The Best One Yet - 🍟 “$20/hour McPayDay” — California’s bottom-up economics. Netflix’s ski resort. Sports betting’s worst week yet.

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

California now has the highest minimum wage law in the country at $20/hour for fast food workers — We call it “The McPayDay”, and it’s a test of the economic concept: “Bottom-Up Economics.��Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings acquired Powder Mountain, a ski resort in Utah — It will be part private club, part open to the public. Because Post-Pandemic America loves clubs.And the sports betting industry just had its worst week yet after 3 pro scandals — So we think sports betting needs to learn from the stock market… sports betting needs to learn from insider trading.Plus, 63% of restaurants are officially “too loud”. Do you think music at restaurants should be louder or quieter?: Vote Here.$NFLX $MCD $DKNGWatch us on YouTubeWant merch, a shoutout, or got TheBestFactYet? Go to: www.tboypod.comFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Tuesday, T-Boy, Tuesday, April 2nd. And today's pod is the best one yet. It's a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. But I'm sorry, Jack, it's not R-O-I. It's R-O-U-U-S.

Are you looking for an EBITDAdie over there, Nick? Yeah, you need a little market cap sugar mama, maybe. That is our April Fool's joke. Sorry that T-boy dating isn't a real thing. Although, honestly, maybe it's one of the... those April Fool's jokes that becomes a real thing. Jack, did you say it's not a real thing? Yet. Yes.

Miranda, we know you own Apple stock, and we know you're going to find your husband on T-boy dating. It's not R-O-I. It's R-O-U-S. Jack, we've got a fantastic show for today. What have we got for today's T-Boy? For our first story, fast food workers in California get paid $20 an hour starting this week. It's the highest minimum wage in the country. Jack and I call it the Mick Pay raise, and we're going to tell you. what it means for everybody outside of California.

For our second story, Draft Kings is down 9% in last week on a whole bunch of sports betting scandals. And the way we see it, sports betting needs a lesson from insider trading. Check, sports betting needs a lesson from Martha Stewart. That's what we mean to say. Correct. And our third and final story. The founder of Netflix just bought one of the largest ski resorts in the country,

Powder Mountain in Utah. Reed Hastings is trying to disrupt the ski industry. to save the ski industry. He's actually a snowboarder, I should point out, though. We just started the show and we're back checking each other night. We're 0 for two, we're oh for two, but we're also kind of two for two. We'll be fun, we'll be fun. But yeah, it is before we hit that wonderful mix of stories.

A fantastic mix of stories for a T-boy Tuesday, speaking of which, check. This past Saturday night, we were out at our go-to restaurant. We could see the food, we could taste the food, we could smell the food. But we couldn't hear a thing. Because restaurants are really loud these days. Is it just us? No, it's apparently not just us. But get this, Yetis.

According to Soundprint, 63% of restaurants are now too loud for conversation. You're like, Bon Appetit, everyone. What was that exactly? Bon Appetit. I'm sorry. This data company measured the music volume at 250,000 American restaurants. Turns out, 63% of those spots were above 75 decibels. 75 decibels is really loud.

It's the sound of standing near a vacuum or a hair dryer or garbage disposal. I lost hearing in my left year for like three days after Molly was blow-drying her hair on a Saturday night once. True story, Jack. Well, that's what a restaurant is every Saturday night, apparently. That's true. I actually can't hear on Sundays either. You try to order a Bucatini neck, and they're blasting bust around. Jack, you try to order enchiladas, but you're drowning in Adele.

Sorry, sir. Was that medium rare or medium well? I said no more Metallica. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, restaurants are now so loud. You are reserving tables based on the speaker location. People are calling up and being like, hey, can you find me the booth that's like in the most quiet part of the restaurant? Do you want to sit at the booth or do you want to go deaf?

But for restaurants, there's no easy solution here because no one wants a quiet restaurant ambiance either. I mean, Jack, it's true. There's nothing worse than a bistro that feels like a library. Nothing ruins a date night like the table next to you, loud talking the whole meal. So, yet here's the ironic twist facing the restaurant industry. Restaurants are demonstrably too loud for us, okay? But we also hate it when they're not loud at all.

Yeah, we don't want it quiet either. So for T-Boy Tuesday Yeti's Jack and I want to know. Do you prefer restaurants music to be a little too quiet or a little too loud? Just right is not an option. Sorry Goldilocks. We have a lot of restaurant tours who listen to the show, so you need to let them know your preference. And we all want to know, should they air on too loud or too quiet? Vote at T-boy Pod right now.

In the meantime, Jack, let's bon appetit our three stories. What? I said medium rare. I said no more Metallica. Let's say that three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is an norm.

Jack, 50 percent. That's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor. For our first story, California's minimum wage for fast food workers just hit $20 an hour. That is the highest minimum wage in the entire country.

