Morning Brew Daily - The NCAA Trust Fund? & Couples Without Kids Are Making Bank

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

Episode 207: Neal and Toby explain the letter that NCAA President Charlie Baker sent to schools proposing that a trust fund be established to compensate college athletes. Plus, couples with no kids are raking it in and Israeli regulators did not find trade abnormalities before the Hamas attack on October 7th. CVS is planning to overhaul how much prescription drugs cost and Godzilla is back on the big screen. Finally, what are the most visited Wikipedia articles of the year. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, you're never going to believe this, but the NCAA may have done something smart. Then what are dinks and why are people so mad at them online? It's Wednesday, December 6th. Let's ride.

Toby, crazy stat I read yesterday. There are a record 20 sets of brothers playing in the NHL this season, which means on any given night there's probably a brother playing against their sibling on the ice. Players attribute it to those early mornings at the rink that require the support of the entire family and brothers would be just pushing each other to get better and better. And there's no other sport that has such a concentrated gene pool by a long shot. Last year, the NFL, which has far more players than the NHL, had just 13 sets of brothers playing. It's so interesting to me. The data set I want, though, is which brother is better?

Is it the younger brother or the older brother on average? I know that's difficult to quantify, but I feel like the younger brother, always nabs them coming from two people with younger brothers. And is your younger brother better than you? If you're listening, Henry, you get me in some stuff, but not everything, not everything. Okay, before we jump into the news, quick shout out to our purple friends over at Yahoo Finance. The best part of producing this show, or the worst, depending on your perspective, is that it feels like we are studying for a test every single day.

That check out for you, Neil? Yes, but I love that aspect of it. I get paid to learn things, new things, every day, and what is not to love about that? But the reason I bring it up is because the best study buddy for acing this show every morning is Yahoo Finance. They supply us with trusted news, real-time market data, innovative tools, and robust suite of resources so that MBD can be MBD. Yahoo! If you're always coming in clutch, head to finance.jahoo.com today or download the Yahoo Finance

mobile app to get it directly on your phone. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill, and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot.

Now through May 6th, Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. So NCAA president Charlie Baker proposed sweeping changes to college sports yesterday that could lead to athletes getting paid directly for the first time ever. And did your job just drop? Because ours did when we heard about this. For decades, the NCAA has tried its best to prevent athletes from getting paid to preserve the amateur aspect of college sports, even as those athletes provided labor for what is now a multi-billion dollar industry. But the wins have shifted and under fire from numerous lawsuits, the NCAA wants to create a pathway for athletes to collect a paycheck for their work. So how would,

this work. Baker, who is the former Massachusetts governor, by the way, wants to create a new tier of D1 sports where those big budgeted schools, the U.S.Cs, the Ohio states, the Alabama's of the world, can pay athletes at least $30K per year through a trust fund, and that'd be split 50-50

among men and women athletes to comply with Title IX gender equity rules. The schools can also offer unlimited educational support and enter into name, image, and likeness deals with their athletes. Toby, if this happens, and there's certainly a long road ahead, It will be the biggest change in college athletics that maybe we've ever seen.

Yeah, it's definitely a new era when it comes to common-sane athletes, so you need kind of a new financial structure to make it happen. This is still just a proposal. We should mention that maybe just a conversation starter and the end product could look a lot differently. But I do think that this is meant to just bring a little bit more uniformity to the NIL landscape. Because right now the current system kind of relies on these third-party boosters and donors, basically paying players to come play for their schools. So now these schools themselves have an equal opportunity

to contribute to this educational trust fund and pay players. So I think it does provide a little more autonomy to the schools themselves, reduces the reliant on these rich boosters, which is the current system has been built under, and obviously paves away for players to be compensated. To me, it's a recognition that college sports, we say college sports as if it's one thing,

but it's really two things. There are a set of Power5 schools, which are those conferences that you hear about all the time, Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, all that. And then there are the rest of D1 sports, which are just regular schools, and they might have college athletics, but they aren't these powerhouses because the Alabamas of the world, they are essentially semi-pro clubs, and their budgets reflect that. I mean, Baker, in his proposal, noted that athletic budgets in D-1 range from $5 million to $250 million. So there's really two sports going on here.

