Make Me Smart February 1, 2022 transcript

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Kai Ryssdal: Alright, Charlton whenever you’re ready, go.

Kimberly Adams: Hello, I am Kimberly Adams, and welcome to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

Kai Ryssdal: It is Tuesday. Oh, I’m Kai Ryssdal, by the way, sorry. It’s Tuesday. We’re gonna do one single topic today and talk about it for a while with somebody who really knows what they’re talking about. And make us all smarter. And we’re talking today about the economic issues du jour, inflation, we talked about it May of last year, when we were still trying to figure out kind of what was going on. And we thought maybe it’d be around for a while, maybe it wouldn’t, we didn’t know. And now it is. So what does it mean? That’s what we’re gonna do today.

Kimberly Adams: Yeah, we are now at the point where inflation is the highest it’s been in what, like almost 40 years. And the Fed is saying, communicating pretty clearly it’s going to be raising interest rates to bring down demand and thus in theory prices. So you know, what changed? And what are we going to do? Now that we are living with all of this inflation.

Kai Ryssdal: Betsey Stevenson, is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, she used to be the chief economist at the Department of Labor, also on the Council of Economic Advisers, both in the Obama White House. And she’s now here to make a smart Professor Stevenson, thanks for coming on.

Betsey Stevenson: Oh, it’s my pleasure.

Kai Ryssdal: So let’s get straight to the is it, is it fleetin or is it lasting thing? Why was it so hard to predict that inflation was gonna stick around? Because you had smart people on both sides saying, “Oh, yes, it’s gonna be here forever.” And and other saying, “No, it’s not gonna last?”

Betsey Stevenson: Ooh, that’s the big question. So you started big. So well, let’s start by thinking about what inflation is. Inflation happens when there’s more demand than there is stuff for people to buy. And so demand is outpacing supply. And some people thought it was gonna stick around, because they felt the government really juiced demand by giving people a lot of money during the pandemic. And we really wanted to help make sure people weren’t suffering. So we got a lot of cash in people’s hands. And that kept demand up, it did what it was supposed to do. It’s actually why the economy started recovering in May, even though by May we weren’t even anywhere near halfway through the pandemic. In fact, the pandemic was just getting going. But the economy was recovering. And that that was partially because of the, you know, really rapid fiscal and monetary policy responses we’ve had. Now, some people thought it was fleeting, because the other side is supply. And part of the problem has been that supply for many things, has declined. There’s not as many new cars out there to buy today as there was in 2019. So we don’t have as many cars and we keep thinking, surely they’re gonna get us the cars, or I’m sure there’s people listening who are waiting for some consumer good, a couch, a dishwasher, that hasn’t arrived that they ordered ages ago. Where is the supply? That’s the thing we keep thinking is going to get fixed. And we’re going to see an increase in goods traveling across the ocean landing on our shores, getting in the trucks and arriving at our house. Both of those, decreasing supply or inadequate supply and a lot of demand, those are two causes of inflation. I think some of that debate was could supply respond quickly enough that the price pressure would dissipate because supply would rise to meet demand.

Kimberly Adams: I think Kai probably recalls the travails of my attempt to get a dishwasher. They couldn’t find – I couldn’t get the part for the dishwasher. And so for months and months and months, and so I ended up having to get a whole new dishwasher instead. And I mean, supply chain, I get it is part of it. But, it’s – there have definitely been a lot of complaints from some of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, that not all of these price increases are just because of the supply chain constraints and demand that some of it is these companies sitting on record profits and still choosing to push up prices.

