We are facing a massive competitive threat from China.

We need to automate. We need to just buy lots of machines in order to compete with China.

Sometimes unions fear machines because they fear automation putting them out of a job.

So we need to have a bargain where companies pay to educate people to use the machines.

Everyone's always been worried about machines putting them out of a job all the way since like the Luddites, right? But then it turned out that education was always the solution.

Teach people to use the machines. Then the synthesis of a human and machine becomes more valuable

than either one on their own. And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

My guest today is Noah Smith.

Noah is an economist who used to be a good, respectable assistant professor of behavioral

finance at Stony Brook University before he left that job to focus fully on his

excellent writing on substack. We talked about a wide range of interesting economic issues,

about whether the term neoliberal is actually helpful and what it would mean to move on

from the neoliberal quote- unquote, era of economic policy.

We talked about why it's so hard to build more housing in the United States.

How to deal with the scarroting cost of child care.

Whether or not it makes sense to try and revive the era in which unions played a huge part of the American economy.

And finally, what it would look like to embrace a genuine abundance economy and abundance agenda in American politics.

This is a short preview to a full episode.

Go to yashemunk.com to get access to your

private podcast feed with full bonus episodes like this one.

Noah Smith, welcome to a podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me on.

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