Eric hosts New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger, author of The Inheritance, Confront and Conceal, The Perfect Weapon and most recently New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion and America's Struggle to Defend the West. They discuss the underlying assumptions that led American policymakers to underestimate the rise and threat of great power competition, whether hawks or doves have been more correct in analyzing the course of events over the past 15 years, the tensions, both past and present, in the Biden-Zelensky relationship, the Biden Administration's efforts at "escalation management" during the war in Ukraine, Russian nuclear threats and how seriously to take them, the question of whether the US and China have been engaged in an action-reaction spiral of distrust or whether Chinese actions have unfolded against a backdrop of American complacency, the unprecedented challenge of deterring two nuclear peers and the Biden Administration's Iran policy which seems to be on autopilot.
I love Eric Edelman because saying Biden had a lack of strategic sympathy is the kindest way I could characterize my feelings at that moment of the podcast and Eric Edelman was worried he was too harsh.
It’s politics. You cannot demand people to help you and look at where are politics are now? Half the country wants to abandon Ukraine. He should have understood that an American president also has to think about politics (as he does ALL the time).
No, it's excessive pride on Biden's part. You saw this lack of strategic sympathy in the press conference chastising Afghans when clips of Afghans falling to their death out of military planes were running on cable news.
It wasn’t. He had no understanding on how to deal with the leader of the world. It’s NEVER demanding stuff. Literally all our allies including the Brit’s have said the same thing. He needed to knock it off and he did because he was wrong
The hawks got it dead wrong. Why? Because of what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. At some point people stopped believing that everything, everywhere was a risk to the USA. Everything is a nail to the person who only has one tool: a hammer.
Combine that with they never ever tried to pay for anything. It would be one thing if you want to go to war in Iran or Iraq or Syria. It’s another to dismiss ever increasing taxes to pay for it. At some point hawks have to admit if you want 5% of gdp for defense like we did in the 70s then the marginal tax rate will be closer to 90% than 40% but they won’t because they KNOW Americans will say no. Hawks constantly hide the ball
If you want to set the marginal tax rate to maximize revenue, 40% is about right. When you go above 40%, tax avoidance starts to eclipse productivity. Our problem is that too many people are not paying taxes at all
Maybe, maybe not. Our economy is growing massively in the 60s and 70s with very high tax rates (to be clear I don’t want higher taxes).
However, my point is if you want to go to war or pay for higher defense then you got to pay for it with taxes. Hawks problem is Americans will say no to higher taxes so they hide the ball by stuffing it into the deficit.
I agree the federal government desperately needs more revenue. But raising the top income tax rate would not achieve that goal. If you raise the top tax rate, you would just increase the burden on the those who are already paying their taxes. That would do nothing to extract revenue from tax shirkers. You need to close their loopholes and tax shelters.
The tax rates that should be raised are payroll taxes. We need more revenue to fund Social Security and Medicare, and unless we let more immigrants into the work force, that means getting more money from current workers. (Raising the income ceiling on payroll taxes might be popular, but it would only bring in half the needed revenue.)
I guess we are missing each other here. I don’t solely think that the tax rate should only be raised for top earners. Like you I think it needs to be raised everywhere and especially by eliminating loop holes. In. Done. I’m with you.
I am also in on increasing immigration. Done. Let’s do it.
My only disagreement is that this has absolutely zero chance of happening. Taxes for the voters is like a murder charge. Somehow immigration is in the same place. There is no chance that Biden or Trump or Obama or bush or Clinton (maybe he could have done it after 9/11…not saying he should have or even could have but 9/11 could have…maybe…been a forcing function).
With respect to immigration I just don’t know how we got here. I know people say just get rid of illegal immigration then we can increase legal immigration. I want to believe it but I don’t. I mean they have been negotiating on this for like 40 years and we just can’t get any compromise. I am not blaming anyone but it just doesn’t seem possible. I thought we could get there with the most recent bill because that was basically dragging the dems over the coals. They lost everywhere and we still couldn’t get over the line. I just don’t see any way to get anything pass. I know people hate giving current illegals a pass to citizenship but honestly how couldn’t we? It would be Sooooo expensive to actually do and so awful for our economy.
The only solution I can see to raising federal revenue is a new centrist political party. The Rs and Ds are cowards who try to avoid talking to voters honestly about it. That's one of many reasons we need a new party that can give voters a simple choice - slash all government services, including popular ones, or raise revenue to pay for them without exploding the deficit. Force voters to make a choice instead of letting them go on pretending they can have it both ways by "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" or "raising taxes on the rich".
I hear you but that party loses. I mean, what about the last 8 years leads you to believe our voters will make hard choices. Maybe I’m just too negative on our society but I see no way out.