Betsey Stevenson: Well, that definitely seems like something people would like to be able to pin the blame on. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of evidence that that’s true, because even when you have what economists call market power, you still are facing the the sort of forces of supply and demand. So at a time with really high demandthat’s not necessarily a time where we would think that companies … that have monopoly power are going to react by trying to drive up prices to sell even less then say they might have before. So profits and market power might definitely be a problem in this economy. But they’re not necessarily a much of a contributor to what we see going on with inflation. And to understand that, I think it’s useful to look at where the inflation is coming from, because it’s not uniform. Now, that’s the tricky thing is we think of inflation as a generalized rise in prices. But it’s been pretty clear in the US that we saw prices for goods rising much faster than we saw prices for other things. Another big, you know, source of blame has been well, are people getting wage increases? And you know there what we see is the places where prices are rising, the fastest is not necessarily where we’re seeing wages rising the fastest. So the, the, the big industry here that saw a huge price increases was used cars and trucks. That’s not about market power. That’s about you looking in your garage and saying, Do I really need that second car? Because right now, there’s a lot of demand out there, and you could sell it at a pretty high price. Compared to 2019, you can sell it for 50%, more than you could have sold a car the same vintage in 2019. So you know, that’s not monopolist. You know, that’s, that’s you and me trying to think about whether it’s a good time to unload a secondhand car, or a used car that we don’t really need as much anymore. It’s also not where we’re seeing the wage gains. It’s not like the guys selling cars are getting the biggest wage gains right now. We’re seeing a lot of pressure on wages in the service industry. That’s, that’s a place where we actually haven’t seen very much in terms of price increases. And that’s actually what scares me the most about inflation is that we haven’t seen a lot of inflation yet in services. And the yet is the key fear there.

Kai Ryssdal: Say more about that, because that is not good news.

Betsey Stevenson: No, that is I mean, it depends Kai, it’s a glass half full, glass half empty kind of story.

Kai Ryssdal: All right.

Betsey Stevenson: So you know, if we look at airline tickets, for instance, they fell. The price of airline tickets fell 18.4% in 2020. I mean, it’s exactly how economists tell you markets work, people don’t want to buy plane tickets anymore. And the airline industry discounted those tickets because people weren’t buying them. And they’ve made a little bit of a recovery in 2021. But the price of tickets is only up 1.4% over the year. So still means it’s a great time to travel compared to 2019 if you only care about price, there are some other things you might want to care about. But if you only care about price, airline tickets are pretty low. And they’re pretty low, because we haven’t fully seen demand come back for things like airline tickets, or even recreation in general, you know, the recreation sector prices rose 3.3%, in 2021. So that’s a little elevated when the Feds aiming for 2%. But you know, that’s not the 11%, we saw for new cars, that’s not the 7% we saw overall. So on the one hand, that’s great. On the other hand, Omicron is starting to fade, and I don’t know about you, but I’m really getting itchy to get out there and do something in person. And if other people feel like me, and we have a big surge in demand for those recreational activities, or taking that trip to somewhere warm, well, that could end up putting a lot of upward pressure on prices, particularly if those service sector industries have a hard time finding people to hire. And that’s where the sort of fear of future price increases are, I think, is in the service sector where we haven’t seen them. I’m pretty sure we’re gonna finally get more dishwashers and cars out there. And I think that’s going to slow the rate of inflation in the goods producing sector. And in fact, we, you know, even though what we saw in December was very high inflation for the year, keep in mind that monthly, it was already starting to come down, sort of October, November was a worse time than December for inflation. And that’s because we are going to solve this sort of the pressures that are causing inflation in the goods producing sector. But that service sector inflation, it’s looming.

Kimberly Adams: Right, cuz I’m thinking about, you know, the shortage in child care workers or elder care workers. And those are areas where the wages really haven’t gone up as much as apparently are needed to meet the demand. But you’re saying that’s coming?

Betsey Stevenson: Well, let’s look at those sectors, overall, if we look at the private sector education, right, so this isn’t our public school teachers, but more like our childcare workers, prices are only up 2%. That’s exactly where the Fed wants them. But you know, we’re still missing 10% of the childcare workers? How are we going to get them back, particularly if they can go work at an Amazon warehouse for $18 an hour. So I think we’ve got no choice but to push up the wages of childcare workers. And as we push up those wages, well, you know, those aren’t industries with big margins, that’s gonna end up getting pushed on to customers and that’s gonna mean that we end up seeing inflation there. Similarly, if you look at medical care, inflation was only 2.2%. Again, sort of right where we want it. But, you know, you raised the issue of the shortage of workers in nursing care, particularly residential nursing care, or what we think of as, you know, old age homes, homes for people who need sort of adult care. You know, there are fewer workers there today, the prices aren’t going up. Are people going to want to, you know, go back to using that kind of residential care? Or, you know, maybe more frivolously, what about sort of elective or even cosmetic medical procedures? Are we going to see a demand and increase in demand for those kinds of things? If so, are the workers going to come back? Or did we kind of fry out all of our essential workers in a way that’s going to mean, they’re not going to come pouring back once we’re ready to start consuming those services again?

