The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Inflation with Jason Furman

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Jason Furman is the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University.  He served eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama acting as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. Furman also served under President Clinton. Myq Kaplan is the host of Broccoli and Ice Cream and his most recent album is called AKA. 

Welcome to live from the table, the podcast for the world famous comedy. I'm not going to do this. It's definitely not my job to do this intro and then get made fun of. Oh my God, go ahead. Welcome to Live from the Table. Better. Welcome to Live from the Table. Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast for the world

famous comedy seller. We are taping live in New York City. I guess we're not taping live. I'm here with the host of the show, Noam Dwarman. He is also the owner of the comedy seller. Dan decided to tell me yesterday that he couldn't make it because he had a show in New Jersey. What's your name? My name is Periel Ashton. And who's to my right? And to your right, well, I was told to get somebody very smart who also knows about economics.

And you got Mike Kaplan? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's an insane- What does Mike Kaplan know about economics? I know as much about economics as Dan Natterman. Yeah, exactly. And also, I mean, it's like insane. What does Mike Kaplan know about economics? I know as much about economics as Dan Natterman. Yeah, exactly. And also, I mean, it's like an insane assignment to give me to like find a comic who's like smart enough.

But I, you know, I think I did really well. Anyway, Mike Kaplan is the host of the podcast, Broccoli and Ice Cream. And his most recent album is called AKA. I think that one of the reasons that I'm not as afraid anymore is that I've discovered some places where religion and science agree. One place they agree is they're like, let's both use Latin and no one will like us. But more relevantly, religion often says that we all have an immortal soul, an eternal spirit.

And science, I've learned, says that no matter or energy can ever be created nor destroyed, which means either way, everything I am has always been and always will be. Or wasn't, won't be, and isn't right now. This is an illusion, and you may have overpaid for the show. But if I'm an illusion, then you're probably an illusion, too, and your money definitely is, so please buy my albums.

Thank you. I do have some CDs for sale after the show. They're totally different than this one, so if you're enjoying what I'm doing tonight, you can enjoy a totally different show on my CDs. And if you did not enjoy what I've been doing tonight, you can get a totally different show on my CDs. I'm fearless.

Today is also a very special episode because it was just Noam's birthday. Happy birthday, Noam. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You don't look a day past whatever it is. How does it feel? How do you feel?

I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine. Why? Well, I don't know, because you're really getting up there. All right. Get it out of your system, Perry. Jesus Christ. Okay, go ahead.

I'm 60 years old. Wow. Yeah. You look great. Thank you very much. So go ahead. Go ahead, Perry. I'm trying to get my stuff together

Because we have some important people coming on today And I want to get it right Well, I can share my economics credentials Go ahead We have Jason Furman coming on today He's one of the most important economists in the world Worked for Barack Obama I think he was chairman of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisors

Whatever you call it And we're here futzing around. Go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. And I, when I was in high school, took one semester of economics in which we had to prove that we knew how to spell words like 14 and seven. Really?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because sometimes you have to write out the numbers like on a check. You know, you have to write it out long. So you got to learn how to spell them. That's funny. Yeah, I do. And also one time I did the Seattle International Comedy Competition in 2006. And one of my competitors was a comedian who called himself a stand up economist named Yoram Bowman, I believe, or Bowman. And yeah, so he would be a great get.

We'll get him next time. I mean, I'm actually really interested in what sparked your interest in talking to him. Like, was it something specific? Because the quote, I mean, can I read the Twitter quote that you sent me? One second. But answer me, because I'm going to pull it up right now. Well, because he and very few economists, especially Democratic economists, were correct in predicting inflation and correct in being skeptical of the was a build back better program. Is that what it's called? So, you know, he's kind of proven himself to be one of the few able prognosticators of the economy. And people like Mike Kaplan, they just thought you could just spend as much money as you want. It didn't matter. Just print money, give money to everybody, buy a house for everybody. I don't know that I said that.

Yes, you did, actually. Let's go to that clip. Yeah, go to the Nick videotape. And I just think it's nice to talk to smart people so it's been a while we should we should have one on so go ahead i thought that was why you kept me around it was very what i said i thought that was why you kept me around i thought that's what you said go What are you two kids going to get together? Jason Furman tweeted, I hope to generally stick with a charitable and open minded approach to the best version of the opposing argument. Oh, this is what he wrote. He tweeted about Krugman.

Yeah. where Krugman said that the gas tax would go all to the gas station owners. When in 2008 or something, he said that the gas tax would, a gas tax holiday would go all to the consumers. Okay. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. We can ask him about that if you want. Okay.

What is he coming on? In one minute. All right. So I had my 60th birthday yesterday and boy, did it take a lot out of me. That was an emotional day. I, I just find the impending end of my life and the years of, you know, semi health that if you're lucky proceed it just totally unacceptable and, and, and, and terrifying, just terrifying.

You don't know what the future holds. Will you be one of these people like bent over and a pretzel walking around and a Walker will you die of horrible death? Well, I have to have one of those catheters in my penis, you know, like screaming in pain or will I, will it go be easy? You know, like you want me to murder you right now? I don't know. OK, so first of all, yesterday was really beautiful.

It was really sweet. What was the celebration like? It was I mean, well, go ahead. You want we went to we had a we had a big dinner at Nobu, which is a very nice Japanese restaurant. It was explained a lot. One of those axes. Nice Japanese restaurant. I had, I don't know, 30, 31 people there.

And it was very pleasant, very pleasant vibes all around. It was very diverse crew, not like a typical party that you would probably have, which is a bunch of white liberal people. Don't understand where this is all coming from. Because I've been to some events. I've never invited you to a party. No, I haven't been to your parties, but I've been to events of your kind. Jews? Whoa, know them. And it's a bunch of people there you know like talking about the man and

and how we got to do better and blah blah blah but there's narrow is it nary nary a uh a person of color there's probably a few gay people but uh for the most part um there's just not that much diversity and i you know you looked at my my jest is a lot of people from all walks of life, you know, despite who I am. All right. Go ahead. Jason Furman is here. OK. And I was pretty proud of it. I mean, pretty proud. I was not the right word. I was. I don't know what I was happy that my kids saw that. I would say that. All right. Hello, Professor Furman. Jason. But hello. Hi, Jason. Professor Jason. Hello.

Welcome to the show. I'm Perrielle. This is the host of the show, Noam Dwarman. But she's doing the heavy lifting. I'm going to do that. And comic Mike Kaplan. Thank you for joining us. We're very excited to have you. Jason Furman is a professor of economic policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He served eight years as a top economic advisor to President Obama, acting as both President Obama's chief economist and a member of the cabinet. I had to really cut down your bio significantly and I was very nervous to do that. So I hope I did an okay job. It would have filled the whole episode. Yeah. She tends to make the bios very, very long. First of all, we're very, very honored to have you on, sir. I don't know

what credential we offered, what kind of lies she told you to get you to go. Well, I grew up around the corner from the Comedy Cellar on Sullivan Street. Ah, that's interesting. So what years was that? I grew up in the 70s and 80s. So my father also used to have a place called the Cafe Fienjan. I don't know if you remember that. It was a Middle Eastern nightclub. And I also used to own the Cafe Wa, which you probably remember.

