The Airport Lines Are Long

Summary

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Everybody's Business – “The Airport Lines Are Long”

Bloomberg Businessweek | iHeartPodcasts
Hosts: Max Chafkin & Stacey Vanek Smith
Featured Guests: Dina Shanker (Bloomberg Reporter), Martha Gimbel (Yale Budget Lab Exec. Director)
Date: March 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this high-energy and incisive episode, Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith dive into how current global crises—especially the war in Iran and the resulting economic ripple effects—are exposing deep vulnerabilities in American institutions, from air travel to retirement security. The show explores:

• The chaos at airports under the strain of government shutdown and global unrest
• How the high-profile Epstein files are eroding public trust in elites (with reporter Dina Shanker)
• The fragility of America's retirement safety net (with economist Martha Gimbel)
• Their takes on under-the-radar business stories, including the rise and collapse of the Metaverse and the unprecedented attempt to stage Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as an oratorio

The episode is marked by the hosts’ signature blend of sharp journalistic inquiry, candid humor, and firsthand reporting.

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1. Surging Airport Chaos Amid Crisis

[01:19 – 03:15]

• War in Iran: The ongoing conflict is causing soaring oil prices (“Oil has jumped as high as $120 a barrel,” Stacey, 01:19), global inflation, and major supply chain disruptions for products like fertilizer and plastics.
• Air Travel Breakdown: U.S. airports are in turmoil, amplified by a partial government shutdown that’s left TSA agents unpaid and calling in sick—resulting in hours-long security lines. The hosts relay field reporting from JFK:
  • “I'm a little worried about the whole ‘we might start shutting down airports’ thing…” (Max, 02:25)
  • “I feel like they just add an hour every time there’s a crisis... now it’s five hours.” (Max, 03:06)
• Systemic Weaknesses: These airport headaches highlight brittleness in institutions Americans once trusted to run smoothly.

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2. Trust Shaken: The Epstein Files and Public Figures

[04:22 – 17:04]

Segment with Dina Shanker starts [06:01]

What the Epstein Files Exposed

• Peter Attia’s Fallout: The celebrity wellness doctor and new CBS contributor is revealed to have a close, favor-trading relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, raising questions about integrity at the top.
  • “He met Epstein… in hopes of fundraising… but also because he's starting a concierge medical practice” (Dina, 09:36)
  • “He did some blood work for Epstein... instead of paying me, I'm looking for connections.” (Dina, 09:36)
  • Attia brands himself as ultra-thorough: “One of the things he has built his reputation on is his intensive research... so how could he have not known anything about Epstein?” (Dina, 12:11)
• Elite Complacency: Many prominent people were happy to look the other way after Epstein’s 2008 conviction.
  • “This wasn’t unknown to people.” (Max, 11:36)
  • Attia’s correspondence shows he knew of Epstein’s “creep” reputation: “There were a number of things like that where you're like, this guy is quite…” (Dina, 12:57)
• Notable Quote: “Losers… the people that you thought of as the smartest, most responsible, richest… all just acting like school children. They can’t spell. The men seem incapable of meeting women. They’re just losers.” (Max, 13:56)
• Broader Cultural Impact: Dina and Max agree this scandal has torched public faith in once-respected institutions and figures—especially in finance and wellness.
  • “We as a society are going to be living with [this] for a really long time… We’ve just dropped a bomb in our relationship with power that is going to take decades to resolve.” (Max, 14:52)

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3. Retirement Under Pressure: Economic Volatility and American Insecurity

[18:19 – 31:09]

Guest: Martha Gimbel (Yale Budget Lab)

Segment begins [19:06]

The Retirement Landscape

• Economic Uncertainty: Tumult in energy markets and labor market anxieties are making Americans nervous about their budgets and futures—even when data (like the low unemployment rate) doesn’t fully back it up.
  • “If you ask them about how likely they are to have a job in six months, they are much more pessimistic than you would expect.” (Martha, 20:00)
• Saving for Retirement: Despite more money in retirement accounts, there’s deep debate on whether Americans are saving “enough”—and a big part of this is how Social Security is counted.
  • “If you account for Social Security, people are doing okay,” but definitions differ. (Martha, 21:06)
• US Vulnerability: America’s reliance on job-tied benefits means economic shocks feel riskier here than in other advanced countries.
  • “We tie a lot of things to work... Our unemployment insurance system is not very generous.” (Martha, 22:27)
  • “The maximum weekly [unemployment insurance] payment in Mississippi is something like $200 a week.” (Martha, 22:59)
• Energy Shocks: The US is more buffered from oil/energy market volatility than Europe but not immune.
  • “A big energy shock is much more disruptive for economies in Europe than it is in the United States. On net, I would still rather be a worker in the United States, but there are pros and cons here.” (Martha, 24:23)
• Social Security Politics: Both Martha and Max are skeptical about the likelihood of major benefit cuts, citing Congressional and political reluctance to go after these programs.
  • “Even Congress is going, yeah, we’re not going to do that.” (Martha, 25:32)
• The “Trump Account”: Discussion of a new savings initiative championed by Michael Dell and others, aiming to seed children’s retirement savings ($1,000 per eligible child). Martha is unimpressed by the system’s ability to address deeper issues:
  • “The Trump accounts don’t provide like a new form of tax-advantaged saving that likely makes a huge difference for families.” (Martha, 27:16)
• Personal Retirement Philosophies:
  • “I’m like super cautious. I would much rather have my money in sort of a safe, steady place than a high earning place… I don’t like risk.” (Stacey, 30:29)
  • “The real thing if you have a 401k is to put money in there and try really hard not to think about it.” (Martha, 30:22)

