Defending Wonks with Nic Dunn – Transcript

The following transcript comes from Saving Elephants podcast episode 197 – Defending Wonks with Nic Dunn.  This transcript was auto-generated by Zencastr and while some effort has been taken to reduce glaring omissions and errors, mistakes will undoubtedly still exist.  The original podcast audio should be relied upon for an accurate representation of the actual conversation.

Podcast Introduction

While Saving Elephants is dedicated to offering the conservative intellectual tradition in mercifully modern vernacular, fellow podcaster Nic Dunn has been on a similar mission: making the work of policy institutions more digestible.  Nic joins Josh for a conversation around the important role policy can play in defusing political tension, alleviating poverty, and expanding the freedom and opportunities all Americans seek.

About Nic Dunn

Bio from Sutherland Institute

Nic Dunn serves as Vice President of Strategy and Senior Fellow at Sutherland Institute. As VP of Strategy, Nic oversees the execution and strategic external impact of Sutherland’s written and multimedia policy content. In his capacity as Senior Fellow, he leads the policy research, coalition building, and public advocacy for policies that strengthen opportunity and upward mobility. This policy focus includes social safety net reform, workforce issues, and support for the well-being of men and boys. His expert commentary and analysis can be found on Sutherland’s weekly podcast, Defending Ideas, which he hosts, as well as in major outlets like Deseret News, Washington Examiner, National Review, and other Utah print and radio outlets.

Nic brings more than 13 years of experience in public policy and strategic communications spanning state and local government and the private sector. Prior to Sutherland, Nic served as director of Utah Community Builders, the Salt Lake Chamber’s nonprofit social impact foundation. In that role, Nic worked with the private sector to advance statewide initiatives in mental health, family policy, and upward mobility. Nic is also a member of the AEI Leadership Network, and the co-chair of the Salt Lake County Intergenerational Poverty Task Force.

In other previous work, Nic ran public policy for the Utah Valley Chamber, served as senior policy advisor to Salt Lake County Councilwoman Aimee Winder Newton, directed media relations for the Utah Department of Workforce Services, and worked on Gov. Gary Herbert’s communications staff as lead speechwriter.

Nic has a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Utah and dual bachelor’s degrees in broadcast journalism and political science from the University of Nevada, Reno. Nic and his wife, Lizzie, live in Eagle Mountain with their two sons.

Begin Transcript

Josh

In Trump's first administration, it seemed to me the prevailing belief was the Republican Party has kind of gone without policy institute, has gone without policy, right? I think there was even a year in which the Republican Party passed no platform and essentially just endorsed whatever Donald Trump wanted to do.

And fast forward to the second administration, and it seems like most of the talk is more about the Heritage Foundation backfilling a Trump policy, if you will. But it still leaves in my mind kind of this overarching question, which is, are we in an era in which think tanks and policy institutes are left by the wayside and sort of waiting for, and it's not just in the Republican Party, of course, but waiting for it an era in which both political parties are a little bit more receptive to their ideas?

Nic Dunn

I think the way I would approach that is that I would actually say the opposite is true, that in this era of politics, in our nation specifically, there is more of a unique need and value add for policy think tanks like Sutherland Institute and others that are principled and try to sort of offer a thoughtful principle-based approach to the issues of the day, but still making it practical for real policy solutions. I had a former boss years ago would always say, “there is always opportunity in conflict”. And I don't know where that originated, if it started with her or she heard it elsewhere, but it's always stuck with me, just this idea that when whenever there is a lot of conflict, there are numerous and important opportunities there to make a difference in a really positive, powerful way.

And if you look at the last however many years you would measure it of our American political culture here in the United States, I don't think anyone would disagree with the assessment that we are experiencing a lot of conflict right now. We have for a number of years now.  And I also think most people would not disagree with the idea that we don't like that and we don't actually feel like that's the way our politics should function. But it seems really hard to get out of it.

And part of the thing that I would offer to those folks is that I actually think public policy think tanks are uniquely positioned to offer something really valuable, a roadmap, if you will, to get out of that because policy think tanks, generally speaking, at and Sutherland Institute, we're a 501c3, we're a nonpartisan public policy organization. And we really focus on the world of ideas. I once heard Arthur Brooks say that politics is kind of like the weather. And ideas are climate. And so it's kind of the big picture, high level discussion about the movement of ideas that are the kinds of things that that think tanks like ours are focused on. And I actually think in this kind of era of politics, that's actually more important than ever because the partisan tribalism or the back and forth or just the day-to-day political, partisan, contemptuous warfare, however you'd want to describe it, if we can sort of recenter the way we as a country, as voters, as elected officials, think about these issues from the standpoint of first, what are our true grounding principles? What are the big ideas that stem from those principles? And then how do we translate those into policy solutions. And then you start to think about there is a reality of political coalition building. And of course, we have to run elections and elect people into office. So all of those things can be part of it.

But I think when we focus so much on the politics at the expense of the policy ideas and the foundational principles that can undergird those ideas, that's where I think we run into a lot of the problems we've had as a nation in recent years. And I actually think think tanks in general can be, and I think Sutherland Institute very much is, an antidote to that because we bring principles and ideas, policy prescriptions and solutions, and that just makes the political coalition building and then the debate and the discussion side much more productive if we do it right.

Josh

I share your thought that now is exactly the time we would want to lean into policy. I'll say solutions, even though as a conservative, I have a hard time with the word solution sometimes, but I guess we could say from the perspective of policy, policy solutions.  I'm wondering, though, ours is an era, it seems like, unique, or at least within our lifetime, uniquely performative in our politics. So, for example, politics is always a grubby business, and I think it's kind of a myth sometimes, not chiefly, but sometimes more of the left, not exclusive to them, that there's some way in which we can stand above the partisanship or the coalition building where I think that's probably endemic of human it's always going to be there.

