May 19, 2025 • 45 mins
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson examines life in the newly minted United States of Arabia.The Economist’s Callum Williams details why Gen X may be the saddest generation America has ever seen.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and GOP Congressman Don Bacon confirms the
DoD Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered pause and cyber operations against Russia.
I wonder why we.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
The Lincoln Projects owned Ritt Wilson joins us to discuss
life in the newly minted United.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
States of Arabia.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Then we'll talk to the Economist's own Callum Williams about
how Gen X maybe the saddest generation America has ever seen.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
But first the news, Samali.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Right as we were recording this afternoon with Rick Wilson,
we got horrible, horrible news that former President Biden has
been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which, for those who don't know,
is for someone his age a very bleak outlook much
of the time.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well so a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Prostate cancer is very treatable, but this cancer has, according
to The New York Times, has metastasized the bone. According
to his statement from mister Biden's personal office, aggressive form
of prostate cancer spread to his bones. That is not good.
It's a you know, metastasis as I just went through.
And you can read about of my book How to
Liz your Mother.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yes, I was going to say, your book details this
very thoroughly and it comes out very soon. I'll give
you the plug to say June third.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
It's a book about what happens when everything goes wrong.
My cancer patient is totally fine, but a lot of
cancer pigeons are not, and a lot of us are
going through this experience of having a loved one with cancer.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So I have had a lot of experience dealing with this.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It's really when it spreads the bone that is not good.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Again.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Cancer is a major problem in America, and you know
who just cut funding for cancer research, Donald Trump and
his doughe initiative. And you know who funded a lot
of cancer research was Joe Biden and his cancer moonshot.
So I do think it's really important that we see that.
As much as this is fucking heartbreak, it's also a
(02:09):
real case of where our vote actually means a lot,
because there are a lot of people in this country
are going to get cancer, and the treatments we have
will be discovered now for later, and so it's really heartbreaking,
and I think all of us send lots of lots
of hope and prayers to the Biden family, Joe, Jill, Hunter, Ashley.
(02:35):
They're a big family, very boisterous, a lot of people
in that family, but a lot of hardship.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
So let us all hope that.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Joe Biden makes it through this, and more importantly, that
we can stop le get relitigating the fucking twenty twenty
four election cycle.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Now, yeah, Somali scottisent. He went on with Kristen Welker
this morning and it was pretty hilarious. I thought, personally,
hot take. I love that guy on television. He is
so wooden and so uncomfortable. You know, like, here's a man,
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Who has pretty much cast his entire administration from Fox
News hosts because they look good on television, and then
he gets this guy who is clearly the most uncomfortable
person on television you have ever seen. And he is
just himming and hawing about these tariffs. And by the way,
every time he goes on television, you know, a less
(03:32):
so today. And and let me just add, but sent
is actually relatively smart. I mean, he's like one of
the very few people in this administration, who's not a
complete like sycophant with no qualifications. Right, the guy has
at least some experience working in what he's doing, which
is a dark contrast to people like Linda McMahon, who
(03:54):
is the head of the Department of Education. You know,
he said a lot of confusing things on there. And
he said the thing which Donald Trump has been again
and again lying about, right, which is he said Walmart
will be absorbing some of the tariffs. Again, if they
do that, they hurt small businesses. And also they said
they wouldn't do that, so maybe they've decided they will
(04:16):
some that get passed onto the consumer. Donald Trump said
tariffs will not raise prices. Here is Scott per Cent
saying some of it may get passed onto the consumer.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Well, I can tell you this hoping you post that
a great article today where they've started to assemble all
the different companies showing what the tariffs are doing to them,
including security cameras, people placing orders and getting shipping fees
that are three hundred dollars, six hundred dollars. It's not
looking good for what they did. And Scott per Cent's
(04:49):
whole deer in the headlights thing where he's just not
as cute as a deer. It's not feeling very comforting
to the consumer.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I mean, I find him to be hilarious, but I
do worry it's going to kill our economy.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The laughing so we don't cry type of energy that
we bring to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
There's more laughing than we're if you think we're laughing
to keep from crying. On this topic, let's move on
to everyone's least favorite group.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Of nine people who dress weird judges.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, I mean, look, three of them are good, six
of them are not.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Are you talking about the Supreme Court?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I am, in fact talking about the Supreme Court. So
I want to point out, so this is the Supreme
Court ruling. It goes seven to two. I bet you
can't guess the two two judges who are like Trump
should be able to do anything they want because he's
our mango god king. Those are Alito and Thomas, who
practically work for Rupert Murdic at this point, but I
just want to talk about this Alien Enemies Act, which we,
(05:50):
by the way, on this podcast, I've been talking about
since we read Project twenty twenty five, where we saw
that the Trump administration at every point. This at stration
months before has told us what they're going to do.
And this is a great example. Alien Enemies Act. They
said they were going to use it. They only has
ever been used World War one, World War two, War
(06:12):
of eighteen twelve, so it has only ever been used
during wars, right wars, not during made up things that
don't exist. Okay, so Trump administration wants to use it
to deport Venezuelans because of this gang that no one
has ever heard of, right trende Iragua.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
It sounds like a really great restaurant that I could
go to somewhere to hit part of town.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yes, correct, But more importantly, there just is no There
is no there there. So this is already a wildly
insane case. And still and still two of Trump's justices
are like, you can do it. I want to add that.
As soon as this happened, Donald Trump retweeted a guy
(07:00):
called Mike Davis, who is a close Trump aallet and
founder of the Article three project. So he is in
this conservative legal space, but really even more to the
right than the Supreme Court, and he called the decision illegal,
claiming it was heading down a peril's path. The perilous
path being keeping the Constitution going. And then he said,
(07:23):
and I think this is worth seeing. The Supreme Court
still has an illegal injunction on President of the United States
preventing him from commanding military operations to expel these foreign terrorists.
There's no evidence in these people are terrorists. There's no
evidence in any of this makes any sense. And he
says the president should house terrorists near the Chevy Chase
country club with daytime release. Chevy Chases located in Maryland,
(07:47):
near the homes of Chief Justice John Robbers and Justice
Berg Kavanaugh. If you don't see what the alt right
is doing here, I don't know what to tell you,
because what they're doing is trying to intimidate these in
order to get them to rubberstamp stuff Trump wants to do.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Speaking of fuckery around this issue, one of the new
tactics Ices adopting is to deport before court. Which it's
just so bleak that these people cover themselves in the
Constitution and the rule of law while they do things
like this.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Again, these are the plain clothes guys that are rolling
up grad students, right. They're doing things like leaving children.
You saw that where they left a kid on a
platform by himself and arrest of the parents. This is
a sort of despicable militious. Some members of this group
are from actual militias. They're just doing anything they can
(08:46):
to deport without offering due process, and now they're going
to deport them before they go to court. I just
want to point out that again, we need people to
work these jobs like this is not We're not to
pouring people because we don't have enough work for them.
If anything, we have too much work for them. We
are deporting people because Donald Trump has made this a
(09:08):
central campaign issue, just like we are not cutting the
federal government. I mean, we do have a deficit, but
we could raise taxes, we could let the tax cut expire.
All of this is because Donald Trump has a few
ideas that he wants tariffs, tax cuts, deportations. None of
(09:29):
these things need to happen. They are just all Donald
Trump's brainchild. And even though Trump says that all his
people want this, in fact they want it with caveats, right.
They believe in some deportation, but they don't like a
lot of the stuff that this administration is doing. And
we're already seeing in the polling Trump is losing you know,
those working class voters that went to him, He is
(09:50):
losing them at a rapid clip. And I think that
is probably the one bit of good news.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and
the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Rick Wilson, Lolly John Fast.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Here we are another week in Trump's America or is
it Trump's Arabia? So I feel like, you know, what
a lot this trip, this Trump Middle East? I want
to say jaunt. Can we say it's a jaunt?
Speaker 5 (10:29):
We could say it's a johnt sure?
Speaker 1 (10:31):
This Trump?
Speaker 5 (10:31):
You could just say it's a hajj.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
It's a hajjh. It's a hash beaj uh. This trip
reminded me that everything in Trump world is just a
rehash of something else that happened in the first administration,
that happened on reality television, that happened to him in
the eighties in New York. Like, we're just in a
(10:55):
kind of cyclical Fuckeray.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
It's a cyclic fucker is a great way. It's a
time loop. Yes, I mean we're just stuck in the
same bullshit with him over and over and over and
and it is why I think Americans have such a
hard time dealing with it because even people who like
Trump or support Trump, this week were like, uh, boss, boss,
(11:22):
no man, come on, this ain't it chief?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
This ain't it?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Chief?
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Was that the plane was that that was a lot of.
Speaker 5 (11:29):
It was about the plane that could The guitaris have
been trying to sell since twenty twenty and decision had
forest one is actually not the bargain Trump can see to.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Be, but even has one, so like, I mean, God,
I mean and look.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
That's a that's a sea tier, a seat tier dictatorship. Honestly, Look,
I think what we what we saw this week was
two things. One that is Trump centric and one that
is about America. All these people in corporate America who
got on the plane and went over there with Trump,
(12:08):
they now, in his mind, owe him anybody who made
a deal over there, or who who it could even
tangentially be seen to benefit from being over there. Trump
will now think Boeing must do whatever I want forever
and ever. They must give me whatever I want forever
and ever. You know, Sam Altman is over there, and
Ray Diallo's over there, and Blackstone and black Rocks leadership
(12:32):
are over there. And all these folks that are sort
of dragging along behind Trump, he will make them pay
for this trip, literally or metaphorically.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Right.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Yeah, as for Trump and the and the Trump and
the Trump clan, this was pure you know, gimme, gimme, gimme.
