Who really counts as ‘working class’?

I think that's truly at the heart of what it means to be working class is that you you there's this tone that we can't really put our finger on that somehow you are being left behind or somehow you are being left out of power or excess or success or something. Hello, hello, I'm Brittany loose and you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Good working class it's a term we hear a lot but do we actually know what it means does it mean working in manufacturing not having a college degree or is it the same thing as blue collar work. And they're on up to the midterms politicians are touting their plans to help the working class begging the question who exactly are they talking to to help us understand who's a part of the working class. Talking with Catherine and Edwards labor economist and host of the optimist economy podcast to learn more Catherine welcome to it's been a minute. Thank you for having me oh my gosh so happy to have you ever watching your videos for forever as I was telling you before we started recording. And I yeah I just appreciate the way that you think about the economy and economics and it's I'm just thrilled that you're here with us. You're going to talk about the working class today let's do it which like a definition I feel like it's pretty elastic because I guess I would put it. There are so many different ways that people use it and it can be so many different things but first what is the textbook definition of working class. I don't know I don't know if there is one is probably the best answer because it's a it's a fungible very much reflective of what society is putting on to its workforce. So the origins of working class come from the industrial revolution like go way way back early 1800s in England and it's this separation between people and land and ownership. Where I work I work a plot a land that I own and I'm a subsistence farmer or I work a plot a land that I rent but it's you know I've we've worked it for forever the idea of a working class is that you have people who are laboring but own nothing. And this comes out of the industrial revolution and the mass employment of people in things like factories. This is the this kind of idea of working class of working but not owning carries through the 19th century you know it's it's featured heavily in the communist manifesto and the works of Marx and angles they talk a lot about the working class. The US context especially in the 20th century we've always talked about the working class as a function of education and income. And so this is this economic notion of do you work and not own is the kind of premise behind the idea of having a working class but in our context we tend to say it's this divide between going to college and not going to college and making a lot of money and not making a lot of money and not making a lot of money. But with working class being we we almost always refer to it as being a high school educated but not college educated person we tend to think of as someone who makes less wages as opposed to higher wages but even then it's still very fungible. When politicians use the term working class who are they referring to like who are we meant to picture when we hear that term working class. I think that it's it's leaving room for you to fill in the blanks and that's why it's such I think that's one reason why it's so commonly used you know I'm sure you've heard some type of and your listeners as well have heard some type of statistic like if you ask the average American whether or not they're middle class you know 90% of people will say yes and we have a self identification that comes from middle class and when politicians use middle class. The fact that they say that and you know 90% of Americans will think that they're talking about me is this way to you know have some degree of interpretation reflection that comes from the person of what do I identify as I think what we've seen you know recently is that there's also more like self identification is working class. Even people who make if you look at their kind of drill down the data there's people who make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year who will say they're working class yeah and so it's starting to catch more people as a self identifier. So I don't I think you wouldn't say Gallup has a definition of working class it's Gallup lets people fill in the definition of working class and you end up a lot of people who make a lot of money who say I'm working class. There's a relationship between like a definition of the middle class and a definition of of of working class like how do they fit together how are they separate what's up with that. Let's we okay I think we should talk about the political and economic elephants in the room. Okay political elephant in the room is that when we talk about working class we're often talking about white men like a spring scene kind of lunch pale factory sort of. You know fantasy that some politicians kind of bring up in 2026 I don't even know if it's I don't know if it's that because you know typical because there is a lot of there's a lot of conflation of working class and blue collar. But working class the reason why we are talking about it so much today is because white men without a college degree over the past 50 years have shifted political parties from Democrats to Republicans and that makes them important. And that influences elections to have a voting block change from one party to another and so they get a very they're very like important politically because they shifted their preferences political preferences. The other reason why they tend to be focused on is that there are certain gaps in voting blocks in the US you know men and women have different preferences college educated non college educated and white men without a college degree accentuate the college non college white black and male female gap they're kind of like they embody three of the big political gaps we see in the US. It's important by default but that means that it ain't that being kind of assumed that working class and white men without a college degree almost because the same thing. Yeah like we yeah we have this parlance of like oh when we're talking about the white working class male or we're talking about the working class we're focused on this this group and it becomes very much a story of their history of the decline of manufacturing jobs in the US and what that has meant for economic prospects and that that becomes the story. We're just going to build up from the economic data of what does it mean to be working class in the US what does it mean to be say in jobs where you don't have high say asset ownership across households you don't have high income you wouldn't have the trappings of a middle class life like owning a house or sending your kids to college. That is going to be very different looking group of people defined economically that group is going to be very female very much women of color in like shift sector jobs. The economic kind of deduction of what is working class and the political deduction of what is working class they're very much in conflict because one focuses on white men and the other is very much comprised of women of color. Talking about sort of like the white working class male of it all like one of the biggest tells to me sometimes with with how prominent politicians and political analysts sort of envision the working class isn't how they talk about democratic voters or people who are not democratic voters anymore. At least since 2020 if not before then there's been a lot of hand-rearing about Democrats you know quote unquote losing the white working class on identity politics or so called identity politics kind of driving them to vote for President Trump. What do you think working classes as a descriptor for this group like you said who is sort of shifted politically in a way that is really notable and kind of affects elections for the broader American populace like. That term is sort of doing there I don't know I mean for me I think it would just be speculating I mean I can talk about their wages and income and their occupations but getting into their politics is is. Let me qualify by saying this is outside of my subject area but as like a student of US history in public policy in US history we are so good about not talking about race but talking about race. Like we don't you know to buy for the working class in a lot of ways in the US means to is really about the history that the US had a strong middle class that came from unionized sectors that led to high paying jobs for people who didn't go to college and we you know through just the very successful gutting of the union movement of the right to organize through the abandonment. Of wage and labor practices through the fair labor standards act we have basically taken this kind of pipeline for creating middle class jobs and we both you know abandoned the public policy that supported the pipeline and then took the jobs that we had in that pipeline and a lot of them were either automated or traded away. And now we're left with this we have a lot of people who are in jobs where they don't make that much money and we are almost just so totally focused on the past like how do we bring like this working class conversation is really about manufacturing and we need to bring manufacturing back to the US or we made a mistake in NAFTA or we made a mistake mistake with China's acceptance into most favored nation status for the world trade organization like we shouldn't have traded away these jobs because they were good. When I think that that's a very backward looking and therefore not actionable question, the real question is, well, how do we make more good jobs from the ones that we have as opposed to? How do we recreate the jobs that, you know, manufacturing employment in the U.S. has been declining since 1979, six years before I was born? And the idea that like somehow we're going to bring it back has become, you know, this politician's really appealing to, I don't know, I mean, the political part is really hard for me because I don't think you've got any politician in the room and you ask them, you know, there are 200 factories in the U.S. in 50 years. How many people are working inside of them? They're not going to say it's going to be hundreds of people. Like we know what factories are the future are going to look like. They're going to be machines. I mean, the idea that this is a job solution for manufacturing gets wrapped up in what like working class beliefs, but it's not our economic future. So the politics of it, I think I struggle with what to say because I'm just such an arrogant economist. I'm like, I know it's wrong. Don't go anywhere. The share of private sector workers who are unionized is lower than before the National Labor Relations Act was passed to establish our right to organize. So this law has been so decimated as if it doesn't exist. You've got more coming up after the break. You're bringing up some really good points. It actually reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a really, really, really fantastic offer. His name is Dylan Gottlieb here with this book called Yuppies and it's all about specifically how like in the 1980s, this generation of Yuppies, you know, so like a lot of people working on Wall Street and then also a lot of people working in the professional services like associated with that whole sector, so like advertising, legal services, all this stuff. But one of the things that was really important about the conversation that I had with Dylan Gottlieb about his book, Yuppies, was that like a big piece of that is the democratic party shifting from new geopolitics to embracing capitalism and embracing specifically free market capitalism. I mean, there's a big shift there that doesn't directly have to do with quote unquote identity politics that very much has to do with economics. Yeah, that also feels like a pretty big about face that kind of predates the shift with white working class men that we're talking about. Well, there's a couple of things worth kind of like parsing in the history. One is that the US tends to move through like very large economic eras in which the tone tends to be more conservative or more liberal, and those include both of them include democratic and Republican presidency administrations. So you know, imagine like how hard it is to get infrastructure passed in the US, but like Eisenhower built our highways, right, that this is there that he was president, he was a Republican president during a fairly liberal economic era that had started in the New Deal and continued through the 1970s. By the time you get to the 1970s and 1980s, we move into a much more conservative era. So you have you know, Democrat presidents like Clinton who ended cash welfare and supported free trade, which were relative like it's I think that we put a lot of emphasis on the exact person or party. We're at kind of a crucible moment right now because we've been in a very conservative economic era with Republican and Democratic presidents for about 50 years. So I think it makes it, you know, easy to do political, Navy gazing of like what have Democrats gone wrong and like what did they give up, what didn't they fight for? But at the same time like, you know, they still won elections every so often, even a Democrat can win elections. It doesn't like it matters who is the party, but the tone of the era is let's defer to the market, let's have less regulation, let's have less, you know, labor law, let's give businesses, you know, as much of a past as we can. And that that that that can be a good move from say a liberal era that had come that had been in power for 50 years, but at the like fifth decade of that, you just are generating a ton of problems in the economy. And so I think what a lot of people are feeling right now is this shift back of like we're all starting to get to this like even my mom, you know, thinks that the corporate income tax rate is too low and we need to have unions. You know, like people are shifting their views because they're responding to like five decades of accumulated, you know, rather conservative economic policy. And that's hitting people differently. I don't know like, I guess I just don't know how much political parties actually have that much controller's ways. Wait, I have a question, I have a question. I think that I have a question that I think it would be helpful for a lot of our viewers or listeners. Like you've described this a little bit, but what is a conservative versus liberal like sort of economic moment? Like what is that? What's sort of like the difference between each of those things? It is I think the easiest way to kind of divide up liberal and conservative economic policy is the degree of deference to markets. So you have a market that's, you know, you can sell anything by anything. The kind of liberal economic policy is to see treats, intervene and stop market failures. Then more conservative economic policy is to allow markets to kind of work themselves out because this is arguably more efficient. So kind of you, this will, you'll hear this show up in government, this isn't government's job because government is inefficient, whereas on the liberal side it will be this market is cruel and it's creating negative outcomes in our economy. And those actually aren't in contradiction. Markets are efficient. They're rather efficiently cruel. Government isn't necessarily as efficient because it's not a cold-blooded market and it intervenes. And so the question is, what do you want to have like all, do you want to defer to the cruel efficient market or do you want to have some intervention? Most people want a degree of intervention all of the time. I think it's the salience of the intervention and how well it's executed as well as the degree of failure and cruelty from the market that kind of switches you from like the more liberal to a more conservative approach. It's all in the spectrum. So what are some markets and failure? Let's, let's go through some heavy-hitting examples. Okay. One of the most failed markets in the US is healthcare and health insurance. Oh, yeah. All right. So if I were to have a perfectly free market for health insurance, nobody old, nobody chubby, nobody sick, none of you would have health insurance because a health insurance company would look at you as a risk and say, well, you're not going to be as healthy and so you'll cost me more so I'm not going to sell you insurance. And so we have intervention into the health insurance market to require this market be fair when left to its own devices. It absolutely would not. And if you don't believe me, you can look at the history of health insurance legislation in the US and all of it is trying to make up for where the market won't. So the market won't make up, the market doesn't want to ensure old people because they die. So we have Medicare. The market doesn't want to ensure Medicaid people because they can't afford premiums or poor people because they can afford premiums. So we have Medicaid. It doesn't want to ensure disabled people so we have Medicaid and Medicare. Another market that's in failure is childcare. Oh, yeah. So right now, if you want to put your child who is under kindergarten age into some type of care situation during the work day, that is sold in a market. Sometimes for a profit, sometimes not for a profit, but it's sold in a market. That market doesn't have care everywhere. It doesn't have care at prices that parents can meet. And that market failure affects our economy because if I can't afford care and I'm a worker, either I won't work or I'll put my kids someplace unsafe or I'll put my kids someplace that's maybe not the best environment or more likely I'll pull back from work, which makes our economy smaller and either the short run or the long run. Now, the Republican Party has been rather, and the conservative economics in general has been rather stalwart. This is not a government issue, right? That market is in failure, but that's women's fault for working is kind of their answer, right? That it's not, it's not the government's job to raise your kids, right? But it's what they're really saying is it's not the government's job to interfere or take over this market. They'll subsidize it a little bit on the back end, throw in a child care and dependent care tax credit, maybe give a little help to low income people who are working and help them with care. But they are not interfering with the sale of the care of children. That they are keeping fundamentally untouched. That is conservative economic policy. Liberal economic policy would be to say this market is no good and we need to take it over and start providing childcare in which the government pays for it and private providers offer it. So, it moves from a sale and a market to reimbursement from the government level. So, you would, if you go to child care now, you would go to the same childcare provider. But at the end of the month, they build a government instead of you. Instead of you. So, I think that is like the real difference between conservative and economic policies is what do you do about markets? Less interference on the conservative side, more interference on the liberal side. We have a lot of market failures that are really hitting Americans right now that have had almost no touch or light touch intervention for decades. And the momentum is building for because it's hitting families on their bottom line and the cost are spiraling that it's like, okay, you've never intervened that much in the housing market. You need to do more. You've never intervened. in the healthcare market, you need to do more. Or you've intervened in the healthcare market, but it's still not working, you need to do more. Child care market, you need to do more. You're seeing the prices that are hitting families are really just markets that are failing. And that's kind of one, I think that's how it, that's the way I would explain it. - No, that's a great explanation. It also makes me think about, no, that's really helpful. It's really helpful. And also it also makes me think about something that you were saying earlier. Something that come up for us in our research and that you mentioned as well, is that like the demographics of the working class, or who is considered working class in the United States, are changing. Like now, nearly half of the working class is made up of women and people of color in the United States, which doesn't always fit into sort of like, I think the thought bubble imagining of who is in the working class, but those are the facts. Like those are, that's the truth. - It's logical if you think about it. I mean, if you think of the political definition of white men without a college degree, there's never room for anybody else. If you think of the economic definition of people who work, but don't make that much money and don't have a middle class life. - Yeah. - It makes a lot more sense when you think about who is the lowest paid people in our economy, the pay gap between men and women. You would expect there to be more women in the low wage group because women make lower wages than men. - Yeah, and also it's very logical. - Specifically when you talk about like the issues of healthcare or childcare. As you pointed out, when whether it's the market or the government, whatever individual families or persons needs can't be met with regard to healthcare or childcare, something that we also know statistically is that women tend to step in to do the unpaid labor of caring for sick family members and caring for children. What are the specific challenges of the women, and the people of color? And also the women of color specifically that are part of the changing demographics of the working class. What are things that they're specifically concerned about that might be politically important? - The conservative liberal spectrum I gave you for economics was degree of interference in a market. And how much you can tolerate that and how much you're willing to do it. I think that one market that has been given a free reign for too long is the labor market. You know, we used to have a meaningful minimum wage and we don't. Congress has not voted to raise the minimum wage since 2007. They have not voted to raise the minimum wage since the iPhone was released. The first iPhone, right? So we have had the entire era of the US having smartphones, we have never raised the minimum wage. With that comes a lot of labor law that doesn't get, I think as much name recognition as the minimum wage, but still matters to people. Things like the tipped minimum wage, which is $2.13. The shift regulation. So things like you have to tell people when they're working in a shift with like a week or two weeks notice. - Yeah. - Right? There's no regulation really for that. You don't, it's stressful. Like I obviously don't do that anymore, but I have done it and it is stressful to not know when you're gonna have time to do anything. - Yeah, and the posture of the labor market is that workers need to be paid as little as possible and be given as few benefits as possible. So the way that I give it, I kind of set it up for people is we are in an era of a grand experiment where we are going to put as like few rules on employers. Really that's kind of decent 'cause we still have a minimum wage which is $7.25 an hour, right? So what does that era show us? Not all workers are gonna get paid sick days, not all workers are gonna get health insurance, not all workers are gonna get retirement, not all workers are gonna get a decent shift or decent wage. Employers have had two decades to show their hand. You don't have that much regulation in the labor market. How are you going to treat workers? We've got it all there. And so now we need to go back and regulate the labor market. That to me is a very key aspect of the working class is that they are the ones that suffer the most from not having a more regulated labor market 'cause they'll have the lowest pay, they'll have the worst shifts, they'll have the worst schedules and they'll have the least benefits, even if that benefit is you got the flu and you're fired. That's the working class. So the political focus of like white men used to have, you know, unionized manufacturing jobs to me is a very effective distraction from what the working class actually needs, which is the chance to have power and compete in the labor market. And everything I just told you about the minimum wage and benefits and things like that, you could just run it back and do the same thing about unionization. It's a very similar story. We used to have very robust unions. We used to have a very clear rights to organize. It was pretty easy to join a union. We got legislation to protect our ability to join a union. And now the share of private sector workers who are unionized is lower than before the National Labor Relations Act was passed to establish our right to organize. So you don't take up the floor of the labor market, the Fair Labor Standards Act. You don't give people the right to organize through the National Labor Relations Act. This is what we're left with. Don't go anywhere. We talk about the white working class male and elections. We talk about boys and men in culture and society, but there are distractions from the actual issues and they offer solutions that are not viable in today's economy at all. We've got more coming up after the break. You mentioned earlier that there are even people who earn upwards of $100,000 a year in salary who might also identify as working class. Something that we talked about recently on our show is about how the Democratic Socialists of America have been like winning elections. Now one of the interesting things is that, according to a DSA internal survey from 2021, 80% of DSA members over the age of 25 were college educated and 28% earned at least six figures. Just to put this in context, like roughly 36% of Americans are college educated and about 18% of Americans earn $100,000 or more each year. So these are people who are considerably more educated and earn more than the average American. And yet, the DSA uses a very inclusive definition of working class, meaning anyone who has to sell their labor for money, which could potentially include anybody from sanitation workers to surgeons. I wonder, what are the, what do you see from your perspective as an economist? What do you see in, whether it's an opportunity or a potential pitfall? What I see in the labor market right now is that the US worker writ large is at a nidier of power. And if you think of workers collective power coming from, their ability to bargain, their ability to ask for more, their ability to leave. I mean, we consider the heart of worker power to be the ability to quit your job and go to a new one. Yeah, well, true. I mean, and there are plenty of people who are, make high earners, high educated, who've been unemployed for months or even years because they have not been able to find a new job, even with credentials at Wazoo. It does not take a low wage to be terrified of losing your job because you don't know what else you would get. We have, we call this, I think on the labor side, we would think that this is being the effect of both a weak labor market and increasing employer concentration and that the number of firms that you can go to in your area with your skill set in your city or your county, that number is probably getting smaller. We measure employer concentration in both the national labor market and in local labor markets to study how much mobility workers have, aside from anything else, just how many options do they have. And it's a number that's falling. And so I don't think that, you know, if you think of the working class under the broad definition of people who labor for others from a position of weak or less power, yeah, I mean, that sky's the limit in the US. And if someone were to tell me, I feel very precarious in my job. Precarious in your job really comes down to your ability to cultivate an outside option and feel like it's there for you. And a lot of people do not feel like they have that. I think that's truly at the heart of what it means to be working class is that there's this tone that we can't really put our finger on that somehow you are being left behind or somehow you are being left out of power or excess or success or something. And so I think that there are a lot of people who would feel like that applies to them. But I mean, it also makes sense when you think about market failures and what are the markets that are hitting people and squeezing them. And you've gotten them like in a way that they probably feel on a daily basis. Oh, yes, squeezing them on her child care. Yeah, you feel those every day. Courting a group of voters and saying white working class or white men without a college degree don't like Democrats anymore. And then working back logically from what they want is not necessarily when they get you what the economy needs right now for Americans. What Americans need are basic protection in the labor market and they need basic protection for markets that are absolutely running a muck in their finances. And I think deferring to a group of people who have shifted their voting makes sense for political scientists, but I think as an economist, the needs don't stack up so neatly with political voting patterns. Like the needs are obvious and I wouldn't want anyone to be distracted from the needs. Like the ask is that, or the needs are there, respond to those. And then if you really wanted to get philosophical about the politics, like don't let people usurp the notion of what it means to be working class. I don't know, that makes me sound quite hostile to white men without college degrees. I just think that they get treated really sorely by politicians because they're sold a really terrible bill of goods. The US used to have more manufacturing jobs and you're a white man without a college degree. Therefore, I'm going to fight for more manufacturing jobs. It's a lie because there's not any reasonable belief that we're going to enter a manufacturing employment renaissance in 2050. And that factories will have thousands of people in them the way they used to in 1940. Like they're chasing the past and saying, oh these white men, they need unionized manufacturing jobs. As opposed to like, I don't know, unionized hotels and restaurants because those jobs aren't going anywhere. Like someone has to carry your bag up to your hotel room if you can't. That's not going to another country. That's not going to a robot. Like we have to have people in certain places make those jobs better. I think that what I didn't emphasize was this two-way street of what we define as working class politically and economically. But then how those constituencies are met by politicians. I think that the attention on white men without a college degree is doing them a disservice because they're being told essentially like a public policy or an economic policy package that isn't going to work. And you can see that all around you in the second Trump administration. All we need to do is have tariffs to bring manufacturing job back and you'll all be fine. They are short-changed so severely by the very shallow economic rhetoric surrounding what they need. That's why I think not only the whole, you know, I'm a hammer, the whole world's a nail. So I'm a labor economist. But if you just ignore any voting pattern you've ever seen and just look at the economy is a very clear set of policy solutions that present themselves around basic market interventions to make people and workers feel less overwhelmed by markets, less at the mercy of markets and more empowered in their own economic lives. I think that the race, gender distinction that ends up on working class in today's political conversation doesn't disservice to all of us, especially them. It's interesting the types of policies that you suggest. I mean, even if you are focusing, well, the types of policies that you suggest, even if they would be extremely helpful in a very obvious way to many working women, many working people of color. It's still, these are the, it's the rising tide that lifts all boats, like who wouldn't benefit from nationally mandated sick days, who wouldn't benefit from more affordable child care, like everybody would. And trust me, we've talked a lot about those things on our show before. And how, you know, those changes don't just affect the people who are, you know, directly, you know, actually taking this sick day or the people who are actually organizing or doing the child care. They have positive effects on everybody regardless of whether you're sick or well, regardless of whether you have kids or not. Yeah, the rising tide that lifts all boats sounds like what you're describing. But that isn't really for granted in these conversations. So I appreciate you bringing that up. Yeah, I, I, I, um, yeah, I think I try, I like have stammered over every question about politics. I'm like, I don't know what don't worry. It doesn't make any, it's politics on symbol. It makes no sense to me. But I think I'm very much like problem solution oriented. And I think there's a whole other conversation. So I have a podcast and we talked about this in one of our episodes of the, like, there is no worse conversation in the US than the one about boys and men. And how like we have these like, I'm sorry, I can feel the table shaking around me. Continue. Continue. And then it's, it's, it is, it is a really, um, like some of the most male issues in the US economy have to do with incarceration and addiction. Hmm. And that doesn't come up. You're like, oh, boys need to start school later and we need