August 5, 2026 • 36 mins
Why is socialism suddenly becoming popular again in America—and what are the real consequences if it succeeds?
In this episode of The Tudor Dixon Podcast, Tudor sits down with Dr. Anne Bradley, professor of economics at the Institute of World Politics and Vice President of Academic Affairs at The Fund for American Studies, to examine the resurgence of democratic socialism and why so many young Americans are embracing it.
The conversation explores why "free" government programs have become politically appealing, how envy and economic frustration fuel socialist movements, and why history repeatedly shows socialism leading to economic failure and government control. Tudor and Dr. Bradley also discuss the rise of crony capitalism, corporate welfare, regulatory barriers facing small businesses, and how government favoritism undermines entrepreneurship and opportunity.
Drawing from history, economics, and Tudor's own experience running for governor of Michigan, they explain the difference between free-market capitalism and government-controlled economies—and why protecting opportunity matters more than ever.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. You all are hearing
about socialism everywhere. Everywhere you go, you are hearing about
the democratic socialists of America. And I really do believe
that right now there are a lot of Democrats who
are like, do not come into our party. I mean
we heard James Carvill saying, don't come into our party.
Do not use our party as your platform to go forward.
(00:24):
But they are, and they are really really successfully almost
taking that over. And I think something that you all
need to understand in history is that political parties have changed,
Political parties have crashed and burned, political parties have gone
away completely. And I really think that there is a
(00:45):
chance right now if they can do it. The goal
is to take over the Democratic Party and make it
a socialist party. And ultimately, I think there are some
Republicans who are out there saying, oh my gosh, what
a great thing. We'd win everything. No, I mean you
are looking at the other half of the ship and saying, well,
if they go down, we'll still be paddling. No, you
(01:08):
cannot have half the country become socialist. We will lose
the beauty of what America is. And so I wanted
to have somebody who can talk about this at a
greater level and explain exactly what socialism is. But why
on earth is so romanticized today? Why are so many
people going Yes, I think that we can do that.
(01:30):
For some reason, it's never worked in the past. I
always ended up in death. But yeah, let's try it
here in America. So I have doctor Anne Bradley with
me today. She is a professor of economics at the
Institute of World Politics and the vice president of Academic
Affairs at the Fund for American Studies. Thank you so much,
doctor Bradley for coming on today.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, I'm just stunned by what's happening, and I've read
some of the things that you've written about this. I
think that it is incredibly important for people to know
that socialism is not for all people. Socialism is just
all people are going to fail. It's not just the economy.
(02:13):
It's going to fail for everybody. Why is it so
popular all of a sudden?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I mean, it's a great question because it's you know,
if you're my age, you can remember and the Americans,
you know that we're alive during the fall of the
Soviet Union, it would have been very hard. Say, in
nineteen ninety five, right after the fall of the Soviet Union,
we felt like freedom had won, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan,
(02:40):
all of that. It would have been kind of ridiculous
for a Democrat to run as a Democratic socialist to
be taken seriously because it was a different tide of ideas,
I think, And we had seen the threat of Marxism
politically in the Soviet Union. It's rampages through Europe and
other places. So I think we just kind of knew
(03:03):
this is a kind of a bankrupt idea and it
would bankrupt us. As you mentioned, we're fast forward now
and we're in a very different place. So socialism democratic
socialism is trending, as you say, and I think where
we really need to speak into this. And I'm a
professor and I deal a lot with young people in
the classroom, and I think that it's trending because it
(03:23):
sounds so great. I think the Democratic socialists talk about
all the proposed benefits, which sound wonderful, right mom Dommy
talks about free groceries and free buses and free daycare,
free paid leave, free college, we hear various democratic socialists
talking about the free stuff, and of course it's very
(03:44):
hard to argue with free But the problem is there's
a very significant cost, And as you mentioned, I don't
think the cost is simply economics. It is it will
bankrupt cities, states, and the country if we pursue it seriously.
It always has and it always will and we can
only know that by understanding economic theory. But I think
there's a different problem, which is the cultural decay, the
(04:07):
decay and erosion explicitly of the family of churches, of community,
and of civil society that goes along with it. But
when you know, when you're told, hey, free bus is
in a very expensive city, it just doesn't seem like
a big deal. It's like, Okay, this guy's going to
give me a free buss. I'm for that, and I'll
have very rich people pay for it. And the presumption
(04:28):
is the economy we'll just chug along as it always
hit has, And I think that's where we make a
lot of mistakes with these policies.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
You said something in one of your writings about really
this what they're doing is kind of exploiting envy, going
after the envious side of people. And I thought that
was so such a good way of putting it, because
that is really what this is. And then and then
you can kind of see from that statement how that
decays culture because if you can get to envy and
(04:57):
you say, okay, everybody should have the same stuff, impossible,
and then you kind of have people tearing each other apart.
Well does that person You know, we're not going back
to every kid having one doll, but I mean maybe
we are, And then how did that kid get two dolls?
But think about that on a larger scale of do
you have a nicer house, do you have a nicer car?
Everything has to be the same. We can no longer
(05:19):
allow people to do better than us. Tax the billionaires.
In fact, billionaires should not exist. We should not have
people that are that wealthy. And to prevent that, and
this is what we're hearing in Michigan with Abdul Sayad,
this is what we're hearing in Wisconsin, this is what
we're hearing with Mom Donnie. To prevent that, we should
have the government take over those big businesses. And that,
(05:42):
to me, I'm with you. I remember the wall falling,
I remember the President saying tear down that wall. I
remember the President constantly talking about communism and defeating communism
and not allowing communism. But what you said about Murgaret
Thatcher struck me because I've been thinking about it from
the standpoint of what I saw in our country when
(06:05):
I was growing up, and exactly what you said, like
this wouldn't have happened when we were young, But I
didn't think about how the Western cultures were together on
this and that Margaret Thatcher was saying, Eventually, you run
out of other people's money. That's the problem with socialism.
You can't do this forever. We don't have the support
of the western countries right now because they have been
(06:26):
invaded by people who are socialists. I mean, you look
at who's winning in the UK right now. It's actually
quite terrifying. So you see that happening there, you have
that coming here. I mean, let's face it, that's what
Abdul Saiad is in Michigan, That's what Mom Donnie is
in New York is We're going to take over and
(06:47):
kind of brutalizing people with you. If you don't like
what we're doing, doesn't matter that we're focused on the
economics of it. They call it a racism issue, and
it does scare a lot of Democrats. It's off from
calling out the economics because they're like, oh my gosh,
I don't know how to handle this. I can't get
involved in a race discussion. It's not a race discussion.
(07:09):
This is an economic discussion.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that is
if we start there, I think then we can elevate
the conversation out of just kind of the kind of
proverbial fistfights that you see on X and you know,
kind of because that's when I look at that dialogue,
it gets overwhelming, right, because it's easy to not have
(07:31):
a serious conversation in that regard. But I think, if
you're right, I fully agree that this is about economics.
Socialism has never worked anywhere we've tried it as a
scalable social economic model. It doesn't work. It simply doesn't work.
