What’s With Rich People These Days?

Summary

Podcast Summary: To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes

Episode: What’s With Rich People These Days?
Date: February 7, 2026
Host: Charlie Sykes
Guest: Justin Wolfers, Economist (University of Michigan, Brookings Institution)

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Overview

This episode, “What’s With Rich People These Days?”, takes aim at the perplexing behavior of today’s billionaires—particularly their willingness to “bend the knee,” grovel before authority, and sacrifice journalistic independence. Host Charlie Sykes and guest economist Justin Wolfers dig into questions about billionaire psychology, the evolving media landscape (with a focus on Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post), America's shifting economic picture (manufacturing decline, the dollar, global trade), and the seismic workplace transformations being triggered by AI.

Through candid anecdotes, economic analysis, and memorable metaphors—including turkeys at the window and AI as a superhuman "cape"—the episode explores power, accountability, and uncertainty at the summit of wealth and tech-driven change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Turkey at the Window”: A Billionaire Metaphor

• Opening Metaphor (03:11):
  • Charlie describes a turkey staring hungrily into his window, and Justin likens it to how billionaires (and sometimes immigrants) feel: surrounded, isolated, and not always sure how to respond to those who want something from them.
  • Justin Wolfers: “This, my friend, is what we immigrants feel like, really. We’re peacefully at home. We hear a pounding and a scratching at our door, and what do you know, you look out the front. Freaking turkeys. Those guys are turkeys.” (03:46)

2. Explaining Billionaires: Numbers, Power, and Vulnerability

• The Mind-Boggling Scale of Wealth (04:32–07:46):

  • Justin breaks down what billionaire wealth means—how even lavish spending barely dents their fortunes.
  • Justin: “A billion is a thousand million...It’s almost impossible to spend the money at 1 billion.” (06:12)

• Why Do Billionaires Grovel? (09:43–12:44):

  • Billionaires live without pushback—nobody tells them no or calls out mistakes, leading to a "bubble" that distorts their behavior.
  • Justin: “The most fundamental problem with being a billionaire is no one ever says no to you. And no one ever says you’re wrong... That’s why I believe we should never elect any billionaire president ever.” (09:43)

3. The Washington Post, Bezos, and “Bending the Knee”

• The Post as a “Burnt Offering” (07:49–15:13):

  • Sykes and Wolfers scrutinize Jeff Bezos’s stewardship and seeming ritual sacrifice of The Washington Post to political pressure.
  • Continually, they emphasize how little $100 million annual losses matter to someone whose wealth rises by $55 billion in two years.
  • Sykes: “This was a choice...to offer up the Washington Post, you know, sort of as a. As a ritual sacrifice, a burnt offering to the Orange God King. But ...these guys who have so much money and yet they are so anxious to grovel and humiliate themselves before the throne. Please explain this.” (07:49)

• Escalation of Political Pressure (16:04–18:23):

  • Wolfers notes the vulnerability of media holdings for billionaires when a government is willing to wield power arbitrarily.
  • Justin: “If you remember, in fact, the President was so upset at the Washington Post that he tried to get the U.S. postal Service to start charging Amazon more for packages... If you knocked 1% off the value of Amazon, now we’re talking real money.” (17:05)

4. Personal Stakes & Press Freedom

• Charlie’s Run-In with Trump/Bezos Lawsuits (19:00–21:10):
  • Sykes shares a story about being potentially named in a Trump libel suit for a piece he wrote in the Post—an example of the ongoing intimidation facing journalists.
  • Sykes: “Do I depend on Jeff Bezos to do the right thing? Well, absolutely not, because I don’t think he’s going to do the right thing.” (20:52)

5. Economy: The State of the Dollar & America’s Place in the World

• Strong vs. Weak Dollar (22:25–25:26):

  • Sykes asks if Americans should be worried about the administration’s comfort with a "weak" dollar.
  • Wolfers: “That’s the sort of thing, that’s why they pay me to be a professor, so that I can obsess about small things. But I think this language is strong and weak is actually really unhelpful...it’s the price of America today versus other countries today.” (22:56)
  • Key point: weaker dollar boosts exports/jobs but raises import costs; not inherently good or bad.

• Reserve Currency & Global Shifts (25:26–30:39):

  • Wolfers explains reserve currencies and the “exorbitant privilege” of the U.S., but sees a gradual erosion as countries diversify and lose trust in the U.S.
  • Wolfers: “Being the reserve currency comes with what’s sometimes called the exorbitant privilege...people are willing to loan to us at lower rates for what sort of feels like no good reason.” (25:50)
  • Increasing isolation ("America alone") means alliances and deals may bypass the U.S.

• Cooperation vs. Zero-Sum (30:39–34:43):

  • Wolfers highlights trade as fundamentally cooperative, not competitive—a point Trump misses.
  • Wolfers: “Every part of international trade...and in fact, every part of economics ... is fundamentally about cooperation, which Donald Trump does not always seem to understand.” (32:24)
  • Memorable analogy: Charlie as a "busker" trading podcast value for muffins (subscription fees).

6. Decline of Manufacturing: Myth vs. Reality

• The Arc from Agriculture to Industry to Services (38:01–43:20):
  • Wolfers details the long-term decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs—not due to trade, but automation and productivity. Output remains high, jobs shrink.
  • Wolfers: “This country started as an agricultural country...Industrial revolution comes along...We moved from the factories to the service economy...We now sit at desks and we have fewer calluses on our hands and our backs don’t ache.” (38:01)
  • The nostalgia for manufacturing is misplaced: “Manufacturing is what rich people think poor people want to do. It’s not what poor people want.” (41:13)

7. The AI Age: Fears, Hopes, and How to Prepare

• Future of Work in the Age of AI (43:20–52:10):

  • AI is poised to disrupt white-collar jobs just as automation did for blue-collar work.
  • Wolfers: “You and I should understand ourselves to be in the same position as a Detroit auto worker in the 1970s. The robots are coming. They're coming for you and I.” (45:24)
  • Gives examples of jobs lost (typists), transformed (bank tellers), and emphasizes that AI can be both a replacement and a "cape" that enhances productivity.

