Oren Cass
speaker
818 appearances
4 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2025
last heard 3 Jun
Oren Cass’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Well, that in my mind is exactly the argument for something like tariffs is to say if all we want is the cheapest thing, then this is great.
If Chinese slave labor makes it, it will be cheaper.
There is potential for it to be regressive.
There's actually a wonderful – I guess he's an economic historian officially named Michael Lind who makes this point that I think is so important and wrote a great essay for us about it that it's really important to remember that the progressivity or regressivity of our income, of our tax system isn't the primary question.
It is a secondary thing that we do to make up for all of the other inequality.
But if we could do something – How else do you make it up?
Taking tariffs as an example, if we do things to restructure our economy in ways that are actually going to benefit typical workers left behind parts of the country or going to ideally generate better economic outcomes, if that comes alongside less progressivity in the tax system but the end result is better jobs and opportunities for the typical worker, that's a great outcome.
We push very hard for the Chips Act.
I saw that bumper sticker on your car, Oren.
That's right.
I'm a huge hit at cocktail parties.
Ultimately, I think something like 16 or 17 Republican senators voted for it.
And so you're right.
It's something that was – it divided the Republican Party at this point because you had the more old guard folks who were like, oh, that's not what we do.
And you have an increasing segment that say like, oh, yes, actually, this is what we should do.
Well, so – but this is the key is I think you can't do it all through those kinds of policies, right?
You can't go and find every industry and everything you wish we did and design a government program to boost it.
I think that kind of industrial policy can be really valuable where you have like a particular must-have thing.
So semiconductors is a great example.
You're seeing it now with critical minerals is a great example.
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