And so it doesn't matter how hard you try, and
(07:52):
it doesn't matter how good your intentions are. And so
I think, for for the you know, kind of related
to the comment you made before, it has to be
pitched in something like envy. It has to be pitched
in two things. One, I think you're right envy. Right,
It's like my neighbor has a land Rover and I
have a ten year old Honda, you know, Odyssey, and
(08:14):
it's like, why can't I have the land Rover? And
so if I believe the government is the arbiter of
who gets nice cars and I feel powerless in that,
then it it's kind of you see why people kind
of buy into that vary. Like I said before, bankrupt
economic and political ideology. I think the other thing is
(08:35):
it is socialism is about power. It's absolutely about power.
And I think the Democratic Socialists that's why that adjective
is so important for their cause. They're not saying let's
go back to Leninism, because absolutely nobody's going to sign
on to that. But what they're saying is, look, we're
going to put smart people in charge. They're benevolent people,
they care about the poor, they care about the working class,
(08:56):
and so they're going to distribute accordingly. But I think
the problem with that is that when you put people
in power to do that, what you've see time and
time again is that they can't deliver the goods. And
it goes back to a comment you made earlier with
a lot of people. A lot of politicians in the
United States are saying things like billionaires shouldn't exist, and
I think about that, and I think, gosh, the only
(09:17):
way to believe that there's two ways. I think one
is that you just believe everybody steals and wealth is
a zero sum game, right, and so the only way
to be a billionaire is to engage in theft and expropriation.
And if you believe that that wealth is a zero
sum game, then of course you're going to kind of
maybe lean more towards let's put why is benevolent people
(09:41):
in charge and have them sort this out for us.
But I think that that's just not what the United
States has been about. And if you look at why
people are so desperate to come and live in the
United States is because it's an opportunity society. That's the story.
That's what the founder's envision right. This year, we sell
clebrated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversity of the Declaration,
(10:02):
but it was also the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
of Adam Smith's publication of the Wealth of Nations, which
the you know, kind of those ideas that he was
talking about against mercantilism, against excessive government power. Those ideas
are baked into our institutions, and so I think there
(10:23):
is kind of like a contingent of people that want
to burn down the institutions and they're going to take
everything with them if they're allowed to succeed. Again, it's
not just about the economy, it's about the family, it's
about civil society. And those three things work together. The
economy and politics and civil society. They're not like siloed, right,
They need each other. They work together, and so when
(10:44):
you tear down one, you injure the others. And I
think that's why the fight here is so important. And
to me, there's just never been really since prior to
the falling of the Wall. I think there's never been
a more important time in our modern history to kind
of really be effective communicators for freedom. And I don't
think we do that by like yelling at people on
(11:06):
Twitter or whatever or next, right, I think we have
to engage very tough conversations like you're doing and.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
How and that. But I do think that's a question
how on a bigger scale do you have the time
to engage in this conversation. I and I love that you,
as a professor, are having these conversations, but we don't
have we don't have the ability so much to talk
to the younger generation because if you say they have
(11:31):
been kind of conditioned, too many have been conditioned. If
you hear something you don't like, walk away from the conversation,
get away from that conversation. And that's something where that
seems very un American too. But you brought up power,
and I want to get into that because I think
even the founding fathers knew that men inherently want power,
like that's just the human nature to want power, and
(11:55):
some want more power than others.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And I do.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Believe that in a capitalist society where you do have opportunity,
I mean you see, look, I would say Jeff Bezos
has power. I would say Mark Zuckerberg has power. There's
power in private industry, and you can get to very
high heights in private industry in the United States, that's
for sure. I mean, yes, you can become a billionaire.
(12:18):
If you said to those people who have that drive,
you can no longer be in private business. Does that
urge for power go away? No? So then what do
those people become in a socialist society because they're not
giving up power. So then they go on to the
government side and they control the people, and they don't
have the opportunity to control in a way where you
(12:40):
can raise wages or have insurance or all of the
things that they can do in their private business. How
does culture change at that point and how do you
stop men who desire that level of success from becoming
complete overlords?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, this to me is the multimillion, sixty four million
dollars rush. And I guess is how what they used
to say, right is how do you separate economic progress individually? Right? So,
I think what we care about a lot is income mobility.
And again that goes back to the American dream, which
is that you know, you can start with nothing and
(13:16):
you can make a bet, right, an entrepreneurial bet in society,
and you can become a millionaire or billionaire because of
that entrepreneurial talent and the institutions that allowed you to
do that. That's what we want to advocate for. And
I think that that's so important to restore that to
(13:37):
part of the conversation because you are exactly right, and
I think on the right, and you know, classical liberals
should not pretend that that doesn't exist. I think one
of our biggest problems. And America is very free country.
I think there's many things to be proud of. I'm
very proud to be an American citizen. I'm very grateful
for it. But we could be freer, we could We
(13:57):
have room for improvement, and I think this era that
you're talking about is one of those rooms for improvement,
which is we have a cronyism problem. And that is
to say that Jeff Bezos has a lot more ability
to involve himself in regulations that govern his industries and
other industries simply because of his economic status. Same with
(14:20):
Mark Zuckerberg, same with others. So I think that is
a problem of what we should call, you know, kind
of systemic privilege, which is that, as you know, you
kind of become a bigger player in an industry, you
get to reweave or influence the regulations, the subsidies, what's
(14:40):
going on in international trade related to your industry. And
of course, as you mentioned and Lord Acton said, right
power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely,
So the more cronyism that gets baked into our system,
the more we should expect that billionaires now have all
this political power. There's nothing about capitalism though that indicates
that should be the case. So a capitalist system is
(15:04):
one where you actually have as few political entanglements as possible.
As Milton Friedman taught us, capitalism is about profit and loss.
The most important thing there is the loss, right. I mean,
look what bankrupted Blockbuster? It was Netflix. It was because
they saw that technology changing. They didn't want to invest
in big box stores, and what do they do? They
(15:26):
kind of made those investments. Blockbuster had an opportunity, they
didn't do it. So now Blockbuster is a museum. That's
profit and loss. That's you know, that's a good thing
in the sense that you have to be on the
cutting edge of technology and innovation. If you don't, your
business has to correct. And I think that's what Friedman
was talking about. It's not just a system of profit.
I mean even Friedman said, I'm not pro business, I'm
(15:49):
pro consumer. And I think when we start to say
we're pro business, I think what we tend to mean
on the right is like, I'm for business development and entrepreneurship,
but I think we need to be careful with that language,
because being pro business might mean being pro subsidy and
being pro privileged, and we don't want to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
No, you are so right. So I will tell you
I don't even know that I've talked about this much.
When I ran for office in the state of Michigan,
I was running for that reason really, because we had
a family foundry and the regulation and the attacks from
the government were just so strong. And I found out
it wasn't just us. This was happening to everybody who
(16:29):
was the smaller end of the spectrum where the bigger
companies would come in. And I mean we had this
even in food service. We had local butchers who would
butcher for a few farms, and then you had like
the massive meat manufacturing plants, you know, and those guys
have the power. So they go in and they say, oh,
these aren't health they don't meet the health requirements, so
(16:50):
they're not safe. They can't do this, so they get
them shut down. And I think this is what people
don't understand about what when we say cronyusm what this
actually can do to the entrepreneur, the small business. You know,
Americans say that they are pro small business, but what
they're not seeing. And I think that's where people like
Abdual capture American's hearts, because he's like, you should not
(17:15):
have the government in your business. Now, on the flip side,
he's saying the government should own the big businesses instead
of letting any small businesses exist. So you know, his
approach doesn't actually work. But I will say when I
was running, I went to the Michigan Manufacturers Association and
I sat down in one of the big three car
(17:36):
companies said to me, will you continue to give us
the money that the state gives us to operate in
the state of Michigan. And I said, I can't agree
to that. I've not seen the agreements that you have
with the state and you all sign NDAs. I mean,
that's the other this is the other part of cronyism.
