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Optimist Economy
Thanksgiving Prep: An Optimist’s Guide to Dinner Table Debate
00:53:09
Thanksgiving Prep: An Optimist’s Guide to Dinner Table Debate
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, optimists, it's Robin. We are, as you know, on hiatus, but we have a little surprise episode for you while Catherine's off on her family leave. We did want to tell you about two updates. One is we have a new website, and more importantly, on that website, you can find our merch store. So if you need your tote bag, and who doesn't, go to optimisteconomy.com and we'll help you out.
- [00:28]
B
Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm. Hi, I'm Katherine Ann Edwards, economist.
- [00:33]
A
I'm Robin Rousey, editor.
- [00:35]
B
On this show, we believe the US Economy can be better. And we talk about how to get there one problem and solution at a time. And if there were ever a time to talk about problems in the United States, it's at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Optimist Economy is in the middle of a break between season one and two, but we recorded this episode in October before I went on maternity leave to keep our fellow optimistic, rhetorically armed and ready for the holiday. So if you're new to the show and haven't heard us before, we encourage you to check out our back catalog. Each episode takes on a different socioeconomic problem, but we're going to have fun with this one. This is a bonus episode. Our listeners have told us that we are a mix of humor, education, hope, joy, insight in a way that is, quote unquote, delightfully unhinged and, quote unquote, an assault on the medium of podcasting with our lack of professionalism. So, y', all, let's bring it to the Thanksgiving table. Let's get ready.
- [01:33]
A
Let's get ready. In this episode, I'm taking on the role of. Think of me as who's the guy who plays Medea and all the, you know, all the characters in the family drama. I'm all the characters in the family drama, starting with your drunk uncle who starts asking not so nice questions. Tyler Perry. That's right. Thank you, Andy.
- [01:53]
B
And if you've listened to the show, you know that I make a lot of proverbial shout outs to a drunk uncle. Or, like, that's something the drunk uncle would say. So this is like Robin is like all of the drunk uncles, right? The drunkels.
- [02:06]
A
The drunkels.
- [02:07]
B
So Robin is going to read off some tough, pointed questions with a somewhat of a Persona that could come up at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and I am going to give a response to help all of you respond similarly should it come up at your Thanksgiving table.
- [02:22]
A
I asked Katherine if she really wanted three Questions on Social Security. And her response was in type, in text. Did I stutter facts? I was like, okay, we're going to do three questions on Social Security. Are you ready?
- [02:41]
B
I'm ready.
- [02:42]
A
You're so ready. Okay. Your libertarian cousin who works in crypto. This is what he says. Social Security is literally a Ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff went to prison for that exact same thing. You pay in, they pay current retirees, then new workers pay for you. It only works if you keep getting more suckers in at the bottom. How is that not fraud?
- [03:03]
B
Calm down, Robin. Okay, libertarian cousin who works in crypto, which is not a bubble. Sure. All right. A Ponzi scheme is an investment scam. It's built on fabrication and deception. It only works so long as the lie is believed. As soon as the lie is revealed, the entire scam collapses. In contrast, Social Security is an insurance program. It's not an investment. It has no fabrication, no deception. It's not maintained through some grand hoodwinked lie that Americans have bought hook, line and sinker for 90 years. You know where your money goes, to whom it goes, for what, for how long, and what you'll get out of it. There is no deception. There's no scheming and there's no scam. There's also no investment. It's an insurance program. So if it's literally anything. Crypto, bro. It's literally like your car insurance or your homeowner's insurance, but administered through the tax system instead of private carriers and payments. You pay a flat amount, you pay it regularly, and you don't get paid out until you meet certain circumstances. In this case, not the car crash, but getting too old to work. Okay, how was that? Was that okay?
- [04:15]
A
Yeah, that seemed pretty good.
- [04:16]
B
Okay.
- [04:18]
A
This is your uncle who's an accountant, and he's been planning for his own retirement for 20 years. The Social Security trust fund. Did you see it's now going to run out in 2033. I've been paying in since I was 16 years old. And the money will be gone. Benefits will be cut at least 30%. Congress won't touch it because it's a political suicide. So what, I'm just screwed?
- [04:40]
B
No accountant uncle. Social Security has never missed a payment in its 90 year history. And it has been at the brink before. And in fact, because of its consistency, I don't think people realize just how close it has come and has run out of the trust funds and yet still didn't miss a payment. In fact, in the run up to the Last big reform. In 1983, the trust fund was completely depleted. And Congress had to pass an emergency measure for the trust fund to be allowed to borrow in order to make payments, which it did. Congress passed the major reform. The trust fund was replenished. They paid back the loans in 86. You don't know any of this because all you know is that Social Security has never missed a payment, not in 90 years. So it's not a reflection of the strength of the program that Congress will wait until the last possible minute to address an issue they've known about since 1995. And for what it's worth, most people don't think that it's political suicide because there is broad consensus, even amongst Republicans of exactly what Americans want done to Social Security. They want to raise taxes in order to preserve benefit levels. And over 80% of Republicans would agree with that. So it's not political suicide. We know how to save it. I can't make Congress better, but I won't blame Social Security for Congress not being better. Social Security, don't miss.
- [06:00]
A
Okay. All right.
- [06:01]
B
Rounding out the Social Security appetizer course.
