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- [00:01]
Fidelity Trader Plus Announcer
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- [00:32]
Cincinnati Insurance Announcer
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- [01:06]
IBM AI Representative
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- [01:38]
Alex Mayasi
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, Radio news.
- [01:54]
Tracy Alloway
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
- [01:58]
Joe Weisenthal
And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
- [01:59]
Tracy Alloway
Joe, you and I have talked about doing a book at various times.
- [02:02]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, talked about it.
- [02:04]
Tracy Alloway
That's pretty much it. We talk about it and then we get a few emails from like agents and publishing houses.
- [02:10]
Joe Weisenthal
So much work.
- [02:11]
Tracy Alloway
And then we get distracted.
- [02:12]
Joe Weisenthal
And then we get distracted. But you know, the one thing I was thinking about is maybe that idea for a recipe book that may be one that we should consider at some point.
- [02:22]
Tracy Alloway
A cookbook slash supply chain.
- [02:24]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, yeah. About the food and each one the business of it.
- [02:27]
Tracy Alloway
I would totally do that. I have some good recipes, too. All right, so we are actually going to get our acts together and do this. Okay, well, our guests today are people who have actually gotten their act together to publish a book while running a highly successful podcast. It is, of course.
- [02:41]
Joe Weisenthal
So we're going to learn. We're going to learn what to do. We're going to.
- [02:44]
Tracy Alloway
That's right.
- [02:44]
Joe Weisenthal
We're gonna take notes during this.
- [02:45]
Tracy Alloway
That's right. Actually, someone who's written two books now, so I don't really know how she does it, but the through line in all of this is I'M just gonna say it. We're gonna be talking to one of the Planet Money co hosts and then a longtime contributor to Planet Money, and they've written this new book called Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life. And one of the. Through lines that I think we share between OPBOTs and Planet Money is this idea that, like, there are all these hidden economic forces that basically dictate the. The way we live.
- [03:14]
Joe Weisenthal
Totally. I mean, there's been especially the, you know, the less. I mean, it's always the case. Right. But especially in the last several years, which is just the sort of the invisible becoming divisible. We see how they shape their life, but there are all these things that we, like, take for granted, et cetera, and now, like, they're in our face, and we. We're only scratching the surface of what we know about them.
- [03:36]
Tracy Alloway
Right. We all became supply chain experts during COVID We became trade experts during 2020 25, and now we're all going to become commodity experts, given the Iran situation as well. Well, without further ado, we do have the perfect guest.
- [03:50]
Joe Weisenthal
That's right.
- [03:51]
Tracy Alloway
The people who actually wrote the book. We're gonna be speaking with Alex Miyasi and Mary Childs. So thank you so much for coming on Oddlauts.
- [03:58]
Alex Mayasi
Thank you for having me.
- [03:59]
Mary Childs
It's such a pleasure to be here.
- [04:00]
Alex Mayasi
It's an honor to finally be the perfect guest. Oh, you've been the perfect guest before, but now I'm. This is. It's like the sun is shining on me.
- [04:07]
Joe Weisenthal
Do you know what I mean? You're the perfect guest.
- [04:10]
Tracy Alloway
All right, so why a book and how did you manage to do it between your actual day job of podcasting?
- [04:15]
Alex Mayasi
Well, this one's easy for me because I did almost no work. Alex did all of the book work. And so that's what I would recommend in terms of division of labor, is to not do the work.
- [04:22]
Tracy Alloway
Okay.
- [04:23]
Alex Mayasi
That's my thing. Yeah.
- [04:23]
Mary Childs
Specialization still has a place.
- [04:25]
Tracy Alloway
I think that's good advice, I think.
- [04:27]
Alex Mayasi
Yeah. So just have a friend who's a longtime contributor. But basically, I think a lot of our work, like, feeds itself, and it's such a different medium. And like, writing and processing, like, the way that you synthesized some of the episodes is, like, kind of crazy because it's like a story story in a totally different way. But, yeah, we just. It's a very collaborative team effort is what I would say.
- [04:47]
Joe Weisenthal
Why don't you talk about your process, Alex? And again, as the one who apparently actually did all the Work. Tracy and I are going to have to play rock paper, scissors if we ever do this.
- [04:57]
Mary Childs
And which one actually is the book? Does the winner write the book or does the loser write the book?
- [05:00]
Joe Weisenthal
I don't want to write. I'm busy. I'm busy enough because I feel like I won.
- [05:04]
Mary Childs
But, you know.
- [05:05]
Alex Mayasi
Well, okay, yeah, I'm too scarred from
- [05:07]
Joe Weisenthal
my experience, but it's like, all right, like, intuitively doing the reporting for the podcast, et cetera, you encounter a lot of things, and assembling some of these big ideas into a book makes sense, but then again, the actual process. So how do you, like, go from thinking about, okay, here are all these things you talk about and learn about, et cetera, to, like, putting it on paper kind of.