It's the McPay raise, and it's the biggest test ever of bottom-up economics. All right, Jack, we got a lot of lovely Yetis living in lovely Los Angeles, and we know for our besties down there that the cost of living in L.A., it is high. It's 140% higher than the national average. Your average one bedroom apartment, it costs $3,000 to rent. The medium home selling price in Los Angeles is a million dollars plus. Well, you drive past an in-and-out burger and you think, hey, how can fast food workers afford to live here at these prices? The short answer, they can't live around here.

They're often sharing an apartment with a bunch of people or commuting a huge distance to get to work every day. And that is what leads to today's news. California's 500,000 fast food workers are celebrating right now, the nation's high. highest minimum wage, 20 bucks an hour. If a fast food chain has more than 60 locations nationwide, then they must pay at least 20 bucks an hour in the state of California. That's the highest in the country and a 25% pay bump from last week when the minimum wage was $16 an hour. Jack and I call it the barista bump. The McPay Day. The Chick-fil-A-Chay, Chaching, by the way, I just realized, there are more fast food workers in the state of California than there are people in the state of

Wyoming. The golden arches, the golden state. And that population is now getting the McPayday. So this is a huge win for labor and a huge loss for big corporations, right? Classic story. Labor wins, corporations lose, little guy, David versus Goliath. It's something we should all celebrate. Well, you may want to hold the French fries for a second. Because Yeti's, McDonald's is a $200 billion company. And they can afford to pay everyone 20 bucks an hour. That's true, but that's not exactly what this law makes them do. Because 95% of McDonald's locations aren't owned by McDonald's. They're owned by small business people known as franchisees. Franchisees, they run franchises. They operate a location of

McDonald's with the license from corporate, but they're the ones owning and operating that McDonald's that you pass by. Which means the small business owner near your local McDonald's, they have to pay 20 bucks an hour, not McDonald's Inc, which is based in Illinois. That is why critics of this law point out some of the downsides of the highest minimum wage price in America. 20 bucks an hour means restaurants will probably have to increase the food prices on the menu. 20 bucks an hour means they'll probably result in some layoffs, as some locations may have to close because it's too costly. And 20 bucks an hour does increase the incentive to replace human workers with robot workers someday. If you're one of these franchisees, you're looking at the numbers

and that avocado cutting robot at Chipotle is suddenly looking like a long-term. higher. So all those things we just said about the downsides that this law are true. But the McPayday also lifts hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty. Working people out of poverty. So Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies who are everyone in the country? California is about to test the bottom up theory of economics. Yet he's back in the 1980s before Jack and I were actually alive. A conservative economist said that riches at the top would trickle down to those at the bottom. It would just trickle down. It'll be wonderful.

That was the trickle down theory. Although it's been debunked by data, it is still a popular argument. Well, California is testing the opposite now. That riches at the bottom will filter up to everyone. It's kind of like a sprout-up theory instead of a trickle-down theory. Because what will those fast food workers do with four bucks more an hour? They'll spend it. Here's the theory.

Unlike tax cuts to the wealthy, which are often saved, not spent, Minimum wage increases are immediately spent, which boosts the economy. So California is betting that the extra four bucks an hour on wages are immediately recycled into California's economy. California is about to test out the bottom-up theory of economics. Chick-fil-A, cha-ching, cha-ching. I prefer McPayday. For our second story, three sports betting scandals last week, a reminder of why sports betting was fresh. Frankly, illegal in the first place.

But now that it's legal, we think sports betting can learn a lesson from finance. Jack, can we check out the calendar? What do we got going on? What's happening, man? I love the spring. You get March Madness, the Masters Golf Tournament, Major League Baseball opening day, all happening in a couple weeks. You got the NBA playoffs, the NHL playoffs. And also, who can forget, you're going to have the big fashion event with May Day, First of the Day, Vogue magazine.

I love we were talking about sports. basically a competition. Anna Wintour's tough, man. She's tough. But yet, all of this is going to happen in a three-week span in the sports industry. Spring is about daffodils, and it's about competitive pro sports, too. Well, it's also not just about pro sports. It's also now about betting on sports. According to a recent poll conducted by the gambling industry, a bajillion fans plan to bet on sports this year. They always just love rounding up on those numbers. Well, here's the problem. Apparently, the players are betting on sports. Three major sports leagues are dealing with gambling issues that threaten the integrity of the game.

And this all went down in just the last few days. It's the worst month for sports beddings since the Supreme Court effectively legalized sports betting in 2018. Jack, I think it's the worst month for sports betting since shoeless Joe Jackson, right? Possibly. I think definitively. Here's why March 2024 will go down in history as a reminder of why we banned sports betting in the first place. Yeah, is this all. started in baseball, didn't it, Jack?

Shohayotani, who is considered the perfect person over in Japan, has become Mr. Baseball in the United States. But his Japanese interpreter amassed millions of dollars of gambling debts, which Shohayotani paid for, which is awkward. Turn over to the NBA, where Jonté Port of the Toronto Raptors is under investigation for making bets against himself. Remember, players are forbidden from betting on their own games in their own sports.

Not allowed. Why? Because if you bet on your stuff, yourself, then you might throw the game on purpose to win the bet that you made on yourself. Well, it looks like this basketball player did exactly that by taking himself out of a game with an injury to limit how many points he scored. Sticking on the NBA for a second, the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers has received threats from fans who lost money on bets.

And those threats, they included the address where his family lives. So this got like really freaking. Now, drafting stock has nearly quadrupled since the start of 2023 because America's betting has been booming. But last week, Draft King stock fell 9% on these ugly betting headlines. Sports betting and sports passions can be an explosive combination. Yeah, Jack, those Cameron crazies get even crazier if they lose a prop bet. The Philly fanatics, they were already going to punch you in the face.

And then you made them lose 50 bucks? So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies in the sports betting industry? The betting market can learn from the stock market. Yeah, the gambling industry. can learn from insider trading. Yeties, especially with the decline of cable TV, sports leagues didn't want to miss out on big betting money the last few years. So the sports leagues went from zero to 60 on betting,

from completely forbidding it to embracing it and making money off it. Well, Jack and I see a parallel here between the players betting on their own sports and insider trading of your own stocks. What Jante Porter of the Toronto Raptors is accused of doing is basically insider trading. Publicly traded companies, they must comply with strict and clear SEC rules about insider trading. The trading of a stock in which you have a lot of knowledge because maybe you work there or you've intimate information on it. Right. The potential reward of insider trading can be so great that we have extra safeguards to prevent people from acting on it.

Yeah, Martha Stewart, she found out the hard way. We think the sports leagues need to think the same way as the stock market does. Strict and clear rules around sports betting. with systems in place to ensure compliance and punish violators. I mean, Jack, when we worked at banks, we had to, like, share so much information with compliance departments, right? Like, we had to share all of our trading accounts. We had to give the compliance department full visibility and monthly statements on our

trading accounts so they can ensure we weren't insider trading. So best is what the stock market did to manage insider trading the sports leagues need to manage sports betting. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story. founder of Netflix is trying to disrupt the thong skiing and snowboarding. I told you he's a snowboarding. It's a good point. You got me. You got me. Here's what Reed Hastings plans to do with Powder Mountain, the ski resort that he just bought in Utah. Yeties, last year, Jack and I covered a story.

Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, was shockingly stepping down as CEO. The next thing he did, He built a house slope side at a beautiful ski resort. Powder Mountain was that slope. An old ski resort in the northeast corner of this great state of Utah. It's actually one of the largest ski resorts in North America with 8,000 acres of skiable terrain. Jack, could you sprinkle on some snowy context for us over there. That is twice the skiable terrain of Palisades, Tahoe. It's three times as big as Breckenridge, Colorado.

It's four times as big as the Beast of the East, Burminton, Vermont. Because Reed Hastings, he loves popcorn. He loves HR policies, and he loves this one particular mountain, Powder Mountain. And he loves it so much that when the owners of Powder Mountain wanted to sell, Reed bought it. Now, Basties, the price was a secret. But according to the New York Times, Reid's already dropped a hundred of million bucks to pay off the debts, update the chairlifts, and replace those charming but challenging hot cocoa machines. He upgraded them basically to like an Italian espresso mom. dismiss for Reed, if you know what we mean.

But here's the twist. Netflix's founder's new ski resort is part public skiing, part private skiing. This is Netflix ski club. That's what this is. Local youths can still enjoy most of the mountain's charming 50-year-old traditions. But Reed also acquired 2,000 acres of extra land to expand the skiing, making that part members only. And to ski in that 2,000 acres of member-only terrain, you have to be able to.

have to buy a $2 million house. And then you have to pay $30,000 to $100,000 a year in dues. I'm sorry, where was that in the fine print, Reed? You thought a country club is expensive? A ski country club is really expensive. Yet these locals are skeptical. That's why they've been calling Reed Hastings, Greed Hastings allegedly, also from the New York Times. But Reed says that the private part is going to subsidize the public part. So we're holding out hope. After all, Powder Mountain has never turned to profit. And it could have just gone out of business. Without this new business model, it could have gone out of business. That's the potential alternative.

It is to be determined whether Netflix, the company, gets involved with their founder's new ski resort. But, I mean, Jack, this feels like the untapped potential here, doesn't it, man? Love is Blind season seven. Hammer out those relationship issues on a double black diamond. A little bit of steam on the slopes. Or Jack, Jack, what if Netflix did their own version of White Lotus? But like, instead of doing a summary thing, they did it at a wintry place, like this hotel. That is a great idea.

