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A
Foreign.
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Hello, and welcome to the big mistake of the 2010's edition of Sleep Money, your guide to the business and finance news not only of the week, but also of the decade. We're going to be talking about the big news of the week this week, which is the latest conflagration in Iran, which is related to obviously the price of oil which has gone up. We're going to talk about whether it's actually gone up over the long term or whether it's in long term decline. What happened to the price of oil over the past 10 years, what happened to other assets over the past 10 years, whether things could have gone much better if only various governments in the US And Europe had managed to get their act together. And we're also going to talk about David Stern, who died this week. He ran the NBA, which is an organization which runs basketball games. You may or may not know about that. And Anna has stuff to say about that. So all of that is coming up in Sleep Money. So, Anna, everyone is talking about geopolitical chaos right now. The US Is killing Iranians and this is causing oil to go up and stocks to go down and people to worry about war. And what I'd love is if you could help us just take about 30,000 step backwards and put this in perspective for us in terms of like, how important is Iranian oil supplies and that kind of thing to the global economy and what's happened to the price of oil and why does it matter and that kind of thing.
- [01:53]
A
Right. So I mean, I think the number one thing to understand is that oil prices have been, you know, significantly lower than where they were, you know, about a decade ago, you know, when you had very, very high oil prices. Then in 2014, oil prices really tanked and now they've been in kind of this mid range. Right.
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B
And so, so give me some numbers here.
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A
So oil prices recently, if you're looking at Brent crude, which is like the global benchmark, it's been, you know, just like around $70. If you're looking at WTI, which is more like the US benchmark, that's been more like a little over $60.
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B
That's like recently.
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A
Yeah, exactly. And that's basically where you've kind of seen oil prices sticking. You know, they've gone up, but they've gone down. But that's really around the range that you've seen. And so, you know, when you have movements like this where you have, you know, an Iranian general being killed and then you have Iran saying they're going to Retaliate, obviously that's going to cause a spike in oil prices. People think supply could potentially decline.
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B
Supply declines because there will be less Iranian oil on the world market. Yeah.
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A
And then also the idea that if there's more tension in the Middle east, that could just cause other countries oil supplies to potentially also be able to decline.
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B
So compared to our roughly $70 base price of oil, like how much is oil moved in in?
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A
I think it's about 4%, 4 or 5%.
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B
So it's not another couple bucks.
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A
Yeah. And it's not enormous, it's not an insignificant move. But I would also just always caution people that, you know, we've seen this happen before where, where something happened where, you know, when you had the idea that Iran oil tankers and then you had oil move and then it kind of went back down or it kind of went back up depending on what was happening.
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B
So put this in perspective for me, just going back like 10 years, what's been the range of oil prices? How much does it move over a decade long time horizon.
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A
So over the past decade, if you had oil prices before they fell in 2014, you had oil prices above $100 and then they fell Thanksgiving of 2014 and then in 2015, 2016 they continued to be low. I think the lowest was probably in 2016, I think getting into the 20s.
- [04:04]
B
So we have seen, you know, in the not too distant past, we have seen massive plunge in the price of oil from well over $100 down to like 30ish in comparison to which any like small moves right now on the order of a buck or two are, you know, are really not worth getting excited about.
- [04:27]
A
Yeah, that actually is what I believe. Now if this does really escalate, if this tension between the US and Iran, which granted has been escalating for a while, but if it really, really escalates, then yes, that actually could cause problems. But I would really argue that this is a little bit of a blip in a much longer trend. And the longer trend really has to do with the rise of shale oil in the United States as well as global demand concerns. So when you have, you know, your supplies increasing and demand is potentially not increasing, then that is obviously going to bring down prices. And also as you have more concerns about climate change coming and also as you have the price of renewable energy declining, that is just one more thing that can potentially weigh on oil prices. So I think that you have a much stronger long term trend and then you have these kind of blips. And I think Obviously the long term trend is more important and the long.
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B
Term trend is down.
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C
I think what this Iran news today will show, I mean, yes, oil prices go up a little bit and the stock market goes down a little bit. But, but longer term, the energy sector, the oil and gas sector's importance, like in the S and P for example, has really decreased over the past decade. As Anna said, with the shale boom, I think the number is oil and gas used to make up 15% of the S&P 500. Now it's about 5%. And if you took out the two major energy companies, then it would be like 2%. Like it's just not what it was because of the shale boom that began in the 2010s that I'm sure we'll talk about Josh Brown's piece in Reform Broker. So even though this is major geopolitical news, it's maybe not major economic news.
- [06:08]
A
Well, I mean, I would, you know, I would say that, you know, obviously because of shale now the US Is producing a lot more oil obviously than they were in the past. But what we're seeing now is we're seeing a fractured market. And this actually is kind of interesting, I think long term because traditionally you had oil has always been pretty concentrated, whether you're, you know, even talking about Standard Oil and then when you start getting into the nationalization of the kind of oil industries and OPEC and the rise of OPEC and again this really control over the oil market. And now really what we're seeing, what we've been seeing since again like around that 2014 mark, is this fracturing of the market. And that really is changing things. And I do think long term that is not only going to have economic consequences, but it is also going to have political consequences.
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B
And we talked about this a bunch with Bethany maclean when she came in to talk about her book about shale. But it's worth revisiting this and I think Josh Brown did a really good job just zooming back and saying there's literally more than twice as much oil production in the US today as we thought there would be this time 10 years ago. It is an all time high. I just pulled the figures for my newsletter and it's 12.7 million barrels a day, which is unprecedented. The US has never produced this much oil. But Emily, to your point, it's not ExxonMobil who's producing this oil. It's a bunch of small little oil producers and there's so much oil that none of them are actually making that much money. And this flood of oil from the US which was completely unexpected, has weakened the big oil producers. It's weakened both whether they're American or Brazilian or Saudi or anyone else. And, and it is made. It is. It has given less power to the people who hold on to the oil. And it has been largely overlooked. I think is like this incredibly dominant trend of the decade. And I think Josh put his finger on exactly why. Because no one made money from it. You know, no one directly sort of like, bought oil or shorted oil and made. And there was no big, like, stock which zoomed up 100 times. It was just this background noise that quietly changed everything. And Josh makes a pretty compelling argument that it even explains the rise of Putin that, you know, without the oil and gas revenues that he used to be able to rely on, he started getting much more aggressive.
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A
So I, that is actually the only part of the article I have some quibbles with, because some of the aggressive movements that Putin took were before oil prices fell. And in a weird way, I actually think that some of the sanctions on Russia from the US and the EU kind of gave Putin a little bit of COVID as, like, the economy was really tanking in Russia after that point. He could blame it on the sanctions when really it was much more about other things. But, but having said that, like, I do think most of what you just said is very, very correct. I really do think that this, this change is something that, it relates to other trends that we'll talk about later in terms of the kind of excess capital needing to find a home, very low rates that has really spurred this kind of growth of all of these small shale. It is very, very similar to actually what happened before Standard Oil took over. Actually, like, part of the reason that Standard Oil created that trust was because when you had a bunch of small oil companies, it was impossible for anyone to make money. It's just, it, like, it just. There's too many price swings. So I guess that, that just leads me to think that moving forward, it is going to be very hard to make this a stable market if you don't have a major player.
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C
And then what? I, I guess my question going forward would be, given this recent attack in Iran and given how much the energy sector and the oil sector has changed over the past decade, like, if there's increasing, there is increasing, but if it gets even worse in the Middle east, like, how is that going to be different than it has been in the past, given sort of this evaporation of power in the energy sector? This Kind of like dilution to all the smaller players. Right.
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B
Like the dynamics of this are going.
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C
To be so different.
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B
I totally buy what Anna's saying here. And the natural implication of what Anna's saying is that Middle Eastern wars, at least from an economic perspective and at least from an American economic perspective, become just less and less important over time. There's no way we're going to have a 70s style oil shock because America's like energy independent at this point.
- [10:37]
A
Yeah, and I actually think it works the other way too. Like, I've always said that I think that we would never have been able to do the Iranian deal if it hadn't been for shale oil. Granted, we obviously went out of the Iranian deal, so it ended up not making a huge bit of difference. But part of the reason we were able to do that was because we didn't have to worry about the ang, about angering the Saudis as much as we would have had to in the past.
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C
I mean, Josh Brown called shale the most disruptive Trend of the 2010s. I don't know if that's true.
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So, Emily, what's your. What would you nominate as the most disruptive Trend of the 2010s now that we've seen the entire decade from beginning to end?
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Mm.
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How would you sum it up in terms of one big trend? If it's not shale, what is it?
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C
I knew you were gonna ask me that and I should have one snappy answer. But I have two two's Good. So the first is technology, which upended everything. Like, if you think about 2010, we didn't really use iPhones the way we use them now. We didn't have Google Maps. We barely use social media compared to now. Like, it's just changed everything from politics to the economy to our personal lives. One and two. I'm sort of convinced by Jordan Weissman and Paul Krugman. I know that the austerity, the reaction to the Great Recession, the muted reaction in government spending was also one of the most disruptive Trends of the 2010s, because it helped sort of pave the way for, like, the Donald Trumps and the Demagogues.
- [12:05]
B
Let's unpack that a little bit because I think most of our listeners wouldn't understand that. I read Jordan's Feast. Even I don't fully understand that. So let's put the personal technology and social media thing to one side for the time being. Although you're right, that was huge. And we'll say that in the wake of the financial crisis. The Obama administration and the Fed did a bunch of things to stimulate the economy in terms of fiscal and monetary policy. And people like Jordan Weissman and Paul Krugman say that they didn't do enough that they stimulated fiscally, but they didn't stimulate enough that they stimulated in terms of monetary policy, but they didn' like enough and they should have done more. And I, I totally buy the idea that they should have done more. And what I'm not really. Well, what I don't buy or what I don't entirely understand is this certainty that if they had done more, then things would have been radically different. And it was the lack of them doing more that really caused a bunch of xyz. And if you could be a bit clearer about those causal mechanisms, that would be really helpful.
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C
So yeah, it was the lack of doing more, the lack of government spending that slowed down the recovery. And it was also not the Obama people or the Democrats not doing enough. But it was also the opposition from the Tea Party and conservatives who pushed austerity in the 2010s and you know, ground the government to a halt over things like that and made it sort of fashionable to cut rather than spend. Or even more fashionable, I think if there had been more government spending and more efforts to help Americans and not just banks, then we could have had sort of like a new era of even growth, sort of bottom up growth in the country that we didn't see. And instead, you know, for most regular people, yeah, maybe they have jobs and unemployment's low, but the recovery hasn't just, it hasn't been as spectacular as it could have been. And I think this fomented a lot of unease and unhappiness, that sort of yada yada. Plus that social media thing I talked about before gets you to Donald Trump.
- [14:18]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think that there is a reasonable argument to be made that clearly post the Great Recession and during the Great Recession, obviously there was a significant problem with aggregate demand. Right. And if you do have a problem with just in general thinking about demand in the country, having more kind of countercyclical fiscal policy, so having the government b have loose, looser fiscal policy to try to stimulate that demand makes sense in traditional Keynesian thought, like that is what you do. And although there was obviously some stimulus, there was not in many people think there really was probably not enough in the United States. And as a result there probably was a slower, like more muted recovery, especially for the average worker. And then I think on the other side and this to Me is actually the biggest trend, bar none of the decade are incredibly low rates and very, very active central banks. You know, this is really underlies almost everything and partly it relates to this because all countries and the US as well really relied on monetary policy as opposed to fiscal policy. And while on the one hand there's probably that worked in some ways, there are some negatives to that in the fact that when you are relying so much on monetary policy, you're going to increase income inequality because you're going to inflate asset prices and the people who are holding most of the stocks and a lot of the real estate are obviously going to be wealthier. And so I think that these two things you, you could argue that yes, they did some things. It's impossible to say that had they stimulated more fiscally 100%, everything would have been better. You know that you can never say that. But there is some, I do give some credence to the argument that you may have had a stronger recovery for the average worker.
