tv Alec Mac Gillis Fulfillment CSPAN May 30, 2021 11:00am-12:01pm EDT
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motor company at the time with $1 billion underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and dangerous a similar line labor. the the market cannibalization of amazon.com succeeded $1 trillion and it's way over our economy under society continues to intensify. alec macgillis is a scene reported for both propublica covering politics and government and reported privacy for the "washington post", baltimore sun and the new republic and his journalist has been in the "new york times" magazine, the atlantic, harpers and others. recipient of a least three awards including the 2016 prize for political reporting and 2017 award for nash reporting, his propublica reporting on dayton, ohio, was the basis of the 2018 pbs frontline document entitled left behind america about the economic andi' social forces leaving the once thriving rust belt city. in ruins. he is also the author of 2014 24 biography of mitch mcconnell entitled the utterly sincere
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guarding edison and his traditions. myr bad. it's actually called the senate. margaret o'mara -- sorry, no time for that. out of france's entire professor of history at university washington and contributing opinion writer of vineyard times. her research focus on the high-tech industry, american politics, she's authored several books including 2019 the code, silicon valley and remaking of america, financial times and publishers weekly best book of a very dear. we are grateful she returned tonight to talk with alec macgillis about his latest book "fulfillment: winning and losing in one-click america." please join me in welcoming margaret omara and alec macgillis. >> thank you so much. welcome to seattle, alec. you are actually three hours ahead in a time zone, so first of all thanks for partying with this late night in seattle. it's really great to have you
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here come one week since the book came out and i really fantastic book it is. what are want to do is open up and ask you why you wrote it. tell us a bit about what you're trying to say with this book. >> let me say first of all thank you to townhall for having this event. i i wish i could be there. this book is about places, very much about y in america and he would be great if i i could bn these places talking about the book but this is certainly something much better than nothing and i'm grateful for that and i'll be back for the paperback hopefully. thank you to you, margaret, for moderating this, you are a great authority on the subject so it's really helpful. when i set out to do the book it was actually not a book about amazon. it was a bookrt about regional equality, regional disparities
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in america, , growing gaps betwn america. traveling all around the country as a national political reporter starting in the obama years, the obama 2008 election and then his early administration, and i would be out in the midwest during the great recession and i would come back to washington and be blown away by again the incredible prosperity on display there and disconnect with what was going on around the country. f prosperity. and ended up moving back to baltimore eight years ago. that gap between washington and baltimore the two cities 40 miles apart that been growing so wide apart and prosperity in their prospects. it's credibly unhealthy ballots with the winner take
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all both take major problems as a result of this i want to write about this trump got elected at that and i really need to write about it because it clearly played a role in trump spray spent the next year trying to figure out how to write about these disparities i finally settled on amazon for two reasons. the company is so ubiquitous everywhere to show american how we live the handy frame date driver of this regional it and the other tech giants have contributed greatly to this concentration of wealth original concentration of wealth is closely tied to
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whole sectors of our economy. it worked in both ways as a frame. how we said allen's three years ago in here we are. >> your book's got some really wonderful reviews very well barb you did all the major outlets. i really appreciate there's a really when the l.a. times last week. which did say effectively threaten a horror story. [laughter] was very complementary. and that is amazon. another product of baltimore the wire is a series of human stories change the political
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economy in a system of winners and losers and how institutions have failed, whole groups of people. so tell me how you found your people in kind of come about some of the people in this book. tell us sort of why they are good vehicles for understanding what is going on in the united states right now. make sure. to keep going as we'll find the people in society and places. i wanted to have certain cities there were hyper prosperous cities that were struggling with the prosperity than left behind in town is very clear what my cities was going to be cl is clear from the outset. the city had been utterly transformed by the company. and i knew i wanted to write about washington d.c. because it was also to me and very classic example i wanted to write about the baltimore
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divide and i went to pick pc from a city even though amazon did worked up very nicely. baltimore no wanted to write about because i live here and i've seen this up close. spent a lot of time in ohio dayton and sort of rural southeast ohio go very much in the book as well as left behind. when it came to the characters , as more people encountered in my reporting there are fascinating people and i wanted to write about them. i knew they had a story to tell. and in some cases that connection to amazon was pretty close like the young man in dayton ohio made cardboard boxes to support amazon. he is in there. the story is his dour mobility has dayton's.