This was hand out. Whatever you can fork into the bag,
I'll take it first.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
You know. Amazon said we're gonna show how much the
tariffs raised prices. Trump was like, no, you're not. Walmart said,
we're gonna have to raise price is because of the tariffs.
Trump said, no, you're not. You have to eat the tariffs.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Again.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
I was told, by the way, I was told that
foreign countries paid those tariffs.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
I was assured that was how it were.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
But it turns out that what he meant by foreign
countries was American consumers. But so here's a question. Though
these are a companyes Walmart is a huge country, country
and also company, how do you square this? So you're
gonna they're just gonna.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
The scale of Walmart is such that.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
By the Americans shop at Walmart some absurd number.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
But by the time they reached the point where they
had to say, hey, we're gonna have to raise prices.
You have to understand that they've already done everything they
can to keep their suppliers in line, keep prices down,
negotiate further down on They're already inexpensive supply chain deals
to make up for the tears. All of this is
super terrifying for Walmart because they've already done what they can.
(13:59):
They've already pushed the levers down as far as they can.
So at this point, Walmart is kind of like China.
They're an organization that plans on a fifty year scale.
Now they're not just quarter to quarter to quarter. They
are looking out into the future. And their deal is,
we're not going to blow ourselves up financially. We'll take
a little bit of a hit from Trump and his people,
(14:21):
but where else the fuck you gonna go?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Chief? If Walmart raises prices, that is actually better than
if Walmart eats the tariffs, because if Walmart is able
to somehow keep prices lower, will they will put out
all of the other businesses that exist out of business. Right,
So it's.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Correct, Yeah, so you have you have the exact you
have the exact key to this thing.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
So if you go to the drug store next door
and the whatever the hammer is twenty one dollars and
you go to Walmart and it's fourteen. Then eventually those
mom and pop shops are going to go out of
business sooner.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
Round they're vastly more price sensitive than Walmart or Target
or or you know, Amazon to some degree, but other retailers.
But once you get below that tier, I mean, these
days in America, unfortunately, retail is the pyramid is weirdly inverted.
It used to be a lot of small businesses and
a few big ones. Now it's a couple of big
(15:25):
businesses who take eighty percent probably of the national revenue
that's coming into to that kind of sector, and small
business is taking twenty percent, but they're going to take
a much wilder degree of pain.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yes, and I wonder, I wonder what the sort of
larger how you can spin that to be good for anything,
including capitalism. But I think.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
Besides, I mean, but we got to realize this is
not capitalism now right, This is crony, this is maoism.
We keep talking about it, but this is not capitalism.
You know, all those all those fuckers last year who
were screaming like, oh, I'm a free market, free market Republican.
I'm a big I believe in markets and free enterprise,
and Harris will lead to full communism. They don't mind
(16:11):
when Donald Trump sets wages and prices. They don't mind
when Donald Trump controls the means of production. It's kind
of odd.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yes, it's almost as if they're all hypocrites. Almost almost
that you will be listening to this podcast on Monday.
If all goes well. Tonight Sunday nights ten o'clock, we
have another meeting of Mike Johnson and the big beautiful Bill,
(16:39):
you know.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
At ten o'clock on Sunday night. Meeting screams out to me, everything's.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Fine, everything is going what could possibly go wrong? Going great?
Speaker 5 (16:46):
Are going great?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
When you're a member of Congress and you have a
meeting at ten o'clock at night on a Sunday. Mike
Johnson has done a number of really amateurish things. Set
deadlines he couldn't make right. Is supposed to be done
by next weekend. Could have put two bills together instead
decided to do one. I think the thinking here is
that they're only going to be able to get one
(17:08):
piece of legislation passed, which I think is probably very likely.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
True.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
But the top line in this House bill that I
want you to talk about, Rick Wilson, is something that
I feel like we have not been talking about in
the pundent industrial complex, and that is eight hundred and
eighty billion dollars cut from Medicaid.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
So it's now about ten days ago. I was told
by a reliable person I've known for a long time
who said there had been polling done for the Republican
Caucus and it was so bad that Mike Johnson refused
to let the polling company brief the members. And the
worst part of it was that eighty three percent of
(17:52):
American voters said that they would be more likely to
vote against a candidate who cut Medicare or Medicaid. Yeah,
good luck, Chief, because at that point, at that point, you.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Tell all Republicans if you have hit.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
A level where Republicans, no matter how loyal they are
to Trump, and no matter how much they want this
tax cut, and no matter how scared they are of
Elon and all this of their garbage.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, but I don't think they're so scared of the
al anymore. So let's talk about that next.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
But they're going to cut eight hundred billion dollars out
of Medicare and Medicaid over a five year window. Which,
first off, one thing that people have not figured out
yet about this is the minute you do that many many, many, many,
many American families who have a father or a mother,
a parent or grandparent in a nursing home right now
that is partly paid for by Medicaid. They're moving home, chief,
(18:44):
they're coming back. You enjoy that, You'll have fun, you'll
have phone. That happens.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
That's the nay mercenario for everyone. That and then also
your rural hospital is going to close. But I want
let's talk about Elon's more diminished role in the death
of democracy. So my man has gotten in there and
he's gotten in all the computers, he's fired a ton
of people. He's had to rehire some. Right, we have
(19:10):
some The FAA seems like it is having some issues,
Rick Wilson a little bit.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Yeah. You know, Look, they did in fact want to fire,
and they did offer early retirement to many of these
FAA controllers and many took it. We have about thirteen
thousand controllers we were due to hire under the Infrastructure
Bill about twenty five hundred more, which we needed that's
on hold. They're blaming Pete Butta Judge and Joe Biden
(19:38):
for doge cuts which disrupted the FAA. I've talked to
people in the FAA who I have been told are mortified.
They're working the extra hours, they're covering the extra bases.
But this thing has been so screwed up from DC
that the head of air Traffic Control took the retirement bonus, yeah,
(19:59):
and got out. This is a dangerous situation. Look, and
I'm going to do the as a pilot. But as
a pilot, I'm not a I don't fly a commercial jet,
but I fly in the instrument system all the time.
And you rely on these underpaid, overworked, overhassle people to
keep four hundred mile an hour, four hundred passenger steel
(20:23):
and aluminum tubes from crashing into each other. And it's
a pretty good use of my government, of my taxpayer money.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah. I would think so too. I would like my
taxpayer dollars to.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
Go to good to not having me killed in a
fiery crash.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's my I'm.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
Against the fiery crash thing.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
That's my hottest take. But I want to talk about
Elon for a minute. She's definitely. Let we don't know again,
because we have so little transparency into what the fuck
Doge did in our federal government, and years from now
we'll probably find out nothing good. Big Balls and his
group are still in the government. Computers are federal agencies.
(21:01):
But whether or not this is true, there is less
Elon in our.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Me there's less Elon in the press. And I I
have Atrairian take on this, and a lot of people are, oh,
he's thrown out, it's over. I have a contrarian take
on this. I think that Elon had this is a
very deliberate pr strategy to pull him out of the limelight.
I do think he had a little bit of fence
mending and fixing to do it Tesla and SpaceX, but
(21:28):
I think this is a very deliberate let's let's take
the heat off Elon by by by you know, making
him wear the ballgag for a few weeks. But I
still think the fuckery that's going on here that Elon
has a direct hand in, like the South Africans coming
here right right, which, by the way, the the the
oppression of those poor South Africans. You can see that
(21:50):
many of them had lost the Battle of Buffet Ridge
as they were coming off the plane. These were not
people that looked to me like they were that they
were draggled war refugees, But in fact they looked like
a bunch of fucking middle class people who watch too
much television, need too many carbs. Right.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
But the point, the point of the story is that
it's not clear. I think what we both are. We
know that Elon pulls slightly below the Saponic plague. Yeah,
and so we know that Republicans have a real incentive
to make him disappear, especially if you look at what
happened in that judicial election in Wisconsin. Ye, the polling
(22:31):
was that Elon did not help.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah. We tested ads that had the same message and
once said Brad Shimmel supports Trump, and it worked. It
wasn't it wasn't like a home run. It was like
a good, solid double. And then we said took the
same message, he supports Trump doing this, this and this.
Then we swapped it out and said Brad Shimmell supports
Elon and the DOJH agenda to cut medicare, to do this,
and it was one hundred and forty five percent more effective.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Yeah, insane it was.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
It was like, fuck, Elon, Yeah, Elon, doesn't that immune response?
You know?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, Elon is polling poison. So the question is is
he really gone or is he pretend gone.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
My theory of the case is he has pretended on.
I am gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna die on this
hill that I think he I think he needed a
week or two to reset because SpaceX.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Has been having a lot of problems and seventy what
they had they had an earnings call where they announced
that they were down seventy one percent their earnings were down.
Imagine like what you have to do for your earnings
to be down seventy one percentage And.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
And think about this in context too. Molly the year
before SpaceX is board and it's and and I can't
remember her name right now. The chairman of the board
was arguing to both the board and to the Delaware
Chancery Court that Elon Musk last year deserved a fifty
four billion dollar annual salary.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
No, it can't be a billion billion.
Speaker 5 (23:58):
Oh no, billion with a book nollions.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
We're going to need a We're going to need a
fact check from Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
Here you can check it out.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
But the point is, uh yeah, so we don't know
is Elon gone or is Elon pretend to be gone.
We have no idea. And again I want I want
to go back to another thing we were talking about before,
this idea that Trump all these people made these deals, right,
and they were announcing these deals that were faky numbers.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Right right, trillion dollars.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Tell us about some of these Middle Eastern deals that
they were announcing, you.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Know, as I was on with Ali Velshi this morning,
and I refer to them as concepts of a deal. Right,
This is a this is these are press release promises.
