The Invisible Hand Doesn’t Want to Change Diapers

Summary

Optimist Economy Podcast Summary Episode: The Invisible Hand Doesn’t Want to Change Diapers
Release Date: May 20, 2025
Hosts: Kathryn Anne Edwards and Robin Rauzi

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Introduction and Announcements

The episode kicks off with Katherine and Robin sharing updates and engaging in their signature friendly banter. Robin humorously recounts a listener's review praising the podcast but critiquing its length, to which Katherine responds with playful optimism about potentially expanding to a four-hour format. They emphasize the importance of listener reviews and donations, highlighting platforms like their newsletter and Buy Me a Coffee for audience support.

Notable Quote:
Katherine [00:38]: “Optimist family, you've heard Robin and I struggle in our awkwardness in trying to ask you to give money.”

Recap of Previous Episode

Katherine briefly summarizes the previous episode on fertility, addressing misconceptions about population growth and economic sustainability. She clarifies that while the U.S. population is projected to decline in the next 15-20 years, the economy can remain strong through effective management by institutions like the Federal Reserve.

Notable Quote:
Katherine [03:01]: “Population boost is a tailwind to economic growth, but it's not the only tailwind that we have.”

Defining "Over Index"

The hosts delve into the term "over index," a concept more commonly used in the podcasting world. Katherine explores its meaning, linking it back to its origins in finance and explaining its application in everyday language.

Notable Quote:
Katherine [06:10]: “It has to do with like how things are valued in a composite index.”

Main Topic: Childcare Market Failure

The centerpiece of the episode is an in-depth discussion on the U.S. childcare system, which Katherine argues is a clear case of market failure. They explore the inadequacies in the current system, highlighting the scarcity and high costs of childcare services.

Key Points:

• Types of Childcare Providers: Center-based care, home-based care, and informal care (friends or family).
• Regulatory Constraints: Licensing requirements focus primarily on safety and adult-to-child ratios, not necessarily educational quality.
• Economic Impact: High childcare costs deter parental employment, particularly affecting mothers, which in turn impacts family income and economic inequality.

Notable Quote:
Katherine [12:45]: “We have constraints, we have preferences, and then we have kind of realized outcomes and we have this tendency to conflate what women do with what women want.”

Challenges in Reforming Childcare

Robin and Katherine discuss the complexities involved in reforming the childcare system, emphasizing that solutions aren't straightforward due to intertwined issues like paid family leave and preschool availability.

Key Points:

• Preschool vs. Infant Care: Expanding free preschool can inadvertently drive up costs for infant care, exacerbating the market failure.
• Paid Family Leave: Universal paid family leave is essential but requires extensive policy coordination and funding models to avoid negative incentives, such as employer discrimination against women of childbearing age.

Notable Quote:
Katherine [21:00]: “You can't get childcare until you get everybody to agree on preschool and paid family leave.”

Policy Proposals and Solutions

Katherine introduces her proposal for a "Child Development System," a federally funded universal childcare system that integrates early childhood, after-school, and summer programs. She argues that the infrastructure and financial mechanisms already exist, and with proper assembly and funding, a comprehensive system can be implemented.

Key Points:

• Federal and State Roles: Proposes direct federal funding to localities instead of state-governed distribution to better address localized needs.
• Community Involvement: Encourages community-based solutions involving churches, community centers, and immigrant groups to provide diverse and culturally relevant childcare services.
• Cost Estimates: Universal childcare might cost around $500 billion over a decade, which is relatively modest compared to other large-scale government expenditures like the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act.

Notable Quote:
Katherine [33:22]: “We don’t need to build a system, we need to assemble it and augment it.”

Economic and Social Benefits

The hosts highlight the numerous benefits of investing in universal childcare, including improved educational outcomes, increased workforce participation, and reduced economic inequality.

Key Points:

• Educational Advantage: Well-supported early childhood programs lead to better school readiness and long-term academic success.
• Economic Growth: Enabling more parents, especially women, to participate in the workforce boosts overall economic productivity.
• Social Equity: Universal childcare helps bridge the kindergarten readiness gap, providing all children with a fair start regardless of their socioeconomic background.

Notable Quote:
Katherine [51:12]: “The gulf between how kids show up to kindergarten is so wide. To me, it's a gross economic failure that we would not shield kids more than we do from the inequalities of their parents.”

Optimistic Solutions and Future Outlook

Katherine and Robin conclude with an optimistic vision for the future, underscoring that with the right policies and community engagement, significant improvements in the childcare system are achievable. They emphasize the readiness of states and localities to implement these changes, especially in the wake of the pandemic's lessons.

Key Points:

• Shovel-Ready Projects: Many states have existing frameworks and funding mechanisms that can be leveraged to expand universal childcare.
• Community-Based Initiatives: Empowering local communities to oversee and manage childcare services can ensure that solutions are tailored to specific needs.
• Balanced Policy Design: Advocating for a two-tiered system for paid family leave to accommodate diverse personal and economic circumstances.

Notable Quote:
Katherine [45:26]: “If you were to have a dollar amount that was attached to the care of a kid that was equal across licensed and unlicensed care, you cannot be blind to the fact that low income moms do not have the same autonomy as high income moms.”

Concluding Thoughts and Executive Orders

In their signature closing segment, the hosts share playful "executive orders" reflecting their personal interests and frustrations. They wrap up by expressing gratitude to their production team and reaffirming their commitment to fostering an optimistic economic future.

Notable Quotes:
Katherine [54:32]: “We also do not have any financial sponsors as of yet, although we do have many supporters who have given us their money to support the production of the show.”

Robin [57:01]: “My executive order is much simpler, which is if you're a band and you go on a farewell tour, you only get to do that once.”

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Final Takeaways

• Childcare as a Market Failure: The current U.S. childcare system fails to provide adequate, affordable, and accessible services, necessitating comprehensive policy intervention.
• Integrated Solutions Needed: Effective reform requires simultaneous advancements in preschool expansion, paid family leave, and the creation of universal childcare systems.
• Economic and Social Uplift: Investing in childcare not only supports working families but also fosters long-term economic growth and social equity.
• Optimistic Path Forward: With existing infrastructure and community support, the transformation of the childcare system is within reach, paving the way for a more equitable and prosperous economy.

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For more insights and discussions, visit optimisteconomy.com and consider supporting the podcast through their subscription platforms.

Transcript

[Katherine]

All right, we're doing this fam.

[Robin]

Let's do it.

[Katherine]

Let's do it.

[Robin]

Let's do it. We sound so excited. Let's do it.

[Katherine]

Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Katherine.

[Robin]

I'm Robin.

[Katherine]

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. All right, I think we have a couple announcements. Robin, what's yours?

[Robin]

Well, first, I want to say we've gotten some really, really nice reviews on Apple podcasts. And if you like the show and you want us to keep doing it, it'd be great if you would review us there. But this review came in last week. That said, I enjoy the quote. In the beginning, creatures emerged from the slime answers I sometimes am accused of explaining, but I feel the history of a very important. My only critique is that the show could be longer. I normally listen at one and a quarter speed and the current length format flies by. To which I'm like, first of all, fella, just slow it down if you want it to be longer. Second of all, do not encourage her.

[Katherine]

Oh, my God.

[Robin]

Four hours.

[Katherine]

I just. I feel the wind beneath my wings.

[Robin]

You feel seen.

[Katherine]

I feel so seen. Oh, man, I can't wait for our four hour podcast session. Thank you for those very kind words from that reviewer and everyone who has reviewed and said nice things. If you reviewed and said not nice things, like, okay, okay, I think that.

[Robin]

That keeps us real. Yeah, it keeps it real.

[Katherine]

A5.0 average is gonna look like you are inflated.

[Robin]

Yeah, you've gamed it. Anyway, leave us a review. We'd love it. Thanks.

[Katherine]

We would love it. My announcement was is actually another shout out to our listener base, which is that, yeah, optimist family, you've heard Robin and I struggle in our awkwardness in trying to ask you to give money. And I just want to particularly shout out the number of you who wrote in to encourage us to get better at it. To get better at it. The people who gave us advice, like detailed advice, was I. I was so touched of like, listen, you can do this now. Am I going to listen to that advice right now? I don't have it in front of me, but they were encouraging. You know, if you believe in us, we will take a donation. We have two ways of doing that. Through our newsletter and through Buy Me a Coffee. We've received donations from it. It could be 10 dol. We would love it. It supports the production of the show. It supports Payne, Sophie and Andy primarily.

[Robin]

Which is why this show is audible.

[Katherine]

Which is why you can listen because Sophie makes us sound good. So that is what we use the money for. And we are, you know, it is one part in Ask for Money, but another part to join our community [e-mail] and we try to share morsels and tidbits and our thoughts in between what will now be a four and a half hour long podcast.

[Robin]

Also, we're posting letters to the editor and if you would like to send a letter in response to a specific episode on thoughts you have, we've gotten really nice, thoughtful letters. Send them to optimist economymail.com okay, well.

[Katherine]

Let'S dive right into retcon, retroactive continuity.

[Robin]

So thoughts on our previous episode?

[Katherine]

Our previous episode was on fertility, which we said at the start was a bit of a weird topic for us because it's not necessarily a problem or something that we should consider being solved as it involves the choices of families and whether to have children. But that doesn't mean we do it right or that we can't make it easier. So that is what we talked about last time. And I think I, how do I say this? I think I accidentally freaked some people out that unless the population grows to infinity, we won't get to have an economy. And that's certainly not true. That's on me and that's my bad. You don't need to worry about that. The US population is actually projected to start declining in absolute terms in about 15 to 2020 years. Population boost is a tailwind to economic growth, but it's not the only tailwind that we have. So, no, it is not meant to instill panic. It will require kind of different economic policies and different economic environments, but not insurmountable. It doesn't mean doom. We can have a smaller or shrinking population and still have a very strong economy. And given that we're the U.S. the U.S. has the best economic management system in the world, and that's the Federal Reserve. And when we have the best independent bank of all of them, so we, we have aces up our sleeves. I would put all my money on us having, even in a world with a shrinking population, the strongest economy still.

[Robin]

I was looking through the notes that I had taken before our fertility episode and I just thought I would throw out there that women without children on average earn $4,232 versus $3,407 per month.

[Katherine]

I mean, that's over women who do have children.

[Robin]

Yeah, yeah. So it's not, you know, it's whatever that is. 20. Don't make me do math live on the air. But 20, 25% more or something, It's a sizable amount.

[Katherine]

And again, that's a two way street of women pulling back from the labor market and commitments to career as well as career pushing women out. What I would always stress is that we have constraints, we have preferences, and then we have kind of realized outcomes and we have this tendency to conflate what women do with what women want. And we know enough from the constraints and barriers that women face that that's, that's not a reasonable assumption in the slightest. Even if you know what women are currently doing, that's still not going to be an indication of what women necessarily want to do. Because if you're backed into a corner, it's not like you really ever had a choice.

[Robin]

Yeah, I realize that this is in some ways it's like our third episode in a row about children. We did child labor and then fertility and now childcare here in a minute. But before we do that, let's do terms and conditions. Looks like you have a term.

[Katherine]

I looked up one that I've heard really only ever used in the podcast world, which is over index. And I've heard it a lot. And the way that I've heard it in conversation is people saying I'm like I'm over indexed on podcast or I'm over indexed on this thing. And it kind of felt like it meant that they're in really deep or that they over consume something of like I'm over indexed on this.

[Robin]

I take that to be like, you know, over subscribed, oversubscribed. You have subscribed to too many podcasts, by the way. You can always add one more.

[Katherine]

You can always add one more. You can always add this one. Yeah, absolutely, Robin, that's a great point. You can't become over indexed on podcast about the economy or optimism that are co hosted by two women that have an optimistic bent. You can't become over indexed about that. That's what every dictionary said. But what I thought was interesting is that I tried to look up over indexed meant and it was a lot of definitions and none of them were really consistent.

[Robin]

Thanks for bringing clarity to our listeners on this.

[Katherine]

And that's it. That's all I got. No, I mean like there was an.

[Robin]

Is this not like from index funds? That kind of thing, like where you've got too many stocks and not enough bonds or something.

[Katherine]

Yeah, so apparently, I mean, it has its own urban dictionary definition, which is Where I knew I was like, oh, I'm in too deep here. So it has like a technical term that comes from finance. And then they said economics. And I was like, well, hell, don't tell people you had to look it up if apparently it's an economic thing. But yeah, it has to do with like how things are valued in. In a composite index. And the example that they brought up was the change in the big thing was actually caused by a small change that was overweighted. I don't know, like if you're shopping for an apartment, like you over index on windows, floors or wood floors and lighting and you're not over indexing on like how loud the neighbors are or something like that. So you're putting too much emphas as someone variable. But this, I was just how this came from. It's a way that you have constructed a composite and an index, like the consumer price index to how you weight things to decision making to this own kind of podcast terminology of I'm over indexed on something means I almost like I could consume too much of it.

[Robin]

Yeah, no, I can see that. It's like that's how I'm ingesting my news or whatever and I do it too much in this one form instead of reading newspapers like a good American citizen should or watching the CBS Sunday Morning like everyone in my family but me does. No one in my family understands why I don't love and watch CBS Sunday Morning.

[Katherine]

Really? You're cbs? I come from a Meet the Press family big time.

[Robin]

It's like they think I'm adopted because I don't watch CBS Sunday Morning, but they like it for the optimism, which is also hilarious in that I'm the one that doesn't watch it.

[Katherine]

Okay, well, that's actually fair. I don't know if I'm taking your family side. I'm just saying I see them. But it's kind of fun to watch a world a word evolve in real time time as it's co opted by this like it's a clearly a podcast user thing. Anyway, this is my attempt as an economist who looks things up to connect with all of you podcast listeners. I hope it went well. You should see me at dinner parties. I'm great.

[Robin]

Speaking of you and your word play because you said that your nickname on your debate team was W for George W. Bush, who was known for his malapropisms. I looked up malaprop because I thought that it came from the French. Right, Meaning inappropriate mal apropos. My French is not good.

[Katherine]

So that's interesting that you say that, because I have always pronounced it malapropism.

[Robin]

Maybe it is. Again, I'm a person who learned words by reading them, which is a bit of a problem.

[Katherine]

And I learned them in Texas. We are not in a good place.

[Robin]

But it comes from a play. And there was a character who used the wrong word often. A word that would sound sort of like the real. The right word, but would be particularly funny. And the character's name was Mrs. Malaprop. And that is where the term comes from. It's from a play.

[Katherine]

I usually think if I had to weigh high school nicknames, W probably beats Mrs. Malaprop. So I'm gonna stay grateful for W, even though at the time it could be.

[Robin]

It was a devastating burn, I bet.

[Katherine]

Yeah, it was a great burn. I'm trying to think of what the best. I remember a few of them. The one that really got me in trouble was when I was debating in front of the class and I said obli duties instead of obligations and duties. And I put them together and like a forced, incorrect, yeah, big pot. It's very much a big pot moment. But I said obli duties. I actually think in the same speech, I also said studies instead of students duties. So duties was clearly a word that I've really never said since.

[Robin]

You know, it's cause your brain is moving faster than your tongue can. It's just. It happens.

[Katherine]

So to our listener, who wants more of this, you want me at full speed, brother, you got to prepare yourself. Oh, yeah. So our centerpiece from today's show, as Robin already hinted at, is we are going to talk about childcare.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

It would be helpful to do some basic landscaping, especially for people who don't.

[Robin]

Haven't faced the market recently, who haven't.

[Katherine]

Sold their soul to the local childcare provider down the street like my family has. I think of this childcare center where I have had a kid for five years now. And I think of the hot dog guy that follows Homer Simpson around. And throughout episodes, he'll just show up with hot dogs and Homer will buy them. And Marge is like, do you follow him? And he's like, lee, he's putting my kids through college. So right now we have the private provision of childcare, where if you would like childcare, you go and buy it on the open market. And the people who provide childcare basically provide it to you, where they charge you enough to cover their cost and meet your needs. We would say that this market is in failure because there aren't enough childcare spots in the US and the ones that we have are too expensive. So it's neither adequately provided or accessible and affordable. And the other reason why we know the childcare market is in failure is because nothing about that will change. Like AI is not going to do anything for childcare. Automation, you know, economies of scale, just in time delivery, like new supply chains. Nothing will change childcare. It's going in one direction, which has become more expensive and less affordable. So childcare in the US spans 0 to 5 because you have to be 5 to start kindergarten. The cutoffs in the fall. So from zero to before kindergarten are in childcare if you have care. The US has some very light touch intervention into child care. It's got Head Start, which is a federally funded provider. It skips right over state governments and goes straight to the provider for childcare for a set of very low income kids. And then it has for some low income families, not all of the ones who are eligible. Some get a voucher that's distributed to state governments for them to distribute to families. And the voucher helps defray the cost of childcare. But for the most part it is a pure market. You pay someone to look after your kids, they are selling care to you. What I would say it is in market failure. This is a failed, not necessarily experiment, but we have a lot of data and evidence to say that the private provision of childcare is a market failure.

[Robin]

Do you have any sense of how many kids are in what kinds of care or like what the rough ratios are?

[Katherine]

Yeah, the data isn't great, but the types of childcare providers we have in the paid space is we have kind of the center based care. So this is in a facility, could be in the ground floor of an apartment building, you know, in an employer's office. You were at a center and we have center based care. You have home based care where it's someone in their house operates a daycare center, often in like one floor or on a basement. You have a home based care. Those are typically licensed and they have to meet regulatory requirements that's set by the locality and state. And those licensing requirements are mostly about staffing levels.

[Robin]

You can't have 20 kids and like two adults.

[Katherine]

Yeah, it's called the ratios. You've got to meet the ratios. They've got to have enough adults to little people and the adults to little people changes with the age of the little people. So I think for most places it's like 4 to 1 for infants, but you could be like 8 to 1 for a 5 year old, it's just for safety. You just. Kids cannot keep themselves alive if left to their own devices. And you've got to have an adult there watching them and they can't be watching too many. So they have stricter ratio requirements than they do education requirements. I will say that for most localities.

[Robin]

Just keep them safe. If they learn something, great.

[Katherine]

Yeah. A lot of them is like, please keep them safe. So then on the other side you have informally provided care. So this would be external to the family, like a friend or neighbor that watches your kids and then you have the family provided care that's like a grandma. And then you have. Right, you'd have the mom or the dad staying home. Most people are going to consume often more than one type of care. So like you have your kid in childcare, but you also have like a neighbor pick them up and watch them in the evening. Kids are in a lot of different situations because there's a lot of need to be met and you can't afford to pay for all of it. So the evidence on childcare, I think we don't have to spend that much time on it. It's not necessarily that interesting. But the more expensive the childcare, the less likely the mom will work. The cheaper the childcare or the freer the childcare, the more likely the mom will work. It makes a huge difference to family income and earnings to have a working parent. And I mean what's really sad about it is that if you look at studies of the quality of care from whatever type from center from family, because there's also nannies and friend or family. Really the underlying trend is the more education and income that the mom has, the better situation for the kid. No matter what type of provider or situation that the kid is in.

[Robin]

Oh, interesting.

[Katherine]

You know, so if I have a center based care and I'm rich, or if I have home based or if I have a nanny or if I'm leaving them with a neighbor, like I will have enough resources to guarantee that it's the highest quality possible. But it is a luxury to have that. So I think there's like a cultural argument about childcare that's I find to be more of a distraction and also uninteresting.

[Robin]

Oh, just what? That mothers should stay home with their kids? Like that's.

[Katherine]

Yeah, yeah. Like should mothers stay home? Like yeah. Two thirds of women with kids under six are working. Like not really. It's a distraction. Oh my God. A strawman.

[Robin]

It's a straw man.

[Katherine]

Yes, yes. It's a straw man. We did it. Rock it. Oh my gosh. And it is. Yes. Oh my God. Wow. What a full circle moment. It's a straw man.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

And I think the real tension behind what is stopping this failed market that the government doesn't really necessarily prop up, but did in the pandemic, the real argument is less about should mothers be working? And it's much more a step deeper than that. That's kind of superficial. And from the 50s, it's really a step deeper. And if I could characterize, say, what is the fight on childcare kind of inside the family versus outside the family. Outside the family you think it's about? J.D. vance doesn't think women should work. I mean, inside the childcare space, there are a couple fights. First, think of kids from age 0 to 5.

[Robin]

Sure.

[Katherine]

01, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are actually dramatically different ages.

[Robin]

Yeah, no kidding.

[Katherine]

And there's big consensus that preschool, which would start at age 3 and go from age 3 to 4 and 4 to 5, that preschool is great. People love.

[Robin]

Everyone loves it. Everyone loves it.

[Katherine]

Yeah, it was super popular. It has incredible evidence behind it. Early literacy, early numeracy. A lot of localities are moving into the preschool space, led by Washington D.C. which has two years of free preschool for every kid in the city.

[Robin]

Preschool is popular, drives up property values. I'm just gonna say like in like the suburbs of la, where they have free preschool, like, oh yeah, well if.

[Katherine]

Childcare cost 2 grand a month, you're saving families $50,000 by offering free preschool. Like I'd pay, you know, $50,000 more for a house because I could and I'd get free preschool. Yeah, it's a, it's a huge mover for families. But that creates a problem. It's like a little bit of a domino or house, not house of cards. Save it for next time. Whatever metaphor I just fucking struggle to get around. If you just took all the three and four year olds in the US and put them in high quality free preschool, the zero to three childcare market would collapse because many providers span zero to five. And infant care is so expensive and five year old care is relatively cheap that they cross subsidize tuition across the age group. So if you take off the cheapest kids, they'd have to dramatically increase the price of childcare. And in fact that did happen in Washington D.C. to the point that the city is now continuing to intervene in the childcare market.

[Robin]

And even though childcare centers, I mean, they already charge more for infants. Right.

[Katherine]

They Already charge more for infants, but.

[Robin]

It would be even more.

[Katherine]

Yeah, it would be even higher. So that's, that's the first problem is that if you move for preschool, you're accelerating the market failure decline of 0 to 3. Well, then you enter this other problem, which is that 0 to 3 is something that we have less consensus on where kids should be on the early side. On the 0 year olds. We don't have paid family leave. A quarter of private sector workers have paid family leave, and some of them it's only for four to six weeks. So if you were gonna like fix childcare, you actually have to do a bunch of things at the same time. Like you have to go in and create preschool. That's one. You have to go in and create universal paid family leave for the 0 year olds. But then you end up with this big question mark in the middle of when paid family leave should end and what care should look like until three. And it's this like zero to question mark, question mark to three. This is where so much of the tension is on childcare.

[Robin]

It seems like a Rubik's cube or something. If you can't, you can't get childcare until you get everybody to agree on paid family leave.

[Katherine]

Yeah. You can't get childcare until you get everybody to agree on preschool and paid family leave. And you'd have to basically do all three at the same time.

[Robin]

Right. This will be in the big family bill we talked about, but not at.

[Katherine]

Exactly the same time. But like, you couldn't, you know, paid sick days. I said you could drop that into the labor market and you'd be fine.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

This other stuff, you really couldn't drop in.

[Robin]

Yeah. Well, and also because you have to like build the capacity, which isn't necessarily there yet.

[Katherine]

That's a whole other thing. I mean, that's like, we'd have to agree on what we want to do and then we'd have to build the capacity. So the. I think the real fight is in the friend and family space of you aren't a licensed center, you aren't a licensed home provider, but you are watching children. Should you be paid by the federal government? Like in this new world where the federal government is paying for everyone's childcare because the market's a failure, so they're going to pay for the provision. Is the federal government going to pay unlicensed friend and family care providers for looking at kids?

[Robin]

Can I, can I just. Sorry, I don't want to derail this.

[Katherine]

Could derail it.

[Robin]

Girlfriend Okay, I know that there are. I mean, so your daycare center, that's fairly sizable. As multiple employees, they have to be licensed. You're hiring a retired lady down the street to be the childcare provider. Not licensed. But there's this gray zone in between. Like the federal government doesn't say you have to be licensed. Is it states that are insisting you be licensed?

[Katherine]

I'm pretty sure that.

[Robin]

Or localities.

[Katherine]

It's states and localities that do the licensing. It might be that to get child development block grant funds, which is the federal money that the states get to support childcare, they might have some licensing strings attached. But like most things federal, the federal government floor is gonna be a floor. And it's states and localities that are putting these in. So some states do have voucher spending on grandma care. Like if you are having a hard time finding it, or in certain situations, like there is already a mechanism from public dollars going to friend or family care.

[Robin]

Okay.

[Katherine]

It's just how widespread and uniform that should be, I think so.

[Robin]

It's interesting that, like even in the group of people who would advocate for more childcare being available and it agrees that this is a good thing, that the fights are so vicious about exactly what it should look like and who should get paid how much.

[Katherine]

And the paid family leave people don't agree on the length of paid family leave. Like should it be 12 weeks, should it be a year? And then the chart, That's a big span. It's a huge span. And the childcare people don't agree if friend or family should be paid. And if it's paid, should it be paid to the same level of a licensed care center? I will say I get in trouble a lot about this because I'm a heartless economist. And what I point out is that incentives matter a ton. I don't actually have a lot of friends necessarily in the childcare space for this reason. But if you were to have a dollar amount that was attached to the care of a kid that was equal across licensed and unlicensed care, you cannot be blind to the fact that low income moms do not have the same autonomy as high income moms. What I point out in the incentives problem is one, if you pay unlicensed and licensed care the same, you disincentivize licensed care.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