I would watch that. White Lotus, white powder, Yeti's so much potential here. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy Reid over at Netflix? One unspoken legacy of the pandemic is America's club of vacation. Yeties from Soho House to Delta Loungees to Disney World Skip the Line Club. Americans are paying big money these days to live exclusively. Now the ski industry is getting in on the luxury private club business model. First, you had Yellowstone Club in Montana, then you had Hermitage Club in Vermont,

Now, you've got Windham Mountain in New York. They're all club-based skiing. You've got to join the club to get on the slopes. America's private clubification. We think it's driven by three pandemic factors. Okay, first, there's been a post-pandemic perception of increased crime, so people want the safety of a private club. Second, more people are working from home.

So they want space to do work and go skiing in between work. And third, the country has seen a huge boost in millionaire and billionaire wealth, and they're willing to spend 100,000. bucks on a ski pass. One unspoken legacy of the pandemic is America's clubification. And we're seeing it now in ski resorts. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? Effective this week, California fast food restaurants must pay a minimum $20 an hour for each worker. California is testing out the bottom-up theory of economics. For our second story, Draft Kings, their stock fell 9% as the ugly side of sports betting made headlines last week.

Now, sports betting's legal. It may need to take some lessons from the stock market. And our third and final story. Netflix's founder Reid Hastings owns a ski resort in Utah, which has a private part. It's America's unspoken pandemic legacy, the proliferation of private clubs clubification. And by the way, if Reid doesn't name each of those trails after a character on Ozarks, he probably shouldn't have bought the man in the first place, Jack. Why would you own your own mountain if you're not going to rename all the trails?

He could have named every trail read. But yet is this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, gold is the new gold because gold just jumped to another fresh record high. Gold is now priced at $2,264 per Troy ounce, which is the highest level since Pirates of the Caribbean. And second, the Trump stock, which we covered on this show last week, fell 21% after publishing an abysmal earnings report. Reminder, one single Olive Garden location makes more revenue than Truth Social does. And finally, Google Podcast is shutting down today.

You can't listen to T-Boy Pot or any podcast on Google going forward. They want you to listen on YouTube music instead. Another thing that Google owns. Also, reminder, though, if you do go to YouTube to listen to our show, you can also watch our show because Jack and I broadcast the video every day on YouTube. The cameras are on right now. How you doing? Hey, that's awesome.

I see you, Nick. Oh, listen. Hey, Jack, how are you doing? I'm a fan of here. Speak fan. We've got a link to our YouTube page in the episode description. And speaking of YouTube, Jack, it is time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Jennifer C, a Yetty down in San Diego, California. Happy belated birthday to Gmail. Gmail just turned 20 yesterday.

I'm sorry we missed it, but we're very happy for you, Gmail. That's right. Google launched Gmail on April Fool's Day in 2004. But here's the thing, Yeties. Gmail's growth is no joke at all. 1.5 billion people use Gmail every minute probably. But that's the active user account. 1.5 billion people.

Gmail, happy birthday. We hope you're celebrating with some auto correct or something like that. Thank you for finally adding the send later feature. So I didn't have to have that boomerang plug in for so many years. Yeties, you look fantastic today. And remember, Jack and I have got a T-Boy Tuesday question for you. We gotta know. Should restaurants turn the music up or should they turn the music down?

Is restaurants a little too loud or a little too soft? Sorry, Goldilocks. Just right ain't an option. Jack, did you say medium well or medium rare? I said no more Metallica. If you know, you know, hit us up at T-Boy Pod on Instagram to vote. Jack and I will see you tomorrow. And before we go, a happy birthday to Yeti Kelly, Cola Vincenzo,

who's celebrating down in the hot springs of Phoenix, Arizona. Happy birthday to Ruben Gimenez in Carlsbad, California. Elijah Owens, happy 13th birthday. Congratulations of being a teenager in San Antonio, Texas. Huge congratulations to Whitney and Andrew in Indiana, who just had their second daughter, Scotty. Willa, we know you're going to be the best big sister yet. Congratulations to Lila and Kayla,

two big red best friends who are finally moving in together in Santa Monica after four years together at Cornell. Congratulations to the U.S. marketing team at Apps Flyer in San Francisco, who just organized a whole ton of events at a major conference in Vegas. You guys deserve a vacation. Big shout out to Doug Rowland, who just launched a new online platform to educate the deaf and the blind. It's called Feeling Throughstudio.com.

And a happy national DIY day to our buddy, Lauren DIY, not too shabby. Huge shout out to Dan Katz and Bridget Mooney, who just moved to the Upper East Side, and just got engaged in Central Park. All right, guys, we gotta know where you did it in Central Park. You gotta send us some picks at T-Boy Pod. We gotta see this. My money's on the Penguin exhibit at the Central Park Zoo.

This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix, and Nick and I both on stock of Apple and Chipotle.