Work Requirements Don’t Work

Here’s what work requirements rarely accomplish: Getting more people to work or lifting them out of poverty. They are, however, very good at driving people off public benefit programs, which was their primary role during the welfare reform of 1996. Yes, Kathryn Edwards economist/human will tell you that in theory, people will optimize how much they work and “consume leisure” according to their preferences, and that if some people get free stuff, they’ll work less and swim at the beach more. But that effect mostly gets swallowed whole by the reality of low-wage work in America. Support us by becoming a paidSubstack subscriber here https://optimisteconomy.substack.com/, or by making a contribution athttps://buymeacoffee.com/optimisteconomy Complete show notes with links to articles and data athttps://optimisteconomy.substack.com/p/podcastoptimisteconomy.com http://optimisteconomy.com. You can also find Optimist Economy on: TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@optimist_economy YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@optimist_economy Instagram https://www.instagram.com/optimist_economy/

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• 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?

• 0:16Speaker 01

  This is a politician's dream.

• 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.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  I think that maybe one thing that people who have not been around a two-year-old would not understand is just how much they fucking love Band-Aids.

• 0:37Robin Rauzi?

  Yes, they do.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  It's like, it's, god, they're addicted.

• 0:47Speaker 02

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

• 0:50Robin Rauzi?

  Hi, I'm Robin.

• 0:51Speaker 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.

• 1:03Speaker 02

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• 1:24Robin Rauzi?

  So last week, we talked about the national debt, all 36 trillion dollars of it, and why it shouldn't lead to ulcers or panic attacks. Do you have any retcons about the national debt? She's just shaking her head.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  I went so heavy on retcon last week, I made a whole retcon episode and put it into our regular show. I feel like I'm...

• 1:43Robin Rauzi?

  It was like a 20-minute retcon. It was really long.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  This is because I just wanted to do retcon con, and you said no, and then I did it anyway, in a worst way. I don't know if I have any retcons of the debt.

• 1:55Robin Rauzi?

  I was going to try to figure out how much of the debt is owed to me by other Americans, but I didn't have time to do enough.

• 2:05Robin Rauzi?

  All right, terms and conditions.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  All right, well, I looked up one, or maybe one was pointed out to me. And that is that bona fide is in fact two words.

• 2:18Robin Rauzi?

  Two words.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Bona fide, fide, you know, bona fide. And it's not in fact, one word that looks like bona fide. Bona fide, B O N I F I E D. Like you, it's like you bona fide something in the past and it has become bona fide.

• 2:37Robin Rauzi?

  That's right.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  And, and I don't want to bring up who pointed that out and how. I don't feel like I need to name names. I don't, I'm just, if you can see me, I'm pointing.

• 2:48Robin Rauzi?

  Into space, she's pointing into space.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  I'm just pointing into empty space and not a particular person or co-host. In that they didn't do it while laughing in all caps, just to make sure they thought it was funny.

• 3:01Robin Rauzi?

  And I feel like now my term and condition is just piling on.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Really?

• 3:04Robin Rauzi?

  Because I was listening to our, our letters episode. You're talking about Jeff Bezos and you said, that guy had a lot of upper hands or something to that effect.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm sure that's right. That doesn't sound right.

• 3:18Robin Rauzi?

  I was like, I think she's just mixing a metaphor, like either he was dealt a lot of good hands or he was given some hands up. Yeah, but it did make me look up upper hand, actually, and why, where that comes from.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Surely not left-handed people, as we all know, they're backwards and evil.

• 3:33Robin Rauzi?

  Right, or backhanded, right, exactly. I was like, this is a continuation of our handed terms. But first of all, much older than I thought, like goes back again to our friends at the OED.

• 3:46Robin Rauzi?

  1481 is the first known use of this. And it sort of means what you think it means. It means an advantage, a mastery or control. But it also was even at that time, used also synonymously with overhand. Which sometimes was related to like the whip hand. So like the kind of controlling hand. But we also think of it related to the game or the thing they do in like Little League, where you put your hands up a bat. And whoever gets to be at the top has the home field advantage.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:18Robin Rauzi?

  So that's like kind of a, sort of a roll of the dice, upper hand, grabbing that advantage. And that also is apparently a pretty like long time thing that was done with sticks, long before we had Little League bats.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Okay, well, I'm glad there's at least one definition that wasn't related to something like horrific or violent, like every other phrase that we've used from the Middle Ages. It's just this like, it's just this like B plot of our-

• 4:40Robin Rauzi?

  The whip hand part is a little violent, but yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  This is the B plot of our like, Optimus Future show is like, and remember, the past was pretty messed up.

• 4:49Robin Rauzi?

  That's right.

• 4:53Robin Rauzi?

  But apparently, you can only have one upper hand at a time.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:56Robin Rauzi?

  It's like, in a situation, somebody has the upper hand, you gain the upper hand, but you don't have a lot of upper hands.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  You don't have, you only have what, like, max two hands?

• 5:03Robin Rauzi?

  You can't see me gesturing, but I'm gesturing multiple hands.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Humbling as that is, the whole thing about bona fide is I was trying to say that, like, I'm a legitimate expert in economics, where I have a PhD, and there's lots of people in this space, influencer space, in the podcasting space, that they will call themselves economists.

• 5:25Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  And they don't have a PhD, and I'm, I'm, you know, I don't want to be a jerk. And I'm not like, it's not like this is like, you know, Optimist Economy with like, Dr. Catherine and Robin, and I make sure I get the like, the letters in there. That's just weird. But there is like this, like, on the other side, it does, I don't know, knife in the side a little bit, that like, I worked so hard on a credential and like, have this like, body of knowledge, and, you know, there's going to be an influencer who has so many more followers and has like, sponsored content, and he's like, and I'm like, the youngest economist on TikTok. And I'm like, yes, because you're 20 and you don't have a degree in anything. I was trying to like, say that like, in a way that was more humble, that it's not like,

• 6:09Speaker 02

  flashing around the PhD to say that, no, I'm like, I'm an actual economist.