• Rapid Change, Uncertainty & Advice (54:20–56:00):

  • Wolfers encourages listeners: “Become the most AI savvy person in your workplace.” You don’t need to become a coder, just the best at using and adapting.
  • Wolfers: “You’re the one who can help with the adaptation. You’re the one who’s going to be showing everyone, here's your cape... The person who’s giving out capes is the last person you want to fire.” (54:20)

• AI in Podcasting (56:00–57:18):

  • Sykes points out the episode itself will be clipped and summarized using AI—underscoring just how quickly this technology is becoming routine.

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Notable Quotes

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |---|---|---| | 03:46 | "This, my friend, is what we immigrants feel like, really... Freaking turkeys. Those guys are turkeys." | Justin Wolfers | | 06:12 | "A billion is a thousand million. ...It’s almost impossible to spend the money at 1 billion." | Justin Wolfers | | 07:49 | "This was a choice...to offer up the Washington Post, you know, sort of as a ritual sacrifice, a burnt offering to the Orange God King." | Charlie Sykes | | 09:43 | "The most fundamental problem with being a billionaire is no one ever says no to you. And no one ever says you’re wrong." | Justin Wolfers | | 16:04 | "...a rich family owned [news organizations] and they thought of themselves as a holder of the public trust...But under this president, it does [make you vulnerable]." | Justin Wolfers | | 22:56 | "I think this language is strong and weak is actually really unhelpful...it’s the price of America today versus other countries today." | Justin Wolfers | | 25:50 | "Being the reserve currency comes with what’s sometimes called the exorbitant privilege...people are willing to loan to us at lower rates for what sort of feels like no good reason." | Justin Wolfers | | 32:24 | "Every part of international trade...is fundamentally about cooperation, which Donald Trump does not always seem to understand." | Justin Wolfers | | 41:13 | "Manufacturing is what rich people think poor people want to do. It's not what poor people want." | Justin Wolfers | | 45:24 | "You and I should understand ourselves to be in the same position as a Detroit auto worker in the 1970s. The robots are coming. They're coming for you and I." | Justin Wolfers | | 54:20 | "Become the most AI savvy person in your workplace... The person who's giving out the capes is the last person you want to fire." | Justin Wolfers |

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Notable Moments & Timestamps

• The Turkey Metaphor (03:11–04:02): Sykes and Wolfers use wildlife encounters to explore feelings of exclusion and greed.
• Billionaire Math & Psychology (06:01–12:44): Wolfers lays out the vastness of billionaire wealth and their social isolation.
• On the Post/Bezos (07:49–16:00): Unpacking the strange incentives that lead billionaires to surrender influence rather than risk core assets; personal lawyer anecdotes from Sykes (19:00–21:10).
• The Real Meaning of Dollar Strength (22:25–25:26): Wolfers reframes the “weak dollar” in terms of global economics, not national vigor.
• Economy as Busking (32:24–34:43): Wolfers likens Sykes’s podcasting and economics as "busking"—creating value traded for "muffins" (subs).
• AI & Job Transformation (45:23–54:20): Anticipating both destruction and creation, Wolfers calls for AI literacy as the best protection against upheaval.

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Conclusion

Sykes and Wolfers deliver a wide-ranging, sharply observed episode that blends humor, cynicism, and deep economics to question the motives and mindset of the ultra-rich, unpack economic myths, and give practical and philosophical advice for a world upended by AI and shifting power structures. For listeners anxious about billionaires, the fate of media, or their own jobs in a world of rapid automation, this episode offers perspective, context, and a call to adapt rather than despair.

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Summary prepared for those seeking an in-depth understanding of podcast themes and discussions.

Transcript

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[Charlie Sykes]

I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast and congratulations on making it through another week. More billionaires bending the knee, more craziness. The other day I just mentioned that it was just a couple weeks Ago, we were all worried about invading Greenland. We thought that was kind of peak crazy. Since then, it's gotten even crazier. So we have again, as usual, lots of questions. We have some questions about two things. About the economy, where we are, where we're going, and what's with rich people these days. Stay tuned. All right, joining me on the podcast again, and it's been too long, the people's economist, Justin Wolfers from the University of Michigan, senior fellow at the Brooking Institution, and just like, guy all around town. How are you, Justin?

[Justin Wolfers]

Charlie, I've missed you, mate.

[Charlie Sykes]

Can we just talk about a little bit of a metaphor here?

[Justin Wolfers]

Sure.

[Charlie Sykes]

First of all, I just want to warn people that we might be interrupted because I'm kind of here in the basement, just so you know. But there's a window right up above me. And a few minutes ago, right before we began, I started hearing some pounding. Like somebody was outside scratching and pounding and tapping on the window, which is really bizarre because I wasn't expecting anybody. And I live in the woods. So I stand up, look out the window, and there is this gigantic turkey looking in the window, like, staring right at me, apparently feeling that I have not been feeding him sufficiently. We feed the turkeys, we feed the birds.

[Justin Wolfers]

I'm gonna pause you right here, Charlie. Cause you've got the metaphor. This, my friend, is what we immigrants feel like, really. We're peacefully at home. We hear a pounding and a scratching at our door, and what do you know, you look out the front. Freaking turkeys. Those guys are turkeys.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah. And they're. And they're. And they're big and they're hungry and they're voracious and they're greedy. Which brings me to this. Could you explain this? I really want to get into, you know, what's going on with. With the economy, with the stock market, with manufacturing, consumer confidence, the future of the Fed, all that stuff that you know something about. But I want you to help explain billionaires to me. Okay? Can you do that? Because I. Because I figure that you're an economist, so you hang around with billionaires, right? You understand how they think and they make decisions.

[Justin Wolfers]

All right, Charlie, your credibility with your audience when you say, I'm going to try and understand billionaires, so I'm going to go to an academic who teaches at a state school. I hope your audience does not have any faith in you whatsoever.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, none. Well, I could ask the turkeys, but I don't think that they would have any particular insight. Now, you know, I'M talking about the art of the grovel that we've seen over the last year or so. The number of people who have that we once thought had fuck you money who decided that, no, we're going to bend the knee, you know, these sort of, you know, dickless wonders, you know, including the guys that compensate for that by making these penis rockets. And of course, I'm referring to Jeff Bezos and what he did to the Washington Post the other day. And I want to put this in perspective, because there's part of this that I completely understand, you know, these, you know, these spineless boligarchs. But Peter Baker from the New York Times put Jeff Bezos's, you know, put it all in perspective here. So Bezos's wealth in 2024, $194 billion. His wealth in 2025, $215 billion. He's not getting poor Jeff Bezos's wealth today, as you and I are speaking, this man is worth $250 billion. So the net increase in Jeff Bezos wealth since 2024 was $55 billion, which is. Is a lot of money. I think you've explained billions and millions to me before, the cost of Jeff.

[Justin Wolfers]

Bezos on that, because I think it's central to your question, right? Because you said, could you explain millionaires? I'm like, they're the guys in the big houses, right?

[Charlie Sykes]

Right.

[Justin Wolfers]

A billion is a thousand million. So even for those of you who live in expensive parts of the country, where one of the big houses is, where do you live, Charlie?

[Charlie Sykes]

I live in Wisconsin. Well, we're not one of the places that have the big, massive millionaire houses.

[Justin Wolfers]

So in Wisconsin, a big house might be $4 million. Right. And for those of you who live in the D.C. area, maybe it's 10. So you could buy twice as big as the biggest house, 20 million, and you could buy five of them, and you're at 100 million. And then you've bought the most expensive asset you'll ever own, and you still have 90% of your wealth left, and that's five enormous houses. So it's almost impossible to spend the money at 1 billion. I just wanted to pause just because you asked the question, didn't you? Yes, Explain billionaires, people with a billion bucks. But you're talking about someone. So 1 billion is almost unspendable, at least without wanting to buy 1 billion. Right. If you bought, you know, four $200 million paintings, you're an idio, but you don't have much left. But, you know for sports cars, big houses, a pool. Wouldn't a pool be nice?

[Charlie Sykes]

Really big pool.

[Justin Wolfers]

A big pool, right. And a pool boy to work on your pool.

[Charlie Sykes]

So mixed feelings about that.

[Justin Wolfers]

Charlie, we can talk.

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[Charlie Sykes]

Okay.

[Justin Wolfers]

So that's what a billionaire is. Just wanted to pause you right there. Get back on your tirade, brother.

[Charlie Sykes]

So. So, Jeff. So Jeff Bezos is not only a billionaire worth $250 billion, has increased his wealth in the last two years by $55 billion. The cost of Bezos's 417 foot super yacht, $500 million. So half a billion dollars he spent on the super yacht Amazon's investment in The Docubribribe Melania. $75 million. I haven't seen it yet. I'm never going to. The original purchase price of the Washington Post Back in 2013, a mere $250 million Jeff Bezos was worth back then, $25 billion. He was kind of a piker back then. Net increase in Bezos wealth since he bought The Washington Post, $224 billion. Now the Post is losing money. It's losing about $100 million a year, which is a lot of money, except that the as Peter Baker runs the numbers. So how long would it take Jeff Bezos to absorb those losses with what he makes in a single week? And the answer would be 5. So it would be. I mean, it's so disproportionate. Yeah. You know, you and I losing that kind of money. Really bad. Jeff Bezos. This is a choice though, isn't it? This was a ch. To alter up the wash. To offer up the Washington Post, you know, sort of as a. As a ritual sacrifice, a burnt offering to the Orange God King. But I guess the part that continues to just blow my mind is these guys who have so much money and yet they are so anxious to grovel and humiliate themselves before the throne. Please explain this. Make it make sense. Justin.

[Justin Wolfers]

All right. What do we know about billionaires? So the first thing is billionaires have tons of money. And lots of people come really close to them because they'd like to be blessed. Not because they love them, but because some money might fall out of their pockets. They might consult, they might invest for them, so on. It actually means the most fundamental problem with being a billionaire is no one ever says no to you. And no one ever says you're wrong. And that in turn is why I believe we should never elect any billionaire president ever. You need someone who's used to being told no, who understands that they're not omniscient because you spend enough time around these guys, and no one has told them they're stupid.

[Charlie Sykes]

Never.

[Justin Wolfers]

No one told them they made a mistake. No one told them they look funny. No one. Right. And so. And you know, you see this disease very much inside the White House. No one has taken Howard Lutnick aside and said, you're beclowning yourself. They should. Like, if they were friendly, they'd be like, you know what? You've been very successful in business, but the more you speak right now, the less people think of you. So the fact that I think is actually a really, really profound problem. They're deeply in this bubble, and it takes a lot to get out of that. Now, talk about a billionaire. I admire Bill Gates. Gates works tremendously hard to get out of that. He reads voraciously. He's always talking to experts, and I think he's sort of an intellectual at heart. But if you're a hedonist at heart.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, he apparently had other extra mural activities as well. Since you know about billionaires, nobody ever says no to them.

[Justin Wolfers]

Okay? But he's also saved millions of lives. That is a truly great, noble life. There is a question. What is scarce in a billionaire's life? Because you can buy everything. $500 million super yacht. You can have caviar for breakfast. You can have people whose job is to tell you how handsome you are while they're giving you a manicure. So you always, as part of the human condition, what am I missing out on? What's scarce. And what's scarce is what can't you buy. You can't easily buy time in the Oval Office. You can't easily buy time with celebrities. You can't. You know, there's a small number of rooms where money alone won't get you in, and then that makes them all the more seductive. The thing I've been struck by with the whole Epstein files is the guy has so much money, but all he wants to do is ingratiate himself with the sorts of people where money is not an easy entree. He actually seems like he had a very sad life. He wanted to be around intellectuals, but he wasn't one. He wanted to be around powerful people, but he wasn't one. He wanted to be around beautiful people, but he wasn't one. So, you know, why would they grovel in the Oval Office? That's the price of getting in the Oval Office.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, and, you know, and also, look, I mean, Jeff Bezos had to make a decision, you know, a few Years ago, he was, you know, had this self image of himself as this, you know, huge philanthropist who was going to save the storied Washington Post, that he was going to be the savior. And for a few years, in fact, he invested a lot of money, they hired a lot of reporters, they made themselves into a journalistic powerhouse, did some of the best journalism of my life time, and then apparently decided that he was bored with that and he wanted to be something else. He wanted to launch, you know, the penis shaped rockets. He wanted to suck up to the administration, he wanted to cut these deals. He wanted super, you know, you know, a super yacht. He wanted a. Another wife. All he, he went through some things where he changed what he wanted to grow up to be, didn't he? And, and apparently had those. And one of the things he does not want to be is he says, yeah, that whole Katherine Graham stuff, boring to me. I don't want to be that. And I don't give a shit that the whole world is looking at me and saying, what the hell are you going through? And you have just killed one of the most important journalistic entities in the country. And he just doesn't give a shit.

