Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Did Someone Say 4-Day Work Week? Juliet Schor did…
Episode Date: April 6, 2023We’ve all heard about the 4-day work week, but is it realistic? Will it really improve our lives as much as people say? And how can we persuade the traditionalists? Renowned economist and sociologis...t, Juliet Schor, answers all of this and more on today’s episode, but does she persuade Anthony… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is open.
open book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding
the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists,
political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's
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and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're
enjoying or how we can do better. You know I can roll with the punches, so let me
No. Anyways, let's get to it.
The United States is overworked.
Burnout is real.
And quite frankly, we need to do something about it.
Here to tell us what we need to do is Juliet Shore,
whose TED Talk on the four-day work week went viral last year.
You might think the four-day work week seems self-explanatory,
but there's a lot more to it.
And trust me, I'm as traditional as it gets when it comes to work.
But Juliet had me on her side by the end of this conversation.
So listen in.
see if she persuades you too. So joining us now on Open Book, Juliet Schor, an award-winning
economist and sociologist, and we are going to talk about the case for a four-day work week,
which was a sensational millions of millions of views TED Talk, Juliet. I watched it,
although I didn't send it to my employees yet because I still want them on a five-day work week
because I'm a traditionalist, I'm an old geezer, but you make a lot of compelling points,
which is why I wanted to bring you on.
So let's talk about burnout for a second.
Most of us suffered that at some point in our career.
Lay out the problem for us about burnout.
I think the biggest problem is how much it's increased.
If you look at Google searches from the U.S., I think 2021 for burnout, it skyrockets.
And you can see this in a lot of other similar metrics like stress, also people leaving the workforce,
difficult to getting people back in. People are experiencing a lot of stress, anxiety, worry.
Burnout is the sort of most extreme version of that when it's a more persistent condition
and people just don't have the energy anymore. They just feel so depleted. And it's a big
problem that U.S. employers, employers in other parts of the world, but even more here are
are facing right now, and it's part of why more and more are turning to four-day work weeks.
You ever experience it?
Personally, not really.
And what do you attribute that to?
I have a lot of control over my work schedule.
You know, as a university professor, we have to be in the classroom only a small number of
hours.
And if I start to feel too stressed or too much is happening, I've
got control over the other parts of my job, like how quickly I'm doing research and so forth.
And that, you know, we call it in the field autonomy. I have really high levels of job
autonomy. And that really helps with burnout. But very few people have the levels of autonomy that
university professors do. So if I have this right, and maybe I don't, and you'll correct me if I
don't. Some of the way you work, you think has been beneficial to you staving off burnout, and there may be
a need for more flexibility in the way other people work, right? I'm not saying they should all adopt
a university professor's work schedule, but there's some relevance to your own life in terms
of transposing it into this idea, right? Or no? Definitely. What the research shows is that there are
two components to high levels of stress in the workplace. One is how demanding is the job. So how
how fast you have to work, intense.
They call it job demands.
The other is how much control you have over what you're doing.
So I've got a lot of control,
and that also allows me to moderate the demands.
But I think giving people more control at work
will really help with stress and burnout,
and the other side of it is reducing demands
on the most stressed kinds of workers.
I mean, we can think about some of these really high-intensity jobs,
like in healthcare where you have so many people burning out and leaving the field because those
job demands have ratcheted up so high and also changes in health care have reduced their
control as well. You know, again, I listened to the talk a few times and I took some notes. I'm
just going to give you some of my reactions and you tell me what you think one way or the other. You're not
calling for less work. You're calling for spending less time at work. You sort of feel like with a little bit of a work
reorganization, we can be equally productive in less time. And then that gives us more downtime to
unplug from a screen or to do things that we like to do from a hobby perspective. And you actually
think that a four-day work week, people would be way more productive than in the current five-day
structure. Fair to say? Yes. Let me put a couple of caveats on there. So since the TED talk I did
a year ago, we now have lots of data because we've had companies over the last year and a half
who are following this model, hundreds of companies, thousands of workers. So the ones who are
trying it feel that they can make it work, which means they reorganize work, get rid of a lot of
the low productivity activity they're doing, make it easier for people to get all their work done in
four days. Their hourly productivity is going up. And a lot of these companies are also just saying
their productivity overall is rising. So it's been very successful for them. Employees love it.
