The Current - Gen Z Economist Kyla Scanlon on the "Casino Economy"

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Kyla Scanlon says the economy feels like a gamble right now — one that's built on risk and speculation. We speak with the popular American economic commentator and author of "In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work" about how her generation is feeling in this economy, the AI boom, the future of work, and the importance of financial literacy at a time when young people face an uncertain economic future.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Step into the casino that now passes for the American economy. That is how my next guest opened an opinion piece in the New York Times recently. Kyla Scanlon is a popular American commentator. She's been called Gen Z's favorite economist. She argues that the American economy is currently built on risk and speculation, and that it could all come crashing down, particularly on the heads of young people,

trying to build their futures on shifting sands. She's 28 years old. She's also the author of the popular substack, Kyla's newsletter, and the author of a book. In this economy, how money and markets work, and she posts videos daily on social media talking about the American economy. Kyla Skalin, good morning.

Good morning. How is the American economy, a casino economy? I mean, I think there's multiple ways that you can look at the American economy right now, and it's obviously heavily impacting Canada from the lens of tariffs. Like, as I write in the piece, you know, tariffs are used,

as poker chips to try and shrink the trade deficit or to negotiate deals with countries that really end up hurting everybody. And then you can look at the U.S. stock market and, you know, there's these companies spending billions and billions of dollars on AI data centers, which are ultimately a massive gamble on both the cities that the data centers are being built in, that they can withstand the electricity costs that the data centers are going to result in, as well is that AI will work and that these data centers will be useful. You know, the U.S. just exited a government shutdown, which was a huge gamble over health care, that the conversation is going to have to continue.

We have not actually reached a resolution there. You know, there's meme coins, the treatment of the U.S. dollar. There's all sorts of things that you can point to that really have a gambling aspect right now in the United States. How worried are you by that? I mean, one of the things that happens in a casino is the house. always wins. You think you're going to win, you think you're going to do okay, but unless you are very, very lucky, you could lose your shirt and worse. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people

are pretty worried. You know, people have been studying the markets for a long time or like this doesn't seem sustainable. And so I think there's like three possible paths, right? It could all work and, you know, everything's fine and the bets pay off and AI is like the savior and tariffs actually end up helping because they switch to maybe targeted tariffs instead of broad-based tariffs, you know, the dollar remains stable. I think a more likely situation is that it ends up being a series of smaller crises. So if you look at sectors in the U.S. like private credit, you're starting to see a lot of weakness there. So that's investment firms giving out loans instead of banks. They've made some poor choices with auto financing companies and you're

started to see a lot of defaults. So I think you're going to see a bunch of like small crises pop up. And then the nightmare scenario is that everything kind of goes south really quickly. I hope that doesn't happen. But, you know, who knows? With all the gambling has been going on, you could see any possible outcome. I mean, how would you describe the scale of the AI boom right now? We're talking about the potential nightmare scenarios, but just how big is this? Pretty big. It's 40% of US GDP growth, and it's 75% of S&P 500 earnings growth. So the top 500 companies in the U.S. that's called the S&P 500. So it's a huge part of both the stock market growth and the broader economy. And then the last time that we got government data in the

U.S., the only jobs that we were adding and were in healthcare and social services. So AI is most of the economy, but it's not adding a ton of jobs. And then it's most of the stock market as well. And so one thing that most investors will tell you is you want to be diversified to avoid gigantic blowups and AI is, you know, kind of one gigantic bet. And it's turned the US economy into one gigantic bet on AI. Do you think there's the possibility? I mean, there's a bunch of reasons why people would be betting on AI. But one of them is that this will change everything. Is that a fair bet, do you think, or a reasonable bet? Sure. Yeah, I mean, there's a chart from the FT, which I think, from the Financial Times, which I think encapsuli is it the best, where

AI could be either the end of scarcity, so it could kind of solve all the problems that human civilization has been dealing with for centuries where there's not enough stuff, we don't have enough food, we don't have enough jobs, and AI could be a solution for that. It could also be the end of humanity where the AI models, you know, get too smart and they decide that humans are maybe not that worthwhile to keep around, or it adds 0.2 percentage points to GDP growth. So I think that sort of explanation encapsulates the various paths that it could go down well. You have a lot of people who really believe in AI who are investing a lot. You know, these investors are investing in the data centers, obviously really believe that AI is going to do something or at least make a lot of money.

