Make Me Smart February 13, 2024 Transcript

Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Shall we? There you go. My goodness.

Kimberly Adams 

Hello, everyone. I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thank you for being here on this Monday 12 February is the date and day.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. Can you believe we’re almost halfway through this month already? It’s wild.

Kai Ryssdal

Totally.

Kimberly Adams

Yeah. Anyway, today we’re going to do some news stories. We’re going to do some Make Me Smiles, but let’s start with the news. So, Kai, what you got?

Kai Ryssdal 

So, mine is political, but mostly economic in a way that probably a lot of people listening this podcast will understand, but I fear a lot of people in this country don’t. So, Trump goes to South Carolina this weekend says all the standard stuff he usually says at these rallies. And then he says, tells a story, which you can tell his fake because he uses the “sir” thing. “I was at a big conference and a leader of a big country said to me, ‘Sir, if we are behind in our payments to NATO, will you help defend us against the Russians?’” And Trump says, “I told that person no.” I’m paraphrasing that, but that’s pretty damn close to what the story was. And that, of course, is just another example of the former president not understanding America’s position in the world specifically not understanding our position in the various alliances that have made the post-war global economy and peace since the second World War mostly happened. So, Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition this morning did an interview with a guy by the name of Tom Nichols. Tom Nichols used to be a professor at the Naval War College. He’s an old Soviet guy, but he’s very tuned into political and economic and geostrategic affairs. And Steve said to him this morning in this interview, which I commend to your attention, and we will put it on the show page. Steve said, help people understand why things like the NATO Alliance, which the President former president is threatening to pull out of, and has threaten to pull out of repeatedly and has, you know, said he won’t abide by the terms of Article Five, which is the common defense article. Steve said, make people understand why that matters today. And here’s what Tom Nichols said.

Tom Nichols

“I think it’s really important for Americans to understand that their freedom to move about the world, their freedom at home, and their standard of living on a day-to-day basis is directly dependent on those alliances.”

Kai Ryssdal 

I don’t know how to put it any more plainly than that. There are many, many, many things wrong with this world and with this country, but the global alliances that have helped shape peace for the last 80 years is not one of them.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, when I saw that clip this weekend, what really struck me about it is the former president is saying out loud, that as per his whims, he’s willing to ignore our treaty obligations, right? And yes, to all of those things that you said, but our treaties with any country are pretty fundamental to how countries relate to each other in the world. And if you have a president saying out loud, “I don’t feel like I have to abide by our treaty obligations,” it kind of just throws everything out the window, in terms of our relationships with other countries and it undermines trust. I mean, already, I saw an article over the weekend about all of these countries, you know, getting ready for a potential Trump administration. And you know, all the upheaval they think that might potentially cause especially in terms of, they won’t be able to trust that the United States will keep to its promises and obligations and won’t necessarily adhere to whatever future promises are made. And I think that is really damaging to our reputation, to put it very mildly.

Kai Ryssdal 

Very mildly. It beggars’ belief and really bums me out. Anyway, what do you got?

Kimberly Adams 

Two interesting stories. So last week, we did some reporting on Marketplace and a bunch of other folks talked about how there was new data out that during the pandemic, younger Americans really saw an increase in their wealth. Now, they still have miniscule wealth compared to older generations, you know, like boomers and things like that. But nevertheless, because a bunch of young people invested in the stock market with that extra cash that they had, due to stimulus checks and not having to pay student loans or whatever. Their personal wealth went up, which was like great, great news, then, you know, happy Monday this morning, I see a different story. In the Associated Press that actually used some similar data, but you know, pulled out a different, you know, data point I’m going to read this from the Associated Press. “A strong performance in financial markets, particularly an outsize gain for the stock market in 2021, helped entrench existing trends of wealth inequality during the pandemic, new data released this week show. According to report from the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the real net worth of white individuals outgrew that of Black and Hispanic individuals by 30 percentage points and 9 percentage points respectively, from the first quarter of 2019 through the second quarter of 2023. The period featured a remarkable level of government financial support and after, the initial shock of the pandemic, a surprisingly strong job market.” And then they talk about unemployment. But the article goes on to say that it has to do with where different groups traditionally have their money, white Americans are more likely to have their wealth invested in the stock market, in a home, or, you know, in a retirement account, aka the stock market, right. But I’m going to start reading again. “More than 50% of Black financial wealth is invested in pensions, the New York Fed found. Less than 20% of Black wealth is stored in private businesses, corporate equities, and mutual funds. In contrast, less than 30% of white financial wealth is invested in pensions, with about 50% invested in business equities, and mutual funds.” So these sort of, you know, historic legacies of what investment products and access to wealth building tools were available, even in a time when lots of people saw economic gains, those sort of legacy problems, entrenched wealth inequality, even in this moment when you know, that happened. It’s a really interesting article. It has to do with unionization levels as well and housing and highly recommend. So yeah, that’s one.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, no, look, I mean, so the idea of this, it’s just. Well, there’s a lot going on here. But the obstacles that have been put in the way of building generational wealth for black Americans and other Americans of color, are staggering, and will take generations to undo. You know, that’s, that’s the super sad reality of this.

Kimberly Adams 

I mean, I remember we talked about the K-Shaped Recovery, but 30 percentage?

Kai Ryssdal

Yeah, that’s crazy.

