Pod Insights Optimist Economy Paid Sick Days for Lady Gaga (and Everyone Else Too) About this episode In the category of low-hanging policy fruit, why won’t any politician pluck the ripe, juicy goodness of federally mandated paid sick leave? About 30 million American workers not only don’t get a paid day off when they have the flu, there’s no law on the books to prevent them from being fired if they call in sick. Economist Kathryn Edwards points out that research has found that the job-protection aspect alone is worth $2,000 a year to vulnerable working moms. Of course this also keeps communities healthier because who needs to be exposed to baristas with bronchitis?
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:41 Robin Rauzi? Thanks.
0:41 Speaker 02 On that note.
0:43 Robin Rauzi? On that note.
0:43 Speaker 02 Co-host and friend.
0:50 Speaker 02 Hello and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine.
0:53 Robin Rauzi? I'm Robin.
0:54 Speaker 02 On this show, we believe the US economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there, one problem and solution at a time.
1:07 Robin Rauzi? So, it's time for Redcon. Catherine, do you have anything that you have been thinking about, about AI and jobs since we spoke on that topic at some point in the past?
1:18 Speaker 02 I was thinking back on the AI episode, and I couldn't help but think that so much of what we end up talking about on the show is just this myth-making and boogeyman that gets created in economic narratives that often are meant to instill fear, like you should be afraid of AI. You know, and if someone told you, like, if you went back in time and dropped yourself into 1960 and someone said, "Listen, right now, computers take up an entire gym, but one day, they'll just be on your desk, and you need to be afraid of what they're gonna do," it really just makes you wonder, like, who benefits from fear versus optimism. And I'm not saying there aren't negative consequences to progress
2:02 Speaker 02 or evolution, but it's, it's an instinct we have to lead with fear, and I don't love it. I have obviously no idea what's going to happen in the future, but I know it's not great when you're afraid of it.
2:13 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, yeah. I was reminded about the conversation that we had because shortly after that, a piece ran by Heather Long in the Washington Post, again, with one of these fairly alarmist headlines saying essentially, AI is going to kill all these jobs. It's kind of an interesting read, but it also, speaking of fear, just also reminds me that as journalists, and we also, we sort of traffic in fear and in clickbait, and I think that that's become a tendency that's worse as competition in the internet world grows for news outlets.
2:47 Speaker 02 I don't know if you, did you ever read Jean Weingarten from the Washington Post?
2:53 Robin Rauzi? Uh-uh.
2:54 Speaker 02 He was a columnist, and I think he would describe himself as cantankerous. But one of my favorite columns of his is Jean Weingarten column mentions Lady Gaga. And it was from, like, when she was everywhere. I mean, it was from like, just like the height of like, Lady Gaga's entry into the world. And she, the column is about how headlines used to have their own artistry behind them. And it was, you know, all about wordplay and being quite, you know, clever and appealing, and how they were being corrupted by search engine optimization. And so he's like, yeah, because Lady Gaga is so important, all I have to do is mention Lady Gaga. And it's the last word of the piece is Lady Gaga.
3:36 Robin Rauzi? So the whole speech is not about Lady Gaga at all?
3:40 Speaker 02 The whole, none of the, none of, the whole piece is about headlines and how people are directed to things and like, what is being lost? And then it says Lady Gaga. It's a cantankerous. I mean, I, I don't know many people who I would describe as like delightfully cantankerous in today's landscape.
3:55 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, I know. It is, it's also something that we, we lost in the evolution of away from newspapers to whatever we have now. I think sometimes that people, if you didn't come out of print journalism, that you don't realize that print newspapers, they had evolved into a visual language that meant things. And the size of headlines meant things. Things where they were on the front page meant things. They were people and this was their specialization was figuring out how to present that information. And you had one shot at it, maybe two, maybe there was a reprint. But now the New York Times will do, one article could have three, four, or five different headlines, and they may be testing them out. They're testing them in their newsletters, they're testing them on the website.
4:41 Robin Rauzi? They'll be different from what will be in the print newspaper. It's a different art form, but it's more fractured. And I think people react, people react to headlines without reading the articles. And then when the headlines are different in different places, talk about like, you're not even having the same conversation.
5:00 Speaker 02 It's interesting, like I, I even on social media, you know, I'll post a video on, you know, as Keds on TikTok. And it'll be very obvious to me that like the first 50 people who responded absolutely did not watch the video, but felt like they should comment on it. And I, and I'm always like, whoa, did you, were you like the person who didn't do the reading, but also didn't shut up in class? Like, is that who you are?
5:27 Robin Rauzi? Or are you a bot?
5:28 Speaker 02 Or are you a bot? I do wonder, I mean, do we always have this instinct to think about the future with fear? Or has something about our media environment made us more predisposed to that? I mean, I don't, I don't know. Or is, or if it's like the media environment, with economic insecurity that we get more afraid and just to see the worst in.
5:49 Robin Rauzi? I think that they feed off each other for sure. Right? And there aren't many people who probably have felt economically more afraid than newspaper journalists in the last 20 years.
6:00 Speaker 02 It's just the tendency to lead with fear and negativity. It's worth questioning, like, why is someone benefiting? My dad always said cui bono, like who benefits when you're afraid?
6:11 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
6:11 Speaker 02 And you said it actually in our first episode, you said despair is paralysis. And so I think sometimes when it's like, here's AI coming down the pike and people are, you know, freaked out about what it means, that keeping them freaked out is very different than keeping them like poised and ready.
6:28 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
6:30 Speaker 02 So staying informed and staying optimistic, all the way back to what we're trying to do.
6:35 Robin Rauzi? Yeah. And I know that for a lot of people, they're trying to stay optimistic by. By tapping out of the news, you know? And I think it is, it's hard to find the balance where you are feeling informed and like you're still thinking critically about what's happening, but not overwhelmed.
6:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, sometimes when the news progresses quickly, I'm just like, I'm gonna miss this one.
6:55 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, me too, me too.
6:59 Speaker 02 Okay, terms and conditions. Did you, did you look up anything this week? Did you?
7:05 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, so I looked this up, I actually looked this up a few weeks ago when we were talking about, I think it was in the DEI episode about DEI as a sort of a straw man argument. And I, I didn't feel like straw man was quite the right word. And anyway, I wound up on scapegoat and then looking up where that came from. But then I wound up on whipping boy. And I didn't want to use whipping boy, but I was like, what does that even mean? I mean, I know what it means. I know it's how it's used, but like, why? And so there's this backstory that supposedly royal children.
7:38 Speaker 02 Oh, God.
7:39 Robin Rauzi? Could not themselves be physically punished by their teachers or tutors because they were divine. And so that there was supposedly this other child who would take the beating for the royal child. And this was to keep the tutor on the right side of God, I guess, but also so that the royal child would understand, you know, that this was a serious punishment. Anyway, this article in the, in the Times of London that I will put in the show notes basically says, that entire story is bullshit. And they trace a lot of it back to Mark Twain's Prince and the Pauper.
8:24 Robin Rauzi? And anyway, so there is apparently, this was a film a few years ago, but some debate about the veracity of the whipping boy concept.
8:33 Robin Rauzi? But it is used to mean the person who gets punished, no matter what the problem is.
8:37 Speaker 02 Okay, that's, so the person who gets punished no matter what the problem is.
8:41 Robin Rauzi? He's kind of like DEI.
8:43 Speaker 02 He's kind of like DEI. I do think maybe let's find a new phrase for that. When you were describing the whole thing about the royal children, all I kept thinking was like, listen, I know democracies can seem pretty fucked sometimes, but nothing is as messed up as like blood hereditary like rulers leading a country. And I, this is like, I know, I love going to other countries and I love exploring, but like I have never walked in a palace and been like, man, I wish we had this in America.
9:16 Robin Rauzi? Do you know who Kitty Kelly is?
9:18 Speaker 02 Yes.
9:19 Robin Rauzi? She wrote a column for us at one point and with the last line, or one of the lines of which I just think about all the time, which was, being an American means never having to say, "Your Highness."
9:31 Speaker 02 It's so true. I mean, sure, there's a lot about democracy today where I'm like, whoa, that's rough. That is rough. But at least on some level, I'm like, honestly, I'd rather be brought down by a man of low birth than an aristocrat who for a long time thought he was God. I'll take the people's mistakes any day. It's funny, it's funny you looked up whipping boy. I looked up straw man and I still don't know what it means. I went through like the etymology, I went through, I mean, maybe I've just been using it wrong for so long that I don't know what it means anymore.
10:10 Robin Rauzi? I feel like that about begs the question, which is misused 99% of the time.
10:16 Speaker 02 Well, sometimes I add that to my like words I've blacked out for my usage.
10:20 Robin Rauzi? Just don't use it.
10:20 Speaker 02 I'll never say the word comprise. I just won't, I just mean, I just won't say it because I don't know if I'm saying it right and I have no way of checking. It's just like, I'm not gonna say it.
10:29 Robin Rauzi? You call me, Catherine.
10:32 Speaker 02 Call the editor. So straw man is, I think, based on what.
10:37 Robin Rauzi? It's a fake argument.
10:39 Speaker 02 It's a fake argument. And then I was like, but then when is that actually used? I don't know if I've ever heard straw man and thought the fake, it's a fake argument. Allah, a little straw doll that you attack as opposed to the real argument. But like, I'm not quite sure what this accomplishes. I think I maybe was just struggling of like, but then why, why wouldn't you attack the actual argument?
11:00 Robin Rauzi? A straw man argument would be like, we have to roll back everything about gender equality because we can't have trans athletes in swimming competitions. Like, that's a straw man argument to, to me. Anyway, usually it's used to accuse somebody of making a argument in bad faith.
11:18 Speaker 02 Okay, so I, I, yeah, it seems like it comes up a lot in politics, actually, of like, most politicians debating policy are in fact just debating straw man. And so I think I kind of got like, incepted by the examples they gave, where I'm like, well, now I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. So honestly, I think we just talked a lot about DEI and the abstract.
