Just imagine Fox's histrionics if a President AOC had said that American kids have too many dolls and that she's raising the price on them. Now the supposedly pro-family administration is doubling down on 'just pay more’ for toys, while it waits for China to blink on tariffs—an unlikely event given that it makes a lot of the things the world needs and wants. Meanwhile, AI's economic threat may be here for recent college grads, Marc Andreessen has deep thoughts on VC, and the NIH (and future American Nobel Prizes) are being burned to own the libs. Plus, the Dems should zero in on how Trump is making America less affordable—and very much like 2020 again. show notes Derek's piece on the job market for recent college grads Derek's podcast, "Plain English" The book, "Abundance," by Derek and Ezra Klein Tim's playlist
Full Episode
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm delighted to welcome back staff writer at The Atlantic, author of the Work in Progress newsletter, his latest book you might have heard of. There's only been about 272 podcasts about it. It's called Abundance, co-written with some guy named Desiree Klein. He also hosts the very excellent podcast Plain English.
It's Derek Thompson. What's up, man? Hey, man, let's make it 273. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Well, we're going to get to abundance at the end. And, you know, I'm sure we've got some like, you know, bulwark daily sickos who have not listened to your other 272. So we'll do a little bit on it. But we've got some more pressing matters first.
And I would like to begin with what I've been dubbing the Rick Santelli Tea Party rant for the capitalist left. That was you on CNBC. And for those who haven't heard it, let's play it right now.
To be totally honest, Kelly, I've been listening the last 10 minutes of this show. I cannot believe what I'm listening to. I heard your last guest say if the economy shrinks, that's good. If the stock market goes down, that's good. If the housing market crashes, that's good. If there's a trade war, that's good.
When did the capital class get taken over by de-growther protectionists seeking 19th century autarky?
It goes on for about two minutes. And literally the CNBC host responds to you like, what are you talking about, Derek? Didn't you say that you wanted housing prices to go down? What is wrong with housing prices? The housing market collapsed. I was like, what am I watching? What happened?
I had an aneurysm on live television, obviously. I was in this chair. This is my chair to have a mental breakdown in, in this very room. And it was funny because you do podcasts all the time. I was actually talking to the producer, like setting up the shot, right? Like setting up this shot, like move a little bit to the left, move a little bit to the right.
And I could just hear between her instructions, These little murmurings from, I think it was Kyle Bass, a hedge funder, basically saying like, oh yeah, the stock market goes down. That's great for young people. They'll buy it at a lower price. If the housing market crashes, fantastic. That makes housing prices cheaper. And I kind of expected a little bit of a pushback from CNBC hosts.
And the fact that they weren't pushing back was just slowly making me enraged. I should say, as a matter of framing my mental breakdown here, I had just, not 30, 90 minutes earlier, come back from a two-week book tour. Yeah. So I was tired. I was unwashed. You have nothing to apologize for. I was coming off of a connecting flight. I had to sit at O'Hare for like nine hours in the tarmac.
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