Stop Donating Your Vacation Days to Your Boss

Nearly 90% of private-sector workers get paid vacation days from their job, but a Pew survey found 46% leave at least some of it on the table. Government survey data also show that the share of workers who are on vacation in any given week has fall by about half between 1980 and 2022. Blame thin staffing, guilt culture, and “PTO bundles” that push people to ration days between vacation days and sick leave. The fix exists elsewhere: the European Union, for instance, guarantees 20 paid days a year. If a Costco cashier is able to vacation in Europe twice, so should you. Chapters: 0:52 Announcements 2:53 Retcon Marathon 11:01 Terms & Conditions: Statutory Leave 12:04 Big Pilcrow: Vacation Days 14:03 Why Do We Think We Can't Take Time Off? 16:01 No Staffing Slack in the Office 16:51 Vacation Guilt is a Real Thing 18:51 What's Worker Power Got to Do With It? 20:20 Decline in Days Off: What the Data Says 21:17 Vague Numbers of Vacation Days 24:23 Cost of Travel is Up 24:56 Statutory Leave Could Create Jobs 26:28 What are Workers Leaving on the Table? 28:48 How Much Does Vacation Time Cost Employers? 31:08 Vacation Marxist Economics-Style 34:40 The Curse of the Long-Weekend Vacation 38:21 Could the Government Mandate Vacation Time? 42:46 Executive Orders: ACFC wins and Americans with Children Act 46:23 Spiritual Sponsors: Lizards! Donate to Optimist Economy: https://optimisteconomy.com Video-curious? Watch the Optimist Economy YouTube channel⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@optimist_economy. We’re also on Instagram at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy https://www.instagram.com/optimist_economy or TikTok at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy https://www.tiktok.com/@optimist_economy. Chat with other Optimists on Substack. https://substack.com/chat/4604257?utm_source=pub-nav-bar Find utility with our merch: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Got economic questions, concerns, or executive orders? Send them to [email protected] mailto:[email protected]

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy were about as different as two politicians could be. The lanky businessman and the stout old senator, the conservative darling and the liberal icon. But did you know they once teamed up to tackle an elusive challenge? Universal healthcare.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  In season four of the Big Dig podcast, we tell the story of Romney Care and the odd couple alliance behind it. Find Mitt and Ted wherever you listen.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Cue the Go-Go's right here. Vacations all I ever wanted, vacations all I ever needed.

• 0:38Robin Rauzi?

  Got to get away.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Got to get away.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm economist Catherine Ann Edwards.

• 0:50Robin Rauzi?

  And I'm editor Robin Rousey.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:05Robin Rauzi?

  The problem we're talking about this week is that Americans are apparently bad at taking vacation. So we're going to ask, is that us or is it actually the economy?

• 1:13Speaker 01

  It's the economy, don't worry. You're all beautiful and special and brilliant and it's the economy to blame. But before we do that, we have some announcements.

• 1:23Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  First, the biggest one, we are going to take a break on production of the podcast for about a month.

• 1:31Robin Rauzi?

  Catherine has to go write a book.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  I have to write a book.

• 1:32Robin Rauzi?

  She's got a deadline.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  I've got a book, I've got a deadline, I've got to do it. Turns out it's hard. Turns out doing a podcast is hard.

• 1:39Robin Rauzi?

  We're just going to take a little summer break. We're going to take our own vacation and model good vacation behavior for all the optimists.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  By working through vacation.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Do what Robin's doing. Everybody be Robin and just take real time off.

• 1:59Robin Rauzi?

  Go to yoga.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  We also want to shout out some really great reviews, including Queen and BK, who said she's pretty close to getting a Pilcrow tattoo. Heart.

• 2:10Robin Rauzi?

  She said she's this close.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  This close.

• 2:14Robin Rauzi?

  I wanted to say that we also in recent weeks have gotten support in three really wonderful ways that I wanted to explain. First, Michael in Minneapolis joined our new eternal optimist tier. That's $365 a year. In other words, a dollar a day to be an eternal optimist on Substack. Jessie in Portland, Oregon, she donated $13.07, which was her portion of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica settlement. I want you to know that Jessie also applied for company matching funds for that, which has required me to do a lot of paperwork, but it's honestly, it's worth it.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  It's so worth it.

• 2:50Robin Rauzi?

  And Becca in Lake Forest, California here, decided she wanted to stop shopping at Amazon but was having trouble, so she donated her prime membership fee to Optimist Economy instead. And we're here keeping her, you know, accountable for that. Any of those ways, we love, of course, we love your money, but we also love your creativity in how you decide to donate here.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely love it. While we're on break, be sure to keep sending us questions because we're putting together a question and answer episode when we return.

• 3:19Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, we'll record that a few weeks after we're back.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23Robin Rauzi?

  Okay. Time for the marathon retcon.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  This is gonna be a long retcon. So first, from America 250, a case for the defense. Yes, the high five is truly amazing and I feel for the people who didn't live in the era of the high five. However, many listeners pointed out that before the high five, there was the gimme five, which was typically around waist level. Similar action. I appreciate the reviewer.

• 3:49Robin Rauzi?

  Story and story.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Appreciate the reviewer who said, when explaining where gimme five came from, that it is in fact inferior to the high five. That's on America 250. And five is for the five digits. I know that other people thought that was obvious. That actually unlocked something in my brain when I realized it's for the five fingers on your hand, but it's okay. Second retcon comes from overtime. We talked about how we could increase overtime in the US by having it apply to more white collar workers. Well, a recent study came out since we recorded that looked at the effect of the overtime salary cap increases that we've seen. So basically, if you raise the threshold for being eligible for overtime from, say,

• 4:35Speaker 01

  $20,000 to $40,000, what happens? Do people work more? And what they found is actually a lot of them just get salary bumps, so they're not eligible for overtime, which is a win on its own. What they gleaned from it was that the hour provisions might be tough for them to enforce, but also they turns out had a lot of room in their salary budget to give everybody a raise, so they wouldn't have to pay overtime.