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C
Yeah, I think the mentality was you help those at the top and not those at the bottom. And we saw how that shook out.
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B
I think that Anna actually puts her finger on it much better than that. It wasn't a deliberate attempt to help the top rather than the bottom so much as it was a deliberate attempt to let the central bank do the heavy lifting rather than Congress. And given the tools at the central bank's disposal, which is basically interest rates and not much else, if the central bank does the heavy lifting, then what you're going to have is the rich getting most of the benefit. In contradistinction to. If Congress had done most of the heavy lifting with a large deficit financed stimulus package, then they could have targeted it much more. The median household and even poor households. Heaven forefend.
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C
There was really a sense though coming out of the Great Recession of the. If you remember how the, the Tea Party started with Rick Santelli sort of ranting against people getting bailed out, you know, because they took on too big mortgages and how unfair that was. There was really this sense and it pervaded everything. I think that average workers and people at the bottom kind of like deserve this in a way. There was that anger against the banks, but it didn't matter. There was still an impetus to help them that they kind of got lost for average workers.
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B
And the place where you see that most strongly is the place where austerity hit hardest was actually not in the US at all, but in Greece. And so you look and that attitude of Rick Santelli to the, you know, homeowners who might get bailed out in the United States is basically exactly the same as the attitude of most Germans towards the idea of helping out the Greeks. And in both cases, what you had was governments shying away from making those kind of spending decisions because it was perceived as being unfair or something, or bailing out the unworthy. And because governments didn't make those spending decisions, things were much worse than they need otherwise have been. And the story of austerity is a missed opportunity story, I think, in the United States. But in Europe it's much worse than that. In Europe we're really seeing the story of austerity having on some level just fractured the entire European project.
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A
And I would actually make an argument that you could even see this before the great financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis. I mean, I would actually make the argument that, you know, part of Germany's fiscal policy for, you know, since like the Hartz reforms of basically not spending any money to try to push up savings rates to try to make this grand export economy really, really hurt Europe, it's not seen as austerity. But I mean, it is, you know, it is another form of austerity.
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B
And if you save, if you save more, you spend less. And if you spend less, that's austerity. Right?
- [19:01]
A
And also obviously then they're going to be importing less from other countries, you know what I mean? So it's like they, so as a result those countries are going to take on more debt. These things are all, are all connected. And I do think one thing we are definitely seeing now is the pushback from a lot of places, including even honestly the imf, you know, where you're starting to question a little bit more this kind of dogma, that the only answer to every, you know, debt problem is just massive austerity. Now, you know, and granted it's complicated obviously because, you know, you do sometimes have governments that are, have, you know, poor spending policies and they are wasting a lot of money. And so like it's, this isn't to say that, you know, there aren't still some valid criticisms to government policies. However, I think that there is much more of a kind of a pushback now against that kind of pure kind of austerity driven dogma.
- [19:48]
C
I think you can see it in the Democrats running in 2020. Like, I think sort of the tragedy of the austerity dogma was there was like a lack of creativity in what could be done to stimulate the economy and the kinds of new policies we could be looking at that finally now it's 2020 and people are talking about sort of like new interesting kind of things like a Green New Deal or Medicare for all or like there's finally some kind of like creativity to economic policy.