And I think that this proposal says, look, we need to recognize this and we need to create a pathway to kind of acknowledge that there is such a drastic difference in financial structure between the Michigan's of the world and the Kennesaw States. I was wondering which. I know me too. Pull out Kennesaw State out of my butt. Shout out Kennesaw State. Also, some observers of this proposal still say that it doesn't address kind of like the core issue that the NCAA has been grappling with for decades at this. point, which is employment. They have lobbied for years to prevent college athletes from being named employees, but some law experts are saying, like, eventually this is the Rubicon

that you're going to have to cross. You're going to have to define whether or not these athletes are, in fact, employees. There's also a fair amount of legal pressure coming to NCAA's way right now. And there's a case called House v. NCA, which is seeking as much as $3 billion in retroactive NAL in broadcasting revenue. revenue payments. So it's just like the latest lawsuit to chip away at these NCAA's bedrock of so-called amateurism that's been eroding for a while now. And that's what Baker is trying to do is shield the middle middling schools from these kind of lawsuits. So they don't have to pay players like the Alabama's camp of the world. Okay, Neil, to some, the word dink might symbolize

a drop shot in tennis or pickleball. To others, it might be the sound of a flicking fingernail making contact with a wine glass. But when you're in the world of personal finance, dink can only mean one thing. Dual income, no kids. D-I-N-K. Now, that acronym has been floating around personal finance spaces for years now, but they recently have come back into the public eye

after multiple social media posts on TikTok and Twitter went viral where dink couples brag about how lovely their dink lifestyles are. Debate erupted around these videos. Some congratulated them for ending their genetic blood. and replacing the joy of family with the joy of materiality, but others supported this increasingly popular lifestyle choice because if there's one thing we know about Dinks is that they do have that money. According to data from Rocket Mortgage, Dink families bring in an average of $9,000 more than the typical dual-income family with kids, plus the Brookings Institute estimates that

raising a child to age 17 is likely to cost over $310,000 in expense Dinks don't have to deal with. Neil, anytime the Dink discourse kicks back up again, it brings out a lot of strong emotions on both sides. What do you make of the growing trend of people opting for the Dink lifestyle? This is absolutely a growing trend. Every data piece you look at shows that people are having fewer kids in the United States. As of last year, 43% of households here were childless, which is a 7% increase from 2012. And when you talk to parents about whether they're likely or not likely to have kids, So 44% in a 2021 Pew survey of non-parents, ages 18 to 49, said they were not likely to have kids someday, and that is up from 37% in 2018.

So the dink trend appears to be catching on because people just seem to be wanting to live their own lives and don't want to deal with the financial burdens of having a kid. Yeah. If you look at the financial numbers, you understand why this is such an attractive lifestyle. The median net worth of a couple without kids is around $399,000. which is 100% more than 2019. Couples with children, 251,000. So it affects obviously every single aspect of life, but especially the financial aspect.

Do income families with kids bring in an average income of $129,000. I mentioned that the typical non-Dink household earns $9,000 less. When you have kids, like you have to attend to their lifestyle. But again, it's not just, obviously it's not just a black and white financial equation. There are other aspects to it. Right. which is why this discourse just kicks into high gear anytime these videos come out. I mean, if I'm a policymaker, I'm looking at this and I'm saying, oh, this is not good.

Because you need kids to fuel the future economy. I mean, these people are going to grow old. And my question for you, Dinks, is who's going to take care of you when you're older? No, there's a lot of existential questions attached to it, which is, again, why it's not necessarily always a, like, rational financial equation. it's also like there's more meaning to life than just the financial aspects. So like kids bring obviously more than just being a financial burden. So again, that is why you see these videos every once in a while.