• 5:00Robin Rauzi?

  I don't quite understand what you mean. The hours might be tough to enforce. You mean for the employer?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like if you made $35,000 a year and now you're subject to overtime, they have to track your hours.

• 5:12Robin Rauzi?

  And they'd rather just not track your hours.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  And they'd rather just give you $5,000 more a year.

• 5:17Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  So they wouldn't have to pay the overtime and wouldn't have to, not only would they have to not pay overtime, they wouldn't have to keep track of it.

• 5:26Robin Rauzi?

  I only glanced at this report, but they also didn't find that people got laid off, right? There was no reduction in work either.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. The adverse consequences of raising the overtime threshold would be similar to what is advertised about the minimum wage, right? It's going to cause job loss, but it really didn't. It just, a bunch of people got salary increases, so they wouldn't be eligible for overtime. All of these results would be in line with employers have a lot of power and they're underpaying. And when you force them to pay more, they'll do it in the way that they prefer.

• 5:58Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, that's most convenient to them.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:01Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  In the social security episode, I missaid the number of pensions and I said 75% of Americans used to have pensions, but it really was 45%. And actually TikTok follower commented that we misstated the share of American workers that had traditional pensions, even at their peak was still closer to 45%. So that was just a factual error I made in trying to make a argument that I don't know if it landed. And then a very small aside, someone seemed to take umbrage from the joke that Robin and I made about reading The Economist, where Robin said, I was reading The Economist, and I said, why do you hate yourself? And someone wrote in like really earnest and confused, like, why would you say that?

• 6:43Robin Rauzi?

  What's wrong with The Economist? We're talking about the British news magazine.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, the British news magazine, The Economist, I guess.

• 6:53Robin Rauzi?

  It was a little bit of an inside joke because we had shared an article that was particularly difficult to parse. And yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's as a source of coverage, it's high quality, but it's very dense and it's very conservative. And I think a lot of times it's inscrutable, where like it's so dense, sometimes you have trouble following the argument, but it ends up with like, we're smart and liberalism is bad. And you're like, wait, what? So I think I find that The Economist is just, it's a tough read. Like it's just not an easy, pleasant read.

• 7:28Robin Rauzi?

  It's not for you.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  So that was mine.

• 7:31Robin Rauzi?

  My brother-in-law has taught me, rather than saying things are, he doesn't like them, it's not for me.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Oh, mine is, this is like truly southern. I just say it's not my favorite.

• 7:41Robin Rauzi?

  It's not my favorite.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Which is really fun, having like your three-year-old and six-year-old say that back of like, we're going to try vegetables tonight. And they're like, mm. Rockley's not my favorite, mom.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  The Economist is not my favorite. All right, now we can do the big retcon, which is the most recent episode on health.

• 8:05Robin Rauzi?

  Health insurance.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Health insurance, not healthcare, health insurance.

• 8:09Robin Rauzi?

  By the way, you said healthcare through that entire episode.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  I messed it up, even though you were like, it's, remember they're two separate things.

• 8:15Robin Rauzi?

  Health insurance and healthcare are different things.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  I'm just like, yep, 100% not going to keep to that.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  It's so hard.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  All right, health insurance, not care, health insurance. We have some retcons.

• 8:31Robin Rauzi?

  So the bad news for us is that the name Americare is taken. It's already, it's already in use by a disaster relief nonprofit that is doing wonderful work.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  That's the worst part. Is that they're such a good organization.

• 8:47Robin Rauzi?

  We did not mean to steal their name. Second, I was curious how many people actually work in the health insurance industry. So the closest I could find out was, there was a number that includes life and health insurance, and that was about 888,000 people in the United States last year, though that number has been declining slowly but steadily since 2020. I think I also made an offhand comment that the population of Switzerland was 10 million people, but it's only 9 million people.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  All right, my health insurance retcon was, we didn't talk in the episode about the notion of job lock when we said things that Americans would like about this new program is that you would have less job lock, which is the idea that you have to stay in a job because you have to keep your health insurance. Either because other jobs don't offer health insurance, or you are locked into a specific plan that offers a benefit or a coverage that is important to your family. People who have severe medical conditions, they often say that they're job locked because they can't lose their current coverage. And according to Gallup, around one in four employees say that they have some degree of job lock, where if health insurance wasn't a problem, they would leave their job.

• 10:00Robin Rauzi?

  Right. And it's not just to go to another job, but you know, maybe to quit working altogether, retire early, but they can't because they're not eligible. Yeah, they're not eligible for Medicare yet and.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we didn't talk about how Americans would like not being job locked, which even as I say it out loud, like, y'all don't want to be locked in place? All right.

• 10:20Robin Rauzi?

  State budgets, what is that?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Okay, and then the other thing that I think was just such a omission, things that Americans would like about having one health insurance coverage plan from the federal government is that state governments wouldn't have to pay for it anymore.

• 10:35Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, because they're paying for Medicaid.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Roughly 30% of a state's budget goes to Medicaid, which is crazy considering that most Medicaid spending happens on the federal level. So even the cost sharing part on states isn't even the majority of Medicaid spending. It's still around 30% of state budgets. So I think just imagine

• 10:56Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  what education funding would look like in the US if state budgets got 30% more room.

• 11:04Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  It would be a really different world, especially for things like teacher pay. Because they're state employees, they don't have much options of other ways to pay for teachers other than just state and local budgets. So freeing up state and local budgets by getting Medicaid off their books is a massive win that a lot of American people would cheer for. And with that ends our retcon marathon, which we wanted to get in before the break.

• 11:29Robin Rauzi?

  God, that was a lot. Okay. Terms and conditions. Did you, you didn't look anything up this week?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  No, I just didn't want to add to, I felt like I added so much.

• 11:37Robin Rauzi?

  I actually did look this up last night. I looked up statutory leave. Because I was, it was a way of phrasing this that I had not heard before. But statutory leave is time off that employers have to give you because it is statute. It is required by law. This is, of course, a foreign concept to us in the United States because we, by and large, don't really have statutory leave, except maybe for something like jury duty or military service. And of course, the Family and Medical Leave Act. But we do not have it for vacation time, for time off, paid or unpaid. But apparently, other places do. So for instance, the EU sets a floor of 20 days of paid annual leave. In Japan, workers must take five days off

• 12:19Robin Rauzi?

  and employers must offer them 10 to 20 days off, depending on their tenure. We do not have that. That's a little preview of where we're going to go when we get to the big Pilcrow after this little break.

• 12:34Robin Rauzi?

  I'll just start by saying, one of the things I love about the internet is when you go to look for a story you know you've seen in the last year and you realize that people have been writing about this issue for 10 to 15 years, that Americans are bad at vacation. They don't take enough vacation. They don't use all their vacation time. They leave vacation on the table. They leave paid vacation time on the table. So I, I kind of went into this thinking, well, it's part of this measurement problem must be that people just don't actually get paid time off. Because we've talked so much about people don't even get sick days. But 88% of private sector workers get paid vacation time. I mean, I was surprised that the number was that high. It's not quite as high as Europe, but like, the problem then seems like we actually just don't even take off the time we have.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:20Robin Rauzi?

  And that's our show.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And that's our show. That's our show. Why don't Americans take vacation? If it is at least offered by our employers, why don't Americans take vacation?

• 13:30Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. So, I mean, my theory going into this is it's us. We're workaholics. We don't know how to unplug. It's an American culture thing. You don't think that's the case?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's, I think there's an aspect that that's right, but I still think that that's employers' fault. Like, maybe you feel really guilty taking vacation or you feel like the work would pile up if you were gone or you'd be letting your coworkers down or it would be like more trouble than it's worth because if you leave, you're just going to come back to a massive mess that'll take you a while to come back from. All of those are your employer's fault for not managing time or work or teams effectively. So I, like, yeah, I mean, vacation is horrible if you're punished for it on the back end. But that, being punished for it on the back end part. I mean, it just comes up like even with tone of like, well, it's a really hard week for us because next week, like, Jim's going to be gone.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  So it's going to be really hard on the rest of us. Like, how many people have had some asshole boss say something like that?

• 14:33Robin Rauzi?

  I don't know. I don't work with Jim. But I worked in newspapers and I always thought our, our problem was that, you know, newspapers come out every single day of the year. And so you can work a little bit ahead, but somebody's got to work every single day. Actually, a lot of people, people who print the newspaper, people who deliver the newspaper, people who lay out the pages, people who monitor breaking events.

• 14:56Robin Rauzi?

  So I just thought, oh, well, my idea about vacation is just really screwed up because of the industry I worked in. And then after that, when I became a, I was freelancing, but I was on a retainer at a big company for a while. And they just shut down for a week or two, depending on when the holiday breaks fell around Christmas and New Year's. And I was like, what? What kind of strange world is this?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  This is an option?

• 15:19Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, and they're like, yeah, well, most of the, our corporate clients are also just closed down at this time of year. It's like, but what if there's a fire, you know?

• 15:31Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  So, so Robyn's journalist mind actually can't get around the notion of it's okay for people to take weeks off at a time.

• 15:39Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I mean, it took me a long time, anyway.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  But then that would also come down to staffing. Like, if you're staffed razor thin so that the work can't be done, like, the whole thing grinds to a halt because you don't have enough people, that just means you're not staffed effectively.

• 15:52Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  This is one of the number one complaints that nurses make about hospitals is like, pay aside, we're staffed, basically.

• 15:59Robin Rauzi?

  To the bone, yeah.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  To absolute, absolute.

• 16:02Robin Rauzi?

  There's no slack.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  There is absolutely no slack in staffing. That makes it hard to take a vacation. That still comes down to this is employers' fault for, I know that the shift workers that we talked about, it made it really easy to see how people are treated like cogs in a machine because their shifts are scheduled like cogs in a machine. But you could be on salary and have no slack in staffing. That makes it so hard for you to take a vacation and you have that same type of just-in-time treatment.

• 16:28Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. When I left daily journalism, one of the things I did was I freelanced for places as a fill-in for vacations and leaves because I knew they had no slack. And I marketed myself as a, basically, an editing temp who could come into your organization and edit almost anything because I was a journalist and I was fast. But it was still, it was kind of a hard sell because they were just so not used to actually dealing with their staffing problems that, you know, I did that several times.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Well, you know, my dad was a judge. And if he went on vacation, he would schedule a visiting judge, basically like a substitute teacher.

• 17:07Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  If you're staffed so thin, if you're managed so meanly, and if you are basically told that it's mean to coworkers for you to take time off, people are less willing to take vacation.

• 17:20Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. I read this survey, this woman who, who did it, she's like a academic but studies travel and tourism. They did this survey of 860 full-time workers who had paid time off. And 20% of them suffered from vacation guilt. Like, they felt guilty about taking more than a day or two of vacation. And a lot of them, even if they had planned a vacation, they would dial it back and make it shorter in the survey. And then those who actually did, like, plowed ahead and took their vacation, they then actually felt penalized on the other side of it. And to me, there's kind of no telling as to whether there's a, like, a psychology issue here or if there's a workplace issue here, or there's both.

• 18:05Robin Rauzi?

  But anyway, vacation guilt, real thing.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  I believe it. I would absolutely believe it, but it's, you know.

• 18:11Robin Rauzi?

  Especially if you're close to your coworkers. Like, you just, you don't want to feel like you're.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  It's curable, though. I mean, that, I guess.

• 18:16Robin Rauzi?

  It's an office culture problem.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  It's an office culture problem that benefits the bottom line of companies. And so if they don't directly foster it or encourage it, I mean, they might not foster it, but they certainly benefit from it. So they wouldn't like necessarily like nip it in the bud. Like, I, I even think that having the weeks off at July 4th and Christmas, which a lot of companies will say, everybody is off this week, I even think that's kind of bull****ed. I'm like, okay, fine. But that just encourages people to take their vacations at the most expensive time of the year. It's like, hey, well, we gave you off a week of July 4th. So taking a week vacation, two weeks later, you know, you, everybody just had off. Like, it's almost a way to manage vacation time off to be like, the most efficient version of vacation for employers

• 19:02Speaker 01

  is either nobody takes it or it's like managed so that it's all taken at the same time. You can like corral people into doing that and then they feel guilt about taking vacation outside of the time that's given.

• 19:13Robin Rauzi?

  Right, right. Exactly. You've just, you just make everybody away and everybody, yeah. Interesting.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. To me, when you talk about something like vacation day of like, I voluntarily don't go to work and instead do something for myself or my family and I still get paid for it. If there's a reason that's happening less, it's because worker power is on the decline. I mean, people feel less secure in their jobs and more than likely, the way that that benefit is handed down is not as nice as it used to be or not as clear as it used to be.

• 19:45Robin Rauzi?

  I mean, how do we know whether people are taking fewer days off?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Great question. We actually have a really good idea because of the current population survey.

• 19:54Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  So, the current population survey is what we use to measure the unemployment rate, and it asks about the week of the 12th of the month.

• 20:01Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  So, were you at work the week of the 12th? Well, if you weren't at work, but you still had a job, they ask you why. Like, why were you not at work the week of the 12th? And so, they have a measurement of vacation over time, because that's one of the options. And vacation has just been on a slow decline for decades, where people used to have much more likely in the survey that someone would be gone the week of the 12th, and that's just been falling over time.

• 20:28Robin Rauzi?

  Do you know the actual numbers?

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, there is a column that The Washington Post, I think, still has. So, they have a column called "The Department of Data."

• 20:38Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Run by this guy named Andrew Van Damme.

• 20:41Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  And he has a column from 2023 called "The Mystery of the Disappearing Vacation Day," where he goes through the data available and various sources to try to understand why Americans are taking less vacation. And he charts out that the percentage of Americans who are off at any given time in the survey used to be around, you know, 3% and is now closer to 1.5. So, it's about a 50% reduction in

• 21:09Robin Rauzi?

  That's crazy.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  ... being gone for vacation.

• 21:11Robin Rauzi?

  Is just because that nobody goes on vacation on the 12th? I mean, you know, that's like...

• 21:17Speaker 01

  No, no. I mean, and it spikes. It's like a really spiky series. I mean, it's one thing that he points out is that the week of the 12th will never include Thanksgiving or Christmas.

• 21:24Robin Rauzi?

  Hmm.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  But it does capture the summer months.

• 21:28Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  And so, it's really, that's when most people take vacations, in the summer, and that's where most of the decline in vacation is being taken, is in the summer months. So, the column is trying to answer, why don't people take as much vacation? And, yeah, they talk about worker power. They talk about the guilt. It's frowned upon if you take vacation. But the upshot that this column comes to is, it's because of how time off is structured now.

• 21:53Robin Rauzi?

  What do you mean?

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Well, instead of having enumerated sick days and vacation days, you have a bundle of paid time off.

• 21:59Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, some people do, I guess.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  But they talk about how the idea of having the PTO bundle, as opposed to separately enumerated paid sick and paid vacation, has led people to ration those days, because they're worried they'll need it for something else.

• 22:15Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, interesting. Uh-huh.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, the decline in vacation is really a decline in people taking off five days.

• 22:21Robin Rauzi?

  Five days in a row.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. A week-long vacation

• 22:24Robin Rauzi?

  A week-long vacation.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  is what is kind of being erased from our workplace. And the story he comes up with is like, yes, it's the con worker power, but it's also people who are afraid to take five days, because that's also their sick leave.

• 22:39Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. I have a friend who started a business with the unlimited time off policy. His business has been incredibly successful. Anyway, I ran into him, and he was head down into his laptop, and he was trying to rewrite his vacation policy, because, like, you know, the belief is that a lot of people won't abuse it, and they won't take that much time off. He said, "The people that do abuse it, really abuse it." And it made everybody else really mad. So, he was now just having to write a new vacation policy for his company.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Oh. My husband once got a job where he was like, "Hey, it's unlimited vacation days and time off." And I was like, "No, it's not. It's fascist, and they're trying to guilt you. And they're playing on your guilt to not give you an enumerated sense of days that you have off, so you don't know, because you'll under-guess, and then you just won't take time off at all." It's like, it's totally fascist.

• 23:29Robin Rauzi?

  Totally.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  And I was like, "And you can tell them? Your wife says so."

• 23:33Robin Rauzi?

  You know, I realized, going into this episode, that I really have, I don't know how many vacation days I get, because it's accrued. At some fraction, I mean, I should figure out, it's probably like, a minute and a half for every hour I work or something, right? So, I really, I don't know. Like, if you ask me, "Do I have three weeks of vacation a year? Do I have four weeks of vacation a year? Do I have two weeks of vacation a year?" I have no idea.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Okay. If I remember correctly, it's like, if you work full-time, you should accrue this per year.

• 24:03Robin Rauzi?

  Right. And I would obviously accrue half of that, right? Because I work half-time.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:08Robin Rauzi?

  But to your point about not knowing, like, there's something about having, like, 20 days that the European Union insists that everybody get. You know that you have 20 days. You don't have to go and say, "Well, have I accrued 40 hours so far, and 40 hours is one full-time week?" Right?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Oh, no. There's like, there's no way to be, like, "Hey, 170 million people working in the economy. You get 10 days off a year." No other policy is going to come close to that one for being like, clear, understandable. Everybody knows what they get. Everybody gets what they get. Like, you just say, like, you get 10 days off a year, and you would, you would know it. Now, there's part of it, surely, that people would, listening would say, like, "Well, vacations are also a lot more expensive."

• 24:59Robin Rauzi?

  Well, yeah. I just bought tickets to New York, and yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, vacations have gotten more expensive, so you might be less likely to take them. But I mean, what I would argue is, even though vacations are more expensive, there are still ways to make them cheap, right? Like, you can still drive, especially if you had five days off, like, you could drive to your vacation instead of fly.

• 25:20Robin Rauzi?

  You don't actually even have to go anywhere.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And you don't

• 25:23Robin Rauzi?

  You just have to not work.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  You just have to not work for five days. There are people who have, like, very legitimate policy proposals, that we need to have a mandatory federally enumerated number of days off, and that this will increase employment in the US. And honestly, they're not wrong. I just don't necessarily say that part.

• 25:43Robin Rauzi?

  So, wait. So, if we had statutory leave

• 25:46Speaker 01

  If we had statutory leave

• 25:48Robin Rauzi?

  It would lead to more, more jobs?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Well, their contention is, your headcount would have to be larger. Let's like, let's say you have to make 100 widgets, and you make 100 widgets with 20 people who, on average, take two vacation days a year. Then, if those people got to take 10 vacation days a year, you're going to need to have more than 20 people in order to produce the same number of widgets. The idea is, in order to maintain staffing levels

• 26:16Robin Rauzi?

  Maintain production. You'd have to, yeah, increase

• 26:18Speaker 01

  You'd have to increase staff, which a lot of people will tell you, like, I mean, we had people write in about the overtime episode, and we had so many people tell us that, especially people who were, who had been in the workforce a while, who were on their third or fourth or fifth job, their third or fourth decade of working in the US, say, "I cannot believe how hard my job is now."

• 26:38Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  The amount of work on our shoulders, what we are expected to do, just how much it feels like we're in a vise in our workplace, it's all gotten worse, where if everybody got 10 days, like, they'd have to staff more. Almost every company in the US would have to staff more if every single person took 10 days off a year.

• 26:57Robin Rauzi?

  If they took it. I mean, I think that's a little bit the challenge we're up against now. I, Planet Money did actually an episode on this topic, you know, in their funny conversational style, and

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Not as funny as ours, though.

• 27:09Robin Rauzi?

  No, no, no. But anyway, but the figure for the amount of money that Americans, like, give their company by not claiming their vacation time is nuts. It was, I swear to God, it was like $65 billion a year or something. It was insane.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  I believe it.

• 27:29Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. And so, there are, there are places where if you don't use your vacation time, the companies have to pay you for it. And I think, I wonder if that would actually motivate companies to actually just have you take the time instead.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You could write into the law, like, a 10-day vacation, and if you have a company where you don't have enough people taking vacation, you have to start paying... Listen, fines can do a lot.

• 27:56Robin Rauzi?

  Well, I mean, there is also this thinking that, that Americans don't take vacation because we want to work more, because we are a consumerist, we want to buy stuff. And I always do worry that people will just say, "Well, I won't take the time. I'll just take the money," and use it as a down payment on a car, you know? You don't care. Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  I guess

• 28:18Robin Rauzi?

  An economist doesn't care.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Well, I guess on some level, or rather, a lot of American workers are up against so much that they would say, taking 10 days vacation a year is a champagne problem. Like, it's just not one that they really have the luxury to handle, because they need the money to do other things. That, to me, is a failure.

• 28:38Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  If it's the case where you have tens of millions of workers who don't want to take time off, even when it's paid, and they'd rather just get, like, the money as a bonus, because they don't have enough money to live on, like, vacation is like, absolutely the symptom, and not the, not the disease or the cure, right? And if, if we keep missing this mark, it's like, a overall performance measure of just how well our economy works for people.

• 29:05Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  So, to give you guys a perspective of what we're talking about, in terms of how, how important is paid vacation to a company's bottom line? Could they afford to pay more? The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a lot of different desks that measure a lot of different things, and one of them is called the ECEC, Employer Cost for Employee Compensation, which measures just how much it costs employers to pay their employees. And it's not solely the wages, but total benefits.

• 29:38Robin Rauzi?

  True.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  So...

• 29:40Robin Rauzi?

  And does it break it down?

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. So, sick leave is 1% of total compensation amongst private sector workers in the US.

• 29:49Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Holiday is 2.2. Vacation is 3.8. Total benefits, which is benefits aside from your cash wage, is around 29.5%.

• 30:01Robin Rauzi?

  And that's mostly your

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Healthcare.

• 30:03Robin Rauzi?

  And maybe contributions to your retirement plan.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Right. So, right now, with the paltry amount of vacation that Americans take

• 30:09Robin Rauzi?

  And it's health insurance, by the way.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Oh. For **** sake, Catherine, I will never get this right. Ah, it's gonna be tough for me. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the, the vacation is 3.8% of cost. So I'm like, y'all, those are rookie numbers. Let's get that number. Let's get that number.

• 30:28Robin Rauzi?

  I read this other survey that was a survey of 3,000 US workers and they, they looked at the people who didn't even take one day of vacation last year. 23% of the people they surveyed didn't take one day of vacation. And they asked them why, and 43% said their workload was too heavy, 34% that they didn't have enough days. I'm gonna guess that that maybe includes people who didn't really, because this survey was not limited to people who had paid time off. 30% were afraid of falling behind and 29% felt guilty and 19% said they were discouraged by their employer.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Fascist. See, that's just employers being bad employers and being fascist.

• 31:10Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm. I mean, and you saw that Pew study that found, and this was, I think, 2023, found that 46% of people took less than the total paid time off that they were offered. You know, that was available to them. I want you to know, I don't have that problem. I, I got hired, you know, like right before the pandemic and then, so I actually accrued a lot of vacation time that there was no place to go, you know, but I noticed that this year I actually have taken more than I've accrued.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Hey, I, I have this like really formative undergraduate memory when it comes to taking vacation. So for a long time, I went to UT Austin, for a long time, the economics department offered a class called Marxist Economics. And, you know, it's, it's a-

• 31:58Robin Rauzi?

  I'm just trying to imagine that at Texas. Okay, yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's Marxists there. So I'm like, alright, I'll bite. I'll take Marxist Economics. I'm like, why not?

• 32:08Robin Rauzi?

  Don't tell the people on the social media that you've taken Marxist Economics. It's all over for us.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Well, I actually ended up dropping the class. Um, so I didn't, I didn't finish it. It was a rough semester, but, um-

• 32:18Robin Rauzi?

  It's because you're a garbage communist.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  It's because I'm a garbage communist. I didn't even finish Marxist Economics.

• 32:24Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, sorry.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  So it's really, it's fun. So Marxist Economics was, was an amazing, like, I, I didn't end up finishing the class and I had to drop it because I, um, I loved college. I just loved taking classes and I would take like five or six classes a semester and that semester I was like, I'm not gonna make it through. So I dropped Marxist Economics. But the professor, he was very like, uh, how do I say it? Like, he's kind of a weird guy. But in Marxist Economics, he said, you know, the, the basic conceit of like capitalism versus Marxism, like, we are not gonna have a Marxist revolution today. But, you know, he was like, carry out the little, I'm trying to remember, imagine like, what is a more frightening thought for conservatives

• 33:06Speaker 01

  than a public school professor telling students, "Carry on little Marxist revolutions in your life?"

• 33:17Speaker 01

  But, but he brought up, you know, slack off at work. They put the internet in front of you. What are you gonna be mad if you go browse the web or do something? He's like, yeah, slack off at work. Like, stick it to them. Like, they, they own you. And this was his like crazy Marxist belief of like, just, you know, they, he's like, they don't want you to do anything but sit at that computer or sit at that desk or sit on that line and work. And they don't want you to eat. They don't want you to sleep. They don't want you to breathe. They want you to work. And anytime that you can **** them, you should. I thought that that was hilarious. Because he's like, he's like, state legislators in Congress has to require employers to give you a break. You think they want you to **** and eat? They want you to sleep? They don't want you to do any of that. They want you

• 34:01Speaker 01

  to be a slave at the machine, doing whatever they want, and not, you are not a human to them. He was really a firebrand, but he kind of, he made it so clear in a way that wasn't practical, but was still appealing, that, that, you know, your employers own you and they act like they own you. And if you don't want them to own you, like, fight back. And sometimes you don't have any power at all. And the only way you can fight back is like, you know, text while you're at work or go on the internet while you're at work to look for another job. And like, take all the vacation they give you. Your employer makes more money off of you if you don't take paid time off. Don't **** give it to them. Like, don't give them your life. Don't give them more of your life than you already take. So yes, it was

• 34:45Speaker 01

  inspired by Marxist economics and I can like go down in history as like the bad garbage communist. Um, yeah, once he said it, I was like, oh yeah, you have a really good points. They absolutely don't, your employer does not want you to take any vacation.

• 35:01Robin Rauzi?

  No.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  They don't want anyone, anywhere, working for them to ever be sick or ever take vacation.

• 35:08Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, yeah. I don't know if you know this, but before I was an opinion editor, I was a travel editor and my-

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just gonna say it. Lesbians have the best jobs.

• 35:17Robin Rauzi?

  We do. We do. I was not the only lesbian in that department. Um, actually, now that you say that. Um, anyway, I was an assistant editor and I, and my beat was the Western United States. But one of the things that we were dealing with or thinking about in, in our coverage at this time, it was like, gosh, it was after early 2000s, uh, 2005, 2006-ish, um, was that people were taking shorter vacations, right? That they were taking long weekends, two days off. And there were a lot of flights now available to get from, say, Los Angeles to Portland easily, or Los Angeles to Salt Lake City. And thinking about ways that people

• 36:02Robin Rauzi?

  could, could take a quick getaway. So, I mean, I think that those things used to be cheaper. Hotels were cheaper, airlines were cheaper. But that they also don't get at the fundamental thing about what we hope vacation does for people, which is granted, just give them time to do what they need to do, but also to avoid burnout and to sort of rest and relax. And so I, as a result of that job, which I really loved, it was the best job, uh, I took a lot of those trips. But it was also exhausting. Like, it was exhausting to plan. It was exhausting to go away for three days and then come right back into work. And you'd kind of let whatever would normally get done at your house over the weekend not, not get done, right? And, and right after that, I went into another role and I, and I, and

• 36:46Robin Rauzi?

  it was in that role where I was like, the ideal vacation is three weeks long.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:50Robin Rauzi?

  The ideal vacation is a week to like come down from the stress, a week to like actually enjoy your vacation, and then a week to mentally prepare to come back. Like, so that you're coming back at a, in a good place.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Oh, no. And then it makes, it also makes vacations less of a competitive sport. You know, like, if you have longer time in a place, your vacation is less exhausting.

• 37:14Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  If you actually have time to go there. Like, oh no, remember you need two days just to sit and stare into the middle distance.

• 37:21Robin Rauzi?

  Exactly.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Like, why do we do all this? Like, why do we earn money and have jobs if we don't get to go out and actually enjoy things outside of work? Like, yes, I like it when people have careers with purpose, but if their career doesn't have purpose, their vacation should still be a vacation. Like, it's, we give up these like inches after inches after inches and then you end up with these like, now, what, like, how often does the New York Times do 48 hours and blank?

• 37:47Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, 36.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  You don't sleep. They don't put in the part where you're taking speed so that you can make it through your vacation because it's so **** exhausting. You have exactly 36 hours to have a good time. Have a good time.

• 38:02Robin Rauzi?

