Boomers Didn’t Ruin Everything. Really.

The popular narrative is that baby boomers rode cheap houses and 401(k)s to wealth, dismantled the welfare state behind them, and left everyone else to fight over scraps. But conflating boomers and conservatives lets the latter off the hook for 25 years of tax cuts and disinvestment in children. It erases the Black boomers, poor boomers, and pensionless workers who never got a slice of that wealth. And it lays the groundwork for the one policy outcome its loudest advocates actually want: gutting Social Security. Who really benefits when you decide your parents' generation is the enemy? Support Optimist Economy by donating: https://optimisteconomy.com Video clips are on the Optimist Economy YouTube channel⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@optimist_economy. Follow us on Instagram at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy https://www.instagram.com/optimist_economy or TikTok at ⁠⁠@optimist_economy https://www.tiktok.com/@optimist_economy. Or meet other Optimists on our Substack https://optimisteconomy.substack.com/ chat https://substack.com/chat/4604257?utm_source=pub-nav-bar. Optimist merch provides great utility: https://merch.ambientinks.com/collections/optimisteconomy Send your economic questions, concerns, or executive orders to [email protected] mailto:[email protected]

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

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• 0:30Speaker 02

  This is, this is the worst topic for us to be rolling on, on a day when you and I are both in terrible moods about the podcast of like, today we're going to talk about why boomers don't suck. Honestly, digging deep here.

• 0:48Speaker 02

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

• 0:52Robin Rauzi?

  I'm editor Robyn Rousey.

• 0:53Speaker 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. Sorry, I'm already giggling because I'm like, I guess that means the problem for episode today is baby boomers?

• 1:04Robin Rauzi?

  Is baby boomers, yeah.

• 1:11Robin Rauzi?

  It could be the problem is whiny millennials who complain about baby boomers.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  God's deep. Well, you know what? We're going to talk about boomers and generations. But first, announcements.

• 1:24Robin Rauzi?

  The only announcement I have is to remind people that it helps us out a lot. If you rate the show on Apple Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen to the podcast on, if you want to leave us a written review, that's also super. But yeah, that's it.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Excellent. We also, if the review is really funny, that's the only reason why. Like, you should tell us genuinely how we're doing. But if the review is funny, we do love reading them on the show.

• 1:47Robin Rauzi?

  We do.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Remember Andy Five?

• 1:51Robin Rauzi?

  What's his name, Andy Five?

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Johnny Five.

• 1:54Robin Rauzi?

  Johnny Five.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Johnny Five. All of the compliments about how like, you guys are trying so hard. I have them filed away as the bless her heart.

• 2:05Robin Rauzi?

  You have a file of them? Nice.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  After announcements, we move into retcon for retroactive continuity, where we reflect and discuss and correct things that we said in the past episodes. Robin, do you have a retcon?

• 2:19Robin Rauzi?

  I do. We were talking about the Trump accounts last week, and I said in passing that Michael Dell was going to give money out to all kids. And I went to check that. Michael Dell has committed to giving out $6.25 billion to 25 million kids under the age of 10 if their family income is under $150,000. It's $250 that he would put into their Trump account. So it includes a lot of kids who would not get that $1,000 in the Trump account pilot program. I think he's trying to create an incentive for people to create accounts who aren't part of that pilot.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  I mean, good on him.

• 2:56Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I would prefer it if it came from the federal government and just automatically enrolled everyone. But I do like the idea of directly transferring wealth outside of the very wealthy. So good on you, Michael Dell.

• 3:08Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I just wanted to make sure I was clear that it wasn't just young kids and it wasn't kids up to age 18 who can in fact open the accounts. It's kids under 10. And if their family income is under $150,000.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  I have one retcon about housing.

• 3:23Robin Rauzi?

  More about housing. Shocking.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Want to talk about anymore. I don't know how to say this, except for that I think maybe there are some people who listen to the show who really need to hear me say I'm wrong. That supply matters more than income and supply is really important and supply will fix things. And they need to hear me say it. I don't know what else to do to get people to stop calling me a stupid in my DMs for pointing out that building a condo tower in every city in America is not going to make housing affordable.

• 3:58Robin Rauzi?

  Well, it reminds me a lot of what you were saying about like people got supply and demand. Like, that's all they understand about economic forces. Like, we talked about this in relationship to power, but it's also true in relationship to like these levels of income. And it's not a one and done solution. I mean, I guess if you tripled the amount of housing and the population didn't grow.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:20Robin Rauzi?

  Maybe.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  I mean, but what predicts home prices in a locality is wealth.

• 4:26Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  It is the top tail of the income distribution that predicts housing prices really, really well. And supply comes second. And there's lots of things we can do to make supply better or to make supply more ample, but it's not clear that it would fix that problem. Now, I did talk to someone at a conference who I went to in DC last week, who was very kind, who's worked a lot on housing, who said that whenever you talk about housing, you do have to carve out the California coastal counties, that they are different. And California suffers from both the income problems and the supply problems in deep extremes, home to more billionaires than any other place on earth.

• 5:03Robin Rauzi?

  And it also suffers from, not suffers from, but has other constraints about building. For instance, lack of water. I was just up in, near San Luis Obispo, and they can't build houses there unless they find a way to offset the water use because they don't, they don't have enough groundwater.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  I was too cavalier about abundance and supply. And there are lots of really good things that supply and abundance can do. I just [BLEEP] that. I'm not sorry. It's not supply. I'm going back to what I said before. I, I just worry that this supply train is like rolling on through the station and like, everyone's like jumping on of like, we just need to build, we just need to build.

• 5:46Robin Rauzi?

  I know. And we just need to slash regulations and we just need to, we need to fix zoning. Those things can be true. They still may not be adequate, an adequate solution.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Like, everything you think about housing being built and where it should be built is totally right. People who don't like housing being built are often insecure homeowners who are terrified of their property going down in price, which a lot of people went through in the financial crisis and great recession. And they're afraid of losing an investment in their home. And they're so tied to the money that they need to get out of their home that they are antagonistic to anything that could possibly change. All of those things can be true, but it is not clear that that is the salvation for affordable housing, especially if a lot of affordability is predicted by the preponderance of very rich people. So we'll never talk about housing again. This is my last retcon. We're never talking about housing.

• 6:35Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, and, and, you know, it took me a long time to realize that it's a rare thing that you want to hear from people who disagree with you. Even if it makes your brain like crackle a little bit while you do it. It's hard. I mean, it's, it's hard for me to read the Wall Street Journal opinion page.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  You actually read the opinion page? I don't read the opinion page. I even like skip over it so I don't look at the headlines.

• 6:58Robin Rauzi?

  Not every day and not every article. And I read some of the financial columnists and the economics columnists at the Wall Street Journal, some of whom I think are very good, right? I mean, I have little patience for things that are badly done, badly argued, but I like to know how other people think. Maybe it's just because I don't really have super strong opinions on a lot of things and so I'm curious what other people think. But it's one of the things that made being an op ed editor really fun, right?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  It's, I mean, the housing one's an interesting one because it's agreeing on the problem, but not necessarily agreeing on the solution.

• 7:33Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  But then when you don't agree on solution, people think that you're minimizing the problem, like you don't care about the problem.

• 7:39Robin Rauzi?

  Yes.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  And it's not, it's not the same. Like, I care a lot about this problem.

• 7:42Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Which is why I don't want to put all of our eggs in the just build with fewer restrictions basket. By not liking their solution, I've made it seem like I don't care about the problem.

• 7:57Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Or that like their problem doesn't exist.

• 7:59Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. People don't examine their own thoughts before they fire off an internet comment, I think.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Well, I guess maybe my retcon would then just be like, I see you frustrated by arbitrary housing rules that you think aren't necessary. I see you frustrated that there are homeowners in your town who would rather set themselves on fire than allow accessory dwelling units. Or that you just need a little bit of density in your neighborhood so that other people get to go to schools. I see you and I see that and I respect it and it is a problem and it is frustrating and it has consequences and we could build housing really differently in this country. I hope you will see me when I say that there is an argument that has relatively stable ground that the supply deficit of housing is overblown.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  It has motivations in being overblown and that it is a distraction from the degree to which income inequality is warping our housing market in a way that leaves half of America behind. I just want you to see me, what I'm seeing when I look at the housing market and all I am seeing is warping of our economy by this wealth that the government at the federal level endorses. It's not that it's a problem they are doing a bad job at containing, they have spent the past 25 years endorsing it.

• 9:20Robin Rauzi?

  No, creating it.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yes. All right, terms and conditions. Do you have anything?

• 9:25Robin Rauzi?

  I don't. Do you?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  So I wanted to go back to Calvin ball.

• 9:30Robin Rauzi?

  I do still love Calvin ball as a...

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a term we brought up a few episodes ago, Calvin ball, where you change the rules every time you play.

• 9:38Robin Rauzi?

  Every time you play.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  So I think Calvin ball is a great way to think about where did generations in the United States come from as well as their moniker. It's Calvin ball. You change the rule with every generation. It's pretty incredible. So Calvin ball, we're just doing a refresh before we get to our centerpiece, which we will also stop in here across promo and then we'll get to the big pill crow.

• 10:06Robin Rauzi?

  So for our main pill crow today, we're going to talk about boomers and why people are so angry at boomers.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Answering the basic question, did boomers ruin everything?

• 10:17Robin Rauzi?

  Particularly the economy.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  They've decided to devote all the economic resources we have into making more World War II movies and documentaries about Woodstock and that's going to become a third of our economy from here on out.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  It's easy.

• 10:34Robin Rauzi?

  All right, why did you?

• 10:36Speaker 02

  Why did I want to do this?

• 10:37Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, all right.

• 10:40Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  One of the most formative books I have ever read in my entire adult life is this book called, I have it here, Myth in the Greatest Generation.

• 10:51Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, yes.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  By Kenneth.

• 10:53Robin Rauzi?

  We've talked about this book before.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Uh huh. I don't remember who recommended it to me. I don't remember how I heard about it. I just know that I ordered this book and it is a social history of Americans during World War II. And, I mean, it is just jaw dropping. I think the myth that you've heard of the Greatest Generation, of the people who like, they defeated fascism, they made the world safe, and then they went home and they had nuclear families. And they didn't get divorced, and they all worked. Like, it's this myth of like the...

• 11:24Robin Rauzi?

  But not the women. The women didn't work.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  The women didn't work, obviously, because they knew that staying home with their children was better. And they had 2.5 of them. Like, it's very much this like, you might not have ever had it written in a narrative that was three sentences long, but you know it. You know that Americans used to be better, and now they're not. That we used to be better at family, we used to be better at working, we used to care more about our country. And this book just, I wouldn't say essentially, I wouldn't say it's like the most beautiful writing I've ever written, but it just says like, this is a complete mythology.

• 11:58Robin Rauzi?

  Of course it is.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  And if we are myth-making from this Greatest Generation and making them into heroes that they weren't, we are making boomers into villains that they're not.