- [06:05]
A
I mean, really, this is the main. This is the main course. Let's not lie. Your aunt who watches Fox Business every morning. When Social Security started, there were 16 workers per retiree. Now it's less than three. People live to be 90 years old. They're collecting for 30 years. You're not having kids. Who's going to pay for all these boomers? First of all, you are having kids. I know, but I'm not having kids. Who's gonna pay for all the boomers?
- [06:31]
B
Well, aunt who watches Fox Business. Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty common misunderstanding to treat Social Security as some kind of numbers racket as opposed to a wage insurance scheme. The number of people paying in matters less than their wage growth. And the biggest hit to Social Security's finances, as repeated over and over again by the Office of the Actuary, has been wage stagnation and wage decline. And frankly, that Social Security's taxable wage base is declining. And that doesn't have to do with the number of people that just has to do what workers in the US Are earning. So another way I would think about it is that demographics we can see coming. You know, the last big reform was in 1983, and the youngest baby boomer was turning 20 years old. I mean, the birth rate had declined, and they assumed that it would decline further. The life expectancy had increased, and they assumed that it would increase further. The entire reform package was built around those demographic facts taken into account. Fewer babies, longer lives, and a big generation that was going to retire. And what they didn't plan on wasn't the demographics, which were all predictable. They didn't plan on wage inequality. They didn't plan on an eroding tax base. I mean at the early 1980s had seen 40 years of broad wage growth across the wage distribution. People who didn't make that much money, people who made a lot of money, their wages grew at a roughly similar rate. They passed the 1983 reform and we enter four and a half decades of unprecedented economic inequality. The hollowing out of the middle class, the decline of manufacturing employment. And Social Security's taxable wage base gets smaller every year because they only tax benefits up to a cap. So the reason why Social Security is having problems with money is because it's basically giving a de facto tax cut every single year and collecting less in taxes than it could. That's a fixable problem as well. And it doesn't have anything to do with the number of kids or the number of old people long they live. They just need to shore up their tax base back to what it was in 1983.
- [08:32]
A
All right, You've got another uncle, his small business owner uncle who complains about payroll taxes.
- [08:44]
B
Uh huh.
- [08:46]
A
You know, half this country doesn't even pay federal income tax. They're on food stamps and Medicaid and they're living off my taxes. I see them buying steak with EBT cards. You want benefits, get a job. Why am I subsidizing laziness?
- [08:59]
B
Well Uncle, I am incredibly happy that you're here to have your cake and eat it too. So let's, let's go through these non taxpayers and tell me how you really feel about them, if they really are a bunch of lazy steak eating bastards. So right now, do you think that elderly people who are living on fixed incomes need to pay federal income taxes? Because as it currently stands, 80% of people over age 75 do not have enough in Social Security benefits or non Social Security income to have a tax bill. So we don't make them pay federal income taxes. And you were wrong. It's not half of Americans. It's 40% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes. And a large share of them are old and retired and living on Social Security. Another question for you. In 1996 the US ended cash entitlement for welfare. We just didn't think it was right that there were poor people, even if they had children. That got cash from the government with no strings attached. And so we replaced that cash welfare system with a tax bonus for working. It's called the Earned Income Tax credit. If you are low income and you have children but you work, the federal government will not only waive your federal income taxes, but they'll make sure you get a bonus at the end as a, you know, reward for working. So they don't pay income taxes either. And there's a lot of them. Do you want to go back to the cash welfare system or do you like having a certified tax bonus for working? So let's forget elderly people who are too poor and the poor people who are working who are doing what we're telling them to do via the tax system and get back to this, like now, fractional share of the 40% who don't pay taxes, who don't earn enough in a year to pay taxes. The standard deduction for a single filer in the United States is $16,000. The standard deduction for a head of household is $24,000. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. If I work the minimum wage 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, and not miss a minute of work, I earn $1,000 less than the standard deduction. And I won't owe anything in taxes no matter how hard I work or how long I work because my wage is so low. If you want more people to pay taxes, you need to raise the minimum wage. What I would add, and what makes me so mad about a comment like this, all these people who don't pay their taxes, is that Republican controlled Congresses have passed over $11 trillion of tax cuts this century. And every single time it's billed as this is about helping families, this is about helping working turn around. And you're saying we're not collecting enough in taxes from working people or we're not collecting enough in taxes from certain people, or people need to be taxed more. If that's how you really feel, raise taxes. You've cut taxes five times in a quarter of a century and then you're upset that there are people who don't pay taxes. So which is it? Because what it kind of sounds like is that you don't want to pay much in taxes and you want other people to pay more in taxes. And frankly, that sounds a little freeloading and some would say borderline lazy. So have your cake, eat it too. God fucking sick of taxes. Pass the mashed potatoes. That one made me really mad. Sorry. Of all the Personas that you adopted. This one like, really was like, knife. I was like, that is it.
- [12:11]
A
This is from your. Your aunt who doesn't have any children and who makes a point of mentioning that all the time. If you can't afford kids, don't have them. People pop out five kids and then they want government assistance. I'm paying for your kids because you couldn't plan ahead. Birth control exists. Why is this my problem?
