Buying into America | Featuring Amity Shlaes

How to Fix Democracy

Amity Shlaes is a best-selling author, Chair of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, and Presidential Scholar at The King’s College in New York City. Her most recent book Great Society: A New History, presents a critical view of President Lyndon Johnson’s campaign to expand the social safety net and reduce poverty in the United States in the 1960s. Shlaes argues in this interview with Andrew Keen, our first remote interview of the series, that government intervention is not how the United States will economically recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, she recommends tax cuts and finding ways to bolster Wall Street to help the U.S. economy. To remedy this crisis, Shlaes argues, more people need to buy into America.