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some pieces that connection was little more distant. a young man in southeast ohio worked at texas roadhouse as a waiter and trying to save his rural town was another person. in the case of seattle, i knew early on that it wanted to write about the central district and what it happened in the central district. i feel that's a story a lot of people outside seattle are not aware of that the city had such incredibly vibrant black community. when we hear a lot about black displacement in d.c. and somewhat in san francisco. but register last in seattle. so i wanted to write about that community and what happened to it. that meant with a whole bunch of members of the community, one of my early visit to seattle, and then decided to focus on pastor right such a
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compelling person. her story of choir and not just the choir but her expressiveness about her sadness what's happened to the central district to me. and so another main character in seattle is katie wilson. i kind of came to her later as a character. a new knothole tax between 2018 happened to be out of the very week the vote to repeal the tax happened. was all very well-timed and traumatic. i met katie at city hall that day and stayed in touch with her. it was clear among all the activists who were sort of working on that issue on the whole fight to deal with housing problems he homelessness problem that she was both out front in the
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fight very compelling in her own right. it's very eloquent how she talks about these problems. one other character i will just mention in passing led to a union hall looking for people, retirees of the huge still work with by amazon warehouses. i wanted -- hope to find someone whose grandson or granddaughter networks amazon so you could draw the generational there. lo and behold i made a requester union hall and afterward 69-year-old man walked up and says looking for someone who works at amazon? he said yes, i do. so this guy still works come
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back to work for less than half the pay. in amazon warehouse. outside the site in baltimore. >> it's really extraordinary. i think he was my favorite character in the book two. i might want to get back to seattle. first, molière on baltimore, this is a book that you really dive deep into this longer history of what work has meant and what industry has meant. in the steel mill in baltimore that is now the warehouse include amazon warehouses with american capitalism and the way that amazon is now, can you talk a little bit more about what was great about it what was not great about it?
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sometimes we talk about the newest economy right now the giga economy musical back to the good old days of unionized workforce, tell us more about what you discovered in this story you're telling about that? >> are so blown away by what they found. the bash i did not know more about this. more than a dozen years right up the road from this place. the notion of how vast and intensive extraordinary this place was. 3000 workers the biggest steel mill in the entire world. fire 6000 people downtown segregated downtown and all about. it became clear, i never one to apologize or idealize that work, at the outset. but as it began to research
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how important was. the work was incredibly treacherous, incredibly dangerous. there's injuries and fatalities. just the basic conditions the extreme heat, just the constant, constant risk. just the grueling dose of it comes through. by donning himself suffered multiple injuries. at 20 finally left the job after yet another injury. but, what becomes clear to get into the history of things changed over time for it at the in the early 20th century still works was so it's younger years things were incredibly brutal. incredibly low pay no say on the job crazy hours to get to holidays off a year and then
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of course over time they got organized. the 40s and 50s they finally got organized there. dramatically improved across the board. greatly improved benefit condition say on the job safety there's just more say how things are run on the floor. you have big gains actually in the integration of the workforce in the 60s heavily black. major advances the americans increases suffered as things decline. especially steel was very badly managed in the latter decade. it completely vanishes.
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by 2012 it's gone completely. so creepy your gps still says east street it's all gone and so now you have these warehouses. a bunch of others too. i talk about the difference in the work. obviously the warehouse work is physically taxing and wearing. and is not as treacherous as what was experienced at the steel mill because there is no comparison. but, one man and many people like him feel the loss of the
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work routinely. because as dangerous as it was it paid a lot more, but more importantly it just gave them vastly more sense of purpose and camaraderie and community and meaning alike. there is a reason why they allow mostly men to stay there for decades for their whole career. not only because they provided middle class kind of income but also because they felt part of something. i was talking to another retired still worker recently and he still lives right there. after the shifts at the warehouse you see all the guys go the workers men and women go screaming out of their. then to put in big speed bumps. they're desperate to get out of there you've done your shift the $15 hour shift. it's incredibly often very repetitive very isolating kind of work.
