← Slate Money
Slate Money
Least Cool Ferrari Ever
00:41:24
Ferrari reveals its new EV, the UN shares an alternative metric to GDP, and Europe won’t embrace A/C despite deadly heatwaves.
Loading summary
Transcript288 lines
- [00:02]
A
Slate Money is sponsored this week by Bill, which is the intelligence finance platform that helps business and accounting firms scale with proven results. Bill is a leading provider of software that simplifies, digitizes and automates back office financial processes for accounting firms and small to medium sized businesses. What does that mean? It means they help businesses pay and get paid by ach jet credit card wire transfers, you name it. It's simple, secure. It has AI powered accounts payable automation that erases the busywork from capturing invoices and processing payments. It syncs seamlessly with accounting software.
- [00:41]
B
It does your 1099 tax filings, you name it.
- [00:45]
A
It's an end to end workflow. Its customers come from all industries ranging from startups to established brands and non profits to accounting firms themselves. When business owners choose Bill, they aren't guessing, they're choosing infrastructure that is already proven by millions of users and over a TR dollars in secure payments. Bill doesn't just move money, it enables the business's entire accounts payables workflow and it creates the ability for them to control their financial operations securely and at scale. So talk with a payments expert@bill.com proven and get a $150 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com proven this message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. Apple Card is a no fee cashback rewards credit card with a ton of great benefits. There's a lot to love, but instead of listing everything, I want to focus on my favorite benefit travel. You all know how much I love to travel, but even as a seasoned traveler, things can still get stressful, which is why I use Apple Card on my international trips. Apple Card has no foreign transaction fees, so I never have to worry about extra charges when I'm abroad. And with 2% daily cash back on every purchase with Apple Pay, I'm actually earning daily cash as I Travel. That's 2% wherever Apple Pay is accepted, which adds up when you're booking flights, hotels and car rentals. Instead of coming home feeling like I've drained my bank account, I come back with cash back I can put toward my next trip. So start using Apple Card for everyday purchases today. Don't have one yet? Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.49% to 27.74% based on creditworthiness rates as of January 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app. Apple Card issued by Goldman sachsbank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at Apple Co AppleCard benefits. Hello.
- [03:03]
B
Welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week.
- [03:08]
A
I'm Felix Salmon of Bloomberg with Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times.
- [03:13]
C
Hello.
- [03:13]
A
With Emily Peck of Axios.
- [03:16]
C
Hello. Hello.
- [03:17]
A
And we are going to talk about fast cars because they go zoom, zoom
- [03:22]
B
only sometimes they're electric and they have
- [03:25]
A
fake engine noise that gets pumped into
- [03:28]
B
the cabin to make you feel like you're going more zoom even though they're electric and they're basically quiet. We're going to talk about one of
- [03:34]
A
those that costs €550,000. We are going to talk about GDP and whether it's useful metric and whether
- [03:41]
B
anything will ever replace it.
- [03:43]
A
And we're going to talk about air conditioning and why Europeans are so mistrustful of it.
- [03:48]
B
We have a Slate plus segment on the funny media machinations behind all of the stories you might have heard about
- [03:57]
A
people getting sexually harassed at JP Morgan. And it's all coming up on Sleep Money.
- [04:12]
B
Okay, so obviously the most important business and finance news of the week is the fact that Ferrari has a new car.
- [04:21]
C
Oh my gosh.
- [04:24]
B
Elizabeth, am I correct about the massive importance of this car?
- [04:27]
D
Oh, this is the only thing I've been thinking about for at least 72 hours.
- [04:32]
B
I've been thinking about this all week.
- [04:34]
A
Basically.
- [04:35]
B
As far as I can make out, John Elkann, who now basically owns Ferrari, put in this tech guy as the CEO of Ferrari and he was like, we should do an ev. And everyone said, yeah, yeah, whatever. And then to make it buzzy and cool, they decided to hire Jony I've to design it. Even though he has never designed a car in his life. And he with great fanfare. It is kind of impossible to overstate the fanfare with which Ferrari launched this car unveiled. Basically something that looks either like an apple mouse or a Nissan Leaf, depending on who you believe. It just has zero sexiness, zero Ferrari DNA. Nissan is making great play of this on, on the socials and everyone, I think everyone hates it.
- [05:24]
A
Is that right?
- [05:25]
B
Everyone hates it.
- [05:26]
D
I think that's true. I would defend part of it though, maybe from knee jerk contrarianism, but I think the interior is cool, very kind of like retro futuristic. But I understand why everybody's mad about it because it looks like a sedan, it has four doors and five seats, which makes you wonder like who they think the market is for it. It's like the same people who buy really boring looking Bentleys. Is it?
- [05:51]
C
Say the price, say the price, say the price. Emily, what is the price €550,000 or 640,000 DOL, which is an insane amount. That's why it's crazy, because, okay, it looks like a Leaf. Fine, a Nissan Leaf, or it looks like a Apple mouse on its back. And that was my favorite of the memes, with the car on its back with the Charger in it, like how you have to charge your wireless mouse. But $600,000 for that.
- [06:15]
D
Obviously, that's terrible supercar pricing.
- [06:18]
B
Yeah, it's.
- [06:19]
A
It's supercar.
- [06:20]
B
Well, it's like demi supercar pricing. I feel like supercars start, like a million these days, so it's like half a supercar. The idea is that electric vehicles have been very, very fast for a long time. And a lot of people were comparing this car to a Xiaomi car from China, which has basically exactly the same acceleration and performance figures and costs $57,000. And they were like, why would I pay $640,000 for an amount of acceleration I can get for a tenth of that?
- [06:55]
D
The Ferrari accelerates 0 to 62.5 seconds. Can you do that with a.
- [06:59]
B
With a Shelby? Yes, you can.
- [07:01]
D
That's surprising.
