Welcome Back to The Realignment
The second edition of The Realignment newsletter, with our Q&A episode and interview with Lisa Napoli, plus listener mail, book lists, and more.
Where to listen:
YouTube (videos will be back in 2021).
Welcome Back to The Realignment
We hope you all have had great starts to the last month of 2020. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed so far. Each newsletter will go out every Friday afternoon. Comment below with any suggestions or things we should add/expand on.
This week, we aired our monthly Q&A episode and spoke with Lisa Napoli, author of Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News.
Our Q&A episodes are pretty straightforward, but we want to give more context to our conversation with Lisa.
You’ve probably noticed that we’ve increasingly focused the podcast’s attention on the future of media. The past few years have seen dramatic changes and disruption across the industry, from the surprising come-from-behind dominance of The New York Times (which looked all-but-dead in 2007) to the rise of new formats like newsletters and podcasts. Tens of millions of people now pay for news online, something once thought unthinkable. At the same time, tens of thousands of journalists have lost their jobs due to the collapse of advertising revenues both before and during COVID-19. Add in Joe Rogan’s rocky relationship with Spotify and the debate over independence vs. consolidation in the podcast industry, and it’s clear that the entire media space is wide-open.
In Up All Night, Lisa tells the story of Ted Turner’s creation of CNN, the first 24-hour news network. Cable news feels (and is) boring today, but at the time, the idea of using satellites and the emerging cable television industry to disrupt ABC, CBS, and NBC was novel and transfixed viewers. All this took place right before the dawn of the internet era, which further revolutionized who and what we watch.
Anyone who shares our interest in the future of news definitely needs to check out Up All Night. For further reading, check out Tim Wu’s The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires and Ken Auletta’s Media Man: Ted Turner’s Improbable Empire.
The Realignment’s Bookshop.org Storefront
As a reminder, we’ve created a Realignment podcast affiliate shop for books by our guests at bookshop.org. The shop currently features the books of 10 of our guests including Michael Lind, Scott Galloway, Reeves Wiedeman, Ross Douthat, Matt Stoller, and Lisa Napoli. We’ll soon have all of our previous guests’ books uploaded to the shop.
If you purchase a book using our link, we get a 10% commission, a local bookseller gets supported, and you get an awesome book! Watch this space for new uploads and future lists by topic.
Listener Mail
Adding the Realignment Qs section was one of our favorite things about relaunching the podcast in July. We take a question an episode, along with the monthly Q&A shows. Still, there usually isn’t enough space to respond to everything, so we’re going to use this space to feature questions and feedback. As on the show, you can reach us at realignmentpod@gmail.com.
This week’s feedback is from early in November. During our episode with Ross Douthat, we debated the significance of a red state like Florida going for Trump while still voting for a $15 minimum-wage increase. Luckily, a listener who worked on the campaign wrote in with his insights:
Joe writes:
Marshall and Saagar,
I heard you mention the Florida $15 minimum wage amendment on the show with Ross Douthat today and wanted to add a few points about the $15 minimum wage for your thoughts.
I’m biased on this as I was the general consultant for the No on Amendment 2 ($15 minimum wage) campaign. I’m also unusual among political consultants on the right because I’m actually from a working class family with working class siblings and step-siblings.
Ballot amendments in Florida require 60% to pass and Amendment 2 earned 60.79% to just barely squeak into the constitution. The amendment got onto the ballot through a petition drive funded by the millionaire lawyer John Morgan who spent about $5 million on the effort (funny side story: we discovered Morgan owned several restaurants where starting pay in his own businesses was only $10 an hour).
As a comparison, the no campaign raised a total of about $675,000 mostly from small and medium sized businesses. The big business players (Disney, Publix, Darden, etc.) decided not to engage in the effort at all for fear of bad press and an understanding that a $15 wage advantages larger businesses (they can afford the upfront costs to automate quickly)
Despite the funding disadvantages, the Amendment actually failed to pass in every Florida market but Miami and Orlando (the highest cost of living areas).
So here are my questions/thought points as regards the $15 minimum wage and the working class.
A blanket statewide $15 wage may make sense in Miami where the cost of living is high but makes less sense in Florida's dozens of small and rural counties. In many of these smaller countries, 70% of voters voted against the measure. In effect, the $15 minimum wage pitted the interests of the working classes in cities and small towns against each other.
Most working-class people actually earn over $15/hr but remain very cost sensitive. The $15 wage is great if you currently earn $10 an hour but for anyone earning between $16 and $30 an hour it means higher costs (childcare, groceries, etc.) but no raise. In effect, the $15 wage pitted working class and lower-middle income people against each other.
In polling and focus groups, high income earners (specifically women with household income over $100k) were most in-favor of the $15 wage. From the funder of the Amendment down to the core supporter, the $15 min wage feels like a rich person’s solution to a working person’s challenges. Specifically, I find people with higher incomes overlook that marginal income households have both income AND cost challenges. The $15 wage gives some people more income but leaves the majority of working class people simply with higher costs of living.
The alternate reality to the higher cost of living is accelerated automation. Among my biggest concerns is that we are headed for a world (between COVID and automation) where human contact becomes a luxury good. I see this reality as profoundly isolating and dystopian. Is there any way populist policy can help avoid a world where only the elites can interact with other humans in commercial transactions?
My expectation is that undocumented workers and under-the-table cash work is going to increase as $15 wage scales in over the next few years.
From my perspective, it seems like the $15 minimum wage is a bad policy alternative to raising wages through tighter labor markets.
Let us know if you agree or disagree with Joe’s take in the comment section below.
Next Week’s Episodes
On Tuesday, we’ll air an episode with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about his new book Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization. On Thursday, we’ll speak with Avik Roy about his Agenda 2025 post-election conference on the future of the right, left, and center.
If you have any thoughts/questions about what we should discuss with Joe and Avik, leave a comment below or email us at realignmentpod@gmail.com
Let us know what you think about this, or any week’s, episodes. Please share it with anyone who’d enjoy the podcast.
We’re excited to build out this newsletter, so we’d also appreciate any suggestions. You can reply directly to this email or send us a note at realignmentpod@gmail.com. Have a great weekend!
Of course Joe is right.