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  Welcome to policy chats, the official podcast of the School of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. I'm your host, Kevin Karami. Join me and my classmates as we learn about potential policy solutions for today's biggest societal challenges. 

  Hello and welcome to a very special episode of policy chats. Feauturing the founding dean of the University of California Riverside School of Public Policy, Anil Deolalikar.  Dean Deolalikar it is a pleasure to have you with us today. Likewise, a pleasure Kevin, for me to be here. I think a great way to get the conversation started about the most critical challenges we face today will be for you to first broadly outline them. What would you say are the most significant policy challenges facing our region, country, and the world. Thank you, Kevin. I think the world today as societies around the world are facing many significant challenges and opportunities as well, I don't want to be a pessimist and focus entirely on the challenges without mentioning that there are opportunities as well, perhaps some other time we'll talk about opportunities, but today I'll focus on the challenges. And there are multiple challenges. But I would say I would list maybe four of them, three or four that I think are quite worrying and possibly very serious and would probably need addressing soon. The first of these, I would argue is global warming or climate change. This is a significant worry. Some of the damage from global warming has already been done. It is too late to adjust it. All we can do right now is trying to limit further worsening of the world's environment. Another trend, another challenge I see is rising inequality. And this inequality of wealth, inequality of income, inequality of opportunity. And this poses significant challenges to it, results in very adverse consequences about which I can talk later. A third challenge. I think we have seen this arise recently in the last, I would say four - five years, is the slow erosion of democracy. The rise of populist leaders around the world, and the slow erosion of democracy. And then the fourth challenge I would highlight and about which we can talk today, is that in terms of what I would call a big power conflict. We had an amazing period of peace in the world following the Cold War, three decades of peace and prosperity. And I think we see a return of that big power conflict now with some recent political and international developments. So I would, I would list some of those as a significant challenges that will need to be addressed in the short-term. Thank you, Dean for outlining the most important challenges we face today and really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on them. At this point, we'll transition to a more in-depth discussion regarding each of the topics you mentioned. 

  Dean Deolalikar,  you mentioned climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the world today. Why do you think the world has found it so difficult to address global warming decisively? Thank you, I think first of all, before we delve into this topic, I should add a couple of remarks about climate change. I think despite a few naysayers who say that climate change is not real. The bulk of the evidence, 99% of all the climate scientists in the world and the United Nations Environmental Group basically have provided irrefutable evidence that the world is indeed warming. And that it's warming is related to human activity. So climate change is for real and it is related to human activity. Largely the unprecedented economic growth and industrial activity that has been taking place over the last 200 plus years has contributed significantly to the warming of the planet. Now, why is it so difficult to address this issue? It's a political problem to some extent, simply because to address climate change, to address global warming, you are going to have some winners and some losers from this process. Take the example of countries that historically contributed most to climate change and the countries that are today contributing to global warming. Up until 50 years ago, it was mostly the United States and Europe that were growing very rapidly, that were industrializing and that contributed to the warming of the planet. So if you look at the stock of all the carbon in the air, right now, most of it has been contributed by the West. But in the last 40 or 50 years, as you have had the rise of different countries in Asia, particularly, but throughout Latin America and Africa as well. These countries have increasingly contributed to global warming because they have stepped up their industrialization, economic growth activities. And so now today, China is the biggest polluter, and India is the third largest polluters in the world. And United States falls in-between a second. And so these countries rightfully have said, well, you in the West sort of ended, have basically polluted the world's environment already. And you would like us now to provide economic growth and economic progress for our citizens and try to curb our economic growth in the interests of saving the planet. But you have already destroyed the planet, Earth, atmosphere so much. And so you have to make exemptions and you have to allow us to sort of do unrestrained growth. And I think there is this conflict between the industrializing countries and the industrialized countries. And that's why it's been very difficult to reach agreement on, on how do we hold the line on global warming. So that's been a problem. And then in the United States as well, we see this play out within the US political arena. You have basically some regions of the United States which are big producers of coal and oil. And as, as the folks who want to limit global warming argue that we should try to limit the use of fossil fuels. These producers of coal and oil are going to be impacted adversely. And so they are going to be the losers from this process of moving away from fossil fuels. They are objecting to this and we see this playing out in US politics where the Republican Party, for the most part is, is not very keen on adopting the same kind of liberal emission savings policies as the Democratic Party is. So I think that's why, that's certainly one reason why it's been difficult to reach an agreement, which is not to say that no agreement has been reached and we have not made progress. We have indeed made a lot of progress in in controlling emissions. I think we have done quite a lot. Unfortunately not enough. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Thank you. So with that kind of conflict and that kind of budding heads, winner and loser reality facing climate change. What can we do as ordinary citizens and students to help address climate change and what specific policies might help in that. Well, what can we do as ordinary citizens, ordinary students, ordinary professors? Well, we can do a lot. We can make small, simple behavioral changes using less water. As you know, one of the big Problems. One of the effects of climate change has been worsening drought. In California, at least California faces a historic drought of the type it has not seen in hundreds of years. We need to be more, we need to be more frugal in our consumption habits. We need to treat water, as a scarce resource, and make sure that we, you know, tell our neighbors and friends and parents not to run there, have their big lawns and water them because that water is too precious to be wasted on keeping grass green. We have to try to keep our houses a little warmer in the summer, a little cooler in the winter, and not bump up the heating too much again. Do all that we can, we can make these small steps. We can take these small steps and save a lot of energy and a lot of fossil fuels being emitted into the environment. All the little bits count. I just sort of having frugal consumption habits, switching off lights when we don't need them, to the extent possible, limiting our commute by car, taking the bicycle to work if you can. All of these things can play an important role in saving our planet Earth. Now, your second part of your question was policies. I should add that California has some of the most progressive policies when it comes to climate change, California has actually done more than almost any other state in the, in the country in terms of setting ambitious goals for emissions controlled. And it has achieved many of these goals. Actually, it has achieved some of the goals it set for itself 40 years ago. But there are many other policies that the United States could implement in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I think we in, for instance, despite a lot of discussion, there is no federal carbon tax.In California. We don't have a carbon tax of sorts, but there is no federal carbon tax. In California, we have a mandate that 50% of the electricity you should come from renewable sources by 2030. There was a recent mandate that all cars sold in the state of California will be electric by 2035. All of these are ambitious goals, but California as a state alone, cannot achieve them. The entire country has this sort of go along with that, some of these goals. In some ways you can almost think about California as a giant experiment to show what can be done by policy to control emissions. And this experiment is proving to be very successful. So I hope that other states in the United States can emulate this example. But again, I think there is a lot of room to bring in policies that will control some of the emissions. We have to realize, of course, that a lot of the damage to the environment has already been done. The Earth is warming, there's going to be warming. That will continue despite our best efforts because of all the historic levels of emissions that have accumulated in the atmosphere. And so we should also think about public policies that mitigate some of the adverse impacts of global warming. And certainly our region in California, which is amongst the poorest regions in the state and in the country, is going to suffer a lot from global warming. And so in that sense, I think public policy should be prepared to address, mitigate some of these negative effects of global warming on the state and on our region. 

  Join us on December 6th for a special seminar on one water solutions to Western water challenges. Creating a resilient and reliable water future in the face of climate change. Our panel will feature three prominent figures in water management to discuss this important issue. To learn more, go to SPP.UCR.edu. You can also find the RSVP link in our show notes. 

  Dean Deolalikar  you mentioned rising inequality as one of the big challenges facing all societies today. How much has inequality and worsened in the world? In the United States and in our region in the last decade or two. And why, and how can public policy addressed this problem? Catherine, I really do think that we're rising inequality is one of the most serious challenges the world is facing today. And by inequality, I mean inequality of all sorts, inequality of income and inequality of assets and property, inequality of opportunity. And most importantly, of course, we know from, from the literature, inequality of incomes and of assets often results in disparities of health outcomes, disparities in education. And it sort of becomes a vicious cycle of inequality. So the scale of inequality today is staggering. I mean, let me just tell you a couple of facts to tell you how, how unequal world is. Today, the richest, 1% of the world controls about 40 percent of the world. So think about that. I mean, just 1% of the world, 1% of seven or 8 million people control nearly half of all the wealth in this world. That's very unequal. The ten richest billionaires in the world, most of whom are in America, own more wealth than the GDP of several countries, large countries, Australia, Spain, Mexico, Turkey. And what we have seen happen is rising inequality throughout the world, even in socialist countries like China, China started off as one of the most equal societies you could imagine. 50-70 years ago. And today is one of the most unequal societies in the world. United States, we have. Actually the period right after the Second World War was a period of relative equality during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. But beginning in the 1980s, we started seeing inequality rise and rise and rise, and it's become much worse, even just since the Great Recession of 2008, inequality has worsened considerably in the United States. So one indicator of how much inequality has worsened is given by this statistic. Which is that if you look at the average pay of a CEO in a company relative to the average production worker in that company. That used to be the ratio used to be about 25 in the, in the 1960s and 1970s. So average your CEO was paid 25 times the average worker, production worker in a factory. Today that ratio is now not 25, not 1,500, not even 200 but it is 300. So that tells you how unequal things have become. And in fact, if you look at the real wages of the poorest Americans, they have not changed. They have been pretty stagnant over the last 40 years. In fact, by some indicators, real wages of the poorest Americans have fallen, while those of college graduates have increased enormously. So you've seen a big polarization of incomes. Now in our own region. The inequalities are equally glaring. For instance, if you look at Eastern Coachella Valley, if you look at a city, a town of Indian Wells, it has a per capita, an average household income of about 200, more than $200,000. And if you look at another town in Eastern Coachella Valley Mecca, it as an average household income of 25,000. So there's almost a nine to one ratio of average household incomes. So our own region here in the Inland Empire has seen a rapid rise in inequality. Now, why has it occurred? Many factors. It's complicated, it's nuanced to, but I would say definitely globalization has been one factor that has put a strain on, on inequality. What has happened primarily in globalization is that a lot of manufacturing jobs that paid well in developed countries like the United States, were off-shored to low-income countries like China or Mexico. And of course, that has put downward pressure on wages in low-skill jobs in the United States. Some people argue that immigration, large-scale immigration, especially immigration by low-skilled workers, has also put downward pressure on, on low-skill jobs in rich countries. And to some extent that's true, although one can argue about, about exactly, I think on the whole, immigration has been beneficial for the world as has globalization. But they have definitely increased inequality. And the idea was that governments would somehow compensate for this inequality by putting in policies to address this rising quality that's inherent in globalization, in the globalization process. But what did governments do? Governments actually did not do much to arrest this inequality. In fact, if anything, I think public policy has worsened inequality. And there are many reasons for that. I think the tax policy has been generally very favorable to the rich relative to the poor. Even though we're supposed to have a progressive tax system. In reality, it's not very progressive. You have lots of loopholes. And in the United States, the rich often don't end up paying their fair share of taxes. In fact, if you look at everyone likes to complain that tax rates in the United States are very high. But if you actually look at the United States in comparison to other African countries, we have a fairly modest tax rate. In Europe it is much higher. So there are many taxes. The tax system is somewhat biased in favor of, in favor of the rich, and it works against the poor in many ways. What can we do about, about inequality or about rising inequality? I think we need to have the political will to address inequality head on. Most governments have not shown that strong political determination to, to do this. One important factor I would like to draw your attention to is the role of education. Public higher education actually plays a role in reducing inequality. Universities like UCR, actually are great engines of social mobility. What they do is they take students from disadvantaged groups and give them a college education and put them in. In the higher income. The size of the income distribution. Basically, you take people who are disadvantaged and move them into the advantage category through education. And I think universities, public universities like UCR play a very important role in social mobility and in improving inequality. But we need more universities like UCR to make a big difference. Then of course, I think coming back to the other question, I think we need to have a serious conversation in this country and around the world on, on using the tax system more effectively to address inequality. There's been discussion in the United States for several years now of putting a wealth tax. Modest wealth tax, a two percent wealth tax on properties that are worth more than $50,000,000. And 3 percent tax for properties of $1 billion or more. But that discussion hasn't gone anywhere. I don’t think as the political support for introducing a wealth tax of that sort. There's also no federal inheritance, inheritance tax. So even though we do have an estate tax, that would go a long way in making sure that inequality is not perpetuated across generations. So I hope I've answered your question in terms of why inequality has risen, why it is a problem? What we can do about it? Yes, Dean, thank you for sharing statistics about wealth and the rise of inequality in the world and the recent decades. I really believe the solutions that you've talked about really helped show how public policy can really address this problem. 

  Dean Deolalikar you mentioned the slow erosion of democracy as a challenge facing the world today. What exactly do you mean by that? And how and why has this happened? Andrew I mentioned that as a challenge that many societies around the world are facing today. And I think it is. The result of two main factors. One is something I referred to earlier about the rise of inequality in many countries. What has happened with the rise of inequalities, that it has created a class of disaffected individuals, people who haven't really benefited from economic growth or from the process of globalization. In fact, many of these individuals have been hurt by the process of globalization. The jobs that they held, the manufacturing jobs that they had before, which paid them. Decent wages have all been exported out to low-income countries. And so wages at the lower end of the scale have stagnated or even come down in real terms. And so this has left a group of individuals a disaffected. And I think what has happened in many countries is that politicians have seize this opportunity. Some politicians, I should say, have preyed on this disaffected class of individuals and played up on their fears by saying that look your situation is what it is today because you haven't really have had your jobs that have been exported out to countries like China or Mexico, or you have had your job's taken away by all these immigrants who have come from abroad. And they are made to feel as if they are under threat. As a result of this, you have, I would almost call this a kind of populism that has played into politics. And that is one reason why you have Populist Party is on the rise throughout the world. And many of these parties are using elections to get them into new power. But once they are in power, they often stack up the rules of the elections in such a way that they will never be voted out of power again. We have seen this happening in many countries alarmingly in Europe and Latin America, in Asia, and even in North America. I think that's certainly what I would call it as a worrying trend. It is related to the rising levels of inequality. It is related to high levels of immigration. I mean, I think immigration is generally very positive for everyone concerned, but I think it has to be managed well. And unfortunately, immigration from low-income countries, Japan, be politically divisive and some politicians have seized upon immigration, as a topic that they can exploit for the benefit of populism. And I think what this has led to is, is this rise of, I've taught it Adrian is a model slow erosion of democracy. We have seen this happen in Hungary and Poland, in Brazil, in Mexico, in the Philippines, Turkey, many, many parts of the world. So that's what I meant by this rise of the erosion of democracy. Thank you Dean, and I want to stay on the topic of populism. Do you think there are any other instances in recent world history or populism has led to an erosion of democracy. Well, we saw, again, I'm not saying that these are identical cases in I think we have seen in the past, especially during, just in the aftermath of the Great Depression in the 1930s. You saw this kind of populism arise. And there were certain political parties in Europe that preyed on people who had lost their jobs and their fortunes were in a bad economic situation as a result of the depression. And I think the sort of populism, The Populist streak amongst certain political parties lead to fairly authoritarian parties, parties that did not really believe in democracy, taking power and then cementing their power by changing the rules of the game as it were. This is what we saw happen in Germany and Italy and in other countries in Europe. During the 1930s and 40s. So that's the comparison I was. I think that one could make. Now again, I'm not arguing that we add in a similar situation now. But unless we address this issue forthrightly, we are going to, we may end up in a situation of the type that we saw in the 1930s and forties and we don't want that to happen. There's an excellent book that came out a few years ago called The, called How Democracies Die. And it basically documents the fact that democracy is dy, not true. Revolutions or upheavals like that. But they just said, slowly, you sort of have the slow erosion of democracy. And many democrats come into power using democratic means, but then somehow they break the rules and continue to stay on in power. Oh, thank you so much, Dean, also, as a quick side note, a lot of political experts and historians worried that America's democracy, democracy is on the brink of erosion and frankly utter destruction. Do you see that? Does that worry you a little bit like through our own country domestically or do we do not think we have much of a problem to worry? I don't think we have too much of a problem to worry. I mean, again, it's good to be vigilant, but I think American democratic institutions are very strong and buy those institutions. I mean institutions of the free, a free press, an independent