  Exactly.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  No, I need like 360 hours. It is really tough how close we all live, just to capacity, and not taking vacation or doing 36-hour trips and that's it.

• 38:16Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  So take all the vacation you have. I mean, how's this for our optimist? That guy at Costco in Arizona pulling down $33 an hour? He's been to Europe twice. How many times have you been to Europe? Your employer sucks. Like, take the **** vacation. If they will reward you for not taking vacation, **** them. Like, you, it's a terrible place to work. Like, don't worry about it. That's not official advice.

• 38:43Robin Rauzi?

  I'm not a liar. This is not employment advice.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  That's not official advice, but **** them, take the vacation.

• 38:50Robin Rauzi?

  Um, do we even think it's, I mean, this feels really remote to me. Far from, like, for some reason, I feel like the, like, job scheduling problem is so fixable. And I feel like mandating vacation time for everybody in America just seems like so, it seems like a pipe dream to me.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Really?

• 39:07Robin Rauzi?

  I don't know. The fact that we don't have it after all this time and that we just think that companies and businesses should just dictate everything about their environment like they're little fiefdoms.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Well, okay, yes, but back to shift scheduling. We also have not touched the Fair Labor Standards Act in a really long time. So it's not as if like labor law is, you know, this, which is flourishing. And we're doing so much for workers, but like this is kind of untouchable. Like, it's-

• 39:35Robin Rauzi?

  But this isn't, it's not like this is like happening in 22 states, right?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not something, I think a lot of people wouldn't prioritize it, right? That they're prioritizing the minimum wage, they're prioritizing the, uh, shift scheduling laws and overtime and that this is seen as a, a bonus. A lot of workers get it already. This is imminently doable. Um, I think that employers would freak out and do it anyway. Like, I, this is really, to me, strikes me as a cry wolf scenario. Like, if you required paid sick days and paid vacation days and you enumerated a minimum standard for workers in the US-

• 40:12Robin Rauzi?

  For everyone.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  For everybody.

• 40:14Robin Rauzi?

  For everyone.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Part-time, full-time.

• 40:16Robin Rauzi?

  Level playing field.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Everyone gets at least this. In areas where they've done that for sick leave, like, there's this massive uproar of how much it's gonna cost, especially small businesses, and then everybody's fine.

• 40:28Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Is it a pipe dream to have paid vacation in the United States?

• 40:34Robin Rauzi?

  Mandated.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Mandated vacation.

• 40:37Robin Rauzi?

  Statutory leave.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Is statutory leave a pipe dream?

• 40:43Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 40:44Robin Rauzi?

  Good. I'll take, I'll take that as optimism.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  I don't take that optimism. I mean, I don't think so for a few reasons that is like practically speaking, because it's not very costly to employers. I mean, this is a fraction of their total compensation that goes to paid vacation and paid sick as it is. So for a lot of companies, this means it wouldn't really change much of their policy. It would really extend vacation and sick for certain parts of the wage distribution. In that case, if they cry wolf, like we've had a long enough natural experiment to know that companies like Costco offer really good vacation and they still have a company. And so if you say that paid vacation is going

• 41:30Speaker 01

  to bust you and you won't be able to have a business anymore, that just means you don't run a business well, or that you don't have a viable business. I think that the number of companies that have moved in this space show how viable it is. I think there's room to bargain because we haven't touched the Fairly Restored Act in a long time. That is where my, it's not necessarily a pipe dream comes from because there's, we're going to come to the table with a lot of demands.

• 41:57Robin Rauzi?

  Mm hmm. Good. Anything else?

• 42:00Speaker 01

  I hope everybody takes a vacation soon.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Even if it's just, as my husband and I often say when burnt out from children at the end of the evening of like, I think I'm gonna go watch a screensaver.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  One night after we went with the kids to bed, he was like, yo, you know what I could watch right now? The Pipes. The Pipes Speed Bill. I could watch that for a half hour. And I was like, I could, I could watch five episodes of that.

• 42:30Robin Rauzi?

  We have that Apple TV screensaver that does the like really high def drone sort of slow motion shots. We do actually literally watch it.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  So take five days.

• 42:41Robin Rauzi?

  It's mesmerizing to do that. It's mesmerizing. In fact, it's my spiritual sponsor. It's what's getting me through, it gets me through me a lot of weeks. It's like, oh, look, is that, is that China? Or is that, oh, no, that's Argentina. Yeah, okay. Oh, it's the Scottish coast. Oh, yeah, I love this one.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  We need, yeah. All right. We will, that is the Pilgrim. Everybody take vacation. Let's get vacation. And when we come back.

• 43:10Robin Rauzi?

  Executive orders and spiritual sponsors.

• 43:16Robin Rauzi?

  Okay. And we're back. Executive orders.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  All right. Well, my executive order, in honor of recently passing the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is that we need an Americans with Children Act to change accessibility and appropriateness of our greater surroundings.

• 43:37Robin Rauzi?

  I'm sorry. So it's accessible to children?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like.

• 43:41Robin Rauzi?

  Or like people or adults with children?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Here's where this executive order came to me from. So I'm trying to get my three year old to wash her hands after she goes to the bathroom, because they're not good at it. And so I, I had to get her to wash her hands, but sinks are taller than her and there's no like step. They're not required to have like a step for a little person to get up to wash her hands at the sink. So I have to hold her Superman style over the sink with her legs kicking behind her as she's got her hands out under the water trying to get it. And then at some point, trying to get the soap onto her hands while I'm holding, it's like really like underneath one arm, get the soap in there. And like this woman was waiting at the bathroom door for me. And you would think like, oh, wow,

• 44:25Speaker 01

  I'm struggling with a child in public. Surely people will look at you kindly. No, they don't. It's like, wow, hate to be that girl's mother. Just like, it's so much disdain. And I was like, you know, a stool would really help me. And I'm not gonna fall into the [bleep] trap of being a mom that carries it around because society won't meet me where I am. So this is just as much as like you have to have stools under sinks and you, if you have a billboard or a sign, it can't be graphic or inappropriate.

• 44:53Robin Rauzi?

  I would appreciate that.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  It's like, just like a nicer world.

• 44:57Robin Rauzi?

  I'd appreciate the stools.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the stools, the like billboards can't have inappropriate things. Like, listen, I know that there's a lot of listeners out there and a lot of people out there that love seeing big titties, but like, I don't think it belongs on a billboard that I pass with my children. Because I don't know what, I still don't know what they're selling. Like, it might be clothing.

• 45:15Robin Rauzi?

  Shoes.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  It might be clothing or shoes, but she sure as hell ain't wearing any. It's just like, this is just not appropriate for children. Like, I, why, I mean, this would go in with like cars need to have more colors, but like just at a basic level, if a kid walks through a public space and there's something really like grotesquely inappropriate, like, why is it, like, we can change society so children get to walk through the world and not be horrified, ruined, exposed. Put those titties away.

• 45:46Robin Rauzi?

  And that they, they were able to wash their hands.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  And able to wash their hands. Probably one of the more important parts. So the Americans with Children's Act, I'm really excited. ACA is not taken, so.

• 45:58Robin Rauzi?

  Uh, all right. My executive order is that my NWSL club, Angel City, needs to win at home. I mean, I could just end there, but, but the thread I'm, is that they need to win at home before I buy any more merch, and especially not that really amazing looking new sweatshirt they've got. It's got the Angel City crest on the front, and it says, everyone watches women's sports, you know, on the back. And it's really nice, but I am not, not buying it until they win at home.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  They're, they're home losers, right? Like, they just, they never win at home. They win, they've run some crazy upsets on the road.

• 46:36Robin Rauzi?

  To the worst team in the league.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Well, it's a pretty close, it's a pretty close league.

• 46:42Robin Rauzi?

  We lost badly. Anyway.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  It was a, wasn't a good run.

• 46:48Robin Rauzi?

  We did check. We're like, well, we're still ahead of the Houston Dash. So there's that.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Oh, great. Good.

• 46:53Robin Rauzi?

  All right. My spiritual sponsor this week is the Western Fence Post Lizards. These are very common in Southern California. They're everywhere. For some reason, for the last few years, to me, have seemed very large. Like, they're usually little skinny lizards. And now they're, they're like beefing up. I don't know if you've got more bugs. I don't know what's happening. But what's so adorable about them is that they get up on a fence post or on a, like the edge of a curb or the top of a wall, and then they do these little pushups. And they're just, they're fantastic. And that's my spiritual sponsor this week.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  I love that. Okay. My spiritual sponsor is also a lizard.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  It's an animal lizard, which is really common in Houston. They're like these little guys. They're like this big. They jump. They have like really big red necks. So when the, the neck will puff out red and then go back. So you'll see this like flash of red.

• 47:43Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, that's a very fancy lizard compared to my lizard.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they've got like a red beard. So it's like, you don't see anything. And then it's like bright red. They turn green and brown. They love the trees. They love our houses. They eat bugs. And they often crawl right along the window where I work next to. So I just see these like little lizards coming by. And they're all over the side of the house. I think I brought this up last season, but it is like, a day the lizard gets in the house is like a great day for my kids, because it becomes just, they watch a lot of wild crats. And so they're like, we gotta protect.

• 48:15Robin Rauzi?

  I'm sorry. They watch a lot of what?

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Wild crats. Wild, wild, wild crats. Sorry. Are you unfamiliar with, with the canon of wild crats?

• 48:25Robin Rauzi?

  I am.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a PBS show about two brothers, the Crat Brothers, that then go explore nature and they learn about animals and.

• 48:37Robin Rauzi?

  And they rescue the lizard, lizards in your house, your kids? Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  And so they, my kids become little wild crats and they rescue the lizard, which is like the most fun thing they'll do. It's like, get the lizard, help him, keep him safe.

• 48:51Robin Rauzi?

  If the lizard got in our house, it would be like, we'd never see it again. It would be, the cats would have a great time. It would be not, it would be not pretty.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  I mean, the first time I saw one in the house, I mean, because they really do blend in and they totally freeze when they see people. And so I was going down under a coffee table to grab a book. And then I was like, oh, there's a lizard like looking right at me. So these, these tiny little lizards crawling all over our house that do thing like eat roaches. Like, they're amazing. Those little lizards are my spiritual sponsor.

• 49:20Robin Rauzi?

  Very good.

• 49:27Robin Rauzi?

  We're gonna be off for four, five, six weeks. We don't know exactly.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  If it's, if it's six, I'm gonna come back like, like smoking, like, I'll have picked up a smoking habit of after six weeks. I'm like, yeah, I just need more time, you know? It's, it's fine. I smoke now. Everyone says it's okay.

• 49:46Robin Rauzi?

  Take care. Be safe.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Take care and be safe. The Optimistic Economy Podcast is edited by Sophie L'Enland. Our video production for social media is by Andy Robinson. Thank you, Andy and Sophie. Video clips from the show for you to see are available on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. I recommend doing a scope of the Facebook because Facebook olds do not understand what we are, that we're a podcast.

• 50:10Robin Rauzi?

  We could use some people who would defend, defend or honor their.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  There's a lot of people who feel like Robin doesn't let me talk on Facebook. It's a, it's a wild ride. Otherwise, please check out our t-shirts and tote bags, which are on our website. As we prepare for more merch, go to optimist economy dot com.

• 50:27Robin Rauzi?

  If you're on Substack, free or paid, you can join our Optimist Economy chat. And if you have the means to contribute, in whatever creative way you want to constitute that, we will happily take your gift at optimist economy dot com.

• 50:46Robin Rauzi?

  And we're done.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  We're done.

• 50:48Robin Rauzi?

  We're on vacation. Let's go get a drink.