Planet Money Turned Everyday Annoyances Into an Economics Book

There are a lot of things to be annoyed about in modern life. The high cost of food and housing and childcare. Dating apps that don't seem to work. The fear of AI replacing you at your job. These are all common complaints and concerns, and each of them can be traced to a specific economic phenomenon or market structure issue. Once you start thinking about the world in this way, you can't unsee it. In this episode, we speak with Planet Money co-host Mary Childs, and contributor to the podcast, Alex Mayassi. They've just written a book called Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. We discuss how one of Tracy's childhood memories was a reflection of the commodity trap, what Baumol's cost disease tells us about daycare, and why -- despite all these frustrations -- there are still many reasons to be optimistic about economic progress. Read more:Australia Secures Fertilizer From Indonesia to Meet Crop NeedsKerrygold Butter Maker Sees Iran War Costs Hitting Consumers Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots NewsletterJoin the conversation: discord.gg/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Joe Weisenthal?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Tracy and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and need to know what's moving markets and why. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and research get you up to speed on what matters and what to watch next, about the time it takes to grab a coffee. So, search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk, and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs, and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw, innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors,

• 1:11Speaker 01

  and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

• 2:07Tracy Alloway?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

• 2:11Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

• 2:12Tracy Alloway?

  Joe, you and I have talked about doing a book at various times.

• 2:15Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, talked about it.

• 2:17Tracy Alloway?

  That's pretty much it. We talk about it and then we get a few emails from like agents and publishing houses.

• 2:23Joe Weisenthal?

  So much work.

• 2:24Tracy Alloway?

  And then we get distracted.

• 2:25Joe Weisenthal?

  And then we get distracted. But you know, the one thing I was thinking about is maybe that idea for a recipe book.

• 2:31Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, I would totally do that.

• 2:32Joe Weisenthal?

  That may be one that we should consider at some point.

• 2:35Tracy Alloway?

  A cookbook slash supply chain.

• 2:37Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, yeah, about the food and each one and the business of it.

• 2:40Tracy Alloway?

  I would totally do that. I have some good recipes too. All right. So we are actually going to get our acts together and do this. Okay. Well, our guests today are people who have actually gotten their act together to publish a book while running a highly successful podcast. It is, of course.

• 2:54Joe Weisenthal?

  So we're going to learn, we're going to learn what to do. We're going to.

• 2:57Tracy Alloway?

  That's right.

• 2:57Joe Weisenthal?

  We're going to take notes during this.

• 2:58Tracy Alloway?

  That's right. Actually, someone who's written two books now, so I don't really know how she does it. But the through line in all of this is, I'm just going to say it, we're going to be talking to one of the Planet Money co-hosts and then a longtime contributor to Planet Money. And they've written this new book called Planet Money, A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. And one of the through lines that I think we share between Odd Lots and Planet Money is this idea that like, there are all these hidden economic forces that basically dictate the way we live.

• 3:27Joe Weisenthal?

  Totally. I mean, there's been especially the, you know, the less, I mean, it's always the case, right? But especially in the last several years, which is just the sort of the invisible becoming the visible. We see how they shape their life, but there are all these things that we like take for granted, et cetera. And now like they're in our face and we're only scratching the surface of what we know about them.

• 3:48Tracy Alloway?

  Right. We all became supply chain experts during COVID. We became trade experts during 2025.

• 3:55Tracy Alloway?

  And now we're all going to become commodity experts, given the Iran situation as well. Well, without further ado, we do have the perfect guest.

• 4:03Joe Weisenthal?

  That's right.

• 4:04Tracy Alloway?

  The people who actually wrote the book. We're going to be speaking with Alex Mayassi and Mary Childs. So, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Thank you for having us.

• 4:12Speaker 05

  Such a pleasure to be here.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  It's an honor to finally be the perfect guest.

• 4:15Tracy Alloway?

  Oh, you've been the perfect guest before?

• 4:16Speaker 04

  I know, but now I'm, it's like the sun is shining on me. Do you know what I mean? I'm the perfect guest.

• 4:22Tracy Alloway?

  All right, so why a book? And how did you manage to do it between your actual day job of podcasting?

• 4:28Speaker 04

  Well, this one's easy for me because I did almost no work. Alex did all of the book work. And so that's what I would recommend in terms of division of labor is to not do the work.

• 4:35Tracy Alloway?

  Okay.

• 4:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, specialization still has a place.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  I think that's right.

• 4:38Tracy Alloway?

  This is good advice, I think.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I just have a friend who's a longtime contributor. But basically, I think a lot of our work feeds itself. And it's such a different medium and like writing and processing. Like, the way that you synthesized some of the episodes is like kind of crazy because it's like a story in a totally different way. But yeah, we just, it's a very collaborative team effort, is what I would say.

• 5:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Why don't you talk about your process, Alex? And again, as the one who apparently actually did all the work, Tracy and I are going to have to play rock, paper, scissors if we ever do this. Which one actually has to do all the work?

• 5:10Speaker 05

  Does the winner write the book? Or does the loser write the book?

• 5:12Speaker 04

  The loser.

• 5:13Joe Weisenthal?

  I don't want to write it. I'm like, I'm busy, I'm busy enough.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  Because I feel like I won, but you know.

• 5:18Joe Weisenthal?

  Well, okay.

• 5:18Speaker 05

  Enjoy, yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  I'm too scarred from my experience.

• 5:21Joe Weisenthal?

  But it's like, all right, intuitively, doing the reporting for the podcast, et cetera, you encounter a lot of things and assembling some of these big ideas into a book makes sense. But then again, the actual process. So how do you like go from thinking about, okay, here are all these things you talk about and learn about, et cetera, to like putting it on paper, kind of?

• 5:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think probably the first big decision was really coming up with a kind of organizing principle for the book. And so one of the early ideas we had was to think of this book as a field guide. You can imagine like leaving your house in the morning and tucking it under your arm to help, help you as you experience the economic forces outside your door. And, you know, then from there, there were some, some different ideas we had about how to structure the book. There was some thought to maybe start with kind of like your younger years and then increasing sections are as you get older, you know, kind of then retirement. Then we were like, we do end in death, which sounds a little morbid. But then again, I loved the idea of an epilogue about the economics of graveyards, which is a fascinating topic. But ultimately, we structured the book as kind of about different parts of your life,

• 6:25Speaker 05

  such as some expected ones, working career, saving and investing, and some that are maybe a little bit less expected, like leisure as well as love and family. And so I think from there, with this idea of kind of a field guide to the biggest economic forces that, that shape your life, that impact you, that kind of gave us and gave me in particular, some ability to kind of look at both, some really classic Plenymoney episodes that we thought we'd really love to get that story in the book, as well as new ideas I had, other members of the team had, and be able to kind of have some sort of, you know, filter or criterion to say like, okay, what belongs in this book and what doesn't?

• 7:00Tracy Alloway?

  Okay, so speaking of formative life experiences and growing up and hidden economic forces, one of the things I learned from this book is that when I was performing as a California raisin at the age of six, I was actually participating in a government like psy-op, basically. Explain that.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  Wait, no, you explain that. What? You were a baby raisin?

• 7:24Tracy Alloway?

  I don't remember a lot from my childhood, but I do remember putting on like a purple swimsuit with big white gloves and singing, I Heard It Through the Grapevine as part of some school production.

• 7:36Speaker 05

  That is fantastic. I don't think I would be invited to do that, but I do feel like I would remember if I did.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, that does feel formative. I love that for you.

• 7:43Tracy Alloway?

  Okay, so California raisins, so they were part of a, I guess, government induced ad campaign for raisins.

• 7:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:50Tracy Alloway?

  I had no idea.

• 7:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, and this is, you know, agriculture rate is an unusual sector. And one thing is that, that is unusual about it is that there are cases where there are government sanctioned cartels, like blessed by the power of the federal government and in fact enforced by the federal government, you know, if the government is often trying to prevent. Different businesses within a sector from collaborating to try and fix and increase prices. Instead, in some agricultural sectors like raisins, the US government has historically, you know, made an agreement with the raisin growers and said, okay, you are able to form a cartel, or they often might use words like cooperative.

• 8:25Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 05

  So you can collaborate as an industry.

• 8:27Joe Weisenthal?

  Cooperative is always nicer.

• 8:27Speaker 04

  Sunday.

• 8:28Joe Weisenthal?

  I never really thought about how, how different that word lands. You know, it's like, oh, we're part of like a dairy cooperative. It's like, oh, that's great.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  But cartel is just the word for group in Spanish. Like, I feel like that's unfair to the word group.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, and economists certainly like use the word cartel like non-pejoratively. That's just like what's happening here. But you're right, like, when you think of like a dairy cooperative or these different cooperatives, like, they are, you know.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  They're all friends here.

• 8:50Speaker 05

  They are, they are businesses all working together, often to restrict supply and increase the price. And that's what was going on with the raisin cartel in California, centered in Carmen, where lots of raisins are grown. And I think the economic logic for it is like, there are things about agriculture that are hard. Sometimes you have all these small farmers that are going to sell to a few processors or, you know, dairy markets. You want them to kind of have leverage, almost like a union.

• 9:15Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  There's also a way, if you have a bumper crop one year, then you get a low price. But then the next year, if you have like a really terrible crop, I mean, maybe the price is higher, but like, you don't have as much to sell. So either there's this way that the government sees value in allowing them to cooperate to kind of smooth out the supply. And that's what was happening with raisins. It also meant that when they had this organization that was responsible for managing the supply of raisins year to year, in an effort to kind of smooth things out, but also boost the price, they also advertised. And so, yeah, like, their big coup was like the, like these singing raisins. And apparently you were one of them. And why didn't we, why didn't I know this two years ago?

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 9:54Joe Weisenthal?

  This is like really interesting. You know, also, again, like, milk is another one of these things that was like collectively advertised for years. It's like the drink milk campaigns with like.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  Got milk, yeah, so good.

• 10:03Joe Weisenthal?

  Milk mustaches that all the celebrities wear. But it's interesting, just musing on this a little bit further, because we've done a fair number of episodes about like agribusiness, gigantic, like really powerful nationwide.

• 10:18Joe Weisenthal?

  Wide entities and whether it's chicken or restaurant supply, et cetera. Of course, like a really large company, they solve the coordination problem by being one company, right? And there's no like, you know, they can pass pricing, you know, the, there's no law as far as I know that says like, the West Coast manager can't coordinate on prices with the East Coast manager, et cetera. But then you have like these independent entities like a farm, et cetera. And if they can't, you know, intuitively, if they can't coordinate on some level, whether it's output and price, then how would they, how would we ever expect smaller companies to compete against gigantic companies that, you know, have that ability to do internal coordination?

• 10:59Speaker 04

  I just love that it's like, how did we pick raisins? Why is it, or raisins so important? Am I supposed to be eating way more raisins?

• 11:06Speaker 05

  I mean, some people would have strong opinions on that. I mean, I think raisins were a big deal, like, uh, these raisin farms had really like kind of boon years, like during World War II. You know, they were growing lots of raisins that were bought by the federal government to send to the troops. And yeah, I think like probably, you know, this is not, I've not done deep dive on this, but I'd also just assume, right? Like the same way that like children used to receive an orange for Christmas and be happy about it. I assume also that like the sweetness of raisins was much more impressive when we were not just bathing in sugar on a daily basis.

• 11:36Tracy Alloway?

  Now you're the neighborhood villain if you like give out raisins for Halloween.

• 11:39Joe Weisenthal?

  Sorry, just to be clear, is that still, is the, is it still the same market structure for raisins?

• 11:44Speaker 05

  It has changed for raisins. And you know, the story in the book, and this one comes from like a classic, amazing Planet Money episode, is about two farmers, I mean, they're a couple, ran their farm together. And you know, there was a year in the early 2000s where the leadership of the cartel said, okay, this year we're diverting, everyone's diverting 47% of their crop. So not selling it and it goes to the cartel, which in theory, you know, we'll, we'll save it, sell it later and then pass money back. But in practice, these, this couple of these farmers felt like, This decision just kind of comes on high down to us. We're not involved and like they spend a lot of that money on, you know, sometimes marketing coups like that California raisins, but other things administrative costs that they didn't necessarily see a huge benefit from in their opinion. And so they decided they they felt that they'd

• 12:28Speaker 05

  found almost a legal loophole where if they did certain aspects of like packing raisins themselves, they felt that they therefore were not covered by the legislation and had to be part of the cartel and could sell their entire crop themselves. This led lent to like a stakeout and like someone like a P I. Named Rocky, like getting video footage of raisins leaving their farms that could then be used in a court case. And this ultimately went all the way to the Supreme Court.

• 12:53Tracy Alloway?

  Imagine staking out raisins.

• 12:55Joe Weisenthal?

  And so it was then the and this when which way did the Supreme Court basically ended the raisin cartel?

• 13:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, because some earlier decisions found against these farmers, the horns, and they would have had to pay a lot of money and the cartel would have endured. But the Supreme Court sided with them, said that, you know, this is more or less kind of like a taking of property situation and that this should not be enforced by federal law. And so the cartel still exists, but more as a kind of organization that maybe does, you know, coordination, maybe advertisements, but that farmers like the horns are not compelled to divert their raisins to anymore. So it really changed the system.

• 13:27Tracy Alloway?

  Defanged the cartel. You briefly mentioned oranges. And this is the other thing I learned. Well, I learned many things from this book, but one thing that stood out to me was this idea that you have cuties, the oranges, like the orange brand, and you think that that's one particular variety of oranges. But actually, it turns out that sometimes it's different fruit. What's going on there?

• 13:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think this was something really fun to do with the book that like we had this amazing episode about these raisin farmers, the raisin cartel. You can learn about, you know, cartels in agriculture. But for the book, there's also this opportunity to show like, oh, this really represents kind of like the commodity trap, right? Like companies are always in competition and in a state of like perfect competition, basically their profits go down to zero because they're all busy trying to lower their price, make a better product, which is great for all of us as consumers. But not great if you want to make a profit. And so like, how do you get out of that? A cartel is one way. They may be able to boost your price by having like managing the supply and having pricing power. It was really interesting, like the farmers in the episode and that I spoke to, it turned out they kind of had their own idea. Like, they almost wanted to do it in their own way.

• 14:31Speaker 05

  They wanted to escape the commodity trap in their own way. So one of them was experimenting with like, he wanted to sell his own like raisin snack packs and he was putting like spicy stuff on his raisins or doing some sweet mixes. I mean, like, that was kind of his dream was to sell those. And then I think, you know, branding is another way, right? That companies are able to have pricing power, customer loyalty and so on. And so it is interesting, like agriculture, probably the reason you have cartels is because it's really hard to have any pricing power there. Yeah. But this is one of those ways that like with cuties, they achieved brand recognition and pricing power. Like, there are other times I get some other Clementine and I don't like it as much. And then I, so the next time like I look for the cuties and I buy the cuties and they probably charge a little bit more and I'm okay with that because it's a dependable product that I like.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  And they did it by creating, you know, this cute like cartoonish character that I think many of us have seen on the packaging. And yeah, to your point, like, it's actually not always the same fruit in the bag because obviously like fruits go through cycles. And so, you know, kind of when the harvest for one ends and they run out, then they switch to a similar one.

• 15:30Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 15:30Speaker 05

  But under the same brand name.

• 15:31Tracy Alloway?

  That's truly successful branding when you have a different product, but it's still recognized as the same thing.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  It's just trust us.

• 15:37Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  Just don't worry about it. You're gonna be safe.

• 15:55Tracy Alloway?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets, fast. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 17:04Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors, and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

• 17:45Joe Weisenthal?

  This conversation is like really making me think generally about how, to some extent, rare, like true, like free market capitalism is in a lot of different industries and whether we're talking about really big entities like OPEC came up, or whether we're talking about raisins or et cetera. It's really hard to have sustainable industry without some level of coordination, especially if there's like a commodified element to what's being sold.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, if you want the end result to be that your society definitely has something, there needs to be some degree of like stability, dependability, regulation, some, something in there to make sure that it's actually, that it's smoothing those market cycles.

• 18:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I think this is why, like a field of economics that I'm really interested in is market design, because I think, right, like market design started with some of these case studies of just really unusual goods. Like, a lot of listeners might know, like, kidneys is kind of a canonical example, like, we're not gonna... I think Iran is the one place in the world where you can buy and sell a kidney. But you know, most of the world, the United States, we're not going to buy and sell kidneys. So like, how do you match people up? How do you make those quote unquote transactions happen? But I think market design, you know, with the growth of this field, it's also, you know, reached into other things where there certainly are prices. And I think it's also leading to more focus on, as you say, the way that this kind of like laissez faire market that's almost feels like it just sprung from the earth full of fraud. It's like, not really a thing.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  There are often rules being made, sometimes very intentionally, sometimes, you know, kind of sporadically and random. But, you know, I just think about the fact that like Wall Street and finance is a kind of, probably most people's main image of like a bastion of pure capitalism. Like, they literally have trading hours and they like close for the day. Or they have kind of like circuit breakers, right? Where we stop trading for, you know.

• 19:35Joe Weisenthal?

  They're not necessarily that onerous, but they have the tests that people have to take, the certification tests and FINRA and like certain of these like bodies that regulate, who can get in and so forth. Like, they play a similar like coordinating role.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  Also rules like on insider trading and things like that.

• 19:54Joe Weisenthal?

  And rules on insider trading, yeah.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  It's also the, I was just thinking while you were talking about Al Roth, like the guy, the kidney guy. I feel like the way that he sees the world is like, you actually have markets everywhere and you are choosing to see them or not by what you regulate. So like, it is always a coordination problem. And you're just like, if you aren't regulating it and allowing this market legally, then you're allowing it in the black market and that's also a choice. And you're accepting whatever negative externalities come with that. Like in prohibition, it was like, well, you have to buy your liquor from a gangster and maybe get shot. Like, is that a good social structure? Do we like that? And we didn't like that.

• 20:29Speaker 05

  And it also led to the overproliferation of speakeasy bars in, you know, wealthy cities around the world.

• 20:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:36Tracy Alloway?

  You know, you mentioned society earlier and one topic that I think we've both done podcasts on before, and it's a big chapter in your book, is childcare.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:45Tracy Alloway?

  Which is a sort of great demonstration in the overall economy of how the prices of goods keep going down. Like TVs are cheaper than ever and bigger than ever. Meanwhile, childcare just seems to be this like basket case of a service and the cost keeps going up. What did you learn from that chapter?

• 21:04Speaker 04

  That's one of my favorites for obvious reasons. I think it's such a problem that we have across our society that like is a problem that came of good things. Like economic progress means that like everybody's got jobs, everybody's wages are going up, the prices for a lot of these goods, as we have technological advancements and improvements and efficiencies, the prices go down and that's fantastic. Our phones get smarter, there, no one buys cameras separately anymore unless we're literally a photographer. And then that means that like all these tech salaries are going up and, you know, labor's getting more and more expensive. And so meanwhile, across the economy, there are all these jobs that are not scalable. There are just like people jobs where you have to do them with your hands and they're kind of like bespoke and they're just not, you can't make these same kind of technological

• 21:48Speaker 04

  advancements and make the cost go down. And so there's this like weird inelasticity there, but those people doing those jobs are like, I'm making 20 bucks an hour, doing childcare or singing on Broadway and like, great, but I could be over here like thinking more about chips and, you know, making these technological advancements and like feed my family and then some. So what am I doing? And so they migrate over, which makes the labor supply harder in the childcare sector. And you just get this like, it's just like kind of a broken system. And so daycares, childcare centers have to operate at like razor thin margins just to be able to get, even though it's so expensive, like it's crazy.

• 22:25Tracy Alloway?

  Say more on that, because I've never understood this. So like, everyone is paying insane amounts for childcare.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Literally insane.

• 22:31Tracy Alloway?

  And the childcare centers don't seem to actually make that much money off of it.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  That's correct. So you just like, it's such an empirical question. You just go and you stack up each thing and it's like, okay, you gotta pay for the real estate, you gotta pay for the insurance, you gotta pay for the labor so that like the people are there. And then you're just out of money, even though there are wait lists for longer than the duration of childhood, right? Like you get on a waitlist and like, I think I'm still on waitlist for my five and a half year old who's now in like kindergarten. I'm like, I just didn't get in, I guess. I know. And like, but that's because they have to keep these waitlists in order to say like, okay, to keep their spots filled so that they can kind of operate like they're basically offering their services at a discount, which is wild because it's, it's so in demand and they should be able to raise prices. There's also another thing where like, because the family making the choice to put their kid in daycare.

• 23:19Speaker 04

  They have an out. They could just, one of them could drop out of the labor force. So that ends up putting a cap on how much you can actually charge. So it's like broken on a few different, in a few different ways. And what ends up happening is like, you just need intervention. Like if you want this to be a service, you need intervention.

• 23:34Joe Weisenthal?

  That's interesting. I actually had not thought about that element that if you hit a certain price, then one of the parents, usually the mother, will just drop out of the workforce and do it, which is not the same case with healthcare, right? So, you know,

• 23:51Joe Weisenthal?

  like they, you know, you keep raising the price of some, you know, a heart transplant, et cetera. It's like, okay, you know what?

• 23:58Speaker 04

  Not gonna DIY it.

• 23:59Joe Weisenthal?

  I'm just gonna get into heart surgery myself and do this my own. And like, that's never gonna happen, but I hadn't, that's an interesting dynamic in terms of like, what puts a lid on the potential for, I guess, margin expansion.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. And our brilliant colleague Sarah Gonzalez calls this like baby's first market failure. Right? Cause you have like, everyone's like, I'm willing to pay so much money and yet there are lines everywhere. Why are there lines? That's a market failure. And it is the fact that there is this kind of cap on the price. And therefore, because people have the alternative, the made on by deal of dropping out of the workforce, you know, one member of the couple. And so, you know, that's why we're in this place, like really long lines, a market failure.

• 24:35Joe Weisenthal?

  The thing that I think about all the time, or one thing that I think about a lot is, you know, I went to like an elite university and, you know,

• 24:47Joe Weisenthal?

  and you know, I've like, oh, in my career, I've been around like a lot of people, well educated, et cetera. It's like, the number of people who I would call like peers, who like ever went into education, setting aside just childcare, but like became a teacher.

• 25:06Joe Weisenthal?

  I know like one, like it's really extraordinary, you know, like one person I'm friends with who like became like a public school teacher.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:12Joe Weisenthal?

  And it's just extraordinary to me, the degree to which this career, which many people think is like really vital and important to society. And of course, like public school teachers, an element of their job is childcare is that's where people, like how disconnected that is from people who've had like the privileges of like myself and all these people I know, just like, never like think about going into that as a career option. I mean, do you know many like public school teachers that like you went to college with or anything?

• 25:45Speaker 05

  No, and I absolutely have a friend who like, Works on the tech side of finance. Yeah. And you're like, he would be such a good teacher. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He would do it. But I think, you know, this kind of dynamic we've been talking about, it's commonly known as cost disease. Yeah. It's kind of the name for it, this way that like, these parts of the economy that look very similar, they're very labor intensive, they look very similar to the way they did 50 years ago, maybe even 100 years ago. They don't have those kind of crazy productivity gains of factories, of software. It's a very simple idea. Right. But it can explain so much.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:14Speaker 05

  And I think one kind of implication of it is that a lot of labor intensive services are things provided by the public, by the government. So, you know, public schools, policing, firefighting. There are technological improvements there and gains to be made for sure, but they're still, they're very labor intensive. And I think part of the reason why teacher salaries are low and budgets squeezed there is because of cost disease. And it's, you know, I've absolutely like spoken with people in firefighting where this is a big problem, that like their labor costs keep going up and lots of places have not therefore also increased. Yeah. You know, we're not all thinking about cost disease all the time and being like, of course my taxes need to go up X percent a year to account for cost disease.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  Maybe we should be talking about it.

• 26:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, like I think we should be talking about it. Like if you want to make sure that like people can go into firefighting, go into teaching, you know, make a solid wage, afford to live in especially the really successful cities where there is a lot of growth that is great, but also makes cost disease even worse. Like it is important to think about, that's a very, very strong argument for public subsidies or, you know, the government providing the service and, you know, increasing taxes potentially to pay and fund for these things.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  That line at the end of the chapter is basically just like this, it's a good thing, the sign of your economy doing well is that your taxes go up forever. It's like, whoa.

• 27:31Tracy Alloway?

  That's definitely an optimistic way of looking at it for sure. Well, one like thought experiment question I had on this was, does AI start to change this equation at all in the sense that, okay, the problem here is that you have a bunch of childcare workers who see other industries that are making big productivity gains and higher salaries and they can leave. And then if we have AI come in. To all these sectors that typically see a lot of productivity gains like software or other white collar jobs. Does some of that leakage start to stop?

• 28:06Speaker 04

  I love this like

• 28:07Joe Weisenthal?

  Basically, the question is.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  It's like a reverse backlash AI optimist.

• 28:10Joe Weisenthal?

  It's like a bunch of people are gonna have to get into home healthcare because they lose their white collar job.

• 28:15Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, like most new job creation in the US has been in the healthcare sector.

• 28:19Joe Weisenthal?

  But is it gonna be like, oh, yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  But I think that's not wrong, like, because all the AI disruption, yeah, collapses a sector of the economy of the labor market. And then those people need jobs and so they go into the things that are bespoke, human hand jobs. Like childcare and home. I love it. I love it.

• 28:33Joe Weisenthal?

  This has been my joke idea for a website I want to vibe code, which is, and I'll just say it because it's not actually.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  Just say it.

• 28:40Tracy Alloway?

  I feel like you've already said it. Was it on a podcast or just to me?

• 28:43Joe Weisenthal?

  Well, it's basically a website and you like enter in, it's like, what is your career? What is your education level? And how many years have you worked? And then it's a go, okay, what will your job be post AGI? And you click it and everyone just gets returned the same answer, home healthcare aid. Like that sort of, this is a joke.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  But yeah, that's good.

• 29:03Joe Weisenthal?

  It doesn't matter what it is.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:04Joe Weisenthal?

  That is the

• 29:05Speaker 05

  It's gonna make one joke, one economic point, you do it well.

• 29:08Joe Weisenthal?

  Maybe I'll make it, maybe I'll.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  You should. It's really good.

• 29:11Speaker 05

  I think I kind of have a pitch here. So whoever will be like the overlords in our AI future, like, please consider my pitch.

• 29:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay.

• 29:17Speaker 05

  But like, you know.

• 29:20Joe Weisenthal?

  Chat GPT if you're listening.

• 29:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was a good prompt.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  Like, I think it was kind of required in like the aughts, the early 2010s, that whenever someone wrote about a four day work week or base universal income, you would talk about how John Maynard Keynes made this prediction about, you know, I don't remember exactly how far out, but you know, in X number of decades, we'll be living, we'll be so much richer, this will kind of be our living standards.

• 29:39Speaker 04

  Abundance.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  And therefore we'll be working way fewer hours.

• 29:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  And famously, he underestimated how much wealthier Britain would get, as well as other countries like the United States. But of course, he greatly overestimated the idea that he thought we'd be working like 20 hours a week, 10 hours a week. But of course, like, working hours have stayed quite high. And I think a point I've seen, and I'm sorry, I forget who made this point first, but I thought was really smart, was like, well, yeah, we're not all working 10 hours a week, but now like children. The vast majority of the world don't work.

• 30:07Joe Weisenthal?

  True.

• 30:07Speaker 05

  And retirees retire. So like, we made choices so that, you know, some people could work last and could get an education or have a secure retirement. And I do think like, if we are going to, I don't know if it's coming, but if we are contemplating the potential of a world that has so much.

• 30:22Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 05

  You know, intelligence on demand, so much automation and so much abundance that we like, in theory, don't know what to do with ourselves. Like, perhaps allowing parents to not be like, man, I could barely afford childcare, do I drop out? And it feels like a terrible choice. And instead being in a place where it's like, it's a social norm that like, we are wealthy enough that people can drop out to take care of your children during formative years. Like, that's a vision I would love to see people express with excitement more.

• 30:45Joe Weisenthal?

  Can I push back just a little bit?

• 30:48Speaker 04

  As the person with their children, I don't want.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  That sounds so nice, but I care too.

• 30:52Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah. No, no, I mean, I agree.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  Let me work.

• 30:53Joe Weisenthal?

  In defense of Keynes, because I've thought about this a lot, which was like, you know, think about like, what quote work meant when he was writing that.

• 31:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:03Joe Weisenthal?

  And now think about that, like, there are those of us who have like, jobs, literally like, writing books and talking and stuff like that.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  He's like, that's fun, bro.

• 31:10Joe Weisenthal?

  I'm just, I'm just saying, like, does it really, compared to like, what Keynes had in mind when he talked about work and labor and toil versus what so many people do in the knowledge, does that even like, count as work?

• 31:23Speaker 04

  I love that. This is leisure.

• 31:24Joe Weisenthal?

  In other words, like, a lot of people really like their jobs these days, in a way that I suspect was not the case when Keynes was writing. And so it's like, are you even, are people who like their jobs even quote, working 15 hours a week?

• 31:38Speaker 04

  I never have to go into a coal mine. I never have to like, lose a finger on a sewing machine.

• 31:43Joe Weisenthal?

  This is what he was talking about when he was talking about work.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:45Joe Weisenthal?

  And now there are a lot of people that literally never have to do any hours, let alone 15, but any hours of work. Now, I understand that's not everyone.

• 31:53Tracy Alloway?

  But those are the jobs that are most likely to be disrupted by AI.

• 31:56Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, I'm just saying, like, I think Keynes might.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Multi-decade aberration.

• 32:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Might have been more right than.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. Oh, I think these are two good defenses of Keynes, but the point that like, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot more leisure time. It's just now people actually retire and they're not like, toiling in fields because they're insecure. And the fact that a lot of people, yes, are getting like, self-actualization. From their job and that feels like a story of progress as well.

• 32:18Tracy Alloway?

  Well, actually, on this note, I mean, there's a lot in the book that is framed like very optimistically. And you make a lot about human advancement and the idea there's the famous chart in there of like, how much you would have to work in order to afford like a certain amount of light over time. Like, there's a lot of human progress in this book. But if you look around in 2026, certainly in America, it doesn't feel like that's necessarily translating into the general vibes. There's this sort of like nihilistic sense of wealth building and economic advancement. And people just sort of giving up and thinking that the system's rigged against them and that they're never going to be able to afford a house or whatever.

• 33:00Tracy Alloway?

  In your view, as the authors of a whole book on, you know, a guide to economic life, is that a failure of like storytelling about how the economy works? Or is that is that sense, that vibe shift, an actual reflection of like secular stagnation in the way the economy works?

• 33:18Speaker 04

  My bias would be the latter, but I didn't write the book, so I wanna, I do wanna let you answer first.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  I think my inclination is like, yes, like both. You know, I think there's both. I think we see in surveys that people often think that the average American is working more than ever. When in fact, you know, we have seen not huge, but modest decreases in the amount of time that the average American works. There's often a lot of sense that American, the average American or median American has become much worse off. That does not match up with statistics. So I think there is absolutely some, whether it's built in or not, there's pessimism in there. That's perhaps, you know, maybe it's something about human nature. Maybe it's something about storytelling and maybe this book can help, you know, be a positive force in that respect. But I also think like, you know, this book is absolutely, you know, has chapters talking about big challenges and places where, you know, we have housing shortages.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  And that's often from people making selfish choices, ones that are rational and understandable, but that that lead to, you know, this problem of housing shortages, high rents, people not being able to afford homeownership. There are other examples. And I think also, yeah, like we have the hockey stick chart growth of like the global economy over the last 200 years, and it's incredible. But at the same time, like, I feel that way. I feel anxiety, anxiousness. I don't feel fully secure and optimistic about everything.

• 34:34Tracy Alloway?

  You're not happy that you can like flip on a light switch and get hours and hours.

• 34:38Speaker 05

  I mean, I do with the hedonic treadmill and then I forget about it. But I also think it's, you know, it's maybe that way where it's like, you can be somewhat comforted by the incredible story of progress we are part of. But probably if we all took that for granted, you know, would the progress continue? And it feels kind of similar. I don't know if you've had experiences, right? Like, you're working on a project and you're nervous about it and you're tense. And, okay, well, I'll just put this in first person, because this is true of me. You've done this to you, but like, you're working on a project, you're tense, you're nervous, you're stressed about it. And as many times as I tell myself, you've done similar projects like this before, you figured it out, it went really well, it probably will this time, too. I'm absolutely going to be anxious and stressed for quite a bit of that time. You know, some good moments, too, but I will be, I will have those, you know, that anxiety and whatnot. And like, maybe I could get to a place where I'm just

• 35:23Speaker 05

  blissful the entire project, but probably some amount of that stress and anxiety is required. And if it wasn't there, I wouldn't actually get to the good outcome.

• 35:31Joe Weisenthal?

  I feel in my head, it's like, oh, I'm so blessed. I can turn on a light switch and I get light and I can afford raisins and all this stuff. And you hear people say like, oh, you know, you can like get penicillin and like, you know, the king of England 200 years ago would have died from this infection, whatever. I understand that my head, it does nothing for me on my god. Like, it's like, I get that. And I appreciate it great. I love living. But like, it does not do it. It does not actually like, on any like real emotional level, make me happy. Just sort of like, I like intellectualize.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  We have a Planet Money episode for this. This is the cost of free donuts. Once you start getting something for free, you will not pay for it. So I'm, it's not the exact, but like, you have these things already. You do not delight in their arrival every time. Although I do delight in the arrival of amoxicillin. Like, I feel like, actually.

• 36:23Joe Weisenthal?

  It's just this whole thing of, oh, be so appreciative, because think about how like, the king would have been so jealous of you. It's like, great, but that's still like, I'm exhausted at the end of the day and all this stuff. It only goes so far.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  And I think there is a disconnect between like, you know, we've had life expectancy like peak in this country. And things are, there is, there does seem to be some kind of sea change in how our trajectory is going. I think we, yes, we can accept that we're way better off than we were 100 years ago. We're not all dying in the mines. Children aren't working. Like, this is all great. But I think that there in the past five, 10 years, there is this sort of, I don't know, there's a hollowing, there the inequality stuff that like the rise of AI and the like future that we all know is going to be very different. They were in the middle of this enormous transition. I mean, I think we all can accept like the disconnect between consumer sentiment and this, the data suggests that the data need updating, suggests that like, we're not quite collecting in the way that we need to be. There's something missing.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 04

  And I mean, not to get Derek Thompson, but I do think a lot of it is societal glue and we lost the habit, but like, what else? And how do you measure those things?

• 37:26Speaker 05

  And I think also, you know, we talked before about how often people's survey responses suggest that they think, you know, wages have gone way down when in fact it's gone up, but also like, that almost maybe captures a more fundamental truth that like, people are right that like, the average worker is not benefiting as much from economic growth in the US as it, as they used to. And so if the sentiment that like, things have just gotten worse and worse and worse is not quite true, it's absolutely true that like, gains are no longer as broadly shared and there's a lot to like.

• 37:54Tracy Alloway?

  I actually, I think this is key. Like, I think humans have a innate tendency to look at relative gains versus absolute gains.

• 38:01Joe Weisenthal?

  Definitely, definitely.

• 38:01Tracy Alloway?

  Right? And so you see that like, come to the fore right now. All right. I think that's a great place to leave it, maybe.

• 38:08Speaker 04

  What? I thought we were just getting into it.

• 38:11Tracy Alloway?

  Thank you so much for coming on All Boss.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 38:15Tracy Alloway?

  Congratulations on the book. The book again is Planet Money, A Guide To The Economic Forces That Shake Your Life.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  Joe, that was really fun.

• 38:36Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, I love catching up with them. That was great.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  And it is genuinely like, I haven't read the full book cover to cover, but I have been flipping through it and like, just the number of interesting things that you can pick out, like the oranges thing, fascinating.

• 38:49Tracy Alloway?

  I forgot to ask Alex this, but like, one of the few people I found that actually shares my like obsession with insurance

• 38:55Joe Weisenthal?

  as a potent force in not just the economy, but in society. Yeah, I find these kind of conversations really interesting and helpful because like, it's like, sort of like, pretty core ideas. Like, okay, like, what is the issue with childcare? Or what do agricultural cooperatives slash cartels, like, what problems they actually solve? How much are we actually working and why have we gotten so much richer? But, you know, people are still like

• 39:23Tracy Alloway?

  We feel bad about it.

• 39:24Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, etc. Like, these are like, pretty big

• 39:27Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 39:27Joe Weisenthal?

  questions. Like, they sort of, like, if you, like, think about them, you can get to, like, some interesting places.

• 39:33Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Joe Weisenthal?

  So it's good to sort of just, like, zoom back and, like, think about some of these things for a while.

• 39:38Tracy Alloway?

  Also, to your point, it kind of illustrates, once again, like, all the decisions that go into the economy.

• 39:45Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Tracy Alloway?

  In the sense that, like, the economy is often pitched, at least in America, as this free market thing.

• 39:50Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:51Tracy Alloway?

  Exists and, like, is automatic in many ways and just does its own thing. But actually, there are all these active decisions and policies that go into it.

• 40:00Joe Weisenthal?

  Choices about market structure. You know what I was thinking about? Was one of the things that we've talked about a lot on the podcast is that after the great financial crisis, the housing industry got hollowed out. All these home builders went out of business, etc. And now we're, like, faced with a big housing shortage, etc. What if there had been more coordination among

• 40:23Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 40:23Joe Weisenthal?

  home builders to curb both the upside and the downside, etc. Would that be more sustainable? Now, like, people, like, would get really anxious about the idea of, like, any sort of, like, you know, home builder coordination, etc.

• 40:37Tracy Alloway?

  Subsidies or whatever.

• 40:37Joe Weisenthal?

  But when you look at the cost that we pay for boom bust cycles, you understand why some of these mechanisms get developed and blessed, at least for certain periods of time by the law, etc. Because there is a price that you pay for boom busts over time. And so I think, like, these are actually, like, pretty interesting questions.

• 40:56Tracy Alloway?

  It is phenomenal that, like, we haven't done much for housing in that sense, but we have for raisins, right? There's a cartel or cooperative that exists in order to smooth the boom bust cycle in raisins.

• 41:09Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 41:09Tracy Alloway?

  It's funny, like, the things that we pick

• 41:11Joe Weisenthal?

  I know.

• 41:11Tracy Alloway?

  socially important. All right. Shall we leave it there?

• 41:14Joe Weisenthal?

  Let's leave it there.

• 41:15Tracy Alloway?

  This has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

• 41:21Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart. Check out the book Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life by Alex Myassy. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at CarmenArman, Dashal Bennett at Dashbot, and Kale Brooks at KaleBrooks. And for more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com/oddlots or the daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.

• 41:47Tracy Alloway?

  And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we have conversations about the economic forces shaping our lives, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

• 42:39Speaker 06

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