Conversation with Senator Chris Murphy — Combating Loneliness, Regulating Social Media, and Understanding the Tension between Capital and Labor

25:26I mean, so I would I have no problem banning TikTok. I don't think it's a little weird that we allow a Chinese own company to have this much information about our kids. But I think it's a distraction from the real problem, which is that they have tapped into a market and they have perfected a technology that others are perfecting and somebody else will perfect if they disappear. So I have not been sort of the leader of the band TikTok bandwagon because I think you have a you need a broader regulatory regime that applies to all these sites. I've got one kid on TikTok. I've got the other kid on YouTube.

26:06And I don't necessarily, TikTok seems particularly addictive, but man, like for a lot of younger kids, the YouTube algorithms are pretty effective as well. So you need to handle it all. You said something earlier in the pod that a family needs or someone needs to work 70 hours versus 40 a couple of decades ago to have the same sort of opportunities and create the disposable time, like disposable income, to establish those relationships. I mean, there's unions. My big rant recently is why wouldn't we raise the federal minimum wage to$25 an hour? I would argue we spend too much time focusing on unions, which represent 11 percent of the workforce, that it's almost become sort of a false flag or a bit of a distraction that we talk about unions as if we're going to solve the problem of labor and putting more money in the hands of middle class Americans when it's 15 million people.

27:08I think the majority of Americans feel that the tension between capital and labor, the healthy tension that's existed, has become unhealthy. That capital has just been beating the crap out of labor for a good 30 or 40 years. CO compensation, 30 to 1, now 300 to 1, top 1%, you know, 90 % of all income gains, and wages have just been flat for 30 or 40 years. What do you think practically are the most obvious solutions to trying to do what I think three quarters of Americans would like to see happen? And that is to see more of this prosperity. I don't want to say trickle down, I don't even use the term trickle down, but waterfall down to the lower middle classes.

27:46I mean, I don't think there are particularly new and creative solutions here. You are right that, you know, today a relatively small percentage of Americans belong to unions. But this is, you know, in our lifetime, a historic low. It is also true that very few people make minimum wage, certainly very few people make federal minimum wage. But what we know about raising the minimum wage is that it is the quickest way to raise the entire salary structure, right? Because when the lowest wage workers start to make more, that puts pressure on the rest of the salary scale. I think the same thing holds for labor unions.

28:28When more people belong to labor unions and labor unions deliver more generous contracts, benefit levels, that has pressures throughout the industry. And so, you know, my belief is that we should just sort of unskew the balance right now between labor and management and allow more people to join these unions. But the other two things you can do are to make it harder on companies to take profit and earnings and stash it in places that are not increased wages and earnings. So, you know, prior to 1982, right, you couldn't take your profit and dump it into stock buybacks. That was seen as an illegal manipulation of your stock price.

29:13And it's probably time for us to put some constraints on the other places that profit and capital go. And the final thing you can do is, you know, just look back at historical data. If you sort of look at sort of the broad sweep of civilization, from what I understand, the input that matters most to the separation of wealth is educational investment. And the benefit of having all this money accumulated at the very top is that it's a it's a source of taxation to provide benefit level for those at the bottom. And so if you just tax folks who are making all the gains at a slightly higher rate, use that money to update the educational guarantee so that everybody gets a college degree instead of a high school degree, that would automatically have a pretty substantial impact on wage growth and also just make the country wildly more competitive.

30:13So, I mean, that's a sort of series of policies that you could start with. And I'm sure there are more nimble, more nuanced policies to layer on top of that. So let's unpack that a bit. The whole idea of a progressive tax structure, most people agree that a progressive tax structure creates harmony. And that is people who do really well end up contributing more that we can reinvest back in the economy, innovation, social programs. But we have slowly but surely created a tax structure that is progressive up until about the 99th percent. And then it goes regressive. What do we do to restore progressive tax structure at the top?

30:50Is it elimination of capital gains tax? Is it increasing tax rates? Is it closing loopholes? Like what do we do to take my tax? I'm very transparent about this. My tax rate the last 10 years has been 17 percent. What do we do to bring that more in line with average working Americans? I think in the end, you are likely, no matter how you rejigger the tax code, I just always worry that there are means and mechanisms for smart people with armies of lawyers and accountants to be able to figure out a way to get a lower rate. And so these ideas around a just basic minimum tax level for the very affluent is probably the neatest way to solve for this problem.

