EP 665 American Business and the Hangover From the Pandemic
The pandemic was an economic catastrophe the likes of which CEO’s running America’s biggest companies had never seen or prepared for. There was no playbook and the shock was even greater given the fact that it seemed that the good times would roll on unimpeded as cheap money(zero percent interest rates)sparked tremendous growth. But as we all know, as in life, business has good and bad cycles and nothing lasts forever. So what did company leadership learn from this and what are the ramifications of what happened–good and bad–that can be seen in today’s economy? All of this leads to a great conversation with Liz Hoffman, a longtime Wall Street Journal senior reporter, who is now at semafor.com as its business and finance editor. Her book “Crash Landing: The Inside Story of How the World’s Biggest Companies Survived an Economy on the Brink,” is our starting point as she analyzes key decisions that had to be made during the pandemic and how American business came out the other side. It’s clear that issues like supply chains, just in time inventory and the value of labor have all been impacted tremendously at this moment and well into the future. It’s a must listen.
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We have addressed the issue of the overreach of our current make-up of the US Supreme Court, but not in a way as comprehensive as the deep dive we take in this podcast. We look at the history of overreach on the Court(hint: this isn’t the first time)and we explore the far-reaching implications of what this Court did last session, overturning Roe v.Wade, making new gun laws in states more difficult to pass Constitutional muster and hobbling the EPA from addressing climate change. And they have just started, according to our guest, Michael Waldman, the president and CEO of the highly respected Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, a nonpartisan law and policy institute and the author of the new book, “Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America.” He reminds us that this court session will deal with race, given two cases on affirmative action and voting rights, which are sure to bring further attention to the legitimacy of the Court as to whether its rulings are steeped in law or political preferences. And we even touch on reforms that may be possible to restore confidence in the Court.
That’s right. The long held practice of degree inflation is coming to an end in America. With three state governments–Maryland, Utah and Pennsylvania–declaring that experience, military service, technical preparation and apprenticeships will count more than having a bachelor’s degree for many positions in government, this movement of busting through the paper ceiling is real. And this requirement is now being eliminated by many in the private sector, too.Companies like General Motors, Bank of America, Google, Apple. IBM and Accenture are major players embracing the skills-based hiring model. Given that 63 percent of Americans ages 25 and up do not have a bachelor’s degree, this movement is going to open up tremendous opportunity for minority candidates and many who live in rural areas. The path to prosperity just got wider and more inclusive and, by most accounts, it is just starting. Cristian Siera, Director of Strategic Corporate Partnerships at Opportunity@Work(
Healthcare is the number one cause of bankruptcy in America. Nearly 30 million Americans have no insurance and those who do face staggering increases each year. We all interact with the healthcare system and to a person I do not come across anyone who thinks it’s a good model. And while we might have the most advanced technologies and very capable medical professionals, they are hamstrung by bureaucracy, out of control costs and demands from intermediaries that often have little to do with the care they want to provide. And whether you call the health care system you interact with for profit or non-profit, they all continue to get bigger and more focused on the bottom line than on patient care. Dr. Ricardo Nuila is the author of “The People’s Hospital” and practices medicine at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston, Texas. It is a ‘safety net’ hospital funded through property taxes by Harris County and serves a majority of patients who have no health insurance. Doctors are allowed to be doctors and not focus on the business of medicine. We discuss what is wrong with America healthcare(more accurately described as sick care)and at its root is the private health insurance model which encourages differentiated care depending on your wealth and status in our society. He offers a different perspective and some policy solutions. Won’t we ever engage as a country on this vital issue?
While the belief is that all young people are in lockstep with liberal ideas, many flirting with socialism, the truth is that the enthusiasm of young people on the right is better financed and has some charismatic leaders who are working diligently to get those ideas to their age cohort who feel marginalized by the changes going on in our society. This movement is not just taking place among those who are ending their academic careers after high school. There is an active recruitment effort by many well known groups like the NRA to bring young people into the fold early on. Leaders of the effort include Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA and Candace Owens a media favorite who has abandoned the ’emotionally abusive’ Democratic Party and evinces the passion of a convert to the conservative cause. Award-winning journalist, Kyle Spencer, spent five years researching and following this movement and reports what she found in her book, “Raising Them Right: The Untold Story of America’s Ultraconservative Youth Movement and Its Plot for Power.”
Our guest has been warning America for decades that our government has become unaccountable tied up in overlapping jurisdictions and strangled by reams of rule books and regulation. The ability to make decisions based on common sense and human
Imagine getting a check for $1,000 from this point on, on the first day of every month, deposited directly into your bank account. What would that do to give you peace of mind that there’s an income floor under you? Andrew Yang made this concept a basic tenet of his 2020 presidential run calling it a ‘Freedom Dividend’ as he saw frightened Americans looking at their downside prospects in the wake of automation and job outsourcing. To those who think the idea of Universal Basic Income is a liberal utopian concept, it actually harkens back to conservative economist Milton Friedman who preferred this notion to the many categorical programs we have now, like SNAP benefits. Richard Nixon actually proposed something like it during his presidency. Today, municipalities across the country are experimenting with it in various forms. And early research tells us that people put the money to good effect, helping them to provide food and shelter in these uncertain times. We’re joined today by Jim Pugh, co-director of the Universal Income Project(universalincome.org)to describe how it works and what the likelihood that it will gain more traction in the years ahead.
Faced with mounting Medicaid costs, powerful public employee unions and often underfunded pension and medical obligations, state and local governments can present fiscal dilemmas that, at times and as a last resort, the federal government gets dragged into. It is hard to overstate the importance of making certain that the 50 states and Puerto Rico and thousands of local municipalities have the resources they need to operate since they provide the most essential, visible, government services important to all of us–teaching our children, building and maintaining most infrastructure, public health and public safety. And yet with the din of our obsession with national news, we do not see substantial reporting on their fiscal health. And as David Schleicher, a Yale Law School professor and expert in this field reminds us, in his book “In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises”, while we have a moment in time when many state governments are awash in federal pandemic dollars, it is a good time to take a true assessment of the health of state and local governments to perform their vital tasks.
Enron. Theranos. Purdue Pharma. Harvey Weinstein. The Nazis. Awful behavior abounds. The question is what do we do when we see it? Do we become a whistleblower or an enabler? Max Bazerman, a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a behavorial ethicist, has written a new book entitled, “Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop.” While it is easy to condemn obvious wrongdoers, his focus is on the many people around them who ignored or supported tacitly or actively the commission of unethical or criminal behaviors. Let’s admit it. We all have to one degree or another, either by acts of commission or omission. In his book and on this podcast we take these issues on directly and he offers strategies for recognizing and avoiding the psychological and other traps that lead us to ignore, condone, or actively support wrongdoing in our businesses, organizations, communities and politics. I share my own sense of complicity in a dubious personnel practice at one point in my career. If you have an ethical compass, this podcast will have you asking questions of yourself by the end.
America lost the Vietnam War. End of sentence. The reasons most scholars give are many. Chief among them is the notion that the North Vietnamese and Vietnam Congress wanted to win more than we did and understand how to fight this asymmetrical war better than our conventional forces. Dr. Mark Moyar, a military historian at Hillsdale College disputes conventional wisdom in his new book “Triumph Regained”. He argues that what most consider a military folly, built on the domino theory, was actually a strategic necessity that could have ended in victory had President Johnson heeded the advice of his generals. He makes his case and we have a lively discussion as to whether America today and going forward is as strong as we are led to believe militarily or whether our projection of force is greater than our actual battlefield capability.