- [07:01]
B
You can do that in quite a lot of electric cars. You've. You've been able to do that on, like, the Model S plaid for, you know, many years now. Electric motors are very, very good. Fast acceleration from 0 to 60, that's kind of what they're best at. And you can put a very fast acceleration motor into pretty much any EV. And so, to a first approximation, all EVs accelerate really quickly, unless they're incredibly heavy, which this one isn't. So the fact supercars have been able to get sold, whether they're by Ferrari or Koenigsegg or Bugatti or Porsche or whoever, over the past five or six years at prices of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 million plus, is proof that what you are paying for is not acceleration, because you've been able to get that acceleration on a Tesla for all those years or lucid or, you know, any of those cars, right? So then the idea here with this Ferrari is that it. All of the handling and performance and all of the other things that you want in a Ferrari and that people pay a million dollars for in a Ferrari beyond just the acceleration, and maybe it does, but the other thing that people want in a Ferrari is something that looks like a Ferrari and that makes people look at it and go, ooh, that's a sexy car. I want that car. And there is just nothing, nothing sexy about this car. It Seems like it's been designed by exactly the same algorithm that designed all of the Teslas and the Nissans and everyone else, which is basically an aerodynamics optimization algorithm, making it very smooth so that you can maximize mileage. But that is not what Ferrari stands for.
- [08:50]
D
It's like a picking the kids up from school car.
- [08:53]
C
Yeah. Seating five is not how I think of a Ferrari. I think of a Ferrari as a very profoundly uncomfortable car that's very low to the ground. That is. Has zero appeal to me. Like, I don't like being super low to the ground. Then you have to like climb your way out of a car and it's super like tight in there. I just.
- [09:11]
B
Everywhere, no room for luggage, no room for kids.
- [09:14]
D
The non ev Ferraris, the powertrain is structured so that you can't have more seating in it. Like there's just no room. Yeah.
- [09:21]
B
And the Ferraris with engines. And Ferrari has been putting batteries into cars for some time now. They've had like hybrids, but this is the first one with no engine at all. And all the ones with engines have these engines basically right in the middle of the car where your passenger would normally be. And so because the engine is there, you can't have a passenger there. Now they have all of these batteries and they don't have to have an engine there. And so you can put passengers in the back where the engine would normally be. And in fact you can put three passengers in the back because you don't have that. I believe it's called a transaxle, which is the long tube which connects the steering wheel to the back wheels, basically. And because that's not there, you can fit a third passenger. Passenger in the middle. And so, hey, look, we have lots of space. We may as well use all of this space. Good for us. But please just find a way of making it cool in Ferrari.
- [10:10]
D
I have two theories about this. One is that nobody wanted to tell Jony. I've no, because surely they do focus groups or they got feedback from people who are potential customers before they rolled it out. And then my other theory is that maybe the idea is that because it's so distinctive looking and now everyone knows how much it costs, that it's the kind of people who are going to buy it are the people who bought cybertrucks.
- [10:31]
C
That's what I was thinking. Everyone did the same thing with the cybertrucks. So ugly.
- [10:35]
A
The cybertruck.
- [10:35]
C
I see them everywhere.
- [10:36]
B
Now, I know you see them everywhere because they stand out, but there aren't that many of them. Objectively, the Cybertruck is not a high selling vehicle.
- [10:44]
C
But like these aren't meant to be high selling vehicles. Ferrari's whole thing is we don't sell a lot of vehicles.
- [10:49]
B
But what I would say is that it is not that distinctive looking. It looks like every other EV out there and you could easily mistake it for Nissan Leaf and it could drive past you and you could be driving down the road past a bunch of these things and you'd have no idea. It just looks like a lump.
- [11:05]
C
The former CEO, he was in some video saying he hated it and blah, blah, blah. Oh, he said if I say what I think I'd cause harm to Ferrari. Like he said what he thought.
- [11:15]
B
There is actually a reason for this and there is a reason it will sell and there is a reason Ferrari makes it and there is a reason why it really doesn't matter what it looks like or what anyone thinks. The reason why it is being made is because Ferrari is a European car maker. It is an independent European car maker. And under European regulations, and under European regulations, Ferrari needs to make a certain amount of sustainable, you know, zero emissions or low emissions cars or all the rest of it. Like they can't just make ICE cars. That's actually illegal in Europe now. So they needed an EV to remain in regulatory compliance. So they put out an ev. The second reason is that Ferrari is a little bit like Rolex or AP or you know, the swanky watch brands, which is that they make many fewer cars than there is demand for. So there's. Everyone is clamoring to buy their cars and everyone's like trying to jump ahead on the wait list and all the rest of it. And so the way they allocate the really in demand cars is they basically look at you and they're like, did you buy our boring shitty cars and have you given us a bunch of revenue by buying like a bunch of Ferrari Luce that no one wants? And if you do, then you're more likely to get that coveted allocation for the supercar that everyone wants. So they have a built in base of buyers who just want to suck up to Ferrari so that they get the allocation they want and they get a whole bunch of regulatory kudos, basically even as the likes of Porsche and Mercedes are like pulling back on their pure EVs so they get to be kind of, you know, environmentally responsible and sell a bunch of cars that no one wants at the same time and everyone kind of wins.
- [12:58]
D
You're saying this is like Hermes in the Birkin bag? Where they make you buy like a bunch of crappy Hermes stuff before they'll let you buy Birkin.
- [13:06]
B
Basically, the Ferrari Luce is the equivalent of the crappy Hermes stuff that no
- [13:11]
C
one wants for $600,000, which is cheap by Ferrari standards.
- [13:15]
D
Maybe the billionaires will buy the luche for their kids when they turn 16.
- [13:21]
A
Exactly. This is, this is the toy you
- [13:23]
B
get for your daughter when she turns 16 and she needs something to go to the supermarket in.