These are not These are not actual hard number, you know,
commitments like the I'll give you an example, the the
supposed deal with with uh uh Tar to buy two
(24:54):
hundred and fifty billion dollars worth of jets. Well, it's
really to buy fifty jets with an option to buy
a hundred more. Okay, none of these things are and
again this is all such press release hurry up bullshit.
And some of these deals, by the way, had been
percolating that the arms deals in particular had been and
the Boeing deal had been percolating in the background. Since
(25:16):
well before Trump took office. Some of them were negotiated
by the Biden administration. They're just taking credit for them.
But a lot of them are just vaporware, right.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
But I also I love that they were so because
of everything is fake. They were just getting bigger and
bigger numbers. You know, I think, oh, Fatari's had a trillion.
You know, someone's an eight you know, billions, No trillion, billions,
you know.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
Yeah, none of that to my mind, None of that,
to my mind, is what we call real. Nobody. Nobody
in this world who deals with the Middle East, ever,
who's ever dealt with any business, organization, government, or person
in that ultra high wealth petro dollar universe, walks away
(26:04):
believing anything as racist as it was. Even Senator John
Kennedy said, you know, you can't trust any of these people.
Lock up your camel. Which look, if I had Campbell's
I'd be afraid that John Kennedy would come and, you know,
do unspeakable things to them.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
But well, I also think, like you know, this is
a little like anti Muslim.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
No, no, it's not. Actually, it's actual real talk. The
idea though, that Trump right goes and looks at the
Middle East. Now, I have to say, I think a
lot of American Jews had to be a little surprised.
And Israel has been totally cut out of all these discussions.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I'm not surprised. Here's an American Jew who's not.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yes, I think I have a little bit sophistication about this.
But Harris will abandon Israel.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
By the way, I was wrong about the fifty four
billion dollar pay day. It was a fifty six billion
dollar pay day.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
How is that possible?
Speaker 5 (26:59):
It was a I'm looking at Reuter's judge voids Elon's
unfafthable fifty six billion Tesla pay package. Right, just put
a link in the chat.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Okay, all right, I'm Ridy Wilson again.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Callum Williams is a senior economics writer for The Economist.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Callum, thank you very much for having me. It's nice
to be here.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
So let us talk about Generation X.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Are you generation X?
Speaker 4 (27:31):
First of all, No, I'm certainly not. I'm right in
the middle of the millennials.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Oh that's so annoying.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
This was a really interesting article that I read the
Economist that got me really As Jesse and I are
both Generation X.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
First, define what generation ACTS is. How old is Generation X?
Speaker 6 (27:48):
Typically these are people who were born between nineteen sixty
five and nineteen eighty. I mean, there's a bit of,
you know, poinless debate about really where the boundary is,
but it's roughly between those years.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
So let's talk for a minute about what it looks
like for these people sort of where they are in
their lives.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
Okay, well, I suppose you would say that they are
in early middle age on average. You know, they've they've
they've obviously left college a long time ago. If they're
going to have kids, that they're likely to have happened
by now.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Not certain, but but likely.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
They're at a point in their careers where, you know,
it's kind of they've probably reached the peak of where
they'll be in their in their career. They're not yet
retiring unless they've been enormously successful and sold the company
or anything. So you know, in that kind of period
of life, I would say, you know that the parents
are possibly still alive, possibly pretty old now, and their
kids are kind of not probably super young, but kind
(28:43):
of their kids are starting to move out of the house,
so they're in that kind of that kind of age.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I think it's fair to say that this, or at
least the sort of the thought of this piece was
that we in generation acts are the least written about
and thought about generation in some time.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
Right explained to us that that's exactly right. So, you know,
the Baby Boomers get a lot of hate, I would say,
because they've done.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
So well, yes, and maybe that's not the only reason,
I continue, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
Maybe not.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
So they get a lot of press, as it were,
had a lot of interest. And then the Millennials, maybe
less than before, but certainly in the twenty tens, like
people often talks about it, you know, how much millennials
were struggling to buy a house and how they've been
screwed over by their financial crisis and a lot of stuff.
So they've got a lot of press.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
And then gen Z. Of course everyone's talking about gen Z.
Speaker 6 (29:30):
You know, people worry about the effect that social media
is having on gen Z and whether gen Z are
entitled and all this kind of stuff. But the weird
thing was that actually people don't really talk about gen
X all that much, Like there aren't really many books
about gen X, there's not many many memes about gen X,
so it just seemed like a big gap in the literature,
and so I was looking at what's going on with
this with this generation?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
So why is that?
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Well, I think there's a few things going on.
Speaker 6 (29:54):
One is that they are a relatively small generation in
comparison with the Baby Boomers. So there was you know,
in the US, there was this enormous surgeon in births
after World War Two, and that created this big kind
of co orp which you just don't really have with
with with Gen X.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
But I guess also, like you know.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
I guess it's probably to do with the fact that
the Millennials and Gen Z have just been growing up
at recently, right, you know, people are more interested in
like young people than they are in middle aged people.
So it's partly to do with kind of where we
are in the long term use cycle. It's you know,
it's nothing that Generics has done wrong, it's just that
they've they're just that the sort of boring age I suppose, I.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Mean, yes and no, though, right, it strikes me that
there was more written about other generations too, right as.
Speaker 6 (30:40):
You were saying, you're saying, so twenty years ago, that
was probably more written about baby rivers.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Yeah, when they were in middle age. That's that's right.
Speaker 6 (30:46):
I mean, I don't know about that because my sense
is that interest in the generations has really taken off
in the past, like I would say, fifteen years. So
you know, the idea that people belong to a specific
generation is not something that's been around for a very
long time. But if you went back fifty years, no
one was really talking about like the baby Boomers or
(31:07):
you know, and if you ask someone like, what's the
generation before baby Boomers?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
The greatest generation?
Speaker 5 (31:13):
All right?
Speaker 6 (31:13):
So okay, well I can push that question again that
what's before that? And what's before that? Then you know,
you ask someone like, what's something fairly modern. Yeah, it's
not just a modern thing. I'd say it's like a
twentieth maybe even twenty first century thing. So yeah, But
I think also the other thing to spare in mind
is that, like the ability for us to analyze generations
(31:34):
in a rigorous data driven way, that it's definitely very
new because what you need to be able to do,
right is you need to be able to look at
at a given person of given age over time. It's
a bit sort of like follow that person from when
they're in their twenties to win their threads in their forties. Now,
that requires very detailed, in very high quality data, and
that really hasn't been amount for very long.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
That's certainly true. Why is generation acts the most sort
of fun generation?
Speaker 6 (32:01):
Well, the argument is that in two ways. So one
way is to do with the age that they're at
right now, right, and then the other way is to
do with the actual cohort of people, the actual specific
people who are you know, maybe in their forties now,
but will be in their fifties and ten years time.
So in terms of where they are right now, they
are at the bottom of what people call the U
(32:23):
bend of life right, which is essentially the idea that
you're you're happy when you're young, and you're happy when
you're old, but you're miserable in middle age. And that
is for all kinds of reasons including yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Why why are we miserable? Jesse and I want to now,
So what I.
Speaker 6 (32:37):
Would say for us is that this I think that
the evidence for this ubrend is is not bad. Actually,
I mean, it's hard to measure, but it seems pretty clear.
One factor is this this idea that you're responsible both
for young slash youngish children and responsible for old oldish parents,
So you're kind.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
Of being pulled in both directions, right.
Speaker 6 (32:59):
So that's a lot of work, and we did some
work to show that both in terms of the time
spent on caring for others and the money spent on
caring for others, gen X does a lot more about
in all generations right now.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
So that's one thing.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
When people get chronic health problems, they tend to emerge
around this time. People also kind of come to realize
that their career has really topped out, and so you know,
they might have aspired to be the CEO, but they
kind of realized by their fifties it's not going to happen.
So that's kind of depressing. Yeah, I guess those are
the main reasons. And you can see that in the
survey data that you ask people in loads of different
countries like how happy are you, and people who are
(33:34):
in Generation X are less likely to say they're happy
than people in other generations.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
M That is interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
So you think that they are less happy because of
their age and not because they have had less positive
struggle like boomers made a ton of money.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
You don't think it's that's the reason.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
Right, I see what you're saying. Yeah, it's a good question.
I mean, to be perfectly honest, it's hard to know
for sure. All I would say is that the U
bend idea has been around for quite a long time,
and so you typically do see that. For example, the
baby rooms appear to go through the same thing where
they were relatively unhappy when they were in their late
forties and fifties, and then they kind of saved it
(34:15):
when they moved into into their sixties and they've got
happier again. So I but I agree with you could
be right that this could also be a cohort problem
rather than just the kind of life stage of life problem.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
But it's hard to be sure.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Are boomers happier now?
Speaker 5 (34:29):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Why?
Speaker 6 (34:31):
Well, I think your view of life goes through some
kind of evolution. Right, you leave your job and maybe retire.
You go and spend all their golfing or going on cruises.
You've got more time on your hands. Your kids are
probably grown up, so they are looking after you rather
than you looking after them. Your parents have died, so
you don't have them to take care of. You know,
I think there's lots of reasons to expect people to
(34:52):
get happier if they properly age.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Do you think that the sort of higher rate of
illness caused by whatever have affected my generation, our Generation Generation.
Speaker 6 (35:04):
X, Well, they are, but I mean if you look, certainly,
if you look at the on mental health stuff, so
you look at questions of anxiety and despair and nut
kind of thing. You know, there's the U shape is
pretty it's pretty stark. Actually, like when you're in your
particularly we're kind of around age fifty, if you are
going to be anxious, it will be then basically. And yeah,
(35:25):
so on the kind of physical health problems like mobility
and you know, being diagnosed with some bad disease or
something like. I mean that's more anecdotal, I think, at
least in terms of such idea, but it you know,
it seems obviously correct that the older you get, the
more at risk you are of developing these problems.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
So yeah, I think I think that's right.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
But as I say, I don't think this is something
that affects necessarily affects Generation X more than other generations.
I'm sure that when I'm in my fifties, I will
also reach a peak of anxiety, and you know, I
will become more likely to realize I can't run like
I used to and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
So I'm going to go through it like everyone else.
Speaker 6 (36:00):
Oh so you think this is like midlife crisis. Yeah,
I mean you could call it a mid life crisis.
I guess it's a reflection that you of your that
your body is not what it used to be. Right,
you can't do all the things you used to be
able to do, Like you know, when you're in your
Maybe when you're in your thirties you can still go
out and drink a lot and be fine the next day.
Maybe that's less true in your forties and fifties, all
(36:21):
those kind of things like going out and paying soccer
with your kids. You like, you realize that you can't
turn as quickly as you used to, or you're more
likely to get injured and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Like it's as you know, that's a depressing realization for anyone.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
I think, do Americans seem less happy overall than other countries?
Speaker 2 (36:38):
How does this break down.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
America is about?
Speaker 6 (36:40):
In the middle, I would say of the happiness people
love to do cross country comparisons of happiness. But you know,
happiness the word happiness or whatever the word is in
different languages that you know, that means different things in
different countries. You know, happiness, I think for us in
the kind of English speaking West can often mean like
a great sense of fulfillment or like joy, whereas I
think can maybe scan Scandinavia it means more like contentment.
(37:03):
You know, those those do being different things. So I
think it's hard to say that country X is clearly
happy in the country why, you know, Like Japan, for example,
always comes out very badly on these on these topics
of on these questions of happiness, Japan seeds incredibly unhappy.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Now I.
Speaker 6 (37:18):
Don't know if you can really be sure that it
actually is like full of really unhappy people, just because
again the term happiness will mean something different in Japan
than it does in the US. But so what I
would tend to do is look at, you know, how
it's happiness changing over time within a country. Now, what
is very clear is that the US has it does
seem to have become less happy over the past stay decade,
(37:38):
fifteen years, not not massively so, and other countries have
got worse, but yeah, it has become less happy.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Do you be said about how the other countries feel
about America right now.
Speaker 6 (37:49):
Well, so I'm based in the US, but obviously I'm British,
so I can tell you that there is a bit better.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
And you guys have done a lot of work on
this at the Economist, which is why I'm asking.
Speaker 6 (37:59):
Yeah, you know, so they do these polls about who
would you vote for in the election? They did they
did a global poll just before the twenty twenty four election,
and obviously, you know, the Democrats win in a complete landslide.
I think people are quite shocked by the stuff about
defense and about the tariffs, so I would say, but
you know, I think, you know, people are smart. They
are able to distinguish between the actions of an administration
(38:23):
and what they encounter when they either come to America
or meet Americans. There was a lot of concern actually
the other day about this idea that travel from Europe
to the US has fallen off cliff and this idea
going around, particularly in the Financial Times, that Europeans were
canceling travel to the US because they hated Trump so much.
And actually that's turned out it could be completely wrong,
(38:44):
but it's just a kind of very basic stake that
they made in doing this stuff, and people still.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
Come come to US a lot.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
I mean, I'm in San Francisco, San Francisco, so there's
loads of tourists from Germany, and it's.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
What's the mistake.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
Well, basically what they did was they looked at the
year on year page change in people from Europe coming
to the US. And what you can see is that
I think it was in March of twenty twenty five,
the year on year change from Europe was like it
was like down like twenty percent or something. So could
say there is everyone freakdowns, like Europeans are canceling their
(39:15):
holidays to the US and it's because they hate Trump.
And actually what had happened was that in March of
twenty twenty four, so the year before, there was this
really weird spike surge in tourists and people visitors coming
from Europe to the US. I think it was to
do the Time of the East or something, And so
the comparison with twenty twenty five is really unfavorable. And
(39:36):
in fact, if you just looked at the level of
people coming to the US, it was fine, there was
no change. It was just because you were comparing it
with a really unusually strong month in the previous year,
and it looked really bad. But then if you look
at what's happened in April the year on your comparison
is much more kind of fair, honest, then in fact
there's no change at all. But I suspect that many
of the people that wrote that European tours into the
(39:58):
US is collapsed. I'm not going to be pieces of saying, oh, no,
it hasn't actually collapsed, because that's the nature of the
media these days.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
But there you go, Yeah, is that media or is
that hyperpartisanship? What is that?
Speaker 5 (40:10):
Well?
Speaker 4 (40:10):
I think it's probably a bit of both.
Speaker 6 (40:11):
It's you know, you see in academia too, where people
will publish results if they're exciting, but then they won't
report on results when they're not exciting, if you know.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
What I mean.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Is this a collapse of the sort of attention economy?
Is Is it just so hungry for attention that it
has a sort of attention to itself into no longer
being true? I think it's definitely. I think it's definitely that.
And I think getting clicks on Twitter is obviously massages
people's egos to a great degree. So I think it's
very nice to get clicks on Twitter, so I think, yeah,
there's a bigger sense to do that. I think the
(40:42):
spectru of Trump is something the journalists I think have
to be much more careful about than they are. I
think what basically what's happened is people most journalists, I
would say, wouldn't have voted for Trump. I think that's
probably fair, and I can go so far. I said
that most journalists really don't like Trump, and so I
think what they there's this behave you all bias? I
think as a result to finding stories that confirm what
(41:05):
they would like to believe, which is that Trump's awful,
and so people will do things and say things and
respond in a way that accords with the notion that
Trump is awful. So I think probably when people see.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
This right story like this, it makes sense because they
believe it.
Speaker 6 (41:19):
It's too good, And I think that blunts your critical faculties.
And I think, you know, had it been that's safe,
for example, that Kamala had won, and in fact, it
probably would have been exactly the same, tourism in March
twenty twenty five to the US probably would have been
twenty five twenty percent down as well. I strongly suspect
that no one would have written the piece saying everyone
hates Kamala, they're a band in it. It just wouldn't
have happened, right, So I think we have to be
(41:40):
very and I'm sure, I'm sure you think about this
aholl time, but I think you have to be so
careful about like, you know, would I have written this
piece if there was a politician in charge that I like?
Is always that question you got to ask yourself, And
I think people tend not to ask that question of themselves.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
I have seen pieces of that be true, but I've
also seen other things. But the thing I want to
ask you about now is this idea that if you
read the newspaper it was like very unlikely that you
would vote for Trump.
Speaker 5 (42:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (42:06):
Go, well, there's obviously there's obviously a causality question there is,
you know, does does reading the newspaper make you less
likely to about for Trump? Or do people who would
never have voted for Trump anyway are they more likely
to read the newspaper. I don't know the study referring
to it. I can't ask that question. I suspect it's
probably that part mostly the latter. I don't think people
really are persuaded by what they need in the newspaper
(42:27):
one way or the other.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
It's quite rare. It's basically quite work to.
Speaker 6 (42:30):
Change their minds about anything, right and mostly when say,
for example, with this piece that we're discussing now, the
gen X piece, right, generally, the letters I got about
this piece were either that was great, I completely agree
with everything you said, or it was You're an idiot,
You've got everything wrong.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
No one emailed to say or let what a letter
to say?
Speaker 6 (42:48):
Thanks for changing my mind on this particular point, because
I you know, people just don't do that basically unfortunately.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
But that's not a new thing.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I don't think so interesting. Thank you for joining us column.
Of course, no moment, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5 (43:08):
Yes, Molly John Fast are we ready for the moment?
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah? What is it?
Speaker 5 (43:12):
The moment America loves? I would say that this week's
moment is is a is an all time champion example
of everything Trump to just dies. The moment of fuckery
is our international credit rating? Tell me it's now been
reduced by a notch. It's been cut And Moody's was
very direct about what it was. I'm surprised Trump hasn't
(43:32):
attacked them yet.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, well Moody's, Moody's, you're going to the Hague, going
to the hag, But they are.
Speaker 5 (43:42):
Credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in
a long.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Time since Obama, not because of since the twenty.
Speaker 5 (43:48):
Meta economic crisis, right right, Yeah, that was a crisis
where there was a downgrade and by the way, people
on the right at the time were screaming bloody fucking murder.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Including Trump clearly, who's always lead because.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
It's always Yeah, But the fact that our credit rating
has been downgraded, which is going to mean higher costs
for every American, higher interest rates, higher lending rates, uh,
more scarcity in the financial markets for people looking to
expand a business. All of this comes down to one guy,
and it's Donald Trump. Well, it's easy to make him
the moment of fucker every week. He really deserves it
this week.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
And I would add that, like, there's this scenario that
we are all really anxious about, which is why Trump
backed off the tariffs in the first place, which is
dollar flight to this idea that maybe the dollar stops
being the world's currency finally, and the your you know,
euro bonds or they go somewhere else. And by the way,
if they do that, right, because we have a president
(44:44):
who acts like a leader in an emerging country, and
our markets behave like emerging markets, and then we have
we find ourselves in a scenario where everything is more expensive.
The you know, debt is more expensive to service. We
are down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
That is pretty yeah, it is.
Speaker 5 (45:04):
It is a ship and all this is because of
his wrong ideas and his big ego.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Right well, and also because he wanted to onshore manufacturing
without doing the work of entering manufacturing.
Speaker 5 (45:14):
Unlike that chips and science sector which we had to
get rid.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Of, right because it was short manufacturing.
Speaker 5 (45:21):
Who knew?
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Everything is so stupid? Till next Monday, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5 (45:28):
Thank you, Molly. I'll talk to you later.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and GOP Congressman Don Bacon confirms the
DoD Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered pause and cyber operations against Russia.