11:43 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
11:45 Speaker 02 Okay.
11:45 Robin Rauzi? Okay.
11:46 Speaker 02 Okay, pitch meeting.
11:47 Robin Rauzi? Pitch meeting.
11:48 Speaker 02 I'm pitching you today.
11:49 Robin Rauzi? You sure are.
11:51 Speaker 02 I sure am. And I'm coming in strong with paid sick days.
11:56 Robin Rauzi? The question to me here is, are you going to just convince me that we need paid sick days because, no kidding? Or are you going to convince me that there's something interesting to be said slash written about paid sick days?
12:10 Speaker 02 All right, well, I'm just gonna say shots fired, Robin. Is there something I can, I'm pretty sure I could come up with something interesting to say, just keep this mic running for four hours and we'll pay Sophie double and I'll get there.
12:26 Robin Rauzi? I might have to have a snack break if we do that, but, okay.
12:29 Speaker 02 No breaks.
12:32 Speaker 02 I, I, so paid sick days.
12:33 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
12:34 Speaker 02 Are, are voluntarily provided by employers in the US. And there is no law on the national level that says you can't be fired if you call in sick, nor is there a law on the national level that says if you are sick, you can accrue paid time for your sick. So there's no guarantee that you get it, that you're not fired if you get sick, that you get sick time, paid or unpaid, or that you get to kind of like earn the access and right to paid sick days. So I would like to do, and sick days, this is not the same as paid family leave, which I don't want to talk about, which would be for a longer term. I mean, this is like.
13:13 Robin Rauzi? This is, I got the flu.
13:14 Speaker 02 I got the flu?
13:15 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
13:16 Speaker 02 I can't go to work and I should be able to take a day off and get paid for it.
13:20 Robin Rauzi? And not give my coworkers the flu.
13:22 Speaker 02 And not give my coworkers. I think, I think this should be a federal law.
13:25 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, and it is a law in some states, right? I mean, I feel like in California, we have that law. I mean, I don't know about all the aspects of it, but.
13:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, some states and localities have voluntarily started paid sick days. So, yes, in answer to your question, do I have anything interesting to say about it? I mean, I don't know many people outside of the US Chamber of Commerce that would say we shouldn't have paid sick days. Of course, they're vehemently opposed to it, as they are to any intervention into labor regulations.
13:55 Robin Rauzi? Why do they want their people, because they're just opposed to labor?
13:58 Speaker 02 They would say that it's up to the employer to decide if they want to provide it, and they are opposed to paid sick days laws.
14:05 Robin Rauzi? Even if it's in their interest? I mean, it's got to be in their self-interest.
14:09 Speaker 02 I mean, it's, it's, I think that they are just, it's for them, it's like you knock down one labor law and more will follow. So they don't want any, they're opposed to any regulation of the labor market that would impede what an employer is allowed to do. I mean, they were against child labor laws.
14:24 Robin Rauzi? Some of them still are, probably.
14:27 Speaker 02 And I'm sure a lot of them still are. I mean, they, they just, they do not want any regulation of the labor market. Because that means businesses wouldn't be able to say what they're allowed to do. I mean, interestingly enough, there was a presentation from one of the US Chamber of Commerce members that was leaked. And the Washington Post wrote it up about internal polling of US Chamber of Commerce members that found just how many of them are individually in favor of a higher minimum wage.
14:56 Robin Rauzi? Oh, yeah.
14:56 Speaker 02 So the US Chamber of Commerce is like, you know, I mean, just absolutely like fight to the death. You cannot raise the minimum wage, but they have internal data showing that upwards of 80% of their members are like, we think the minimum wage should be higher. So they defend.
15:11 Robin Rauzi? Why does any, well, okay.
15:13 Speaker 02 Why, yeah.
15:13 Robin Rauzi? Why does anybody listen to the chamber then if they're not actually speaking for the majority of their members?
15:17 Speaker 02 I think that they will, they do like a close ranks around anyone negatively affected. Like, it's not a majority, it's a, it's a minority-driven institution of like, if there's one business that's hurt by this, we will use all businesses to fight it. Huh.
15:32 Robin Rauzi? Okay, well.
15:33 Speaker 02 Okay, so.
15:33 Robin Rauzi? Let's get back to sick days, yeah.
15:35 Speaker 02 And they actually had sick days in that data. And again, like vast majority are like, yes, you should have, we should have.
15:39 Robin Rauzi? Oh, they did?
15:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:40 Robin Rauzi? And when was that story? I mean, how long?
15:42 Speaker 02 Oh, that's like 2016.
15:45 Robin Rauzi? Okay, so not yesterday, but not in the 80s.
15:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, in 2016.
15:50 Robin Rauzi? Mm-hmm.
15:51 Speaker 02 Support for paid sick leave in the survey showed it was supported by upwards of 70% of members.
15:57 Robin Rauzi? So, do you have any sense? I don't know how you measure this. How many firms or how many workers are in a situation where they're not getting paid sick time?
16:07 Speaker 02 Yes, so right now, the share of private sector workers who have paid sick days, it's 79% overall, but it's only 55% of part-time workers and 58% of the bottom quarter of workers. So if you divide workers up by their wage, like their hourly wage, and rank them highest paid to lowest paid, the bottom quarter, only 58% of those have paid sick days.
16:37 Robin Rauzi? So 40%, 42% don't?
16:41 Speaker 02 Don't. And the Department of Labor thinks it's around 28 to 30 million people who don't have it.
16:47 Robin Rauzi? 28 to 30 million people, that's a lot.
16:49 Speaker 02 That's a lot.
16:50 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
16:51 Speaker 02 I think most people, including most members of the Chamber of Commerce who would oppose paid sick day legislation and regulation, would say like, obviously, we need paid sick days.
17:02 Robin Rauzi? Mm-hmm.
17:02 Speaker 02 And yeah, I mean, if you want like, even if you need to be convinced because of evidence, it's not a hard sell. Um, they, you know, you give people paid sick days so that they're not fired when they're calling sick and they, they stay home when they get sick. You know, there's, there's immediate evidence that it, uh, it helps communities stay healthier. So like citywide rates of flu go down after a paid sick leave law goes into effect.
17:27 Robin Rauzi? So like, the city of Memphis passes a sick day law.
17:30 Speaker 02 Memphis flu rates go down.
17:32 Robin Rauzi? And the whole city.
17:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:34 Robin Rauzi? Interesting.
17:35 Speaker 02 Well, think about who's getting, think about who's getting brought into sick day.
17:40 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
17:40 Speaker 02 Like by the sick day legislation, it's going to be the bottom quarter of workers. It's a lot of retail.
17:44 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
17:45 Speaker 02 And, uh, people you interact with. Food service. Food service. Yeah, it's a lot of retail and food service. And people who interact with a lot of people during the day.
17:57 Robin Rauzi? Germ vectors.
17:58 Speaker 02 Germ.
18:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, people for like, if you had to pick a sick person to like, get the flu, and you would be like, oh, the guy who works from home, give it to him.
18:08 Robin Rauzi? Exactly.
18:10 Speaker 02 Like, you know, if you were to extend paid sick days to stay at home engineers who don't interact with anybody, it wouldn't have a big effect on citywide flu rates, but you end up affecting kind of high, people who are in positions to be high transmitters.
18:23 Robin Rauzi? Right.
18:24 Speaker 02 So, yeah, so it makes everyone healthy.
18:26 Robin Rauzi? Right.
18:27 Speaker 02 That's good.
18:27 Robin Rauzi? That's good.
18:28 Speaker 02 So that's one argument, like, even if you hate people who get paid sick days and you don't think they deserve it, you would be healthier statistically and less likely to get a virus if we had paid sick days. So for your own self-preservation, it just unfortunately has to go through these awful people who don't deserve paid sick days, but you are better off.
18:44 Robin Rauzi? Right.
18:44 Speaker 02 I think that's, that's the first, that's the first argument. The second one, if you don't care about becoming healthier and you'd, you'd risk the flu to spite people having paid sick days. What paid sick days do versus how they're described varies by the worker who is going to use them. So you think of paid sick days probably in your, like, salary job of being a day that you get to stay home.
19:10 Robin Rauzi? Right.
19:11 Speaker 02 And it's just about you staying home for a day. For people who are in, like, high turnover or high volatility industries, staying home sick is missing a shift. Or staying home sick is getting then, like, taken from the top of the Rota to the bottom of the Rota because you aren't reliable anymore, and so now your schedule gets worse.
19:31 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
19:32 Speaker 02 You could be fired for calling in sick. You didn't show up, I needed you, you don't have a job anymore. And so sick days for people who have, like, relatively luxurious relationships with their employers is just about whether or not you get paid for staying home. That's not how sick leave law ends up operating for a lot of people who don't currently have it. For them, it ends up being essentially a job protection mechanism.
19:56 Robin Rauzi? Right, yeah.
19:58 Speaker 02 And it's a way for people to keep their job and not be punished for staying homesick, including the punishment of not having a job anymore. Or not being scheduled for any shifts. Like, you're not fired, but, you know, I don't need you for another three weeks. Like, you didn't show up today, so I don't need you for a month.
20:12 Robin Rauzi? Right.
20:12 Speaker 02 So, they did a case study of the paid sick leave law in Seattle. And they found that the group who was most beneficially affected in terms of their earnings of paid sick leave laws were moms.
20:27 Robin Rauzi? Right. Because kids are sick all the time.
20:30 Speaker 02 Kids are sick all the time. CDC thinks it's six to 10 colds a year for a kid is normal.
20:35 Robin Rauzi? Yeah. They recover pretty quickly, but you can't send them to school or preschool or whatever.
20:40 Speaker 02 I mean, or you can try and they catch you. You're like, I didn't give them Tylenol. And you can also have a lot of care arrangements that are like, if he's sick, he has to stay out for two days.
20:50 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
20:51 Speaker 02 Or depending on the type of illness, he has to stay out for four. Because kids also get a bunch of stuff that you don't get as a human. Like, you don't get hand, foot, and mouth. Like, an adult wouldn't randomly get it. You'd get it from a kid.
21:03 Robin Rauzi? Right.
21:03 Speaker 02 My kid got it twice in one year. And I ended the year by quitting full-time employment because it broke me. So, yeah. The kid getting sick thing is not a small pressure on parents. But what they found was that in Seattle, after they had paid sick laws, it increased women's employment by 1.2 percentage points, which is not small, but easier to understand is that it increased their earnings by $2,000 in a year. And it's not that they took $2,000 worth of sick days. It's that they earned $2,000 more because they had more stable employment.
21:37 Robin Rauzi? Hmm.
21:38 Speaker 02 So, for reference, that's the current size of the child tax credit.
21:42 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
21:43 Speaker 02 So, they earned the equivalent of the child tax credit simply by not having so much precarity in their job tied to their child's illness.
21:51 Robin Rauzi? Yeah. Yeah.
21:53 Speaker 02 So, I mean, obviously, bonus, the moms themselves said they were healthier, but like, obviously, we don't care about that. We just care that little worker bots that have future worker bots in training at home took home more money.
22:07 Robin Rauzi? More money.
22:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:10 Speaker 02 I think what I find so bewitching about paid sick days is that this is like win, win, win, win.
22:19 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, yeah.
22:20 Speaker 02 And yet, we cannot seem to have even the basic functioning to pass it or get people to really care about it.
22:25 Robin Rauzi? And why do you think, besides the Chamber of Commerce, you know, why do you think that is?
22:31 Speaker 02 I don't know. I mean, it's not like, it's not like, okay, so truly like really don't know much about politics or campaigning, but to me, this is like this glaring issue of this is such a basic, basic economic policy that has clear dividends. It punches so far above its weight class when it comes to a policy that can generate good things in our economy. And yet, it's just considered, what, not important enough to fight for? Like, how do we come up with the ordering of policies that such low hanging fruit would not even be in the top 10? Like, I understand why people don't care about it. Because if they have it, you don't really think about people who don't have it. I don't understand why policymakers would not take the win.
23:16 Speaker 02 But I think for me, this is like the biggest source of optimism and why I think the future will be so much better. Because we have let whatever toxic conversation has led us to where we are in the economy, there is a path of light out.
23:33 Robin Rauzi? And it's not that hard.
23:35 Speaker 02 And it's It's not that hard.
23:36 Robin Rauzi? Yeah. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard.
23:38 Speaker 02 But it's also, it's so achievable. Like, maybe the political conversation is so hard, and one of our listeners can write in and be like, here's actually why it's political suicide to want a single mom who works at the retail sector to have paid sick days. And I'm sure I would listen to him. But I think, I think for me, this is just a fundamental proof positive. Our economy can be better, and it is not hard to get there.
24:05 Robin Rauzi? Is this part two of our 68 part series on the Fair Labor Standards Act? Is that
24:11 Speaker 02 Indeed, it is, Robin. I'm so glad you're keeping count. And it is, it is part, part two of 68. If you're, new work standards were one, paid sick days is number two.
24:19 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
24:20 Speaker 02 And luckily, we'll have
24:21 Robin Rauzi? 66 more.
24:23 Speaker 02 At a minimum.
24:25 Robin Rauzi? So many policies, but that's but that's kind of where this would live. It is in an updated Fair Labor Standards Act.
24:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, and same with the higher minimum wage, just to give you a preview for the many things to come. But yeah, I mean, basically, the Fair Labor Standards Act says, here's how many hours people work before you get overtime. Here's what the minimum wage is. You can't employ children. It's just like the the rules of the road when it comes to employing people in the US is set by the Fair Labor Standards Act. So you would just add to that kind of set of existing rules. You can't be fired for being sick. Everyone has access to sick time off and they can accrue paid sick time off based on their tenure. So you wouldn't necessarily say everybody has to start with 10 days sick.
25:09 Robin Rauzi? Right.
25:09 Speaker 02 But you do have to set up a schedule to say like, all right, for every hour work, you can accrue another, you know, so many hours sick.
25:18 Robin Rauzi? You know, this reminds me a little bit of what you were talking about about in part one of our Fair Labor Standards Act, about in new work standards, though, about the importance of staying attached to the workforce. And that this seems to me like another way to keep people from, you know, from getting thrown out of the workforce.
25:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, the evidence we have on paid sick days really challenges this assumption that most people have, especially if they're elected to Congress, that the reason why people have low income is because they don't work. Like, it's a personal failing. They just don't have enough motivation. And we see this all the time in legislation through things like work requirements. You know, Congress says in order to get food stamps, you have to work. But, you know, policy has to work backward from the goal, right? If the goal is to get people to have high enough income that they don't qualify for a benefit like food stamps, then work requirements are useless because if you can't work, say, because you have a disability, this this won't change that.