- [12:28]
B
What an excellent and insightful point. I actually think we should operationalize your plan. So, I mean, let's come up with a test. If you don't have enough money, you don't get to have children. First year of life. You've got to pay for labor and delivery out of pocket with your private health insurance. That's like three to five grand. If you've got to pay for your other health bills for the baby, you've got to have food, maybe formula, childcare, clothes, crib, that whole deal. Your estimates are that the first year of life for a kid is going to cost a parent somewhere between 16 and $25,000. Okay, but you can't work right after you have a kid. You have to have some type of leave. Of course, we don't have paid family leave in the US So that means you have to go two to three months without earnings. That takes a quarter of your income for the year. So in order to be able to afford a kid to your measurement, which we want to implement in the United States, you need to make at least $33,000 a year. We wouldn't want to end up with a marginal case. Let's make it an even $35,000. So now question back for you is how do you want to make sure that people who don't have $35,000 a year in income don't have a kid for sterilization? Forced abortion? Do you want the doctor to give the income test? Do you want to happen at the hospital? Does it make more sense to give the income test at pregnancy or at delivery so at least we get our fertility numbers up and those deserving rich families get to have a kid. I'm curious as to how you want to put this in action and what you see happening first. Or maybe all of that is grotesque. As grotesque as the stereotype that lives in your head that poor people pop out kids in order to get welfare money for a cash benefit program. That ended when I was nine years old. You know, get mad, get riled up, and like, you know, dramatically pour yourself another glass of wine. But the Truth is, we're already living in your world. The reality is that families in the US have internalized your criticism that they shouldn't have kids they can't afford and they're not having them. Fertility in the United States has never recovered from the housing bubble, the financial crisis and the horrible recession that followed. Families in the US repeatedly and consistently say in survey after survey they want more children, but they can't afford them and they don't have them. What it means to be a family or to have a family in the US is constrained by the reality that kids are so expensive. We are living in your world. We didn't need to operationalize it. People don't have kids that they can't afford and they lose the ability to have them or have that type of family that they want. Your world in which children are a luxury, good, a prize for the richest. We're on our way there. We didn't even need for sterilization or adoption or income tax. We just needed to structure our economy in a way and our social policy in a way that being a parent is so expensive and so difficult that families will willingly and painfully forego children. They meet your test. Lack of paid family leave, lack of child care, expensive health insurance that taxes, birth infertility treatments that have to covered out of pocket. We don't do anything. We live in your world. And you know what? I understand that if we lived in the world in which families got to have children, that you'd have to pay more in taxes. In 2025, Congress passed the one big beautiful bill of $4.5 trillion tax cut over a 10 year period. And unless you're in the top 10%, you're going to get a thousand bucks back from that. It's $450 billion a year. $450 billion a year would pay for universal paid family leave, universal and affordable child child care. It would probably play for free school meals and a cash benefit for all children in the U.S. but we don't have any of those things. And now you get a thousand bucks a year. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you nurture it. I hope you take that thousand bucks a year and enjoy it to the fullest extent possible. And I hope you love it as much as a family who didn't get to have a kid would have loved that kid.
- [16:17]
A
Ouch. It's kind of hard being me.
- [16:20]
B
I just want to say, fuck you, Robyn. That's the end of that one. And you know what else? Robin, Robin, maybe you should put on like sunglasses and a hat.
- [16:36]
A
You know, if I'd been thinking, I'd have a whole. A whole different outfit for each of these. So your cousin who lost his factory job back in 2008.
- [16:44]
B
Okay, okay.
- [16:46]
A
You know, China has been ripping us off for decades. Tariffs will make them pay. Don't tell me Americans pay tariffs. That's not how it works. Your iPhone costs more. Boo hoo. That's the price of not being their doormat. When do we stand up for ourselves?
- [17:02]
B
Okay, okay. Let's assume you're right.
- [17:07]
A
I'm sorry, Your relatives are also angry.
- [17:09]
B
Yeah, actually, I should say I come from, like, a very large, loving family. I know. All right. I mean, okay. Cause let's assume you're right.
- [17:17]
A
Okay.
- [17:18]
B
And tariffs work the way that you say they will, and no US Company or no US Consumer pays for tariffs, and China pays for all of that. I mean, is the idea that. I mean, so the idea is that we're going to put a tariff on China and somehow charging them and making them pay for it will somehow make them fall in line and do whatever we want them to do in every other respect. So not only will they pay whatever we ask them to pay, but they won't retaliate in any way that could hurt us. They won't do anything we would disagree with after that. I mean, your theory to the test. China is the world's largest buyer of Soybeans and the US is their largest supplier. And in fact, 30% of all soybeans made in the United States are sold to China. So we slap a tariff on them and tell them you need to now pay to sell us iPhones. How much of our soybeans since they have they bought since.
- [18:15]
A
I don't know.
- [18:16]
B
None. They've bought none. Sure. Maybe they'll pay the tariff for the iPhone. Maybe. Maybe they'll just, you know, suck it up and pay a tax to the US Government in order to sell the iPhones made in China and the U.S. but they've decided that they just won't buy soybeans from our farmers anymore. Ever. None. It's a third of our market, almost. I think that the problem with tariffs is that, you know, even if you can get them to do what you want in relation to the tariff, you don't have any control over what they do outside of that. So say all these trade wars work out perfectly exactly the way that you want, and all of these other countries pay and we don't. You think that makes us stronger? I think it makes us weaker. Because now Our revenue, the revenue that pays for our military, the revenue that pays for our infrastructure, for our health, for investments, for education. Now, all of that revenue is at the mercy of other countries because they're the ones that pay it. They get mad at us. They don't just have a military threat. We've given leverage to other countries because they hold the purse strings instead of us. I mean, If China pays 20% of our federal budget and then they call us and say, hey, by the way, it's Taipei again, not Taiwan, and we're taking it back, are we going to risk 20% of our revenue for Taipei? How big of an aggression do they have to have before we actually start to risk all of the revenue that supports government spending in order to punish them? It's too much leverage. It's too much concentration. All right, can we make comments of like. And now let's get to the turkey.