judiciary, and the bureaucracy. Actually, there's been a lot written recently on how the bureaucracy help prevent many of the excesses that we saw during the previous US administrations. And I think these there was, we had the beginnings of a tendency towards authoritarianism when we had President Trump denying the election results and, and be unwilling to step down from power. But unfortunately, it didn't amount to much because of all the pushback from our democratic institutions. So our democratic institutions are strong enough to withstand this erosion of democracy, but we have to be vigilant. In other countries, the democratic institutions are not as strong. And so I think this slide from democracy to authority has been, has not been checked and we have seen them slide into, into autocracy and authoritarianism. But I think in the United States, there's a very low likelihood of that because it's a mature democracy. We have had our democracy for 200 years and our institutions are pretty solid to withstand this. 

  Social injustice, health disparities, climate change. Are you interested in solving pressing challenges like these currently facing our region and the world? Then consider joining the next cohort, a future policy leaders like me, By applying for the UCR Master of Public Policy program. Learn more at MPP.UCR.edu. You can also find the link in our slides. 

  I would like to follow up on one of the big global challenges you had mentioned, namely the return of big power conflict. We're seeing this with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China's increasing aggression towards Taiwan and increasing tensions in the Middle East. Do you think these conflicts will have long-term consequences on such things as globalization and economic progress in the world. Thank you. And I think this is an important question because for at least the last 30 years, since the end of the Cold War, the world sort of went through a relatively peaceful period where you had conflicts around the world. But none of the big powers got involved in these conflicts. So they were not big power conflicts in the sense that we ever had in the first part of the 20th, that we had in the first part of the 20th century. I think I would say that the conflicts in the Middle East have, It's been going on and even the more recent conflicts in the Middle East haven't really drawn in the big powers into them. So I would set those aside. But what I'm a little worried about is the conflict between the United States and Russia in Ukraine over Ukraine. And the tensions that have arisen in the last couple of years between the United States and China. And the likelihood that those tensions could actually become even greater. China or two. Invade Taiwan, which it might in the next few years. I think. The world currently has two or three superpowers. The United States, China, and Russia. Russia is probably not the kind of superpower that it used to be, but it's still an important force to contend with. And it has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. It is an important actor on the world stage, at least militarily, if not economically. China, on the other hand, is both an economic and military, a power and a competitor to the United States. So any conflict between these countries poses a problem. With Russia. I think we saw the United States, in coordination with its allies, put a very comprehensive set of sanctions on Russia, mostly economic sanctions. And those worked initially. It's not clear how much they have, how effective they have been, but there have been unprecedented in their nature and their skills. They have essentially cut off Russia from from the world financial system. Now Russia probably doesn't have many options to respond to these sanctions. They have tried to evade them at the margin. But, but what I am worried about is that similar sanctions imposed on China could really create more problems for the world. In the sense that China has seen what has happened with Russia recently with respect to the sanctions. It knows that it may suffer similar sanctions if it did decide to invade Taiwan in the near future. And it's probably preparing for these by decoupling itself from the United States and the Western economies. Which means basically they are becoming more self-reliant on producing, on producing key manufactured goods. The big, the big issue right now between the United States and Russia is semiconductors. And the United States has put a ban on American companies or European companies selling semiconductor chips to Chinese companies. And this will really start China of much needed technology for producing critical infrastructure that it needs. And I think China's response to these kinds of sanctions will be to spur innovation and try to come up with domestic sources of technology where it won't need to rely on the United States and the West. And so in some sense, we have seen this happen already. The United States has been decoupling itself from Chinese supply chains. And China has been decoupling itself from american and Western and supply chains. And you will see this now happened with respect to consumer goods as well. Apple bonds has decided that it's going to shift a lot of its production facilities over the next several years from China to other countries like Vietnam and India. And you will see this happen in industry after industry. And in a sense this mean, well, I hope it doesn't, but it may mark the end of this four decade period of globalization that we have witnessed. In particular, globalization has really been on a fast track since 2000s when China was admitted to the World Trade Organization, WTO and globalization to now, there are many reasons why globalization may have heard some sections of society in the Western countries. But overall, globalization has been a big boom to the world. It has resulted in progress for millions of people. It has brought billions of people above the poverty line in countries like China and India. And so I worry about globalization sort of slowing down or eventually reversing itself. We don't want two separate worlds. Economic was one with China dominating it and the other one with the United States and its allies dominating it. We really want a more integrated world. And this is where I worry a little bit about big power Conflict and its implications for globalization and economic progress. Yeah, Thank you. It's really interesting how you brought up the idea of allies in the US. Using their allies to put sanctions on Russia and how China has been attempting to decouple itself from Western economies. I was just curious, how do you see this? Like you'd mentioned that there could be a strain on globalization. Do you see that strain extending also to supranational organizations? You mean like international organizations like the world bank, for instance? Like the nation's, yes, I see this already. I mean, you have, you have. China has actually created its own version of a World Bank in the last few years. And I believe China does actually more lending to the developing countries, to third world countries than, than the World Bank and other western banks built. Well, I shouldn't call them investment banks because they are multilateral banks. And China has a stake in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and the International banks as well. But, you have had some sort of parallel organizations, arise. Trade organizations, multilateral development organizations. Yes, There's decoupling could mean that we have two entire sets of supranational organizations in the world. One sort of aligned with the Chinese and one allied with the United States. And again, I don't think that's good for the world. 

  Thank you, Dean Deolilkar for the insights on each issue. It was really interesting to hear your thoughts on these critical topics and the kinds of policy solutions which should be looking at. Before we end the episode, I thought it would be appropriate to maybe give you an opportunity to briefly describe your thoughts on the school of public policy. How do you feel about whether school is now compared to when you first found it? Well, that's very easy to answer because when I first found it did about nine years ago, 9-10 years. There was no school at all. There was basically just it was a one-person school. I was appointed as the founding dean and there was no one else here. Fast-forward nine years later. And we have a very vibrant school with more than 350 undergraduate and graduate students, about 20 faculty members, 25 staff members. And four maybe now perhaps five vibrant research centers that are generating lots of grants and contracts and grants and activity. And making political waves. Making policy, having a big policy impact in California, in the inland region and around the country. So yes, looking back, I cannot imagine where the school is now. I cannot I could not have imagined how far this cool, good progress within the short period of ten years. And it's largely because of the great faculty, the wonderful staff, and the phenomenonal students like you that we have. We are very lucky to have had all these wonderful students, staff, and faculty who helped make this school the success that it is today. Well, thank you so much Dean, for your remarks and for joining us on the policy chats podcast. And for the amazing work you've done for the School of Public Policy. I'm honored to be involved both as a student and as host of the podcast. I also want to thank my fellow ambassadors Dinara Godage, Andrew Shannon, Catherine Mah and Zeno Marganian for joining us today and for their invaluable aid in the production of the podcast. We all enjoyed getting a chance to speak with you today. Likewise, it was my pleasure and honor to be with all of you and thank you again, Kevin, Dinara, Andrew, Catherine, and Zeno. And enjoy talking to all of you. Goodbye. 

  This podcast is a production of the UC Riverside School of Public Policy. Our theme music was produced by C code. I'm Kevin Karami. Till next time.