- [13:28]
C
What are we doing? How is this our lead story? Is there any bigger picture to this story that we need to address or should we just move on? It is what it is. People got excited about an ugly car. Again, it's not. I was like, maybe this is about EVs. China's taking over the whole market. Maybe this is the decline of our regular. Like my colleague at Axios, Joanne Mueller, had a story about how American automakers are cooked. She used the word cooked. She is not Gen Z, but still used it because the whole world is going ev. I think half of the EV sales in the world are now Chinese cars. And the US is off that train or off that highway or whatever. And the automakers in the US are flailing about. Trump has tariffed their business to hell. Now he's going to get rid of NAFTA or usmca, whatever it is, it's just a mess. And maybe something, something this relates back to Ferrari. But look, we can cut this. It doesn't relate back to Ferrari.
- [14:26]
A
No, I think, Emily, you are absolutely right.
- [14:28]
B
That is the big picture here, is that one of the reasons people are so disappointed is because Ferrari was kind of the last hope of the European and the American carmakers to be able to do something that the Chinese could not. What is clear is that Ford and GM and Volkswagen and you know, the big companies, even the big Japanese companies don't really have the ability to compete with Chinese EVs on a kind of we can make a better car for cheaper. Right? You know, the Chinese cars are just for any given price, they're going to be better than anything that the Europeans or the Americans can do. And the Americans and the Europeans have basically given up. I mean, like that no one can point to a European or an American EV that anyone's got excited about for years, right? In America, even Tesla seems to have more or less given up making cars. The only other American EV maker which seems to have its head remotely above water is Rivian. And they're making a tiny number of cars.
- [15:29]
C
Their cars look good.
- [15:30]
B
And they just released the R2s, which are medium size and that, you know, but like, look, no one is getting super excited about the R2, which is just a smaller version of the R1. Ferrari had the opportunity here to be able to say kind of like this is the way you compete with China on EVs is you make something just ultra high end that something something and it just fluffed it. And so now if you want an ultra high end ev, even you wind up going to Xiaomi rather than to Ferrari.
- [15:59]
D
So Ferrari kind of said, all right, we tried that sort of design, we're going to go back to the Dragon board. And they made something that actually looks like a supercar. Would that be, would that change anything?
- [16:09]
B
I hope so.
- [16:10]
C
Cars are the new microwaves. Like in the 80s, the microwaves were expensive and like cool isn't the right word, but they were like coveted items perhaps. And now you can get a microwave for like 20 bucks and it's no big deal. As all appliances go, ultimately that's where we're headed with cars. I don't know, it's just the thing I thought of just now, my hot take.
- [16:29]
D
I wish they would get more microwavy so we could get a new one at a decent price point. Yeah, I mean like that's what we're waiting for.
- [16:36]
C
Like go to Walmart and get like their door buster car.
- [16:39]
B
All it would take would be a single relaxation of the effective US ban on Chinese EV imports.
- [16:46]
C
Let's relax things here.
- [16:47]
B
If the US was like, hey China, come sell us your EVs because they will allow us to get around much more cheaply and much more efficiently than anything we can drive around in right now. Let's improve our economy by having much more efficient transportation.
- [17:02]
C
Free up so much money for people.
- [17:04]
B
It could happen tomorrow.
- [17:05]
C
I had Chad Bowne and Sumaya Keynes on money talks we just recorded. And Chad is very worried, as are a lot of people, that the Chinese will spy on us through the EVs.
- [17:15]
D
I feel like that's, that's what people say about any kind of Chinese technology.
- [17:20]
C
Right?
- [17:20]
B
Yeah, I like, fine, the Chinese can know where I'm driving.
- [17:37]
E
This episode is powered by AT&T Business. For every small business owner, there's a moment they remember when they realized they wanted to start their own business. It can be a life changing moment. But those first steps are never easy. Figuring out the right building blocks, your goals, your schedule, your mindset. You have to think about an entire ecosystem. Not just the big stuff, but the little bits too. In this day and age. A major point for any successful business is strong connectivity. Spotty Internet has led to some terrible work calls in my life, but when you're running a business, connectivity can make or break you. AT&T business has the tools, team and expertise you need for a reliable network you can depend on. They make connecting easy and that's the main thing you want in a provider. Less time stressing so you can focus on the million other things on your plate. AT&T business is a reliable provider for small business owners. For Small Business Month we celebrate small businesses by helping them run better. This means reliable uptime, easy switching, smart communications. AT&T business built to work. Get AT&T business@business.att.com.
- [18:38]
A
Slate Money is sponsored this week by Quince and let me tell you, now that spring has sprung, I am very much enjoying.
- [18:49]
B
I am wearing right now a shirt that I absolutely adore, made of some of the most beautiful cotton I have ever come across in my life.
- [18:56]
A
If you lean into pieces that just feel effortless and comfortable and still put together, it can improve your mood, it can improve your day and it makes getting dressed simpler. Quince has fabrics that feel elevated, have flattering fits. They can put together a wardrobe for you where everything just works without overthinking it. My proposition to you is that you should refresh your everyday this spring with pieces of that feel as good as they look. Quint uses premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton, ultra soft denim. They have lightweight linen pants, dresses and tops starting at just $30 which are effortless, breathable and easy to wear on repeat. Everything at Quint is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories. They cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality and craftsmanship, not brand markup up. We are out of the Quince cashmere season.
- [19:49]
B
I would guess like it is getting
- [19:51]
A
a little bit warm for that Quince
- [19:52]
B
cashmere is just incredibly high quality.
- [19:55]
A
You can find cashmere sweaters for the same price but they are just not as good. And if you find something as good it is more expensive. So here's the idea. You should refresh your everyday with luxury. You will actually use head to quince.com money for free, free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com money for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com money.
