The American Compass Podcast

America's "college for all" approach has failed students and eroded the workforce needed for reindustrialization and other national priorities.

Chris Griswold, American Compass policy director, joins the podcast to present a different vision, focused on making vocational and trade-based education a core component for high-school graduation. He and Oren discuss what students lose when they aren't taught physical skills, the benefits and political salience of "vocational education for all," and why such a program is critical for American renewal.

Further reading:

• "Vocational Education for All," American Compass, by Chris Griswold

Without a ready workforce, the project of rebuilding American industry is dead in the water.

Ashwin Lalendran and Brent Parton, cofounders of IndustriousAF, join Oren on the podcast to discuss the workforce challenge of reindustrialization. Lalendran, who is based in San Francisco but retains a midwestern mindset on how capital and manufacturing should operate, and Parton, a D.C.-based former assistant secretary of labor, discuss the challenges and opportunities of taking big manufacturing projects from the promise stage to the production stage.

Further reading:

“The Gen Z Blue-Collar Jobs Boom,” Skylar Adleta, Commonplace

“An Industrious Workforce for the AI Decade,” Ashwin Lalendran & Brent Parton, American Compass

Election Day is only weeks away, and as we’ve come to expect in recent years, it has inevitably brought with it allegations from both parties that the other side is cheating.

Ben Ginsberg, Hoover Institution visiting fellow and former national counsel to the Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns, joins Oren to unpack what he calls the “fraud-suppression industrial complex,” where both parties tell their voters that the other side is trying to steal the election. He and Oren talk through why this is so damaging to faith in our elections, and undercuts turn out across the political spectrum. Finally, they discuss ways to rebuild confidence in our election system.

Further reading:

• “Confidence, Not Faith, in the Ballot Box,“ Trey Trainor, Commonplace
• “Calling Elections Rigged Is Bad Politics and Worse Civics,” Alex Tarascio and David Kochel, Commonplace

Financial firms exist to raise capital and find ways to deploy it productively. But are they still doing that today? Or merely profiting from the appearance of doing so?

Oren joined William Gruver, a former Goldman Sachs COO and professor emeritus at Bucknell University for an Open Discourse Coalition program debating the question “Is the financial industry broken?” They discuss how to evaluate the merits of the industry, the role of rent-seeking, and the broader trend toward destructive financialization. Finally, they turn to the cultural problem of a profession that pulls in so many bright and promising young people to do work that’s unproductive and ethically questionable.

Further reading:

• “The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way.“ Oren Cass, New York Times.

American reindustrialization requires hundreds of thousands of skilled tradesmen, each of whom requires a wide array of high-quality tools to get the job done.

Nicholas Pinchuk, CEO of Snap-on, joins Oren on the podcast to give a ground-level view on America's ascendant manufacturing industry and the professional tools that make it possible. They discuss the damage done by industry's decision to offshore manufacturing jobs earlier in the century, both to the U.S. and to the working-class professionals employed in the trades, and the forces bringing industry back to American shores.

Pinchuk explains why high-quality, American-made industrial tools are vital to our industrial turnaround, and what a better version of technical education for those relying on them could look like. Finally, he and Oren discuss what AI portends for domestic manufacturing, from the benefits of more and higher-tech blue-collar jobs to concerns about the grassroots economy more broadly.

How did American life go off the rails?

MIT professor and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu joins Oren on the podcast to talk about the erosion in what he calls “working-class liberalism” and the consequences of its decline. He makes the case that America’s liberal democracy is most threatened not by external forces seeking to replace it but from a misunderstanding of liberalism as a prescriptive rule book rather than a guiding philosophy. He and Oren discuss how this thinking infected immigration policy in the Western world and why Acemoglu sees the error as a “kiss of death” for working-class communities before closing with ways to repair some of the damage done in liberal democracy’s descent.

Further reading:

• What Happened to Liberal Democracy? by Daron Acemoglu.

For decades, the Right has written off issues related to climate and the environment. But as the Left’s climate alarmism increasingly falls on deaf ears, a new generation of conservatives is charting a course for a more productive approach to protecting our shared natural resources.

Chris Barnard, president of the American Conservation Coalition, and Taylor Myers, attorney at Boyden Gray, join Oren and Chris to discuss their recent pieces for Commonplace‘s climate issue. They talk through why environmental issues are so salient, particularly to a younger generation, and why efforts to craft climate change policy absent a focus on human flourishing have caused so many people to tune the topic out. Finally, they discuss why environmental policy needs to also consider America’s growing energy demands, and the tradeoffs inherent in a better approach.

Further reading:

• “Reclaiming Environmental Policy from the Left,” Chris Barnard, Commonplace
• “Against Climate Piety,” Taylor Myers, Commonplace
• “What Does the Science of Climate Change Tell Us?,” Joseph Majkut, Commonplace

Often lost in the broader conversation around solar power is how the technology can support American reindustrialization.

Mark Widmar, CEO of First Solar, joins Oren on the podcast to explain solar's fit both into an all-of-the-above energy strategy and as a bulwark of U.S. manufacturing renewal. They discuss why solar power is such an American industrial success story, particularly against unfair competition from China, and what AI and automation could portend for the industry. Finally, they talk through how so much of conservative resistance to solar power isn't about the technology itself, and why First Solar's Made in America strategy sets it apart both in terms of energy output and in supporting local communities.

The youngest generation of Americans are increasingly without the kind of formation that shapes children into adults and allows them to develop the muscles of good citizenry, as the institutions and systems that once helped their elders fall short today. This not only sets young people up for failure, but erodes social cohesion and a democratic politics.

Yuval Levin joins Oren and Chris to try to define what a better path of formation and true citizenship could look like. They discuss how replacing citizenship with consumerism has impoverished not just conservatism but the country more broadly. and wrestle with the temptations both toward nostalgia for older generations and nihilism for the younger ones, Finally, they talk through what this all means in the context of politics, and what today's deeply unpopular Democratic and Republican Parties could learn about renewing formative institutions from their predecessors in the late nineteenth century.

Why have so many economists gotten it so wrong about the impact of Trump's economic policies, from trade to immigration and beyond?

Stephen Miran, former chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisors, joins Oren on the podcast to unpack the president's economic realignment. The two discuss the change in thinking Trump has delivered and why economists can neither understand its value nor accurately predict what its implications will look like. Finally, they discuss tariffs, and why the revenues they raise are so vital for paying for what America needs today.