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4. Underrated & Offbeat Business Stories

[32:53 – 40:44]

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations — The Oratorio

[33:14 – 35:40]

• Stacey attended a new performance by the NY Philharmonic, staging Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations as an oratorio.
  • “I have, like, never felt so seen.” (Stacey, 34:03)
  • The show tackled both the ideals and critiques of capitalism, blending music with text from economic and literary giants.

RIP to the Metaverse: Facebook’s Horizon Worlds Shuts Down

[35:52 – 40:44]

• Max chronicles the massive investment ($80 billion) and ultimate demise of Meta’s VR platform.
  • “The division… has lost to date almost $80 billion.” (Max, 37:13)
  • “There were really smart people… who were absolutely 100% sure this was gonna be a huge thing.” (Max, 37:38)
  • “Many normal people were skeptical from the beginning.” (Max, 38:40)
• Debate over why digital worlds like the Metaverse struggled while others (Roblox, Minecraft) persist, and Second Life confirmed as still operational.

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5. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Airport Lines:
  “I feel like they just add an hour every time there’s a crisis... now it’s five hours.”
  — Max Chafkin, [03:06]

• On the Epstein Files:
  “Every time I think that I cannot be horrified anymore… another level of horror emerges.”
  — Stacey Vanek Smith, [05:42]

  “Losers… the people that you thought of as the smartest, most responsible, richest… they're just losers. And I think that is really damaging.”
  — Max Chafkin, [13:56]

• On American Retirement:
  “The maximum weekly [unemployment insurance] payment in Mississippi is something like $200 a week.”
  — Martha Gimbel, [22:59]

  “If you have a 401k, it doesn’t really matter what’s happening in Iran... You’re in this for decades.”
  — Martha Gimbel, [30:22]

• On Facebook’s Metaverse:
  “The division… has lost to date almost $80 billion.”
  — Max Chafkin, [37:13]

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6. Timestamps for Important Segments

• Airport Crisis & Systemic Vulnerabilities: [01:19 – 03:32]
• Epstein Files and the Fall of Elites: [04:22 – 17:04]
• Retirement Pressures & American Insecurity (with Martha Gimbel): [19:06 – 31:09]
• Underrated Stories: Wealth of Nations Oratorio & Metaverse Collapse: [32:53 – 40:44]

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Tone & Style

Reflecting Max and Stacey’s conversational, sometimes irreverent approach, the episode balances sobering investigations with levity and spontaneous asides. There’s a spirit of skepticism toward institutional trust and a hit of gallows humor, especially as they trace how disruptions in global events trickle down to daily American life.

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For Listeners

This episode is a vivid illustration of the interconnectedness of global conflict, economic systems, and public trust. It’s essential listening for anyone interested in how current affairs—from empty airports to exposed scandals—are changing the rules of business and retirement today.

Transcript

[IBM AI Representative]

The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across hr, IT and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business.

[Adobe Acrobat Advertiser]

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[Stacey Vanek Smith]

this is everybody's business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Stacey Vanek Smith.

[Max Chafkin]

And I'm Max Chavkin.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Max, the war in Iran is front and center again this week. And especially in these last few days. The economic and structural impacts continue, continue to evolve. Oil has jumped as high as $120 a barrel. It's down a little bit now, but also global inflation is on the rise. There are supply chain choke points, including for products like fertilizer and plastics. And all of it just seems to continue to spread.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah. And air travel has been completely disrupted worldwide and, and not just worldwide, but, but here in the US the partial government shutdown is kind of adding to the uncertainty and the sense of chaos. In fact, Our producer, Jasmine J.T. green, took a short trip to our local airport, John F. Kennedy International, to see what was happening there.

[Martha Gimbel]

This is Howard Beach. JFK Airport.

[Max Chafkin]

Connection is available to the AirTrain to JFK Airport. We're here at JFK. What brings you here today?

[Martha Gimbel]

We're doing Southeast Asia, so Thailand, Cambodia,

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

bringing my mom waiting in the line of tsa. She's going to Luciana, but then she's going to Miami.