31:33Yes, you can get rid of some of the most egregious tax loopholes that exist, like carried interest, but you are probably just going to need to impose a basic minimum tax level. Well, on your point about capital gains, I think it's a really important one because, you know, there's already a natural incentive to glean your earnings through investment. Since the beginning of time, investment has tended to bring you higher returns and higher income than labor, than salary. And so you are always going to have human beings incentivized to invest. And so I think it's a really important question to ask.

32:14Do we need the additional tax incentive? And especially in an era where that tax treatment is not incentivizing domestic investment, but is incentivizing investment outside of the United States, it seems particularly antiquated. And I can remember a state in which, you know, obviously a lot of people make a lot of money that gets taxed at capital gains rates. But I just think, you know, it's time for us to ask the question whether we whether we need it or not, especially at a moment where money is kind of coming back to the United States. Right. This is a moment where people are really wary more than ever before about investing in places like like China and other unstable places.

32:53There's a lot of reasons why investment is going to be here because of global geopolitical factors. I want to cover a few issues because I know we don't have much time with you. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's worrisome for those of us who hear history. I would say that when you get to my age, you have two choices. You can take an interest in World War II history or smoked meats. I mean, I'm just fascinated with World War II history. And it bothers me that people don't see more parallels between what happened in the middle of the last century, both, you know, bad, an autocrat, a fascist invading Europe and the good that the West comes together to fight tyranny.

33:33And yet we were obsessed and we were all in on World War II. And it was just so important. We just weren't going to lose that war with everyone supporting it. And I worry that it's going from the front page to page two to page five. I would love to hear your thoughts on the invasion of Ukraine and if and where you think we're getting it right and wrong. Well, and I think to your point, it's important to remember that we did learn a lesson here. I mean, of course, one of the stories of both World War I and World War II is how long it took for the United States and for the American public to become convinced that those were worthwhile endeavors and our reluctance to enter those wars ended up prolonging the conflict, costing millions of lives.

34:18And so it is in part a determination to not allow that to happen again. And it is also, I think, just absolutely true that if Putin had been given a green light into Ukraine, he would not have stopped. Would he have tested a NATO ally? Maybe, but he's got plenty of other places to go in the Balkans, in his more immediate neighborhood, in the Caucasus in Central Asia, where there's no NATO guarantee. And so I just think, you know, America has become the preeminent political and economic power in the world because of the post World War Two order, in which big countries don't expand their borders by invading small countries.

34:59And if you don't preserve that world order, then I think that is part of what ends the era of American influence in the in the world. And what a small investment we're making. I mean, compared to the world wars, compared to Vietnam, compared to Korea. Ukraine's not asking for a single drop of American blood. They're asking for a fraction of our GDP, and they will do all the fighting, and they're doing it pretty effectively. So I just think that this is a massively smart investment. But I can talk to you if you want about the reasons why this is a hard sell for the American public. It's in part due to years of foreign policy failure and military adventurism overseas that looked and was pretty unsound.

35:42That there's just a lack of faith that when we commit ourselves militarily overseas, that it's actually in the best interests of the country. We'll be right back. The pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. Crafted with our signature espresso and real pumpkin sauce. Then topped with whipped cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The PSL. Get it while it's hot or iced. Only at Starbucks. What do walking 10 ,000 steps every day, eating five servings of fruits and veggies, and getting eight hours of sleep have in common? They're all healthy choices. But do all healthier choices really pay off? With prescription plans from CVS Caremark, they do.

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36:52You're one of the few senators or elected officials in general that is talking openly about masculinity. You tweeted that, open quote, we cannot avoid the biological evolutionary differences between men and women. It's not toxic masculinity that causes men to commit 90 percent of murders, for instance. Both biology and thousands of years of culture have wired men differently. Policy has to acknowledge that. Say more about—first of all, I find that as a courageous thing to say, that whenever you just— And I don't know why it is, but I mean, I certainly got a lot of shit for it, but it sort of seems obvious to me.

37:28It strikes me, my experience is that whenever you advocate for men, there's a gag reflex and they worry that you're going down a thinly veiled rabbit hole towards misogyny. And that advocacy is a zero sum game and that people, so many people slipped in negative voices, slipped into this void of not talking about various obvious challenges that young men are facing. That I think correctly, people have a bit of a gag reflex. But first off, I just think that's just an incredibly important starting point to acknowledge that generally speaking, men and women are predisposed to different types of behaviors and receive things differently.

