Here's the Deal with Joe Biden and Andrew Yang

Yesterday my family and I listened to Joe Biden's podcast, Here's the Deal. His guest was Andrew Yang.I admire a lot of things about Andrew Yang. I especially liked his slogan MATH.

And I think his Venture for America that recruited young people work in fields other than law and banking. The Times reviewed his organization; here's an excerpt:

“These are young people who have come of age in an era of institutional failure,” he said. “The sense I get from talking to them is that there is some disillusionment.”

He is trying to turn that disillusionment into an entrepreneurial advantage. His vision was on display last month as the program’s second class, of 68 fellows, sat around small tables at Venture for America boot camp at Brown University — Mr. Yang’s alma mater. At this particular session, employees from IDEO, a design consulting firm, were presenting a course on product design. The five-week boot camp also includes classes on topics like entrepreneurship, Web design and public speaking.

After the boot camp, the fellows take jobs at start-up companies in industries like e-commerce, biotechnology, finance, media and clean technology. Generally, the companies must be less than 10 years old and employ less than 100 people. Starting salaries are $33,000 to $38,000; pay increases and stock options are at the companies’ discretion.

The fellows are receiving invaluable experience, but “they are definitely making a sacrifice,” said Jeanne Markel, director of brand experience at Zappos, based in Las Vegas. She works with the Zappos founder, Tony Hsieh, on his for-profit Downtown Project to revitalize the city. Mr. Hsieh pledged $1 million to Venture for America last year, and as of August the Downtown Project will employ 14 fellows.

“The salaries are commensurate with what we would pay an entry-level employee,” Ms. Markel said, but the fellows “are the best and the brightest and could easily be making six-figures right out of college.” They are given more responsibilities and opportunities than in a typical entry-level position, she said.

But, back to the podcast episode.

So much of the podcast was Biden and Yang saying things like, "I couldn't agree with you more, pal." And when each of them got a question at the end -- there was only one question -- tell us about a person you admire, they both chose very obvious examples. Yang talked about Theodore Roosevelt and Biden talked about Franklin Roosevelt.

In order to be intellectually stimulated, at least in my opinion, it is important to hear people talk about ideas they disagree with. It is also important to give or describe unusual or non-obvious examples. So, let me suggest two people to admire that are not taught in high school history classes in an depth: 
Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins

Frances Perkins worked as Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor. Here's the start of the wikipedia article about her:

Frances Perkins (born Fannie Coralie Perkins; April 10, 1880 – May 14, 1965) was an American sociologist and workers-rights advocate who served as the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, the longest serving in that position, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition. She and Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes were the only original members of the Roosevelt cabinet to remain in office for his entire presidency.

During her term as Secretary of Labor, Perkins executed many aspects of the New Deal, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and its successor the Federal Works Agency, and the labor portion of the National Industrial Recovery Act. With the Social Security Act she established unemployment benefits, pensions for the many uncovered elderly Americans, and welfare for the poorest Americans. She pushed to reduce workplace accidents and helped craft laws against child labor. Through the Fair Labor Standards Act, she established the first minimum wage and overtime laws for American workers, and defined the standard forty-hour workweek. She formed governmental policy for working with labor unions and helped to alleviate strikes by way of the United States Conciliation Service. Perkins dealt with many labor questions during World War II, when skilled labor was vital and women were moving into formerly male jobs.

Harry Hopkns was secretary of Commerce and one of Roosevelt's most important foreign policy advisors during World War II.  It is important to remember that Hopkins had much of his stomach removed due to stomach cancer, yet he remained one of Roosevelt's most important advisors despite his illness. As Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in her book No Ordinary Time:

Harry Hopkins was in such poor health near the end of his boss's second term that one observer said he didn't know how Hopkins could possibly report to the president. But, at the onset of war and genuine national emergency, Hopkins was animated with a new sense of purpose.

I have read No Ordinary Time and highly recommend it.

Here is the start of the wikipedia article about Hopkins.

Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American social worker, the 8th Secretary of Commerce, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisor on foreign policy during World War II. He was one of the architects of the New Deal,^[1] especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. In World War II, he was Roosevelt's chief diplomatic troubleshooter and liaison with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. He supervised the $50 billion Lend Lease program of military aid to the Allies.

Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social work and public health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931, Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the executive director of New York's Temporary Emergency Relief Administration. His leadership of the program earned the attention of Roosevelt, then the governor of New York, and Roosevelt brought Hopkins into his presidential administration after his victory in the 1932 presidential election. Hopkins supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration. He also served as Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940.

Hopkins served as an important foreign policy adviser and diplomat during World War II. He was a key policy maker in the Lend-Lease program that sent $50 billion in aid to the Allies; Winston Churchill in his memoirs devotes a panegyric to this "natural leader of men" who had "a flaming soul".^[2] Hopkins dealt with "priorities, production, political problems with allies, strategy—in short, with anything that might concern the president".^[3] He attended the major conferences of the Allied powers, including the Cairo Conference, the Tehran Conference, the Casablanca Conference, and the Yalta Conference. His health declined after 1939 due to stomach cancer, and Hopkins died in 1946 at the age of 55.