The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Live from the Table: Michael Mechanic

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand sit down with journalist and author of the book, Jackpot, Michael Mechanic.

This is live from the table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99 Raw Dog. And as a podcast, this is Dan Natterman with Noam Dorman, owner of the world-famous and ever-expanding comedy cellar. We've got Perrie Alashenbrand here on mic number three. Hello. She is our producer. She is wearing a Jordache jeans.

Jordache. Vintage Jordache from the 70s? Mm-hmm. 70s. And I think they went into the 80s a little bit. That's owned by Israelis. Or was it Jordache? It was Israelis.

It was Jews of some... No, no. Israelis. I know for sure. Okay. Syrian Jews or something like that. Persian Jews. Be that as it may, she's wearing a jumpsuit,

denim jumpsuit. I didn't even see those in the 70s. I don't think I've ever seen a Jordache jumpsuit. Oh, I saw it. Every girl in my high school wore one of those. A jumpsuit? That could be. With the stitching on the back.

I feel so old. Jordache loves... Go ahead. on the back. I feel so old. The Jordash look. I mean, is this like the closest I'm ever going to get to getting a compliment from the two of you? I've given you compliments, I think. But it's interesting what you're wearing. Very interesting. Anyway, Norm and I are dressed

in a female mechanic. modern uh attire um we are waiting on our guest michael mechanic who wrote a book about money buying happiness norm did i send a couple of articles that i guess disagree with his basic premise well that's good you can you can stick it to him not not i just want to tell you i had a woman on the on um hot times podcast over the weekend okay and uh we won't be running that podcast. Why? What happened? Because I was like half paying attention for a while, and then I began to get the gist

of what I was hearing. She's like a function, she's a doctor or something. I don't want to say her name. A doctor in functional medicine. What does that mean? Well, that's why I began to look at her. And I realized that she was a doctorate doctor, not a- Not an MD. not a medical doctor.

So I had the temerity to ask her, cause I feel like you're discussing financial, I mean, financially discussing medical advice. Yeah. People listening have the right to know that this is not a medical doctor. Right. So I said, wait a second, are you a, are you a, are you a, what are your credentials? I forget exactly how I'd ask her. And she was like, not answering, not answering.

And I said, listen, when you walk in your office, what certificate is hanging on the walls in a medical school? So no, it wasn't like it's a PhD and blah, blah, blah. And then it just, it went downhill from there. And then she called me, like she said, I wasn't smart. And I said, well, yeah, I only have a high school education. And she said, well, that figures out that makes sense education. And she said, well, that figures out. That makes sense then.

And I said, you're a snob. And it was awful. It went in great red. But the thing is that. Why aren't you running it? Because I feel like she came on thinking it was going to be not that. But, you know, it's hot times fall. Because you know how I am.

And, I mean, she could have said, no, I'm not an MD. But I think actually I know better than medical doctors because my experience like whatever it is that she kind of showed fear and um and i felt and i said i said listen the only reason you wouldn't like you you come on as a doctor but obviously i it seems like your intention is for people to think that you're a doctor, doctor, PhD is, I know they call it doctor, right? When you use the term doctor in the context of treating people medically. Right. Yeah. That's the, you would assume that she's a medical. I mean, she could have just as well said, yeah, I have a doctorate in literature.

Right, right, right. Sure. Right, right. That's what I was just thinking of. I mean, so, so apparently,. Right, right, right. That's what I was just thinking of. Well, I mean, so apparently, you know, now it's a, it's nutrition, it's functional medicine

and maybe, maybe it's legitimate. Like I'm open-minded about like acupuncture or whatever. I know, I'm not saying that, that none of these fields

have anything to offer, but I'm skeptical of them, you know, because they don't, because they don't have to go through the same double blind rigors that a conventional medicine doesn't. And even conventional medicine gets it wrong much more often than we'd care to, you know, uh, that much more often than much more often than it ought to, for us to have the kind of confidence that we still have in medicine.

Well, um, do we have confidence? I mean, you know, 10 years ago, it's hard to believe was the ice bucket challenge, raising money for ALS.

And there's, I don't think they've made any progress on that front. No, but it's things like it or on Parkinson's. They don't seem to have made much progress. It's not like a few years ago. So we'll actually, uh,

mammograms are not worth. That's true. Yeah. do you mean no you're supposed to get your now this and the mammograms didn't actually extend life and the only thing that they the only thing that actually pulled up is uh the finger test for prostate again probably that old that old uh uh wisdom is still we have with us just joining us remotely remotely through the magic of the internet. This is Riverside that we're using? Yeah. Riverside, yeah. Michael Mechanic.

Hi. Cool name. You think of Mike and the Mechanics. Oh, don't say that. I'm going to have to kill you. You've never heard that before, have you? Actually, I did a whole other podcast about how they ruined my life. Did you ever get in a podcast and they thought you were Mike from the

Mechanics? His name is Michael Rutherford. From Genesis, right? Yeah. We had fun basically deconstructing one of his songs and talking about why it stinks. That was the name of the podcast. Why does that song stink?

All I need is a miracle because that's a good song. We had a guy on our podcast once years ago, Dan, Dr. Sears. I don't know if you remember. I wanted Dr. Sears. I just had my first child. I wanted Dr. Sears, because that's a good song. We had a guy on our podcast once years ago, Dan, Dr. Sears. I don't know if you remember, but I wanted Dr. Sears. I just had my first child. I wanted Dr. Sears, the child-rearing expert, and it turned out to be Dr. Sears, the diet guy. We got halfway through realizing, well, you're not the Dr. Sears.

He's asking questions about children. Michael McCannick. I can talk about music. I can talk about whatever. Michael McCannick is a writer. He's an author. He just has a book out called Jackpot, How the Super Rich Really Live and How Their Wealth Harms Us All.

And that's available from Simon & Schuster. Welcome, Michael Mechanic. Thanks for having me. To our podcast. I guess no one wanted you on because you wrote an article in The Atlantic about money and happiness. Well, this is an issue that I don't want to just just on for me, even though I, of course, want to mom.

But this is an issue that we always talk about money, buying happiness and that kind of stuff. So I figured that's interesting to all of us anyway. So and the the the is it called a subtitle at how it harms all of us? A super rich. What's the title again, Dan? Exactly. A jackpot. Yeah.

How the super rich really live and how their wealth harms us all how their wealth harms us all i want to make sure we get to that part too but go ahead you just start tell us your basic thesis about money and happiness about all of it whatever whatever you start well i mean jackpot is kind of an exploration of wealth and the u.s the american wealth fantasy and kind of how we buy into this myth of, you know, striking it rich. Ever since our founding, essentially, we've been obsessed with this stuff. Like the first people to sail into Chesapeake Bay, first white settlers came here to get rich, basically,

not for religious freedom. And, you know, the gold rush completely reshaped the way California came to being. And, you know, people left their fields behind and left their stores empty, just like ran out to get the gold. But the people made the money where the people were selling the tools to the people trying to make the money. And it's sort of the same way today. It's like you can make a lot of money off people's desire to get rich.

Yes. The I would cite the people who make screenwriting software as a very good example of that. Final draft. You should see their headquarters. Yeah, well, at a time of the gold rush, it was potatoes. These guys got rich selling potatoes to the miners. Also, acting teachers make a lot of money, and their students typically do not. So that's an analogous situation.

Let's take it step by step. So back in the day, in the days of the change in your life than the things that money buys you today in a certain way, in terms of hot water, food. Well, you tell me. Maybe I'm wrong. Well, I mean, you think about it. There's a lot more stuff you can buy now. And it was probably more expensive then to just get the basics that you needed

because you had to build your own house or whatever. That's the kind of thing. There wasn't indoor plumbing. You didn't have the things available. In fact, Andrew Carnegie's whole shtick was like, well, you know, my workers are poor because I don't pay them, but they have more than the kings of yore because the kings didn't have the technology that we have, you know, in the 20s. And now you say, yeah, well, everybody's got, you know, the homeless guy's got a cell phone. But that doesn't, you can't eat a cell phone. Well, but, you know, I'm always, I always trip over that argument because I feel like on one sense it's a rationalization. In another sense, there is something to that, that there's a comparative wealth, which is in some ways a psychological thing.

And then there's the actual way that you're living, which in a certain way, Andrew Carnegie's wealth at his time bought him a lifestyle, which in certain ways would be considered poor today. You know, like how could people would be considered poor today you know like how could people live this way when you know well that might be an exaggeration i'm glad you brought that up because that is he didn't have i guess he didn't have air conditioning and yeah but he had you know he had 100 people around him with fans just going like this and feeding him grapes no i'm just making that up um yeah it's true uh um what true. You pointed a point just a minute ago. It just slipped my mind. what people are making in europe you're this is ridiculous you live like this in america and on the other hand um when you think about the poverty overseas or in other places it is a different situation entirely than what we consider as poverty here yeah what you said that got my interest was the social comparisons and it's it completely true. I mean, but that's also what's toxic,

right? It's like we compare ourselves immensely to our peers and people around us. And I mean, there's research in my book where if you move to a richer neighborhood, you make your money, you want to move up, right? So you move to where you have more space, a bigger house, whatever. And then the guy next to you expands his house and your happiness goes down. I mean, there's all these studies showing that when you go into a bigger house, you're only satisfied insofar as the houses around it

are the same size. And then somebody upgrades and then your house satisfaction, they call it house satisfaction, goes down. So it's a constant sort of- That's not just Jewish people. That's just not just my people. So you can, go ahead, go ahead. I'm half, so, you know, I feel it, I feel it.

You can laugh. So what do you think about that? I mean, is that something that social policy actually needs to concern itself with? Or should we say, well, you know, that's your mishegas, that's your craziness. Yeah, I mean, you can't really, you can't change people's psychology. They're always going to feel that way.

But what's sort of happening as the wealth gap increases, there's sort of a striation of society that's like the ladders, the rungs of the ladder are getting farther and farther apart. So the idea of what is success is looking farther and farther up there, you know, and we sort of fetishize the rags to riches stories. And we hear them all the time, because they're fun to tell the media talks, let's talk about this guy had nothing. And now he's looking at he's a billionaire. But that almost never happens. And so instead, we have these policies that kind of take the people who already have wealth and give them a big advantage in order to maintain it. I mean, just like- Why do you say it almost never happens? Almost everybody I know who's quite well off is a rags to riches story. No, no, honestly.