I certainly know that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, it's a pleasure to have you here. You're one of you become a kind of a hero of mine because you're one of the few experts. In any field, I would say, who seems to be able to call it straight, who doesn't seem to just work backwards from what your milieu, you know, would like to have you say. I'm probably not the first person to say that to you, right? That's really nice. Nothing, you know, I don't know.

It's almost the nicest thing someone could say. So thank you. Well, it's absolutely true. And you and so let's talk about the inflation. Let's start there. You and Larry Summers. And I just realized you guys at one time had worked together, but I didn't, I mean, even more closely than both being associated with Obama, you guys have worked together. I didn't realize that till like yesterday, but, but both of you, maybe even he was more out in front of it than you were, but both of you were warning about inflation, correct? Yeah, he was certainly more out in front than I was. To some degree, frankly, I pulled my punches a little bit at the beginning of last year. I regret that. That's something I don't plan to do again in my life and my career. I was saying what I thought. I just wasn't saying it that loudly

or clearly. And I think you make the world a better place if you say what you think and people can decide if it's right or it's wrong and do what they want with it. So what does it say about, I mean, this is going to sound like a confrontational question, but I really don't mean it to be, or it might sound confrontational. What does it say about economics as a discipline when there's such a spectrum of opinions on what the result will be on a pretty straightforward fact pattern, you know, spending this much money and, and, well, and all the things that went into you and Mr. And professor Summers predicting inflation is, is that all bias what's going on there?

Look, first of all, it's complicated. It's not like you can run an experiment where you give a thousand countries $1.9 trillion and you give another thousand countries no dollars and then you compare what happens to them a couple of years later. medicine just aren't available here. So you have to do your best in a complicated situation. I think on this one, most of the academic economists who do research in economics that I talk to actually agreed that it was too large, agreed that it would cause inflation. But most of them just do their research, might be afraid of rocking the boat, might not have a way to get their ideas out there. So I think it was less of a minority opinion than you might think, but certainly there weren't a lot of people expressing it last year. Well, I mean, I heard this debate between Larry Summers and Paul Krugman. Some German guy was hosting, and I'm sure you know what I'm referring to. Markus Brunemeyer.

Yeah. And to my, you know, I don't know much about economics. I'm educated. But to my just like a common sense ear, Summers wiped the floor with Krugman. I mean, just wiped the floor with him to the point where Krugman was retreating into basically admissions that, well, this would be bad for the Democratic Party if we were to, you know, go this way. And I don't think I'm being unfair to him. I don't remember the exact quotes. And and yet. That didn't seem to convince anybody, you know, it so something very wrong, I believe, is going on. And then this does this is not just in economics. This is in our politics in general. This is what happens in COVID.

This is what happens in basically everywhere that we're turning to experts today. Just as you described, it seems to be they're holding their tongue. They're afraid to rock the boat in order to conform with the party that they are associated with. And this is and it's backfiring big time because nobody trusts anybody anymore. Correct. Is that a real problem? Yeah. No, I think that's right. I watched that debate and I think you described it accurately in that Paul conceded a lot of the Paul Krugman conceded a lot of the economic arguments, but said, but politically, here's why it's a good idea. Exposed, of course, politically, that probably is the wrong analysis too. But yeah, I think we've made it harder to have opinions and put them out there. Something like the school closures last year, economist I know, Emily Oster, she did research and writing on it, that the school closures last year, economist I know, Emily Oster, she did research and writing on it, that the school shouldn't be closed. And the feedback she got was vicious and horrible and

just incessant. She left Twitter. She continued communicating in other formats. Now she's 100% vindicated. It was a disaster, just a disaster for children. And, you know, people weren't speaking up. And I mean, since we're off the economics, but a really good illustration to me of this is masks. So you have the right wing just, you know, mocking and refusing to wear masks. And you have the left wing embracing masks. However, the left, for whatever reason, I believe it may be equity or whatever it is, won't come out and say, but it has to be an N95 mask.

If you wear a cloth mask, it's like wearing nothing at all. So they're imposing these mask mandates. People are walking around in cloth masks which probably gives them a false sense of security and may lead to more people getting sick than otherwise. And neither side would say the common sense thing, which is everybody should wear a mask, but it has to be an N95 mask. And if you don't have the money for an N95 mask, well, hopefully the government can get you the

money, but then you should probably stay home. But I believe it's because of this kind of notion of equity that everybody should be able to afford it. They didn't want to come out and tell people, but you can't wear a cloth mask. And I think that I'm saying what is clearly correct based on the data. And yet to this day, I think the CDC recommends cloth masks or did until very recently. How can we trust these people? Yeah, look, I think in general, again, no one's going to be right all the time, by the way. It's just we're all going to be better off if people aren't self-censoring, if they're sharing their thoughts, and then we're aggregating those. I try to sometimes do, you know, what, you know, before I call somebody a hypocrite, I try to think, hey, have I ever done anything like that? You know, I try to think, you know, what would I have thought

about this if Donald Trump were president and this was what the jobs number looked like? I try to do, you know, what did I think about it before I knew Joe Biden was in favor of it? You know, some of these things you wouldn't even have known which side you're on. Initially, in the very beginning of March 2020, it was a little bit of a liberal reaction of, you know, we want our freedom and we're afraid that the, you know, repressive Republican government is going to lock us all in. That lasted for like two days, and then the politics reversed on it. But, you know, I think tribalism and forming views based on what your side thinks is just, you know, a terrible way to make decisions. You're describing a thought

process that I think is right, which is kind of a constant, harsh interrogation of yourself to try to seek out whether or not you're guilty of motivated reasoning. And, you know, we know that it's almost impossible not to think that way. That's why we have double blind experiments, right? We know that in various experiments, no matter how much they try, the people running the experiment can't see it without bias. And I think this is a really important lesson that, you know, it's important analogy and an important lesson that people really need to realize how deep bias goes. So anyway, in March of 2021, I wrote an email to, I don't want to say his name, but somebody you would respect. And then I'm going to read it to you. And then you tell me why I was right. Was it me? No, it wasn't you. Okay. I don't want to read the whole thing. I'll read the whole thing. I said, whenever I feel

particularly insecure about having an opinion on a topic that I fear is over my head, I remind myself that democracy presupposes that ordinary people ought to be able to, in some way, apply their common sense judgment to complex issues. I said, what I don't get is, this is right before the Build Back Better program, I think, around that time. What I don't get is why the 2008 economic crisis is so important to the analysis of the current situation. To me, in 2008, the engine seized, the pistons blew, et cetera, and the car ran out of gas. It was going to take a lot of work to get that car back on the road. Today, it really just feels more like the cops pulled us over. And when they're done, we could just drive away. We might even be able to make up some lost time by speeding. I understand that the longer this

goes on, the more the analogy degrades. But still, to me as a business owner, I didn't understand why everybody was comparing this to the financial crisis, which was a breakdown of everything in the economy, right? Just a total destruction where this was just a lockdown and we were all kind of in place. And once they let us out again, why did they think we needed trillions of dollars to get everything started again? Explain that to me. Yeah, look, I think your analysis was exactly, exactly right. I think there was an awful lot of fighting the last war. You know, in my boring economic terms, I'd call it, you know, in 2008, the problem was more demand.