• 12:09Robin Rauzi?

  Oh.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  That was why I wanted to do this episode, because there is someone who benefits from you deciding that someone else is to blame.

• 12:18Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, for sure. That's always the case.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  So, yeah, they were named the Greatest Generation when almost all of them were dead, in the 90s, when Tom Brokaw wrote a book about them.

• 12:27Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, but before that, they were not called the Greatest Generation. So, one, highest divorce rates we'll ever have, 1945 and 1946.

• 12:34Robin Rauzi?

  When people come back from the war.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Just massive numbers of divorce.

• 12:38Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Two, lots of child abandonment.

• 12:40Robin Rauzi?

  Oh.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  And lots of abortion. During the war.

• 12:43Robin Rauzi?

  For sure.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  And there's a quote in here about how the Public Health Commissioner for the City of San Francisco, which is a port city, he says that there are years in the war in which he thinks there are more abortions than live births in the City of San Francisco. There's rampant cheating on partners. This is where Dear John letters come from. There's a trade amongst soldiers in World War II to have pictures of naked women so that if you do get a Dear John letter, you have smut to send back to your soon-to-be ex-wife or girlfriend. Incredibly high rates of desertion.

• 13:16Robin Rauzi?

  You mean desertion in the military?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Desertion in the military. I mean, like, people in the military just deserting. Really high rates. And there's also, like, they do surveys of troops of, like, why are you here? And the most common response was, they were drafted. And then we get into, like, the race stuff of just how deeply racist this generation was. And they bring up things like, at a production site in Detroit, it might have been an airplane facility, I don't remember. Anyway, a black guy got a promotion and, like, 15,000 white people walked off the job. There's race riots at this time. Like, it's a very ugly version of a time that we associate a lot of good things with. Yeah, these were just people.

• 13:56Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  A lot of them were racist. They weren't perfect. And he doesn't say it to, like, criminalize them. He's just like, you don't hear about this part. Like, we've completely dehumanized these people into these saints to which we aspire, and we were never that. So who gains from you thinking that you're a failure relative to people who never existed? Obviously, I'm accepting everyone's grandpa who is clearly better. But those were the hits, the highlights of myth and the greatest generation.

• 14:22Robin Rauzi?

  Okay. So the boomers, they're kids, right? Mostly?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Yes. So Calvinball, I brought this up in Terms and Conditions. The idea that every time you play the game, you make a new rule. That is definitely the case with generational titles.

• 14:39Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  So there is only one generation that has a name in the United States, according to the Census Bureau and the Population Reference Bureau, and that is the baby boom. 1946, 1964, 18 years of extremely elevated birth rates.

• 14:55Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Goes all the way to 1964. So it's not just they had kids the year they came home from the war. This is a longer period. After that, everything else is invented by either authors, columnists, or advertisers.

• 15:08Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  And they're invented for the purpose of storytelling. So I think, I wanted to make sure to give a shout out to those names that didn't make it.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  So.

• 15:19Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  You are a Gen Xer.

• 15:22Robin Rauzi?

  I am. I am a Gen Xer.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Okay, but you were also Baby Bust.

• 15:28Robin Rauzi?

  Sure.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  This one's my favorite. The 20-nothings.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Grunge kids.

• 15:33Robin Rauzi?

  Yep.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  And the 13th gen.

• 15:35Robin Rauzi?

  Yep.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Before you became Gen X.

• 15:37Robin Rauzi?

  It's funny that Gen X is the one that stuck.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Which one do you prefer?

• 15:41Robin Rauzi?

  I don't know. I mean, I remember the 20-something cover of Time Magazine came out when I was in college and it was just like, everybody of course gets a little annoyed because it was a play on 30-something, the TV show. And, you know, as you say, they're invented, but it did sort of, I do remember thinking that it didn't capture my experience personally, but it did capture the experience of a lot of people my age, which was their parents got divorced, they were latchkey kids. But again, it's not, you know, none of those things were universal, but it, you know, per our earlier conversation about feeling seen or not. I think in a way, it did make me, it did make me feel seen when

• 16:21Robin Rauzi?

  I was 21 or 22. I do say Gen X, so I guess that's the one I prefer.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  I feel like Baby Bust is quite harsh.

• 16:29Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. I mean, but it really was. It was like a big drop off in population size and we are, we suffer politically for it.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  But consequences of that, y'all would have been busters. It would have been boomers and busters. I think busters is actually like, you could, there's some power there to busters.

• 16:47Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I am a millennial.

• 16:50Robin Rauzi?

  You are.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  1985. So no matter the definition of millennial, I'm in it. We were Gen X too. Gen Y.

• 16:58Robin Rauzi?

  Gen Y, I remember.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Echo Boomers.

• 17:01Robin Rauzi?

  Uh huh.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Digital Natives.

• 17:03Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  The Net Generation, Nexters, instead of Xers, we're Nexters. And the Trophy Kids.

• 17:12Robin Rauzi?

  Oof.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Gen Z has also been called I Gen, Multi Gen, Homeland Gen.

• 17:22Robin Rauzi?

  Homeland Gen, because they were born after the creation of Homeland Security?

• 17:25Speaker 02

  I, um, they were all just huge Claire Danes fans.

• 17:29Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, seriously.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  I would, I think I would have liked being either Echoes or Trophies.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Or Xers, or Xers Nexters. I mean, because Trophy Kids is a comment on both our parenting and ourselves in that like, we got lots of trophies, but then our parents gave us lots of trophies.

• 17:48Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, I was thinking like, trophies, like being trophy wives, you know, like something like.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  No, but I think there's that too of like, how much emphasis is put into child rearing and like, the pressure on kids and. So that was my, I want to do a little bit of Calvinball on generations are not a thing. Someone makes them up for advertising purposes. I mean, I read a really interesting article from the Population Reference Bureau about, you know, the reason why we have these generations is to help with storytelling.

• 18:17Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  It's to give people an identity and to give an identity to a set of people whose experiences might be different as a way to really foster and catalyze storytelling. But I think that there's an aspect to which like, the story is wrong. And, and when you're young, right, you just like, let me count the ways of like millennials were mischaracterized in my youth.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  But I think that there is a degree to which we don't do as much like, and what did we get wrong about the Boomers? And so I wanted to, I wanted to talk about that because I think the Boomers are presented with what's wrong with the economy.

• 18:53Robin Rauzi?

  For sure. And it's, you know, it's interesting because I feel like a lot of that conversation, I, I went back to read a bunch of articles. You know, did Boomers ruin everything? Did Boomers ruin the economy? A lot of them from Boomers.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Yes, there was one in the Wall Street Journal that was like, congratulations Boomers, you own America now.

• 19:13Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. Robert Reich did a whole riff about Boomers and. I take a lot of their point, but a lot of the anger really does seem to be millennials angry at boomers, at least recently. And I think, not that I want to bring it up, but I think a lot of it has to do with housing.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Oh, come on. Nope, we're not doing it. Talking about something else.

• 19:34Robin Rauzi?

  But anyway, somebody wrote this, which is like the dynamic of boomers waiting for millennials to say you were right, and the converse waiting for you to say you're sorry, right? Like, there's a parent-child generational thing that's going on there with this argument, to which the excerpts just kind of stand back, put up their hands and go, okay, you guys, have it out, have it out.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  There's a great SNL skit about this, where they make fun of all the generations, and the host says, "Well, I'm an excerpt. We just sit back and watch it burn."

• 20:04Robin Rauzi?

  Exactly.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Fade into the background and watch it all come down. So, the basic premise of the boomers ate the economy, and there's no more for the rest of us, I think, has a few features.

• 20:16Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  One, they're big and bad.

• 20:19Robin Rauzi?

  They're big.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  They're big. Technically, millennials are bigger now, because enough of them have died.

• 20:24Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I saw that they crossed over boomers. It was just like a few years ago, right?

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, very recent. But now millennials are the largest living generation, to the extent that you think that they're a real thing. And also, what year did they end that classification?

• 20:35Robin Rauzi?

  It's true. You can make them bigger or smaller, depending on...

• 20:37Speaker 02

  I can actually make millennials real big. It's everyone born after 1965. So, the boomers, they're big. They're bad. They came of age in the late 70s, early 80s, when the US was going through a rough economy. But they got houses for cheap and dealt with really high interest rates, but then held on to those houses, and now they're all worth millions. They were the first to get exposure to 401Ks, and they rode the market to wealth and retirement. They benefited from a generous welfare state that they then dismantled in their wake. They benefited from a progressive tax system that they also

• 21:21Speaker 02

  dismantled in their wake to give a lot of tax cuts as they hit their prime voting years. Basically, the boomer story is they're going to benefit from government investment when they're young and take it away from people as they get old and rich. And that is why boomers have ruined the economy.

• 21:37Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, the only thing that I think I would add that you missed is the debt. All of this was financed with the national debt.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:45Robin Rauzi?

  So the millennials are squeezed out of making any policy decisions now because all the money can only go to social security, Medicare, interest on the national debt, and the US military.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, the spending on the elderly is an interesting one, too, because for me, there's this, this like, who gains from making boomers the bad guys? Why do we have to make boomers into bad economic actors? So we'll care less if we cut social security? I mean, I think, I think that's like slightly conspiratorial, but the link to they have so much money and the economy favored them, and also they get social security and Medicare, is great, like, first level, like, foundation building for we shouldn't have social security.

• 22:31Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, no, the Wall Street Journal, I don't know if it's the same one, but it did exactly that. It started at all the things that they voted for, and you think that it's going on this direction of like, we need to help millennials, and then it's just be like, we need to cut social security.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the answer here is to not have social security or Medicare because old people are mean and they had enough money on their own.

• 22:53Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  I think the first things to say about this characterization that I, I think have to be said out loud is that like, you would not know from what we just said that there are black boomers.

• 23:03Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, no.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  And that their economic trajectory is incredibly different from their rich, white brethren. I think that you also wouldn't know that there are poor people who are boomers, boomers that don't own houses, that don't have retirement accounts, who suffered from things like their pension was taken away, they never had access to a 401k, and then their job was, you know, shipped overseas.

• 23:25Robin Rauzi?

  Offshore.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  By the time they were 50.

• 23:27Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  And then a lot of the reason why you don't hear about them is because a lot of them are already dead. I think we, we have picked a story and we have erased the people who don't fit in it. And that is problem one, is that you erase vulnerability, you erase diversity, and you erase the economic failings of a generation. That's problem one.

• 23:45Robin Rauzi?

  Well, you erase the people for whom that economy failed.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Yes, you erase the people.

• 23:51Robin Rauzi?

  I mean, like, there is a huge amount of wealth being held by the elderly in this country right now. And they need it, right? They need it. They save for it. It needs to support them in their retirement. That's what we told them to do.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, the economic term behind this is called life cycle savings. And the idea is that you save up money while you work to dis-save. We actually call it dis-saving when you, I know, it's kind of a fun, I mean, in our context, it sounds dry. Not, we don't spend, we dis-save. I don't know about y'all being spending this weekend. I've been dis-saving this weekend. But, you know, you basically, the wealthiest you are in your life is on the day you retire. And you have at that point accumulated wealth and accumulated savings so that you can then draw that down and dis-save until you die. And the idea of a life cycle savings is that all of the wealth that you build up is then depleted.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  So there are economists who have tried to look at wealth, asset savings in the US and determine how much of it is life cycle savings versus like inherited accumulated wealth.

• 25:03Robin Rauzi?

  And what, do you know what they find?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on who looks at it and when, but the, the general consensus, I'm like afraid to say that now. Yeah, I think it's mostly life cycle.

• 25:17Robin Rauzi?

  Really?

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Up until this point, it's, it's, I mean, there are very wealthy people who have handed down dynastic wealth. But there's not 100 million of them. I mean, there, I think there, I think there were 80 million boomers. That's a notable fact.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Boomers, where are they? Okay, 76 million people saving for retirement to the degree that they can. And some of them being quite successful at it explains more of the wealth than just dynastic wealth. Like, there are Bezos and Musk and Gates's and Dell's of the world. There are those people. There are more billionaires now than there ever have been. But the 70-plus million people saving for retirement is also a lot of money. And so the idea is that a lot of the wealth has been life cycle. So the reason why the Wall Street Journal says that they own the America now is because

• 26:19Speaker 02

  there are a lot of them are right at the peak of their wealth because they're either retiring or they have retired. For current reference, it's 2026. So the oldest boomer is 80 and the youngest boomer is 62. So you are getting a lot of people who are right at their wealth peak.

• 26:37Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, they're at their peak financially of contributing and not dis-spending.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Dis-saving.

• 26:43Robin Rauzi?

  I'm sorry, dis-saving.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Dis-spending is when you save. Come on, Robin. Economics is pretty simple.

• 26:49Robin Rauzi?

  Right, right. Sorry. So anyway, we would want, we want them to have this money. But I do, I get the feeling that people are mad that they're living long and spending it all and not spreading it around. There's a whole, I read this whole article about, you know, inheritance and that, you know, the new attitude, and I don't think that it's new, the new attitude among boomers is spend it before you die, right? You've earned this money, enjoy it. And that, of course, again, in this like broad paintbrush with which generations get painted, it's an extension of them being the me generation, right? Which was the other selfish and self-involved and all about live for the moment, don't

• 27:34Robin Rauzi?

  plan ahead, which of course, if they weren't planning ahead, they wouldn't have.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Accumulated.

• 27:39Robin Rauzi?

  Eighty percent of the wealth.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Accumulated.

• 27:41Robin Rauzi?

  Quite so much wealth.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I, I think of this as like boomers are, are an example of like, there's a lot that we can get right in our economy if we try.

• 27:53Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  And we can have a generation that has money, that has houses, that lives a long time. I guess part of me feels like there's almost like a, a parallel to workers and unions. When you tell a low wage worker at an awful job, making the minimum wage, like, you know, what's the problem? Someone out there is unionized and making good money. Like, that is not beginning of the problem, that someone else is succeeding. It's that you have been set up to fail. And so it's, it's easy to point to success as the problem and as the culprit, when really it's that someone has held you back. And I think that, that conflates with boomers of like, it's their fault that you're being held back and also they're really successful.

• 28:34Robin Rauzi?

  I mean, I think that the blame gets laid on them, and I'm not saying this is fair, but is because they were also in control of the politics. You've got multiple, multiple boomer presidents, boomers dominating Congress, and the feeling is that it wasn't just that they benefited from the program, but then they also made these decisions, like, as you have talked about, these 25 years of tax cuts, those were voted on by largely boomer politicians.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Well, that one even makes me more mad, because like, y'all, that's just a Republican policy. That's, that's not a boomer policy, that's a Republican policy. And now they're like, oh, no, no, these aren't the droids you're looking for. Like, Republicans didn't pass tax cuts? Boomers did. Like, don't you forget whose fault it is that we've like absolutely decimated the federal budget for tax cuts to rich people? Your parents. I mean, like, I know it plays, but that's not what's wrong.

• 29:25Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  The political argument that boomers came into office and then made things more conservative gets painted to because they're all like very conservative selfish me people who just want to eat up wealth. As opposed to like, yeah, I mean, boomers are also quite liberal, and there were lots of liberal boomers as well, including liberal boomer presidents. And if they tilted more conservative, your problem is still with conservatism.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  And not with the people.

• 29:55Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  I.

• 29:56Robin Rauzi?

  We should probably blame Gen Xers who voted for a bunch of these Republicans because we were brainwashed by, I don't know, Reagan in the 80s.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, this is fair. I do think if we're making the political argument, Xers are more conservative than Boomers.

• 30:09Robin Rauzi?

  We're a problem. And it makes me worry sometimes about, you know, peak Xers were eight years of Reagan. It makes me worry about the people who are in that age now, growing up under Trump. Like, what, what deep messages are being, like, planted that will surface when they're 40 and actually start to vote, you know?

• 30:28Speaker 02

  I don't know. The difference is that people really love Reagan still, and they always, like, there's a lot of idolatry around Reagan. And I, I am, you think there's gonna be, there's gonna be myth-making idolatry around Trump?

• 30:43Robin Rauzi?

  I think there already is.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. But I mean, like, that's now. I'm talking about in, like, 20 years.

• 30:50Robin Rauzi?

  You think it's just gonna fade away?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, because he's a fraud, a 34-time convicted felon. He's a hateful person in his politics, in that he, he knows how to get people mad. But you don't have a legacy being mad or destroying things. Legacy comes from hope and what you can build. He is not building anything. In fact, the only thing he's building are things he puts his name on, like Trump accounts. And that's not going as well as he wants. And also, they'll take it away from him to make sure people can have it. Like, I, I just, he is not going to make a legacy that's positive. I think people view Reagan as having won the Cold War.

• 31:28Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Of having, like, taken control of big-spending Democrats, of having saved Social Security, of bringing, like, honest folksism to politics after.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Nixon, which like, ugh, Nixon. Like, I don't think you see a lot of young people out here, or a lot of people amongst the boomers who are like, you know who I love? Nixon. Like, you do not find people out there that are like, oh, my god, Nixon, those were the days. Like, you didn't grow up in the Nixon era. Like, it's like, yeah, I mean, the guy's a disgrace. I think Trump's gonna go the same way. Like, his legacy will just get smaller and smaller over time. And Nixon, Nixon actually gives me a lot of hope of how little, like, he just, he just does not have many defenders.

• 32:11Robin Rauzi?

  No.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Um, anyway, boomers, I think, I, I don't, I don't, I mean, obviously, I will laugh at boomer jokes. I will make boomer jokes. I will make them to my boomer mother, um, with pride and glee. She knows me, believe it or not. She, she understands that this is just what I'm like. Um, but I will never point to success of a large group of Americans and say that's what's wrong.

• 32:37Robin Rauzi?

  Well, it does seem like an argument that's sort of like, we, yeah, because they succeeded, nobody else can.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  And that's not true. Like, they succeeded, and maybe we have to succeed in a different way, but that doesn't mean we can't have success, or that their success impedes ours.

• 32:52Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  I mean, like,

• 32:54Robin Rauzi?

  Because that is absolutely the argument that gets made.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there, no, let's, let's make it really clear. Hold on, did you, I'm sorry, did you just say housing again?

• 33:00Robin Rauzi?

  No, I didn't say anything.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Are you trying to trigger me? Are you trying to trigger me? Hold on. Really quick. Really quick. You know why we don't have a child tax credit that eradicates child poverty? Not social security.

• 33:13Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Like, why we don't have universal Medicaid, so every child in the United States has health insurance, at least until they turn 18? It's not social security. Why we, why, why we can't have childcare? It's not social security. And I think that the, this, this, like, pitting one versus the other in a zero-sum world, right, is a great way for you to forget that the reason why we don't have these things is because Congress doesn't prioritize them, and they'd rather give a tax cut. And that is not a boomer policy. Like, there's something special about being born in 1955 that means that you are going to tear down investments in childrens. That is a conservative, Republican policy, that it is not the government's job to help people. And y'all, spoiler alert, if they had been successful in 1983, they

• 33:59Speaker 02

  would have ended social security.

• 34:02Robin Rauzi?

  You're saying that when the last time that we revamped social security in 1983, when the trust fund was about to run out of money then, that the Republican plan was really just to just get rid of it?

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, but like, maybe the more relevant reference would be, they tried to privatize social security in the Bush administration. And he had a plan to privatize it, to change, basically, the entire aspect of social security. And it failed. And I think that now the success of social security is held up as a problem for every other avenue as opposed to...

• 34:36Robin Rauzi?

  It all comes back to social security with you, doesn't it?

• 34:38Speaker 02

  It does, doesn't it? But I think that the conflation of conservatism with baby boomers does conservatives a favor. Because you blame your parents. And it becomes less about tax policy choices as opposed to people.

• 34:55Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I mean, I do, I feel like also it absolves the current generation from taking action, from running for office, advancing policies, voting in numbers, you know, you just keep reading, they're like, "Well, this will be the year that the younger people vote," you know?

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Cynicism and resignation are a free pass for shitty policy.

• 35:19Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  And this is why we...

• 35:21Robin Rauzi?

  They give shitty policy a free pass.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, like, "Oh, we'll never be able to change anything because of the boomers. And so, like, there's no point in voting." Like, that's a very different story of like, you are empowered, you can make a difference. We can have different policy environments. There is absolutely something we can do about it if we don't get brought into these narratives of, "Remember old people a long, long time ago in the Greatest Generation? They were great. And then people old now, they're evil." Like, [BLEEP] it. No. Just raise taxes and pay for children's investments. [BLEEP]. Sorry.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  I wanted to end with a quote that for me encapsulates the boomer argument. You're laughing because I'm going to a quote, but the former head of the UAW, Walter Reuther, he was like an absolutely formative labor leader in the US. Multiple assassination attempts on him and he was vital in not only growing the power of the UAW and then the AFL-CIO, but using labor's voice in the civil rights movement. And in the United Farm Workers movement, he spoke on the 1963 rally, the I Have A Dream Rally. He was one of the people that spoke before King.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  And he said, I think it was in the 40s or 50s, "Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the pie. We're fighting for a bigger pie." It's like a really simple quote, but it has stuck with me in so many ways of like, this is gonna sound so dumb, but like when it's a pie fight of like boomers have too big a slice of pie, like millennials, we need a bigger pie. We don't need to take their slice. We just need a bigger pie and we need policies that fight for a bigger pie. And that, I carry that with me through these types of discussions of like, here's what's wrong with boomers. And then like, can't we just go back to making fun of them for being obsessed with World War II?

• 37:22Robin Rauzi?

  Well, I mean, I think that the problem with the bigger pie metaphor in this day and age is that the bigger pie just keeps getting sucked upward, right?

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:29Robin Rauzi?

  To the wealthiest and that the boomers embody that. But I think your point is right and it's a nice note to end on.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  No, but I think that the pushback is important, right? Like, my problem is that however big the pie gets, I'll never get more.

• 37:43Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  That's, I mean-

• 37:45Robin Rauzi?

  The pie is gonna service the national debt, no matter how big it gets.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  I genuinely think if we just had like few different choices in our tax policy, we could make investments in children and in the workforce that would actually grow the pie. And I don't talk about housing, but you know, if you want to know a really morbid thought, I actually know where about 15 million homes are gonna come from in the next 10 years. And those are the ones that boomers vacate when they die. The secret supply argument that no one wants to talk about. Which is very morbid and I don't celebrate it. But the highest homeownership rates in the United States are amongst a group of now 70 million people that will not be on this earth, more than likely, in the next 15 years. So if you really care a lot about supply, just

• 38:33Robin Rauzi?

  Just wait.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Just wait. But I, it's, it's funny, it's, it never comes up in the supply discussion of what is the relative housing stock over a 10-year, 15-year trajectory? And given the changes of like the, the actual size of the population and homeownership rates by demographic, by age cohort groups?

• 38:50Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  We actually have a big release of supply coming, but

• 38:54Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, it's interesting that we haven't figured that part of it out. I mean, the people, that people don't, they're not downsizing out of their houses because we have put policies in place that discourage it.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Or they don't want to, and they like their house. Yeah, or, and they like their house where it is, which, and they feel like, maybe I live in a house that's too big, but like, that's also okay. I don't want to create an economy where, when I turn 60, someone tells me, I'm not allowed to live in the house that I live in because that's what young people need. Yeah, it's, you know, whatever, I get to live in my big piggy house, like, I get to, I'm an American, I get to do what I want.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  If the answer is, we need to put people out of their big piggy houses because we need more, like, y'all, that's what the communists did. This is America. If I buy my big piggy house, I get to live in my piggy house, and that is not why you don't have a house. And then I'll die, and someone else gets my piggy house, and the circle of life continues.

• 39:52Robin Rauzi?

  Your children can fight over your piggy house, or cleaning it out, which is really what they fight over.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  I have filled my piggy house with so much stuff that you will have to go through.

• 40:02Robin Rauzi?

  So many books.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  So.

• 40:05Robin Rauzi?

  I can't even tell you how, how close that gets.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  All right, I should say that I have cleaned out the house of a very beloved person after they died, and it was a brutal process, so I don't mean to undercut it.

• 40:20Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, it's hard.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  I cleaned out my childhood home when my dad died, so. That's one more house in the suburbs, people.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Break. Okay, so we're gonna take a quick break. A whole lot happened there. Robin and I are still working through a lot of feelings that come with hosting a show that tries to be positive about the economy in 2026. And sometimes you throw your hate at us, and it doesn't really put us in a good place to talk about optimism. In addition to me getting lots of comments about how dumb I am, Robin has also gotten some comments. And you know what? When you say bad things about me, my feelings get hurt. When you say bad things about my friends, I burn down your home. And that's where we are. Anyway, so we should take a quick break to process all that we're...

• 41:08Robin Rauzi?

  Take a break. We need to take a break. Break, break, break, break.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  All right. We like to end the show with executive orders.

• 41:20Robin Rauzi?

  We do.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Robin, what's yours?

• 41:24Robin Rauzi?

  This is really, really petty. So I feel...

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Yes, I'm here for it. Stop. I need to get popcorn and then go.

• 41:31Robin Rauzi?

  They've just had it with people and their dogs. If there is a sign at the park that says there are no dogs in this park, that doesn't mean you and your dog with your frisbee are exempt from that. I live in a neighborhood with a dog park, and a quarter mile down the road is a park that literally says, "No dogs in this park." And I looked in it the other day, and there was like five people playing with their dog. Go to the dog park.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Go to the dog park.

• 41:56Robin Rauzi?

  Go to the dog park. I can't decide what the fines would be if it was my executive order, but it's just short of you lose your dog.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  We have a dog. I love my dog. My dog is... She's so sweet.

• 42:08Robin Rauzi?

  She's real sweet.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  And yeah, I'm also like, dog owners, be better.

• 42:12Robin Rauzi?

  Be better. Do people bring dogs into the grocery stores where you live? People bring dogs into the grocery store. And I'm like, on what planet do you think that that's an acceptable behavior? Nobody in Spokane took their dogs into the grocery store. This is an LA thing.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  This is an LA thing.

• 42:31Robin Rauzi?

  That just is like, oh, people.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  What I love about dog owners almost all the time is just how much enthusiasm they have for their dog that sometimes blinds them to how we consider it, their being. But dogs do make the world better, and we fundamentally believe that here on Optimistic Economy, which is why we'll send a free dog to any spiritual sponsor.

• 42:53Robin Rauzi?

  I hope you can be, I hope you can match that in pettiness.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  No, I was going for my usual takedown of Hollywood that we need like prestige drama about Walter Ruther and the mid-century labor movement. Oh, my God, does this guy need a Netflix mini, like seasons of a mini-series? Like, if you'll, if you'll shell out for like seven seasons, or were there six, about the British royal family? Can we give like some treatment to the working class in the US? I would watch six seasons about the labor movement in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Like, I would throw down, go, do not spare any expense on costume. I mean,

• 43:34Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Here's a tidbit. He survived an assassination attempt in his home, barely. They shot him with a shotgun through like the window at his kitchen sink. And the only reason why he didn't die is because he was turning to talk to his wife. And so he got hit, instead of getting hit full-on in the chest, he got hit in his right arm.

• 43:52Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  He really struggled to use it for the rest of his life. So if you met him, he introduced himself with his left hand because he did, he couldn't move the right arm because of all the shotgun pellets in there. And then, not that much later, this similar attack was made on his brother, who also survived. The FBI was like, uh, sorry, this is Hoover's FBI. These are liberals. We don't investigate.

• 44:17Robin Rauzi?

  We don't need to investigate this that hard.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're just like, it's not a real crime if you try to kill a liberal. That's, that's not a real crime.

• 44:24Robin Rauzi?

  Wow.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Coretta Scott King spoke at his funeral

• 44:27Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  and gave one of the eulogies. So I mean, like, we just, we have these, like, titans of American history who don't get the same treatment as the British monarchy.

• 44:40Robin Rauzi?

  I know. More American stories, and I'm with you. I think that that would be Walter Ruther. Who would you cast as Walter Ruther?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a great question. Obviously, I have a lot of thoughts on casting.

• 44:51Robin Rauzi?

  You do, generally.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  He looks like he's from the 40s.

• 44:54Robin Rauzi?

  Exactly. You could have cast him in the 40s.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Okay, you know what? This guy actually looks like, um, Bill Pullman. His son is an actor named Louis Pullman, and I think Louis Pullman could pull off a mid-century face. Now, here's a real question. Look up John Lewis, labor leader. He was the head of the United Mine Workers. Look at this guy's visage. Who plays him?

• 45:23Robin Rauzi?

  A pair of eyebrows.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  I mean, you need like.

• 45:26Robin Rauzi?

  Eyebrow wigs.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  You need eyebrow wigs for this one.

• 45:30Robin Rauzi?

  There, yeah, there are so many, it's like, there's so many great labor stories to tell and, and like, the only person who ever did any, I think, is like John Sales, right?

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Or how about MLK was assassinated at a Wildcat strike of sanitation workers in Memphis? Like, he was there for a strike. Why can't we do some kind of like lens of history, but about the striking sanitation workers in Memphis? And like, what happens as King comes and then is assassinated?

• 45:57Robin Rauzi?

  Like, it's not enough for you to have a podcast. You, you actually need it. You need an entertainment studio. You know, I think that, I, I'm trying to Warner Brothers is for sale. If we could just, you know, get, just get.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  This is, it comes down to you, optimist.

• 46:11Robin Rauzi?

  A few, a few hundred dollars. I bet that we could rival, uh, the offer from Netflix to buy Warner Brothers.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Should you, should you give us millions of dollars?

• 46:20Robin Rauzi?

  And you would like to see more labor.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  More labor stories on film. We will start a production studio. Now, will Trump, will Trump's FCC approve it? I don't think so.

• 46:30Robin Rauzi?

  No, but you know, if it's not, if it's not broadcast, who cares? We don't need the FCC.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  That's a fairly good point.

• 46:37Robin Rauzi?

  Spiritual sponsors.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Spiritual sponsors on this episode about the boomers and people who don't know how to walk their dog. Who is your spiritual sponsor?

• 46:50Robin Rauzi?

  Actually, my spiritual sponsor, I was thinking about this, and I've been thinking about this for a while, is my baby boomer friends who are a few years older than me and who, especially in the last few years, have given me kind of great advice about things and who, you know, I'm the oldest daughter, so I don't have a big, an older sister, and they have all really filled that gap for me.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Oh, that's such a good sponsor. I'm coming back again with the Olympics.

• 47:21Robin Rauzi?

  Of course you are. By the time this airs, it'll be like, you know, World Cup season, but.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Then they need to be reminded. My spiritual sponsor is, once again, the Olympics. I had one of the most, like, thing that you wish would happen in a high-stake sports moment, which I was in a public place, I was in an airport, and I have this very formative memory of being at an airport during the Michael Phelps relay race in Beijing in 2008. And I mean, like, people weren't getting on the plane because the race was, and people were like shouting from the gate of like, "Go!" And it was amazing. And then he won, and then we boarded and had to be on an airplane. It was really great to have that, like, sense of community. So I was, I was at the airport, and I watched the US women win hockey, real time, and heard, like,

• 48:07Speaker 02

  throughout the terminal, just like, like, hollers when that amazing witchcraft of a play went in. And I, that was a very special moment. So my spiritual sponsorship is whoever, whoever shouted, "F*** yeah!" in the terminal when that shot went in.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Because it really, it really, and then there's like the, the hollers, "Yeah!" It was, it was great. That is my spiritual sponsor.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  I know that our productions, at least one of our production staff, was highly vested in the game, to the point that if it had played a different time, we would have had to have moved recording. So Sophie Lalonde is an amazing women's hockey fan and edits the Optimist Economy podcast. And Andy Robinson creates our online videos that you can see on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, snapping the two of you.

• 49:02Robin Rauzi?

  Of course, thank you to everyone who donates to keep those two paid. You can donate if you'd like to become a sponsor of our show at any level that is comfortable for you. You can do that at optimist economy dot com. And if you're interested in chatting with other optimists, we have a chat going on Substack. And so if you just become a follower of our show on Substack, you can talk to them in the chatroom.

• 49:25Robin Rauzi?

  That's it for our show.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  That's it. That's it.

• 49:28Robin Rauzi?

  We're done.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Look how red I am relative to the start of the show. I mean, look how red I am.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Look at my big old red face.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  We got it, not just a near spit take. She spat out her water, folks. And how did she do it when I made a comment about my appearance? Boom. I don't know what did that.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Ah, Christ.