The Dispatch Podcast - Supply-Chain Woes Explained

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

On today's episode, Sarah and Steve sit down with Scott Lincicome, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of The Dispatch newsletter Capitolism, to discuss the details of our global supply-chain issues. Plus, Lincicome answers questions about inflation, wages, and problems with our labor force participation. Show Notes: -Make sure you get Capitolism in your inbox -Lincicome’s latest Capitolism tackles our supply-chain woes -Lincicome’s Capitolism looking at our labor shortage Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. We are back with Steve Hayes and friend of the pod, Scott Linsacombe, author of the dispatch newsletter Capitalism and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. Let's dive right in. Scott, just coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers quit their job at highest rates on record in September. Data just out shows 3.0 quits rate, which 3.0 doesn't mean a lot to me, except that first sentence did. Let's start with the breaking news. So why, what does this say about the health of our economy? Well, the labor market is very, very hot. And the quits rate essentially is a way to see how comfortable workers are with their job prospects, because the vast majority of people who are quitting, especially right now, aren't quitting to go

into unemployment. They tend to be quitting to go to another job. And when the labor market is hot or tight, then you feel more comfortable quitting. Typically, when the labor market stinks, you don't quit. I think that's probably pretty intuitive. The issue, though, is why is the labor market so tight? And I think that's where some of the issues start. The fact is that, yes, we have a lot of demand right now.

There's a lot of people shopping, and some of that is just COVID reopening stuff. We were all trapped in our homes. some of us in certain places kind of still are, but now people are feeling more comfortable going out and spending money, particularly on services, and so there's a lot of demand. Now, the other big demand thing, of course, is that we have super easy monetary policy, and we have a lot of fiscal stimulus that's still kind of hanging out making its way through the economy, primarily the American Rescue Plan from... back in the spring that sent everybody a lot of money and checks and then unemployment insurance

and then child tax credits. And there's now rent relief and all this type of stuff. So there's also some government side stuff going on. But the other big thing is that our labor force participation rate, so really the size of our workforce and the size of the people working relative to the size of the population, is still pretty depressed. And there's millions of our workforce. And there's millions, of workers, if you look at pre-pandemic trends, sitting on the sidelines. So when you have a lot of demand and you have a workforce that is four, five million workers short of where you thought it was going to be, that's going to lead to a very tight labor market, wage pressures and the rest, and that's going to then feed into inflation and the

rest. Supply chain. Let's just start from the beginning. Okay. What is the supply chain? Well, I mean, didn't you just hear the president? He explained it all so well, just a couple days ago. A supply chain is essentially the start-to-finish path of a good to getting from starting at raw materials to your doorstep.

So essentially, you're looking at the production of that, which these days for things that are anything more complicated than, you know, like a lump of coal, it's going to probably be made That's what Steve will be getting for Christmas, but the rest of us are expecting something more. Yeah. So, you know, goods are not made in single places that they are made all over the world. And so the supply chain starts with getting those inputs to a factory for final assembly and production. Those factories, final assembly factories are oftentimes in Asia and China and elsewhere.

And then from there, though, it has to get to your doorstep. And so then it's going to get on a boat, typically. It's going to end up at a port. It's going to then be loaded onto, oh, and of course, it's in a big shipping container, these big blocks that have made shipping so efficient. then that container ends up bidding typically on the back of a truck or a train after it gets to the port hauled to a warehouse, then it goes from a warehouse into a smaller truck, typically like an Amazon truck, and then it ends up at your doorstep.

So that's generally the supply chain. And it seems to me like we've talked about, I guess, some of the problems with the American economy and why that supply chain may be a little strained right now. But it's not just the American economy. There are supply chain issues in all of the originating countries and the raw material countries, like all of them. Yeah. And that's, you know, it's really important when you talk about the supply chain stuff, which I have done too much lately, quite honestly. But it's really important to understand that a lot of what's going on is not something you can blame Joe Biden for or whatever. It is just the pandemic doing its thing. The fact is that you had a

worldwide shock to a bunch of economies, essentially all of them. You had economies shutting down and reopening and then some shutting down again, all at different times and on different schedules. that really disrupted kind of your standard, relatively predictable supply and demand patterns. And those supply and demand patterns are critical for our supply chains, because those supply chains involve, again, a lot of moving parts. And so very, very smart people kind of map these things out. One of the reasons that supply chains have proliferated is because of information technology. You can actually track all of this stuff in real time. You can map it out and do all this

cool stuff. And so when the pandemic hit, all of those schedules, all of those things got disrupted. So all of a sudden, for example, particularly in, say, this spring, the United States economy was reopening rapidly because vaccines were proliferating. People were feeling comfortable about leaving their houses, all of that kind of good stuff. But a lot of Asian economies were still pretty shut down. And so you had a lot of demand for stuff from abroad, but we weren't exporting a lot of stuff like we normally do. The United States is, believe it or not, the world's second largest exporter. And so all of a sudden, the ships were bringing in a lot of stuff, but they didn't have stuff to bring back, and that causes problems. You throw in then random factory

closures, random port closures, the occasional natural disaster that has nothing to do with the pandemic. And worker shortages, not just here in the United States, but workers that are either afraid to come back or they're sick or they're sitting at home because they got some government stimulus, whatever it is, or they retired early. And that's also happening all over the world. And so you combine all that, and it's just a recipe for all these types of snarls. In fact, I just saw that China's big singles day, which is a thing they do there, that's kind of like Black Friday, had significant disruptions. And so, you know, if China, the world's factory for assembling consumables is having these problems, then, you know, we're going to happen to. There's been lots of discussion about what the role of the government is in improving the situation.

what's the role of government in improving the situation? Well, I think... If any. Yeah. So first thing is acknowledging that a lot of this is out of the government's control. Now, good luck getting a politician to admit that. But again, you know, those big things that I just mentioned, they are going to dictate a lot. And again, one of the things here in the United States is Americans,

consumers have really gotten comfortable with e-commerce and they are also, there's a really heightened demand for goods as opposed to services. Some of that is pandemic related. You know, people just don't feel comfortable going out to eat, getting massage or whatever, but some of it appears to be perhaps longer term. You know, people are really into fixing up their houses or whatever. And so wasn't that in part because we're flush with cash? I mean, not speaking personally, but. Right, but. Well, part of it is. But if you look at consumption of services has dropped. So this is not just like adding more goods to your standard consumption.

It's actually consumption of goods has gone up while consumption of services gone down. So there's kind of a save the savings rate has gone, has gone up considerably as at the same time, which could explain part of it. That is. And then again, there's no doubt that giving people thousands of dollars in, in stimulus. checks and other things, has also patted those savings accounts. And so, yes, some of it is pandemic-related, pent-up savings and demand. Some of it is government checks. So back to the government policy. Some of it is just admitting, look, a lot of this is out of record control. And it's out of our control, I'd add, just to plug my newsletter, as I've written now twice,

some of it is that, look, these supply chains didn't develop overnight. They reflect a lot of long-term kind of systemic policy-related things that just you can't flip a switch and fix. So, for example, our ports are some of the least efficient in the world. One of the big reasons for that is that very powerful longshoremen unions in the United States have actively resisted automating our ports because, you know, if you bring in the robots, you have fewer jobs, well, that makes our ports pretty inefficient. It also means the ports don't typically operate 24-7, unlike, again, a lot of ports in Europe and Asia. So what does that mean?

Well, the whole system, trucks and warehouses and the rest, they are modeled on that framework. And so when you're a government official, you suddenly say, aha, I'll have the port stay open 24-7. Well, yeah, but the truckers aren't used to that. The warehouses aren't used to that. You don't have the labor force for that. And so there's just, that's another kind of systemic thing that's going on. And I go through, there's all sorts of other ones, you know, whether it's, again, the Jones Act pushing a lot more cargo being transported by truck or train. The Jones Act, for those who don't know, essentially requires all shipping between two U.S. ports to be on an American-made ship that makes shipping.

very expensive, so we don't do a lot of it. So that adds stress to your inland transit system. So again, you're not going to fix any of that overnight. So again, humility from our policymakers to kind of understand that. Now, beyond that, I think there is a role, and to the Biden administration's credit, they do appear to be trying to get all of these private actors on the same page about trying to move to 24-7 operations and trying to, you know, trying to get some of the odd little bottlenecks that have popped up worked out. And some of those bottlenecks are just, again, because that's how people have operated. That's how, and when you have two, you know, producer and customer, as is often the case with between these actors, they might not be, you know,

very, they might have their own private interests in getting this fixed, or maybe they don't have an interest in getting this fixed. So there's a government role there in terms of information, transparency, and they've done some of that. But I think the, you know, the fact is that nothing is going to solve this overnight. It's going to take a lot, a lot longer, and it's going to require simply, you know, these kind of supply and demand patterns, smoothing, smoothing out. And some of those problems, let's just talk about trucking to pick a specific example. If you look at what's happening in the ports and choose the ports in California, the Los Angeles and Long Beach, which have gotten so much attention, you have these rules

and the sort of, I think, framework, as you put it. And truckers who carry goods from those ports are used to working on a certain time frame, certain things. And then you layer on top of that the shortage in truckers general due also to the pandemic. I mean, you know, I was talking to business owners manufacturers who were complaining about trucking shortages more than a year ago because they, for a while, they didn't have goods to ship and then they had goods to ship and truckers had gone and done other things that were taking government money to stay. How do you, how does, I mean, is there a role in government there? You've heard the Biden administration, you've heard Biden administration officials talk like there's a role for government

there. And is, I mean, on the one hand, you can make the argument that the biggest thing the government could do is get out of the way as it relates to the longshoremen unions and other things. Yeah. And to the, again, to the Biden administration's credit, and I think the Trump administration before that, they have done a few things like getting, getting out of the way. So for one example, there was a new trucking regulation put into place, I think during the Obama administration, which essentially limited the hours that truckers could work. So for safety reasons. Now, in general, look, not a bad rule to not have truckers working 24 hours in a row or whatever. But the problem is that the way the regulation was implemented was it had no flexibility.

And so you had a trucker that was basically just hanging out waiting for a container. that added to his workouts. And so both the Biden and Trump administration and then Texas and some other states have just waived that aspect of the regulations to allow for more flexibility in trucker schedules and to allow truckers to work longer without running afoul of these regulations. Another thing that they appear to be pursuing is to allow 18 and up. So 18-year-olds to drive. So right now, I think it's at 21. You have to be 21 to drive, a big rig. And that's another just random regulation. So they, they're, I think they're working on suspending that. But again, you know, you don't, you can't train truck drivers overnight. And the, the levers that

the government can pull to instantly fix what these types of situations is, is just, there's just not a lot, a lot they can do. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy.

to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage, and policies starting at about two bucks a day, build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through ethos,

it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. I want to move to inflation a little bit. So without getting too far in the weeds, some things happening recently appear to have caused inflation in the last year. We'll take that as the economic diagnosis. Now let's look to what's going to fix it, what's going to bring it back down. you know, fixing supply chain issues, fixing the tight labor market, all of those could contribute to

reducing inflation. I don't think that because you can't fix all of them at the same time, it seems to me that inflation continues past those things if those things are in fact the cause of the inflation, which I think, again, is a pretty fair assessment. Joe Manchin, on the other hand, does not, one of the reasons that he is not supporting the social infrastructure bill from the president is that he says large amounts of government spending will lead to increased inflation. Here's my question to you. We've been spending wild amounts of government money for the last 20 years and had incredibly low levels of inflation up until the pandemic. Is Joe Manchin right because there's something else going on about spending lots of government money right now? Or is Joe

mansion using something that is just, it sounds good? I think it's a little a boat. So it's undeniable that a combination of ultra-easy monetary policy at the Fed and crazy amounts of fiscal stimulus. I mean, and we're talking trillions and trillions of dollars have been ejected out of the federal government since last March. And really, if you look at the budget, if you look at the charts, I love charts, I mean, the spending line goes, it's almost straight up last year. And that is going to have an effect on demand. The issue that we're having right now is that supply is constrained,

whether it is supply chain stuff. So you have a lot of demand, and then I would add reopening, right? So people spend a year, give or take, stuck in their homes, not spending on what they normally spend on, vacations, trips to dinner, whatever. And they didn't make up for that spending, that lack of spending with goods. They bought more goods, but they didn't make up for it. So you have the government's stuff plus pent-up savings, kind of rushing out, and then it hits a wall. It hits a wall of a pretty sclerotic supply chain system that, again, I've written about a lot.

You guys are interested listening. Check out a couple of my newsletters on this. And the supply chain that our ports are trucking, our trains are, they can't handle it. Because they can handle some. And, you know, to the systems credit, import demand has been way up. And they've done it. And they are processing it. It's not like it's all stuck.

I mean, they're processing record amounts of cargo right now. The problem is they're just still behind because they can't process. So let's say they're 10% above norm. They need to be 20% above norm. So that is, so that's one of the issues. But the other big issue is this worker shortage, which is another thing I've written on. And, you know, you have four or five million workers out of the labor market. Now, when you have that, you have that.

have businesses that just aren't able to provide the services that they're used to providing, but you also have wage pressures. And so that's going to also build and cause additional inflation. Now, I tend to remain on the team transitory side of things. You know, there's two sides of the inflation debate. Is this locked in long term? Because inflation really is more of a long-term phenomenon where all prices are tend to go up. And we've seen more this kind of chunky inflation in the short term, where all of a sudden use cars are like 30% more expensive. And then hotels, rental cars, some of these kind of crazy things related to reopening.

Now it's getting a little different. And you're seeing things that beyond food and energy, which are always very volatile, but you're seeing some other areas that are getting frothy. And so I think that, you know, I still think that this is going to work itself out, but it's going to take, it's going to take some time. And so that's, I think, the big problem is that we were told transitory was going to be two months. That is my question. This is my next question to you. Is transitory three years? I mean, what's, what's transitory and what's long term? And this is what I think is a big problem. And there was a great article on CNBC yesterday. tweeted it out, that the issue we have is that policymakers and politicians and

econ wonks, econ Twitter was way too dismissive about the near-term price pressures that were going to exist. They were like transitory two, three months. Supply will adjust in response to higher prices. Everybody will rejoin the labor market all seamlessly. And we'll all be happy and everything will be fine. And then, of course, we'll pass another bagillion dollar spending bills and everything will be Zanadu. The reality now is that it looks like transitory per the Fed

is going to last through next year. And the problem there, and I think they're probably right, because the long-term fundamentals really haven't shifted much. But here's the problem. There was two. One is you have the increasing risk of a wage price spiral situation where essentially is workers expecting higher prices demand higher wages. Companies pay those higher wages and then they

raise prices and then you have this wage price spiral, right? Problem. But the other thing is the Fed's credibility. The Fed keeps saying they have everything under control. The Fed keeps saying they still can moderate inflation as needed when they need to. But the Fed keeps getting things wrong. And the problem you have is at what point does the market, what point do employers and others lose confidence in the Fed? Or at what point do these transitory price pressures become just too painful and the Fed feels compelled to act for political and institutional credibility reasons?

And then if the Fed acts, then by raising rates, does that induce a recession? Because when you raise interest rates that causes credit markets, everybody seizes up, things, you know, getting loans and whatever else gets more expensive, adjustable rates, debt, you know, that changes. And that can cause an actual recession. And so I think, even though I do think that this is not, we're not locked into 70s-style inflation, it is, there are risks out there that, that, A, this is going to last longer we think, but B, that there are these potential downsides in terms of the Fed.

Can I ask just a very basic question going back to your point you made just a moment ago? So why was the conventional, let's assume you're right. Like this is transitory, but transitory might mean, you know, two, three years rather than two, three months, right? Why was it that sort of economic conventional wisdom, or at least big chunks of economic conventional wisdom, was kind of cavalier about the disruptions and what this meant? I mean, why would people who have PhDs in economics, who have studied this forever, who are a lot smarter about this stuff than I am, think, yeah, this is probably going away? You know, we had this massive, massive global disruption to the world economy.

How could people have thought that this was going to just snap back? I mean, I am no economic genius. That seems crazy to me to have ever entertained those thoughts. Look, you're preaching to the quiet because even I who was not screaming about, you know, Zimbabwe-style hyperinflation was saying, you know, we need some human. here. But, I mean, it's a global pandemic. Like, you know, the unknown unknowns are really massive.

And if you look at also individual responses to the pandemic, and I think that's the other thing. And I, you know, I wrote about what's going on in the labor market and a couple weeks ago in my newsletter. And, you know, we had a lot of people retire. hiring early. And, and, you know, not to sound too morbid, dying, or getting really sick. And or people just reassessing their life work. Changing the way they think about work. Exactly. And, and, and so all of these things were happening. And you're right. The, the econ Twitter folks out there were really cavalier. They just kind of assumed, ah, you know, in the models, uh, this is all fine. people aren't going to spend quick they're not going to spend their stimulus money quickly

saving drawdown will take uh take months or years and uh the workers will come back and all that and look all of the the workers part and a lot of this might still happen but um the idea that yeah that global production uh was going to just snap back was nonsense and you know in retrospect and i certainly wasn't thinking about at the time, but if you look at all of the ways that we've made are supply chains inefficient and inflexible and sclerotic, as I wrote, all of the dumb policies, it actually makes tons of sense that supply didn't respond quickly and that there are 100 ships off the coast of L.A. right now. And none of that is an indictment of global or whatever, because, oh, by the way, our domestic supply chains are just as screwed up as our

global supply chains. You know, most of our food is sourced domestically and your store shelves or, you know, grocery stores are up and, you know, short shelves are empty. So, yeah, there should have been a lot more humility in this. But, you know, we libertarians are very happy to say we don't know. And I think a lot of folks for either political or whatever other reasons aren't, aren't willing to do that. Wages have gone up a lot. I mean, it's like $20 at the Starbucks down the street for me. Scott and I drove by and he was like thinking about it at 20 bucks an hour. I don't know, man. It's looking pretty good. that won't go back down because prices will stay where they are, wages will stay where they are. That's why inflation, I think, outlasts all of the rest of this halting, which is a problem,

because then wages can't stay where they are. They have to go up to keep matching inflation. You get the runaway problem you were talking about, even if it's a slower down runaway problem for some amount of time. I want to talk a little bit about minimum wage laws. does this disprove the $15 minimum wage push that was happening just two years ago? I mean, obviously it's going to be dead now because $15 minimum wages are going to seem pretty low in another year. Yeah, Macy's went to $15 an hour and everybody shrugged.

Like, great. Why do we care? Yeah, you're going to have to come up with a new slogan because fight for 20 is just not nearly as catchy as fight for 15. I mean, you know, it has the alliteration, right? Be careful, or they'll say fight for 50. Yeah. There you go. That's the living wage. Well, but I guess part of my question also, though, is, okay, so we've seen wages go up to 20,

way beyond what they wanted percentage-wise. And inflation is the result of that and the cause of it, as in raising the minimum wage. They were like, no, no, no, this won't cause inflation. It won't cause goods to go up. We sort of have now run this natural experiment. Yeah. Yes. And in fact, the other things that we've seen are that companies are automating like crazy.

So they're, and not just in like McDonald's kiosk service, manufacturing, like the, there was just a new report that we're buying manufacturers are buying robots like crazy because they just can't find the workers, at least at the wages they're willing to pay, right? And the other thing is that we're seeing is that, yeah, they're passing on. especially in the food service industry, but outside of that, these higher wages, they're just being passed on to consumers. But you're also seeing some really other things that are exactly what we stodgy, you know, right of center free market folks said about the minimum wage. So you're seeing companies reducing hours. You're seeing them push their workers harder in order to try to, you know, whether it's

having them work longer hours or whatever, in order to try to maintain profitability. So, yeah, I mean, it's all, it's, and then like you said, you're just seeing this kind of higher inflation. Now, I will know that while real wages overall are down, so again, real wages are inflation adjusted. So it's, in fact, people have not gotten a raise on an average when you factor in inflation. So, say, I don't know the exact numbers, but say wages have gone up 5%. Unfortunately, inflation's gone up six. So, well, that's actually a real pay cut because, you know, you have to consume stuff or you die.

So you, but I will know that in the very low wage sectors, leisure, hospitality, that kind of stuff, Those have actually, those wages have outpaced inflation. So it's certainly, you know, look, there's not everybody's losing. It's not all horrible. But yeah, in general, you do have a clear case where simply raising wages doesn't do much if prices increase even more. Can I ask a very important, highly technical question? Is it about my pay raise? Because I'm going to go so deep on this.

I noticed Scott just worked in a little, like, people need to be paid more because of inflation. Nice. Thanks. Thanks, Scott. You're welcome. My question is very technical. The hazes have two cars that one of them has 150 plus thousand miles on it. One of them has 130,000 miles on it and is dented and scratched and ugly.

We probably could still sell it. in this market for a reasonable uh price because of the used car market but we then probably couldn't really afford to buy anything else when are the hazes going to be able to buy not even a new car definitely not a fancy car just a reasonable used car number one and then number two, when the new car market comes back, will we see the market flooded with product in such a way that new cars will be really cheap in a year or whenever your transitory period is over? And Scott, I want you to factor in two scenarios into this. One, the Hayes family as currently instituted, and also the Hayes family with an additional

dog. Okay. You can skip the last one. Okay. 2023 for your used car buying. I'm sorry. Yeah. Trust me.

The lincolums are in a similar boat. My old Subaru is not that far along, but certainly I'm starting to look. And yeah, I'm staying totally away from the market for a while. It's crazy. Grim. I don't foresee a glut either in vehicles. And that's really, I think, more due to the nature of automotive manufacturing. I mean, this is a really capital-intensive industry.

And I don't see a lot of evidence of automakers like dumping cash into building new factories. I mean, outside of the EV space. So maybe, hey, look, if you're looking to get a Tesla or, you know, But really, in EVs, they do appear to be investing. But it's, that's going to replace, that's going to actually cannibalize other products. It's not going to be in addition to the models they're doing. So, yeah, I don't really see much, much hope for that. And especially if you're a pickup truck buyer, because, you know, we have, I have to get this in here.

We have 25% tariffs on imported trucks from almost. almost everywhere in the world, which has made pickup trucks here even more expensive, but not just more expensive. It also, of course, dramatically limits your available supply options. So if you're a truck driver or truck, not a truck driver, but you're a driver of a truck, good luck out there. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime.

That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.com. All right, Scott, thank you so much for joining us on that important topic. But we need to move on to another important topic, which is Aaron Rogers. Yeah. Yeah, we've got to end the podcast with a little Aaron Rogers discussion.

Steve, just we'll start with you. Do you want, cut them, cut your losses, take the loss in the money? What do you want to happen here? I mean, you can't. So Aaron Rogers is the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. I've been a Packers fan since literally I was two and I could recite the names of the entire Packers defense. So I'm a longtime Packers fan. I want them to succeed.

But boy, he has become a diva. Either he's become a diva or he's always been a diva and we're just seeing it because he's more public you know there were there were a lot of offseason um back and forth with the packers and he was i thought quite a diva then and while i don't have a lot of confidence that jordan love who was picked to be his replacement is going to to be very good uh he didn't look great he didn't look great in his uh start last week he the reports out of training camp is that he just doesn't have it so i don't have a lot of confidence there but at a certain point you just tire so much of the drama, like, enough, like this vaccine drama where it's very clear that

Aaron Rogers lied to people and lied to people repeatedly about his status and about other things related to his vaccination. Like, there should be costs for that. I think that's bad. I would be happy, you know, he basically, they created a deal where he was going to be committed to Green Bay for this season and then was likely to move on. He was tweeting about this being his last dance. Michael Jordan is so annoying. So I hope it is his last dance. I just as soon see him go.

I have no idea what the Packers will do in the post-Rogers era. If you knew it was going to cost the Packers some games, would you still be in favor of getting rid of Rogers. Because part of this is the assumption that Aaron's past his prime anyway. You're willing to lose games. No, I don't think he's passed as prime. I think he's unbelievable. I think if you're starting, if you are starting a franchise next year and you want to win a Super Bowl and you can pick one quarterback, I think the conversation is

between Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rogers, and Tom Brady. And the only reason it might not be Brady is because of age. I think I would pick Rogers. If it's, if we're purely talking about performance on the field. Yeah. You're willing to lose games over this. Yeah. I mean, the rest of the team, we've got such a good team. The rest of the team is very strong. I think if you're If you can get an adequate to above average quarterback, that could be a Super Bowl contending team. Scott, do you want the Packers to keep Aaron Rogers so that Steve continues to live in misery? Well, it's really hard. So as a lifelong Cowboys fan, reluctantly, and with the Cowboys looking pretty good except for last week,

I definitely want Aaron Rogers to sit out the rest of the year because I think that would make the Cowboys path to the NFC through the NFC a little easy. easier. But I really have to balance that with the clear pain that I'm seeing on Steve's face right now, which, for those of you at home, I mean, it's really, it's deliciously, it's really entertaining. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm probably going with them cutting him again because of my lifelong allegiances, but it's not easy. Well, you still have Mike McCarthy, are the Packers former coach. So you're limited in your upside anyway. Because he is not good. I was going to email you when the Cowboys were riding very high two weeks ago.

I was actually going to email you about Mike McCarthy. But last week's debacle has me once again. Well, I would argue that they were winning despite Mike McCarthy, given his clock management and other coaching decisions. This is what the Packers did for years. In our Dispatch Fantasy League, by the way, Steve has, sitting at number two in our Western conference. However, he is beating Caleb, legendary producer Caleb, who has more points than him? And it's always hard to see. I mean, this is the popular vote versus the Electoral College in fantasy football.

It's tough to really think of Steve as the true number two. I think I'm up there in points overall, right? 1033. I'm looking at it. And legendary producer Caleb is at 10.50. That's good. Caleb, credit to Caleb, despite your four and five record. That's good. All right, Scott Linsacolm, thank you for coming on, talking supply chain, inflation, who's at fault, and when Steve gets to buy a new used car? My pleasure. Good luck out there. This is brought to you by the This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished, home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients, and Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services,

book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site. It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.