope for the best. So, yeah, I thought that was a particularly interesting one. But as usual, labor gets the short end of the stick.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. I guess the thing that I'm taking away from this court, too, is that I was thinking that it would be-- with the addition of Amy Coney Barrett, oh, wow, it's going to be so conservative and all these things. But it's not-- I mean, I think labor probably-- yeah, labor would have lost, no matter what. But so it's interesting to me.

I was reading an article that said the court is 3-3-3 right not, three liberals, three very broadly defined middle, and then three conservatives. And that made more sense to me versus thinking of it as a 6-3 court or something along the much-- leaning more-- leaning hard conservative and then the three liberals that are still out there. This is also the time of year, Blyth, to on your calendar that if we have any retirements, they generally make this announcement at this time of year.

And the big push is on Stephen Breyer who's, I think, in his early 80s to retire so there's not a repeat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He has said, similar to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that he will continue to serve on the court. So we'll see. Yeah, (LAUGHING) your reaction.

MARK BLYTH: You have one of the best jobs in the world. You're at the very pinnacle of your profession. You can have profound influence for good or ill in people's lives. But at some point, can't you just retire, like the rest of us? You've spent a lifetime accumulating assets. You probably have a very nice beach house in the South. You probably have a very nice beach house in the North. Go see them before nature comes along and says, enough What is wrong with these people?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I know.

MARK BLYTH: Have I ever told you about my earl retirement fantasy?

CARRIE NORDLUND: No, but please, I'd love to hear this.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, my early retirement fantasy is I walk in to see the dean of the faculty or whoever it is and say, hey, how's it going? I'm thinking about retirement. And they say, well, how early? And I say about 2:30 this afternoon. My preferences are just way different. Why don't I wait until I'm basically cognitively and physically impaired to stop doing my job so I can finally relax? Why was that ever a good choice?

CARRIE NORDLUND: I don't know. And I'm with you. I think it sounds pretty nice to be able to get off the treadmill a little bit, too. But--

MARK BLYTH: Well, this is your top 10% who are quitting, right? Basically, what they've done is like, OK, so the pandemic sucked. But what it showed us it's that we actually don't need all that income, and you honestly don't need to work in that bank 65 hours a week. And we don't need to spend all this money shipping our kids around to pointless activities. Why don't we just chill and reset?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, and to your point, enjoy the sunset while there's still a sunset before--

MARK BLYTH: Before I just burns the entire West to a crisp.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes, exactly.

MARK BLYTH: Fodder for the next podcast, no doubt. All right. Where else are we going to go then? Let's stay in your reservation. The Voting Rights bill, tell me all about that. What is that all about?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, the voting-- big shocker here, a big spoiler alert, it was all politics. So the Voting Rights bill, I think it was HR1, which has been kicking around I think since the last presidential election, was a 50-50 vote in the Senate. So it isn't going to get any discussion or any up or down vote in the Senate.

And essentially what it did is it nationalized things. So it made it that everybody would be, once they reach 18 would be, automatically registered to vote and nationalized standards for absentee ballots and vote by mail. So anyway, it wasn't going anywhere. If you caught one second of news, Chuck Schumer was up there pontificating.

And the big surprise was that this is a way to get people-- to get Democrats mobilized for Twenty-Twenty-Two. And all the ads will say Republicans are trying to take your vote away, blahdy, blah. I think the bill that does have a chance is the bill named after former Congressman John Lewis, which is much more process oriented, much more sort of policy wonk sort of stuff. And the big thing is that it reinstates preclearance, which the Supreme Court allows Southern states to move away from preclearance.

So any changes to their voting rules they used to have to get OK from the courts. Then they didn't. And so this would sort of re-establish that. I think that has a better chance of getting past Joe Manchin, who's the linchpin right now in the Senate, seems to be on board with that. But this is all about Twenty-Twenty-Two and about getting people upped and amped and happy and moving their feet towards voting.

There's really pivotal elections in the swing states, the swing states that decided this last presidential. So to the point where we started with the G7 and is there going to be whiplash in American politics, this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to prevent, which is the re-election of Trump or more Trumpian-like candidates. That's my big spiel.

MARK BLYTH: But that's great because I just rely on you to tell me you what all this is about because I look at other stuff. Let's say I'm looking at other stuff.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, one the-- so let me just-- one last thing that I wanted to highlight is that so much stuff-- and I come at this from my purely academic point of view, which is that critical race theory is now become this big wedge issue in American politics. And so many school boards are passing the stuff that we're not going to teach critical race theory. And as I a critical race theory as an undergrad in the '90s, it was about that race is a social construct and that it's embedded in policy systems and in our legal. It was super from research papers.

