TRIGGERnometry - Kate Andrews on the Gender Pay Gap, Feminism, Socialism & the NHS

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

Associate Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Kate Andrews (@KateAndrs) discusses the gender pay gap, feminism, metoo, classical liberalism, individualism, socialism, the housing crisis, austerity, healthcare, the NHS and a lot more with the guys at TRIGGERnometry. Find us on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's only getting every customer's order right. It's only a point-of-sale system connected by Spectrum fiber-powered business internet, helping you track hundreds of secure transactions. And it's all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based customer support and local technicians. It's only everything. Get business internet advantage free forever when you get four mobile lines from Spectrum. Visit Spectrum.com slash free-for-life to find out how. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas.

IP Vanish protects every device you, own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP Vanish encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi. And with no device limits, one account covers everything. Stream with added privacy. Browse securely. Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVanish. And welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Frances Foster.

I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is the show for you. If you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts. We ask the experts. Our fantastic expert guest this week is the Associate Director of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Kay Andrews, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me.

Oh, it's so great to have you. We've been trying to get you on the show for a long time now. I'm very happy to be here. Oh, we're really excited to have you. Before we get into the interview, just tell our viewers who you are, how are you, where you are, a little bit about kind of your political evolution as well, perhaps. Sure. My name's Kate.

I'm the associate director, as you said, of the Institute of Economic Affairs. I'm American. I came to Scotland in 2008 to study, spent four years there, went back to the States for a little bit, and ended up coming back to work at the Adam Smith Institute. I know you guys interviewed Sam Bowman. He used to be their executive director. I was there for two years, moved over to the IES, I guess as a kid I was always very interested in what was happening in politics and particularly policy actually.

I like sort of the nitty-gritty details from a strangely young age. But I think that my philosophy definitely developed over the course of university. I actually did an internship at the IA. And that's when I realized, oh my gosh, libertarianism, classical liberalism, individualism. It brought together things that I firmly believed and was always trying to put into a political slant. but realized that there was a philosophy behind it too. And then I decided, why not do it for a job? Although it wasn't that easy.

Like, my visa is the bane of my existence. But, you know, I took some effort. But here I am. Brilliant. We're very glad you're here. Let's get straight into it. One of the things that you are known, I think, for talking about. I see you on TV quite regularly talking about the gender pay gap. In doing the research for this, I was looking on YouTube

and pretty much every video that is entitled to anything like smart woman destroys radical feminist with facts has you as the smart woman cast in it? I did not upload those videos and I hate those headlines I think they're so, I hate the age of clickbait but yes I have seen some of it So you've never destroyed a snowflake

I wouldn't word it like that I wouldn't word it like that I'm sure I've been destroyed too you know you win and you lose some I get destroyed every episode I look forward to that part of this one But yeah, so actually, you know, we don't do that either. Like with this show, we don't put stuff out like this.

Yeah, no, I know. It's much more thoughtful, which I find more interesting. So do we. So do we. And I think that you're going to grow slower doing that. It's much faster to just go destroys this, destroys that. But I think the benefit of kind of cultivating an audience that's interested in nuance and a genuine conversation. That's much better.

So anyway, you're destroying people online, is what we started with, on the gender pay gap. So why don't you destroy us about the gender pay gap? So why don't you destroy us about the gender pay gap, or tell us rather, what it is, what are your thoughts on it? Why are you critical of this concept? So the gender pay gap is the average difference in the pay of men and women who are working. This is different from equal pay. Equal pay is asking the question, are men and women who are doing the same job under the same circumstances

with the same background, is one getting paid more because they're a man, is one getting paid less because they're a woman? Whereas with a gender pay gap, you're looking at averages. So people often say, so are you saying that there's no gender pay gap? No, I'm saying that there are an infinite number of gender pay gaps, because you can calculate that average amongst anyone you want. We could do a gender pay gap right now between us. I'd rather not.

Or for charity, so you might turn out well on that one. You know, we could calculate gender pay gap between the boss and the junior researcher who's 22 years old, who's just started. We could calculate a gender pay gap between people. who work at Goldman Sachs versus people who work at the IAA or Oxfam or any other charity. So for me, the question on the gender pay gap is what are you actually measuring?

Obviously, some of those calculations are going to be a lot more meaningful than others. And often, you find with a lot of these gimmicky campaigns and efforts, they're going to great lengths to make the worst calculation possible to come up with the biggest statistic that they can. And that's where myself and I think a lot of other young women now are trying to step in and saying, to step in and saying, wait a second, this isn't true.

You know, statistics can tell you anything they want, but what's the most factual analysis we can get on this? And that's where we step in and we try to come up with some more legitimate figures. Well, the media concept of the gender, the way they present it, I don't think they would ever elaborate on that way, but the way they present is essentially for every pound that a man earns, a woman earns, whatever, 77, 83.

Cents in the States, yeah, right, right. That's the idea. And what you're saying is, is what they're doing is essentially they're adding up all the earnings of men on average, they're adding up the earnings and women averaging that and comparing the two. And that doesn't reflect things like choices, time off work, career choices, you know, things like that, right? That's definitely true. But even those statements, women are earning, you know, X amount of pence to the pound or the dollar.

Those are just false. You know, that is, well, that's essentially implying a question of equal pay, right? You know, for every pound a man earns, a woman will earn X. because that's, no, that's not true. You then have to ask yourself, what is the circumstance? Because it could be that for every pound a woman earns, who is a CEO at a bank, a man earns X percentage less, right? So, you know, I think that statement in and of itself

is extremely misleading, if not downright, wrong. So let's look at the figures in the UK. The most popular statistic used, well, not necessarily most popular, but the one you'll see perhaps on the big media screens is 18.4%. That is the gender pay gap in the UK. That statistics calculated by the Office for National Statistics, which is a really good job of calculating the pay gap. But that combines full-time workers and part-time workers.

We know that women are significantly more likely to work part-time and that those jobs tend to pay less. So I think in and of itself, that is a really unfair calculation. You're not comparing like-for-like. If you just separate part-time workers from full-time workers, that's all you've done. You still have not taken into account age, job, background, children, anything. You get 9.1% pay gap for full-time workers, negative 5.1% pay gap for part-time workers. So that's a pay gap in favor of women.

So part-time workers who are female actually out-earned their male counterparts? On average. Yes, exactly. So just by doing that one thing, you've cut the pay gap in half for full-time, and you've actually shown that women are doing better on average and part-time work. So that just goes to show how manipulated these statistics can be when you just are taking one thing into account. Then when you start to go into age, start to go into background, you know, the pay gap

gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So in the UK, women between the ages of 22 to 39 are basically earning the same as men. The pay gap is negligible. In 2015, women age 22 to 29, we're earning slightly more, tiny percentage. Right now, men are earning 2%, 2.5% more. That's a negligible statistic. So, you know, we can actually say that the gender pay gap has been eradicated for men and women between the ages of 20 and 40. That's a huge part of your working life.