38:04Talk about masculinity and how you think we can develop a more modern vision of masculinity, a positive vision of masculinity, and if and what role government plays in that. Sure. And to this point about, you know, the skepticism, I mean, I got it from my teenager who read that tweet and said to me, he said, Dad, it's too soon. And I said, what do you mean? He said, we're engaged in these huge fights for women's health care and gay rights. And, you know, those are the things you need to be engaged in, not a conversation on behalf of men. And, you know, to our friend Richard Reeves's point, I just think you have to be able to do more than one thing at once.

38:49And I guess I come into this issue through the prism of violence, right? So I spent the last 10 years of my life working to try to lower the rates of violence in this country. And you just can't spend 10 years working on this issue and not understand that men are hardwired for violence. Ninety five percent of the murders in this country are committed by by men. And, you know, that is because our biology just works just works differently. And so I do think it's a really important conversation to have, especially at this moment where there's this remarkable change happening in the workforce and in the economy where this sort of seminal idea of men as the breadwinner is being erased.

39:34And for good reason, because women should be able to participate in the workforce at the same rate. But you have to kind of speak to this loss of control that American men are feeling today. Now, I think all Americans are feeling a loss of control and agency. But I think when it comes to economic control and agency, that feeling of disempowerment is even more cataclysmic for men. And so when I think about the need to make wages be living wages, when I think about the need to sort of put people back in control of their economic lives, I think that is in particularly important for men who have long believed that their masculinity, that their identity was tied up in earning enough for their family.

40:27And while I think that they will always, for the foreseeable future, feel a threat from women in the workforce, at the very least, we can make sure that if both parents are working, as they sort of work through the change that's happening, they at least have enough money to feed their family. I think that is particularly emasculating, this idea that you can work and not make enough to send your kid to college. So wage policy, earnings policy, I think is a really important piece of redelivering men the meaning that they have lost. Yeah, I mean, you've been a real leader around gun control. And, you know, when you hear about these mass shootings or you turn on CNN and you see a bunch of, you know, a SWAT team surrounding a school, you kind of, you know who the shooter is before you know.

41:20And what I also find kind of interesting, though, is that we will talk about how 90 percent of murders are committed by men, but also men are much more likely to commit violence against themselves or times more likely to kill themselves. it feels as if the frame through which we look at men is we're very comfortable talking about the crimes they commit and trying to recapture social status but we're not as empathetic to them that we don't we want to punish a 19 year old male for the sins of his father and his grandfather is there a way we can address these problems but also begin to frame masculinity as positive as opposed to a negative?

42:01I mean, you're raising two boys. What are you telling your boys about masculinity and about what it means to be a man? Yeah, I think that's a, I'm not somebody who necessarily does a lot of telling, right? I mean, I think I do more showing. I mean, I just try to model for them, you know, what a leader looks like, you know, what kindness and caring looks like. I try to show them that sort of nurturing, you know, matters for men, right? That that's something that brings tremendous value and it's not something to sort of shy away from. I try to spend much more time sort of modeling what being sort of a good person, a good human being is rather than modeling for them what being a good man is.

42:50And maybe that's the luxury of class, right? I mean, maybe my kids are going to grow up in a relatively economically secure manner, and so they may not have some of the crises of identity and meaning that others have that tends to coincide with economic powerlessness, but sort of the choice that I've made. I know. It sounds like a good parenting, Senator. Whenever I try and lecture my kids, that's a guarantee they're going to turn off and probably go the other way. What advice would you have for young fathers in terms of what you think you've gotten right, what you've gotten less right? Yeah, it's a great question.

43:28I do see this retreat that is happening. And I find myself being much more purposeful in the work that I do with my kids to put them in social settings than my parents were with me. I just don't think I had any other options. There were less mechanisms for me to withdraw. And so I think as a parent, I always sort of look back on my best moments as the moments where I wasn't telling my kids what chances, what socialization opportunities they needed to take, but that I was sort of pressing them hard to put them in those spots. And I just think that's a consequence of an environment today where it's really easy for kids to be on their own.

44:18I think the other thing that I have learned is that the amount of academic pressure on our kids today is pretty overwhelming. And, you know, my kids, for instance, I don't know if the same for you, my kids, you know, have an online grading system in which they can see their grades in real time. And that starts in sixth grade, you know, for an 11-year-old. That's so unhealthy because the measure of success for them is not, you know, the grade that they are getting in math or science. But they feel, you know, such pressure to sort of measure to those standards instead of other standards like being a good friend, being a leader, being a moral model.