• 6:12Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  But of course, I did that in a way that revealed that I'm like, actually bad at grammar.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Trying to be like, blah blah, I'm a real economist. Bonafide in some ways and not others, let's talk. This is going to be our most, this is a good preface, though, because some actual classic econ theory might come up in our centerpiece discussion, which is on work requirements.

• 6:38Robin Rauzi?

  Work requirements.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Work requirements.

• 6:40Robin Rauzi?

  Sounds like a good idea.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  It's a terrible idea.

• 6:43Robin Rauzi?

  It's a terrible idea.

• 6:49Robin Rauzi?

  Work requirements, I mean, obviously about to be in the news again because they're a key part of the plan to reduce the budget specifically related to Medicaid.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:00Robin Rauzi?

  But they have a long history, right?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  They do. So the idea of a work requirement has a very specific function in classic economic theory as we think about program benefits. That's one thing to talk about.

• 7:13Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  The second thing is that what's funny about work requirements in this context of how they're being discussed in Medicaid is that work requirements were the mechanism for ending welfare.

• 7:25Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  When we say we ended welfare in 1996, what we mean is that we put on such stringent work requirements, we basically zeroed the program out of existence in a lot of ways. The third part about work requirements is that we only apply them to people who, for the most part, are in the low-wage labor market. They have to be. If they were a high-wage worker, they wouldn't be eligible for public benefits. So they have to be working and earning little enough money, and the labor market basically eats the work requirement and the whole notion of this classical economic theory. So there's the policy history of like, we love telling people they have to go to work for public programs, but then there's the kind of like econ theory side, which is that

• 8:06Speaker 02

  these are just a very well-constructed notion from classic econ theory that our large, low-wage labor market just like eats alive.

• 8:16Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Theory versus history.

• 8:19Robin Rauzi?

  Theory versus history. So in theory, what is a work requirement? Why should it work? And why would we want them? Let's start there.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Let's start there. So let's pretend that you still get summer vacations.

• 8:32Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  And that you're a college student who has a summer vacation, and you want to be able to like hang out with your friends and drive to the beach, or the lake, or the river, or whatever body of water you're going to swim in in the summer, the pool. You want to spend as much time with friends swimming as possible. But you also want to be able to buy things like gas for your car, or food, or drinks, or new clothes, or new swimsuits, or whatever. So you have these competing demands, one of which that you want to not work, AKA, spend times with friends and swim, AKA, we would call that consuming leisure.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Economists are normal human people. And just like other humans, we would say that spending time with our friends is consuming leisure.

• 9:28Robin Rauzi?

  So you want to consume goods and you want to consume leisure?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  So there's this trade-off between how much you can consume of leisure and how much you can consume of goods and services. And even though this sounds kind of silly, there's a reason why you don't work 24 hours a day. Or there's a reason why you don't work absolutely nothing at all, because you have to have things. You know, yes, in theory, you would like work as much as you can 24 hours a day, and that's how you get the most money. But nobody wants to do that, because you want to have time off. And so this idea that you have these competing demands on your time based on how you would like to get happy, they're in natural conflict. So an economist would say that looking at your labor supply curve, your indifference curves, and your budget constraint of time and money,

• 10:14Speaker 02

  we would say that you work the right amount to optimize the amount that you want to consume and the amount of leisure you want. So how many days do you work at the gap in the summer? And so however many days it'll get you enough money that you can still spend time with friends, but have some money to play around with, right? Like you are picking the labor supply.

• 10:34Robin Rauzi?

  This is just reminding me, when I was in college, I actually did this. I got a temp job and I worked full-time as a temp. And then when I knew I'd made enough money, I just quit.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:42Robin Rauzi?

  And then I just screwed around for the summer.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yes. Robin, you are optimizing your labor supply

• 10:48Robin Rauzi?

  I optimized my...

• 10:49Speaker 02

  to the exact amount to maximize the right consumption of goods and leisure that left you with the highest level of utility. You're also a human person, just like me.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  So that's how people pick how much they want to work in the perfect.

• 11:05Robin Rauzi?

  In the perfect abstract economy.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so now, let's say you get a raise.

• 11:11Robin Rauzi?

  Great.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Now, if you get a raise, that means you don't have to work as much to consume the same amount of goods and services. So if I make $5,000 more a year, I can work $5,000 less in hours and I'll still be able to have the exact same consumption bundle, but have more leisure time. This is called the income effect.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  But if I'm making five grand more a year, that means my price of leisure, which is foregone wages, that's gone up. Right, and now every hour that I spend at the pool has just gotten a lot more expensive because I'm leaving more on the table. So I should work more. That's called the substitution effect.

• 11:49Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, so let me just get this straight. Let's say I'm making $20 an hour. I get a raise, I'm making $22 an hour.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Do it in extremes first. It's helpful to do in extremes. So you are that temp.

• 12:01Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  And you're making, you're gonna make $3,000 for the summer.

• 12:05Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  And then you're gonna quit and have some fun. But the company comes to you and says, wow, Robin.

• 12:11Robin Rauzi?

  You're such a great temp.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  You're such a great temp. We are actually going to give you $100,000 for your time over the summer.

• 12:19Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Which is crazy, right? But like, think of extremes. Like, if you thought you were gonna make three grand at a job and they told you you were gonna make 100 grand, like, would you still quit on the same day? Probably not.

• 12:29Robin Rauzi?

  Probably not.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Because you would have so much more money working.

• 12:32Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  This is like, someone gives you a raise and you work more because now, like, that day at the beach isn't costing you the $200 you might have earned. It's gonna cost you like $2,000 or $20,000. And then it's like, beach has gotta be real worth it for you to walk away from 20 grand and everything that that'll buy me.

• 12:51Robin Rauzi?

  So basically, leisure has a price tag.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Leisure has a price tag, and that's the wages you don't earn. So when you get a higher wage, you would either work less so that you could consume more leisure, because you can still afford the same life, or you would work more because leisure has become more expensive and you can get more goods. And your decision to work more or work less, which effect dominates, the income effect or the substitution effect, would depend basically on your preferences.

• 13:20Robin Rauzi?

