Q&A Part 2: Working Two Jobs, Incentives vs. Handouts, the Gold Standard, and Government ROI

Economist Kathryn Edwards is back with more answers. In Part 2, she talks more about student loans, who actually “lives off taxpayers,” why gold reserves aren’t a great idea anymore, the importance of mobility in worker power, and whether ROI is a good measure for the work of government. If this two-parter was too much, blame the listener who said he didn’t like it when we used the timer back in May. Support the Optimist Economy podcast by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack https://optimisteconomy.substack.com/, or donating at https://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:35Speaker 02

  Hello, and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine.

• 0:38Robin Rauzi?

  And I'm Robin.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  On this show, we believe the US economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there, one problem and solution at a time.

• 0:51Robin Rauzi?

  So, Optimist, we talked to Catherine Horst last week. We decided to record more questions than we really had time for, and we've added a second episode this week for more mailbag. Usually, we have more questions in the hopper than we could take. We really appreciate all the ones you sent on Substack and by email. And we'll try to do this maybe every 10 episodes or so.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I couldn't actually stop myself from answering every single question that Robin gave, even though she's like, let's pick the ones that we think are best.

• 1:18Robin Rauzi?

  Let's go have dinner.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Nope, that one too.

• 1:22Robin Rauzi?

  My blood sugar's crashing. Can we stop now?

• 1:26Speaker 02

  This microphone's in my cold, dead hands. You asked me about social security and CBO in the same hour. Like, how does one stop? It was a little bit like Christmas, these episodes.

• 1:39Robin Rauzi?

  It was Christmas for Catherine. It's true.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  All right, so more questions, more answers. Let's go.

• 1:45Robin Rauzi?

  Here we go. Next, Naved in San Diego asks, "Does it actually matter that America has abandoned the gold standard? Is there real evidence that leaving the gold standard has had negative economic consequences, or is this a bunch of nonsense being pushed by the descendants of the John Birch Society?"

• 2:07Robin Rauzi?

  Would there be any benefit to returning to some version of the gold standard?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  No, I think that the easiest one is no. There's trade offs and risk. Of course, there's something we lost from leaving the gold standard, but what we gained was independent monetary policy that wasn't tied to the amount of gold we had on reserve. So this is the real value to having a Federal Reserve is independent in overseeing the money supply. So we get a stronger, independent central bank to help manage the economy if it's, if they're not basically shackled to the gold standard. This is why the gold standard people are also anti-fed people, because you can't have it both ways. If you, if you want gold, you don't want strong monetary policy. If you were interested, there is a really amazing history book called Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  And it's about the gold standard in World War I as it fell apart. And it's a very long but excellent illustration of why the gold standard hamstrings countries. And in the case of World War I, England and Germany and France had a lot of gold, but then they had a really expensive war and they sold it. America bought all of it. We had a lot of gold and we become powerful. And then each of these countries has to decide, basically, at what rate are they going to enter back into the gold standard? And by having to enter back into the gold standard, they each have to decide whether or not they're going to punish wage earners or punish savers, because the, the value of the currency relative to gold is going to affect one of them.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  So I, I think that that gives you an idea of like, why you wouldn't want it to be a commodity that's fixed in amount and out of your control.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  And for what it's worth, the, that book has an excellent description of the start of World War I, which starts in August of 1914, when like, half of the major players are on their month-long August vacation. And they're like, well, he couldn't be reached because he was on a boat in the Mediterranean. I'm like, who are these people? Like, every, it's like-

• 4:07Robin Rauzi?

  When was 1914? They didn't have cell phones.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  I mean, every country is like, we are on the brink of war. War could be any day. We don't know what's gonna happen. Like, you know, we, the negotiations are tense. It's like, I've gotta go on a boat in the Mediterranean for a month. Be back.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  And then I come back and there's war? That's so weird. We were right on the brink of it when I left, but I went on vacation anyway, said like 17 different people in all these countries.

• 4:35Robin Rauzi?

  Maybe they thought if they just went and relaxed a while, like, things would just calm down. Everybody just needs to go chill out.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  I know there's war, but there's also summer to be had.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Anyway, it's a great book. But no, I don't think the gold standard gives us much.

• 4:51Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 4:53Robin Rauzi?

  Pamela Gordon in San Jose, California. I've been concerned about the unintended consequences of the 30-hour work week cap in order to get benefits. I've heard many companies reduce hours for their employees and who are then forced to get two jobs. My own 26-year-old aspiring musician's son works two part-time jobs, and one of his employers keeps shifts under six hours or four even to minimize their paid breaks.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  That's petty. That's real petty.

• 5:22Robin Rauzi?

  It seems like employers are now welcoming employees to work at two different companies or more just so they can avoid paying for breaks and insurance. I'm curious if this has been an increasing trend.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Hard to measure. I would say because you wouldn't be able to figure out the causal direction.

• 5:39Robin Rauzi?

  What do you mean by the causal direction?

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Like, do I have two jobs because I couldn't find a single job that I like, or I prefer working for these two employers and it fits my schedule? I mean, especially in the data, like, you couldn't really see it. I can tell you that the rates of multiple job holding have not increased much over the past 30 years. It's a pretty consistent. And I actually think it's a falling share of people who work two jobs. It could be that the class of people who are working two jobs is changing, but...

• 6:07Robin Rauzi?

  What do you mean?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  It could be that there might be more people who have higher education and earnings who find themselves working two jobs. And the two jobs question in the current population survey where we get this data, it's arguable of how well it covers gig work.

• 6:21Robin Rauzi?

  We have seen, you know, again, not data, but journalistic reporting about, you know, companies using highly sophisticated software to program the amount of hours that people work and schedule their shifts, and that that has had some... Negative effects on how many hours, you know, they're trying to minimize the number of worker hours that they have, particularly in service industries, right? They don't want any more people on the shop floor than they have to have. And that, you know, that means that overall, people might be getting fewer hours than would help them qualify for things like benefits or breaks.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  For me, the, the bigger question is, is there a benefit to having so many benefits tied to your employer?

• 7:07Robin Rauzi?

  In general, sure.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  In general, and I think that her question is one of many that would come up with like, why do you even get health insurance from your employer?

• 7:16Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Why, I mean, I can understand maybe philosophically why retirement, you might need to get from your employer, since it is, you know, kind of like wage.

• 7:25Robin Rauzi?

  An extension of your salary or your wages, yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but even then, like, do we still benefit from having your employer control access to retirement savings? Do we still benefit from you having your employer control access to high-quality health insurance? I think you'd be really struggling to find the answers of like a resounding yes. I think employers like it for the employees that they like, that they get to like lure them over with these benefits, but I don't think we as an economy have benefited from gatekeeping essential benefits behind employers. In the 30-hour minimum is a great example of how if they don't want it, they'll get around it. The break one, though, this you just need to.

• 8:08Robin Rauzi?

  That just needs to be petty, yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  It's so petty, like, I mean, not wanting to pay for health insurance, which the, the value of health insurance, that's like you and your employer buy a new car every year. Health insurance is crazy expensive. So if an employer's like, yeah, I did some dirty stuff to get around it, I'd be like, I get it, like, it's, it's a lot, but a 15-minute break? Let's call the wage an hour division of the Department of Labor of California, because that one is petty.

• 8:35Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. Okay, another question. We've gone through a lot of questions, you know, we've been on the, we've been, we've been on this for a while, how are you feeling?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  I'm feeling good, I'm, I'm, I'm doing great.

• 8:48Robin Rauzi?

  You're just getting, just getting loose.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  I'm just getting loose.

• 8:52Robin Rauzi?

  Okay. We just got like another question just today. It says, I just heard that you're asking for listener questions. I'd been a little confused about how the labor market is supposed to function in a capitalist economy. And I thought, finally, this is my chance.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 9:07Robin Rauzi?

  Each time I came up with a question, I would start wondering how some detail works. And then I had a list of questions so long that I wondered if I'd missed my calling. But I've come up with this question. In our economy, it seems like we generally try to let most things run with as hands-off an approach as possible. Everything has to be its own market. Sometimes the markets fail to function correctly, and the government tends to step in to address these things. The labor market appears to have an extreme power imbalance, though. If I, as a real human person, do not have a job for a long enough period, then it's an existential problem. If I don't have income, then I can't pay for house, clothing, or food. If your average business doesn't hire another employee, they just miss out on the small

• 9:51Robin Rauzi?

  amount of revenue that that employee would add, but the business continues to exist. Is this a malfunctioning market? I know that unions can address that power imbalance, but is there a more universal solution? Is there, for instance, a sweet spot of universal basic income that doesn't discourage people from working, but can also allow them to pass up working conditions that don't align with them? That's as brief as I could make it. Signed, Paul Wilk.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Paul Wilk. Paul, so what I would describe as power imbalance in the labor market isn't because employers have power over workers all the time. It's because in certain conditions, that power balance is greater. Or like, I would argue, and this is going to sound real arrogant, but like, not a lot of employers have power over me, Catherine Edwards, because I have a ton of outside options. And if I didn't like a place, I could go somewhere else. And I have a ton of power in the labor market, and there are a bunch of employers I could sell my labor to.

• 10:54Robin Rauzi?

  She could quit this podcast anytime.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  I could quit this money-losing podcast whenever I wanted. You don't, you don't, you don't tell me what to do anymore, Robin.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  But in that case, the difference is that employers are competing over me, and so I have power in the labor market. And so this idea of an exploitative relationship, or me being at their whim, it's not there. And a lot of people in the US labor market, they aren't under the power of their employer. They have outside options. What has happened for a lot of people is that their outside options have gotten to the point where there are so few that employers do have more power. And they know you can't go anywhere else. And some things that affect worker power would be things like recessions, or the period we're in now, where there's not a lot of hiring.

• 11:45Robin Rauzi?

  Or even geography, right?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, geography can affect it. But we're also in an era in which we've had incredible concentration of businesses, and lots of mergers and acquisitions. And so most people are in some kind of labor market where there is a concentration of employers. And so I don't have a ton of options of selling my labor somewhere else. Now, I think that there's never one perfect, right solution. And part of what we need to do is put in some more basic protections for workers so that these employers who do have so much power can't exploit it to such a degree.

• 12:21Robin Rauzi?

  Like a stronger minimum wage, or what?

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a stronger minimum wage. Because the idea of perfect competition, which a lot of economic theory is based off of, and it's not because we think it actually happens, it's just because it gives us a really good intuition to how the world works. When you have perfect competition between firms and workers, you're going to be paid what you're owed. If employers don't have to compete for that much, they're going to pay you less than what you're owed. So part of getting you back up to where we want you to be is in regulating just how far down the employers can kick the floor. But the other part is doing more to have competition in the labor market. We do this through things like banning non-competes, prosecuting firms that collude to keep wages low,

• 13:08Speaker 02

  as well as monitoring the concentration of employers into large trusts or monopolies. Because a monopoly is going to have an effect, not just on the consumer market, but also on the labor market. So the power can switch between employer and worker, and the more effective policies are about shifting that power back. Okay.

• 13:32Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  And I also just want to clarify that that does correlate, like, your power in the labor market can correlate with income or education, but not perfectly. So, one of the largest employer collusion settlements in US history was the tech sector.

• 13:49Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  And those people made a ton of money, but a set of firms in Silicon Valley basically entered into a compact that they weren't going to...

• 13:59Robin Rauzi?

  They weren't going to poach workers from one another, right?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, they weren't allowed to poach workers from one another. So, if you worked for one of the companies that I was in cahoots with, I'm not going to hire you. And that's a way to keep people from moving around. The, the heart of worker power...

• 14:13Robin Rauzi?

  Is your ability to leave.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Is mobility. Mobility is everything for a worker. You have to be able to pack up and leave, take this job and shove it, and go somewhere else. And so, everything that can increase worker mobility is something that can increase worker power. And I think that that's really optimistic because there's lots of ways to increase mobility. I mean, you can increase worker mobility by, like, expanding access to the internet to get people more chance to look for jobs.

• 14:39Robin Rauzi?

  I know that I'm not the, like, you know, optimist economist in this, you know, podcast, but I, I have often thought that mobility, you know, the United States has been in this process of what they, some demographers call, like, the great settling in, that we used to be an incredibly mobile society. I have friends who's, who moved six times when they were kids because their parents just moved with their job, you know, from Illinois to California to Indiana, you know, back to, back to California. And the people just don't do that anymore. And there's probably a lot of reasons for that, housing costs and the cost of moving. But what, things that we could do to actually enable people to move, to take jobs where they are, where the market is, is healthier or has more opportunities, rather than just say, "Well, you know, sorry, you live in, you know, a small town in West Virginia,

• 15:24Robin Rauzi?

  and there's no opportunities there. Well, you're stuck there."

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, uh, what's interesting is that higher educated people always moved more than people with just a high school degree. And I know that that's a brute distinction, but it's just, it's, that's what we can see in the data.

• 15:40Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Is we can see your terminal educational degree. That doesn't mean we see like the, the textured quilt that is people's abilities in the labor market, but the more education you have, the more associated you have been with mobility for a long time. Even if you could have someone who was like, I'm a plumber in this city. If I move to be a plumber in this city, I could get like 15% more income. People don't do it. I will say amongst the unemployment insurance people, of which I am proudly one, there has been a question for a while if unemployment insurance, it's, it's typically an enumerated benefit that you get for a certain amount of time. So there's a formula based on your past earnings. It gives you a weekly benefit amount and you get that weekly benefit amount for a specific number of weeks.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  It used to always be 26, but now in a lot of states it's dropped down to 20, 16, or in the case of Florida, nine. But there's a question of whether or not you should make people get a half week, like a, somewhere between 25 and 50% of their prior earnings on a weekly basis. Or you should just cut them a check for the whole, whole amount. And some of the cut them a check people are like, look, I'm entitled to 26 weeks of benefit at a 35% replacement rate. Write me a check and it, it gives people the power to like, take the money and go. And then it could be an avenue for mobility for people who are in labor market duress. It's, it's not necessarily going to lead to higher benefit payouts because most people do take around the max of their unemployment.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  But it, it would get people like a different.

• 17:11Robin Rauzi?

  Right, right, right. Other than getting, you know, $380 a week and worrying about your rent, you just say, I'm moving out of this apartment and I'm taking this. Used Honda and going to Nashville.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:23Robin Rauzi?

  Or whatever.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, on a wing and a prayer. And the other part too, I mean, the problem with that is that, you know, some people think it would create an incentive, right? Because I have this cash bonus for getting fired.

• 17:34Robin Rauzi?

  For getting laid off, yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  For getting laid off, because you can't get it unless you've been laid off through no fault of your own. But, yeah, I know someone who is actually like dying to convince a state to do this. So just like, let half the people who claim for benefits get a check and like, let me see what they do.

• 17:48Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, just do it, see what happens.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Because it could really improve long-term outcomes. It's that same kind of question about incentives versus barriers. You know, someone who's lost their job, it's probably a recession. Or if it's not a national recession, it could be a recession.

• 18:04Robin Rauzi?

  Local recession, regional.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, or a recession in your industry.

• 18:07Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  You immediately don't have enough money for your life and you somehow have got to get back on your feet to do something else. Because you have less earnings, it's, or no earnings and less income, it's really unclear if you'd be able to get into a job training fast enough to get a job before your unemployment expires. In the meantime, you might lose your cost of living and it's expensive to move even when it's under duress. And, you know, you are faced with the prospect of lower earnings for the rest of your life. So like, is the problem, and this is also going back to what makes an economist conservative or liberal, some conservative economists would say, you know, the problem is that unemployment insurance lengthens the spell of unemployment. I'm giving people a benefit every week, and so I've basically incentivized them to

• 18:53Speaker 02

  take as long as possible to get a job and they won't get a better one.

• 18:56Robin Rauzi?

  They won't get a job until they have to.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  They won't get a job until they have to.

• 18:59Robin Rauzi?

  Every last second of this.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  They're not, I mean, the exit rates from unemployment insurance is like, if it lasts 26 weeks, it's like the number of people exiting are like, and at 26, it jumps up. Right, so then like a liberal economist would say, that's good, we want people to take their time to find a job, because if people just take the first worst job they can find, the economy has lost human capital and that person has lost earnings. So you want to, you want to invest in the job search, because a good job search has a ton of rewards for the economy overall and not just that person. So same thing with like this incentive of like, do you write them a check of like, okay, well, there's, there could be an incentive problem. Or it could be that because they've lost their job, they now don't have the type of resources to make the investment that could help them move to a labor market where there's still work.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  So if I lose my job. And I am a bank teller.

• 19:52Robin Rauzi?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  I've lost my job because my branch has closed. And there aren't bank teller positions open where I live. But I know, you know, because my cousin lives two states away. She asked, you know, a bank that she goes to, and they are hiring. So I need to somehow get there. What's going to make the difference incentive or barrier?

• 20:13Robin Rauzi?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Right? I would say a lot of people face a barrier for moving two states away to take a new job. And that the incentive is less of an issue. It's really just the practical concerns of moving across the country.

• 20:24Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  But I'm a liberal economist. I want to give people more money. I want to invest more in people. And I know that there are trade offs to how much people will work or how fervently they will search for a job. And I'm just like, look at that, my pulse didn't even rise. I'll take it. I'll take it 10 days a week.

• 20:45Robin Rauzi?

  And that's because you think that that those investments pay off for the economy overall.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  I think those, yes, I think those investments.

• 20:52Robin Rauzi?

  It's not just because you're a bleeding heart liberal and you just want to give money away. I mean, it might be.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  No, I think that we don't spend our money that smartly.

• 21:00Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  And we're so cruel about it that it ends up not being effective.

• 21:05Robin Rauzi?

  We've opened up the back of the tax truck and we spit out like a bank heist movie gone bad. And.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  The government tax truck is on its way to Palm Springs. Cash in the back, ready to go through that neighborhood and give those people what they deserve. The government cash truck. That one, that's a, that's a great image.

• 21:28Robin Rauzi?

  Um, okay. This question comes from your hometown of Houston, Texas.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, yes.

• 21:35Robin Rauzi?

  From Amir Bafroi. Amir asks, how would you determine what federal agencies or grantees provide the federal government with the most ROI? That's return on investment for those of you who aren't into that jargon. Please feel free to define ROI in whatever way is most quantifiable. But I'd also be interested in your qualitative analysis, too. How would you determine what federal agencies, programs, or grantees provide the most ROI to the government?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Okay, I would come back with the government doesn't make decisions based on ROI. And that a lot of what the government backs, the private sector would consider to be a loser. And that's why the government is there for them. So I would say probably the worst ROI you could possibly have is trying to keep an 80-year-old alive. What are you gonna get out of that? You're gonna get more tax dollars? You're just keeping dependent people alive for longer. The ROI, once someone turns 70, every aspect of it is negative, from the government or economy's perspective, for the most part. So like, we don't let ROI determine how we make investments as a government, because we're a democracy. And

• 22:49Speaker 02

  holding federal agencies to some kind of ROI standard based on their investments, you know, it rests on the idea that, one, ROI is something that's a worthy pursuit for a public entity, and, two, that we'd be able to measure that return. So, you know, an example of an agency that hit the chopping block because of DOGE is AmeriCorps. I mean, you could not find that much cheaper of an agency to run, considering that the bulk of grantees don't get paid. They're volunteers. It's a volunteer, right? So it's not as if the investment was really breaking the bank of the federal government, and the return is incalculable. What is the, what is the benefit to our economy of having people

• 23:33Speaker 02

  encouraged to volunteer in certain areas and localities of people in vulnerable situations? I mean, the number of members of Congress that were vista volunteers themselves is truly incredible, considering how small the program is. I think that if you try to come up with an ROI to compare that to say, what's the return on investment for America of having a civic-minded volunteer organization versus the ROI to an office within the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services that passes through policy on reimbursement rates in order to discourage people from treating ambulances like fancy Ubers?

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, that that office is going to do really well because that's they're playing around with more money than God. It's money in the US healthcare system. You save half a percent, like, we've all gotten $10,000 richer, right? It's it's really like the that calculus of return in investments, I don't think it makes sense in the public sphere because it's about meeting citizens, you know, where they are. So that's that's one is just to like, make sure that that way is

• 24:44Robin Rauzi?

  You're gonna dis- discount some more?

• 24:46Speaker 02

  I'm gonna discount some more. I'm scantin' more. Fellow Houstonian, I'm just scantin' more. That said, the federal government is in such desperate need of reform. Federal agencies are in desperate need of reform. And if you needed to ask anyone about this, you could ask any federal employee and they would be like, oh, I could tell you 10 different things that I need to do differently in my federal agency. But up until January, the only people who had any power to change the functions of the federal government was Congress. So, I mean, yeah, I I I've talked about this before, but, you know, some people in federal agencies are in an office created by a piece of legislation, and the person who wrote the legislation never

• 25:28Speaker 02

  bothered to check that there was a similar office at like, the agency next door. And now the government is like, now these people are blamed for being inefficient, when it's really just that Congress is not good at their job, nor will Congress take the responsibility to correct it. So, the reform of the federal government takes leadership. And it's very hard for me to keep a level speaking voice when discussing what the Department of Government Efficiency did. And so, I will not try to dwell too long on the subject, only to say that, man, if you ever needed proof that someone ought to stay in their lane and remain an accountant for tech companies, we have it here. There have been so many good proposals

• 26:13Speaker 02

  about how to reform federal government, that looks at these ideas of efficiency, not from the perspective of like, an ROI-like calculation from the market, but from the perspective of like, what leads to better service for the American people, and what leads to better careers for the people who decide to serve in that capacity. Someone who was a longtime leader on this was Paul Volcker. I struggle with his last name, Volcker. And, you know, he pointed out things like The federal government needs fewer political appointees, not more. And that that would make it a much more effective and efficient agency because you wouldn't have people who like spend their career and then basically cap out at like where the political appointees

• 26:58Speaker 02

  begin, that you don't, you don't want this.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  There's also been ideas that we should have some type of recurring commission. That's basically like a congressional committee that like is given mandates to review federal agencies and take suggestions from the federal agencies of like, dear Congress, you created two duplicated offices with the same function.

• 27:21Robin Rauzi?

  It's like a suggestion box.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Like the suggestion box from federal workers of like, please get rid of one of us.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  I mean, I knew someone who worked for a federal office that the way the law was written, the law created their office. And at the same time, the law gave them no oversight. So like they were an oversight office when the law didn't include any oversight. And so she was like, oh, we've just been, I mean, it's Orwellian because someone has to have this job. The person who runs our agency-

• 27:53Robin Rauzi?

