Episode 120 – Chain Reactions with Mike Figueredo

Macro N Cheese – Episode 120
Chain Reactions with Mike Figueredo
May 15, 2021

[00:00:04.240] – Mike Figueredo [intro/music]

When I started my show in 2015 in the first Bernie campaign, I think that I was still identifying as a social democrat pretty much. Now I’m 100 percent anticapitalist, 100 percent more radical. And now I feel like MMT is another layer of radicalization.

[00:00:24.170] – Mike Figueredo [intro/music]

I do think that change is inevitable in the future. It’s just a matter of one, how bad does it have to get to actually catalyze some sort of fundamental change? And two, what kind of change is that going to be? Because I don’t necessarily think that change will automatically be positive.

[00:01:35.200] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:43.060] – Steve Grumbine

All right, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Folks, I’ve got Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report. If you did not hear my interview with Mike a few weeks back, please go to Mike’s channel on The Humanist Report and check it out. We go through Modern Monetary Theory.

And it’s just a wonderful experience because he had the “aha moment.” He came into the MMT world. And it was just such an amazing thing because this is a guy who’s got a huge audience and he’s got a huge heart. And he really brings great analysis to the entire political spectrum, especially as it pertains to the progressive movement.

And watching the lights go on with Mike was singularly the greatest experience of my life. I have really reveled in this. It’s been a beautiful thing. And so Mike was gracious enough to agree to come on my show. And it just so happens to be coming right as Joe Biden has his 100-day report card and some of the people within the establishment have been throwing up, is there anything higher than an A+ plus?

We want to give it to him. And really, in fairness, it’s not a very accurate depiction of not only the first 100 days but what looks to be coming the rest of the term. So with that, Mike, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:02:56.710] – Mike Figueredo

Steve, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for all the nice things that you said. I just want to say the interview that I put out, I do a lot of interviews on the program, not so much lately because I’ve had some tech issues. But out of all the interviews that I’ve done, I haven’t had that much feedback in a while.

Your interview, I had a lot of people reach out to me and say how enlightening it was and how they’d never heard of MMT, but they’re looking into it or how that was really what sold them. It was a monumental interview in so many ways because a lot of people now are seeing the world through the lens of MMT. And if you watched it, you can kind of see the light bulb go off in my head. You could kind of see it on camera as you explain it to me.

And so it really is something that’s beautiful. And now I’m in that second phase where I’m really trying to apply it to my own political analysis. There’s some growing pains. There’s some other things that I need to brush up on. I need to get still a more concrete understanding. I do need to revisit the material, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And I’m at that stage and it’s so nice to see simultaneously a lot of other people wake up with me. I really am thankful for that time that you gave us.

[00:04:04.060] – Grumbine

It was not only my pleasure, but I’ve watched you since the first Bernie campaign.

[00:04:09.430] – Figueredo

Oh, man!

[00:04:10.150] – Grumbine

You were an inspiration. And we were in a little group of our own with Debbie the Sane Progressive for those you all remember Debbie the Sane Progressive.

[00:04:18.220] – Figueredo

Man, that was a long time.

[00:04:19.480] – Grumbine

It was a very long time ago. But I used to watch you all the time and I still watch you. And in fact, it’s been a amazing feeling to know that as you give your analysis, I watch you working through your MMT saying different things that say, yes, he’s getting it.

The thing most progressives, I think, really just need to understand is that the reason why we can pay for a bloated military budget and it doesn’t cause inflation, it doesn’t cause all these other problems, is because they know what Modern Monetary Theory is and they use it for their own purposes. And we, the people have been led to believe that our bank accounts are bare. And so good people like yourself and others struggle to try to understand why in the world are we letting people die.

[00:05:10.150] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:05:10.150] – Grumbine

And once that light bulb goes on, you’re right, you can’t unsee it. So all the ticky-tack deep stuff, yes, it’s there to learn. But for those people out there who simply want to understand why things are bad, you just need to know the United States creates currency every time it spends and deletes it every time it taxes. And I think once you realize that there’s nothing we can’t afford, it fundamentally changes your politics. It has to.

[00:05:35.590] – Figueredo

I think it further radicalizes you. Nobody’s politics is static. I feel like we’re always constantly changing. And over the course of the last couple of years especially, I feel like I’ve become a little bit more radicalized. When I started my show in 2015 in the first Bernie campaign, I think that I was still identifying as a social democrat pretty much.

Now I’m 100 percent anticapitalist, 100 percent more radical, and now I feel like MMT is another layer of radicalization. And what really helped me to kind of go back to seeing the world through the lens of MMT is something that you said that stood out to me. I think I asked you something to the effect of what’s a really easy way to sell MMT if you could fit it on a bumper sticker and you said, “taxes don’t fund spending.

That to me was really, really clever because it’s simple and you can kind of work backwards from that easy conclusion. And it really helped to, I guess, put it into perspective for me. So, yeah, things are constantly changing in politics. And to me, MMT is like one of those things that is the most significant development, at least for me personally.

I mean, it’s not like I was unfamiliar with MMT, but to really have a better understanding of it, I think it really does help. It’s a lot more illuminating and makes the world a little bit more understandable, if not a little bit depressing, knowing that there’s so much more that’s possible. So it’s like at the same time, it’s great that I feel a little bit more enlightened, but I’m also a little bit more depressed because of that if that makes sense.

[00:07:05.350] – Grumbine

It absolutely does. Now, imagine carrying that knowledge for 12 years and just feeling like your knuckles are dragging on the ground as you watch people fight you, resist you like you’re some crazy person saying this stuff. And then as the lights go on, you feel a momentary blip and then you realize there’s still 329 million people that don’t get it.

[00:07:26.170] – Figueredo

Right.

[00:07:26.800] – Grumbine

So you did a great show the other day that I think is worth touching on. And I think looking at it through the lens of MMT, but really understanding why this stuff is so important. You talked about Biden’s first 100 days and in particular the overexuberance of Pramila Jayapal and her A+ rating

[00:07:48.340] – Figueredo

Um, hum.

[00:07:48.340] – Grumbine

For what Biden’s done so far. And already you’re seeing in the news Janet Yellen talking about deficit reduction and how we’re going to pay for it and that we gotta match dollar for dollar and just a lot of typical bad stuff that has kept us in chains for as long as I’ve been alive.

[00:08:04.480] – Figueredo

Um, hum.

[00:08:05.380] – Grumbine

Let’s go back to that show you did and talk a little bit about Biden’s 100 days. What is your assessment of that?

[00:08:13.490] – Figueredo

Yeah, so I just want to say, first of all, that I’m probably one of the easiest graders ever. So when I was in grad school, I graded political science papers, just very basic political science, a one-on-one papers. And I would look for almost everything to see that the students are really grappling with the material, at least a little bit. They’re referencing back to key themes throughout the course. So I’m looking for things.

I’m trying to be extra kind because ultimately I want people to pass as long as I see that they’re trying. Having said that, though, I use this analogy. I don’t think that I gave Biden a grade. But let’s say that you take a test and you get 55 percent. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you got 100 percent of the questions wrong. But that’s still not passing. That’s not a passing grade. In fact, that’s a failure.

You have to retake the class. And so looking at everything, I wanted to be as fair as I possibly could be to Joe Biden, because there’s this assumption that progressives and leftists, they’re so unreasonable they can never be appeased. So I do want to make it clear that there’s good things. I’m not a hack. You know, I’m not just going to go out of my way to pooh-pooh every single thing that he’s done.

So I start with the good. But ultimately, you know, when you step back and you look at the entirety of his presidency, thus far, it’s not even close. It’s a failing grade. It’s a failure. I go back to what he said on the campaign trail. Nothing will fundamentally change. And that’s exactly right. Nothing has fundamentally changed. And even the things that he has done, that’s good. A lot of it is temporary.

I mean, going back to Modern Monetary Theory and viewing the world through that lens now, one thing that really irritated me to no end is that even conservative Democrats were pushing back against Biden when it comes to the early childhood tax credit. He passed that. And that’s phenomenal. That’s going to help a lot of families. That does help to eradicate poverty, albeit temporarily, because he didn’t do it permanently.

And even the most conservative Democrats like the worst you can imagine, they wanted to even extend it to 2025, but he didn’t want to do that. He wanted to go on this year-to-year basis. And what frustrates me is that you see progressives in Congress, they’re desperate for some sort of a victory. So they tout this bill. They say, “Look, this is us wiping childhood poverty in half, but we’re doing that for a year.”

And then what happens when that tax credit expires? Things go right back to normal. And so I feel like we’re circling the drain and we’re about to go down it. So we’re looking for any victory to cling to. But to me, I don’t actually think that that’s healthy. I think that we have to acknowledge the reality, not be overly optimistic just because that’s what makes us feel better even if psychologically it’s a way to cope.

We have to be real. We have to grapple with the reality and acknowledge that Joe Biden is failing so far. And I just go back to Medicare for All. We are in the middle of a pandemic. Something like this occurs once every 100 years. And if that didn’t even move him a little bit towards Medicare for All, then I don’t view that as oh, well, you haven’t changed.

I view that as you’re just terrible and it’s worse than that because he actually moved away from a public option. So he hasn’t said anything. Has anyone heard about a public option since he came in? All that we’re talking about is pumping more subsidies into our already broken health care system. So when you look at all of that, to hear someone like Pramila Jayapal, who’s the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, give him an A.

I just can’t help but think this is why the left loses, because things are so bad that we look at everything as a victory. And I get it, right? We don’t want people to become so demoralized and feel like nothing is possible. And then they end up tuning out. That’s not what I want to do. Rather, what I want people to take away from all of this is that, OK, things still aren’t changing. This is the reality of the situation.

It’s grim. It looks really bleak. What do we do given that set of circumstances? I don’t want to be unrealistic. I want people to actually grapple with the reality of the situation. And so I don’t think I gave him like an F grade. I don’t want that to be the takeaway. I want people to really grapple with the nuances. But overall, things are not changing. And you see the same things ultimately happening with Joe Biden that we’ve seen throughout the course of the last couple of decades.

The military-industrial complex, it’s basically become this autonomous entity that just functions the same regardless of who’s in power. We see the immigration system that we have in place remain. And that’s not to say that the tweaks around the edges aren’t nice. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy that $1,400 stimulus check that was supposed to be $2,000, but it’s ultimately not good enough. We need systemic change. We need fundamental change. And that’s not what we’re getting. And I think that progressives need to, in fact, I think we have a responsibility, especially elected lawmakers, to call that out.

[00:13:04.340] – Grumbine

So as we’re watching China ramp up their domestic infrastructure building themselves and building out a parallel digital state currency similar to the dollar, except the digital dollar of Chinese yuan, the Republicans always jump to “they’re going to take over” xenophobia.

[00:13:25.307] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:13:26.360] – Grumbine

But Biden seems to be playing right into that trope. My friend Bob Hockett, who I recently interviewed, said that he’d like to believe that that’s Biden playing a strategic card to entice Republican support for his larger mission. I can kind of buy that. How else do you lure Republicans other than making them hate some poor Chinese guy or poor Mexican? Maybe he’s playing poker here? Maybe he’s playing chess.

I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be his M.O., but maybe it is. But you see the same kind of Cold War rhetoric that we saw with Russia. And we saw this during the entire Reagan revolution, that he was able to explode the deficit by existential threat, the nuclear powers of Russia. So I guess my question is, based on the level of military spending, plus the use of xenophobia and this geopolitical saber-rattling, it appears that Biden’s approach to infrastructure is, in fact, to use that Cold War rhetoric rather than just simply talk about the public purpose. What are your thoughts on that tactic?

[00:14:34.220] – Figueredo

Yeah, history repeats itself, and in American politics, there’s always been this common enemy. It was the Soviet Union and now it’s China and it’s also Russia. And the common enemy is used not just as a political tool to get elites on board with political legislation. It’s also something that rallies the American public that’s also really useful as well.

But to me, the issue with this frame, we assume that Joe Biden doesn’t really believe this and he’s playing 4D chess to try to lure Republicans into supporting his infrastructure plan. The problem is that there’s a lot of connotations with this rhetoric. The first thing that really this implies is that, well, if we don’t want China to be number one, then they must be our enemy. And if they are our enemy, then that has a lot of implications.

We have to keep our military far ahead of theirs. If their military spending is ramping up, it doesn’t matter if ours is 20 times higher than theirs. That’s not an actual number. But just approximately, I think it’s like five. But if they’re ramping up their military immediately, we have to fear monger about that and make it seem as if they’re going to attack us and they’re a threat to us.

But look, here’s the thing. My response is I don’t care if China becomes number one, they become the largest economy in the world. They are set to overtake us. But if you actually want America to be the largest economy, then there are things that you can do to make us a leader. Climate change is right upon us, right? Infrastructure spending, that’s part of it. Investing in clean, green, renewable technology, wind, solar, hydro. This is all important.

So if Republicans are truly looking at this through an economic frame, then they shouldn’t have to be lured. They should just see automatically where things are going. But the current status quo isn’t allowing for that. It has kind of kept everything stagnant. So the old industries are really bankrolling both parties, but disproportionately Republicans – oil and gas where they don’t want to change the status quo.

And I think that ultimately what we see is the way that capitalism and neoliberalism has handicapped a lot of developed countries. It’s made it so that we’re incapable of changing our country fundamentally. Look at the way that covid-19 has absolutely made us unable completely of dealing with a basic pandemic. This isn’t a new thing. It’s happened all throughout human history.

There are things that we can do, even if we don’t understand the virus, to mitigate the spread of the virus. But you see the way that capitalism has completely made us unable to deal with that because we aren’t actually using our sovereign currency to pay people to stay home, which is logical. So instead, we do what big business dictates, which is to reopen and pretend as if it’s not a thing. So to kind of go back to your question, I kind of went on a couple of tangents there.

[00:17:20.520] – Grumbine

Good tangents.

[00:17:22.290] – Figueredo

Yeah, there’s a lot because it’s such a big topic. But I think that the issue with Joe Biden is that aside from the corruption, right, because he’s bankrolled by every special interest imaginable, the health industry, that’s why he doesn’t support Medicare for All. But it’s also naivete, I think, as well. It’s not just corruption. I think he really is a believer in these good old days.

He talked about this on the campaign trail where he’d argue vehemently with the segregationists on the floor of the Senate and then they’d go have lunch together. He genuinely believes that interpersonal relationships and building connections and forming a rapport with Republicans is actually going to be conducive to good governance. But times have changed. We are more polarized than we’ve been since, what, the civil war.

That’s not the way that things happen. If you want to get things done, you have to completely marginalize the opposition. And Biden is not only unwilling to do that, he’s not even willing to stand up to folks within his own party who lean ideologically more towards the right than they do the left. Joe Manchin, how many times has he talked about the rapport that he has with Donald Trump? He openly contemplated voting for Donald Trump in 2024.

So you’re not going to be able to get anything done if you just assume that this is a good-faith actor. Joe Manchin is corrupt and you have to play hardball. You have to use your bully pulpit as president of the United States if you actually want to get your agenda passed. But he doesn’t want to get rid of the filibuster. Biden has signaled his intent to reform it, but even his own party doesn’t want to do the bare minimum. So it’s not just about Republicans.

If he actually wanted to accomplish his agenda, then there’s things that he can do, concrete actions you can take to actually get some things done. The leftists in Congress talk about the Covid Relief Package and that was a good thing, but is that really that big of an achievement? What we need is fundamental changes to our system.

We’re staring down the barrel of a gun right now. Climate change. What is it the IPCC says by now we have 10 years to act to avoid catastrophic climate change? Tweaking around the edges, it’s not just insufficient, it’s literally deadly at this point. And nobody is willing to say that in DC. Nobody is willing to frame it with the urgency that’s needed. So it’s really frustrating.

[00:19:38.920] – Grumbine

I think Sinema and Manchin are two people that could easily flip parties.

[00:19:44.820] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:19:44.820] – Grumbine

And I think that if they flip, then you lose the Senate.

[00:19:48.570] – Figueredo

Right.

[00:19:49.160] – Grumbine

So if you really believe in the political theater as it stands, that they’re fighting for our interests, which, by the way, I don’t believe. But if you did believe that, then I can certainly understand why he would not want to poke the bear too much with Joe Manchin.

[00:20:05.260] – Figueredo

Sure.

[00:20:06.090] – Grumbine

But you have to have the belief, first of all, I think that you really are meaning business, that you really mean to win. We’ve got a rotating villain in the Democratic Party. There’s always a villain that sabotages the legislation, there’s always some bizarre Dixiecrat, there’s always some corporate hack that is ready in the wait.

There’s always somebody that gets propped up as the villain. And it’s always kind of that deferred justice. And it’s always the most important thing in that moment that we support them. It’s Lucy pulling the football out from Charlie Brown.

[00:20:39.950] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:20:39.950] – Grumbine

I’ve gotten to the point I don’t want to sound too cynical, and yet I can’t help but sound cynical.

[00:20:44.495] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:20:45.170] – Grumbine

I’m not going to kick the ball. I’m not even going to play. That feels a little bit like what this is. And I wonder with the deficit, you know, that Joe Biden talks to Janet Yellen. So where is she coming up with this whole deficit fear porn? Where are they coming up with all these bogeymen? Each one of these things, I believe, is a well planted distraction from success, assuming they even want success. Is that too cynical, Mike?

[00:21:13.430] – Figueredo

No, I’ve taken the black pill. I’m right there with you in terms of cynicism. I think that really what this gives them is plausible deniability. If Janet Yellen comes out and says, “Listen, deficits, this is something that we have to look into. We have to do deficit reduction. It’s gotten too high.” I think that this is the parliamentarian. This is the Joe Manchin.

This is, “Oh, shucks, I tried so hard, but it couldn’t happen.” But if Joe Biden genuinely wanted to do a lot of good and he doesn’t want Joe Manchin to flip, because I think that is a real possibility. Right? I think that he’s really close to just joining Republicans. Given the circumstances with the stakes being so high, Joe Biden can pull Manchin into his office and say, “Listen, what do you need for West Virginia? We’ll do pork barrel projects to the moon.

We’ll include a bunch of stuff in this infrastructure bill. You name it. You got it. So long as I have your vote.” There’s so much more that can be done. And I get that our political system is just terrible. The fact that one of two senators from a state with 600,000 people can hold up the entire country and the president who was just elected, like the fact that that’s possible, shows that our political system just is inherently flawed.

But there are so many things that can be done if you want to even tweak more around the edges and not just get systemic changes, but it just feels like the bar is so low that the fact that we have the Covid Relief Package, that’s basically well, you know what? We did something. And I think that you’re right. You’re on to something when you say that they can kind of just say, you know what, we tried, we’ll get them next time.

But the reason why I really want progressives in Congress to make a bigger fuss and a bigger stink about everything is because the next time is going to be too late. So the last time when Democrats held control of all of government was 2009, 2010, right, until Kennedy died. But now they don’t even have full control of government. The Supreme Court has a six to three conservative majority.

So the next time when Democrats are in control, assuming that they lose one branch of Congress in 2022, it’s going to be passed, most likely, that 10 year IPCC deadline. And then we’re not just talking about mitigating climate change. We’re talking about how do we adapt to the reality of climate change? Like, do we build a seawall because then it’s too late.

[00:23:32.490] – Grumbine

Yeah.

[00:23:32.810] – Figueredo

And of course, there’s the same limitations when we talk about a seawall in 15 years, then it’s well, you know, the deficit is really getting high. It’s like this never-ending cycle. And I think that the cycle just seeing history repeat itself is really what has me all doom and gloom, because I don’t know how we break the cycle. And I don’t think that we will break the cycle unless there is this real urgency, unless there’s this actual ferocity of leftists in Congress.

And I don’t see a fight. And I don’t think it’s because they’re bad people, like with Pramila Jayapal giving Joe Biden an A+. Maybe she actually believes that and she’s playing some sort of political game to cultivate goodwill with him. I don’t think that she’s doing that because she is a bad person. I think that she believes complimenting Joe Biden is going to keep him in her corner. But it’s not working.

And the progressives in Congress have always tried to play this game and it’s never worked out. The only time when we’ve made changes in this country is when the people actually rose up. You look to the labor movement during the Great Depression with the New Deal and whatnot. So there needs to be a bottom-up approach. I want to see real change in this country come from the bottom up.

I think that what folks do and I did this with Obama, you vote for someone and you expect, you know what, they got it. They could take it from here. But that’s not the way that this works. So a lot of folks are disappointed in elected progressives currently. And I think that you don’t just expect them to do the right thing on their own accord. You have to pressure them. And that’s why I’m really a proponent of embracing the cynicism to an extent, not in the type of way that gets people to check out, but as a mobilizer, right?

Yes, things aren’t going to change the way they are. So the question is, what do we do? And we’re in such a unique circumstance because I can’t in good conscience tell people, you know what, go occupy the office of elected officials during a pandemic. So we’re backed into a corner. Right? And I want people to figure out how to get out of that corner rather than just curling up into a ball and dying.

[00:25:32.410] – Grumbine

That’s so powerful. It’s funny you say that because the barrel of the gun that is pointed directly at us is austerity.

[00:25:42.070] – Figueredo

Right.

[00:25:42.450] – Grumbine

And my tagline on Twitter is, austerity is murder. And I don’t think many people even know what that word is, but I hope that word becomes more socialized in the United States as opposed to just Europe where they know this word very well.

[00:25:56.440] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:25:56.440] – Grumbine

But more people die from not spending on the people than I think in all of our wars combined. If you think about how many people die unnecessarily without health care,

[00:26:06.700] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:26:06.700] – Grumbine

Without housing, without food and the disease that we spread by allowing people to live in very unsanitary conditions where we could easily fix that. People associate the gun with murder. They don’t associate the policy with murder. And so when I see this play out, I’m not seeing it like some benign thing.

I see this as a legitimate gun to the head of anyone that is not flush with cash. And so many died unnecessarily in this pandemic. And I don’t see any path forward. And you said the people have to be angry. They can’t just vote. They’ve got to organize. The problem is they don’t know that there is a legitimate war going on right now against them with this austerity narrative. That’s like a sanction against the American people.

[00:27:01.390] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:27:01.390] – Grumbine

And I think that when you look at the political theater that is before us, we’re going to go through this hand-wringing competition to see who can look like they’re most pensive about spending. And as we’re talking about organizing to get those people to really understand what they’re fighting for as opposed to just being an angry mob, I feel they need to understand the power that Joe Biden has to make their lives better today.

And if they knew that what austerity does, it wouldn’t just be some benign policy choice. When the money comes from the state and you withhold that money and that money is what is required to keep people alive or to fix the planet, you can’t bitcoin your way to a Green New Deal.

[00:27:46.128] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:27:46.380] – Grumbine

Friends in the progressive movement think you can bitcoin your way to prosperity. You may be able to have that in your investment portfolio, but the United States government cannot solve these major problems with that. They’re misplacing their focus. And to have that powerful movement that you describe that we would need to be able to make the systemic change, I think they’ve got to have that black pill moment and I think we got to give it to them.

[00:28:13.370] – Figueredo

Yeah, I’m glad that you said that, actually. I do see a lot of distractions and I don’t want to oversimplify and be condescending to progressives who are trying to focus on something. But I do see this focus on the wrong thing. And one example is kind of a retreat with the national single-payer movement, where you see organizations like National Nurses United trying to shift focus to a state version of single payer.

And you can’t really do that. And if you were to pull off a state, quote-unquote, “single payer,” it could jeopardize existing federal programs. If it turns into like this block program where states get control of federal programs like Medicaid, that honestly would be a disaster because think about the way that Arkansas would govern their single-payer system.

And so it’s frustrating because on one hand, I don’t want to pooh-pooh people who are genuinely trying to affect change. But at the same time, it does feel like a retreat where we should be asking or demanding, rather, Medicare for All. And I want to go back to what you said about austerity because I think it’s so important.

I’ve tried to remind myself to get in the habit to use the word austerity more because if I don’t use that word, I kind of feel like I’m giving Joe Biden a pass. Right? He’s really trying so hard to fix everything, but he doesn’t know the issues. And climate change is one of these wicked problems where we don’t necessarily know what the environment – there’s a chain reaction. Right?

One thing will affect another thing and that will affect another thing and so on and so forth. But the point is that we know exactly what we need to do. We’re not completely ignorant here. We know exactly what we need to do. But us not acting, it’s a self-imposed wound. And that’s why bringing up the austrians and austerity in general is important, because that puts the burden on us, on our government.

It’s not like, oh, well, I wish that we could figure out how to solve climate change this gigantic issue. No, we actually do know how to solve it. Maybe not 99 percent, but we can solve quite a bit of it. We can mitigate it to the point where human beings will be spared. But we’re not doing that. We’re not making sure that 100 percent of the human population is getting clean drinking water.

We’re not making sure that Americans have health care because we did this to ourselves. It’s self-imposed austerity unnecessarily. And so you bringing up Bitcoin as a way to enrich yourself personally because it feels like the dollars are going to do that. Another example, mutual aid. I think that mutual aid is a great idea, but as a substitute, it’s like, OK, government isn’t going to work and I’m not going to stop fighting.

So I’m going to invest in mutual aid and try to make sure we do that. Whereas we’re kind of all in our own little bubbles where some folks are focusing on UBI, some folks are focusing on state single-payer, some folks are focusing on mutual aid and there’s no unity. We’re all kind of factioned-off.

[00:31:02.580] – Grumbine

Yes.

[00:31:02.880] – Figueredo

And it’s a little bit frustrating because there is a lowest common denominator, but not everyone has seen it yet. And that’s what I think that you and I are now trying to do. Get them to see it’s austerity. It’s the fact that we’ve imposed these limitations on ourselves, and that’s why we’re not getting what we need.

[00:31:28.490] – Intermission

You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast brought to you by Real Progressives, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching the masses about MMT or Modern Monetary Theory. Please help our efforts and become a monthly donor at PayPal or Patreon, like and follow our pages on Facebook and YouTube and follow us on Periscope, Twitter, and Instagram.

[00:32:17.650] – Grumbine

You brought up a really important point about state-based Medicare for All or Medicaid.

[00:32:24.130] – Figueredo

Um.

[00:32:24.130] – Grumbine

This is such a fundamental disconnect.

[00:32:28.150] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:32:28.150] – Grumbine

Once you understand the role of the currency issuer being the federal government and the currency users being the state governments, you understand the states can’t absorb shocks to the economy. They are dependent on tax receipts to pay for these things. And so for the states that are flush with cash, they might be able to get away with it for a little while like New York or maybe California, in particular.

[00:32:51.190] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:32:51.190] – Grumbine

These other smaller states cannot afford to do that, and the big ones even can’t really afford to do it forever because they have no ability to create currency to support that effort.

[00:33:02.850] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:33:02.850] – Grumbine

So the people that are doing this stuff all have a heart of gold, but they are not listening. There’s a reason why there’s a FEMA and there’s a reason why every state goes to FEMA when they have a disaster begging for relief. And it’s because they can’t create currency and they can’t tax their way to fixing their communities.

[00:33:20.527] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:33:21.310] – Grumbine

The federal government has to step in. The federal government has unique powers being the currency issuer. And so not understanding this takes good people out of the game fighting for these orphan politics that are not useful for the whole of society. And they faction off, as you said. So to me, one of the most important things we can do is help them understand.

Now, if we did block grants to the states, if we had the federal government agree to provide block grants to the states, even that would not be a great solution simply because what if the costs go above the block grant? There’d have to be buffers based in there to absorb that. But why not just let the federal government pay it? Why put these artificial barriers in there? Why not just let the federal government pay for health care, period. Make the federal government act on our behalf?

[00:34:14.170] – Figueredo

Yeah, there’s a lot of complexity with even bringing this up because the issue itself is really complicated. And unless you fully understand MMT and I don’t fully understand it, but it does make it more clear. But if I were to bring this up, I think that folks would point to my videos in 2017 where I was screaming at Anthony Rendon for shelving single-payer in California.

And that’s not to say that this is someone who is an honest actor. I think that what states need to do is states need to pay fealty to federal Medicare for All, federal single-payer, and they should try to do everything in their power to get to 100 percent coverage. But at the same time, I do think that it’s a bit of a distraction. And bringing this up, I think people can point to, “Oh, well, it might change” who used to be in favor of state single-payer.

But the logic does make sense just at the surface level, right. Because we see the way that marijuana legalization at the state level has kind of catalyzed this sort of domino effect. And I get the hopes that this will happen from state to state. And I see people frustrated that we’re not making movement at the federal level with regard to Medicare for All. So these are good people. You know, as you said, they have hearts of gold.

But Margaret Flowers, she is a Green Party member who is basically one of the smartest people, and she warned about the way that we can undermine our own cause if we truly fight for single-payer at the state level and we take these federal programs that currently work and we change them because if we change them, if we put them in the hands of states, once you do that, you can’t put the cat back in the bag when really the focus needs to be on changing them only in the sense that we expand them using the federal government to be the one state payer.

Because if you really think about it, you can’t have a state be the single payer. I mean, the whole point is to have one payer, one insurer. And so in order to actually have state single-payer, you have to reject the federal aid that’s coming in from the government or have them issue it to you as block grants, which Republicans would love to have happen because they’re not going to put that into health care.

They’re going to funnel that to special projects for their donors. So it’s hard because we’re really getting the movement overall. There’s a lot of infighting. There’s a lot of these individual unique movements forming on the left. But nobody’s really seeing the common picture. Everyone is correct to know that we have to act immediately. There’s a lot of crises, but I think a lot of folks are just not getting it.

And it’s a little bit frustrating. Even members of Congress, Ro Khanna, AOC, who support federal single-payer, but they support also another bill. I don’t know if it’s been introduced yet that would actually turn Medicare Medicaid into block grant programs for the states that would allow states to do, quote-unquote, “single-payer.” But that’s basically going to be the Republicans’ evidence.

“See, it’s not working at the state level. It’s not going to work at the federal level.” I just see this train wreck in slow motion, going up in front of me and speaking out, you kind of become the villain. Where it’s like, hey, you don’t support this anymore when it’s like, no, no, no. We have to, we have to understand. See, this is why I like MMT is so significant because it becomes so apparent.

[00:37:29.820] – Grumbine

Don’t hate me.

[00:37:31.050] – Figueredo

Yeah, exactly. It’s like, listen guys, I know what I said in 2017 and yes, Anthony Rendon is still a piece of shit for shelving that bill. You have to make sure that you’re still fighting for single-payer. There are things that states can do to maybe perhaps move the ball in some way. But actually changing federal programs so states can do single-payer long term isn’t going to help the national single payer movement.

We should have never shifted focus. It’s always got to be a federal single payer because that’s the only way it will actually work, because, as you said, the states can’t do this. They have to balance their budgets. They can’t print their own currency. States can’t make the money or it’ll go broke, but the federal government can. So we have to be careful here.

[00:38:09.130] – Grumbine

I want to get to something a little bit off topic. Back in 2008, 09, we had the Great Recession, which was really the housing collapse, which was brought on by elite control fraud. And we have the Panama Papers that come out and we have all of this elite fraud. We are in a dystopian financialized world where we’re just little piece parts in their game of Monopoly.

And I haven’t seen anybody prosecuted from 2008 and 2009. Here we are in Biden administration and you’ve got them talking a little bit about fraud and trying to stop the wealthy people from buying influence. And so as we’re talking about just getting checks, pandemic relief checks, and we’re talking about Medicare for All and these really low ticket items, comparatively, they literally backstop the entire collapse of Wall Street to the tune of some $27 trillion.

[00:39:04.880] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:39:05.920] – Grumbine

I’ve seen nothing whatsoever to indicate that that’s going to change. In fact, the same gentleman I spoke to, Robert Hockett, said it looks like the Biden administration’s willing to look forward, but they don’t have an appetite to look backwards. And I wonder why that is considering it’s happened on Obama’s watch, you know?

[00:39:23.560] – Figueredo

Right.

[00:39:24.550] – Grumbine

So have you seen any appetite for this government to attack fraud?

[00:39:31.040] – Figueredo

No, quite frankly, and I don’t expect that to happen, and part of the issue is kind of going back to the people. If you poll people, they want to see more regulations on Wall Street. They want to see a crackdown on fraud. But that doesn’t happen. The last time we really saw this groundswell of movement to prosecute the criminals on Wall Street was Occupy Wall Street.

And we saw exactly what happened. The media went out of their way to smear the movement, essentially say, well, I don’t understand what it is that they want. It doesn’t make any sense. And really what this was about was fraud ultimately. But I think the issue is that part of the reason why folks are kind of tuning out, in general, is because we’ve become so accustomed to it that it’s just common. It’s not anything new.

And when you have folks so desperate, when they can’t pay the bills, they can’t put food on the table, they don’t have health care. Well, you know what? I don’t care about fraud. I just want to make sure that I can eat. So to get back to your question. I absolutely would eat my hat. I’d eat this microphone that’s in front of me if I saw any criminal go to jail under Joe Biden.

You know, the folks who he’s trying to prosecute is Julian Assange, which is shocking. It’s never going to be the actual frauds. It’s going to be the people who hold government accountable and disrupt the status quo. And so I have zero optimism in that regard, unfortunately. I would like to think that we’re going to see a couple of crooks get penalized in jail. It’s never going to happen. At least now.

[00:41:00.730] – Grumbine

I hope to God something happens because you’re looking at over and over again financial institutions bailed out and not the people ever.

[00:41:10.050] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:41:11.020] – Grumbine

They take severe risk. They bloat assets up. They steal every bit of the value out of it, and then they allow it to collapse. And right now, we’re going through another massive housing bubble yet again. In San Francisco, you see lines of people in tent cities and homelessness, but the price of housing is once again shooting through the roof and the student debt bubble and all the stock buybacks, companies are ripe to blow up again as well.

There’s any number of these bubbles that are ready to burst and there appears to be absolutely no intent to control or to mitigate or to prosecute. And I don’t find a lot of value in just prosecuting for the sake of prosecuting because there’s always another bad guy waiting around the corner. This is a model.

If you look at this more of an attack on the system as opposed to individual players, and you understand that there is a never-ending supply of ability to write down bad debt and there’s a never-ending appetite for propping up the financial institutions out there. But even now as we speak, we see them not willing to do it for us. This is not just a matter of MMT.

This is a matter of seeing the power dynamic and the balkanization of society as a wealthy elite lead a life so detached from the realities of everyone else. It’s so unhealthy to democracy. There’s no way to have a functioning democracy when you’ve got basically a neo-feudal state unless we change it. I don’t see how we fix the rest of it.

[00:42:57.090] – Figueredo

Yeah, and I will say this, it feels as if everything is on pause and real fundamental change is seemingly impossible. Having said that, though, I think that the situation is so bad that a lot of people can obviously see that it’s unsustainable. You can only bend some things so far, bend democracy or bend the people until it snaps, until it breaks and the floodgates open.

And so I do think that change is inevitable in the future. It’s just a matter of one, how bad does it have to get to actually catalyze some sort of fundamental change? And two, what kind of change is that going to be? Because I don’t necessarily think that change will automatically be positive. I think it could be negative. It could get worse.

When we’re this polarized as a country, one side is going to win out over the other and so grappling with that reality, it’s a little bit demoralizing, but it should give us a sense of direction. What do we do, given the circumstances, given the situation that’s so terrible currently?

[00:44:07.400] – Grumbine

So you got two things here, like number one, they’re talking about how power is shifted to the south. And the second thing is you see that the progressives have not really taken the fight. Who do you think we can look to in elected office, not as our savior, but who do you think we can look to to help push the ball forward? Is there anyone in there that’s really got the strength to do that?

[00:44:33.110] – Figueredo

It’s hard to say. It could be somebody in Congress that we’re not necessarily following right now that’s somewhat progressive, that just rises to the occasion. But for now, I would say it’s hard to say that anyone is up to the challenge. But what I will say is that we don’t really have many options.

I love Bernie Sanders, but the issue is you can very clearly see that he’s very deferential to Joe Biden, so he doesn’t want to rock the boat. So I think that what we have to do is really focus our efforts on members of the squad, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or at least part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus because most of it isn’t actually very progressive.

But I think it’s not going to be enough to have people who listen to these podcasts, to have people who watch my show. It has to be the normies for lack of a better word.

[00:45:25.670] – Grumbine

I get it. Yes. Mainstream.

[00:45:28.220] – Figueredo

Exactly. We’re very clearly not enough. If we were enough, we could have won in 2020 and gotten Bernie Sanders to the presidency. But that was because we had a lot of normies on our side. But even that wasn’t enough. So it’s got to be the normies. They’ve got to acknowledge, hey, we need to put pressure.

And they see that the most likely allies are the congressional progressives. And to be clear, I don’t think that they’re bad people. I don’t think that they’re frauds or sellouts. I think that they don’t really know how to effectively wield their power, or maybe I’m mistaken about that, and they do. But it’s just that there’s not enough of them and we need more of them.

We’re not necessarily working with a lot of certainties. There’s a lot that I think is in question. Maybe my strategy isn’t necessarily the best, putting pressure on Biden. Maybe the progressives are right, that trying to be more malleable and trying to give Biden more credit. Maybe that’s going to work on him. Behind the scenes, I have no idea.

What I do know is that people in general, the normies, they have to really be the ones who see that more needs to be done. And I think that our goal as leftists online is to try to get them to see the light, try to get people who are well-intentioned people who don’t necessarily know better, to understand that there’s so much that we can do that we’re not doing because we’ve imposed restraints on ourselves. We’ve chosen austerity as a country.

[00:46:55.250] – Grumbine

With that in mind and altmedia, we’ve got a million things that are working against us to get our message out there. YouTube has come out, mocked us as basically basement dwellers with an opinion. And in the mainstream, the average Jane and Joe that come home from work and flip on the TV are watching Rachel Maddow and saying Joe Biden was able to step off the cross and part the sea and break bread and turn water into wine. And so this is what they’re hearing. How do we get out of our echo chambers and into that world? You see a path forward with that.

[00:47:29.990] – Figueredo

It’s really the question of the decade for me. It’s something that I think about all the time and how to reach more normies. And ultimately there’s no easy answer. But I think that we have to do our best to replicate the model of mainstream media in order to reach boomers. And what I mean by that is boomers aren’t going to flip on their computer and get their news from YouTube.

Increasingly, they’re getting their news from Facebook. So, I mean, we could reach out there. But what a lot of people do is they just very passively listen to the television. And even if they’re not watching directly, they’re getting brainwashed for lack of a better word. So we have to find some way to have our own alternative to where we could just be on in the background.

And YouTube very clearly isn’t sufficient at doing that. For the new generation, it is, sure. But there’s a lot of older people who we still need. I’ve seen probably more cynical people than me say, “Oh, well, don’t worry. These people in their 80s watching Fox News, they’re going to die soon.” That’s not the best solution, right? It’s not right? It’s kind of messed up.

And assuming that they live another 10 years, that’s too late still. If you compare us to the right, even the normies who only turn on Fox News and MSNBC, they still probably know who Ben Shapiro is and Steven Crowder is. So I think that we could do more to reach out. And I think we have to go where the people are.

As much as I hate Facebook, I do think it is really useful at reaching people, people who wouldn’t see YouTube videos, for example, a lot of older folks. I’ve started doing streams on Twitch where I play video games and just casually talk about politics. And perhaps younger people will go to my YouTube channel. They’ll find out about leftism just because they started watching me play video games.

I think that we have to adapt to appeal to normies more specifically. That doesn’t mean that we change our rhetoric. That doesn’t mean that we censor ourselves or deradicalize. It just means we try to attract more eyeballs. Now, the problem with this is that on YouTube is that it incentivizes bad behavior, right? It incentivizes clickbait and be overly negative and appeal to right-wingers.

So if you attack Democrats from the left and you never talk about Republicans, then you’ll attract a big right-wing audience, and eventually, that’ll change you. So we have to fight against the forces on YouTube and fight against our instincts to be clickbaity. And I think that we have to attract eyeballs by doing it in the moral way and a responsible way that actually is going to be effective. Now, you can’t quantify what we’re doing, so who knows if what we’re doing is going to work. But in short, we have to reach more normies.

[00:50:08.930] – Grumbine

Right. You said something. Well, first things first. One of the things that I admire most about you, which I know upsets some of the other lefties who are exactly what you said, they’re not even making a veiled attempt at reaching normies.

[00:50:25.460] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:50:25.460] – Grumbine

And there’s nothing wrong with having a position. But the thing I like about the way you do it is even when you take a decidedly tough position, you do it in a way that you understand that the people hearing you may differ in opinion and that you’re trying to make them see reason for your message.

[00:50:42.995] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:50:43.940] – Grumbine

And you don’t push them away. They stay for the meal.

[00:50:47.300] – Figueredo

Right.

[00:50:47.810] – Grumbine

I think that’s really valuable. I’d like to be more like you in that sense because your 100-day explanation was absolutely well done.

[00:50:56.720] – Figueredo

Oh, thank you.

[00:50:57.560] – Grumbine

I agreed with everything you said and I am on the left of that. And I can imagine somebody who’s a centrist hearing this saying he wasn’t hyperbolic.

[00:51:07.532] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:51:08.450] – Grumbine

He made his point and maybe he’s right. I don’t know if they do that, but I could see that, you know?

[00:51:15.020] – Figueredo

Um hum.

[00:51:15.020] – Grumbine

For me, your style, your rhetoric is really good because you’re able to say some really hard-hitting stuff while not dehumanizing your opposition, so to speak, and to see it your way as opposed to immediately put their guard up.

[00:51:27.740] – Figueredo

Well, thank you for saying that. I certainly try. I know a lot of conservatives and MSNBC liberals personally, so I kind of know what to say that will and won’t turn them off. I’ve gotten into so many arguments with people I know, friends and family, but I try to do what works, right. If you try something and it’s not working, you have to abandon that strategy.

And so one thing that I’ve gotten the most feedback from is back in 2017 when I was really fighting against the repeal of net neutrality, that was, I think, the golden era of The Humanist Report when I put out a video and it got 500,000 views and it’s like, oh my God, this is incredible. I feel like I’m finally getting rewarded for doing a good job.

People are seeing my work. And so what I hear from a lot of folks, at least a dozen people by now, they’ve said, “Look, I was actually conservative or I was just kind of apolitical, but I really cared about net neutrality. And so I tuned in. I subscribed because you were talking about it. And now I actually am a liberal or I’m no longer conservative.”

So if you reach out and you broaden your avenues, I think that that’s one way because as you said, they might stay for the meal. And I’ve kind of noticed this with Hasan Piker on Twitch. He plays a lot of video games. And this is why I’m kind of copying his style. To be honest. He plays a lot of video games, but then he gets into political analysis.

And little by little, I think that the tide is kind of turning on YouTube, where it used to be overly dominated by the right after being previously dominated by the left. And I think the tide is turning again, slowly but surely. And I don’t necessarily know why that is, but I think it’s mostly the people who are able to speak to other folk’s interests. Right? Because if somebody knows that I’m a leftist, if they’re not a leftist, they’re going to be immediately at least a little bit turned off.

They’re going to have their guard up. But if they see me joking about some dumb meme or playing video games, then it’s OK, this is cool. And then if they see that I’m a human and I could build trust with them that way they realize I’m not trying to dupe them. I just want to make the world a better place. They kind of get to know me first and then that makes them, I think, more susceptible to my politics. Now, again, zero way to quantify this,

[00:53:39.830] – Grumbine

Sure.

[00:53:39.830] – Figueredo

But based on people who I’ve talked to who have told me about this. But my goal is basically to radicalize as many normies as I possibly can. And I have to adjust from time to time. I have to figure out what works, what doesn’t work. A lot of them are very turned off by my cursing on my show. OK, noted. It’s hard, but that’s what I’m trying to do is radicalize people.

And as I try to radicalize them, they understand that I’m getting radicalized myself. I’m still learning, I’m still growing. Starting the podcast, I was a social democrat. Now I’m a socialist. Starting The Humanist Report, I had no idea what MMT was. Now I consider myself absolutely in the camp of MMT. Still learning, of course, still growing.

But I think that if they see us as human beings and not like stale news people, even though that is important to an extent, disseminate information, I think we could build up trust. Now if every single leftist YouTuber and podcast host radicalized as many normies as we all can, if we all radicalize 10,000 normies each, is that still enough? I don’t know. But here’s what I will say.

And this is kind of been my philosophy, very dark. So bear with me. I have come to expect the apocalypse that we’re all just headed straight off of a cliff and we’ve hit the gas as a society, not just in America, but just as humanity. We’ve hit the gas and we’re going straight off the cliff. Accepting that reality, that likelihood, it might not be the case, but accepting that that is the fate of humanity, that we’re kind of driving ourselves towards extinction due to capitalism, due to austerity, what am I going to do?

How am I going to grapple with that? I could just curl up into a ball and be upset about it, be depressed about it. And I kind of am sometimes. I have my days, or I could just try to have fun, party until the apocalypse actually happens, and maybe try to radicalize some folks along the way to stop it. Who knows? But I’m not going to use this as a demobilizer.

I’m going to use this as, OK, the world’s going to end, what, a couple of decades? What do I do to stop it? Can I stop it? If not, what do I do? And that’s super black pill. So please, people don’t take that away for yourself. This is just me. But it has helped me to adapt and try to understand the world a little bit better.

[00:55:55.800] – Grumbine

You stare your demons and you say, what’s the worst that can happen? We die.

[00:56:00.180] – Figueredo

Exactly.

[00:56:00.960] – Grumbine

Let’s move forward and try not to make that happen.

[00:56:02.970] – Figueredo

Exactly.

[00:56:04.010] – Grumbine

I love this. This is actually a very positive way to facing your fears and saying, “If I die trying, that’s better than dying laying down.”

[00:56:12.190] – Figueredo

Exactly. Exactly. I’m glad that you spun that in a more positive way, because to me, I feel like it’s overly negative. But I mean, this is how I’ve dealt with things personally. So, like over the past couple of years, I haven’t talked about it. I’ve had a debilitating panic disorder to where I became overly agoraphobic. And leaving my house was almost literally painful.

It was very frightening every time I would have that fight or flight response. And so the way that I grapple with that is, OK, I have to go. I have to get groceries today. I’m going to have probably a couple of panic attacks. Oh, well, I’m just going to deal with it and we’re going to get through it. Knowing what’s going to happen, I’m going to accept that fate and I’m going to continue to live. It’s my dark and twisted way of dealing with it that’s somehow effective for me, but probably not for everyone else.

[00:56:57.930] – Grumbine

I have so much respect for you. I really do.

[00:57:00.510] – Figueredo

Oh, thank you. Likewise.

[00:57:02.040] – Grumbine

As a guy in recovery, I listen to you talk and it’s very similar. It’s a struggle, a personal struggle, and how we overcome. And you, sir, I just see you as such a positive influence. And even if I don’t agree with every take you have, I agree with your heart.

[00:57:19.470] – Figueredo

Thank you.

[00:57:20.220] – Grumbine

And I really appreciate the time you took with me today. This was just absolutely wonderful. And I hope we can work together in the future because you’re great.

[00:57:27.650] – Figueredo

Well, likewise. Honestly, I look up to you so much now. I’ve always known of you. I knew that you were the co-founder of Real Progressives, but there’s so many people in media that it’s just kind of like, oh, cool, another lefty host. Well, actually, I’m really learning from you, I truly feel like you’re a mentor for me, someone who I really look up to. And there’s not a lot.

I have my go-to’s, right. I have my Richard Wolffe, Cornel West, but then I put you in that category because of how much you’ve influenced me. And I truly appreciate what you’ve done. And I will say this. I actually am getting a new computer, so no more tech nightmares. I’m crossing my fingers, unless literally it is me doing something wrong. So once I get my studio computer, I can actually record interviews again, I think competently.

And so, yeah, I’d love to bring you on more. There’s probably a million more questions I could ask you, and that’s not going to happen over the course of one podcast. As I learn more, more questions will come up. More confusing things will come up, and you’re my MMT guru. As I said, you’re my go-to guy, so I’m going to have to bring you back on.

[00:58:25.770] – Grumbine

Well, thank you so much, Mike. I really appreciate it. Folks, this is Steve Grumbine, Mike Figueredo with Macro N Cheese. We’re out of here.

[00:58:39.350] – Ending credits

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Mindy Donham. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.