  Or I could work the same amount. Play the same amount and save a little more.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Okay, well, sorry, we don't save in two dimensional classic econ theory. So I need you to, we would, we would just say like, nope, that's future consumption or future leisure. Gotta pick Robin. Remember you're a human person right now.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  So this idea, if you get a little bit more money, would you work more or less? Is at the heart of like every public policy debate when it comes to whether or not we help people in need.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  What happens with the public benefit is it's the same question of do you work more or do you work less when you get more money? So in this case, instead of getting a wage increase, you would get a benefit. So I make $20,000 a year and now I get $5,000 in public benefits. I mean, the, the short version is if someone gives you free money, you will work less. But there's two ways that we think this happens, the income effect and the substitution effect. So the income effect, really obvious. I can work $5,000 less and consume the same amount of goods because I'm getting five grand from the government. So I can have same goods, more leisure. This is a slam dunk, free money equals less work. Income effect says if you give someone public benefits, they will work less.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  The substitution effect is a little bit more nuanced. Because when you think about a wage increase, you have to substitute between work and leisure. With a public benefit, it's not about substituting between work and leisure. It's actually about substituting between work and benefits. The price of leisure hasn't changed. Instead, the price of work has changed because now it has foregone benefits. If I work too much, I lose benefits or I get less in benefits. So I've added a cost to working, which is the price of foregone benefits. This is less of a slam dunk, but like still getting points on the board. If you give people contingent money, that means less work.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Because just like how wages were the price of leisure, now wages are the price of benefits.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  And to be fair, we definitely think this happens. Like, if you look at people who become eligible for social security and inflation-adjusted cash benefit that they'll get for the rest of their life, like, even if they work longer than their full retirement age, by the time they get their social security benefit, the incentive to work, I mean, it just, it falls off the cliff. Because you can have the same life and more leisure. All these things, like, we think they all happen to a certain degree. Like, your summer job, the social security recipients, if you get money from the government, it has a work disincentive through either the income effect, or the substitution effect, or both. And the income and substitution effects came up during the 2021 extended child tax credit,

• 16:10Speaker 02

  when all families got a monthly payment. There's a fact checker in the Washington Post that kind of goes into the detail about this, about how the economists, some of which fell in the left camp and some of which fell in more the right camp, became really torn about the size of the income and substitution effects for the child tax credits. Because for decades, and decades, economists have tried to estimate the precise size of these effects, like, quote-unquote, "in the wild," so to speak. So, we studied all kinds of changes in policy in the economy to figure out what the income and substitution effects really are, for both wage increases, for public benefit increases, and so on. Well, they got into like, a super nasty fight about it, and some people say the expanded

• 16:54Speaker 02

  child tax credit would cause 150,000 people to drop out of the labor force, and others were saying that it would be closer to 1.5 million, right? Like, 10 times the size.

• 17:03Robin Rauzi?

  Right. And remind me again, how, how large those tax credits were? It was like, $500 per child?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  So, it was $3,600 a year if your kid was under 5, and $3,000 otherwise?

• 17:14Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  If you were to tell someone, you know, "You have a kid, and I'm gonna give you three grand a year to help you," and they're like, "And you're probably gonna stop work," you'd be like, "What is your deal? Have you ever lived in an economy? Like, do you know what it's like to have children? $3,000, they'd suck that into a vacuum the first weekend you gave it to me." Like, it feels so detached from reality. But at the same time, if I told you, "The government's gonna give you $100,000, would you work less?" You'd say, "Yes." And so, it's, it's hard, I think, sometimes to think of this economic theory, because, you know, the things that make sense in extremes, economists also think happens on the margin. Like, sure, if I gave you a $300,000 check from the government, you would not work.

• 17:53Robin Rauzi?

  Sure.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  But if I gave you a $3,000 check from the government, you'd be like, obviously, I have to keep working, but we think on some margin, there's a work effect there. That this income effect, aka work disincentive, would still be acting on you, even if it was small, the margin.

• 18:07Robin Rauzi?

  And do we, I'm sorry, do we really think that? Or is this just classical theory? Or?

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I mean, they definitely try to estimate it. The debate about the child tax.

• 18:16Robin Rauzi?

  Like, it's gonna throw some people over some threshold in their lives, that they'll say, okay.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  I'll work less.

• 18:22Robin Rauzi?

  I'll stop working Saturdays. Or whatever it is.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  The debate around this got really absolute of like, will people leave the workforce? Or will people work less? And it all comes down to moms, like.

• 18:34Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you gave a mom three grand with no strings attached, like, would she work less?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  That was the part that I think a lot of parents struggled with of like, what kind of life do you think I lead? That I would get three grand and suddenly all my money problems would be solved and I would have to work less. I always was of the mind that if three grand was attached to every kid.

• 18:56Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  People would work less. It's just not clear that that's a bad thing. Right? Like, if you have a mom who has two shifts and she holds two jobs to keep her family afloat and.

• 19:07Robin Rauzi?

  And now she could work one.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  And now she can work one and spend more time with the kids. Like, is it really that bad that she's working a little bit less? Or like, what if one of her kids has special needs and she can cut down to a part-time job and now take him to like, more appointments? Like, is that so terrible?

• 19:21Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I was thinking, there's this thing reminding me of my, a friend of mine whose dad worked overnight shifts because they got paid more and never saw his kids. Big families that he was trying to support. And if, you know, if they didn't have to work an overnight shift, would that be bad?

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Would it, yeah, would it be so bad if people pulled back from the labor market? This is why I think that they were never talking about the same thing, because the work incentive people, like, work is everything.

• 19:47Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Right? Like, getting people to work, like, that is the point of public policy. Whereas I think on the other side, it was maximizing the welfare for children. And so they just, they weren't even trying to achieve the same things. The idea of a work requirement is that it basically shuts down the work disincentive. So it's, it's a way of say like, hey, we'll still give you the help you need, but you have to keep working. And the way that we're gonna guarantee that is we're gonna put in a work requirement. That is the theoretical and economic justification for a work requirement.

• 20:16Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  To shut down the income effect that comes from the boost in consumption that you can get when you get a public benefit, whether it's a cash benefit or an in-kind benefit like Medicaid or food stamps.

• 20:29Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, it does seem like those things would have different effects, but I suppose economists account for that. Like, giving someone cash welfare would seem to me to be different from giving them, say, health insurance.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yes, but it does free up money in the budget for other things.

• 20:43Robin Rauzi?

  Or we could believe that they just wouldn't have health insurance, which is what had happened.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that's, I mean, that's just your opinion, man.

• 20:52Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  But even if, but even if they, even if they didn't have health insurance, they might still consume healthcare of like going to an urgent care.

• 20:58Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Or going to an ER, or having to pay for some kind of like clinic or something like that, that they would still consume some type of healthcare that they spend money on and that giving them Medicaid is giving them a boost. I think one of the biggest problems I have with the debates around public policy today is that this work question and how much people are working is paramount, and it trumps every other aspect of any public program is just are people working to the maximum extent that they could? And that is the approach to how we evaluate public programs in the US. Like, is Medicaid doing a good job? Well.

• 21:36Robin Rauzi?

  Is everybody working?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Is everybody working that can be working? Because if the answer is no, then Medicaid's not doing a good job, right? Even though Medicaid is like, it's keeping people alive.

• 21:44Robin Rauzi?

  Exactly.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  And the same thing that happened to child tax credit happens with food stamps, it happens with food support for children, the summer food program that a bunch of Republican governors refused the federal money to help keep kids in their state who are very poor fed during the summer. It all came down to, is everybody working that can be working?

• 22:06Robin Rauzi?

  But it does just sound like everybody is working. It's like everybody's working some sort of maximum amount.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically. They all need to be working as much as possible. And if you get a benefit and that makes you work less than you would otherwise, then the benefit is therefore bad. That is the conversation around almost every public program we have in the US. And it doesn't matter what it does, it doesn't matter what it accomplishes. Three million children lifted out of poverty by the child tax credit, that doesn't matter. I mean, work requirements to me are on some level so uninteresting a topic because the bigger and much more important question is, are we really evaluating Medicaid based on how many people go to work?

• 22:45Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, like it's the wrong yardstick.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yes, it's the wrong yardstick, but that's the problem with work requirements is that it forces you into this conversation of whether or not these people are actually working as opposed to whether or not this program is doing the job that it's meant to do.

• 23:01Robin Rauzi?

  If the idea that you have said here is that the size of the US economy is based on the amount of workers in the economy, and if the plan is to grow the economy and that's what our policymakers want to do, I mean, I can sort of see the rationale. I'm not saying I personally agree with it.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what's interesting is that if you were to say like, "Look, we need more workers in our economy," this is just an economic calculus, you would not start with people who earn little enough to qualify for programs like Medicaid and food stamps and try to squeeze a few more hours out of them because it would be a really low return. And you'd have a much higher return addressing very key barriers to work and getting people on the other side of them. You've got low-wage workers who are eligible for public programs is a whole different bucket than you've got billions of people sidelined because they have a disability or because they have a kid at home and can't afford childcare or because they have a felony conviction and no one will hire them. Even if that was the

• 24:01Speaker 02

  right way to view all economic policy, this one would be so, so small relative to other problems, it wouldn't make sense for it to come first. So this is where I get really frustrated in the conversation with things like...

• 24:13Robin Rauzi?

  I'm sorry, but do you think that's in part because we know that there are a lot of people using something like Medicaid, but we don't really think about how, what percentage of them are actually potential labor force participants who aren't already working?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Medicaid and food stamps have these really big numbers. So Medicaid's like 77 million people.

• 24:32Robin Rauzi?

  Right. I mean, it is. It's a really big number, but only like, I don't know, 7% of them or something are not already working and can work?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, because 40% are children.

• 24:43Robin Rauzi?

  And some are students and some are disabled?

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Some are students, some are disabled, a lot are elderly too.

• 24:48Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  You know Medicaid is one of the biggest service providers for institutional elder care. So yeah, if you strip away all the people in Medicaid who aren't children, aren't elderly, aren't disabled, and are left with like a relatively able-bodied adult who doesn't have that much money, the majority of them are working or have worked recently and are in between jobs.

• 25:10Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Most of the people for whom work requirements would be applied to, people who earn little enough money to be eligible for public programs, they are in a low-wage labor market that is incredibly volatile. And I don't care what kind of job you have. If you don't make less than seventeen dollars an hour, you are in a different world than people who are in the low-wage labor market.

• 25:31Robin Rauzi?

  Sorry, is that a formal definition of like?

• 25:33Speaker 02

  No, I mean, there's not really a formal definition of low-wage work. We tend to think of it as people who are, again, there's lots of ways to measure workers, but if you look at hourly wages, the bottom twenty percent is like sixteen, sixty, and the bottom twenty-five percent is just over seventeen. So the-

• 25:49Robin Rauzi?

  So that's kind of the-

• 25:50Speaker 02

  A functional cutoff would be seventeen dollars an hour or less, and that would capture a quarter of all workers in the US. We have the largest low-wage labor market of any of our peers. I mean, you're talking about forty million people.

• 26:01Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Now, just to put that in perspective for you, if you are making seventeen dollars an hour, if you work every single hour of the year, forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and you have two kids at home, you are eligible for Medicaid in the expansion states. So if you make less than seventeen dollars an hour, or if you can't, or you don't get forty hours a week in your shift, or you don't get all the weeks-

• 26:27Robin Rauzi?

  In the year.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  In the year. You know, you're talking about a fourth of the US workforce that are potentially eligible for these benefits simply by virtue of how low their wages.

• 26:38Robin Rauzi?

  So maybe if you wanted them not to be eligible for benefits, you would do something about their wages?

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's like a lot of other options here. I mean, the low-wage, the low-wage workforce, some, some things about the bottom of the US workforce. So most people, if you say poor people in the United States, they're like, oh yeah, that person who's like never had a job.

• 26:54Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Uh-uh. A lot of people in the low-wage workforce, these bottom forty million earners who make about seventeen dollars an hour or less- That group of people is associated with the most volatile earnings in the US, meaning that their swings in income from month to month are wild.

• 27:12Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  And they can have, I mean, one paper estimated, this whole phrase will mean nothing, that the coefficient of variation for the bottoms workforce, which is just like

• 27:21Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  deviation around a mean, I mean, it's like 85%. You can measure this in terms of the number of spikes or dips in your earnings, the size of the spike and dip in your earnings relative to your average wage over a multi-year period. The coefficient of variation around a mean of how much your, I mean, yes.

• 27:38Robin Rauzi?

  You're just showing off now with your economic course.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  No, but they're all, they will all tell you the same thing.

• 27:42Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  I'm bona fide. I'm bona fide.

• 27:46Robin Rauzi?

  You're trying to prove that this week.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  I am feeling some confidence issues, I won't lie. But they would all tell you the same thing, which is that the most volatile income groups with the least predictable income are at the very top and the very bottom. But the bottom swings more and the bottom is more likely to say that the reason why their income swings is because they don't have control over their work hours.

• 28:08Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  The reason why I bring this up is because if we go back to Robin, the summer temp employee, who's going to work for a few months and then go to the beach, or did you go to a pool? Where did you go? Swim?

• 28:17Robin Rauzi?

  I stayed home and I did some writing.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Ah, nerd alert. Robin, this analogy only works if we're swimming.

• 28:24Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, sorry. I was in Seattle and I went to, you know, Lake Washington.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Awesome. You, Robin, as a temp worker who then quits after you get enough money, you are in control of your schedule. So the income effect, the substitution effect, all of that makes sense for you because you have agency in how much you work.

• 28:42Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  The reason why work requirements fall apart for the people for whom we actually deploy them is because most of them are not, don't have any agency over their work to begin with.

• 28:52Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  So the idea that Medicaid would have this huge income effect is very much eaten by the realities of the low wage labor market, where it's not like they could just casually pull back with a lot of control over when they work, problem one. And then problem two, even with Medicaid, they don't have enough money to live. So they would still need to work in order to have rent and food and things like that. So this-

• 29:14Robin Rauzi?

  So the economic theory just essentially dissolves in the face of reality here.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  I mean, there could be a huge work and disincentive from Medicaid that every one of us feels, but very few of them actually have the ability to act on. It's not that the theory has to be wrong or not applicable, but it's not explaining what you actually see. Something else is operating on people who don't have that much money.

• 29:34Robin Rauzi?

  Poverty.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Poverty, reality, wanting to do better by their children.

• 29:39Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  This is the other thing that gets lost in the policy conversation is that economics gives us more intuitions than it does predictions. Economics can tell you like, hey, man, you give people money that they don't have to work for, probably gonna work less. But that doesn't mean that it's a rule. It just means that it's there and you can design programs to minimize it, but it doesn't, it doesn't become a rule. There's a gap between the intuition behind our economic decisions and their manifestation.

• 30:08Robin Rauzi?

  Can we talk a little bit about how work requirements, the role that they played in the welfare reform of whatever that was, 1996?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  PRRWA, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act? What's interesting about welfare is welfare was a monthly benefit that you got based on the number of people in your household, typically the mom and her kids. And it had two terrible design flaws. The first one was, and the most obvious one, was that if you worked any amount, you got a dollar for a dollar reduction in your welfare benefit. So if I got 200 bucks a month from welfare and then I picked up a job that paid me 50 bucks a month, they would reduce my welfare benefit by 50 bucks, so I would stay at exactly 200 dollars.

• 30:57Robin Rauzi?

  So I can see, based on the theory that we were discussing earlier.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  This is a massive work disincentive. Like, this was designed to prove the income effect exists. Like, part of me is like, did some, like, kind of bastard economist design the program like this just to prove that he thought the income effect was real and he wanted to show it in a large population? Because, like, man, was it really looked like it was designed to do that. Yeah, I mean, it was a horrible work disincentive. And so you had a lot of women who, you know, often worked under the table or had some other way of getting earnings that they didn't report. And non-formal work is never going to have the same type of trajectory as formal work. So the debate around welfare really became around, these women should get back to work. Not fair, because welfare always trended with the unemployment rate. And the majority of women on welfare weren't on welfare for that long. Like, they had a hardship, something happened, they were on welfare for a bit, and then

• 31:45Speaker 02

  they got off again. But the myth of this, like, permanent welfare queen who had kids for more money, you know, she'd rather have a kid than get a job. That dogged the program for decades. What's interesting about welfare is that it existed from 1935 to 1996, but it really had two eras. The first era was in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, where it was gate-kept by local administrators. It wasn't really considered an entitlement, and the majority of women who could apply for it didn't do it. It was really cruelly given to in a lot of ways. Like, there's evidence of, I think it was in Florida, where like, they kicked all women off of welfare during the orange picking season to make sure they had people to work in the field.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Like, it's never been like a shining light. But in the 60s, there were lots of civil rights cases related to how women on welfare were treated that made the entitlement aspect of it something that women took advantage of. So it went from like 40% of women who could get welfare applied to like 95%. And the big increase was amongst black women.

• 32:51Robin Rauzi?

  I'm sorry, of the women who were eligible for welfare, 40% had applied, and now 95%.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  And then it went up to like around 90%. And when, you know, legal rights and civil rights and mothers' rights groups rallied around the program, it became like, you need to go out and claim this money. And a lot of women went on it. And I mean, as soon as the numbers of people on welfare went up, the hatred of women on welfare went up, and it became absolutely associated with black women and the welfare queen. So that was the second era of the program, was lots of women getting it who were eligible. And I think what the US was never comfortable with was the number of women who were eligible for the population. The idea that we had so many single moms. The second problem with welfare is that it did have a huge marriage penalty.

• 33:34Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  And if you got married, you almost always lost your benefit.

• 33:38Robin Rauzi?

