WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.799 The giant sucking sound. Oh, man. I just want 00:00:04.799 --> 00:00:07.019 you to let those words sit in the air for a second. 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:10.480 It is visceral. It's weird. And honestly, if 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:12.240 you didn't know the context, it sounds like, 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:14.439 I don't know, a catastrophic plumbing emergency. 00:00:14.859 --> 00:00:18.780 Right. Or maybe the title of a B grade sci -fi 00:00:18.780 --> 00:00:21.500 horror movie from the 80s. It really does. Yeah. 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:24.199 But it's one of those phrases that if you were 00:00:24.199 --> 00:00:26.989 around in the early 90s, it instantly triggers 00:00:26.989 --> 00:00:29.390 a very specific memory. You probably picture 00:00:29.390 --> 00:00:31.690 this charts and graphs billionaire on TV with 00:00:31.690 --> 00:00:34.570 a laser pointer. Yep. But if you're younger or, 00:00:34.590 --> 00:00:36.329 you know, if you just weren't following American 00:00:36.329 --> 00:00:38.929 politics back then, it might sound like complete 00:00:38.929 --> 00:00:41.710 nonsense. Exactly. But here is the thing. And 00:00:41.710 --> 00:00:43.109 this is why we're talking about it today. This 00:00:43.109 --> 00:00:45.990 isn't just a funny arrangement of words. This 00:00:45.990 --> 00:00:49.310 specific sound actually defined an entire era 00:00:49.310 --> 00:00:51.990 of American economic anxiety. You really did. 00:00:52.229 --> 00:00:56.350 It was the viral meme of 1992. before the concept 00:00:56.350 --> 00:00:59.030 of a mean even existed. It was the sound bite 00:00:59.030 --> 00:01:01.229 that ate the election. And in many ways, it was 00:01:01.229 --> 00:01:03.530 kind of the first time a mass audience was forced 00:01:03.530 --> 00:01:07.230 to visualize globalization not as like a handshake, 00:01:07.269 --> 00:01:09.790 but as a physical force. Right. So today we are 00:01:09.790 --> 00:01:12.310 doing a deep dive into the source material surrounding 00:01:12.310 --> 00:01:15.609 this exact phrase. It starts with Ross Perot 00:01:15.609 --> 00:01:18.849 and the 1992 presidential election. Specifically, 00:01:19.129 --> 00:01:22.290 the brawl over NAFTA. Yes, the North American 00:01:22.290 --> 00:01:25.670 Free Trade Agreement. But our mission for this 00:01:25.670 --> 00:01:28.390 deep dive isn't just a dry history lesson about 00:01:28.390 --> 00:01:30.430 a trade deal. Thankfully, we're going to look 00:01:30.430 --> 00:01:32.670 at how this catchphrase actually escaped the 00:01:32.670 --> 00:01:35.030 orbit of American politics and traveled around 00:01:35.030 --> 00:01:37.829 the world. We've got historical sources, media 00:01:37.829 --> 00:01:40.069 archives and global economic reports to pull 00:01:40.069 --> 00:01:42.760 from. It's a fascinating case study in how language 00:01:42.760 --> 00:01:45.040 evolves. We're going to trace it from a warning 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:47.959 about Mexico to a description of the European 00:01:47.959 --> 00:01:50.379 Union and eventually into a very graphic and 00:01:50.379 --> 00:01:53.219 very strange description of politicians panicking 00:01:53.219 --> 00:01:55.879 in Washington, D .C. And along the way, we're 00:01:55.879 --> 00:01:57.780 going to pull out some key insights from all 00:01:57.780 --> 00:02:01.000 these sources about globalization, labor arbitrage, 00:02:01.299 --> 00:02:04.239 and really the physics of fear. So grab your 00:02:04.239 --> 00:02:06.420 headphones. Maybe check your plumbing just in 00:02:06.420 --> 00:02:09.240 case because we are diving deep into the giant 00:02:09.240 --> 00:02:11.539 sucking sound Let's do it. Okay. Let's set the 00:02:11.539 --> 00:02:15.620 scene. It is 1992 The US presidential campaign 00:02:15.620 --> 00:02:18.620 is in full swing. You have the incumbent George 00:02:18.620 --> 00:02:21.939 HW Bush You have the challenger Bill Clinton 00:02:21.939 --> 00:02:24.460 and then you have the grenade in the room Ross 00:02:24.460 --> 00:02:27.259 Perot the independent candidate and it's really 00:02:27.259 --> 00:02:29.620 important to remember for those who weren't watching 00:02:29.620 --> 00:02:32.490 back then Perot wasn't a polished politician. 00:02:32.669 --> 00:02:35.590 Not at all. He was a Texas billionaire businessman. 00:02:35.990 --> 00:02:38.969 He literally bought 30 minute infomercials on 00:02:38.969 --> 00:02:41.870 primetime TV just to show people charts about 00:02:41.870 --> 00:02:43.969 the national debt. Can you imagine that today? 00:02:44.169 --> 00:02:47.030 30 minutes of charts, no viral dances, just bar 00:02:47.030 --> 00:02:49.729 graphs on network television. And people watched. 00:02:50.129 --> 00:02:52.729 They really tuned in. He brought a totally different 00:02:52.729 --> 00:02:55.810 energy to the stage. He was blunt. He was folksy. 00:02:55.909 --> 00:02:58.289 And he was completely obsessed with the nitty 00:02:58.289 --> 00:03:00.939 gritty details of the economy. He wasn't speaking 00:03:00.939 --> 00:03:03.659 in soaring political rhetoric. He was speaking 00:03:03.659 --> 00:03:06.400 in business logic. He treated the U .S. economy 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:08.620 like a distressed asset that he was trying to 00:03:08.620 --> 00:03:11.599 fix. And the specific moment we're dissecting 00:03:11.599 --> 00:03:14.240 from our sources is the second presidential debate, 00:03:14.539 --> 00:03:18.000 October 19th, 1992. The topic on the table is 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:22.800 NAFTA. Right. Now, Perot was famously against 00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:25.840 it, but he didn't just say, you know, I think 00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:29.419 this is suboptimal macroeconomic policy. He painted 00:03:29.419 --> 00:03:32.060 a picture. He had to. He needed a metaphor that 00:03:32.060 --> 00:03:34.479 would cut through all the academic talk. And 00:03:34.479 --> 00:03:36.039 to understand the metaphor, we have to look at 00:03:36.039 --> 00:03:38.460 the specific economic argument he was making 00:03:38.460 --> 00:03:40.360 on that stage. Right. He wasn't just throwing 00:03:40.360 --> 00:03:42.240 insults out there. No, he was talking about a 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:45.219 concept economists call factor price equalization. 00:03:45.439 --> 00:03:48.639 OK, hold on. Factor price equalization. That 00:03:48.639 --> 00:03:50.960 sounds exactly like the textbook definition that 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:52.860 puts people to sleep. Fair enough. Let's break 00:03:52.860 --> 00:03:54.759 that down for the listener based on the debate 00:03:54.759 --> 00:03:56.419 transcript. What was he actually pointing at? 00:03:56.599 --> 00:03:59.780 Essentially, he was looking at the massive disparity 00:03:59.780 --> 00:04:02.219 between the cost of labor in the United States 00:04:02.219 --> 00:04:05.479 and the cost of labor in Mexico. He was arguing 00:04:05.479 --> 00:04:08.060 that when you remove trade barriers between two 00:04:08.060 --> 00:04:11.120 economies with such vastly different wage structures, 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:13.919 the free market will force them to meet in the 00:04:13.919 --> 00:04:15.979 middle. Right. It's like connecting two water 00:04:15.979 --> 00:04:18.360 tanks, one full, one empty, and you connect them 00:04:18.360 --> 00:04:21.319 with a pipe. The water levels have to equalize. 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:24.060 So let's unpack the actual numbers he threw out 00:04:24.060 --> 00:04:26.160 there in the debate because They were pretty 00:04:26.160 --> 00:04:29.360 stark. According to the source material, Perot 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:31.600 was highlighting that U .S. factory workers at 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:33.519 the time were earning somewhere in the range 00:04:33.519 --> 00:04:37.279 of $12, $13, or $14 an hour. Correct. And that 00:04:37.279 --> 00:04:40.180 $12 to $14 an hour, that was the benchmark for 00:04:40.180 --> 00:04:42.360 a middle -class American life back then. It bought 00:04:42.360 --> 00:04:44.779 a house, a car, it bought stability. And then 00:04:44.779 --> 00:04:47.699 he pointed south. Exactly. He argued that if 00:04:47.699 --> 00:04:49.899 you move a factory south of the border to Mexico, 00:04:50.220 --> 00:04:53.930 you are paying labor $1 an hour. $12 versus $1. 00:04:54.170 --> 00:04:58.279 That is a massive gap. Any CFO looking at a spreadsheet 00:04:58.279 --> 00:05:00.680 is going to circle that number in red ink. Oh, 00:05:00.819 --> 00:05:02.759 absolutely. But he didn't stop at wages. Right. 00:05:02.939 --> 00:05:05.000 Because it wasn't just about the paycheck. No. 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:06.920 And this is where he really tried to drive the 00:05:06.920 --> 00:05:09.579 point home for the business -minded voters. It's 00:05:09.579 --> 00:05:11.819 about the total cost of employment. The hidden 00:05:11.819 --> 00:05:14.899 costs. Right. He listed the lack of benefits 00:05:14.899 --> 00:05:18.240 in Mexico as huge cost savers for corporations. 00:05:18.860 --> 00:05:21.800 He mentioned no retirement plans, no environmental 00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:25.420 controls, and no pollution controls. And he's... 00:05:25.389 --> 00:05:26.930 He specifically mentioned health care too, which 00:05:26.930 --> 00:05:29.769 was a big deal. He did. He noted that health 00:05:29.769 --> 00:05:32.790 care is the quote, most expensive single element 00:05:32.790 --> 00:05:35.949 in making a car. Wow. His argument was that in 00:05:35.949 --> 00:05:38.310 Mexico, corporations just wouldn't have to carry 00:05:38.310 --> 00:05:40.709 that burden at all. So let's look at this from 00:05:40.709 --> 00:05:45.009 the perspective of a CEO in 1992. Yeah. You have 00:05:45.009 --> 00:05:48.490 cheap labor, no benefits, no environmental regulations. 00:05:49.009 --> 00:05:51.230 Perot's conclusion was basically, if you are 00:05:51.230 --> 00:05:53.939 a corporation and your only goal is profit, Why 00:05:53.939 --> 00:05:56.160 would you possibly stay in the US? Precisely. 00:05:56.459 --> 00:05:59.139 He was describing a vacuum. He was arguing that 00:05:59.139 --> 00:06:02.180 capital money, factories, jobs, it flows like 00:06:02.180 --> 00:06:04.519 water. It flows to the lowest point of resistance 00:06:04.519 --> 00:06:07.639 and cost. He was directly challenging the idea 00:06:07.639 --> 00:06:09.980 that companies had any sort of national loyalty 00:06:09.980 --> 00:06:12.379 when the math was that clear. And that leads 00:06:12.379 --> 00:06:15.240 us to the quote. He said, and I'm paraphrasing 00:06:15.240 --> 00:06:18.180 the buildup here, but if you have all these factors, 00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:21.040 there will be a giant sucking sound going south. 00:06:21.120 --> 00:06:24.519 There it is. The auditory metaphor for U .S. 00:06:24.660 --> 00:06:27.420 jobs leaving the country. It's such a powerful 00:06:27.420 --> 00:06:30.379 image. He didn't say jobs will migrate. He didn't 00:06:30.379 --> 00:06:33.180 say employment figures will shift. He said sucking 00:06:33.180 --> 00:06:36.399 sound. It implies violence. Yes. It implies a 00:06:36.399 --> 00:06:38.959 force of nature that you just can't stop once 00:06:38.959 --> 00:06:42.100 you open the door. It frames the economy not 00:06:42.100 --> 00:06:44.639 as a system of cooperation, but as a system of 00:06:44.639 --> 00:06:47.920 predation. The sucking sound is the sound of 00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:50.120 the U .S. being drained. It's the sound of a 00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:52.540 whole breach on a spaceship. It really is. And 00:06:52.540 --> 00:06:54.459 he had a pretty grim prediction about what would 00:06:54.459 --> 00:06:56.040 happen next, because it wasn't just that the 00:06:56.040 --> 00:06:57.500 jobs would leave. It was about what would happen 00:06:57.500 --> 00:07:00.220 to the wages of the people left behind. This 00:07:00.220 --> 00:07:02.319 goes back to that equalization concept we talked 00:07:02.319 --> 00:07:05.550 about. The water tanks leveling out. Right. Perot 00:07:05.550 --> 00:07:07.569 predicted that Mexican wages would eventually 00:07:07.569 --> 00:07:10.889 rise. He said they might go up from $1 to $6 00:07:10.889 --> 00:07:13.110 an hour, which sounds good for Mexico. Sure. 00:07:13.470 --> 00:07:16.029 But, and here's the scary part for the American 00:07:16.029 --> 00:07:19.230 voter, he argued that U .S. wages would fall 00:07:19.230 --> 00:07:21.930 to match them. So everyone meets in the middle 00:07:21.930 --> 00:07:25.129 at six bucks an hour, meaning the American standard 00:07:25.129 --> 00:07:28.120 of living basically gets cut in half. Exactly. 00:07:28.540 --> 00:07:31.500 He claimed this process would quote, wreck the 00:07:31.500 --> 00:07:34.879 country. It was a classic argument against unchecked 00:07:34.879 --> 00:07:37.490 globalization. the idea that it benefits the 00:07:37.490 --> 00:07:40.350 owners of capital but ultimately hurts the laborers 00:07:40.350 --> 00:07:42.870 in the developed world. He was basically telling 00:07:42.870 --> 00:07:45.069 the American worker, you cannot compete with 00:07:45.069 --> 00:07:47.529 a dollar an hour without becoming poor yourself. 00:07:47.889 --> 00:07:50.029 And we are not endorsing that economic view or 00:07:50.029 --> 00:07:51.810 the opposing view here, just to be clear to you 00:07:51.810 --> 00:07:54.009 listening. We are just looking at the argument 00:07:54.009 --> 00:07:56.370 he made. And it's a terrifying picture if you 00:07:56.370 --> 00:08:00.550 are a factory worker in 1992. Absolutely. You're 00:08:00.550 --> 00:08:02.550 hearing this billionaire on stage tell you that 00:08:02.550 --> 00:08:05.069 your $14 an hour job is mathematically doomed. 00:08:05.389 --> 00:08:08.050 But, as we know from the history books, history 00:08:08.050 --> 00:08:10.250 took a slightly different turn. Well, the election 00:08:10.250 --> 00:08:12.930 certainly did. Because, despite the memorable 00:08:12.930 --> 00:08:16.550 line, Perot lost. Bill Clinton won the presidency. 00:08:16.730 --> 00:08:19.750 And Clinton supported NAFTA. He did. The agreement 00:08:19.750 --> 00:08:23.709 went into effect on January 1, 1994. Now before 00:08:23.709 --> 00:08:26.470 we move on to how this phrase survived the 90s, 00:08:26.670 --> 00:08:28.610 I have to share a little piece of trivia from 00:08:28.610 --> 00:08:31.540 our notes. little well actually moment, because 00:08:31.540 --> 00:08:33.720 human memory is a funny thing. Oh, I love these 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:36.539 details. What did you find? So we all remember 00:08:36.539 --> 00:08:39.519 it as giant sucking sound. It's in the history 00:08:39.519 --> 00:08:41.960 books. It's on Wikipedia. But if you look at 00:08:41.960 --> 00:08:44.440 the original transcript from the Commission on 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:47.299 Presidential Debates and PBS, they transcribed 00:08:47.299 --> 00:08:49.279 it slightly differently back then. They originally 00:08:49.279 --> 00:08:52.059 wrote it down as job sucking sound. Job sucking 00:08:52.059 --> 00:08:54.340 sound. That doesn't have quite the same ring 00:08:54.340 --> 00:08:56.840 to it, does it? Not at all. Giant sucking sound 00:08:56.840 --> 00:09:00.799 feels momentous. It feels cinematic. Job sucking 00:09:00.799 --> 00:09:04.080 sound feels, I don't know, a bit clunky, a bit 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:06.220 too literal. It just goes to show how collective 00:09:06.220 --> 00:09:08.700 memory works. We culturally remembered the version 00:09:08.700 --> 00:09:11.559 that hit harder. Giant gives it scale. It turns 00:09:11.559 --> 00:09:14.259 it into a monster. Right. Job sucking sounds 00:09:14.259 --> 00:09:17.940 like a localized HR problem. Giant sucking sound 00:09:17.940 --> 00:09:20.779 sounds like a national catastrophe. Exactly. 00:09:21.299 --> 00:09:24.179 So NAFTA passes, GRO loses, the world moves on. 00:09:24.460 --> 00:09:27.259 But the phrase didn't disappear. it actually 00:09:27.259 --> 00:09:30.179 started to travel. This is where the story gets 00:09:30.179 --> 00:09:32.019 really interesting to me as we look at the later 00:09:32.019 --> 00:09:34.399 sources. This is the linguistic evolution part. 00:09:34.740 --> 00:09:37.059 The phrase detached itself from the specific 00:09:37.059 --> 00:09:41.720 context of the 1992 US -Mexico debate. And it 00:09:41.720 --> 00:09:44.120 just became a piece of general slang for economic 00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:46.519 fear. It became the go -to term for unwanted 00:09:46.519 --> 00:09:49.039 labor exportation. Or even just the fear of it. 00:09:49.340 --> 00:09:51.179 Any time one nation felt like they were losing 00:09:51.179 --> 00:09:53.480 jobs to a rival, especially a rival with lower 00:09:53.480 --> 00:09:56.559 costs, that sound came up. It stopped being about 00:09:56.559 --> 00:09:58.879 Ross Perot and started being about the universal 00:09:58.879 --> 00:10:00.659 feeling of vulnerability. And it wasn't just 00:10:00.659 --> 00:10:03.399 Americans using it. The notes mention a European 00:10:03.399 --> 00:10:05.299 Union representative actually using the phrase 00:10:05.299 --> 00:10:07.679 on the record. Yes. This was a specific instance 00:10:07.679 --> 00:10:10.320 where an EU rep spoke about worrying about quote, 00:10:10.559 --> 00:10:12.980 the giant sucking sound from Eastern Europe. 00:10:13.139 --> 00:10:16.480 So in that context, Western Europe plays the 00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:19.679 role of the US. the high -wage, high -regulation 00:10:19.679 --> 00:10:22.480 zone. And Eastern Europe plays the role of Mexico. 00:10:22.740 --> 00:10:26.600 Exactly. The dynamic is identical. You have established 00:10:26.600 --> 00:10:30.139 higher -wage economies, fearing the pull of developing 00:10:30.139 --> 00:10:32.659 lower -wage economies right next door. Right. 00:10:32.759 --> 00:10:35.399 It shows that the anxiety Perot tapped into wasn't 00:10:35.399 --> 00:10:38.519 uniquely American. It's a feature of globalized 00:10:38.519 --> 00:10:41.240 economics. Whenever you have a border separating 00:10:41.240 --> 00:10:44.159 high wages and low wages, somebody is going to 00:10:44.159 --> 00:10:46.000 hear that sound. It's interesting because it 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:48.710 suggests that the sound isn't a specific countries. 00:10:49.289 --> 00:10:52.269 It's about the gradient. It's about the slope. 00:10:52.450 --> 00:10:54.070 That's a great way to put it. It's about the 00:10:54.070 --> 00:10:56.070 slope of the economic playing field. Speaking 00:10:56.070 --> 00:10:58.250 of slopes and globalization, here's where it 00:10:58.250 --> 00:11:01.059 gets highly ironic. There was a great observation 00:11:01.059 --> 00:11:03.559 from Thomas Friedman in our source material. 00:11:03.960 --> 00:11:05.759 Now, Friedman is the guy who wrote, the world 00:11:05.759 --> 00:11:07.700 is flat. Right. He's generally known as a big 00:11:07.700 --> 00:11:10.200 cheerleader for globalization. He is. He's always 00:11:10.200 --> 00:11:13.000 looking for those massive global shifts. And 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:15.460 years after Perot made his prediction, Friedman 00:11:15.460 --> 00:11:17.779 looked at the global data and opined that the 00:11:17.779 --> 00:11:20.019 tables had completely turned. What did he see? 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:23.159 He noted that Mexicans were now hearing the giant 00:11:23.159 --> 00:11:25.840 sucking sound themselves. Wait, so the jobs went 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:28.159 to Mexico. And then Mexico started losing them. 00:11:28.860 --> 00:11:31.399 Yes. Friedman said they were hearing it in stereo 00:11:31.399 --> 00:11:34.940 from China in one ear and India in the other. 00:11:35.100 --> 00:11:38.039 That is wild. So the sucking sound kept moving 00:11:38.039 --> 00:11:41.139 east to Asia. It illustrates the relentless nature 00:11:41.139 --> 00:11:43.580 of what economists often call the race to the 00:11:43.580 --> 00:11:46.860 bottom regarding labor costs. Perot warned that 00:11:46.860 --> 00:11:48.860 U .S. jobs would go to Mexico because it was 00:11:48.860 --> 00:11:51.779 cheaper. Right. But eventually China joined the 00:11:51.779 --> 00:11:54.399 World Trade Organization. India opened up its 00:11:54.399 --> 00:11:57.179 economy and suddenly Mexico wasn't the cheapest 00:11:57.179 --> 00:11:59.500 option anymore. So the very thing Perot warned 00:11:59.500 --> 00:12:02.019 would happen to the U .S. that feeling of helplessness 00:12:02.019 --> 00:12:04.659 as jobs vanish happened to the country he was 00:12:04.659 --> 00:12:07.399 originally afraid of. Precisely. It really highlights 00:12:07.399 --> 00:12:10.620 that in a global there is always a South. Always 00:12:10.620 --> 00:12:13.039 a South. There is always somewhere with lower 00:12:13.039 --> 00:12:15.620 costs, at least until the entire global standard 00:12:15.620 --> 00:12:18.000 of living levels out. It's like a really stressful 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:20.559 game of musical chairs. But every time the music 00:12:20.559 --> 00:12:23.940 stops, the chair is in a different country. And 00:12:23.940 --> 00:12:25.580 the South isn't a compass direction anymore. 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:27.879 It's just an economic state of being cheaper 00:12:27.879 --> 00:12:30.519 than the next guy. That's a perfect summary. 00:12:31.059 --> 00:12:33.779 And it validates the underlying mechanism Perot 00:12:33.779 --> 00:12:36.360 was talking about, capital chasing the lowest 00:12:36.360 --> 00:12:39.879 cost. Even if his specific prediction didn't 00:12:39.879 --> 00:12:42.240 play out exactly. Right. Even if the US wasn't 00:12:42.240 --> 00:12:44.580 completely wrecked by Mexico the way he thought, 00:12:44.919 --> 00:12:47.779 the mechanism was real. The geography just kept 00:12:47.779 --> 00:12:50.639 shifting. So the phrase traveled geographically, 00:12:50.639 --> 00:12:53.049 but it also started to travel contextually. It 00:12:53.049 --> 00:12:54.970 wasn't just about international trade deals anymore. 00:12:55.169 --> 00:12:57.149 It started popping up in domestic industries 00:12:57.149 --> 00:12:59.730 that have nothing to do with manufacturing. It 00:12:59.730 --> 00:13:02.850 became a shorthand for any drastic economic downturn. 00:13:02.929 --> 00:13:05.409 It's like we needed a vocabulary for mass disappearance. 00:13:05.570 --> 00:13:07.590 For instance, we have an example from Joe Sharkey, 00:13:07.830 --> 00:13:09.990 a columnist for the New York Times. This was 00:13:09.990 --> 00:13:12.159 years later. Right. And this was in the airline 00:13:12.159 --> 00:13:15.279 industry. Totally different sector. Sharkey used 00:13:15.279 --> 00:13:18.299 the headline, That Giant Sucking Sound, to introduce 00:13:18.299 --> 00:13:21.679 a serious discussion about a massive slump in 00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:24.440 employment at major US carriers. And he wasn't 00:13:24.440 --> 00:13:27.740 talking about outsourcing pilots to Mexico. No, 00:13:27.740 --> 00:13:30.840 not at all. He was talking about a 34 % slump 00:13:30.840 --> 00:13:33.080 in employment over a four -year period. Wow. 00:13:33.360 --> 00:13:35.440 He was talking about bankruptcy, consolidation, 00:13:35.720 --> 00:13:39.309 and layoffs. just due to brutal market conditions. 00:13:39.490 --> 00:13:42.029 So in this case, the sucking sound wasn't jobs 00:13:42.029 --> 00:13:44.870 going to another country. It was just jobs vanishing 00:13:44.870 --> 00:13:47.230 into thin air because of an industry collapse. 00:13:47.590 --> 00:13:50.470 Exactly. The metaphor shifted from displacement 00:13:50.470 --> 00:13:53.470 to just disappearance. It signifies a vacuum 00:13:53.470 --> 00:13:55.929 where prosperity used to be. It's the sound of 00:13:55.929 --> 00:13:57.850 the air leaving the room. It shows how versatile 00:13:57.850 --> 00:14:00.350 the phrase became. It basically just meant bad 00:14:00.350 --> 00:14:03.129 economic news involving large numbers. OK, but 00:14:03.129 --> 00:14:05.509 my absolute favorite usage, and I use the word 00:14:05.509 --> 00:14:07.230 favorite loosely, here because this is a little 00:14:07.230 --> 00:14:09.690 graphic, comes from the world of political comedy 00:14:09.690 --> 00:14:12.129 or maybe just political anger. I have a feeling 00:14:12.129 --> 00:14:13.370 I know which one you're talking about. This is 00:14:13.370 --> 00:14:15.789 the curveball in the research. It really is the 00:14:15.789 --> 00:14:18.789 curveball. So fast forward to 2009, totally different 00:14:18.789 --> 00:14:21.450 era. We are in the middle of the great financial 00:14:21.450 --> 00:14:24.690 crisis. The banks are failing. The housing market 00:14:24.690 --> 00:14:27.990 is crushed. Congress is intensely debating the 00:14:27.990 --> 00:14:30.220 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The big 00:14:30.220 --> 00:14:33.279 stimulus bill. Right. A very tense time in Washington. 00:14:33.559 --> 00:14:35.799 Trillions of dollars on the line. Everyone is 00:14:35.799 --> 00:14:38.779 on edge. Very tense. And enter U .S. Congressman 00:14:38.779 --> 00:14:42.139 Steve Littrede, a Republican from Ohio. He's 00:14:42.139 --> 00:14:44.279 on the House floor. He is criticizing the bill 00:14:44.279 --> 00:14:47.399 and he decides to invoke the ghost of Ross Perot. 00:14:47.620 --> 00:14:50.659 But with a twist. A very biological twist. A 00:14:50.659 --> 00:14:52.879 major twist. Again, we're impartially quoting 00:14:52.879 --> 00:14:55.159 the sources here. He says, quote, Well, today 00:14:55.159 --> 00:14:57.399 there's another sucking sound going on in Washington, 00:14:57.419 --> 00:15:00.019 D .C. And that's the tightening of sinkers on 00:15:00.019 --> 00:15:02.259 both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, as people are 00:15:02.259 --> 00:15:04.620 having to explain who put into the stimulus bill 00:15:04.620 --> 00:15:07.340 this provision of law. That is certainly vivid 00:15:07.340 --> 00:15:09.320 imagery. The tightening of sphincters. I mean, 00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:12.399 wow. He took a phrase about macroeconomic trade 00:15:12.399 --> 00:15:14.639 policy and turned it into a crude joke about 00:15:14.639 --> 00:15:18.559 terrified politicians. It's crude, yes. But if 00:15:18.559 --> 00:15:20.940 we analyze it, and let's try to do this seriously 00:15:20.940 --> 00:15:23.259 for a second, it's actually a really interesting 00:15:23.259 --> 00:15:26.200 evolution of the language. How so? Beyond just 00:15:26.200 --> 00:15:28.220 being a gross -out insult. Well, look at the 00:15:28.220 --> 00:15:30.879 core emotion behind it. Perot's original usage 00:15:30.879 --> 00:15:34.059 was entirely about fear. The fear of the American 00:15:34.059 --> 00:15:36.860 worker losing their livelihood. Lutterette flips 00:15:36.860 --> 00:15:39.039 it to describe the fear of the political class 00:15:39.039 --> 00:15:41.360 getting caught doing something unpopular. So 00:15:41.360 --> 00:15:43.759 the sucking sound is still fundamentally the 00:15:43.759 --> 00:15:46.580 sound of fear. Exactly. It's the sound of panic. 00:15:46.759 --> 00:15:49.500 Whether it's panic about factories closing or 00:15:49.500 --> 00:15:51.899 panic about a legislative scandal, the phrase 00:15:51.899 --> 00:15:54.860 captures that sudden contraction, that moment 00:15:54.860 --> 00:15:57.919 where you realize you have lost control. It really 00:15:57.919 --> 00:16:00.240 de -elevates the discourse, doesn't it? Yeah. 00:16:00.419 --> 00:16:02.179 Perot was trying to be a statesman warning of 00:16:02.179 --> 00:16:04.980 national doom. Lutourette is making a bathroom 00:16:04.980 --> 00:16:08.309 joke on the house floor. They are both tapping 00:16:08.309 --> 00:16:11.049 into that exact same visceral feeling of, uh 00:16:11.049 --> 00:16:13.129 -oh. It proves that if an image is strong enough, 00:16:13.210 --> 00:16:15.769 it will stick around. Even if the original meaning 00:16:15.769 --> 00:16:18.090 gets a little distorted or corrupted along the 00:16:18.090 --> 00:16:20.590 way, it becomes a reliable container for our 00:16:20.590 --> 00:16:23.330 anxieties. So let's bring this all together for 00:16:23.330 --> 00:16:26.370 you listening. We've gone from Perot's charts 00:16:26.370 --> 00:16:29.610 to the EU, to China, to the airline industry, 00:16:29.610 --> 00:16:32.009 and finally to the floor of Congress in 2009. 00:16:32.710 --> 00:16:35.210 What does a journey of the giant sucking sound 00:16:35.210 --> 00:16:37.590 actually tell us? I think it tells us that economic 00:16:37.590 --> 00:16:40.190 anxiety is a permanent fixture in our lives. 00:16:40.690 --> 00:16:43.230 Ross Perot put a memorable name to a very specific 00:16:43.230 --> 00:16:46.649 fear, the fear that someone somewhere else is 00:16:46.649 --> 00:16:49.889 willing to do your job for less money. And that 00:16:49.889 --> 00:16:52.169 fear definitely didn't end with NAFTA. Not at 00:16:52.169 --> 00:16:54.370 all. As we saw with the Thomas Friedman example, 00:16:54.509 --> 00:16:56.190 that fear just moves around. It moved to Europe. 00:16:56.190 --> 00:16:58.850 It moved to China and India. And even today, 00:16:58.850 --> 00:17:02.110 we hear similar rhetoric. We hear about reshoring, 00:17:02.210 --> 00:17:05.109 about tariffs, about protecting domestic industries. 00:17:05.289 --> 00:17:07.630 The vocabulary changes, but the underlying fear 00:17:07.630 --> 00:17:10.069 of the sucking sound is identical. It's like 00:17:10.069 --> 00:17:12.109 the sound is always there in the background noise 00:17:12.109 --> 00:17:14.470 of the global economy. It's the constant hum 00:17:14.470 --> 00:17:17.269 of globalization. And it's a reminder that policies 00:17:17.269 --> 00:17:19.769 like trade agreements aren't just dry legal documents. 00:17:19.930 --> 00:17:22.529 They have visceral emotional impacts on real 00:17:22.529 --> 00:17:25.869 people. Perot understood that. He completely 00:17:25.869 --> 00:17:28.609 bypassed the intellectual arguments, all the 00:17:28.609 --> 00:17:30.789 factor price equalization stuff we talked about, 00:17:31.009 --> 00:17:34.170 and he went straight for the gut or the ear in 00:17:34.170 --> 00:17:35.990 this case. He definitely knew how to make a headline. 00:17:36.329 --> 00:17:38.289 It's funny, even though we lost the election, 00:17:38.750 --> 00:17:41.950 that one phrase probably had more cultural impact 00:17:41.950 --> 00:17:44.890 than a lot of the actual policies discussed that 00:17:44.890 --> 00:17:47.470 entire year. I would agree. It became a permanent 00:17:47.470 --> 00:17:49.529 part of the lexicon. It gave people language 00:17:49.529 --> 00:17:51.849 to express their insecurity about the future. 00:17:52.289 --> 00:17:54.230 And once you give people language for a feeling, 00:17:54.309 --> 00:17:57.529 they do not let go of it easily. So here's a 00:17:57.529 --> 00:17:59.430 final provocative thought to leave you with. 00:17:59.849 --> 00:18:02.349 We track the sound from the US to Mexico and 00:18:02.349 --> 00:18:05.069 then from Mexico to China and India. But the 00:18:05.069 --> 00:18:07.579 world keeps spinning. Economies keep changing. 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:10.519 Wages in China are rising now. Right. The South 00:18:10.519 --> 00:18:13.039 is moving again, maybe to Vietnam, maybe to parts 00:18:13.039 --> 00:18:14.920 of Africa. But there's another layer to this, 00:18:15.019 --> 00:18:17.680 isn't there? If that sucking sound represents 00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:21.160 the flow of opportunity to wherever it's cheapest 00:18:21.160 --> 00:18:23.660 or most efficient, where is the sound coming 00:18:23.660 --> 00:18:26.599 from today? That is the big question. Is there 00:18:26.599 --> 00:18:29.579 always going to be a geographical South? Or, 00:18:29.779 --> 00:18:31.980 as automation and artificial intelligence enter 00:18:31.980 --> 00:18:34.450 the picture, Maybe the sound isn't coming from 00:18:34.450 --> 00:18:37.069 another country at all anymore. Wow. Maybe the 00:18:37.069 --> 00:18:39.250 sound is coming from the server farm down the 00:18:39.250 --> 00:18:42.490 street. That is a chilling thought. The giant 00:18:42.490 --> 00:18:44.809 sucking sound of the future might just be the 00:18:44.809 --> 00:18:47.750 hum of a cooling fan on an AI server. It very 00:18:47.750 --> 00:18:50.450 well might be. And that is a fear that no border 00:18:50.450 --> 00:18:53.690 wall or trade tariff can really stop. On that 00:18:53.690 --> 00:18:55.890 cheerful note, thank you for joining us on this 00:18:55.890 --> 00:18:58.369 deep dive into 90s political history and global 00:18:58.369 --> 00:19:00.430 economics. We will catch you on the next one. 00:19:00.509 --> 00:19:01.009 Bye -bye, everyone.