Katherine Ann Edwards (2:28)

Oh yeah. Disk saver. Dis Saving support.

Robin Rousey (2:33)

We'll come up with something really good here. I'm writing down disava actually to saver sound to saver.

Katherine Ann Edwards (2:38)

It fits because you're giving us money but you're not spending, you're just saving. Okay. We are doing a question and answer episode and you can send your questions to optimist.eacreymail.com and we will answer some of the questions we receive on the show. We love to get questions so please send them to us and then I'll try To answer them and see how fast I can do it.

Robin Rousey (3:01)

See how many episodes we can get out of it.

Katherine Ann Edwards (3:03)

Yeah.

Robin Rousey (3:05)

Okay.

Katherine Ann Edwards (3:06)

Next up is Retcon retroactive continuity. Yep. Where we reflect and fix past episodes. So I have two Retcon. Wait, do you have any?

Robin Rousey (3:18)

No.

Katherine Ann Edwards (3:19)

Okay. Okay. So here's mine. So after we recorded the Trump account episode which was about that was like 5:30, a Baby Bond 401 kid Trump account in the State of the Union, Trump announced another Trump account called Trump Savings Plan. So he now has two accounts that he's named after himself, One for children and one for retirement. So that's confusing. I also got a note from someone who said that in the kids episode, which we internally referred to as Baby's Got bank, someone asked me what is the asset based welfare for the middle class that the government pursues? And I don't think I was clear on this. So when I said that the US needs asset based welfare, which was an argument made by Sheraton, he pointed out, and I said as well, the US has asset based welfare for the middle and upper class. That is the tax preference that the US gives to employer sponsored accounts contributions. So when you contribute to your 401k, you are not taxed on that contribution. That is welfare, not having to pay income taxes on money that you put in for retirement. And that is something that largely the top half and really the top 20% is. Who benefits from that? The Trump kid accounts. God, they need another name. But the kid accounts, it's not meant to be tax preferred contributions. What would make it asset based welfare for the lower income is for the government to contribute directly into the account. So the welfare for the middle class comes from the tax treatment of contributions. The welfare for the bottom half of the distribution, the lower class would be for the government to directly contribute to the account. There's no need to give a tax preference to the bottom half because they often don't have that high of a tax bill.

Robin Rousey (5:07)

I'm just going to see if I can clarify this. But let's say your effective tax rate is around 15% for federal taxes and you are able to save $10,000 in a pre tax account. That essentially means you're not paying fifteen hundred dollars in taxes.

Katherine Ann Edwards (5:22)

Right.

Robin Rousey (5:23)

So that fifteen hundred dollars is the asset that that Katherine's referring to.

Katherine Ann Edwards (5:28)

Yes. This is welfare for white collar workers that the government puts the thumb on the scale for you to have retirement contributions. And so the idea of these Trump kids accounts would be the asset based welfare would come from not giving Some type of tax preference, but in giving a direct contrib count.

Robin Rousey (5:49)

Yeah. Okay. You had another.

Katherine Ann Edwards (5:51)

Yes. The other one was I got a comment on one of the Social Security policies, which, like, take out your notebooks, class, and let's review. I had a lot I wanted to say. One of the things I pointed out was that people who have different levels of education work have different length work histories, and by the time they turn 67, it'll reflect a really different amount of work. I kind of said, like, I think this will be hard because people have interruptions to work and they have, you know, maybe months or years that they spend out. Well, someone who is equally, if not more, passionate about Social Security than myself. She said that she thinks it would be too complicated and that the system would be very hard to design in a way that would stay fair. And so I think she didn't say this, but the conclusion is we should just have a more progressive benefit. So Social Security benefits are progressive in that you get a larger benefit relative to your earnings the lower your earnings are. And we call this the replacement rate. So she said we should just make the replacement rate formula more progressive and of course, not raise the retirement age. So I thought that was a good comment.

Robin Rousey (7:02)

Right. Anything else? Are we on to terms and conditions?

Katherine Ann Edwards (7:05)

On to terms and conditions.

Robin Rousey (7:06)

Okay, Terms and conditions. What did you look up?

Katherine Ann Edwards (7:10)

You know, I didn't look it up, but I heard it. It's in the context of soccer. Chippy.

Robin Rousey (7:14)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (7:15)

How we describe a soccer game in which it's pretty physical and there are lots of fouls and a lot of, like, yellow cards and maybe even red cards. A chippy game.

Robin Rousey (7:22)

Is that a British soccer.

Katherine Ann Edwards (7:23)

I don't know.

Robin Rousey (7:24)

It reminds me of chuffed, I guess.

Katherine Ann Edwards (7:27)

What's chuffed?

Robin Rousey (7:28)

What's chuffed? It's like when you're kind of pleased with yourself. I'm dead chuffed to have won. It's a dead chuffed. Yeah, it's a. It's a British line anyway.

Katherine Ann Edwards (7:38)

Chuffed. Okay.

Robin Rousey (7:39)

It's just. Yeah. Like, we won a podcasting award and we're just so chuffed.

Katherine Ann Edwards (7:45)

Oh, okay. Well, maybe it came up because normally reviews and comments we get from people leave me chuffed. Yes. But they've been quite chippy. And I would think maybe it's because it's primary season. It's a little bit of chippiness in the air these days.

Robin Rousey (8:06)

I have a friend who's very into astrology and numerology. She'll tell you mercury in retrograde all the way through the end of March.