- [20:32]
B
What if a marginal gain unlocked greater performance? What if an insight and data could change Everything. At Aramco, our focus on detail helps us deliver reliable energy to millions across the world. Because margins aren't marginal, they're where we can truly push the limits of what's possible. Aramco, an integrated energy and chemicals company. Learn more@aramco.com. Let's take that excellent segue and talk about if we were going to measure the way in which a massive influx of Chinese EVs could benefit or not the US economy, what metric would we look at? And I think the, the main one that the go to thing that we all have been trained like Pavlovian dogs to point at any time anyone says anything like that is to look at gdp and they're like, would it cause economic growth if we brought in all of these Chinese EVs? And people would be like, well it wouldn't help GDP because you know, the cars are made in China. So it would help Chinese gdp, but not US gdp. But on the other hand, because we would be spending less money on American cars, like that would reduce the US carmakers contribution to gtp. But as you said Emily, it would free up a whole bunch of cash that we could put to more productive uses than just buying a car. And maybe GDP would grow rather than shrink. There would be all these arguments and people would say, would it be a net positive for GDP or not? But ultimately GDP does seem like a weird metric. And what we want to know is, does it make Americans in aggregate better off in a sort of life way? And so the UN now has a GDP dashboard which they have managed to come up with with 31 different metrics. And they're like, look at all of these 31 different metrics about a country which includes inequality and human rights and sustainability and all the rest of it. And then if you somehow aggregate these, then you can get a much better feeling for how well a country is doing than you can just by looking at gdp. And so then the likes of Joe Stiglitz come along and go, yes, yes, this is what I've been talking about all along. I want to maximize gross national national happiness. And you know, congratulations on creating an alternative to gdp. Except for the problem is that this dashboard is not an alternative to gdp. Like it's, it's just, it's too unwieldy, it's too many numbers. It's just like, I think if the best you can do to come up with an alternative to GDP is come up with a dashboard of 31 numbers, then that just proves that GDP is here to stay.
- [23:31]
D
I Feel like this is a function of policymakers tend to operate like this where they have to sort of coalesce a million different metrics into one. But if you've ever been on the sort of business side of any operation where you have to use analytics or create KPIs for people, you learn very quickly that if you have too many metrics, people don't know what to do because it's just overwhelming. So I don't think the problem here is that there shouldn't be an alternative way of looking at prosperity besides gdp. Maybe some GDP plus measure. And I read Stieglitz book People, Power and Profits when it came out, and I thought it was really good. He makes a lot of good points about the idea that first of all, GDP is correlated with prosperity, but it's not synonymous. And so the question his book was trying to answer is what do we consider prosperity? And I don't think you need 31 different data points to get to something that's better than GDP. You need to be at 2 or 3.
- [24:26]
A
So I think, yeah, we can all
- [24:28]
B
agree, and I don't think you'll find anyone, anyone who would disagree that GDP is imperfect in measuring whatever it is you're trying to measure. The question is whether there's anything better. And Joe was basically saying in that book that, yeah, there probably is something better that we should try and put together. And now that the UN has come up with this dumb 31 unit dashboard thing, I kind of get the feeling that Joe has kind of given up on that because he's come out and said, oh yeah, there is no one thing that we can create. And this kludge of coming up with a dashboard of 31 different metrics is frankly the best that we're going to be able to do. If he's kind of given up, then I think there is no hope for replacing GDP with anything else.
- [25:17]
D
I think it's probably an exaggeration to say he's given up, but he did say that he thinks 31 data points is way too many.
- [25:23]
B
But he also said that one is too few, that you can't bring it down to one.
- [25:27]
C
Well, there was some country in the one of the pieces we read in the prep where they wanted a different measure because they wanted to borrow more money and GDP wasn't capturing like the value of their natural resources or something like that. Like why There are other metrics obviously that people use to compare different countries, well being and prosperity to each other. Like we're covering them all the time in Business journalism, various, like, you know, Norway or Finland or whatever. They're the happiest per capita income. Like, there's tons of things you can do do. So I guess my question is, like, why is gdp? Is it just the most popular one? Is there just so much decision making that goes behind the GDP numbers?
- [26:08]
B
I think it's easy to overstate the importance of GDP on things like, yeah,
- [26:12]
C
that's what I'm saying.
- [26:12]
B
Borrowing costs. Like, if a country is like, I want you to take into account the value of my natural resources rather than just my gdp, the financial markets will
- [26:20]
A
be like, well, yeah, we already do.
- [26:22]
B
You know, it's not like. It's not like a country's bond yields are entirely a function of its GDP or its GDP growth. They're not right.
- [26:29]
D
It's just a function of the winners. Great history, because the US Insisted on using GDP as a metric for prosperity at the Bretton woods conference after World War II, and that's what made it the sort of dominant metric that we look at.
- [26:42]
C
I guess what I'm saying is I don't think of it as a dominant metric myself. As a business journalist, I'm like, this is the one I never write about because I'd rather look at unemployment. I'd rather look at inflation, I'd rather look at median income. I'd rather look at income growth. Like, there are so many other fun things to. To look at.
- [26:59]
B
Emily has put her finger on something important here, which is that it's really not that dominant that when the inflation number comes out, when the next CPI number comes out, everyone is going to be glomming onto it much more than when the next GDP number comes out. And the GDP number is going to have this thing called the GDP deflator, which is the broadest measure of inflation. And in a weird way, that right now is more important, important than gdp, unemployment, and especially like youth unemployment and all of this kind of thing. What's happened to unemployment among recent college grads? Has that been going up? These are the numbers that people are caring about right now. We had, not that long ago two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth for sort of technical reasons. There was not a recession. We kind of knew that it wasn't a recession, even though, like, if we were in Europe, it would have been, because the Europeans just say, if you have two negative GDP prints, then you're in a recession.
- [27:59]
A
But we had that.
- [28:01]
B
No one blinked.
- [28:02]
A
We kept on growing.
- [28:03]
B
Everything was fine. And so I feel like, Emily, you're exactly right here. That GDP Just we're trying to solve a problem of GDP dominance in a world where GDP actually isn't all that dominant after all.
- [28:15]
C
Exactly. Yes.
- [28:16]
D
So here's where I'd push back a little bit. I don't think it's that dominant for people in the. The private sector.
- [28:22]
C
Normal.