26:17 Speaker 02 And if you are working, this is almost like an Orwellian punishment to have to prove that you have a low wage job. And that's where the burden is, if you wanted to work backward from a problem. The problem being that there are a lot of people who qualify for very low-income program participation supports. Then the solution is get them higher income. And if they're already working, getting them higher income means getting them a better job and regulating the labor market. And we've got evidence in hand that shows like this is where the problem is. I think Congress is more reluctant to believe that employers need to be brought to task as opposed to people. But here is an evidence of employers are not, need to be brought to task in the low-wage
27:02 Speaker 02 labor market. Their very difficult positions with a lot of precarity and instability are causing low incomes. And Congress just doesn't want to intervene on the other side.
27:13 Robin Rauzi? We should do a whole episode about work requirements. I don't know. I think there's a psychology to, I don't know. It's like there's a romanticization, romantic, now if I try, that was as good as I was going to get, romanticization of American small business owners who are job creators and therefore the greatest thing since the American farmer, and that they should be free to do whatever with their business that they want to do.
27:41 Speaker 02 Okay, well, so if I could reference for like the 50th time in seven shows, my time I testified in front of the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee. At one point, one of the members of Congress starts, like, I've just finished speaking, and then it's his turn. And he starts by saying, you know, I really hate it when people who haven't created a single job want to tell me what to do about it, or something like that. But he basically like points out that I shouldn't be able to talk because I've never created a job, and I don't run a business, and so I don't know. Well, yeah, I actually created my job.
28:17 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
28:17 Speaker 02 Because I run my own business. And when the Democrat went next, the next, when I actually got a chance to speak in, because of course you can't speak unless they give you permission, believe it or not, he wasn't dying to hear a piece of my mind. So then when she gave me a speech, I was like, I need to go back and clarify something. I created my job, and I just, I was so, I was, this was like the maddest I was during the testimony. And I said that my job wouldn't exist if I didn't have childcare. And I'm nothing if I don't have a safe place to put my children. I don't get to have a job because I created it. And I was mad in the moment, but stepping back and thinking about the exchange, like, it's just a reminder that even this deep psychology, this romanticized love of the small business, it's not pure.
29:03 Speaker 02 It's not absolute. And there are lots of small businesses that will tell you that they aren't heard. They're not put on the pedestal. Their needs don't matter. You know, the perfect small business is the one that doesn't want any government policy, but just wants tax cuts. But, you know, there are lots of businesses that would say that they need childcare, but they don't count, right? Like, I didn't count. That's what he told me in that moment. I don't count. I'm a business, but because I don't want a tax cut and because I want childcare, I'm not the right type of small business. And it's the opposite of the fall guy. But it's just as shallow, which is why focusing on the actual policy effects, the tangible impacts on our economy and weighing it towards what it does for our economy
29:46 Speaker 02 and the people in it and not picking a winner, selectively picking a winner and just doing whatever they want. Like, that's how policy should be made for the economy.
29:58 Speaker 02 You know, obviously, I want people to have jobs, you know, for like humans. But, I mean, you know, even for my cold, dead heart that just processes data from the economy, paid sick days are an easy win. This is a benefit to our economy to have this type of protection that encourages work, stabilizes work, increases income. And it's just, you know, how many wins do you think exist like paid sick days? This is like an absolute grand slam for me of like, what an amazing policy that we're going to get to have. And I guess this is how we build a better economy. We do it one policy at a time. And those policies, the arrows in the quiver of the better economy in the future,
30:42 Speaker 02 they start with something like paid sick days, and it is such a rock solid start.
30:46 Robin Rauzi? Well, I'm also optimistic that, you know, that the truth is that business owners would support this.
30:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:53 Robin Rauzi? You know.
30:54 Speaker 02 The newspaper article about the Chamber of Commerce study, I think I've read it 15 times, top to bottom, word for word.
30:59 Robin Rauzi? Yeah. There's, you know, the only, there's nobody running around, I mean, except the lobbyists saying, "We shouldn't have this."
31:07 Speaker 02 Or people who think that it's not important, but...
31:10 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, but that's, yeah. I guess, you know, there's benign neglect, right? You know, or there's, there's, there's just something you've neglected to do, but then there's things that you vehemently oppose. And the question to me is like, can you get beyond the people who just vehemently oppose any kind of regulation on business and any sort of, anything that infringes on the autonomy of the business owner?
