← Bulwark Takes
Loading summary
Transcript123 lines
- [00:01]
A
All right. We are live. It's me, Sam Stein, here with Katherine Rampel for your weekly what are we calling this? Econ Live Show, Receipts Live. We still have to work on this. We're going to talk about the economy.
- [00:13]
B
Somebody proposed a bull market, like bull market, which I like.
- [00:17]
A
I like, unless it's a bear market and then it doesn't really work either way. We're going to be talking about a bunch of different things. We have Katherine's latest newsletter, which is phenomenal. We have the jobs report, which actually beat expectations, looked nice. We're going to go under the hood on that. And then we're going to be talking about this budget, which I am obsessed with. So what happened this morning is that the administration put out a budget. It's a state stated priorities for what they want to cut and what they want to fund at a greater level. And there are some really interesting choices, let's put it that way. But before we get into that, I want to talk about the column, because that column does look at the budget, too. So the title of the column is is Donald Trump Trying to Lose the Election? What makes you question whether he wants to win?
- [01:04]
B
I mean, I don't think he I'm not literally saying I think he's trying to lose. But the real question is if he were trying to lose, what exactly would he be doing differently than what he is doing now? And the reason I mention that is that, like, basically everything that I don't know your standard political strategist would suggest a president do if he wants to help his party win the midterms. Donald Trump has done exactly the opposite. Specifically. I mean, we could talk about the war in general, but like, specifically, the thing that voters say that they care about this election is the same thing that they said that they cared about in the election that put him back into office, which is prices, affordability. And pretty much everything Donald Trump has done has not only not helped that issue has made it worse. So there's the war, obviously, which the
- [01:58]
A
war plays into that. Yes. Okay.
- [02:00]
B
Yes. So the war plays into that. I mean, the war has lots of other costs that are perhaps much graver than like whether gas at the pump goes up. But the thing that voters are probably going to show up to the polls and make decisions on is how much they are paying to fill up their tank, how much they are paying at the grocery store as a result of disruptions in fertilizer, which are going to drive up food costs, how much more they're going to be paying for Pretty much everything across the board. Because as we've discussed before, this is not just an oil crisis. It is kind of an everything crisis. So much goes through the Strait of Hormuz, and so much economic activity here in the United States is conditional on the. That those supply chains functioning in ways that people may not even appreciate. Like, just as a. For instance, do the helium one. Yeah, the helium. That's where I was going. Yeah, I'm in. Okay. So, yeah, so people know, obviously, about disruptions to, you know, to fuel, but lots of helium comes through Middle East. And it's partly because helium, I believe, is a byproduct from the refining of natural gas. You can also. There are actual, like, helium deposits in the world, but there are very few of them.
- [03:21]
A
Sure.
- [03:22]
B
So they're also. It's also made through processing of natural gas. It's a petrochemical, essentially. And helium is now in a crisis. Helium, not just used for your kid's birthday party, also used to manufacture semiconductors. Semiconductors, as people may realize, are pretty key to this AI boom, which is propping up the US Economy right now. So you have a disruption in helium. You also have a disruption in the ability to make these big data center investments, among other things. So lots and lots of unintended consequences. No surprise. And that's going to drive up prices. And then on top of all of that, you have, like, the things that Donald Trump is saying about these concerns and the things that he's asking for in his budget.
- [04:14]
A
Well, okay, first of all, I didn't realize that you were such a helium expert.
- [04:20]
B
I read in. I did not. But I listened to actually a really good podcast call Odd Lots. If people. If people are into econ, Everyone knows Odd Lots. Yeah, it's great. It's great. If people are watching this, you might be into odd Lots. They had a good deep dive into helium.
- [04:40]
A
Don't be so dismissive of children's birthday parties, okay? I like those balloons up there. It brings joy to my child. That's as important as a semiconductor.
- [04:49]
B
Okay, fair enough.
- [04:50]
A
Let's talk about.
- [04:51]
B
Let's talk about high value.