manufacturing jobs. But like in the here and now what men disproportionately suffer from is incarceration and the very long effect, awful effect it has on your ability to get a job and addiction, not just not just drugs or alcohol, but also gambling. Like these are the addictions. These are the, the ills that are hitting boys and men very hard. And yet the conversation about boys and men is like, let's not, let's be really, let's all be mad girls go to college and enter a labor market where they still make 20% less. Like to me, if someone's talking about how we need to have a blue collar manufacturing job back, it's almost like a tell that they don't have meaningful economic policy. Because meaningful economic policy wouldn't be, let's bring back what worked in 1950. Meaningful economic policy is, let's bring back what would make, what works today. Today's economic policy isn't, let's recreate the 1950s. Today's economic policy is making a better economy from what we have. So it's the same thing of, you know, these, the, to me, they're similar shades of, we talk about the white working class male and elections. We talk about boys and men in, you know, culture and society. But there are distractions from the actual issues and they offer solutions that are not viable in today's economy at all. And that does a disservice to everybody, particularly the constituency groups they hold up, you know, like poster children of, here's who I'm helping with nothing to show for it. No, I'm really glad you brought that up. I mean, specifically what you said about addiction and incarceration. Because when you, I mean, one of the things, I've read the books, right? The one, you know, Richard Reeves and, you know, I've read the books. And one of the things that is continually touched upon and touched upon in this conversation in general, that I actually do think is extremely important, which is men and boys mental health. But like when you talk about addiction and incarceration, I mean, those things absolutely destroy your mental health. It's like a very crucial reframe you've just given me. Well, and then, you know, tie that back to the one big beautiful bill act to cut Medicaid, right? Medicaid disproportionately serves, you know, addiction and treatment in the U.S. More than private sector health insurance plans. Medicaid is going to punch well above its weight and actually providing very good treatment to people with addiction. And of course, they cut it. So I think the politics I will never understand, but the policy failures I will, and not offering a health intervention to men, that's the failure, right? We need universal health insurance. And in a lot of ways, women would benefit from that on the kids side, but men would benefit from that on the treatment side. Wow. Oh my gosh. Is all, you know, when you just, when you ignore politicians, the world is actually like a lot easier to understand. I think if you just ignore politicians and political parties and you just kind of like look at the problems in the U.S. and like come up with like, oh, this needs this and this needs this. It also makes the, the machinations of political parties and the rhetoric of politicians seem so vacuous and shallow. Well, and like one of the things that we have seen is like when, you know, as more and more recently, as certain politicians have been leading with affordability. And, you know, types of, and policies that are like of the flavor that you've described. People are into that. People, oh, like you said, people, people, regardless of party, regardless of background, they're like, oh, you're going to make my life more affordable. And maybe, and also two, I mean, the other thing too, that you, you seem like you want to make the lives of people around me more affordable. Interesting. I'm compelled to see what happens. Yeah, I think there's this weird naval gaze of like where is the democratic socialist resurgence coming from? And like the Wall Street Journal could not be happier about this because now the editorial board has been to write about like every other day of like, that mean like that amount of coverage that they give to any democratic socialist candidate, like they must be in high cotton. But I mean, for the rest of us, like, I think it's pretty simple. People want policies articulated to them that, that meet the problems in their economic life. Those are pretty simple policies to articulate. It should be like, this should be a road coming from every candidate of like, we need this and we need this and we need this, right? Just just put it out there. Yeah, we got to fix health insurance, we got to fix childcare, we got to boost the labor market, we got to go, go, go. And I, I think that the my sense of the democratic socialist is that they, they just have a very clear interventionist policy agenda that people are looking for. And then there's this like third order naval gaze of like, what does mom Donnie mean? And I'm like, oh, still don't care. I still just want policies that make people's lives better in the economy. And if someone articulates them, like good. Well, I think there are a lot of people then roof you on that idea. And I really appreciate this conversation. And just how well you laid all of this out for me, you've given me a lot to think about. And I'm really glad that we got to talk today. Katherine, thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much for having me. And to all of you, Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Be sure to come back to this feed every Tuesday for a fresh video episode. You can watch these episodes exclusively on Spotify, YouTube, and the NDRF.