That being said, I think it could be a lot more honorable than what we currently see where it largely seems to be personality, cult, and performative driven. That obviously is a big problem with our politics, but I think it trickles down to our policies also because a politics that is largely personality driven, it would seem to me is not interested in policy discussions or solutions. It's more interested in owning the other side and winning the culture war, whatever that means. And so I'm wondering, are institutions such as Sutherland crowded out in a sense due to the era we live in? Absolutely there is a good need for policy, but is there a sense in which the distortion of our politics is making it difficult for organizations such as yours to get a voice at the table?

Nic Dunn

I think to a certain extent, there is some truth to that, that if you look at the kinds of things that typically command attention in news coverage, on social media, and even if you if you try and kind of gauge what people are interested in, what they focus on and what they discuss, it does still tend to be that that political tribalism. And to your point, that a lot of these elements are not new. In fact, you know historians far more well-versed than I can go back and sort of quantify and tell the story of the nature of political tribalism and partisanship and you know things in in America's past history that we would look at and say, well, that's not you know at all what we would kind of view as sort of the ideal.

We shouldn't just look at the past by default with rose-colored glass and say that, well, things were always better in the past. There are good elements in our or good examples in our nation's history of how we can do politics better. I think the American founding is actually one of the best examples of those that you had people with very strong disagreements, but still come together and build a system that allowed us, in the words of Yuval Levin, to think differently but act together. And that's what the constitutional order, the constitutional system provides. And so I think as we look at sort of the nature of things today, I think part of the reasons that we find ourselves in this current political environment, and there are many, but I think part of that is ask ourselves, what are we really looking for? We meaning voters and media consumers. What are we really looking for when we tune into multimedia like this podcast discussions or news coverage or things on social media?

And also when we are looking for elected officials or candidates to support. And what I mean by that is ah Probably the best example that I think encapsulates this, and an experience I had a number of years ago in in a different job working for a different organization years back, I had a colleague say to me, and this colleague happened to be on a different side of political issues than I was, kind of from a different ideological camp. And this colleague said, watch people who engage in politics and policy and elected officials and candidates and ask yourself this question: “Do you want to make a point? Or do you want to make a difference?”

And I think that dividing line, to your point, is partly what helps explain the performative nature of our politics. That it feels a lot easier at times, maybe a lot more enticing to go and make a point to say something that just feels like you're saying the right thing that is popular with your supporters or establishes your position on a particular thing in a way that you feel like, well, again, I have to make this point. But then shifting to, well, how do I make a difference? And that's where I think if more of us, yes, are elected officials, but especially each of us as voters, if we thought more in terms of how do I make a point more often than, excuse me, how do I make a difference more often than trying to just make a point?

And because that turns it from, well, I have to own the other side, that's making a point to I want to get some kind of solution passed. I'm using the term solutions because you said you struggle with it sometimes. I'd love to kind of hear why. But I think most Americans would look at what's going on and say, we want to raise our families. We want to work. We want to earn some money. We want to have our rights protected. We want to have a good quality of life. We want to achieve the American dream. We want to feel like the American dream is within reach for us and we want our elected officials and our policy debates to reflect the need to kind of clear our path in pursuit of the American dream. And so I think it actually would be very resonant with a large number of Americans if we all sort of committed and said, look, we're still going to disagree, we're still going to debate, and at times those debates will be passionate and will be difficult.

But if we can shift our lens away from purely and solely my tribe versus a different tribe and shift it instead to this problem that I want to fix and who else is willing and able to help me fix that problem. That comes back to shifting again to making a difference, and which is again, going back to your first question when we started, that I think the role that think tanks can uniquely play because we are nonpartisan by default, by our very structure, because we can focus on the realm of ideas and policy debates and policy solutions that At the end of the day, the thing we want most is to safeguard core American principles and ensure those are influencing the terms of the debate today.

And also move the needle on policy, actually make a difference in the policy sphere. And I think sometimes people misinterpret politics as sort of the end game, whereas rather politics is a vehicle. Maybe a good way to put it would be its true form, Politics is, or at least should be, collaborative problem solving. That's really it at the end of the day. And if it really is collaborative problem solving, then the way we're going about it right now as a country is often not really well calibrated to collaboration and not really well calibrated to solving problems. But I think that's a message a lot of Americans would resonate with. We just keep, we need to keep pushing for that. And I think I have full faith that that that will kind of come back into vogue if we all commit to it.

Josh

I do want to give you points for less than 10 minutes into the conversation evoking Yuval Levin. And I do think his insights on you know That unity, I think, as he puts it, is not a matter of agreement, but of working together in spite of disagreements and working in unison, I think, is not only important, but I think one of the only ways we're going to get unstuck from this current animosity we have, if we could embrace it.

We both mentioned the word solution multiple times, and within certain contexts, I have no problem with the word solution. I think my concern with it from coming from a conservative perspective is that it tends to be a terminology more comfortable on the left in that the you know this is what Thomas Sowell would refer to as the open worldview or the utopian worldview, kind of the notion that political problems have political solutions, and therefore that's what we ought to be seeking and attempting to implement. It can come in various shapes and sizes and forms. the Kind of the American Wilsonian model, of course, is this notion that the role of government is to empower the proper individuals who have the right vision, who understand via scientific means what the answer to our problems are.

So something like poverty has a solution to it. It's simply a matter of empowering the right individuals to enact such a solution. This, of course, is very different than oftentimes a small government or conservative perspective where Again, to quote Thomas Sowell, talks about the the closed worldview or the tragic worldview. It's not that there can't be some alternatives that are preferable, but they're just that. They're alternatives. They're tradeoffs.

We can do things to alleviate poverty, but it's going to create you know a problem over here. And I'm bringing this up, I guess, and in sort of opening this, the entire notion of a, let's say, think tank or policy institute within the broader conservative worldview, I think is something interesting. I think it totally aligns and it fits. But I do think that there's a difference in which the progressive tries to embrace policy versus the conservative. And that I, and you know, you can speak to this authoritatively, but that I'm assuming there's a notion of trade-offs that works more robustly within the confines of Sutherland in a sense that maybe it's not as, I'll say, solution-driven, even if that's the terminology that's being used, that it's a little bit more given to, say, free market ideas because of the recognition of trade-off. What do you think about that? That's my animosity toward the word solution.

Nic Dunn

Well, I think, and I think you're probably a better Thomas Sowell scholar than I am, but the phrase there, was this him where he said that there are no solutions, only trade-offs? Is that a Sowell quote?

Josh

I think he's, it sounds like a Sowell quote, but he said things to that effect anyways.

Nic Dunn

Right. And I think to a certain extent, that is important to keep in mind is that sometimes some policy issues can feel a little bit like playing whack-a-mole at the arcade where we think, okay, well, we can change this particular aspect of law or public policy, but then what about this this over here? So I think to a certain extent, those who are engaged in the public policy world should always have a degree of humility about what we can accomplish, specifically through government means, through government policy, government action at the federal or state or local level.

But I think the way I would sort of situate the how I would characterize an approach to this is that again, with full recognition that there are there are constitutional scholars and American history scholars that are far deeper than I. I consider myself a casual observer of history, and we have a great constitutional law scholar on our staff here at Sutherland who's phenomenal.

And when I look at it, I kind of drawing from all that, and again, referencing Yuval Levin's work, is that the genius of the American founding and the design was sort of from this perspective of a degree of humility, is that all of us together as a people acting through the constitutional system, that sort of gives us the best shot to create the right set of circumstances in our laws, in our public policies, in the way we govern, in the way we live together, in order to have the maximal opportunity for human flourishing. And one of the things that we commit to very seriously here at Sutherland Institute is that we want to protect and strengthen and promote the principles of the American founding. We have kind of a three-pillar focus of faith, family, and freedom, the importance of religious freedom in this country and the role that faith institutions can play in public life, the importance of the family as a key, foundational civic institution, and an institution of civil society that's really essential. And then freedom, of course, which extends to free enterprise, it extends to the freedoms that we enjoy thanks to our constitutional system, and all those kinds of things.

But then it also is those civic institutions themselves, which is another thing that Yuval Levin writes about and talks about a lot very eloquently. But I think that's maybe one of the dividing lines is that for maybe folks on the right versus the left, I think folks on the right, maybe typically or traditionally are maybe a little bit more predisposed to recognize the role that civic institutions can play as creative problem solvers or as part of that collaborative problem solving that I mentioned earlier. And so in fact, our governor here in Utah, Spencer Cox, in one of the state of the state addresses within the last couple of years, um I'll paraphrase his comments. This is not an exact quote, but I recall him saying that so many of the issues we deal with in this country, if we kind of go upstream to the family, we can deal with or prevent a lot of those issues in a more cost effective and just a more effective and efficient way by making sure our families are strong and healthy and stable.

And a good example of that is there is ample data, there's ample evidence showing the downstream positive effects of children being raised in married two-parent households. And this is right and left. And you've got folks like Brad Wilcox, the Institute for Family Studies, been doing tremendous work on that front for years and many, many others. But then on the other side, you've got Melissa Carney, who was a Brookings scholar and had a book come out called The Two-Parent Privilege, just diving into all of that evidence.

And we've had her on, ah we've had both of those folks actually on our show at Sutherland defending ideas where we dive into that. So I think part of it is a recognition that Government intervention may not always be the best or the most correct way to address a problem. Or if there is a role for government, what is that role and how can we make sure it is limited and properly calibrated to the solution itself without inadvertently edging out things like our free enterprise system, things like families, things like churches, faith institutions, and other civic organizations.

And you mentioned poverty a couple times, and I think that's actually where this principle is best applied. is that one of the best things we can do by virtue of any kind of public policy intervention, if our goal is to reduce poverty or increase upward mobility, is ensure that we have a really robust free enterprise system with markets and job creation and innovation. That's really, really essential. Where I do think at times some of my friends on the political right um might have some opportunity to be a little bit more strident in some thoughtful ways to address poverty, is that a robust free market alone there is still a perception at times that it leaves people behind.

And this is where, you know for take Utah, for example, for years and years since the Great Recession ended, Utah has been at or near the top of various economic rankings. We've had the best state for business many times over the years. We've had one of the most diverse economies, if you look at the various ways they measure that with an index that looks at diverse economies. I think we were the second or third or fourth most diverse economy for a number of years. Look at our job growth rates, incredibly low poverty rates, low rates of families and people using public assistance. The Archbridge Institute has ranked us two times now in two different studies as the state with the highest upward social mobility of any state in the nation. And so we have this unique mix of ingredients here in Utah.

There are still families stuck in poverty in our state. And so if I am looking at those families, and again, it's a much smaller number than a lot of other states, but there are still families who struggle to get out of poverty here. And if I were to look at those families and say, well, we have a really great free enterprise system in Utah, and that's all we can kind of do as conservatives, I would say that's wrong because there are still barriers that people face that sometimes are policy barriers and sometimes warrant a policy solution.

Josh

Mm-hmm.

Nic Dunn

And so I think that thoughtfulness and how we approach it, again, that's where I think there's actually a ton of room to run, as it were, for think tanks in general, and maybe for center-right think tanks as well, to really make a serious contribution that we should be a movement of principles, that lay the foundation for aspirational ideas and policies, and then practically applying those in order to try and solve problems and move the needle for folks. And I think there's a lot of evidence in recent decades that we've been able to do that pretty successfully as a movement.

Josh

I'm curious, not that there is enormous opinion in the United States to just remove the social safety net, but what you just said, of course, can be fighting words among certain libertarian free marketers. And this is a safe place. I'm not a libertarian. I support the social safety net to a certain degree, and I you know I'm not going to give my the whole song and dance exactly what I do or don't believe about it, but I'm just, I'm curious, how do you encounter often, and if so, how do you respond to those who say, yeah, that's great and all, but that's kind of falling into the progressive trap. Every step towards trying to give a government handout is ultimately causing more harm than good.

Nic Dunn

It's a fair question. And it's in most of the policy circles that I'm in on these issues. That's part of my role at Sutherland Institute, kind of wearing my senior fellow hat, is leading our efforts on poverty issues and upward mobility and those kinds of things that we do a lot on social welfare reform as far as these federal programs.

So that is not a perspective I encounter that often, but I've certainly heard that. There is, of course, that, as you said, a little bit more of a libertarian argument that, well, we shouldn't have a federally funded social safety net at all. There are folks who articulate that.

I've never been quite persuaded of that for a couple of reasons. Number one, if there was a real opportunity on the table to essentially have the federal government sort of send all this back to the states, you know, so we hear about block grants, for example, if the federal government basically said, look, we're going to kind of get out of this business as much as we can.

And we're going to basically give states the resources, maybe within some kind of broad parameters, and otherwise kind of let states do it. there could be a lot of benefit from that. I mean, I'm a huge proponent of federalism, where I think states should play a much more significant role when it comes to social welfare policy. But that also means they need to be empowered to do so from the federal government, because the programs we have when we typically think of the welfare system, they're federally created, federally funded and state administered, but with federal rules attached to them, generally speaking.

But I think that the question of, well, should we even have a social safety net? I go back to one of the most important works in my mind, certainly for me and my professional trajectory in life, and also I would say for the conservative movement broadly, is the book The Conservative Heart by Arthur Brooks. It came out, I think, in 2015, so it's a little over a decade old. But when I read that book, it was transformational for me because I had for a while started to feel like, well, poverty is one of the issues I care about most. That in in the United States, this is an oversimplification, but I'll make the case anyway. I think you can boil down the full promise of America to basically two things. Again, oversimplification, but the two things being freedom and opportunity, meaning our constitution, our rights, our constitutional system, is designed to protect your freedom, protect your core rights and your freedom to pursue happiness, to pursue the American dream. And then the opportunity side of that bucket is that, again, thanks largely to our free enterprise system, but also to the civic institutions. There's a lot of correlation with kids being raised and married to parent families and much better upward mobility metrics down the road. There's a lot of correlation. we've talked We talked about the success sequence a lot.

So a lot of these sort of civic institutional pillars in addition to public policy playing a role in that opportunity bucket. And so I think in the conservative heart, Arthur Brooks does a really great job of sort of making a conservative case, if you will, for how to address poverty issues. And You know, one of the things he says in that book, and I've seen him say in other speaking engagements and interviews a number of years ago, is that the United States is an incredibly wealthy country, obviously. And the fact that we even can have and can afford a social safety net. is a byproduct of our free enterprise system. The fact that if there are those who fall, economically speaking, and struggle, that there can be an appropriate role for government to provide some help.

Now, the arguments that I am a little bit more sympathetic to is that we don't want the virtue, the by virtue of government engaging on those issues, we don't want to crowd out and unintentionally private charity or churches or individual charity or those kinds of things. But I have yet to see a compelling case for saying we shouldn't have a social safety net at all. I think it does a lot of good. It can do a lot more good.

But what there is a compelling case for is very serious reform to the social safety net. And that's one of the things that I think, again, going back to that idea of freedom and opportunity being two sort of core foundational pillars of the American idea, I think there is a lot of reform we need to engage in on the social safety net side and that conservatives can and should feel comfortable and enthusiastic about engaging in them in large part because if we don't and if government policies, especially federal policies, are created without kind of this lens of it's about freedom, it's about opportunity, and it's about clearing your path so you can enjoy the benefits of the free enterprise system and engage in what I call work-based self-reliance is the ultimate goal. The goal is not to have people on programs long-term. If those perspectives are not brought to the table, then we can have a system that inadvertently keeps people trapped in poverty or keeps people trapped on government programs or can inadvertently discourage or disincentivize work and earnings and family formation and those kinds of things. So I think it's actually one of the areas where Because what I perceive at times, folks on the political right are a little bit reticent to engage in the poverty issue space and the social safety net as an issue space in ways that are looking to reform and improve, maybe through comprehensive reform, but improve a system to function better.

We have ceded some territory that I think is unfortunate because the families that are stuck in poverty and stuck on these programs don't want to be there and they need powerful ideas which lead to policy solutions and everything we're talking about to help change that. So that's the case that I would make to anyone who's not sure about maybe anyone on the political right or the more libertarian side to say, well, should we even be in this business? At the end of the practically speaking, we have an existing massive federal social safety net. You know, that on the conservative end, it's more than 80 programs at the federal level. We spend, I've seen numbers ranging from $1.2 trillion dollars a year to $1.5 trillion dollars a year on so many different federal programs that are designed to help the vulnerable in one form or another.

The thing that we're getting as taxpayers for that investment, there are some good things that come from temporary alleviating material deprivation in this country, but we need to go to the next step and focus on the safety net being a true springboard back into work-based self-reliance and the American dream. And that's just the practical reality. And ah folks who might argue, well, we shouldn't even have a system Could be ah an interesting philosophical debate to have. That's not the debate the country's having right now. And I want to focus on where we can actually make a difference and move the needle.

Josh

There are those on the right who say, look, we have witnessed the hollowing out of the United States through trade deals. It's been great for Wall Street and for her investment bankers and maybe some multibillionaires. It's been extremely devastating for our communities and therefore trade policy, trade restriction, and maybe some sort of incentives to re-bolster manufacturing to kind of bring the jobs back is what we need.

You've got certain voices on the left that essentially say we need to catch up to Europe and maybe even bypass Europe in extending not only the social safety net, but the imprint of government and its ability to help people. Look at the inequalities we have in this in this country. We're the wealthiest nation on earth that's ever been, and yet...we don't offer all the goodies that some of our you know Western counterparts do that that's immoral. And I want to be careful here because ah you know I'm trying to not broad brush too many people, but you know there are some who essentially say, look, there was there's nothing wrong. We're doing just fine. We just need to lean more into you know kind of let's call it a free market solution.

While essentially saying the J.D. Vances and the Bernie Sanders don't have a point, right? We can just go it alone. We can keep doubling down on this. And I wouldn't say so much poverty, but sort of those voices within the broader political coalition saying, no, we don't like the direction the country has gone. I don't see that there's as much an opportunity for me or my children as what my parents or grandparents had.

And so I guess this all leads me to ask, because I think we are surrounded by what, in my personal opinion, are really bad solutions you know to this moment that we might all agree, yes, something ought to change. Solutions that I think either will not work or in a lot of cases will make the situation much worse. But if we focus just for a moment on, I won't even say income inequality, but upward mobility, the ability of those either in poverty or let's just say lower middle class or of any class perhaps to take a step up. I mean, this has always been the pride of the United States, right? That no matter where you start, you can, if you you're diligent and put effort in, you can actually transcend, you can move up.

What are the main impediments to our social mobility and what policies would you say, hey, if I had to pick you know the top two, three, four, here's what I think we should work on first?

Nic Dunn

Yeah, there's a lot wrapped into that. I think that um maybe a good way to start to answer that is to look at the patterns in upward mobility to try and give us a sense of, well, what does what does true upward mobility look like and how do we have more of it? And I think that's actually maybe an important mindset shift from typically these conversations kind of go like, well, what does poverty look like? Let's study poverty. And then let's figure out how do we have less of it? How do we prevent poverty and how do lessen poverty?

Josh

Right.

Nic Dunn

And if your only goal, if your only goal is just to say, well, I want less poverty in this country. And if the only way you measure that is about the amount of financial or material resources a given individual or family has, and if those are sort of your parameters, then it's not a far leap to say that, well, our friends over on the left are correct and that maybe we do need just much more generous social safety net programs or universal basic income or those kinds of things. Because if poverty alleviation is just somehow getting more money in the pockets of people and to get them above various lines or metrics, oh, then we've solved poverty. Then that is a natural outgrowth of that idea. But that's why I think it's important to then shift the mindset to really what we're trying to do is let's look at what up upward mobility looks like.

And then when it works, why does it work? And then how do we have more of that? And there's two examples that I think articulate that point. Number one is, mentioned earlier, the ample evidence about this idea of the success sequence. For any of your folks who may not be familiar, the success sequence refers to research showing that young people who finished at least a high school education, who got a full-time job, and then who, if they had kids, they got married first. And so education, full-time work, marriage, then kids. Young people who did those things in that order only about 2% or 3% of them would experience poverty in adulthood. So in other words, you have roughly a 97% or more percent success rate of people following this sequence who do not experience poverty in adulthood, and significant numbers of those you know go on to the middle class or higher.

So that's one where I would say that at times, the feeling of economic or cultural angst in the country, I think it is one of the things that all of us who work in the public policy space or the political space do need to pay attention to. We need to understand why folks are feeling a particular way if they're feeling frustrated or feeling like the American dream is increasingly out of reach. And we need to do important work to understand what extent of that is driven by perception versus what extent of that is driven by reality. So I don't think we just ignore entirely or gloss over when people are expressing genuine concerns.

But I think we do recognize that there are patterns that still show really good evidence of what upward mobility looks like. And the data for the success sequence, initially this concept came out of the Brookings Institution, which is a center-left institution. very well, in my view, very well respected, high quality research, high quality people there tend to be kind of a center left perspective.

The flip side of the coin is the American Enterprise Institute, kind of the more of the center right perspective. But that concept coming initially from Brookings being replicated at AEI, being replicated by scholars at the Institute for Family Studies, just shows that again, there, there is a pattern. This is broadly speaking in the data that correlates really strongly with what true good upward mobility looks like. So, that's one aspect of it.

Kind of the second, is again, looking at things like the Archbridge Institute and their social mobility index of all 50 states, along with the Harvard Opportunity Insights project from Raj Chetty and his team that looks at upward mobility around the country and other rankings and metrics as well. Again, showing that, for example, the state of Utah as is essentially the highest in terms of upward mobility for the nation. And I think when you look at the state of Utah, we have, like I said, a very vibrant and robust economy, a free enterprise system. And I don't think in Utah we have engaged in the kind of robust protectionist policies that sometimes the populist instinct reaches for when they say, well, what about folks who feel like America has been hollowed out?

In Utah, again, I would look at it and see what can we learn from Utah's example that can be templatable in other states to the extent that it can be. And again, it's... it's This is maybe an oversimplification, but it is a combination of a strong and robust economy and public policy decisions that always try and prioritize having a strong business sector, strong job growth. Economic dynamism is maybe the shorthand to look at it. And then very strong civic institutions. Again, the fact that we have some of the highest rates in the nation of children being raised in married two-parent households is tremendously impactful.

The fact that we have some of the highest rates of religiosity in church attendance is very impactful as well. So this is goes back to what I was saying earlier, that part of, in my view, sort of the conservative argument should be public policy can only do so much. If the principles and the civic institutions that have in the past traditionally undergirded American success and prosperity, if those crumble, a public policy fix is not going to be enough to come and fix those. We have to bring those institutions back or protect them from crumbling in the first place. And so it's essentially boiling down to We need strong families. We need strong civic institutions, which includes faith institutions. We need a strong economy and a vibrant business sector and economic dynamism. And we need public policy and cultural leadership to reflect those priorities. And then, of course, the success sequence is maybe a deployable framework that also can have impact on public so policy decisions as well. Those are the kinds of things, broadly speaking, that I think can contribute really significantly to but bolstering upward mobility in the nation.

And the last one I mentioned, because that you asked for specifics, so that this one will be the most concrete out of these so far, is I think we very much need significant comprehensive reform to our social welfare system. Again, well over 80 programs at the federal level, well over 1.2 to 1.5 trillion dollars a year that we're spending that that are organized under different federal agencies that report to different congressional committees that are then all kind of sent to the states.

And in many instances, the states just kind of have to figure out how to administer these things. If you are a single mom with a couple of kids in poverty, trying to work and increase your earnings and get out of poverty, but navigating the social safety net right now. It is incredibly difficult. It's not really navigable. And we expect people who are in a very tough circumstance to navigate this and figure it out. I think it's one of the greatest tragedies that our system is noble in intent. If you go back and read the words of President Johnson when the war on poverty, so to speak, was launched, and words of other leaders when various programs came online or were adapted or improved or whatnot, it is noble language and noble intent of we don't want our fellow Americans to suffer or struggle needlessly in poverty. And we're a wealthy nation, so we can afford to help them out.

But the way these things have been designed or not designed, for that matter, has sort of inadvertently left people stuck. And the best example of that is the issue of benefit cliffs, where there are instances in which a family receiving multiple benefit programs, welfare programs through the government. If they increase their earnings, if they earn a little bit more at their job, let's say you get a raise, you get a new job or a promotion. If you clear certain income thresholds, that could trigger a reduction in your government benefits that might actually make you worse off financially than before you got the raise.

And so that's one area where there's a lot of momentum actually right now to try and fix that. where we need comprehensive reform at the federal level. But this goes back to another, what I would articulate as a core conservative principle as well, is this idea of federalism. I would much rather have states empowered to be really creative and have additional innovation authority to test different approaches to cross-program reform in our social safety net.

And I think what we often think of that as, well, these are just programs for folks in poverty. But there's actually a really good case to be made that if we can fix that and sort of clear the obstacles that a lot of these low-income families face, that's going to be beneficial for America broadly, for all of us, because we want all of our citizens, essentially the only thing holding an individual or family back in America from realizing the American dream should be themselves. We want to make sure that we clear any obstacles in their path. There are some real practical, tangible policy steps we can take as a nation in in doing that.

And I think that's part of what we need to be focused on, broadly speaking, across partisan ideologies, but also make a hearty case for folks who consider themselves political conservatives, that the end of the day, we can make sure that government policy does not harm or disincentivize families from moving up the economic ladder and getting married and having kids and pursuing the American dream. And that's something that is well within our wheelhouse as conservatives that we should embrace.

Josh

I wanted to change gears slightly. Here at Saving Elephants, I am all about trying to introduce our fellow millennials to... the conservative intellectual tradition in the United States. you know When we hear the word conservative, the first thing that comes to mind is Donald Trump, love him or hate him. I think that's terrible because I don't think that displays the depth of what I'm trying to get across, right the philosophical underpinnings, if you will, which is why I'm reading a you know books like The Political Reason of Edmund Burke by Francis Canavan, which is so popular that it is not available online. I had to literally find a PDF that I printed myself because I think the thing's out of print.

And I recognize that most people will not read things like this. And so I try to translate them in such a way that it's like, oh, okay, but he's going to have this guy on to talk about it. And hopefully they'll have a couple of jokes, maybe some lighthearted moments and tell some stories. And that'd be a lot easier to digest over the course of my commute to work, one hour commute. I can just listen to the podcast rather than read the book.

And the reason I'm saying this is because I wanted to ask you about your show, defending ideas, that I think you embark upon a, I think it'd be fair to say a similar idea in mind of Let's just be frank--Policy institutes do incredibly boring work, right? Read a lot of data, a lot of studies, and try to translate it to come up with what is the ideal policy. And I'm getting the sense that what you're trying to flesh out is trying to connect that gap for people too. Yes, we're doing good things, but if it just stays up here on the ivory towers and it's just talked about among other policy institute wonks, it's not going to do any good. So we need to translate this in a way that, you know the average Joe can kind of understand it. and I say this in mine too, you know, there's a number of wonderful, political philosophy podcast out there. They're pretty boring. And I hope I'm not as boring. There's a lot of really good policy podcasts. I've listened to maybe half an episode in each of them. And that that's all I can do. And I was wondering, can you speak to that? like is that but What are your aims or goals with defending ideas? What challenges have you experienced trying to bridge that gap of making the seemingly boring and mundane interesting to the average listener?

Nic Dunn

Well, I chuckle when you say that think tanks do boring work because in in some respects that is sometimes true to sort of a normal person. And the quintessential example of that is writing policy papers. I've got a couple of them on my shelf here of reports that I've written for Sutherland Institute. And those kinds of things are incredibly important because I think what... part of the angst that a lot of us feel with our modern political culture and political era that we're in is that it feels like so many of the discussions and the debates we have lack depth and thoughtfulness and nuance. And the more time I spend in in the public policy space, the more I feel strongly that a lot of these issues do not have easy, simple, quick answers. There's a lot of depth and nuance and thoughtfulness that's required to move the needle on this. And so that kind of work I still think is really essential, but to your point, your average voter out there is not going to sit down, you know, as much as it make might make some of us in the think tank world sad to know that, well, regular voters aren't just pouring over my 40 page research paper, you know?

And, and that's why I think, Part of what we've tried to do at Sutherland Institute through our Defending Ideas podcast is talk about these issues in such a way that regular people would latch onto and would say sort of say, okay, this is actually helpful to me. And especially our footing, our intent with Defending Ideas is to speak to people who Primarily, not exclusively, but primarily who might consider themselves political conservatives or center right or maybe leaning right or conservative adjacent. I mean, there's maybe a number of terms you could apply to it. But you know even if they wouldn't use that term, if they would hear the kind of ideas and principles we espouse at Sutherland Institute, would hear that and say, okay, I like that. That resonates with me, even if I maybe wouldn't have used the term conservative per se. Maybe they're just American principles to a lot of folks.

Josh

Right.

Nic Dunn

But we want to speak to that group in such a way that we equip them to then go and have actual substantive conversations about issues with other people and a way in a way that, yes, hopefully they can be persuasive and effective, but also in a way to turn down the political temperature in this country. Because one of the other things, again, I quote Arthur Brooks a lot because he he's been a great sort of model to view his work and his approach, and it's been highly influential for me. But Arthur Brooks said often when he was talking about his book, Love Your Enemies, which is another essential read in my view. But he said that no one in history has ever been insulted into agreeing with you.

And that really stuck out to me because if you just watch the way people engage in politics, whether it's elected officials or people on Twitter or candidates or even us as regular voters, especially when we get on social media, all too often we are jerks to one another. And no one is going after being called horrible names and belittled and those kinds of things, no one's going to say, oh, okay, good point. I agree with you now. And so part of the goal of defending ideas is this recognition that we have lost the ability as a nation to actually discuss ideas and debate ideas and do it in such a way that we are engaging with the ideas and not the person or the personality themselves. And so one of the things that I've said on the show is that if you're in a discussion or debate with somebody, don't frame it as you are wrong or you think all these bad things. Frame it as, okay, this argument that you're making. Say, I'm gonna engage with this argument. I'm going to critique it. I'm going to be robust and strident to the extent that I need to be. But I'm going to treat you with love and respect, no matter how bad I think your argument is.

I'm going say to you, I love and respect you, and I appreciate your passion on this issue and the fact that you're here at the table trying to make a difference. I may disagree entirely, and here's why. But I think the reason that is necessary is that, again, some of the most... important things we've done together as a nation have come about in the midst of disagreement or conflict, but because there was this desire for consensus building. So defending ideas, we try and boil a lot of these kinds of conversations down to sort of bite-sized chunks that that regular folks could latch onto. And one of the things that I saw, Josh, was that you look at a good example. I'll use national examples because it'll be easily identifiable for your audience. You look at two institutions. I've mentioned the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right public policy think tank in D.C., one of the best, most well-known in the policy world, ah policy think tanks that we have in this country.

Josh

Arthur Brooks was the former president, if I'm not mistaken.

Nic Dunn

Correct, yes. And so, um tremendous think tank, tremendous folks there that do amazing work. I'm a huge fan of the American Enterprise Institute. And then think of another institution, The Daily Wire, very different, you know media company, Ben Shapiro helped to start and all and all that kind of thing. And they've had tremendous success in in the years since it was created. But that's more of a political commentary outfit with various shows. And they've now gotten into documentaries and movies and those kinds of things. Tremendously successful.

The reason I articulate those two examples, whether or not anyone listening likes or doesn't like either of those institutions, I think they're an important reference point because the sort of scholarly intellectual heft of the folks at the American Enterprise Institute is really important for these conversations that we're having, that we're having as a country. The scope and breadth and the reach of the multimedia program of The Daily Wire is tremendously impactful. And so sort of the broad aspirational vision that were we're very much in pursuit of, I wouldn't say we're there yet by any stretch, but we I would say at Defending Ideas, this is what I aspire to, that I want to have the kind of intellectual heft and principled approach of an AEI style, or in our case, a Sutherland style um set of ideas and policies and approach to these important issues, but delivered in a format that meets the age that we're in because people tend to consume multimedia and short form media has become tremendously impactful in terms of reach as well.

And so that's the hope. I always feel like we're always trying to get better at that and make it the kind of thing that regular people can latch onto. Because again, I think one of the greatest travesties of the modern age is that most of the reporting or discussion about these big issues is political and tribalistic in nature. It's a horse race. It's this team and that team. It's the personalities. And I initially got my start in the journalism industry very early on in my career. And I love the world of journalism and have great appreciation for the fact that we need good journalism in this country. But it's always, in my view, been tough. to find content that is policy in its orientation rather than political. And there's plenty of political commentary shows out there. There's plenty of conservative political commentary shows out there.