I wonder why we.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
The Lincoln Projects owned Ritt Wilson joins us to discuss
life in the newly minted United.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
States of Arabia.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Then we'll talk to the Economist's own Callum Williams about
how Gen X maybe the saddest generation America has ever seen.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
But first the news, Samali.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Right as we were recording this afternoon with Rick Wilson,
we got horrible, horrible news that former President Biden has
been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which, for those who don't know,
is for someone his age a very bleak outlook much
of the time.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well so a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Prostate cancer is very treatable, but this cancer has, according
to The New York Times, has metastasized the bone. According
to his statement from mister Biden's personal office, aggressive form
of prostate cancer spread to his bones. That is not good.
It's a you know, metastasis as I just went through.
And you can read about of my book How to
Liz your Mother.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yes, I was going to say, your book details this
very thoroughly and it comes out very soon. I'll give
you the plug to say June third.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
It's a book about what happens when everything goes wrong.
My cancer patient is totally fine, but a lot of
cancer pigeons are not, and a lot of us are
going through this experience of having a loved one with cancer.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So I have had a lot of experience dealing with this.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It's really when it spreads the bone that is not good.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Again.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Cancer is a major problem in America, and you know
who just cut funding for cancer research, Donald Trump and
his doughe initiative. And you know who funded a lot
of cancer research was Joe Biden and his cancer moonshot.
So I do think it's really important that we see that.
As much as this is fucking heartbreak, it's also a
(02:09):
real case of where our vote actually means a lot,
because there are a lot of people in this country
are going to get cancer, and the treatments we have
will be discovered now for later, and so it's really heartbreaking,
and I think all of us send lots of lots
of hope and prayers to the Biden family, Joe, Jill, Hunter, Ashley.
(02:35):
They're a big family, very boisterous, a lot of people
in that family, but a lot of hardship.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
So let us all hope that.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Joe Biden makes it through this, and more importantly, that
we can stop le get relitigating the fucking twenty twenty
four election cycle.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Now, yeah, Somali scottisent. He went on with Kristen Welker
this morning and it was pretty hilarious. I thought, personally,
hot take. I love that guy on television. He is
so wooden and so uncomfortable. You know, like, here's a man,
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Who has pretty much cast his entire administration from Fox
News hosts because they look good on television, and then
he gets this guy who is clearly the most uncomfortable
person on television you have ever seen. And he is
just himming and hawing about these tariffs. And by the way,
every time he goes on television, you know, a less
(03:32):
so today. And and let me just add, but sent
is actually relatively smart. I mean, he's like one of
the very few people in this administration, who's not a
complete like sycophant with no qualifications. Right, the guy has
at least some experience working in what he's doing, which
is a dark contrast to people like Linda McMahon, who
(03:54):
is the head of the Department of Education. You know,
he said a lot of confusing things on there. And
he said the thing which Donald Trump has been again
and again lying about, right, which is he said Walmart
will be absorbing some of the tariffs. Again, if they
do that, they hurt small businesses. And also they said
they wouldn't do that, so maybe they've decided they will
(04:16):
some that get passed onto the consumer. Donald Trump said
tariffs will not raise prices. Here is Scott per Cent
saying some of it may get passed onto the consumer.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Well, I can tell you this hoping you post that
a great article today where they've started to assemble all
the different companies showing what the tariffs are doing to them,
including security cameras, people placing orders and getting shipping fees
that are three hundred dollars, six hundred dollars. It's not
looking good for what they did. And Scott per Cent's
(04:49):
whole deer in the headlights thing where he's just not
as cute as a deer. It's not feeling very comforting
to the consumer.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
I mean, I find him to be hilarious, but I
do worry it's going to kill our economy.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The laughing so we don't cry type of energy that
we bring to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
There's more laughing than we're if you think we're laughing
to keep from crying. On this topic, let's move on
to everyone's least favorite group.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Of nine people who dress weird judges.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, I mean, look, three of them are good, six
of them are not.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Are you talking about the Supreme Court?
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I am, in fact talking about the Supreme Court. So
I want to point out, so this is the Supreme
Court ruling. It goes seven to two. I bet you
can't guess the two two judges who are like Trump
should be able to do anything they want because he's
our mango god king. Those are Alito and Thomas, who
practically work for Rupert Murdic at this point, but I
just want to talk about this Alien Enemies Act, which we,
(05:50):
by the way, on this podcast, I've been talking about
since we read Project twenty twenty five, where we saw
that the Trump administration at every point. This at stration
months before has told us what they're going to do.
And this is a great example. Alien Enemies Act. They
said they were going to use it. They only has
ever been used World War one, World War two, War
(06:12):
of eighteen twelve, so it has only ever been used
during wars, right wars, not during made up things that
don't exist. Okay, so Trump administration wants to use it
to deport Venezuelans because of this gang that no one
has ever heard of, right trende Iragua.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
It sounds like a really great restaurant that I could
go to somewhere to hit part of town.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yes, correct, But more importantly, there just is no There
is no there there. So this is already a wildly
insane case. And still and still two of Trump's justices
are like, you can do it. I want to add that.
As soon as this happened, Donald Trump retweeted a guy
(07:00):
called Mike Davis, who is a close Trump aallet and
founder of the Article three project. So he is in
this conservative legal space, but really even more to the
right than the Supreme Court, and he called the decision illegal,
claiming it was heading down a peril's path. The perilous
path being keeping the Constitution going. And then he said,
(07:23):
and I think this is worth seeing. The Supreme Court
still has an illegal injunction on President of the United States
preventing him from commanding military operations to expel these foreign terrorists.
There's no evidence in these people are terrorists. There's no
evidence in any of this makes any sense. And he
says the president should house terrorists near the Chevy Chase
country club with daytime release. Chevy Chases located in Maryland,
(07:47):
near the homes of Chief Justice John Robbers and Justice
Berg Kavanaugh. If you don't see what the alt right
is doing here, I don't know what to tell you,
because what they're doing is trying to intimidate these in
order to get them to rubberstamp stuff Trump wants to do.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Speaking of fuckery around this issue, one of the new
tactics Ices adopting is to deport before court. Which it's
just so bleak that these people cover themselves in the
Constitution and the rule of law while they do things
like this.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Again, these are the plain clothes guys that are rolling
up grad students, right. They're doing things like leaving children.
You saw that where they left a kid on a
platform by himself and arrest of the parents. This is
a sort of despicable militious. Some members of this group
are from actual militias. They're just doing anything they can
(08:46):
to deport without offering due process, and now they're going
to deport them before they go to court. I just
want to point out that again, we need people to
work these jobs like this is not We're not to
pouring people because we don't have enough work for them.
If anything, we have too much work for them. We
are deporting people because Donald Trump has made this a
(09:08):
central campaign issue, just like we are not cutting the
federal government. I mean, we do have a deficit, but
we could raise taxes, we could let the tax cut expire.
All of this is because Donald Trump has a few
ideas that he wants tariffs, tax cuts, deportations. None of
(09:29):
these things need to happen. They are just all Donald
Trump's brainchild. And even though Trump says that all his
people want this, in fact they want it with caveats, right.
They believe in some deportation, but they don't like a
lot of the stuff that this administration is doing. And
we're already seeing in the polling Trump is losing you know,
those working class voters that went to him, He is
(09:50):
losing them at a rapid clip. And I think that
is probably the one bit of good news.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and
the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Rick Wilson, Lolly John Fast.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Here we are another week in Trump's America or is
it Trump's Arabia? So I feel like, you know, what
a lot this trip, this Trump Middle East? I want
to say jaunt. Can we say it's a jaunt?
Speaker 5 (10:29):
We could say it's a johnt sure?
Speaker 1 (10:31):
This Trump?
Speaker 5 (10:31):
You could just say it's a hajj.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
It's a hajjh. It's a hash beaj uh. This trip
reminded me that everything in Trump world is just a
rehash of something else that happened in the first administration,
that happened on reality television, that happened to him in
the eighties in New York. Like, we're just in a
(10:55):
kind of cyclical Fuckeray.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
It's a cyclic fucker is a great way. It's a
time loop. Yes, I mean we're just stuck in the
same bullshit with him over and over and over and
and it is why I think Americans have such a
hard time dealing with it because even people who like
Trump or support Trump, this week were like, uh, boss, boss,
(11:22):
no man, come on, this ain't it chief?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
This ain't it?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Chief?
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Was that the plane was that that was a lot of.
Speaker 5 (11:29):
It was about the plane that could The guitaris have
been trying to sell since twenty twenty and decision had
forest one is actually not the bargain Trump can see to.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Be, but even has one, so like, I mean, God,
I mean and look.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
That's a that's a sea tier, a seat tier dictatorship. Honestly, Look,
I think what we what we saw this week was
two things. One that is Trump centric and one that
is about America. All these people in corporate America who
got on the plane and went over there with Trump,
(12:08):
they now, in his mind, owe him anybody who made
a deal over there, or who who it could even
tangentially be seen to benefit from being over there. Trump
will now think Boeing must do whatever I want forever
and ever. They must give me whatever I want forever
and ever. You know, Sam Altman is over there, and
Ray Diallo's over there, and Blackstone and black Rocks leadership
(12:32):
are over there. And all these folks that are sort
of dragging along behind Trump, he will make them pay
for this trip, literally or metaphorically.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Right.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Yeah, as for Trump and the and the Trump and
the Trump clan, this was pure you know, gimme, gimme, gimme.
This was hand out. Whatever you can fork into the bag,
I'll take it first.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
You know. Amazon said we're gonna show how much the
tariffs raised prices. Trump was like, no, you're not. Walmart said,
we're gonna have to raise price is because of the tariffs.
Trump said, no, you're not. You have to eat the tariffs.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Again.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
I was told, by the way, I was told that
foreign countries paid those tariffs.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
I was assured that was how it were.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
But it turns out that what he meant by foreign
countries was American consumers. But so here's a question. Though
these are a companyes Walmart is a huge country, country
and also company, how do you square this? So you're
gonna they're just gonna.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
The scale of Walmart is such that.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
By the Americans shop at Walmart some absurd number.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
But by the time they reached the point where they
had to say, hey, we're gonna have to raise prices.
You have to understand that they've already done everything they
can to keep their suppliers in line, keep prices down,
negotiate further down on They're already inexpensive supply chain deals
to make up for the tears. All of this is
super terrifying for Walmart because they've already done what they can.
(13:59):
They've already pushed the levers down as far as they can.
So at this point, Walmart is kind of like China.
They're an organization that plans on a fifty year scale.
Now they're not just quarter to quarter to quarter. They
are looking out into the future. And their deal is,
we're not going to blow ourselves up financially. We'll take
a little bit of a hit from Trump and his people,
(14:21):
but where else the fuck you gonna go?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Chief? If Walmart raises prices, that is actually better than
if Walmart eats the tariffs, because if Walmart is able
to somehow keep prices lower, will they will put out
all of the other businesses that exist out of business. Right,
So it's.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Correct, Yeah, so you have you have the exact you
have the exact key to this thing.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
So if you go to the drug store next door
and the whatever the hammer is twenty one dollars and
you go to Walmart and it's fourteen. Then eventually those
mom and pop shops are going to go out of
business sooner.
Speaker 5 (15:04):
Round they're vastly more price sensitive than Walmart or Target
or or you know, Amazon to some degree, but other retailers.
But once you get below that tier, I mean, these
days in America, unfortunately, retail is the pyramid is weirdly inverted.
It used to be a lot of small businesses and
a few big ones. Now it's a couple of big
(15:25):
businesses who take eighty percent probably of the national revenue
that's coming into to that kind of sector, and small
business is taking twenty percent, but they're going to take
a much wilder degree of pain.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yes, and I wonder, I wonder what the sort of
larger how you can spin that to be good for anything,
including capitalism. But I think.
Speaker 5 (15:50):
Besides, I mean, but we got to realize this is
not capitalism now right, This is crony, this is maoism.
We keep talking about it, but this is not capitalism.
You know, all those all those fuckers last year who
were screaming like, oh, I'm a free market, free market Republican.
I'm a big I believe in markets and free enterprise,
and Harris will lead to full communism. They don't mind
(16:11):
when Donald Trump sets wages and prices. They don't mind
when Donald Trump controls the means of production. It's kind
of odd.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yes, it's almost as if they're all hypocrites. Almost almost
that you will be listening to this podcast on Monday.
If all goes well. Tonight Sunday nights ten o'clock, we
have another meeting of Mike Johnson and the big beautiful Bill,
(16:39):
you know.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
At ten o'clock on Sunday night. Meeting screams out to me, everything's.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Fine, everything is going what could possibly go wrong? Going great?
Speaker 5 (16:46):
Are going great?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
When you're a member of Congress and you have a
meeting at ten o'clock at night on a Sunday. Mike
Johnson has done a number of really amateurish things. Set
deadlines he couldn't make right. Is supposed to be done
by next weekend. Could have put two bills together instead
decided to do one. I think the thinking here is
that they're only going to be able to get one
(17:08):
piece of legislation passed, which I think is probably very likely.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
True.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
But the top line in this House bill that I
want you to talk about, Rick Wilson, is something that
I feel like we have not been talking about in
the pundent industrial complex, and that is eight hundred and
eighty billion dollars cut from Medicaid.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
So it's now about ten days ago. I was told
by a reliable person I've known for a long time
who said there had been polling done for the Republican
Caucus and it was so bad that Mike Johnson refused
to let the polling company brief the members. And the
worst part of it was that eighty three percent of
(17:52):
American voters said that they would be more likely to
vote against a candidate who cut Medicare or Medicaid. Yeah,
good luck, Chief, because at that point, at that point, you.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Tell all Republicans if you have hit.
Speaker 5 (18:07):
A level where Republicans, no matter how loyal they are
to Trump, and no matter how much they want this
tax cut, and no matter how scared they are of
Elon and all this of their garbage.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, but I don't think they're so scared of the
al anymore. So let's talk about that next.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
But they're going to cut eight hundred billion dollars out
of Medicare and Medicaid over a five year window. Which,
first off, one thing that people have not figured out
yet about this is the minute you do that many many, many, many,
many American families who have a father or a mother,
a parent or grandparent in a nursing home right now
that is partly paid for by Medicaid. They're moving home, chief,
(18:44):
they're coming back. You enjoy that, You'll have fun, you'll
have phone. That happens.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
That's the nay mercenario for everyone. That and then also
your rural hospital is going to close. But I want
let's talk about Elon's more diminished role in the death
of democracy. So my man has gotten in there and
he's gotten in all the computers, he's fired a ton
of people. He's had to rehire some. Right, we have
(19:10):
some The FAA seems like it is having some issues,
Rick Wilson a little bit.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Yeah. You know, Look, they did in fact want to fire,
and they did offer early retirement to many of these
FAA controllers and many took it. We have about thirteen
thousand controllers we were due to hire under the Infrastructure
Bill about twenty five hundred more, which we needed that's
on hold. They're blaming Pete Butta Judge and Joe Biden
(19:38):
for doge cuts which disrupted the FAA. I've talked to
people in the FAA who I have been told are mortified.
They're working the extra hours, they're covering the extra bases.
But this thing has been so screwed up from DC
that the head of air Traffic Control took the retirement bonus, yeah,
(19:59):
and got out. This is a dangerous situation. Look, and
I'm going to do the as a pilot. But as
a pilot, I'm not a I don't fly a commercial jet,
but I fly in the instrument system all the time.
And you rely on these underpaid, overworked, overhassle people to
keep four hundred mile an hour, four hundred passenger steel
(20:23):
and aluminum tubes from crashing into each other. And it's
a pretty good use of my government, of my taxpayer money.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah. I would think so too. I would like my
taxpayer dollars to.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
Go to good to not having me killed in a
fiery crash.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's my I'm.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
Against the fiery crash thing.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
That's my hottest take. But I want to talk about
Elon for a minute. She's definitely. Let we don't know again,
because we have so little transparency into what the fuck
Doge did in our federal government, and years from now
we'll probably find out nothing good. Big Balls and his
group are still in the government. Computers are federal agencies.
(21:01):
But whether or not this is true, there is less
Elon in our.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Me there's less Elon in the press. And I I
have Atrairian take on this, and a lot of people are, oh,
he's thrown out, it's over. I have a contrarian take
on this. I think that Elon had this is a
very deliberate pr strategy to pull him out of the limelight.
I do think he had a little bit of fence
mending and fixing to do it Tesla and SpaceX, but
(21:28):
I think this is a very deliberate let's let's take
the heat off Elon by by by you know, making
him wear the ballgag for a few weeks. But I
still think the fuckery that's going on here that Elon
has a direct hand in, like the South Africans coming
here right right, which, by the way, the the the
oppression of those poor South Africans. You can see that
(21:50):
many of them had lost the Battle of Buffet Ridge
as they were coming off the plane. These were not
people that looked to me like they were that they
were draggled war refugees, But in fact they looked like
a bunch of fucking middle class people who watch too
much television, need too many carbs. Right.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
But the point, the point of the story is that
it's not clear. I think what we both are. We
know that Elon pulls slightly below the Saponic plague. Yeah,
and so we know that Republicans have a real incentive
to make him disappear, especially if you look at what
happened in that judicial election in Wisconsin. Ye, the polling
(22:31):
was that Elon did not help.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah. We tested ads that had the same message and
once said Brad Shimmel supports Trump, and it worked. It
wasn't it wasn't like a home run. It was like
a good, solid double. And then we said took the
same message, he supports Trump doing this, this and this.
Then we swapped it out and said Brad Shimmell supports
Elon and the DOJH agenda to cut medicare, to do this,
and it was one hundred and forty five percent more effective.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Yeah, insane it was.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
It was like, fuck, Elon, Yeah, Elon, doesn't that immune response?
You know?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yeah, Elon is polling poison. So the question is is
he really gone or is he pretend gone.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
My theory of the case is he has pretended on.
I am gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna die on this
hill that I think he I think he needed a
week or two to reset because SpaceX.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Has been having a lot of problems and seventy what
they had they had an earnings call where they announced
that they were down seventy one percent their earnings were down.
Imagine like what you have to do for your earnings
to be down seventy one percentage And.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
And think about this in context too. Molly the year
before SpaceX is board and it's and and I can't
remember her name right now. The chairman of the board
was arguing to both the board and to the Delaware
Chancery Court that Elon Musk last year deserved a fifty
four billion dollar annual salary.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
No, it can't be a billion billion.
Speaker 5 (23:58):
Oh no, billion with a book nollions.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
We're going to need a We're going to need a
fact check from Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
Here you can check it out.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
But the point is, uh yeah, so we don't know
is Elon gone or is Elon pretend to be gone.
We have no idea. And again I want I want
to go back to another thing we were talking about before,
this idea that Trump all these people made these deals, right,
and they were announcing these deals that were faky numbers.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Right right, trillion dollars.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Tell us about some of these Middle Eastern deals that
they were announcing, you.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Know, as I was on with Ali Velshi this morning,
and I refer to them as concepts of a deal. Right,
This is a this is these are press release promises.