45:02And so I've been at my best as a parent where when I have depressed the emphasis on academics and increased the emphasis on sort of understanding other ways to assess your your worth. I think the last thing is what I've seen is that this culture of kind of owning people you disagree with is really central to being a teenager or a boy today. And sort of just working through that with kids and, you know, understanding that there are other ways to feel good besides saying something nasty about somebody you don't like online or through a text. And you've just got to spend real purposeful time working through how in the end that is not going to bring you fulfillment.

45:55And I've gotten to observe you. You don't get to observe me because you're in such a public spotlight. But the thing that always struck me about you is you're talking about some of the most emotional issues in America, specifically gun violence and literally the havoc it has wreaked on our society and people's lives. And what I find just impressive is just how even keel you are, just how unemotional you can be. I mean, you're talking about the most emotional topics and you're not adroit, but you're just very sober and very pragmatic and very measured. And I'm just curious, when you're off camera, where do you feel the most joy and sort of awe, if you will?

46:39And also, what really pisses you off? Where are you most frustrated? Like where where do we see the peaks and the valleys in Chris Murphy when you're when you're not in Senate? I think, you know, part of what I'm good at is unplugging. I mean, this this this is the set of issues that I deal with are just, you know, are immensely emotional. I mean, this issue that I've chosen to be in the center of gun violence. Right. I mean, it's unlike any other because I spent all my days with, you know, people who've gone through the unthinkable, who've lost their kids and they count on me to deliver something for them.

47:14And so part of the way I deal with that is to just, right, is to just unplug, to, you know, go back home and, you know, watch the Red Sox, to hang out with the kids, to, you know, manage my fantasy football team. Like, I'm pretty good at doing that and sort of stopping thinking about all of the rest. But, you know, I do get on this issue of violence. I mean, I get absolutely furious at how broken this system is because I'm in the midst of an issue where 90 percent of Americans want to do something and democracy can't deliver. And that is absolutely infuriating to me. And I'm not somebody where you see that all the time.

48:03But the reason that I think I've had success on this is because I just don't give up. I don't give up. I don't care how the odds are stacked against me. I don't give up because inside, even though I may not wear it on my face, is a fury about how badly we've screwed up life for a lot of kids. And here's lastly, here's what really makes me angry is, you know, the invisibility of the kids in my neighborhood. So I live in the south end of Hartford, pretty violent neighborhood. You know, those kids in my neighborhood, school is the safe place for those kids, right? Those schools, they feel great when they're in school.

48:41It's outside of school when they can't leave their house. Their parents tell them when you come home from school, you lock the door and you don't go out until I come back home. That's what makes me furious is that is that those kids are invisible. And the only thing we see are the mass shootings. That's just unacceptable to me and part of what drives me on the issue. So if you could ask, we'll get about 200 ,000 people will listen to this podcast. If you were to ask them and say, all right, I'm working. I'm working at this. I have sacrificed for this. I'm doing everything I can. I need you to do this one thing, this one thing.

49:14The majority of Americans realize this issue is not only out of control, but has this really tragic normalization happening to it. where we're humans are very it's sort of a benefit and a flaw of humans is that we're adaptable we're getting used to climate change which is not a good thing and unfortunately we're getting less and less horrified by these these mass shootings because we're just seeing them so often what is the one thing doable thing you would want people listening to this right now that would help move the needle there listen american politics is about organized political power. And for 30 years, the gun lobby had organized political power and we didn't.

49:55We have it now. But that's only because we have these groups. Right. And there are a whole panoply of them. Moms Demand Action, March for Our Lives, Giffords. That's where the power comes. And so the one thing you can do if you care about the issue of gun violence is join an organized political group. And occasionally, not every day, maybe not even every week, but every two weeks, respond to one of their action alerts, because it is that volume level that we have created on the issue of gun violence, now higher than the volume level that comes from the gun rights groups, that has put us in a position to change laws that allowed us to pass the law last summer.

50:35So join a political organization. Don't think that advocacy is just opening up your Twitter feed and replying to somebody or liking a post. Advocacy is joining an organized political organization. Chris Murphy is the junior U.S. Senator for Connecticut, the youngest person elected to the Senate. Since the Newtown school shooting in December 2012, Senator Murphy has become the best known leader in Congress in confronting the plague of gun violence in America. Now in his second term representing Connecticut, he and his wife Kathy, an attorney, have two young sons, Owen and Ryder. He joins us from Washington, D.C.

51:13Senator Murphy, appreciate your service and keep fighting the good fight. You too, Scott. Thanks.

51:22This episode was produced by Caroline Chagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.

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