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B
Except that I'm, you know, lucky enough now to work with some pretty plugged in political reporters on Capitol Hill and they're all unanimous that a Green New Deal is dead on arrival, not just because of Republican opposition, although that is assured, but also because of Democratic opposition. You couldn't even pass a Green New Deal among the Democrats, let alone among Congress as a whole.
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C
But people are talking about these ideas. I think there's people were talking about.
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B
Them after the financial crisis. Talking about them didn't help.
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C
There's more of an opening and a real that it was Christy Romer, right?
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B
Christy Romer was talking about it in the White House after the financial crisis and Larry Summers shut her down and said, no, don't even talk about it. The conversations have always been there and the outcome has always been, you know.
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A
Yeah, I mean, the one thing I will say, and I do, I mean, honestly folks, I do kind of agree with you. I mean, I've actually heard the same thing out of people in who are talking to people in Frankfurt that say the same thing that everybody's talking that about Germany is going to start spending more. And the people say, yeah, you talk to some German politicians and I'll just laugh at you. So I do think that there is some truth to that. However, I guess the one thing, though is that we are seeing that we're getting to the limits of monetary policy. We are seeing that like monetary policy can only do so much. And once you get, you know, into negative rates and this kind of quantitative easing for forever, you're honestly almost seeing more negative consequences than you are seeing positive consequences. So then that that kind of brings up the question of, well, you're going to have to do something else. Right. If we've kind of gotten to the point where you can't just rely on monetary policy, then, you know, there aren't that many other things left to do. So then there's the possibility that fiscal stimulus could potentially become more of a reality in a number of countries, especially countries in Europe, that have more fiscal space.
- [22:04]
B
So, Anna? Yes, I know. As you know, as every listener to Slate Money knows, I know absolutely nothing about about sportsball except that I know that not only team owners but also players went from ludicrously rich to Insanely, ludicrously rich. Over the past decade, they had a. And one of the prime architects of that has just died. And that's about the limit of my knowledge. Help me out here.
- [22:32]
A
Yes. So David Stern passed away on New Year's Day. He is the very longtime serving former commissioner of the NBA. He was commissioner from 1984 to 2014. And the reason that he is so, I mean, well regarded in one sense, I mean, there's definitely some controversies, but. But he really changed the NBA and honestly, I would argue he changed all of us sports. So when he took over in the 80s, the NBA was kind of a afterthought. Like most of the teams were losing money. They were showing games on tape delay. They wouldn't even showing some of them live because nobody really cared. You know, teams were playing and like they only had, you know, only a little bit more than 50% of people. The arenas were filled. So really this was, this was not a really good look. And at the same time, honestly, all US Sports really were still pretty domestic, you know. Yes, you had some, you know, in Japan there was a little interest in, in US Baseball, but for the most part, a lot of US Sports were very, very domestic. And then what David Stern really did was he did two things. One, he really leaned into the growing stardom of players. And this is important because this is actually something that the other leagues were kind of pushing back on because they were concerned about the power of these, of this kind of growing stars and thus the money that they could kind of ask for. Whereas David Stern really leaned into that initially, really very much. Mag Johnson and Larry Bird.
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B
So. So how did he do that? What, what do you mean when he leaned into it? Yeah, he do that.
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A
So there were a lot of kind of very player focused TV promotions. He really kind of hyped up the All Star Game again to really focus on these kind of players. He spent a lot more and really expanded their kind of entertainment wing to really like highlight and showcase players. In terms of his relationship, in terms of the players actual, like the unions, it's a little bit complicated. But he was involved initially when they did get rid of the, this option clause which allowed free agency in basketball. And so you did have this kind of growth of the big star players being able to ask for a lot more money than they could in the past. And while, yes, he did push back against this, as all kind of leaders of these different leagues do, NBA players, because of a number of reasons, were able to get contracts that are actually quite a Bit better than you see in other leagues. So that's one thing in terms of this kind of growth of a star driven industry. And then the other thing and the probably honestly maybe even more important but related is making this a global brand. So he really and this he did by setting up multiple kind of global NBA offices. The NBA was the first league to have a regular season game outside of North America. It was in Japan. And the other big thing he did was actually in 92 when he put together the dream team of, you know, it was the first time that you had professional athletes in a U.S. olympic basketball team. And that was another thing that really liked, brought all of these stars kind of to the world stage.
- [25:22]
B
Well, it was the first time you had professional athletes at the Olympics at all.
- [25:26]
A
Yes, exactly. Exactly, yes. So that was the one way he kind of did it where he really made it so that you could go to many, many, many places in the world and people would know who Michael Jordan was.
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B
You're right about the branding. And one of the things I've noticed living in America as a foreigner is that people talk about the league brand all the time. They watch the NBA, they're fans of the NBA, they, you know, they're like, is there an NBA game on today? And the phrase NBA always appears when and where I as like a naive foreigner would expect people to use the term basketball. Like I feel like people, like people don't even talk about basketball anymore. Not nearly as much as they talk about NBA as like this. It's almost like the sport is unto itself the league. And that's astonishing to me. Like I find that super interesting. And every time anybody talks about basketball they invariably mention NBA. And I always have to mentally try and remember what NBA stands for to try and work out which sport they're talking about. Because for me like the sport is the basketball. But it seems that exactly what you're talking about, this sort of branding of the sport as NBA has just made everyone think of it as this branded professional thing.
- [26:43]
A
I will say I think you're right, but I would say I think part of that actually though also has to do with college sports. Because there's a reason that people say I'm watching the NBA or the NFL because they want to distinguish it from college basketball and college football. When people say they're watching baseball, they do not usually say the mlb. Sometimes they do, but not as frequently. And I think that's because people don't watch as much college baseball.
- [27:00]
C
What I was going to say is in terms of the branding of the NBA. I think David Stern was really instrumental in branding the NBA and really in distinction from the NFL, not, not only in elevating players into stars, but sort of letting players be themselves, letting them be a little more outspoken, have a little more personality, and sort of branding the NBA as a progressive sports league. And I think the turning point there was Magic Johnson. When he was diagnosed with HIV in the early 90s, this was like a. A very different time. AIDS and HIV was still pretty stigmatized. And when Magic Johnson got HIV and announced his diagnosis, it could have gone a lot of ways, but Stern really supported him and had him play in the All Star Game, I think the following year or the same year. And that was very controversial decision at the time, but it turned out to be a huge boon not only for HIV awareness and sort of destigmatizing the disease, but also for Magic Johnson, who said that had some quote they had in the Times obit that was like, david Stern saved my life basically by not shunting him off to the side, but, like, highlighting him in that game. And my husband, who's a sports fan, was like, talking about that game and how Johnson, you know, everyone. He did phenomenally, and they even, like, ended the game a little early, and it was like this very emotional thing. And it really sort of highlighted the NBA as sort of the more progressive sports league. And I think about that a lot, just in contrast with where we are with the NFL, which is just this, like, brutal. This brutal sports league where, you know, players aren't allowed to have distinct personalities. Man, look what they did to the guy who kneeled, right? I mean, Colin Kaepernick and how he's been ostracized. It's just such a distinction. And I think Stern was instrumental there.
- [28:55]
A
I think that that is. That is definitely true. I mean, I know that there are, you know, there definitely were some controversies over the years in terms of. I know there was like, a dress code at one point that they tried to put in that I know a lot of people thought was kind of.
- [29:06]
B
Racist for basketball players.
- [29:08]
A
Yeah, it was when they were, like, going, like they had to wear suits, you know, like when they were going at appearances and that kind of thing. And there was definitely some. Some pushback to that. And. And of course, whenever you. You have an instance where you have a owner or, I'm sorry, commissioner who is white and a league where dominantly African American, like, they're definitely going to be some. Some. Some issues. You know, having said that, like, you. You Know, if you do listen to what a lot of the players have said, you know, since the death, I mean, there definitely are a. And really saying that, you know, he. It was certainly not far from perfect, but in comparison to other leagues, he really did allow the players a lot more freedom. And I do think that part of the reason that it is a more progressive league. I think you're right about that. I mean, I do think he did set a kind of an understanding of that, of what players could do, which I. Which I definitely think is a positive thing. And I definitely. And I think that it's another reason why the NBA, you know, continue to become so popular, you know, because it's, It's. He understood that stars are really why people watch professional sports often. I mean, yes, people watch professional sports because it's their hometown team or whatever, but people get really excited in professional sports about players. And he understood that. And I think that's something that other leagues sometimes, still to this day, I feel like, don't always understand. I have a sad number, Anna.
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B
What's your sad number?
- [30:28]
A
My Sad number is 8000. That is the estimated number of koalas that have died in the Australian wildfires. So there have been something like. I mean, they're enormous number. I think it's like half a billion animals have been killed because of these wildfires. But that includes, they believe, about 8,000 koalas. And there are like not that many koalas in the world. And koala is also cute. So I just saw the statistic and it made me very sad.
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C
Thanks, Anna.
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A
Yeah, Happy New Year.
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B
Too sad to have a number. Emily, do you have a number?
- [31:00]
C
I do have a number. I'll tell it to you. 11.97 billion. That is the amount in taxes that Jeff Bezos estate would have to pay to Washington state if he died. And it would raise the state's revenue, tax revenue overall, 52.1% in just one year. And I got the number from this really interesting paper that I'm like halfway through, was reading on the train over to Slate's offices by Enrico Moretti of Berkeley and Daniel Wilson of the San Francisco Fed that looks at estate taxes and this change in the federal law, I guess, in 2001, which made it sort of advantageous for millionaires and billionaires to move from states with estate taxes to states without estate taxes. Anyway, it's really interesting and one of the more surprising conclusions they come to is that the estate tax is really worth it. Like, even when millionaires and billionaires some of them do move the money that states get when a rich person dies, totally more money than they get just from like income taxes and other taxes with the exception of California. So anyway, it's a really interesting paper and it and shows the power of this really interesting death tax. And the only other thing I'll say is that I read the paper thinking about Knives out, which is really, when you come down to the year, the best.
- [32:22]
A
Such a good movie.
- [32:23]
C
And it's all about like what a rich guy does with his money after he dies. And these are very important and big questions and provide much.
- [32:31]
B
So if the Descendants was a movie about the law against perpetuities, and it was probably the best movie ever made about the law against perpetuities and Knives out is really a movie about the estate tax and the necessity for it being much bigger. My number is 25%, which is the proportion of all beer produced in the world that is consumed in China. Wow. This is up from basically Nothing in the 1970s. And then like the rise of China as an economic force has coincided with the rise of China as a beer drinking nation. So China overtook the United states in about 2004. United States historically had about 20% of the beer consumption in the world. Now it's down to about 14. Germany has just plunged. It used to be like 18 and now it's less than 5. And China is taking all of it. Who knew?
- [33:33]
A
Yeah.
- [33:34]
C
What about hard seltzer? The Chinese drinking hard Seltzer?
- [33:37]
A
That's the next.
- [33:38]
B
Well, I mean, that's the thing. This explains the decline in American beer consumption because everyone's drinking White Claw, apparently. Apparently the guy who started White Claw is now worth $3.6 billion. In case. Keeping track of your billionaires. Yeah, maybe that should have been my number. In any case, I think that's it for us this week. Many thanks to Jessamine Molly for producing and especially to Jack Phillimore, who's sitting opposite me in a very cozy little room in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is recording me so that I can sound slightly congested. Many thanks to all of you for listening. You can keep the emails coming on slatemoneylate.com and we are going to have a slate plus segment about Carlos Ghosn and his exfiltration, which is one of my favorite words. Other than that, we'll talk to you next week on Slate Money.