- [04:53]
A
Yes. Literally and figuratively. Let's talk about what Trump has said, because there was a quote, and I'm going to butcher it. You probably know it better than anybody who's talking to Russ Fat, who is the OMB director, basically, about cutting all these domestic programs to pay for the war. I wish I had the quote in front of me, but it was so bad. It was like nails on a chalkboard, politically, to me. Where he's just like, we can't afford child care, we can't afford daycare. We're like, we have to pay for the war
- [05:23]
B
again, again, the literal opposite of what any Republican, any political strategist, period, would tell you. They're not going to be like, sorry, we can't deal with the, you know, any of the main expenses affecting your family because we need to send off our boys to get our boys and girls to get slaughtered abroad.
- [05:43]
A
So we were doing the editing of the newsletter last night. I like kind of pulling back the curtain a little bit. And you and I were sort of in the, in the edit comment section where we're talking about, well, is this a directive? Is he really going to do this? Is this more like Trump just riffing? And, and I think I kind of softened it a little bit. But then it turns out that they put out the budget today. It's like it quite literally is a reflection of that directive.
- [06:08]
B
Well, yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry, I was
- [06:11]
A
going to say across the board. And we'll get into the specifics in a little bit. Across the board, there are cuts to domestic social safety net programs, not necessarily the major entitlements which Donald Trump has been steadfast. He's not going to touch, like Social Security and Medicare, although they did cut significantly Medicaid. And there are increases, although I will note they don't actually specify how much to increase on the DoD side, but there are real increases in what we're putting into our military and what we're putting into immigration enforcement. So it is the manifestation of what he said off the cuff to Rasvat.
- [06:44]
B
Well, actually, even before the budget came out today, the administration did try to put that directive into action. Trump told his OMB director to basically stop sending money to blue states for childcare. For childcare and for other social services for that matter, you know, ostensibly because he was concerned about fraud. This is, you know, before we actually invaded or we started bombing Iran. So that happened earlier this year. And there have been a bunch of legal whatever orders, court orders, at least temporarily staying those directives. There was one, I think, actually that came out yesterday because it's, you know, now it's like state by state somewhat because of the way that the Supreme Court has said that these stays can be implemented. But anyway, so Trump has tried to cut child care funding from whatever it was, five blue states. And now, you know, he did not. He has not so far succeeded. But then you look at the actual budget that he has put out, as you point out, and that is asking Congress to change the law, which would make it somewhat more resilient to court decisions. And he's asking for cuts across the board for all sorts of domestic services and again, exploring explicitly in some cases to pay for the war. And it's not just Trump. Like, you know, whenever I cover the budget, whenever journalists cover the budget, we always kind of have to say, you know, this is a symbolic document. It's a statement of, it's a messaging document. It's a statement of priority.
- [08:22]
A
It is now. It is.
- [08:24]
B
But, you know, it's not something that's actually going to happen. But in this particular case, Republicans on the Hill, lawmakers on the Hill have also said that they're thinking about cutting domestic programs. They're cutting about, they're thinking about making more cuts to healthcare, specifically in order to fund the war. So it's not like Donald Trump just going off on his own and freelancing, which I think some people thought he was doing. Maybe freelancing is not the right word since he's the boss, but, you know, thought that this was like a gaffe as something that he said by accident when he said, oh, we can't pay for daycare, we have to pay for the war.
- [08:57]
A
Well, we have the video. Let's play the video. And then the other thing I want to add as we get the video ready to your point, because I think it's valid, is, you know, budgets are aspirational. Congress does have to legislate them, but especially with this administration, they have exercised executive authorities much further around budgetary items than any other administration. Now, they've been pushed back upon by the courts and occasion Republican lawmakers will say, no, you can't cut this stuff. I, I need it especially for my state. But, but they are very upfront about how they want to go after blue states, specifically along the lines of what the budget proposes, alleging waste and fraud. So, for instance, this morning, let's put up the Vance tweet first and then we'll play Trump. This is Trump about J.D. vance. And you'll notice in there, in this tweet, I'm looking for it because it's long. He mentions blue states. There it is. We will call him. The frauds are. And his focus will be everywhere, but primarily in those blue states where crooked Democratic politicians. So they're very, they're not hiding the ball here.
- [10:03]
B
Yeah.
- [10:03]
A
Now to the video. Let's just play the video because we've been referencing it of Trump telling Russ fought more or less to Russell, don't
- [10:11]
C
send any money for daycare because the United States can't take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare.
- [10:31]
B
So it's like, it's very explicit.
- [10:34]
A
Yeah, just run it as an ad.