- [19:50]
A
If I'd been thinking, we would have paired each of these with a. Oh, like a.
- [19:54]
B
Like a wine plate pairing of like.
- [19:57]
A
Yeah, I know. This is the green bean course. You know, cranberry sauce from your brother as your brother hands you cranberries.
- [20:08]
B
Okay, let's do it. All right.
- [20:10]
A
Your brother, who's a construction worker, says Americans just can't find jobs right now because immigrants take them. They work for peanuts. And the companies, of course, love it, but real Americans can't get hired. When you complain, they call you a racist, but it's just economics. American jobs should go to Americans, right?
- [20:31]
B
Well, your question implies that Americans can't be immigrants, and I assure you that they can. So I assume that when you're talking about immigrants stealing our jobs, you don't actually mean immigrants. You're talking about unauthorized immigrants who don't have permission to be here and not the 25 million or so immigrant American citizens. Yeah. You know, the most interesting part of your question was when you said that they work for peanuts, implying that immigrants make so low of wages that they undercut Americans. Well, I would say that there's two types of peanut work in the US labor market. Wages that are so low because the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and wages that are so low because even with a minimum wage that's $7.25 an hour, employers violate labor law. And in the case of the latter, employers are violating labor law not because they're necessarily employing unauthorized immigrants, but they're taking advantage of the fact that unauthorized immigrants are unlikely to call wage and hour enforcement, either because they don't know or because they're afraid. And these employers are exploiting weakness in our labor law in order to pay people less. I mean, it sounds like you're for a higher minimum wage and better labor law enforcement. And in that case, my brother, I'm with you. I'm 100% with you. But I think you probably weren't saying that. You were probably saying that immigrants take our jobs because they work for less payment.
- [21:55]
A
And it's economics.
- [21:56]
B
It's economics. You would only say it's economics if you knew your sister had a Ph.D. and you were trying to rile her up. Don't ask mom for help. You knew what you were doing. So here's a question. Why does New York City have more jobs than Skokie, Illinois? The number of jobs is a function of the size of the place and the industries there. And when you say immigrants take our jobs, you're assuming that there's a, a fixed number of jobs. But that's like assuming that New York City has more jobs because they were assigned to them as part of some master plan. Jobs aren't assigned. They're not ratioed or rationed or fixed. Jobs are the result of economic activity. So the idea that immigrants take our jobs makes it seem like there's a fixed amount of jobs. When there's not. Jobs will always reflect economic activity. Economists think that immigration has two primary effects on a range of economic outcomes. One, and this is completely undisputed even by the most fervent anti immigrant economists. Immigrants make the economy larger. That's not like a, not a matter of opinion. Like that is just how the economy works. More people equals bigger economy. It's why New York City has a bigger economy than Skokie. The part that's disputed, hotly disputed, is whether or not immigrants reduce the wages of native born workers. And it's pretty easy to see how this would occur, right? If you have 50 people who are applying for a job, they're going to be able to pay less than if you only had five, right? Beggars can't be choosers. So the thought is, is that because immigrants add to an applicant pool, they could reduce wages, but they don't. 50,000 immigrants didn't move to Skokie. They moved to places like New York City. They tend to follow demand as opposed to dearth. So what year did the US see the highest number of unauthorized immigrants? Historically, this is the biggest year in U.S. history. Most Number of unauthorized immigrants there have ever been. What year is it?
- [23:56]
A
Unauthorized immigrants versus say asylum seekers?
- [24:00]
B
Just unauthorized.
- [24:03]
A
Am I really guessing.
- [24:04]
B
You really guess.
- [24:05]
A
Oh, 1990, 2007, 2007.
- [24:17]
B
So the year before the financial crisis, the economic crash, the horrible recession that followed, the number of immigrants dropped each year between 2008 and 2019 because the economy was weak. The most effective strategy the US has ever had for reducing the number of unauthorized immigrants is crashing our economy.
- [24:37]
A
Me, it's not a good plan.
- [24:39]
B
The evidence has not found a significant effect of immigrants on native wages. So it should be the case if there are more people competing for jobs, that it pulls down wages and immigrants pull down the wages of workers who are born here. But in practice, we haven't seen it. And the reason why is because they don't go to depressed labor markets. They go to thriving labor markets where the economy is growing. They add to the growing of the economy by their presence and spending and work. And the economic growth effects outweigh the competition effects.
- [25:10]
A
You're nicer to your brother than you were to your uncle.
- [25:12]
B
I know. My brother listens and he'll be like, thanks, Kay.
- [25:22]
A
All right. Your grandfather, who's just already had too much wine today, nobody can afford a house on one income because women entered the workforce. You doubled the labor supply and wages got cut in half. Both parents are working, kids in daycare, and families are falling apart. If women had just stayed home, wouldn't wages go back up?
- [25:42]
B
No, grandpa. And pass the wine. All right, Grandpa, I'm just gonna. I'm say this delicately because you got a temper. So before and after are not the same thing as cause and effect.
- [25:59]
A
Oh, don't patronize me.