Kai Ryssdal: So we’ve had goods inflation now for a while. And if your theory of the case is correct, we’re gonna have service inflation for a while. And that means prices are going to be elevated for a long, long time? Well, for a long time anyway. Right. So so the question is, even if inflation doesn’t stay at 7%, like it did, but if it comes down to four and a half, or five, which is, you know, double where the Fed wants it to be, even though they’re trying to be flexible? What are the lasting effects on this economy do you think?

Betsey Stevenson: Well, Kai, first of all, can I just say that I’m an optimist, so I don’t want to say that inflation’s gonna be –

Kai Ryssdal: Fair enough.

Betsey Stevenson: So well, I was like, “Wait, I didn’t make that prediction.” I told you where the risk was.

Kai Ryssdal: Gotcha okay. Noted.

Betsey Stevenson: Let me tell you where the risk is, because there are things we can do right now. We can pass policies that help increase the number of people going into childcare work. We can pass policies that make childcare more affordable for families, while paying child care workers, more of those kids will increase labor supply.

Kai Ryssdal: But wait – I’m sorry to jump in here. But you keep saying we can pass policies and the Congress of the United States can’t agree on what day it is.

Kimberly Adams: She chuckles while in Washington. Again, you just – in order to think about policy in the United States, I think you have to get up every day and be an optimist.

Kai Ryssdal: Fair enough. I’m sorry, I interrupted. Go ahead. So we can can do things is your point, I get that.

Kimberly Adams: We can. And immigration policy would be really important here, because what we – the risk is inadequate labor supply. So we have ways to solve that. Then is the risk – what is the long term effects on the economy is what you wanted to ask. So now, let’s say that you know, my optimistic hopes are dashed, and we’re looking at elevated inflation. You know, going forward, I don’t think that it necessarily stays at 7%. Because so much of that came from energy. But what if it’s gets stuck at four or 5%? First of all, it’s actually not that bad. There’s a bunch of people who are gonna gasp in horror as me saying that. But remember that, what happens when inflation just gets stuck at a level, like we’d like that level to be 2%. But things move kind of smoothly, most people get a 2% raise prices go up around 2%. On average, then you get another 2% raise prices keep going up on average, 2%. Banks understand this. So they set you know the interest rates on your loan, so that they’re getting your money back at least 2% higher so that they’re preserving the real value. And we just sort of settle into a groove of 2%. Is it really that different, if we settle into a groove at 3%, or settle into a groove at 4%, it becomes problematic if like, we were settling into a groove of seven, eight or 9%. Because it just becomes more of a hassle that your money’s always worth a little bit less. And so you’re always trying to protect it and you want to make sure that your checking account bears interest or you’re moving your money quickly into an interest bearing account so that, you know, it’s still able to buy the same amount of stuff when you finally get around to spending in six months or a year. So it just gets more complicated as the rate gets higher. Now, you know, the real risk is that inflation doesn’t stabilize at a high rate, but that somehow it starts to spiral up. So we’re at 7%. And then it goes to eight, and then it goes to nine, and then it goes to 10. And so every year, inflation’s getting a little bit higher. And that is problematic, because it’s almost like getting caught by surprise. And so there are winners and losers, there’s the bank that didn’t set interest rates high enough. So they’re not getting enough back in payments on the loans that they’ve put out in order to, you know, be able to pay interest to the people put their money in the bank, which makes it harder for the whole system of borrowing and lending to work. That, I think we’re at such a faraway risk from that right now that that’s not what I really worry about. I do think the Fed has set our minds around the idea of 2% inflation for so long, that we all want to get that level back down to 2%. And I think the main reason why economists hate inflation, is because it is it can be very inefficient, and it’s very redistributive. So you know, people who have, if you have a lot of debt, and inflations great the value of your debts going down over time. But if you have a lot of savings, and you’re not being careful with your savings, then the value of your savings is going to go down over time. You thought you’ve planned for retirement, but it turns out, you can buy less stuff with the money you set aside for retirement. That hurts people, and it’s really bad. But I think there is a really important clarification, which is when people look at the Fed, and they’re like, okay, the Fed has got to raise interest rates. So that, you know, we get inflation under control. I think deep in people’s hearts, what they’re not really wanting is for government to make people want less stuff. I think they want government to make more stuff available. Like the goal wasn’t to raise the price of a dishwasher so much that you stopped wanting a dishwasher. The goal was to make there be more dishwashers.  I did stop wanting the part.

Betsey Stevenson: Yeah, so the the that’s why I think I turned back to it’s Congress that has to solve this by trying to increase supply, particularly labor supply. All the Fed can do is dampen demand. And when people really think about what they want to feel more secure, they want to be able to afford stuff. And the best way to be able to afford stuff is for there to be more stuff available.

Kimberly Adams: Betsey Stevenson, Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of Michigan, thank you so much.

Betsey Stevenson: Thank you.

Kai Ryssdal: Thanks. Well, we’ll make sure we keep the optimist part in there for you.

Betsey Stevenson: Thank you.

Kai Ryssdal:  Alright, see, ya.

Betsey Stevenson: See ya.

Kimberly Adams: Kai, the pessimist.

Kai Ryssdal: Well, you know, I mean, look, and I take her point about if you’re going to work in policy, you have to wake up every day being an optimist, but you know,

Kimberly Adams: And I think we need to, like maybe move off of the Congress does nothing trope, because think about all of the pandemic relief stuff that did get passed in a hurry. in a crisis

Kai Ryssdal: When the world was exploding, right, That is absolutely true, but day to day –

Kimberly Adams: And the infrastructure bill, and the infrastructure bill.

Kai Ryssdal: All right. Well, that’s all that’s a whole different podcast, maybe next week or two. Now we do what the hell is Congress worth anyway? How about that? Yeah. Okay, we were wondering what you think about inflation, about Congress, about anything you hear on this podcast, if you’re paying more or if you don’t want to pay more or whatever? Give us call 508-827-6278. 508-82-SMART or leave us a voice memo. Makemesmart@marketplace.org. We will get it on the pod and we’ll be right back.

Kimberly Adams:  I am so impressed that you made it to that whole convo without saying transitory.

Kai Ryssdal:  Bridget, hit it, Bridget, come on. [Bell noise plays] Thank you. Thank you. I got the warning text from Bridget when I was on my way to work this morning. She was like if you say transitory, there’s gonna be something that happened. [Bell noise plays] Oh, you did it again. Very funny. Very funny. This is now producers Gone Wild producers out of control. Charlton Thorp laughing his ass off across the glass. He’s live “Oh, I got to do it. I got to do it.”

Kimberly Adams: “I got to push the button!”

Kai Ryssdal: All right. All right, we’ll do some news.

Kimberly Adams: Since we were just complaining about Washington, my adopted hometown here. There has just been this steady trickle of news coming out about as the investigations continue into what went down in the lead up to and during January 6, obviously, those prosecutions are ongoing. But it’s kind of hard to follow the sort of steady stream of releases about just all of the stuff that went down behind the scenes at the White House with all the maneuverings in the attempt to basically overturn the election and figure out if the military should get involved, or if the Department of Homeland Security should get involved and try to, you know, confiscate voting machines. And if folks haven’t been paying attention to some of the reporting coming out about this, there’s a lot of new stuff coming out about just how much of a role President Trump in particular had in the decision making around that. And it’s very detailed and complex, I’m not going to try to summarize it. But some of the latest reporting shows that President Trump may have been a lot more directly involved than previously known in the plans that were being developed by outside parties and advisors and lawyers to try to find the fraud that wasn’t there and potentially overturn the election results. And today is an interesting day to, to pay attention to that, because we also have reporting out about the amount of fundraising the former President’s political action committees and other associations –

Kai Ryssdal: Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy.

