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Ep 4 - Patrick T Brown, Ethics and Public Policy Center - Family policy
66 Plays3 months ago
On this week's episode of the Sphere Podcast, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry talks to Patrick T Brown, Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, about pro-family policy, natalism, and what that could look like in the new Trump Administration.
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Transcript
Introduction and Humor
00:00:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the third an episode of the Sphere podcast. We are still doing this with very low production values, so you will have to excuse us for noises, things crashing. um We recorded another episode where I was ah surprised by my dog, so, you know, anything might happen. This is this is basically the Titanic.
00:00:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah And but today I'm joined by the way, you know, this is not the third episode. It's actually the fourth episode ah So you as I was saying very low production
Guest Introduction: Patrick T. Brown
00:00:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
values. This is this is basically shot in a cave in Romania So anyway this week I have with me the highly intelligent and astute ah Patrick T. Brown who works for my former employer ah the ethics and public policy center ah where he focuses on the crucial topic of family policy. ah But why don't you introduce yourself in a sort of more more full way?
00:01:09
Patrick T. Brown
Oh, well well, thank you. And yes, I'm glad we're, we're keeping with the, uh, the low production value. We don't want to get anybody's expectations too high in terms of what the, uh, what the content will, will
Patrick's Interest in Family Policy
00:01:20
Patrick T. Brown
be like here. But, uh, no, I'm Patrick Brown, uh, as you mentioned with the PPC now since, uh, 2021, before that I was on the Hill and, uh, doing other various things about town. Uh, I live in Columbia, South Carolina, uh, and basically love to.
00:01:37
Patrick T. Brown
talk and think and work on family policy, because if you you approach it from the right angle, anything can be family policy. So, you know, it touches on so many questions about, you know, fertility, marriage, housing, healthcare, care all that kind of stuff can can either contribute towards or, you know, militate against a more pro-family America. And so that's what I'm trying to work on these days.
00:02:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So I did a lot of homework and a lot of research for ah for this interview. And so I wrote down a lot of prep. And so I have two lines. One says, why family policy? And then the next one says, what family policy?
00:02:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So let's start with the first one. ah A lot of people who were listening to us may disagree with the very note or may be skeptical with the very notion that America should have a family policy. They would say, you know,
00:02:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah We have a constitutional system based on limited government, based on the rights of the individual. If people want to get married, not get married, that's fine. If people want to have children, not have children, that's fine.
Government's Role in Family Matters
00:02:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah And it's not the government's job to try to have a pro or anti-family policy. ah So what would you say to these people?
00:03:01
Patrick T. Brown
Well, you're always going to have some kind of approach to these questions. And the question is whether you do that deliberately or by accident, right? I mean, you can design a tax code like the one that we have now where we've essentially addressed most of the marriage penalties for upper income earners or for for families with big differences in income between, ah you know, one spouse and the other. But if you're two low income individuals getting married, you do face as sometimes you massive marginal tax rates, negative marginal tax rates. If you're getting married and you're thinking, you know what's this going to do to our finances, you can be losing you know safety net benefits, your taxes could go up
Critique of Tax Code and Marriage
00:03:37
Patrick T. Brown
and that sort of thing. So we're indirectly
00:03:40
Patrick T. Brown
subsidizing cohabitation rather than marriage, which I think you know that the the research is pretty much in at this point, that that's that's better for the kids that are being raised in that family and also for the adults in that relationship as well. So yeah it's it's impossible, I think, to say, well, we're just going to be totally neutral when it comes to questions that lie at the heart of a life well-lived, right? What sort of but sort of family structure is best and should we should we even be you know encouraging family over just sort of a life of atomized individualism. And so we can be more or less aggressive
Policy Aggression Spectrum
00:04:16
Patrick T. Brown
on that, right? And so that's where, you know, especially on the right, there is people who are willing to say, yeah, sign me up, you know, full on Orban style, you know, post liberal fairly policy in a sense, you know, we really want to have a prescriptive role about what what policymaking should be advancing. And then some who would say, OK, I'm only on board as far as getting rid of the bad stuff.
00:04:38
Patrick T. Brown
And then beyond that, we'll let 1,000 flowers bloom. you know I try not to be terribly doctrinaire on these questions because I don't think it's it's especially interesting to say, well, you know the child tax credit, for example, I'm in favor that only if it's if it's tax cuts, but as soon as you start providing a refundable value to families that don't make a lot of money, well, that becomes welfare. And therefore, yeah that to me, it's just an accounting exercise. you know Are we actually in favor of working-class families who may not be making $50,000, $40,000 a year or not. um that That, to me, is interesting to, like, what is the principled, you know, hierarchy and view about what a totally neutral policy should be.
00:05:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay, fair enough. ah Which brings us to the next question, wet family policy. Okay, you have 55 minutes.
Child Tax Credit Proposals
00:05:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I'm going to go get a drink.
00:05:32
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:05:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah So joking joking aside, to sort of narrow the scope.
00:05:36
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:05:39
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah So one issue that i want ah I think we should start with is the child tax credit because there's going to be a big tax fight next year.
00:05:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah It's been, you know, both campaigns had child tax credit proposals. ah So some things something's likely to happen there.
00:06:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And the the issue with the child tax credit, God help me, I've been involved in these discussions since the 2010s,
00:06:15
Patrick T. Brown
yeah
00:06:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
maybe. um
00:06:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah There's a lot of there's a lot of devil ah of devils in the details. JD Vance came out with a proposal during the campaign, which was you know endorsed by Donald Trump in a sort of, oh yeah, ah kind of way.
00:06:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And you know we're dealing with a huge you know fiscal problems, and all sorts of tax promises have been made.
00:06:38
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, yeah.
00:06:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
so you know
00:06:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
A, again, the why and the what. So A, why is a child tax credit a good idea? And B, how should it be structured? And C, what's the most realistic good way it should be structured?
00:07:00
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, man, no you know, an hour is probably not enough time.
00:07:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yes that's Yes, that's still that's still a lot.
00:07:05
Patrick T. Brown
So, you know, I think it's important to, you know, start with just the basic, right? So, child tax credit, the way it works currently, you know, at the end of the year, you file your your taxes.
00:07:17
Patrick T. Brown
If you have a positive federal income tax liability, you can you can yeah subtract $2,000 per child from that, right?
00:07:26
Patrick T. Brown
and so that used to be $1,000 in 2017. Trump signed his his tax cuts and jobs act. That doubled it to $2,000. That's scheduled to revert back to $1,000 if Congress doesn't do anything next year.
00:07:39
Patrick T. Brown
I think that's pretty unlikely. I think but politicians don't want to raise taxes on millions of American parents, so they'll do something. The question is what? And then you get into this, you know, as I sort of alluded to of the previous question, this question of like, okay, well, what if a family has a single, you know, earner who's only making 35 or $40,000 a year with two or three kids, they're not going to have much of any federal tax liability at all. Do we just say, sucks for you? Do we give them the full value of that as ah as a check? Or do we give them some
00:08:10
Patrick T. Brown
portion of that as a check right now, you can get up to I think $1,600 of that as a per child as ah as a refundable check on on top of your tax returns. So there's been various proposals to think about that because if you're, you know the the canonical sort of you know Republican, you back when you know you and the reformer cons were talking about this in the early 2010s, the sort of classic you know response from a lot of you know, sort of mainstream Republican types was like, Oh, sure.