How many you know? Well, I mean, everybody I know, well, it depends what you call my riches- Well, you're in comedy though, you know? It depends what depends maybe my rags as well i'm saying the people that i know that are doing well not maybe not super rich but you know people that you wouldn't nobody would shed a tear for um almost all of them were kind of broke when i when we were younger you know well yeah but we were all broke when we were younger, you know? Well, yeah, but we were all broke when we were younger, right? The inheritance hasn't come in yet. No, no, I mean, it's true.

I mean, obviously people make good, but if you look at sort of the predictive, if you look statistically, you know, at very high income people, they tend to come from high income backgrounds. I mean, the best predictor of a person's wealth is their parents' wealth. Well, okay. I mean, if you come from a wealthy family, you're probably not going to wind up poor. So that correlation is going to be very good. But I don't know what that tells us. And by the way, I'm not actually contradicting you because

my anecdotal experience could absolutely not be correct. But that doesn't really change whether or not everyday people are moving up that ladder. And it seems to me a lot of people do move up that ladder. And even Elon Musk, by the way. All right, he may be an outlier. But a lot of Bill Gates, even some of the famous people that we know. Steve Jobs. None of these people were born to wealth.

Steve Jobs was adopted. I think Gates came from a family of certainly upper middle class. I don't know if they were super rich. Yeah, they did okay. They were Palo Altoans, you know. Like Mark Zuckerberg's father was a dentist. Well, they did pretty well. But somehow he was at Exeter and Andover, these very fancy universities.

Could it also be that intelligence begets wealth and intelligence is inherited so that somebody that was smart enough to become a doctor and make money is more likely to have a son or daughter with the brainpower to pursue a field? Before you answer, I'd like to let the jury know that I'm moving my chair away from Dan on this one. Yeah, that argument is a very slippery slope towards you know badness um well i mean i think there's something to it at least an element of uh well yeah but when you think about a lot of that is a lot of this a lot of that is education and it's like you live you grow up in a household with educated parents it's full of books they read to you. They put you on paths to sort of activities that are enriching and so forth, and they have the means to do it. It's very hard to come from an atmosphere of sort of poverty and go that far. I mean,

it happens, but it's rare. It really is me – I'm just saying that we put too much hope in the idea that we're going to get there this way, right? Let me – Just through our own grit. Let me rehabilitate Dan a little bit and say only the following, just in our close little circle here of people who are related to Jewish people. I don't know almost any Jewish person who's not two generations away from somebody who was flat broke okay I'm with you and I was there too

my grandfather came over from Eastern Europe nothing and he worked making dresses in a sweatshop on the Lower East Side and his wife didn't work and he wanted my dad my dad and his brother and sister to just not get educated. You should go work.

We need money. You go straight to a job. You know, education is a waste. And his wife said, no, no, no, no, no. They're going to college, right? But college was free. You know, New York City College, free. And, you know, you do well and you get a scholarship.

And so that's how it worked. And, you know, he became a professor. He did quite well for himself. So I totally agree with you. But there were more, I feel like there were also more opportunities. Well, I'll tell you this. And then I want to hear about how the super wealthy hurt us. I was saying the other day, so my father started as a fuller brush man.

I don't know if you know what a fuller brush is. He was kind of a ne'er-do-well to his 30. But one of his jobs was a taxi cab. He drove a taxi. And it's kind of amazing when I tell people that when I was a kid, all the taxi drivers were like, you know, regular white guys just driving a taxi. It wasn't like, you know, it was a regular job. His friend that also drove a taxi with him co-wrote the book Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess, which is a very famous chess book, while he's driving a cab. This is what cab drivers were like that.

So but anyway, he somehow cobbled together the money from driving a taxi and opened his first coffee shop. Now, that is unthinkably impossible today. You cannot get enough money in that kind of job to think of opening a restaurant. And the reasons, my firsthand reasons that I see are responsible for that are probably the opposite of what you're going to say. They come from a lot of well-intended, in my opinion, progressive policies and regulations, which have raised the costs of the barriers to entry to small businesses and the expertise you need to have to open small businesses so impossibly high, mom and pop type stores, with some exceptions, really can't open anymore. And I'll say one more thing. They just raised the, or they're about to raise their minimum wage now in New York to $16 an hour. Now, we as the comedy seller, pretty successful. We take that on the chin. And just so

everybody understands, it's not just the minimum wage that goes up, but basically every buddy's salary in the entire chain goes up because people, everybody judges their wage in relationship to the minimum wage. So if you were making 17 while the minimum wage was 15 and then people making 15, well, shit, I want 18 now. And then the manager says, he's making 18. So it's quite expensive. But again, we're successful and we handle that. But if I were trying to start out and I had to pay $16 an hour to every employee and hope to make it through, plus the rent, plus the incredible insurance, which is unbelievably high now in a way you wouldn't imagine. And the cost of employment practices and liability insurance and the ridiculous accounting costs because you can't possibly do your own books anymore.

And I mean, you just go on and on and on how how it's changed in my lifetime. Yeah, there's no doubt that you need a million dollars or more just to get you through your first year or two when you can hope to get ahead, unless you can have an overnight sensation. That was not the case. It used to be you could just barely have enough money and you could sort of get by until you made things happen. But the minimum wage used to be relatively generous in the know, the 60s and 70s. But it's stagnated to the point where, you know, you can't feasibly live in New York City or San Francisco area. Yes and no.

Because in the restaurant business, they also raised the minimum wage for tipped employees. Where tipped employees, it used to be quite, quite low. Yeah, $2.13 an hour. Yeah, you remember that. And it was proper to be low because people working for me, they'll make $700, $800 in one night in tips and plus their salary. So there's no real reason they need to be getting paid that much of a wage from a policy point of view. I mean, it's fine that they get it. But you're right. In certain ways, the minimum wage didn't policy point of view. I mean, it's fine that they get it. But you're right.

In certain ways, the minimum wage didn't keep up with inflation. But in the overall, I think it's undeniable that the costs to start a business now are exorbitant where they used to be manageable. And that's by a thousand cuts of many, many well-intended policies. So that's the tradeoff, in my opinion. But you might have other. But you'd also say, well, a lot of it is the cost of leasing or renting, you know, your space. Right. Which is just soared, especially in cities like New York and San Francisco. You know, the rent is only one, the rent is only one small part of it. It is part of it, but the cost of construction is crazy. The idea that you have to be, I'll tell you another story. I've told it before. We, we tried to move. We did. We moved a non-structural wall at our restaurant back by around five feet,

just to, I'm sorry, up by around five feet in order to make our kitchen bigger non-structural wall we had to be closed for six or seven months to do it between the permitting and the landmarks and the community board and this is something that we probably could have done in two weeks and probably could have done it without closing no structural no nothing to the integrity of nothing and when we reop reopened, our business never recovered. All of which is to say that if you're opening from scratch now, it's almost impossible to get open. And you don't have the money.

You just don't have the money to last you a year and a half to get open. Was this in New York City? In New York City, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you guys are notorious for being a difficult place to do business. Well, as all liberal cities are. Yeah, well., you guys are notorious for being a difficult place to do business. Well, as all liberal cities are. Yeah, well. It's true. New York is just, you know, just the idea of trying to open a business there.

That makes me run for cover. We should talk about money and happiness there, right? But what else contributes to the fact that you think that people are not getting ahead like they used to, besides what I'm saying? The lack of social mobility. I mean, I don't have a full explanation for it, but a lot of it is, well, there's the aspect of the way the system is sort of stacked in favor of the people who already have wealth. And what happens when wealth accumulates at the top, they begin buying up everything. And so, for instance, private equity companies are buying up real estate all over the place, buying up single family homes, and then renting them back to people, buying up apartment buildings,

kind of pulling all this money out, putting them in debt, and then renting them back to people. And it ends up with a lot of people on the street. It ends up people not being able to afford a home and also just paying such high rents that they can barely get by. I mean, housing is people, you know, the very poor in this country paying 50% of their income in housing. It doesn't leave much left over for other things. The irony is that they couldn't pay it if they couldn't afford it. You know what I mean?

Like there's always something about me that says, well, yeah, everything's so expensive, but it's only that expensive because the landlords can get it. It's just weird, you know, and also they don't build enough housing. I mean, in New York. That's a huge problem. There's also going to be a problem, you know, with this, the green revolution, right? We want to, we have to build all these wind farms and solar farms and so forth.

And indeed, in a lot of cases, it can be the liberals that get in the way. They're saying, I don't want that blocking my view, right? Yeah, you know, let's get to super wealthy. So there's, I've used this analogy before lately. I think it's the same in these laws and

regulations as it is, if you ever signed a contract, if anybody's ever signed a contract, even for something simple, there's pages and pages of clauses there. What are these clauses? This is like an archaeological dig of every lawsuit, every weird thing that's ever happened in the past in a legal sense that some lawyer now has to protect you against this. And it piles up over the years. And that's what a in the past in a legal sense that some lawyer now has to protect you against this. And it piles up over the years. And that's what a lot of all the regulations are. Every weird thing, horrible accident, quirky thing that has gone wrong that that makes our heartstrings that pulls at our heartstrings. We respond to with a law. So that will never happen again.

And these are all well intentioned. And at the time, who could oppose such things? But the sum total of these things at some point does weigh things down because we are clearly in a stagnant period and we need to be open-minded to look at everything the right and the left says about what might be causing this stagnation. Cause there's probably good sense coming from all directions on this issue. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, there probably is. Tell us about the super wealthy. What do you want to know about? they're getting wealthier all the time how do they hurt me i'm i'm well off i'm not super wealthy for sure so how do they hurt me and then tell me part of the part of the way they hurt you is by um by essentially being able to have it's essentially a huge pot of money to deploy at their will. And to be able to, I'm not really saying this very well.

It's okay. It's been a while since I've talked about the book. I mean, you know, Wealth in America, in some way, it's a zero-sum game. And for some people to have the kind of money that these people have, other people have to have very little. And so,

it's not just that it happens organically, which it does to some degree, but the, you know, government policy, the way the tax code works, it's actually, you know, if you think about a welfare system where you lift some people on the bottom,

we're actually giving a lot more to the upper end. And that's sort of taking away from the commons. They have so much money, that means that other people have to have less? That's not the way money works, is it? Well, it kind of is. It's not a way money works is it well it kind of is i mean i supply money well that's technically the the government can just print money right um people create money but they're you know yeah okay yes there there is growth in that but if you look at you know there have been

studies i sort of cite in my book about like actual growth in the markets, for instance, from the 30s through the 70s, were based on actual increase in the value of companies, real economic growth. And then from the 80s onward, most of the growth in the market was just sort of, they call it reallocation of rents. Basically, shareholders and investors and executives reworking things so they were taking a much greater share. So the size of the economic pie was not increasing, but they were taking a much bigger slice of it. I know people roll their eyes, but I don't have any reflexive sympathy for the super wealthy, but I do have some observations about it, which is just in no particular order.

First of all, it was interesting that it came out that Trump had wanted to raise taxes on the super wealthy. And what was his Secretary of Treasury's name? Was it Paulson at that time? No, no, it was a Jewish name. Anyway. Mnuchin. Was it Mnuchin?

Maybe. Told him, listen, you can't do that. And Trump's answer was, they don't care anyway. And they said, no, no, McConnell's never going to go for the – you're a Republican now. They're not going to go for raising tax on the super wealthy. So I always thought that was an interesting thing. And I've heard that before from – we've in various times super wealthy people indicate, we don't really care if you raise our taxes a little bit. There's like the Buffetts of the world or whatever it is.

But that's neither here nor there. Yeah. Well, first of all, it's a small number of them saying that. And the ones, I call them the good billionaires, right? Right. And they go out and they say, hey, tax us more. There's even a group called the patriotic millionaires. And they actually go out and advocate for fairer tax policies. But then one thing I observe is that they all hire Wall Street firms

or big wealth management companies or they have family offices, whatever, to manage their wealth. And all of these organizations lobby heavily to keep all the things the way they are. So on one hand, they're saying, tax me more, but they know sort of in the background the way they are. So on one hand, they're saying, tax me more. But they know sort of in the background, the people they hire are lobbying the government to like, yeah, keep carried interest and keep this ridiculous trust structure and keep giving more money to my $5 billion Roth IRA. You know, Peter Thiel has a $5 billion Roth IRA. I heard that he did an interview with Barry Weiss.

I heard it this way. by the way he's super smart guy an interesting guy but yeah Peter Thiel yeah yeah I found that that interview very interesting I didn't agree with everything he said but this guy so what did he talk about his his Roth IRA yeah he did interesting yeah she asked him about it and he acknowledged it so I I don't think that um I that the super wealthy spend their money any worse than it would be spent if the government had it to spend the government you know spends money ridiculously um a lot of these super wealthy people do great things i would say that during uh like there's a lot of resentment about amazon and companies like that but my goodness COVID, Amazon kept a lot of people healthy and safe

by being able to order so much online. I don't know how you overcome the reality that the world has gotten so small now that the best a business used to be able to hope to do was to sell to the people within a 20 mile radius of their store and then have to open more stores if you wanted to make that bigger and now you can open up i can open up a business in this building alone and sell to the entire planet earth and make a billion dollars and that's never you know that's just changed so some people are going to get super

wealthy well that's that's the internet i mean you you's just changed. So some people are going to get super wealthy. Well, that's the internet. I mean, you don't need Amazon to do that. Right. But I'm saying that's like, so we have super wealthy people now. But this is my leading, I'm leading to this point, which is if all the billionaires in the world move to America, wealth inequality would get much worse in America, but we'd certainly be better off to have all those people here. So it's not on its face. It doesn't seem I don't understand how the super super wealthy are hurting us. The psychological damage is real that we started with, and that may be insurmountable that alone might be warrant

punitive measures against the super wealthy just because people can't stand the fact that these people make so much money bill gates is the richest man in america and it's a blowout he he is worth 59 billion dollars 59 billion dollars He makes everybody in here look destitute. And I know, even if you're like, no, it's okay, I'm a billionaire. No, fuck you, you are broke. Compared to Bill Gates. We have nothing in common with him.

He has nothing in common with your run-of-the-mill garden variety single-digit billionaires. Like, most of your billionaires, let's be honest, have $1 billion. They're what I like to call barely billionaires. Whenever I'm introduced to a billionaire as a billionaire, and it turns out they've only got $1 billion, I always say under my breath, barely.

But how big a factor is that? I mean, how, you know, how jealous is the average? I'm not really seeing that. You know, I see a lot of these guys, they're firemen, policemen, you know, I'm not hearing them grouse about the billionaires. They're happy with their pension and their good insurance.

It's funny. People always talk about firefighters, but they actually make pretty do. Cops and firefighters make a lot of money. But they're not being bothered by the billionaires. I don't think. I don't hear them complain. I go to a local club and they're all vacationing there. They're having a wonderful time

where they're retired. We compare ourselves to people close to us in occupation and income and religion or whatever. Our family groups. I mean, if you... I think there's a line in the book with a quote from somebody saying beggars don't envy billionaires.

They envy the beggar with a, you know, with a better, better panhandling quarter. So who are the firemen envying? The fire commissioner. And I guess the thought, so does money buy happiness? It buys some. It doesn't buy happiness proper. It's like, you know, it's one of many factors. But, you know, a lot, I feel like a lot, too much emphasis is placed on it.

What it buys especially is lack of misery. Freedom. Lack of misery. people who are very poor there's a much bigger effect when their money increases because they're no longer worried about the rent they can pay off their debts

what about somebody that's not poor but has a job they don't really like that much and money would allow them to say i'm out of here i'm gonna do well you know i know a guy that was a lawyer for 20 years he he didn't much like it he wanted to be a high school teacher and but he was sort of stuck and he eventually became a high school teacher but but he he could have pursued that earlier if he had had i guess guess, more money to leave his... On an individual level, of course, I'm not saying

that for particular individuals it can't really increase the value of the way you see yourself in the world and so forth, and the way you live. It hasn't really been measured. It hasn't been measured any kind of before and after study, but looking at the same people over time.

And the data is probably out there, but nobody has crunched it. Like all the studies that exist, look, just compare groups, you know, people in this bracket, people in this bracket, and they look at different things, but it, but there's no way of knowing what happens when you come into a lot of money, except anecdotally. We have an example right with us, Noam Dorman, who's, as he said, he's not super wealthy, but he does quite well. And that wasn't always the case. So here's a guy, we have an example of a guy that used to worry about money, doesn't worry about money anymore. Noam, how has your happiness level been affected by that?

Okay, I can tell you that the main thing that – I might have said this on the show before. The main thing that I noticed that money has bought for me is not having to worry about certain things, like when I had a new car, and 10 days after I got it, my wife smashed it up, where that would have been a major source of horror for me 10 years ago. I was like, all right, I'll get it fixed, and I have the money to fix it,

or now we need a new air conditioner in my house, and get hit with this thing and it's, it's, it's thousands of dollars. And there was a time when you get hit with this unexpected expense of thousands of dollars. It upends everything, your plans, you might have to cancel vacation. You know, it's just horrible. And now I'm able to say, ah, I'll fix the air conditioner. You know, it sucks, but I'll fix it. What about freedom to not do shit you don't want to do? No, no. At a, at a much, at a much lower level of money, I was already able to, and I mean much, much lower, to eat out when I wanted to eat out, go to the movies, take a girl on a date. You know, I had a car. It wasn't as nice a car as I have now, but that didn't matter.

There was no actual. Unless you were young. At a pretty low, upper middle class, I'd say, lifestyle, you're really able to do most things that you want to do. Take a vacation. You stay in a Holiday Inn, but that doesn't matter. You still have the time of your life on the vacation. As you get older, I think being able to protect you,

to buffet you or whatever, buttress you against unexpected things that happen to life, especially as you get older. This is a really nice thing about money. But nothing brings happiness like being involved in some project or a career or whatever it is, or a child, whatever it is, that gives you real fulfillment. No amount of money can give you that. Yeah, the research that's been done on it looks especially at people's social connections. It's the people that have extensive social connections that tend to be the happiest.

Interesting you said that, the fulfillment of having children. I have two kids. In these articles on money and happiness, they cite being a caregiver, like a parent, as a negative happiness effect. I see it. It increases your worry and your stress and your financial needs. I can definitely see that. My kids are wonderful, but I worry about them all the time. Right, but something obviously I think you would agree with,

something is wrong with the nuance of that measurement. If it would, I mean, it would put kids in the list of things that make people unhappy, except nobody would undo that. With the other things in that list, they would traditionally say, oh, thank God I got rid of those. Get rid of my kids, or I wish I'd never had them. But I'll tell you, my kids are going off to college, and I'm feeling pretty good about that. It's a complex – it's a thing that brings you a lot of worry and a lot of stress and a lot of unhappiness and also indescribable joy and, and pleasure.

Right. Yeah. Do you have kids? I have three, 11, nine and five. Yeah. So,

you know, but when, you know, when things are going badly for them, you feel it like it's happening to you. They say, uh, uh,

Harry said, but also someone had said to me on today on the phone in another context that you're only as happy as your least happy child and and there's a lot of truth to that so i would say that um you know i've said in a kind of i didn't mean it to be sexist but it it has come out sounding sexist. Peril is looking at me. That most jobs are so crappy. My father used to say, no, most people can't wait for the weekend. This was his way of separating the rest of the world from himself. He never wanted to be one of those people who waited all week just to get to Saturday when they could do what they wanted to do. And he'd say, no, never be one of those people.

Don't do anything you don't want to do. He's like, make sure your career, you're could do what they wanted to do. And he said, no, I'll never be one of those people. Don't do anything you don't want to do. He's like, make sure your career, you're doing exactly what you want to do. So he, and he, and he lived that way. Um, but I feel like there's a lot of social pressure on women to have careers, even if it's a crappy career that nobody like an accountant who wants to like go to work every day and crunch numbers and deal with clients and worry about getting it wrong and i'd be like you should go you should go be a mom that's so much better like like than than this crappy god well this i knew i know comes out sexist but i telling you as a, as a person who has had crappy jobs,

if I could have had not to do like, I get it. If you have an awesome job, like you, you're, you're doing stuff. You like, you're a writer,

you're a comedian, things that you would do for free, things that gave you fulfillment. I understand that of course, but I'm saying a lot of people, I feel like there's a pressure to take, have a career as it were, even if it's not a career, even if you can't wait for the weekend. I'm like, if you're in a job where you can't wait for the weekend, why do that if you have other options?

Because there's pressure. Like, have a family. It's better. I think that in my. That's not a sexist thing to say, by the way. No, that's. Well, the only part that's a little bit questionable is like being a mom is really hard. But it's also tremendous fulfillment.

But it's also invisible labor that you don't get paid for, that you are, well, it's true. I mean, there are effects of doing that. I mean, in a sense where you have a family, where you have a breadwinner in the man, where that you can that you can if you can't afford it. That's that's an indictment of an indictment of our society in a sense. And and actually part of the reason you can't afford it is this dynamic where the marketplace has changed. So all the rents, all the expenses have come up to to grab all the money from to earn her household. When when everybody was a one earnarner household, everything was cheaper because nobody could afford it. But the only people who

stayed home were women. Men were never... It's like, why don't the men stay home and be dads? I was going to make the same point. Yes. Listen, I have a very good friend who was a partner at Skadden Arps and he left the law to be a stay-at-home dad.

But the fact is, there is something about being a mom, which is just you get roped in because of your biology. I mean, that's just the nature. Well, that's true. You get roped in because of your biology, but also most of the very lucrative jobs out there are in the hands of men. And it's actually very hard for women you know to become a partner at a law firm to get funding to start a business all these sorts of things

i have a chapter called women on top that explores that and what does it say well i mean it starts out with talking about the fortune 500 and how you know a of years ago, there was exciting new news. It's like there were now four women CEOs in the Fortune 500. And why do you think that is? I mean, I'm on good standing because all my most important employees are women. Right, Perrielle? Yes. Yeah.

And they're great. So why is it that there's so few women CEOs? Well, there's a lot of barriers to getting there. Also people saying you should stay home and be a mom. And sometimes that's by choice, right? I mean, I actually had dinner with a guy the other day that I hadn't seen in a long time, and he was making a similar argument.

And I said, look, that's fine, but it's not your decision, pal. It's like it's up to. Yeah, of course. But also it's like for as much joy and love and fulfillment as one might get from being a mother, you know, that's not necessarily the only thing people want to do, right? Like you could want to be like your example of being a father is actually pretty good because you are an incredibly present, incredibly involved. Why? Well, you are, dad. But you also have the luxury.

And I don't mean the luxury that like not that you aren't working very hard for it or that you haven't, but to come and go and to do as you please. And you have your band and your music and the podcast. I'm the luckiest man on earth. Nobody should compare themselves to me. What I'm just saying is it's a good example because that's part of why I think you are able to be such a great father is because you are also able to be fulfilled in those other ways. Let me, can I put my point in another way? I think that we have too much idolatry of careers and earning and all that stuff in this country. And I think that it's insufficient acknowledgement that, you know what?

Having a career is not the be all and end all. Some careers are wonderfully fulfilling, but a lot of careers are drudgery. Right. And, you know, it's no shame to say, fuck this. This is drudgery. Like, like, like, and being a mom is hard work too. But if you're going to put an equal amount of hard work into your, your awful career or your kids, at least the kids give your life meaning. That's all I'm saying. And, and, and so

many jobs don't. And I feel like that's kind of a third rail of sort of like feminist politics or something. You're not really supposed to say, hey, you know what? It's totally fine. If you don't like your dumb job and you can afford it, be a mom. It's awesome. But how come nobody's saying that to men? I told you why. Because it just doesn't work out that way for men.

You know, men, women have the children. That takes it. And then they breastfeed them and that career is interrupted. And God forbid, they might have a certain maternal instinct at that time that makes them do that job. It's funny. You know, this is, this is anti-feminist. We hear all the time. Women are better at this. Women are better at that. Women are better that women should, women should be present. They won't fight wars. We've heard all these kinds of things, right? But if you say, but actually women are better at this. Women are better at that. Women are better at that. Women should be present because they won't fight wars. We've heard all these kind of things, right? But if you say, but actually, women are better at raising babies.

What are you, crazy? But maybe women are better at raising babies. How can you say such a thing? Your argument is deeply flawed, and I'll tell you why. Deeply, not just flawed, deeply flawed. Because what winds up happening in the scenario that you're setting up is that once the woman is no longer needed, quote unquote, which is to say that the child is now old enough to go to high school or college and you have no meaning in your life. So you've spent 18 years pouring your entire heart and soul into this child, which may and probably is very rewarding. I wouldn't know because I ignore my kid most of the time.

I can't remember her name. You have Camille Paglia had written, it says that nature is the oppressor. That's one of her, that nature is the oppressor. And in some ways, in some ways there is that truth. Nature is the oppressor. But then you I've heard. That nature is the oppressor. And in some ways, in some ways there is that truth. Nature is the oppressor.

But then you essentially, when you go out and have kids, you come back in your career, your earning potential has taken a huge hit. Sometimes just getting back into the job market is difficult. I don't know any women who don't need to work, who have jobs who they hate, that which they hate. That that's good that's good

i do you do yeah i know but anyway it's neither here no it's just an interesting thing i i think that and and this is a theme for you know a lot of a lot of issues including like the stuff about trans people we talk about it's like i think our goal ought to be to everybody should try to to be everybody free to lead a fulfilling life like that is the most important thing by the way bruce springsteen's mother was the breadwinner because his father was mentally ill and could only work intermittently she was a legal secretary and she spent you know she didn't have a lot of money but she bought bruce's first guitar for his for about whatever it cost, like $10. And you talk about a good investment.

Yeah, best one they ever made. Paid off. All right, I guess we're just about out of time. This is fascinating stuff, and it's important stuff. I did want to say, because we were just talking about that, that in one of these papers they cite studies about, they ask people, do you think money is important? And that turns out, whether you think money is important doesn't have a big effect on your well-being, the association between income and happiness. But if they ask, do you essentially equate money with success?

If they answer in the positive of that, it presages like poor outcomes. Oh, that's interesting. It's interesting. So it's like if you're chasing a career for the sake of money because you think it's going to make you successful, that's really a losing battle. I'll tell you what money does buy you, buys you life. I was reading a study, and I sent it to Noam, that richer people, not only do richer people live longer than poorer people, but there doesn't seem to be an upper limit to that.

They'll never die. Well, not that they'll never die, but I mean, it's like an, you know, but the increase is less and less and less, but, you know, rich people do live longer. Actually, a lot of very, very wealthy people are obsessed with longevity and doing all kinds of weird treatments to extend their lives, which, you know, who knows. Yeah, Peter Thiel. But if those treatments are ever available,

they're going to be the first to get them. Peter Thiel said he's getting his head or his whole body cryogenically frozen he says he doesn't believe it works but he's doing it anyway I wonder about those people because like

2,000 years in the future and it comes around time it's like oh we're pulling the plug on the company the heads can thaw I would like to live forever I don't understand people saying I don't want to live forever comes around time it's like oh we're pulling the plug on the company the heads can thaw you know i would like to live forever i don't understand people say i don't want to live forever of course i want to i don't want to suffer but i want to do forever every i love every day and i'd love to to um uh see what the future holds i'll tell you what the future holds if you live forever is that the sun gets incredibly hot and burns up all the oceans evaporate and uh then eventually the sun well they don't know

whether or not the sun will actually swallow the earth or not but suffice to say that there will be no water left on this planet damn that's by 2100 you're talking about the prediction for 2100 oh 2100 no not by 2100 we're talking about the prediction for 2100. Oh, 2100? No, not by 2100. We're talking about like 600 million years. No, like 600 million years, the oceans are going to evaporate, I think. And then in like billions more years,

the sun might swallow up the earth or whatever. So anyway. Can you imagine? And Noam's going to be there. Noam will be there. With his guitar. Can you imagine what the future holds? I mean, if this like AI

thing doesn't end us, which I don't think it will, but it could. I mean, just the breakthroughs that are coming in the next hundred years in terms of... Do you remember how the guy in Highlander makes his money? No. He's an anti-stealer because he knows he's living forever. He just buys stuff and puts it in storage and then sells it like

a hundred years later. So easy. But you are living in the future. I mean... Compared to... Yeah. Just in the past. Compared to, you know, when we were born. Right. They're going to make some breakthroughs in terms of human health in the next

2050 years which are going to change everything. Well, Dan pointed out they haven't in the past 10 years to use ALS and Parkinson's as those examples. But they will, Perry. They will reverse, mark my words, they will reverse aging. They are going to reverse aging.

And when they figure that out, boy, will you want to be wealthy then. Yeah, but i mean suppose it suppose it was within the the means of the average person to extend their lives you know 50 years that could create all kinds of problems it will cause problems for sure but um the youth aren't gonna like it they'll work out the problems. They'll work it out. There's something really... It's not natural. I mean, it's like so... Antibiotics already

are not natural. Of course, a lot of these are not natural. Stuff's gotta die, though. What'd you say, Michael? I said stuff's gotta die. Yeah. Alright, so that's that. Everybody, buy Michael Mechanic's book, Jackpot, available on Amazon.

But if you don't want to give that money-grubbing scum of the earth, Jeff Bezos, any money, you can drive 10 miles to Barnes & Noble. By the way, there's a Barnes & Noble opening up on the Upper East Side. Opening up, I said. You can get it from independent sites. There's links on my website. It's readjackpot.com. Does nobody hear what I'm saying? A Barnes & Noble is opening.

This is a whole other interesting phenomenon. How the hell does that happen? The same way vinyl is coming back. Like something, not all trees grow to the sky. Not every trend continues. Sometimes people might say, you know, retail is not so bad. but I love Amazon. Anyway, thank you, Michael Mechanic. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. If you're in New York, come visit us at the Cellar.

I will. Half price. No, I'm kidding. Good night, sir. Good night.