We're finding reduced stress, reduced burnout, reduced anxiety. You name it across many metrics,
well-being is better. That's not to say that all employers would be able to take the five days of
work and sort of fit it into four without any loss. And we can talk about what those are, but I'll
give you an example of health care, which is the most obvious one, where you can't ask people
to do as much in four days as they're doing it five. They're already burned out. So you need to
hire some new people, but you're going to save on that burnout. You're going to save with better patient
outcomes. You're going to save with your people leaving the field. Okay. I mean, it all makes sense to
me and I have to pull myself away from work at different times so I don't get overly fatigued or
you know get the wheel spinning too quickly from work stress activity but yet there's a constant
anxiety for people particularly you know a lot of your work is done on income inequality and a lot of
your work is done on the not only just a work light balance but also certain unfortunately blue collar
workers are you know we're serving people and they get paid by the hour so what do you say that
in those situations, just pay them more for less time?
So here's an interesting fact.
We have as many construction and manufacturing companies in these trials as we do IT companies.
That shocked me when the net numbers finally came in on that.
And those companies are mostly succeeding, not all of them.
I mean, it's a little bit easier in an IT context or a white collar context to figure out how you're wasting time
than it is at a factory or a construction site.
But these blue-collar companies are also making this work.
We have restaurants in these trials too.
So the hourly rate does go up for those workers.
Right.
But they're more productive in those hours.
And that's a big part of what makes it work.
And the other thing I would say is at the current moment in the U.S., employers are facing two big problems.
One is they're sitting with lots of unfilled jobs.
And the other is the great resignation.
They're losing people at rates.
And the four-day week really saves them money on both those.
People stay with a much more likely to stay at a company.
And they're much more likely to go to a company.
It's a big attractor for talent.
I find that the most fascinating.
And this is, I guess, what I would ask you as an entrepreneur.
We have a society that's changing.
There's a paradigm shift clearly happening in the society.
We both know that at the start of the Industrial Revolution, there were people working seven days a week. And then we invented the weekend. And now there's probably a time due to the way people are working to go to a four-day week. But there's this anchored anxiety where people are anchored into something that doesn't even really exist anymore. So how do you move those people who are afraid to make a bold decision like this, who are more traditional or don't want to be embarrassed or don't want to make a mistake? Because you are.
a first mover. You are an innovator and the companies that are in your experiment are innovators,
but how do you get somebody off the fence to see this as the future? I think there are two possible
ways. One is a more gradual shift. So we've seen companies that are going to a Friday off every other
week or Fridays off in the summer or go down to a 35 hour week and see how that goes and then
gradually go down. So to think of it more as an evolution than a revolution.
that's one way. And I think it's a lot easier for someone to get their head around the fact that you
could take out three hours and make it up and then maybe four, maybe five, then that jump all the
way to eight at once. So that's one thing. The other is, and this is true of, you know, everyone who's
in our trials, is they start it as a trial. So we're going to do this for six months. We're going to
evaluate it. We're going to, you know, pay attention to what happens and we're not promising this
forever. Of course, you know, that has some risk, which is that people don't like it being taken
away once they have it. But there are a couple of companies. There are just a few in our trials
who decided that, you know, they weren't going to continue with it. So that that is an option. And I do
think that sort of testing it out, thinking of it as a pilot makes a lot of sense. So I think the good
news for me is that people that work here probably don't listen to my podcast. They've had enough of
me, Juliet, during the workplace, so they have no interest. But if they were listening in, they'd be
knocking on the door behind me and saying, when are we going to a four-day work week? What do I say to
them? Do I push back? Or do I say, okay, well, let's start this summer and you can have Fridays
off? I would start with the summer. It's a good time. What you could do now.
You're becoming the most popular person at Skybridge, Julia. Go ahead. Keep going.
You could start with no meetings Fridays. That's what some places are doing. That sort of allows people to reclaim their time a little bit. And I think one of the things that's happening is in workplaces where the employees have a lot of sort of freedom and discretion. Actually, my bar instructor told me this. She teaches a Friday morning class. A number of the people come in and say, we have no meeting Fridays. I'm supposed to be working, but I'm here at class. So people just start reclaiming some of that time for the
themselves. And then you can see like, well, actually the work is still getting done. They make sure
it gets done on Monday through Thursday. So that's what I would start with. No meeting Fridays.
Fridays off in the summer. Then go to the every other Friday. And a year from now, we're going to be,
I'm going to be back on your podcast or we're going to be talking about how you, the year of the four day week on
open book. And you're expecting more productivity, better work or morale inside the organization.
and probably won't miss a beat in terms of what we're doing as a company.
That's what I think.
I mean, the costs for companies when somebody leaves to attract a new worker and train them,
they're really high for many companies.
We're not talking McDonald's here.
Your employees, you know, when you lose one of them, it's expensive.
There's a big productivity loss there too.
And you may be sitting with an open position for quite a while.
and that's going to stress out the people who are still there, and it increases the likelihood that they're going to leave.
So it's a kind of proactive strategy for the current labor market, which is a tight and challenging labor market for employers.
Okay, so if my Skybridge employees are listening, some of you will be going to a four-day week, but others will be going to a six-day week, and you'll know who you are, and a result of which you'll know what that represents.
No, I'm kidding.
I think it's a really good idea, and I'm going to talk it over with my partners.
I want to ask you about our culture, the United States.
We have a live-to-work culture.
Europe seems to have a work-to-live culture.
What does it say about our society right now?
Well, you know, it's not a good reflection.
I do want to say that when we think about this, we have to realize how recent this difference is.
because the U.S., and this is something most people don't realize, I think, the U.S. led the world in
time reduction from the late 19th century until after the Second World War. We were the first to get a six-day week and then the five-day week.
And our working hours were a lot lower than Europe. Beginning and around the 1970s, we start to diverge from them.
And Europeans keep reducing working hours. And we kind of stall out. And, you know, I wrote a book called The Overworked
American about how actually working hours have increased here. And it's a result of a dysfunctional
economic system. Part of it has to do with the fact that we're paying health care. You know,
companies are paying health care. And that means they don't want to hire more people and they want to
work the ones they have longer because it's more expensive to have more employees and more health care costs.
We've got to get health care out of the employment relation. And we have had such a big increase in
inequality and we know that more unequal societies tend to have longer working hours. And so my view,
and this is partly my bias, you know, having been trained in economics, is that these economic
incentives are part of what have driven us into a culture, which is so such a workaholic culture,
rather than it's something inherent in our culture that has created it. Okay. I think it's interesting.
I have relatives that live in Italy and they tell me that we think in America,
we're going to live forever. And so we have a persistent need to work where perhaps we could be
more productive, less time at work, which is why I wanted to invite you on. Let me ask you this,
because I've been dying to ask you this, if you could wave, let's say you were tonight designated
the employment czar for the United States. And so you could get your hands on every employee
handbook and everybody's personnel direction. And you could then designate how we're going to
work. Would you just blanketly, everyone's now on a four-day work week? Because, you know, in your speech,
you say that one size doesn't fit all. So I'm just wondering, how would you set it up if you were just
now the czar of all employment in the U.S.? Well, I do think a four-day work week is something that can
work. Some companies have to do it differently. So in some, they rotate the day off. You know,
different people have different days off because they want to stay open for five days or maybe they're a seven-day
business, you know. The biggest group is taking Fridays off. And I think that is from an employee
point of view, the most valuable day off. It's sort of the end of the work week. People are tired.
They need that. They need the three contiguous days to kind of refresh, revitalize, get everything
done that they have to do. But I think you do need, you do need room for flexibility. I mean,
there are some people who prefer to work five short hour days because they want to combine it with
child care, you know, a short working day and then they take care of their kids. So I would like to get
us down to 32 hours on average for a full-time job, but then give the companies a bit more flexibility
in terms of how they actually implement it. So I used to work at Goldman Sachs and they put me to work
on Memorial Day and I worked the entire summer, including labor.
day. And so that would include Saturday and Sunday. I was literally on the job for that entire
period of time. What do you do with an investment bank that has deadlines and deals that they're
working on and quote unquote all this urgency or a law firm, a blue chip or a white shoe law firm
that has these issues? I'm reminded of a talk I gave to a group of CEOs. And this was years ago
when I wrote The Overworked American. And there was someone there from what I think,
was an investment bank. Donaldson, Lufkin, Ingen, right. Yep, that used to be,
got bought by First Boston, yep. Yeah. And he started talking, he was the CEO, and he started
talking about how unhappy he was about the long working hours at his firm. And he talked about
it constantly at the firm, but he couldn't get people to, you know, he just talked about it.
He couldn't get the young people to not work so hard. In the past, investment bankers didn't work these
crazy hours. And then you get a competitive thing going and you can get a ratcheting up effect in which
suddenly everybody's working 20% more or 30% longer hours than they were. It's a kind of market failure.
You need some kind of umpire, central, centrally coordinated activity to kind of get the hours down.
It's really inhumane. I mean, people do it because the money is so incredible. But it's really
detrimental to people's health and well-being to work those crazy hours. I mean, you know way better than I do
about what it can do. It's horrible for marriages. It's horrible for people's physical health.
We're seeing improvements in people's exercising, in their sleep, they're saying their physical health,
and for sure their mental health are getting better over the period of our trials.
Well, I'm in agreement with you. I'm just wondering about the certain cultural
where there's not just the work, but there's also a little bit of a fraternity-like hazing,
where we have to put you through this.
You know, let me give you another example, I'll get your reaction to it.
You have hospital interns, medical internships, where the residents in the hospital
can sometimes pull a 72-hour shift as part of their labor right to passage, so to speak.
What do you say about that?
I mean, those are really detrimental.
And I know New York, I think, was maybe the first state, or maybe it was in the city to pass some laws trying to do something about hours of interns.
You get a lot of bad patient outcomes when you have this.
In fact, one of my colleagues in Four Day Week Global did his PhD dissertation looking at sleep deprivation among surgeons.
And they tested them before they went on call even and found they were sleep deprived even before they started those sort of mammoth calls.
think we need to, we need to deal with that. Those are health hazards for the doctors themselves as well as
the patients and you need to, legislation can can move those down. It's, it's a really outmoded
reactionary sort of idea that you need to put people through this. Well said. And I think we should
probably end some of that stuff, even though it's traditional. It's not beneficial. Sometimes our
traditions are not beneficial. Probably should end some of those. Okay, so with every one of my authors,
or my big thought leaders, I show up with five words and I'd like you to react to those five
words. Okay, so let's start with burnout. Burnout is a self-inflicted wound. We can get rid of burnout
and way more prevalent than we would think, right? Particularly senior managers probably don't
realize how much burnout is going on inside their own companies, right? Absolutely. That's a great
point. Okay. Productivity. Overrated. Productivity is important. I'm still enough of any
economist that I believe it. I think it's the foundation of our ability to reduce working hours
over time. And it's key to a lot of the progress that we make as a society. But we can also get
obsessed with productivity to the point where we undermine well-being at work. I mean, you've seen
these stories about the people who are getting surveilled through their computers. And if they,
you know, turn their head away, they get docked with money or they need to go to the bathroom.
And there's an overreach that goes on productivity.
I know the reason you're seeing me smile is that like you're saying very obvious things.
And yet because of the culture and the concrete nature of these traditions,
we're not willing to shatter them, you know.
And so you're a mover and a shaker.
Inequality, let's talk about inequality.
Inequality is one of the two biggest problems that we have as a society today.
and it's linked to the other one, which is climate change.
And they actually go together very well.
I've done a lot of work on how countries that are more unequal,
have more income and wealth concentration at the top,
have higher carbon emissions.
It's the cancer that's killing us.
Yeah.
Equality.
And if we are in the world now in the era of extreme inequality in which,
look at what happened in the pandemic,
the fraction of growth and increased income,
which went to the very few people at the top.
It was out of proportion.
And it's destroying us from within.
Well, I agree with you.
I guess it's perhaps a philosophical question, but I want to ask you this.
I thought our generation was going to fix this stuff, though.
You know, I actually thought that we were an enlightened group of people,
us being the baby boomer generation.
We were going to come in and take on these problems and tackle them.
And we were going to handle the environmental issues.
We were going to, you know, I can remember myself.
sister got her first job, she was getting paid 72 cents for the dollar that the person,
they joined on the same day, had the same resume, but she was getting 72 cents. The other guy
was getting a dollar. He had outdoor plumbing. She had indoor plumbing. That was the only difference
from their resumes. I thought we were going to fix it. Why didn't we fix it? And is it fixable? Is the
next generation going to fix it? Or, I mean, we play a lot of lip service, we have a lot of diversity
meetings. We have a lot of equal pay stuff. I have friends at the female quotient. We certainly try to do
it here at Skybridge and maybe it's getting done in a micro sort of a way. But why can't we fix it?