But I think, you know, the other scenario should be considered as well. But of course, it could possibly work. I think more and more people are a bit hesitant to believe that just because of how much money it's taking up and how much debt the companies are having to do. take out to continue to finance this said growth without a lot of opportunity for profit. So I think that's a big concern. More and more people are calling this a bubble, not just a boom. And so if the bubble pops, I mean, you laid out the possible scenarios, but who will be the victims of this? Well, I mean, the bummer about this is that the gains from AI are pretty privatized, right? So it'll be the AI companies that benefit. It'll be the

investors that benefit, but the losses will be socialized. So if you think about the way that people retire in the United States, they retire with something called a 401K. So in the U.S., you know, people are responsible for their own retirement, not their employer, the employee. And so a lot of people have all of their retirement money now kind of tied up in this AI situation. So if the AI bubble burst, you could see a lot of retirees or people who are trying to retire, all of a sudden, that 401k not be worth as much anymore. And then if you think about all the money that's been allocated to AI instead of to other perhaps more productive things or things that the U.S. needs like health care, for example, I think that's the other worry is like the people who

are in the stock market are going to be hurting pretty badly. And then people in the broader economy where this money has been going towards building out data centers instead of making sure that sick people can have care or hurt as well. So that's, it's pretty unfortunate the way that the risk profile plays out. At the same time that this is all happening, you have a message that's being directed to a lot of young people saying that AI is going to come and take your entry level jobs, that those jobs that you are counting on, they're not going to be there anymore. You just came back, this is really interesting. You were writing about this. You came back from a month on the road traveling to a number of different cities.

How, I want to talk more about that trip, but how are young people processing that threat in particular, that the jobs that they thought they were going to get may evaporate? Yeah, so I've been on essentially a book tour with my book in this economy for the past year and a half and have been to like over 25 college campuses, most recently at Palm Beach Atlantic University and West Palm Beach. And I think a lot of people are worried about that.

The students, you know, that's one thing that the CEOs of these AI companies keep on marketing is like, oh, this is going to take everybody's job. And there's no recourse, like there's no policy solution on how to take care of people if they are, you know, if they do lose their jobs, like there's no talk really of re-skilling at a mass scale. There's no talk of sort of a universal basic income type of solution. Even if you don't agree with those policies, like we still need to be talking about. them. And so I think that's the worry that young people have is like, okay, so I've spent all this time studying. I spend all this money studying because education is not free. And now I'm being told that like some machine is going to come in and take this job. So I think there's a lot of nihilism, there's a lot of worry, there's a lot of concern that there is no path forward for

them. And the way that the AI companies market it, you know, of course, they're right to to believe that somebody doesn't want them to have a path. And so I think, yeah, young people are very concerned and it's very sad. Let me ask you about one specific word, and this is prosperity. One of the things you write about in your newsletter around this trip is the question of where did American prosperity go? Let me just read a little bit of what you wrote. You say, if you're making decent money, but your boss keeps hinting that AI might replace

your job, you can't afford to buy a house in the city where you work. The train you take doesn't run on time or you're 55 minutes in traffic or the bus never shows up or you feel unsafe or without community, you're not going to feel prosperous. You're going to feel like you're treading water in a system that's slowly giving up on you. Is that how people of your generation feel that the system is giving up on you? I think that's what I hear. So with generational conversations, it always gets a bit tricky, right? Because every generation has had their own headwinds.

Every generation has had something go wrong or has had some sort of headache. I think specifically for younger people, a lot of them, including my children, including my myself came of adult age during the pandemic. And so that was kind of a big economic situation to have to stare down. And it really impacted, I think, how people socialize. And then now you have sort of this like rolling recession in the United States. We're not in a recession, but it can feel that way to a lot of people because of the weakening labor market, because of all the talk of AI replacing the jobs, because of mega high inflation, which Canada is also experiencing, because of the housing crisis, which Canada is also experiencing. And so I think for young people,

you know, all of these things are really compounding and creating a situation where it's like, okay, I don't feel like the infrastructure of the world that I'm meant to be a part of. I don't feel like it's giving anything back to me. I don't feel like it's investing in me. I don't think it cares about me. And so I think this AI conversation is kind of icing on the cake for a lot of people because now you have people explicitly saying that they don't care about you. And I don't know how you're meant to feel good about a conversation like that or feel like you have a place in society. And this is not whining. It's not complaining. I think this is just objectively how people are feeling right now. And it deserves to be a part of a conversation about how to make

them feel better. Do you worry that it's characterized by perhaps other generations as whining and complaining? I mean, yeah, that's kind of every generation, right? Every generation thinks the generation below them is whiny, doesn't get it, isn't willing to work hard. And so I have a lot of these sort of generational conversations, especially being on the road for as long as I've been on it. And so I think a lot of people, like kind of look at the situation that young people are facing. It's like, well, you have all this opportunity because of technology. You have great education. Like you do have these paths to, you have this optionality that people in my generation, you know, an older generation might not have ever had access to. But I think infrastructure-wise,

you know, people don't necessarily feel that way. I mean, work is such a huge part of that, though, right? Figuring out, like, what a career looks like, what your path might look like. As you mentioned, you're speaking with students on this tour, and you were in Florida, and the students asked you, how do we find meaning in work that might not exist in 10 years? What's the answer to a question like that? I don't know. I mean, that's like something I've been trying to figure out for a long time.

Like the students, most of them are majoring in business or finance or economics. And I think for them, it was kind of like, am I doing the right thing? Like, is this a good thing to be investing my time in? Is it worthwhile? Like, will my job disappear? Like, the thing that I've spent all this time studying for? And so the common wisdom when people ask a question like that, that you'll hear from other people, is that you just have to maintain a pretty diverse and resilient skill set.

You know, you don't want to get too niche. You want to make sure that your skills are broadly applicable. And so I think that's how people can maintain meaning. It's like not niching down into one career path, but that's, you know, harder than it sounds. Part of that is the deal, though. I mean, you talked about studying. There was this deal that young people that we all had with society, right? You go to school, you get a degree, you work hard, and it'll pay off.

that's kind of, I mean, not just an American dream, a Canadian dream. That's just the deal that we as a society have created. What happens to a generation if they feel that that deal has been broken, that the terms have changed without their consent? Well, I think you see a lot of nihilism. You know, you see a lot of people, maybe the quiet quitting word, if you remember from a few months ago where people would just sort of mail it in at work. You see maybe declining ambition in sort of the corporate path, but you also see the rise of things like entrepreneurship, people deciding to go out and do their own thing. Again, hard to do. So I think that's what you end up seeing as people either not believing in the system anymore. Demetri Kofinas was the person who coined that term financial nationalism. So people just saying, hey, like, I don't think I'm going to have a financial future. I might as well not save, not invest and just kind of have fun now because now is the only time I have.

You might see them not investing in a corporate path, and you can't really blame them for that, considering how corporations right now are talking about AI and replacing workers. And then, yeah, you see the rise of entrepreneurship. So I think there's good and bad that can come with it. What do you say to people who might be embodying that financial nihilism? Part of it is about how they define success, too, right? And so if they can't see a path to success based on the architecture that was sketched out for other generations, what do you say to them about what success might look like?

I mean it's very like that's one thing about the economy right it's so incredibly personal like everybody has their own personal inflation rate depending on the goods that you purchase everybody has their own experience with the labor market everybody has their own experience with economic growth especially in places as big as the United States and Canada where you know you can go to one part of the country and it could be in a recession and another part of the country you could be having a boom time and so I think the thing that I try to convince people is that it is pretty important to save what you can. Like even if it's just $10 or $20 a month,

like just try to put a little bit of money away and to something like a high-yield savings account which still have pretty good interest rates and they can compound over time. I try not to be too prescriptive and let people do what they like, but I do try to tell people it is important to have a little bit of money saved.

That's part of the conversation around economic literacy, right? You were on The Daily Show, Sean Stewart, and you said that young people are underserved with economic education. that they're, you know, tossed out into the world without understanding how the economy works. Yeah. Yep, they are. It's a tragedy. I mean, so, like, the, yeah, yeah, do you know, don't you think? Oh, yeah, no, no, I just wonder why you use that, use that word in particular. I mean, that, that suggests real consequences and, and hurt. Do you know what I mean? Well, yeah, I mean, I think there are real consequences and in real hurt. Like, we, you know, expect people to know how to buy a house or how to finance a car. Like, the reason I got started in economics, I just,

education, I sold Hyundai's in Louisville, Kentucky, and I was 19 years old, and I'd have people come in and not know what interest rate were, like, how to think about even affording the car that they wanted. And it was just so upsetting to me that we had these people who deserve to understand how to buy a car. And this is one of your most important financial decisions that you'll ever make, and they had no clue what to do. And so I think, like, if we want to have a better society that makes better decisions that is ultimately better educated and can sort of weather economic downturns, which are part of the cycle. We have to be able to teach people how the economy works. Like everything is the economy, buying a cup of coffee, driving your car

down the road, going to the grocery store, going to work. Everything we do is a part of the economy and not giving people the tools that they need to understand it, I think is a huge I've covered a lot of K-pop stories in my time as a Korean journalist, but this one is different. All I need is one person to believe in me. All I need is one person to think I have something. Because Katie Zito isn't a famous K-pop idol. That's what she wants to be. Can she do it in just three months at one of Seoul's grueling K-pop academies? From USG audio and novel, listen to Mission K-pop. Available now. What is it like for you to see the work that you're doing connect with people?

I mean, it's been really, really successful. I mean, yeah, I feel very lucky and I feel very grateful. And I think it just shows, like, how many people do want to understand this stuff and how locked out they've felt from the system and from education about economics because, you know, economics can be pretty highbrow, the language, inflation, GDP. Like, the terms that we use are not necessarily accessible. And so it's been the greatest joy of my life to be able to help people, hopefully, and understanding this stuff. And maybe they're making better decisions and maybe their communities are better off.

And then ultimately we'll all be better off just on the margins, yeah. Can I go back to the travel that you were doing this month of travel, where you went to these American cities? You also went to Prague in the Czech Republic. You went to Kilkenny in Ireland. And you say that everybody that you talked to was wrestling with. with this one question. How do you keep a system human? What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, I think like everybody's kind of dealing with the impact of AI and what it could mean for what it means to be a person. Like the conversations that we do have around AI are like,

okay, it's going to replace artists, it's going to replace writers, it's going to replace TV shows, which are kind of like the best parts of being a person is like talking to other people and consuming the work that other people do and sharing it with us. other people. And so I think that's like one part of it is like the AI of it all has really scared people. And then I think the other part of it is like maintaining infrastructure. So in all the places that I went, you know, the conversations were around housing or they were around, you know, education and what it means to go to university or it was around, you know, the generational differences that were staring down sort of these like really broad parts of the economy and

everybody just wants everyone to be okay. And so that's the goal. think that people have is like how do you maintain an economy as well as maintaining the people who are part of it who ultimately are the economy right like the economy is 70% consumer spending there's a really powerful moment and it picks up exactly on that where you are in this cathedral in Ireland and you start crying yeah why are you crying uh I mean so it was my last day on the road so I've been traveling for pretty much 30 days straight and I'm my first family's from Ireland. So my grandparents are Irish immigrants. I've never had a chance to go to Ireland. So, like, part of it was that personal side. And then part of it was also this sadness, I think.

I was in this cathedral, and the cathedral is from the sixth century. So it's very old. There was this monk tower that you could go into, and it used to be the place where the monks would call the other monks to prayer. And I think just being around something that had lasted that long and had so much history It made me emotional, partly because I think I was prone to emotion due to being tired. But I think there's also that sadness for all of the stuff that the United States is dealing with. But then there's also this hope that, like, you know, if the monks can maintain something for this long and the cathedral can stand for centuries upon centuries, that really says something about the tenacity of the human spirit and, you know, how powerful humans really are and can be, especially when they work together

and when they decide to rebuild and to maintain. And so that was why I started crying. Yeah. Yeah. No, but it's really powerful. You talk about how you're watching people, in your words, try to make prosperity visible again

to build systems you can see, touch, and trust. I mean, in some ways, that speaks to that idea of what it means to be human right now. Yeah, I mean, so I went to all sorts of cities all over the country. And, you know, I was in Florida, in New York City and New Hampshire, and I was in Baltimore, and I was in Berkeley, which is in

California, and then I was in Washington, D.C. right before the government shut down. And across all of those places, you know, all of these people that I talk to, like, really are just trying to make things better. And I think oftentimes when we, you know, get on social media, we just see the bad stuff because that's what carries and that's what is algorithmically friendly and is bad news. But then when you actually go out into the world and talk to people and see what they're working on, you do see how many people are trying. And I think that was, that was very, very, very impactful. Yeah. There are the people, but just finally, there are the systems as well that hang over all of us. And I just wonder how much, given what you've done, but the people you've also

talked to and the nihilism that they might be feeling, because that can be really attractive and enticing if you're in this situation. you feel like you're being screwed. How much faith do you have that those systems can be transformed particularly for young people who feel like they don't have a future that they can invest in? I'm hopeful. I mean, I think we're seeing some interesting policy discussions around this on the state level, like New Hampshire, for example, they have a huge focus on rebuilding housing and building out housing and making sure young people can afford to move there. So I think right now everybody is pretty aware of the problems and like awareness is always

the first step to fixing things. I think we're starting to see, yeah, some interesting political moves like forever you feel about Mom Donnie in New York. He's like talking about things differently. He's talking about affordability. He's talking about fixing the underlying problems rather than just like papering over them with tax cuts or something. And so I think that I'm hopeful.

that will get pushed into the right direction, but it's an uphill battle. What would you say to somebody who doesn't see that, a young person who does not see that? What would you say to them? Oh, I mean, yeah, sure. I get why they don't see it. Like, I think it's sort of like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs in a way. Like, it's easy to sort of zoom out and say, like, oh, everybody's trying to fix things that are immediately impacting you.

Like, don't worry, I'm sure it'll all be a little better in about five years. But if you're a young person, it's like, well, I really need to afford housing right now and I really need a job right now, and I really need my grocery bill not to be going up by like $10 every month. And so I totally get why people are sort of whatever about that kind of thing. And that just points to the immediacy of the problem and like how we really do need to sort of allocate resources to this, you know, maybe stop building so many data centers and really think about how to make groceries a bit more affordable or sort of expand the labor market in terms of training and upskilling and the providing latitude to workers in sort of you know that those two

things can't be compared directly data centers and investing in the labor market but I would say yeah I would understand why somebody would be frustrated I'm frustrated it's frustrating yeah I'm a big fan of the work that you do and it's really important the breaking down as you said kind of an obscure or difficult to wrap your head around kind of subject but also giving people a sense as to what their agency is within the world that they're in right now. Kyla, thank you very much. Thank you. Kyla Scanlon is an economist, an economic educator and commentator, the author of the book in this economy, how money and markets really work. She also has a substack called Kyla's

newsletter. She was in Los Angeles. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.