- [28:22]
D
I do think that it is a big part of the discussion in global political economics. And I think in terms of the political discourse, even domestically, it's something that is part of the discourse. It's the metric that Republicans often point to when we have contradictory economic indicators that maybe voters wouldn't like. They can still point to GDP and say, look, GDP is growing. The economy is fine. So I don't think business reporters would pay attention to it. I don't think anyone with a Bloomberg terminal would pay very much attention to it.
- [28:52]
A
People with Bloomberg do pay attention to it.
- [28:54]
B
I don't think voters pay attention to it. I think if the best that a Republican, or a Democrat for that matter, if it's a Democrat in office, can do is point to a GDP number and say, this is positive. So you're doing well. Like, at that point you've lost the argument anyway, no matter which party you're part of.
- [29:09]
C
That's what Felix was saying. Because I was like, I don't want to talk about this. And he was like, no, it's good, because right now the whole thing with the K shaped economy or whatever rising inequality is that you can point to all these indicators that show the economy is great, but of course, for many people it doesn't feel very great. So GDP is maybe the biggest one that sort of exemplifies that. And that kind of goes back to the original problem that I guess Stiglitz was kind of, well, part of it that he was trying to solve for, which is like, this doesn't really capture the vibes.
- [29:39]
B
We've reached the point now at which, you know, if I come up to you and say, who you gonna believe, like GDP or your own lying eyes? Like, everyone's gonna be like, I believe my own lying eye. We all, like, no one is convinced by the GDP ARG anymore. Like, politically, it carries no water anymore. And so the program of trying to replace it has become much less important. Just because, yeah, like back when Joe wrote that book, I think especially not, not even the, the U.S. government, but especially the IMF. And to a certain degree, the World bank cared about maximizing GDP growth, but they've all moved on to a whole bunch of different indicators at this point. So, like, if they don't care.
- [30:23]
A
I don't know who does.
- [30:25]
C
Also read the room. Now is not the time for these wonks to be like messing around with dashboards of 31 metrics grouped into four buckets. Like there's a trade war going on and an actual war going on and like it's not the time to tinker with the metrics yet, I don't think.
- [30:40]
A
Yeah, but Emily, this is the un.
- [30:41]
B
What else are they going to do?
- [30:49]
D
Foreign.
- [30:57]
A
Is sponsored this week by another nine, which allows you to set up a golf business. A 247 indoor golf franchise. There are nearly 50 million golfers in the United States. Three and a half million of them played for the first time last year. And more people played off course golf last year than traditional on course play. Another nine is the ideal indoor golf experience. It has private simulator suite, people can book hourly. There are memberships available but not required. They have this technology called A9OS which handles bookings, access, reporting, customer support and you can own another 9,000 franchise business with no staff in a booming industry without leaving your day job. This isn't a bar, this isn't a restaurant. You're delivering this country club level experience with no staffing, basically at a public course rate. Explore your path to entrepreneurship and visit another9.com to see if your territory is still available. Slate Money is sponsored this week by Cash App, which is a place you
- [32:14]
B
can go to start accumulating Bitcoin.
- [32:17]
A
I have been thinking about writing about Bitcoin for well over a decade at this point.
- [32:23]
B
There was a big piece I wrote on Medium about bitcoin back in 2013
- [32:27]
A
when it blew through a billion dollars
- [32:30]
B
in total market cap. It's now more like a trillion.
- [32:33]
A
It's one of those things that felt like it was always going to go away, but never really did.
- [32:38]
B
I have bought a work of art with Bitcoin.
- [32:41]
A
I have bought a coffee with bitcoin.
- [32:43]
B
I have tried to use it as
- [32:45]
A
a payments mechanism but honestly the people who seem to have been most successful
- [32:49]
B
are the people who just bought it earlier, just did nothing with it and
- [32:52]
A
saw it accumulate in value. If you have been curious about bitcoin but haven't made the jump yet, then you can do that in Cash App. It's just in the app on your phone. You can set up automatic purchases with zero fees or you can buy larger amounts also with zero fees. You can start small, you can go bigger. It's. It's designed to be simple. Either way, for a limited time, new customers can get $10 added to their balance. Just use code CASH APP10 when you sign up. And don't forget this part. Send at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner Bitcoin services provided by Block Inc. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures
- [33:35]
B
at Cash App Legal Podcast
- [33:42]
A
we need
- [33:43]
B
to talk about the heat wave that has just broken in Europe. It was May people, and even in May people were dying in Europe because it was so hot. And you know, it was 95 degrees across vast swathes of Europe, including England. I happen to be recording from Europe right now, and I was in literally the only tiny corner of Europe on the west coast of Ireland that wasn't suffering from a heat wave. But even we had a amazingly unseasonably sunny and warm day. But this problem of heat in Europe is a real problem which is causing an enormous number of deaths. And we'll link in the show notes to a wonderful little blog post that kind of proves that whether you're looking in aggregate or per capita or whatever, the number of people who die in Europe because it is too hot and they don't have AC is broadly equal to the number of people who die of gun deaths in America. And the number of people who die of heat in America is tiny, just like the number of people who die of gun deaths in Europe is tiny. They are almost weirdly perfectly symmetrical with each other. And I find that fascinating. And it's really interesting to see the discourse, the sort of pro AC versus anti AC discourse in Europe and the the incredible reluctance that politicians and even homeowners have to installing ac. People be like, well, okay, we should have some ac, but only in major civic institutions or something like that. The idea that a normal person would just want an AC in their bedroom so they can sleep comfortably at night still seems to be a step too far for most of Europe. 20% of French people have AC.
- [35:25]
D
20 there was something in the prep and I'd be curious to know if this is your impression. That said, a lot of English people view it as from a place of stoicism or ideas about American excess.
- [35:36]
B
Yes, both of these are true.
- [35:37]
D
View the disparity between the US and England as being that which I find remarkable because if you look at where the US is just a much bigger band of potential weather. I grew up in central Alabama where 95 degrees is a random day in mid March.
- [35:54]
A
Yeah, no, but for that reason you
- [35:56]
B
need AC in order to live in Alabama. I think what happens then though is that Europeans come to america and it's 95 degrees or 100 degrees or 110 degrees, whatever it is outside. And then they walk into the shopping mall and it's like 65 and it's freezing and they're like, this is crazy. Why is everything so air conditioned? And they, they find it obnoxious to make something so artificially cold on, on such a warm day. And they're like, we would never do this where we come from. And so they don't, they just don't put in any AC at all. I have a relation in Germany in an area where it gets extremely hot in the summer and he has a heat pump on his house, but the heat pump has the cooling thing disabled. It's a heat only heat pump. It's a heat pump that doesn't cool, that doesn't provide any ac. And so every summer they just swelt it. And this is so normal. And if you ask any sort of mainstream European politician like, what should we do about this? They'll start going on and on about
- [36:55]
A
like, have better insulated buildings, buildings and improve cross ventilation and make sure that you have good solar shading on your
- [37:02]
B
windows and yada yada. And then AC can only be a last resort. There's this thing called regulation O in the uk which basically means that no new houses get built with AC because you have to tick off so many other things you've tried first before. You're allowed to install AC as a way of dealing with heat.
- [37:19]
A
And the heat is just, it doesn't care.
- [37:22]
B
You know, the sun doesn't care. The sun is going to beat down and people are going to die. And people, I don't think, really appreciate how lethal these heat waves are.
- [37:30]
D
That's why I think it's amazing that stoicism comes into this at all. Because if you can fight a heat stroke with just mental fortitude.
- [37:37]
C
But I mean, air conditioning isn't great, right? It's part of the reason it is so hot. Isn't it environmentally pretty bad? And isn't the 65 Degree Mall kind of obnoxious? And like when you walk down the street in Manhattan, you get blasted by ac. When doors open in the summer, it's always like, what are we doing?
- [37:52]
D
Yeah, but there's a difference between no air conditioning and too much air conditioning.
- [37:56]
B
There is this feeling in your Europe, which is technically true. If the problem is that your city is too hot, then installing lots of air conditioning units only Makes it hotter. Because what the AC units do is they blow hot air out. And so basically, wherever you are in America is hotter than it would be if there wasn't any ac. And so you're making the problem worse. And they're like, we don't want to make the problem worse. We want to make the problem better. The way to make the problem better is to address global climate change. You know, you're like, yeah, okay, good luck with that. The real immediate problem is that thousands of people who die every single day that there's a heat wave, and what are you going to do about that? And it is just fascinating to me that cooling things just seems to be a bridge too far for millions and millions of Europeans on a sort of just intuitive level. The thing that I keep on coming back to is this idea that, like, heating things is not right. Every house in Europe have some kind of heating mechanism.
- [38:54]
C
But they're drafty, right?
- [38:55]
A
Aren't they?
- [38:56]
B
Well, I mean, like, some are, some aren't.
- [38:57]
C
But the castles, I don't know.
- [39:00]
A
But, you know the amount of energy
- [39:02]
B
that you need to bring a building up from, say, you know, if it's 40 degrees outside to bring it up to 70 degrees inside, right? You're increasing the air temperature by 30 degrees. Conversely, if it's 90 degrees outside and you want to bring it down to 70 degrees inside, then you need to bring it down by 20 degrees. It's cheaper to bring it down on by 20 degrees, and it is to bring it up by 30 degrees. And yet the Europeans are perfectly fine with the heating part. And they're like, no, the cooling part we can't do. And that's the sort of asymmetry that I struggle with.
- [39:37]
C
Does this come back to why Europeans don't like ice in their drinks? What's up with that? Ice in the drink is great. Everyone, how do you not like ice in the drink? Is it all of a piece? You can tell me. Do you not like ice in the drink?
- [39:50]
B
Drinks?
- [39:52]
A
I have no problem.
- [39:53]
B
I mean, but I'm American now. I've lived more than half my life in Manhattan. Don't ask me. I'm a rootless cosmopolitan, Emily.
- [39:59]
C
Right, of course. But I'm sure Elizabeth likes ice in her drinks, right?
- [40:03]
D
Mostly. But it doesn't bother me if there is no ice. Like, I don't ask for it, if I don't. If somebody brings me a glass of water.
- [40:10]
B
No, the phenomenon of ice water is a very American phenomenon, to be clear.
- [40:15]
C
So the Europeans don't like ice water. Come on, put the AC on. Have a cool glass of ice water. What are we doing? It's summer.
- [40:23]
B
Maybe.
- [40:23]
C
Thank you. Jessamyn, our producer is with us.
- [40:26]
D
Me that said I would totally buy one of those ice machines that just makes the crunchy ice. Pellet ice.
- [40:33]
C
Yeah, you could buy one for your countertop. Now, Europeans need to get ice machines for their countertops. Don't buy Ferraris. Put in ac. Live your best life.
- [40:42]
A
All right, so let me ask you
- [40:43]
B
this, Emily, because you're an expert on rich people. The thing that fascinates me the most is, is the seemingly insatiable demand by Americans to holiday in some of the hottest parts of the planet in the summer. The number of Americans who are flocking to Rome or Athens or Positano or Amalfi or, you know, all of these very hot places in the summer where it gets incredibly hot outside and it's just going up and up and up. It is dwarfing pre pandemic levels. There are rooms in Amalfi this summer that are going for $6,000 a night. And you're like, why? You know, it is so uncomfortably hot. You know, either you just stay inside your air conditioned hotel room. Of course, if you're paying $6,000, you get air conditioning inside your hotel room. But then the minute you leave, the minute you go down to the beach or whatever, you know, it's horribly hot. And like, there seems to be something about the hot American summer that is attractive to Europeans because look at the number of Americans who travel to Paris every summer.
- [41:44]
A
In all, Paris in August is one of the most miserable places in the world.
- [41:47]
B
And yet, like, it is swarming with Americans.