Katherine Ann Edwards (8:15)

Sometimes I forget that you're on the west coast and you probably know your sun sign, your moon sign your star sign your house rising.

Robin Rousey (8:23)

I don't. But I know who I can go to for that information.

Katherine Ann Edwards (8:28)

Robin's got a star guy.

Robin Rousey (8:30)

I got a star woman.

Katherine Ann Edwards (8:31)

But, yeah, a bit chippy. That was mine.

Robin Rousey (8:33)

What's yours? Libel versus slander. I did look this up today because we got an email from a listener who said, per your comment in one of our last episodes, about you would be libeled. And I said, no, you'd be sued for libel. Somebody said, you don't get sued for libel for things you say, which is true. But I did look this up because I thought. I feel like the news media almost always gets sued for libel, not slander. Like, if you make a comment verbally, you can be sued for slander. Libel is usually what happens when you sue a newspaper for something they put in print. And it does seem that if you record a podcast, if it's something that is permanently recorded, that you could still be sued.

Katherine Ann Edwards (9:14)

Reliable. Okay, so I feel like. I feel like the. The Mercury is in something, and that's why everyone's chippy right now.

Robin Rousey (9:24)

Mercury is in retrograde.

Katherine Ann Edwards (9:26)

Mercury is in retrograde. So I'm being libelous. We just thought, like, what's another corner of the Internet? We can get mad. Let's talk about AI again. Anyway, we're going to take a retrograde break. Come back for the big pilcrow. Hope you're still with us. And we're back. Sorry, we all. We got to note that we need to stop laughing. And now I can't. Everything is funny. This is like when I was a little kid and my dad would be like, stop giggling. And then not just giggle harder. Okay, so we wanted to talk about

Robin Rousey (10:05)

what's going to happen when AI takes all our jobs.

Katherine Ann Edwards (10:08)

What's going to happen when AI takes all of our jobs?

Robin Rousey (10:11)

We've kind of put this on the list of things we want. Wanted to talk about. And then almost the next day, Jack Dorsey announced that he was laying off 4,000 of the 10,000 employees at Block, which is the financial services company that owns the Square app and the Cash app. And then I began. I, like, literally heard people talking about it at dinner in a restaurant the same night. It was a big announcement. And I think there's some real question as to whether the layoffs that they were doing were really because they were building an AI future. But it was the kind of thing that just puts the fear of God into the hearts of every white collar worker in America all at once. Right?

Katherine Ann Edwards (10:55)

Yeah.

Robin Rousey (10:56)

And so what I said to Catherine was, what's the likelihood of real job retraining? What can we really expect to be done? What could be done in a better way, economic, in an optimist economy situation? What. What would we hope that would be provided for people who, whose jobs are going to be taken by AI? By, in part because it's government policy to be all in on AI.

Katherine Ann Edwards (11:23)

Yeah. Our episode last season about AI was very much, I think, me trying to pour a bucket of cold water on what we think AI will do within the next few years, even within the next 10 years. And to really put in perspective, I think the short version would be.

Robin Rousey (11:41)

And that was a year ago, and people are still like, it's going to change everything tomorrow. And you're like, well, you and I have been talking about it for a year and it's not like we were on the cutting edge of it, like tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Right.

Katherine Ann Edwards (11:53)

And the upshot of that episode is that it takes a long time for technology to be adopted into firms used on the job and then actually increase productivity. So even though you have lots of noise and fanfare around AI, the idea that there is a company using it really well and effectively is a bit of a long shot. Right. Remember that there are 170 million people working in our economy and you do not have 170 million people using AI on the job or seeing AI on the job, and especially in a way that makes them either more productive or redundant. That was the part that I was like, productivity, it doesn't shoot up. And if you find that hard to believe, I mean, it's worth knowing. Productivity didn't show a large jump up with computers, with the Internet. Right. Like, imagine how much the Internet has changed your job. Even that took over a decade to be adopted into the workplace and probably two until it was reasonably adopted. So I think, you know, it's. It's very hard to change how people do jobs.

Robin Rousey (13:05)

There was a piece today in the New York Times by a guy who used to work at Block who basically said firing nine people out of 10 is a good way to force people to use AI.

Katherine Ann Edwards (13:17)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and the other thing is that when a firm says that they are either not hiring or firing or making any type of headcount decisions based on AI, you have no reason to believe them.

Robin Rousey (13:28)

Oh yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (13:28)

I mean, it's a very convenient fall guy that has almost no way of

Robin Rousey (13:33)

being validated And I don't even think it's a fall guy. I think it's actually deliberate. It's a message. Also, the guy who wrote that column in Block thinks this, it's signaling to Wall Street. We're on the cutting edge of AI. It's a message to shareholders and stock buyers and investors. I mean, I think Block's stock price shot up after that announcement. Right?

Katherine Ann Edwards (13:54)

Yeah.

Robin Rousey (13:55)

Because it made payment processing firm appear to be an AI generated firm. It's like you process payments. How much AI do you need?

Katherine Ann Edwards (14:04)

Yeah, I mean, it's highly manipulable. Like, if, you know, the stock market is looking for, like, oh, we're too concentrated in tech stocks and we need to find places to invest that rely on AI. Don't just build the AI. And we need to diversify. Like, I can make money firing people from the market. Awesome.

Robin Rousey (14:21)

Yeah, but people, I mean, companies have always made money firing people. Right. Like that. That's been true for, for decades.

Katherine Ann Edwards (14:27)

Oh, they do. Until they don't. It depends on when and how they do it and what the announcement is, because at some point, like, you can see this habit forming in recessions where, like a bunch of people have done layoffs and then the pressure from shareholders is, well, you need to do some layoffs too, because everybody's cleaning house.

Robin Rousey (14:43)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (14:44)

So there's more peer pressure to corporate decisions than they would probably like to admit. But I think what this episode is to say, like, let's say AI does take jobs.

Robin Rousey (14:55)

I know, let's, you know, take them at their word.

Katherine Ann Edwards (14:57)

Take them at their word. Say AI is taking white collar jobs. What does that mean? And is there anything we can do about it? Assuming that we can't stop the job loss, is there something that we can do about it? And I actually did a closed door testimony on Capitol Hill to a congressional committee about this Closed door. It wasn't a public testimony. I think.

Robin Rousey (15:18)

Isn't that even, like, I don't know, more fancy pants behind closed doors?

Katherine Ann Edwards (15:25)

Behind closed doors. You know, honestly, they do it so that members have a chance to ask. It's like a, like a safe space to ask questions. Like, truly briefing. It's not a testimony. It's like a briefing to one side of the House. And so I did one ages ago and just kind of said like, all right, assume all these jobs really do go away.

Robin Rousey (15:47)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (15:48)

You cannot turn back the tide. There's very little the government can do to make private companies not fire people if they want to. So you should probably regulate this. So it's not violating privacy. And also algorithms are really racist. So maybe look into that. But aside from those problems, which I call those IT problems, those aren't on labor economists to fix. I mean the point I was making to them was the scariest thing about AI isn't necessarily the technology itself, but the idea of your job becoming obsolete and not having any options. Congress can fix that. Second part, you can give people options. You can change the way we treat unemployment. You know, we can take the kind of wind out of the spooky sails of AI by giving people a really good outside option from the government.

Robin Rousey (16:37)

Okay, do you think that there are things that are specific to the AI job, the kind of job loss we might anticipate from A.I. that would be different?

Katherine Ann Edwards (16:48)

All right, so the U.S. deciding to help people who don't have a job, there's really like a few eras of this. One is during the Depression and this was we're going to do everything we can. And the US it didn't have an unemployment system at the time and so it leaned a lot on public employment service.

Robin Rousey (17:09)

This is like WPA projects within the

Katherine Ann Edwards (17:12)

public employment service included like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the wpa. And there's been flashes of that since. So you know, big blizzard hit New York last month and mom Donnie has done what a lot of mayors have done, which is a public employment of like if you come with a shovel, we're going to give you some money and then the path gets cleared right away. Right. It's short term public in service, public temp work. Public temp work. So that was pursued during the Great Depression. And then afterwards lots of people have proposed it as an anti poverty program, as an economic investment program, something like manufacturing job loss program. Like there's lots of people who have wanted to have a public jobs guarantee, a public employment service, something like that. But we haven't really done it to any large degree outside of the Great Depression. What we have had is unemployment insurance, which is the current system of unemployment where if you have lost your job through no fault of your own, your employer has to verify that you are willing and able to work and you have worked enough previously. So it's going to exclude all new job seekers. You are eligible for a benefit that is a portion of your prior wage. And this system has been not broken broken, but going to be broken since the 70s and we've never fixed it. So it's now it goes to fewer than half of the unemployed. We're meant to replace about half of wages and they used to. And now they replace closer to a third or even a fourth. So it's not a generous program. It doesn't go to that many people. And it is the only benefit in the US that has a firm time limit. You are eligible for a certain number of weeks and then you're done.

Robin Rousey (18:50)

And that varies also from state to state.

Katherine Ann Edwards (18:52)

And that also varies from state to state. Now, the third kind of era is that we've had a couple of recessions, the Great Recession, the pandemic, where we've tried to do something else for the unemployed. In the Great Recession, we extended the length of unemployment so that the benefits weren't higher, but you could get them for a long time. The pandemic added money to the unemployment benefit that your state gave you. Everyone just got like a flat federal add on to their weekly state benefit. And they created this wraparound unemployment insurance program for people who weren't eligible for unemployment insurance.

Robin Rousey (19:27)

Like people who are self employed or something.

Katherine Ann Edwards (19:29)

Yeah, it was called PUA Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. And it was modeled on DUA Disaster Unemployment Assistance. When a FEMA disaster is declared, people who go apply for unemployment because of the disaster are rejected. They get dua. So it's a program for unemployment insurance rejectees to still give them some money in the disaster. And so that was the, like, it's a big disaster and we're gonna make it a federal wraparound.

Robin Rousey (19:57)

Are the benefits the same?

Katherine Ann Edwards (20:00)

Well, in hurricanes, they get the state average weekly wage because they don't have a good enough earnings history or they don't have an earnings history from W2 Employment, they get a function of the state's average weekly wage. In the pandemic, you were supposed to like, submit documents of how much you earned. And it also had some fraud issues.

Robin Rousey (20:20)

Got it. Okay.

Katherine Ann Edwards (20:23)

So that is how we help people. The only, like, big variation from that is that we had a program called TAA Trade Adjustment Assistance that was designed to help workers who lost their job to international trade. What year did TAA start?

Robin Rousey (20:42)

Was this like factory? Factory work going overseas? This is aimed at manufacturing jobs?

Katherine Ann Edwards (20:47)

Yes, it just ended. It ended in 22. But what year did it start? 62.

Robin Rousey (20:55)

It's been 50 years. 60 years?

Katherine Ann Edwards (20:58)

Yes. It's had a resurgence after the free trade agreements of the 1990s. I mean, the problem with the program was that in order to benefit, you had to prove that you had lost your job to trade, which was just a really high burden, huh?

Robin Rousey (21:16)

Yeah. I mean, there's a million ways that can be really difficult.

Katherine Ann Edwards (21:19)

What was it called trade Adjustment Assistance.

Robin Rousey (21:22)

Adjustment assistance.

Katherine Ann Edwards (21:24)

Then the program itself never had that good of funding. And then the options for training weren't great, especially because a lot of times when trade took out a job, it would take out a large employer in a smaller mid sized city where it's not training can't create jobs.

Robin Rousey (21:43)

Right, Right.

Katherine Ann Edwards (21:44)

I could put 300 people into a skilled production training, but that's not going to create jobs. At the end of it, you have to align TR with work and places that are going through a hard time economically don't necessarily have a lot of work.

Robin Rousey (21:58)

Right. I think a lot about that book, Janesville, all of those people who lost their job in Janesville, Wisconsin when an auto manufacturing plant went shut down. And there was ripple effects to all of that and that the job training that people got, I mean like, you know, people became prison guards.

Katherine Ann Edwards (22:18)

Yeah. The job support is good.

Robin Rousey (22:20)

The jobs weren't as good. And even then like a lot of people didn't make it through the training. They needed jobs. They didn't have time to go do the training. They had to be working because if they weren't making any money, it was better to be making some money than to be trying to do the training for a job that wasn't necessarily going to be as good.

Katherine Ann Edwards (22:36)

It's an absolutely heartbreaking book. I have said since like the day I finished it that every labor economist in the country needs to read this book. Like you, you shouldn't be allowed to do research on unemployment if you have not read Janesville. It's a GM plant. I think it's the old continuously operating GM plant in the country and it closes during the Great Recession. And it had been politicized because Obama had made a campaign stop there. The congressman that represented Janesville was Paul Ryan who made like a big deal about like Obama lied to my high school buddies. And then he has like a total heel turn. By the end of the book he is running for vice president. And so he starts the book like very invested about what's going to happen at Janesville and the people who lose their job. And by the end of the, of the book like he's gone. And if he sounds familiar to optimist listeners, it's because this is the paper bag guy.

Robin Rousey (23:30)

Yeah, who, who,

Katherine Ann Edwards (23:33)

who doesn't. The lunch bag.

Robin Rousey (23:34)

The lunch.

Katherine Ann Edwards (23:35)

This is the lunch bag guy. Paul Ryan, who doesn't think that children who don't have food should have a lunch. Empty paper bag of their souls.

Robin Rousey (23:45)

So we should say, James, it's the book is called Janesville An American Story. And it's by Amy Goldstein, who was

Katherine Ann Edwards (23:51)

a Washington Post reporter covering the campaign, who went back, and she goes back over, like, three or four years to cover Janesville.

Robin Rousey (23:57)

The book came out in 2017.

Katherine Ann Edwards (23:59)

Oh, it's so good. But I think we can take a lot of lessons from what has come before, which is, number one, America doesn't care that much about unemployed people. I've always thought that this is self preservation, that it's easier to write off unemployed people as people who were bad at their job, people who didn't work that hard, people who haven't looked that hard. Because if so, someone who works hard, looks hard, and did everything right, loses their job. What does that say about you?

Robin Rousey (24:28)

Yeah. That were all vulnerable.

Katherine Ann Edwards (24:29)

Yeah, that we're all vulnerable. And I think nobody wants.

Robin Rousey (24:31)

Yeah, nobody wants to think about that.

Katherine Ann Edwards (24:33)

Yeah. People are like, my job is safe because I work hard. So if someone who works hard loses their job, it, like, it absolutely threatens my worldview. And so it's easier for me to write off unemployed people as worse than me. And having empathy with the unemployed, I mean, it's just not there.

Robin Rousey (24:48)

And, yeah, if you worked in a newsroom, you know, you. You had to learn. You learned empathy on. With the unemployed real quick because, you know, people who are smarter than you lost their jobs all the time.

Katherine Ann Edwards (25:02)

I think a lot of people have no experience with that.

Robin Rousey (25:05)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (25:06)

Especially the people who feel like their jobs are currently threatened by AI. That part of the desperation comes from, like, but I did the right things.

Robin Rousey (25:13)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (25:14)

You know, I went to college. I got a job in a good sector. I, you know, I've worked for a big employer. Like, the idea that you could be vulnerable after making, quote, unquote, the right decisions is very scary.

Robin Rousey (25:24)

Especially because we judge people in the economy for not making the right decisions. Right. We blame them for not investing for retirement. We blame them for not going to college. We blame them for studying art history.

Katherine Ann Edwards (25:38)

You know, I think it's so much easier to judge people for doing something wrong as opposed to recognizing that the economy can just. Just. It can dole out a really bad hand. Deal out a really bad hand.

Robin Rousey (25:51)

Either one. Okay, maybe.

Katherine Ann Edwards (25:54)

Okay. You can be dealt a pretty bad hand in this economy, even if you, Even if you. I don't know. I don't think I should take this metaphor further.

Robin Rousey (26:03)

Well, I mean, we should. It's worth reminding people that. What did you say, 2 million people lose their job every month?

Katherine Ann Edwards (26:10)

Yeah.

Robin Rousey (26:11)

In the United States.

Katherine Ann Edwards (26:11)

Let me get you the Fred.

Robin Rousey (26:14)

Ask Fred.

Katherine Ann Edwards (26:16)

Ask Fred. So layoffs and discharges includes people who were fired, people who were laid off, or people whose job ended either because their business closed or because they had a temporary job that ended. And every month, I would say, for the past three years, it's averaged around 1.7 million people every month.

Robin Rousey (26:35)

We should say what Fred is.

Katherine Ann Edwards (26:37)

Oh, Fred is the Federal Reserve economic database, and it's run out of the Federal reserve Bank of St. Louis. And so Fred is like a compendium of all publicly published data. Fred is great. Fred's been around, basically. Like, before there was the Internet, there was Fred. It does have a companion, which is actually, I think, a sleeper hit amongst the data nerd community is that it has a Alfred. So Fred is Federal Reserve Economic Data. Alfred is the archive Federal Reserve Economic Data. So Alfred has everything. Alfred has, like, you know, the amount of money for funding for every line item of government spending going back to, like, the 1930s. Alfred will have. And it'll have meetings of the Federal Reserve. Like, Alfred is like. It's all of the history is on Alfred, and then the current data releases are on Fred. Fred and Alfred are my besties.

Robin Rousey (27:40)

Excellent. But back to our AI jobs situation here. So here's what I'm hearing. We don't like unemployed people. Our unemployment system is cracked, if not completely broken. We did have a trade Adjustment assistance system for 60 years, but it was also not well funded and it ended in 2022. I'm not seeing anything here existing or even a pattern that resembles something that would help for potentially major economic shift. Even if it happened over. Even if it didn't happen. Who. Who wrote that essay that said we're in our February 2020 moment?

Katherine Ann Edwards (28:20)

Oh, I don't know.

Robin Rousey (28:21)

Did you?

Katherine Ann Edwards (28:22)

I didn't read this.

Robin Rousey (28:22)

Oh, okay, I saw it on the Wall Street Journal. But like, they were basically saying, this is our February 2020 moment. We don't know, like, AI is going to hit us like the pandemic. We have no idea it's coming. Now, again, I don't buy all of that hype. Again, this is AI people, you know, hyping their own stuff. The essay was by an investor whose name is Matt Schumer, and he says it wasn't meant to go viral and he didn't mean to scare people.

Katherine Ann Edwards (28:50)

The one thing I will add to your recap is we do have public money for training programs in the U.S. but those training programs are often limited. It's, like, related to work requirements. Like, you often have to be very poor in order to be eligible for money for training. Now, American job centers are where kind of like a central hub for this. It's called the Workforce Investment and Opportunity act, wioa. It's not meant for middle class people to take advantage of. The idea is that it helps job seekers and aligns them with training and some of them get funding for it. But it's not like, hey, I lost my job. I'm going to go to American Job center and they're going to line me up with free training. I'm going to move on to that. It doesn't work that seamlessly. It's not something we make poor people do to get benefits. But it's not. Not that.

Robin Rousey (29:44)

It's not. Not that.

Katherine Ann Edwards (29:46)

So once we lose all of our jobs to AI, what is the hope? Getting a note from production. This is sad.

Robin Rousey (29:58)

Yeah, I mean, AI has already come for the copy editors, you know, and while I'm not a copy editor, I'm in an industry that's been shrinking and changing for a long time. And I understand that some people can get unpaid work in podcasting, but some people, some people, that's maybe not where they want to go. And smart people, agile people, people who can learn a lot and learn quickly, but what, you know, what are they going to do?

Katherine Ann Edwards (30:31)

What are they going to do?

Robin Rousey (30:33)

Bookkeepers, accountants, all sorts of smart, detail oriented people who've been valuable contributors to companies, to their own businesses.

Katherine Ann Edwards (30:44)

So I think that part of the optimism from this has to come from the fact that most people do not look around for jobs that are becoming obsolete. I mean, a lot of occupations completely gone from our economy that used to employ a ton of people and we didn't necessarily focus on them. I, I think in part because a lot of those jobs that were made obsolete were done by women.

Robin Rousey (31:09)

Done by women, sure.

Katherine Ann Edwards (31:10)

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, you have switchboard operators, typists, a lot of classical receptionist jobs.

Robin Rousey (31:16)

You have all sorts of secretarial jobs.

Katherine Ann Edwards (31:20)

Yeah, yeah, all sorts of secretarial jobs. Computers used to be women. We have lost occupations before and this is something that happens in our economy. We destroy jobs. That's just a, that is part of our economic history. And so this is not new from that perspective. People are like, but these are good jobs. These are white collar jobs. These are jobs that paid well. Yeah, we lost a lot of really good, high paying jobs to technology in the past. And just to give you some perspective, in 1979, the peak of manufacturing employment, 19.5 million people were employed in manufacturing. A high paying, blue collar job. That had pretty high rates of unionization, health care benefits, and retirement benefits even as the economy was growing over like a 30 year period, we lost 8 million manufacturing jobs. And more than likely we lost a lot more than that. But we gained new ones that had different exposures to technology. I just say this to bring up that, like, the job loss isn't unique, the obsolescence isn't unique, the technology taking over. What could be something a person could do. All of these things have happened all the time. Is there a way for our economy to deal with it better? I think the answer to that is yes.

Robin Rousey (32:36)

Do you have an idea about what should we be doing?

Katherine Ann Edwards (32:40)

The first thing we need to do is replace our state level unemployment system. That sucks. This isn't. I wrote my dissertation on unemployment insurance. You guys ready? It sucks. That is what much. That's Dr. Edwards. That's me going from Catherine to Dr. Edwards. This thing sucks. So we did a whole episode on unemployment insurance and all the ways we can change it. But the short version, if I'm ever capable of saying the short version. The short version is we need a new federal unemployment insurance system that is built for triage, is built for the notion that unemployment can look really different for a lot of people. I mean, think about this in the context of AI Legitimately, you lose your job to AI. What kind of unemployment spell will you have? Some people, that spell is going to be really short. I mean, they need some cash quickly in order to stay afloat, but they'll find a job in a couple of months. Other people, it's a longer process. They're going to have to do some slight changes to their career, but they are able to use their current resume and current situation and find another job. It just might take them longer. Some people will have to pivot altogether, and that pivot might look like moving across the country. That pivot might look like starting up their own business or retraining for another career, but they need to pivot. And what a good unemployment system will do is help all three of those workers, not just the one that can be rapidly absorbed back into the labor market. But the government should invest in the pivot that careers need to take. Sometimes this has like two, like, sidebar issues that are catastrophically large.

Robin Rousey (34:25)

I was just going to ask if any states do this.

Katherine Ann Edwards (34:28)

Well, no, because you really need universal health insurance.

Robin Rousey (34:32)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (34:33)

One of the things that people talk about the most with unemployment is that how they get their health insurance and how they take care of their physical health. This work we need really good health insurance. Republicans would hate this because once you get someone on Medicaid, they're not going to want to get off of it too true. Why would I want to get off health insurance if my employer doesn't offer it? I mean, I would argue it makes the job search a lot harder if you have to find a job with health insurance. So problem one, health insurance. Problem two is that we'd have to do a little restructuring around how we charge for education. Right. Specific to people who lose their job to AI and face obsolescence or maybe a career that they can't use anymore. If the government were to pay for retraining, we'd need to have different offerings from our education and training system. We have a two year degree, we have four year degree, we have for profit trade schools. We would need some more options to really cultivate this kind of mid career job loss retraining market. For what it's worth, I think the government can do that because if it's paying for something, I think colleges and universities would meet them where they are. An example of this is after World War II you had the GI bill that funded a lot of returning service members to go to college. But a lot of them like they did not want to be in school for four years. They had been in the military, A lot of them had wives and families. So they wanted to take advantage of college. They did not want to be there for four years on a traditional degree. So schools offered accelerated programs specifically for gis so that they could get the degree and go. And actually George Herbert Walker Bush did this at Yale.

Robin Rousey (36:15)

You know, it's funny, I mean, I feel like we have a lot of those things in community colleges now though I suppose they vary again from state to state and place to place.

Katherine Ann Edwards (36:25)

Well, they need to because they should be built around local employers. One thing we can do is we can expand apprenticeships, which are really good programs. They require a nationally recognized credential. That's what makes them so good, is that they're selective. But we could expand apprenticeships. I mean it's a lot of school, it's a lot of nights. I mean it would be hard to do if you had young kids. But I think that with better public programs we will start to see more apprenticeships. So a lot of states have been experimenting with a child child care worker apprenticeship or like a home health care worker apprenticeship. The problem with those two is that apprenticeships cost time and money and the jobs don't pay.

Robin Rousey (37:09)

The jobs don't pay.

Katherine Ann Edwards (37:09)

Yeah. If we had a different system, like a universal childcare system and the jobs were paid at a reasonable rate. The government could reimburse at like an apprenticeship level and then, yeah, we would open up opportunities. So I think that's all one aspect of it is we could do all those things. And I think it sounds like boiling the ocean, but a lot of the pieces are there. I mean, the US is the envy of the world. And having a community college system like we do, we have lots of opportunities for people to pick up second careers if they want to.

Robin Rousey (37:42)

I think one of the things that seems particularly scary about this moment is that not only do you not know what's going to happen to your job, you actually don't really know. The next path might also be disrupted. Might be the next thing to be disrupted. I was just watching this video about manufacturing. They were talking about manufacturing chips, right? So they're building these big chip, computer chip centers in Arizona. And you just looked at them and there's like one guy working and everything else is robots. I mean it's an amazing system, but it's not going to bring in a bunch of people to work in that factory.

Katherine Ann Edwards (38:19)

You know, that is the way that manufacturing is going. But there's lots of places where like, I don't see that ever happening. I don't ever see like high service oriented sectors like restaurants or hotels or entertainment venues. Like they're always going to demand a ton of labor. Childcare, education, health always is going to demand a ton of labor, right?

Robin Rousey (38:40)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (38:41)

A lot of unemployed people in like sociological studies and ethnographic studies, they'll say the same thing of like, once they realize that they weren't going to get that job back, like they just, just went ahead and like left in different directions and, and started businesses or, or moved across the country or did different things or I'm sure, you know, so many second careers of people who were journalists who went on to do other things. Enron hit Houston so hard.

Robin Rousey (39:05)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (39:06)

Largest, most infamous, I think corporate scandal in U.S. history. And those people lost everything because at the time there weren't regulations on retirement contributions and all of their retirement was,

Robin Rousey (39:16)

was tied up in Enron stock, right, which crashed.

Katherine Ann Edwards (39:20)

And we, I remember we had a guy come to the house who I think was another soccer parent and he was an Enron layoff who became a full time carpenter. And I remember him like when we came and he installed it and he measured and he came back and my dad was like. Because the Enron like prosecution was going on by that Point. And the guy was like, yeah, man, I hope they all burn in hell. But I am happier. I will never forget the casual way he said it. I'm just like, oh, yeah. I mean, I hope they die in jail, but this has been better for me. And something like, as I became a researcher and looking at the unemployed, you do have the Janesvilles of the world, where a lot of people go through terrible, terrible times. But there is like night as dark as before the dawn type moments where people use it to be creative. We don't have to fix the labor market for people because the government would never be able to do that that well. But we can change the structures of our economy in small ways to facilitate and foster people taking advantage of what is a situation. It's not going to work for everyone, which is why we have to have other methods and other backup systems. But I think we, we. We basically do nothing. So we can do a lot more. And then there's a whole other separate part about we could have public employment service again and like a job guarantee and things like that.

Robin Rousey (40:45)

And then there's that and then there's that.

Katherine Ann Edwards (40:47)

The whole thing about a public job guarantee, which, man, if there's something conservatives hate, they really hate the idea of more public sector workers. But it is a very popular policy, and in fact, it's one that was long championed by the Black community because MLK's budget that he wrote with Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, they came up with a budget to like, revitalize the black community and give them the economic opportunities they've never had. And it included a public jobs guarantee.

Robin Rousey (41:21)

Anything else? Any other optimism for us?

Katherine Ann Edwards (41:24)

I don't know. Do you feel optimistic after that or are you like, oh, it's like a really big to do list.

Robin Rousey (41:29)

I was listening to the guy who used to be. He was like the chief economist for the Treasury Department, okay, on Marketplace, and they were talking about the tariffs. But one of the things he said was one of the lessons that he was taking away from the tariffs was that that the fact that the economy did not crash out of the tariffs, this was right after the Supreme Court ruling, is that the US Economy is just really, really big and diverse. But I thought that it was. It's a reminder that humans experience the weather from like six feet to the ground. Like, that's weather to us. But weather is actually happening all the way up to 30,000ft in the sky. And the economy is like that too. We feel the economy in our house, but the economy is so much bigger than that. And that, like you were saying, the economy will survive AI.

Katherine Ann Edwards (42:26)

It will. And the economy will survive AI. And we have to. I think that the position of public policy should be, you know, what can we do to facilitate the transition to whatever comes next? And, you know, I think people would say, like, well, if only we had all the money in the world. We do have all the money in the world. We're America. But also, it's. I think it's not as expensive as people think, because unemployment is still really rare. And it doesn't feel rare when you're going through it, but it's still, I mean, even when the economy is at its absolute worst, 90% of people have a job job. So being able to do right by those 10% of people is completely feasible. If we don't think that we need to punish them for being bad at economy and consider that we could be in their place. And so let's give them the right type of structures that we could absolutely afford, and they won't all need it. Like, some people, like, they'll lose their job to AI and they'll get another one. And some people, they'll lose their job to AI and it'll take a minute, but they'll get another one. And then some people will have to pivot, either because they couldn't find a job or because they just decided they wanted to. And when I say right type of structure, I mean, not just supporting go back to work as soon as humanly possible at whatever the cost or whatever the wage. I mean, go back and get a good job or pivot to your next career. It's so funny. My best friend and I actually talk about all the time about our pivot to our next career. The thing about PhDs in biology is that they can actually have a pretty short career span because once they, unless they get the golden ticket and funding for forever, they lose out. So we've always talked about our future pivot. Hers comes from no longer being able to get grants to support her research. But it's the pivot. What are you going to do next? I think we can talk openly about AI pivots. AI makes your job obsolete. What are you going to do if you pivoted, what would it be? Actually, this is a great question, Robin. What is your pivot? It AI. AI takes away your job, what career would you do?

Robin Rousey (44:34)

Ooh,

Katherine Ann Edwards (44:37)

mine's run a bookstore. Okay, I'm guilty.

Robin Rousey (44:42)

I see. This is just because you wanted to,

Katherine Ann Edwards (44:44)

say, run a bookstore, run a coffee shop.

Robin Rousey (44:46)

Bookstore, coffee during the day, wine bar at night.

Katherine Ann Edwards (44:50)

Yes, please. You know, that or gardening service and just help people like gardening and landscaping. I would love to just work on people's gardens all day or come to

Robin Rousey (45:01)

my yard anytime needs it. What is your.

Katherine Ann Edwards (45:06)

What is yours? AI has made me obsolete.

Robin Rousey (45:08)

Oh. So I have been thinking about this, right? And I said to my wife the other day that I want a yoga co op. I want to run a yoga co op.

Katherine Ann Edwards (45:18)

If y', all, like, if you are legitimately terrified about losing your job to AI. I think part of where that fear can come from is just the total lack of support we have for unemployed people. That is a choice. We can choose differently, and we can absolutely build a banger unemployment system that, like, helps people through this transition that looks very different, that has very different outcomes, and will, you know, filter people to all kinds of directions. But it starts with sympathy for the unemployed.

Robin Rousey (45:47)

All right, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back.

Katherine Ann Edwards (45:53)

Okay, we're back. We all have jobs, and

Robin Rousey (45:58)

it's time for executive orders.

Katherine Ann Edwards (46:00)

It's time for executive orders where we

Robin Rousey (46:02)

get to dictate some big change that we would like to see happen in an undemocratic fashion. What's your executive order, Katherine?

Katherine Ann Edwards (46:12)

Well, Optimist Economy has a word ban list of things that we don't let people say anymore. We don't let them say red state, blue state. Recently, we've added common sense and the American people. Coming from politicians. There's a whole compendium of things you're not allowed to say to pregnant people. I'm going to add to the word ban list today, which is electable. Not allowed to say electable anymore.

Robin Rousey (46:37)

I like that. For a lot of good reasons.

Katherine Ann Edwards (46:40)

Well, if it ever applied to anyone who wasn't a woman, maybe I would feel differently. But, yeah, we're not allowed to be electable anymore.

Robin Rousey (46:49)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (46:51)

I'm just going to rant real quick and say. Just real quick. I need to, like, I need to get this off my chest. The thing that gets me about electability is, like, Hopefully we just came back from all that thing that we cut because I. I went on a rant about an election, but no more electability. Let's just vote for the people who stand up for what you believe in.

Robin Rousey (47:19)

Yeah. Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (47:21)

Anyway, I'm gonna go scream into a paper bag. I'll be right back. Before you're. What's yours.

Robin Rousey (47:29)

Yeah, mine. Assuming that the Epstein files will be in the news forever, because it certainly feels that way. No more pictures of Epstein or whatever her name is, Maxwell, on vacation in France or at parties in New York. Like, you know what? I don't think people realize this continuing glamorization of these sex traffickers and pedophiles just because we've decided that everything that goes online needs a photograph. Find something else.

Katherine Ann Edwards (48:06)

Else.

Robin Rousey (48:07)

Just find something else. We do not need ever to see smirking pictures of Jeffrey Epstein ever again. And that makes me almost as mad as your thing. What's your spiritual sponsor?

Katherine Ann Edwards (48:19)

Spiritual sponsors. It's a big cleanse. Spiritual sponsor. My.

Robin Rousey (48:23)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (48:24)

My spiritual sponsor.

Robin Rousey (48:26)

Yeah.

Katherine Ann Edwards (48:26)

Are small independent bookstores.

Robin Rousey (48:29)

Oh. Love them.

Katherine Ann Edwards (48:30)

I have many that I deeply love. I think the best way to explore a city is to find whatever independent bookstore they have. It's typically in a fun neighborhood. It's typically in, like, a walkable area. And it's always a great way to get to know a locality by going to their local bookstore.

Robin Rousey (48:49)

Yeah. I'm gonna shout out Sophie's spiritual sponsor. So it's Lent, as we're recording this right now, which is the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter when people often give things up as a sacrifice and other things you're supposed to do that it. Anyway, there's a guy on TikTok who's. Who's a Catholic dad who's doing one really, really cringy thing on TikTok every day for Lent as a. As a way to, I don't know, learn humility. He's very funny. My spiritual sponsor. Because again, it's. This time of year is backyard avocados. We've got eight of them on our counter right now. Makes everything good. Makes everything good, y'.

Katherine Ann Edwards (49:29)

All. I just want to do a quick background that Robin and I were doing a planning call, and I was trying to make lunch, and I. She heard me yell to my husband, wait, did you take last avocado? And she's like, not in this house. Got avocados for days. That was Robin's response to, oh, no, you took the last avocado and was going to put it in my lunch. It was not a problem here.

Robin Rousey (49:48)

Not a problem here. Not right now.

Katherine Ann Edwards (49:51)

I can't ever be accused of being a avocado on toast. Millennial. Because I just like to buy them directly on a tortilla chip.

Robin Rousey (49:59)

We put them on everything. Chop them up, put them in your soup, put them on your salad. Salad. Put them with your eggs.

Katherine Ann Edwards (50:06)

Just like when pizza is on a bagel. You can have pizza anytime. Okay, well, now that I'm singing, we

Robin Rousey (50:14)

should probably wrap this up.

Katherine Ann Edwards (50:17)

If there were, if we were being broadcast, this is the point where we'd be kicked off the air.

Robin Rousey (50:24)

Yeah, it's like we're like, we're like public access cable at this point.

Katherine Ann Edwards (50:28)

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Optimist Economy podcast is edited by Sophie Lalonde. Our video production for social media is by Andy Robinson. Here we go. Let's keep those two in paychecks. If you have the means, please contribute. We'll take them@optimist economy.com we will also sell you a shirt, a hat, a tote bag, video clips from our show or on TikTok, Instagram. You can YouTube and LinkedIn. You should definitely send them to people who you think should be listening or who love making nasty comments. If you're on Substack, you can follow us. Join the. Oh no, I just. He just seemed like. He just seemed like you were kind of emotionally over talking so I was just going to step in because you know, I never am talking about self horse here. If you're on Substack, you can follow us there too. Join the Optimist chat to talk with fellow optimists. We're eavesdropping, both of us. Try to chime in and wait. That's part we already said so. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Rate us on Apple Podcasts. We're giving you a lot of to do listeners. But in the meantime, we love you and we couldn't do this without you and we do this for you. So we hope you enjoyed it. Andy, we're not on ebay. Come on now you're just trolling us. Production, get it in line.