- [26:01]
B
Don't patronize me. So let's take your theory about women as the bane of men's existence in the labor market and what's wrong with the US Economy is that women started working and consider a couple of facts. So since around 1980, the wages of men who have a college degree or more have shot up and I mean, just skyrocketed. Just unprecedented wage growth sustained over long periods of time. The more education and power you have in the labor market, the more you're going to earn. At the same time, the wages of men who didn't have a college degree and who were in blue collar occupations got hit really hard. Inflation in the 80s did not help the situation, and you started to have this bifurcation in the economic outcomes of men based on how much education they had. So there is no version of the world in which that is women's fault, because women entered both labor markets, the labor market with a college degree and the labor market without a college degree. And in fact, for the college degree holding labor market, women made up an increasingly higher and higher share. And yet even as women made up a higher share, wages kept going up. So it is more than likely the case that it's not women who are causing the problems. It's something about our economic structures that are causing the problems. And women are an easy target because their labor force participation changed over that time period and because, I don't know, we've got like low key misogyny held over for lots of generations. And it's just easier to think, think that we could go backwards in time rather than solve the problems of the future. I mean, it's worth bringing up that not only were women sabotaging men, according to you, with their presence in the labor market, but as they were doing this, they failed to overcome the gender earnings gap. They hold the lowest paying jobs, they make less than men in every, almost every occupation, they make less than men overall. And yet somehow they're to blame for you not having a good wage. No, no. It's the decline of unions, the weakness of labor law, the spiraling expense of critical goods like health insurance and housing. We have wage inequality, we have income inequality, we have wealth inequality. If you need to blame someone, you can blame Congress because it is in fact their fault for not pursuing better economic policy. And you don't need to blame women because the truth of the matter is that women's labor force participation doubles between 1950 and 2000. And every woman who went to work made the economy bigger. And every woman who went to work brought home earnings that made their families richer. And she did it while being the primary caregiver. She did it without paid family leave, she did it without paid sick days, and she did it without childcare, and she did it while earning less. Pass the wine. And grandpa, you have green bean casserole in your teeth. I can imagine some like high production version of the optimist economy world where you and I are like in fact actually eating dinner while we do this. But I think I need to remind our listeners that like my callbacks of passing the wine are purely proverbial. I am still nine and a half months pregnant and it is the middle of the afternoon.
- [29:08]
A
Nine and a half months pregnant.
- [29:09]
B
Yeah, yeah. So next year we'll have actual wine. But this year it's just, these are just proverbial shout outs. And Robin is not in fact my grandpa.
- [29:21]
A
Nor your sister, nor your aunt.
- [29:25]
B
Okay, okay.
- [29:26]
A
This is from your sister in law who I guess is married to your brother, the construction worker. And you're your sister in law who was a college swimmer.
- [29:35]
B
Sister in law who was a college swimmer. Okay.
- [29:37]
A
Trans women should not compete in girls sports. Male puberty means bigger bones and more muscles, and that does not disappear. Girls train their whole lives, then biological males take their scholarships. How is that fair to women?
- [29:50]
B
So I'm going to start with a sidebar, and I'll get there, I promise. So here's a sidebar, and I think you have to understand this in order to understand why the conclusion that trans women shouldn't compete in sports is not just a wrong one, but a dangerous one. In the 1950s and 60s, it was incredibly difficult to end a marriage the way that divorce laws were written at the time. You had to have your partner's permission. In most states, you couldn't leave your husband unless he told the court that you were allowed to leave him or you had to prove fault. In most cases, that meant cheating, where you had to have proof that the husband was cheating in order to get out of the marriage, which they weren't willing to give, or easy to provide. That changed in the 1970s with the introduction of both unilateral divorce, where you didn't need your partner's permission, and no fault divorce, where you didn't need to prove that something had gone wrong for the marriage to end. You could just walk away from a marriage and women, freely, for the first time in history, could leave their husbands. Here's what economists found when they studied what happened to women when they were legally allowed and freely allowed to leave their husbands for the first time. An 8 to 16% decline in female suicide, a 30% decline in domestic violence for both men and women, and a 10% decline in females murdered by their partners. When women lack power, when they lack control, they lose physical safety. Now it's not 1970 anymore. And some things change, but some things don't change. Women's power is a direct proxy for how physically safe they will be able to be. So in order to prevent trans women from competing in sports, we need to come up with some kind of sex check. Do you think this will fall on the side of giving women more or less power? It's going to be less at the youth level, at the college level, at the professional level. Women basically need to have some kind of proof of vagina in order to compete. And we are going to create gatekeepers that have the ability to say yes or no because her word doesn't count anymore. All it takes Is one accusation for her to be called into question. And now a gatekeeper has to come in and adjudicate, how is that gatekeeper going to do that? And what kind of power will they have over women athletes and false accusations? I mean, I need you to go through in your head right now and just sit with it for 10 sobering seconds. Every article or news story you have ever read about the sexual abuse women athletes already face before any type of trans ban that came with its own counterpart of some kind of vagina check that someone needs to have. You're thinking of the predatory doctor and US gymnastics. You're thinking of the National Women's Soccer League and the pay for play grooming coaches that got kicked out in a wave of scandal. So go back to those, how powerful those athletes were and how they were gatekept even without some type of sex check to be held over them. And then go back to what I said about the women who had the power to leave their husbands. And I'm going to ask you again, does a trans ban give more power to women athletes or less? Or does it give power to people over them to check their bodies? And if you think anything other than that will happen, you just don't want to know the truth. You don't want to think about it in practice. You just want to say it's not fair that they grew up male and walk away. Because your version of fairness is one square foot of real estate. It's one competition. It's one person. And not the tens of millions of girls who are thrown under the power of someone who can just simply say, I don't think you're a real girl. Prove it. Absolutely fucking not. And while we're discussing it for everybody who has a strong opinion on female athletes and what trans women should be allowed to do, let's do a quick show of hands. Who here has been to a professional women's sporting event, who's been to multiple more than one league, who has watched a women's sporting event on tv? It is remarkable to me how much women athletes are thrown around. As if the biggest problem they face isn't the fact that they play in stadiums, that they don't own, that they're paid shit for being a professional athlete, that they have terrible TV media deals, they can't get themselves shown on TV to get the type of advertising that would get them pay. They can't do any of that. And all of that is unfair. But the only amount of unfairness you care about is that less than quarter of a percent of trans people who compete in sports. Do not delude yourself to say that this is about fairness for women. It bothers me to my core as someone who has, like, watched and loved women's sports my whole life of, like. Like, the lengths I've had to go to to watch the most successful national team in soccer's history play a game.
- [34:36]
A
Yeah, you've had to, like, go to a bar somewhere across town or, like.
- [34:42]
B
Hack into someone's network and, like, get a VPN because it's only playing on Fox Sports 17. And, like, I'm just sitting here, I'm like, okay, they're the most winningest team in U.S. history. And I'm having a really hard time watching them. And then they'll turn around and be like, it's not fair for girls. And I'm like, the fuck you care about fair? You don't care about. You don't care about women's athletes at all. Honestly, we got to move on. I've been sent to the kids table. And as a palate cleanser, I'm being asked to explain whether or not Ghostbusters are an official part of the police.
- [35:14]
A
What do you think? If they're not, should they be?
- [35:18]
B
I mean, do they need to be in the union? I wonder about that. I mean, they have their own vehicle already, so I would say that they don't necessarily need to incorporate.
- [35:25]
A
I know, but I hope they have good insurance coverage. They do very dangerous things.
- [35:28]
B
But they live in a firehouse. Oh, that's a really great point. Do reside on public property, so. But didn't they buy the firehouse?
- [35:37]
A
I would say I think it's a retired firehouse.
- [35:39]
B
Yeah, I think it's. All right. So it's a quasi private public endeavor because, I mean, the mayor eventually gives them the okay and the resources they need. This is a question I got from a 5 year old not that long ago. Are Ghostbusters part of the police? I was like, all right, I can see why this would be incredibly confusing. So that's our little kids table. Snack break. Like, I lost my about trans women, and now I'm heading back to the adult table.
- [36:14]
A
Okay, you got another cousin who's a real estate developer, and he says everyone wants to tax the rich. Tax the rich. But you know what? The rich already pay for everything. Like, the top 10% pay, like 70% of all federal income tax taxes. 70%. Meanwhile, half the country pays nothing.
- [36:34]
B
Zero.
- [36:35]
A
And we're supposed to squeeze even more out of successful people.
- [36:39]
B
All right, cuz. We should get our story straight. The top 1% of US tax filers pay 45% of federal income taxes and the top 10% pay 75.9. So not the 70 you were crying about, but actually a little more so. I mean, worth saying as an aside that this is just federal income taxes. The only progressive tax in the United States is the federal income tax. So of course it's going to be the one that they pay a disproportionate share of because nothing else is progressive. But I think there is a key question that we need to answer here. You are upset that the top 1% and the top 10% pay so much in taxes. So I'm going to put this back to you. As you say, I quote unquote want to squeeze even more out of successful people over the past 25 years. Have their tax rate rates gone up or down?
- [37:30]
A
I don't know.
- [37:32]
B
No, because you don't know. And you should know. I'm very popular in my family. No, I mean you're crying about the top 10% of Americans paying more in taxes because their tax rate has gone down this century. And in fact the top 1% is paying a 2.5 point lower net tax rate than it paid 25 years ago even as their tax contributions have gone up. Because this isn't a tax story. It's not as if Congress sat down in 2000 and were like, we are going to get these rich people, we are going to make sure that they pay. We're going to put the whole tax system on them. On the contrary, they have cut their taxes five times, which is why the biggest tax cuts in rates at the rate that Congress actually sets through the tax system, through all the changes, through the step up basis, through the marginal tax rate, through the capital gains tax rate they have in from what's in their power lowered the tax on these people. The reason why these people pay so much money is because they are earning more income. So I don't know how much the top 1% of Americans should pay in taxes. I know we've given them a 2.5 rate cut over the past 25 years and that today they earn 25% of all income. The top 1% comprises 1.5 million people and they bring home one out of every four dollar in the United States, 25% of income. What's a fair tax look like when our economy is so unfair? The top 10% of Americans take home more than half of all income. So if you're taking home 55% of all the income earned in the United States, you're getting a tax cut every five years from a piece of legislation. And then you're turning around and crying to me about how you're paying 75.9% of income taxes. I don't care. I don't care. It would be one thing if Congress had spent the past 25 years throwing every tax at you they had and increasing your rates to the greatest ability they can. But they've done the opposite, and you're still taking home more. I guess my question back to you would be, are you actually telling me that the richest people in the United States need a larger tax break than the five that they have gotten this century because their income is going up so much? I wouldn't call that being squeezed. The people who are being squeezed are the people who don't earn the 55% of income that goes to the top 10% of Americans. That's the real squeeze. The tax system is. Marginal income is everything.
- [40:07]
A
Okay, so you had a lot of brothers in this?