- [41:51]
C
And you want me to explain that? Yeah, I'll let Elizabeth explain. I don't know if I can.
- [41:54]
D
Isn't it just that, you know, Americans get almost no vacation and if they have kids, like, this summer is the only time the kids are able to travel.
- [42:01]
C
I think that's it.
- [42:02]
A
Yeah, but why would you go to Paris?
- [42:04]
C
Is it cheaper then because it's so hot?
- [42:06]
D
These are not people who go to Paris regularly. They don't realize it's sweltering and gross. Like, people come to New York in August, too.
- [42:12]
A
Yeah, don't do that either.
- [42:14]
C
I kind of have come full circle on New York in August because it's like only the die hards are out there on those streets and everyone acts a little weird when it's like maniacally hot. So it's kind of fun.
- [42:25]
D
All the rich New Yorkers are in
- [42:26]
C
the Hamptons Yeah, all the rich people are gone, or maybe they're in Paris, I don't know. But it's just like the real ones. They're out there on the. On the streets.
- [42:35]
B
Are they being stoic?
- [42:36]
C
Super stoic. But they're going inside and blasting the AC in their faces with their guns. No, I don't.
- [42:57]
B
All right, it's time for us to move on and have a numbers round.
- [42:59]
A
Elizabeth, do you have a number?
- [43:01]
D
I do. My number is $200. And for $200, you can get a pair of on running shoes that are cloud surfer Maxes, but they're on X Erawan. They've done a collab, and I'm fascinated with these kind of collabs that sort of make sense, but then they don't.
- [43:17]
B
Wait, wait, on Ex Erdogan.
- [43:19]
A
Did you say, like, the former president of Turkey?
- [43:21]
D
No, Erewhon, the store in LA where you get that $1 would be amazing.
- [43:32]
B
Is there an Erwan Erawan?
- [43:35]
D
I mean, that would really make my point. I'm thinking about the, you know, just kind of rando collabs that. I mean, another one is. Since you mentioned Audemars PJ earlier, people have been rioting at Swatch stores because they did a collab with Swatch for a kind of pocket watch called a Royal Pop Watch. And it's like, 400 bucks.
- [43:54]
C
Who did the collaboration with Swatch?
- [43:55]
B
Swatch. Swatch Xap. And it's not even a.
- [43:59]
A
It's not even a wristwatch. It's like. It's like a pocket watch.
- [44:02]
D
It's AP Audemars pg. Yeah.
- [44:04]
A
And you can.
- [44:04]
B
You can dangle it from yours handbag like a Le Booboo.
- [44:08]
C
Wait, say the name of AP again. What is it?
- [44:10]
A
Audemars Piguet.
- [44:12]
C
And that's like the new hot watch?
- [44:13]
A
No.
- [44:13]
B
Well, they're the old hot watch, Right.
- [44:15]
A
They were this old Swiss watch company.
- [44:17]
D
They're like the $100,000 watches.
- [44:19]
B
Exactly. And now that you can. You can buy like, a cheapo quartz one for 400 bucks, and everyone's going crazy.
- [44:25]
C
I see. Great. I have a collab, too, for my number, actually.
- [44:28]
B
Okay, what's your collab number?
- [44:30]
C
My collab number is five. As in five pounds of weights that come with the Starbucks limited edition weighted vest sold by a company called kbb. That's the collab. It's a weighted vest sold by Starbucks.
- [44:44]
B
Starbucks XKBB weighted vest with five pounds of weight in it.
- [44:48]
C
Correct. Five pounds of weights. I think you could put more if you want. And then in the back. There's a pocket in the back where you can put your Starbucks protein drink. And that's something that exists in the world. It costs $22.
- [44:59]
A
And then there's like a long straw
- [45:01]
B
that comes out and you can sip on your drink.
- [45:02]
C
I didn't see a straw. Most vests. I have a running vest, you know, with the straws, but it didn't have a straw. You can just reach back and get the. It kind of seems like a bad idea actually, now that I think about it.
- [45:12]
A
But won't it spill if you're running
- [45:14]
B
or are you not meant to be running with it?
- [45:16]
C
You walk with a weighted vest. Actually, I saw someone today with a weighted vest walking women, middle aged women especially, really into walking with weighted vests on right now. It's very popular. There's a Wall Street Journal story about it.
- [45:27]
D
Like resistance training, kind of.
- [45:29]
C
It gets strong bone.
- [45:32]
B
You know, who lost like a ton of weight walking with a weighted vest. It was friend of the pod, Manu Sadiya. Shout out to Manu.
- [45:40]
C
There you go. Maybe he would want this vest. You can't. It's sold out, as these things tend to do. But there is like sweepstakes. You can enter to win one if you walk a certain amount every day or something and you don't have to have the Starbucks drink in the back. That's. That's entirely up to you.
- [45:58]
A
Talking about sweepstakes, I just need to
- [45:59]
B
like, rant about this for a minute. Zoran Mamdani did this deal with FIFA to allow a thousand New Yorkers to go to each of the World cup games in New York except for the final for 50 bucks. And he was like, yay. And he was like, there's going to be a lottery and you know, we'll pick a thousand winners for each game and you get the tickets. Fine.
- [46:21]
A
But then he was like, we are
- [46:22]
B
going to artificially limit, limit the number of people in each lottery to 50,000.
- [46:27]
A
So now you have to like enter
- [46:29]
B
a lottery to enter the lottery.
- [46:30]
A
And then if you're one of the
- [46:31]
B
top 50,000 people trying to enter the lottery, then you get to enter the lottery, which you might then win the ticket.
- [46:38]
A
It's like, why, if it's a lottery anyway, just allow everyone to enter.
- [46:41]
B
What?
- [46:42]
D
I feel like there has to be like a bureaucratic reason for that.
- [46:45]
C
That is the most New York thing I've ever heard.
- [46:48]
D
You know, sweepstakes law is really weird. Like we've. I've had to with. Deal. Deal with this before. You know, media companies Will give away, like, a trip or something. And there's all this legalese around what constitutes the sweepstakes and what the parameters have to be. So I feel like this is some red tapey thing.