Kimberly Adams

Wow, that’s wild. So, the other story jumped out to me because of some reporting I remember Justin Ho doing during the pandemic about how with a labor shortage that was really getting to a lot of companies, small businesses were starting to buy a lot more machines, robots, automation equipment, right? So, story out in Reuters that said, last year “North American companies ordered a third fewer robots as worries about a slowing economy and higher interest rates made it harder to justify buying the advanced machines, the first hiccup in what has been a steady progression of the robot invasion of the region’s workforce.” And so here are the hard numbers. “Companies bought 31,159, robots in 2023, a decrease of 30% over the year before, the largest drop in percentage terms since 2006 and the largest drop ever in net units, according to the group, A3. The pullback occurred in the automotive-related industries – which made up about half the market last year – as well as sectors such as food and metals and manufacturing.” I think that’s really fascinating because all of that talk about we’re heading into a recession, we’re heading into a recession, we’re heading into recession, even though it didn’t happen. It informed the decisions that businesses were making about investments. And we had talked to the time about you know, this being kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you talk about a recession too much, you might cause one. This is what that looks like.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right? Right. Totally. Totally. Yeah, and I’m still well, we’re all still waiting for that recession to come. You know?

Kimberly Adams 

Well, I’m not waiting. I’m hoping it doesn’t.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yes. All right. Jay has had enough. What do you got? What going to make you smile?

Kimberly Adams 

Cats. Cats always make me smile. Yes, I saw the most adorable story in the Washington Post. The Washington Post has this newsletter called The Optimist, and it’s just feel-good stories, which often are very. It’s funny how heavily it has to rely on pet stories to get feel-good things.

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, sometimes that’s what it takes.

Kimberly Adams 

And so, I’m leaning on that. So, here’s the headline; “Yes, cats do get stuck in trees. This climber rescues them for free.” And this is a guy in Pennsylvania, who offers to rescue people’s cat stuck up trees for free, and he’s got all this climbing gear. And apparently, even though the stereotype is that people will call the fire department to get cats out of trees, those ladders often don’t reach up into the canopy of trees very well. And also, fire departments are quite busy doing other things. And so, there are all these different surfaces. In some places, there are people who do it for free. Other times you have to pay for it. But this guy, Steven Morrow. Sorry, Steven Murrow is the guy’s name. He actually lives in Pitman, New Jersey. And so, the opening story was in Philadelphia, and so he drove from New Jersey to Philadelphia to get the cat out of the tree. He’s runs a Tesla tree service, a tree cutting business used after the vehicle he uses to haul around his solar charge chainsaws and climbing equipment. And so, he posts videos online of all these rescues. And so, he’s done something like 100 plus cat rescues over the past three years. 39 of them in 2023. And so, the article has all these great photos of him like reaching over and getting cats and you know, trying to coax these cats out of trees. It’s very, very cute.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m going to need a very smart, cat savvy listener to this podcast to explain to me why cats get stuck up in trees and can’t get down. I truly don’t understand.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh wait, it’s in the article. I can read this to you. Yes, hold on, let me find it. Okay. “It’s a common situation with cats, according to pet health experts at Pet MD, cats tend to go high when they’re either chasing a small animal or feeling threatened, but many have trouble coordinating their front and hind feet when trying to climb down. They generally jump down from high purchase, but a tree might be too far off the ground for them to land safely.” So, they don’t usually climb down off of things. They typically jump so when they get too high, they can’t jump and they get stuck.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, thank you for that. Read the article, Kai. There you go.

Kimberly Adams 

You’re welcome. It’s okay, you have a busy day.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right, here’s mine. Did you watch the football game last night?

Kimberly Adams 

I did not. I did catch up on some of the ads this morning.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right, ads are the important part. For those who did watch the game and for those who’ve been on social media since, there were a couple of meme worthy moments. The most meme worthy and it’s this is really amusing to me, because I’m not a big meme guy. But there was a moment in the game after Kansas City fumble where Kansas City’s Travis Kelce of Travis Kelce fame went over and was screaming, literally screaming sweat dripping off his brow, veins popping out of his forehead at the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs Andy Reid, who’s sitting there stoically just ignoring Travis Kelce going bananas on him. And of course, that turned into a meme that various people used for various things. My favorite one comes from Scott Lincicome. He’s at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. He’s the vice president of economic policy there, and he put on this picture, he said, he put; ‘for the last time foreigners aren’t paying the tariffs.” It’s pretty funny if you’re an econ guy.

Kimberly Adams 

It is pretty funny, but that’s a lot of rage in that photo.

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, he was, you know, there’s a lot of testosterone in a football game. What can I tell you? What can I do?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to yell at your professional colleagues, especially like that. But I see it’s a game and there’s a lot of high emotions, but I don’t like it. The meme is funny, though. I did chuckle when I saw it. Sorry, I ruined it. That is it for us today. You can join us tomorrow for our weekly deep dive. Since it’s Valentine’s Day this week, we decided to have a chat about how the economy can impact our love lives, from dating culture to navigating finances, in all kinds of romantic relationships.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, until then, comments, questions? You know how to get them to us. Why yes. Send us your thoughts, your comments on finances and romantic relationships. What could possibly go wrong? 508-U-B-Smart, makemesmart@marketplace.org is how you get ahold of us.

Kimberly Adams 

Are you worried about this conversation, Kai?

Kai Ryssdal 

You know, I just ask the questions. Make Me Smart, which is this podcast, is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s program was engineered by, c’mon you should be able to tell if you’re a regular listener, Jay Siebold. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Thalia Menchaca.

Kimberly Adams 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts, and Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital.