A Generational Reckoning

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. I am actually off today atoning for my sins which should take me weeks every year but my religion only provides one day. To anyone else observing Yom Kippur, may you have any easy fast, as they say. No live show but we have something probably better. Most of you listening now probably did not hear the national call-in special that I co-hosted with Maria Hinojosa on Thursday night as part of our national series, America, Are We Ready? Specifically this time, America Are We Ready To Save The Middle Class? We'll talk about Generation Z and millennials. We'll ask how much socialism, how much capitalism is good for the country. It's going to be great after the latest news.

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Brian: From WNYC in New York, it's America, Are We Ready?. This hour, America, Are We Ready To Save The Middle Class?, a national call-in special for generational reckoning. I'm Brian Lehrer from WYNC.

Maria Hinojosa: I'm Maria Hinojosa, host and executive producer of Latino USA and author of my new book, it's called Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America. In 2011, during the Great Recession, economics journalist Catherine Rampell wrote this in The New York Times, she said, "This month, college graduates are jumping into the job market only to land on their parents' couches. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds is a whooping 17.6%."

Brian: That was 2011. Just a few weeks ago, because of COVID, economics journalist Eduardo Porter wrote this in The New York Times. He wrote, "For some younger workers, this is the second blow in barely a decade." He quotes an analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute which says, "The generation that first entered the job market in the aftermath of the Great Recession is now going through its second once in a lifetime downturn."

Maria: Ouch, both of these economic journalists are going to join us in a minute. As the presidential campaign hits the homestretch, a central question for the candidates and for the nation is, "What to do about the people we often hear described as the first generation of Americans not expected to do better financially than their parents did?"

Brian: That description, general as it is, doesn't even show the savage racial inequalities plaguing the economy of Young America. In fact, Eduardo Porter's recent book, and remember what he's known for is being a business and economics reporter, is called American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise.

Maria: Dear listeners, this is a national call-in show. We are inviting you to call this hour, better if you're 40 years or younger. We want to know what's on your mind about this. Has it been hard to become as economically comfortable as your parents, or are you worried about doing so if you aren't even in the job market yet? If so, what's making you worry? Call us at 844-745-TALK. That's 844-745-8255. If you're Black, African-American, Latino, Latina and you're under 40. What do you think about systemic racism in the economy and how it's affecting you compared to your parents' generation when they were starting out in the workforce? Again, it's 844-745-TALK, 844-745-8255.

Brian: Think about it, this is all happening in the 30 years since we so-called won the Cold War. It's in this years that we've seen the first generations of Americans come of age, who are not likely to have better standards of living than their parents. How did this happen in a post-communist world, in which arising tide of capitalism and democracy was supposed to lift all boats. It's now been 56 years since the seminal Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. Why is economic inequality by race as persistent as it is?

Again, the invitation is for listeners 40 years old or younger for this call-in. "Has it been hard to become as economically comfortable as your parents, and if so, why?" Call us, 844-745-TALK. If you are Black or Latino and you're under 40, how do you think systemic racism in the economy is affecting you compared to your parents' generation when they were starting out in the workforce? 844-745-8255.

Maria: Get your phones ready because now we're going to meet our guests. Eduardo Porter is an economics reporter for the business section of The New York Times. He's the author this year of American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise. Catherine Rampell is a syndicated opinion columnist for The Washington Post, a politics and economics commentator on CNN and a special correspondent for the PBS News Hour. Welcome to you both.

Catherine, you wrote that line about college graduates winding up on their parents' couches. In 2015, you wrote an article called "The Great Recession’s Lost Generation? Older Millennials." In 2018, you wrote one called "Millennials aren’t breaking traditions. They’re just broke." [chuckles] What's the through line between all of those articles of yours and today?

Catherine Rampell: I think the through line is that millennials have been in an exceptionally unlucky generation. We know this from previous research that it's very bad to graduate in a recession. Not just because you endure potentially a spell of unemployment when you first entered the job market but also you have lower earnings for a stretch of time afterward. Possibly a decade, possibly longer, depending on which recession we're looking at. Young people who were unfortunate enough, through no faults of their own, to enter the job market when the job market was an unusually lousy one. From the very beginning were more likely to be on a worse track than comparable generations at the same age, Gen X or Boomers, Silent Generation, et cetera.

Actually, if you look at the numbers more recently, young adults are living with their parents at even higher rates today than they were when I wrote that piece almost a decade ago because of multiple reasons, of course. COVID has added some additional factors into the equation for where people decide to live. Maybe they don't want to live in a tiny apartment near their job, maybe they lost their job, maybe they can work from home, they can work remotely, they might as well live with mom and dad et cetera.

In any event, the numbers are much higher than they used to be. What I'm very fearful of is that, just as we saw a scarring effect from the recession 10 years ago, those scars never quite healed and those wounds are being reopened. People will have gotten stuck on this lower trajectory in terms of income, in terms of not being able to pay off their student debt. Home ownership being further out of reach, family formation being further out of reach. Now, they have this second setback relatively early in their careers that will be very difficult for them to recover from.

Brian: Eduardo, you wrote an article in May, called Facing Adulthood With an Economic Disaster’s Lasting Scars. I think you were writing about the new adults even younger than millennials, Gen Z. Who is that article about specifically?

Eduardo Porter: Those are the guys that are entering the labor market now. I can't imagine a worse moment to start coming out of college and into the labor market than when you have the kind of unemployment rate that we've seen in the last few weeks. Which frankly, I think is likely to persist for a fairly long time. What Catherine has been describing about entering in the job market after the 2008 financial crisis into the Great Recession is going to be repeated again this year and to the extent that this crisis is long-lived. We really don't know but my guess is that this will be a fairly long long-lived downturn, not a fast bounce, we will see the same scarring.

I just wanted to point out that this scarring, it's hitting the young now, but it will stick with them as they get older. The research finds that this not only hurts your earnings and your job prospect now, you will earn less. If you graduated into a recession you will earn less in midlife. You are less likely to be married, to have kids. You're more likely to die young, you'll have higher mortality rates, starting in your 30s, driven by stuff like heart disease, lung cancer, organ failure, drug overdoses. It's like there's this whole package of pathologies that arises from entering your working years when there's no work to be passed.

Brian: I want to go to our first caller and I want to remind all our callers, or just tell all our callers that this is a national call-in. We're on, in many, many, many, many places around the country and don't be insulted if our screeners bump you because we're looking for geographic diversity. We've invited people from all over. Some of you in some cities are really used to calling talk shows, some other people aren't. It's not because we don't like you, it's not because we're discriminating against your city or your town. We are trying to open this up to so many different people from around the country by race, by gender, by geography and so don't be offended. It's not about you, if a screener bumps your call.

Maria: We just like make a very transparent here, right Brian?

Brian: That's true, we're just--

Maria: We just want super, super transparency.

Brian: Were saying how it works, we have 10 lines which might sound like a lot, but in the scheme of things, that's not really a lot compared to the number of listeners we have around the country. Joe, in Acworth, Georgia, you're on America Are We Ready To Save The Middle Class? Hi, Joe.

Joe: Hi, how are you guys?

All: Good.

Brian: How old are you if you don't mind saying, and how's your economic early adult life compared to your parents?

Joe: I'm 38, I consider myself to be upper-middle-class I guess. In terms of garnering wealth and building amassing wealth to leave behind for my children, which is what I focus on. I think it's much harder for me and my generation specifically, because it's extremely difficult to acquire real property. Home buying is hard for me, it's hard for my generation. Maintaining your credit score and those sorts of things is extremely hard for my generation and I meet cohorts all the time who have the same issues that I do with that.

I think that the reason for it is basically threefold. We learned a lot of lessons from 2008 and lenders and financial institutions are wary of running into those same issues. It's much more difficult because of those things that we had to go through. Then globalization, I think makes it harder for entrepreneurs like myself to establish state-based operations against pitting their acumen against the big corporations who can afford to go overseas and things like this, it's extremely difficult.

Brian: With those analysis, are there any government policies that you would like to see that would make it easier for your generation along those lines as an aspiring homeowner and an entrepreneur?

Joe: Yes, I actually would. I would love for state governments to invest more money in small businesses in and around bigger metropolises. Like Atlanta is fed by the small towns around it, and I know there are some pushes to do that stuff, but it's just not quite enough and small businesses are struggling, especially now with coronavirus, it's hard. I've went several times for a couple of loans for my small business. I've been denied a couple of times, and then I got some relief there, but it's not easy.

Brian: Joe, thank you so much for starting us off. We're going to get a reaction from our guests to your thoughts about causes and they'll put some others on the table. Is it globalism? Is it China? Is it Reaganism that led to all this? What is it? America, Are We Ready To Save the middle class? Continues after this.

Maddy Smith: Wednesday it's April 1st, happy to record that I currently have no income. My Venmo is Maddie Smith7 if anyone wants to help me out. It's a desperate time, I might have to do something crazy like sell pictures of my feet or call my parents.

Brian: Or call my parents. That was comedian, Maddy Smith. Funny, not funny, depending on what situation you're actually in, you can either laugh at it or not. It's America, Are We Ready To Save The Middle Class? A Generational Reckoning, a national call-in special. I'm Brian Lehrer from WNYC with Maria Hinojosa host of Latino USA, and our guests.

Eduardo Porter, Economics Reporter for the Business Section of the New York Times and the author of American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise and Catherine Rampel syndicated opinion columnist for the Washington Post. She's a politics and economics commentator on CNN and special correspondent for the PBS News Hour. We're inviting your cause on the question if you're 40 years old or younger what's on your mind about this? Has it been hard to become as economically comfortable as your parents and if so, why? At 844-745-8255, 844-745-8255.

Maria: I was really struck by the caller from Georgia. I took a couple of different notes. The biggest note that I took was this is the great American economy? Not so much right in this whole notion that the American economy is so strong. I also was thinking about Georgia in particular because demographics in Georgia are really interesting. Over the past decade, some of the fastest growing demographic groups into Georgia are Chinese Jamaican, Mexican, and those are really strong, while they were before COVID, strong business communities and a lot of growth and investments.

Eduardo, how do you square what he was saying? I think a lot of people are feeling yet again, and young people certainly are feeling, oh my God, not again, not another downturn. On the other hand, there were a lot of young people who were investing in these communities, in these different demographics and we're trying to talk about structural racism also, so can you put those things together for us?

Eduardo: Well, there's a lot of moving parts here. Just to address what Joe said, his main theme about the impact of the situation of small businesses. I think that is an immense concern because, across urban America, the small businesses at forums, that are mainly in the urban service economy are going to be devastated by COVID. Because the entire economic equilibrium on which they depended, which included tourism and business travel, and office business being open has all closed down. That is going to be a tremendous blow, that it's going to take a very, very long time to dig urban economies and urban service economies out of.

Now, to your point about the role of diversity, the one way I think about this is of the role of immigration and the future of the United States. That maybe you're speaking about Asian Americans and Latino Americans in the economic vitality of Georgia. Well, I would say that interestingly, the more vital economic locales in the United States, are the places that have been most inviting to immigration. The places that have been most hardly left behind, are places that in fact have very little immigration and there's a chicken and egg thing here going on.

Of course, immigrants are not going to go to places that are not really growing very fast. One thing that remains that is absolutely true is that the American population and labor force is getting very old. If we want to sustain a vibrant economy into future we're going to need a faster growing labor force. If we close our borders to immigrants, we are basically going to ensure that we have a shrinking labor force and probably a less vibrant economy to support the many retirees that the Boomer generation is producing.

Brian: Let's go to Rosac in Cleveland with the next question and we'll go to Catherine Rampell for the next answer. Resoc in Cleveland, you're on America, are we ready to save the middle-class? Hi there.

Rosac: Hello, how are you?

Brian: Good, question is how are you?

Rosac: Well, I'm doing all right, but just where I am, I'm 26, but I actually lived with my parents until I was 24. Just because I wasn't able to find work and go to school, which is my way to try to accumulate wealth. Then further, by the time my parents were like 22, 23, they were already married, had a house, and had a kid. Whereas me, I'm now 26 and any of that is looking years off from now.

Brian: Who do you blame, anybody?

Rosac: Who do I blame?

Brian: Yes, anybody in the political sector or the corporate sector or anything at all?

Rosac: For me, I think there's a lot of just systemic racism or barriers that are associated with systemic racism. Just going through the [unintelligible 00:20:25] morale of high school, having failed educators, not respond to racism. Just applying for jobs, applying for schools, it's affected me at every level.

Brian: Rosac, thank you for that bracing observation and unfortunately not surprising bracing observation, though it should be surprising 56 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Let's go on to James, in Fort Worth. James, you're on America, Are We ready? Hey?

James: Yes, hello, can you hear me?

Brian: I can hear you fine. I see you told our screener you're 40.

James: Yes, my wife and I, our experience has been that we're never going to be able to achieve as much financially as our parents did and part of that is by choice. It seems like that is part of the problem that we're dealing with, is that they really prioritized accumulating wealth and consumerism. We're really trying to value our family, and relationships in our lives, and experiences. As long as we have access to healthcare and reliable transportation and a safe place to live, we're really okay with that.

I'm worried that if we continue to value things the way that a lot of the Boomers seem to value things that we're just going to--. I don't think it's a bad thing that we have less wealth than our parents did. If we continue on this track, I'm worried we're going to end up back in a lot of the same boats we've been over the last while.

Maria: James, is that just because you feel there's this, the dog eat dog, capitalist kind of we got to make more money. Certainly, on the East Coast the presence of the Ivy Leagues. There are young people who have graduated from Ivy Leagues that I know of, that are not complaining about being unemployed. In fact, they're making substantial salaries in the financial sector. You're basically saying, I want to turn away from all of that, that whole thing is the reason why we're in this, what are we in? In this bucket to begin with. Is that what you're saying?

James: Yes, I'm really okay if we're not as wealthy as our parents. It's weird because you talk about a single-payer medicine, and aunts, and uncles are like, "Oh no, you're starting to sound like a Marxist." It's like "That's not the boogeyman it was for you guys, it's not the boogeyman for us that it was for you." It seems like we are spooling up again to just have the same outcomes that we had before.

Brian: James, thank you so much for your call. In fact, I'm going to play a clip of Bernie Sanders that we have that relates to what you just said. Listen to how he compares his support to Joe Biden's support during the primary season in generational terms.

Bernie Sanders: I think what the Biden campaign does understand is that we did really, really well among young people, white and Black and Latino, Native American, Asian American, we did pretty badly among older people. What I think the Biden campaign understands, they're going to have to reach out and bring those people into the fold, and I think they are making some success.

Brian: Catherine Rampell, what are you thinking?

Catherine: I think we need to be specific in what we mean when we talk about wealth. For a lot of young people we're not talking about necessarily, are they ever going to strike it rich but are they ever going to leave their financial anxiety behind. I think it's fair to say, as our caller just said, he doesn't see himself as a Uber consumerist, he doesn't want to accumulate as much money as he can. On the other hand, presumably, he wants to be able to put a roof over his head, he wants to make sure he's not worrying about bills. He talked about healthcare, he wants to make sure that he has access to affordable care.

I think we need to be a little bit precise when we're talking about what it means when we say young people are not going to be as wealthy as their parents. Wealth could also be construed a little bit more broadly, it's not just what's in your bank account, it's your general wellbeing. If you look at various other measures of how people are doing today versus how they were doing a year ago. It's not just that maybe they have more financial anxiety, they have more anxiety in general.

I think what we should be trying to maximize as a country is welfare, not wealth per se in terms of dollars but general welfare and what are the kinds of policies that would get us to that objective. It's not necessarily maximizing GDP, it's about making sure that people can live safe, comfortable lives. Where they're not always freaking out about whether they're going to get evicted from their homes as many Americans are right now or whether they're going to be able to pay their medical bills. These things are all interlinked, but we have to think about what is our value set here and what is the right way to achieve goals that get us to those objectives.

Maria: Amir, you're in Piscataway, New Jersey, you've been listening to all this. What do you want us to know, and how old are you?

Brian: Guess what, we lost Amir.

Maria: Oh, no [laughs].

Brian: I'm going to go instead to somebody who's not too far from Piscataway, New Jersey. Noah in Philadelphia, you're on America, Are We Ready? Hi Noah.

Noah: Hi guys, how are you?

Brian: Good, how are you?

Noah: I'm pretty well, thank you for asking. I am a Black female, I am 29 years old, I'm from Philadelphia and I actually went to school in Delaware, in a private school. I decided not to go to college from there, just because of the financial burden that it would bring on me personally, I decided to get into the working field. I got into sales and that's mainly because you don't necessarily have a salary, you could be commissioned and then you have the ability to earn more.

I think some of the problems come in when you don't know what to do with that ability to earn more. When you don't know how to invest it and you don't really have that generational knowledge or knowing what to do with it or how to spend it. I also was adopted, I didn't know my biological family, but then I found them in 2016 and I have a sister, she's 21, and she has two kids. They had a house that they had bought for my mom who passed away, she lived in it and then my uncle sold it. It's things like that that happen and then it's like you can't get ahead in a sense, like you're trying to keep your head above water.

Maria: Exactly, in fact, there's an interesting piece of information which is during the subprime mortgage. This really was the largest transfer of wealth out of the Black community, because of the subprime mortgage. As you're saying, this is the kind of stuff that stays with you and then you cannot recuperate. We do want to talk, Eduardo, about the question of structural racism.

The earlier caller was just saying look, it follows him everywhere when he tries to apply for a job. We do have to acknowledge that one of the other colleges or I guess it was the joke of like time to call your parents. I'm thinking about the African American parents who had the homes, who bought into that subprime mortgage that then lost it all and then some. Now, there's no way that their kids are going to be able to do well. Right, Eduardo?

Eduardo:

Yes, there's an interesting statistic that speaks to that, that I recently read. If you think back to the '1960s right around the time of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. African American families on average had $5 in wealth, for every $100 in wealth of white families. Then we had the Civil Rights Act and we had supposedly a great deal of progress on the lines of equity. By now I think the statistic is from 2015, for every $100 a white family had, a Black family had $10. This is, just to also go back to the note that you said at the beginning of the show.

We have half a century worth of history following the passage the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and a variety of pieces of and decisions that supposedly ended our history of segregation and discrimination. The progress made by Black-Americans, and I would broaden it to also other Americans of color, has been pretty paltry. What's been driving this? Well, of course, things like redlining, that it made it impossible for African-American families to actually accumulate wealth from housing. Housing is the main vehicle for wealth accumulation in this country. Also through business loans, discrimination in the educational system. Which also created a lag in educational attainment in communities of color.

There's been a variety, a whole plethora of institutional obstacles. Obstacles of law, obstacles of regulation, obstacles of social norms, that had been really keeping this community back, and for sure. Right now the fact that this community is particularly vulnerable to our current crisis, shouldn't be surprising. You see it in the statistics of the morbidity and mortality statistics from COVID. African-Americans are dying at a much higher rate. Partly because of course, they have the most dangerous jobs, they cannot work from home, they live in the most difficult conditions. These inequities have been built by policy, have been sustained by policy, and so it is not surprising that they manifest enormously now.

Brian: Let's get in one more caller before our next break Bill and Clinton Township, Michigan, just outside Detroit. Bill, I'm going to ask you to do it in 60 seconds. Hi, there.

Bill: Hi, I am bill. I am a 39 year-old, white male and I did 13 years in the Michigan Prison. I have a good job, I'm lower middle class. I'm working in the aerospace industry. I see jobs wanted poster signs everywhere, everywhere I drive, anywhere around the Metro Detroit area.

Brian: Then why are so many other people, if you have an opinion, feeling like they can't do as well as their parents did at their age?

Bill: I was raised on Welfare as a kid. I'm one of four children, and I believe that I am doing better now than I was as a child.

Brian: Bill, we're going to leave it there because we have to take a break. When we come back, I'm going to ask our guests how they compare Trump and Biden on policy responses to this, so stay with us on America Are we ready?

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Brian: It's America, Are We Ready To Save the Middle Class?, A Generational Reckoning and a national call-in special. I'm Brian Lehrer from WNYC, with Maria Hinojosa host of Latino USA. Our guests Eduardo Porter, economics reporter for the New York Times and author of the new book, America Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise. Catherine Rampell, syndicated opinion columnist for the Washington Post. Catherine, is there a Democratic and a Republican way to address generational inequality?

Catherine: To address generational inequality, I would say use as a case study the tax policies of our two presidential candidates, the incumbent Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. If you look at Trump's policies to the extent that any have been generally hand waved at, they're often about rewarding wealth. He already over saw this big tax cut, which was predominantly a tax cut on corporate income taxes, as well as there were taxes for personal income, excuse me, there were cuts for personal income taxes as well.

Overall, the bill was weighted very much towards the wealthy, and if we're talking about corporate income taxes. That's going to predominantly help people who are higher income, who have wealth. If you look at what Trump has talked about in terms of further tax cuts rather, he's very interested in cutting capital gains taxes. He's talked before about the estate tax as well. These are all about rewarding people who get unearned income. These are tax cuts on wealth. If we care about the intrafamily intergenerational transfer of wealth, which is what much of this conversation has been about, this will exacerbate existing trends.

You look at Biden's tax policies on the other hand, they're not about capital gains tax cuts. They were about tax cuts for the middle class, lower income people as well. I believe he's talked as well, or at least it could be the administration he was a part of, had increased the earned income tax credit too. It's more about rewarding earned income, versus unearned income. I think that's just a microcosm of the two parties approaches to this question. About how you could use policy levers to either magnify existing inequalities, or to shrink them.

Maria: All right, we have Hadley calling from Lubec, Maine. Hadley, you want to talk about policy, or you want to tell us how old you are, and whether or not you think you're going to be able to do better than your parents?

Hadley: Okay, is this Maria?

Maria: Yes, it is.

Hadley: Okay, Maria and Brian, thank you so much. I'm calling in I am 47, so I'm outside of that 40 year old cut off but I'm--

Brian: Cut off, you're a Maverick, you don't care what the boundaries are, but go ahead.

Hadley: I'm so grateful to be talking to you two. Here's my story, so I flagged it away in New York for many years. I eventually moved to Maine in 2005. I flagged it away here working different jobs, bla bla bla, it doesn't matter. I'm an only child and my parents passed away, and then I inherited some money. Then I was able to lift myself out of the day-to-day paycheck. Then I moved to Lubec, Maine, and I opened up a little cafe and tried to do my dream. Here's the issue, like that's a hard thing to do anyway. That middle class dream, like I wanted to open this cafe to be a community spot, to be a year round spot to provide wholesome helpful food.

Brian: Part of this, and I'm going to move you along for time, forgive me, is what you're seeing in Lubec, right?

Hadley: Right, in Lubec, Maine right now, actually what's happening because of COVID-19, things have gone haywire. I'm a New Yorker, I left New York in 2005, I've been in Maine since then. What I'm hearing from people is, things are turning here like you can't believe. People are escaping the urban areas, different from 9/11, now their health is at risk, that's a serious thing.

Brian: People are coming up there for that reason. Got you Hadley, and we're going to move on to another caller. We're going to go from all the way up in Lubec, Maine, to all the way down in Dallas, Texas, where it's Mike calling in. Mike you're on America, Are We Ready.

Mike: Hey, how is it going guys?

Maria: Actually, good.

Brian: Good to have you.

Mike: Thank you for having me on, I really appreciate it. My story is a little bit interesting. I am a first generation American. My parents are from Latin America, and given that they're from Latin America, they've not had it as good as I have being being American myself. I've had the opportunities afforded to me that they haven't to themselves, and I am financially better off than they are. However, I do believe I'm financially better off than many first generation Latino Americans, American Latinos, given the fact that my grandparents happened to be from Europe. My parents are from Latin America, my grandparents are from Europe. I think that might play into a disparity that I often realize myself, that other people of my bracket aren't afforded the same opportunities I have been.

Maria: I'm just wondering what kind of work did your parents do, and where in Latin America are your parents from?

Mike: My father is from Argentina, my mother is from Mexico. My grandparents are Italian and Spanish actually. My mother she really never got a better paying job, I would say than, I think the max she makes was like $19 an hour [laughs].

Maria: You went to college?

Mike: Yes, I did, my father. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Maria: I was just going to say that it's interesting because in the question of immigration, for example, your story is one of those stories where you are doing better than your parents. Because they've emphasized college, you were able to do that and you took advantage of certain market opportunities. I think that there is a conversation about what immigrant and the immigrant spirit brings to the country that's being lost here. Because for example, if the COVID Aid that was going out federally. Had actually gotten into the hands of like the essential workers who were doing all the food work in the farms in California.

They were not getting that money because they're undocumented, but if they had that money, Brian, would have gone immediately into the economy. They would have spent it immediately, tt would have actually been like a push into the economy. Sometimes, it's like one of the things that we're seeing ahead of us is a possibility of embarking on economic growth from an immigrant perspective. Yet not everybody gets that opportunity. It's something that Eduardo you've also been talking about just the immigrant story. I'm wondering, for example, I'm an immigrant, I was born in Mexico. I wonder what about my kids? Are they going to do better than me? What does it look like Eduardo from academic statistical place?

Eduardo: I'm also the son of a Mexican mother and grew up in Mexico. Tthe stats do suggest that very strongly that the kids of immigrants from Mexico and point South do much better than their parents. Largely because of the opportunities that you've been talking about, because they have an opportunity to go to school. They have an opportunity to go to college, and their incomes are definitely higher than those of their parents. Just the more broad theme that immigrants have come historically here from Latin America in very large numbers, because there was enormous economic opportunity for them here, because here there were jobs, there were jobs that might pay minimum wage, but minimum wage for somebody who was living in Michoacan, and had really no cash income, that was an enormous wage.

I would also like to say that that is I'm speaking of an older history, because our more recent past is different. If you think net immigration into the United States, from like Latin America, which was mostly unauthorized, actually, started declining from around 2008. By 2016, when Trump became president, it was at its lowest in more than a decade. That equation of United States as an opportunity for low wage immigrants from Latin America has in fact changed, and I think this has to do with changes in Latin America that have become more stable economies. Their populations are also older, so these demographic and economic changes make the push force to come here lower. Also I think the United States has become a less promising opportunity in the eyes of many of potential immigrants.

Brian: Hey Catherine, I'm curious how much you think globalization, the trade agreements, the Clinton era, where they really opened it up. You accepted what had been a Republican premise and said, okay, a rising tide of trade is going to lift all boats. We may give up the manufacturing of things we were making for a long time in this country, but we'll make other things that are higher tech and our exports will even out the job market, and maybe that didn't happen. We have the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party and Donald Trump both killing the idea that corporate America and the government, let so many jobs in manufacturing leave this country. Was that a bipartisan failure, and do you see either side addressing it?

Catherine: I think there are a few things we need to talk about when we talk about trade and misunderstandings about trade. Generally the consensus within economics is still that trade has greatly benefited the United States. It has made us richer in many respects. The problem is that while it's made most of Americans a bit richer, the people who feel the negative consequences of trade are much more concentrated. The benefits are diffused and the costs are quite concentrated in former factory towns, for example. We have not done a good job at basically making amends financially or otherwise to the people who are helping people transition to other kinds of careers for example, or helping them move to areas where there might be more opportunities.

There's a lot of debate about the right way to help people who were dislocated by trade, but that's not to say that the answer is to try to shut off trade. The other thing that I would point out is, in many respects we actually do make [chuckles] as much, if not more than we did. In some of the industries that are the poster children for how trade has dislocated people's jobs, for example, in steel. The last time I looked at this, we produced as much steel as we did, I think in the late '80s, somewhere around there, the issue is that we just do it with many fewer workers than we used to. We haven't lost steel jobs per se because, or at least only because of competition from abroad. Although there have been issues with dumping and things like that, I don't want to completely write off that explanations.

It's largely because of productivity, it's because of automation. What we really need to be doing, if we want to make sure that we have these manufacturing jobs. Is that we adequately train people for the skills that are needed for the manufacturing jobs of the future. Again, just like turning off the spigot of trade, A, makes the country poor. B, isn't necessarily going to solve the reason for why we have job losses in some of these industries that again are considered so illustrative, the former steel towns, for example, the big manufacturing towns.

Brian: Lets get one more caller in this hour, and it is Tony in Beaufort, South Carolina. Tony, you're on America, Are we Ready To Save The Middle class? Hi, Tony?

Tony: Hey there Brian, I'll try to be quick. I'm a hopeless millennial, 31 years old, born right after the Soviet Union's collapse. Came out in 2011 when times were hard. I have a graduate degree, I'm a white collar professional. I just lost my own job just two months ago as a consultant. I just wanted then to add that perspective. A lot of us are suffering out here, certainly within the Millennial generation just like anyone else. I'm just saying that it's not just those who don't have college degrees are that suffering it's also those who are also in the white collar professional field and certainly as--

Brian: Tony, who do you blame if anybody and what do you want on a policy level if anything?

Tony: [laughs] Politically I do blame the Republicans, I'm more of a Democrat myself. I just want the next president, whoever that might be to just try to take into account that a lot of us do have student debt, which I myself I'm paying off right now, as well as just less opportunities.

Maria: Do you feel like this notion that people who have college degrees that are losing their jobs, white collar professionals. Do you think that that picture is getting anywhere in Washington, DC? Not that they're necessarily paying attention to this, and do you think, or is it true that you lost your position because of COVID-19 and therefore lack of inaction on the part of Washington, DC to deal with this on a national scale?

Tony: It could be of course, a gray area, just like anything else. Professionally, I'm actually a health care consultant so, of course, we got hit pretty hard with COVID. There's really just no reason for a hospital to hire us right now, other than clinical trials and whatnot. Obviously, there's a lot more that we have to do on the policy level. If I could change my major 10 years ago, I probably went towards IT instead of economics. There's still a lot more discussions to be had.

Brian: No, Tony's going to get the last word in this hour as we are running out of time for this hour of America Are We Ready? Our question this hour, America Are We Ready To Save The Middle Class? A Generational Reckoning. Thanks to everybody from around the country who called in. We hope everybody found it interesting and informative.

You can read Catherine Rampell in The Washington Post, see her on CNN and PBS. You can read Eduardo Porter in The New York Times or in his new book, American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise. You can read Marina Hinojosa brand new book called Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America, or hear her on Latino USA. I'm Brian Lehrer from WNYC. Thanks again to everybody for participating this hour.

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