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and you are out of there. back in the day you often rolled out with your crew into the bar or the diner, or whatever. he filling a fire going to work for drew going to put out fires you're going to rule steel for that you are part of something. i brought this up to talk about the book again, there was a amazon worker called in and said yes there is no way, no way i'm going to leave work now to go have a beer at joe. i only know who joe is. he is 30 feet away but i do not know who he is. that's what the difference comes down too. that's what i call it the book about dignity. it's about purpose and dignity and meaning in your life. that is what has been lost along with the much lower pay.
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>> host: so -- amazon is not the only postindustrial big employer. that is certainly gotten a lot of scrutiny and been a disruptive force in redefining work. walmart is another example. similar huge workforce very contingent and what ways are the two similar? also in what ways is it different? how do we see this model of the work in amazon fulfillment center different from these other new forms of work? >> i think the difference comes onto couple main things. that have to do with the book's main theme of geography. amazon has massive geographic
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destructive effects devastation of mainstreet all the small towns, small cities, especially in certain parts of the country. just wiping out helping to wipe out communities in that way. it was so disruptive. what amazon has done to the landscape is slightly different. while it is also contributing to further weakening of local retail and local business and the sort of community vibrancy that comes with that, that is been very well documented amazon is having in that way on small businesses. it then has the other effect i read about in the book, it has created, helping to create the winner take all or all of that
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wealth and business activity is now sucked into in a way that did not really happen with walmart. walmart is in bentonville. and up and agitated all of these downtown these last couple decades with the tech giants which is incredible racial inequality in the sorting out of the winner cities and the left behind once. one other difference i will note one important thing to note about walmart it pays a lot more taxes than amazon
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does because of this physical manifestation, the physical kind of gain the system as well through the sort of online loophole for sales taxes. but then also managing to pay any federal income taxes by taking huge losses and taking down pay for gains. walmart isn't paying billions more in taxes every year as amazon. one important difference. >> i think amazon's counter would be well, we are just
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following the u.s. tax code, right question work we are following the rule and that's what the rule exists do. i think that comes to a nether sort of big underlying current throughout the story of regional inequality you're tracing in this book which is the role of politics and policy. different levels of government have done over the last 40 years to create and re-create pathways of opportunity. what you think are the big takeaways in this book by whom seek culpability across the spectrum here in your story. >> the book is not a policy argument book or a thesis book. it is that narrative a reported narrative. it definitely leaves one with the conflicted impression that
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the biggest thing we could do to address this problem of this kind of concentration of wealth regional and equality is antitrust. and our lax approach to monopolies over the last four or more decades has played a big role in this. to put it in very blunt terms, the more that certain giant companies dominate whole sectors of the economy, the more that wealth and prosperity and business activity have been hoover into them and the places where they can reside. and that if we could deal with that problem somehow break them up, rein them in, you
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would end up dispersing wealth and prosperity around the country. the other example is what was done to my industry of media, right? it used to be ad revenue which was the lifeblood of journalism was spread across the country. papers, local to become a local radio, whatever. and now we move to a digital world where digital ad revenue is what matters most. in 60% of all digital ad revenue is controlled by two companies. and they reside in the bay area. and the bay area because of this is utopian levels of inequality and crazy wealth. they're gaining on this to an ad revenue.
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>> speaking of levels of inequality in the bay area, usually what else the area it ails seattle to view and don't burn quite as hot but we still burn the pain and uncomfortable porch of diversity as it is now, our region. coming in as an outsider, what did you see? what were your takeaways? what you see is the biggest challenges for this place? >> it really knocked me out coming there. i've been there before us back their way back in 2004 is the first of may came. i just loved the city back then. he fell in love with it. just struck me how much it still felt like a raw natural resource outposts. you can still picture the logs rolling down the hill from the sawmill.
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in the huge rail yards and the port, and the ships, you can see all of this stuff coming down from the northwest, from alaska to this frontier trading post. so then to come back for the book in 2018 the wealth is just astonishing. it just knocked me out. not just the wealth the feeling you walk through union and you see all of that blandness of it. the buildings with strange names, but one in the buildings you saw that dog park on the 17th floor, the viewable terrorist. this amazing view on the 17th
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floor on a dog park terrorists. it's incredible's also surreal. then you go to the central district. i've been doing all this reading this great history of it but washington state historian and i found that book the baltimore library stumbled onto it. they had the historical monograph about the central district. meant to come there and see, i thought is in the wrong place, this is it? this is the famous neighborhood? this is like no neighborhood i'd seen transformation was stunning. i was back again a year or two later and saw the parade going
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down the street it was just heartbreaking. it was so poignant going down the street all the new buildings and people sipping coffee in their balconies looking down for a community neighborhood that was just barely hanging on. and then there was the political aspect of it. what happened around that 2018 tax referendum. and how kind of easy it was for amazon to tap into servant on pleasant strain of politics. really a liberal left version of tea party is in. anti- government strain of white should we raise more tax money to pay for causing homelessness customer for just going to waste it anyway. the government saw it
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wasteful, why even bother? and then the conflicted feelings are on amazon itself. like seeing that it had brought congestion to the city >> hike what happened around that referendum and how kind of easy it was rams are not to tap into sort of an unpleasant strain and the politics and really almost kind of of a libel left version of the tea party is a targeted antigovernment strain. why should we raise more tax money to pay for homelessness. it does not waste anyway, they're not you know, it's always full. and infective and why even bother and like the conflicted feelings around itself. like but amazon that had brought
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congestion to the city and transform the city in ways that were not entirely welcomed but in the same time, also knowing that it had brought this prosperity and it major look little that you bought for like 200 granted, some years ago fourth million dollars now. in this kind of a real pride in that it not wanting to kind of kill the golden goose. and just this sort of deep in big billets about the prosperity. and like in a way, a reluctance to kind of to do anything that might somehow diminish it even if it brought some more kind of balance to this incredible inequality.
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this very liberal city was just really striking. alec: bullet has deep roots in multiple causes and it is going to be interesting that you did not write a policy book. you don't end with prescriptions of here is how it is all going to be fixed i am tempted to ask you because as you know to hold from the la times review, noting that america does not have to ba a horror story. we did have in the 20th century, incredible sort of concentration of wealth, the bethlehem steel's that this incredible inequality. and also geographic and balance in sort of concentration of wealth in certain cities now pray to some of the cities now that are the left behind your narrative. simonhe carries, this is probaby a seattle question printed there's probably a lot of people are caring deeply about seattle
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future. both in terms of what prosperity looks like and i think the people have different ideas of what that entails and recognizing that amazon and microsoft are two of our very biggest employers as well as these other multinational companies in a of wealth is the seemingly problems. what advice you have for yes and i thinking about these sort of different approach towards antitrust at the local level. what are some things that people who are living this and caring about this. what does one do. >> i actually think that the key is actually not to think of it as local. and to really actually think the connection between the local problems you are dealing with in the national one. and i find it confounding how so often in the winter cities there's this whole housing
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debate between kind of the left factories. the housing supply side build more that runs into the people who don't want you to build more and then there's the kind of the rent control people who n think that we can just fix it by some- kind of regulated limits. that of course comes with its own problems and this fight and that i just feel like so oftenow is missing that is the broader context which is that this problem before the ability us being driven part of the buy this incredible constraint enough prosperity and wealth in our country and a handful of places. and it is hard to say. what kind of numbers we have for like way back in the day. but that we simply have not seen in a very long time if ever. and that just as income inequality has grown to these incredible levels, 1 percent in all off that.
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the inequality, also we simply are not nearly as desperate and between cities as we are now. i just wish there would be more of an awareness of how one cities problems fits into that broader context and kindd of adjoining up a fight. on the national level. but i do worry that one reason that doesn't happen is that many people in these cities while they are very worried about the housing affordability problem and all of that actually do not want to surrender any other cities and their status. there actually kind of proud of it. or maybe even see it is a good thing for like the world to have so much growth concentrated in the cities that are kind of climate friendly and they're
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always other cities out there who are also quite dense. in cleveland and baltimore and st. louis are . dense and you have various sort of climate friendly growth and prosperity there. whole blocks of row houses that are standing empty. and the fact that we are now put it bluntly, we are in washington princeton's knocking down and figure out what to do in a city where your average townhouse cost seven or eight or $900,000 upon more. just 40 miles up the road, the board demolishing entire blocks of row houses that were actually nicer back in the day and once in dc. that is madness. what would happen just two years ago, amazon picked those 25000 high paid jobs in dc, not baltimore. the problem will get only worse so it's all connected to that dynamic. but too often, this is kind of
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more sort of narrow local fight that does not connect to larger issues. >> someone to bring audience questions and and if anyone has any questions i encourage you to put those in the chat. we can try to address as many as we can but we have one really i think an interesting provocative one coming in here asking is amazon evil player here or is it technology/the internet. if not amazon, others would be doing internet commerce and amazon pays $15 an hour, versus walmart $11 an hour. what is your reaction to that. >> i'm well acquainted with that argument because it's actually being named the argument that i got back from amazon. anna talked at length with them. in the home stretch of the book. that actually is the main thing
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is that the they were going to happen and it just happens to be a sewer the sea right now it could be somebody else and could be some company called something different but is not, in a sense, amazon. and that is true to a certain extent but, there are these larger structural things happening in the economy and the technology. but i think that we too often how to go to the structural kind of frame too quickly. or to exclusively. the fact is the company does have agency and responsibility and for specific things that it has chosen to do, it did not have to do things in the ways it did. and often go through all t of these different choices they made. starting with an aggressive approach to tax avoidance in all
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of these different things that the book describes. weand particularly, demanding workplace for the parkers to the point where it has these reports again for my story, because a lot of them. of just how high pressure the warehouses are. there is a reason why the turnover is so why a lot of people just cannot packet. it is unclear midday. in the choice relates to setting locations like that they could have taking this as this moment as a outgrowing seattle is a choice to in a moment to try to get this regional balances country and just imagine we would put hb two at saint louis, yes who might like the greatest
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workforce waiting for us in this moment but they will come and we will build it. this is good for the country. and in the book, when i bring this up, why not think of it this way and he laughed at me. is he he said you don't understand amazon at all. you don't understand jeff at all, this is not how we think. there is no notion like something is good for the country. the larger picture. so yes, there are larger structural things happening but companies made ulcers of choices long way to meet some of these problems especially dire. >> is also not just one company i would say this kind of idea the notion of growth and prosperity is good we just need to be headstand focus on that is something that cuts across the
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tech industry and has for quite some time and it did not come out of and has common across all industry sort of and also for the incentives are and what are the leaders of the companies being measured on. * performance and so there is a real sort of telling the story of inequality and think it amazon is sort of a powerful good connective tissue here but this is about broader political economy of the 31st century america. and it is not just retail, it is also you talk a lot about aid to the u.s. which is an incredibly part of amazon itself and also as part ofon a bigger microsoft big cloud player and google is working hard to get up there. it also has a physical manifestation and footprint . can you talk about that too with their thinking probably about this action driven, what is the application of cloud infrastructure and the
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concentration it of that and services and few companies. alec: is a whole chapter in the book where is just that i knew i had to talk about the cloud as well. and really go to that world. i went to that world into many places in northern virginia which is amazon and the rest the industry's initial big east coast hub for data centers, just as whole sprawl of them and going out into the worst countries of northern virginia was about washington. now increasingly also ohio, excerpts, this whole new kind of sprawl of them. i spent time with them. it's hard to describe how huge kind of aggressively land and the horses utterly and personal
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and literally there are almost only a few dozen people employed which is why it's all the more striking that these little communities have just thrown incentives at the companies to build them because they're only going to get a couple dozen of employees out of them. they are super heavily guarded and secretive. i was followed by an amazon cop followed me all around. it was crazy. and now of course there's this whole the biggest question with them as really the energy. this just the incredibly amount of energy. and the companies are making all sorts of grand claims to try to make them as renewable energy dependence as possible but they are so far from that and right now one reason that whole big
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cluster dc is this people electricity coming out of appalachian something with ohio, you have all of this cold still in ohio. so there's this major reckoning around it the still has to occur when it comes to the energy part of it. in the pacific northwest, hydro electric power. that is rare. margaret: so it's easy to forget the east coast is very dependent on something quite different. so there is a political to this side of this, the trump was a catalyst for you to printed the book. i think a lot about this sort of intense geographic sorting of america which is something new and different that you are writing about. and i are great examples
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knowledge workers who grabs morris, grew up in arkansas. i live in seattle now which is very blue and there are a lot of nypeople who are in the seattle region who are from somewhere else. that is a big part of his mojo, knowledge work center. it is brought people in from elsewhere. and so what is or does this work - the policy is part of the answer here and finding common ground and commoni understandig which i would say books like yours, although it is a very dispiriting portrait, i think that this is giving for folks like me who a live in seattle to window into what it's like to be in dayton, ohio, what is that landscape look like. we cultivate the by understanding the lives of others. is geography destiny. do youmi really think that are
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resorting and kind of a seating the middle of the country with coastal people and vice a versa is the answer. alec: i'm so glad to hear that you have such an understanding for the people in the books because that was such a big goal for me. i'd looking doing these big goals between the people in different areas and i was so struck between the disconnect between them and so wishing to somehow better understand between them. some toxic what we have right now and itt did bite such a big roll in trump selection. it's not economic decline and resume it does not dispute the racism and xenophobia, it's completely lengthened they are and it is the fueling each other.
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and it's vulnerable to certain appeals. the realignment is well i think we are not wrapping it just how much the realignment is underway now just how much democrats are a little i guess talking about how much the parties come down by highly educated upper income professionals know of cities like seattle and boston in new york and dc but it just has. they have lost one of its hold on the working-class white motor is because that motor in ohio looks at the people who now dominate the party and say, i feel no relation to these people. and the parties still does have very strong support among non-
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white working-class black and hispanic voters. creating this awkward coalition. i think of it as an amazon coalition, all of the people in the cities, the well-off upper middle-class professionals mostly white who by tons of stuff on amazon and other online services. payment too much greater numbers this past year and the people who packet and deliver it to them, that is sort of the democratic coalition. and that is a tough coalition to pull together. in fact we saw last fall in trump loss he actually made against mom working-class hispanics in smaller gains among some black men but mainly hispanics.
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not crazy to think that we might happen that wind up with the working-class republican coalition. is not exclusively white. the democratic party has become so much the party of these winner take all cities. and that's a huge problem for the democrats like you can just. barely scrape by an electoral college but never going to get back the senate was a boy because of the way the senate is set up. i wrote a piece back in 2016 before trump had been elected sort of urging liberals to populate the midwest. but i still think a better way to do it would be to address the problem the book describes
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switches the regional inequality. if you can make a dayton and toledo and akron more prosperous cities again, there will be less resentment. and it will be less imbalance and democrats might actually win state again. margaret: i'm going to push back in part because i have in response to a question that i see in the future, questioning about this. this economic decline versus racism and xenophobia which clearly was something that trump tapped into. the clinton had a larger share of working-class voters there sort of the myth of the economic discontent. those left behind voting for trump is not totally tracked.
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we've always had racism and xenophobia in america, has been a national problem throughout a mark in history particularly in times of economic of people. will regional realignment help sort that what more needs to be done. alec: it is a question of making and what is that what we have generally seen in recent years is that certain places experience some kind of prosperity, and is spread where it didn't exist before, that has generally made places, one of your democrat thinking how do we do with this problem. one way to do what this strike places off.
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only politically but not to write them off through economics. economically. but as far as the class realignment, we have to be honest about this. yes, republican party has all source of support among upper income voters and plenty of their country club republicans and plenty of business owner republicans and all that is true. but trump, the reason trump>> oe in 2016 as he did a lot better with lower income white voters and republicans have formally 2 done. he did so much better than romney. the o obama hundred they did exist, they were crucial. and then the other people in
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nonvoters and he brought in from the woodwork. lower f income. yes you can get the numbers a certain way it was like democrats are better with lower income voters but trump proved it better than past republicans in this holy one. margaret: i think economics during the two tone the book is a really good like a and helps explain why so many voters in 2016 look at the democrats and republicans and look at what those two parties had had offered to that group of people, the people in dayton and also in southeast ohio. they said what the heck let's go with the guy who can promise to turntable over. you can't getting while it can only get better from here for these guys. it's a real indictment but i think that you tell the story really carefully and i think
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that this is one of the things and i think this book will have a long tail, not just to stick it to amazon about. it's actually about much more than amazon but it underscores how much amazon has come to a penalize and the kind of detail that but a certain era of american politics and economics is comparable to legendary companies. i appreciate that. we need to wrap up but i want to and i always like to teach because american history can be of them are. so so it was like two unkind up enough though so i was wondering if you have like, what makes you optimistic or filming too optimistic. so from doing this book, and writing this book, where do you see hope. it. alec: i definitely see hope and really just an people.
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one reason that i wanted to include certain people in the book is actually see them as simple people. and katie wilson is a very hopeful person. even after the patent 2018, keep fighting and is now ending up with another version of that tax. the fight goes on. to the young man who include from southeast ohio, taylor, incredibly hopeful person many goes back home, at george washington university onn scholarship. he doesn't feel at home in washington goes back to southeast ohio. appalachian, ohio and runs for local office and has recently finally one local t office and paste the town auditor in the small town there and it's incredibly poor town. it is working so at it while
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still working part-time at the kroger in town. after previously having working at at texas roadhouse noise at kroger and east now town auditor as well and he has have recovered incredible huge local fraud by his predecessor on the job. he will bring this town a lot more money this way and i just find such hope in these people. and that is why i actually love reporting is that you always are going to find these people. and h that's why i actually dont get too downof about all of this because we actually meet the people and you sort of see the light in them. and the spirit and it is completely restorative. and it really is what he's been
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going out find even more of those people. margaret: what a great note to an aunt and i'm going to turn it over to town hall to take us out. thank you so much for staying up late with us alec macgillis. alec: thank you margaret. >> thank you both so much and we really appreciate you spending this evening with us and talking by this interesting topic. i also think to everyone who was watching from home. if you would like to become a copy of the book, please do so through our partner. there's a link in the chat and have a great evening everyone and thanks again. >> during a virtual event, hosted by the commonwealth of california, contended that immigration in europe has led to increased sexual assault. >> we knew that if we had allowed it a large number of men, very young men, to come and
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unguided not socialized it in the new context that they were coming into that we were going to run into problems like this one. in the response itself where the putting up with us in owning it, it puts on the woman and is put in women in poor neighborhoods. and i think that is really is outrageous. it is absolutely outrageous. so if you want more color, is you made the book you will seek example after example have spoken to somebody women inside they literally say that i am not and i want to display the exact same compassion. they feel sorry for the people of syria and sorry for the
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people of afghanistan. the sorry for the people of somalia and elsewhere they want to welcome them. there's so many volunteers in so many of these european countries who wants to do good things for people in difficult places. most of them vote center left parties. but they also describe how the streets have changed how the schools have changed. the continuous assault on their bodies and their obscenities and how they sent on a daily basis. now the authorities leave them to themselves because when they go to the city council to say, what is happening in my neighborhood, they just dismiss them. and that is where they come in and that is where the russian trolls come in and that is where the islamists command and other
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french groups and extremists within an agenda because the mainstream parties don't want to deal with these issues. it's too much watch the rest of this program for their website .org and search for ayaan hirsi ali or the title of a book pray using the search box at the top of the page. book tv on "c-span2", every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors funding for book tv comes from the television companies and more. including media calm. >> the world changed in an instant in the media calm was ready and internet traffic sorted we never slowed it down. schools and businesses went virtual and we powered it and new reality because media calm we are built to keep you ahead. media, along with these television company supports 20 on "c-span2" is a public service.
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