I don’t agree with bridge Colby much but I feel he is at least realistic that the voters will not massively increase defense spending. I don’t like the choices he makes but he at least makes them.
I guess where I struggled with this podcast is that these guys make no hard choices. It’s be everywhere all at once and spend more even though it’s obvious, at least to me, that isn’t in the cards
I love Eric Edelman because saying Biden had a lack of strategic sympathy is the kindest way I could characterize my feelings at that moment of the podcast and Eric Edelman was worried he was too harsh.
It’s politics. You cannot demand people to help you and look at where are politics are now? Half the country wants to abandon Ukraine. He should have understood that an American president also has to think about politics (as he does ALL the time).
No, it's excessive pride on Biden's part. You saw this lack of strategic sympathy in the press conference chastising Afghans when clips of Afghans falling to their death out of military planes were running on cable news.
It wasn’t. He had no understanding on how to deal with the leader of the world. It’s NEVER demanding stuff. Literally all our allies including the Brit’s have said the same thing. He needed to knock it off and he did because he was wrong
The hawks got it dead wrong. Why? Because of what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. At some point people stopped believing that everything, everywhere was a risk to the USA. Everything is a nail to the person who only has one tool: a hammer.
Combine that with they never ever tried to pay for anything. It would be one thing if you want to go to war in Iran or Iraq or Syria. It’s another to dismiss ever increasing taxes to pay for it. At some point hawks have to admit if you want 5% of gdp for defense like we did in the 70s then the marginal tax rate will be closer to 90% than 40% but they won’t because they KNOW Americans will say no. Hawks constantly hide the ball
If you want to set the marginal tax rate to maximize revenue, 40% is about right. When you go above 40%, tax avoidance starts to eclipse productivity. Our problem is that too many people are not paying taxes at all
Maybe, maybe not. Our economy is growing massively in the 60s and 70s with very high tax rates (to be clear I don’t want higher taxes).
However, my point is if you want to go to war or pay for higher defense then you got to pay for it with taxes. Hawks problem is Americans will say no to higher taxes so they hide the ball by stuffing it into the deficit.
I agree the federal government desperately needs more revenue. But raising the top income tax rate would not achieve that goal. If you raise the top tax rate, you would just increase the burden on the those who are already paying their taxes. That would do nothing to extract revenue from tax shirkers. You need to close their loopholes and tax shelters.
The tax rates that should be raised are payroll taxes. We need more revenue to fund Social Security and Medicare, and unless we let more immigrants into the work force, that means getting more money from current workers. (Raising the income ceiling on payroll taxes might be popular, but it would only bring in half the needed revenue.)
I guess we are missing each other here. I don’t solely think that the tax rate should only be raised for top earners. Like you I think it needs to be raised everywhere and especially by eliminating loop holes. In. Done. I’m with you.
I am also in on increasing immigration. Done. Let’s do it.
My only disagreement is that this has absolutely zero chance of happening. Taxes for the voters is like a murder charge. Somehow immigration is in the same place. There is no chance that Biden or Trump or Obama or bush or Clinton (maybe he could have done it after 9/11…not saying he should have or even could have but 9/11 could have…maybe…been a forcing function).
With respect to immigration I just don’t know how we got here. I know people say just get rid of illegal immigration then we can increase legal immigration. I want to believe it but I don’t. I mean they have been negotiating on this for like 40 years and we just can’t get any compromise. I am not blaming anyone but it just doesn’t seem possible. I thought we could get there with the most recent bill because that was basically dragging the dems over the coals. They lost everywhere and we still couldn’t get over the line. I just don’t see any way to get anything pass. I know people hate giving current illegals a pass to citizenship but honestly how couldn’t we? It would be Sooooo expensive to actually do and so awful for our economy.
Sorry to be depressing
The only solution I can see to raising federal revenue is a new centrist political party. The Rs and Ds are cowards who try to avoid talking to voters honestly about it. That's one of many reasons we need a new party that can give voters a simple choice - slash all government services, including popular ones, or raise revenue to pay for them without exploding the deficit. Force voters to make a choice instead of letting them go on pretending they can have it both ways by "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" or "raising taxes on the rich".
I hear you but that party loses. I mean, what about the last 8 years leads you to believe our voters will make hard choices. Maybe I’m just too negative on our society but I see no way out.
I don’t agree with bridge Colby much but I feel he is at least realistic that the voters will not massively increase defense spending. I don’t like the choices he makes but he at least makes them.
I guess where I struggled with this podcast is that these guys make no hard choices. It’s be everywhere all at once and spend more even though it’s obvious, at least to me, that isn’t in the cards