Demand was too low, so you needed more demand. This time it was supply. How do you fix a supply problem with vaccines, not with cash? So really very different problems. In 2008, people were heavily indebted. By the beginning of 2021, people actually had more money in their bank accounts than they had before the pandemic. Now we needed some money, maybe not in March 2021, maybe some then, certainly before, to make sure that when things reopened, they could afford to go back to your

club. They could afford to go into restaurants. They could afford to travel again. So you need to do something to maintain people's income. The problem is that we dramatically expanded their income, which wasn't needed for the recovery. And then when you couldn't make more stuff, the price of the stuff you made went up. Well, is there is part of the underlying reason was part of the underlying reason simply this let no crisis go to waste, that the Democrats just saw the opportunity to fulfill their fantasies of spending. And they, you know, they rationalized it. Maybe some people cynically, maybe some people believed it. But I, again,

I'm going back to that Krugman debate. When I saw Krugman, the great Krugman was clearly, you know, being buffeted again and again and not having good answers. It was clear to me that this was kind of bold, that even the smartest guy in the world didn't have a rationale as to why we needed to spend all this money. He just liked the idea of these programs. And this was a time they were going to be able to get it through. And he closed his fingers. It would be okay. Look, there's some programs I like giving money to families with low income children. I really like that. We did that in 2021. The problem is it was only done for a year. Something like that permanent with, you know, money spread out a smaller amount each year spread out over time done in a well-designed way. You know, that that would be a great and wonderful thing.

The problem is a lot of money spent all in one year, too much in one year. And then it doesn't do anything. Is there. Now, Mike is a far lefty, by the way. I want to tell you that. Go ahead. more money in their bank accounts than they were used to? Not everyone. We're talking on average, obviously. And the more money you have, then the more money you had. And people at the lower end would likely have potentially less. Is that so? Actually, the increase in bank balances was larger for the bottom quintile or the bottom quartile, depending on which numbers you're using, than for those at the top. Why? Because if you got $1,200 check in 2020, it's a much bigger deal if you're making $20,000 a year than if you're making $200,000 a year.

And by the way, if you made 2 million, you didn't get that check. So the pandemic itself increased inequality. The policy response to the pandemic, including under President Trump, I think more forced on him by Nancy Pelosi, but whatever it was, she passed it, he signed it, went the opposite direction. So you did see, there were people who fell through the cracks that weren't getting some of those programs, but an awful lot of things like credit card debt was lower than we've ever seen before.

And so moving forward, like, is there like, what are you, what is your relationship to like the concept of like a general, you know, universal basic income as just a broad continuing thing? So I did a debate on this a few years ago. I was against it and won the debate. So you can go watch that and see what you think. You know, here's my concern. My biggest concern is if we as a country could, we're willing to raise a lot more taxes and have an honest conversation of here's how much more you're going to pay, here's how much more you're going to get, then maybe, you know,

even then I sort of query as to why you want to collect a lot of taxes and then hand out a lot of money. Why not just cut out both steps and do what we do now. So I, you know, it's pretty expensive. I don't agree with the premise that the robots are going to take all our jobs. I think work is going to be central to our society for some time. So I'd rather focus on what we can do to help people get jobs and succeed in those jobs. And then, you know, where I like UBI is for children. So something like that was done for a year in 2021, and it's now over where anyone with a child gets money, regardless of, you know, how low their income is. So if it's UBI for children, I can meet you partway there. I appreciate it. Yeah. I'm with you on UBI for children. I'm with you. I mean, I don't know if this is what you're saying. I'm with you on many, I think a lot of

ways we give money to people, for instance, minimum wage when they raise it very high. I think this is a mistake. I had a young kid who was living in my house who was earning a lot of money that he didn't need. It seems to me that the government ought to step in and provide the safety net for people with families, people who are trying to support a family who are unskilled on low wages. They don't need to raise it so the sons of rich people can sit in their parents' house and make a lot of money at the expense of their employers, who are then struggling to meet those payrolls. I mean, I have a very successful business, and the minimum wage didn't really hurt us at all.

But I know firsthand other places that were really walloped by the raise to $15 an hour. What do you think about a policy to move people who need to into Noam's home so that they don't have to worry? You know, I've never seen any research on that particular policy. You didn't do a debate on that a couple of years ago?

Okay. And as far as you, listen, one thing is for sure, or you might disagree. For some reason, it was a mystery why nobody was working after the pandemic ended. We still can't get employees. But to me, I mean, there's only one reason it can be is because they have enough money not to work, right? I mean, if you don't have money, you need to go to work and nobody wants it to work. So is that what we can expect from UBI? Yeah. So, well, let me take those in reverse order. I think unemployment insurance played a role in keeping people from working. It had a feature that UBI doesn't have, which is if you went back to work, you lost the money. With UBI, at least you keep the money, whether or not

you're working. So, you know, I don't think a whole lot of people are not going to work because of $12,000 a year, but with unemployment insurance, you were potentially getting a thousand dollars a week and you'd lose that money the second you took a job. So I think that really did. Well, it was, it was that plus they accumulated a lot of money during the pandemic. Yeah, I agree with that on the minimum wage. If I were a czar and I could design the perfect set of government programs, I would debate whether or not to have a minimum wage. If there were other ways to support people, I'd not hurting employment very much, is sort of given all the different trade-offs worth doing. What would be the best program? And by the way, most people on the minimum wage aren't like your son. It used to actually be, if you look 30, 40 years ago, it was an awful lot of teenagers. The number of teenagers on it have

gone down. The number of sort of middle-aged people who are supporting children, for example, have actually gone up. And they need more money than the minimum wage, which is why you say that they should have money for children, correct? Yeah. So what would I do? I think if I were czar, I would have a basic floor in terms of things like health. I would have a basic floor for children. And then a lot of the other subsidies would be contingent on work for anyone who could work. So if you get a job and it only makes $10 an hour, the government gives you another $5 an hour. And so now you're at 15 and the cost of that extra money is being spread across the taxpayer. So some wage subsidy like that would be probably what I would do if I was czar. Do you do you find yourself or do you feel yourself becoming a little bit orphaned politically in views like that?

That does not seem to be where the future of the Democratic Party is going. I don't even know what the Republicans stand for vis-a-vis that, but they're more cold hearted, I'm sure, than you would want to be. Right. I mean, that particular policy I was just describing, I came out with a proposal for it with a friend of mine. His name is Phil Swagle, and he's a Republican economist who had worked in the Bush administration. I think in general, especially on tax and transfer programs, my sympathies are much closer to the Democratic Party. I think we can afford higher taxes on high income households. I think we can afford to do more for our safety net. And, you know, Democrats support that Republicans don't. So I let me ask

neither party is a perfect fit for me, but it's it's a decent amount closer for one than the other. I know what the Democrats say about wanting to to tax the super wealthy, even actually Trump even says something like that. You know, if you read Woodward's book, apparently Trump Trump was like they could afford it. They could tax the super rich. And the people around him says, no, no, you're a Republican now. You're crazy. You can't do that. But anyway, leaving who knows what Trump believes. But it seems to me Senator Schumer and the rest are pushing to reinstate what is it called the SALT tax. They want to raise the deduction for state and local taxes from $10,000 back to $80,000. And who pays $80,000 in state and local taxes? The rich. And this was the most prominent part of that program. So call me skeptical. I know

what they say, but what they do doesn't seem to really show that that's their priority. Look, I spoke at vociferously on expanding the state and local deduction. I think it was just an awful idea. You know, still, if you ask which party is more likely to raise taxes on high income households, both parties would be more than happy to agree. It's the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, that's why you do it. You know, I don't, I wouldn't do it to penalize anyone. I think there's an awful lot of people that made a lot of money by contributing to society. I would do it, you know, largely because the people wouldn't miss the money and there's better things to do with it. You know, it also matters how you do it. The state and local deduction, you know, lowering that cap like they did in the 2017 law. And that's actually a good way to raise taxes. But there's other ways

that are, you know, better and worse. So for me, like on the ground, what I always see is that, yeah, they should raise taxes on the super wealthy. And when I hear super wealthy talk about it, they're usually like, yeah, of course I can pay more taxes. What the Democrats tend to do, in my opinion, that bothers me is they'll say, look at Warren Buffett is paying less, you know, money than his secretary, blah, blah, blah. And they'll give a few outrageous examples of people not paying taxes. And then they'll reach all the way down to the guy making three hundred thousand dollars a year. And they will, you know, they will include him in that category. And that's where and I thought Obama did this, too. And that's where I think they're

kind of three generations into the Ivy League that so many people are. They just don't understand what it means to be a small business person. And you advised Obama to defend yourself. No, no, I didn't mean it that way. I'm just saying, like, honestly, like Obama got a bum rap when he said you didn't build that. And I did a lot. And he didn't mean what the Republicans tried to make him out to have meant. However, there was still something tone deaf about it to me as a guy who was working 70, 80 hours a week that he never once seemed to. I always seem to be the enemy. Always, always, always. I can employ 100 people and work my ass off and have a good year and a bad year.

And somehow I was part of this oppressor class that's, you know, making too much money and out to hurt everybody. Any comment on that? I mean, look, I can see why some Democratic politicians would make you feel that way. I don't quite know why President Obama would make you feel that way. He was someone that believed in markets, believe that entrepreneurs made a big contribution. In terms of taxes, I think I might have diametrically the opposite view of you on that question. I think, you know, we are going to ultimately need to pay more taxes, people who make $300,000, $200,000, even $100,000 a year. And President Biden, you know, won't go below $400,000. So I think he's insufficiently moving from Warren Buffett to others. In the legislation that just probably came to an end, they had a tax increase

in the rates that started at $10 million. Politically, you can't start at $1 million, can't start at 500,000, you have to start at 10 million. So I think we're going to ultimately need to do a little bit more, a little bit broader, and no one wants to do that. Well, okay. I mean, listen, I might be losing your vote. No, you know, I don't expect anybody to. We brought you here to agree with Noam exact. I don't expect anybody to agree on everything, obviously. And I don't expect myself to be right on everything when I'm talking to one of the best economists in the world. But I'll tell you, I had an idea one time that there ought to be like an American dream index or something where we really added up, okay, what is a reasonable thing for people to aspire to? I want a house

and I want to be able to send my kids to college and I want a car for me and my wife. And I want to take two weeks vacation every year. I want to fly coach, you know, just some sort of basket of what kind of, um, we think it's not greedy for a person to want a lifestyle to have in his forties or fifties or, and whatever that costs, I think below that amount of money, we should go easy on taxation. And I think $300,000 in New York is very close to the bone on people being able to have a decent, well-off lifestyle that they've worked for 20 or 30 years to get to. So that's just the way I view it. And above that, yes, people don't need yachts. They don't need to fly. They don't need first class. They don't need expensive vacations. But I don't begrudge them to want to have a certain lifestyle.

Universal income of $300,000 for everyone. No, I don't know what the number is, but I don't know. But I would want to figure out that number. $75,000 for everyone. I don't know what the number is, but I would want to figure out that number. 75K. Before I started deciding they can pay more, because people can always pay more. They pay more and then sacrifice in their personal lives, but they're paying more for what? Why can't they prioritize themselves to that extent that I'm describing? Right. So you said you were talking to an economist. I don't know the answer to this question any better than any of the three of you do. This is about morals and philosophy and your theory of justice. I teach the introductory economics class at Harvard and we begin the year, maybe our third or fourth class, with a class on ethics and morality, where I don't say,

hey, here's the right ethics, here's the wrong ethics. We try to describe a couple different coherent ethical systems. One of those is basically you make the money, you deserve to keep it. Another is utilitarianism. How much does a dollar mean to you? How much does it mean to someone else? Let's take it away from the person who doesn't mean much to you, give it to the person who means a lot. Those are different moral philosophies. I don't have any expertise in which one of those is right. I happen to be closer to utilitarian myself. So even if that person making $300,000 in New York is stressed in all sorts of ways, I still think the last dollar they made, they're just going to miss it less than somebody who's that much more stressed in lots of different ways is going to be.

But, you know, but that's, I can't prove that that's right to you. I agree with you. It's just, you know, they talk about the top 1%, and sometimes they talk about the top 10th of 1%. And there's a big difference. You know, the top 1% is, the top 1% with the family and college and all that stuff is doing great. It's top 1%, right?