- [05:29]
Mary Childs
Yeah, I think probably the first big decision was really coming up with a kind of organizing principle for the book. And so one of the early ideas we had was to think of this book as a field guide. You can imagine, like, leaving your house in the morning and tucking it under your arm to help help you as you experience the economic forces outside your door. And, you know, then from there, there were some. Some different ideas we had about how to structure the book. There was some thought to maybe start with kind of like your younger years, and then increasing sections are, as you get older, you know, kind of then retirement. Then we were like, we do end in death, which sounds a little morbid. But then again, I loved the idea of an epilogue about the economics of graveyards, which is a fascinating topic. But ultimately, we structured the book as kind of about different parts of your life, such as some expected ones, working, career, saving, investing, and some that are maybe a little bit less expected, like leisure, as well as love and family. And so I think from there, with this idea of kind of a field guide to the biggest economic forces that shape your life, that impact you, that kind of gave us, and gave me in particular, some ability to kind of look at both some really classic Planet Money episodes that we thought we'd really love to get that story in the book, as well as new ideas I had, other members of the team had and be able to kind of have some sort of, you know, filter or criterion to say, like, okay, what belongs in this book and what doesn't.
- [06:47]
Tracy Alloway
Okay. So speaking of formative life experiences and growing up and hidden economic forces, one of the things I learned from this book is that when I was performing as a California Raisin at the age of six, I was actually participating in a government like psyop. Basically, explain that.
- [07:08]
Alex Mayasi
Wait no, you explain that. What? You were a baby. Brazen.
- [07:12]
Tracy Alloway
I don't remember a lot from my childhood, but I do remember putting on like a purple swimsuit with big white gloves and singing I Heard it through the Grapevine as part of some school production.
- [07:23]
Mary Childs
That's fantastic. I don't think I would be invited to do that, but I do feel like I would remember if I did it.
- [07:28]
Alex Mayasi
Yeah, that does feel formative. I love that feeling.
- [07:31]
Tracy Alloway
Okay, so California raisins, though, they were part of a, I guess, government induced ad campaign for reasons. Yeah, I had no idea.
- [07:38]
Mary Childs
Yeah. And this is, you know, agriculture, right. Is an unusual sector. And one thing is that that is unusual about it is that there are cases where there are government sanctioned cartels, like, blessed by the power of the federal government and in fact enforced by the federal government. You know, if the government is often trying to prevent different businesses within a sector from collaborating to try and fix and increase prices. Instead, in some agricultural sectors, like raisins, the US Government has historically, you know, made an agreement with the raisin growers and said, okay, you are able to form a cartel. Or they often might use words like cooperative so you can collaborate as an industry.
- [08:16]
Joe Weisenthal
Thought about how, how different that word lands. You know, it's like, oh, we're part of like a dairy cooperative. It's like, oh, that's great.
- [08:23]
Alex Mayasi
Cartel is just the word for group in Spanish. Like, I feel like that's unfair to the word group.
- [08:27]
Mary Childs
Yeah. And economists certainly, like use the word cartel, like non pejoratively. That's just like what's happening here. But you're right, like when you think of a dairy cooperative or these different cooperatives, like, they are, you know, they are businesses all working together often to restrict supply and increase the price. And that's what was going on with the raisin cartel in California, centered in Carmen, where lots of raisins are grown. And I think the economic logic for it is like, there are things about agriculture that are hard. Sometimes you have all these small farmers that are going to sell to a few processors or, you know, dairy markets. So you want them to kind of have leverage, almost like a union. There's also a way, if you have a bumper crop one year, then you get a low price, but then the next year, if you have like a really terrible crop, I mean, maybe the price is higher, but like, you don't have as much to sell. So there's this way that the government sees value in allowing them to cooperate, to kind of smooth out the supply. And that's what was happening with raisins. It also meant that when they had this organization that was responsible for managing the supply of raisins year to year in an effort to kind of smooth things out but also boost the price, they also advertised. And so, yeah, like, their big coup was like, the. Like, these singing raisins. And apparently you were wondering, and why didn't we. Why didn't I know this two years ago?
- [09:41]
Tracy Alloway
Oh, man, this is, like, really interesting.
- [09:42]
Joe Weisenthal
You know, also, again, like, milk is another one of these things that is, like, collectively advertised for years. It's like the drink milk campaigns, milk mustaches that all the celebrities wear. But it's interesting just musing on this a little bit further because we've done a fair number of episodes about, like, agribusiness, gigantic, like, really powerful nationwide entities. And whether it's chicken or restaurant supply, et cetera. Of course, like a really large company, they solve the coordination problem by being one company, right? And there's no, like, you know, they can pass price. You know, the. There's no law, as far as I know, that says, like, the west coast manager can't coordinate on prices with the east coast manager, et cetera. But then you have these independent entities, like a farm, et cetera. And if they can't intuitively, if they can't coordinate on some level whether it's output and price, then how would we ever expect smaller companies to compete against gigantic companies that have that ability to do internal coordination?
- [10:47]
Alex Mayasi
I just love that. It's like, how did we pick raisins? Why are raisins so important? Am I supposed to be eating way more raisins?