So like I want to start a childcare business, but I have to follow a bunch of licensing and then they're going to check the outcomes of the kid to make sure I'm doing a good job. Or I just tell Everyone to say I'm their family and friend and I get paid just as much. So you'd basically be like cannibalizing the licensed space by equally endorsing friend or family. So it certainly shouldn't be as much money from that perspective. And then the other problem is that if you put a dollar amount on it, you could be pressured to keep that money in the family and not put the kid in care. It's like, Well, I get 500 bucks a month for watching your kid, so don't put them in care, keep the kid with me. Cause 500 bucks a month, 1,000 bucks a month, and that's a lot of money. I think I'm the bad guy in the room because I point out, however much we want to make all care paid and all care is equal and every type of care should be treated the same way. The federal government shouldn't decide the best type of care. Not all care has the same really problematic incentive problems as paying friend or family care. So this is not an easy question. I luckily get to hide behind being an economist, so I get to have just this one opinion about it based on incentives and design. But I mean, the same thing happens on the paid family leave side. Have people who are like, look, paid family leave needs to be a year, it's gotta be a year. Infants need a year with their parents. We can have some backup for people who can't do it, or maybe something happens. But like, you know, paid family leave needs to be a year. What happens to their health insurance? Yeah, are you gonna have employers pay for health insurance for a year for someone who's not working for them? If you say yes, I'm telling you, you're gonna see massive discrimination against women of childbearing age. And you'll see it in their wages and their hiring. Why would I hire a 35 year old woman? I'm gonna have to subsidize her for years. She has three kids. That's three years of health insurance I have to pay for. I mean, this gets really rough. And then a friend of mine who works in health insurance, who's very good at it, told me you and your employer both buy a new car every year.

[Robin]

Oh, easily.

[Katherine]

It's just the amount of money that you spend on private health insurance premiums, even in an employer sponsored plan, it's so much money. And so even paid family leave, having an employer keep Your job for 12 weeks is different than six months, and that's different than a year. I will say paid family leave will likely be paid for in a social insurance model that's like Social Security, where everybody in the US Contributes part of their paycheck to paid family leave and then you make a claim on it. So employers aren't necessarily paying for your wage, but you're making paid family leave costly to them by protecting the job and demanding health insurance.

[Robin]

Health insurance. And I don't know that, you know, health insurance is so expensive. We have no. I mean, we're going to probably get into this more in future episodes.

[Katherine]

Another market failure that's going to collapse for sure.

[Robin]

Right?

[Katherine]

Yeah.

[Robin]

And we got a really nice letter that I'm going to post later today about how the lack of paid sick days contributes to overburdening the healthcare system. Because when people don't have the ability to take a day off, like how that ripples through. It ripples through that they have to go. She's saying, go to get a note from a doctor that says they were really sick. And so they have to go to urgent care to get this note so they don't get fired from their job. But the same thing is true with health insurance and childcare that you have to really pay attention to how much your employer is putting in on behalf of your health insurance. Because they used to say overhead was 30%. I bet it's higher.

[Katherine]

Yeah. So this is where, like, sure, strawman cultural argument, but really, we have so many different types of care. Who should the federal government pay for? Yeah, that is the ultimate question. It's not should we have childcare? We should. Do we need childcare? We do. Can anyone else afford childcare by the federal government? Not really. So I think this is the question that's behind the question of childcare. Is this. I wouldn't say it's necessarily the whole fight, but it's definitely there. People have super strong opinions. And it's the reason why I would say maybe the childcare advocacy space is not perfectly united.

[Robin]

Right. In fact, it sounds like bitterly divided.

[Katherine]

I think for some people it's bitter. I have been called out for having this opinion on incentives before. And actually it was in a group conversation at a conference. And one woman, she was so nice, she was trying so hard to defend me as people were getting enraged by what I said. And she goes, listen, you have to understand, she's an economist. And I was like, I just burst out laughing. And she was like, no, I mean, but I mean it in a nice way. And I was like, yeah, yeah. But I think the optimism here, like, this is a tough question. And I don't. And this is a question where I would go back and say like childcare advocates don't necessarily have an answer. I don't know if America has an answer. Yeah, like it's, this is something. And polling people tend to be really torn on, like well, yeah, children do best with parents at home, but also I'm not paying someone to stay there. So like we don't have necessarily policy coherent views on childcare because it's like. Yeah, on a survey or poll, Americans are like queens of having their cake and eating it too. Yeah, like stay home, I'm not paying for you. Also, if you don't have a husband, get a job. So like you make those three things work.

[Robin]

Exactly.

[Katherine]

But I think the good news is because of our experience in the pandemic with the federal government coming in, because of how much experience states got in propping up their childcare centers and playing around with a lot of federal money, y' all, this is like talk about shovel ready. Like we are ready for a universal childcare system. States are ready, localities are ready. That doesn't mean there won't be problems, but it's like there are some problems that we would much prefer having than the ones we have than the one we have. Now.

[Robin]

Tell me about, what do you mean by when you say that these programs are shovel ready? I mean explain that.

[Katherine]

Okay, so this is actually kind of fun for me. This was a client project that I did as. I actually wrote a blue sky report about how to have. I called it the Child Development System. And it is a universal federally funded child care after school summer system called the Child Development System. And it's Basically the like 0 to 5 years old, 3 to 5pm June, July, August program for children that they all go to and would be free for them.

[Robin]

So it fills the gaps of all of these.

[Katherine]

Yeah. So I think of it as like the public school system is an immovable object and the labor market is an unstoppable force and they will never meet to have kids in school year round from 8:30 to 5:30. Right. Like something like parents have to make up the difference between these two places. And it's the early ages, the after school and the summer. And so we should just have federally funded child development system that takes these three things and put it into a coherent system that focuses on enrichment, development, child led growth, mental health and well being. Kind of like a non academic. So academics does a lot of that stuff after school. Summer and early childhood would be kind of like the compliment where it can do some academics, but it's focusing more on development and growth. And so I put them all together in a system and the whole report is me trying to convince people that this would be easy. You're a lot better. Your laughter is, I think, telling me a lot. But I don't think it's as hard as people think it is because we have this smattering of private providers in every one of these spaces, including early childhood, where you've got providers distributed throughout the country serving local communities, but we don't have enough of them. And you have federal mechanisms for giving states and localities money for child care. All of them are underfunded.

[Robin]

Right.

[Katherine]

So we have dollars going, yeah, yeah, they're there, the money's there. They have people they talk to. And then at the same time you have for the past 10 years a practitioner space in estimating the reimbursement rate of care. Okay, so if you were to tell me like, forget what the market charges, how much does it cost to take care of a four year old in a center in D.C. versus how much does it cost to take care of a two year old in a home based care in Idaho? We actually have a ton of research and work on how to estimate that. So you put these three things.

[Robin]

So we don't have the estimates, we just have the methods.

[Katherine]

Oh no, we have tons of estimates.

[Robin]

Okay.

[Katherine]

The federal government estimates it. A lot of states have kind of started to estimate it. And then you have a ton of advocates who are estimating it using this. It's called the provider cost of quality PCOQ obvi. But they use this method to advocate in their state to be like, look, the provider cost of quality says it costs $35,000 to put an infant in care in our state. And this is how much your childcare voucher is. And so because it's become such a useful advocacy tool, it's gotten a lot of people use it. And yes, there are lots of $am attached. And I think DC has the longest running official estimates of how much the provider cost of quality is. So we've got providers, we've got federal.

[Robin]

We know how much it should cost. We have wire transfer ability to get money from one another.

[Katherine]

Yeah, the wire transfer setup. We know how much we should be paying per age, per type of provider, and we have a bunch of providers. So what I argue is that we don't need to build a system, we need to assemble it and augment it. Like we've got to just link these pieces together through a broad Comprehensive federal funds. And I mean, you all would be surprised if the federal government's like, hey, we're going to pay for all your childcare. You'd be surprised how fast states could act. But it's a lot closer than you think because you think of this like, broken market that's not serving anyone that well, that cost a fortune. But the infrastructure is there to have of basically a distributed childcare system in which anyone who meets, licensing and has kids gets reimbursed by the federal government for the care they provide based on the number of kids they watch and their ages. And all of it is regulated by states and localities.

[Robin]

Right. It's interesting. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of the fight over Medicare expansion and the Affordable Care act, which is that states might drag their feet on it because they, they have an objection to federal intervention in private markets or whatever their objection would be, but the people are going to demand it. I mean, and you just saw that again and again in unexpected states where voters said to their state leaders, we want Medicare expansion or Medicaid. Medicaid expansion.

[Katherine]

Yeah, yeah. I think that this one would have a much broader constituent base than Medicaid because this is something where like, employers could get reimbursed for providing care on site. For providing care on site.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

Right.

[Robin]

What a game changer.

[Katherine]

Yeah. Forget nine to five office employers. I mean, think if you run a police department, you run emergency services, you have a factory that runs overnight. I mean, like, think of how hard it is to find care 9 to 5. What do you do at 5:45 when there's basically no childcare in the United States? So, I mean, it's. So what I did say kind of snuck this in there on the kind of thinking of the Medicaid expansion is that if the locality is big enough or wants to, they should get the federal grants directly. And I was thinking of principal cities like New York and LA and Chicago that are basically like, they are larger than their state, at least in New York's case. And so they're their own small country. Don't send money to Albany to send to New York City. Like send money directly to New York City. Same thing with Chicago, because the needs of big cities are very different than the needs of like a geography of rural areas. And the state of Colorado is actually doing this where they're probably, other than New Mexico, the state farthest along and most aggressive about expanding childcare. And they're going. They passed a bill to expand childcare and they had a bunch of People basically like meet and talk about what they wanted it to look like. And one of the decisions they came to is that they would like to have like self identified localities basically oversee care in their space. And their locality could be like five rural counties or it could be like south Denver. It's just like it's such a small community level problem that they wanted community level control. And so the way that I kind of put it into the paper or to this idea was you should let certain localities go directly to the federal government if they're large enough and they want to have non state control.

[Robin]

I mean, that makes a lot of sense too, because the patterns by which people move between where they live and where they work. I mean it's the same thing with the transit. Right. That you don't have just the bus line in LA doesn't stop at the border of Pasadena or Glendale. Right. Like you have region, there are regional problems or sometimes there are sub regional solutions. That's interesting.

[Katherine]

Yeah, I mean, I think about this a lot with Houston that, I mean it's a city that has a lot of ideas and, and yeah, the governor hates it. Yeah, he really does. I mean, we just had an active takeover of the school system. He doesn't like the county executor. It's a lot of conflict. If you were gonna have universal childcare in the city of Houston, does that need to go through a state government that has been actively attacking it? Does Houston and Dallas and El Paso need the same thing? And do they need the same thing as Corpus? This is such a small, intimate problem of having the right care in the.

[Robin]

Right place at the right time.

[Katherine]

Well, I mean the idea is that you want to build up an ecosystem of like, it's not just establishing care providers, but like building this development system for the kids in your community, like who provides aftercare, who provides summer care. And so one of the examples that they talked about in this space was like, you could imagine like an immigrant community center or a church where like they would love to have an early childhood center and then open up for after school, like host kids for the summer or like, you know, an immigrant kind of community center that like they one day a week provide after school, where they teach the, you know, kind of like mother tongue. If that's, I mean, I hope that's not offensive to say.

[Robin]

I have no idea.

[Katherine]

Yeah, I have no idea. But like you can learn the foreign language and like, or you, you learn like it's a cooking class. That all has to do with like the Traditional cooking of the immigrant community. Like you, you, you know, you get to be really creative when you're not hung up, up on how much should grandmas get paid. Right. Like, you get to think like so much more creatively of like, yes, that is a hard question and I'm not trying to minimize that. But like we could have a much better set of problems of like, you know, how many churches are in this space. And I mean, I think a lot of institutions like churches and community centers and immigrant groups, I mean, I think that they would love to be a participant in what is essentially a community around children as opposed to a for profit care space.

[Robin]

Yeah, that's a really, I mean, you know, I was.

[Katherine]

It's a different world. I mean the thing is that it's, I think what's so hard about it is like, yeah, there's these, all these like small questions about what we have now and how we transition out of it. But like we are building a different world for children. That is the goal, right? I mean, yes, I'm a heartless economist, as I've said many times on this program, but like, yeah, I want my little worker box at their desk earning money and moving their family income above public program participation and paying taxes at the end of the year. I want all of those things. But that doesn't transform the economy. What transforms the economy is changing childhood for the better and giving kids throughout their childhood stability and community. We can do that. And I know some people would be like, federal government can't do that. You know what, I give them a lot of money and I bet they could.

[Robin]

Yeah, yeah. You know, granted, not an expert, not even an economist, but I did serve on the sort of governing board of my local church here. And there was a lot of people who really wanted us to have a preschool at that location. And it was, you know, it is complicated, but if there is money but also a force within, whether it's the city or the state or the region, to encourage it and to show people the path through it, there would be a preschool.

[Katherine]

Yeah, I think a lot of churches feel that way, a lot of institutions feel that way. And it's beneficial to have early childhood development, but there are needs of older children too. And there's this evidence based practice here called positive Youth development. And Positive Youth development is basically kind of like the research summary of things that we think help kids become resilient adults. And one of the things that they stress is the importance of community and non parent mentors and that a lot of kids really struggle to find either a sense of community. They struggle to find a sense of place. And they don't necessarily feel like they belong somewhere. And so that the idea of having a through line through your life, of institutions that you go to outside of school that focus on things like development enrichment, is a way to incorporate this idea of positive youth development into kind of the regularity of every child's life in America. So it's. I mean, it's really. The possibilities get really. They get really big and they get really hopeful. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's gonna be awesome.

[Robin]

I'm suddenly remembering, like, we had YABCs.

[Katherine]

YABCs. No, tell me about it.

[Robin]

YABCs was at the local YMCA when I was a kid. And it was. Yeah, it was like a preschool program part day. Among other things, we learned to swim, which was really useful, but there was also games. And I still have friends who I went to YABC's with. And also a fondness for the YMCA, you know.

[Katherine]

Yeah. And the summer camp. People talk about this a lot. And I mean, it was actually, I shouldn't call them the people, but people who are in the after school space or the summer space will tell you that it's also nice to have kids have a space to try things out that they can't fail. Right. Like, you can fail school, but you can fail a standardized test, but you can't fail summer camp. You can't fail after school. You can't fail childcare, for that matter. And that the idea is that it's a balance of, yeah, we want to make sure the kids are developing, but we also want to balance out the increasingly high stakes world of education and testing. And so my thought was that if you bridge all these together, you can start to create kind of like vertical community institutions around children to help bridge a sense of community. I can be really dismissive of, like, all the early childhood stuff. I'm like, yo, you give them money per kid. Like, how hard is this? The state government says you're licensed, they inspect you. The federal government writes you a check, you take the kids, like, bada boom, bada bing, what are we waiting on? On some level, this is so clear in my mind that I know that I'm being stupid about it because I'm like, whew. This seems actually quite easy. I mean, the hard parts would be building up the number of providers. But again, one of those problems that money is really good at solving. So I kind of envisioned it as you have childcare money for reimbursement. And then you basically have like a startup fund that states get to apportion out or localities apportion out, that they're like, all right, well we need like five more centers here. And like they help construct it and they get money to help build it. And we basically build up this infrastructure that already exists, but we just kind of do it.

[Robin]

Build it out as needed.

[Katherine]

Build it out.

[Robin]

And I think people don't necessarily think about, but we know, know we screw it up sometimes. But schools know how many kindergartners they're going to get usually. And therefore they know the three and four year olds in their community. So in terms of projecting the population, the capacity, the need, like, it seems like it would be hard, but it's not that hard.

[Katherine]

I don't think it would be that hard. I think, yeah, I mean, I think we've got a lot of straw men in the conversation, but if the focus was can we build something better for children? The answer would come really quickly and it would be like, yep, and we would do this. And we would do this and like, sure. I don't think there's gonna ever be consensus on when paid family leave should end.

[Robin]

Do you think that could vary from state to state?

[Katherine]

It shouldn't. I would not want it to vary state to state. I think what would be more likely is you would have a two tiered system. So you would have the paid family leave that's covered where like wages are covered at, you know, close to 100%. You keep your health insurance, you keep your job, and when that ends, you can go into a two tiered system that's like a much lower wage replacement that you can have for longer and that would have different job protections. Well, there is a family act actually. It's for paid family leave. The current proposal would be 12 weeks, federal universal. The replacement rates in the current legislation are too low. I would be like, get those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers. But it would be a 12 week system. I think 16 is probably more appropriate. But I think a two tiered system would probably serve Americans well. I mean, at the end of the day, Americans have pretty diverse preferences about things. And so the thing I don't like about Head Start for all is that not all want Head Start. Some people like home based care, some people want to stay home, some people don't like a center. They want to be in a different environment. And so I think the same thing with paid family leave, like, yeah, establish some minimums, like we all get 16 weeks you know, you and your partner can hopscotch it, you know, so that extends it out to 32. But the problem with having like a uniformly long one is that it would put a lot of pressure on what people want to do. And some people would want to go back to work. Moms and dads.

[Robin]

Right. Did you sketch out how much universal childcare would cost in your proposal?

[Katherine]

We have a pretty good idea. So Biden proposed and Build back better. The part that didn't get passed was all the stuff that would go to families and children.

[Robin]

Nobody's bitter about that.

[Katherine]

Nobody's bitter about that. Not me anyway.

[Robin]

This is when we need a video editor.

[Katherine]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't ask me about Joe Manchin and paid family leave because he said we shouldn't have it because they'd go hunting instead.

[Robin]

What?

[Katherine]

Yeah, Joe Manchin is why the build back better didn't get passed. They were going to push the whole thing through reconciliation. But he was like the Democrat that refused to vote for anything that went to women or children. And his reasoning, he said on the record of, like, well, you have paid family leave. Like, how you know they're gonna watch the kid? They could just go hunt. And I was like, what if that's actually good for their mental health? Like, if someone's watching the baby, like, what. What is wrong with you? Like, there's a hunter who needs to be kept from hunting on paid family leave, and therefore we don't get to have paid family leave. I mean, he's. That's the type of person where I'm like, man, I really hope I never meet you, because either I'm gonna do something, I'll really regret, even process that I walk up and slap you and regret it for being rude, or I'll say nothing and hate myself even more. So I just hope I never meet you.

[Robin]

Oh, okay. So.

[Katherine]

So optimism, optimism, optimism, optimism. How much would it cost? Sorry. So after that whole, like, Joe Manchin thing, build back betters, universal preschool in childcare. Zero to three, that was like, capped as a share of income. That was projected to cost $350 billion over the 10 year window. So if you just assume that we want to pay more for universal childcare, you could assume it is as much as 500 billion over the 10 year window. So now the real question is, it's the government. That's monopoly money. Does that mean anything?

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

All right, well, let's give you some carefully selected alternatives to $500 billion for universal childcare. For the record, universal paid family leave would be like 2,200 billion.

[Robin]

And that would be part of this.

[Katherine]

I think it should be.

[Robin]

Right. So now, so now we're, so are we gonna, Are we, Are we adding those.

[Katherine]

We add those up. That would be about 700.

[Robin]

700 billion.

[Katherine]

Yeah. I mean, and that's like giving a generous amount, like 700 billion over 10 years. It's $70 billion a year. That's probably an overestimate. But, you know, advocates can, you know, we've got to defend the right space. So the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs act cost $1.9 trillion.

[Robin]

1.9 trillion.

[Katherine]

Yes.

[Robin]

So it would be more than twice as much as having both paid family leave and universal health care or universal child care.

[Katherine]

You could have universal paid leave and universal child care two and a half times over for the cost of that tax bill. Just giving you a sense of scope.

[Robin]

Again, we could have nice things.

[Katherine]

We can have nice things. Now, that bill had a lot of expirations in a lot of its components. And right now, Republicans would like to extend the part of the Tax Cut and Jobs act that is going to exp. And the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that were they to go through with that, it would cost $4.6 trillion. The 2012American Tax Relief act cost $3.6 trillion. So they're not afraid to throw this type of money around when it comes for tax cuts. So $4.6 trillion. I mean, we're talking like solid five universal child care, getting on six universal childcare systems and universal paid family leaves and stacking them on top. And it would cost less than this tax cut that they're probably going to pass within the next month.

[Robin]

And we know that this pays off. We know that, you know, kids do better, that they graduate at higher rates, they, they go to college at higher rates, they earn more. I mean, like the out. We haven't even talked about the economic benefits of the outcomes of having kids who are going to school ready to learn.

[Katherine]

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, there's lots of ways that you can make this argument because it is so beneficial. Like, you can make the little worker bot argument, which that's immediate tax dollar increase, program participation, decrease worker bots in the economy, makes for a larger economy, as we've talked about before. So, like, you can make that worker bot argument, you can make the child investment argument. And I think for me, like, it's often put in terms of the test scores that people that kids can get and that if you're more prepared for school you will do better throughout school, not just kindergarten, but it lasts for a long time. And I'm pretty sure any public school teacher would be like, yeah, no, dermatologist.

[Robin]

Yeah. And please do that.

[Katherine]

Yeah, yeah. And if you're a public school teacher and you think I'm right, by all means, chime on [e-mail] but for me, the argument comes down to the principle of the matter that if you were to take today's crop of five year olds, they're going to show up to kindergarten in the fall. Economic inequality between rich and poor has already been imprinted on these kids. It's been imprinted on the type of early childhood investment they got. And you can see it in what's called the kindergarten readiness gap of how prepared they are for kindergarten and things like early literacy, early numeracy. Can they count to 10? Do they know their ABCs? The gulf between how kids show up to kindergarten is so wide. To me, it's a gross economic failure that we would not shield kids more than we do from the inequalities of their parents.

[Robin]

Yeah.

[Katherine]

And so, yeah, like worker Bot's great. Kids do better in school, also good. But for me it's like, this is like one of these base performance measures of the economy that it is reaching down as far as five and picking out the people that are gonna be more likely to succeed. No, fuck that. I hate that. And of all the arguments, this is the one that I think I, I, I get like the most upset about. Of like, well, how fucking worse off do you need a five year old to be to feel like you've treated their parents fairly because they went hunting, motherfucker. Like, I get it. So this is the thing with Manchin and this argument of like, you know what, just assume that that parent sucks. You're better than them, you work hard and pay taxes and they don't, they don't invest enough in their kid. Like, you win, but like you, the kid loses. So can't you be smug and invest in the kid at the same time? Can I get you a little jacket that says taxpayer and better parent? And then we still get to invest in the children and like make this early childhood investment. Like, I'm not telling you not to hate their parents. I'm not telling you to feel like you can't feel better than them. Like feel as better than you want. I will get you a little sash and tiara that says better than poor parents. I will hand stitch it. If you would invest in children like through a universal childcare system that makes all of them equally ready to thrive at school. I would happily just do it. Happily do it. But I. That's. Yeah. Even if they went hunting, I would do it. All right, so executive orders. Executive orders for our new listeners. You might not know that we like to end every show by talking about the Republic of Rousey and the Edwards Republic of executive orders that we would put through in our little fiefdoms, rules that you can't break. So that's right.

[Robin]

And then we get to just sign into law.

[Katherine]

And we just sign into law. Whatever I feel like. So my executive order is that every company that has a customer service line, one, they're required to have them, and two, it has to go to a person. And if you make people go through like an AI red voice or computer voice through a touch tone system, every number I have to press to get to a person, I get to charge you like an extra 10% in taxes and it doubles. So if I have to press, it's like one number. I charge you 10% extra in corporate tax taxes. Two numbers, 23, 40. You're like tennis rules. We're going way, way, way up. Like, if you want to have market agglomeration, you go right on ahead, but you're going to have to have a fleet of customer service providers, and I will require it by law and I will tax you to death if you don't. I hate going through those things.

[Robin]

My executive order is much simpler, which is if you're a band and you go on a farewell tour, you only get to do that once. You don't get to double dip on farewell tours, and your ticket sales will be garnered if you do a repeat farewell tour.

[Katherine]

But if they do a farewell tour, a reunion tour, can they get around it without trying to reunite? No, it's just one farewell.

[Robin]

It's one and done, people.

[Katherine]

I. I love this.

[Robin]

Okay. All right.

[Katherine]

We also do not have any financial sponsors as of yet, although we do have many supporters who have given us their money to support the production of the show. But we do have, have spiritual sponsors of the things and people we need to thank that help us get along with our day, our week, our life, and of course, this show. My spiritual sponsor for the week in line with the show's theme, is traveling without children. Once you've traveled with children, it's really hard to go back, and then you get to travel without children and you're like, oh, my God, life is so easy. This is amazing. What am I going to do, go to the bathroom, bedroom, sit at a restaurant, put in headphones. Maybe I'll just randomly walk around the bookstore and touch every book but not buy anything. I can do whatever I want, whatever I want to.

[Robin]

Just read a book.

[Katherine]

Could just read a book. I could just sit there and read a book. I could stare into the middle distance and miss my flight. I'm so zoned out. And it doesn't matter because I'm traveling without children. Traveling without children. I can't endorse enough. If you have children, you need to find a way to travel without them. It's just. Oh God, it's like, it's the sweet relationship release of like I'm just on an airplane right now listening to headphones and I don't have to do anything.

[Robin]

So good.

[Katherine]

That's life so fun. Child care and free trips without kids.

[Robin]

That's good. That's good. My spiritual sponsor this week was this great vending machine I saw that sells gelato in like little cups. I couldn't resist it. And it was banging good. It was excellent. It was excellent. Yeah, I'm, I'm all for more sort of creative Japanese style vending machines so that if it's after hours, it's Monday afternoon and the gelato shop isn't open yet. I can still get it.

[Katherine]

I mean, think about all the cigarette vending machines there used to be.

[Robin]

Yeah, they're just sitting around unused. Kind of like all those fotomat booths that became, you know, espresso. Drive thru espresso. At least here in Spokane. Not Spokane. Spokane.

[Katherine]

Spokane like beer can.

[Robin]

Spokane like beer can. Yeah, we got a lot of drive through espresso here again.

[Katherine]

And I mean endorse all of this. This has been a. This has been a great show. I think it's, you know, it's optimism. Having different problems in the future. That's optimism.

[Robin]

Exactly. We would just like to have better problems.

[Katherine]

I just want a better set of problems. And frankly, that is what we deserve. As we end our show, we would like to snap out our production team. Team which consists of Sophie, our audio engineer and producer, and Andy, our video engineer and producer that help us produce the show, make the show, and of course advertise the show to you. So thank you very much.

[Robin]

Thank you both.

[Katherine]

Snaps out.