What does it say about us? Well, things went wrong in the 80s, you know, with the shift to what we call
neoliberalism, but trickle down economics, kind of changing the rules of the game so that more and more
income flowed to the top. I think we have done better on gender. I would agree with you there so that
gender wage gap has narrowed. But the income and wealth distributions have just become, you know,
the growth in inequality there is historically unprecedented. And, you know, probably the most likely
thing is it causes a system collapse that leads to then a reorganization. And, you know, you get the kind of
thing that we got after the Second World War, which was kind of a building up of a middle class
because you couldn't have political stability without it. And we see that the hollowing out of
the middle class is now also creating so much political instability in our country. And it's
tearing, it's a big, it's not the only thing, but it's an important part of what's tearing us
apart. No question. It's getting people angry. And there's a reason why 20% of the people have
hived off from the establishment. We've got to reconnect them. Okay, but two more.
Okay, ready? Life. Life. Life is, I don't know, life is beautiful. We need to cherish life and we need to make
life on earth worth living and we need to preserve life of not just human species, right? We're at a
point where we're destroying our planet and we are making life impossible for more and more people and
other species. Right. So, again, you know, the sociologists sometimes say that we could only
think about 100 or 150 people in terms of our ability to empathize with others. And perhaps there
needs to be another evolutionary movement where we can be more sensitized to a broader group of people.
You know, if I'm dropping this plastic bottle off, I'm indifferent to it. But perhaps I shouldn't
be. I need to be in something more recyclable or reusable because each incremental person that does
that makes the planet better. But for some reason, we can't get there. So again, another philosophical
question, what is it about our nature that's leading us down this path? It's the great irony,
because this ability to be tribal among 150 of ourselves enabled us to survive and civilize,
but now we're at a plane where we need another big leg up intellectually or spiritually. What could we do
to make that happen? I actually disagree with that analysis that this is our human nature.
I think, you know, last year, 24% of the population did something for climate change.
whether it was they went to a protest, they contacted a legislator, they educated people, or they
gave money. In the younger generation, they were at like a third or 34% or something like that.
I think people are getting it. I would agree there's an empathy gap in our country. We don't,
we don't have enough empathy for enough people and so forth. But I don't think that ecocide,
which is what's happening to the planet now, is something that we can't get. I mean,
all over the world, you have people who are really mobilizing in pretty significant ways to protect
their livelihoods, their countries, their islands, their forests. And I think Americans can do that, too.
We've just been sold a bill of goods by corporations who say that we don't have any choice,
but having ExxonMobil or the Cokes. And I think people are realizing that those folks are taking us
down the path to a burning planet. Okay. And I agree with you on that. But let me ask you about
Dunbar's number. If you remember the anthropologist Robert Dunbar, he said that we get to 150 people,
and that's sort of the max limit of our ability to connect with, relate to, and empathize for. You
disagree with that. I disagree with it. I mean, think about all those, a disaster happens. People,
Americans are so generous. They're like sending money to Turkey.
or they're seeing a commercial.
The Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina.
Right.
Kids who are starving in sub-Saharan Africa, they're sending money.
I mean, do you feel you can't empathize with people in other parts of the world?
I don't.
I feel like I can, and I don't think I'm anything special.
Well, I'm certainly not anything special.
I think you are, though.
You're perhaps more enlightened than most people.
I do think that the general population, okay, and again, I'm not speaking in any elitist
terms or anything like that. I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. I still live two miles
with my parents. I do think that you have thought more about this than the average person.
I do believe that. And I think that's why your work is so well recognized. And that's why people
are looking to you for thought leadership. I'm just, but I also agree with, I think you're opening
my mind to what you're saying about the empathy that people have for tragedies and hurricanes or
earthquakes and things like that. And I'm just, I'm just wondering if we can convert more of that
into the day-to-day things.
You know, this is an individualist country, if you really think about it.
And sometimes you need some level of collectivism to cure certain problems.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely right.
And I think that, you know, part of what we need to do is just, you know, connect with each other more,
talk to each other more, build relationships and so forth.
We've had a fraying of our social fabric.
If you think back to decades ago, there was more.
There was much more neighborhood-based social connection.
That's declined.
You know, to some extent, people have work-based social connection.
But, you know, other axes of social connection, like churches and, you know, other religious institutions and so forth, people spent less time in them.
And they're, I think the neighborhood-based decline is really significant.
All right.
My last word could be part of your legacy.
So you got to think about it.
it, ready? Work. Is work overrated? Work? Yes and no. I mean, work is so fundamental to us as
creative human beings and, you know, many of us get incredible joy meaning out of our work.
But work under, I'll use the word capitalism, you know, socialism too, but we don't have any,
there's none of that left. So work and capitalism has really been.
perverted in a lot of ways. And there's just too much of it. People need to work less. And I think that
they will enjoy their work more. They will be more productive at it. And they'll just be happier.
So I get asked a lot about the future of work. And one of the things that I have spent most of my
career, you know, hoping what happened is that the future of work involves fewer hours of work
for most people.
Well, I greatly enjoyed this, and I appreciate the opportunity for you coming on with us.
Juliet Short, award-winning economist and sociologist, the TED Talk, is the case for a four-day
work week, which has inspired a lot of change.
And if you're listening here from Skybridge, maybe we're going to try some of your ideas here,
Juliet.
So thank you again for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's been a real pleasure, and we'll be happy to research what
happens with your employees if you do make me.
I'm going to let you know, I'm going to, to the great shock of my producers listening,
I'm probably going to give Fridays off here.
Let's see what happens after the Memorial Day.
We'll see what happens if we go broke or not.
You know, who knows?
Maybe we'll have better performance.
Who knows?
Thanks so much.
Thanks again.
Juliet has persuaded me to experiment with the four-day work week.
And I'll give you several reasons why.
Number one, I'm working all the time anyway.
And if I was unplugged or told I didn't have to have meetings,
or didn't have to have structured to my day as a result of being at work, my guess is I would
use that free day to catch up on phone calls, catch up on email. I think our creativity gets
stunted when we are burning out, and a result of which you can't think about how to create
more growth for your company or for your career. And so Juliet is right. Those against it
would say, okay, come on, America needs a kick in the pants. If we work four days a week, we'll be even more
slouchier and grouchier perhaps than we are today.
I don't think so.
I think people will end up picking up on the 20% reduction in structured work.
They'll end up picking up 50 possibly more percent in terms of ideas, creativity,
and innovation.
So we're going to be giving it a shot here at Skybridge this summer.
Hello?
All right, Ma.
How are you?
I'm okay.
All right.
You like being on the show, though, right?
Tell the truth.
Yeah, let's hear it.
All right.
So I interviewed somebody today.
She's a economist, and she wants to move the work week to four days.
What do you think of that?
Should we go to a four-day work week?
No.
Okay.
Tell me why?
Because I think that it should be, in America, it's been five days forever, and why change it?
If it's not broke, I can't do anything about it.
Well, I mean, let me just say this.
A lot of people are burnt out.
They're working very hard.
They got a 12-hour day sometimes in a five-day work week.
maybe giving them a day off, make them more creative and more flexible and less burnt out?
What do you say to that?
I don't think so.
Okay, tell me why.
I think that a five-day work week has been in existence since the turn of the century,
and I think it should remain the same.
If it's not broke, just leave it alone.
Okay, but you don't think, I mean, people should chill out a little more and relax a little more
and have more opportunity to spend time with their family?
No, because I think New York, you can't be a sleeper because New York is just the one.
wonderful place to live and you have to be alerted all time.
Well, you also got to pay a lot of taxes here in New York, so you've got to work your ass off to pay the taxes, though, no?
Right, but everyone wants to live here, and they just can't afford it.
They've got to work hard to live here, and I believe that if you work hard, you can live anywhere.
All right, but, Ma, how do you create a good work-life balance?
Because you know I'm working all time.
You know that, right?
Well, I'm using you as an example when I answer the question.
All right, so you're basically saying that even though if I had a four-day work week, I'd still work seven is what you're saying, right?
Absolutely. There's workers and there's sleepers. And if you sleep, you don't belong in New York.
Okay, but if you have a four-day work week, then the sleepers can take advantage of the workers. Is that your point?
If you have a four, what are you doing? Dishes, well, I'm trying to talk to you?
No, go ahead. I'm okay. Lower the TV, a little, Ma. Lower the TV.
I'm watching the Trump deal.
All right, but lower the TV so I can talk to you, please.
All right. I have it.
Lower.
All right.
Lower the TV.
All right.
Lower, baby.
All right.
I know you like watching the Trump thing.
You want him to go down the drain, right, ma?
Well, I want you to become president and Trump to be vice president.
And I do think of both of you together.
So secretly, secretly you like Trump, but you just think he's nuts, right?
I think he's very narcissistic.
And he's, but he has a presence to the outside world.
But I think you have a better present.
And I think you should be president and he should be vice president.
But he's so eager to.
test the goal they'll never take that route.
Okay.
All right, Mom.
I love you, Ma.
All right.
It's good.
All right, it's good to talk to you, ma.
I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was open book.
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