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Reihan Salam

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65

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2015-12-07

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2015-12-07

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1. “And I wonder if something similar might happen because the argument in 2004 is just this idea that, well, you know, Carrie wasn't necessarily the first love of that many Democratic voters, but people thought he is plausible, he has a compelling biography. So it's kind of people catching up, kind of voters becoming political pundits. But I wonder about your...”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Yeah, go ahead. So when I look at these different scenarios, how they might play out, I often think about 2004 when you had Dick Gephardt in a rough spot, but he decided to really go guns blazing and run hard against Howard Dean before Iowa. And then you see both Gephardt and Dean”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Cruz has a huge advantage, which is we had an article in National Review online, very smart article by this guy named Lawrence Brinton. It's actually a pseudonym. But he was looking at the campaign filings. And he basically, he offered this theory that if a candidate is getting money from big donors and small donors in a good balance, that's a very good sign. It turns out that Jeb Bush in that particular quarter received very little money from small donors and a lot of hard money from big donors. Whereas Ted Cruz He was very balanced, getting that small dollar money and also the big dollar money, which struck me as intriguing.”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “I don't endorse candidates. I will say that Marco Rubio is a very Smart, thoughtful guy who has a lot going for him. I will also say now that if you look at Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz is the first candidate to have really released a serious comprehensive immigration agenda that is in line with those who believe that we ought to reduce immigration somewhat. We ought to have a more high-skilled oriented policy. And Ted Cruz, you know, I disagree with him on many things. Ted Cruz is someone whose tactics on the Affordable Care Act and many other issues. I disagree with quite, quite strongly. But I'd say that Rubio and Cruz are two candidates who are doing things that the other so-called mainstream or other kind of elected candidates with elected experience haven't been doing. So I find it very likely that they're going to play a very big role in the race going forward.”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “I do know. I do not believe that Donald Trump can win. I do believe that he might prove somewhat surprising. Who knows? I mean, that's frankly such an exotic. You're a Rubio.”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “And my belief is that if you actually had Republicans who were thoughtful, sensible, and actually address these legitimate concerns rather than just purely dismissing them as the concerns of Yahoos, you wouldn't have had this situation now. You wouldn't have had this panic that a lot of other Republicans have now.”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “But if you have Who knows? I mean, we'll see what happens as more people drop out. I mean, but my view is that if other Republicans got out of their kind of blinkered kind of narrow little world where they're only speaking to other people who share the views of, let's say, the Wall Street Journal editorial page or kind of lots of other voices on these issues, they might be able to craft a more responsible, humane, thoughtful way of talking about these issues that, by the way, speak, you know, if you stopped immigration tomorrow, you stop at zero, completely stop it tomorrow, we would become a majority-minority country. Because if you're looking at people under the age of 18, so look, this is not about race. And maybe some supporters of Trump might believe that. It's not actually about that.”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Here's what I think that if other mainstream candidates don't address legitimate concerns about immigration, immigration policy, then when there's one person who talks about it in an inflammatory incendiary in many ways extremely counterproductive way, then that's what you're going to get. And my issue is that there are lots of Republicans, Republican elites, who spend a lot of their time around donors, who have, in my view, a very narrow-minded, very blinkered perspective on immigration. And so basically you have one guy who's speaking in this way that I'll bet a lot of his supporters, they're not the way that he talks about it. No, no.”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “They're also disproportionately moderates, which is something that people don't know. I mean, they're disproportionately self-identified moderates among Republicans. So, you know, there's this perception that Trump represents the hard right of the Republican Party, when in fact Trump is the guy who's saying that, hey, I don't belong to the billionaires or whatever else. He's the guy who's saying that when it comes to tax policy, even though his actual tax plan, in my opinion, is completely silly and counterproductive. But he's the kind of guy who's been making some of these more populist noises. And my issue is that the Republicans who want to think his name.”

   2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “I am very concerned about the tone of the candidates who believe that if you support limiting immigration, let's say you're necessarily a bigot, I'm concerned about the tone of Republicans who are so skeptical towards and hostile towards populism, partly because, you know, look, there are a lot of Americans, including a lot of Republicans, who do not have a lot of faith in our leadership, who do not have faith in the people who've been, you know, running their Republican Party, running our government for a very long time. And I guess, you know, there are a lot of people who are talking about a lot of those who...”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Social, cultural conservatives need to recognize that they are not a majority of the society. They need to recognize that in order to achieve their objectives, they need to make their style of life, the things they care about most attractive to other people and win converts over time. These issues are not, in my view, primarily political issues. They're really issues about how people live. And I think in a funny way, our culture wars debates have become all about sex, the regulation of sex, same-sex marriage, abortion, et cetera. And in a way, when you're thinking about what social conservatives care about, they care about family life. They care about community. They care about revitalizing civil society. They care about things. And from their perspective, and again, I know lots of people disagree with it, but from their perspective, they're like, well, look, we were, you know, kind of, it just then Roe v. Wade happened, or then this other thing happened, or then, you know, kind of, you know, we kind of.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Wasn't that the courts? Isn't that up to the courts? One view is that you look to the Constitution, but of course, I would argue that the Constitution does not express a settled view on the regulation of abortion. This is an honest debate a lot of people have. John Hart Ely, a great liberal legal scholar, made this case in the 1970s. I'm sure you're familiar with that argument. It may well be that a lot of people find Roe v. Wade, the kind of philosophical underpinnings of it sound and attractive. It's not obvious to me that it was part of our constitutional settlement. But, you know, again, I'm not a constitutional law scholar. This is not really my area. But what I will say about the politics of social conservatism and how to think about this, I guess my view is that”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “It would be better than not a disaster, David, because I think that if you have people embracing a consensus and if you have people who believe that actually their input and actually the democratic process was at work, I think you would have had very different politics around this issue. And even if you're looking back to the early 80s, Bill Clinton is someone who kind of experienced this in his own state in Arkansas. There are a lot of quirky coalitions, the kind of big positions on these issues mask a lot of more complicated nuanced views than a lot of people have. And I guess, you know, we might disagree about this, but I believe that the democratic process working in a federal, state-by-state kind of way could have led to an outcome and can still lead to an outcome in which people feel a greater sense of ownership of what these rules are. And they also have hope. They feel that actually I can change this over time through persuasion.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “There's a law professor here, Will Bode, who's made a broadly similar argument. I do think you would need some federal settlement in place that would relate to, you know, for example, the ability to travel, et cetera, to have an abortion. I think that that would be important. You need to have some kind of framework in which different state laws could work. But we have a patchwork of state laws in many different domains. And also, even now, you have differences in terms of the way that abortion is regulated from one place to another. I don't think that it would be a disaster. And if anything, I think that you would have a strong.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Most of that If you're a pro life, I suppose you don't necessarily. David, I guess I see this differently. My view is that we would be much better off if we had something like the European consensus where this is coming out of democratic deliberation. If we did what you suggested.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “You have to go back. I actually don't know that much about the details of the shooting. I'm not sure that's a planned parent facility.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “You know, this is not an issue I write about. Often as I ought to, it's an issue where I know a lot of smart, thoughtful, intelligent people on both sides of the issue. And also perhaps because I grew up in New York City, I have a sense of how determined and dedicated people are on one extreme of this debate, I'll say. So I guess I know people on both extremes of this debate.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Think that's true, and that's why when you're looking at the pro life movement, they've achieved their greatest successes when they have focused on particular practices that, you know, kind of a majority of people are concerned about. And I guess what is your...”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Abortion is an interesting issue because that's an issue where on lots of issues, younger people are far more socially liberal than older people, whereas abortion is an issue where actually there's been much more consistency and younger people are somewhat more likely to be pro-life than they are to have other socially liberal views. You know, I guess my view is that you're not going to get to some overwhelming consensus on this, but there are some questions about the strategy.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Well, like many conservatives, I believe that we would be much better off had we decided some of these contentious issues, let's say at the state level, so that democratic majorities could work through them and then reach a conclusion that reflects the kind of sensibilities of the place. This is actually what you saw happen in most of Western Europe. Mary Ann Glendon, professor at Harvard Law School, is a really interesting person because she's a pro-life liberal Catholic. And she's done a lot of interesting work looking at how that consensus wound up being reflected in law. And what you find is that abortion laws in much of Western Europe are actually quite different from what we have in the United States in that they actually reflect that cultural consensus more and some of those sensitivities that people who are concerned about abortion have. And I guess more broadly about the cultural question, you know,”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Judgment, you know, kind of maybe it's a bad thing for people to intermarry. There are a lot of people, for example, the Jewish community who believe that it's really good and important to preserve a distinctive identity. But I guess if you care as I do about cohesion and forming a national community and getting away from caste and getting away from that kind of cultural segregation, there are some big benefits to having that kind of intermingling. And when you have a very big underclass of people concerning the bottom third of the society who don't have social relationships with people from different backgrounds, that strikes me as dangerous.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “For that, people fighting side by side. Absolutely right. But the intermingling really intensified and accelerated in the 30s, when you had a very dark economic climate, actually. So that was a time when you had a lot of that intermingling. This phenomenon that scholars call replenished ethnicity, there's a sociologist at Stanford, very smart guy, Tomas Jim ⁇ nez, who's done a lot of really interesting work on this as relates to Mexican Americans. But of course, that dynamic obtained in that mid-century period before, even during the darkest economic climate, partly because you have people who have a similar level of education and skill. And also, when you don't have new arrivals coming to replenish that old ethnic community, it's interesting. If you look at different Asian American groups, Japanese Americans are far more likely to intermarry than Indian Americans, partly because, you know, the number of new Japanese American arrivals is quite small. The Japanese American community is heavily native. Whereas with Indian Americans, it's a very different story. So, you know, it's pretty simple. And this is not a value.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Decades in the middle of the century when we had the lowest level of inequality, and you also had the highest level of intermingling because the Greek towns, the little Italies that you remember, they actually were fading because you had people move to the suburbs. Well, we had a big explosion.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Exactly Irish hungry. Irish speaking my language now. So there was someone scares me, brother. So there was somewhat more, but you notice that I talked about when you get to the second generation, right? Because what happened in the United States is that after the late 20s, we had this severe reduction in immigration. So by the time you got to 1970, the foreign-born share of the population was about 4.5%, probably the lowest share it's ever been in American history. And actually it was during those”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Exactly. And when you don't have that kind of intermingling, then that's where caste comes from. And the issue with, and just to harp on immigration for one more moment, when you're looking at immigration, in the 1900s, Americans, native-born Americans had much lower levels of education, and immigrants had pretty low levels, but they were actually much closer to each other. So the intermingling was a lot more likely, particularly by the time you got to the second or third generation today, there's a very big gap. And because of that gap. I wonder about that.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Exactly, exactly. I've worked in all kinds of communities, but you've also been around a lot of kind of college educated upper. No, there's no doubt about it. There's no doubt about it, right? So that's the challenge. When you don't have...”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “People are much more likely to marry people with the same level of education that they have than had been the case in earlier eras. But also, more broadly, people are much more likely to be friends with people. So, you know, you and I both have a college education. And I bet dollars to donuts that you and I both probably have pretty diverse friend groups, but probably a disproportionately high share of our friends are college-educated too. And again, you probably have a way more diverse group of friends than most people just. I've had more years to work on it, too. And you work in politics. And I grew up in a kind of...”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Yeah, exactly. And that's why when I look at social inequality, when I look at social and economic inequality, the way that I think about it is this. And there are actually a lot of social scientists. Pretty much entirely on the left who've been talking about how can you have racial inequality when you don't have explicit out and out racism. And one of the basic mechanisms of this is that people have social networks. When you think about economic opportunities, you share them with people in your social network. Actually, in a society in which you have greater diversity and you don't really know about people who are outsiders, et cetera, you might actually become more inclined to think about, well, who do I know? Who is my third cousin? Or who did I go to the University of Chicago with or something like that? You know, those relationships matter a lot. And we also have had this big development in our society, this rise of what is called assortative mating. But you could really talk about that more broadly. People are much more about more colors.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Over the next twenty or so years, you're going to have over thirty trillion dollars of wealth passed on from baby boomers like yourself to their children. Now those baby boomers who are passing on that wealth are overwhelmingly white. Whereas a lot of the younger generation, you know, this is very close to a majority minority younger generation. And so, you know, do you believe that there are not going to be ways that our conversation about inequality and redistribution? I believe that's going to really get bound up with racism and potentially very fraught.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Need to draw more on the strength and intelligence of diverse communities. You know, when I look at our politics right now, what I see is an older generation that looks one way and a younger generation that looks a very different way. Yeah, I agree with you. And a younger generation in a way that actually doesn't understand, and an older generation that doesn't understand either. So we talk a lot about the older generation of had these people in their 60s and 70s, you know, they grew up in a different America, they don't get it, et cetera. That's fair. But of course, people of my generation, too, they don't get it all the time either. They don't get the scale of the demographic transformation we've experienced. And also, you know, here's another issue that I think about a lot.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “I'm going to talk to those Republicans and I'm going to say, here's your guy right here. Just turn 35. He's qualified. There are a lot of pieces to it. And you will not be surprised in education. I believe that's an area where you want more space.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “The former mayor of Chicago, first African American mayor. We had this political class of people who were activists, who were brave, who were courageous people, who changed our society in lots of important ways, who came from that, who were the descendants of that great migration. We don't yet have that generation of people from the Latino and Asian American communities, let's say. But the thing is that they're going to want a place at the table too. And that's why I believe that it's pretty much just baked in that we're going to have to spend more to kind of alleviate some of the poverty and some of the concerns that arise from this huge demographic change.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Why I talk about that a bit, but you're right, there are much bigger issues than that. There is now more Hispanic poverty in the United States than there is African American poverty, and that's going to become a much bigger issue in the future. You know, right now it's not something we talk about that much because you work for Harold Washington. We had this political class.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Absolutely, although I guess part of the issue is, and here's maybe a controversial thing to say, but I personally believe that what our society owes African Americans who are the descendants of slaves is different and greater than what it owes people from Bangladesh, let's say, who want to move to the United States today. I think that we have a special obligation in particular to deprive excluded communities that have experienced discrimination in the past and that experience lingering discrimination in the present. And that means that when it comes to those resources, I guess I look to immigration policy as something that can help us identify people who are going to make large net contributions fiscally so that we can help people who haven't been given a fair shot, who are very much a part of our society and have been for a very long time. I take that historical obligation very serious.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Um well There are areas where I think we're just going to have to spend more and we don't have much choice about it. When you have an immigration policy that is not a skills-oriented policy, and when you have an economic change that is actually putting less skilled people under pressure, that just means that you're going to need lots of labor-intensive services for very poor people who are being raised by parents who don't have very high levels of literacy numeracy. If you look at Japan, the number of adults who have a high level of literacy numeracy, it's quite high. So with low levels there, it's one out of 20. In the United States, it's one out of seven. And, you know, again, the kids of those adults have much harder time gaining skills than themselves for all kinds of reasons. So I just believe that our immigration policy just bakes in that we're going to need to spend more on providing children with labor-intensive services. I guess that's...”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “And I just don't believe it. And I think that our debates are just so focused on what do you do about that incremental 200 bucks as opposed to that huge amount of money that's being deployed right now. And I don't deny, you know, I have areas where I might be inclined to spend more. Others where I might be inclined to spend less.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Another $200 on top of that, pretty substantial amount of money. I guess I think about how are you allocating those resources. And in many cases, I would argue that actually you have rich people who are getting more of those resources than they ought to be getting, as opposed to lower-income people, et cetera. I think there are a lot of ways we ought to be more thoughtful about where that money goes. But I just think that there are a lot of people, including, by the way, conservatives, who really believe that the issue is at the margin. The issue is if we add another $150, another $250, if we kind of move that a little bit.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “Eugene Stirley at the Urban Institute, which is not a right-wing think tank by any means, lots of good work that lots of people across the political spectrum rely on, did a really neat back-of-the-envelope calculation where he was trying to look at what state, local, and federal governments are spending, and even if you're factoring tax expenditures and just trying to give a really big picture of what kind of government resources we're bringing to bear. And he found a number in the order of over $20,000 per person. And the president in his State of the Union, his last State of the Union address, proposed a few reforms that would have added about $150 to that amount of money. Now, given inflation, given just lots of change, we're automatically going to be spending more. And I, by the way, don't think that's a bad thing. I think that a lot of that money in that $20,000 bucket that Sterly identified is very worth spending. But I guess I just think that adding another hundred”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “I think that is something we really ought to think about more rigorously. And I think the problem with our debates is that it immediately goes to this place of like, well, you're for investment and you're not for investment. It's like, well, actually, maybe I am for investment, but I just think that our institutions are so bad at delivering this investment that we need to think harder about restructuring them before we start pouring more money. That could be used for many other really important purposes in a country with entrenched multi-generational poverty.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “It's an honest disagreement between us. I've got to say, if I could get very low interest rates, but I'm still getting 30 cents in the dollar or 80 cents on the dollar, I feel like that's still a pretty big issue because taking on that debt, we could take on that debt for lots of valuable things. There are lots of needs in the society. And that's actually one thing that I really strongly believe. That's part of why I started out talking about some of these human capital issues. I personally think that the fact that our infrastructure spending is so lacking in productivity relative to other countries that are not in outer space, we're not talking about Mars. Canada's a really close by a flight there is from DC takes a couple of hours.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “I'd say if you're getting 30 cents on the dollar relative to what the best practice is globally, that seems like something you want to think about. No, you should look at that.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Need stronger unions? No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if you're thinking that, oh, well, that's the reason, that's not it. You have societies with weaker unions, with stronger unions, you have societies with more government role in infrastructure, less government role in infrastructure, much less government role in infrastructure in some societies. Tokyo has one subway system that's entirely private, and their per employee costs are the same as those of New York, but actually they have far fewer employees. They have far fewer work rules in place.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Really bright guy who runs the Common Good Foundation has done a lot of work on that. And so when you talk about government's role, yeah, I do think the government can do a lot of good in infrastructure, but government does a lot of bad too. And it does bad not for bad reasons, but because people think, gosh, we want to have these permitting processes in place in a good, smart way. But that's not the only issue. I mean, if you look at Madrid, for example, that's a place where building about a mile of subway tunnel costs a third of what it does in the United States. London, expensive city, unionized labor, actually a more difficult place to build in a lot of ways than New York. Every underground project we built, every big infrastructure project gets way more expensive in the United States than it is in social democratic”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “It's not on its own, David, the thing is that it's really hard to think about the counterfactual and we tend not to because we live in the world in which Lincoln did X, Y, and Z, and that's the way these things happened. But there are actually other societies, too, that built railroads. There are other societies where valuable agricultural knowledge spread from one place to another. So, I mean, I'd say that there are a lot of things he did that I totally endorse, including things along the lines of what you're describing, thoughtful government action for the future. But was every single one kind of well thought through? Now, going to the present, If you think about infrastructure, for example, one thing that's really fascinating is that America gets far less for its infrastructure buck than pretty much any other market democracy compared to Canada and Germany. Okay, let's leave Germany aside. Canada is a country that's a lot like ours, not all that different, yada, yada. It takes about 10 years to get a permit for a big ticket infrastructure project in the United States. And Canada takes two years. Philip Howard,”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Right. There are a lot of pieces to what you said. So even starting out with Lincoln, I believe that Lincoln was a great president, a courageous president. But if you look at something like the Transcontinental Railroad, I actually believe that he didn't actually pursue it in the right way. There's a lot of pretty interesting historical work on this. If you look at this great Chicago economist, Robert Fogel, he did some amazing work comparing the parts of the country where the canals were competing with the railroad and what have you. And then you had the West where you had some subsidies, land subsidies for the railroads, which then had all these captive shippers. They became predatory monopolies because they grew and they didn't really have the competition. And he kind of sketched out this really interesting view, which is that, well, actually, they grown organically, railroads are pretty impressive. You know, lots of people would have wanted to build them. But then you also would have had canals competing with them. And then who knows, maybe you would have invented the horseless carriage a little bit sooner to get agricultural produce.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Oh, oh, absolutely. And look, that's a courtesy or stenuff. No, no, no. And I've got to say, you know, it's something for me too. Sometimes you kind of wonder you wake up and you think to yourself, gosh, when I disagree with all the smart people, what does that say about me? Maybe that means I'm the one who's deluded. I mean, chances are that's right, right? So I guess.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “I do disagree with a fair number of things you said, and you've said a lot, so I guess, oh, no, no, in a good way. I mean, what you've done is you've outlined a view that many, if not most, smart people in the country have, and that's a burden for me right now.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “No, no, exactly, exactly. They don't get paid very well. So, my issue is if we're going to deal with some of those issues along long term care. The healthcare sector. The healthcare sector, everyone agrees, the president agrees, everyone seems to say that gosh, we have a very expensive healthcare sector relative to what we get. On the other hand, it's a huge creator of working in middle class jobs in America. I mean, those things, they go together, right? So the best case scenario is that you have jobs that are high wage but also high productivity. And that's kind of, it's kind of tough to get to that point unless you have lots of technological investment, unless you have workers who have good training and good skills. But again, then what happens to those workers who have very low levels of literacy and numeracy? We're not really thinking of all of these issues comprehensively. We're not thinking about how they interact.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “That's absolutely right. And the thing that's changing is that until now, for the last 30, 40 years, we've thought of the only occupations that are vulnerable to technological change as manufacturing, let's say. It's not going to be in-person services. But if you look, for example, at home health aides, that's a job that we're going to have many more people doing this work. But the thing is that it's very expensive, and it's very expensive despite the fact that wages in that sector are under extreme pressure. Yeah, they are.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “Oh, absolutely exactly. And it's actually a big chunk. And also, so if you look at the foreign-born share of the workforce as a whole, it's about 15% of the workforce as a whole. So it's bigger than the foreign-born share of the population as a whole. And when you're looking at this population, I mean, you know, these are folks who are oftentimes in the professions that are vulnerable to technological change.”

    2015-12-07 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 15 - Reihan Salam · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source