Should We Cherish the Ultra-Wealthy? (a.k.a. ‘The Cornfield’)

Fixable. We've helped leaders at some of the world's most competitive companies solve all kinds

“of problems. On our show we'll pull back the curtain and give you the type of honest, unfiltered”

advice we usually reserve for top executives. Maybe you have a co-worker with boundary issues. Or you want to know how to inspire and motivate your team. No problem is too big or too small. Give us a call and we'll help you solve the problems you're stuck on. Find fixable wherever you listen to podcasts. I don't want to read the news. I want Robin to read the reaction to the news. Sometimes in the morning my poor wife is making coffee and I'm like, "But that could you keep this thing?"

She's like, "It's the coffee grinder button." You know, just like, "Is there a way to shop for loud grinders?" Hello and welcome to Optimistic Economy. I'm economist Katherine Ann Edwards. I'm editor Robin Rousy. 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. Well so today on Optimistic Economy we're only both about 30% sure about what we're talking about,

but we're pretty sure it's about rich people. It's definitely about rich people. What we're going to say about them is a little bit up in the air. Part of the conversation is that we don't know how to talk about what we talk about them. All right first announcements. First we've got a lot of great questions so far for our next Q&A episode.

“I think that we will be recording it in two weeks, which means I need your questions in the next week.”

So if you're hearing this and you've still got a burning question, send it to [email protected]. All right moving on to a retroactive continuity, aka retcon. We have a retcon that comes via the internet, which is we put a clip of Robin explaining the origin of 86 on TikTok and Instagram. Thanks. And apparently there's not a user on that platform either platform that agrees with your genesis and it was like such a wellspring of personal stories of like I worked in a restaurant.

We never 86ed anybody. Things were 86ed. Like it was very

no one agreed with your assessment of 86 and I was like y'all. I wouldn't question Robin, but it was you can question me. That's fine. I mean I don't think that there's a settled case. We also got emails about this. One person said that they had taken a food tour of New York and

“gone to a bar prohibition era bar called Chumli's in New York City and they'd had a”

entrance that was on 86 Bedford Street but that wasn't the main entrance. And supposedly it was the one that got the call saying 86 your customers, so during prohibition people could sneak out this back door. Yes, but I thought that this was kind of beautiful that it has so many potential

origins and also that we'll never have a definitive it's this one. Yeah, apparently somebody wrote

a magazine article with 18 different origin stories of 86. I love that. I just really appreciated people's like I know what 86 comes from and contributing to the 86 discussion. Okay, also one red con. Also one red con. Last time I gave a quote about FDR and I realized that it's actually a truncated quote where he talks about calamity, howling executives and it's from a fireside chat. And so I thought I could read the full quote so I will not be accused of cherry picking the language.

So the full quote from the fireside chat is do not let any calamity howling executive with an income of a thousand dollars a day who has been turning his employees over to the government relief roles in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves tell you using his stockholders money to pay the postage for his personal opinions tell you that a wage of eleven dollars a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. It's actually much more biting

in the full quote of like it's not just that they're crying wolf it's the pay the postage for his personal opinions. Oh yeah that he's using the company for his personal opinions or that like they're paying people so low that they're on government relief roles. I mean it sounds familiar. It does sound familiar actually. I thought of this quote a couple of times reading the news this week including reading Howard Schultz op and the Wall Street Journal today about how Washington is

being ruined. How entrepreneurs know how to run things. I was like Howard Schultz take your money. Stop talking. It does remind me of that like now famed billboard of the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights. Have you seen this? No. A real estate agent took up like a monthly

please turn out the lights because Seattle's economy in the 70s was not. No it was not good. It was

meant to be tongue-in-cheek but people got really upset and so they took it down after a couple of weeks but I found an interview with a guy like relatively recently he was like yeah so that really stuck. I'm feeling like if there are any people with an entrepreneurial spirit in Seattle who want to run out of billboard you could take out a very similar end that's something like well the last billionaire at leaving Seattle. Please please turn off the space launch pad.

Well the last millionaire leaving Seattle please be sure to pay your work staff your household supports staff. Oh take your private jet with you. Oh what else can you do? Listeners I know you can

nail this. Optimus will nail with the last billionaire leaving Seattle please turn out the blank.

I know you're gonna get this. Like it. Like it. Terms and conditions. I have suggested a

“term a condition for you but I don't know if you want to use it. Oh yeah I can do it. Okay so wealth”

effect in economics can have a couple of different meanings based on the context. I think the one that most people are talking about is the idea that you will increase your consumption which is how much you spend on goods or services or whatever when you get wealthier so your income hasn't changed but because the assets that you hold are more valuable you will go out and spend more money. It's like a behavioral change based on how rich you feel based on unrealized gains on things

and it can include the stock market. Home prices are pretty obvious place it gets measured it seems like.

I mean it's a really fascinating question too of how do people internalize the assets they hold that they haven't converted to cash. This is just like I'm holding an asset that is illiquid and I'm spending more money because of it. The rule of thumb is $1 of wealth equals 2 cents of consumption and the short term. So like if I found out tomorrow that my house went up by $10,000 I might spend

“$200 more. But just one time. Well we're in the short term. In the long term if I think that I'm”

worth more money it could lead to more consumption as I use that to borrow to invest or to do other things. So in the 1980s and 90s you saw a run up of people who were getting access to the stock market which has typically been a relatively elite held asset. So if people in the middle class are able to get assets in the stock market is there spending different than people who are you know say traditionally holding it is that have the same consumption effect. It doesn't. People tend to know that they're

value in the stock market could very well go down again and they don't respond the same way. So it's really just the wealth effect is not just based on the amount of wealth that you get but also where that wealth is coming from. People tend to spend housing they don't necessarily spend the stock market at the same rate. Right. Yeah and housing wealth I mean people can tap that with things like home equity lines of credit in a way that for most of us would require selling selling assets

and paying capital gains and all sorts of things if you're trying to do that in the stock market.

“Yeah and our economy as we all remember from the GDP episode as we all remember all remember”

around two thirds of the U.S. economy is the spending of households. That means a portion of our economy is maintained via people feeling wealthy and spending money and so is the wealth effect from these assets. What's your term is weird looking? It is it's zooswang and it's German I'm sure if you're German it sounds something like zoots of lung. It's a word from chess actually it means that you are forced to move but every move you make is actually going to make things worse for

you. This sounds German now that I've heard the definition this feels very German but it gets used a lot in daily life and I read it in an article about the situation that Vladimir Putin is in vis-a-vis the word Ukraine but it also reminded me a little bit of the position that our president finds himself in and I ran anyway it seems like it was a good word good German word. All right well I feel like this is a little bit of an ominous beginning for a episode of like FDR's going out

executives that got employees on the dull fighting labor law consumption is being converted from assets like stocks and in the meantime we're all back into a corner and every time we move it gets worse. We'll be back with the optimism right after this coming up on the big pilcro.

about let's see if we can make a 75 by the end like those odds so here's the hook there are

movements across the country as we've talked about in our tax episode to somehow raise revenue from high income high net wealth households and I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about

“what is becoming quite popular which is the second home higher property tax. Right I think it's”

New York City it's the oh I'm not going to say this word correctly. Pied a tear. Pied a tear okay Pied a tear. All right so mom Donnie is getting a Pied a tear tax in New York City and the idea is that if you own a residence that is worth a certain amount of money and you don't live in it they're going to tax you more for it. They're talking about doing this in San Diego which has just be clear like a lot of the West Coast a really big housing affordability problem and a housing shortage problem

and a burgeoning homeless population. I don't think it's burgeoning. There's just been here a long

time been there a long time yeah so this woman says who owns a second property in San Diego

cities should cherish someone like me because they own property and pay taxes but don't use city services and I don't know anything about this woman I'm not trying to pass judgment on her what I thought it evoked was this this entitlement that if you are rich you do more for the economy and so you are more important. Oh yeah that's exactly what it just exactly what it did. I don't know her situation maybe she's really trying hard to get by but that is what she's

appealing to when she says cities should cherish someone like me because I don't use services but pay taxes and I I thought we could just kind of amble around this point of optimize should we be grateful to rich people for the economy. Our producer Sophie also shared an article about the same thing from the financial times and I was just looking for let me see if I can oh here's a quote

“can I afford the tax yes is it going to determine no but I think it's shameful I provide a lot of”

money to people or blue collar workers who work for me servers and restaurants if we're not there they're going to be less people being paid. Yeah I mean the entire piece was built around that but the one that I I was stunned by it was further down and it's from wealth advisor and he says the progressive movement is the most dangerous thing for the upper middle class professional that's ever happened in these big cities when these people are successful and they become a

man and director after working a hundred hours a week and they're making real money these governments are going to crush that person. Where do you think those people come from you think that how what the hell yeah so I mean I just everything about that did just to still so much this idea

“that if we do something to the super rich which really gonna hers is the upper middle class professional”

bullsh*t is working a hundred hours and we're working a hundred hours a week because that's great they're not making real money until they're a managing director but they're going to be crushed by the government so I just want to talk about where this argument comes from how it has been seen and why it is total bullsh*t. I don't know about you but some of this started to bubble up in my consciousness like last year when this report came out from Moody's Analytics claiming that the top

10% of earners in the United States accounted for nearly 50% of consumer spending and this got picked up there are many stories about this including the one in Washington Post including one in the

Wall Street Journal that basically all said the strength of rich people spending is

entirely its popping up our economy right now like Katherine said consumer spending is nearly 70% of GDP and so that would mean basically that rich people's spending is responsible for a third of our entire nation's GDP which seems a little scary I did kind of a deep dive on some of this and it sounds like a lot of that Moody's Analytics is let's just say not widely accepted. No I mean one of the best things I read about that was from the Federal Reserve Bank of

Minneapolis that just said we're going to review the data like Moody's came out swinging 10% of Americans drive half of consumption which means that they are almost a third of our economy and then separately the bank of America came out with a point where they're like oh it's not okay it's E we have an E shaped economy and it's not like if they are driving spending it's been like this for a while it's not a part of the recent recovery the New York Fed has been much more

necessarily attribute this to just some top percent there assessment is that the consumption patterns of households by income have not changed for a long time so kind of closer to what bank of America was saying of like if this is the case it's not like drastically pulling apart. Can you explain a little bit like what we mean by consumption and then you dropped in K-shaped

“okay and and I think we should just like explain yeah so the K I mean just think of the shape of”

a capital K it was initially kind of in contemporary times brought up in the pandemic that we would

have a K-shaped recovery which means that basically the top half takes off and recovers quickly

and the bottom half slides kind of into its own recession it was then applied to inflation inflation is taking off prices are going up families are feeling the squeeze and if you're at the top you're fine and you're still spending as you normally would the E shape is meant to point out that they don't have differing fates with some starting point being the pandemic or the starting point being inflation these are just two very unequal groups that have different kind of experiences in

any aspect of our economy in any economic event you have one group that's at the top in elites and another group that's big and at the bottom it has a different fate because of their household economic security so the E shape the point is the the visual they're going for is it's a capital E with three bars where you've essentially divided in this case consumers into three wealth groups or three income bands and not quite sure which one and the top spends this way the middle

class spends this way low income people spend this way and what Bank of America was certainly saying was that those trends those trend lines are very consistent yeah so to give you a sense here

“to be in the top 10% of American households this is based on income tax data you need to be”

a date about 200k yeah maybe even more right um according to IRS statistics the income floor to be in the top 10% in 2023 which was their most recent year of data was 187 so around 200k annual incomes is not looking assets so 200k income puts you in the top 10% the top five percent

is around 300 mm the top 1% is around 700000 mm and the top 0.1% is closer to 100 million okay

so kind of the basis of moody's k-shaped economy was these households that have more than 200 thousand dollars a year and income they spend a third of our economy and we're being maintained on them what if people have tried to point out since then is that above 200000 up to the people who are pulling down a minimum of 80 million dollars a year you have some really high variation and part of that comes from there are lots of people who make above 200 thousand dollars

who are sitting on millions in wealth and people who make 200 thousand dollars who do not have as many assets to their name and they have very different consumption and so what they were trying to point out is that the income and wealth they're not a perfect map mm yeah one of the other

things that that I read suggested that that analysis first of all that it used basically disposable

income as a proxy for consumption but that that was a mistake that wealthy households saved