And we would talk about these big discussions, whether or not race was a social construct or whether-- and so it was not this-- which I think it's morphed into that everybody is-- there's a other. And people white people should be made to feel guilty and terrible and should have to go through some sort of reeducation system. And so it's just interesting to see this become this big issue around in the political world.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, it is interesting. I went to grad school in the '90s as well. And this was the time when subalterns and criticality and all the sort of stuff came of age, right? So it was all over the place. So to me it's kind of like, oh, you've rediscovered all this? That's kind of interesting.

But as you say, it's kind of weird. It's like all these people who read Foucault-- so everything is basically constituted by power relations, and you don't really control your subjectivity. You are basically produced by these discourses. And we have positions [INAUDIBLE] It's like the people who taught that then raised a generation of people who said, OK, so let's take the next step.

That means that you don't really have any agency, and if you're a certain type of ethnic person, then your identity is x and you do y. And then these other people are the other to that. And everyone becomes an essence. The weird thing about this is like the whole thing was premised upon race being a social construct. And now it's become an essentialism, right?

And once you make it an essentialism, it's kind of weird because now you have the right, using this as like a classic cultural club, to beat people in politics by essentially pointing out that you're essentializing people, which is exactly what the left critique was of race in the first place. So the whole thing makes my head spin. This is like, who's arguing what at this point?

CARRIE NORDLUND: It's so interesting that we had these conversations. If anyone feels like I've been called a racist or I-- the defense is, I'm not racist. But that's the last--

MARK BLYTH: That's not the point.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Right. Is that the last sentence?

MARK BLYTH: But that's the weird things. We've made it that way. So there's this weird double movement, right? But it's like, OK, it's really a structural critique, right? OK. But you are a racist. And it's like, well, you can't have it both ways. I cannot not be a racist because it's structurally determined and then just be accused of being a racist because that's not an individual quality. Again, my head is spinning. The causality in this is just whizzing around and around at this point.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. On this point, way, way different, but sort of in this vein-- and because I was just reading about this before we started recording, thinking about essentialism, is reading about the Peruvian presidential race and that there's a new-- the leader of the Marxist party just won and beat Keiko Fujimori. And I thought, what is a Japanese person doing in Peru? And then read 30 seconds about the first Latin American country to welcome Japanese and that her father was a former president. So a nice job to have.

But it was just one of those things when you think, oh, you think, I know everything about where everybody is and that what is a Japanese person doing in Peru? So I'm trying to connect this back to what we're saying. And I think it's mostly that there's so much context for stuff, and there's such historical trends, that just to have it be this like, well, I'm not racist denies everything, like the hundreds and thousands of years of human history that precedes us.

MARK BLYTH: Right. But then there's also the other side of that, which is if you admit that something is structural, it doesn't mean it has to persist, right? You can then do something about it. But what I tend to worry about-- and there's plenty examples of this happening in history. I am married to an East German. And they had plenty of the sort of stuff going on, which is essentially these tropes become ways of disciplining people. We already see this in the workplace.

And essentially, HR, everybody's least favorite department, now gets to basically cement their power vis a vis everybody else by essentially organizing us in terms of our ethnic identities, et cetera, et cetera. And that just usually doesn't end too well because one or two things happen. You either get disengagement because people don't like it and just get fed up of it. And then you do the East German thing. Everybody mouths the words to the Communist Party, but nobody believes a damn thing.

That hollows things out from the inside. And in terms of the tragedy is you open up this window in this moment to have a conversation about, no, really it's not about you. It's about the way that we do things as a society. And then because you individualize it, again, and essentialized it, you shut the door on that moment of possibility. And it just becomes about weaponizing it for anger, which is what we see every night in the right-wing media.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. I so agree with that, that it's not about the individual and that the pushing away way of being able to say, well, I'm not racist or it's not my fault or my family didn't do fill in the blank, fill in the blank, it's just so beside the point. But then it makes it easy to do exactly what you said, either escape it or just to say, yes, OK, I'm going to say what I have to say just so I can get out of this terrible training that I'm forced into.

MARK BLYTH: Right. Meanwhile, the people who do the terrible training have now made themselves indispensable and will continue to give you the terrible training, whether you like it or not for the next 20 years because it will become part of the furniture, which people then ignore.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, exactly. So I'm trying to land this plane here on Jeff Bezos going to space. That was tough.

MARK BLYTH: It's amazing. His wife gives away another couple of billion, and he's building a $500 million superyacht that has three masts on it because it has to be green. And it's going to be powered by these amazing sails. But because of the sails, he can't land a helicopter on it. So he's building $100 million yacht as the companion yacht that keeps the helicopter, thereby obviating any benefit of having the sails. But bigger point is, when you have that much money, if the only thing you can think to do is build pointless toys, we should be taxing the crap out of you.

Frankly, if this whole thing is like me and my brother are now going to go to space-- if you're going to invent warp drive, let's go with us, right? If you're going to use your money to invent interstellar travel, if you're going to basically revolutionize our place in the universe and introduce us to Star Trek, yeah, all right, you get my kudos. That's fine. And sort of Star Trek lore, the guy called Corcoran who invents the warp drive is a kind of Jeff Bezos character. I totally get that.

But this guy basically just seems to be, I've got lots of money. I'm going to build a rocket. I've got lots of money. I want the biggest boat ever. And your wife left you. I wonder why.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, she married the high school chemistry teacher. Talk about a real--

MARK BLYTH: And then gives her money away. Clearly, that was not going well. Clearly that was not going well in terms of the mutual ambitions. Clearly she had something more going on than I want to sunbathe on the biggest yacht in human history.

CARRIE NORDLUND: And the helipad, yes.

MARK BLYTH: And the helipad and all the rest of it.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. And on this much lighter note, and that is that there's this article that I was reading that this is-- last summer from when a popular song was the "Hot Girl Summer." This summer is now "Hot Vax Summer." Online dating memberships have increased. Contraceptive purchasing has increased. So the Gen Z that was denied their summer last summer, they are back. And they are out at the bars, driving all of this consumption of food and drink.

MARK BLYTH: Food to drink and delta variant spread.

CARRIE NORDLUND: (LAUGHING) Yeah, well, pretty much.

MARK BLYTH: [LAUGHS] So are you going to go anywhere for the rest of the summer? We'll definitely do a late summer pod. But what are you going to be? Do you got plans to go anywhere? Are you going to go to Peru?

CARRIE NORDLUND: We do have plans. Well, I was thinking about it. It sounded-- well, minus the whole pandemic, but I thought, well, let's go to a country where there's someone who wants to-- who isn't a crazy authoritarian or may turn into one. I don't know, but a socialist. Actually, speaking of socialism, wanting to go to Finland, if the EU-- if we can get there and maybe go biking. What about you?

MARK BLYTH: So we are thinking about going to Britain. But this is so brilliantly Britain, right? So we've got flights booked. The reason I got flights booked is because I had this voucher for to BA. To use the voucher, you have to use your miles. BA basically charges you $500 per flight for using your miles. So in other words, you're buying a ticket, right?

Now, you get a refund if the plane's canceled. But if you just decide to change it, then you get a voucher, right? OK, fair enough. Then they put the US on the amber list, despite the fact that we are way ahead of vaccines from anybody else, right? So that means that we have-- this is how the British regulations work. It's totally insane.

You arrive. On day two, you can take a government test. You need to quarantine for I think it's eight days. On day six, you can take another test. And when you finally get your test results or the quarantine expires, you can go out.

Question number one, if it's an eight-day quarantine and I'm not getting my results until day nine, why am I even taking the test? The alternative is that you can take a test on day two and pay extra to a private lab from a list of government-approved subcontractors on day five. But if it takes two days to get the result, I'll get it on day seven. So I'd be saving a day. How much is it for a test? 350 pounds per person. This is the same test I can get in CVS for $40.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Holy cow.

MARK BLYTH: This is like the British government has literally become a giant corruption scheme for friends of the Conservative Party. That's all this crap is, right? So anyway, the problem is do we really want to quarantine in a friend's house in London for a week and then have a week to travel? Maybe not. particularly if I'm going to have to spend $1,500 on pointless tests. So maybe we're not going anywhere.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Is Germany any easier?

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, Germany is much easier, particularly because my family have all got German passports. So they just show up and go, (IN GERMAN ACCENT) hello, I'm here. And then and you go. And they've been vaccinated, so they're fine. So they're actually being sensible about it. Whereas the Brits have just been idiots.

Their whole travel industry's about to collapse. And basically they're turning up the heat on the government. So what we're hoping is that by the time that we get to August this nonsense has disappeared. If you're fully-- what is the point in being fully vaxed, if I have to quarantine? What are you talking about, right?

Oh, but some people who are-- yeah, we get it. But if you're going to do this, it's never going to go back. Shut everything down.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. Well, I hope that you're able to get somewhere or maybe just do the beach in Newport.

MARK BLYTH: Or I'll just be-- I'll be stuck in my basement for the whole summer. As you can see, there are worse places to be. But it would be nice to get out.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. Well, I will hopefully see you in person, as well, come the fall since we are all being told to come back. So I will--

MARK BLYTH: Yes, that's right, exactly.

CARRIE NORDLUND: [INAUDIBLE] the come-back people. Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: All right, we will stop there. Carrie, you must go to work.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes.

MARK BLYTH: Let's stop there.

CARRIE NORDLUND: And you must relax.

MARK BLYTH: I must. But then I must get back to work. Let's get back to work.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Thank you for listening. We'll catch you soon.

MARK BLYTH: See you soon.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Bye.

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