- [40:11]
B
Well, I do.
- [40:11]
A
It's funny.
- [40:12]
B
I do come from a massive family. I have, like a large family on both sides. And so I've definitely had. Had big Thanksgiving dinners. But even this is like a real cast of characters.
- [40:22]
A
Your day trader brother who thinks that he understands the markets, he says we're in a recession already and the government's lying. The BLS is cooking the books. Unemployment is double. What they say inflation is killing us, but they claim everything is fine. The numbers are rigged to make them look good. And you believe their statistics.
- [40:41]
B
All right, well, there's, like, a lot going on with what you just said. What I'm hearing in here is that the government's lying, the BLS is cooking the books, unemployment is double and inflation is killing us. It is very hard. It is very hard to live in an economy in which other people thrive and you do not. And yet it is a permanent part of the US Economy that there will be unemployed people, people every month, that there will be laid off people every month. Over a million people will lose their job in a month. We have massive pockets of inequality in layoffs, in unemployment, in where people earn good wages, where people have lots of opportunity. And I think you are like most people in which you don't think it's a crisis until it happens to you. Your view of the economy is based on your experience in it. And it is a cold, hard, capitalist world that would say you just happen to be part of the casualties this month. But the economy itself is still fine. Even in our worst recession, 10% of people will be unemployed, 15% will be underemployed, which would be, I think, what you mean by unemployment. But that means 85% of people are fine. So our version of a bad economy isn't that 100% of people are doing poorly, but just 15% at a max are doing poorly. That's a cruel world. So I understand that that takes a certain degree of empathy and kind of a thick skin to both empathize with people who are suffering when you are fine, and a thick skin to understand that you can be suffering while other people are fine. But what I would put forward is not that you are upset at the BLS or that you were upset about the unemployment statistic that came out last month or didn't come out because the government was in shutdown. I think your life is fucking hard. And I think it's been hard for a while. And the US economy for the past 45 years has done a very poor job of making life better for a lot of people. Wages have been stagnating, Inequality has been growing, while the price of housing, the price of health care, the price of transportation, the price of care in general, it's all rising. It gets harder and harder to afford a good life, while the labor market feels more precarious and less remunerative every single year. You want to attack the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the fall of 2025? You should be pissed off at Congress for at least the last 25 sessions. There are policies in the United States that can make a difference for families, that can make a difference for workers. And that's what you should be fighting. How you want to be mad, be upset about whatever some aloof economist says is the state of the economy right now. But what you are suffering from is a type of weakness that the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not produce.
- [43:20]
A
Okay, last one.
- [43:21]
B
All right, last one.
- [43:23]
A
This is from your other uncle who went to trade school and never shuts up about it.
- [43:28]
B
Okay?
- [43:28]
A
Universities are just indoctrination camps. They have safe spaces and they have trigger warnings. Cancel culture and we give them billions of dollars. For what? For gender studies.
- [43:37]
B
Classes. Classes.
- [43:38]
A
They're turning out unemployable activists and worthless degrees. You want taxpayer monies? Teach something real. Why are we funding this nonsense?
- [43:48]
B
So I think if you took off of the table money that colleges and universities receive for very specific research grants that are mainly going to professors and researchers who are studying a question that the government has approved of and funded and Take that off the table and then take off the table. Loans that students have to pay back or grants given directly to students, like appel grants. I'm not quite sure there's that much money left. I don't think you're getting that much money relative to how upset you are. The second thing I would say is that it might just be that you don't like young people and they tend to gather at universities as opposed to not liking universities. You might not like that young people today want safe spaces, have trigger warning mornings, and don't really want to follow or participate in an activity in which someone gets up and says something that's really offensive to them. And they're like, all right, well, I'm not going to follow you on Twitter and I'm not going to watch your TV show. I mean, is your problem really that the fact that they all gather at a place called college or that you just don't like young people and the opinions that you don't agree with? I mean, as far as churning out unemployable activists with a worthless degree, sure, some majors might not make sense on the outside, but, you know, one thing we've learned is that kids degrees aren't really always predictable of their earnings. I was an English major. You would have called me a woke indoctrination camp attendee studying something that wasn't real. I mean, I spent a year studying one Russian novel and I ended up with a PhD in STEM. We're not really good at planning the career trajectories of young people. We have to give them a little bit of space and trust to go out on their own and make their way in the world and, and take whatever they've studied and whatever they've learned and put it into a career. And I understand that giving people freedom and agency and choices isn't something that you like because at risk that they disagree with you in the process. But this is America. Kids don't respect you. Welcome to the world of being an older American. Kids have never respected you. I don't know why you need to. You're blaming universities because they're there now. But like, man, I did a paper on generational perspectives of economic security. It involved polling and like, asking people of different ages the same question and seeing, like, how they aligned. And a big part of the paper was saying that the idea of a generational divide is total bullshit. Like, it was mainly invented by advertisers. But one of the things that we went through in like, primary evidence and documents to Bring up in the paper was like, all these news articles about the greatest generation before they fought World War II, and how they weren't named the greatest generation until of them were dead. And it was well into the 1990s. And that when they were in their, like, 20s, they were like, these are useless children who want to flap their day away. They have no career motivation. They don't work hard. And how, like, hating young people is just a thing that old people do was.
- [46:50]
A
But that would have been like, during the Depression, right?
- [46:52]
B
Like. Like when they could, like, 20s and into 30s. Like, these are just these. These flapper kids. And then, like, the boomers were all commie communist. They were coming to aging colleges. Like, these are communists who won't find a Vietnam and they're lazy. And then they, like, get a 401k and they're like, you know, who's actually a lazy communist? The next set of young people.
- [47:15]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [47:16]
B
It's actually.
- [47:17]
A
It's actually the experts don't want to work and.
- [47:19]
B
Oh, yeah, it's. I mean, it's. It's like, this is like, part and parcel of being an American. Like, I understand they listen to weird music, they wear despicably ugly clothing, and they, you know, have their hair a different way. Way. And too bad. They'll grow up.
- [47:35]
A
It's so true. Amy and I walk around all the time. We're like, the young people, they're just not wearing enough clothing.
- [47:42]
B
It's like, it's both, like, not enough clothing and too much at the same time. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how they pull off their sartorial choices. In a way, I'm both, like, mad and impressed and jealous. Like, I understand what getting old me means. It means I'm alienated when I see someone under 25 and like, wait, what? And at the same time, I can say with enough security that the more different they are from me, the better society is, because the same thing isn't going to work all the time. So I hope they're crazy, poorly dressed, listening to terrible music, people who are studying some weird type of literature at school. I studied some weird type of literature at school. School. Man, can you imagine the look on my dad's face when I was taking a course in Russian and he was like, a person.
- [48:33]
A
Ecofeminism.
- [48:35]
B
Eco feminism. Oh, man, I love it on that Russian course. Not only did I take Russian language my senior year, I took a course on, like, a specific book in Russian literature. And my dad's like, that's how hard college is. You got one book for the whole class.
- [48:50]
A
We went deep.
- [48:51]
B
Yeah, we went. I was like. We went. We're going deep on this book, dad. And he was like, like, okay.
- [48:58]
A
All right. That's it.
- [48:59]
B
That's it. I.
- [49:00]
A
You know, we're at dessert.
- [49:02]
B
We're at dessert, where I get sent back to the kids table for telling my uncle he's just afraid of young people.
- [49:09]
A
Exactly, Exactly.
- [49:13]
B
So back to the kids table where they're making me play hotel like a bluey episode. Maybe what we've learned this Thanksgiving episode is that I'm not always nice.
- [49:28]
A
I have had second thoughts about inviting you to my Thanksgiving.
- [49:32]
B
Listen, listen, listen. So of people that I am blood related to, we are, for the most part, either teachers, salesmen, or lawyers. And so if I'm not explaining and I'm not charming, I am going for the jugular in a very calculated way. And I think maybe lawyer Katherine came out.
- [49:50]
A
I think that that's high school debate Katherine is what I think I heard there.
- [49:56]
B
Oh, man. Just like, this is my next shot.
- [49:58]
A
That's the jugular part.
- [50:00]
B
I don't know. I mean, doesn't everybody go back home and then, like, you immediately revert to being a 15 year old? I guess I am like the know it all debate co captain, you know, even at the, like, metaphorical Thanksgiving table.
- [50:12]
A
Yeah, that was our podcast.
- [50:15]
B
That is our podcast. Yeah. Maybe I came out a little bit harsher or maybe I'm trying to. Passionate. We've said before, being optimistic doesn't make you naive or friendly or nice, especially given the number of executive orders that we're like, don't talk to us. But there is a theme here, which all of these questions come back to people feeling like their life is not fair. The way that unfairness manifests for you and what you latch onto is really personal and can be really hurtful to other people. But, like, we all have the same problem. This economy sucks sometimes. A lot of the times, in a lot of ways. And the way to move forward is let's make the economy more fair.
- [51:04]
A
I think we should tell everybody we'll be back real for real in January, and we are making plans now. And if you're listening to this and you still haven't filled out our listener survey, it's probably still available.
- [51:13]
B
Available. We hope you enjoyed it. We really wanted to. Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving. Oh, should we do what I make my family do and say what we're thankful for, or are you gonna kill me? Everyone, my family I feel like my family is, like, so tired of this, and yet I look forward to it every year.
- [51:29]
A
Sure, sure. What are you thankful for?
- [51:32]
B
Oh, I was not prepared to go first. Sorry.
- [51:36]
A
I think that that's the.
- [51:41]
B
Okay. Sorry, sorry. What I mean is I am thankful, truly thankful. And I can say this from our podcast, Optimist Economy. I can say this as the public Persona Keds economist that I have on every platform, but I can say that I am truly thankful that sometimes people feel like they have something to say, but I am blessed with having. Having people who want to listen. So I am thankful for everyone who has ever given me even a 30 seconds of their time to hear and learn about the economy. Your time is valuable, and I appreciate when you give it to me. Your turn, Robin.
- [52:21]
A
We should just end there. No, I can't follow that.
- [52:23]
B
That's.
- [52:26]
A
You know, I'm thankful you asked me to do this show. I never would have done it, never would have thought of it. I'm thankful that we're still getting along after a year of doing this.
- [52:35]
B
Oh, my God, Robin. I'm going to cry. That means so much, y'. All. I basically tricked her, and I. I was so prepared at the end of the season for Robin to be like, I'm out.
- [52:47]
A
That was fun.
- [52:48]
B
That was fun. Oh. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
- [52:53]
A
Happy Thanksgiving.
- [52:53]
B
Good luck. Good luck at the dinner table. I hope we have given you some good talking points.
- [52:59]
A
Fight those drunkles.
- [53:01]
B
Fight those drunkles.