- [10:53]
Mary Childs
I mean, some people would have strong opinions on that. I mean, I think raisins were a big deal. Like, these raisin farms had really, like, kind of boon years. Like during World War II, you know, they were growing lots of raisins that were bought by the federal government to send to the troops. And, yeah, I think, like, probably, you know, this is not. I've not done a deep dive on this, but I would also just assume, right, like, the same way that, like, children used to receive an orange for Christmas and be happy about it. I assume also that, like, the sweetness of raisins was much more impressive when we were not just bathing in sugar on a daily basis.
- [11:23]
Tracy Alloway
Now you're the neighborhood. Vill you, like, give out raisins for Halloween or something?
- [11:27]
Joe Weisenthal
Sorry, just to be clear, is that still. Is the. Is it still the same market structure for raisins?
- [11:31]
Mary Childs
It has changed for raisins since, you know, the story in the book, and this one comes from, like, a classic amazing Planet Money episode, is about two farmers. I mean, they're a couple, ran their farm together. And, you know, there was a year in the early 2000s where the leadership of the cartel said, okay, this year, we're diverting. Everyone's diverting 47% of their crop. So not selling it. And it goes to the cartel, which in theory, we'll save it, sell it later, and then pass money back. But in practice, this couple, these farmers, felt like this decision just kind of comes on high down to us. We're not involved. And they spend a lot of that money on sometimes marketing coups like the California raisins, but other things, administrative costs that they didn't necessarily see a huge benefit from, in their opinion. And so they decided, they felt that they'd found almost a legal loophole where if they did certain aspects of, like, packing raisins themselves, they felt that they therefore were not covered by the legislation and had to be part of the cartel and could sell their entire crop themselves. This led lend to, like, a stakeout and, like, someone like a PI named Rocky, like, getting video footage of raisins leaving their farms that could then be used in a court case. And this ultimately went all the way to the Supreme Court.
- [12:40]
Tracy Alloway
Imagine staking out raisins.
- [12:42]
Joe Weisenthal
And so it was then in which way did the supreme. The Supreme Court basically ended the raisin.
- [12:47]
Mary Childs
Yeah. Cause some early, earlier decisions found against these farmers the horns, and they would have had to pay a lot of money, and the cartel would have endured. But the Supreme Court sided with them, said that, you know, this is more or less kind of like a taking of property situation, and that this should not be enforced by federal law. And so the cartel still exists, but more as a kind of organization that maybe does, you know, coordination, maybe advertisements, but that farmers like the horns, are not compelled to divert their raisins to anymore.
- [13:12]
Alex Mayasi
So it really changed the system, defanged the cartel.
- [13:16]
Tracy Alloway
You briefly mentioned oranges. And this is the other thing I learned. Well, I learned many things from this book, but one thing that stood out to me was this idea that you have cuties, the oranges, like the orange brand, and you think that that's one particular variety of oranges, but actually, it turns out that sometimes it's different fruit. What's going on there?
- [13:33]
Mary Childs
Yeah, I mean, I think this was something really fun to do with the book that, like, we had this amazing episode about these raisin farmers, the raisin cartel. You can Learn about cartels and agriculture. But for the book, there's also this opportunity to show, like, oh, this really represents kind of like the commodity trap, right? Like, companies are always in competition and in a state of, like, perfect competition, basically, their profits go down to zero because they're all busy trying to lower their price, make a better product, which is great for all of us as consumers, but not great if you want to make a profit. And so, like, how do you get out of that? A cartel is one way that you may be able to boost your price by having, like, managing the supply and having pricing power. It was really interesting. The farmers in the episode and that I spoke to, it turned out they kind of had their own idea. They almost wanted to do it in their own way. They wanted to escape the commodity trap in their own way. So one of them was experimenting with. He wanted to sell his own raisin snack packs. And he was putting spicy stuff on his raisins or doing some sweet mixes. That was kind of his dream was to sell those. And then I think branding is another way that companies are able to have pricing power, customer loyalty and so on. And so it is interesting. Like agriculture, part of the reason you have cartels is because it's really hard to have any pricing power there. But this is one of those ways that, like, with cuties, they achieved brand recognition and pricing power. Like, there are other times I get some other clementine and I don't like it as much. And then I. So the next time, like, I look for the cuties and I buy the cuties and they probably charge a little bit more. And I'm okay with that because it's a dependable product that I like. And they did it by creating, you know, this cute, like, cartoonish character that I think many of us have seen on the packaging. And yeah, to your point, like, it's actually not always the same fruit in the bag because obviously, like, fruits go through cycles. And so, you know, kind of when the harvest for one ends and they run out, then they switch to a similar one but under the same brand name.
- [15:19]
Tracy Alloway
That's truly successful branding. When you have a different product but it's still recognized as the same thing,
- [15:24]
Alex Mayasi
it's just trust us. Yeah, don't worry about it. You're going to be safe.