These are not These are not actual hard number, you know,
commitments like the I'll give you an example, the the
supposed deal with with uh uh Tar to buy two
(24:54):
hundred and fifty billion dollars worth of jets. Well, it's
really to buy fifty jets with an option to buy
a hundred more. Okay, none of these things are and
again this is all such press release hurry up bullshit.
And some of these deals, by the way, had been
percolating that the arms deals in particular had been and
the Boeing deal had been percolating in the background. Since
(25:16):
well before Trump took office. Some of them were negotiated
by the Biden administration. They're just taking credit for them.
But a lot of them are just vaporware, right.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
But I also I love that they were so because
of everything is fake. They were just getting bigger and
bigger numbers. You know, I think, oh, Fatari's had a trillion.
You know, someone's an eight you know, billions, No trillion, billions,
you know.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
Yeah, none of that to my mind, None of that,
to my mind, is what we call real. Nobody. Nobody
in this world who deals with the Middle East, ever,
who's ever dealt with any business, organization, government, or person
in that ultra high wealth petro dollar universe, walks away
(26:04):
believing anything as racist as it was. Even Senator John
Kennedy said, you know, you can't trust any of these people.
Lock up your camel. Which look, if I had Campbell's
I'd be afraid that John Kennedy would come and, you know,
do unspeakable things to them.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
But well, I also think, like you know, this is
a little like anti Muslim.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
No, no, it's not. Actually, it's actual real talk. The
idea though, that Trump right goes and looks at the
Middle East. Now, I have to say, I think a
lot of American Jews had to be a little surprised.
And Israel has been totally cut out of all these discussions.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I'm not surprised. Here's an American Jew who's not.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yes, I think I have a little bit sophistication about this.
But Harris will abandon Israel.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
By the way, I was wrong about the fifty four
billion dollar pay day. It was a fifty six billion
dollar pay day.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
How is that possible?
Speaker 5 (26:59):
It was a I'm looking at Reuter's judge voids Elon's
unfafthable fifty six billion Tesla pay package. Right, just put
a link in the chat.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Okay, all right, I'm Ridy Wilson again.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Callum Williams is a senior economics writer for The Economist.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Callum, thank you very much for having me. It's nice
to be here.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
So let us talk about Generation X.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Are you generation X?
Speaker 4 (27:31):
First of all, No, I'm certainly not. I'm right in
the middle of the millennials.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Oh that's so annoying.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
This was a really interesting article that I read the
Economist that got me really As Jesse and I are
both Generation X.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
First, define what generation ACTS is. How old is Generation X?
Speaker 6 (27:48):
Typically these are people who were born between nineteen sixty
five and nineteen eighty. I mean, there's a bit of,
you know, poinless debate about really where the boundary is,
but it's roughly between those years.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
So let's talk for a minute about what it looks
like for these people sort of where they are in
their lives.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
Okay, well, I suppose you would say that they are
in early middle age on average. You know, they've they've
they've obviously left college a long time ago. If they're
going to have kids, that they're likely to have happened
by now.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Not certain, but but likely.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
They're at a point in their careers where, you know,
it's kind of they've probably reached the peak of where
they'll be in their in their career. They're not yet
retiring unless they've been enormously successful and sold the company
or anything. So you know, in that kind of period
of life, I would say, you know that the parents
are possibly still alive, possibly pretty old now, and their
kids are kind of not probably super young, but kind
(28:43):
of their kids are starting to move out of the house,
so they're in that kind of that kind of age.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I think it's fair to say that this, or at
least the sort of the thought of this piece was
that we in generation acts are the least written about
and thought about generation in some time.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
Right explained to us that that's exactly right. So, you know,
the Baby Boomers get a lot of hate, I would say,
because they've done.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
So well, yes, and maybe that's not the only reason,
I continue, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
Maybe not.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
So they get a lot of press, as it were,
had a lot of interest. And then the Millennials, maybe
less than before, but certainly in the twenty tens, like
people often talks about it, you know, how much millennials
were struggling to buy a house and how they've been
screwed over by their financial crisis and a lot of stuff.
So they've got a lot of press.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
And then gen Z. Of course everyone's talking about gen Z.
Speaker 6 (29:30):
You know, people worry about the effect that social media
is having on gen Z and whether gen Z are
entitled and all this kind of stuff. But the weird
thing was that actually people don't really talk about gen
X all that much, Like there aren't really many books
about gen X, there's not many many memes about gen X,
so it just seemed like a big gap in the literature,
and so I was looking at what's going on with
this with this generation?
Speaker 2 (29:50):
So why is that?
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Well, I think there's a few things going on.
Speaker 6 (29:54):
One is that they are a relatively small generation in
comparison with the Baby Boomers. So there was you know,
in the US, there was this enormous surgeon in births
after World War Two, and that created this big kind
of co orp which you just don't really have with
with with Gen X.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
But I guess also, like you know.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
I guess it's probably to do with the fact that
the Millennials and Gen Z have just been growing up
at recently, right, you know, people are more interested in
like young people than they are in middle aged people.
So it's partly to do with kind of where we
are in the long term use cycle. It's you know,
it's nothing that Generics has done wrong, it's just that
they've they're just that the sort of boring age I suppose, I.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Mean, yes and no, though, right, it strikes me that
there was more written about other generations too, right as.
Speaker 6 (30:40):
You were saying, you're saying, so twenty years ago, that
was probably more written about baby rivers.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Yeah, when they were in middle age. That's that's right.
Speaker 6 (30:46):
I mean, I don't know about that because my sense
is that interest in the generations has really taken off
in the past, like I would say, fifteen years. So
you know, the idea that people belong to a specific
generation is not something that's been around for a very
long time. But if you went back fifty years, no
one was really talking about like the baby Boomers or
(31:07):
you know, and if you ask someone like, what's the
generation before baby Boomers?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
The greatest generation?
Speaker 5 (31:13):
All right?
Speaker 6 (31:13):
So okay, well I can push that question again that
what's before that? And what's before that? Then you know,
you ask someone like, what's something fairly modern. Yeah, it's
not just a modern thing. I'd say it's like a
twentieth maybe even twenty first century thing. So yeah, But
I think also the other thing to spare in mind
is that, like the ability for us to analyze generations
(31:34):
in a rigorous data driven way, that it's definitely very
new because what you need to be able to do,
right is you need to be able to look at
at a given person of given age over time. It's
a bit sort of like follow that person from when
they're in their twenties to win their threads in their forties. Now,
that requires very detailed, in very high quality data, and
that really hasn't been amount for very long.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
That's certainly true. Why is generation acts the most sort
of fun generation?
Speaker 6 (32:01):
Well, the argument is that in two ways. So one
way is to do with the age that they're at
right now, right, and then the other way is to
do with the actual cohort of people, the actual specific
people who are you know, maybe in their forties now,
but will be in their fifties and ten years time.
So in terms of where they are right now, they
are at the bottom of what people call the U
(32:23):
bend of life right, which is essentially the idea that
you're you're happy when you're young, and you're happy when
you're old, but you're miserable in middle age. And that
is for all kinds of reasons including yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Why why are we miserable? Jesse and I want to now,
So what I.
Speaker 6 (32:37):
Would say for us is that this I think that
the evidence for this ubrend is is not bad. Actually,
I mean, it's hard to measure, but it seems pretty clear.
One factor is this this idea that you're responsible both
for young slash youngish children and responsible for old oldish parents,
So you're kind.
Speaker 4 (32:56):
Of being pulled in both directions, right.
Speaker 6 (32:59):
So that's a lot of work, and we did some
work to show that both in terms of the time
spent on caring for others and the money spent on
caring for others, gen X does a lot more about
in all generations right now.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
So that's one thing.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
When people get chronic health problems, they tend to emerge
around this time. People also kind of come to realize
that their career has really topped out, and so you know,
they might have aspired to be the CEO, but they
kind of realized by their fifties it's not going to happen.
So that's kind of depressing. Yeah, I guess those are
the main reasons. And you can see that in the
survey data that you ask people in loads of different
countries like how happy are you, and people who are
(33:34):
in Generation X are less likely to say they're happy
than people in other generations.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
M That is interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
So you think that they are less happy because of
their age and not because they have had less positive
struggle like boomers made a ton of money.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
You don't think it's that's the reason.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
Right, I see what you're saying. Yeah, it's a good question.
I mean, to be perfectly honest, it's hard to know
for sure. All I would say is that the U
bend idea has been around for quite a long time,
and so you typically do see that. For example, the
baby rooms appear to go through the same thing where
they were relatively unhappy when they were in their late
forties and fifties, and then they kind of saved it
(34:15):
when they moved into into their sixties and they've got
happier again. So I but I agree with you could
be right that this could also be a cohort problem
rather than just the kind of life stage of life problem.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
But it's hard to be sure.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Are boomers happier now?
Speaker 5 (34:29):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Why?
Speaker 6 (34:31):
Well, I think your view of life goes through some
kind of evolution. Right, you leave your job and maybe retire.
You go and spend all their golfing or going on cruises.
You've got more time on your hands. Your kids are
probably grown up, so they are looking after you rather
than you looking after them. Your parents have died, so
you don't have them to take care of. You know,
I think there's lots of reasons to expect people to
(34:52):
get happier if they properly age.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Do you think that the sort of higher rate of
illness caused by whatever have affected my generation, our Generation Generation.
Speaker 6 (35:04):
X, Well, they are, but I mean if you look, certainly,
if you look at the on mental health stuff, so
you look at questions of anxiety and despair and nut
kind of thing. You know, there's the U shape is
pretty it's pretty stark. Actually, like when you're in your
particularly we're kind of around age fifty, if you are
going to be anxious, it will be then basically. And yeah,
(35:25):
so on the kind of physical health problems like mobility
and you know, being diagnosed with some bad disease or
something like. I mean that's more anecdotal, I think, at
least in terms of such idea, but it you know,
it seems obviously correct that the older you get, the
more at risk you are of developing these problems.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
So yeah, I think I think that's right.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
But as I say, I don't think this is something
that affects necessarily affects Generation X more than other generations.