- [10:36]
B
Well, you, you didn't play the couple of sentences after that. But after that, he also says, he says something like, we can't pay for daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all of these things. So it does suggest that however much he thought entitlements might have been a third rail, you know, at least Medicare, maybe it's on the table. I mean, it certainly sounds like he left it open to the idea that, you know, we really can't afford these programs. And look, to be fair, like, it is true that our entitlement programs are on an unsustainable spending trajectory and probably we do need some reforms of some kind. But I don't think that's what he had in mind. And it also is, again, not something that politically is maybe advisable to say in a midterm year.
- [11:29]
A
Well, we know it's not what he has in mind, not just because of what he said there, which was we have other expenses that are more important, but because of this budget. So I'm going to go through a few things. You just scream when you want me to stop. But the sort of top lines here are 1.5 trillion for defense in 2027 fiscal year. Significant money. People don't really process how astronomical that is. It is by far the most in the world. In fact, you look at the top, whatever, five, six other countries combined, it wouldn't even come to that. Roughly, it's a 40% bump from what the United States was spending on the Pentagon this fiscal year. In addition to that, it will be coupled with $73 billion in cuts across domestic agencies, including the elimination of a lot of programs. So here's what we add. Among other things on ICE and Customs and Border. Sorry, Customs, Border Patrol and Protection gets another 18.5 billion. ICE gets another 10 billion. Here's the doozy. This one, really, I couldn't fathom it in the, in the fine print. He asks for 1.7 billion with a B dollars for the restoration of Alcatraz. Now, if people don't know what Alcatraz is, it is the defunct federal prison in San Francisco Bay that is now a Tourist facility. I don't know if you've been there, Catherine. I went when I was a kid. Pretty cool. You might know it from the Rock. I don't know if we have any clips of that incredible movie with Nicholas Cage and Sean connery. To spend 1.7 billion to restore it to some sort of functioning prison is shocking to me. I can't believe they put their name to this.
- [13:19]
B
Especially since we don't have money for health care. You know, we're gonna get. Yeah, it's just again, in isolation. This is lunacy. But it's especially, especially galling when you think about, like, what the opportunity costs are. Right? Like what is. What we don't have money for. But we do have money for this. We have money for a war that Congress has not authorized. We have money to restore what is now a museum into some sort of inhumane prison. I kind of remember, I'm trying to remember what exactly happened last year. Didn't Donald Trump want to revive Alcatraz last year? Like after watching it on Air Force. After watching Air Force. What's it called? Escape from Alcatraz on Air Force One. Am I making this up? This is what I remember.
- [14:05]
A
Is that what triggered him?
- [14:06]
B
I think so. Well, what I remember, and somebody in the comments can correct me or Google this or whatever, is that Trump had these tweets, truth social posts about wanting to bring it back. And then it turned out that Escape from Alcatraz happened to have been playing the night before on pbs. And so, I mean, I guess we don't know definitively, but we know correlation
- [14:33]
A
or causation, who knows?
- [14:34]
B
And we know the President likes his telly. So I think that was what happened here. You know, he wants things that are telegenic and
- [14:46]
A
this, I think it's no complicated.
- [14:48]
B
Cinematic even.
- [14:49]
A
Yes, I think it's no more complicated than that. The other thing that was kind of tucked in there, which didn't get much attention, but they're part of the Department of Transportation budget. I'm being told in our slack that you are right.
- [15:00]
B
Okay. Okay. All right.
- [15:03]
A
Tucked into this budget is a request for Department of Transportation money. They want 403 million for a safe and beautiful transportation in Washington D.C. i'm a resident. Thank you would take it, but probably not the best use of money. And in that little paragraph, they note this. This program, one of the programs they're funding, would also support DOT's recent actions to refocus management and provide a long term vision to modernize Washington Union Station. It is yet Another transportation or infrastructure project in the D.C. area that this man is trying to take over and run. Union Station, Dulles Airport, the ballroom, the reflecting pool. Am I missing something?
- [15:49]
B
There's gonna be, like, some kind of arch that he wants to build.
- [15:52]
A
Oh, yeah, the arch.
- [15:53]
B
Yeah. Overlooking Arlington National Cemetery Stadium.
- [15:57]
A
He wants to do AFK state interview. He is absolutely gonna remake Washington, D.C. it's not the best use of taxpayer funds. I would just argue, even as a resident. But what is. Okay. Brings us to the most important part,
- [16:09]
B
which is, I will say, meanwhile, he's trying to withhold funding from infrastructure projects here in New York, where I live.
- [16:17]
A
Yeah. The Gateway Tunnel.
- [16:19]
B
Gateway Tunnel. And he had talked about. What was the news story a few weeks ago? God, my brain is mush about. He wants Penn Station named after him or somebody wanted.
- [16:29]
A
No, that was. That was the deal he was going to have. Schumer was going to get Penn Station named after him, and in exchange, Trump would release the Gateway Tunnel funding.
- [16:38]
B
You know what? Penn Station sucks. They deserve each other.
- [16:42]
A
Mind the Moynihan Hall. I think Moynihan hall is pretty good.
- [16:45]
B
Moynihan hall is very pretty, but there's no seating and it kind of sucks.
- [16:49]
A
I think that's deliberate. Okay.
- [16:50]
B
Yeah, I think it's. Yes.
- [16:52]
A
Okay. Cuts. Now, here's where. This is where you actually have to put your name to stuff that's painful. And from what I can tell, they don't care. And this gets to your theory. Are they trying to, like, blow this thing? So among the cuts that we have here in the budget document, five billion dollar cuts to the National Institutes of Health. I want to just stop there for a second, because you write about this stuff, I write about this stuff. This stuff matters. Okay. We were for decades the leader globally of scientific and medical research. We did that because we spent a lot of money on this stuff. And by doing that, we didn't just have incredible breakthroughs that then benefited us economically, medically, and scientifically. We became a magnet for the top talent across the globe to come here because they knew they could get funding for projects that they wanted to do. It was a great system that essentially paid for itself. And up until this Trump administration, every president has been pretty damn dedicated to funding it and keeping that system alive. With one tiny exception, which was during the Obama administration. They put this NIH and sequestration, but it was reversed. And yet now the Trump administration, this is the second or third time they have gone with an absolute ax at NIH funding. Obviously, the first was when they came in, Elon Musk was doing this. And I'm just. It's flabbergasting to me. I don't get it. I really don't get it.
- [18:16]
B
Yeah. Last year I wrote a piece called how to lose the 21st century in three easy steps. And one of the steps was slaughter your golden goose, which is science, research, technology. And that is exactly what we are doing. I mean, we've done it through lots of different means. Not just gutting these scientific agencies, also taking away grants from other research institutions that are not affiliated with the federal government, you know, that get NSF funds, NIH grants, et cetera, and of course, cutting off that talent pipeline. So you mentioned the fact that our premier scientific research, health research system attracted a lot of talent. Now to the extent that talent wants to come here, speaking still, they're often unable to because we have made it so much more difficult for students to come here as well as for people, you know, out of school, scientific experts to come here. And really this has been our golden goose for over a century. It's not just about like do gooderism. It's great idea to cure cancer and to, you know, to work on rare medical diseases and to improve people's lives and all of those things that seem fairly obvious. It's also been a big economic generator here in the United States, 100%. Because when the federal government funds particularly basic research that has these spillover effects to the private sector, where you have like a thriving biotech industry that, you know, can make money coming up with these scientific breakthroughs. So it's like we are shooting ourselves in the foot so many times over. And for what? For what?
- [20:10]
A
That's the thing. It's like, what is the actual. So, okay, so let's say you cut 5 billion in NIH funding. I mean, it's not nothing 5 billion, but you're spending 1.7 billion on Alcatraz. Okay. And 300 million or so on Union Station and God knows how much more on some Defense Department initiatives and over
- [20:30]
B
a billion dollars a day on the war right now. Right.
- [20:33]
A
And if you're just thinking short term, maybe you can say, oh, well, we need that. It's a short term expense in Iran. But boy, like, the long term ramifications of this are, are hard to fathom. And people always tell me, well, you know, if the research is so important, if the science is so critical, then the private sector will do it. And it's just not how it works.
- [20:53]
B
Well, it might happen.
- [20:55]
A
No. At least when it comes to some research, private sector research and development dollars is going to go to stuff that they think will turn profits.
- [21:03]
B
Yes.
- [21:04]
A
Okay. It's not going to go to stuff that you have a 10 to 15, 20 year ramp up with uncertainty that it will ever get to market. That's what the NIH is for. And so.
- [21:15]
B
Well, yeah, and, and the idea of basic research is that these are, these are discoveries or scientific endeavors that can, that can have applications to a whole bunch of industries, to a whole bunch, you know, can shoot off into different kinds of innovation. And there's not a lot of incentive for the private sector to do that if they can't capture all of the gains themselves. Right. The whole idea of basic research is that this is the kind of research that like underpins lots of other discoveries. And then other people can go off and run with it and figure out how to apply it in their field. Like something like MRNA vaccines, for example,
- [22:02]
A
which we are just killing right now. Well, yes, that's through regulatory initiatives too, but yeah, it's crazy.
- [22:08]
B
Yes, yes. And so that's the kind of thing where you have like one fundamental scientific breakthrough that then can change the course of so many other scientific trajectories. And you know, when you have a private business that cannot capture the full value of the potential upside. Right. Like if you're. Because it's risky, you know, the part of the, part of the thing, like part of the reason why you want some public subsidization of research is that not everything pays off. And so you want to have a system where like you can have scientists take risks where even if it doesn't pay off, like literally pay off, you know, doesn't. You don't get your money back, you still are incentivizing, you're still enabled. That kind of.
- [23:00]
A
I got to get to some of these other cuts.
- [23:01]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [23:02]
A
Okay. So I'm going to go through a few of them. 2.7. 2.7 billion proposed cut to higher ed. We have $4 billion proposed cut to LIHEAP for, for folks who don't know what LIHEAP is. It's heating assistance for poor people.
- [23:18]
B
Yeah.
- [23:21]
A
There is a elimination of the Food for Peace program, which, you know, helps people in impoverished communities eat. That's $1.2 billion saved by limiting that program. It's again, $500 million to go until you get to the cost for building Alcatraz. This one's going to make Jonathan Cohn cry. It will terminate the budget, would terminate the, what they call unnecessary subsidies for Electric vehicle chargers, which is $4.2 billion saved, basically handing over the EV industry to China once more. You need those chargers in order to get people to buy EVs because they are fearful that they will get stuck on some long, winding journey without a charging station. Although it's less and less of an issue now, as Kona has written about. I just want to pull up just to give you a sense of how not silly, but I don't know what you want to call it, how contradictory some of this stuff is. I noticed this in the McGovern dole food for education program. Now, people don't really may not know what this is, and I'm not like an expert on this, but this is, again, it's one of those things that helps people eat. And on the website currently of the federal government, is this the statutory objectives? This is the current website of the Trump administration. The statutory Objectives of the McGovern Dole program are to reduce hunger, improve literacy in primary education, especially for girls, by providing school meals and teacher training, yada, yada, yada. So according to Trump administration, looks like a pretty damn important initiative that is important and significant for women and girls specifically. This is what they say in the budget. Can we put that up as well, is wasteful and inefficient. Food often takes months to arrive. They want the whole thing eliminated, say $240 million. So anyways, I just thought that was an interesting dichotomy there. But to your point, Catherine, in your article, this budget is a list of priorities. And the priorities that they're announcing to the public don't seem all that politically advantageous or tenable, honestly, for them.
- [25:26]
B
Yeah. In the case of the Dole McGovern program that you mentioned, I'm honestly, like, surprised that that has survived the cuts from last year when we gutted all sorts of other foreign aid, including foreign food aid. So I'm glad it's still around. I didn't even know.
- [25:42]
A
Yeah, some of these things, I was like, wow, they didn't. Elon didn't get to that one.
- [25:45]
B
I know. But yeah, it's. It's surprising to me because, like, besides the fact that, again, you can make the case for a lot of these kinds of programs on the merits, you know, just in terms of, like, policy, it's good to have research that has economic benefits. It's good to save people's lives. It's good to help people be able to pay for heat in the winter. Again, it's also very popular to do those things. And Sometimes what's politically good and what's, you know, policy effective, those do align. They don't always align, but here they do. And that's why it's particularly bizarre that even in this statement of their priorities, which may be symbolic and may not even get through, they don't even like, gesture at the idea of keeping these kinds of popular programs around. And if you look at recent polling, Gallup had polling recently, looking at, they do this like every month. You know, what is the most important issue to voters and the most important domestic issue to voters, at least as of, I think, early March, was health care. That's the thing that they were most worried about, health care, both in terms of affordability and availability. That may change now that gas prices have gone up quite a bit. Maybe they'll be more concerned about that, but that doesn't mean that they'll be less concerned in absolute terms about the cost of healthcare. And meanwhile, this administration, in cahoots with their co partisans on Capitol Hill, is gutting health care just as they did last year when they cut Medicaid and they declined to extend those enhanced premium tax credits for people who are getting health care on the exchanges. They're trying to cut it further through a bunch of measures in this budget and other things that have been proposed by lawmakers. And it's just so strange to me that there it's inexplicable. Yeah.
- [27:50]
A
And it's inexplicable because, look, say what you will about Donald Trump. We say a lot about Donald Trump. I always thought of him as someone who, at the bare minimum, when it came down to it, would just do whatever he thought was politically the right thing to do. Right. Like, I don't think he cares anything more than about his own survival and political viability. And surely he knows that this type of stuff is toxic. I mean, he lived through it when he tried to repeal and replace Obamacare in his first term. We have a couple of things to get to. One serious. And then the other, just an incredibly bizarre, quirky story involving Mount Everest.
- [28:27]
B
Oh, right, yeah, I forgot about that story.
- [28:28]
A
We're, that's, that's the dessert. But first, the jobs numbers. Look, going to call spade a spade. They came in better than expected. Right? I mean, it was especially after last month, especially with the surrounding circumstances and all the noise and the geopolitics. They came in fairly good. So now we're pointing to the negative chart right now. But you will see March added 178,000 jobs. And you can see the Month before was negative 133,000. So look, I'm not. Obviously, if you scan back, this is not a great labor market relative to where we were not even that many years ago coming out of COVID But it could have gone. In my estimation, it could have been a lot worse this month. In fact, the economics estimates were. That will come in worse.
- [29:21]
B
Yeah. Well, a couple of things to point out. One is that while the numbers for March were better than expected, the numbers for February were actually worse than originally reported. And those things are kind of related. Part of what drove the decline in February and then the reversal in March is a strike that happened. There was a health care strike that happened in February that stripped a lot of people off of payrolls temporarily. When they got added back to payrolls in March, it reversed itself. So, like, it's two sides of the same coin. But in general, health care has been driving the job market like, over the past year. I think it was the Wall Street Journal that pointed out this fact that I had not noticed that if you strip all jobs.
- [30:13]
A
Are healthcare basically more or less on that?
- [30:16]
B
Yeah, basically on that. That if you strip out what's happened in healthcare and social services, which is like a whole. That's the category for the industry.
- [30:25]
A
Yeah.
- [30:25]
B
If you strip that out, the economy actually lost half a million jobs over the past year, which is. How is that possible?
- [30:32]
A
So I guess how is it possible? Not on the health care side. I mean, how. Why There is just an aging population. We need more people to care for them. What is going on here?
- [30:41]
B
Yeah, I think it's largely that it's. It's demographics. And so there's just a lot more demand for home health care aids for people who are treating, testing for lots of kinds of medical ailments that become more prevalent as people age. So it's that it's largely demographics. And, you know, until recently, the government subsidizes all. The government is a backstop for all of that. So it's not completely controlled by market forces. Right. It's like when we were talking about how Medicare is on and probably an unsustainable fiscal trajectory while every Medicare dollar that is spent is somebody else's medical income. Right. So that sustains jobs. Now, that brings me to the second piece of this analysis, which is how sustainable is all of that? Not only because, you know, like, it's expensive, but also Congress again just passed a major cut to Medicaid for. It hasn't gone into effect yet. It will go into effect, I guess, at the end of this year, beginning of next year. And those Medicaid dollars sustain a lot of health care spending, especially in rural areas. You know, they're like, the passage of Obamacare was a godsend to a lot of rural hospitals because it meant that people were suddenly able to, because of Medicaid expansions, they were suddenly able to afford care. And so that sustained a lot of hospitals that were, like, teetering on the brink and couldn't afford to pay their staff or whatever. Now they had those federal dollars flowing in. So you're going to see some reversal of all of that. That's part one for why that industry may not continue to have the same rapid job gains that we've seen in the past few years. And then the other has to do with the labor force, which is that the Trump administration is deporting and de. Documenting, for lack of a better word, a lot of healthcare workers are attempting to right now. So just as an example, there are a lot of Haitian immigrants who work in health care in positions like home health aides, for example. Haitians are widely overrepresented in those occupations. And a lot of Haitian immigrants who are here are here legally. They're on a program called Temporary Protect status. Yes, exactly. Temporary protected status, which says that they are allowed to stay here and they're allowed to work. They have a work permit. Donald Trump is trying to strip them of that work authorization and that temporary legal status. And, you know, there have been a bunch of efforts like this. They have been held up by the courts. But in the meantime, there's at least a lot of uncertainty. And if you're an employer and you're thinking about hiring someone, like, you can't
- [33:42]
A
hire someone whose TPS is gonna get.
- [33:45]
B
Yeah.
- [33:45]
A
You know, revoked. Right. Like, that's impossible. Let me just say on the TPS thing, just a quick thing, because again, we're referencing a lot of Jonathan Cohen here, but he had a great piece on the Haitian caregiving community and what they're going through. And actually, in about, I don't know, 30 minutes or so, Adrian Kiriske, who does our immigration newsletter, Huddle Masses, he's writing about what's happening in Miami. And one of the things that he. He got in his reporting is the same exact uncertainties like these. There's a Haitian community out there. And here's the sort of pervasive element of this, that they registered with the government to get tps. So all the immigration authorities know exactly who they are and where they are, and they're just basically sitting docs so once the TPS comes, they are, you know, they are just expected to be gone. And this is causing incredible uncertainty here. Let me ask you just quickly, last question on the jobs report, which is on the, on the, the, the worker side of the, of the ledger, which is are there jobs available or are there people going out and looking for work at this point in time? Heather Long, who's now the chief economist at Navy Federal, she was at the Washington Post.
- [34:53]
B
Yeah, she was my colleague. She's, she's awesome. I love her.
- [34:56]
A
She's awesome. She's awesome. She, she is welcome on this show whenever she wants open.
- [35:01]
B
Heather, if you're listening. Yep, I'll let her know.
- [35:03]
A
I'm sure, I'm sure you're in the comment section. All right. So she knows that the employment fell to 4.3%. This, for this last month, but not what she says for, for great reasons. There's a big drop, almost 400,000 in the labor force. Labor force partition rate also fell. It appears people stopped looking for work in March or perhaps more migrants left the workforce. Or both. I think it's both, but that's just my intuition. But what do you think?
- [35:30]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's probably a combination of those things look, to be fair, like these, those survey numbers are really noisy. They've gotten noisier over time because it's been increasingly difficult to get people to answer surveys. So I just want to, like, present all of this with a grain of salt. But on its face, it does not look great. And my guess is is that part of what's happening here is, or a large part of what's happening here is about immigrant workers who are either losing status, they're afraid they're going to lose status. And by status, I mean their legal ability to work, to be here and to work here. So their work authorization and so some combination of people already getting forced out of the workforce or at least a lot of uncertainty about whether they can work. You know, I don't know how they're. That may also be corrupting the data in some sense. Like if people are afraid of answering truthfully in these surveys, and there's probably some effort to figure out how big of an error that's introducing, but I just don't know it offhand. So, yeah, I think a lot of this is probably about the immigrant workforce, which was driving the economy, was driving the job market for a few years there. And it's part of the reason why we had such strong gains. The Trump administration has argued. Oh, well, Those, it's zero sum. And any jobs that were going to immigrants were at the expense of native born heritage Americans, which is not actually true. I mean, these are a lot of jobs that kind of like would have gone begging otherwise, particularly because they're in fields native born Americans don't want to work in. But also because like the demographic issues we were talking about, native born Americans are getting older, they're aging out of the workforce. Immigrants are much more likely to be working age. So all of those things combined is part of how we had such strong growth before. And now, conversely, you're seeing that there are fewer people in the labor market. And that's again, I think likely, at least part partly due to fewer immigrants coming into the country. We have like net out migration right now. And then those who are here, there's a lot more uncertainty about whether they can work or whether they can work on the books, whether they're willing to tell these surveyors, you know, survey the people fielding surveys that they're working, et cetera. So, you know, the Trump administration is like suggesting this is a good news story, I guess.
- [38:05]
A
Well, they have two prongs of how they spin this.
- [38:09]
B
Yeah.