[Justin Wolfers]

Let me say something personal and then we'll take on the Washington Post. If there's a lesson here, men, middle aged men, we do all struggle, it's true. We look to find meaning the first half of our lives. We know how to channel that into ambition. And many of us hit midlife and struggle. Find a good therapist. And I think Jeff Bezos is one therapist away from being an amazing human being. But he didn't find that therapist, did he? Let's take on the Washington Post. I actually think this is really, really interesting. So first of all, having beaten up on billionaires, let me come back and be sympathetic. Many of these guys, Tim Cook is not a billionaire, but runs a very, very valuable company.

[Charlie Sykes]

Honorary billionaire.

[Justin Wolfers]

Yeah. They run big companies that have payrolls and they feel very serious responsibilities to the institutions that they've inherited, to the workers who work. And when you have someone in the White House who will abuse power in arbitrary ways, bending the knee might be the kindest thing you can do for your staff. And I have some empathy for that.

[Charlie Sykes]

Now to protect your ass. Yes.

[Justin Wolfers]

Bending the knee to undermine the system that created the great wealth, that created the opportunities. That's the other side of this. Right? So on the one hand, for instance, let's take the law firms that caved in. I understand why they did it, but it was gutless. Like I Looked after the guys in my building. But the rule of law, which is kind of the thing I swore an oath to, and the reason a young me became a lawyer, I just thrown that overboard in order to sign up with the new authoritarians. But I do think for those of us on the outside, we do need to acknowledge those inner conflicts, and I think they're real and important. Now let's come back to Bezos in the Post. Bezos bought the post $250 million. What a bargain, by the way. Incredible.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yes, it was.

[Justin Wolfers]

I'm thinking about buying it.

[Charlie Sykes]

It was regarded that way at the time, too.

[Justin Wolfers]

Yeah. Now, it was actually an extraordinarily courageous act. Not for the usual reasons. So under a normal presidency, the way, in fact, the way that many of our most important journalistic institutions, the Times, the Post and so on, a rich family owned it, and they thought of themselves as a holder of the public trust, they would not make a lot of money or lose it slowly enough that their kids would still be overemployed, their kids would still be wealthy, but they weren't going out there to hoover up every penny, make every dollar that they could. And that sense of being a holder of the public trust is really important. The thing is, it wasn't that expensive because they only had one line of business and the government could attack them. But it actually made them more interesting. When the Post broke Watergate, it made the Post more interesting. Two things changed. So Bezos bought in. Now Bezos, the Washington Post is a hobby, or it's something he believes in, whatever the story you want to tell. And he has this other thing, remember the post? 250 million, Amazon, hundreds of billions. And you suddenly move to an administration that is willing to go after the people who own the media institutions. So as a business idea, it was absurd because all of a sudden, it puts them in the eyes of the administration and the administration, they could knock 10% off the value of the Post by doing something. But if they knocked 1% off the value of Amazon, now we're talking real money. And if you remember, in fact, the President was so upset at the Washington Post that he tried to get the U.S. postal Service to start charging Amazon more for packages. And so what you have is this imbalance, which is this is someone who has a portfolio that exists beyond the media property and a president who's willing to use that imbalance to his advantage. And so at a deep level, if we had the old rules of the game that were not crony capitalism, that were not authoritarian that were not anti media, that were not anti accountability, that the owner happens to be wealthy, wouldn't normally give you extra vulnerability. But under this president, it does.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah. And the willingness to use that power to punish. And there's no question about it. Look, I mean, you know, Donald Trump is suing, basically kind of suing everybody right now. Have you noticed this? I mean, everybody. I mean, he sued abc, sued cbs, he's suing the New York Times, he threatened to sue the Washington Post. I mean, he's had a gun to the head of the Washington Post for some time. And at a certain point, Jeff Bezos decided that whoever he wanted to be in 2013 was not, was not worth that. So I'm debating whether or not to tell a little story about this that that is like, slightly personal, but like, absolutely.

[Justin Wolfers]

Now we want to hear about your feelings, Charlie.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, no, no, no. I mean, there's actually, there's actually a little bit of a downside for what I'm saying about Jeff Bezos right now, because this summer I got a phone call one day looking at my phone and, and it says maybe it was an email saying, you know, Washington Post call immediately. And I'm thinking, no, I'm not going to call this guy. And it kept coming up that it was the, it was the general counsel's office. And so I finally called back and they said, just so you know, Donald Trump has filed in Florida state court a notice that he's going to sue the Washington Post for libel. He has not put a number on it, but he's suing us for three things, one of which is something you wrote for us in the Washington Post. And ironically enough, it was this one piece where I said, donald Trump is the luckiest politician in America. It was absolutely bulletproof. I wasn't worried about it. But what was very, very clear was that. And the Washington Post lawyers were absolutely wonderful. They said, we will vigorously defend this. The outside lawyers were absolutely top notch. And the question I had for them was, is it up to you or is it going to be up to Jeff Bezos? Because this seems so ludicrous to me that it just seems like what Donald Trump does, which is not file good faith lawsuits. He's just shaking them down. Right. He's looking for a way to intimidate them and get them to pay it off. And that was my take on it. But the one thing that I knew was that the Washington Post lawyers were going to defend this case. Now, it also means that I'm sort of slightly, I don't know. Do I depend on Jeff Bezos to do the right thing? Well, absolutely not, because I don't think he's going to do the right thing. Donald Trump filed lawsuits against the New York Times. He never filed this lawsuit against the Washington Post, but that's always a possibility. And so, you know. So Mr. Bezos, are you going to continue to pay the lawyers to defend something I wrote for you, or is this going to be the same pattern here? So I don't know. I don't have fuck you money, but I'm willing to say fuck you. Okay, that's just me. So anyway.

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[Charlie Sykes]

Can we talk about the economy?

[Justin Wolfers]

Let's do it brother, because I have.

[Charlie Sykes]

Some other questions for you. Number one, how worried should we be about the weak dollar and the fact that internationally right now, the administration seems to be sending signals that they have no problem with the weak dollar. Now again, a weak dollar means that stuff abroad is more expensive, but it means that the foreigners can buy our stuff more cheaply. So how do you sort out weak dollar, strong dollar, and whether we should be worried about it?

[Justin Wolfers]

Yeah, great question. I also find this hard, but let me start. I think language is actually really helpful. That's the sort of thing, that's why they pay me to be a professor, so that I can obsess about small things. But I think this language is strong and weak is actually really unhelpful. It gets the testosterone flowing. It almost seems obvious that strong is better than weak. It's not. The exchange rate's a price. It's the price of US Dollars versus foreign dollars. Therefore, it's the price of American goods versus foreign goods. That's all it is. And so we could call that high or low, or we could say the US dollar became cheaper and then we take some of the emotional content off the table. I actually genuinely find that to be quite helpful. So the US dollar just got cheaper, which means American goods got cheaper. So first of all, what does this mean for us? Exactly what you just said, which is it means for Americans who are buying stuff from abroad, that stuff just got more expensive in a reasonable amount. So. So if you're worried about the affordability issues, this is a movement in the wrong direction. But it does mean that the stuff we make gets cheaper, which means we'll sell more of it, which means more jobs for Americans. One way of thinking about this is the President wanted to cut interest rates to stimulate the economy. Well, this is a little bit like. And that's cutting a different price. That's cutting the interest rate, which is the price of today versus tomorrow. This is cutting the price of America today versus other countries today. So in some sense it's a little bit like getting a little bit of that. So it's going to be bad for inflation, but it's going to be good for boosting the economy. So overall that just is what it is. The President has actually been quite comfortable with it, which is surprising because weak dollar sounds very, very unmasculine, but it's consistent with his goals. And then the harder question is why is the dollar lower? To the extent that others believe that investing in the United States is no longer such a good bet and therefore they're not going to build stuff here, and if order to build stuff here, they'd need to buy US dollars, If that's what's going on, it's a symptom of a deeper malaise. If it's just relative prices between us and the rest of the world adjusting inflation's different here than elsewhere. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there's a whole lot less to worry about.

[Charlie Sykes]

What about the speculation that at some the dollar will no longer be the world's reserve currency? That the Chinese have been making noises why can't we be the world's currency? I'm somewhat skeptical about that, but the fact that that's in the conversation. Your thoughts?

[Justin Wolfers]

Yeah. Let's go back and explain what a reserve currency is.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah, please. Thank you.

[Justin Wolfers]

This confused me for a long time. So the reserve currency is just. If we're going to talk about a currency, which one are we going to talk about? That's all it means, it turns out, in Australia and talk about the value of the Aussie dollar. You talk about it relative to the US Dollar. Often it goes with, if we're going to sign a contract that the Aussies will send a boatload of wheat to the us we could either say that boatload of wheat's worth a million US dollars, or we could say it's worth a million and a half Aussie dollars, or we could say it's worth 700 million yen. Which words are we going to use? And it's not just which words, what are we going to put in the contract, which is how do we do the billing? And it turns out most of the people most of the time just think the US is the easiest one to think about. It's a little bit like saying, what is the language we use? Charlie, you and I could have gotten on this podcast today and we could agree to speak French, be a very short conversation, or Mandarin or Mandarin. Right? And as long as we're speaking the same language, it works. And so when we're doing trade with each other, we decide to speak US dollar. That's what a reserve currency is, right? And there's countries that speak English, and as long as everyone's speaking English, it works really well. There's countries that speak Portuguese, and as long as everyone's speaking Portuguese, they all understand each other. So in the language of economics, there's many equilibria, there's many languages we could choose. Just turns out we've chosen the US at this point you might be saying, well, why do I care which language we speak? For instance, in Australia, we speak US dollars. So Australians, all right, and they're fine. We have to do a little bit. We're a little bit better at mental arithmetic than Americans. International test scores show that. And we have to practice it whenever we do a cross border transaction. Well, so it turns out that being the reserve currency comes with what's sometimes called the exorbitant privilege. And we believe the two are related, though it's not completely obvious why, which is when people lend money to the U.S. they're lending it in the baseline currency, U.S. dollars. And so therefore they don't think of it as risky. And so therefore the American government can borrow money at a far lower rate than other countries. Now this is valuable if we can borrow at say, a quarter of a percentage point lower, and we have trillions of dollars of debt. A quarter of a percent times trillions is billions. Yeah. And so that's what we really care about is the exorbitant privilege. The exorbitant Privilege is people are willing to loan to us at lower rates for what sort of feels like no good reason. Maybe they believe that we're the safest place. Maybe again we're the language of international finance. So how easy would it be to replace the US dollar? Well, we have become less central to global commerce. That's a policy choice by the administration and we may actually be completely cut out in some countries increasingly. So people may be less willing. When a Canadian and Australian do business, they're going to write the contract in US dollars. They might start doing it in Canadian dollars. Is there an obvious alternative reserve currency? No, certainly not the Chinese yuan. Does it make more sense for people to be thinking about the euro though? Maybe. And so what I want you to do as you're thinking about that question is don't think about it like an American. Think about it like an Australian or a Canadian or someone from any of these other mid powers where they have a choice of which language to speak and which language is most helpful to them. And it may be that we've made the American approach less palatable, less common, less central to the world and over time we're going to move across. Now I don't think that all of this is going to happen in one big night. I think that the whole discussion is somewhat overblown. I think that the United States is slowly losing credibility in a range of ways which you know, it's not that we wake up and exorbitant privilege is gone, but it might be a little smaller right now.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, especially if America first becomes America alone and the mid sized powers decide that they're going to cut deals with one another. You saw the European Union make a deal with India. I've lost track by the way of a lot of the tariff deals and what to believe and who to believe about all of this. But it seems significant that you are seeing the mid powers making trade deals that would have been somewhat inconceivable, including Canada cutting a deal with China, seemingly implying that China was a more reliable trading partner than the United States. So there does seem to be something afoot in that respect.

[Justin Wolfers]

Right. So one thing I want to do is draw because it's too easy to get these issues meshed up. The issues around the reserve currency are issues of finance, blah blah blah. They're different than the issues of trade. Trade is when stuff moves back and forward between countries. And so whatever happens with the reserve currency is a completely separate issue or largely separate issue from the US has tried to isolate itself from other countries and succeeded. That's the problem. Now, it turns out then when we isolate ourselves from other countries, other countries still like having friends, and so they're looking elsewhere. And it is very much the case that this is diverting trade and attention away from the United States. And it turns out, I mean, you don't need an economics PhD to know when you treat people badly, they don't come back to say hello over and over and over again. So, you know, it's the middle school bully who can bully folks for a while, but by high school, they grow up and realize, I can just sit at a different table, I can hang out with different friends, I can have better, richer, deeper, more engaged relationships. And the economic point I want to make here, Charlie, is it's a very, very foundational point. It's very easy to think about economics and trade in terms of competition. We win, they lose, we can beat China, blah, blah, blah. And this is a fixed pie mentality, a zero sum game. That's wrong. The whole idea, every part of international trade, and in fact, every part of economics, every part of commerce is fundamentally. The forces of competition exist, but it's fundamentally about cooperation, which Donald Trump does.

[Charlie Sykes]

Not always seem to understand. He does seem to think of it as a zero sum game. Right? I win, you lose.

[Justin Wolfers]

If it's a huge cognitive error. Right? But think about the present moment right now, Charlie. Does your podcast have ads?

[Charlie Sykes]

Various versions of it do, yes. The ones on ACAST do.

[Justin Wolfers]

Or you're on substack.

[Charlie Sykes]

Substack.

[Justin Wolfers]

And so what you're doing is creating this wonderful show, which I love to listen to and people. So you're creating something of value to other people. And what they're effectively doing is saying, thank you, Charlie, could I bake you half a dozen muffins? Which is what the $10 a month you charge them is. Right. And so you're spending some time behind a microphone to make their lives and their understanding of the current political moment richer. You're helping them, and they're sending you back muffins because you need sustenance. And it's one of the most beautiful things in the world that what we have is an ability to cooperate with total strangers. There are people sending you muffins every day. That's the love they feel for you, Charlie. And I want them to understand. Charlie spent his morning thinking about what the issues were, thinking about what's on your mind, thinking about how he can reduce the anxieties that you feel, thinking about how he, as just a bloke Alone in his basement with some turkeys knocking on the door can enrich your life. What a beautiful, noble, lovely thing to do. Charlie, I'm enjoying this. That moment, that's just one. One transaction in our whole economy. But the whole economy is that it's basically Charlie's busking and people are giving him muffins. And by the way, that's what trade in cars and chips and AI and all of that. At the end of the day, it all comes back to that, how can I make your life better? By doing more of what I'm good at. And in return, you'll pay me. Which is another way of saying you'll find ways of making my life better by doing the things you're better at.

[Charlie Sykes]

I love thinking about what I do as busking. I mean, I think that is value added, because that's what I do, is sort of every day busking, hoping that people will drop a muffin, say, you know, hey, you know, we appreciate that this is the way the economy works, and I wish Donald Trump understood that. So.

[Justin Wolfers]

But I want you, it's beyond you busking. I want people to understand. It's the most important lesson in economics, which is this is the science of understanding, cooperation, facilitating cooperation, of finding ways in which we can help each other be better off. And I know it doesn't look that way because there's profit motives and there is competition in markets, but at the end of the day, the competition is all about each of us being allocated to ways in which we can help each other more. Sorry, mate, you know, I'm off my purse.

[Charlie Sykes]

No, no, no, no. This is what free market advocates had argued for years and years and years before they decided they were going to do something else.

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[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, so I needed to get your take on a couple of other things. You saw that big headline in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days that American manufacturing was in fact, in some decline. Can you put this in perspective? Because, of course, we were told that we were entering this golden age and that the point of all of these policies was to bring manufacturing back. And then there's the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, with this big freaking banner headline about what's happening. Justin. Because I was told, golden age jobs coming back.

[Justin Wolfers]

I know that this surprises you, Charlie, but sometimes people don't tell the truth. Okay, so look, here's the truth about American manufacturing. It's more or less been declining every year that you've been alive. And sometimes it declines quickly, and sometimes it declines slowly. The amount of output we produce usually rises, but because we increasingly automate, the number of people involved keeps falling. So how should we think about that? Well, one is the long sweep of history, very long sweep of history. This country started as an agricultural country. We lived on farms. We would make food for our own families. Then we got slightly bigger farms, slightly more sophisticated markets, and we would trade agricultural goods with each other. And then we also got ships, and we would trade them with people in other parts of the country and increasingly other parts of the world. But it was predominantly an agricultural economy. At its foundation, Industrial revolution comes along. Factories are amazing. It turns out that now you don't need a horse to do any hard work. We've now got factories that can do things. And so we saw the United States, Americans move off the land and into the factories. And the peak of that might be the so called golden age of the 1950s, which is the period, of course, of Trump's youth. 50s and 60s. I live just outside of Detroit. We were the richest city in the world at that point in time. There was enormous angst though at the time that we are leaving behind true America. The true America is farming. And the forgotten folks were the farmers as we moved from the fields to the factories. And so the sort of nostalgia you see today, what subsequently happened is we moved from the factories to the service economy. We moved up the value chain, the service economy, knowledge economy, bits and bytes. And we now sit at desks and we have fewer calluses on our hands and our backs don't ache and we can keep working after 65 and we can enjoy time with our family and our friends and all sorts of things. So we've moved from the factories into the offices. And what's happened is the same nostalgia we saw as we left the farm exists as we left the factory. Change is hard. I don't think anyone would say that we should go back to being an agricultural economy. We're pretty good at growing stuff, but we're so good at growing stuff now that basically we only need 1 or 2% of the American workforce to produce all the food for all the Americans. And so then we got to go off and do better things. Now we're at the point manufacturing got so productive that if we need clothes, we only need 5 or 10% of Americans. And if we need machinery and if we need refrigerators, we only need a small number of Americans to be working in those factories in order to produce all the refrigerators and clothes and so on that all of us need, which means the rest of us have gone off to do something else. What a beautiful arc. What an improvement to people's lives. So American manufacturing is in decline, there's no question.

[Charlie Sykes]

But it's not a bad thing because.

[Justin Wolfers]

The opportunity, we have opportunities elsewhere. And those opportunities are higher paying, more productive, less painful and so on. So look, how do we feel about this? There's an Australian on the left that remembers the 1950s and 1960s. Union labor jobs. Union manufacturing jobs were the engine of the middle class and they were. They were also the engine for enormous wealth, as my city of Detroit will attest. But that's nostalgia. They are not high paying jobs anymore. They used to be, but they're not. The high paying jobs now are in the offices. Look, here's the nostalgia here, I think is unmistakable. It is tightly related to the President's age that he believes so much in manufacturing. It was what he thought of. And it's actually, by the way, a real failure of economic thinking that we've failed to explain to people what an economy could look like in which we're not producing things. Stuff you can hold, right? We're in this weightless economy. But remember, you're the town troubadour, Charlie. You're producing something weightless. You're producing just words. But those words create joy as much as if you'd made some widget that I would enjoy playing with. It's joy either way. Look, here's the problem with the nostalgia for American manufacturing, Apart from the fact one, it's no longer sustainable, and two, it's no longer high wage. Three, manufacturing is what rich people think poor people want to do. It's not what poor people want. If you talk to people in a manufacturing plant and say, what are your hopes and dreams and ambitions for your children? None of them say, I hope they come in and punch the clock in a noisy factory, and I hope they've got an overseer who's a son of a bitch who yells at them every now and then. And I hope that they don't actually see natural light between 9 and 5. And I hope their body aches a little bit at the end of every day. What they say is, they say, you know, college may not have been for me, but my kid's smart, my kid's got hopes, my kid's got ambitions. Maybe they could design apps. Maybe they could be a teacher.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, this leads to the next obvious question. I mean, obviously this is what's been happening, and I think you're completely right about this. But what happens when we move from the industrial age to the post industrial age that you're describing now to the artificial intelligence age? Because what happens to all of those white collar jobs? Have you gotten your head around that? Because I'm not sure that anybody fully understands all of the social, political, economic impact of AI and it's all happening so fast. But do you have a sense that that will be be a destroyer of jobs? A creator of jobs? Will it even out your thoughts?

[Justin Wolfers]

So many ways of getting at that, Charlie. We'll spend an hour talking about this together sometime soon. Let me just start by saying, if we were in a sane world, this is the most important question of our time. And it's all that we'd be talking about. Instead, we're chasing the latest outrage of the day and missing the fact that we're having one of the great economic revolutions of our time right in front of us right now. So let me give you a couple of thoughts about it. One We've had technological revolutions before the Industrial Revolution, steam, electrification, blah, blah, blah, right? All happened before. Almost all of them have been technology as a replacement for brawn. That's what the industrialization was about. Factories can do the work that otherwise men and horses did. And what that did is, if you've got a good replacement for Braun, it meant that the price of Braun goes down. Which is to say, if you're a blue collar man, the last 50 years have been relatively unpleasant for you. The thing that's different about AI, Charlie, I know a thing or two about you. I know that you read widely. I know that you know quite a lot of things about quite a lot of things. And I know that your true skill is turning that into straightforward English that you can share with your audience. I. I have very bad news for you. AI reads quite a lot of things about quite a lot of things and turns it into straightforward, plain English.

[Charlie Sykes]

I've been noticing this.

[Justin Wolfers]

So you, like me, you and I should understand ourselves to be in the same position as a Detroit auto worker in the 1970s. The robots are coming. They're coming for you and I. Now, what's very interesting here is that makes it different to the disruptions we've seen in the past, because the disruptions we've seen over the past have predominantly come after blue collar workers. This one's a white collar revolution. And so the politics of that are completely different. The economics of that are completely different. The people who are affected are completely different. How does this play out? Permit me to tell you two stories, because I want to show you two ends of the spectrum. The first is the story of secretaries and the PC revolution. So it used to be when Donald Trump was young, that most of the tall buildings in Manhattan, there'd be a floor called the typing floor. And the typing floor would be full of predominantly young women, often unmarried, whose job was to type for all the very, very important men who are in the floors above them in advertising and law and business and so on. Then the PC landed and there's now a computer on everyone's desk. There is no typing floor anywhere in New York anymore. So basically all those typist jobs are gone. So that's the destruction of jobs, right? So that would be to use the language of economics, where that technology, the PC, was a substitute for the specialized skills of the typists. Now, by the way, words are still being typed. They're just being typed by the men now, as opposed to the young women. And now we even allow women on the other Floors. It's amazing. So that's one story. And that might make you a pessimist. We're going to see vast tracks of the labor force destroyed. A different story here. The technological change I want you to think about is the invention of the atm. So again, in your youth, when you wanted money, you would go to the bank and you would see a person and you would bring your bank book in and you would say, could I please have $200 from my account? And they would write some things down on the ledger. Then they'd go to the Safe, pull out $200 and give you $200. Then the ATM was invented. I want to say early 80s was the rollout. If I remember now, you take a card and you go to a machine. The machine dispenses the cash. Right. So the key job that bank tellers did has gone away. Guess what? The number of bank tellers didn't decline. What happened was the job changed. So the worst part of being a bank teller was having to deal with grubby pieces of paper and count them. It's low skill. It's not very interesting. It's. We now have fewer bank tellers per branch, but opening a branch now is cheaper because a lot of it's automated. So we have more branches. When you walk into a bank, a bank teller will now sell you financial products. A bank teller is now a highly skilled job. What's happened is that occupation has moved up the value chain from counting cash to talking about financial products. And so that's a case where the technology took out the boring, monotonous, awful parts of the job, but actually left the rest of the job. We also had enough time that the job was able to evolve fairly well. Coders today look like secretaries. The job of coding, if you've used Claude code. Unbelievable. The job of coding, I think may well be going away. But the other thing this does is. So sorry, let me go back. I just want to do some Econ 1012 frames for thinking about technology and AI in particular. One, the one that gets all the press is AI is a substitute for what I can do. This is the secretary story. The other which is just as true is that AI is a compliment for what I do. AI is a cape that gives me superpowers.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yeah. It's a tool all of gender, sudden icon.

[Justin Wolfers]

Yeah. And if that's the case, then you're going to be more productive and more highly paid. And the truth is, it's going to be elements of both and it's going to vary across places. But one sort of intellectual reflex I want people to think about is to realize if you're only thinking about substitutability, then you're missing half the story. So, yes, coders are going away, but guess what? It turns out now PhD economists can write beautiful computer programs. So for me, it's a cape. And so what it's going to do is lead to the expansion of specific occupations. Now, having said all of that, I just want to come back to the enormous uncertainty about this, which is this is. It's easy to find people who tried AI, didn't work for them, and turned it off. I drank the Kool Aid, I tried it, found I couldn't get it. Perfect persistence. I find them amazing. I've made the investment, and it's an extraordinary tool.