I'm sure that when I'm in my fifties, I will
also reach a peak of anxiety, and you know, I
will become more likely to realize I can't run like
I used to and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
So I'm going to go through it like everyone else.
Speaker 6 (36:00):
Oh so you think this is like midlife crisis. Yeah,
I mean you could call it a mid life crisis.
I guess it's a reflection that you of your that
your body is not what it used to be. Right,
you can't do all the things you used to be
able to do, Like you know, when you're in your
Maybe when you're in your thirties you can still go
out and drink a lot and be fine the next day.
Maybe that's less true in your forties and fifties, all
(36:21):
those kind of things like going out and paying soccer
with your kids. You like, you realize that you can't
turn as quickly as you used to, or you're more
likely to get injured and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Like it's as you know, that's a depressing realization for anyone.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
I think, do Americans seem less happy overall than other countries?
Speaker 2 (36:38):
How does this break down.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
America is about?
Speaker 6 (36:40):
In the middle, I would say of the happiness people
love to do cross country comparisons of happiness. But you know,
happiness the word happiness or whatever the word is in
different languages that you know, that means different things in
different countries. You know, happiness, I think for us in
the kind of English speaking West can often mean like
a great sense of fulfillment or like joy, whereas I
think can maybe scan Scandinavia it means more like contentment.
(37:03):
You know, those those do being different things. So I
think it's hard to say that country X is clearly
happy in the country why, you know, Like Japan, for example,
always comes out very badly on these on these topics
of on these questions of happiness, Japan seeds incredibly unhappy.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Now I.
Speaker 6 (37:18):
Don't know if you can really be sure that it
actually is like full of really unhappy people, just because
again the term happiness will mean something different in Japan
than it does in the US. But so what I
would tend to do is look at, you know, how
it's happiness changing over time within a country. Now, what
is very clear is that the US has it does
seem to have become less happy over the past stay decade,
(37:38):
fifteen years, not not massively so, and other countries have
got worse, but yeah, it has become less happy.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Do you be said about how the other countries feel
about America right now.
Speaker 6 (37:49):
Well, so I'm based in the US, but obviously I'm British,
so I can tell you that there is a bit better.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
And you guys have done a lot of work on
this at the Economist, which is why I'm asking.
Speaker 6 (37:59):
Yeah, you know, so they do these polls about who
would you vote for in the election? They did they
did a global poll just before the twenty twenty four election,
and obviously, you know, the Democrats win in a complete landslide.
I think people are quite shocked by the stuff about
defense and about the tariffs, so I would say, but
you know, I think, you know, people are smart. They
are able to distinguish between the actions of an administration
(38:23):
and what they encounter when they either come to America
or meet Americans. There was a lot of concern actually
the other day about this idea that travel from Europe
to the US has fallen off cliff and this idea
going around, particularly in the Financial Times, that Europeans were
canceling travel to the US because they hated Trump so much.
And actually that's turned out it could be completely wrong,
(38:44):
but it's just a kind of very basic stake that
they made in doing this stuff, and people still.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
Come come to US a lot.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
I mean, I'm in San Francisco, San Francisco, so there's
loads of tourists from Germany, and it's.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
What's the mistake.
Speaker 6 (38:54):
Well, basically what they did was they looked at the
year on year page change in people from Europe coming
to the US. And what you can see is that
I think it was in March of twenty twenty five,
the year on year change from Europe was like it
was like down like twenty percent or something. So could
say there is everyone freakdowns, like Europeans are canceling their
(39:15):
holidays to the US and it's because they hate Trump.
And actually what had happened was that in March of
twenty twenty four, so the year before, there was this
really weird spike surge in tourists and people visitors coming
from Europe to the US. I think it was to
do the Time of the East or something, And so
the comparison with twenty twenty five is really unfavorable. And
(39:36):
in fact, if you just looked at the level of
people coming to the US, it was fine, there was
no change. It was just because you were comparing it
with a really unusually strong month in the previous year,
and it looked really bad. But then if you look
at what's happened in April the year on your comparison
is much more kind of fair, honest, then in fact
there's no change at all. But I suspect that many
of the people that wrote that European tours into the
(39:58):
US is collapsed. I'm not going to be pieces of saying, oh, no,
it hasn't actually collapsed, because that's the nature of the
media these days.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
But there you go, Yeah, is that media or is
that hyperpartisanship? What is that?
Speaker 5 (40:10):
Well?
Speaker 4 (40:10):
I think it's probably a bit of both.
Speaker 6 (40:11):
It's you know, you see in academia too, where people
will publish results if they're exciting, but then they won't
report on results when they're not exciting, if you know.
Speaker 5 (40:20):
What I mean.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Is this a collapse of the sort of attention economy?
Is Is it just so hungry for attention that it
has a sort of attention to itself into no longer
being true? I think it's definitely. I think it's definitely that.
And I think getting clicks on Twitter is obviously massages
people's egos to a great degree. So I think it's
very nice to get clicks on Twitter, so I think, yeah,
there's a bigger sense to do that. I think the
(40:42):
spectru of Trump is something the journalists I think have
to be much more careful about than they are. I
think what basically what's happened is people most journalists, I
would say, wouldn't have voted for Trump. I think that's
probably fair, and I can go so far. I said
that most journalists really don't like Trump, and so I
think what they there's this behave you all bias? I
think as a result to finding stories that confirm what
(41:05):
they would like to believe, which is that Trump's awful,
and so people will do things and say things and
respond in a way that accords with the notion that
Trump is awful. So I think probably when people see.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
This right story like this, it makes sense because they
believe it.
Speaker 6 (41:19):
It's too good, And I think that blunts your critical faculties.
And I think, you know, had it been that's safe,
for example, that Kamala had won, and in fact, it
probably would have been exactly the same, tourism in March
twenty twenty five to the US probably would have been
twenty five twenty percent down as well. I strongly suspect
that no one would have written the piece saying everyone
hates Kamala, they're a band in it. It just wouldn't
have happened, right, So I think we have to be
(41:40):
very and I'm sure, I'm sure you think about this
aholl time, but I think you have to be so
careful about like, you know, would I have written this
piece if there was a politician in charge that I like?
Is always that question you got to ask yourself, And
I think people tend not to ask that question of themselves.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
I have seen pieces of that be true, but I've
also seen other things. But the thing I want to
ask you about now is this idea that if you
read the newspaper it was like very unlikely that you
would vote for Trump.
Speaker 5 (42:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (42:06):
Go, well, there's obviously there's obviously a causality question there is,
you know, does does reading the newspaper make you less
likely to about for Trump? Or do people who would
never have voted for Trump anyway are they more likely
to read the newspaper. I don't know the study referring
to it. I can't ask that question. I suspect it's
probably that part mostly the latter. I don't think people
really are persuaded by what they need in the newspaper
(42:27):
one way or the other.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
It's quite rare. It's basically quite work to.
Speaker 6 (42:30):
Change their minds about anything, right and mostly when say,
for example, with this piece that we're discussing now, the
gen X piece, right, generally, the letters I got about
this piece were either that was great, I completely agree
with everything you said, or it was You're an idiot,
You've got everything wrong.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
No one emailed to say or let what a letter
to say?
Speaker 6 (42:48):
Thanks for changing my mind on this particular point, because
I you know, people just don't do that basically unfortunately.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
But that's not a new thing.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I don't think so interesting. Thank you for joining us column.
Of course, no moment, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5 (43:08):
Yes, Molly John Fast are we ready for the moment?
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah? What is it?
Speaker 5 (43:12):
The moment America loves? I would say that this week's
moment is is a is an all time champion example
of everything Trump to just dies. The moment of fuckery
is our international credit rating? Tell me it's now been
reduced by a notch. It's been cut And Moody's was
very direct about what it was. I'm surprised Trump hasn't
(43:32):
attacked them yet.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yeah, well Moody's, Moody's, you're going to the Hague, going
to the hag, But they are.
Speaker 5 (43:42):
Credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in
a long.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Time since Obama, not because of since the twenty.
Speaker 5 (43:48):
Meta economic crisis, right right, Yeah, that was a crisis
where there was a downgrade and by the way, people
on the right at the time were screaming bloody fucking murder.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Including Trump clearly, who's always lead because.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
It's always Yeah, But the fact that our credit rating
has been downgraded, which is going to mean higher costs
for every American, higher interest rates, higher lending rates, uh,
more scarcity in the financial markets for people looking to
expand a business. All of this comes down to one guy,
and it's Donald Trump. Well, it's easy to make him
the moment of fucker every week. He really deserves it
this week.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
And I would add that, like, there's this scenario that
we are all really anxious about, which is why Trump
backed off the tariffs in the first place, which is
dollar flight to this idea that maybe the dollar stops
being the world's currency finally, and the your you know,
euro bonds or they go somewhere else. And by the way,
if they do that, right, because we have a president
(44:44):
who acts like a leader in an emerging country, and
our markets behave like emerging markets, and then we have
we find ourselves in a scenario where everything is more expensive.
The you know, debt is more expensive to service. We
are down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
That is pretty yeah, it is.
Speaker 5 (45:04):
It is a ship and all this is because of
his wrong ideas and his big ego.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Right well, and also because he wanted to onshore manufacturing
without doing the work of entering manufacturing.
Speaker 5 (45:14):
Unlike that chips and science sector which we had to
get rid.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Of, right because it was short manufacturing.
Speaker 5 (45:21):
Who knew?
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Everything is so stupid? Till next Monday, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5 (45:28):
Thank you, Molly. I'll talk to you later.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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