Slate Money: The Pink Collar Edition

Date: January 7, 2017
Host: Felix Salmon
Panelists: Kathy O’Neill, Jordan Weissmann

Episode Overview

This episode explores three main topics:

1. The gendering of virtual assistants and the broader implications for “pink collar” jobs and societal expectations towards women and caretaking roles.
2. The potential conflicts of interest surrounding President-elect Donald Trump’s debts, their securitization, and the implications for governance.
3. The decline of public companies in the U.S., what’s driving it, and the ramifications for investment and innovation.

The panelists bring a mix of policy wonkery, economic analysis, and social critique, creating a lively and insight-packed discussion.

1. The Gender of Virtual Assistants and “Pink Collar” Job Trends

Timestamps: [03:00] – [14:26]

Introduction (03:00)

• Kathy O’Neill kicks off discussing a Twitter thread that points out how most voice assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc.) default to female voices, tying this to cultural norms around women being helpful, caregiving, and passive.

“The answer is they’re all female, or essentially female...It’s a part of a general theme where in our society, women are expected to be helpful, to be caregiving, and to be relatively passive.”
— Kathy O’Neill [03:27]

• Felix Salmon raises the question of whether making helpful AI “female” further entrenches gender roles or will eventually “de-gender” these qualities.

“The question I have is, if we wind up in a world where a bunch of women have passive and helpful female Assistants, does that basically create a world where passive and helpful becomes a robot thing? Or does that make passive and helpful even more gendered?”
— Felix Salmon [05:04]

Transition to Job Market Trends (06:02)

• The discussion moves to U.S. labor trends:
  • Loss of manufacturing jobs since 2000 (about 5 million lost), primarily male-dominated and not requiring college education.
  • The BLS projects the fastest-growing jobs over the next decade will be women-dominated: health and caretaking, “pink-collar” fields.

“What we’re seeing in the next 10 years...we’re seeing tons—millions, in fact—of jobs in women-dominated fields.”
— Kathy O’Neill [06:53]

Why Aren’t Displaced Men Transitioning? (07:20)

• Wage pride: Service jobs pay less ($11–$12/hour) than old manufacturing jobs ($18–$20/hour), and there’s a perception/reluctance due to gender norms.
• Jordan Weissmann notes many men simply don’t have the temperament or inclination for health/care roles due to cultural identity and personal disposition.

“When they say, ‘I don’t fit this line of work. I’m not suited for it.’ They’re not bullshitting.”
— Jordan Weissmann [09:51]

• Felix points out that when men do enter these fields, they often see faster pay and promotion, and over time these jobs become less gendered.

“The more men that enter a certain profession...the less gendered that profession becomes.”
— Felix Salmon [10:24]

Race, Identity, and Jobs (11:25)

• Black men are already overrepresented in the fastest-growing care jobs, highlighting racial divides.

• The transition isn’t easy; Kathy O’Neill relates personally, acknowledging she’d struggle in caregiving roles.

• The panel challenges the economist’s narrative that workers should easily “flip” to new sectors, highlighting how tied identity is to work, especially in working-class jobs:

“We have trained ourselves...to think about jobs as commodified objects...Like historically people were in the family business...the expectation that economists have that people can just switch up very quickly is just not true.”
— Kathy O’Neill [12:57]

“Actually no, their identity is very, very much, maybe even more so to some extent...tied up with the job they do.”
— Jordan Weissmann [13:51]

2. Trump’s Debts and Presidential Conflicts of Interest

Timestamps: [14:26] – [22:29]

Introduction and Context (14:26)

• Following a Wall Street Journal report, Felix explores why Trump’s debts could be a greater conflict of interest than his assets.

“Because we live in a financialized world, Donald Trump’s debts have been securitized...Vanguard alone owns more than $200 million worth of Donald Trump’s debts...It’s a really interesting potential conflict.”
— Felix Salmon [15:01]

What Makes Trump’s Case Unique? (16:41)

• Trump (and most mega-borrowers) have engaged in “liability management”—renegotiating and sometimes defaulting on debts.
• Trump’s debts are widely held (via securitization) and traded, unlike typical personal loans. This opens the door for anyone—including foreign governments or bad actors—to accumulate Trump’s debt and potentially curry favor through favorable restructuring.

“What you have is an auction among every single person and sovereign wealth fund and country and businessman and corrupt drug lord...can start competing to buy this distressed debt...Everyone is going to be wanting to own that debt so...they can do him a favor.”
— Felix Salmon [18:09]

Is This Precedented? (21:57)

• Comparisons to wealthy presidents of the past (Kennedys, Roosevelts) fall short; they never had securitized, tradable personal/business debt in the marketplace.

“I think this is unprecedented.”
— Felix Salmon [22:26]
“Unprecedented. That can be cut. Wait, keep that.”
— Jordan Weissmann [22:29]

3. The Disappearance of Public Companies

Timestamps: [22:41] – [34:15]

Background: The Numbers (22:41)

• The number of U.S. public companies peaked at 7,507 (1997) and has fallen to 3,766.
• Causes: Mergers, privatizations, and a dearth of IPOs (“birth-death model”).

“We’ve just seen this die off since the late 90s...We’ve just seen this massive consolidation of industry for just this variety of factors.”
— Jordan Weissmann [23:46]

• Fewer new IPOs: Public companies aren’t being “born” as fast as they’re “dying.”

Why the Decline? (24:33)

• Felix: The “money is elsewhere.” It’s easier to get large sums from wealthy individuals, PE funds, or venture capitalists than from many small investors in public markets.
• Regulatory and managerial aversion to public reporting and scrutiny.
• Private equity and VC backers can be more involved and helpful than anonymous public shareholders.

“There are lots of advantages to managers and to CEOs, in particular, of not going public. Going public sucks. It gives you a whole bunch of public scrutiny which no one likes.”
— Felix Salmon [26:09]

The Shareholder Value Revolution (27:10)

• Shift towards prioritizing returns to shareholders—often at the expense of reinvestment and innovation.
• Kathy O’Neill: The rise of “shareholder value” wasn’t organic; it was engineered by financial theorists like Milton Friedman and business school professors.
• Now, large public firms increasingly act like monopolies/oligopolies, returning cash via buybacks and dividends instead of investing for growth.

“They basically don’t invest as much as they used to...They are returning capital to investors and hoarding cash, rather than raising funds to invest more.”
— Jordan Weissmann [24:42]

Societal/Investor Implications (30:16)

• Less access to high-growth investments for ordinary investors—private company deals are the preserve of the ultra-wealthy.
• Most of the population invests via retirement funds, which are largely in the “rump” of boring public companies.

“If this goes to an extreme where all the exciting companies are owned by VCs and all the boring companies are publicly traded, that’s a problem.”
— Kathy O’Neill [32:31]

• Felix offers optimism, arguing there are still plenty of opportunities in global public markets: “I don’t think we should...feel to ourselves that we’re missing out on something great just because we can’t invest in Uber.” [32:05]

Policy Notes

• Short-termism and declining innovation are acknowledged problems but, as they point out, policies to address them (such as those tentatively offered by Hillary Clinton’s campaign) are hard to design or implement.

4. Numbers Round & Notable Moments

Timestamps: [34:15] – end

• Kathy O’Neill: “33,000”—Opioid deaths in the U.S. in 2015, close to the worst year of HIV deaths and more than gun fatalities. Recommends “Dreamland” by Sam Quinones. [34:24]
• Jordan Weissmann: “2”—The number of days between a Bear Stearns economist’s “don’t worry about the credit crisis” op-ed and the start of the 2007 credit crunch. The economist, David Malpass, was later tapped for a key Treasury post by Trump. Panel expresses skepticism about his judgment. [35:41]
• Felix Salmon: “1.00928”—The most recent 3-month dollar LIBOR rate, crossing 1% for the first time since May 2009. “We have interest rates now, people...a little bit of normalization.” [38:27]

Notable Quotes

• “I am not a caring person. I don’t feel like I am the right person for that job. I feel like I want like six hours a day of being by myself.”
  — Kathy O’Neill [12:05]

• “When Donald Trump has hundreds of millions of dollars of debts and he’s trying to manage those debts...how do creditors respond? Because they’re...dealing with the President of the United States.”
  — Felix Salmon [15:01]

• “There are companies all over the world which you can invest in and which really have a lot of growth ahead of them and are perfectly innovative and successful...I don’t think that we should feel...that we’re missing out on something great just because we can’t invest in Uber.”
  — Felix Salmon [32:05]

Episode Tone & Style

The panel maintains a conversational, irreverent tone, mixing policy wonkery with humor, personal anecdotes, and sharp critique of prevailing narratives around gender, economics, and business.

Key Takeaways

• The feminization of artificial assistants and the rise of “pink collar” jobs reflect—and may reinforce—societal expectations about gender, caregiving, and labor.
• The economic transformation away from manufacturing has left deep cultural and psychological impacts, especially on non-college-educated men, for whom switching careers is more than an economic decision—it’s an identity crisis.
• Donald Trump’s securitized debts pose unique, under-discussed conflicts of interest that have little historical precedent in the presidency.
• The decline of public companies and the “shareholder value” focus may limit investment access for ordinary Americans and stifle innovation—both a reflection and a cause of broader economic inequality and concentration.
• The panelists give voice to skepticism, caution, and some cautious optimism on these changes, with plenty of room for robust debate.

For links and further reading, see the episode show notes on Slate.com.