[Max Chafkin]

Have you been hearing about the current like, wait times here? Yeah, I'm a little worried about the whole we might start shutting down airports thing, which I saw a headline about yesterday.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I knew before I even had an app that told me like, how much time you need to wait in each terminal. So we have been here like 10 minutes and I think we're doing good.

[Max Chafkin]

You've been following at all like the news regarding, like the Department of Homeland Security. In relationship to these long lines, we're hoping that Precheck is going to do us good today, but I don't know. Time will tell.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I got nervous when they almost canceled Precheck recently, but fortunately, we've still got it for now. We saw that in Luciana. You have to be five hours before, so that's why today we came three hours before her flight. So we will be on time.

[Max Chafkin]

I feel like they just add an hour every time there's a crisis. Like, I remember when you only had to be at the airport, like, an hour early, and now it's five hours.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

No, I mean, it is. It is wild. And, you know, a lot of this, like you said, Max, has to do with the partial government shutdown. So TSA agents, like, by and large, are not getting paid right now. This has a lot of people calling in sick, so there are very few agents. And in certain places, the lines are just. Yeah, it's kind of a mess.

[Max Chafkin]

And, you know, beyond just air travel and beyond the chaos in the Middle East, Stacey, I think we're really living through a time where some of the systems that we thought we could trust are just proving a little bit more brittle, a little less trustworthy than we had first assumed.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

We're seeing a lot of weaknesses start

[Max Chafkin]

to get exposed, and that gets us to retirement. You wrote a story about workers who are dealing with retirement by just not retiring. Yeah.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

A lot of people keep working for sometimes financial reasons, sometimes not.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah. That is either kind of heartwarming. You're like, wow. Like, you know, that's so cool. Or maybe a sign of, you know, a lack of economic security.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yeah, there's just a lot of stress, I think, being put on all these different parts of. Of the economy, and we're feeling the impact in kind of surprising ways, which

[Max Chafkin]

is the perfect transition to our other topic, the Epstein class, which is another area.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yes, I mean, that's true.

[Max Chafkin]

And we'll. We'll talk all about this with Dena Shanker later in the show, but it's another area where, you know, again, some of the parts of our. Of. Of our society that felt most solid, the most respectable, most trustworthy people, somehow seem a little bit less trustworthy.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yes, exactly. I mean, these power structures, be they economic or societal like.

[Max Chafkin]

Or financial.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Exactly. And, Max, you've got a story out now about the Epstein files and a little bit about how they are exposing these systems as well, in the same way that maybe right now the conflict in Iran is exposing some of our economic Weaknesses, all that's ahead.

[Max Chafkin]

But we gotta get through security. Stacey. Let's, let's get.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Apparently five hours lead time is like my personal nightmare.

[Max Chafkin]

It's going to be a long podcast. Settle in, Stacey. It's been some weeks since the big Doj Epstein files release, but because these documents are so big and so long and there's so much in them and

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

have come out gradually and so many

[Max Chafkin]

powerful people, it is upsetting.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It is really upsetting. I have to say that there are. Every time I think that I cannot be horrified anymore that I've jaded on this front. As it turns out, there is another level of horror that emerges.

[Max Chafkin]

I just published a piece in BusinessWeek about this.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

That's a great idea.

[Max Chafkin]

And we have a second piece also in businessweek same month. The two pieces are kind of in conversation with one another. This one is written by Dina Shanker, who, who is a friend of the podcast Bloomberg Reporter. She is here now. Hey, Dina.

[Dina Shanker]

Hey. And also I just wanna say with Courtney Rubin, another writer, that we worked on this together. So it's definitely a team effort.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah, absolutely. But your piece is about Peter Attia, who is a sort of podcaster, celebrity doctor, wellness guru. I had thought of him sort of as like one of these like annoying voices that you sometimes hear telling you to like, you know, making unrealistic promises about your health and that your most ambitious friends are into. That's the holy grail metric of longevity. Cardiorespiratory fitness outperforms every other variable we can measure. This includes blood pressure, this includes cholesterol, this includes bmi, smoking. It even includes age, which just blows my mind.

[Dina Shanker]

That's probably the way a lot of people perceive him. He has been preaching his longevity philosophy for his podcast launched in 2018. He had a book out in 2023. So like for a while now. And a lot of what he talks about is basic preventative medicine. You know, like eat healthy, exercise a lot, maintain emotional connections with other people. And then he also likes to really push for off label use of certain pharmaceuticals and supplements. So that's where he really gets into what he calls evidence inform rather than evidence proven.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I like that. I like to practice that in my article, evidence Informed. But what kinds of things, like what kinds of medications? What is his thing?

[Dina Shanker]

So, for example, one medication is called rapamycin. It is FDA approved for cancer patients for people who have recently received organ transplants. He says it's also an anti aging drug. And so he used it for anti aging purposes until it gave him Some mouth sores, and then he sucked. Yeah.

[Max Chafkin]

Never drink.

[Dina Shanker]

Exactly. So he does a lot of stuff like that.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

That is an informed. Yes. Experience. Right.