- [47:02]
C
I was going to enter for the Starbucks weighted vest because it looks really weird and interesting, but you have to have a Strava. An account. A Strava account, which I don't have to enter, which. Is that legal? I don't know. Elizabeth, can you tell me.
- [47:15]
D
I don't know. I'm not sure.
- [47:18]
C
We'll get back to you. Let us know. Write us. Write to us. Slate Money, slate.com.
- [47:22]
B
all right, my number is 3 million, which is the number of dollars that John Caryrou has been paid for his new book about this guy, which we talked about, who he reckons is Satoshi Nakamoto. And we talked about this on the pod and we were like, okay, he's come up with a name, and it might be true and it might not be true. And. And he's one of 18 people who's come up. And anyway, that name has been published,
- [47:50]
A
and he's splashed it all across the New York Times. So who is going to buy this book? And how on earth does he. Like, does any publisher think they're going
- [47:59]
B
to make back a $3 million advance?
- [48:01]
A
I do not understand publishing.
- [48:02]
B
All the publishers are, like, you know, crying poverty and claiming that their business is really bad, and then they're paying John Caryrou $3 million for this book that no one is going to buy.
- [48:11]
D
Well, okay, so here's my theory about sales like that. First of all, the publisher probably gets a cut of any options on the book for a movie, which this is the sort of thing that would maybe get made into a movie.
- [48:24]
B
This is such an uncinematic story, though,
- [48:27]
D
also, if you read the prior Caryou book, you might. Might not have seen the Times reporting. You'd pick it up because you liked the last one. And bitcoin enthusiasts who just want to know everything about every possible theory are going to.
- [48:39]
A
Yeah, you see, if I had any
- [48:41]
B
belief whatsoever that bitcoin. Bitcoin people read books, then I would buy that.
- [48:46]
A
But there's no evidence of this whatsoever. Bitcoin books. There have been a million published, and
- [48:51]
B
none of them have done well.
- [48:52]
C
I feel like we should celebrate when a journalist has a $3 million idea, like, almost no matter what.
- [48:58]
B
Fair point, Emily.
- [48:59]
A
Well done, John.
- [49:02]
C
We should all have a $3 million. Like, where is my $3 million contract, Emily?
- [49:05]
B
You should have a $3 million contract.
- [49:08]
A
And well done to John for signing
- [49:10]
B
a $3 million contract. And it is. He's a great journalist and he is a good journalist. Yes.
- [49:14]
C
I mean, the Elizabeth Holmes thing, he should be able to dine out on that for the rest of his career.
- [49:19]
A
I believe that is exactly what he is doing.
- [49:21]
C
Well, good for him. I mean, he put in the work and he did a service for us all. So many memes and entertaining things have launched because of that. I mean, just wonderful.
- [49:32]
B
Just wonderful.
- [49:33]
C
Great job.
- [49:34]
B
We can bask in John Carreyroo's success.
- [49:37]
C
Give him an ice, a counter ice machine.
- [49:41]
A
Thanks for listening. Thanks to just me and Molly for producing and thanks for being a Slate plus member. If you're a Slate plus member, then
- [49:49]
B
we have an extra Slate plus segment coming up on basically the media law behind the viral story about the J.P. morgan sexual harassment lawsuit.
- [50:01]
C
Come on, say it to get people excited. JP Morgan sex slave scandal.
- [50:05]
B
JP Morgan sex slave scandal.
- [50:07]
C
That's what Jessamyn wrote in the notes. So I'm just repeating what she wrote,
- [50:11]
B
you know, with a little asterisk saying there is no J.P. morgan sex slave.
- [50:15]
C
None at all.
- [50:15]
B
Nothing happened. But it's still a sex slave scandal.
- [50:17]
A
Right? We will talk about why we can
- [50:19]
B
call it a sex slave scandal even though it isn't one in the plus.
- [50:22]
A
So listen to that if you remember. And otherwise we'll be back next week with more Slate Money. This episode of Slate Money is brought to you by Airalo, the world's leading EIM brand. In this wonderful world of modern technology, you travel the world with a supercomputer. You can order a car, you can book a hotel, you can translate a menu, you can text your friends. But are you going to have any service this when you're traveling internationally, you have to think about it in advance. It's complicated. It's often very expensive. That is where Airalo comes in. It's the world's largest travel EIM platform. It's trusted by more than 30 million travelers worldwide, and it lets you connect to mobile networks instantly in more than 200 destinations. So you don't need to worry about finding a SIM at the airport. You don't need to worry about roaming charges. You can just, just use your phone
- [51:23]
B
like a normal person. I spend a lot of time traveling around Europe and I can tell you
- [51:27]
A
having a second SIM and having a
- [51:29]
B
second number in Europe is just relaxing.
- [51:32]
A
And because Airalo offers prepaid plans, there are no hidden fees, no surprise charges, no worries about what's going to happen to your phone door when you get back home. In fact, travelers using Airalo can save on average more than $70 on a one week trip compared to with traditional carrier roaming fees. So if you want to learn more or get unlimited data this summer, go to airalo.com that's a I R A
- [51:56]
B
L O dot com. Are you really buying a car online
- [52:03]
D
on Autotrader right now?
- [52:05]
E
Really?
- [52:05]
D
At a playground?
- [52:06]
E
Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.
- [52:09]
D
Wow, your search can really get that specific.
- [52:12]
E
Really?
- [52:12]
D
And you just put in your info and boom.
- [52:14]
B
Cars in your budget.
- [52:15]
D
Mom needs a second.
- [52:16]
E
Honey, you can really have it delivered. Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership.
- [52:21]
C
One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car.
- [52:24]
B
Mommy, look.
- [52:25]
D
I think your kid is walking up the slide. Kyle.
- [52:27]
C
Again?
- [52:28]
E
Really? Autotrader? Buy your car online? Really?