31:31 Speaker 02 If I ever get pushed back about paid sick days, I mean, I just ask people like, "How, how much do you need in a business that you can't even give someone a paid sick day?" Like, your business will go bust if you, if your worker, I mean, sorry, like, I don't think that we should subsidize businesses that are so underperforming that a paid sick day would bust them by throwing the health and pay of 30 million people under the bus. Like, "Sorry, 30 million people, you don't get to have a paid sick day because there's like a scattering of businesses that wouldn't be able to sustain themselves if you were actually paid on the day you had the flu." I think there's an empathy there to, a lot of businesses feel like they're barely making
32:12 Speaker 02 it and they don't want to add to a cost, but what are you willing to give over in our economy to support them over the people who have to suffer with lower wages and worse benefits? Like, 30 million people get a sick day, maybe some businesses are going to close. Well, this is America. They're not barred from ever having a business again, they get to start again. So I, I try to pitch it as just how much subsidizing do you need to have of certain businesses through very low-paid, very unprotected workers? I think that that's like too low of a bar for America, which is supposed to have the greatest business economy in the world. Like, I think it's embarrassing that we would be like, "We are the best, like, we are the
32:55 Speaker 02 most capitalist, best, innovative, but like, also, we can't have paid sick days because that would bust us." Like, come on. Come on. If we're such an amazing business, market-based economy, if we're so good at starting business, if we're such amazing capitalists, we would take sick days, like, on face value and be like, ain't got nothing on me, bra, I can still keep going.
33:16 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
33:17 Speaker 02 Like, I would imagine that, like, an unstable, mid-sized economy that has only had business, you know, regulations and licensing for three years could be like, listen, I don't know if I can handle paid sick days, but this is the US economy.
33:29 Robin Rauzi? Right.
33:29 Speaker 02 We will manage. We should be able to manage paid sick days. And if the business community is like, actually, that might send us into collapse, it'd be like, whoa, this is the House of Cards? In a way, I didn't understand. But I, you know, when I talk about businesses this way, it's not meant to be callous or unfeeling. And I think what they would push back and say is that it's not just businesses who don't have paid sick days now that would be affected. Right? It's not like there's this good guy business and bad guy business, and the bad guy business doesn't have paid sick days, and so they're the ones affected by the policy. And it's like, it's just on them, and everybody else is okay. Like, if you're a business that currently offers sick days and some of your competitors don't, this is a margin that
34:12 Speaker 02 you operated on for competitive compensation. You make paid sick days a law that everybody has to offer, and you've lost your competitive advantage and compensation. The law has essentially made standard something you use to compete on. So now you have to compete on something else. Basically, you either have to pay more, or you have to offer more in benefits. But again, like, from the economist's perspective, looking at, you know, all the actors in the economy, I would say like, yeah, well, this is great, because people would get paid more. But that also means, you know, it's proof that it's not costless to do this, that for all its good benefits, it will cost something. Some businesses may have to shut down because their labor costs got too high. Policies aren't magical unicorns. They all have costs
34:57 Speaker 02 and casualties. But you've got away 30 million people having lower earnings and less stable employment versus some number of businesses that are kind of drastically affected. The economy is better addressing the former, getting more people, more earnings, and stable employment. But that doesn't mean the latter doesn't matter or doesn't happen. It's a trade-off. So paid sick days, this is the policy that is emblematic of current economic insecurity. And this is the policy that is emblematic of just what an amazing future we get to build.
35:32 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, and shouldn't be that complicated.
35:35 Speaker 02 Shouldn't be that complicated.
35:36 Robin Rauzi? Yeah. All right.
35:38 Speaker 02 All right.
35:38 Robin Rauzi? Go write it. Excellent.
35:40 Speaker 02 So now that we've given everyone paid sick days for good, regular reasons through our democratic process, let's write some executive orders.
35:48 Robin Rauzi? Let's do that. So you want to go first?
35:53 Speaker 02 We need to make a massive announcement for our fellow optimists out there, which is that we got our first listener submitted executive order. And we didn't, I didn't think about it until this guy sent it in, but I was like, this is amazing. Yes, please send us your executive orders. William wrote in that he would like the gas tank to be in the same place on every car. And honestly, like, I don't even want an executive order because that one's so good. Like, is it on the left? Is it on the right? Or is it on the driver's side or the passenger's side? Is it at the back of the car or the front of the car? All the cars are different.
36:29 Robin Rauzi? Because you'd have an electric car, right?
36:31 Speaker 02 Yes. And don't worry, this problem has carried over the charging point.
36:34 Robin Rauzi? It has. The charging point. Yeah, I switched from a Subaru to a Toyota car and they went to the other side. Years, years it took me to remember to drive on the right side of the gas, the gas pump.
36:46 Speaker 02 One of my dad's best friends from high school ended up starting his own Chevrolet dealership. So we, we only drove Chevys. The first time I had a non Chevy car, I don't know how many times it took me to figure out where the gas gauge was. I also, this was the part that was really humbling, that the little gas symbol has an arrow next to it telling you what side of the car that it's on.
37:11 Robin Rauzi? You know, people have said that. My Lexus does not have that.
37:14 Speaker 02 Your Lexus doesn't have that? Well, I don't feel sorry for you driving a Lexus.
37:21 Robin Rauzi? That's true.
37:23 Speaker 02 I drive an incredibly expensive electric car.
37:25 Robin Rauzi? Yeah, I was gonna say, I bought my Lexus used.
37:29 Speaker 02 I want everybody to feel inspired by William and send us your executive orders because that was a really good one.
37:35 Robin Rauzi? That is a good one.
37:37 Speaker 02 I appreciate that.
37:37 Robin Rauzi? Staying on the transit theme, actually. So in Los Angeles, they recently raised the parking ticket prices if you park in a bus lane. People treat bus lanes here like they're just, you know, an extension of all the parking zones. And so I think they cost over $300 now. I want the same thing to be true when you park in a bike lane. People put all sorts of stuff in the bike lane, trash cans, and they use it as double parking. But if you park in a bike lane and you're blocking a cyclist's path, you are putting their life at risk. I mean, I cannot tell you, if you're coming around a curve and then your bike lane, your lane is suddenly gone with no warning. On Sunset Boulevard, that should be a $500 ticket to start.
38:21 Speaker 02 So this was a long time ago, but New York City was, after they put in bike lanes, would start to ticket cyclists that were out of the bike lane. And so this guy made a video where he stays in the bike lane and crashes into whatever's in front of him, like on purpose. Like, he's not going that fast, but he films the whole thing of like him knocking into a trash can. The best one is when he just like absolutely rams into the back of a cop car.
38:45 Robin Rauzi? Yeah.
38:46 Speaker 02 And they get out and they're like, hey, and he's like, hey, if I go out of the bike lane, I get a ticket. So like, this is the only choice I have.
38:53 Robin Rauzi? Wrapping up our show with spiritual sponsors, because we still don't have any real sponsors.
39:00 Speaker 02 But we do have movement on that front.
39:02 Robin Rauzi? Oh, yeah.
39:03 Speaker 02 Which is that, oh, yeah. Jesus, Robin, we gotta be better about asking for money.
39:08 Robin Rauzi? Yeah. The economist and the journalist don't know how to, I mean, really, this is on you. Journalists already don't know how to ask for money.
39:17 Speaker 02 So we have some news, which is that we have a newsletter on Substack that you can sign up and subscribe and hear more from us, not just from episodes of the show, but news we find interesting, things we find funny. And of course, if you become a paid subscriber, it helps support the production of the show. So of course, we would absolutely take your money. I won't be, I won't be.
39:43 Robin Rauzi? We're not shy on that front.
39:44 Speaker 02 We're not gonna be shy about that. I will 100% take your money.
39:46 Robin Rauzi? Forgetful, sure.
39:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, maybe not good about doing it, but I'll take it. We also set up a just buy me a coffee, or buy me a coffee. Oh, well, I'm glad I remember the name of the website.
39:59 Speaker 02 Jesus, are we not good at this? My God, I would, I would prefer to be trapped in a room and given like a ticking clock in five minutes to design social security reform than to somehow say how we ask people for money. My God, this is so hard. We have, there's a website, buy me a coffee. And we set up a buy me a coffee account for Optimist Economy. Now, if we are capable of directing you there, remains to be seen, but I definitely set it up.
40:29 Speaker 02 And so in theory, you can send donations to Robin and I, and you can subscribe and become a paying subscriber to the show. And we'll take your money. And honestly, we're gonna workshop asking for it because this is a disaster.
40:44 Robin Rauzi? If you're optimistic about our future.
40:47 Speaker 02 You want to get in on this?
40:52 Speaker 02 But, but obviously, this is when we need to thank our spiritual sponsors for the week of the gratitude we put out into the world. Robin, who is your spiritual sponsor?
41:04 Robin Rauzi? My spiritual sponsor this week is the Athena Women's Course, who I sing with every Tuesday. Emotional high point of my week, right after walking out of choir rehearsal every week.
41:14 Speaker 02 Oh, that makes me, that just makes me so happy.
41:19 Speaker 02 My spiritual sponsor for the week is inspired by the shirt I'm wearing, is banned books. I'm wearing a shirt that says.
41:27 Robin Rauzi? The listeners won't know that it says LeVar Burton.
41:30 Speaker 02 LeVar Burton says, read banned books. And he's got that like amazing, kind of like, he's got the reading rainbow behind him. And he's kind of like making this, making eyes with the camera or the person who's walking by him to say, you need to read banned books. And you can go through the American Library Association, will publish the list of the most banned books and. Yeah, some of them, I'm like, alright, well, this does make me uncomfortable. But a lot of bangers on that list, too. And so I think if you can write a story that so speaks to people and shakes people that they're afraid of it, you're saying something important. Whether or not I agree with it, whether or not it makes me deeply uncomfortable, but the whole notion of banned books is that you're poking the bear. And so they are my spiritual sponsor this week.
42:15 Speaker 02 All the books that have poked the bear, kudos to you.
42:19 Robin Rauzi? Excellent, excellent.
42:23 Speaker 02 As we leave, we would, of course, like to thank our producer Sophie, who would probably also make a vocal pitch for money.
42:31 Speaker 02 Of course, we'd also like to thank someone we have neglected to thank in the past, but are thinking now, our video editor and producer, Andy, who has done so much to help broadcast and augment and get our show out through really fun video clips. He also makes GIFs of us, unless it's pronounced GIFs, he makes those, too. So thank you to you both, Andy and Sophie.
43:00 Speaker 02 Lady Gaga.
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