00:08:39
Patrick T. Brown
Well, we love tax cuts and we love parents. So why don't we just give parents a tax cut? I'm i'm on board with that. yeah the Where the you know rubber hits the road is again, especially as the parties are realigning and as Republicans are becoming the party of, you know, middle income, lower working class, you know, Hispanic,
00:08:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yep.
00:08:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Multiracial working class coalition.
00:08:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Say it three times every time you get out of bed.
00:08:59
Patrick T. Brown
Exactly, stay with me, right?
00:09:02
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, um yeah they they don't there they're not benefiting from increasing the value of the tax cut be because they're not making that much, right?
00:09:07
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
No.
00:09:09
Patrick T. Brown
If you're making, again, the low immediate income and you have two kids, it's very easy not to be ah benefiting from the full value of that. And so how you design that and then you get into these vitals, again, you've you the scars of all these white papers about you know, labor force participation and single parent and all that kind of stuff, think it gets it can get pretty wonky, but oh.
00:09:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I've seen white papers you people wouldn't believe.
00:09:36
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, exactly. i And they keep coming. So, but directionally, and you know.
00:09:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
so the The basic point is, um and the way we we used to put it is that Republicans are victims of their own success, right? Because half of the people in America are not paying income tax because Republicans have been so good at cutting taxes.
00:09:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um and And so the basic the basic notion is you know if you're giving somebody a tax, if you're giving individuals or you know filing entities, families, ah cuts on their income tax, it's not going to affect most or a huge thing.
00:10:16
Patrick T. Brown
the 47% trigger warning for those who remember 2012.
00:10:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:10:25
Patrick T. Brown
But yeah.
00:10:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and And also given the fact that we have this realignment, a lot of these people are people who either vote for us or would like to vote for us if they got something out of it. um So yeah, so that's so that's the that's the basic framing. And yeah, you're right, like a lot of mainstream Republicans um I don't know if the word is mainstream now or establishment or whatever.
00:10:56
Patrick T. Brown
Right. Traditional Reagan.
00:10:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah Blanche had the idea that somebody would be getting a check from the federal government because all of a sudden it's no longer a tax cut, it's welfare. But as you point out, it's sort of it's more of an accounting difference in both cases.
00:11:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
you know
00:11:13
Patrick T. Brown
Right. and And this is where I
00:11:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's money coming out of the treasury and going to people.
00:11:20
Patrick T. Brown
Right, and this is where, you know, to to put a fine point on it though, like where the left goes wrong on this is to say, well, then let's just get rid of all this fiction of, you know, working and not working all this good stuff and just make it universal like we did for six months under the Biden administration. And what we saw both in polling, which suggested that the universal CTC was not as popular as the Biden administration,
00:11:47
Patrick T. Brown
projected it would be. And also in some focus groups that I you know did with with our friend, Brad Wilcox and and others, um where we pulled together working class parents and said, what do you think of this new policy?
00:11:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Thank you.
00:12:01
Patrick T. Brown
And I was really you know naively maybe surprised by how many of them said, Look, it just feels like people are going to game the system, that they're getting something for nothing, that they don't have skin in the game. I'm out here busting my butt to you know try to make ends meet. And the proverbial neighbor down the street who's not working is going to be getting this money the same way I am. That doesn't feel right to me. And so it's important. you know We're talking about the working
Tax Benefits and Work Participation
00:12:27
Patrick T. Brown
class. right We want to have some connection to work, whether that's a phase in or some threshold that at which you have to meet $10,000 worth of earnings or whatever that is.
00:12:36
Patrick T. Brown
tying it to participation in the labor force makes total sense. And again, this is a long stated debate on the right, but what's important to stress is once you hit that, or once you have that skin in the game, recognizing that just increasing the amount that you can deduct from your taxes isn't actually benefiting this this population.
00:12:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:12:54
Patrick T. Brown
yeah Again, lots of minority parents, lots of, you know, lowering from blue collar parents that at least lip service Republicans say they're very interested in catering to.
00:12:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:13:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, I mean, this so this is – and I've had this conversation many times with people who are you know even more on the sort of quote-unquote integralist or sort of more Catholic side of the aisle – well, not the aisle, the whatever.
00:13:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:13:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
this is This is a huge deal, and in a sense it's good for us that Biden ran the experiment. like pe you know people and in an understandable way, very, very, are very hostile to the idea of people getting benefits in exchange for quote unquote, nothing.
00:13:42
Patrick T. Brown
Thank you.
00:13:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And you can make a philosophical point about how, you know, having babies is a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, fair enough. But ordinary citizens, and again, if we want to be the party of the working class, we have to actually listen to our voters.
00:13:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um ah Don't see it that way, and it's very clear from Europe, so ah the UK especially um has a universal child benefit. And for decades, you had – basically, it was the bread and butter of the sun, which is the ah populist working-class newspaper.
00:14:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Basically, every week you have this story about you know the woman with eight kids making 150 grand a year and not working. And like this would drive working people insane.
00:14:32
Patrick T. Brown
Right.
00:14:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And the the the solution in the UK, which is just absolutely the worst, is that child you you only get child benefits for the first two children.
00:14:42
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:14:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Which is just the the most terrible policy ever.
00:14:47
Patrick T. Brown
In some states in the US adopted similar, you know this was the era of the of the welfare queen and in the 80s, and they opted for similar what's called family caps in their state welfare policies, where if you had another child, you would be you know barred from from you know accessing you know additional public benefits.
00:14:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yep. Yep.
00:15:07
Patrick T. Brown
You were capped at at the, bound so you know it was the idea that we don't want people to just pump out babies to collect the welfare check. you know Whether or not that was true in the 80s, I think it tends to be pretty overblown.
00:15:20
Patrick T. Brown
But the thing I would stress is, you know as we you know zoom out from the question of tax policy, we all know what birth rates are doing all across the globe.
00:15:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:15:30
Patrick T. Brown
And especially here in the US, the biggest driver of our declining birth rate since 2007 has been a decrease in out of one lot births. marital fertility is that we remained fairly steady since then.
00:15:41
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay.
00:15:44
Patrick T. Brown
And it's really been at a 20% decline in births to single women that has been the biggest driver. And so in some respects, it's a monkey's paw. victory for conservatives, right?
00:15:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:15:54
Patrick T. Brown
We sort of wish only single parenthood would decline and we got it, but we, but those women didn't end up getting married and having kids. they're just not having
00:16:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. We want you to get married and have kids.
00:16:02
Patrick T. Brown
hello
00:16:03
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
We don't want you to like abort your unplanned pregnancy.
00:16:07
Patrick T. Brown
Right, right. So, you know, all that is to say that the sort of socio economic landscape of, well, you don't want to pay people to have babies of the 70s and the overpopulation concerns, right?
00:16:19
Patrick T. Brown
Those are just out the window, my opinion, I think these, the the the the the more substantive reason, again, that the sort of political sense of like, we got to have, you know, some sense of skin in the game, and also that the long term
00:16:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:16:31
Patrick T. Brown
you know, you want to have, you know, we want to be incentivizing people to do the right thing. And that's, you know, how have, you know, a stable job participating in society, you know, that we know the benefits to kids are are much higher if they're, you know, if they have a parent in the in the workforce.
00:16:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, right.
00:16:45
Patrick T. Brown
So I'm, you know, I don't think we want to do socialism light over here.
00:16:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right, exactly.
00:16:49
Patrick T. Brown
But, you know, something to recognize that people who don't have tax liability aren't going to bet it from from a tax cut, I think has to be on the table for Republicans in 2025.
00:16:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:17:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, so I mean, they just just just to finish on this point, um I think the way to look at it is that it's bad for children to grow up in a household where nobody is working.
00:17:12
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:17:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Like that's not a good, ah but especially-income family where nobody's working, that's just not a good um scene. And so in that sense, it's just perfectly, um um and Again, like the politics are just brutal. and so i you know it Two things for Republicans to understand. Number one, refundability is okay because that's how we reach the voters that we like and want. and Number two, work requirements, very important.
00:17:43
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:17:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um ah okay so let's start and Then we'll we'll talk about something other than child tax credit. ah um Let's talk
00:17:51
Patrick T. Brown
No, no, I love the child tax credit.
00:17:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Let's do a full hour on the child tax credit.
00:17:59
Patrick T. Brown
Anytime.
00:17:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um Let's talk amount. so i know you're not a i I don't think you're a budget guy particularly, ah but do you have any thoughts on you know how much, quote unquote, we can afford?
00:18:17
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, it's it's the short answer is I don't think anybody really knows. And you and even if you talk to Republicans on Capitol Hill, they all sort of play games with the baseline, right?
00:18:30
Patrick T. Brown
you know you know ah Congress does these projections and they say, well, yes, the Trump tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, but what if we just pretended that they weren't? Isn't this sort of $4 trillion of free money we can play with?
00:18:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:18:44
Patrick T. Brown
which you wouldn't do if you were sincerely concerned about you know our nation's fiscal health, which I think we should be. right I wrote a piece for National Review 2022, I think, saying, look, it's all well and good to talk about family policy.
00:18:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
right
00:18:58
Patrick T. Brown
And again, that's my bread and butter. But a little bit of old time supply sideism has to be part of the conversation, both in terms of you know housing, health care, you know education, some of these things which need sort of supply side forces, but also just You know, you you economic growth is not sufficient, as we can talk about, right, in addressing family information, but it is necessary.
00:19:23
Patrick T. Brown
People aren't going to want to form families where they feel like they can't afford it, as we've seen over the last and couple of years of runaway inflation, what that does.
00:19:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes. yes
00:19:32
Patrick T. Brown
and in And so boosting the economic capacity of the economy through supply-side reforms, yeah, it sounds a little bit like you know, the 1980s are here again, but it's important. And it's, it's, you know, you know you can't, again, the Biden administration showed us that you can't spend your way out of ah of a cost of living in crisis, you need to be targeting areas of the economy. So, you know,
00:19:57
Patrick T. Brown
tax policy is all well and good, but I don't think it's sufficient. And so something like child tax credit, I think there's, I think, you know, I've ah i played around with the budget calculators and, you know, I think you can do some, some, you know,
00:20:11
Patrick T. Brown
We increased it to 2,000 per child in 2017. If you just index that for inflation, because it's been so high, just accounting for that since 2017, you'd have to raise it to 2,500.
00:20:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:20:22
Patrick T. Brown
I'd i love to see it go higher, but I i think that's where 2,500, maybe 3,000 per child is going to be where a lot of congressional Republicans come in at, because that's that's that's doable budget
Budget and Child Tax Credit Prioritization
00:20:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:20:34
Patrick T. Brown
wise and expensive, but compared to all the other things that they want to do, you know, no tax on tips and no tax on this and that and corporate expensing and all that kind of stuff.
00:20:44
Patrick T. Brown
They're going to have to decide what they actually prioritize. and And I'm really hoping that child tax credit, you know, and makes it onto that shortlist. But again, it's it's not the, it's not the be all and end all of appropriately policy.
00:20:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, so well, perfect segue. Thank you very much. So what, you know, pick a topic, like what do you think is, what would you say is the most important if it's not the child tax credit?
00:21:13
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, I'll pick on one that i I know you and I have tweeted about over the years, or exed about over the years. um You know, i I'm still, you know, I know UMBism gets a bad rap, and some of its proponents are are pretty obnoxious.
00:21:27
Patrick T. Brown
And some of the most high profile.
00:21:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
See, that's, that's, that's what I wrote. I wrote yimby on my, uh, yeah, you can probably assume that they're extremely online
00:21:30
Patrick T. Brown
Yes, there you go. ah Yes, in my backyard, for for those who who aren't online, although I imagine a lot of your podcast guest listeners are very online.
Housing Affordability and Family Formation
00:21:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and, and, and extremely nerdy.
00:21:42
Patrick T. Brown
yeah So, you know, and and, you know, we can all imagine the sort of, you know, stereotypical San Francisco liberal, you know, you can be as type stuff. And, you know, it's not necessarily pro-family per se. However, I think if you're concerned about family formation, which I i think we should be as people on the right, and it's impossible to look at that and not see the element of housing affordability on there.
00:22:13
Patrick T. Brown
And yeah we can think about you know when maybe first time home buyer credits or giving people property tax reductions for having kids you know that that can make some you know differences around the margins and you know you can kind of play around with that if you want to but ultimately the only way you're gonna be you know able to bring the cost of housing down so that people just starting out can afford that kind of canonical starter home is, you know I hate this phrase that's sweeping the the internet, but abundance, right the sort of housing you know approach that yeah says, yes, in my backyard and and you know duplexes and also you know greenfield development and environmental laws and all that kind of stuff, which hamstring the growth of of new housing. But I really think that
00:22:58
Patrick T. Brown
you know when you If you want people to be able to afford to start a family in their 20s, as opposed to in their their you know early mid 30s, which is a huge driver of of declining fertility, you have to make it possible for them to be able to to start a life together.
00:23:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:23:14
Patrick T. Brown
And that and you know housing is the biggest ticket expense on that.
00:23:19
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. So all right. So let's have a debate.
00:23:22
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:23:22
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and Sort of. I mean, no. ah But I am going to play devil's advocate. um there's There's a couple things. so
00:23:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
it's It's a spectrum, right? it's you know ah Especially when you talk about housing, it's like how much do you allow, et cetera. It's not you know full libertarianism versus zero new housing.
00:23:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um I do like to make a contrarian case for NIMBY because every nerd in our world is basically a YIMBY.
00:24:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um
00:24:06
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
and it's totally not a coin And it's totally a coincidence that they happen to be in their 20s and you know ah can't afford a house. um But ah basically people, ordinary people, middle and upper middle-class people, lawyers, doctors, engineers, you know accountants, made
00:24:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
You know, bought houses and made financial sacrifices, bought houses for extra money, but more expensive houses, specifically because they wanted to live for decades in a kind of, in a specific community that has a specific character.
00:24:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah I think that's legitimate. I think you know they they paid extra for a kind of assurance that 20 years from now, their neighborhood is going to be sort of the same way as when they bought it.
00:25:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i i don't I don't see that as illegitimate. I don't see that as sort of like naked greed. And and more to the point, because this is so personal, yeah you know they're they're going to they're they're going to be politically very organized.
00:25:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah you know Hell hath no fury, like an upper middle class person whose real estate values are are threatened.
00:25:36
Patrick T. Brown
Right.
00:25:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like Obviously, there's an there's an element of greed, but so is there but it's not just that. It's not just that. It's a very human um aspiration and one which is understandable and one which is, I think, not a legitimate. And so in this sense, you know I kind of want to stand up for the the most underprivileged faction in American society, which is people who are sitting on a bunch of unearned housing wealth.
00:26:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah But I mean, I i i i don't know, i i just I just like pointing this out also because you know it's the difference between, it's like it's like the thing about ah working class people being pissed off at people who get benefits for having kids.
00:26:09
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, it's right.
00:26:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
It's how normal people think and people like us need to like be able to put ourselves in the shoes of normal people.
00:26:27
Patrick T. Brown
Okay.
00:26:35
Patrick T. Brown
No, it you're you're totally right. In the sense that like it is a natural instinct. it's it's you know i think I think it's the Dartmouth economist, Bill Fischl, who dubbed this the home voter hypothesis, right who said basically like you know people treat this as a form of almost insurance.
00:26:51
Patrick T. Brown
right That like you make this huge purchase, the biggest purchase most of us will ever make in our lifetime.
00:26:52
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:26:57
Patrick T. Brown
And when you're getting ready to sell it, you want to make sure you're not going to take a huge hit. right This is a source of retirement income in a sense, you're your sort of nest egg. if you are you know If you buy this house in 1999 and in 2014, some guy comes along, it's like, I'm going to make an apartment building, public housing or something next door.
00:27:21
Patrick T. Brown
like Yeah, you know it's it's totally natural to feel this sense of like, well, I thought it was you know sort of investing and now you're you're going to take that away.
00:27:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay.
00:27:30
Patrick T. Brown
On the other hand, I think so i think i think the sort of classic you know libertarian case is like, well, you didn't buy the neighborhood, right? You bought your house, you bought your property, and you don't have a... you know I think that's kind of a cold-hearted libertarian answer, so I don't i don't i wouldn't counsel that ah to my more you know, red-blooded, yimby brethren to to lean on that too heavily. Instead, I would say, I think we're getting better. And by we, I mean, again, the sort of side that's inclined towards, you know, liberalizing housing regulations.
00:28:06
Patrick T. Brown
acknowledging that, you know, so for a while it was like, well, you know, if you're if you're NIMBY, you're just racist, right? You don't want those people living next to you or, or you know, you're classist or whatever. I think people are recognizing, look, you know, you can do density and you can expand housing stock in a way that that can be, you know, again, duplex, triplex, townhouse, that kind of thing, can be have a very modest footprint where it looks the same as a single family home or very similar.
00:28:31
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:28:32
Patrick T. Brown
It's not, you know, six-story building in a suburban environment, but, you know, smaller lot sizes, grandma units, all that kind of stuff, where you're just increasing the options that are available.
00:28:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:28:47
Patrick T. Brown
And that's the other thing, I think, sometimes people make the mistake where they go, well, we need, yeah, you're right, we need to build, and we need to build a bunch of single-family homes in the suburbs and keep sprawling out, you know, ah ah who's the guy from California?
00:28:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
but
00:29:01
Patrick T. Brown
yeah Well, it doesn't matter. i'm the names, but like the sort of idea, we just keep need to continue to sprawl out. And it's like, you know, there's some people who definitely want that. But if you are building more studio apartments and small houses and starter homes and that sort of thing, you're also freeing up the existing housing stock.
Impact of Starter Homes on Housing Stock
00:29:19
Patrick T. Brown
right? Where right now, if you live in, you know, the Bay Area or Seattle or something, you might have a single family home where two or three, you know, tech bros can share the house and go in and and you're out competing a family.
00:29:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:29:31
Patrick T. Brown
If you build more, you know, smaller apartments where where they can live elsewhere, free up some of that space. I think you'd also, you know, the sort of ripple effect is some sometimes underrated too.
00:29:41
Patrick T. Brown
So, you know, I'm definitely not a let's get rid of every zoning everywhere kind of thing But I think it's important to remember what it was initially for, which was nuisances and ah you know sort of undesirable factories and that sort of thing.
00:29:57
Patrick T. Brown
I think re-understanding what zoning is, saying, okay, let's keep the thing. and we don't Nobody wants to live next to a glue factory. right Let's keep those out of town.
00:30:08
Patrick T. Brown
But in our you know suburban areas, having more diversity and housing styles and housing stock, I think, has to be part of the problem. Because I think the mistake, again, that natural inclination of, well, I want to preserve what I have, again, I get it. On the other hand, if you keep it in stasis, it's only going to become less, you're you're not able to build, your your your kids are not going to have that same opportunity, right? Because the the the price is only going to go up. And so if you want to be possible for your kids to have grandkids or whatever that is, um you have to be willing to say, well, we got to have more housing somewhere. Maybe it's not quite in my backyard, but down the street is fun.
00:30:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay, so round two. ah So I've made the sort of general anti-YIMBY case. Now I'm going to make the anti-YIMBY case specifically as relates to family policy. because So the pro-YIMBY case for family policy is very simple. You know, if you can't afford to buy a house, you can't afford to have a family. YIMBY means lower prices, more people can have ah can buy houses, therefore they can have families, have kids. Okay.
00:31:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
One of the ah strongest negative correlates with fertility is square footage of living of living space. and so you know There's this notion, oh you know we're we're all goingnna you know this is this is not so much yimby as such, it's more like walkability and and all that stuff.
00:31:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah like
00:31:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
You know, you in real life, average people who are not Dutch, shut up about the Dutch. and I'm not saying you, I'm just ranting against the internet right now.
00:31:55
Patrick T. Brown
you yeah get together yeah
00:31:57
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
But shut up about the Dutch.
00:31:59
Patrick T. Brown
what
00:31:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
None Dutch people will not put like three key three kids on a bicycle and and bike around. um hat You know, one of the great things about America is like those really big houses with yards and stuff.
00:32:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And actually,
00:32:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um The proposition that people will have more kids if they have, you know, If they get like an apartment that's more affordable earlier versus a house that's bigger, that they may not be able to afford right away, but that they think of as, oh, this is a house where I want to live and have a family.
00:32:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I don't think i don't think it's it's as straightforward as it looks. I don't know how you you would be able to measure that if you would be able to measure that. But anyway, I've done my rant.
00:32:55
Patrick T. Brown
No, that's fine.
00:32:55
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Explain why I'm wrong.
00:32:57
Patrick T. Brown
I'm here for the anti-urbanist, you know, contrarian takes. I think, you know, for the one on the one hand, ah you know, I think there's a point at which, you know, the the the average age, I should have looked this up, the average age is your first time home buyer is at its highest it's ever been.
00:33:16
Patrick T. Brown
And it's either 35, it's 34, 35, 36, somewhere in there.
00:33:20
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes, yes.
00:33:21
Patrick T. Brown
And this is, again, just people buying their first home. right And so if you think about that just in like biological terms, right unless and what you know we know that marriage and home buying are correlated, although nowadays a lot of people are are buying houses before they get married, which seems like a big financial risk.
00:33:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yes.
00:33:41
Patrick T. Brown
I don't want to necessarily encourage people to do, but that's that's what people are doing. If we want people to be you know having kids earlier in life, asking them to wait until they've bought a house at age 36 is really compressing.
00:33:53
Patrick T. Brown
if you know For women especially, your fertility window into a couple years, so I would say we've erred them too far in that direction on the one hand.
00:33:56
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:34:02
Patrick T. Brown
On the other, you know, okay, sure, yeah, not everybody wants to live in an Amsterdam or or New Amsterdam or whatever the case may be. On the other, I do think, you know, so part of this is you the suburbs arose out of the decline of the American city and, you know, cars obviously accelerated this, but but the sense of like, you know, urban decline and decay and there's obviously there's some push and pull factors there.
00:34:27
Patrick T. Brown
But, you know, if we can have public spaces that are, you know, I know you had Charles Lehman on like a couple, you know, previous episodes ago, if we can make, you know, urban life more family friendly by having it be less filled with vagrants and and marijuana smoke, that that will help. But also, the just the the ah the way that we live our lives, right, this sort of car-dependent suburban lifestyle is great for a lot of people.
00:34:53
Patrick T. Brown
And I'm not here to say they're wrong, they like it. i you know We live in ah in a sort of pre-war suburb here in South Carolina and it's very walkable. And I really enjoy that. I think Tim Carney's book, ah Family Unfriendly, talks about the you know contrasting his experiences in different parts of DC where they can you know send their kids down the street to the the neighbor's house and you know kind of kids roaming around people's backyards.
00:35:18
Patrick T. Brown
it because it's built
Suburban Design and Family-Friendliness
00:35:19
Patrick T. Brown
to be able to do that. And if you live in a cookie cutter suburb, you might not be able to do that depending or you know, maybe it's a big, you know, divided median going through your neighborhood or whatever that is.
00:35:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:35:27
Patrick T. Brown
So, you know, we have to be intentional with how we we design these things. you You can certainly have, you know, traditional suburbia that is more family friendly than you know, one that assumes that people are going to be driving everywhere, and you'll want to be stuck in the car line at school drop off and pick up, right, I think, I think we can be thinking about these pain points that parents experience, you know, again, school pickup, or all the forms and bureaucracy around healthcare and, and ah you know, yeah we can talk about yeah childbirth, and that kind of stuff, I think part of the reason why
00:36:01
Patrick T. Brown
stuff like make birth free and some of these other sort of gimmicky ideas that that some of our friends pick up on is, you know, obviously there's some financial costs, you know, that that we can pick up, but also just like the headache of getting a bill for your kid's birth the year after they're born, you know, and although there's another $2,000, I didn't know I had to pay all this kind of stuff.
00:36:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:36:22
Patrick T. Brown
These are where I think a pro-family mindset to how are we designing our roads? How are we designing our our healthcare care systems? How are we designing our tax code and our employee benefits and all these sort of things?
00:36:34
Patrick T. Brown
If we're prioritizing family as the core unit right of society rather than the sort of abstract individual, I think that leads us to different design choices.
00:36:39
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:36:44
Patrick T. Brown
and and That's where I think you know conservatives traditionally were very good talking about this in sort of lip service ways. I think the opportunity for the The new right, and' we're getting our daily fly by here, sorry about that. um The new right is to really put muscle on the bone because they're not as hamstrung by, well this isn't something government should be doing.
00:37:09
Patrick T. Brown
um yeah But there's opportunities yeah and and and you know concerns are too, where they they can go sometimes too far and in different directions. But that's that's i think I think it's an exciting chance for folks who are sort of more new right adjacent to be thinking about what would it look like to have the family be in the driver's seat of policy.
00:37:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, i I certainly agree with that general sentiment that, you know, I mean, the family really is the basic unit of society. it's a trite It's an incredibly trite phrase, but it's just like factually true. And now that the birth rates are declining, we're we are sort of learning it in the most painful way possible. um So just to close out on this, of course, the way to square the circle of everything we've been discussing about housing,
00:37:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
is self-driving cars because you can expand out indefinitely and then once everybody switched to self-driving, the car zips along at 200 kph, which is however miles per hours, uncivilized colonials, ah whatever unit that is. um And so you can have you know you can have your um you can have your house in an exurb somewhere and your job in a skyscraper in the center of the city and your commute is 20 minutes and that, and you know, it's cheap.
00:38:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And, um, so, you know, that's, that's the sort of pro-tech, um, you know, that the, uh, I'm pro-family and pro-tech.
00:38:41
Patrick T. Brown
No, I actually please I like that idea with the caveat that in your excerpt, I think it's much more
00:38:48
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So, and I think there's a lot of ways that these two sort of, uh, mesh together.
00:39:00
Patrick T. Brown
So let's imagine a future, right? Because I think we so we saw in the wake of COVID, the rise of remote work actually led to to a little uptick in births among college educated women because they were able to balance, you know, work and family life in ways. Commutes went down. ah People were able to, you know, maybe they used to go to the office every day. Now they're going in two or three days a week. And I know there's pluses and minuses to that.
00:39:23
Patrick T. Brown
But you could imagine a world in which you're living at in your exurb, which is your village in a sense, right? If we build these town centers and and the sort of downtown where people are you know meeting and going to the market and going to church and seeing each other in their small community, and then you go into town, you know sort of ah almost a ah you know colonial Approach where you go in for your do your business two or three days a week and you know you can use that time to catch up on work or whatever you're doing your self-driving car there's a lot of appeals to that right but again thinking about how people live their life it's not just. You know living out there isolated right i think i think there is a reason why there were so many sort of.
00:40:01
Patrick T. Brown
1960s, 1970s novels and movies about how how isolated the suburbs felt was because, it again, it was reacting to the sort of chaos of of an uncivilized urban environment by creating this very sterile ah you know places where you ah sometimes don't interact with anybody.
00:40:22
Patrick T. Brown
I think finding that happy medium of of having these you know small town fields, I think a lot of people, we see this, right?
00:40:25
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:40:28
Patrick T. Brown
In in in you know the the most expensive real estate in America is in places like Alexandria, Virginia, or Charlestown, or South Carolina, or Vail, Colorado, these sort of like recreating that sort of village mindset or you know experience where people can see each other and and get to know their neighbors.
00:40:45
Patrick T. Brown
There's a lot that people you know find appealing about that.
00:40:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah ah All right, next item, ah this is ah this is a bit of a a challenge. Craziest pro-family policy that you can think of. Craziest in the in the good way, like most out of left field, most unconventional, but that you like.
00:41:13
Patrick T. Brown
ah Yeah, it's funny, because I feel like the Overton window has shifted so much on this over the last five years or so, right?
00:41:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:41:19
Patrick T. Brown
Like, if you had asked me this in 2019, I'd be like, oh, well, you know, there's this guy, you know, I saw a speak at at a, at a, some conference where he was talking about Devany voting and giving giving parents, a you know, he's the vice president United States.
00:41:32
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Ah.
00:41:34
Patrick T. Brown
um So in that sense, what was once crazy, I think is, and also, we're seeing just crazy yeah and and sometimes almost think too much, right? Ways of of trying to address fertility. you know South Korea, Japan, we don't need to rehash the problems they have, but they're throwing tons of money trying to incentivize birds and it's not really successful, but it's interesting, right? And so it does point to the fact that like you know money doesn't solve all these problems. And in fact,
00:42:04
Patrick T. Brown
you know If you're worried about the decline of fertility and the decline of the family, you also have to be willing to say, hey, look, economic growth isn't the silver bullet here either. Because as the as the economy grows, as the opportunity cost of having kids go up, then it becomes you know relatively more expensive. You're having to give up more to have kids. So so you know that's a big reason why fertility is dropping. Anyway, crazyest craziest current you know sort of you know envelope pushing idea is, you know, I think, well,
00:42:43
Patrick T. Brown
I don't know. but i gotta i gotta I got to think about, you know, if there's anyone I want to, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus by calling your idea crazy. I thought that was a good big shot maybe that I've seen lately was a paper from the Heritage Foundation, which is very sort of classic,
00:43:00
Patrick T. Brown
traditional conservative, you know, think tank trying to make the case that universal school choice is the sort of pronoun, you know, pronatalist thing to do. And their argument was because, you know, your universal of school choice will allow more parents to send their kids to religious schools, those kids will then grow up to be more religious, and therefore they will have more kids down the line. It's not crazy, in my opinion, it's very expensive.
00:43:28
Patrick T. Brown
But, you know, again, is it more expensive than something like Japan's, you know, or or South Korea style, you know, a baby bonus type stuff?
00:43:33
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean,
00:43:36
Patrick T. Brown
yeah I don't think it is. So, you know, there's lots of reasons for conservatives to be excited about school choice in general. But I think the sort of pro-needless argument again, it's it's it's a little bit of a bang shot.
00:43:48
Patrick T. Brown
I'm not totally sure if it if it holds water all the way through, but at least it's it's, you know, worth exploring.
00:44:00
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Interesting. ah i thank you for Thank you for bringing up the many voting or ah basically the idea that ah people have more votes if they have more kids.
00:44:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah That's a very good one.
00:44:12
Patrick T. Brown
My reason, I'll just say, and this is not you know this is not even worth passing out in a policy conversation, but I would love to see, you know if you want if you want to vote, you have to change a diaper in the last two years, whether that's an instant diaper or an adult diaper.
00:44:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
a
00:44:28
Patrick T. Brown
I think it's important for us to be remembered that we have obligations in society that don' aren't always glamorous, that we are dependent at both ends of life. And especially with threats to human dignity on on both ends of the spectrum these days, I think it's you know encouraging you know people who aren't otherwise seeing you know the various stages of the life cycle. you know Again, maybe voting is not the right carrot on the end of that stick. but You know, we got it we got to recognize that, the you know, they can be of dependence, whatever that is, and what it means to serve others.
00:45:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:45:06
Patrick T. Brown
i You know, more diapers. Dogs don't count.
00:45:09
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
that's ah that's ah That's a good one. I sort of collect, you had these ah in the original French colonies in North America, you had you had crazy things like, you know, you get extra beaver pelts for child number seven or ah
00:45:27
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:45:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
they made They made it illegal to be unmarried after the age of 23. I mean, just this.
00:45:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:45:34
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a long, I mean, Cesar Augustus passed a very punitive tax on on bachelor's and wasn't especially successful.
00:45:38
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:45:43
Patrick T. Brown
People would find ways around it. But I mean, the idea that like, we got to do something about our marriage crisis is not unique to modernity. It's just that what is unique to modernity, I think is the fact that people now have the option to experience all the benefits of marriage without actually ever getting married, right?
00:46:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
yeah
00:46:02
Patrick T. Brown
You know, you can get, you know, get on an app and find a sex partner. You can have a kid, you know, but basically through an app at these days. You can, you know, have all the social and and economic benefits of cohabitation.
00:46:14
Patrick T. Brown
These used to be bundled up in an exclusive good we call marriage.
00:46:17
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:46:18
Patrick T. Brown
And now we've we've essentially debundled that, right?
00:46:18
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:46:21
Patrick T. Brown
Where they're just a la carte. And so I think if we're concerned about fertility, which I think, you know, is a broad thing that, you know, captures the right across the the broad spectrum. Upstream of that is marriage. And again, marriage rate and fertility rates within marriage are are fairly steady. So if you're concerned about that, you need to be concerned about about getting people married earlier. Figuring out ways to raise the social status or the economic benefits associated with marriage, I think, has to be part of the conversation.
00:46:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
So yeah, ah my so my idea, I've been thinking about it while not listening to your answer. ah
00:47:04
Patrick T. Brown
Nobody else is gonna listen to let do it either.
00:47:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
im I'm joking. um No, but this that this i i nobody cares about my idea, but this is a good segue into a to ah topic we can maybe close on. But basically what I would do, the sort of, you know, the sort of less post-liberal version would be to sort of fund pro-family media like TV shows and so on and so forth. There's the famous study about telenovelas in Brazil. but There's a huge cultural element, like there's, you know,
00:47:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
We'll probably have limestone on the podcast at some point. He believes that the paying people to have kids works But like everybody agrees that culture is a huge deal um What you know What, if anything, can policy achieve? a Well, so first of all, A, do you agree? But B, if so, what, if anything, can policy achieve to sort of shift the culture to a more pro-family direction ah in a way in a way that's plausible in this sort of contemporary American political context?
Cultural Influence on Family Policy
00:48:16
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, no, I hit the nail on the head, I think. Even Lyman, I don't think would argue the idea that culture is a huge determinant, right? um And I don't mean to say even Lyman, I think, you know, because he's the proponent of of sort of, you know, aggressive fiscal standard list, I think, but again,
00:48:34
Patrick T. Brown
He would argue, yeah he would point to the the famous example in the country of Georgia, where the patriarch agreed to baptize third children or higher, and they saw an increase in in in family size. So obviously, culture can have an impact. I don't think that Oprah or Taylor Swift offering to baptize the the children of of you know the the higher parity children of families, but have much of an impact. But yeah we need with yeah somebody of that of that sort of universal claim might might help.
00:49:02
Patrick T. Brown
In seriousness, I think... You know, culture is that black box for economists, right? Well, we just sort of don't know really what's going on. We can't really describe it. So we just kind of chalk it. We know, as you point out, telenovelas in Brazil, 16 and pregnant in the US, when that show came out on MTV, rates of, it showed that, there's studies that show rates of teen pregnancy dropped because teen girls saw the difficulties that, you know, moms who were in their teens were facing and was like, I'm, you know, going to be more intentional about, you know, birth control or abstinence or whatever it is.
00:49:36
Patrick T. Brown
And so the question to me is, can policy do anything directly? And i has I'm not enough of a post liberal to go there necessarily. and yeah I think some would definitely bite that bullet. like But indirectly, 100%.
00:49:53
Patrick T. Brown
And we had the national campaign to reduce teen pregnancy that that led to some of this stuff.
00:49:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:50:00
Patrick T. Brown
Very successful. Some would say too successful because it you know we're now seeing not just teen birth rates declining, but that's carrying on to early 20s, mid 20s, that sort of thing. So yeah maybe maybe we overshot the mark on that.
00:50:10
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:50:12
Patrick T. Brown
but But something where we're using government as a convener And encouraging, you know I think you know if this area is before Christmas, you know folks will see the online chatter about these ads from, I think, Volvo and Apple, which are sort of more pro-family than you usually see from big corporations.
00:50:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Right.
00:50:32
Patrick T. Brown
Maybe that's happening organically, and we don't need to do anything about it. And that's great. But I think encouraging that sort of thing, in bringing the big media companies together and saying, hey, look, you know we've been all in on sort of family diversity for a long time.
00:50:46
Patrick T. Brown
Are there ways that we can, you know, again, find interesting and creative and challenging, but, you know, ah you know, again, creatively rewarding stories about family ah yeah that are that are, you know, not just about, you know, modern family kind of stuff. Yeah, maybe, maybe maybe not.
00:51:04
Patrick T. Brown
the bullet pulpit is good, but I would caution on the flip side of that is that there is a polarizing effect as well. And I think, yeah as we saw with the Childless Cat Ladies controversy over the summer, being too heavy handed with some of the cultural messaging and and some of the efforts from you know a Republican administration or whatever can sometimes have that thermostatic reaction where where people say, well, who are you to get in my personal business? And so it has to be,
00:51:33
Patrick T. Brown
yeah you have to lead with, with you know, ah some empathy and some charity and some humility rather than being, you know, musky and maybe about some of this stuff because I don't, you know, referring to Elon Musk, you know, because he is
00:51:45
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Did you say Muskian?
00:51:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, he's not, he, I mean, he's like, he's, he, he talks about how he like, he has a lot of children and he likes having children and he worries about birth rates, but he's, he's not prescriptive.
00:52:04
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:52:07
Patrick T. Brown
i He is not, he's not.
00:52:11
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And he doesn' he doesn't seem to have publicly supported anything in the family policy space, even though he's you know quite vocal about the policies he does support.
00:52:11
Patrick T. Brown
kind of course yeahds but
00:52:23
Patrick T. Brown
Well, right. Well, yeah. So I mean, and he's a, he's a, you know, idiosyncratic.
00:52:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I mean, i'm not i'm I'm not particularly in the business of of defending Elon. Elon, if you're listening, you know, ah ah ah Sphere accepts advertising, you know, we can we can we can advertise some rockets in here.
00:52:40
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah But and i it just it just i I just wondered what you why you way you use that term.
00:52:42
Patrick T. Brown
yeah and the profile
00:52:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
but
00:52:49
Patrick T. Brown
No, because I think he shows a vision of pronatalism that I don't think is helpful for conservatives to pursue. a you know b well a you know Again, his his personal life, is is it you know it is what it is, but I think this this idea that, you know, pronatalism means having as many kids as you you know biologically are able, outside of the construct of a healthy, feel again, if you're the richest man in the world, I'll cut you some slack.
00:52:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay, but why?
00:53:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:53:17
Patrick T. Brown
I'm not too worried about his kids, you know, if you're to only talking about fertility, you're not talking about marriage, I think that's that's a problem for the vast majority of men. Also an end moment, but also, you know, the sort of Silicon Valley tinged pronatalism where it becomes about pre genetic testing and and, you know, you know, relying on IVF and a lot of these technologies that
00:53:36
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:53:41
Patrick T. Brown
end up in a sort of soft eugenics direction, I think is troublesome for conservatives to approach wholeheartedly.
00:53:42
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:53:49
Patrick T. Brown
you know there's There's very vocal proponents of self-described pro-natalism that I think have no problem with you know identifying embryos on different gene traits and that sort of thing.
00:54:03
Patrick T. Brown
I think that is really troublesome if you have a traditional view of human dignity. Now, again, this splits the run, right?
00:54:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:54:09
Patrick T. Brown
I know there's plenty of sort of techno-optimist folks who who who are all on board with that. and And this is a debate that we have to have as conservatives. But I think the sort of traditional understanding of of the family and and my my position as sort of this, you know, old stodgy stick in the mud social conservative is no, you know, marriage and family are are the you know, that's the vehicle for thousands of years with we've, you know, come across as a species that's most conducive to a healthy outcome for kids and playing with eugenics and playing with surrogacy and some of these things is not going to end up leading us in a healthy direction.
00:54:34
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:54:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right. Okay. So now I understand why you meant by muskin.
00:54:49
Patrick T. Brown
Yes.
00:54:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Uh, okay. yeah i yeah i mean Fair enough. Like I'm a Catholic too. Um, and, um, it's funny because these are the hardest decisions to have the the hardest ah discussions to have.
00:55:04
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Like I, you know, I've had discussions with people and I tell them, you know, Oh, I support the Inquisition having, you know, burning heretics to be like,
00:55:08
Patrick T. Brown
get...
00:55:15
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, okay, I don't agree, but you know, I see your point. And then if I say, oh, I think surrogacy should be legal, they're like, what?
00:55:23
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:55:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
What?
00:55:24
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:55:24
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And so it's it it because because they all know somebody who had a child through a surrogate or whatever. um So yeah, there's that sort of intra-coalitional dynamic.
00:55:33
Patrick T. Brown
And again, it's somewhat...
00:55:37
Patrick T. Brown
Right. And I'll analogize it to the the NIMBY andbi discussion that we had, right? Where it's a totally healthy, natural, beautiful desire to want to have a kid. And especially to have a kid you have some biological relation to and and you know people are you know often fed lies about how easy will be to delay fertility and you get to your late 30s and you go oh my gosh this is just not work. I get it and and and we want it and that's why I'm so passionate about wanting to help people get started earlier in life so they're not you know led down you know a heartbreaking path later in life. At the same time I think we got you know it doesn't do us any good to pretend there aren't big moral differences here in terms of
00:56:16
Patrick T. Brown
you know, one path, you know, the the US is very much the wild west when it comes to some of these bio ethical questions, you know, selective embryos and sex selective abortions and and all these sort of things that I think, you know, with, with, you know,
00:56:23
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah.
00:56:32
Patrick T. Brown
lead to these really interesting, you know, I don't hate talking about it all. I think it's it's fun to think about, you know, what is authentically pro-family mean. And again, I don't, I'm not here trying to usher in the integralist, you know, Catholic state.
00:56:44
Patrick T. Brown
I think there's totally, you know, viable ways to perform what we have rather than, you know, trying to ban outright, I the African like that.
00:56:47
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
I am.
00:56:51
Patrick T. Brown
I don't think anybody's in favor of that. But there's, you know, once you start talking about what is pro-family mean, as we kind of started out with this conversation, what is pro-family, I think it,
00:56:59
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:57:01
Patrick T. Brown
all comes back down to essentially, you know, the kids that are produced from for marriage and and trying to do what's best for them.
00:57:12
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah. I mean, I, this, that so this, I mean, you've touched on a very interesting point and we, we just have a few minutes left, but there's, um, Elon's the sort of most famous sort of.
00:57:29
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
spearheads, spokesmen, whatever, but there was this ah not insignificant group of people, particularly associated with Silicon Valley, who understand ah that the problem of birth rates is a very serious problem that, you know, if we're going to have, you know, all of the techno acceleration that we need, you need people.
00:57:54
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
You need people to build the rockets. You need to people to mend the rockets. You need people to, you know,
00:57:54
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:58:00
Patrick T. Brown
Couple of Mars or whatever.
00:58:01
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah
00:58:02
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
people the Mars colony.
00:58:02
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:58:04
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
00:58:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
um And, but you're right, they, they come at it from a generally post-religious perspective and they usually have beliefs on things like, yeah, IVF, surrogacy, that genetics, quote unquote eugenics. I hate that term because it covers A, it's a, it's a scarecrow term and B it covers like the huge, uh,
00:58:28
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
spectrum of things. Um, uh, you know. the a It goes from like, oh, I want to get married with somebody who's handsome and intelligent down to Nazi Germany and like, um, so anyway, so, but that, I mean, I get, I guess the question is, and and then we can wrap up. I guess the question is, what do you think of that phenomenon? Why do you think of?
00:58:58
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
of this new sort of emerging discourse about birth rates because, you know, again, like on the one hand, you know, we share a very important common goal, but on the other, we also have like pretty significant differences.
00:59:13
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, what's that that famous Ross Douthat tweet from I think 2015, 2016, if you don't like the religious right, just wait to meet the post religious right. And i think I think that sums up some of what's going on here. I think you're right to to note that like And the Republican Party in general, as it's become ah you know the the sort of working class you know yeah party that we're talking about, is intentionally, as sort of like President Trump is, intentionally leaving behind some of that moral language, right?
00:59:49
Patrick T. Brown
at The GOP platform, you know talking about personhood and all this sort of stuff, you know dropping mentions to marriage.
00:59:50
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
00:59:55
Patrick T. Brown
These sort of traditional social conservative concerns, I think, you know religious conservatives especially are being you know coming to grips with what it means to be junior coalition members rather than you know having a a you know big voice at the table and that you know runs the gamut right from from you know whether we or not we subsidize IVF of the federal government to what sort of you know how far we can go with some of these more you know, Silicon Valley, pronatalist i types who who end up sort of espousing technologies we we think are are morally problematic, you know, it to, you know, again, abortion itself, and we haven't really touched on that, but that's always been a ah core focus of of a lot of conservatives that I think
01:00:42
Patrick T. Brown
my projection is very soon it will it will fade at least to the back burner in a lot of you know conservative efforts just because you know trans and crt and so these other things are are are what unites uh you know sort of post-religious cultural conservatism rather than the sort of traditional social conservatism that focuses on abortion and marriage and those sort of things And so, you know it's it's again, I think it it's a huge challenge to figure out exactly you know where we can agree, yeah, birth rates are a problem.
01:01:05
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Okay.
01:01:14
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, falling for family formation isn't good, not just economics and colonizing Mars, but it's not good for people to be living in the pod and eating bugs and and you know all your interaction is over only fans, right?
01:01:26
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
01:01:26
Patrick T. Brown
I mean, that's not that's not a life well-lived.
01:01:30
Patrick T. Brown
And so if we are wanting people to to you know have a life of flourishing or whatever, like talking about making it easier to compare often and start families and in in you know be part of the community in that way.
01:01:45
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah. Are there ways that we can do that with with partners who we fundamentally disagree with on some moral questions?
Religious Conservatives in Politics
01:01:51
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah. Are there ways we can do that that we could you know part with maybe some people who could well on the left even, then right? You know, sort of Richard Reeves asked people on the left to say, well, maybe conservatives did have a point about male male declining fortunes or or that sort of thing.
01:02:08
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Right.
01:02:08
Patrick T. Brown
I think you know the the fact that sort of traditional religious conservatism is is sailing off into the West a little bit does open up doors for for new opportunities because some of those old fault lines around you know gay marriage or or maybe you know abortion in a couple of years, those are going to be fading in preeminence.
01:02:26
Patrick T. Brown
I think there'll be opportunities. but you know, I'm going to be who I always am, right? And sort of, you know, so yeah again, gadfly about pointing out that there are there are downsides to some of this stuff, too. And and whoever those partners look like, I'm i'm still going to be annoyingly prodding them and saying, look, there there are there are issues with this if we embrace it too fully.
01:02:46
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Yeah, I mean, so I, and, and I guess we'll close on that because I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I recently learned about artificial wounds. And what I mean by that is I've seen the phrase artificial wounds for decades or whatever. And I used to think, you know, a machine and then you put an embryo or young fetus in this like white box and then nine months out, you take out a baby and it's like,
01:03:13
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Well, what's wrong with that? ah But no, that's not what an artificial womb is. An artificial womb is a clone of a woman whose brain you destroy so that you basically have like a brain dead human body. And that's what you implant the embryo in. And it's like, oh
01:03:37
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
like okay, like burn it all down. like explain You know, nuke it from orbit to make sure that nothing survives.
01:03:47
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
01:03:49
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh my God.
01:03:51
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah.
01:03:51
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
i yeah i i this that This is just a factoid I wanted to throw out because like, for 15 years, I was like, oh, artificial wombs, you know, if we get if we can do that, you know, maybe that's the solution for abortion or it's like, ah.
01:04:07
Patrick T. Brown
Yeah, I mean, you know, eventually, you know, I'm a conservative, right? So I believe that eventually all of my deeply held beliefs will be proven correct. I hope we don't have to experience that one firsthand before we recognize what a terrible idea that would be
01:04:27
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
Oh my God. All right. Well, anyway, thank you so much for your time. ah You are one of the the the the smartest people thinking and writing about this very important ah sort of galaxy of issues and ideas.
01:04:43
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
ah People should follow you on X. They should subscribe to your podcast. Don't worry. I'll put that all in the description so it's not just at the end.
01:04:52
Patrick T. Brown
no
01:04:53
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry
And yeah, thank you very much.
01:04:57
Patrick T. Brown
You're too kind. Anytime. Thanks so much.