Kimberly Adams: $122 million, as we call it, here in politics, war chest, which is this amount of cash on hand that the former President’s political organization announced yesterday, that’s how much they have. In politics where there’s always just so much money, that is still a lot of money for somebody to have on hand and to deploy throughout the party. And so you often hear people say, “Oh, well, why don’t the Republicans just ignore Trump?” And “you know why? Or why do people give him any attention or a platform?” He still has so much power to raise money from the base. And this makes it I think, very hard for Republican candidates, and on the House or Senate level, who might want to say something against him, because he has access to all of this money that he can choose to deploy, however he wants, and a lot of it’s according to some reporting from Politico is going to a rather small group of advisors and consultants and people who are already in his circle, but he definitely has influence in the party in terms of which candidates he backs and if he chooses to distribute those funds around. And for as much as there’s a huge chunk of the political spectrum that would like to, you know, ignore him and pretend like he doesn’t matter when it comes to money. He does.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I almost picked this one. But I didn’t. Yeah, and look, it’s gonna be going on the next well, at least two, perhaps six years. But that’s a whole different thing. Okay. Mine are – one quickie. And then one, two, the substance of the interview, first of all, Tesla is going to recall 50,000 cars in the United States. Because there’s a software glitch, that when the cars are in full driving mode, full self-driving mode, rather, they roll through stop signs. Now, that is not ordinarily an item I would pick up because that’s a relatively small number of cars, and yada, yada, blah, blah, blah, I just bring it up to point out that self driving cars is really, really hard. Molly and I talked about this a couple of times. It’s super, super hard to teach a car to drive itself. And even a company with as much oomph as Tesla which basically created the electric car market cannot get it done. And that’s just a note. Yes.

Kimberly Adams: I thought the whole point was that these updates were supposed to happen without you having to bring the car in.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, yeah.

Kimberly Adams: Why? So is it a recall? Or is it a software updated.

Kai Ryssdal: Well, it is a software update, and I don’t I don’t –

Kimberly Adams: Oh, wait, I’m looking at this Financial Times article you sent, it’s going to it’s going to be carried out by a remote software update. But you know, that’s, that’s pretty substantial. If you think about it, like, that’s a big flaw to have. And the fact that it can be fixed remotely, is, is something. But rolling stops get a lot of people in trouble.

Kai Ryssdal: I got rolling stop ticket once . Anyway, that’s a whole different thing, which I’ve now said like four times on this podcast. You know, I’ve got a lot of stuff I need to talk about. Alright, super quick. The other one, and then we’ll move on is this Bloomberg did some reporting some aggregation of data. And it Bloomberg points out to the topic of inflation, that rents are going way, way up since the lows of the pandemic. And that matters, because for all of the government’s major price indices, the CPI and all the rest of them, rent is like 30 to 33% of that index. So when rent goes up, inflation as a headline number goes up a lot. And that’s a big deal. Cause shelter matters. And we all have to have a place to live.

Kimberly Adams: I know so many people who took advantage of these sort of pandemic rents and moved into new places, because the rents were lower, but then they’re now getting these astronomical rent increases. And moving is expensive and a hassle and they’re now stuck with, you know, “do I stay here and pay this much higher rent, or go basically downsize again to a smaller place because that’s the only thing I’m going to be able to afford. with what I used to be paying.” It’s, it’s tough.

Kai Ryssdal: 

Exactly. My son did that. My son did that last summer, and now he’s coming up on a year of rent and he’s either gonna get whacked or he’s gonna have to move. So, yeah. So there you go. So that’s that. That’s, that’s. Where we going, mailbag.

[Listener mailbag opener plays]

Kai Ryssdal:  Maybe related thing, we can do that. So we did the metaverse last week on Tuesday, if you remember that, if you haven’t heard it, listen up. But first of all, a voice memo on that topic.

Susanna: Hi, this is Susanna. I’m Cathedral City, California. After almost two years of working from home and being extremely extroverted and missing the camaraderie of the office environment, what I could envision in some way shape or form was my Bitmoji being in an office setting with my other coworkers also in that office setting and being able to do all the things that I obviously can do from home, but having a bit of camaraderie where we can run into each other in the hallway or the proverbial water cooler.

Kimberly Adams: I don’t know you got tqo introverts here we can’t really…

Kai Ryssdal:  Totally you know what I like human companionship every now and then but I’m okay without it. And you know, I mean look, it’s weird around here in the offices, but it’s not terrible.

Kimberly Adams: But you’re fine with it. You’re like, I don’t need people just my family, keep it moving. No, I think um, I don’t know I’ve really leaned into just randomly sending people Giphys on Slack and and then that does it for me. Like, here’s a puppy. All right, that’s our human connection. All right, this next voice memo is in response to last Friday’s show where Justin Ho talked about how there should be more Lowe’s because they’re a good place to use the bathroom when you’re on the road.

Kai Ryssdal: Handy tips.

Kimberly Adams: Yeah, and anyway, here’s one more suggestion.

Patty: Hi, this is Patty from South Lake. I have had to travel a lot by car by myself across the southeast. And I look for Walmart’s and Targets because being a woman by herself traveling it is a little unsettling going into convenience stores and parts of the country where you don’t know anybody. And now I’ll remember Lowe’s to go to the restroom. Thanks for making me smart.

Kai Ryssdal: There you go. News You Can Use.

Kimberly Adams: Thanks Justin.

Kai Ryssdal: Absolutely Justin Ho coming through in a pinch. Alright, today’s answer on the way out to the make me smart question. What is something you thought you knew you later found out you were wrong about? Here you go.

Franklin: This is Franklin in Austin, Texas. First time long time. Here’s something I thought I knew but turned out later I was wrong about. I work in the durable consumer goods industry with sourcing primarily in Asia. So the global supply chain challenge shortage situation is something I felt pretty well versed in and I thought naively, if I you know, shopped ahead for Christmas and you know kept a few extra household essentials on hand, we wouldn’t really be affected but when the blower motor on our air conditioning system went out last week and the repair techs told us, there was no timeline for a replacement part. A $400 issue is now a $14,000 whole system replacement so affected after all, keep up the great work love the show.

Kai Ryssdal: Well, I’m just gonna read the producer note that’s in the rundown here because all y’all need the context. Franklin said they couldn’t find a new replacement motor that would arrive in a reasonable amount of time due to the supply chain issue. They bit the bullet and bought a whole new HVAC system he said he couldn’t stomach the thought of heading into winter with a broken system especially since they dealt with three days of no power five days of no water during the big Texas storm last year. Real life consequences of this supply chain stuff folks real life. In addition to dishwashers.

Kimberly Adams: I was about to say I’m gonna complain about that dishwasher ever again.

Kai Ryssdal: Totally. Totally.

Kimberly Adams: That was definitely not a $14,000 problem. Jeez.

Kai Ryssdal: Alright, so when you’re done listening to the show do us a favor, would ya. Send us your answer to the make me smart question. We would love to hear what is something you thought you knew. later found out you were wrong about voice memo comes to us at 508-82-SMART or just send an email makemesmart@marketplace.org

Kimberly Adams: And we are done for the day Marielle and Rhema will be answering your questions tomorrow for What Do You Want to Know Wednesday, so if you have any questions for them, send them our way.

Kai Ryssdal: All the questions.

Kimberly Adams: Perhaps 99 even.

Kai Ryssdal: Make Me Smart is produced and directed by Marissa Cabrera. The team also includes Marque Green. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletters, our intern is Tiffany Bui.

Kimberly Adams: Today’s program was engineered by Charlton Thorp with mixing by Drew Jostad. Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. The senior producer is Bridget Bodnar. Donna Tam is the director of on demand and marketplaces. Vice President and General Manager is Neil Scarborough. Trying to think what I’m most worried about prices going up on.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, I think the whole service sector thing was interesting. I really want to be clear she was not predicting it, but she was just saying that’s where the risks are.

Kimberly Adams: That’s where the risk is.