But the top 10th of 1% is a whole nother universe altogether. Anyway, another area that economists seem to me to totally misunderstand things. This started with Robert Reich. I guess he's not an economist, is he? But he plays one on TV. I believe he might be trained as a lawyer, definitely not trained as an economist. But he wrote, and then the economist, well, you'll see what I'm getting at. So he wrote, Starbucks is raising its prices to consumers,

blaming the rising cost of supplies. But Starbucks is so profitable, it could easily absorb these costs. It just reported a 31% increase in yearly profits. Why didn't it just swallow the cost increases? And to me, the first thing I thought of when I heard him say that, I said, wait a second, if Starbucks doesn't raise their prices, then how am I going to, like I'm a mom and pop, how can I compete with Starbucks if they're going to hold their prices down low, despite the fact that the cost of goods is going up. Isn't that illegal, actually? And then recently, this came around again about these gas stations. They're pressuring these gas stations,

a lot of the big oil companies own gas stations, and they're pressuring them to keep the price of gas low despite the fact that gas is going up. I said, but wait a minute, what are all the people who are not owned by big oil? How can they compete? I mean, isn't that normally called price fixing? Isn't that what's the what's the what's the word for pricing? That's aggressive. Cartel. Well, no, there's a predatory pricing. Isn't that predatory pricing that liberals are now calling for? The liberals at the big gas companies? People are getting it from the left. The gas stations are being criticized. I think Biden did it too, very harshly because they're raising their prices.

Yeah. Maybe you might be searching for it. Yeah. Look, I mean, a lot of these businesses are low margin businesses. Gas stations are really low margin businesses. Now, the refineries, they're making a big profit right now. But two years ago, they were losing tons of money. You look over the last five years, even the oil refineries aren't doing particularly well. Starbucks, I don't know what their margins are like, but I guess my guess is they're not huge. Because there's a lot of other places you can go to get coffee. In fact, they couldn't afford to stay in Harvard Square. They had to close down because they couldn't pay the rent and stay in business right in the center of Harvard Square. So, you know, costs are going up. What do you expect a business to do? They're going to

raise prices. Now prices are going up. What do you expect a worker to do? They're going to ask for more pay. And so we're seeing a little bit of a cycle between the two. Maybe it'll peter out. Maybe it won't. We'll see. But I mean, just to focus on what I'm really focusing on is the call for the richer business owners to hold their prices steady because they can afford it, which they can, which in my mind would put all the less rich business owners in a very, very difficult situation. If Starbucks doesn't raise the price of their cappuccino, if Starbucks decides to take it as a lost leader, then I am really going to lose my shirt because I don't have Starbucks' capital. I need Starbucks to raise their prices so that I can raise mine. And,

and a mom and pop gas station needs the other gas stations to raise their prices so they can raise theirs. Otherwise they're going to go under. That's all. This seems to be a, I draw a big distinction between taxes and interfering with prices. What do you mean? If you want, you know, if you think Jeff Be bezos has too much money you should raise his taxes you shouldn't force amazon to sell things at a different price than they're selling them at now yeah i agree can i uh can i ask a question about taxes that sort of came up earlier when you know

obviously when people are at home getting unemployment they're not motivated to get a job because then they have to give up the unemployment money. And I feel like tax brackets, a similar thing happens. Let's say people in the top 10th of the top 1% should be taxed at one rate. If you're at the lower 10th of that, then it should be a lower rate and so forth. There should be brackets going down. You should pay what you can afford. And at every dividing line though, there's a point, this is going to be a silly story, but with hopefully a point. When I was in college, I remember if you bought $50 worth of stuff at the school bookstore, you'd get 10% off.

If you bought $49 worth, you didn't get anything off. So what about, do you understand what I mean? Like where there's like, how do you deal I mean? Like where, where there's like, how do you deal with that? When there are people who are like, if I make less, if I make $299,999, I'm all set. If I make 300,000, I make way less than the person who makes a dollar less than me. The tax code has a lot of stupid things in it. None of them though, are as stupid as the college bookstore that you just described. And that's because the way it works is it's a marginal rate. So if your income goes from, I think it's around $500,000, the top bracket kicks in. So if it goes from $499,999 to $500,000, you only pay that extra higher rate on that

last dollar you made. Everything else before it, you're not changing the rate on that. It's a lower rate. So it's never worth, not never, it is almost never worthwhile to burn some of your money to lower your overall taxes. New York City had a commercial rent tax where if you hit $250,000, it went down to $1.00 to pay the taxes. There are a few places where there's cliffs. There's actually some cliffs in New York state

tax. I think the estate tax, inheritance tax has a cliff in the New York state tax as well, but there's very few of them in the federal tax and certainly not in free-paying. I spoke to an important economist. You know him. I believe he's a friend of yours. I don't want to say his name, but I told him I was having you on the show and he and he gave me two questions to hit you with. You ready? Uh oh. Maybe I have to hear the questions you might guess who asked me to ask you. One party democratic states don't seem all that great to actually live in. Do you disagree? If not, doesn't that make you wonder if your party is really right? One party states are terrible, and I'm glad there is a debate in the United States. I think there are, you know, sometimes I wish for a better Republican Party in some dimensions, like

respect for democracy, but they want to argue for lower taxes and less regulation and Democrats for higher taxes and more regulation. I think it's way better to have a debate than to have one party rule. Do you feel that, well, the second part is, does it make you wonder if, well, I won't suck into all that. I mean, there's this thing that happened

in New York City recently where this bodega owner, I'm sure you saw it, was more likely someone who's working for me in the shoes of this poor bodega owner who's charged with murder. And this, this seems to be the kind of direction a state goes in only when there's no real opposition, you know, the, anyway, the other question he told me to ask you was, by the way, you have an idea who this is yet? No. OK, is it me? He says, how about how many new skyscrapers should be built in San Francisco and what should be demolished to allow it? Same question works for New York City, he says. You know, whatever the market wants, I think there should be relatively few rules that restrain that. And so if people, you know, want to sell their house to a developer and the developer wants to

build a building that can fit a lot more people, that's how to bring the price of housing down. San Francisco and New York are amazing places to live. They're too expensive because there's not enough housing. Reduce the rules that block that housing and we'd have more housing, more people in New York and San Francisco. They'd be even better cities than they are now. New York's a little dangerous because no one might stab you if you scare them. Well, there is a big movement. I saw Matt Iglesias writing about it, like to get rid of zoning and all this stuff to really allow building everywhere. I have mixed feelings about it. I don't want big buildings being built on my street in Westchester. You know, I like having the zoning, but I, but I, you know,

I understand the argument. Where do you stand on all that? I'm mostly on the Matt Iglesias side of it. You know, frankly, I'm a little bit less worried about Westchester than I am about New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Cambridge, where I live. You know, these are all dense places. They could be a lot denser. And it's just, you know, people being close together, a lot of ideas, a lot of stuff happens, you know, wages go up and it's just hard to access a lot of that because just not enough people can live in these places. So I think San Francisco is the most egregious of them. So you're describing something really interesting, which is the party whose heart is in the right place, as it were, that's that spends the most time worrying about the problem of people who are struggling,

people without homes, also are the most embracing of the policies that ensure that these people will never have affordable housing, right? Is that a fair description of what's going on? I mean, the supply debate is a, you know, it's a weird, you know, it's an area where regulation, I'm against the regulation that limits housing supply. I think Paul Krugman is against that regulation. Some Republicans are for that regulation. Some Democrats are for that regulation. So it's sort of, and I know a lot of Republicans that are on my side of the issue. So I'd say it's a cross-cutting issue that doesn't really map as much into party lines, more into like nerd lines. Yeah. I mean, I feel, I feel completely orphaned politically.

There's no party that speaks for me at all. I was pretty, I was pretty aligned with Mayor Bloomberg, I would say, but even he could be quite heartless and oblivious in certain ways. But, you know, and you could be heartless and oblivious in certain ways. I try not to be. I would have liked to have seen if I could have chosen one public official to have been our president during covid. To me, it would have been Bloomberg hands down. I think he was the only one really who had the administrative and the intellectual skills to have probably done the best job at that very, very daunting challenge. has that kind of firepower. But Bloomberg, in many ways, would speak for me in just being, you know, a reasonable guy who's smart and is ready to analyze things without being too ideological. But neither party has a home for people like that. You seem to me to be a person kind of like what I'm describing. Well, I don't know. I've been trying to convince you that I'm

not. I'll keep working. You're in a nice home right now. I, you know, I don't know. I've been trying to convince you that I'm not. I'll keep working. Looks like you're in a nice home right now. I, you know, I don't know. Yeah, no, I mean, Trump, I'm not going to try to talk you out of the view that Trump wasn't the right person. Clearly he wasn't the right person. Yeah, look, I mean, I think the Democratic Party is imperfect. I think the Republican Party is considerably imperfecter from my values. So there are days and topics where I feel a little bit homeless, but there's a lot more topics. We got to deregulate that whole situation. But the Democratic Party will be better with, you know, everyone speaks their mind. And if it has competition from a good, strong, sensible Republican Party, I believe in competition, I guess. Well, I'll tell you one thing as a business owner. And I hope that it's interesting to you to hear the opinions of small business owners, because we're actually the economy, right?

Like you guys are studying the economy, but we're actually, you know, dealing with it. You know, the Trump's bailout program for restaurants was pretty reasonable. They asked you how much you made in 2019 in the 12 months before the pandemic, and then they compared it to the 12 months after the pandemic. And if you were down by more than 90 percent, you got the first round of money and and so on. So the people who lost the most money got the first money and the most money return. The Biden program prioritized by race. I don't know if you're aware of this. The restaurant program was actually turned overturned in the courts, but the program was already out of money, so it didn't matter. The Biden program, essentially no white male restaurant owner got a dime. And that now there was another program for nightclubs.

So personally, I didn't you know, I came out unscathed anyway. But I know people who lost everything, you know, and they are so bitter. You can't describe the bitterness that a person that this would happen to a person in America. And this is where that party is going, which is a bridge too far for me, that every new law now has an equity provision. The CDC wanted to give out vaccines by race. They gave out Paxlovid by race. But imagine there's a hurricane and all the houses are destroyed and the government of the United States comes and say, OK, we're going to build back the houses, but only the houses that are owned by women, Pacific Islanders and, and, you know, and other people of color, this is unheard of.

And this is a shift in the Overton window. You know, the parallel, you know, start by like the boiled frog, you know, you put the frog in the cold water and you turn it up a little, little, if you throw the frog at the hot water, he jumps out immediately, but you've put him in cold water and turn the temperature up ever so slightly. He boils to death. That's probably not true, but that's the thing. I feel like a lot of us are boiled frogs here, slowly but surely. We would have never thought that this could happen. The government has gotten to the place where they're giving out disaster relief based on race

rather than demonstrable need. This is a shift in the Overton window. In my opinion, we're all boiled frogs here. And this is something that truly bothers me. I won't ask you even to comment on it because, you know, you have, you have students to face and it's, it's a dangerous minefield out there to say the wrong thing, but I, I'd love to see the data. Oh no, this is, this, you can you can Google it. This is this was this is true. I mean, I'm but you're you're referring to like it's not every law. So I'm asking, what are the laws that you're talking about? What is this? What are the specifics that you're referring to? I told you it was Pax of it. They tried it with. But then you said every law has an equity. As you see new laws coming out, It's become the standard now, wherever they can, to prioritize it as best

they can with an eye towards equity. Laws that go through the Senate? I'll just tell you this. Al Franken is a comedian. Al Franken is a comedian. And he was performing at the Cellar. He retired from the Senate. And I told him about this law, about the restaurant program. And he was shocked. And you know damn well if he had been in the Senate, he would have voted for it, you know. But out of the Senate, he was like, oh, I can't believe that. Are you sure? And I showed it to him.

And you could tell he was, my goodness. Anyway, so again, this is why I feel orphaned here. I don't know what else I have on my list here other than to mention. Do you know this famous column that George McGovern wrote in The Wall Street Journal when he got out of office and he he he opened like a bed and breakfast in and he lost his shirt? Do you know this famous column? I can send it to you after. No, no. This is like the the the column for us small business owners. And he said, I quote, I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.

And this is this is really the truth with with politicians. McGovern's column essentially said if he had known then what he knows now, get somebody with actual hands-on experience to explain that it's not quite the way it is in textbooks. I don't know if you have any comments on all that. Oh, look, I don't think anyone should ever make economic policy based on a theory. I think you want a bit of theory. I think that helps make your thinking more rigorous. I think you want a bit of theory. I think that helps make your thinking more rigorous. I think you want some scholarly evidence. I think you want to talk to some real people. I think you want to use some common sense. And I think you want to blend all that together. And anyone for me is too rigidly, you know, oh, this is the model. It says this. I don't believe that. I want to hear all of that. Now it's important though, you don't just go out and talk to business owners and believe every word they say.

That's for sure. Because some of what they do is want money for themselves. Absolutely. And I definitely thought in government, it was easier. You heard from more businesses than from workers. You heard from more businesses than from consumers. And so you want to make sure you're hearing, you know, pretty broadly, you have, you know, a bit of a nonsense detector. So if somebody's lying to you or saying, you know, they'd love an extra million dollars, you can sort of assess what's going on. But absolutely. I always wanted people in my office. I always wanted to hear from real businesses, real workers, real consumers, not just theories.

I have a quick question. First, I can't believe that you use such horrible language on this podcast. Nonsense. We don't talk like that here. Nonsense. I curse so little. I curse so little. It's shocking. The sincere question I have is when you were when you were working in the Obama administration, you're not working for the Biden administration. I'm just curious, who is doing what you did in the Obama administration for Biden? And do you like them? And what are they doing right and wrong? Good question. CeCe Rouse is the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. That's what I did in the second term. A woman, Aviva Arendine, is the Deputy Director

of the National Economic Council, which is the job I had in the first term. They're both good friends of mine and they are both fantastic and perfect. And honestly, like really doing very good job, but it's a tough environment and no one listens to their economic advisor on everything. I'm not sure anyone one listens to their economic advisor on everything.

I'm not sure anyone should listen to their economic advisor on everything, but you know, a lot of politics, a lot of other things going on too, but those two are doing great. How does, how does this inflation end? I don't know. There's a happy story of gas prices come down and expectations come down and we have a soft landing. I think that's possible. There's an unhappy story of recession, but maybe the recession gets rid in and everyone expects it. And so it just becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy that goes on and on and on. I'm not quite sure which of those. The Fed is acting very aggressively now. I think that's a good thing. I don't have a better idea to bring

inflation down than what they're doing. I just wish we weren't in quite as bad a place to begin with. Do you think that the Fed, all right, I'm repeating myself, but, you know, you confess to having held your tongue. You confess that other people were scared to make too much noise about something. You're kind of describing a thing where under the surface, there was a much different picture of what the smart economists were thinking than what we, the general public, knew. Where was the Fed on that? Where was Janet Yellen on that? Were they in your camp just going along to get along, or did they actually, in in good faith not believe there was gonna there was any threat of this i don't know what exactly they were thinking but they made a mistake last year they got badly behind the curve and you'd hear it in the speeches and i i would

point this out when i saw it you'd have eight arguments on one side and they'd all be sort of true but there were also eight arguments on the other side, and those weren't being made. And it just was very, some of the speeches sounded more like advocacy of a point of view that hadn't changed Now they are catching up quickly to the curve. Um, so, you know, I think it's an open question as to how much damage there is about being behind the curve for six months. Um, maybe, maybe it'll all work out and they're going to be able to get up, uh, you know, catch up, but you know, it's, it's a tough one. Last question. Cause I actually don't know this. He knew all the other stuff. No, because we talked about how terrible it would be to have a recession.

What is so terrible about a recession? Who gets hurt? Who really gets hurt during a recession the worst? Look, I mean, is it the most terrible thing in the world? No. I mean, we have them every six years or so historically. But look, it's the every six years or so historically. But look, it's the most vulnerable workers that get hurt, lowest income workers. And it can be scarring.

You graduate from college the year of a recession. You might be making less money 10 years later because you didn't have as great a job opportunity that year. So I think we should be trying to avoid them. But I don't think it's the only problem in the world. So if the Fed were maximally trying to avoid a recession, it would have lower interest rates. We'd have more out of control inflation. And then there might be a bigger recession later on. But it would be, you know, all else equal, would love to have a steady, sustained expansion. All right. Well, Mr. Furman, Professor Furman, it's really been a pleasure to have you on. I really meant what I said. I so admire you and people like you. We need way more people like you out there who are not holding their tongues. And just calling it as it is, we would make much more intelligent decisions as a democracy.

And it sounds like highfalutin what I'm saying, but it's really a serious problem when people know better, but they're afraid to say so. And then, I mean, yeah, people are going to suffer in a recession. Look at the people suffering from this inflation now. People are getting destroyed. And the anxiety alone, I don't know how you put a price on that. People are really scared. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. I'm going to give you a hint about who asked those questions.

It was somebody from George Mason University, and it was not Tyler Cowen. Okay. Alex Tararock or Brian Kaplan? Yeah, it could be. Warm, warm. You're getting warm. Brian Kaplan is coming down to do stand-up comedy at our club. Was he funny? I didn't know that.

Yeah, he's pretty funny. We'll find out. No, he's funny. He's actually funny and he's got a very, very winning manner on stage. I think he might actually have something there. Well, he has a great graphic novel, but I don't know. Don Boudreau.

No, it was, it was Brian Kaplan. It was Brian Kaplan. Yeah. So I was actually emailing with him about his upcoming performance. I said, this is Jason Furman.

Do you have any questions for him? And he said, those are the two questions he told me to ask you. All right, I hope you had a good experience. Well, can I say one thing? My niece is a student at Harvard and I think she's an econ major.

So I'm excited to tell her that we had you on the show. There's a decent chance she took my class. Oh yeah, yeah. She probably did. Actually. She's, uh, she's kind of brilliant. I saw some studies just came out that said that people who score well on an economic literacy test correlates the most to high intelligent more than almost any other test. Did you see that? I didn't see that. I think marginal revolution, but I think that's true of, see that. I think marginal revolution. But I think that's true of your niece.

I have no personal connection to you or anything about you, but I've had a great time talking to you. I really like that you said, I don't know. I feel like for a question where you didn't know, because I feel like that's something that's severely missing from the public loudest discourse. People like honesty. That was that was I didn't even need to put that much work into not knowing. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's easy. Do you come back around here to your old neighborhood often? I come there some whenever I can. Yeah. Well, shoot us an email. Come visit. Come see a show. And I think I think the honest, you know, I always feel like if Biden would go on TV and say, listen, we screwed this up, you know, and and, you know, we made a mistake and we're not going to make that mistake again. And we acknowledge it. That would be the best thing he could say rather than

these kind of ways of kind of convincing us that what we don't have to trust our own eyes and the prices aren't really going up or it's because of this. It's not because just say, Oh, you know, Lincoln made mistakes. Churchill made mistakes and I made him say Clinton actually did that. I don't know if you remember, I know you got to go. Remember when he raised taxes, then he's speaking and he got a lot of guff for it. And he, and he did that speech and he says, Oh, I have to admit, I'm, I,

I probably did raise your taxes more than I should have. Do you remember when he made that speech in the 90s? And the political system is brutal on people who admit error. Yeah, I agree with you. My sympathy is with the idea that you should be able to. That's probably what I'd advise. But that might be one of the cases where a president would be wise ignoring my advice. We teach children like when you do something that hurts someone or cause causes some kind of error, like admit it, make a mistake. As a grown up, we're like you get pulled over, you say nothing. You hit somebody, you say nothing. You go into politics, you say nothing or else they'll have the tape and they can play it

forever. And I don't think it should be that way. It's the people who hate Biden, the Fox News. They're never going to give him a fair shake no matter what he does. Right. That's just the way politics is. But the independents who are the swing voters now, you know, they're putting the generic ballot towards Republicans. I think they are the type of people who just want to hear him say, yes, we made a mistake. And we're going to and we're going to read, we're going to redirect now the next two years. We're not going to make that mistake again. You can trust us. Okay. I'll give you another chance, but don't tell me you did everything right because then I think it was just

going to be more of the same. As I said, I think like you, but there's a lot of times I got ignored. And some of those times I thought that people were right to ignore me. All right. Thank you very much. Hope you do get back to the old neighborhood. Thank you, Professor Furman. Thank you. Thank you to you. Great being with all of you. Thank you so much. Mike has some shows coming up, too. Oh, sure. You don't have to hear about the call. You can you can he can you can keep the exit stage left or you can stay. Yeah, I'm not going to say

anything bad about you. Oh, yeah. God damn. What do you really think of him? He seemed great. He's great. Oh, yeah. He was fantastic. And, you know, he doesn't he doesn't have the arrogance that some super geniuses have,

but he is a high powered intellect, one of the highest in the country. He doesn't have the arrogance that some of us super geniuses have. You and me, Noam, we're in it together. You too, Perrielle. Yeah, thank you, Perrielle. I will be doing shows at the comedy club Acme Comedy Company in Minneapolis, July 28 to 30. I'm real excited about it. And all my other dates, you can follow me at my website, MikeKaplan.com or at M-Y-Q-K-A-P-L-A-N, Mike Kaplan.com or at M Y Q K A P L A N wherever I am now. M Y Q. That's a,

that's a stage name or is that the way your, your, your, your black mother spelled it? Ha I'll tell you about it. Look at that. See, there's a lot of diversity in my life. You think that they're not at my parties. So when I was 13 or 14 is when Prince changed his name to a symbol and I was at a summer camp and I was like, I heard about it and I was like, that sounds cool and weird. And I didn't know about the legal reasons behind it.

You know, his, uh, feud with his, you know, uh, record label that made it so he couldn't release things as Prince for a few years. But I was like, that guy's doing a weird thing. I'll do a weird thing. And I just changed the spelling then just as you know, a silly little kid at a creative art summer camp. And then he changed his name back eventually. And I was like, oh, I guess I'm alone now. But then, you know, it's just kind of a fun thing. Like I was just a weird kid. And so I kept I told people in college, like, yeah, spell it like this if you want. And then when I got into comedy, as it turns out,

there's many Mike Kaplan's Michael Kaplans, you know, Michael B. Kaplans, like there's a costume director, like I would watch Fight Club and like, oh, Michael Kaplan did the costumes. So I was going to have to change it to something. So just search engine optimization wise and like union wise, it needed to be spelled a different way. And I was like, well, I already made up this silly thing when I was a kid and I'm going into the business of silliness. So I just kept it. I think it's great. Thank you. Yeah. I hope you didn't think I was criticizing. Oh, no, no.

I appreciate the question. And I interpreted it sincerely. All right. Do you have any questions for me? Periel, what is that? I want to hear about when you guys first met. I want a whole podcast series about how this dynamic just was inspired and inflamed. I don't want to hear about when you guys first met. I want a whole a whole podcast series about how this dynamic just was inspired and inflamed. I don't want to talk about it.

I want to see a romcom on my decks next week. Anyway, you now have a 60 year old host America. And I don't know. Wait, I want to say something about that. I don't this attitude is not a good thing. I mean, you are knock on wood. I mean, you couldn't be in better health. You couldn't be, I mean, in a better place. I, this like weird, you're like focusing this like negative stuff. You people like I've 40 year old friends who died of cancer.

Like, you can't think like that. I mean, I don't think that it's the thing to be focusing on. Do you think telling me you have 40 year old friends who died of cancer? Doesn't that make you feel good? Exactly. Helping me right now. You're the champion. You've defeated these cancer.

What's the opposite of a survivor? Yes, I do think that I think that, you know, you should be thrilled and not, not be thinking about, Oh my God, what? Cause it's, I don't, I don't think. I just want to live and live and live and be healthy. And I know it's not possible. No. Yeah. Let me, can I, can I offer it? I'm going to not, not disagree with you entirely, but just offer a brief perspective.

I, one month ago, tore my calf muscle real bad and I needed to be, I had to fly home. I had a wheelchair taking me through the airport and I was on crutches. I was with a cast. I had a cane. And in a way that I'm like, wow, before a month ago, I had not experienced that. And I know that, you know, as we all move forward in life, we will all hopefully live long, long enough to get old and sick and die as opposed to the alternative. But like it really, I mean, it certainly made me value like when I could walk, when I could walk more, like I still can't walk as speedily or without,

you know, without thinking about having to leave earlier. And so, I mean, you know, in 10 years, Noam, you look back at right now and you'd be like, wow, 60 was pretty good. Right. That's kind of my point, though. Yeah. It's also my point. Yeah. You're both right. You agree. You feel you feel better now than you will in 30 years also you know it seems to me that if i were born today my prospects would be so much better in terms of what old age would hold for me we really we really just i really just. They're going to be able to grow back your, your organs. They're going to repair your hearing there. There you'll be living to 150, 200 years old.

Who the sky's the limit really. Oh, nuclear war will end the whole society. Well, there's no, no one knows what the future holds. No. Is it New York is dying in a nuclear blast. Painless. It's just, you're incinerated, right? If you're right in there, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's okay. Because I'm also very scared of the

painful aspects of however it is that I perish. Oh, man. Noam, I don't know how much you've engaged with Buddhism, but you'll get some rebirths in that one. And so it won't be over. And you'll get to try again. So you're going to have multiple painful endings. Well, the goal is to ultimately help all beings, including yourself. You believe that crap. You believe you get reincarnated as a bug or whatever it is. Not when you put it like that. All right. Anyway, you can spell spider S-P-Y-D-E-R. Oh, sure. I like that. All right. Well, listen, I don't think I'm unique in the world and being afraid of death. Didn't know which was a Vasco da Gama.

Who's the one? No. Who's the one in search of the fountain of youth? Oh, Ponce de Leon. Ponce de Leon. Yeah, Ponce de Leon. He had this. I think it's just the two of you, though.

Yeah. Well, of course, it's a very common human experience. You can talk to or having Jay Olshansky on in a couple of weeks. He's a longevity expert. Wow. You know, I would like to just say that I'm pretty much crushing it lately with the guests. Yeah. All right. Also I'd write, I'd like for you to live as long as possible and also as wide and deep as possible. You know, like having, it's sometimes said, like, if you have one beautiful moment of sort of, you know, enlightenment, then you're like, oh, well, then I can die whenever. So I wish that for you. I hope that I hope that all your pain ceases and all your happiness increases. You think he means it? I mean, it for everyone. I know. You really blew it there.

I thought, OK, fair enough. Yeah, you got me. You really love it. I love everybody. Anyway, so come on out to the comedy gas station cellar because we're opening one up to help fight inflation. I'm going to spell the comedy cellar with an S. Oh, yeah.

OK, good night, everybody.