- [15:43]
Fidelity Trader Plus Announcer
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- [16:13]
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- [16:50]
Public and Hartford Insurance Announcer
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- [18:04]
Joe Weisenthal
like really making me think generally about how to some extent rare like true like free market capitalism is in a lot of different industries and whether we're talking about really big entities like OPEC came up or whether we're talking about raisins or et cetera. It's really hard to have sustainable industry without some level of coordination. Especially if there's like a commodified element to what's being sold.
- [18:36]
Alex Mayasi
Yeah, if you want the end result to be that your society definitely has something, there needs to be some degree of like stability, dependability, regulation, some something in there to make sure that it's actually that it's smoothing those market cycles.
- [18:48]
Mary Childs
Yeah. And I think this is why, like a field of economics that I'm really interested in is market design. Because I think, right. Like market design started with some of these case studies are just really unusual goods, as like a lot of listeners might know. Like, kidneys is kind of a canonical example. Like we're not going to. I think Iran is the one place in the world where you can buy and sell a kidney. But you know, most of the world, the United States, we're not going to buy and sell kidneys. So like, how do you match people up? How do you make those quote unquote transactions happen? But I think market design, you know, with the growth of this field, it's also, you know, reached into other things where there certainly are prices. And I think it's also leading to more focus on, as you say, the way that this kind of like laissez faire market that almost feels like it just sprung from the earth full form is like not really a thing. There are often rules being made, sometimes very intensely, sometimes, you know, kind of sporadically in random. But you know, I just think about the fact that like Wall street and finance is a kind of, probably most people's main image of like a bastion of pure capitalism. Like they literally have trading hours and they like close for the day or they have kind of like circuit breakers right, where we stop trading.
- [19:52]
Joe Weisenthal
Like, you know, they're not necessarily that onerous, but they have the tests that people have to take, the certification tests and FINRA and like certain of these like bodies that regulate who can get in and so forth, like they play a similar, like, coordinating role.
- [20:08]
Tracy Alloway
Also rules, like on insider trading and
- [20:10]
Joe Weisenthal
rules on insider trading.
- [20:12]
Alex Mayasi
It's also that I was just thinking while you were talking about Al Roth, like the, the guy, the kidney guy. I feel like the way that he sees the world is like you actually have markets everywhere and you are choosing to see them or not by what you regulate. So. So like, it is always a coordination problem. And you're just like, if you aren't regulating it and allowing this market legally, then you're allowing it in the black market. And that's also a choice. And you're accepting whatever negative externalities come with that. Like in Prohibition it was like, will you have to buy your liquor from a gangster and maybe get shot? Like, is that a good social structure? Do we like that? And we didn't like that.
- [20:46]
Mary Childs
And it also led to the over proliferation of speakeasy Bars in wealthy cities around the world.
- [20:53]
Alex Mayasi
Yeah.
- [20:53]
Tracy Alloway
You know, you mentioned society earlier, and one topic that I think we've both done podcasts on before, and it's a big chapter in your book, is childcare.
- [21:02]
Alex Mayasi
Yes.
- [21:03]
Tracy Alloway
Which is a sort of great demonstration in the overall economy of how the prices of goods keep going down. Like, TVs are cheaper than ever and bigger than ever. Meanwhile, childcare just seems to be this, like, basket case of a service, and the cost keeps going up. What did you learn from that chapter?
- [21:21]
Alex Mayasi
That's one of my favorites. For obvious reasons. I think it's such a problem that we have across our society that, like, is a problem that came of good things. Like, economic progress means that, like, everybody's got jobs, everybody's wages are going up, the prices for a lot of these goods. As we have technological advancements and improvements in efficiencies, the prices go down. And that's fantastic. Our phones get smarter. No one buys cameras separately anymore unless you're literally a photographer.
- [21:46]
Tracy Alloway
And.
- [21:46]
Alex Mayasi
And then that means that, like, all these tech salaries are going up and, you know, labor is getting more and more expensive. And so meanwhile, across the economy, there are all these jobs that are not scalable, that are just, like, people jobs where you have to do them with your hands, and they're kind of like, bespoke, and they're just not. You can't make these same kind of technological advancements and make the cost go down. And so there's this, like, weird inelasticity there. But those people doing those jobs are like, I'm making 20 bucks an hour doing childcare or singing on Broadway and. And like, great. But I could be over here, like, thinking more about chips and, you know, making these technological advancements and, like, feed my family and then some. So what am I doing? And so they migrate over, which makes the labor supply harder in the childcare sector. And you just get this, like, it's just like, kind of a broken system. And so daycares, childcare centers have to operate at, like, razor thin margins just to be able to get. Even though it's so expensive. Like, it's crazy.
- [22:43]
Tracy Alloway
Cause I've never understood this. So, like, everyone is paying insane amounts for child.
- [22:47]
Alex Mayasi
Literally insane.
- [22:48]
Tracy Alloway
And the child care centers don't seem to actually make that much money off of it.
- [22:52]
Alex Mayasi
That's correct. So you just like, it's such an empirical question. You just go and you stack up each thing and it's like, okay, you got to pay for the real estate, you got to pay for the insurance. You Got to pay for the labor so that, like, the people are there, and then you're just out of money. Even though there are wait lists for longer than the duration of childhood. Right. Like, you get on a waitlist and like, I think I'm still on waitlist for my five and a half year old who's now in, like, kindergarten. I'm like, I just. Just didn't get in, I guess. I know. And like, but that's because they have to keep these wait lists in order to say, like, okay. To keep their spots filled so that they can kind of operate. Like, they're basically offering their services at a discount, which is wild because it's. It's so in demand and they should be able to raise prices. There's also another thing where, like, because the family making the choice to put their kid in daycare, they have an out. They could just one of them could drop out of the labor force. So that ends up putting a cap on how much you can actually charge. So it's like, broken on a few different. In a few different ways. And what ends up happening is, like, you just need intervention. Like, if you want this to be a service, you need intervention.
- [23:52]
Joe Weisenthal
That's interesting. I actually had not thought about that element that if you hit a certain price, then one of the parents, usually the mother, will just drop out of the workforce and do it. Which is not the same case with health care. Right. So, you know, it's like, yeah, we got a doctor. Like, they, you know, you keep raising the price of some, you know, a heart transplant, et cetera. It's like, okay, you know what?
- [24:15]
Alex Mayasi
Not going to do.
- [24:16]
Joe Weisenthal
I'm just going to get into heart surgery myself and do this my own. And, like, that's never going to happen, but I have. That's an interesting dynamic in terms of, like, what puts a lid on the potential for, I guess, margin expansion.
- [24:28]
Mary Childs
Yeah. And our brilliant colleague Sarah Gonzalez calls this, like, babies first market failure. Right. Because you have, like, everyone's like, I'm willing to pay so much money. And yet there are lines everywhere. Why are there lines? That's a market failure. And it is the fact that there's this kind of cap on the price. And therefore, because people have the alternative, that may not be ideal of dropping out the workforce, you know, one member of the couple. And so, you know, that's why we're in this place, like, really long lines. A market failure.
- [24:52]
Joe Weisenthal
The thing that I think about all the time, or one thing that I think about a lot is, you know, I Went to like an elite university. And you know, I. Thank you. And you know, I've like all in my career I've been around like a lot of people, well educated, et cetera. It's like the number of people who I would call like peers who like ever went into education, setting aside just childcare, but like became a teacher. I know like one, like, it's really extra, you know, like one person I'm friends with who like became like a public school teacher.
- [25:29]
Alex Mayasi
Yeah.
- [25:30]
Joe Weisenthal
And it's just extraordinary to me the degree to which this career, which many people think is like really vital and important to society. And of course, like public school teachers, an element of their job is child care, as that's where people like how disconnected that is from people who've had the privileges of myself and all these people I know just never think about going into that as a career option. I mean, do you know many public school teachers that you went to college with or anything?
- [26:02]
Mary Childs
No. And I absolutely have a friend who works on the tech side of finance. And you were like, he would be such a good teacher, he probably would do it. But I think, you know, this kind of dynamic we've been talking about, it's commonly known as cost disease. It's kind of the name for it this way that like these parts of the economy that look very similar, they're very labor intensive, they look very similar to the way they did 50 years ago, maybe even 100 years ago. They don't have those kind of crazy productivity gains of factories, of software. It's a very simple idea, but it can explain so much. And I think one kind of implication of it is that a lot of labor intensive services are things provided by the public, by the government. So, you know, public schools, policing, firefighting, there are technological improvements there and gains to be made for sure, but they are still, they're very labor intensive. And I think part of the reason why teacher salaries are low and budgets squeeze there is because of cost disease. And it's, you know, I've absolutely like spoken with people in firefighting where this is a big problem that like their labor costs keep going up and lots of places have not therefore also increased. Yeah, you know, we're not all thinking about cost disease all the time, being like, of course my taxes need to go up x percent a year to account for cost disease. But like, if you don't. Yeah, like, I think we should be talking about it. Like if you want to make sure that like people can go into firefighting, go into teaching, you know, make A solid wage afford to live in especially the really successful cities where there is a lot of growth. That is great, but also makes cost disease even worse. Like it is important to think about. That's a very, very strong argument for public subsidies or, you know, the government providing the service and you know, increasing taxes potentially to paying fund.
- [27:39]
Alex Mayasi
Facing that line at the end of the chapter is basically just like this. It's a good thing. The sign of your economy doing well is that your taxes go up forever. It's like, whoa.
- [27:48]
Tracy Alloway
That's definitely an optimistic way of looking at it for sure. Well, one like thought experiment question I had on this was does AI start to change the equation at all in the sense that, okay, the problem here is that you have a bunch of childcare workers who see other industries that are making big productivity gains and higher salaries and they can leave. And then if we have AI come in to all these sectors that typically see a lot of productivity gains like software or other white collar jobs, does some of that leakage start to stop?
- [28:23]
Alex Mayasi
I love this. Like, it's like a reverse backlash AI optimistic.
- [28:28]
Joe Weisenthal
It's like a bunch of people are going to have to get into home health care because they lose their white collar.
- [28:32]
Tracy Alloway
Job creation in the US has been in the health care.
- [28:36]
Joe Weisenthal
But is it going to be like,
- [28:37]
Alex Mayasi
oh yeah, but I think that's not wrong. Like because all the AI disruption. Yeah, collapse is a sector of the economy, of the labor market. And then those people need jobs and so they go into the things that are bespoke human hand jobs like childcare and home. I love it. I love it.
- [28:50]
Joe Weisenthal
This has been my joke idea for a website. I want to vibe code which is. And I'll just say it because it's
- [28:56]
Alex Mayasi
not actually just say that.
- [28:57]
Tracy Alloway
I feel like you've already said it. Was it on a podcast or.
- [29:00]
Joe Weisenthal
To me it was basically a website. And you like enter in. It's like, what is your career? What is your education level and how many years have you worked? And then it's like, okay, what will your job be? Post AGI and you click it and everyone just gets returned the same answer. Home healthcare aid, like that sort of care worker. But yeah, it doesn't matter what it is. Yeah, that is going to make one
- [29:23]
Mary Childs
joke, one exotic point.
- [29:25]
Joe Weisenthal
Maybe I'll make it, maybe I'll.
- [29:27]
Mary Childs
But I also, I think I kind of have a pitch here. So whoever will be like the overlords in our AI future, like, please consider my pitch.
- [29:34]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay.
- [29:35]
Mary Childs
But like, you know, like, I think it was kind of Required in like the aughts, the early 2010s that whenever someone wrote about a four day workweek or basically universal income, you would talk about how John Maynard Keynes made this prediction about, you know, I don't remember exactly how far out but you know, in X number of decades we'll be living, we'll be so much richer, this will kind of be our living standards abundance and therefore we'll be working way fewer hours. And famously he underestimated how much wealthier Britain would get as well as other countries like the United States. But of course he greatly overestimated the idea that he thought we'd be working like 20 hours a week, 10 hours a week. But of course like working hours have stayed quite high. And I think a point I've seen, and I'm sorry, I forget who made this point first, but that I thought was really smart was like, well yeah, we're not all working 10 hours a week, but now like children in the vast majority of the world don't work and retirees retire. So like we made choices so that you know, some people could work less and could get an education or have a secure retirement. And I do think like if we are going to, I don't know if it's coming but if we are contemplating the potential of a world that has so much, yeah, you know, intelligence on demand, so much automation and so much abundance that we like in theory don't know what to do with ourselves. Like perhaps allowing parents to not be like, man, I could barely afford child care, do I drop out? And it feels like a terrible choice and instead be in a place where it's like, it's a social norm that like we are wealthy enough that people can drop out to take care of your children during formative years, like that's a vision I would love to see people express with excitement more.
- [31:03]
Joe Weisenthal
Can I push back just a little bit?
- [31:05]
Alex Mayasi
Which is as a person with children, I don't want.
- [31:07]
Mary Childs
That sounds so nice, but I care to you.
- [31:09]
Joe Weisenthal
No, no, I mean, I agree mean work in defense of Keynes, because I've thought about this a lot, which was like, you know, think about like what quote work meant when he was writing that.
- [31:20]
Mary Childs
Yeah.
- [31:20]
Joe Weisenthal
And now think about that. Like there are those of us who have like jobs literally like writing books and talking and stuff like that.
- [31:26]
Alex Mayasi
He's like, that's fun, bro.
- [31:28]
Joe Weisenthal
I'm just saying like, does it really compare it to like what Keynes had in mind when he talked about work and labor and toil versus what so many people do in the knowledge, does that even like, count as work?
- [31:40]
Alex Mayasi
I love that this is, in other
- [31:41]
Joe Weisenthal
words, like, a lot of people really like their jobs these days in a way that I suspect was not the case when Keynes is writing. And so it's like, are you even. Are people who like their jobs even, quote, working 15 hours a week?
- [31:55]
Alex Mayasi
I never have to go into a coal mine. I never have to like lose a finger on a sewing.
- [32:00]
Joe Weisenthal
This is what he was talking about when he was talking about work.
- [32:02]
Alex Mayasi
Yeah.
- [32:03]
Joe Weisenthal
And now there are a lot of people that literally never have to do any hours, let alone 15, but any hours of work. Now I understand that's not everyone.
- [32:11]
Tracy Alloway
Those are the jobs that are most likely to be disrupted by AI.
- [32:14]
Joe Weisenthal
I'm just saying I think like Keynes, multi decade aberration might have been more right.
- [32:18]
Mary Childs
That I think these are two good defenses of Cannes. But the point that, like, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot more leisure time, which is now people actually retire and they're not like toiling in fields because they're insecure. And the fact that a lot of people, yes, are getting like self actualization from their job and that feels like a story of progress as well.
- [32:36]
Tracy Alloway
Well, actually, on this note, I mean, there's a lot in the book that is framed like very optimistically and you make a lot about human advancement and the idea, there's the famous chart in there of like how much you would have to work in order to afford like a certain amount of light over time. Like, there's a lot of human progress in this book. But if you look around in 2026, certainly in America, it doesn't feel like that's necessarily translating into the general vibes. There's this sort of like nihilistic sense of wealth building and economic advancement and people just sort of giving up and thinking that the system's rigged against them and that they're never going to be able to afford a house or whatever. In your view, as the authors of a whole book on, you know, a guide to economic life, is that a failure of like storytelling about how the economy works? Or is that, is that sense, that vibe shift an actual reflection of like secular stagnation in the way the economy works?
- [33:36]
Alex Mayasi
My bias would be the latter, but I didn't write the book, so I want to, I do want to let you answer first.
- [33:40]
Mary Childs
I think my inclination is like, yes, like both. You know, I think there's both. I think we see in surveys that people often think that the average American is working more than ever, when in fact we have seen not huge but modest decreases in the amount of time that the average American works. There's often a lot of sense that American, the average American or median American has become much worse off. That does not match up with statistics. So I think there is absolutely some. Whether it's built in or not, there's pessimism in there that's perhaps. Maybe it's something about human nature, maybe it's something about storytelling, and maybe this book can help be a positive force in that respect. But I also think, like, you know, this book is absolutely, you know, has chapters talking about big challenges in places where, you know, we have housing shortages. And that's often from people making selfish choices, ones that are rational and understandable, but that lead to, you know, this problem of housing shortages, high rents, people not being able to afford homeownership. There are other examples, and I think also, yeah, like, we have the hockey stick chart, growth of, like, the global economy over the last 200 years. And it's incredible. But at the same time, like, I feel that way. I feel anxiety, anxiousness. I don't feel fully secure and optimistic about everything.
- [34:52]
Tracy Alloway
You're not happy that you can, like, flip on a light switch and get hours and hours?
- [34:56]
Mary Childs
I mean, I do, but the hedonic treadmill, and then I forget about it. But I also think it's, you know, it's maybe that way where it's like, you can be somewhat comforted by the incredible story of progress we are part of. But probably if we all took that for granted, you know, would the progress continue? And it feels kind of similar. I don't know if you've had experiences, right? Like you're working on a project and you're nervous about it and you're tense and. Okay, well, I'll just put this in first person because it's true of me. You can tell me this is true of you. But, like, you're working on a project, you're tense, you're nervous, you're stressed about it. And as many times as I tell myself, you've done similar projects like this before, you figured it out. It went really well. It probably will this time, too. I'm absolutely going to be anxious and stressed for quite a bit of that time. You know, some good moments, too. But I will be. I will have those, you know, that anxiety and whatnot. And, like, maybe I could get to a place where I'm just blissful the entire project, but probably some amount of that stress and anxiety is required. And if it wasn't there. I wouldn't actually get to the good outcome.
- [35:48]
Joe Weisenthal
I feel in my head, it's like, oh, I'm so blessed. I could turn on a light switch and I get light and I can afford raisins and all this stuff and like always. And then go. And you hear people say, like, oh, well, you know, you can like get penicillin and like, you know, the king of England 200 years ago would have died from this infection. Whatever. I understand that. My head, it does nothing for me. On my gut.
- [36:12]
Alex Mayasi
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [36:12]
Joe Weisenthal
Like, it's like, I get that and I. I appreciate it. Great. I love lemonade.
- [36:16]
Alex Mayasi
This is the cost of free donuts.
- [36:17]
Joe Weisenthal
But, like, it does not do any. It does not actually, like, on any like, real emotional level make me happy. It just sort of like, I like, intellectualize.
- [36:23]
Alex Mayasi
We have a Planet Money episode for this. This is the cost of free donuts. Once you start getting something for free, you will not pay for it. So I'm. It's not the exact. But like, you have these things already. You do not delight in their arrival every time. Although I do delight in the arrival of amoxicillin. Like, I feel like actually just this whole thing.
- [36:41]
Joe Weisenthal
Oh, be so appreciative. Because think about how, like, the king would have been so jealous of you. It's like, great, but that's still like, I'm exhausted at the end of the day. And all this stuff, it only goes so far.
- [36:51]
Alex Mayasi
And I think there is a disconnect between, like, you know, we've had life expectancy, like, peak in this country and things are. There is. There does seem to be some kind of sea change in how our trajectory is going. I think we, yes, we can accept that we're way better off than we were a hundred years ago. We're not all dying in the mines. Children aren't working. Like, this is all great. But I think that there, in the past five, 10 years, there is this sort of, I don't know, there's a hollowing, the inequality stuff that, like the rise of AI and the like future that we all know is going to be very different. That we're in the middle of this enormous transition. I mean, I think we all can accept, like, the disconnect between consumer sentiment and the data suggests that the data need updating. So just that, like, we're not quite collecting in the way that we need to be. There's something missing.
- [37:35]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [37:36]
Alex Mayasi
And I mean, not to get Derek Thompson, but I do think a lot of it is societal glue and we lost the habit. But, like, what else and how do you measure those things?
- [37:44]
Mary Childs
And I think also, you know, we talked before about how often people's survey responses suggest that they think, you know, wages have gone way down, when, in fact, it's gone up. But also, like, that almost maybe captures a more fundamental truth that, like, people are right, that, like, the average worker is not benefiting as much from economic growth in the US as. As they used to. And so if the sentiment that, like, things have just gotten worse and worse and worse is not quite true, it's absolutely true that, like, gains are no longer as broadly shared.
- [38:10]
Alex Mayasi
And there's a lot to, like, actually,
- [38:12]
Tracy Alloway
I think this is key. Like, I think humans have a innate tendency to look at relative gains versus Absolutely.
- [38:18]
Joe Weisenthal
Definitely. Definitely.
- [38:19]
Alex Mayasi
Yeah.
- [38:19]
Tracy Alloway
And so you see that, like, come to the fore right now. All right. I think that's a great place to leave it, maybe.
- [38:25]
Alex Mayasi
What? I thought we were just getting into it.
- [38:29]
Tracy Alloway
Thank you so much for coming on, Oddballs.
- [38:31]
Alex Mayasi
Thank you for having us.
- [38:32]
Joe Weisenthal
Congratulations on the book.
- [38:34]
Tracy Alloway
The book, again is Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life.
- [38:38]
Alex Mayasi
Thank you for having me here, Jo.
- [38:52]
Tracy Alloway
That was really fun.
- [38:53]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah. I love catching up with them. That was great.
- [38:55]
Tracy Alloway
And it is genuinely, like, I haven't read the full book cover to cover, but I have been flipping through it and, like, just the number of interesting things that you can pick out. Like the oranges.
- [39:05]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [39:05]
Tracy Alloway
Fascinating. I forgot to ask Alex this, but, like, one of the few people I found that actually shares my, like, obsession with insurance as a potent force in not just the economy, but in society.
- [39:17]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah. I find these kind of conversations really interesting and helpful because, like. And it's like, sort of, like, pretty core ideas, like, okay, like, what is the issue with childcare? Or what do agricultural cooperatives slash cartels? Like, what problems they actually solve? How much are we actually working? And why have we gotten so much richer? But, you know, people are still, like, working.
- [39:41]
Tracy Alloway
I feel bad about it.
- [39:42]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah. Et cetera. Like, these are, like, pretty big questions. Like, they sort of, like, if you, like, think about them, you can get to, like, some interesting places. And so it's good to sort of just, like, zoom back and, like, think about some of these things for a while.
- [39:55]
Tracy Alloway
Also, to your point, it kind of illustrates, once again, like, all the decisions that go into the economy in the sense that, like, the economy is often pitched, at least in America, as this free market thing.
- [40:08]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah.
- [40:08]
Tracy Alloway
Kind of exists and, like, is automatic in many ways and just does its own thing. But actually, there Are all these active decisions and policies that go into it,
- [40:18]
Joe Weisenthal
choices about market structure. You know what I was thinking about was one of the things that we've talked about a lot on the podcast is that after the great financial crisis, the housing industry got hollowed out, all these home builders went out of business, et cetera. And now we're like faced with a big housing shortage, et cetera. What if there had been more coordination among home builders to curb both the upside and the downside, et cetera. Would that be more sustainable now? Like, people like would get really anxious about the idea of like any sort of like, you know, home builder coordination, etc.
- [40:54]
Alex Mayasi
Subsidies or whatever.
- [40:55]
Joe Weisenthal
But when you look at the cost that we pay for boom bust cycles, you understand why some of these mechanisms get developed and blessed at least for certain periods of time, by the law, et cetera. Because there is a price that you pay for boom busts over time. And so I think like, these are actually like pretty interesting questions.
- [41:13]
Tracy Alloway
It is phenomenal that like we haven't done much for housing in that sense, but we have for raisins, right? There's a cartel or a cooperative that exists in order to smooth the boom bust cycle in raisins. It's funny, like the things that we pick as socially important. All right, shall we leave it there?
- [41:32]
Joe Weisenthal
Let's leave it there.
- [41:33]
Tracy Alloway
This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracee Alloway.
- [41:38]
Joe Weisenthal
And I'm Joe Wiesenthal. You can follow me at thestalwerk. Check out the book Planet Money a guide to the economic forces that shape your life by Alex Mayasi. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at CarmenArmondaShellBennett at Dashbot and Cale Brooks at Kalebrooks. And for more Odd Lots content, go to bloomberg.com oddlots or the daily newsletter and all of our episodes and you can chat about all these topics 24. 7 in our Discord Discord GG oddlots.
- [42:04]
Tracy Alloway
And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it, we have conversations about the economic forces shaping our lives, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg Channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
- [42:56]
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Mary Childs
But that's weird.
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Alex Mayasi
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Joe Weisenthal
Com.