You know, that's absolutely fantastic. I think the pay gap that still exists after that age has a lot to do with maternity leave and the fact that women take years off work on average compared to men. It has to do with a lot of choices that women are making. in terms of jobs and work culture and what they value. It has a lot to do with whether or not you're willing to work overtime, willing to work weekends, that feeds into job culture and all that. None of those things and job, the actual job that you choose to do,

none of those things are calculated in the pay gap. So even the very basic statistics we have are showing a pretty good picture for women. The pay gap's the lowest it's ever been on record since they started calculating it in the UK. And, you know, that hasn't taken into account very important things. So if that's the case and you're saying that it's negligible, then why are we constantly getting bombarded with these facts and statistics about how women are being out-earned by men? We live in an unfair society. We live in a sexist society. Why are we getting that story?

Well, I have two theories. One's generous and one isn't. Which one do you want first? Let's go both as well. Okay. I think the generous one is that it's 2018. It's an important year. It's 100 women.

100 women? It's 100 years. It's 100 years since women got the vote in the UK. And something still doesn't feel quite right. You know, as a woman in 2018, you still recognize that a lot of the cards are sacked against you. You know, look at domestic violence stats. Look at rape statistics. Compare men and women walking home alone on any given.

evening. You know, women have their car keys in their fingers and men don't. Something still doesn't feel right. It doesn't seem fair. And I think that that very legitimate feeling that we can all pretty much agree on, then people want to harness that and say, well, what are we going to do about it? And unfortunately, people go to the gender pay gap because they think it's something that they can really easily solve through legislation. They think, well, I want to see results. I want to get a law pass. I want to get something done. Let's focus on the gender pay gap

because we can make the state make big business publish their pay gap figures. You know, we can do something and say we got a win, we got a policy win. But of course, that has no meaningful impact on the things that I think women are still actually facing and the disadvantages that we have in society. So, I mean, that would be my generous reading of it,

that people just want to do something about the unfairness that they still see in the world. So they latch on to the pay gap, even though that's not where we need to be like. latching onto. If anything, we can say this seems to be going extremely well. There's still some things we could do to help women in work for sure, but this is not the major area. We need to look at violence. We need to look at Yarlswood Detention Center, where immigrant women are kept and detained and treated horribly. You know, that's what we need to look at. My less generous reading

is that, you know, it's a lucrative and popular business to be promoting victimhood culture. the statistic, the more media attention you'll get. If you look at a lot of these articles across the spectrum, it's no particular publication. EasyJet was a really good example when businesses had to publish their pay gap figures for the first time back in April. Every headline was EasyJet has 52% gender pay gap, massive. You had to get to Article 6, or 7, if it was in the article at all, where it said, actually, the reason that they have this pay gap is that they pay their pilots a hundred grand a year.

They pay the stewards, $25 grand a year. 6% of their pilots are women. 94% are men. This is double the worldwide average of female pilots. They're actually doing really well. They can't hire more female pilots because they don't exist. They implemented a program years back with their own profits off their own back to bring in more women by 2020. This is a company that is doing everything it can to include.

encourage women, support women, and to pay them fairly and equally. And this is the reason for their pay gap. But that was not at the top of the article. That was, if you're lucky, at the bottom. So those big statistics sell. I think there's a real effort right now to press the reset button on the gender pay gap. It really wasn't that long ago, you know, 40 years ago, where you could see a genuine pay gap that was based on discrimination, that women got paid less than men.

And that has closed so dramatically for a lot of reasons, including the fact that women are getting better educated. They're more educated than men on average, and they're going on to do those top jobs. You know, they're extremely motivated. There isn't that glass ceiling anymore. And, you know, that pay gap has been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, which is great news. It's a wonderful story to tell, especially young women. And a lot of these groups that do very well perpetuating that victimhood mentality need to press a reset button. They need to be able to say that something's still wrong here in order to have relevance. And they've been really successful. I mean, up until April, the pay gap, the biggest one you could come up with was 18.4%,

but that's quite misleading. You know, we've got this great story about 9.1%, negative 5.1%. And then they get these big businesses without much context at all to publish their pay gap statistics. And now they can say, 52% gender pay gap, 70% gender pay gap. It's as if, you know, the past 50 years didn't exist. And that's great for them. It's a really bad message for normal women who are just going to work in the morning, pouring a cup of coffee, now thinking to themselves, I work for easy chat.

Are they discriminating against me? No. They want to perpetuate you. They want to bring you up. They want to propel you to top spots, actually. But if you just read the headline, a lot of people do, you're going to have a pretty negative attitude. So that's my slightly more skeptical perspective. I think they're trying to push the reset button to make this issue still relevant. I think it's really terrible for young women especially to see this because that's not what's really happening for them. When they get out of university, when they're going into the workforce, they're in a great position.

Do you believe in the glass ceiling for women or do you think that, I mean because that's been talked about a lot, the fact that there's not that many female CEOs, it's predominantly male-dominated. Do you see that as being a real problem in industry at the moment or do you think we've sort of evolved past that? I don't see it as being a problem in industry. I think there's an issue culturally. So businesses know that diversity will make them profitable.

They know that diversity helps them. It brings them profits, it helps them to succeed. Sorry, if I interrupt, how? How do they know that? What is there some kind of study that shows that? Yeah, I mean, there's a whole array of evidence that the more diverse your boards are, your staff is, the more likely you are to see that translate into profits. Yeah, diversity equals profits.

And businesses know this, and a lot of them are desperate to bring up women. And I don't think that glass ceiling exists in the world. inside business. Now don't get me wrong, there's always going to be that jerk, you know, usually a man, some jerk who doesn't think that women are as good as men. That happens. That's one. We have one. He got in there first. He got in there first. I was just about to do that same joke. Well, there's always going to be one or two in the room. Or two or both. Yeah, who don't think that women can cut it. And they're always going to be jerks. And that's why we have equal pay legislation. Because if that happens to you, that's illegal and you can go to court

and you can sue them, which is exactly what you should do. But generally speaking, this is not the attitude in workplaces. Workplaces want to elevate and lift women up. I think if we do have a problem, and I think we probably do to some extent, it's much more cultural. It's the fact that there are studies that show that if a man and a woman are doing a very similar job, getting paid similarly, working similar hours, women are still likely to do significantly more housework and home chores than a man. It would be ridiculous to pretend that we don't, we're not sitting here thinking it, right? But subconsciously, most of us still think that women are going to be the primary caretakers. It's just the downright assumption if a couple has children, the woman's going to stay home

to some extent and look after the kid. You know, it's mom who gets called by the school nurse. It's not dad. And I think culturally, we have not evolved as much as we'd like to pretend. And it means that women are taking years off of work. It means they're not going to be promoted in the same way. Their lifelong earnings are not going to be as high. They're not going to become the CEO because they've taken all this time out of the company.

And I think businesses are a lot, if they have the money, and not every business does, but if they have the money, you see great examples of businesses bending over backwards, to have daycare on site, very generous paternity. as well as maternity pay. But not every business can do that. And, you know, culturally, we just haven't advanced enough to be able to say, well, you know what, the man's earning a bit less, maybe he should be the one to stay home. When shared parental leave was brought in in 2015, you know, this was a great step, right? You can genuinely divide up who's going to take leave now. And I think it was reported early this year, maybe late last year, that 2% of men who are eligible of taking it up.

that's a choice and that's a choice that we are making as individuals. No employer is enforcing that. But, you know, these are really hard conversations. Well, do you think that's just culture, though, because, you know, we've had evolutionary psychologists on the show and, you know, other people who would say... You had Diana. She's fabulous. Diana's great.

No, I'm not sure that she necessarily said this, but my sense of what she was saying was she was talking about the fact that some of these things are evolutionary biological and some of them are evolutionary psychological. So essentially, I think a lot of people would say, well, women are better adapted at looking after kids. They're more likely to want to do it than men. And this is not just down to culture. It's down to thousands and thousands of evolution.

Do you think that's an element or do you think it's just culture? We would be really silly to ignore the choices that people are obviously choosing to make. So Sweden provides the perfect example of this. In Sweden, they brought in shared parental leave. early on, very progressive back in the 70s. And they reassessed it in the 90s, and they realized that an overwhelming majority of women were still taking the bulk of the time off. And so they brought in what I like to call forced dad leave.

They basically said, if the dad doesn't take a certain percentage of this time off, you're going to lose some of your benefits. You're not going to get the same number of days off. You're not going to get the same subsidies. And still in Sweden, you have the majority of women taking the time, the majority of time taken up by women. some people are foregoing their benefits because the women want as much time with their newborn as possible. We'd be silly to ignore that, and I think we're going to come to us a bit later on,

but that's a really hard one, because on the one hand, it's really stupid to ignore what majorities are telling you. On the other hand, I believe very strongly in rejecting stereotypes whenever possible in treating people's individuals. So it's a really hard one to balance, especially in terms of public policy. But I think you create an atmosphere, you create public policy based on giving everyone the opportunity to do what they want to do, which is why I think shared parental leave in the UK is so fantastic. And there are some issues there. Paternity leave is not as well paid as maternity leave. I would like to see it be better paid. We need to address that.

But you create the opportunities and then you let individuals do what they want to do. And we shouldn't be surprised when more women take that time off than men. I think where I don't think it's just biological, but it's cultural pressures as well, is when you see how women's behavior changes based on what she thinks society wants her to do. So I don't remember the name of the study, but the New York Times had a fantastic piece not too long ago, where they flagged up a study where young women, fairly young women, were asked about their career ambitions, what they wanted to be paid, and what they wanted to achieve professionally. write it down. And then when they were told that a prospective life partner might see the answers,

they downgraded their expectations for both their job and their salary. Oh, wow. With the assumption that a man would be intimidated by her ambitions, the same piece flagged up a different study where they showed that successful men were very happy for their female partner to make money, very happy for her to be successful, just as long as she earned slightly less than he did. And, you know, this is something to tackle. And, you know, I think that is cultural, and it's something that we need to be extremely aware of. I'm 28, and the expectation on women in their 20s is absolutely hilarious.

So when you're 22 and you've graduated from university, everyone's like, be single, have a great time. Don't get, you know, don't get bogged down. Just go out and be single. And then at 25, it's like, have you met someone? And then, you know, at 28, 2930, it's like, so where's the ring? Where are the kids? Apparently you're supposed to be all three of those things in like an eight-year time period. It's a joke.

It's an absolute joke. But let's not pretend that that expectation isn't being put on women in particular. Is there a men to some extent? There are other pressures on men. But again, there are biological differences there. Like a woman has a certain time when you're a man doesn't. And that's always going to be the pressure, isn't it? Although a quality of sperm does degrade.

so there you go. Well, it's, you learn something in this episode. That's what women are thinking about when they made with the bar. Absolutely. But yeah, you're right. There is a biological clock that's ticking. But also, you know, what if she's not so bothered about having kids? What if that's not the priority?

And yet everyone's putting that upon her. So, you know, I think all of these things factor into the gender pay gap. And they're really interesting to discuss and we need to tackle a lot of them, public policy-wise, culturally. I just think that always the blame is put on employers, and they're probably the least blame. I think they're the ones who are actually creating the opportunities for women. And in terms of public policy and culture,

that's where we need to make the adjustments to help them. And so that really frustrates me. And it's not, I mean, yeah, demonizing business is not ideal if the business hasn't done anything wrong, but it's about the women, really. It's about the women going to work in these places and how they're going to feel day in, day out. if they're just having really large misleading statistics in their head

because somebody put them there and they're unfair. So I can guess what your answer is going to be, but I feel necessary to ask it anyway. Do you believe in quotas? As in, so... That is a hard no. That's a hard no for me. Quotas are the worst.

No, I don't believe in quotas. Quotas are essentially by definition, suggesting that women can't achieve as much as men without help. This is deeply insulting. And as a woman, how could you ever feel confident that you had earned your position within a company as an elected representative on a board, wherever it is? How could you feel confident that you earned it

if you had a quota system in place? Am I there because I'm great because I crushed it because I'm the best? or am I there because I was a box-ticking exercise? And I do not want to sit down at the table with my male colleagues looking at me wondering if she was a box-ticking exercise. I want them to know I'm there because I'm good. I would feel horrific being promoted under a quota system.

I'd feel absolutely horrible. It's interesting how this cultural meme of the gender pay gap has become so powerful, though, because I'm just thinking in my head, if I go on stage tonight in a comedy club and I go, hey, I just spoke to Kent Andrews, and she says there's no gender pay gap. I would be

booed off stage, probably. You would. I'd love to be at that. Yeah, I know you would. I'd start the booing. Yeah, you would. Well, a lot of that comes down to all these misleading statistics, right? And people think you're just crazy to deny a 70% gender pay gap. Because if there is a 70% gender pay gap

and it's based on actually equal pay issues and discrimination, that's horrific. So, you know, a lot of people just won't know the details of it, which is why it's important to share this. But I also think, again, if we're being generous, it goes back to that issue of people feeling like, well, you know, let's not beat up on women. They don't have a easy all the time. But wouldn't to be so much more productive to talk about areas where we could really use better public policy, where we could use better support of the law, to help us, you know,

when it comes to really serious issues like crime. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world. So let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers. You're spending a third of your life on the thing, and most people have no idea what's actually in it. Avicado green mattress is different. Their mattresses are certified organic, built from natural materials, designed to actually support your body properly rather than just hold you in one

position until morning. The craftsmanship is real. These are mass-produced objects. Someone has put thought into them. I'll be honest. I'm not the person who thinks carefully about where he sleeps. My dating history will tell you that. I'm the person who's been on the same mattress for eight years and called it fine. But the older I get, the more I notice that fine isn't actually fine. Your body tells you, if you're going to invest in anything for your home, your bed is the one that pays you back every single night. Avocado products are made, not manufactured, and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado greenmatress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger.

Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. So what is the role for feminism? Is there a role for feminism in your opinion in kind of in the West now today do you think we need something else there is a role for feminism if used correctly but has not been used correctly for a very very long time and I get very frustrated when people say well feminism is just believing that men and women are equal so if you're not a feminist you don't believe that that has not been the definition of feminism for a long time and you cannot have the opinions that I have which are statistics and calculations and economics about the gender pay gap and be accepted in feminist

circles. You just can't. You're not allowed. You're not, you know, you have internalized misogyny, which is something people say to you. Honestly, it's baffling, but people really do say that. If you don't fit their very limited criteria of what it means to be a feminist, then you don't get to be part of the club. And that, you know, most women don't identify as feminists. in the UK, the majority don't anyway. And there's a reason for that. And it's because of course why I don't fit into these little boxes you want to fit them into, we're people, we're human.

You know, I thought we were trying to show the world that women are breaking out of that stereotype of being Barbies, that we're real, treat us as real people. And, you know, I feel like the feminism ideology in the U.S., very much in the Western world, is actually really about being something very specific. And I just, I can't sign up to it. I did not applaud David Schwimmer when he invited a chaperone to his meeting with a woman

at his hotel because she might feel uncomfortable. You know, I do not applaud men going back to the Victorian era. I can't get on board with, you know, the major spokespeople of feminism like Lena Dunham who think that having sushi on college campus cafeterias is cultural appropriation. these are not the issues that I want to be discussing when it comes to women and our advancements. So, you know, feminism has really let me down in that way, and I've been thinking recently, this year actually, about trying to reclaim it and what that might mean. Because when the pay gap reporting measures came out and when they were trying to press

that reset button, I got really emotional about it. I was like, no, you can't do this. We're doing too well. You can't take that away from us. We need to share those stories. And so there would be real merit in trying to reclaim it, but it's an uphill battle, and I don't really know where to begin. So you're saying that feminism, in a sense, focuses on the wrong issues. What should it be focusing on?

I think it should be focusing on the very serious issues related to our safety and our health that we still face in the States and in the UK and in the West. It should be significantly more focused on what's happening around the rest of the world, where women don't know. have the right to health care, don't have the right to drive, don't have the right to wear the outfits they want, don't have the right to a fair trial, don't have the right to vote. You know, these are the stories that we should be flagging up. Well, exactly, like in Iran right now, women are risking their lives not to wear a headscarf. And then you see feminists talking here about, you know, cultural appropriation because of sushi or whatever.

And you just kind of, you go, how do these things coexist in this world? Where are your priorities? Exactly, yeah. It's really depressing. You know, the Me Too movement started out very organic. I liked it when it first began because it was women sharing their stories in a very open, very honest way about sexual assault. You know, I'm not going to keep this to myself anymore. I'm not embarrassed. I refuse to hold on to that shame.

I'm putting out into the world so people can hear my voice. What a wonderful thing to do. And then how quickly did that get hijacked by people who wanted to talk about the gender pay gap? by, you know, actresses who think that wearing a couture dress, which essentially costs what most people average salary is, you know, to talk about issues of the pay gap and to wear all black and whatnot. You know, why don't you just bring some of those women from Iran?

Why don't you bring detainees who got out of Yaroswood onto the red carpet with you? That would be much more meaningful than these silly campaigns. And, you know, I find the state of it really depressing, which is why I think, you know, some of the best work being done, is the work that's highlighting to young women how well they're actually doing. Is the genuine charity work

reaching out to developing countries and countries that are suffering under oppression and doing what they can to help women there. It's not coming from the feminist movement. So how do you identify yourself? If you're not a feminist, if you had to put an easy label on yourself? She told you. She's got it internalized misogy.

Yes. Exactly. I'll just have to go outside and ask the men out there who pay me to say what I say what my ideology does. Give me a sec. Yeah, how do I describe myself? To be honest, I'll give credit to somebody else, and I don't think she knows this, but I spoke on a panel about feminism years back, and I was there with Professor Emily Scarbeck, she used to teach at King's College London,

and she's now, I believe, at Brown. And I was on the panel with her, and I mean, she's a real economist. She knows herself, she knows her numbers, and she was talking about the pay gap from that perspective. And she was asked how she described herself. And she said, you know, I call myself an individualist because I think it encompasses everything that is good about feminism, but also allows me to recognize that stereotyping is wrong, that everyone has their own point of view, and that every circumstance is unique. And that really stuck with me. And that is what I would call myself now when it comes to cultural issues.

I'm an individualist. Because to go back before about biology and, you know, what do women really want? What do men want? You know, I'm classically liberal. I believe in free people. People, you know, having every opportunity given to them and then making their own choices,

as long as it doesn't harm anybody else. And I think individualism encompasses that. I don't want a stereotype. I think it's, I think it'd be very dangerous if we assume that because she's a woman, she'll want to have lots of babies and she won't, you know, she'll want a nice work-life balance.

I think it's dangerous to assume that a man, you know, is going to be really competitive and wants to work evenings. We have to try to treat people individually. So that allows me to believe in equality of the sexes. It allows me to think that men and women are capable of doing the same things. But to speak to you and speak to you and speak to you behind the camera and to speak to everybody out there. You don't have to speak to me.

He doesn't matter. Where the stars. No, he's an individual. No, not to me. Anyway, carry on. I feel bad every time you do that because he doesn't get a chance to reply. You can insult me because I'll make fun of you the next time.

That's why I insult it. Because he can't... Because he can get away. Because he can't... He's just... He's just... He's going after you. Yeah.

Yeah, it allows me to treat everybody and look at specifically and differently and it allows me to acknowledge their circumstances and interact with them in that way, which is so much nicer. than putting people into boxes. One of the things I really abhor, I think it's probably the right word,

about the feminist movement, is like you said, it's just, if you challenge them in whatever way or you disagree with them, like my girlfriend is currently in the last year of her doctor, incredibly intelligent doing a psychology degree, and she says that she disagrees with ABCD&E of the modern feminist movement,

but she would never, ever voice those opinions because she would fear being slandered, having labels attached to her. Do you think that's part of the problem with the movement? The moment you say, well, look, I disagree with this. Immediately you get six people jumping down your throat, putting labels on you, and it's not a real discussion anymore. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of name-calling. But we're just living in a world where everyone wants to label each other.

It is a consequence of identity politics that, you know, there is a real desire to understand you based on very, very super-exam. superficial things. Like, you know, she's a feminist. I understand what that ideology means, and so I can put her here, and I get that. And, you know, I don't think it allows you to get to the individual. And there's definitely that threat. I mean, if she did come out and start talking about that, she probably would get called names and, you know, have a tougher time of it than if she just put her head down and believed it, but didn't want to weigh in on the discussion. We have more young women talking about it, though, and not just young women. We

have women across the spectrum talking about this and how they don't like being stereotyped. And that's great. You know, I do think it is becoming slowly but surely an atmosphere where women can voice their dissent a little bit more against, you know, what you're supposed to say, and what you're supposed to do, and supposed to be as a woman. I mean, this is crazy.

I thought we fought against this. But yeah, you know, it would be rough. That's not gonna lie. It is fascinating how that works, isn't it? Because for decades, I think the feminist movement, the radical feminist elements of the movement have been shutting people down based on identity politics if a white man like Francis was to say something and challenge them, right?

That's what the response would be. You're a white man, you shouldn't be allowed to say this. And now what you're seeing is radical feminists who are trans exclusionary or whatever, they don't believe certain things that they're supposed to believe according to the modern diversity agenda. They are the ones that are being shut down

because they're a straight white middle-class woman. And that's now become a label that can be used is a pejorative, is amazing. And where does it send? Who's going to be allowed to speak at the end of all of this? Well, that's the thing about identity politics, is that the more you can break it down, and the more boxes you can tick,

and the fewer boxes you fit into will define your privilege. But, you know, this is a crazy way to look at the world. What is somebody's background? You know, regardless of their skin color or their gender and things that we can see on the outside, what have they been through? What has their experience been like? And this frustrates me,

Because as somebody who believes in including trans women, very much so in the conversations about women, I would much prefer to speak to radical feminists about their opinions rather than to judge them on who they physically are. You know, I want to debate. I want to have those conversations that are interesting, they're important. We need to have that publicly. We need to get that out there. So let's debate it, but I just can't imagine ever looking at you or you are sitting across from someone and assuming that I can shut them down because of what is being presented to me, it's horrible.

It's very bad for public discussion. And you've said in the past, I think I saw one of the interviews that this is part of a leftist kind of movement or ideology. What's the link there between feminism and this kind of left-wing ideology in your mind? No, not at all. I think over the past few decades, it's essentially become an arm of a left-wing movement.

Because if you look at what they're calling for, they're calling for much more intervention. They want government to step in frequently to solve the problems. And they've gone far past the law, which I mean I completely agree with. We need to protect people under the law from harm. But they want the government to legislate around business. They want it to legislate around all kinds of things. And that's traditionally very left wing. And especially the way that politics pans out in the states as well, to say that you are, say,

a feminist Republican, people would look at you and think that that couldn't go together. And that shouldn't be the case. You should be able to be a feminist anything if we're going back to the original definition. But I think that proves that we're not at that original definition anymore because people would just think you had contradicted yourself. And I know that you're a fan of socialist paradises. I love them. Yeah. Well, I mean, I love them in theory

because real socialism hasn't been tried that. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. My, for the regular viewers, you'll know, my mother is from a socialist paradise. Which one? Venezuela.

We're doing really well at the moment, guys. A million percent inflation. How many people got that in their math test? Right. So, would you like to give a little bit background to our viewers? I mean, because what's happening in Venezuela starting to become more and more worldwide

in that people can see for themselves. Yes, thank goodness, that it's becoming more covered by the media. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, five, six years ago where you had very prominent UK politicians, very prominent philosophers like Nomschomsky, talking about how Venezuela showed us that another way was possible. And they meant that in a good way. Not that another way is possible, you know, here's utter travesty.

It's really horrific what's happened under the socialist policies. Chavez is definitely responsible, but it's become much worse as well under the current President Nicholas Maduro. Over the course of a decade, they seized over a thousand companies in the private sector, just a huge array of nationalization. Since oil prices have tanked, the way that they were able to sustain their economy a bit has completely crashed. And now you have over 2 million people fleeing Venezuela and an estimated 2.5 million more by 2020.

So to put it in perspective, this kind of mass emigration from Venezuela is on the same scale as the Syrian crisis. And we need to treat it as such. It is a human rights disaster, what's happened there. It is socialism in every way. There's nothing about it that wasn't real. There's nothing about it that, you know, you can blame on the capitalist. This is what happens when you believe that through force, the state can control our lives. And it's really sad.

And, you know, I actually think most people know this deep down. You know, I don't think most people really do think that Venezuela shows us in another way as possible. And it's not to say that we can't have a debate about... more intervention versus left intervention, higher taxes versus lower taxes. It's not about that. This is about the way that you control the means of production.

They always jump around about what the new socialism is, and I've heard a lot recently that Scandinavia is actually what we should aspire to because that's socialist. I mean, the Scandinavian countries are fundamentally capitalist. They understand that the very best way to create wealth is through a capitalist system. Then we can talk about redistributing it. You might think taxes should be a bit higher.

I might think they should be a bit lower. You might think the safety net should be bigger. I might think it should be smaller. But we can have that debate once that wealth has been created through capitalism. In the Scandinavian countries, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, they're fundamentally capitalist. If you look at Sweden in particular,

their education system is based on that very famous socialist thinker Milton Friedman. You know, they have significantly more private provisions in their health care system. system than we do in the UK. You know, these are, these, a few of them don't even have a minimum wage. You know, these are not countries that are socialist. So I'm not trying to shut down the debate between the left and the right.

That's a necessary one, it's a valuable one to have. You said earlier in the discussion that, you know, these, actually when we first started, we were talking about these videos that talk about destroying feminism, whatever it is. And one of the reasons I don't like clickbait is because, you know, none of these ideas ever get destroyed. And, you know, I think people who believe in individualism and liberty and free markets and free people thought that they had won that argument. They thought they had destroyed socialism.

But it always rears its ugly head. And we're fighting the battle once more. So you've never destroyed the other ideas, the other side. You're always having to make the arguments, which is why free speech is so important. It's why not telling people that they can't voice their opinion because of what they look like, who they are is important. We have to keep talking about it because nothing ever is destroyed.

As these people say. And one point that I was going to ask is whenever I bring up the subject to Venezuela, people go, oh, but it wasn't allowed to succeed. It was, you know, those catalyst pigs in Washington. They were the one who brought down the system. They were the ones who said, oh, you can't succeed. or implemented strategies so that the economy failed? Is this true?

I mean, a lot of that, I think, is just pure conspiracy theory. If you want to criticize the U.S. for sanctions against certain countries, fine. I think there's an argument to be made that actually the best way to help a country develop out of socialist policy or help a developing country just rise up in general is to trade with it. Trade is one of the best ways that we can help liberalize countries. But in the case of Venezuela, I mean, you are talking about a real dictator as well. And I think U.S. foreign policy remaining extremely strong and against that is vitally important. This idea that the U.S. government made them nationalize all their private companies,

you know, made them ration food, made them turn into a socialist paradise is absolutely ridiculous. And it's a pretty weak cop-out. I mean, just say it's bad. Just say it didn't work. Just say that you can still hold very left-wing views, very progressive views. high tax, high intervention views, and acknowledge that Venezuela, North Korea, Mao's China, the Soviet Union didn't work because socialism and the extension of it communism don't work. They don't just not work.

They kill hundreds, 100 million people, I think is the current estimate around. So let's just be honest about that, get that out of the way. And then we can have a legitimate policy debate about tax rates. Isn't that the fundamental issue with socialist thinking is once you get to a certain point and you want to redistribute wealth at that level, you have to do it by force because there comes a point where people are like, well, I'm not giving away 90% of my wealth? Isn't that fundamentally the flaw? Like as someone who comes from Russia and the Soviet Union, like it's basics, it's elementary

to me. And to see in the West this rise of socialism as this cool thing, it baffles me. It makes no sense to me. It makes no sense. I mean, it's hard to imagine. getting behind an ideology that requires force. As you say, there's no way for it to work without that element of force. And that's really, it's very worrying that people think that this is cool and trendy. But I think that's because communism seems to be maybe the only ideology

I can think of right now anyway that gets away with not having to deal with its real world examples. It gets a pass. And I don't really know why that is. Because, you know, you can criticize. capitalism all day long. No one gets upset when you criticize capitalism. And it's good that we do, right? It's good that we critique it. I think it's the best system we've come up with to generate prosperity, generate wealth, lift people up. But it's not perfect. We'd be crazy to say that it's perfect. And you know, you can't criticize communism because it's never really been tried. And that's dangerous because you have to be able to criticize something based on its real world examples. I think the issue there is actually most people don't have any conception of young people particularly.

They haven't really studied history well enough to, and I don't blame them like, there's parts of the world that I don't know anything about. The reason I know about socialism is that I experienced it myself. Yeah, of course. You probably don't go around saying that something's really cool that you know nothing about. Yeah, probably. There was a horrific poll done in the States not too long ago where a range of people at different age points were asked if more people died under George W. Bush or Stalin.

And millennials, it wasn't 50%, but it was something like 30% of millennials thought that more people had died under George W. Bush than Stalin. No. Yes, yes. Jesus fucking Christ. Yep, it's concerning.

Right. I don't think George W. Bush is that competent. Stalin was very good at the job. Yeah, he was, mate. He was efficient. Yeah, he was. Very good. Do you think there is, I mean, the counter argument to everything that we're joking around about it,

but the counter argument there would be, you know, I put this to our guest a couple of weeks ago, capitalism for young people, their experience of capitalism, if you entered the workforce after the financial crisis, you're kind of going, well, I can't buy a house, I can't even buy a flat, I probably can't even buy a room in a flat at this point, right? I'm really struggling, particularly someone like London. My job prospects are uncertain. The economy, I don't know what's happening with it. I'm kind of like going, well, you know,

I think the point that Tom Slater from Spike Touch Us, it's difficult to expect people to be capitalist when they have no capital. Right? Absolutely. It is. And so isn't that the reason that people are going, well, we need something else. They're not necessarily going, socialism is this great new thing.

They're going, well, this thing didn't work. Let's try something else. And socialism is the alternative. Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. don't think it totally justifies turning to something that has been tried and tested and failed, but there is a lot of merit in saying, I don't like what's happening. This isn't working. And, I mean, there are a lot of issues that government needs to sort out, that we need to liberalize the planning systems, we can build more homes, you know, the productivity puzzle

hasn't been solved. And there are a lot of reasons for young people to feel like the deck stacked against them. In many ways it is. We have a huge issue of intergenerational and fairness. It's what we should be tackling right now and continues to get ignored. So I think those qualms are completely legitimate, and it's good that we can criticize that. And then look to public policy to address an array of issues that have to be addressed. So what will you suggest? How can we go about solving this mess? Is there certain things that we could do?

Oh, my gosh, what a question. No one ever asked about what we can do, do they tell us about what's wrong. Yeah. Well, I think for young people, the biggest question is housing. Yeah. Without, yeah. And to me, it's not simply done, but there is a simple solution. You know, the demand.

Kill old people. No, no, not, no. They're going to die by themselves, it's fine. Gosh, no. Honestly, the way that people are making those arguments in the Brexit debate is so many flashbacks. It is genuinely disgusting. Yeah, it's normal. Francis is a prime example.

The biggest issue is. that demand has heavily outweighed supply. And, you know, we need to build more homes. And the Adam Smith Institute did a report a few years back when I was working there, where they calculated that if you were to liberalize 3.7% of London's Green Belt, all within 10-minute walking distance of a train station, you could build a million homes. We will not solve the housing crisis until those homes are built. You can tinker at the edges all you want, but, you know, the government's now questioning their help-to-buy scheme.

thinking they were helping young people get on the housing ladder, they actually realized now, it was pretty much economics 101, but they realized now that that was further distorting the housing market, bringing in money when there wasn't the supply to meet it. Just causes house prices to rise more. Every single time. They teach you that literally at A-level economics. Yeah, it's really, it's baffling the policies they bring in

when this is fundamental stuff. But I think whichever political party is willing, to do this, is willing to build more homes and address the housing crisis in a meaningful way, will win in a landslide. It's just not obvious who's going to do it. And obviously, there are political sensitivities in every party about why you can't. But whoever can overcome that hurdle, any party, I think will win in a landslide. But the conservatives can never do it, because if they say that they're going to build on the green belt, they will alienate 80% of their call votes? It would be difficult to do. But I'm not convinced they could never do it. I think

if you did it, if you really targeted communities and made those communities feel like they had some control over where the houses were being built and what they looked like, I think you would actually potentially get more popular support. Okay, so we have to let old people live, right? Yes, we really do. You've made me forget the question that we could ask. And we've come false or all? Geriatric genocide conversation.

That won't make for a good click bit, baby, isn't it? Kate Andrews in support of old people. Living. Yes. Key, key, last word there. I was going to ask you about austerity and cuts because I think that's fundamentally an issue where young people don't realize

that they're actually advocating against something that's in their favor. The conversation about austerity makes no sense because the point of cuts and austerity, even though the cuts were actually very minor in terms of the percentage of, right? This is something most people don't realize. I think like 50% of the budget

was destroyed in this process. Yeah, so during the time, of the coalition government between 2010 and 2015, on average, spending was cut 0.5% every year. Right. That was it. Exactly. No.5%. I'll tell you why I think young people feel very strongly about this, and they've got some legitimate grievances.

The cuts were disproportionate to young people. So young people, as you say, are trying to get into the workforce after the financial crisis, that, you know, everything's blown up. Where do we go from now? or where to go to now. And all of a sudden you have university tuition fees come in, which is a policy I'm in favor of, but they came in very quickly with no time to save.

So people are dishing out for that. They're struggling to get on the housing ladder, struggling to get on the jobs ladder. And meanwhile, the benefits for older people were completely protected. The triple-lock on pensions, winter fuel allowance, all of it's protected. And so while the cuts were quite minor

compared to what people actually think they were, they were disproportionate. and younger people would have felt them more. Right. And I think that, again, you know, just goes to this issue of intergenerational unfairness. Well, that was going to be my point, which is young people are going to be the ones

that are paying off this massive debt. They really are. Which is why, you know, I don't think that we can be bribed with 10,000 pounds as the Resolution Foundation wanted to hand out to all 25-year-olds, and IPPRs recently put out a report saying the same thing. We can't be bribed with a one-off 10,000-pound payment

to pay off trillions and trillions of pounds down the road. That's all going to be on us. And yeah, I mean, austerity is very much something that young people should favor, which is essentially just responsible spending. Right. But because of that disproportionate aspect, I think, again, understandably so. You know, you're paying high tuition fees, you're in debt, you don't have a fantastic job or it's not the job you want it. You can't get on the housing ladder. You're working very hard. And someone comes along and says, I'll give you a house, or I'll wipe your debt, I'll wipe your tuition fees,

I'll help you up. And you go, yes, please, yes, please, that sounds great, because nobody else is helping. And the policies are not stacked in my favor, and they have a point. So do you think Corbyn's going to win? I don't make predictions. After the past two years, how can anybody make a prediction? Hey, everybody predicted Trump would get elected, just very few people predicted it before then. Yeah, that's very true. I put money on him to win. Did you? Yeah. I've never, but I didn't think he was going to win. I've never, I had never bet anything before this. I'm not a not a betting kind of gal. I did not think he was going to win. I thought Hillary Clinton was going to win, but the odds were wrong. And I was just like this, he's got a better chance than what

they're given him. It's a good deal. Yeah, exactly. I was like, well, I don't think it's, I think he's, I think this is wrong. And so I put a tenor on it. Okay. should you get back? I don't remember. It was like 40 quid or something. It was very exciting. That's a good deal. Yeah. But I mean a lot of people around me were not happy that night. So I was like, guys, 40 quid! And that didn't seem to solve the problem. Yeah. But yeah, no, I didn't think you're saying. See, there's a solution. Bet on the guy you don't like. Yeah. When he wins, you're going to be happy either way. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. It's good thinking. It's silver lining. Yeah. I don't know. I do think there's a chance that

the conservatives will end up handing Brex I'm exited Britain over to the Waiver Party. But it's near impossible to say who the leaders would be at that time, what the situation will be like, how the public feels about Brexit. I mean, I am very happy to say, I don't know. This is a show about experts, and I am not one. But that's part of being an expert. When it comes to, is making random predictions.

Who the heck knows? I think more people need to say, this is what I know, and this is what I don't know. I agree. And I think that has got to be a part of our conversation. Everybody is always trying to have an opinion about stuff they don't understand. and it's really great that you would say that. Well, I think it's, if you have a philosophy, you can kind of always intuitively know

how you're going to feel about something, and it's great to express an opinion. And, you know, but you have to know the line between opinion and fact, and you have to try to be, you know, we all make mistakes and that's fine, and you can correct yourself. We should be nicer to people who do correct themselves as well. It shouldn't, you know, be like destroyed, take down. You should, thoughtful conversation.

Unless it's Owen Jones. Oh, I like Owen Jones. Do you? Why do you keep a nice guy? Why do you keep destroying him then? I don't keep destroying. I think he punches back pretty well. He's very nice off camera.

But, you know, I think it's just important to recognize what your opinion is and then what an actual fact is. It's great to put forward your opinion, but don't confuse it with facts. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, we've done feminism. We've done killing old people. So that's not been controversial. Let's talk about the NHS and your views on that.

Our NHS. That's not going to trigger anyone in this country. is it? Tell us you of views. I don't actually, I'll be honest with you, I don't know a huge amount about what you think about the NHS, but a viewer and a friend of ours keeps messaging me when I said

that you were coming on. He was like, you've got to ask her about the NHS. Did he mention I don't like it? He did mention that you don't like it. Well, actually, it's actually not the NHS that I don't like. It's the attitude towards it. So the UK essentially

created the principle of universal access to health care back in the 40s. And that's a very important principle. I'm from the States. We don't have universal access to health care. I think that's a bad thing. I do not advocate bringing the U.S. system anywhere else in the world. It's also extremely expensive and unnecessarily so. The problem with the NHS is that since its founding, nobody's been able to criticize it. It has become this godlike entity. People write songs about it. People do dances at Olympic ceremonies about it. That was weird in 2012,

sitting in the union bar watching like nurses do flips during the opening ceremony for the Olympics. And the rest of the world was looking at you guys being like, really? The NHS is part of your opening ceremony? It was strange. People treat it like it cannot be touched. And this is crazy.

It's a health care service. You know, you have to be able to speak about it. But honestly, because it's only as good as the care it delivers to its patients. And, you know, I don't think it's radical to talk about what Germany's doing. So what are the hard truths about the NHS? Because look, I'll give you an example. Two or three years ago, I was playing basketball. I jumped up, I miscalculated.

I landed straight down on my arm. I looked down, my arm was kind of zigzag shaped like that. I'm so sorry. That's fine. And, you know, look, I'm just playing basketball like an idiot. Suddenly three hours later, but an ambulance comes, takes me. me to the hospital, like 10 people are running around, straightening my arm, giving me ketamine or whatever it was, knock me out.

Okay. That was fun. Yeah. But essentially, I get all that treatment. Here I am. I'm an idiot. I broke my arm. I get this amazing treatment from doctors who genuinely really care.

You can tell that they're there because they love doing what they do. They love taking care of people. What's wrong with that system? Why do you want to, why do you want me to walk around with a broken arm, Kate? I don't want you to walk around with a broken arm. I just recognize that every other developed country in the world, apart from the U.S., has developed a system that would have done exactly the same thing for you. Except it would be better how?

Well, in many situations it would be. So one of the areas where the NHS does best is actually an emergency care. Like if you break your arm, they're very good at picking you up and fixing it. It does a lot worse when it comes to longer-term illnesses and quite serious illnesses, like cancer, stroke survival rates, things like that. So on average, the UK ranks in the bottom third of international health system performance. It's on par with the Czech Republic in Slovenia

in terms of health care outcomes. Five great countries? Great countries, but not what we would think of as being world-class when it comes to health care output. It could never be confused with Belgium or Switzerland or France. Thousands more people die when it comes to the five most common types of cancer in the UK, then they would do on the systems in Switzerland or Germany.

And the problem is not the universal access. That's great. It's how the health care is actually provided. Almost every other developed country is recognized that you need a combination of state subsidy to make sure everyone can pay for health care, have access to it. And then private provisions from the private sector,

which are good at efficiency, actually delivering the health care. And it looks nothing like America. You know, it's a very different, inclusive system. And here in the UK, it's so centralized, and it's so bureaucratic, and it's so deeply inefficient in the provisions of health care, that people end up getting worse treatment. And, you know, I don't think that the NHS is going to fundamentally change tomorrow into some mainland Europe dream system.

You know, but it's crazy to me that we can't even talk about those systems without people screaming that you want the American system. and that we can't just be honest about health care outcomes in the UK. I mean, what is the point if you're not getting really good treatment? And so it's the attitudes that bother me, not the NHS itself. Exema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with ebbglis, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase,

about four in ten people taking ebb-glis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Ebglis, Lebrichizumab LBKZ. A 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Ebglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebbglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.

Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebbglis. Before starting Ebbglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about Ebbglis.com or call 1-800 lilyr-X or 1-800-545-9709. So you've mentioned about Switzerland, about Germany. What are their systems? Because I've always been a little bit in the dark about them.

I don't fully understand them. How are they different to the NHS, for example? All the systems are different. But if we focus in on Switzerland, which would be my preferred system, system for the UK and for the US. It's basically universal insurance. So there are private providers of insurance and private providers of health care provisions.

The state tops everyone up to make sure that everyone has access to buy that health insurance. It's compulsory. And then you go out, you buy your health insurance, and you have significantly more patient choice and control over what kind of health care you're getting access to. You get access to it faster.

You have more choice. There's a wider range of provisions for you. It's a very nice. combination of private services and public services coming together to deliver healthcare. And how much would that kind of insurance cost for? So it ranges, but there are serious regulations on what you can charge. It's not a deregulated system by any stretch of the imagination. And they spend slightly more on health care. They spend one to two percentage of their GDP more on health care, which is why I've

always said I'm not fundamentally opposed to the NHS having more money, but who's spending that money? Is the money following the patient? or is the money following the bureaucrats? And if we were to restructure so it followed the patient, it would probably be quite well spent. So I'm not a radical on this one. I mean, this is what I find funny, is that it's probably the topic that is most dangerous to touch.

People get most upset about, and even more than feminism and the gender pay gap are likely to say that you are quite an extreme radical on. But I just don't think France is radical. Like, I don't think Switzerland's radical. I don't think it's crazy to talk about these things. There are other healthcare systems outside of the UK. And the attitude during the NHS's 70th, it was as if if you lived in these other countries, like babies weren't born, people didn't get access to treatment.

Like, what do you think happens there? Australia is a really good example, you know, similar population size, similar money going into their healthcare system, and they get better results. So let's try to learn a few things. Just because we're leaving the EU doesn't mean we don't have something to learn from Europe. And this would be a great area where we could probably pick up a few tips. Don't you think a lot of the celebration of the NHS fundamentally comes from a distrust towards a government? Because I think the counter-argument to what you're saying is, okay, let's bring in private

private companies, and of course that's fantastic. But a lot of people go, hang on, that is just a way for you to start charging. And once you start charging, then fees start going up. And before you know it, we're in the American-style system. I mean, take, for example, our universities. Like, when I went to university, it was £1,000 a year. Now it's $9,000. Mm-hmm.

Well, that's the fear. That's absolutely the fear. And the American system is very easy to point to, and that escalates the fear that people have. Any concept of you paying for your health care upsets people. But what we have to realize is that we are all paying for health care. The NHS is not free. The average family, and I think this is a conservative estimate,

because it's from a few years back, spends on average through their taxation 4,000 pounds a year on health care on the NHS. So it's not free. The question you have to ask yourself isn't, is it free or am I paying? It's how far is that 4,000 pounds getting me right now? And how far could it get me under a different system? And what would the outcomes be like? And I think that's how you have to frame it.

And it's very disingenuous to say that it's free here and that it's not free in the States because that's just, that's not true. money's coming from somewhere. But yeah, I mean, the States is just, it's a really easy way to dismiss any argument around healthcare, which is unfortunate because NHS needs a bit of help right now.

Yep, and we need a little bit of help because our time's almost up. So that segue that made no sense. No, it didn't, mate. It made no sense. That was terrible. I was just trying to find a way to link what you'd said to the fact that our time is like.

It's getting worse as well. Just ask the final question. It's getting worse. Thanks for helping me out, me. I thought improv comedy was supposed to be about a yes and. Then you just went straight. No, it's about destroying. It's about the funniest person winning.

Right, ask the question. How come I didn't win that one then? Anyway, our time's up. So the last question that we always ask is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about, that we should be talking about? I think the way in which ideology is helping to realign politics. So by that I mean, I don't think that the definitions of left and right are very helpful anymore.

And I think that this is actually going to translate to party politics pretty soon. I think the rise of Trump, the rise of Corbyn, a lot of these different phenomenons are coming together, and it means that the way that we define ourselves and our parties and our politics is going to change. And the real expert on this is Dr. Steve Davies at the IA. and he's got some fascinating theories about the realignment in politics, and people should be listening to those because I think it's going to happen sooner than we think. And for a lot of people who are quite tribal in their political beliefs,

a lot's going to change to go out the window. Fascinating. Well, we'd love to get them on the show, then. Sounds like you're right, but we will. All right, well, thank you very much for coming on. Your Twitter handle is... At Kate A-N-D-R-S. Okay, we'll put that in the bottom of the video. I follow Kate.

Kate Andrews was taken. Was it? Yeah. Obviously, I'm not over it. Is there anything that you'd like to promote? Have you got a book or anything else that you would like? Oh my gosh, I don't have a book. I don't know if I have a book in me. Really? Yeah, I'm always really in awe of people who write books.

That's great. Well, I'd flag up the IA podcast where IA conversations on iTunes. You can listen to Steve Davies and his realignment theories and all other kinds of things about how we're going to live to 700 years old. Perfect. We'll put that in the video as well. That sounds good to me. We're going to live to 700 years old.

And then Francis is going to kill us all. Yeah. All of us. Yeah. And take all your houses. And take the houses. That's how it works. If you've enjoyed this week, as always, follow us at TriggerPod on Twitter, Instagram.

We're on Facebook as well. Subscribe to the YouTube channel, obviously. And if you already subscribe, the most important thing, click that bell next to subscribe button so that you get notified when we're released a video. Yeah. It's been absolutely great. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. This is so much fun.

And you need to up your game for next week. Right, I'll see you soon. Thanks. Bye. IP vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP vanish encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi.

And with no device limits, one account covers everything. Stream with added privacy. Browse securely. Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at iSli. IPVANish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVanish.