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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to the Minaj Effect episode of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios and Stacey Marie Ishmael is back with us.
- [00:24]
B
And she is laughing because Nicki Minaj is ruining my life.
- [00:28]
A
Nicki Minaj is ruining Stacey's life. We will talk about why Nicki Minaj is ruining Stacey's life. Stacy, welcome back.
- [00:36]
B
Hello.
- [00:36]
A
You're back in New York. You have a new job. We're going to talk about that. That's exciting. And you've come out of a rather terrible experience, which we will mention. Talk a little bit about that. Emily Peck of Fundrise, you are here too.
- [00:49]
C
I'm also here and have not come out of a terrible experience.
- [00:52]
B
I'm glad to hear that you've had.
- [00:54]
A
A very good experience. You have seen, as you say about the past five years of your life encapsulated and trotted out to the world by none other than Janet Yellen, the US Treasury Secretary. So that's an exciting development in the world of what I promised Stacy. I would not call feminist fiscal policies. So we won't do that.
- [01:16]
C
All humans benefit from these economic policies.
- [01:19]
B
Just smart fiscal policy.
- [01:21]
A
So we are going to talk about smart fiscal policy. We are going to talk about delivery drivers in New York City and their electric bikes and the economics thereof. And we are going to start by talking about vaccine mandates and what that means. All coming up on Slate Money. So, Stacy, welcome back.
- [01:44]
B
Thanks.
- [01:45]
A
Where were you for the past two weeks?
- [01:48]
B
Recovering from a coronavirus. Breakthrough infection on my air mattress.
- [01:52]
C
Oh, devastating.
- [01:53]
A
That's not a good welcome to New York. You moved to New York. Did you get this infection on the airplane? It kind of feels like it, yeah.
- [02:00]
B
As far as the very comprom comprehensive contact tracing that New York put me through, can tell it was a transit based infection.
- [02:09]
C
When you say very comprehensive, you mean it was very comprehensive or was.
- [02:13]
B
I spent 45 minutes on the phone with once. The second I tested positive, I got a phone call from, you know, New York Health and hospitals being like, hello, don't go anywhere and now answer questions. But every single person you've been in contact with and every place you've been for X amount of time. So very thorough.
- [02:30]
A
And then did all of those people get phone calls from New York hospitals?
- [02:34]
B
Also got very thorough phone calls, some of them multiple times.
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A
One of the questions I've been having is how did they find out that you tested positive? Did you inform them?
- [02:43]
B
No, I didn't have to do anything. So I went to, I think it was a New York health and hospital's pop up situation, gave them 92 forms, it felt like of information, showed them my ID, et cetera, et cetera. They created a portal online and then that information seems to have been automatically uploaded to some sort of centralized database that triggered this contact tracing call.
- [03:05]
A
Right. I guess what I mean is like how did you find out that you tested positive? And then how did.
- [03:10]
B
I got an email.
- [03:12]
A
Okay, so you didn't. This wasn't like an at home test.
- [03:15]
B
No, no, no. So I and various other friends just in an abundance of caution were like, hey, we're here, let's go see, you know, queued up, got the tests. The place that I went wasn't doing rapid, so it was PCR and kind of like within 12 or 14 hours, I think from when I had actually done the test. I got an email the next morning.
- [03:33]
C
Should we say that Stacey has moved to New York City because she has a new exciting, fancy job and that she's presumably doing much better now and is not sick anymore?
- [03:43]
B
Compared to sick I do, yes. Like the past two weeks, had you had I tried to talk in as full a sentence as I just did, I would have coughed the entire time.
- [03:52]
C
And the big new fancy job.
- [03:53]
B
Oh, I am now the managing editor for cryptocurrencies at Bloomberg.
- [03:59]
C
I needed to get that information out there. Please carry on.
- [04:02]
A
We will definitely take advantage of all of your newfound crypto knowledge in future episodes. But yeah, like one of the things which I've been thinking about as we navigate this sort of post vaccine phase of the coronavirus is that especially in Europe, but also in the United States, a lot of people are just taking a lot of at home tests and they're testing positive and they're like, oh, and now I'm going to self isolate. And then they do and then after a few days they're no longer infectious and then eventually they recover and they go back into the world. And it strikes me that there's not a lot of protocols for those people to A, you know, tell the local authorities that they're positive so that they can be properly contact raced or B, even just become part of the COVID statistics.
- [04:51]
B
That's 100% correct. Because one of the things that I was doing was I took an at home rapid test of what was supposed to be the end of my quarantine to see if it was like safe for me to kind of go out and get a real test to confirm that I was okay. And there was Just there was no mechanism whatsoever to your point to say, okay, Abbott Rapid says I'm good. And I actually asked this of my doctor after I had tested positive. And they said, well, if you tell us that you tested positive on a rapid test, like, they will enter that into their database, which then presumably does get aggregated into the things. But unless there's like explicit disclosure from testee to medical professional, that pipeline seems totally broken.
- [05:35]
C
There seems like there's two issues. First, in the US these rapid tests are very expensive and not available to everyone. So the problem of people will use them and then not report the data seems to be like a second order problem we can't even get to until we solve the first order problem.
- [05:50]
A
Let's stick on the first order problem for a minute because it's a very interesting problem. You know, I just got back from a few weeks in Europe where they, you know, have hot and cold running rapid tests everywhere. In the United Kingdom, you can order a pack of seven of them. They will be delivered to you free overnight. And there doesn't seem to be any supply issue with rapid tests in either Germany or the UK or most other places that I know about. Whereas in the United States, there seems to be a huge supply issue. They're constantly sold out on Walgreens, Amazon, all of those places. And when you can get them, they cost like $25 for a pair, which is vastly more than like the one or two euros that you pay, if you pay anything at all in Europe. And I genuinely don't understand what accounts for the difference.
- [06:41]
C
There's a good piece in Kaiser Health News that I was reading to prepare for the show. And it's like a confluence of uniquely American Our health system is the worst kind of things. Like in the summer when rates were low, Abbott Labs, which was producing the rapid tests, stopped doing it, got rid of a lot of them. There's an investigation in the Times about that. So that decreased supply. There's holdups at the fda, which hasn't approved a lot of the manufacturers who want to actually make them. It's taking a really long time. In Europe, they fast tracked a lot of that stuff. So I think those are the biggest holdups as far as I can tell.
- [07:16]
A
And it actually reminds me a little bit of the vaccines in this sense. You kind of think of tests as being a commodity product that just kind of sloshes around the world and, you know, they will go to wherever, you know, supply and demand dictates. Whereas in fact, as you say, these things are, you know, medical procedures, they are heavily regulated. And just because they exist in Europe doesn't mean that they can be distributed in the same form in the United States. And the rules are very different. And somehow that just creates massively different supply and demand dynamics in the United States versus Europe. And. And it doesn't even itself out. There's no mechanism for, you know, the excess supply in Europe to make its way across the Atlantic and be used by the people who desperately want these tests. Which I have to sort of like, segue into the sort of news hook here, which is that now that we have a vaccine mandate coming down the pike from the federal government for any employer with more than 100 employees, if you're not vaccinated, which is a lot of employees, you have to be testing frequently. And no one knows how these people are supposed to get tested frequently when already you have all of these kids going back to school and getting tested all the time. The testing capacity. It's not obvious that we have the testing capacity to enforce that kind of a mandate.
- [08:38]
B
I mean, I can speak to that. Right. When I got tested the first time, when I found out that I was positive, it was like I was lining up at a place at 8:30 in the morning, and I was there for three hours. And then after I had done the rapid test at home to then go and confirm, am I allowed to be out in the world again? It was. I went to a spot that was advertised in Times Square. I get there like, we're having WI FI problems, but there's a truck down the street and there's a tent. If you walk down to 44th and 8th, you'll find it. And so I go there and I like, I queue up and it's, you know, I'm in a position where, okay, fine, I can spend half a day each time trying to get tested. But there are a lot of other folks there who, you know, queuing up for hours is not feasible for them. Like, they don't have the schedules, the time, the energy to be doing this kind of thing.
- [09:30]
C
I think that makes you think then that the vaccine mandate with the option to test weekly is really just a vaccine mandate. And the option to test weekly is, I mean, a joke. No one's going to. It's one to do that.
- [09:42]
A
Yeah.
- [09:42]
C
It's a stick. Thank you. Yes.
- [09:44]
B
It's.
- [09:44]
C
This is just the Biden administration saying, get vaccinated or it's going to be a nightmare for you. Although they did announce, also, the president did announce some measures to make these Rapid tests, cheaper. People on Medicaid, I think, can get them for free. They're encouraging more production, they're trying to get the costs down, etc.
- [10:02]
B
You know, but going back to the point about the brokenness of the communication pipeline in addition to the supply chain, Felix, I remember on Twitter you were saying, well, folks in New York can get vaccines to their door. I mean, I really feel like so much of this information about what the options are that are available to you just is not reaching people who would benefit. Oh, in addition to the comprehensiveness of the contact tracing, every day that I was sick, I would get a text message with a link that I had to answer a bunch of questions in. But one of the things that was interesting about that is they told me they were like, hey, did you know you could get food and medication, vacation delivered so that you don't have to leave home? You have the option of quarantining in a New York City hotel? I was like, I genuinely did not know actually that these things were available.
- [10:43]
A
New York City, I have to say, is relatively good at that kind of thing. I. When I came back to the United States from Germany, I got a phone call from, you know, the same folks saying, you know, you don't have to test again now that you're back in New York, but we recommend it. Do you intend on doing that? I'm like, yeah, I'll. I'm totally testing, you know, more test, more, better. And they're like, do you have a test at home? I'm like, yeah, I do. They said, if you don't, we'll just send a test over to you. And then as. As I was saying on Twitter, if you want to get vaccinated in New York and you don't want to make an appointment, you can just ask them to come to your home and they will, like, a nurse will come over to your home and vaccinate you in your home, I think. And obviously testing in, well, not. It's not obvious at all. Testing in New York is free. It is not free everywhere. If you go to a testing site, you do not need to pay. But I think New York is an outlier in this respect.
- [11:38]
B
Oh, it definitely is. Compared to Texas.
- [11:41]
A
Yeah. And so, Stacy, you came from Texas. Like, what's the situation now? A friend of mine was contact tracing in Texas for a while, and that just seems to have basically ended.
- [11:49]
B
I mean, contact tracing in Texas almost didn't start. You know, like one of the very earliest stories that we were looking into in sort of March to July of 2020 was there was this big initial announcement, we're going to have all these contact traces. And then there were none. You know, it was this, this idea of like, ah, too big, like no chance. This is, this seems really hard. And that was again, the vaccine then was a dream, right? There was no sense of that. There is a way to get this under control, under than understanding where the spread is. And even the attempts to try to put that together were waved away as, no, we'll figure something else out. But they never really did.
- [12:29]
A
So what do we think about the vaccine mandate? Employers going to take it seriously? Is it going to force a lot of people to get vaccinated just because they want to keep their jobs?
- [12:41]
C
I think we probably all think the vaccine mandate is great and more people should get vaccinated because if you're not vaccinated, your chances of dying are like 11 times higher. I mean, it's just obvious. But I think it remains to be seen if employers who are going to take vaccine mandates seriously are probably the same employers that would have made their employees get vaccinated in the first place, is my guess. And the ones that aren't going to take it seriously probably won't get caught because this is going to be enforced by osha. And I read a stat, I think it was in the Times. There are so few inspectors at OSHA that if they were to inspect every workplace in the country, it would take 150 years to conduct a single inspection of each workplace under its jurisdiction. I mean, it's not going to be enforced very well.
- [13:25]
A
I don't think they're trying to like catch like scoff laws. I do think it serves a real purpose, especially for unionized workplaces, that when employers first started saying that they wanted to impose a vaccine mandate, the unions would often come back and say, look, it's not that we're against vaccine mandates, but this has to be, you know, negotiated as part of the collective bargaining agreement. There's a whole bunch of, you know, this is an imposition on our members. You're asking them to do certain things. We need to go to the negotiating table and we need to go through that whole process. And you know, employers hate reopening collective bargaining agreements for any reason. It's just a huge amount of work and pain in the ass. And so now they get to do that and just say, look, we have no choice, we have to do this by law. And the union can't really say, oh well, you know, we want concessions or XYZ in return, I do think that one.
- [14:22]
B
And whether this is a mechanism of the collective bargaining or not, one of the things that's also important here, and this is a point the unions made, is if you are mandated to get a vaccine, but your schedule physically does not allow you to have paid time off if you're experiencing side effects or if you have to stand in a queue for however long to get that done or get tested if you opt out of the vaccine, that is genuinely challenging. And there's been years of reporting at this point about the precariousness of workers who are on the equivalent of zero day contracts or really unpredictable schedules where you get a text message that says we need you to be on the shop floor in 12 hours. And that's a legit point if you are going to be expecting people to do a thing as a condition of work, but the conditions of work make it impossible to do that thing. That seems less than ideal from an employee perspective.
- [15:17]
C
But the Biden administration, as part of its mandate said companies must provide paid leave so people can get vaccinated.
- [15:23]
B
Right, but this goes back to the enforcement. Who's going to make them right?
- [15:27]
C
No, absolutely true. And I think there is a, I think, and I've read a few little surveys here and there and Bryce Covert had a good piece in the Times. Some people just haven't had the time to do it. Not everywhere is New York City. It's not immediately obvious how to get vaccinated. I know I spent like a long time when the vaccines were first available just getting that appointment and stuff like that. People don't have time for that. Like they have jobs, they're super busy, they don't have the paid leave. Stacy is saying that's a very legitimate thing. And I know we spend or on Twitter, it seems like everyone spends a lot of time getting upset at vaccine misinformation and people who are holding out because they believe all kinds of crazy stuff. But there is a contingent of people that are just like busy and don't want to bother and there should be more time spent making it really easy to be vaccinated along with mandates.
- [16:16]
A
I've been pretty heartened by the vaccination numbers. I have to say that, you know, it's partly delta and you know, people are like, shit, I really ought to get vaccinated because this is a very scary disease and there's a lot of it going around. But I think, you know, it's also just partly the official FDA approval, honestly seems to have made a big Difference.
- [16:35]
B
A lot of people.
- [16:36]
A
Yeah, I want to wait until there's official FDA approval. Also, I want to be able to pick which vaccine I get. So now people can say, I'm going to go and get the Pfizer vaccine, which has official FDA approval. And people are like, fine, you want to pick that one. And just the fact that so many, like, hundreds of millions of people around the world have been vaccinated and, you know, it is pretty obvious that there's not some horrible side effect that is affecting a large number of those people. And, you know, given the way that vaccines work, if there are what Nicki.
- [17:10]
B
Minaj says, do not Nicki Minaj on Nicki Minaj.
- [17:15]
C
I had to mention it. Oh, get it in there.
- [17:17]
A
Okay. I feel like if we get the Trinidadians started on Nicki Minaj, like, we.
- [17:21]
B
Will lose my mind.
- [17:23]
C
You guys could see Stacey's face right.
- [17:25]
B
Now.
- [17:27]
A
So bless you, Nikki. But weirdly, I mean, I have to say this weirdly, I think that even that even, like, the crazy coming out of Nicki Minaj, ultimately, at the margin, is going to make people get vaccinated. People are gonna see, like, what? Every single retweet, every single reporting, like, the Trinidadian TV coverage of this was just so good, Brilliant, so good. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, there's a crazy pop star who's crazy. And like, I better get vaccinated because this woman has no idea what she's talking about.
- [18:00]
C
I think you just made that theory up. You have no basis for this Nicki Minaj.
- [18:05]
A
So it's a discount. So it's Emily. My point is it's a ratchet, right? You can get vaccinated, but you can't get unvaccinated. A number of vaccinated people can only ever go up. So at the margin, if you're going to change your mind as a result of what Nikki just said, the only way you can change it is to go from I am not vaccinated to I am vaccinated. You can't change it the other way around. You can't go from being vaccinated to being unvaccinated.
- [18:31]
C
Are you saying, like, there is no bad publicity for vaccination and even though she's saying negative things about vaccination, it's still good and gets in people's minds. Minds about.
- [18:39]
A
Yeah, pretty much.
- [18:41]
B
Okay, if there are social scientists out there that are. That's a hot take. Felix Celebrity effect.
- [18:45]
C
Is that a Slate pitch?
- [18:47]
B
It seems very Slate pitchy to me. But if there's Anybody studying the effects of misinformation as a positive for vaccination, please slate money, slate.com.
- [18:58]
A
I did want to pick back up on what you were saying about the precarity of workers, because the absolute, no doubt, hands down, best piece of magazine journalism of the week, if not of the year so far, is this astonishing piece in New York magazine about delivery workers for restaurants. And, Emily, you were raving about it. What did you learn from this?
- [19:26]
C
Okay, so the piece was the New York magazine cover story. It was written by the investigations reporter at the Verge, a tech site, and he originally set out. This is crazy to me. This guy set out to write a story about E bikes and how they were affecting New York City, and it turned into a story about. Not about E bikes, but about New York City delivery workers and how they were faring, especially in the pandemic. And E bikes were a part of the story because they make delivery workers deliver much faster, and they also make them much more targets for theft. So that's one thing I learned from the piece, is that delivery workers are getting robbed at really high rates, especially right now, because there's fewer people around to stop it. And as a result, they've come together in solidarity and sort of formed these groups to fend off the attack. So I learned that as well, Felix. I also learned that being. I mean, I already kind of assumed that being a delivery worker delivering seamless and Uber eats in New York City is, like, not the funnest, best job that you could have, but it's so much worse than it used to be. Like, I remember when I was in graduate school, I worked at Pizzeria Uno on the Upper west side, and we had these two delivery guys, and they had their bikes, and, like, when they weren't doing deliveries, they just hung out in the back at Pizzeria Uno, we all would be like, oh, my God, someone didn't get this pizza or they didn't want it, and we'd all go and eat it together with the delivery guy. I was a waitress or whatever, and we love the delivery guys, but that culture where the delivery guy hangs out in the restaurant, waiting in between deliveries is gone because of these apps. And now these delivery guys and women, sorry, nearly always guys, they're just, like, on their own. They don't have anywhere to go to the bathroom. They don't have anywhere to have a break. They're, like, finding these, like, weird places to congregate and go to the bathroom and eat because they don't have that anymore from the restaurants, because the apps have made a bad job even worse.
- [21:18]
B
I want to add one thing about the E bikes, which is that before Citi Bike, basically Gateway drugged New York into accepting E bikes. Delivery workers were using E bikes before New York City could figure out a way to register and regulate them. And as a result, they were constantly.
- [21:32]
A
Getting their bikes seized by the police.
- [21:34]
B
By the police. And because they were getting their bike seized by the police, and I remember there's a tremendous immigrant population of delivery workers, so they were getting bike seized by the police. Some of them were being arrested. Some of them were, like, the target of ICE enforcement. And so, as a person who has benefited from the mass adoption of E bikes, because I love them, I remember being in New York and living in Queens and watching delivery workers on E bikes just get harassed for this thing that now is like, hey, this is a benefit of being a city commuter. And so just the ongoing unfairness of everything you describe is just incredible.
- [22:10]
A
It's a deeply broken system. And of course, the reason why these delivery workers are driving Around Town on $3,000 E Bikes is because that is the only way that they can compete with the other delivery workers who are on $3,000 e bikes. The equilibrium would work if everyone was just walking around on foot. Right. But then someone was like, I'm gonna do it on a bike, and I'm gonna be faster, and that way I can make more money. And then everyone else needed to get a bike person was like, I'm going to do it on an E bike so I can be faster and make more money. Then everyone needed to get in the bike.
- [22:42]
B
It's not even only just making more money. It's that they are given these explicit targets that they have to hit by the apps.
- [22:50]
A
Yeah, it's like, it's like four deliveries per hour. It's like, insane.
- [22:55]
B
Exactly.
- [22:55]
C
And you get dinged by the algorithm if you're not keeping a pace of whatever targets they set. And then you won't even get on the schedule for, like, the prime time to make money the next day. Like, it's instant punishment if you're not keeping a pace. And there was something in the piece that was like, if you go as fast as you need to go to meet these targets, you're. They're putting their lives in danger going really fast on the E bikes too. I mean, not only do they get the bike stolen, but, like, the delivery workers are getting into car accidents and getting hurt not infrequently. So people can get, like, a single piece of cake delivered to them in the middle of the night. Like, also that. I don't know. That was kind of gross to me as well. Like, people just ordering, like, small amounts of things and these poor men risking their lives.
- [23:37]
A
I live in downtown Manhattan, and right now there seems to be this huge war going on between a bunch of different services with names like Gorillaz and Fridge no more and 1520, basically saying, we will deliver you stuff in 10 minutes. Open the app, order the thing, and it will be at your door in 10 minutes.
- [23:55]
B
Magically, there's like, how is that even possible?
- [23:58]
A
And that is, if nothing else, an absolute guarantee that you're going to have a bunch of people running through red lights and basically making the streets more dangerous for everyone.
- [24:09]
B
Correct. I do want to shout out one to the city, New York, because we are talking about New York. They did in December 2020, I think have one of, if not the first one of the first stories about Los Deliveristas Unidos, which was like, the union Emily, that the New York City food delivery workers had banded together to form as a response to the pandemic meeting that everybody who could afford to trying to order deliver at home instead of going out to eat.
- [24:33]
A
And one of the interesting things about this article was the tension between basically two groups of delivery drivers, one of whom was, you know, trying to work with the apps and with the city of New York and with the police and, you know, kind of saying, we need to unite to be able to get the protections that we need and deserve. Versus, there's another group who was just like, these people will never do anything for us. And we just need to take matters into our own hands. And putting effort into trying to, you know, outreach to local police precincts is always going to be a waste of time.
- [25:10]
C
Yeah. In the piece, it said police didn't care about stolen bikes until someone was finally like, this bike cost $3,000. And the cop was like, oh, interesting.
- [25:19]
B
If your bike gets stolen in New York, you're just like, well, it had a good run. It's just the odds of getting it back.
- [25:27]
A
Zero. My favorite part of the piece was the bit on the Willis Avenue bridge where the delivery workers would get regularly assaulted. Like, people would just ambush them as they were coming over the bridge. And they wound up having this whole system of going in groups to make sure that they had protection in numbers. But then when the assaults did happen, there were police cameras on the bridge, and they were like, they would go up to the police, and the police would be like, we don't have any record of this assault happening on the bridge. Where they're like, it happened at this place on the bridge at this time. And it turns out in an absolutely classic New York moment, that all of the police cameras were concentrated on the roadway because all they care about is car accidents, ticket enforcement, and none of them cared about what might be happening in the bike lane or on the pedestrian path next door.
- [26:12]
C
Stacy, Felix, you guys live in New York City. Are you going to be. Do you order from these apps? Do you feel icky when you order from the app? What do you do?
- [26:22]
B
One of the very first meals that I ordered as I immediately went into quarantine, when I got here and had no food and no pots and nothing to cook with, I called the restaurant. I was like, yeah, no, I'm going to go on your website, find your phone number and give you my credit card details over the phone, like it's 2007. And then, you know, kind of tip extravagantly. So I'm just gonna. I'm trying to make a conscious decision to not, not use the middle apps, as it were.
- [26:49]
A
But it doesn't help because most restaurants, even if you do call them, even if you do go direct, they don't employ their own delivery. So they have to wind up using one of these services.
- [27:00]
C
Wow. I don't have that problem. Where I live, we have three places that deliver, and if you try to use Uber Eats or grubhub, it's like, that'll be two hours. So we just go to the restaurant and pick things up.
- [27:11]
A
I have to say, I am blessed to be in an incredibly restaurant dense neighborhood. Hashtag blessed. So, yeah, when I do decide, but I don't want to eat out, I will just get takeout. I'll go and use my own feet.
- [27:23]
C
Yeah, just walk. I remember I did that. I used to feel bad for the delivery workers even back in the early 2000s, and made a policy of always walking over to the restaurant.
- [27:33]
B
There was another story about people who ordered or attempted to order delivery during the flooding that we had here last week. And then knowing that their streets were flooded and inaccessible. And so I don't know if they thought that folks had boats, but they would put orders in for pizza, the delivery worker would be unable to deliver, and then the delivery worker would get dinged for not being able to complete the transaction. And I'm like, why is that in.
- [27:58]
A
The middle of a hurricane?
- [28:00]
B
It's just.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah, no, I mean, I remember when, you know, Uber used to get in trouble for implementing Surge pricing during storms and stuff like that. But the delivery apps, they, they should absolutely have a hurricane button that they can press. Yeah.
- [28:16]
B
As long as all that money gets to the delivery worker and just say.
- [28:19]
A
Like there is a hurricane going on, we are not delivering anything right now. Sorry.
- [28:24]
C
That's a good idea.
- [28:25]
A
Okay, so Emily, the first ever female Treasury Secretary is now bringing, I guess what you could call like feminist fiscal policy to the White House.
- [28:36]
B
Please don't try to make that phrase happen. Stop it.
- [28:39]
C
Yeah, I mean, and this was very exciting to me as someone who's covered all the childcare, paid leave, all that stuff for a long time. This week the Treasury Department put out this amazing 29 page report called the Economics of Childcare Supply in the United States. And it basically contains everything I've ever written about for the past five years all in one place with the authority of the U.S. treasury Department. Basically, they make the case that the childcare industry and market is broken and needs repair. Part of the reason they're making the case right now is because in the reconciliation bill Build back better that the administration wants to pass, there's, you know, money, a plan for universal pre K and money for people to afford childcare. Capping the amount you spend at 7% of income. Families now spend far more than that. Has all kinds of great data that I've talked about forever on Slate Money and wherever anyone would listen to me about how childcare workers are underpaid, therefore they cycle in and out of the industry. How they're mostly women and people of color and they're discriminated against. How the free market just does not work for childcare for a variety of reasons. Ask me some questions. I can tell you more stuff. I'll stop talking for a second.
- [29:57]
A
Okay, so my question for you, Emily, is like, what is the policy response? What is Janet Yellen doing? What is she suggesting? What can be changed in a way to fix things? This.
- [30:08]
C
Oh, so the policy response kind of like I just said, is to have universal pre K to increase funding for what are these block grants that go out to low income people which like federal money so people can just pay for childcare. Right now these grants exist, but they're underfunded. So most people who maybe could qualify can't even get them. Also this big thing of capping how much you have to pay for childcare, 7% of your income is another policy response. Raising the minimum wage would be another one because some of these childcare workers, workers make, I think average wages are like $12 an hour. So raising minimum wage for $15 an hour would actually be huge universal kind of policy. That would help as well.
- [30:49]
A
And is any of this sort of happening as part of the big fiscal negotiations that are going on right now, or is this all separate?
- [30:57]
C
No, this is part of it. This is a big part of the negotiations going on now, not part of the infrastructure bill. It's the separate reconciliation thing getting tracked. But you know, we need all the Democrats to vote for it, et cetera.
- [31:09]
A
And presumably Joe man going to object somehow.
- [31:13]
C
Yeah, it's really. This stuff is such a no brainer. One thing that's really interesting that they point out in the report that people don't talk about a whole lot is that the point at which parents have to pay for childcare is the point at which they're like least able to pay for childcare. They're most economically constrained. Right. Like you're a young parent, you don't have a lot of money or wealth built up yet, and you're earlier in your career and all of a sudden you have to pay $20,000 a year for childcare. So you want up. Usually the woman drops out of the workforce and the economic costs of doing that reverberate for the rest of your life. And Janet Yellen in the report points this out and I just thought that's something people don't talk about and is really smart. Like, you can take out a loan to go to college because you know eventually that's gonna pay back in lifetime income. But you can't take out a loan for childcare even though it will pay back in lifetime income for these parents.
- [32:03]
B
Emily, One sort of question I have that is related to Felix's about this is why is this so hard to get done in the United States?
- [32:13]
A
Answer this question without using the word patriarchy, of course.
- [32:17]
C
Felix. I would answer it using the word individualism, where, you know, there's this strand towards individualism in the United States holds us back from doing a host of different things like public health and vaccine mandates and universal child care.
- [32:34]
B
I grew up in a sort of a country and a culture and a context in which children were raised by whatever adult was nearby, which meant that you could be in trouble with multiple adults at the same time. But it also meant that, you know, my friends who still live in the Caribbean still live in the West Indies. Like, they don't pay for childcare. They like hand their children over to an aunt or a cousin or a grandparent in a way that is just like unavailable to those of Us who left the Caribbean and the West Indies, for example. And, you know, definitely one of the things that struck me about moving to the US Is what's defined as the atomic unit of family has so many interesting consequences for career potential, for how we think about leave, for how we think about bereavement leave, for how we think about elder care. And I'm never hopeful about anything, but I'm interested to see whether this is the beginning of an evolution in that conversation about the need to kind of rethink, like, what kinds of support families need.
- [33:34]
A
This is also related to the piece I wrote in my newsletter this week about financial literacy education, which I think Slate Money listeners, many of them, know what I think about that, but is really based on this idea, this individualism is based on this idea that the way to avoid financial trouble is to educate yourself, and it's on you as an individual to get educated and to behave in the correct way. And that if you wind up paying some vast amount of money to a credit card company, that's on some level your fault. And then the job of society is to make sure that people are educated enough to not do that, because it's a question of, like, individual responsibility. And you see this everywhere that, you know, obviously the broad interests of society aligned with having good childcare for everyone. Like, I don't have any kids, but it is absolutely in my best interest for people to have good childcare. But having that kind of idea that I should be helping to pay for people's childcare even though I don't have children just is. It does cut against that individualistic streak in American politics.
- [34:45]
C
Yeah. And that's what the report points out. And people say over and over, childcare is a collective good. It's not just like, I benefit because I can send my kids to daycare and I can have a job. It's a collective good. Kids who are placed in quality childcare, whatever it may, might do better for life. And that is good for everyone in the economy, from lower crime rates to more smarties around, you know, inventing cool stuff like, it's a collective good that we don't view it that way because Americans have this streak of individualism. And when I was at the Journal, anytime we wrote about anything like this, we'd get emails and they would be like, children are a choice that you make, and it's on you to take care of them. They are a choice. And I'd be like, but if everyone chose not to have one, like, where would we be like, take that to the logical extreme, it's just, yeah, I don't know if that's a paradigm that's going to get broken, although the pandemic seems to have shaken that up a little bit.
- [35:40]
B
So an interesting thing about the con, the conflict between individualism and childcare is all these people who are pissed that their colleagues, including folks with small children, are leaving jobs and the ones who stay, they're like, why do I have to do so much more work? I was like, well, if you would support childcare and more of these folks could stay in the work and not have to opt out because, you know, they're trying to balance zoom school and zoom work and life, we would also be having a different conversation about just the availability of a workforce.
- [36:12]
C
That reminds me also, I recently spoke to someone at Patagonia, which is known for being like the best place to work for everyone, but they have on site childcare for their, like, white collar workers. And during the pandemic they had even lower turnover rates among the parents that they employ than normal. And when I asked, like, how remote work, hybrid work is going for them, they said, oh, well, mostly it's the parents that are coming back to the office. Why? Because the childcare center is right there. So another thing that the treasury has in their report is a proposal to encourage more companies to build on site childcare facilities, because that is like a real, actual working solution that benefits everybody.
- [36:53]
A
All right, let's have a numbers round. Stacy, let's start with you.
- [36:56]
B
My number is 90. And Felix, you might know what this is. This is the number of years for which, which Prince Philip's will will be sealed. Wait, what, What, What's a true story?
- [37:08]
A
So wait, if he left me money in his will, I'm not going to know for another 90 years?
- [37:13]
B
Yeah, I feel like in 90 years.
- [37:16]
A
Time, like it's not going to help me to be.
- [37:18]
B
First of all, we will not be alive. Let's just start with I have no intentions to live to the age of Prince Philip, I can tell you that. Evelyn, you're joining that startup that, like.
- [37:28]
C
Bezos, funding Elon Musk, Musk's blood startup. I'm in.
- [37:34]
B
Prince Philip's will is going to remain secret for 90 years. And get this, the High Court says it is to the High Court of England and Wales to protect the dignity and standing of the Queen.
- [37:45]
A
So the people, I mean, presumably the people who are getting money in the will or getting stuff out of the will, they get told, but then they're set, then they're also not publicly available. There's an asterisk saying, you know, don't tell anybody you inherited money from Prince Philip because that could harm the dignity and standing of the queen. Yep.
- [38:03]
C
Wait, can we gossip a little here? What could possibly be in it? That is.
- [38:07]
B
This is what I want to know.
- [38:09]
C
Can we just.
- [38:10]
A
I mean, what.
- [38:10]
C
What is he saying?
- [38:12]
A
He has a lot of Nazi relations. We do know that.
- [38:15]
C
What?
- [38:17]
B
Have you not watched the Crown?
- [38:21]
C
I didn't watch the Crown.
- [38:23]
B
Get on that. It's like succession, but British and royalty.
- [38:26]
C
Oh, my goodness. Goodness.
- [38:27]
B
Wow.
- [38:28]
A
Okay, Emily, what's your number?
- [38:30]
C
It's so not as good as Stacy's. I'm almost embarrassed by it.
- [38:33]
B
I had to come back with a bang.
- [38:34]
C
How am I supposed to follow that? My number is 27 million. That is the number of quote, unquote, hidden workers estimated to be in the United States. I wrote about this in a newsletter for Fortune magazine. I'm shamelessly plugging to all of you to please sign up. It's called worksheet, and the hidden workers are people who are maybe working part time, but could work full time. People have been unemployed for longer than six months. They include lots of moms who had to take long time outs. They include people who had to move because their partner had to move for work. They include maybe people who got sick for a long time. And at a time when there's, like, a worker shortage, there is this, like, huge group of people that could be employed. And this is what I wrote in the Fortune piece. But employers are, like, really bad at finding these people. They don't want to hire these people. They've written algorithms to screen out these people. But they actually do want to work, and it would behoove companies to start finding the hidden workers.
- [39:37]
A
One of the narratives in the great worker shortage crisis of 2021 is that a lot of it is just really bad, bad tech. Right. That back in the day, companies would screen job applicants because they would get so many job applicants for every job they need. They just wanted a piece of software that would screen out a whole bunch of people so they could get it down to a manageable number. They are still using the same software, and they are screening out a whole bunch of people who are perfectly capable of doing the job. And then they look at the who's left over at the end, and they can't find anyone who wants to do the job. And it's like, well, why don't you go back to those people who you screened out? They actually want the job and they can do it. And they're like, oh, but that involves trying to get into the innards of the software. We don't know how to do that. Yeah, it's so frustrating.
- [40:25]
C
The journal had a really good piece on the HBR study and, like, some of these algorithms, like, for job listings for nurses, they required nurses to have, like, computer coding experience, but all the nurses need to do is enter some numbers into some spreadsheets. Or, like, retail workers had to have specific floor buffing experience. Otherwise they got screened out. Like, guys, get it together. I don't want to hear from companies screaming about the shortage until they, like, dig into this a little more.
- [40:53]
A
I have a welcome back, Stacey number, which is zero. This is just me. Like, I'm tossing this one to you, Stacey. My number is 0, which is upon a very comprehensive examination by the health authorities. Officially.
- [41:09]
B
I hate you.
- [41:10]
A
Officially. Officially, the number of men in Trinidad. Oh, my God. Who suffered from swollen testicles as a result of getting the COVID vaccine so bad.
- [41:27]
C
And Felix, why are you telling this to us?
- [41:30]
B
And Stacy.
- [41:35]
A
Stacey, why am I saying this?
- [41:37]
B
This week on Twitter, Nicki Minaj, who likes to remind folks that she is of Trinidadian ancestry and parentage, declared that one of her concerns about the vaccine was that a friend of a cousin or a cousin of a friend had his wedding called off because after he got the vaccine, he experienced a testicular challenge which he related back to the vaccine, and his fiance was unimpressed. And in the past four days, the number of people who have been like, aren't you Trinidadian? Is at, like, an exponential high because suddenly, you know, Trevor Noah is interviewing the Trinidadian Minister of Health, and, you know, folks are sharing a clip of a Trinidadian morning show that stars, like, a dude who was like, a SOCA artiste and a failed politician, but who dresses very well. So whatever, you know, kind of dismantling this situation that's happening, which does include.
- [42:38]
A
The classic phrase flat tire, which I had.
- [42:41]
B
I'm not even going to engage with the phrase. But yes. And I can tell you from all of the Trinidadian whatsapps I'm in, that everybody is just, like, losing their minds and would really prefer that Nicki Minaj stop reminding people that we share a flag. So thank you. Oh, my God.
- [42:59]
C
I think I finally just understood what Felix meant earlier in the episode and said it was good for vaccinations that the story go around, because I see that it's everywhere. Everyone's debunking it. So in that way, it's reassuring to people who are maybe worried about this very specific phantom side effect.
- [43:18]
B
I will quote Minister Dalcing of Trinidad and Tobago who was like, we have wasted so much time having to debunk this thing that it is distracting us from trying to get people vaccinated.
- [43:30]
C
Nevermind.
- [43:33]
B
If folks could just get vaccinated and shut this all down that would be fantastic.
- [43:37]
A
I await the live televised vaccination of Nicki Minaj where she has changed her mind and she's like, you know what? The Health Minister of Trinidad persuaded me. I think that's it. I think that's the show. We are going to have a Slate plus segment. We had a request from a listener who wrote in to slatemoneylate.com and said, Felix, can you please please explain the crypto carry trade? And the crypto carry trade really fascinates me. So I am going to explain the crypto carry trade and how there seems to be like a large amount of free money in the world right now.
- [44:09]
B
High risk free money.
- [44:10]
A
Well that's the question. It's all dollar denominated so maybe it's not so high risk. We will talk about that in Slate Plus. And other than that, many thanks to all of you for listening, for writing in on Slate+money@slate.com thanks to Jessamyn Molly of Seaplane Armada in Brooklyn for producing and we will be back next week with more Slate Money.