“much more they don't spend it yeah okay so the the I think the reason why we don't have a great”

answer to this question is that observing consumption income and wealth in the same data set is very very hard because wealth gets really complicated when you're really wealthy and they have all kinds of assets and where they held and who you know are do you have a trust so the the big surveys that we rely on are the consumer expenditure survey the current population survey and the survey of consumer finances the first two are from the Census Bureau the last one's from the

Fed so these don't all line up these these they don't like there's just difference since yeah yeah they're different data sets but it's just we keep things different for privacy reasons but yeah how much households spend relative to what they earn relative to what they own is not a straightforward question and it would vary a lot by going up and down various parts of income and wealth distribution I mean one thing that the Minneapolis Fed pointed out is that we have

over a thousand billionaires and we don't know how they spend their money I mean there's not enough of them to be captured in surveys but they have more money than God so like what do they do with it collectively the wealthiest 1135 billionaires are of a net worth of 5.7 trillion dollars to give you a sense our economy is roughly 30 trillion dollars yeah so getting back to what could be our theme okay pull it back great pull it back is like when you hear something like

wealthy people that the concentration of wealth is like two are benefit because they're consuming

“and that it's not blind we all because they're also our employers but I think there's this”

aspect of coming up with a narrative that suits the wealthy and the rich by saying you know we do more for the economy and I don't think that that's new I think that this is today's version in the gross inequality that we have like I'm carrying the economy is is almost what these people are saying that's the narrative it's not almost it's like literally what they're saying oh yeah I mean so sorry that financial times articles paywall but it is hilarious I mean

there's some level I'm like I don't like this but it is also hilarious oh yeah we've said it

before in the show that rich people are gonna rich so I think what I want to do is take this narrative

if we can seriously and then say why it's you this is not the case you do not need to feel beholden or grateful that people have so much money that they're keeping the economy afloat

“as I think one thing to do is context we are added an incredible historical place when it comes”

to inequality and the amount of income that the top one percent in the top ten percent are taking home well let me start before that we have wages that you earn from your job and you sum all that up and you have your total wage income and then we have total household income and then we have wealth these are three different like metrics and they all three have similar but different inequality trends so when people talk about inequality they tend to be picking the

one that that most suits their narrative that most suits their narrative so wealth in equality

worst is in the 1920s and we'll never pass that because even though with the billionaires now

they did not have middle-class homeownership which we still kind of have so the fact that upwards of 60 percent of Americans own their own home tilts wealth inequality even if it's just a dent it's a significant enough dent that we are not as unequal in terms of wealth as we were then depending on how you measure it then it's income inequality and where we are now is worse worse than the 1920s yeah and then wages it's hard to tell because consistent wage series before I mean

even wages before the 1970s are hard to be reliable I mean like the measures of them are hard to yeah like if I were to track the average hourly wage of the American worker I could probably come up with the average back to the 20s or 30s but distributions of knowing what the 10th

“percent and 20th percent that that gets a lot harder you need to have better data for it so”

that's the context the claim is that I don't even know if I mean do they say this bluntly of like I carry the economy so inequality is okay or do you think it's just like I carry the economy and they don't make a comment on how they're carrying the economy because of inequality yeah they make the claim that rich people are carrying the economy I think they don't care about the laugh of that they don't see it or they don't care but I also think some of what I

respond to of course is not necessarily the individual quotes and pieces but the fact that newspapers are writing about it in this way too yeah yeah I think the idea that we need to be grateful for the spending power of people with very high incomes yeah I mean that's total bull **** I mean I think we are reliant on the spending of rich people and our economy is much worse for it we have a weaker economy because we have such a concentration of wealth and income I mean

I don't disagree that we have a weaker economy I mean what I mean economy was but I do feel like we're made afraid that rich people will get spooked and there's something really unpleasant about that you know like rich people could punish us as an economy as a country as non-rich people by pulling back like even if I don't have money in the stock market I need to worry about the stock market because what if rich people get spooked you know I'm not going to sell my house I have to

worry about home values because what if rich people get spooked it's like that twilight zone episode with like the little girl who everyone is like afraid to say do you know this episode? Not yet keep talking all right well this is worth this is worth a mid-record google maybe it's the little boy yeah six year old Anthony Vermont has godlike mental powers including mind reading he has isolated his town of Pigsville, Ohio from the rest of the universe the people must grow their own

food the people live in fear and into the constantly telling him how everything he does is good since he banishes anyone thinking unhappy thoughts forever to a place that he calls the cornfield

he has confused when his father tells him that neighbors are reluctant to let their children play

with him after he has sent several of his playmates to the cornfield the end of the episode his dad is trying to instill some discipline and review him but everybody else was just looking at the kid with my lane and they're saying tomorrow is going to be a real good day of just playkating the boy with mental powers who sends people to the cornfield so long metaphor took us a minute to get there but yes the wealthy are kind of like that of like who's that guy New York who's like

I'm going to leave and I'm a billionaire and I create these jobs and like sheels is in the Wall Street Journal he's like I'm a billionaire and I I make all these jobs and I'm going to leave and

“it's like I'm going to. Sheels has already lives in Florida I think for other reasons but oh still”

feels like he needs to to go back and talk about Washington and Seattle but they're the little boy

who's holding the town hostage of like if you make me upset I'll send you to the cornfield because I have all the power exactly honey he talks about you know moving hundreds of of executive jobs from Starbucks from Seattle to Tennessee yeah I mean I'm not the Tennessee's the cornfield but yeah they do they they threaten all the time that they're going to move their companies they're going to move their headquarters and and don't get me wrong I think the companies actually

are headquartered where their CEOs want to live and they're off and their CEOs make those decisions based on places that want to playkate them in one way or another yeah I mean it seems obvious to say but this does make our economy worse oh yeah and one of the reasons why we wanted to have this like somewhat vague themeless episode was to pull together a lot of what we had talked about so far this season about you know the corporate income tax rate is at record lows and they're taking home

profits and it's generating untold wealth amongst the very small set of people and then at the same time you've got people who are unincorporated into the financial system and are on a path to be left behind by society because they want to use cash and not have to pay to have money like the rest of us do you've got people working in salary jobs who are white collar who are not getting over time and are working long hours because this is what job this is the expectation

“jobs have become yeah and I I think that at the end of these you know lies and like pretty simple”

legislation that's not the redistribution of wealth it's the redistribution of rules what do you mean I mean like rules need to apply to the rich like we don't I don't need elephants wealth or shults is wealth I don't need it to make a better economy I need them to follow a better set of rules and then they wouldn't exist or have the power that they have I don't see it as like a post-hawk of like let's punish the billionaires that we have I see it as they are a policy failure to have that

much income and wealth concentration and so few people means that the rules are not working

and that in some ways to me is like optimistic of like you know we're not we're never going to

bring elephant to the table we don't need to bring him to the table we just need to change the Fair Labor Standards Act so the middle class has its overtime and like we need to update the Fair Labor Standards Act so we haven't been in a wage and have a corporate tax rate again and that the thing about all this legislation that is meant to empower workers is that it disempowers them I know I was just thinking that about about how we're charged like has anybody done more for

screwing people's schedule than Starbucks you know uh is anybody fought unions more strongly than Starbucks Amazon yeah I see this fact checkers out there because collectively they have so many and national labor relations boards violations meaning that it's not just that they're fighting

“unions but they're violating what mega labor law we have in order to do so so that's that's why I”

think they they win some of this narrative is making us afraid to touch them and it kind of goes back to AI in the same way of like you you have this concentrated wealth and power and because we're all supposed to be afraid of it we're afraid to tackle it yeah and it's they're telling us that you need to be afraid so that will keep you in your like state of livelihood but really they just they are afraid of legislation that could absolutely tilt power away from them well I mean you

certainly see there have been corporate leaders who can remain unnamed but who are clearly so afraid of legislation look at the donations that they've made look at the contributions they've made look at the political alliances that they have been very eager to create suddenly in 2025 they're not doing that out of some sort of goodness of their heart and if they're not doing it because they're poor they're doing it because they are afraid of legislation some calamity howling executive

millionaires tax yeah that is the first one and so you have to fight that one as hard as humanly

“possible right the the Peter Territacks in New York City if New York City does it is it could”

stop there if the state of Massachusetts economy doesn't collapse after they've taxed wealthy people like what's next hmm well are they afraid we're gonna make them all move to Tennessee to the cornfield to to I like you know I don't quite understand like if they don't like it they threatened to leave and when we and when especially in California when we go we'll go they get even more angry I don't I don't want businesses not to be started in California I mean it's it's been one of the

strengths of this state that people could come here and start businesses but when billionaire start flexing the like well I'm just gonna go to Florida I don't I feel bad for Florida I just feel bad I feel I know there are normal people who live there and they should not be subject to this like in a flux of **** so it's a bringing it back to construction right no no I'm I'm with you but to bring it back to consumption the point that they're trying to make of them leaving and in response

to these progressive taxes that are coming up that's kind of spiritually linked to the narrative that we need to cherish all of them in the economy being at their mercy because of their spending you're right our economy is more fragile because we have more eggs in one basket and that is not an inevitability yeah and a stronger economy would have less concentrated consumption I don't know the degree to which it's concentrated because it's really

hard to measure but I know in some ways like I don't need to know to know that it's really skewed and our economy is far too dependent on extremely wealthy people who have the most to spend I mean one

thing you hear kind of on the ground reporting is that businesses find that they they basically

have to cater to much higher income households who have high price points very high quality standards

“or you have to go like down the family house yeah and make it as like cheap as humanly”

possible because that's all families can afford retail shops and places that serve consumers will tell you that's how they're seeing the bifurcation and they're losing the middle consumer makes participating in the economy less fun when it's you know now kind of pulling between two poles of view either by for poor people or you buy for the wealthy people I think it contributes the idea of being left behind because we are a consumer economy so

if you feel left behind it's because I mean for a lot of reasons but one of them is because you can't afford what you want to afford. I think that these wealth taxes and these income taxes and peanut care taxes are good because they're showing us that rich people aren't untouchable. I don't know if they're the solution to the problem they're not the solution yeah I don't think

that I think the long term they're not the solution the solution is have better labor law

and have better tax policy and we don't end up in this situation again like the solution isn't to somehow walk back the wealth that they've accrued the solutions to make sure we don't produce any more of these. Sorry Americans that uphold our spending and create jobs that I don't create I didn't mean it sir sorry don't send me to the cornfield I I hold them up in my mind is like oh this is how you know our current economic policy regime is a failure so the louder they are

I'm like I get it we messed up you exist yeah you can fix it you think it's okay to say these things this like save your talk that they have in our economy I want every optimist if you'll comfortable to push back on and say you make our economy weaker and we are not held hostage by you and the reason why they're holding us hostage is to prevent policy that will actually make a difference I mean this wealth tax on second homes it's not going to make a big difference we need

our one time billionaire tax in California is not going to make a big is not going to make a difference no what will make a lasting difference is a true investment in a fair economy right we need to raise the corporate income tax rate simplify the personal income tax code you're like just up the Fair Labor Standards Act just just up the National Labor Relations Act so people can have a decent job and unionize we're organizing whatever way they want to and then just make sure that our

safety net system is prepared for job laws like you know there's like not that much we have to do it's just like slightly different things and we start tilting the economy in power our way

“because it all rest at power who has powered our economy them what to do about billionaires I think”

is a both hard and fun question but what to do to make sure we don't have billionaires again billionaires in the sense of the elite class that holds power over us and says that we're indebted to them for having an economy at all what do we do to make that not happen that we know exactly what to do and they know exactly what to do too and they fight it hard and some ways they're

playing their hand I mean I think they're also playing their hand right I think they're showing

their hand and that they know what will actually be a threat to power showing their hand while playing their hand and they have card to build their hand just like I know that I can sound somewhat polyanish when it comes to fixing these problems but we the end of the day generating income for working in middle-class households till now power so much more than any pita tarotax we're way better off if we make things thirty percent better for eighty percent of the workers

than trying to claw back thirty percent of the wealth from these eleven hundred billionaires yeah I guess that's what I meant of like their admission of how much we owe to them and how

“powerful and important they are in the economy is kind of like yes that's what I've been saying”

you just said the thing that I said but you think it means something different than I mean and you think it means that I should do whatever you say or else go to the cornfield but I think it means we need to have a really simple set of solutions to labor and income and tax law boom like we we're actually yeah okay optimist I'm fired up I think the title of this episode is

the cornfield right the cornfield because we'd never want to be found on google so we're going to

call this episode the cornfield optimist still waiting for you guys to chime in about what we're putting on that bill more saying goodbye to the last billionaire leaving Seattle actually I think we need to be reversed these would be when the last billionaire gets to Florida somebody locked the gate probably word savage we're in there and we will come back for executive orders and spiritual sponsors I love it when you leave these blank because it's gonna be a surprise I never know

what you're gonna say a lot of the times it's like coming off the top of my head because I forgets the right thing down I was like press myself to do the stuff off the top of my head anymore yeah

“I was like I was grateful for something I don't remember what we actually we were reading the”

quote from after years far as I chat we did get a suggested executive order which is that

people have to stop calling everything a fireside chat that he'd seen some sort of webinar with Sam Altman where he called it a fireside chat and he was like you buddy get fireside chat out here now Sam Altman is right um okay we're back to now after we've fixed big things in the economy Robin why don't you kick us off my executive order this is really for my wife we walk past the California Science Center where they have a ongoing exhibit of mummies and every time we walk

by these science my wife says they should not call them mummies they can call them mummified humans or preserved human remains this term which is by the way the discourse even in academia

“is it's just a little creepy for what are human people I went looking for a word to replace it”

which was not easy I came up with saw which is the Egyptian word for what a person becomes through the ritual of mummification but there are a lot of museums that have stopped using the term mummies and use either mummified people or preserved human remains this is very specific I appreciate it my executive order is that when there is a red carpet or blue carpet for an event that really wealthy and rich and famous people go to they need to name check all the

unions that helped put the event together and there needs to be like proceeding or closing march of the actual staff that made the event work this blue carpet brought to you by iazi yes blue carpet brought to you by iazi um yeah just one of make sure people knows where that know where the magic comes from you think about something like the golden gloves like it's really just kind of like a weird problem we're not for like the magic of certain unions to put together

you know to put on a show so I would prefer the workers behind these red carpet events to I mean I maybe like a share of tickets to go down the red carpet or someone gets to attend or they get to be like a workers table you know I say this executive order but I know someone's going to write in and be like you know the much more fun party would be the party with the union that famous people aren't invited to and that's probably accurate but let's have some

democratization of the red and blue carpets okay all right spiritual sponsors my spiritual sponsor this week is the mellow cello podcast by nick Takenabu Ogawa and he hasn't put out anything new

that he then also releases as a podcast and they he plays maybe five songs in each of them

“they're mostly instrumental with loops and beats and if I need something that is going to be”

just sort of mesmerizing but not to distracting to work to do yoga to I listen to I listen to his his band's called Takenabu which is his middle name I listen to Takenabu a lot but

the mellow cello podcast in particular is on repeat in my house that's awesome mellow cello

“I'm going to have to look that up okay well my spiritual sponsor for the week is stupidly large”

floral arrangements of like this is I got to tell you like this ain't easy to move around whoa is that a mother's day I did I did get this on mother's day yellow roses from one of my taxes yeah yellow roses taxes might have been a prostitute but that doesn't

“mean I don't like the flower anyway I just something about four arrangements that are just like”

really big and studying it's then I've always noticed in like Jane Austen adaptations that

casually these really wealthy people aristocrats who are like pining over a guy that they don't know how to express feelings for will walk by like the most studied floral arrangements so yes big floral arrangements including big thing of yellow roses nice the optimist economy podcast is edited by Sophie LaLond and our video production for social media is by Andy Robinson video close from the show for you to share our available on tiktok instagram facebook youtube

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