Boomers Didn’t Ruin Everything. Really.

in terrible moods about the podcast of like today we're going to talk about why boomers don't suck honestly dig in deep here. [Music] Hello and welcome to Optimistic Economy. I'm Katherine Ann Edwards economist. I'm editor Robin Rosie on this show we believe the U.S. economy can be better and we talk about how to get

there one problem in 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. It's baby boomers, yeah.

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

Oh god. [Laughs] God's deep. Well you know what we're going to talk about boomers in generations but first announcements. 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.”

Excellent. We also if the review is really funny that that's the only reason why like you should tell us generally how we're doing but if the review is funny we do love reading them on the show. Let's move on. Remember Andy five. All the best is Andy five. Johnny five. Johnny five.

Johnny five. All of the compliments about how like you guys are trying so hard. I have them finally as the bless her heart. You have a file of them. Nice. 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?

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 six point two five billion dollars to twenty five million kids

under the age of ten if their family income is under a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It's two hundred and fifty dollars that he would put into their Trump account so it includes a lot of kids who would not get that thousand dollars 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. I mean good on him. I would prefer if it came from the federal government it just automatically enrolled everyone but I do like the idea of directly transferring wealth outside of the very wealthy so good on your Michael Dell 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 ten and if their family income is under a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I have one retcon about housing more about housing like to talk about any more. 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. 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. 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 yeah maybe. I mean but what predicts home prices in a locality is wealth. 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 a 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 and deep extremes.

Home to more billionaires than any other place on earth. 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 Biscoe 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 ground one.

I was too cavalier about abundance and supply and there are lots of really good things that supply and abundance can do. I just I'm not sorry it's not supply I'm going back to what I said before.

everyone's like jumping on of like we just need to build we just need to build like no

we just need to slash regulations and we just need to we need to fix those things can be true. They still won't be adequate adequate solution 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 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

redcon or never talking about housing. Yeah 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 crack a little bit while you do it. It's hard I mean it's hard for me to read the Wall Street Journal opinion page. You know we actually read the opinion page. I don't read the opinion page. I even skip over it so I don't look at the headlines. 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 iPad editor really fun. Right. It's I mean the housing ones are interesting one because it's a green on the problem but not necessarily a green on the solution. Yeah 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. Yes and it's not it's not the same like I care a lot about this problem. Yeah 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 or that their problem doesn't exist.

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

Well I guess maybe my redcon within 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 the schools. I see you and I see that and I respect it and it is a problem and it's just 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 a relatively stable ground that the supply deficit of housing is overblown. 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. No. Creating it. Yes. All right. Terms and conditions. Do you have anything?”

I don't. Do you? So I wanted to go back to Calvin ball. I do still love Calvin ball as well. Yeah. It was a term we brought up a few episodes ago. Calvin ball where you changed the rules every time you play. Every time you play. 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 Pilgrim. So for our main Pilgrim today we're going to talk about boomers and why people are so angry at boomers. Answering the basic question. Did boomers ruin everything. Particularly the economy. They've decided to vote all the economic resources we have and to making more World War II movies and documentaries about woodstock. And that's going to

become a third of our economy from here now. It's easy. Why did I want to do this? Yeah. One of the most formative books I have ever read in my entire adult

this book before. I don't remember who recommended this 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 the not the women. The women didn't work. 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 an narrative that was three

sentences long but you know it. You know that Americans used to be better in 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 succinctly. 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. And if we are myth making from this greatest generation and making them into heroes that they weren't we are

making boomers and to villains that they're not. That was why I wanted to do this episode because there is someone who benefits from you deciding that someone else is to blame. Yeah for sure that's

always the case. 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. Yeah but before that they were not called the greatest generation so one highest divorce rates will ever have. 1945 in 1946. When people come back from the war just massive numbers of wars. Two lots of child abandonment and lots of abortion during the war. For sure. 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

which he thinks there are more abortions than lifeverts in the city of San Francisco. There's a rampant cheating on partners. This is where deer John letters come from. There's a trade in amongst soldiers in war war two to have pictures of naked women so that if you if you do get a deer John letter you have smart to send back to your soon to be ex-wife or girlfriend. Incredibly high rates of desertion. You mean desertion in the military? Desertion in the military. I mean like people in

the military just desertions 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 might have been an airplane facility I'd 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. A lot of them were racist. They weren't perfect and he doesn't say it to like criminalism. 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'd 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 was clearly better but those were the hits, the highlights. Yeah okay and the greatest generation. Okay so so the boomers their kids right mostly. Yes so Calvin Ball I brought this up in terms and conditions. Yeah the idea that every time you play the game you make a new rule that is definitely the case with generational titles. Okay 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. Goes all the way to 1964 so it's not just they had kids the year they came home from the war but this is a longer period. After that everything else is invented. Fight either authors,

“columnist or advertisers. Yeah 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. So okay you are a gen Xer. Oh yeah my am a gen Xer. Okay but you were also baby bust. Sure this one's my favorite the 20 nothings. Grunge kids in the 13th gen before you became gen X. It's funny the gen X is the one that's stuck. Which one do you prefer? I don't I mean I remember the 20 something cover of time magazine came out when I was in college

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, their latch key kids but you can decide you know none of those things were universal but you know per earlier conversation about feeling seen

“or not. I think in a way it did make me it did make me feel seen when I was 21 or 22.”

I do say gen X so I guess that's the one I prefer. I feel like baby bust is quite harsh. Yeah I mean it but it really was it was like a big drop off and population size and we are we suffer politically for it. But consequences of that yaw would have been busters

it would have been boomers and busters. I think busters is actually like you could have

there's some power there to busters. Yeah yeah I am like your 1985 so no matter the definition of millennial I'm in it we were gen X2 Gen Y Gen Y I remember Echo boomers digital natives. Yeah. The net generation nexters instead of Xers we were nexters and the trophy kids. Oof. Yeah Gen Z has also been called iGen multi-gen homeland gen homeland gen because they were born after the creation of homeland security. I um they were

“all this huge clear dance fans. Yeah it's certainly. I would have I think I would have liked”

being either echoes or trophies or Xers or Xers nexters. I mean because trophy kids is a

comment on both our parenting and ourselves and that like we got lots of trophies but then

our parents gave us lots of trophies. I was thinking like trophies like being trophy wives you know like something like 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 you a little bit of cowl and ball 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. Yeah 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 catalyzed 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 for this characterized in my youth 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 that boomers are presented with what's wrong with the economy. For sure and it's you know it's interesting because I feel like a lot of that conversation

like 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. Yes there was one in the Wall Street Journal that was like congratulations boomers you own America now. 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 I thought I want to bring it up

but I think a lot of it has a do-thousand now come on now we're not doing it or something else but anyway somebody wrote this which is like the dynamic of boomers waiting for millennials to say you were right and the congress 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 exor is just kind of stand back but a brand's ago okay you guys have it out have it out great there's a great SNL

skit about this where they make fun of all the generations and the host says oh I'm an exor we just sit back and watch it burn. Faced to 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 yeah um one they're big and bad they're big they're big technically millennials are bigger now because enough of them have died yeah I saw that they crossed the boomers it was just like a

few years ago right yeah very recent and non millennials are at the largest living generation to the extent that you think that they're real thing and also what year did they end to that glad it could make them bigger or smaller depending on I can actually make millennials real big it's a one more now for 1965 um so uh 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

all worth millions they were the first to get exposure to 401k's 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 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 yeah the only thing”

that I think I would add that you missed is the debt all of this was financed uh with the national debt right so they the millennials are squeezed out of making any policy decisions now because all the money can only go to so security medicare interest on the national debt and the US military 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 in the economy favor them and also they get social security in medicare is great like first level like foundation building for we shouldn't have social security 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 that it's just be like we need to cut social security 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 right I think the first”

things to say about this characterization that I I think have to be said at loud is that like you would not know from what we just said that there are black boomers note 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 over trees yeah by the time they were 50 yeah 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 well you erase the people from that economy failed yes you

erase the people right I mean like there's a huge amount of wealth being held by the elderly in this country right now and they need it right they need it they same for it it is a support them in the

“retirement that's that's what we told them to do yeah the the economic term behind this is called”

life cycle savings and the idea is that you save up money while you work to dissafe we actually called disaving when you I know it's kind of fun I mean in our country not just we don't spend we dissafe I don't know about y'all being spending this weekend I've been dissaven this weekend but you know you basically the the wealthiest you are in your life is on the day retire and you have at that point accumulated wealth and accumulated savings so that you can then draw that down and dissafe

until you die and the idea of a life cycle cycle savings is that all of the wealth that you build up is then depleted 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 I would have do you know what they find yeah it depends on who looks at it and when but the general consensus I'm like afraid to say that now yeah I think it's mostly life cycle really up until this point

it's it's I mean there are very wealthy people who have handed down dynastic wealth yeah but there's

not a hundred million of them I mean there I think there I think there were 80 million boomers that's

this is a noble fact oh many maybe boomers were there 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 basos and musk and gates is and delves of the world

70 plus million people saving for retirement is also a lot of money into the ideas that a lot

“of the wealth has been life cycle so they reason why they Wall Street Journal says that they own the”

American now is because they're a lot of them are right at the peak of their wealth because this is 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 you are getting a lot of people who are right at their wealth peak yeah they're right they're a peak financially of contributing and not disspending disaving I'm sorry disaving disspending is when you save come on Robin

economics it's pretty simple right sorry um so we would want we want them to have this money

but I do get the feeling that people are mad that they're living long and spending at all

and not spreading it around there's a whole universe whole article about you know inheritance and that that you know they're new attitude and I don't think that it's new the new attitude among boomers is spending before you die right you've earned this money and joy it and that of course again and 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 plan ahead of course if they weren't planning ahead they wouldn't have

“okay we were sending them there was a community quite so much wealth I mean I I think of this”

is like boomers are an example of like there's a lot that we can get right in our economy if we try 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 parallel to workers and unions when you tell a low wage worker an awful job making the minimum wage like you know it'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 they could conflates with boomers of like it's their fault that you're being held back and also they're really successful I mean I think that the blame gets laid on them and I'm not saying this 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 there 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 well that wouldn't even make 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 like don't you forget whose fault it is that we would like absolutely decimated the federal budget for tax cuts to rich people your parents I mean like I know it plays that's not right right right 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 and we're not with the people right we should probably blame gen Xers who voted for it a bunch of these Republicans because we were brainwashed by I don't know Reagan in the 80s okay yeah this is fair I do think if we're doing a political argument yeah Xers are more conservative

than boomers we're we're a problem yeah and it made just me worry sometimes about you know peak Xers were eight years of Reagan it makes me worry about the people who in that age now growing up under a truck like what what deep messages are being like planted that will surface when they're 40 and actually start to vote you know I don't know the differences that people really

loved Reagan still and they always know like there's a lot of idolatry around Reagan and I

“am you think there's gonna be there's gonna be myth making idolatry around Trump I think there”

already is oh yeah but I mean like that's now I'm talking about in like 20 years you think it's just gonna fade away oh yeah because he's a fraud if 34 time convicted felon he's a hateful person and his politics and that he he knows how to get people mad but you don't have a legacy being mad

in fact the only thing he's building on things he puts his name on like Trump accounts and that's not going as well if he wants and also they'll take it away from him to make sure

“people can have it like I just he is not going to make a legacy that's positive I think people”

to Reagan is having won the Cold War right I've had been like taking control of big spending democrats of having saved social security of bringing like honest philxism to politics after nixon which like whoa 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 they're like oh my god nixon those were the days

like you didn't grow up in the nixon era like it like yeah I mean the guys are disgrace I think Trump's going to go the same way like his legacy will just get smaller and smaller over time nixon actually gives me a lot of hope of how little like he just he just does not have many defenders no um anyway boomers I think 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 with pride and glee she

knows me believe it or not 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 well it does seem like an”

argument that's sort of like we get because they succeeded nobody else can 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 impede ours right I mean like because that is absolutely the argument that gets made yeah but there is no let's make it really clear hold on I'm sorry did you just say how's that again I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm

holding I'm really quick I'm really quick you know why we don't have a child tax credit that eradicates child poverty not social security right 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 child care it's not social security and

“I think that this this like pitting one versus the other in a zero-some 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 children that is a conservative Republican policy that it is not the government job to help people and y'all spoiler alert if they had been successful in 1983 they would have

ended social security you're saying when the last time that we revamped social security in 1983 and the trust fund was about to run out of money yes then that the the Republican plan was really just to just get rid of it 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 has held up as a problem for every other avenue as opposed to it all comes back to social security with your dad doesn't it but I I think that the conflation of conservatism with baby boomers does conservatives a favor because you blame your parents and it becomes less about yeah tax policy choices as opposed to people yeah I mean I do feel like also it absolves 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 cynicism in resignation are a free pass for

shitty policy yeah and this is why I give shitty policy a free pass yes yes like uh 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 f**k it no just raise taxes and pay for

children's investments sorry 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 ui w walter

attempts on him and he was vital and not only growing the power of the ui w and then the aflc IO but using labor's voice and the civil rights movement mm-hmm and in the the united farm workers movements he spoke on the 1963 rally the i have a dream rally he was one of the people that spoke

“before king yeah 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 mm-hmm it's like a really simple quote but it has stuck with me in so many ways of like this is going to sound so dumb but like when it's a pie fight of like boomers have two biggest 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 i can't we just go back to making fun of them for me obsessed with world war two 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 yeah to the wealthiest and that the boomers embody that but i think your point is right and it's a nice note and on no but i think that the the pushback is important right like my problem is that however big the pie gets i'll never get more

yeah that's yeah i mean the pie is going to service the national debt no matter how big it gets 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 really more but thought i actually know what we're”

about 15 million homes are going to come from the next 10 years and those are the ones the boomers they can't 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 home ownership rates in the United States or amongst the 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 just wait but

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 or 15 year trajectory and given the changes of like the the actual size of the population and home ownership rates by demographic by age core groups yeah we actually have a big release of supply coming but yeah it's interesting that we haven't figured that people 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 or they don't want to and they

like they're housing yeah and they like their house where there 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

“it because that's what young people need yeah it's you know whatever i get to live in my big”

house like i get to i'm an american i get to do what i want like 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 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 in the circle of life continues you children can fight over your piggy house we're cleaning it out which is i'm my piggy house i have filled my piggy house with so much stuff that you will have to go through

and it looks so i can't even tell you how how close that cuts oh my gosh all right i should say that i have cleaned out the house of a variable of a person after they died and it was a brutal process so i don't need to undercut it so i clean up my childhood home when my dad died so that's one more house in the suburbs people break okay so we're gonna take a quick break a whole lot happened there Robin and I are so 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 head at us and it doesn't really put us in a good place to talk about optimism and it does you 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 burned down your home and that's where we are anyway so we should take a quick

break to process all that work and really you need to take a break break break break break out

this is really really petty so i feel oh my god yes i'm here for it we're stop i need to

“get popcorn and then and then go we've just had it with people in their dogs if there was 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 at quarter mile down the road is a park that literally says no dogs in this park and i looked in at the other day and there was like five people playing with their dog go to the dog park go to the dog park go to the dog park um go to the dog park i can't decide what the fines would be if i was

my executive order but it would it's just short of you lose your dog we have a dog i don't love

my dog my dog is she's so sweet she's just sweet and yeah i'm also like dog owners be better be better

do people bring dogs into the grocery stores where you live people bring dogs into the into like the grocery store and i'm like on what planet do you think that that's an acceptable behavior nobody has spoken and took their dogs into the grocery store this is an L.A. thing this is not anything that just is like oh people what i love about dog owners almost all the time it's just how much enthusiasm they have for their dog that sometimes blinds them to how it gets in a good

thervene but dogs do make the world better and we fundamentally believe that here on optimistic on me which is why i'm just in a free dog to any spiritual spots i hope you can be

i hope you can match that impediness no i was going for my usual take down of hollywood

that we need like prestige drama about Walter Ruther in 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 west 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 yeah for sure here's a tidbit he survived to see that assassination attempted 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 this right arm oh my gosh 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 and there and then not that much later the similar attack was made on his brother who also survived if the FBI was like uh sorry this is Hoover's FBI these are liberals we don't really get to it's like it's not a real crime who tried to kill a liberal that's that's not a real crime well karetta scott king spoke at his funeral and gave one of the ulogies 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 i know more american stories that i'm with you i think that that would be”

walter ruther who would you cast as walter ruther oh that's a great question obviously i have a lot of thoughts on casting um do generally he looks like he's from the forties exactly you could have cast him in the forties okay you know what this guy actually looks like um bill polman his son is an actor named Louis polman and i think Louis polman could pull off a mid-century face now here's a real question look up john Louis labor leader he was the

head of the united mine workers look at this guy's visage who plays him a pair of i-brows i mean i mean you need like i-browwigs you need i-browwigs for this one 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 or how about MLK was assassinated at a wild cat strike of sanitation workers in Memphis like he was therefore 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 comms and then is assassinated because i'm not for you to have

“a podcast you you actually need it you need an entertainment studio you know i think that i'm”

trying to warn brothers is for sale if we could just you know get this is it comes down to you optimized you don't if you don't are dollars i bet that we could rival uh the offer from Netflix to buy one of others should you should you give us your feelings of dollars and you would like

will trumps FCC approve it i don't think so you know if it's not if it's not broadcast you care

“is we're gonna need the FCC that's a fairly good point um spiritual sponsors spiritual sponsors”

on this episode about the boomers and people who don't know how to walk their dog who is your spiritual sponsor 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 ah that's such a good sponsor i'm coming back again with the Olympics”

i'm sure but here's it'll be like you know world cups using but then they need to be reminding my spiritual sponsor is once again the Olympics i had one of the most like thing that you wish would happen in a high-stakes 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 invasion in 2008 and i mean like people weren't getting on the plane because we 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 but 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 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 who ever shouted yeah in the terminal when that shot went in really and then there's like the the hollers who you it was it was great that that is my spiritual smuncher 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

move recording so so fiela line is an amazing women's hockey fan and edit the optimistic

economy podcast and Andy Robinson creates our online videos that you can see on tiktok instagram youtube and linked in snapping the two of you 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 optimistaconemy.com and if you're interested in chatting with other optimists we have a chat going on subset and so if you just become a follower of our

show on subset you can talk to them in the chat room that's it for our show that's it that's it we're done look how red i am relative to the start of the show look i mean look how red i live my big old red face we got it not just a nearest fatigue she spat out her waterfokes and how did she do it what i made a comment about my appearance boom i don't know what did that oh christ