- [38:09]
A
The first is we have net, net negative migration, therefore there are more, more jobs for native born workers. And that's great. Right. The second is the job losses are predominantly coming from the public sector, which means we are just taking away people on the tax paradigm, were decreasing our tax footprint. And that also is great. And frankly, it, I think just me, more people employed in spending money is better. That's just me. All right, we're gonna, but it's not
- [38:43]
B
even, it's not even true that it's, it's, you know, it's not only the public sector, it's also the private sector losing a lot of job. Yeah.
- [38:51]
A
Okay. So last. Sorry, I, this was so amazing and bizarre and I, I, I mean, it seems almost untrue, but it is, it's in the Telegraph. I'm going to assume it's true. Apparently there's a great fraud, insurance fraud scandal happening with foreign climbers going to Everest being poisoned by their guides, their Sherpas, so that they have to spend money on fake rescue scams involving helicopters. What the fuck?
- [39:20]
B
Oh my God. This story was wild.
- [39:24]
A
It was really crazy.
- [39:26]
B
Yeah. And the story said, I guess this has been going on for a few years and to some extent it's been reported on, on and off for a few years. And insurance companies are like getting wise to it and they're like, well, we're not going to insure people's missions, these very dangerous missions up Mount Everest, if we think, like, they're going to get sick on purpose. And the story said that sometimes the climbers were in cahoots with a gun, right? Well, no, they, like, knowingly ingested baking soda or whatever. Yeah, I think that was my understanding that they, like, you know, to fake the symptoms of altitude sickness. But a lot of the times they were being duped, you know, you. They paid tons of. However much money it is, I'm sure it's extremely expensive to hire these guides to do this dangerous trip. And then. Wait, I don't have the article in front of me, but it was.
- [40:18]
A
Some of the ways they got them sick were kind of.
- [40:21]
B
They were. I mean, it was like, there's no good way, I guess.
- [40:24]
A
Like, rat droppings. No, no, it wasn't that. It was like, a lot of baking powder or something like that.
- [40:29]
B
No, no, no, it was both. It was both. Let me pull it up.
- [40:32]
C
Rat Dr.
- [40:33]
B
Yes, it was baking soda. Okay. Yeah, sorry. This is in the Independent, not the Telegraph.
- [40:37]
A
Oh, sorry.
- [40:38]
B
That's okay. But I have in front of me now. Okay, so where is it?
- [40:44]
A
This is real research in real time.
- [40:46]
B
Yeah. Real time. Yes. Okay. Some unknowing trekkers were allegedly made temporarily unwell due to their meals being spiked with baking soda, uncooked chicken, or even rat droppings. That's. That's in black and white.
- [41:04]
A
Oh, man.
- [41:04]
B
And so, yeah. And, God, it sounds. I mean, well, and then they. They have to get evacuated out, you know, for gazillions of dollars. That's the whole thing, sometimes.
- [41:16]
A
And sometimes they would charge them for different flights even though they're on the same flight. It was just a real scam, an incredible scam involving, like, negligent government oversight agencies, Sherpas, rich people going to Everest and maybe being taken for a bag. I was about to. Actually. I. You might not know this about this. I'm climbing Everest next month. Been training for months, and I'm now canceled.
- [41:40]
B
Oh.
- [41:40]
C
Yeah.
- [41:40]
A
I'm not gonna do it.
- [41:41]
B
Yeah. Okay, well, that sounds like a wise financial decision.
- [41:44]
A
Yeah, I don't want to do it anymore. I don't get ripped off or rat poisoned or something like that. All right, Catherine, thank you so much.
- [41:50]
B
So much.
- [41:51]
A
Really covered the waterfront on this one. Went from budgetary policy to rat poison and all that in between. So thank you for this.
- [41:59]
B
Rat droppings, not rat poison. I don't know if that's better or worse.
- [42:03]
A
Rat dropping poisoning.
- [42:05]
B
Yes.
- [42:06]
A
I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Hey, for everyone watching. I've been watching in the. In the comments section. Someone told me to get a. A mic stand or something because they could hear me typing. You know what? We're trying to multitask here. I'm sorry if my typing got a little loud. We'll do. We'll do better next time. In exchange for us doing that. Subscribe to the feed. Talk to you guys soon. Have a great weekend. Take care. Bye. Bye.