[Charlie Sykes]

Well, and also for people who've tried it and didn't get it right, check back. Because one of the things that I'm noticing is how it's getting smarter and better. Now, whether I should be concerned about that or use it as a tool, that's to be determined. But there's no question about it that if your experience was six months ago, you should check back, because the stuff it does right now is pretty remarkable. And this is where the unpredictability comes in. So for people who think, well, you guys will never be replaced. You can't have a podcast. Actually, there are programs where I can feed in. Have you seen this? Where you can feed in articles, you decide what the sources are, and then you click a button, and in about three minutes it will create a podcast. People talking about, you know, the source material you have in a way that will connect dots and make observations that might not have initially occurred to you, I was talking to one gentleman who's been working on a book for years, and he has a program now where he puts all of his notes in all of his things. And he says it's really amazing because you know, that they will make a connection between something I'm writing about that occurred in 1877 and something that occurred in 1927. And it's a connection. It's all my material. It's not adding to my material. My material, but it has insight. So the kinds of things that it's doing are changing and evolving with incredible speed. And that's where even this discussion about where we're going on the economy, how could you possibly know? Because we're dealing with this protean reality at the moment.

[Justin Wolfers]

Yeah. And just to underscore that I'm going to say that it's the most exciting technological innovation, the most transformative thing I've seen in my career as an economist. Now I'm only 53, but I do just want to emphasize there is some real economic there, there and sort of saying, oh, everyone said crypto was big and it wasn't. And everyone said, yeah, there's other fads that haven't worked out, but they're not like this.

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[Charlie Sykes]

I mean, there will be bubbles that will burst, though. I mean, along the way there will be bubbles that will burst. But there's no question about it that, I mean, if you were to argue that how the smartphone itself, the invention of the smartphone, how did that change the world? How did the Internet change the world? Pull the screen back. Obviously you had, you know, tech bubbles and everything, but think about all of the implications it's had. Again, not just economic, but social and political. The number of young people now who are developing relationships with AI chatbots. This is one thing that I think that as a, as a culture, we're going to catch up to that. We're going to be reading about that and talking about that long after it's already had effect, fundamental impact on the relationship that people have with one another. I've mentioned this before, but I find all of these things to be extraordinary. And it is hard to avert your eyes from what's happening.

[Justin Wolfers]

It raises hard questions about what it means to be human.

[Charlie Sykes]

Yes, exactly. It does, it does. Did you ever watch the show of Pluribus, by the way?

[Justin Wolfers]

I don't watch a lot of shows.

[Charlie Sykes]

Okay, so it's kind of, I won't go into it, but it was sort of the hive mind and, you know, free will versus everything. And at some point it does raise that question about what is, what does it mean to be human? And again, to, to your point, does this replace us or does this make us stronger? I mean, I think that's. Isn't that the kind of, the fundamental question, does it replace us or does it become like putting a jet pack on our backs, the tool? So I'm going with jet.

[Justin Wolfers]

So let me, for now let me do something unusual, which is give direct personal advice as opposed to talking about the economy. But for anyone who's in our audience, here's my advice. There's going to be enormous change during the rest of your career and you want to make sure you come out on top of it. And the single best thing I can suggest is become the most AI savvy person in your workplace. Notice I'm not saying go and become a programmer. I'm just saying in your workplace, become. So I want to be the most AI savvy economist at the University of Michigan Economics Department. That's actually a very achievable goal because many of my colleagues are off thinking about other things. And Charlie wants to be the most AI savvy podcaster and blogger. And that's possible because a lot of other people have their head up their asses. And the thing is, when AI comes for our jobs, if you're the most AI savvy person in your office, you're the last one fired, because you're the one who can help with the adaptation. You're the one who's going to be showing everyone, here's your cape. The person who's giving out the capes is the last person you want to fire. And so the old joke about all you got to do is outrun the bear. Well, in this case, I think what you want to do is be the most AI savvy person in your workplace. And that's going to give you a really, really role over the next decade, because adjusting to this new technology is going to be the most important business issues in your workplace. And I say that without even knowing where you're working.

[Charlie Sykes]

No, this is excellent advice. And by the way, just for people who are listening or watching us, we record this podcast, this conversation that you and I are having right now on a program called Riverside. When we are done and we stop the recording, Riverside will make clips, AI clips of our conversation. They will summarize all of the things that we have talked about. They will give me magic little episodes that range from 30 seconds to three minutes. They will do all of this without me lifting a finger. And it's not perfect, but it is much better than you would actually think. So right now, this conversation that we have will, in fact be, you know, put through artificial intelligence, which will find the most interesting and pithy things that we say and will, on its own, make little clips. So if you're actually watching a little clip of this, it might have been made by me or one of our producers, but it probably was made by artificial intelligence. So just a warning. Justin Wolfers, thank you so much for your time and your insight and your patience. I appreciate it very much, and I'm very grateful that the turkeys did not start pounding on my window during our conversation. So you kept the turkeys away.

[Justin Wolfers]

A great joy, mate.

[Charlie Sykes]

And thank you all for listening to this weekend's episode of to the Contrary Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We do this and we will continue to do this for the duration. Because now more than ever, it is crucial that as we watch everything that's happening around us that we remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.

[Justin Wolfers]

Thank you.

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[Charlie Sykes]

Sound familiar?

[Commercial Narrator]

Those stomach issues may actually be a pancreas issue called Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency or epi. Creon. Pancrelipase may help manage epi. Creon is a prescription medicine used to.

[Justin Wolfers]

Treat people who can't digest food normally.

[Commercial Narrator]

Because their pancreas doesn't make enough enzymes.

[Commercial Voice]

Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to pork or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful swollen joints. Call your doctor if you have any unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic react actions. Take Creon as directed by your doctor and always with food. Do not chew capsules as this may cause mouth irritation. Other side effects may include blood sugar changes, gas, dizziness in a sore throat and cough. These are not all the side effects of Creon. Call 863-9110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's C R E O N info.

[Justin Wolfers]

Com.

[Commercial Narrator]

I'm asking my doctor about EPI and if Creon could help.