(17:57):
All of the legislators and the governor an NDA and
then they hand over hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars
to a private company and we don't get to see
what it's for. And I said, I'd like to see
what it's for. And she said, so you're saying that
the money that GM got last year, you wouldn't have
given them, And I said, I'd love to tell you
(18:17):
if I would have given it to them or not,
but I can't tell you because I can't. I it's
my money, and yet I'm not privy to what the
agreement is. And her response to me was, we have
pet proprietary information in those contracts that you can't see.
And I thought, how could it possibly be that you
require hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and we're talking
(18:40):
about six hundred million taxpayer dollars. But there are things
in there that you can't share with the taxpayer. There's
information that you have to share with the legislators that
I can't know. And when we walked out of that meeting,
we heard a few days later the organization will be
supporting Governor Whitmer because our biggest members are afraid that
(19:02):
you won't continue with the corporate welfare. Why wasn't allowed
to even know what the corporate welfare was for? I mean,
that to me is shocking, shocking, and it's it's it's
how do you get out of that system that has
to be broken because it puts you in a very
difficult position because you you either just have to give
people blank checks all the time to get elected and
(19:25):
then try to change things later.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And I think you're you know, which puts the It
just makes it very hard to change policy. I think
that's the problem. And I think your point that you
made a few minutes ago is so accurate, which is
that people don't really see this. This kind of like
happens behind the scenes, and so nobody knows that, you know,
there are restaurants I live right outside of Washington, DC,
(19:48):
that there are restaurants that are lobbying, you know, the
city council trying to make sure there's as few food
trucks as possible because they don't want the competition, or
to try a limit where they go. Things like this
that seem like, oh, who cares, it's not a big deal,
But it's a very big deal if we care about
income mobility and if we claim to be pro opportunity.
(20:11):
Because when I think about and I actually have a
family member that had this experience, he really wanted to
own a restaurant in DC, which you know, over the
past thirty years has kind of become a very much
a foodie town. The real estate's expensive, and he just said,
I can't afford this. I'm never going to be able
to get a building, so I'm going to start a
food truck. And so he did that, you know, kind
(20:31):
of start went through all these health code regulations. Again,
some regulations are useful. That's where economics comes in, is
trying to sort through what's just blatant cronyism and privilege
and what actually is necessary for safety and that we
just have the most minimal regulations possible. And so then
when you kind of talk to the people who are
(20:51):
democratic socialists running for office who tend to say I'm
for the little guy, I think what we need to
do is point out that these policies hurt the little
guy because again, my cousin was just a small, small
entrepreneur that couldn't really do what he wanted. So this
was his dream two point zero and he's doing it
and he's successful and it's great. But he said, you know,
(21:12):
I really had to learn politics to do this. I
had to learn how to navigate all these rules that
are set up to stop me from doing what I
want to do. Which think about it that way, right,
like theoselations are designed to stop you and make you
go through all these hurdles and then make a bureaucrat
in charge of saying yes, and so that's privilege on
(21:34):
its face.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And they're very expensive, very expensive. I mean, to go
through all of this. You have paperwork, you have to
have attorneys, you have to pay fees for in multiple
different areas. I mean, and this is something that you
know what you just said about him saying he had
to learn politics to do it. My dad came to
Michigan from the city of Chicago. We were He had
(21:56):
run a multi hundred million dollar organization that had steel
foundries all over the United States, none in Michigan. He
retired from there, bought this foundry in Michigan, and when
he came up here, it never dawned on him to
learn politics like that. He'd never run, regardless of having
(22:17):
plants in Scotland and Portugal and Iowa and Illinois, and
never dawned on him that he had to pay off
his local politician here. And after I ran my dad,
my dad died of cancer in the middle of my race,
so I never got to have this conversation with him,
which bothers me. But after he ran, I said to
one of the local business owners, so I guess my
(22:38):
dad was supposed to pay off the local politician to
get them to protect him from the government. And they
were like, everybody knows that. And I thought, no, this
is not how it goes in other states, right, and
you shouldn't have to know. I mean, that should not
be how it is. And that was what I was.
I mean, that has empowered.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Me, or like maybe.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I guess enthused me even more about making sure we
have the right people in office, because I don't think
that people realize this happens behind the scenes. And when
I was running here, we live in a state where
the city of Detroit was under management. You know, they
had a bankruptcy management coming down from the federal government
to try to pull it back. Well, if you try
(23:23):
to open a business in the city of Detroit, it's
the most expensive city in the state to try to
open a business and has the most regulations. And I've
asked people there companies that have purchased property there and
started their own business there, that are wealthy companies. If
you were a local resident you just wanted to start
(23:43):
up your own you were an entrepreneur, you wanted to
start up your own business, they just laugh. They will
look you straight in the eye and say, there's no
way you could afford it. If you were trying to
start up on your own, you would pay so much
it wouldn't be worth it because you wouldn't have the
capital already.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
To spa there.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I mean that to me is shameful, shameful, and then
I mean even to the extent. What we've recently found
out is that one of the big auto manufacturer auto
building manufacturers, like this guy puts up the buildings for
the big auto automotive, he puts up buildings for data centers,
all these places. So what we've recently found out is
(24:22):
this person's supposed to be a Republican. We met with
them multiple times throughout the campaign, and they kept holding
us off and holding us off and holding us off.
I'm like, why will they not engage? You know? And
this guy kept saying, you don't want this job, you
don't want this job. I'm like, you know, here's a Republican.
I just assumed it was me while the evidence came
(24:43):
into the Attorney General's office, who is a Democrat, who
then contacted us and said, yeah, from what we can see,
they every time they met with you, they went and
met with the Democrat governor of the time and said,
here's what their campaign is doing. And then the and
she won all of the contracts went to him. That's cronyism,
(25:05):
it is.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And you know, one of the points you were just
making in your comments I think is so important, which
is that I think what this does is that it
keeps big businesses big. We eliminate the loss function that
Friedman was talking about. But then you don't have any
small businesses that get opportunities to grow because of what
you just said, it's so hard to become a small
(25:27):
business in some of these industries that what we're effectively
doing is sanctioning cartels. Do we want to do that?
I mean, I can spend a week in a micro
class and you don't even have to teach him any
economics for them to know. I don't like monopolies and
cartels seem like a bad idea. There's like a gut
(25:49):
instinct around that. Economics is about showing how and why
that happens and what the solution to that is. And
the solution to cartels is to allow businesses to open up,
grow and then you're just running on profit and loss,
and the most successful business is going to you know,
survive for a time. And I think people don't like
(26:09):
that reality. On some level, I think we accept it
because most of us who have a job, you know,
your job isn't guaranteed. You know that, And that's important,
right because that means I'm going to work hard. You're
going to work hard. And if I stop working hard
and creating value for my companies, and I'm not going
to be able to work there anymore. And I think
that's a very important, you know kind of it. It
(26:30):
teaches us personal responsibility, accountability, and all sorts of other
virtues that underlie the capitalist system. And so again back
to democratic socialism for a moment. The more we promise
people with no skin in the game, the less we
lose the culture of personal responsibility, hard work, prudence, investment,
looking towards the future, thinking about how your business is
(26:53):
going to serve people. That's part of this whole package.
And I think, you know the ps is of the
democratic socialist so that we're just going to make all
that go away. But the reality is what you're talking about.
You get cronyism, you get political privilege, you get protection,
and then we have industries that can't compete in the
world the way they could otherwise you get, you know,
(27:16):
kind of think about the people in the communities that
are victims, right, they're employees of these industries. They could
maybe have a lot more job mobility, job security if
they weren't working for a cartel. But they're stuck too.
But again, that's the stuff that's so behind the scenes
that I think the average voter doesn't think about that.
And it's not because they don't, you know, kind of
(27:36):
not smart or anything like that. It's just really well
behind the scenes, and so I think we need to
shine a light on it, and that's how we get
more exposure to this problem.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I think to a certain extent, they see it like
they see that there are a few groups that have
all the power there are there's not competing and nobody
competing for energy. There's nobody competing for utility. So you
could those those can just rise and then you have
just a few options when it comes to jobs in
certain areas and for some reason no other big businesses
(28:07):
moving in. I think they see it to a certain extent,
and that is where the socialists take advantage of that,
because they come in and they go this is not
helping the little guy, and we want to make sure
the government fixes this for you. And that sounds really good.
But to your point, I think you've made this point
several times in different writings. What you see, what you
(28:30):
see the American people saying like I want to see
small business, I want to see free trade, I want
to see free enterprise is not consistent with what socialism
is offering. But maybe they I think there's a disconnect,
like they don't understand that supporting socialism does not mean
the things you think it means.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I agree fully. I think that's because we're not doing
a good job at teaching economics at a young enough age.
But also just I think economists we're not the best
communicators all the time. We need to be winsome in
the way we expose these ideas. So I mean, I
think that we have a lot of room for improvement
(29:11):
because you're right, and you know, think about I think
about like New York City. Okay, you're twenty three, maybe
you've gone to an Ivy League school, and you have
a quarter of a million dollars in debt, and then
you move to right the financial capital of the world,
New York City, very expensive city, and you feel like,
even though you have a great job, you have all
(29:32):
this college debt now and you can't even you know,
afford like a seven hundred room apartment or something, and
so it feels like the system has been already working
against you, and therefore why not listen to a policymaker
who's like, the system is terrible, look at how it's
disadvantaged you. And the solution, though from the democratic socialist
(29:56):
is just more investment in that broken system. That's the disconnect.
We need to help people understand which is that best.
Doubling down on socialism is not the answer. I mean
the reason college is more expensive, it's heavily subsidized, and
it's a mess. I mean, I work in that field.
There's a lot of problems in higher ED. Higher ED
has experienced one of the greatest levels of inflation in
(30:18):
the past twenty five years, and all the categories that
we look at, So it's a big problem. Everybody knows it.
And I think when you come out and that's your situation,
it's just very easy to believe that this is going
to solve the problems. And I think if you look
at the voters who are voting for democratic socialists. That's
who it is. When you see that wealthy people.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
You're kind of sold a lifestyle, right. You're going to
go to an Ivy League school, then you're going to
work the big job in New York. You're going to
be wearing the fancy Jimmy Chow shoes and you're going
to have the Louis vuittone handbag, and you're going to
live uptown and it's going to be great, and there's
no financial reality. I mean when you come out of
(31:01):
school and debt. I came out of school with no debt.
I moved to New York and I lived this amazing
life for a year there with my parents helping me,
and I don't know why they did that. I look
back at that now, I'm like, I mean, it was
great experience, but I could not afford anything. My sister
and I lived together. We tried our hardest to pay rent.
(31:21):
We couldn't. I had shoes that I probably bought at
coals at home, you know, like there was there was
no there was no like sex in the city lifestyle.
But that's what we're sold, you know. And women are
also sold this idea that you can go and do
that and you don't need anything else in your life
at all, and then you realize, gosh, I want more
(31:45):
than this, and maybe more than this is ultimately in
the suburbs. And that's what happened to me. And I
moved back, and I think I moved back before I
got to the point where I was in an immense
amount of debt and I don't and I see people
younger than me that are now in that situation where
they're like, this is it's unfair to us, And I
(32:05):
totally understand how that socialism creeps into that because they
are like, I have debt, I live in a very
tiny place. I can't afford my cell phone and Netflix,
and I want to have this fancy handbag, and that
all doesn't come together. So suddenly it's like, don't worry.
(32:25):
I'm going to take this cost off of your plate,
and this cost off of your plate, and this cost
off your plate. Oh, and I'm going to get rid
of that student debt. That sounds amazing. So it's an
immediate cell And that's where I think you are dead on.
We have got to come out and have these conversations,
but we do have to have them. And I guess
(32:48):
I would say in a charismatic way, because I think
if you just sound like you're complaining and you're like
you can't do this, the other side is winning people
over with the like we're going to bring everything to you.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And I you know, it's weird, right, because like I
remember in my twenties also just like not having any money,
eating ramen and and oatmeal, still like all those things,
and kind of I feel like that's what your twenties
are for, right, maybe wait for the designer handbag.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You know you were going to be poor, Yeah, and
you know.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
But at the same time, I mean, the data shows
us clearly that we are living in the most abundant
time in history, and so that's a blessing. It's an
amazing blessing. We want more of that. But I also
think it as that combined with living in a social
media world where you see these influencers and they're like,
you know, I have a Louis Vuitton bag and I'm
twenty five. I wasn't even thinking about that, not that
(33:41):
I didn't want one. Of course I still don't have one, right, sorry, right,
but we have to make trade offs in life, and
that bag is way down on my list. So it's fine.
But I think if you believe the world owes you
something and that the way you get that is through
the government, goes back to envy, the envy, that will
never satisfy the envy itch. Ever, it will make it worse.
(34:05):
And if the politicians, if we allow them to play
on envy, then there's no limit to the power that
they will take. And so I'm not trying to sound
overly dramatic, but this is a serious issue. There's no
such thing. I'm actually working on a paper with a
colleague and academic paper on you know, the impossibility of
democratic socialdias is not a thing. It never stays democratic
(34:27):
because ultimately, as we commandeer ownership of private resources, we
must put someone in charge to figure out how we're
going to allocate them. You have to and so when
you put to other people in charge, you have to
give them the authority to distribute. And of course that's
never gonna go. Well, it's never gonna go. We can't
(34:48):
even do it with like a couple municipally owned grocery stores,
so imagine doing it in a citywide It's just you know,
what landlords are facing, what all these things that we've
been talking about. I think it's just sounds too good
to be true, and usually when it sounds too good
to be true, it is too good to be true.
But I think I don't want to end on that
(35:08):
note because I actually think we need to. It was
a GK. Chesterton who said, like, we are perishing not
from want of wonders, but from want of wonder. So
I think the problem is we are not amazed enough
at the bounty around us. If we're more amazed, then
we'll work harder for it, we'll be appreciative of it,
(35:31):
and we will hold on tight to it. We won't
want to lose it. But if we just are like ough,
this stuff is just like ridiculous and I want the
government to just hand me everything I need, you actually
lose the wonder and the wonders. That puts us in
a place where none of us want to be. No.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you for
sharing this today. I mean, it really has been such
an awesome conversation, doctor Ann Bradley. We appreciate you. Thanks
for having me absolutely, and thank you all for joining
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Share this one because you guys
are gonna want to share with your friends. What is socialism?
Why is it happening? I love the idea that it
is playing on envy because it is such a sin
(36:10):
bent in our lives that we try to get past.
We try to get past, but there we don't even know.
We probably don't even know what's happening. So share it
with your friends. You can get it on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, Rumble, or YouTube at Tutor Dixon. Make sure
you join us next time on the Tutor Dixon podcast,
and right now, have a blessed day,
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. You all are hearing
about socialism everywhere. Everywhere you go, you are hearing about
the democratic socialists of America. And I really do believe
that right now there are a lot of Democrats who
are like, do not come into our party. I mean
we heard James Carvill saying, don't come into our party.
Do not use our party as your platform to go forward.
(00:24):
But they are, and they are really really successfully almost
taking that over. And I think something that you all
need to understand in history is that political parties have changed,
Political parties have crashed and burned, political parties have gone
away completely. And I really think that there is a
(00:45):
chance right now if they can do it. The goal
is to take over the Democratic Party and make it
a socialist party. And ultimately, I think there are some
Republicans who are out there saying, oh my gosh, what
a great thing. We'd win everything. No, I mean you
are looking at the other half of the ship and saying, well,
if they go down, we'll still be paddling. No, you
(01:08):
cannot have half the country become socialist. We will lose
the beauty of what America is. And so I wanted
to have somebody who can talk about this at a
greater level and explain exactly what socialism is. But why
on earth is so romanticized today? Why are so many
people going Yes, I think that we can do that.
(01:30):
For some reason, it's never worked in the past. I
always ended up in death. But yeah, let's try it
here in America. So I have doctor Anne Bradley with
me today. She is a professor of economics at the
Institute of World Politics and the vice president of Academic
Affairs at the Fund for American Studies. Thank you so much,
doctor Bradley for coming on today.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, I'm just stunned by what's happening, and I've read
some of the things that you've written about this. I
think that it is incredibly important for people to know
that socialism is not for all people. Socialism is just
all people are going to fail. It's not just the economy.
(02:13):
It's going to fail for everybody. Why is it so
popular all of a sudden?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
I mean, it's a great question because it's you know,
if you're my age, you can remember and the Americans,
you know that we're alive during the fall of the
Soviet Union, it would have been very hard. Say, in
nineteen ninety five, right after the fall of the Soviet Union,
we felt like freedom had won, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan,
(02:40):
all of that. It would have been kind of ridiculous
for a Democrat to run as a Democratic socialist to
be taken seriously because it was a different tide of ideas,
I think, And we had seen the threat of Marxism
politically in the Soviet Union. It's rampages through Europe and
other places. So I think we just kind of knew
(03:03):
this is a kind of a bankrupt idea and it
would bankrupt us. As you mentioned, we're fast forward now
and we're in a very different place. So socialism democratic
socialism is trending, as you say, and I think where
we really need to speak into this. And I'm a
professor and I deal a lot with young people in
the classroom, and I think that it's trending because it
(03:23):
sounds so great. I think the Democratic socialists talk about
all the proposed benefits, which sound wonderful, right mom Dommy
talks about free groceries and free buses and free daycare,
free paid leave, free college, we hear various democratic socialists
talking about the free stuff, and of course it's very
(03:44):
hard to argue with free But the problem is there's
a very significant cost, And as you mentioned, I don't
think the cost is simply economics. It is it will
bankrupt cities, states, and the country if we pursue it seriously.
It always has and it always will and we can
only know that by understanding economic theory. But I think
there's a different problem, which is the cultural decay, the
(04:07):
decay and erosion explicitly of the family of churches, of community,
and of civil society that goes along with it. But
when you know, when you're told, hey, free bus is
in a very expensive city, it just doesn't seem like
a big deal. It's like, Okay, this guy's going to
give me a free buss. I'm for that, and I'll
have very rich people pay for it. And the presumption
(04:28):
is the economy we'll just chug along as it always
hit has, And I think that's where we make a
lot of mistakes with these policies.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
You said something in one of your writings about really
this what they're doing is kind of exploiting envy, going
after the envious side of people. And I thought that
was so such a good way of putting it, because
that is really what this is. And then and then
you can kind of see from that statement how that
decays culture because if you can get to envy and
(04:57):
you say, okay, everybody should have the same stuff, impossible,
and then you kind of have people tearing each other apart.
Well does that person You know, we're not going back
to every kid having one doll, but I mean maybe
we are, And then how did that kid get two dolls?
But think about that on a larger scale of do
you have a nicer house, do you have a nicer car?
Everything has to be the same. We can no longer
(05:19):
allow people to do better than us. Tax the billionaires.
In fact, billionaires should not exist. We should not have
people that are that wealthy. And to prevent that, and
this is what we're hearing in Michigan with Abdul Sayad,
this is what we're hearing in Wisconsin, this is what
we're hearing with Mom Donnie. To prevent that, we should
have the government take over those big businesses. And that,
(05:42):
to me, I'm with you. I remember the wall falling,
I remember the President saying tear down that wall. I
remember the President constantly talking about communism and defeating communism
and not allowing communism. But what you said about Murgaret
Thatcher struck me because I've been thinking about it from
the standpoint of what I saw in our country when
(06:05):
I was growing up, and exactly what you said, like
this wouldn't have happened when we were young, But I
didn't think about how the Western cultures were together on
this and that Margaret Thatcher was saying, Eventually, you run
out of other people's money. That's the problem with socialism.
You can't do this forever. We don't have the support
of the western countries right now because they have been
(06:26):
invaded by people who are socialists. I mean, you look
at who's winning in the UK right now. It's actually
quite terrifying. So you see that happening there, you have
that coming here. I mean, let's face it, that's what
Abdul Saiad is in Michigan, That's what Mom Donnie is
in New York is We're going to take over and
(06:47):
kind of brutalizing people with you. If you don't like
what we're doing, doesn't matter that we're focused on the
economics of it. They call it a racism issue, and
it does scare a lot of Democrats. It's off from
calling out the economics because they're like, oh my gosh,
I don't know how to handle this. I can't get
involved in a race discussion. It's not a race discussion.
(07:09):
This is an economic discussion.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that is
if we start there, I think then we can elevate
the conversation out of just kind of the kind of
proverbial fistfights that you see on X and you know,
kind of because that's when I look at that dialogue,
it gets overwhelming, right, because it's easy to not have
(07:31):
a serious conversation in that regard. But I think, if
you're right, I fully agree that this is about economics.
Socialism has never worked anywhere we've tried it as a
scalable social economic model. It doesn't work. It simply doesn't work.
And so it doesn't matter how hard you try, and
(07:52):
it doesn't matter how good your intentions are. And so
I think, for for the you know, kind of related
to the comment you made before, it has to be
pitched in something like envy. It has to be pitched
in two things. One, I think you're right envy. Right,
It's like my neighbor has a land Rover and I
have a ten year old Honda, you know, Odyssey, and
(08:14):
it's like, why can't I have the land Rover? And
so if I believe the government is the arbiter of
who gets nice cars and I feel powerless in that,
then it it's kind of you see why people kind
of buy into that vary. Like I said before, bankrupt
economic and political ideology. I think the other thing is
(08:35):
it is socialism is about power. It's absolutely about power.
And I think the Democratic Socialists that's why that adjective
is so important for their cause. They're not saying let's
go back to Leninism, because absolutely nobody's going to sign
on to that. But what they're saying is, look, we're
going to put smart people in charge. They're benevolent people,
they care about the poor, they care about the working class,
(08:56):
and so they're going to distribute accordingly. But I think
the problem with that is that when you put people
in power to do that, what you've see time and
time again is that they can't deliver the goods. And
it goes back to a comment you made earlier with
a lot of people. A lot of politicians in the
United States are saying things like billionaires shouldn't exist, and
I think about that, and I think, gosh, the only
(09:17):
way to believe that there's two ways. I think one
is that you just believe everybody steals and wealth is
a zero sum game, right, and so the only way
to be a billionaire is to engage in theft and expropriation.
And if you believe that that wealth is a zero
sum game, then of course you're going to kind of
maybe lean more towards let's put why is benevolent people
(09:41):
in charge and have them sort this out for us.
But I think that that's just not what the United
States has been about. And if you look at why
people are so desperate to come and live in the
United States is because it's an opportunity society. That's the story.
That's what the founder's envision right. This year, we sell
clebrated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversity of the Declaration,
(10:02):
but it was also the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
of Adam Smith's publication of the Wealth of Nations, which
the you know, kind of those ideas that he was
talking about against mercantilism, against excessive government power. Those ideas
are baked into our institutions, and so I think there
(10:23):
is kind of like a contingent of people that want
to burn down the institutions and they're going to take
everything with them if they're allowed to succeed. Again, it's
not just about the economy, it's about the family, it's
about civil society. And those three things work together. The
economy and politics and civil society. They're not like siloed, right,
They need each other. They work together, and so when
(10:44):
you tear down one, you injure the others. And I
think that's why the fight here is so important. And
to me, there's just never been really since prior to
the falling of the Wall. I think there's never been
a more important time in our modern history to kind
of really be effective communicators for freedom. And I don't
think we do that by like yelling at people on
(11:06):
Twitter or whatever or next, right, I think we have
to engage very tough conversations like you're doing and.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
How and that. But I do think that's a question
how on a bigger scale do you have the time
to engage in this conversation. I and I love that you,
as a professor, are having these conversations, but we don't
have we don't have the ability so much to talk
to the younger generation because if you say they have
(11:31):
been kind of conditioned, too many have been conditioned. If
you hear something you don't like, walk away from the conversation,
get away from that conversation. And that's something where that
seems very un American too. But you brought up power,
and I want to get into that because I think
even the founding fathers knew that men inherently want power,
like that's just the human nature to want power, and
(11:55):
some want more power than others.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And I do.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Believe that in a capitalist society where you do have opportunity,
I mean you see, look, I would say Jeff Bezos
has power. I would say Mark Zuckerberg has power. There's
power in private industry, and you can get to very
high heights in private industry in the United States, that's
for sure. I mean, yes, you can become a billionaire.
(12:18):
If you said to those people who have that drive,
you can no longer be in private business. Does that
urge for power go away? No? So then what do
those people become in a socialist society because they're not
giving up power. So then they go on to the
government side and they control the people, and they don't
have the opportunity to control in a way where you
(12:40):
can raise wages or have insurance or all of the
things that they can do in their private business. How
does culture change at that point and how do you
stop men who desire that level of success from becoming
complete overlords?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, this to me is the multimillion, sixty four million
dollars rush. And I guess is how what they used
to say, right is how do you separate economic progress individually? Right? So,
I think what we care about a lot is income mobility.
And again that goes back to the American dream, which
is that you know, you can start with nothing and
(13:16):
you can make a bet, right, an entrepreneurial bet in society,
and you can become a millionaire or billionaire because of
that entrepreneurial talent and the institutions that allowed you to
do that. That's what we want to advocate for. And
I think that that's so important to restore that to
(13:37):
part of the conversation because you are exactly right, and
I think on the right, and you know, classical liberals
should not pretend that that doesn't exist. I think one
of our biggest problems. And America is very free country.
I think there's many things to be proud of. I'm
very proud to be an American citizen. I'm very grateful
for it. But we could be freer, we could We
(13:57):
have room for improvement, and I think this era that
you're talking about is one of those rooms for improvement,
which is we have a cronyism problem. And that is
to say that Jeff Bezos has a lot more ability
to involve himself in regulations that govern his industries and
other industries simply because of his economic status. Same with
(14:20):
Mark Zuckerberg, same with others. So I think that is
a problem of what we should call, you know, kind
of systemic privilege, which is that, as you know, you
kind of become a bigger player in an industry, you
get to reweave or influence the regulations, the subsidies, what's
(14:40):
going on in international trade related to your industry. And
of course, as you mentioned and Lord Acton said, right
power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely,
So the more cronyism that gets baked into our system,
the more we should expect that billionaires now have all
this political power. There's nothing about capitalism though that indicates
that should be the case. So a capitalist system is
(15:04):
one where you actually have as few political entanglements as possible.
As Milton Friedman taught us, capitalism is about profit and loss.
The most important thing there is the loss, right. I mean,
look what bankrupted Blockbuster? It was Netflix. It was because
they saw that technology changing. They didn't want to invest
in big box stores, and what do they do? They
(15:26):
kind of made those investments. Blockbuster had an opportunity, they
didn't do it. So now Blockbuster is a museum. That's
profit and loss. That's you know, that's a good thing
in the sense that you have to be on the
cutting edge of technology and innovation. If you don't, your
business has to correct. And I think that's what Friedman
was talking about. It's not just a system of profit.
I mean even Friedman said, I'm not pro business, I'm
(15:49):
pro consumer. And I think when we start to say
we're pro business, I think what we tend to mean
on the right is like, I'm for business development and entrepreneurship,
but I think we need to be careful with that language,
because being pro business might mean being pro subsidy and
being pro privileged, and we don't want to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
No, you are so right. So I will tell you
I don't even know that I've talked about this much.
When I ran for office in the state of Michigan,
I was running for that reason really, because we had
a family foundry and the regulation and the attacks from
the government were just so strong. And I found out
it wasn't just us. This was happening to everybody who
(16:29):
was the smaller end of the spectrum where the bigger
companies would come in. And I mean we had this
even in food service. We had local butchers who would
butcher for a few farms, and then you had like
the massive meat manufacturing plants, you know, and those guys
have the power. So they go in and they say, oh,
these aren't health they don't meet the health requirements, so
(16:50):
they're not safe. They can't do this, so they get
them shut down. And I think this is what people
don't understand about what when we say cronyusm what this
actually can do to the entrepreneur, the small business. You know,
Americans say that they are pro small business, but what
they're not seeing. And I think that's where people like
Abdual capture American's hearts, because he's like, you should not
(17:15):
have the government in your business. Now, on the flip side,
he's saying the government should own the big businesses instead
of letting any small businesses exist. So you know, his
approach doesn't actually work. But I will say when I
was running, I went to the Michigan Manufacturers Association and
I sat down in one of the big three car
(17:36):
companies said to me, will you continue to give us
the money that the state gives us to operate in
the state of Michigan. And I said, I can't agree
to that. I've not seen the agreements that you have
with the state and you all sign NDAs. I mean,
that's the other this is the other part of cronyism.
(17:57):
All of the legislators and the governor an NDA and
then they hand over hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars
to a private company and we don't get to see
what it's for. And I said, I'd like to see
what it's for. And she said, so you're saying that
the money that GM got last year, you wouldn't have
given them, And I said, I'd love to tell you
(18:17):
if I would have given it to them or not,
but I can't tell you because I can't. I it's
my money, and yet I'm not privy to what the
agreement is. And her response to me was, we have
pet proprietary information in those contracts that you can't see.
And I thought, how could it possibly be that you
require hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and we're talking
(18:40):
about six hundred million taxpayer dollars. But there are things
in there that you can't share with the taxpayer. There's
information that you have to share with the legislators that
I can't know. And when we walked out of that meeting,
we heard a few days later the organization will be
supporting Governor Whitmer because our biggest members are afraid that
(19:02):
you won't continue with the corporate welfare. Why wasn't allowed
to even know what the corporate welfare was for? I mean,
that to me is shocking, shocking, and it's it's it's
how do you get out of that system that has
to be broken because it puts you in a very
difficult position because you you either just have to give
people blank checks all the time to get elected and
(19:25):
then try to change things later.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And I think you're you know, which puts the It
just makes it very hard to change policy. I think
that's the problem. And I think your point that you
made a few minutes ago is so accurate, which is
that people don't really see this. This kind of like
happens behind the scenes, and so nobody knows that, you know,
there are restaurants I live right outside of Washington, DC,
(19:48):
that there are restaurants that are lobbying, you know, the
city council trying to make sure there's as few food
trucks as possible because they don't want the competition, or
to try a limit where they go. Things like this
that seem like, oh, who cares, it's not a big deal,
But it's a very big deal if we care about
income mobility and if we claim to be pro opportunity.
(20:11):
Because when I think about and I actually have a
family member that had this experience, he really wanted to
own a restaurant in DC, which you know, over the
past thirty years has kind of become a very much
a foodie town. The real estate's expensive, and he just said,
I can't afford this. I'm never going to be able
to get a building, so I'm going to start a
food truck. And so he did that, you know, kind
(20:31):
of start went through all these health code regulations. Again,
some regulations are useful. That's where economics comes in, is
trying to sort through what's just blatant cronyism and privilege
and what actually is necessary for safety and that we
just have the most minimal regulations possible. And so then
when you kind of talk to the people who are
(20:51):
democratic socialists running for office who tend to say I'm
for the little guy, I think what we need to
do is point out that these policies hurt the little
guy because again, my cousin was just a small, small
entrepreneur that couldn't really do what he wanted. So this
was his dream two point zero and he's doing it
and he's successful and it's great. But he said, you know,
(21:12):
I really had to learn politics to do this. I
had to learn how to navigate all these rules that
are set up to stop me from doing what I
want to do. Which think about it that way, right,
like theoselations are designed to stop you and make you
go through all these hurdles and then make a bureaucrat
in charge of saying yes, and so that's privilege on
(21:34):
its face.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
And they're very expensive, very expensive. I mean, to go
through all of this. You have paperwork, you have to
have attorneys, you have to pay fees for in multiple
different areas. I mean, and this is something that you
know what you just said about him saying he had
to learn politics to do it. My dad came to
Michigan from the city of Chicago. We were He had
(21:56):
run a multi hundred million dollar organization that had steel
foundries all over the United States, none in Michigan. He
retired from there, bought this foundry in Michigan, and when
he came up here, it never dawned on him to
learn politics like that. He'd never run, regardless of having
(22:17):
plants in Scotland and Portugal and Iowa and Illinois, and
never dawned on him that he had to pay off
his local politician here. And after I ran my dad,
my dad died of cancer in the middle of my race,
so I never got to have this conversation with him,
which bothers me. But after he ran, I said to
one of the local business owners, so I guess my
(22:38):
dad was supposed to pay off the local politician to
get them to protect him from the government. And they
were like, everybody knows that. And I thought, no, this
is not how it goes in other states, right, and
you shouldn't have to know. I mean, that should not
be how it is. And that was what I was.
I mean, that has empowered.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Me, or like maybe.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I guess enthused me even more about making sure we
have the right people in office, because I don't think
that people realize this happens behind the scenes. And when
I was running here, we live in a state where
the city of Detroit was under management. You know, they
had a bankruptcy management coming down from the federal government
to try to pull it back. Well, if you try
(23:23):
to open a business in the city of Detroit, it's
the most expensive city in the state to try to
open a business and has the most regulations. And I've
asked people there companies that have purchased property there and
started their own business there, that are wealthy companies. If
you were a local resident you just wanted to start
(23:43):
up your own you were an entrepreneur, you wanted to
start up your own business, they just laugh. They will
look you straight in the eye and say, there's no
way you could afford it. If you were trying to
start up on your own, you would pay so much
it wouldn't be worth it because you wouldn't have the
capital already.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
To spa there.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I mean that to me is shameful, shameful, and then
I mean even to the extent. What we've recently found
out is that one of the big auto manufacturer auto
building manufacturers, like this guy puts up the buildings for
the big auto automotive, he puts up buildings for data centers,
all these places. So what we've recently found out is
(24:22):
this person's supposed to be a Republican. We met with
them multiple times throughout the campaign, and they kept holding
us off and holding us off and holding us off.
I'm like, why will they not engage? You know? And
this guy kept saying, you don't want this job, you
don't want this job. I'm like, you know, here's a Republican.
I just assumed it was me while the evidence came
(24:43):
into the Attorney General's office, who is a Democrat, who
then contacted us and said, yeah, from what we can see,
they every time they met with you, they went and
met with the Democrat governor of the time and said,
here's what their campaign is doing. And then the and
she won all of the contracts went to him. That's cronyism,
(25:05):
it is.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And you know, one of the points you were just
making in your comments I think is so important, which
is that I think what this does is that it
keeps big businesses big. We eliminate the loss function that
Friedman was talking about. But then you don't have any
small businesses that get opportunities to grow because of what
you just said, it's so hard to become a small
(25:27):
business in some of these industries that what we're effectively
doing is sanctioning cartels. Do we want to do that?
I mean, I can spend a week in a micro
class and you don't even have to teach him any
economics for them to know. I don't like monopolies and
cartels seem like a bad idea. There's like a gut
(25:49):
instinct around that. Economics is about showing how and why
that happens and what the solution to that is. And
the solution to cartels is to allow businesses to open up,
grow and then you're just running on profit and loss,
and the most successful business is going to you know,
survive for a time. And I think people don't like
(26:09):
that reality. On some level, I think we accept it
because most of us who have a job, you know,
your job isn't guaranteed. You know that, And that's important,
right because that means I'm going to work hard. You're
going to work hard. And if I stop working hard
and creating value for my companies, and I'm not going
to be able to work there anymore. And I think
that's a very important, you know kind of it. It
(26:30):
teaches us personal responsibility, accountability, and all sorts of other
virtues that underlie the capitalist system. And so again back
to democratic socialism for a moment. The more we promise
people with no skin in the game, the less we
lose the culture of personal responsibility, hard work, prudence, investment,
looking towards the future, thinking about how your business is
(26:53):
going to serve people. That's part of this whole package.
And I think, you know the ps is of the
democratic socialist so that we're just going to make all
that go away. But the reality is what you're talking about.
You get cronyism, you get political privilege, you get protection,
and then we have industries that can't compete in the
world the way they could otherwise you get, you know,
(27:16):
kind of think about the people in the communities that
are victims, right, they're employees of these industries. They could
maybe have a lot more job mobility, job security if
they weren't working for a cartel. But they're stuck too.
But again, that's the stuff that's so behind the scenes
that I think the average voter doesn't think about that.
And it's not because they don't, you know, kind of
(27:36):
not smart or anything like that. It's just really well
behind the scenes, and so I think we need to
shine a light on it, and that's how we get
more exposure to this problem.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I think to a certain extent, they see it like
they see that there are a few groups that have
all the power there are there's not competing and nobody
competing for energy. There's nobody competing for utility. So you
could those those can just rise and then you have
just a few options when it comes to jobs in
certain areas and for some reason no other big businesses
(28:07):
moving in. I think they see it to a certain extent,
and that is where the socialists take advantage of that,
because they come in and they go this is not
helping the little guy, and we want to make sure
the government fixes this for you. And that sounds really good.
But to your point, I think you've made this point
several times in different writings. What you see, what you
(28:30):
see the American people saying like I want to see
small business, I want to see free trade, I want
to see free enterprise is not consistent with what socialism
is offering. But maybe they I think there's a disconnect,
like they don't understand that supporting socialism does not mean
the things you think it means.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I agree fully. I think that's because we're not doing
a good job at teaching economics at a young enough age.
But also just I think economists we're not the best
communicators all the time. We need to be winsome in
the way we expose these ideas. So I mean, I
think that we have a lot of room for improvement
(29:11):
because you're right, and you know, think about I think
about like New York City. Okay, you're twenty three, maybe
you've gone to an Ivy League school, and you have
a quarter of a million dollars in debt, and then
you move to right the financial capital of the world,
New York City, very expensive city, and you feel like,
even though you have a great job, you have all
(29:32):
this college debt now and you can't even you know,
afford like a seven hundred room apartment or something, and
so it feels like the system has been already working
against you, and therefore why not listen to a policymaker
who's like, the system is terrible, look at how it's
disadvantaged you. And the solution, though from the democratic socialist
(29:56):
is just more investment in that broken system. That's the disconnect.
We need to help people understand which is that best.
Doubling down on socialism is not the answer. I mean
the reason college is more expensive, it's heavily subsidized, and
it's a mess. I mean, I work in that field.
There's a lot of problems in higher ED. Higher ED
has experienced one of the greatest levels of inflation in
(30:18):
the past twenty five years, and all the categories that
we look at, So it's a big problem. Everybody knows it.
And I think when you come out and that's your situation,
it's just very easy to believe that this is going
to solve the problems. And I think if you look
at the voters who are voting for democratic socialists. That's
who it is. When you see that wealthy people.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
You're kind of sold a lifestyle, right. You're going to
go to an Ivy League school, then you're going to
work the big job in New York. You're going to
be wearing the fancy Jimmy Chow shoes and you're going
to have the Louis vuittone handbag, and you're going to
live uptown and it's going to be great, and there's
no financial reality. I mean when you come out of
(31:01):
school and debt. I came out of school with no debt.
I moved to New York and I lived this amazing
life for a year there with my parents helping me,
and I don't know why they did that. I look
back at that now, I'm like, I mean, it was
great experience, but I could not afford anything. My sister
and I lived together. We tried our hardest to pay rent.
(31:21):
We couldn't. I had shoes that I probably bought at
coals at home, you know, like there was there was
no there was no like sex in the city lifestyle.
But that's what we're sold, you know. And women are
also sold this idea that you can go and do
that and you don't need anything else in your life
at all, and then you realize, gosh, I want more
(31:45):
than this, and maybe more than this is ultimately in
the suburbs. And that's what happened to me. And I
moved back, and I think I moved back before I
got to the point where I was in an immense
amount of debt and I don't and I see people
younger than me that are now in that situation where
they're like, this is it's unfair to us, And I
(32:05):
totally understand how that socialism creeps into that because they
are like, I have debt, I live in a very
tiny place. I can't afford my cell phone and Netflix,
and I want to have this fancy handbag, and that
all doesn't come together. So suddenly it's like, don't worry.
(32:25):
I'm going to take this cost off of your plate,
and this cost off of your plate, and this cost
off your plate. Oh, and I'm going to get rid
of that student debt. That sounds amazing. So it's an
immediate cell And that's where I think you are dead on.
We have got to come out and have these conversations,
but we do have to have them. And I guess
(32:48):
I would say in a charismatic way, because I think
if you just sound like you're complaining and you're like
you can't do this, the other side is winning people
over with the like we're going to bring everything to you.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And I you know, it's weird, right, because like I
remember in my twenties also just like not having any money,
eating ramen and and oatmeal, still like all those things,
and kind of I feel like that's what your twenties
are for, right, maybe wait for the designer handbag.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
You know you were going to be poor, Yeah, and
you know.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
But at the same time, I mean, the data shows
us clearly that we are living in the most abundant
time in history, and so that's a blessing. It's an
amazing blessing. We want more of that. But I also
think it as that combined with living in a social
media world where you see these influencers and they're like,
you know, I have a Louis Vuitton bag and I'm
twenty five. I wasn't even thinking about that, not that
(33:41):
I didn't want one. Of course I still don't have one, right, sorry, right,
but we have to make trade offs in life, and
that bag is way down on my list. So it's fine.
But I think if you believe the world owes you
something and that the way you get that is through
the government, goes back to envy, the envy, that will
never satisfy the envy itch. Ever, it will make it worse.
(34:05):
And if the politicians, if we allow them to play
on envy, then there's no limit to the power that
they will take. And so I'm not trying to sound
overly dramatic, but this is a serious issue. There's no
such thing. I'm actually working on a paper with a
colleague and academic paper on you know, the impossibility of
democratic socialdias is not a thing. It never stays democratic
(34:27):
because ultimately, as we commandeer ownership of private resources, we
must put someone in charge to figure out how we're
going to allocate them. You have to and so when
you put to other people in charge, you have to
give them the authority to distribute. And of course that's
never gonna go. Well, it's never gonna go. We can't
(34:48):
even do it with like a couple municipally owned grocery stores,
so imagine doing it in a citywide It's just you know,
what landlords are facing, what all these things that we've
been talking about. I think it's just sounds too good
to be true, and usually when it sounds too good
to be true, it is too good to be true.
But I think I don't want to end on that
(35:08):
note because I actually think we need to. It was
a GK. Chesterton who said, like, we are perishing not
from want of wonders, but from want of wonder. So
I think the problem is we are not amazed enough
at the bounty around us. If we're more amazed, then
we'll work harder for it, we'll be appreciative of it,
(35:31):
and we will hold on tight to it. We won't
want to lose it. But if we just are like ough,
this stuff is just like ridiculous and I want the
government to just hand me everything I need, you actually
lose the wonder and the wonders. That puts us in
a place where none of us want to be. No.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you for
sharing this today. I mean, it really has been such
an awesome conversation, doctor Ann Bradley. We appreciate you. Thanks
for having me absolutely, and thank you all for joining
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Share this one because you guys
are gonna want to share with your friends. What is socialism?
Why is it happening? I love the idea that it
is playing on envy because it is such a sin
(36:10):
bent in our lives that we try to get past.
We try to get past, but there we don't even know.
We probably don't even know what's happening. So share it
with your friends. You can get it on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, Rumble, or YouTube at Tutor Dixon. Make sure
you join us next time on the Tutor Dixon podcast,
and right now, have a blessed day,
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
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Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
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