  You lost welfare.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, public policy learned a lot from how poorly designed welfare was. You know, we now think of things like work disincentives, phase out of benefits, work bonuses, partner versus marriage, you know, thinking of marriage penalties and marriage bonuses. Like, all of that is stuff that we take into account because we didn't with welfare. But rather than fix welfare... In 1996, it was basically the conservative argument one, that these women just needed to go out and get a job. And so they changed the program from aid to family with dependent children to temporary assistance to needy families. And they put incredible work requirements on the program. I mean, the most stringent that you can imagine. And then they put a three-year cap on how long you could receive it over your lifetime.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  But most women left the program because of the work requirements. And even now, they still have work requirements. There's an amazing season of The Uncertain Hour by Marketplace, where they talk about how work requirements act on women on welfare today. And it basically shuttles them into temp work. And the people who place them with temp agencies get more from welfare than the women do. Not surprising.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  The work placement agencies are making tons of money because they get a bonus for every woman they place in a job.

• 34:55Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, can we just talk a little bit about what work requirements, what they actually look like in practice?

• 35:02Speaker 02

  So the welfare work requirements are different. I mean, they're the most draconian by far. And that was, I mean, it helps to think of like, the first federal work requirement we really had was intended to end a program. We have work requirements for food stamps. And basically, they are very hard to figure out. But they should entail something like, you have to either submit a pay stub or submit proof that you applied for jobs in order to keep your benefit. And there's this reporting requirement. Now, there's a lot that's cruelly ironic there. Employers are not required in the United States to provide a pay stub. They have no legal need to. Most of them do, but they're not required to. Another thing that's messed up about it is that sometimes these work requirements, like if you, like, what does it mean to apply for a job?

• 35:45Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  If I apply to a job on Indeed,

• 35:49Robin Rauzi?

  Have you really applied for a job?

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, does the state of Wisconsin know? And so in some places, you have a state job board. And you basically have to log in and fill out a job application on a state job board. It's a, yeah, the reason why work requirements are so loathed is because they're really paperwork requirements.

• 36:11Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  You will not find a study of work requirements that show that after you put them in place, it increased work to any significant degree.

• 36:20Robin Rauzi?

  And punishes them if they don't. It doesn't necessarily punish them if they're looking for a job, the right job, a better job.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  I mean, brace for impact here, people. The federal government might just not be that great at knowing you're applying for a job or working.

• 36:34Robin Rauzi?

  Well, and these things are tracked often by the state, too, right?

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:36Robin Rauzi?

  And it's different from state to state and...

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Now, unemployment insurance has a work search requirement, but, which also varies across every state, but most states' work search requirement is like a report that you bring them. You aren't like limited to the state job board. It's more of like a voluntary reporting to keep your unemployment benefit in most places, whereas on food stamps and possibly Medicaid in the future, it's a little bit more stringent.

• 37:04Robin Rauzi?

  And it's also designed, I mean, designed in unemployment to be a temporary requirement of something that you need to do while you don't otherwise have a job.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:12Robin Rauzi?

  As opposed to something you need to do in an ongoing way while you're also trying to hold down your job and what other responsibilities you might have.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Right. I find that evidence around work requirements around Medicaid and food stamps to be on a lot of levels just like not that interesting.

• 37:27Robin Rauzi?

  Because they all just show...

• 37:28Speaker 02

  They all kind of show, they all kind of show the same thing of like new work requirement paper. And I'm like, oh, I wonder what that's gonna say. Well, look, it didn't increase work. A lot of people lost food. Great, great, great, great, great. Like, it's not, they're not gonna take my breath away. I did watch a presentation of a paper where they try to meet the work requirements in a state. And what they find is that like the actual application of work requirements for food stamps truly depends on the caseworker assigned to you. And some of them are like, these rules don't make any sense. And so you just ended up with a caseworker who was like, yeah, you're probably working. Good job. Or you ended up with a caseworker that was like, you didn't fill out this X form and I don't know how to help you, so you lose your benefit. Like, it came down a lot more to caseworker discretion, which is kind of a sad, full circle moment, because that's

• 38:11Speaker 02

  how people, that was how welfare was distributed in the 30s and 40s of like...

• 38:15Robin Rauzi?

  I was gonna say, we're back to...

• 38:16Speaker 02

  We're back to...

• 38:17Robin Rauzi?

  We're back to panels of, of men deciding what women are deserving of widows and, and orphans' benefits. I do think there's a lot of awareness that that work requirements are a lot of bullshit.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  I will say, yeah, definitely this tax bill is the most I've heard people kind of become, step into the knowledge that the government does weird administrative draconian things to kick people off of benefits. And people who have worked in the space for a long time are like, yes, they designed whole legislation around this.

• 38:46Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  I've been surprised at how much and inspired by how much like the kind of common understanding is, oh yeah, they just do this to kick people off of benefits. You know, it's one thing to target very poor, single moms in the 90s, which is the original like work requirement recipient.

• 39:03Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  It is quite another to take a program that provides health insurance to 77 million people and say, you need to prove you're working. And I think that they-

• 39:14Robin Rauzi?

  Well, and do it in the context that they're doing it in, which is that they want to cut a bunch of, out of the budget. Like, the congresspeople passing these laws have made it transparent that they need to cut the budget and then this is what they've done. Well, they're not doing something that will elevate people's income to take them off these programs.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:32Robin Rauzi?

  Right? They're doing something that instead will just, will just make sure it's really, really hard for them to be on these programs.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Yes, make the program harder to get.

• 39:40Robin Rauzi?

  And what will happen? Will those people stop getting sick?

• 39:44Speaker 02

  No. Actually, I do have some like really depressing evidence around that. This is suffice it to say, if you don't have health insurance, it's a lot easier to die. There's very clear mortality studies around Medicaid that I think the scary part for a lot of people, it's not about elderly mortality. I mean, this is about like 20 and 30 year old mortality of people who aren't on Medicaid. Or you put people on Medicaid in their 20s and 30s and you lower their mortality rate, which is-

• 40:12Robin Rauzi?

  Well, and it also pays for addiction treatment. It pays for-

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yeah. The number of people, I mean, the number of people who are on Medicaid who are just using it for addiction therapy. In some ways, I've been inspired by the backlash. It's not like it's passing because it has like groundswell support.

• 40:27Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Or that people are like demanding it. I'm not optimistic about the bill in the sense that I think it'll do good. But I am optimistic in the sense that like, I don't think this bill is popular. And I think it has proved positive once again of how poorly managed our economy is. And that's the room to go forward. That's the one level of optimism for me is, yes, the public awareness campaign that they're inadvertently starting of how terrible this policy is.

• 40:54Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  10 million people were projected by the CBO to lose Medicaid under this bill. 10 million people. That's a lot of people.

• 41:03Robin Rauzi?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  That's one in seven people on Medicaid will lose their health insurance because they cannot meet a paperwork requirement. Now, hang on a second. This is the part that really should blow your mind on these numbers. Texas hasn't expanded Medicaid yet. 10 states haven't. They're targeting the Medicaid expansion population. Like, you're not kicking people in Texas off the program because they already aren't on it. You're kicking off the people from the 40 expansion states, which is like, how are you kicking off one in seven people and you don't even have Texas in there?

• 41:34Robin Rauzi?

  It's a big state.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  So I take a lot of optimism from their accidental public awareness campaign and from the fact that this bill does not have a ton of support.

• 41:44Robin Rauzi?

  And from the fact that we, that in many of those states, and including conservative leaning states, they voted to expand Medicaid in those states. And not long ago.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Like, you're kicking people off that we voted to have back on.

• 41:58Robin Rauzi?

  We voted to have in, yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Like, it's a tax bill, but the debate has really been about the work requirements. That it's, you know, everyone's like, this is a...

• 42:07Robin Rauzi?

  Well, there's, it's a lot of things, Bill. I mean, it's an, it's an everything burger bill.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  It's an everything burger bill, but I think what has gotten most attention is that it adds to the debt and it kicks 10 million people off of Medicaid. I take that to be like a very positive development in our economic discourse, that people are upset about those things. And that this is becoming like, where you've got some like public standards that you're not meeting anymore and you can't get away with terrible policy much longer. So I, I take some optimism in that. And then the optimism on the work requirements part, like the work requirements themselves, I think... I mean, they're bad policy, top to bottom. And even if you want more people to work and you're of the mind, like, everyone who can work should work. I mean, they're not going to do it.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  And it's biting to have such a failed policy have so much prominence. But it's not solving the problem of the number of people who can't get to work but want to.

• 43:04Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  I always take optimism in knowing that the solution is still in front of us.

• 43:10Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  I think it would be harder for me to be optimistic if we passed some, like, massive labor law reform and, like, nobody worked.

• 43:17Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Like, y'all, we are pulling the best stuff we have out of our arsenal and, like, nothing is working. That would be a sad day. But this is another one of these, like, so, yeah, we've tried the worst idea five or six times now. It's still not working, but we might try it again. And you know what? That's actually not as depressing as the good idea not working.

• 43:36Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  I don't know if that counts as optimism.

• 43:39Robin Rauzi?

  You know, it's kind of like wanting better problems.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Yes, better problems.

• 43:44Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Or a better low-wage labor market, which we could also choose to regulate. Just saying.

• 43:49Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Do you feel like you got both the theory and the, um...

• 43:53Robin Rauzi?

  I did. I actually went back to my notes that I took at the beginning and, like, inspired by your sort of high school debate champ practices.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Does that mean I can keep going with new topics or should we just stop here?

• 44:05Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, it's time for a few upbeat things here at the end of the, hopefully upbeat things here at the end of the episode. First up is executive orders. Catherine, what is your executive order this week?

• 44:17Speaker 02

  So, this is a very special episode of Optimist Economy because this is the last one I will record from our nation's capital, my home for the last nine years. And I am relocating and moving back to Houston, and this is the end of my tenure here. This is my second tenure in DC. I was here also before grad school for a few years. So that has, you know, only one major implication for our listeners. And I want to be upfront about it and I want to be honest about it, but, like, my accent is coming back. And I don't want y'all to be like, she's faking it. She just tries to pretend like she has an accent. But if you listen to the first episode, she didn't. Like, I'm telling you right now, I'm gonna go back home and is gonna come back stronger. Like, I'm gonna

• 45:00Speaker 02

  talk to like a cousin or one of my aunts, and then I'll sit down for the show and be like, y'all, they caught me. Like, give me better. Come on, y'all. Like, it's just, it's gonna come back. I have a pretty low-key accent right now, but I'm gonna have some kind of interaction, and then I'm gonna come back and be like, alright, so, social security. I am probably gonna wear a cowboy hat the first episode I record in Houston, just to make sure that y'all, particular Robin, knows where we're at. So, that is the public service announcement. And so, my executive order, in honor of this week, is the District of Columbia becomes the 51st state.

• 45:36Robin Rauzi?

  You can have that state in the Republic of Catherine Edwards?

• 45:41Speaker 02

  And now, the DC citizens have voted, it would be the Douglas Commonwealth. So, we would keep DC, but we would be the Douglas Commonwealth after Frederick Douglass.

• 45:52Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, nice, nice.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  And there would be like, basically like a Washington federal city of like, all of the real estate that the federal government owns downtown. You carve out like, the actual Capitol from the city, and the city itself becomes the Douglas Commonwealth.

• 46:06Robin Rauzi?

  Would it be the smallest state? Would it be smaller than Rhode Island?

• 46:09Speaker 02

  No, it has more people than Wyoming. I mean, DC right now has more people than Wyoming, and maybe Rhode Island. So, I actually feel very strongly about DC statehood. It's ridiculous that I don't have a senator, right now.

• 46:22Robin Rauzi?

  Or two.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  That is my executive order. Douglas Commonwealth, one day.

• 46:27Robin Rauzi?

  Okay. My executive order comes from the just horrifying experience I had trying to buy a new phone, a mobile phone, this week. And so, the Apple Store needs to have a service or checkout counter, just like any other normal store. I'm so, I don't wanna have to go in and wander around like I'm at a singles bar, trying to pick somebody up, who's paying attention to someone else, just so I can buy a charger. Like, the Apple Store seem like a good idea? When they, when they launched, but this, it's terrible. It's terrible service.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, so many of the executive orders fall into the customer service space. But I get it though. Like, why are we treated so awfully in the US when it comes to customer service?

• 47:17Robin Rauzi?

  But seriously, this, this, I asked a guy and I said, hey, look, I just need to buy a phone. I know what I want. Just go get the box. And he's like, I'll tell our lead person. And I just looked at him and I literally, and again, I know I have a short fuse, but I said, I don't care. Just get me the phone in the box.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Some retail clothing outlet did this at one point where like they did, they weren't going to have checkout anymore. They were just going to have like someone with an iPad come by and check you out, like wherever you were on the floor. And this happened to me once where I was like, I don't want, like I'm holding this shit in my arms. Like, can I put them on a counter and you put it in a bag? And he's like, just stay right there. I'll go get a bag. I'm like, no, no. This is terrible.

• 48:00Robin Rauzi?

  The people made the decisions. Do they shop in stores? This is why people order stuff online. Yeah. All right.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  What are your spiritual sponsors for the week?

• 48:10Robin Rauzi?

  Okay. So our spiritual sponsor for Optimist Economy for the show, this week includes JD Burke of Durango, Colorado. He became our spiritual sponsor on our Substack at optimist economy.com.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Ah, JD, thank you.

• 48:24Robin Rauzi?

  My personal spiritual sponsor is the walkout for Angel City Football Club, which is the women's soccer team here. I'm apparently not allowed to play this music because getting a license for music is, I think, second only to work requirements in terms of the paperwork required. It is nay impossible. The song is called Here She Comes by Leslie Powell. You can look it up, Google it, because it is a crazy song. With brass and drums and it sounds like, you know, the, the Hunger Games, like as, as the players walk out. But then what actually is my spiritual sponsor out of all of this is that they always walk out, holding the hands of, of girls who are soccer players.

• 49:05Robin Rauzi?

  Who are, you know, maybe like seven years old, six years old, and it just brings tears to my eyes every single time.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  So I just want to say personally, I wouldn't mind holding someone's hand.

• 49:16Robin Rauzi?

  I'm walking out onto the field.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Walking them out onto the field. Like, I don't know why it has to be just little kids. Like, I want to walk a soccer player out to the field. I'll wear, I'll wear my old uniform if that's what's required, but like, I would love to do that. I'm just gonna say right now, I do think the kids are very heartwarming and I love to see it. And they're always really nervous looking and that's great, but I'm just, I would walk out with confidence. But like, but you know what?

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Screw those little kids, let me hold someone's hand. I guess I could see it being weird if it was, if it was just like a lot of little kids and then me. You'd have to do like a full adult one or else it would just be weird, but yeah, I mean, yeah.

• 49:57Robin Rauzi?

  Their daughters on Mother's Day.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  What, oh, Jesus.

• 49:59Robin Rauzi?

  No, I'm sorry, it was their kids, because some of them were boys.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Okay, well.

• 50:04Robin Rauzi?

  That was also sweet.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sounds really sweet. I'm just gonna lodge my complaint that like I could do as good of a job and like the kids are cute, but like, you know, I'm just saying, I wouldn't mind doing it.

• 50:13Robin Rauzi?

  But also doubling down on the, so Angel City, so as they didn't have to license music, they actually had their own song written, their own walkout song written and.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Smart.

• 50:24Robin Rauzi?

  It's, it's really great. Like if you need a pump up song, you know, after you watch the, um, the World Cup header a couple of times, you could also do it to the center.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, as, as Robin knows, I'm, I'm kind of switching allegiances that my hometown team has been the Washington Spirit. And now I am going to be and have become a loyal Houston Dash supporter. I always rooted for the Dash, but had season tickets to the Spirit and now, now it's Dash all the way.

• 50:51Robin Rauzi?

  It's Dash all the way.

• 50:54Robin Rauzi?

  My spiritual sponsor.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  My spiritual sponsor for the week, related to my executive order, is the DC Metro. Which if you, uh, have been to our nation's capital is the pretty awesome brutalist metro system. I think it's, it's my spiritual sponsor mainly for all the transportation geeks out there who also love the DC Metro so much. It has broken my heart on a number of occasions. It does not always work that well, but it is a fantastic transit system. And if there is one part of the city that I will really miss, we live not that far from the metro stop. And so just like, walking to the station and like finding yourself anywhere in the city is truly lovely.

• 51:36Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. I also love the DC Metro. I went to DC for the first time when I was maybe 14. And I think it was really one of my first big city trips with my family. And the DC Metro defined sort of what a big city was to me.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  They had this whole method for clearing everyone out of the stations during one of DC's like most brutal snowstorms. So they held all the trains at the very last stop, counted how many people were on every platform, and then just like slowly sent the trains across the city to pick everyone up and take them home. So I remember I was switching from the blue-orange to the green-yellow. And when they opened the doors at the station, there was a guy there and he's like, are you the girl going north? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, get there. And the train was being held for me because like there was the last green-yellow line train going north was coming through. And they're like, you need to hurry. And I like ran through a completely deserted metro station and they had one door open on the train. And I got in and the door shut and then it took me back home. And I was like, this is like my

• 52:39Speaker 02

  personal taxi, like rich people who had their own trains in the Gilded Age. Like this is my Gilded Age taxi is the DC Metro during a snowstorm. Are you the girl going north? And I was like, yes. You know me, I'm famous here. That was such, it was such a banner DC Metro moment, as opposed to the number of times I looked at the minutes to train and I was like, son of a fucking bitch, be better, Metro. I mean, like, yeah, I've also cursed it. So DC Metro, I will miss you. I only hope you continue to get better and recover. And thank you for the thousands of miles you've carried me across my hometown. Oh my God, I'm gonna go on. Thank you for the thousands of miles you've carried me.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  I'm gonna cry. This is why I made you go first because I knew I was gonna cry.

• 53:28Robin Rauzi?

  I know, moving sucks.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  We stopped recording, right?

• 53:38Speaker 02

  So anyway, we like to end this show by crying.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  And also thanks Sophie and Andy, who will make this sound like not a disaster, and look like not a disaster, and we're gonna snap them out.

• 53:56Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, you bet. Alright.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Thank you for listening.

• 54:00Robin Rauzi?

  Talk to you in Houston.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Talk to y'all on the other side.