  So it's Kafkaesque.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Kafkaesque. This agency is required by law to report that it is fulfilling the duties that the law demands of this agency. And part of it is that we have people staffed in offices or else they get in trouble with Congress and then we're writing them back to be like, can you please give us a job to do? Like there's so, so like, I don't know, reform always comes best from the people who are affected most by it. So, yeah, I think there was a lot of, lot of answers.

• 28:24Robin Rauzi?

  No, but good stuff, good stuff in there.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  This was fun. I mean, I could keep going.

• 28:27Robin Rauzi?

  No, no, no. We had, it's 2:30. You have children to pick up?

• 28:32Speaker 02

  I do have children to pick up.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  All right, we didn't, we didn't do anything else this episode, or a normal pillcrows this episode, but we, we can't end a show without a spiritual sponsor. So for this bonus mailbag episode, spiritual sponsors, we need to shout out the things that keep us going and keep us steady. I'm gonna have a controversial spiritual sponsor this time.

• 28:54Robin Rauzi?

  Really?

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. My spiritual sponsor is my dog. And I need to say that my dog is the best dog. And I know that lots of you listening have dogs and you would be like, well, my, no. My dog is the best dog. She is my spiritual sponsor. There are many things I love about my dog. One is that she's quite cute and has ears for days. Another is that she's very cuddly. And even though she weighs 50 pounds, because she's a pit mix, she's pretty sure she's a lap dog. But I think what really made her my spiritual sponsor is that she loves being on couches, loves couch. And in particular loves pillow on couch. So if she falls asleep in the house during the day, it is on the northernmost point of the couch.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  So she'll get like, there's three pillows on one side of the couch. She's like right on top of it asleep. Her, her utilization of pillows is a remarkable thing to. It's just so, it's so good, like how she gets up there, how she gets comfortable. And then she just immediately falls asleep and she's on top of like three things I have to wash, and yet I love her. So my spiritual sponsor this week is the best dog in the world. My dog.

• 30:04Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, all right. My spiritual sponsor this week is improvised yoga pose names. So I've been taking yoga a long time. So I've heard a lot of yoga names and I've been in, I didn't really realize there's sort of regional names for poses. Like I heard names for poses in Spokane that I'd never heard in Los Angeles. But every once in a while, and again, I haven't taken yoga for a very long time. Somebody will say something like awkward airplane pose. And you're like, what? And it makes me laugh. It often makes me actually fall out of whatever pose I'm in. And I just, you know, I just love that, that people are like, what kind of weird shape have I put all this whole class of people in? And I'm now going to give a ridiculous name to.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Robin, I can foresee a future spiritual sponsor of the names that my kid gives to yoga poses. So in preschool, they did yoga. They definitely did. I don't do it. I've tried it a few times. It's not for me. I think maybe the relaxing, I don't know.

• 31:07Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  But your future spiritual sponsor will be my son trying to rattle off the names of their yoga poses and getting them. I mean, even though I don't do yoga, I know he's getting them wrong. And he does do them occasionally. He's like, Mom, I think we should do yoga. And he'll just like do something. He's like, and let's do this. And I'm like, that can't be. One of them was like falling stick. And I'm like, no.

• 31:36Robin Rauzi?

  Just send me like a list and I'll see, I'll interpret them for him and see if I'm right.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  It's great. But I was like, man, so they teach yoga in public schools. Don't tell Republicans.

• 31:52Robin Rauzi?

  Put that on mindfulness.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  For extra production on an extra long

• 32:04Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  session of

• 32:06Robin Rauzi?

  Q and A.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  questions.

• 32:08Robin Rauzi?

  Q and A from hell.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Q and A from hell.

• 32:11Robin Rauzi?

  No, no.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  You don't love discanting? Snapping out Andy and Sophie.

• 32:16Robin Rauzi?

  Snapping out Andy and Sophie, thanks.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Who are like dying for us.

• 32:17Robin Rauzi?

  Stop talking. Stop talking now.