There are not that many... true policy podcasts. There are some, and they're increasing, and there some good ones, but there are not enough. And so we wanted to create something that was for kind of this this thoughtful, principled, center-right space that could be a ah policy podcast where we're going to talk about the issues and equip you to then go and talk about the issues, which again, goes back to my point at the beginning of the show, that that's what we need more of. We need voters who say, these are my principles. These are the big ideas that come from my principles. And these are the policy issues or the policy prescriptions that I care about. Once you have that foundation, now let's go talk about political coalition building and figure out how to get some of these to be successfully over the finish line.

And it starts with the ideas and the principles. And that's what we've aspired to do on the show. And hopefully we'll continue to get better at as the years go on.

Josh

I always want to close with a guest with the opportunity to kind of get any plug in they want to. I think you've gotten some, the Defending Ideas show or Defending Ideas podcast, but let me just give you the opportunity to do sort of a pitch for what is it Sutherland does? How could people plug into it? And where would they listen or watch your show?

Nic Dunn

Sure, so Sutherland Institute, the so the easiest place is sutherlandinstitute.org for folks who wanna follow along with our work. We do a lot at the state level here in Utah on various issues. We're very engaged with the Utah legislative session, which is going on right now. So you might see a lot of stuff come out from us on various bills that are moving their way through the legislature. I think in particular, if folks out there listening care deeply about education policy, about religious freedom and the role of faith in public life, they care about constitutional law and federalism.

We're doing important work on technology issues and social media and AI. We're doing, of course, work on the social mobility space with a lot of work on welfare reform. And a lot of that has some touch points with the federal level and other states as well, just given the nature of that issue. There's all of that at SutherlandInstitute.org where Folks can read a lot of great articles from our policy scholars. We have multiple weekly newsletters with some policy-focused newsletters. If the only thing you care about is education, we've got a newsletter for that. We've got one on the constitution and law.

And then, of course, our Defending Ideas show, which tries to pull all of this together and package it in a way that that folks can find accessible. And that you can find at defendingideas.org. And also any of the major platforms, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, just search for Defending Ideas and those episodes come out every Tuesday morning.

And maybe as well, Josh, a final, I don't know if this is a plug per se but I think maybe a call for some optimism or hopefulness. To be honest, Yuval Levin, going back to him, he talks about hope and optimism as one is passive and the other is active. I can never remember which is which, but the active one…

Josh

Hope. Hope is active.

Nic Dunn

Thank you. Thank you. So to leave to leave your audience with a sense of hope that I have is that I find myself in a lot of conversations with the folks who, but both on the right and left, who are frustrated and worried about the state of our country for various reasons, some of which we've talked about tonight or on this episode. And it's totally well-founded. There are some serious things that we need to try and address and improve as a nation. But what I try and always remind people is that The things that you or I care about very deeply, the things that we love about America, the things that I love about Utah, the things that we love about the blessings that living here has given to us and the potential that it offers for future generations, for my own kids.

If we're worried about those things going away, I can tell you what won't right the ship. What won't right the ship is giving into more and more anger and contempt for folks on the other side and sort of burying our heads in the sand and saying, well, the other side is just bad and has to go away for any of these things to be fixed. Or I just can't deal with it and I'm just going to unplug and ignore all of this and you know not worry about it anymore. It's really important for good, principled, thoughtful people to engage on these issues and in our civic institutions and in our political institutions.

But how we engage really matters. Because again, if you're worried about all these things that you love and appreciate about the American experiment going away, you will not make a constructive difference by engaging in contempt and vitriol to the other side. And I think we also will not make a difference if we're not willing to reorient ourselves to ah as a people to America's founding aspirational ideals and the civic institutions that were necessary for those ideals to be fully realized.

And so I leave that with all of us and also with a sense of hope that you look back at various examples throughout American history, you know the founding of the nation, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, many examples throughout history where we were in yeah in much more dire straits than we are now as a nation. And we were able to overcome a lot of things together as a people. We were able to do a lot of meaningful things as a nation. I really, really believe we can do that again.

But it's going to take a recommitment to those core American principles for all of us. And it's going to take a willingness to, to in in some respects, in some instances, sort of put down our guns at the same time, put down our partisan guns, still have debates and disagreements, and those can be robust at times. But to view it as, I need to do a better job of not only understanding and respecting those who disagree with me on issues, but trying to love them and finding ways for us to act together where we can despite of that disagreement. despite that disagreement And I think if we're all willing to do that, to turn down the vitriol and the contempt and the anger and the heated nature of our political partisanship today, doesn't mean you have to abandon the political party that you like or let go of your ideological frameworks that you find meaningful, your principles that you hold dear. Bring all that stuff with you, but try and approach it in such a way that I don't just want to make a point, I want to make a difference.

Politics at its core and its best form is collaborative problem solving. So that means I need to persuade other people who are different from me to agree with some piece of what I hope to see in the future of this country. And that's a skill set that we can recover as a country if we're willing to. And that's what gives me hope is that there are a lot of people who are willing to do that. We need more of those kinds of people on all sides of the political spectrum. But I really am full of hope and faith that that is not only possible, but it's necessary.

And that's the kind of work that I want to commit myself to for my years on this earth and the kind of work I hope others will as well. And if we do that together, the future going to be a lot more bright than maybe it seems like it could be right now. But that's what gives me hope.

Josh

That is an excellent closing remark. I appreciate you taking the liberty to do that. Very well said. Nick Dunn, thank you for taking the time to come on The Saving Elephant Show.

Nic Dunn

Thank you, Josh. It's a pleasure.