[Max Chafkin]

I think most people became aware of this guy when. If you weren't already listening to the podcast, which he had a lot of listeners when Bari Weiss, the new head of CBS News, named him as one of the new contributors for CBS News. So he was right on the verge of being zoomed into the living rooms of every boomer in America.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

He was like the new Dr. Oz.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah, basically. Yeah, exactly. The new Dr. Oz. And the Epstein files came out.

[Dina Shanker]

That's right. Yeah. It was like, I think within days of his CBS announcement that the Epstein files dropped. And pretty quickly, people found his name in there. They found that, for example, he had a part in his book where he talked about a low point in his life when his. He was in New York and his wife calls him from California, that their baby, their son, had stopped breathing. And Atiya tells this story as an example of him being a bad man. He, instead of flying back to California, he said, just call me, and I'll talk to the Doctors in the ICU. And it took him 10 days to go back. Pretty quickly, people did.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

That does make him sound like a bad man.

[Dina Shanker]

Yeah, that would be some bad parenting. Bad partnership, I would say. But then add in the fact that it turned out that it was during they. People used the Epstein files to figure out that during that time he was in New York and having plans with Epstein.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

What came out in the files? What did he do? So what we.

[Dina Shanker]

Basically, the story of him and his involvement with Epstein that we uncovered is he met Epstein while he was fundraising for a nonprofit that he was running. And he meets Epstein in the hopes of fundraising, but also because he's starting a concierge medical practice. And he says to he. He does some blood work for Epstein. And then Epstein says, what do I owe you? And he says, actually, no, you don't need to pay me. Instead of paying me, I'm looking for either connections to people that can help me with the fundraising or patient referrals, because I'm starting this boutique practice, and I'm looking for wealthy people who want to live longer, essentially, and that's the beginning of their relationship. In June 2015. There's some favor trading or apparent favor trading. It's really unclear if anything ever came of any of this with introductions and things like that. But eventually, what you see from reading all these files is that, like, they became friends. Like, Epstein knew the name of the woman who he was having an affair with and asked about it. So what started as a transactional business type of relationship eventually evolved into, I, I don't know that Epstein was capable of having friends. And I should say they. His people say that this was not a friendship.

[Max Chafkin]

We should say on top of that, on top of that denial, that also there's nothing in these files with Attia, and this is true of a lot of the very famous people who are in the Epstein files suggesting criminality or that he was party to Epstein's abuse. And you have this kind of interesting thing in the Epstein files where there are these, like, very specific and very upsetting things that actually do get to Epstein's abuse of teenage girls. But then there's this additional layer of people, including Atia, who sort of wanted something out of Epstein or wanted to be in this world and were basically willing to look the other way. This was Years after Epstein's 2008 guilty plea for soliciting sex from a minor. He was a known sex offender. And as you get later in these files, in 2015, in 2016, 2017, there were lawsuits that were repeatedly bringing this up. This wasn't like unknown to people.

[Dina Shanker]

Yes. And so there's two things I will say in terms of Atiya. First of all, Atiya, one of his trademarks, one of the things that he has built his reputation on is his intensive research that he does on everything. So when he's talking about evidence informed, he really is informing himself. He really is reading every study on this drug and he can talk about it at length. He talks about always having a guru for everything he says he doesn't.

[Max Chafkin]

He's got a watch guru.

[Dina Shanker]

Yeah, he's got a watch guru. He told Epstein about his lipid gurus. He's very into finding the smartest people on a topic and learning everything he can. So how could he have not known anything about Epstein? Now, the other piece of it is that even if you take him at his word, he did not say, see anything that indicated misconduct, et cetera. You go through those emails and you can see that he knew at the very least that Epstein was a creep because he would say things like, I really want to help you live longer, if for no other reason, just to have more sex. And then I really want to help you live longer just so you can at least keep up with the 23 year old. Like, there were a number of things like that where you're like, this guy is quite.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It's like creep recognizes creep.

[Dina Shanker]

Yeah, I would actually so one takeaway that I've had from going through these files about Atiya specifically, but also then reading the news about all the other people is. And I'm curious, Max, what you think of this theory is that. I don't think that this was a vast conspiracy. I actually think that it was a relatively small conspiracy among well known, powerful, creepy men who, like, it's the same names over and over again that we. And it doesn't mean there aren't gonna be more that come out. But I think you have this group of losers. I mean, these guys only hung out at Epstein's house. They're in New York City. Go to a restaurant, There's a million places to go. You want to meet women, go to a bar, go to a dance club. I don't know. I mean, not that we want these people in public places, but the fact is that we see the same group of people over and over again that just seem to be incapable of functioning in normal society.

[Max Chafkin]

I think you have to be careful because, again, there were crimes committed, there are victims. And so it's not. The only takeaway is not that they. The people that we're talking about were losers. But I do think this is like a major cultural phenomenon. There are millions of people doing this. And when you look at, like, the content that's being, like, pumped out on TikTok and on social platforms, this is like a fixation. And beyond the crimes of Epstein, the second takeaway is just what you just said, Dina. Losers. It's like the people that you thought of as the smartest, most responsible, richest. Just the people you wanted to get health advice from and money advice from. And in the case of Rumaler, who was White House counsel, protect the presidency. All just acting like school children. They can't spell. The men seem incapable of meeting women. They're just losers. And I think that is really damaging. And I think it's gonna be something that we as a society are gonna be living with for a really long time. Like, there was already so much kind of anger at elites even before the release of these files. And now I think we've just dropped a bomb in kind of like our relationship with power that is gonna take decades to. To resolve.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I have a question for you, Dina, that also relates to Max's article, which is there is something interesting at the center of this that are a lot of these were sort of the most respected people that people listen to, who are seen as, like, the most successful people in our society, the most rewarded, hugely profitable positions Heads of very influential people, heads of companies, losers though they may be, had a lot of power. Do you think there's a difference between Atiya and some of the other people who came up in the Epstein files because of the wellness business, which you've covered a lot, or is this all kind of the same thing? Like you can't trust, like Max was saying, people at the top of the, at least the economic food chain.

[Dina Shanker]

So one thing that I think happens a lot in the health and wellness space is that the basic advice we've all heard a million times. And we all know. And so people that really want to, you know, like I said, eat, sleep, exercise, et cetera. So people that really want to say, capitalize on something or try to make themselves stand out, they have to try to go outside of that. And so what Atiya did was he was like, I am going to be extremely credible. I am going to be so well researched. I am going to have people on my podcast that maybe you've never heard of, but they are the absolute experts. And now you get to hear the expert. And I'm gonna, by being the person who pulls them all together. I am also the expert because I am so credible. I care so much about the science and I'm in this space, but I stand above.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

You can trust me.

[Dina Shanker]

You can trust me. Exactly. So I think people are going to have to decide whether he is really the credible person that he has spent years building himself to be, or if he's maybe more like the rest of that wellness space that has so much squishiness in it.

[Max Chafkin]

Dina Shankar, thanks for being here.

[Dina Shanker]

Thank you.

[IBM AI Representative]

The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across hr, IT and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slashed repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business.

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[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So Max the markets, prices, oil. It's all been on a pretty wild ride, which is causing all kinds of worries all over the country. People are worried about their budgets and affording things and also retirement. I think retirement's a big issue on people's minds right now at this moment of great flux.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah. Both because of the job market being uncertain, as we've been talking about for a long time, but also, yeah, anytime the market is gyrating the way it is, or if you have the threat of sort of a long term period of market uncertainty and you prices going up, you are a certain age. Right. That's going to have an impact on your ability to retire. Yeah.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And BusinessWeek, we have a bunch of stories out right now about retirement, but we wanted to talk to somebody who's in the news who looks at this stuff all the time, who could give us some perspective. We're really lucky to have Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Yale Budget Lab with us. Hi Martha.

[Martha Gimbel]

Hello. Thank you for having me.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So Martha, talk to us a little bit about when we see this moment like we're having right now with some prices going up, a lot of volatility, a lot of uncertainty. What does this mean for people's budgets? What does this mean for regular Americans?

[Martha Gimbel]

I think in particular there's a lot of stress about the labor market, which is interesting because the labor market, relatively speaking, is fine. And if you look at how people say they are feeling about the labor market today, it's about where you'd expect given the unemployment rate, which is low. But if you ask them about how likely they are to have a job in say six months, they are much more pessimistic about that than you would expect them to be given how low the unemployment rate is. So there is something in the water, whatever it is, that is causing people to think, man, I'm okay right now, but I think something might be coming where I'm going to be in a lot of trouble.

[Max Chafkin]

Just stepping back on the question of sort of retirement. Like, what is happening with savings rate? Like, are people saving enough money? Are. You know, we're. We've sort of transitioned in this country away from defined benefits to these, to 401ks. What's your assessment of the retirement picture in the United States?

[Martha Gimbel]

So you just asked a question that should have a really simple answer. And I'm going to do the very economist thing and say there's not a really simple answer to your question. And so it partly depends on how you're thinking about it. If you're just looking about, like, dollars in retirement accounts, there's more than there used to be. Right. But that is the thing that people stress out about. One point that researchers have made, though, is that one of the ways that we save for retirement in this country is by paying into Social Security. And so there's a huge amount of debate among economists about how much you should quote, unquote, count that. And different economists will give you different responses on that. If you account for Social Security, people are doing okay.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

One of the issues, though, you were talking about the job market. People worried, feeling like maybe in six months they don't know if they're going to have a job, maybe because of the economy, maybe because of worries about robots taking our jobs or whatever. But people aren't worried about that. In the US a lot of our 401ks, even our Social Security, it's all tied to our jobs. So this does seem maybe especially problematic in the US Compared to other countries at a moment, like right now, it does seem like it adds an extra layer of worry.

[Martha Gimbel]

Yeah. And it's not just retirement.

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[Martha Gimbel]

It's your healthcare. We in general tie a lot of things to work in this country that other countries don't. And we don't have a lot of supports for people if and when they do lose their jobs. Our unemployment insurance system is not very generous, if I'm remembering correctly, which I may not be, but it's about this. The maximum weekly uninsurance payment in Mississippi is something like $200 a week.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

If you lose your job, you get $200 a week to live, maximum.

[Martha Gimbel]

Wow.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And the more you make in your job, the more you get. So if you are earning the top amount of money, you get $200 a week. So in a moment like this, of great uncertainty, are Americans worse off or do they have better reason to be worried than in other developed, economically developed nations, or is it the same?

[Martha Gimbel]

There's pros and cons here. On the one hand, if you lose Your job in the United States, you have many fewer supports than you get in other countries. On the other hand, the US Economy is even now is generally stronger, doing better than many other countries. It tends to have a much more resilient labor market. One thing we were gesturing at the beginning of this conversation was energy shocks and the way that can affect people's budgets, but also the broader economy. But the United States is actually more resilient to energy shocks because we are such a big producer of energy shocks

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

being like high gas prices, high gas

[Martha Gimbel]

prices, electricity prices, disrupting the supply of energy, specifically oil coming out of the Middle east tends to flow through to prices for people, which has economic effects. But the US Is much more shielded from that because of our role as such a big producer of energy than, for instance, Europe. A big energy shock is much more disruptive for economies in Europe than it is in the United States on net. I would still rather be a worker in the United States, but there are pros and cons here.

[Max Chafkin]

So for my entire adult life, people have been talking about Social Security sort of running out of money and the fact that if you're a young worker, you should count on a benefit cut. On the other hand, I think one thing we've learned politically is that those benefit cuts are going would be extremely difficult to do, maybe even impossible. So impossible. How do you balance sort of economic reality with the political reality?

[Martha Gimbel]

So I can give you a very nerdy response to that, which is the Congressional Budget Office generally scores policies on current law, right? So what is in the law? There's something that they basically score on current policy, and that is Social Security. This Congressional Budget Office, when they're doing their scores, assumes that Congress is not going to cut Social Security. Now, that's because that's how they've been told by Congress to score it. But that kind of gives you an idea, right? Of even Congress is going, yeah, we're not going to do that.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So, Martha, you said that you would rather be. If things go sideways in the global economy, you'd rather be in the US Than in another developed country. Would you rather retire in the U. S. Or in another developed country?

[Martha Gimbel]

Ooh, do I get to retire in another developed country with my savings from the United States? Because that's what I'd like to do.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I think you're bending rules here, Martha.

[Martha Gimbel]

I am bending rules here. I should point out there's probably what I'm asking this is there's been a huge increase in people who earn a lot of money in the United States and then retire elsewhere.

[Max Chafkin]

I feel irresponsible for not asking Martha or you, Stacey, about Trump accounts. These are the new savings accounts and the one big beautiful bill. And basically this is, I guess, I'm not sure it's somewhat tax advantaged. And the idea is we're going to get rich people, starting with Michael Dell, to put money aside to help people save. And I think members of the Trump administration have sometimes said, maybe quietly, so people don't get too mad, that maybe long run, this could be a way to supplement or even replace Social Security or somehow deal with the Social Security crunch that like Michael Dell and his ilk, other rich guys who want Trump to be happy will kick in to our collective retirement funds. What do you make of this policy? Do we have any sense of how impactful it could be?

[Martha Gimbel]

I think the real benefit of people of the Trump accounts is that if you have a child after a certain date, you get a thousand dollars from Michael Dell.

[Max Chafkin]

I think. No, no.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And a laptop.

[IBM AI Representative]

Oh.

[Max Chafkin]

In the law. Okay. And then Michael Dell would be on top of that.

[Martha Gimbel]

So part of what Michael Dell and then some other philanthropists have started talking about is in the law, it's for children who are born after a certain date. So if you have a child like I do, who was born in 2024, I can set up a Trump account for her, but she doesn't get that nice thousand dollars to watch grow over the next coming decades. And so I'm going to step in and fill this gap. We have a lot of forms of tax advantaged saving in this country, which is like a longer conversation about how efficient or good those different policies are. But the Trump accounts don't provide like a new form of tax advantage saving that likely makes a huge difference for families. The big thing that makes a difference is the thousand dollars. Right. That then can grow for children over time.

[Max Chafkin]

I think part of the policy argument is that you are going to see that thousand dollars, you're going to have the Trump account, and then you are going to be, you're going to say, oh, let me put a little more in. It's going to be a sort of almost like a cultural thing to encourage further saving and maybe further stock and equities investment.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Like seeding the tip jar.

[Max Chafkin]

Exactly.

[Martha Gimbel]

Yeah. I mean, we'll see what happens there. Again, the. We have a lot of forms of tax advantaged saving in this country. We have 529s. There's all sorts of things that you can do for your kids. And so I don't think the issue is so much that people don't have these opportunities. It's that saving is hard. And if you're going to choose between buying your kid shoes today or putting that money away for the future, you might buy the kid the shoes because the kid needs shoes. So for those who haven't guessed, I have a toddler who one, does not qualify for the thousand dollars in Trump accounts and two, often needs shoes.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So should people who have their money in a 401k who are maybe near retirement, like, how worried should they be right now at this moment?

[Martha Gimbel]

Well, it's very important when I'm answering that question to know that I am someone who predicted a recession basically every year between 2011 and 2019.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So you're just a cautious, cautiously minded person.

[Dina Shanker]

Yes.

[Martha Gimbel]

The one year where I was like, there's no way we're going to recession. It's going to be great was 2020. So I don't know that I'm the right person here. I do think that there are a lot of risks in markets right now that aren't getting fully priced in. It's been interesting to me talking to friends of mine who watch energy markets more closely, like, why aren't energy markets responding more strongly to what's happening in Iran? And they're like, we have no idea. It seems wild to us. On the other hand, if you have a 401k, it doesn't really matter what's happening in Iran. Right. Like you're in this for decades, hopefully. And so I think the real thing if you have a 401k is to put money in there and try really hard not to think about it.

[Max Chafkin]

I was just going to ask you both what your retirement philosophy is. I think we just, we heard Martha's just now. Stacey, what about you?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

My retirement.

[Max Chafkin]

Straight to polymarket, right?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Oh, yes. I'm putting it all, I'm putting it all in polymarkt. I just, I am very, I'm maybe a little bit like Martha. I'm like super cautious. I don't, I'm like much, I would much rather have my money in sort of a safe, steady place than a place that's like a high earning place. Like I was in the very low risk 401k category when I started working. I chose the low risk one, which I know you're not supposed to do. I don't like risk. I don't, I just don't. I know there's a big upside, but I feel like there's a big downside. Too. All right, Martha, thank you so much for joining us.

[Martha Gimbel]

Thank you for having me.

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[Max Chafkin]

Stacey, it's time for our underrated stories.

[Dina Shanker]

It is.

[Max Chafkin]

I have a little preview because at the Bloomberg Mothership, we sit next to each other and you were not at your desk the other day. I wrote that down on a little piece of paper where I keep track of these things. Just kidding.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

You keep track of my desk attendance.

[Max Chafkin]

I know what you were doing. You were going to, I believe, the opera.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yes. So the New York Philharmonic right now has a show. It's technically not an opera. It's an oratorio.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

But it is all about Adam Smith's seminal economic work, the wealth of Nations Oratorio.

[Max Chafkin]

Is that like, there's music playing and they talk?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It's like. Yeah, it's basically an orchestra, but they have singers.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay, got it.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It's an orchestra with singers.

[Max Chafkin]

And the topic is the Adam Smith Thousand Page books. The guy who Invented capitalism, Basically, yes.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It was written and published in 1776, same year as the US declared independence.

[Max Chafkin]

Happy birthday, Adam Smith.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yes. And so this is a whole work that basically grapples with the free market economy, which I understand how strange this sounds. I have, like, never felt so seen.

[Max Chafkin]

Big fan of capitalism. Adam Smith seems like an important guy, but I cannot say I'm super excited about this as a oratorio.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Even I was skeptical. I was like, is there demand for this supply? You know, like, do people want to watch an opera about the glories of free trade? But it was actually extremely moving. Here is a clip.

[Max Chafkin]

I'm, like, a little worried at this. This might not be the time. I know it's the anniversary, but, yeah, capitalism. And we were talking about this earlier in the show, like, it's not a great time for capitalism. Like, I'm worried that they maybe should have, you know, waited a couple years before bringing out this oratorio.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Well, the composer, David Lange actually takes a kind of a critical look at the free market economy. And it brings in authors including Frederick Douglass and Edith Wharton to kind of in conversation with the US and he has a very, very soulful take on the economy that it sort of connects us all, that the value, the wealth of a nation comes not from the gold in its vaults, but from our labor. We are.

[Max Chafkin]

Spoiler alert.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Stay in the wealth right now. I can't see this.

[Max Chafkin]

I don't want the ending to be ruined.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yeah, yeah. There's no twist. Dumbledore does not die at the end of this. It was actually, like, really beautiful and moving, mostly. Cause the music is so beautiful that even though the text, which he pretty much quotes verbatim, is very stilted, the sort of moving music kind of gets you through it.

[Max Chafkin]

Okay, I'm into that. My underrated story. Stacey, do you remember cast your mind back to 2021, speaking of sort of lasting art forms like opera.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yeah.

[Max Chafkin]

You remember the Metaverse?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I went to the Metaverse. Of course I visited the Metaverse. It was very complicated to get in, but it was also a very weird place.

[Max Chafkin]

So back then, back in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, announced with great fanfare that he was renaming his company Facebook to Meta in honor of this idea, the Metaverse. He said we were all going to be sort of living with these digital avatars. And strangely, when it announced, when this first happened, the avatars had no legs. And everyone was, like, really thinking.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I remember that torsos.

[Max Chafkin]

And then there was this big. This moment. I'LL just play you a little clip where Zuckerberg announced that they had legs. There's one more feature coming soon that's

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

probably the most requested feature on our roadmap. Legs. Also, this is. We are watching a video of, like, animated Mark Zuckerberg. Is that. Is he talking to his wife?

[Max Chafkin]

No, it's. It's like an engineer, but it's animated Mark Zuckerberg with great fanfare in. Let's see. I believe that was, like, 2022, October 2022, talking about how they had just brought legs to the Metaverse. Stacey, you are not going to believe how much they spent on this technology.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Tragically, the Metaverse did not have legs.

[Max Chafkin]

This was the central product of Meta's pivot, Horizon Worlds. The. The division that Horizon Worlds was in has lost to date almost $80 billion.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

What, that's like a GDP?

[Max Chafkin]

Yes, it's like a small country's GDP has been lost developing this technology.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Because the Metaverse was a country of sorts.

[Max Chafkin]

It was. There were management consultancies, really, really smart people, not just Mark Zuckerberg, who were absolutely 100% sure this was gonna be a huge thing. McKinsey had a report saying this was gonna be a $5 trillion industry. I remember sit one of these demos where Accenture, another consulting company, said with great fanfare that they were in the Metaverse and they had what was called the Nth Floor. Nth Floor where Accenture consultants were going to be able to get together, like,

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

in a virtual building inside of the Metaverse.

[Max Chafkin]

Yeah. You know how we sometimes go to the sixth floor of the Bloomberg Building to get coffee. You were going to go to the Nth Floor with your legs that Mark Zuckerberg had created for me.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

With my real legs.

[Max Chafkin]

And. Well, they're not real. They just look sort of like. Like. Anyway, this is all a prelude to say that the Metaverse, Horizon Worlds, is no more. Facebook is cutting its support for the virtual reality version of this product, which was the main version. And a lot of people are having a lot of fun because although Mark Zuckerberg and McKinsey and Accenture all thought this was obviously a good idea, many normal people were skeptical from the beginning.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Let me ask you, though. I mean, the Metaverse, it hung on, right? Like, because I went there when it was kind of dead. I read this really funny story about this reporter was running around the Metaverse and there were, like, went to, like. There were supposed to be all these sort of flirty spaces where you could kind of meet hot avatars and they Were all empty.

[Max Chafkin]

Right.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Except for some droids. And I ran around some art museums. It was like very weird wasteland. And then there were, like, little avatars walking in circles. Cause I guess they were bots, but it hung up. Why? How? Who was there? Like, how did it even hang on this long with, like, momentum?

[Max Chafkin]

There is. So first of all, and people who are really into the metaverse, they still exist.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Apparently there aren't very many.

[Max Chafkin]

What they will say is that actually the metaverse is still very popular. Roblox is a sort of metaverse. That's a game. Minecraft is a sort of metaverse. Even Second Life, I haven't checked recently,

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

but it shows that.

[Max Chafkin]

Remember Second Life? No, no, but it was hanging. It has. It had hung around as of a couple years ago. Did they finally.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

They killed it.

[Max Chafkin]

Oh, Rip to Second Life as well. Basically, there are versions of this. I think the thing where Facebook went wrong was the idea that you would want to do this at work. What you really wanted was to see all the people that you work with, not in their physical sense, but as a weird avatar, and that you were going to somehow, like, do work that way. I think the only thing people want to do with this stuff is like, basically play games or. You know, I hate to say this, but have sex probably as well.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Wow.

[Max Chafkin]

If you have thoughts on the metaverse or if you're hanging on like Stacey in Horizon World, just hoping someone will come say hi to you.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Say hi. Yes.

[Max Chafkin]

Everybody'[e-mail] that's everybody's with an [e-mail] all right, and Stacey, before we go, fact check coming in my ear right now from Magnus, our producer. Second Life still exists.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I can't believe it.

[Max Chafkin]

Well, like you said, people want to be in virtual real space.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I think we need to open up with virtual reality. I think we need to open up in everybody's business on the Nth floor in Second Life. The show is Produced by Jasmine J.T. green and Stacy Wong. Magnus Henriksen is our supervising producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin and Maria Lang. If you have a minute, please rate and review the show. It means a lot to us. And if you have a story that should be our business, or if you have a business in Second Life, email us at everybody's loomberg.net that's everybody's with an slumberg.net thank you for listening. We'll see you next.

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