The phrase dink has been around for a little bit. But again, every so often it just kicks up into this discourse again. I would just say anecdotally when I talk to my friends who have kids, it's like the best decision that they've ever made. And it's all they can talk about. And they're obsessed. So I realize that's not the, you know, I realize that there are a lot of financial hurdles and other hurdles for having

for having kids for a lot of people, but I will just say anecdotally, talking to my friends, they're just like, I'm obsessed. Like, this is, I love them more than anything. You heard it here first. Neil's friends are obsessed with their kids, which is good.

It's always a good thing. Well, yes. I also mentioned I didn't like seeing their pictures one time, which got me in, which got me in some trouble. So I'm retracting that statement. I love seeing pictures of your kids, send them to me all the time.

Okay, earlier this week, researchers at NYU and Columbia dropped a bomb. shell report that suggests that someone, most likely inside Hamas, made a meaty profit trading stocks ahead of the October 7th attacks on Israel. These researchers looked at the Israel Exchange traded fund, which is how an investor would gain broad exposure to Israeli stocks, and found what they called extremely unusual trading leading up to the attack.

For example, on October 2nd, five days before, they found that 227,000 shares were shorted, which is when you bet on a stock or index to fall. And on a normal day, about 2,000 shares are shorted of the Israel Exchange Traded Fund. The study also found other examples of curious trading activity, including one bet on a single Israeli bank that yielded a profit of almost $900,000. So the concept of Hamas making a small fortune off of their attack trading stocks caused a public uproar, and Israel's securities authorities said they look into it. Yesterday, they came back with their assessment.

No significant trading abnormalities occurred before October 7th. They couldn't find any of the sketchy stuff that the New York researchers did. So this remains a bit of a mystery. Yeah, it's a murky picture, but the researchers were pretty confident in the findings that they saw. They saw that the short selling prior to October 7th exceeded the short selling that occurred during numerous other periods of crisis. They specifically called out the financial crisis of 2008, the 2014 Israel Gaza War, and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. But then, yeah, you're right. Israel's Securities Authority said, it found no significant.

trading abnormalities. That's a mouthful right there. And they said that the claims made the academic paper were irresponsible. One of the things they called out in specifically is that they said that they calculated the share prices of the companies incorrectly. Basically, the way that Israel's stock exchange works is they're listed in one denomination of the currency, and the researchers calculated using another denomination of the currency. Agarote versus Shekels, which is basically cents to dollars. Right. So they said they calculated it in sense thinking it was dollars. And so they made these kind of outlandish claims that the Israel security authorities basically said did not match up. And then the researchers, and I should mention one of these, these are no slashes. One of these guys is the former commissioner of the SEC. They said they went back and they said, okay, we know we made the currency error, but our claims still check out. And the level of shorting is especially suspicious. And they also called out the fact that the only other time where such shortings.

activity occurred was on April 3rd, which media recently reported was another time that Hamas was originally planning its attack. So that's the only other similarity that they could find. But also this sort of trading ahead of natural disasters and sketchy stuff always brings to mine 9-11, and there's this conspiracy going around, or that has gone around for many years, which is where there was a lot of shorting activity on airline stocks and insurance stocks ahead of 9-11, and people didn't know exactly what to make of that, but they wondered whether there was someone on the inside who kind of knew that these attacks were going to happen.

Yeah, it often comes down to correlation versus causation. The specific 9-11 instance has generally been disproved by regulators saying that it was more of a just causation thing. They found that 95% of one specific trade was placed by a single institution within the U.S. And that they also had bought shares in airlines in the days leading up to it. So, again, you can always find the evidence you need to support whatever narrative you're supporting. And it looks like it's a similar situation here with Israel Hamas. Okay, before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break.

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Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose.com. CVS is changing the way it prices its drugs and it definitely has something to do with the big, bad Mark Cuban breathing down its neck. The pharmacy chain is moving to a new payment model called Cost Vantage that will drastically simplify the way drugs are priced. Under the old method, CVS relied on a series of complex formulas that frustrated both patients and regulators alike, but under cost-vanteds, pharmacies will get reimbursed for the cost of the drug plus a set markup in handling fee. This is known as the cost-plus pricing system, which brings us to Mark Cuban's company

fiddling called Cost Plus Drugs, which has been a big impetus for changing the status quo. It's right there in the name, Neil, cost plus drugs, turn the industry on his head simply by buying drugs at cost from suppliers, then adding a transparent 15% markup fee before selling them to customers. So it's not a coincidence that CVS's new model is eerily similar to the one pioneered by Cuban, but still, it's crazy to see the nation's largest pharmacy change, change in this entire pricing model after coming under threat from a still relatively small incumbent. I would say Cuban definitely had a lot to do with it, but he was just kind of poking the

bear for what has been a murky process for. pricing prescription drugs for decades that has also come under fire from lawmakers. The FDC is looking into it. It is so murky. It is so secretive. No one knows when you buy a prescription drug. No one knows how the hell what you're paying, why you're paying it. So CVS has come under pressure from lawmakers and regulators on one side and then just simple market

pressures on the other side because you have a bunch of insurers kind of ditching this pharmacy benefit manager format and going with Cuban. and a bunch of the other upstarts. Yeah, Blue Shield, California said it's ditching CVS's unit and replacing it with Mark Cuban's company. Then Kroger reportedly dropped CVS as well in favor of cost plus drugs. So the market pressure is certainly there as well. What's funny to me, though, it's not clear if CVS's new program will actually result in lower prices overall for consumers. All that it is doing is providing more transparency.

So some drugs might go up in prices, some might go down in prices. So even though it's not suddenly becoming a lot cheaper to obtain your prescription drugs, at least you know why they're priced the way that you're priced. And the cost of meds in the U.S. is just utterly painful. Americans spend around $1,200 a year on average for prescription drugs. That is more than any other country. And one out of every three U.S. adults on prescription drugs say they've been unable to take their medication as prescribed due to cost.

So this is a really salient issue for a lot of Americans. and CVS, it seems like the healthcare industry under pressure. I wouldn't say they're doing it on their own. They're under a lot of pressure is shining a light on a little more around their pricing strategies. I mean, we speculated that Mark Cuban quit Shark Tank and quit the Dallas Mavericks because he's running for president. But maybe he just is really all in on this opportunity.

Healthcare mogul. Yeah, he's turning into health care mogul. It's the biggest industry in the U.S. Okay, Toby, we've been waiting the entire show to talk about this story. Godzilla. A new Godzilla movie from Japan is getting made. hype here in the U.S., and it may provide a blueprint for Hollywood studios wondering why their big-budget superhero flicks aren't landing with audiences like they used to. This movie called

Godzilla minus one was made on a budget of just $15 million, but already scored $11 million in its opening at the U.S. box office that weekend, last weekend. And that may not sound like a lot, but for a subtitled film, it is a mammoth performance. And worldwide, it's already made double its budget. So why is it working? Well, the movie is good with a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and some critics say it's among the best Godzilla movies ever made. It also presents a simple storyline with human elements that resonate with people in the way that complicated, bloated, Marvel films just aren't anymore. In the words of one reviewer, the success of Godzilla minus one tells us that action movie viewers want entertainment, not homework. Toby,

has there ever been a more charming, prehistoric reptilian monster? I'm a huge Godzilla. fan. I'm a huge fan of the Monster Verse 2. There are U.S. studios who are also kind of building this kind of MCU Marvel-esque universe that brings King Kong and Godzilla together. And even though those movies are not quite as poignant or as human-centric as Godzilla minus one, in fact, I can't even name a single human character, let alone even actor from those Godzilla-V-Cong movies. But it does show that Godzilla is kind of this timeless storyline that just humanity in general has kind of attached itself to over the past 70 years. Godzilla is a very political figure.

It is a blank slate with which you can draw your own plot and storylines are depending on the vibes at the time. Godzilla originally was created in post-World War II, Japan as a sign of the anguish of the nuclear fallout from the war on Japan. And then over the years, it's been used. He? He? He?

Yeah. He? He? has been used as sort of a marker for the vibes of the time. In 2016, it was used as a sign, you know, in response to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. It's also been used as a defender and a hero as opposed to a destroy overworlds. So Godzilla's just this IP that you can kind of mold into whatever you want, depending on what the vibes of the time are.

Yeah, it absolutely is timeless, and it can represent whatever you need to represent. It can also represent kind of bureaucratic failure in terms of. terms of when Godzilla minus 1 was being created, the filmmakers started writing the script during the COVID-19 pandemic. And so a big part of it was kind of this helplessness you feel when confronted with an overwhelming enemy and how do you deal against that. So it is just so symbolic. I personally love just the destruction aspect and how different Godzilla films depict like the level

of destruction that Godzilla is capable. You know those videos on YouTube that shows like over time, like the most. destructive Godzilla's. Have you ever seen this? I have not seen that. It goes through like the entire history of it and I just, I don't know, I'm a simple man at heart. I like seeing things go boom. Okay, Neil, let's descend into the depths of Wikipedia for our last story of the day. The Wikimedia Foundation released its list of the 25 most popular English Wikipedia articles of 2023 based on page reviews. And I'm just going to dive right in. Here are the top five. Drumroll. Starting from five to one. Thank you, Neil. Number five, op and hundred

The film. Number four, Indian Premier League. Number three, 2020, cricket world cup. The page deaths in 2020 comes in at number two. And coming in at number one, pause the podcast right now if you want to guess.

Neil, you could hit the drum roll now if you wanted to. It's Chat GPD with nearly 50 million page views. Neil, most of the rest of the list fell into either the movie, celebrity, sports, or country categories. But you noticed some big themes popping up in this year's list, what stood out to you. I did. One theme that kind of blew my mind is that four of the top 10

page viewed articles in English were centered around a specific sport. And that sport is cricket. Cricket, it's the year of cricket. World Cup, Indian Premier League, cricket World Cup, and 2023 Indian Premier League. So those are kind of two of the those are two pairs of the same thing

that garnered so many views. So I would say we are sleeping on cricket as a global sport, and we are sleeping on India as a powerhouse, even though it became just the most populous country in the world this year. Yeah, in 2023, Cricket comprised 16% of English Wikipedia's top 25 articles. It's kind of crazy. And the 23 Cricket World Cup page received 304% more interest in this year versus last year's edition.

Also, some other things that were funny on this list. Oppenheimer beat Barbie in the Wikipedia streets. Obviously, there was all this talk about which one would win in the box office. Barbie ended up kind of destroying Oppenheimer in the box office, but for whatever reason, people were more interested in Googling or Wikipedia. They didn't know as much. Right. I think that's what this comes down to in terms of the page views on Wikipedia.

It's not necessarily a matter of interest or passion about something. It's constantly updating. So that's why you see tournament pages get a lot of traction as also like Deaths in 20223. That is constantly updating. Something like Barb and Oppenheimer, I think there's a mystery aspect. where people are like, wait, who is Oppenheimer? So they went to Oppenheimer. Barbie is kind of a known commodity for decades.

Speaking of known commodities, some celebrities made the list. Taylor Swift was obviously the most popular celebrity page of 2023 with roughly 20 million page views. Travis Kelsey also didn't make the list, but obviously had an increase of interest, got 11 million page views. And then the two other most visited celebrity pages were the late Matthew Perry and Lisa Marie Presley. Elon Musk got $14 million.

He made the list as well, the biggest business figure on the list. Okay, so little quiz. Do you remember who was number one last year? Absolutely not. Take a guess. What happened last year? Is it still like pandemic? COVID-19?

No, no, no. Nothing like that? I want our listeners to kind of think, they can pause the podcast and take a guess. The answer is Jeffrey Dahmer. Oh, my gosh. I never would have guessed that. That's insane. Was it because the Netflix series came out?

Okay. Classic Netflix. All right, we have to wrap it up there. Hope you all cruise over the hump today. As always, you can reach us at our email, Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com, for any thoughts you have on the show or to complement our skincare routines.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Velas and Raymond Lou are associate producers. Eugenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup is seriously considering becoming a dink. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.

Great. Show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter.