August 21, 2024 • 40 mins
This week Nate and Maria discuss the state of Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, including taking a look at her first policy proposals on price gouging and taxes on tips.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So today on the show, we're going to be talking
about the DNC and what's happening with Kamala Harrison, talk
a little bit about economics and some of the economic
questions of the campaign. But Nate, we are taping this.
You are currently this is Monday, August nineteenth. You're in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'm in Chicago kind of not for the DNC.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm here for a book tour event, which is yes, indirectly,
but yeah, I'm getting out of here in twenty four
hours basically.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
But when you were arriving to Chicago, Welcome to the
world of podcasting. You were stopped by the TSA and
they asked you about all of the audio equipment that
you were carrying with you and what you were planning
to do with it. And Nate is so embarrassing. What
did you have to tell them?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I had this is in LaGuardia, by the way, on
the on the way out, I had to admit to
being a podcaster.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And it's a busy time of day.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
There are all these people around and now I'm openly
admitting to being a podcaster.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
The scarlet pee.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
What happened? Did they detain you immediately?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
And they were like, oh, no podcaster and a podcaster here,
all right, okay, mister being shot right on through, mister
podcast that's not quit.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
What happened.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
It was.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
A very friendly yeah woman, not like a guy.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
But yeah, if you're a podcaster, always budget an extra
fifteen minutes to get through security.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I'm just telling you then, see, this is very good
risk communication strategy. We've already talked about when you have
to arrive at the airport, but if you're a podcaster,
please add fifteen minutes. This is our public service announcement
for today. So let's move on to slightly more serious things,
even though podcasting is serious business and traveling while podcasting
(02:09):
as here, Yes, let's talk about Kamala Harris. Do you
want to give us just a quick update on what
your models have been saying, because they, you know, in
the past few times that we've spoken the past few weeks,
every single time there has been positive momentum, and the
last few model updates have been actually going slightly in
(02:30):
the other direction, if I recall correctly, do you want
to talk us through this a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yeah, so this is Monday. There are some polls from
late Sunday night we haven't entered yet, but Harris was
a fifty four forty six favorite. Look, it's a poker show,
so I think our listeners can handle fifty four to
forty six. You'd rather have the fifty four than the
forty six. But it's basically a toss up Emrie, as
(02:55):
you mentioned, she's lost a little bit of the momentum
that she had kind of a week ago, in particular Pennsylvania,
a state where you know, I would have urged her
to pick Joshapiro.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
You've seen Poles showing a tie there.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
On the other hand, these other new pathways, like she's
actually you know, a slight favorite in our forecast in Arizona,
for example, which not a huge shock. I mean, Democrats
won Arizona in twenty twenty, but that's a state where
Biden had been way behind. And you know, Nevadas a
toss up Georgia, and perhaps.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
More surprisably pronounce that state might Nevada. We no, I
use good job Nevada. It's like I get psyched out,
you know, like I used to.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Have an employee work with named Meghan, right, but like
I always know is Megan or Megan and then and
by the way, I think like people's pronunciation, like Sarah
sr a h and Sarah sa ra are different names.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
By the way, I think people shouldn't Anyway, She's.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Also actually quite close in Georgia and perhaps more surprisingly,
North Carolina. I mean, some of this is the fact
that she's doing better with voters of color, with younger
voters groups that mister Biden. Why am I saying, mister Biden,
I'm saying, mister Bidens just filed a New York Times story.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
This is the first.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, yeah, she's doing better than Biden among like young
voters of color, and those are plentiful in North Carolina
and Georgia, young black voters, young Asian voters at TETRA.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
So she, you know, maybe is less dependent on Pennsylvania
than Biden was. But yeah, look, I think people can
make the mistake of when the chart is going up,
they assume it's going to keep going up, when in
fact it's something I would call a random walk more
or less. Right, you know, clearly it seems like there
was some something that wasn't priced into Harris as pulling
(04:51):
at first, people getting used to the idea of her
being the nominee, and she kind of reverted from being
three points behind to three points ahead two and a
half points ahead, which in some ways is a typical
number for Democrats. I mean, Hillary Clinton won the popular
vote by by two points, lost the Electoral College.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Of course, Joe Biden won it by four and a
half points.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So if she's in the two and a half to
three point range, and that's pretty normal for a Democrat. However,
our model is expecting that she will continue to rise
in the polls after the DNC. That's what we call
a convention bumper convention bounce. Typically this lasts for you know,
(05:30):
the day after the convention, you've had four days of
free television advertising on every network. You tend to see
your polls rise. It's like buying a lot of free airtime.
Then that fades over about three weeks. So we would
expect her to get to maybe four or five point
lead in national polls and be ahead in the large
majority of swing state poles, and then it resets by
(05:51):
the time we get to the second debate on September
tenth or her first debate second debate of the campaign
on September tenth in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So that's kind of the basic lay of the land,
I think.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, so there are a few things in there. One,
I do think that there is this psychological phenomenon that
has been documented everywhere. When you know, charts are going
up or down, people just expect that to continue. So
this is true like in the stock market, this is
true like pretty universally right when when things are going up,
like you just think that it's going to constantly go up.
(06:23):
And that's why it's so ridiculously difficult to like, you know,
sell the sell the top right. People usually miss that
because they just think, you know, or the housing bubble
right like, it's going to just keep keep getting better,
It's going to keep going up. This is psychologically just
very very very prevalent, and human psychology doesn't want to
(06:46):
think that the body like, oh shit, you know, it
might start going in the other direction. And so the
funny thing is, like all of the research that I've
seen and that I've done has been in just given
the fact that you know, I did my dissertation on
risky decision making but looked at stock markets. So that's
kind of the the box that I've always seen it in.
(07:07):
But it makes so much sense that with pulling it
would be it would be something similar where like you
expect those trajectories to continue, and if they don't, you're like,
oh my god, you know, oops, what happened? And it's
obviously much more important to get it right in these
particular arenas.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
No, And in poker, one thing I always say is
the chips have no memory of the previous hands, right
the other place a table might. But if you go
from twenty five K to fifty k, it's the same
as going from one hundred k taking bad be going
to fifty k, and you have to, if anything, you
might want to resist the urge. I mean, I think
there's winners tilt when you've been on a winning streak
and you start making rash decisions, and there's losers tilt
(07:44):
when you lose a big stack and then blow the
bush of it off. We talked before about the analogies
of Trump potentially being on tilt, but yeah, I mean, look,
it's still a tough campaign. If you want to make
the slightly contrarian bullish argument for Trump. Right then you'd say, Okay, well,
number one, maybe she already got her convention bounce. You
(08:05):
had very positive press coverage and the very exciting story
which you won the nomination. So maybe that was her
high water market came a week ago, and then and
then she'll stall out and it'll be close. But remember
Republicans have an advantage to the electoral college still on
our map, although it's narrower. Actually this is important. We
have an edge is being narrower than in twenty sixteen
and twenty twenty. If she wins by one and a
(08:25):
half points in the popular vote, we would have the
election then as a toss up. So it's less than
Hillary Clinton won by. We could talk about the reasons
for that maybe or not. But yeah, and you'd say, look,
and Trump has been very unfocused, but he's eventually, i mean,
a presidential election is something that's you want to win, right,
He'll eventually figure out better messaging about the economy and
the border. We're going to talk about Harrison the economy
(08:48):
in a minute. But yeah, there's still a pretty decent
case for Trump that her momentum has stalled out now
and that this should be a very strong period for her,
and she's in the lead, but not by much. And
they have a lot of ammunition that they still have
opportunities to fire.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, and so one other thing that you said, which
I think is interesting that we should should talk about
for a little bit. You had said that that initial momentum,
it seemed like maybe things weren't priced in right correctly
at the beginning where people were Kamala Harris was basically
outperforming expectations because expectations were set too low. And I
think that there are if you look at the psychology
(09:29):
literature of women who reach positions of power, right of
females in leadership, I think there are a lot of
good reasons why this would be the case, because oftentimes
the expectations are kind of people don't even realize it,
but the way that they kind of see someone. And
all of these studies, by the way, are not on
presidential candidates because there's you know, there's an end of
(09:52):
two now, but they're in you know, CEOs, CFOs kind
of women in those types of leadership roles, and you
find that over and over there are these expectations that
they're not quite gonna they're not quite going to hack it,
and their expectations are lower going in, and they're kind
of seen differently, and a lot of the same personality
(10:15):
traits and characteristics that help them get there then start
being seen in a negative light, and people start predicting
that they're not going to do as well because they
don't think that they're Oh they're not as charismatic, or
you know, you know, she's too cold, or she's to this,
or she's to that. So people aren't going to like her,
and they project that onto them, and so the kind
of the projections end up being incorrect. And I think
(10:36):
we're probably seeing that some of that had happened with
Kamala and that people didn't realize, oh wait, you know,
this might be some bias at play and not actually
how she's going to be performing.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
There's an old Gerald Ford cliff where some student asks
him do you think a woman could ever be president?
And the answers in a way that I'm sure he
thought at the time was quite progressive. Right, He's like, well,
you know, I could imagine a woman being vice president
and then something happens to the president and she takes
over and she's quite competent, right, So it wasn't quite
(11:10):
willing to, and then he said, and then maybe that
would open the door for it, right, But just kind
of in stages here. I do think that, like, you know,
maybe partly for gender and race related reasons and the
fact that you know, Biden had been losing to Trump,
and that like anything seemed you know, a thirty five
percent chance, which is what I thought she'd have before
we before we saw this polling surge is comparably better
(11:32):
than Biden's odds. So she benefited from low expectations, from
softer media coverage. And look, she's doing fine. But I
agree Maria that, like you know, if she's perceived as
the front runner, it's now her race to lose again.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
That can be tougher.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Absolutely, it's in some ways the underdog story, especially when
we're talking about the United States, has so much power.
People love the underdog, whether it's in sports teams or
or in political stories or or anything else. And you know,
you love the You love to hear it, right, you
love to see it. And if she flips and is
(12:12):
no longer the underdog for enough time, people's memory is
also short. Right at this point, we're like, oh yeah,
they're like Oh yeah, Kamala Harris is a candidate, right,
you forget that just you know, a month ago we
were talking about Biden has to step down. People's memories
are short.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
I mean, look, partly I think the media has not
covered the Joe Biden age beat. Well, they covered it
as a beat when it affected the horse race, whether
Biden or Harris someone else be the candy.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But it's also a governance story. Yeah. I look.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I these people on the left who think like the
media is biased, the mainstream media is biased against the
Democratic Party are fucking crazy. But leaving that aside for now,
I do think that, like Harris has this weird thing
where she's kind of running in some ways against the
incumbent party a little bit, right, I mean, what's it's like,
We're going forward, not back, even though she is technically
(13:08):
the incumbent parties carrenate. In fact, I made a mistake
the other day. We ran our model and I was tired,
and I just double checked the numbers before we publish, right,
and basically I conflated in my head the incumbent and
the challenger because in our model, the candidates are not
labeled Harris, Trump or even Democrat Republican and their incumbent challenger,
(13:30):
and I'm like, why is the incumbent party's numbers going up?
I thought it's just gonna be good for Harris and
Trump's numbers are going up or whatever, right when in fact,
so I somehow thought of Trump, who has the president before,
as the incumbent, and Harris, who hasn't, as the challenger.
But of course, you know, she is the vice presidential
incumbent right now. So it's a little bit it's a
(13:52):
little bit confusing, I'd say.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Maria, it is.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
It is confusing, and I'm actually curious, Like from I
think it's an interesting question when it comes to kind
of the polling, the statistics, all of that, because it
is something that people don't really think about when we
talk about kind of the psychology of the underdog narrative
incumbent challenger Trump was, you know, President Trump. And it's
(14:18):
an unprecedented kind of situation where we've switched where you
had one person running. It's literally unprecedented, right, this has
never happened in the United States before, where all of
a sudden.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
At this stage, I mean, so we only have the
current primary system since nineteen sixty eight or seventy two roughly,
you know, you did have LBJ get his clock cleaned
in the New Hampshire primary or underperform expectations is the
more proper framing of that. And then withdraw and in fact,
throughout American history, I mean, Wilson Truman, these people, old
(14:50):
men are stubborn and kind of had to be like
pushed off stage. And before the party had complete power
to do that, and now it has very limited powers,
has to work through persuasion. And then if had things
had gotten messy at the convention, then we would have seen.
But yeah, I mean, I think I think she's been
lucky that, like the Trump campaign hasn't been able to
(15:13):
tie here to Biden more so far. Maybe they will
be maybe you say, look, this whole mess is her mess,
and she's responsible for it. In fact, she's to his
left and things like that. But they, like I said,
they seem to be not on their a game right now.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Trump.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, I think that's very true, and I think that
she is trying to book that narrative a little bit.
But like I said, in terms of prediction, it is
very very difficult because she's incumbent but not incumbent, and
I don't think she wants to be identified as incumbent
so so far, so you know, in her choice of walls,
(15:49):
and because if they're really trying to say, like you know,
we're we're bringing something fresh and new and we're not
responsible for a lot of the bad stuff and trying
to shed that and trying to have this nice and
shiny new image, which has been helpful so far. But
I wonder if that is if they're going to be
able to hold it, because is the Trump campaign was
(16:11):
really unprepared for this. I think that's very clear. And
we were talking about this before and so they didn't
have their shit together, and so far as it.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Comes to we've made this point before, she wanted to
underscore one more time, like, how can you not prep
for this if you have like a team, you're an
NFL team, and the team's starting quarterback is questionable and
the backups totally different style, he's like a scrambler or
something like, how do you not fucking prepare a game
plan for both eventualities? But maybe we should start to
(16:41):
move on a little bit to policy, and we don't
do a lot of policy stuff. I do want to
ask you one more question than Maria. Yeah, on the
incumbency thing. Just get your intuition or expertise or whatever.
Suppose that tomorrow Joe Biden has some medical missap. I
don't want to speculate, Okay, which it is doesn't kill him,
but he can't be president anymore. And Harris inherits the presidency,
(17:02):
do you have any sense for that would help her
or hurt her?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I think that given her story right now, and given
what she's going for, if I had to guess, and
this is pure speculation based on kind of what I
know of kind of human psychology and what we've been
talking about with momentum and that sort of thing, I
think that it might actually hurt her if she had
(17:26):
to assume the presidency for a few months, because what
happens if there has to be a very unpopular policy decision,
like what if something happens in the Middle East and
she has to make a very unpopular policy choice, and
it's one hundred percent on her because she's the acting president,
you know, I think that there's a lot of potential
downside there, and not a lot of potential upside because
(17:48):
it's not like she's going to get presidential experience that
she doesn't have now in two months, So I think
that people can then have very very specific things to
pin on her that she won't be able to talk
around or kind of shrug off. And I think it
will make it easier for the Trump campaign to get
their shit together. But who knows.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
All right, So instance, it's kind of the Kamala Show.
We're gonna also the Kamala Kamala edition. I guess I
received business Kamala.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Addition, we're going to.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Talk more about her economic policies, which walks, like me,
neoliberal economics walks think are very dubious. Uh, but we'll
talk about that more after this commercial break.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
One of the things that people have been I think
the most upset about is rising prices everywhere, especially when
you go to the store, right and you look at
your and you look at the bottom line on your check,
and you're like, holy shit, how did this happen? It
happens to me too, right when I when I go
to like Whole Foods, or to Union Market, which is
my local grocery store here in New York, or Sprouts
(19:06):
when I'm in Vegas and I look at the bottom
and I'm like wait, wait, what did I buy? You know,
and and how how did how did this happen? Like
how much did things cost? Because I don't usually look
and then and then I have sticker shock, and I
think a lot of people are seeing that, and it's
given rise to one of Kamala Harris's first proposals, you know,
(19:27):
first actual policy proposals. Nate, do you want to talk
a little bit about what the Harris campaign has proposed
when it comes to what they've termed price gouging.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, it's actually a little bit vague what they proposed,
which maybe is a reason to take it a bit
less seriously. Some states have bans on price gouging, the
federal government doesn't. They're hard to enforce in any eventuality.
If it's happening, it's kind of very local level.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
The classic economist response is to say that price gouging
is they shouldn't be called price gouging. It's an economically
rational response to limited supply, and that charging higher prices
encourages suppliers to produce or goods. That if you don't
have price couching, then all that actually happens is you
have more queuing people. Wait, in line for longer to
(20:18):
purchase these items that they want. So yeah, the economist
braining part of me really thinks this is kind of icky.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Just to say, the reason that I was talking about
being in grocery stores is Kamala Harris is talking specifically
about price gouging when it comes to groceries, so not
not price grouching more broadly.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, I mean, and you hear it, and I mean
you don't hear about price gouging of like medical services
as much. Right, it's the things where you literally see
literal sticker shock right in the grocery store and gas
prices of the two where it's most often becomes an issue.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And at the World Series this is not technically price gouging.
But I have to ask you, Nate, can you so
I had to buy a banana during the World Series
of Poker. You did not have to buy a banana
at the World Series of Poker as far as I know,
did you.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I'm not really into bananas.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, okay, So well, bananas are really good food for
eating at the poker table because you know, it's it's
really like, it's healthy, nice energy, so you don't have
to touch it. You don't have to touch it.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
The banana lobby is not gotten to me, Maria, like
they have to you, I know the hyghe potassium, all.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Right, all right, So I had to buy a banana.
Do you want to guess how much my banana cost?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Nine bucks?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It's a really, really good guess. It cost eight dollars.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Because you set me up to think it's some absurdly
high number. But really, they charged eight dollars for banana.
I thought it was going to say they charged no.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
No, they charged eight dollars for a banana, which is
heartbreaking and it makes me want to just throw the
banana in their face. But I had to pay because
I really wanted that damn banana and they knew it.
So once again, technically, I know this is not price gouging.
This is very different. They have a monopoly. They're the
only vendors who are allowed to to kind of sell
at the World Series of Poker. But to me, like,
that's that's what I think about, and I think that
(22:04):
a lot of people are going to make faulty leafs
like that, right, And to say, oh, like, yeah, I'm
anti price gouge, so yeah, I don't want to pay
eight dollars for a banana, And I think that that's
sort of miss miss comprehension, misco miss, Yeah, what's what's
the word I'm looking for?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Misunderstanding can conflate that monopoly situation right in the situation
where you have one seller who's also the only supplier
of goods, there's no illegal banana.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Market outside the horseshoe or whatever, then.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
It purely is you have. You know, it's just a
matter of how much profit they're taking. Right You're gonna
sell one hundred bananas. You can either sell them at
nine bucks or at eight bucks or at three bucks
to make a profit either way, and it's just money
coming out of of you know, the world series Pokers
pockets versus poker players prockets pockets. But this is now
a monopoly situation, and you know, you know, there are
(22:56):
multiple suppliers of every good that you buy at Sprouts
or Whole Foods, whichever other, whichever other's store were giving
free advertising to you right now.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, absolutely, But but I do think it's it's interesting that,
you know, brains do conflate things like that all the time.
The policies themselves are vague. This area is vague. There's
a lot of kind of lack of understanding around this,
and I think that politicians tend to take advantage of
that by creating policies that seem to pander to kind
(23:23):
of this general feeling of malaise and oh my god,
you know, banana shouldn't cost that much, and look at
my grocery bill and blah blah blah, and create policies
that might not be optimal, but that satisfy people at
least in the moment. And by the way, when we're
looking at the election cycle and we're not actually enacting
(23:44):
these policies and these policies are very vague, it's not
a bad strategy, right, you want to tell people nice things.
I've talked about Donald Trump as a con artist. I
don't think that the Democratic Party is a con artist.
I don't think that Republican Party is a con artist.
I think he's one very specific con artist. But that's
a that's a con artist strategy, right, Promise people can
(24:04):
give them what they want and then you don't actually
have to deliver. That's where con artistry and politics crossover.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
It's pandering, for sure. She's proposed another category is not
taxing tipped.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, this is this is this is something that both
the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign have proposed that
if you're a worker who receives a lot of your
compensation and tips, then your tips will not be taxed.
And this is obviously very popular. It got the culinary
union in Las Vegas, which is the biggest union, absolutely
huge to get their support, but they threw it behind
(24:40):
the Democrats, which is important because Nevada is a swing state.
But that was right off the back of her saying
that tipped workers will not be taxed.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So what if instead of having a subscription to my
sub stack, I offer people to let me leave, to
leave a tip for me, which is then not tax
the roughly fifty five percent marginal rates I pay in
New York City as a high income taxpayer. Right, Like,
what I mean is that that's the problem too, is
that like this can easily be exploited or manipulated if
(25:11):
the policy isn't designed very well. But it's you know,
it's considered pretty inefficient to have things that can be
exploited in that way.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yes, And in other economic news, you know, we have
Donald Trump who's proposing ten to twenty percent tariffs on goods.
So let's talk about tariffs for a second.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, this is another one where people's intuitions go away
against I mean, you know, the teriffs basically become a
tax on consumers that you know, and by the way,
people like I like going to the little market and
being able to get whatever goods I can from whichever
country produces them. I mean, it's one of the most
amazing things about the global economy. And if I want
(25:49):
my little you know, German wafer cookies or something like that,
or avocados from Mexico, where avocados from Peru somewhere.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
In there are some from Mexico. Yeah, there are some
from California and Florida. There are avocados from lots of places,
but yes, Mexico is our is our friend when it
comes to avocado.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Imports my Fiji water, right, Like, I don't fucking tell
me what I have to pay more so, Yeah, So
tariffs are considered to be a dead weight loss, right,
They just make everything more expensive. I guess it is
a way to raise revenues, but a way to raise
revenues that destimulates the economy and is harmful for consumers
and but like, you know, both parties have moved a
(26:26):
little bit more toward protectionism and like another category two.
I mean, you know, subsidizing housing. Purchasing of housing is
also considered maybe not the best. Like housing does not
appreciate to the same extent that investment in the stock
market does, and people have this fetish I think sometimes
for home ownership that the government encourages. And maybe it's understandable.
(26:50):
I mean, but like, so you have a whole sweetened by
the way one last one. That's why I'm on my
little It's not really rant. It's pretty pretty low key mood.
The student loan relief policy that the Biden administration passed
was struck down by the courts, and they've tried to
piecemeal some of it back. I mean, that's pretty dubious
policy too. That creates moral hazard where now you spend
(27:10):
more because you think your debt might be forgiven later on. Right,
you know, why should why should college students? By the way,
most people who have student debt are like actually it's
often in graduate school, so it's often not poor college
students with people who are going to expensive medical schools,
law schools and are pretty well off. So why they
do it. Well, the answer is that most colleges can
people are Democrats. They're giving a solid to their party.
(27:33):
But like, that's another in the suite of policies that
are not considered economically optimal but are politically convenient or smart. Right, So,
how do you feel about all this stuff? Because you
are the one, Maria, the two of us, you openly
root for Democrats. I am planning of voting for Kamala Harris, right,
but I'm I'm you know, I would say not call
myself a partisan. But what do you think? Are you
(27:53):
okay with this? As someone who's both like a policy
and now, I.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Mean, I think that a lot of these policies are
actually quite bad. So let's just give a little bit
of you know, personal background in the sense that my
family grew up in the Soviet Union so many many generations,
and you know, I have an allergic reaction to a
lot of things that involve central planning, price controls, trying
(28:18):
to kind of create something where you say, this is
how much these things need to you know, how much
these things need to cost?
Speaker 4 (28:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Where there was the end result was there was nothing.
You had to wait in horrible lines to get that nothing.
There was a huge black market. People who had like
ends with the party or with someone could get goods
that other people couldn't get. There was a lot of
trying to kind of skirt around it, and a lot
of people were just hungry and died of hunger. Right,
(28:51):
So it doesn't central planning in no way works well.
And I know I've gone to like an extreme right.
That's not what we were talking about, but I just
wanted to set the stage with kind of why I'm
allergic to some policies that smell of that in any
in any way we're talking about price controls.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
I do think the fading of the memory of the
Soviet Union, right.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I mean, I'm forty six, so I can still remember
the Cold War, right, although it's a long time ago.
And if you're like thirty six, maybe you don't or younger,
you know that fading may increase support for certain types
of left wing economic policies. Oh again here it's like
not so much left wing, it's just inefficiently designed policies.
I'm actually I'm actually more forgiving as the nonpartisan pundit right,
(29:41):
in part because like I don't actually think that Democrats would.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Do very much of this stuff. Right.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Sure, they might have pretty narrow majorities, if they have
majorities at all in Congress. And you know, as much
as I can be skeptical of the expert class, sometimes
I do think that there's generally a higher caliber of
like policy wonks in the Democratic Party than the GUP.
Although again, you know, the Biden administration did do some
things that were you know, the student loan thing, I
think in certain ways is pretty and they did that,
(30:10):
and they spent a lot of money, more money than
some economists thought they should spend. Trump stood a lot
of money too, by the way, So it's kind of
bipartisan blame for inflation. So maybe I'm talking to myself
into being more worried about it. Maybe I think that
actually too many Democrats drink the kool aid and actually
could do some dumb stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
But at the.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Same time, like from a strictly campaigning decision, like I
don't think the annoyed huff huff calls from like neoliberal
economists is going to hurt her electorally speaking all that much. Right,
And you're you're trying Trump does lots of things that
are pandering. Also, I mean, who knows what Trump actually
believes deep down, so I'm not that bothered by it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I guess what about the no tips no tip tax,
because you know, I actually think that you made a
very good point where it does create an opportunity to
classify a lot of things as tips, especially for people
like you and me who are freelancers, right who piece
together are income from you know, speaking and writing and
(31:17):
you know and substack and podcasting and all of these things.
You know, what if we reclassify some of that as
you know, well, my real fee for giving a talk
is you know, one hundred dollars and then I take
you know, a thousand dollars tip on that, right.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
I literally used to work in tax law. I was
a consultant for KPMG in something primarily called the transfer
pricing UH protocol or not protocol, the transfer prising practice.
Transfer pricing is extremely boring. Is what happens when the
company has like multiple worldwide entities like Motorola is manufacturing
(31:57):
cell phones and Singapore and they get semiconductor chips from Taiwan.
How do you divide the profit up between Taiwan and Singapore?
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Basically extremely boring.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
That's why I was deadly bored and starf playing poker
and lots of other things that weren't as healthy as poker.
And but like you know, if you create eccentricities in
the tax code, then you'll have billions of dollars in
industry trying to figure out how to exploit those loopholes.
Maybe you get away for a year or so without it,
but like every loophole will be exploited. And believe me,
(32:29):
if there is some way to structure my incomes that
I pay less taxes by calling substack subscriptions a tip,
then I will do it. I have no moral qualms about,
you know, working my way around a badly designed policy.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Sure, and sometimes when you have rules, they they actually
just end up reinforcing things that already you know people basically,
the people who know how to get around them are
the people who are going to profit the most. Because
if you think about even tips right now, how many
service workers report one of their cash tips and then
(33:02):
pay taxes on them already right in the current status quo.
So so just think about that, right and then and
then think about kind of what we do by creating
these new potential loopholes where now you have more people
who are willing to skirt them in different ways. I'll
be curious to see what ends up happening with these
policies in reality, if Kamala Harris does get elected, We're.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Going to take another short break and then have a
quick wrap up about what we're looking for at the DNC.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Any personal updates in terms of in terms of what
you're doing right now. I'm about to leave for Spain,
where I have a many vacation, and then we'll be
playing in the European Poker Tour, so we're going to
have some more some more poker related possibilities. I hope
that I will run better in Spain than I did
(34:05):
at the World Series.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
We haven't.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
We never actually presented our listeners with the full results
of our bet. But I did not run well as
we as we all.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I don't remember well out of Maria.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
I think I'm a little overconfident in that I don't
know I and yeah, by the end, it was just
campaign crush, right, I was kind of all on a
Google document somewhere. Well, I don't know, we'll figure out.
We'll reconcile it at some point, Yeah, we will. I'm
here in Chicago now, By the way, there are concerns
about are you going to have you know, pro Palestine
or other protests or things like that. There's a big
(34:41):
police presence here. I mean I was walking around last
night and you see like squads of like six police officer.
They're friendly and they don't like menacing or anything like that. Right,
But but you know, it's a democratic run city in
a democratic run state, and Democrats want to put out
a good show. And you know, unlike in twenty I
don't think you have as much kind of police tension
(35:03):
as you had with the old mayor Lloyd Lightfoot in Chicago.
So I would be mildly surprised if there are protests
that get two out of hand. Of course, Chicago has
a reputation for violence at the convention, you know. I
so Harris's speech is on Thursday night after you're here. This,
by the way, the fact they're putting Biden and Hillary
(35:25):
Clinton and Kathy hokel. You know, the game like Chinese poker.
They're basically various poker games where you're dealt some large
number of cards, like eleven cards or thirteen cards, and
you have to divide them into two or three hands, Right, Yeah,
basically Chinese poker, sometimes you have to take all your
shit and put it in one hand and guarantee that
hand will lose to maximize.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Your chances of winning the other hands.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Right, They've got to taking all their fucking shit. Kathy Okele,
thirty eight percent of people riding Joe Biden, Hillary fucking
Clinton putting it on Monday night, they probably hope there's
gonna be some giant internet outage or something on Monday,
and then having three pretty good nights for the convention. Murray,
Actually you're having we're both having internet issues. That might
be the slow burned Democrat strategy to make sure that
(36:07):
nobody watches Joe Biden's speech to night or whatever. But
they will have compelling days of programming Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
You know, I think Harris has to resist the temptation
to be to be too cautious and too triangulating. I think,
you know, if she acts like she has an eighty
percent chance of winning instead of fifty three percent or whatever,
that might be a mistake. And by the way, we
haven't talked about it much in this program recently. But
(36:29):
of course Trump overperformed his polls in twenty sixteen and
twenty twenty, so I think she is a better candate
when she's running like she's three points down and not
three points ahead.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
So I'll be I'll be watching that. What are you
gonna be like, are you gonna be watching? I might?
Speaker 3 (36:43):
I mean I'm doing some book tour event in Seattle
or something, so I'm not sure I'm actually gonna be
watching it live, but I will have a little bit
of plenty of rescue business and silver bulletin content.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Absolutely absolutely I will try to watch live. I'm gonna
be in Europe, so the timing might be difficult for
me to watch live, but I plan on catching up.
And I actually also think it's very funny when you
don't see some of these things live to see what
the reaction is, because I sure I'm going to see
it on my Twitter feed when I opened my phone
before before I actually watch it, So it'll be it'll
(37:16):
be interesting to see what those what those moments are, right,
what those me moments are, what those kind of little
nuggets that get that get exerted look like, as opposed
to the impression of watching the real thing. Because it's
funny when we when we were talking about the debates,
right that that first absolutely train wreck of a debate
(37:38):
with Biden and Trump. The impressions were very different from
people who watched the whole thing versus people who'd just
seen clips, versus people who turned it on and off
at different times. And I think that that's actually that
that tells you something very interesting too, And I'll be
curious to see that.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
We both have a busy day ahead, so I think
we're going to leave it at that. Thank you for listening,
and tune in next time, and.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Good luck with the rest of your book.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Tourning Risky Business is hosted by me Nate Silber and
me Maria Kanakova. The show was a co production of
(38:22):
Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter.
Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Cheen. Our engineer is
Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
If you want to listen to an ad free version,
sign up for Pushkin Plus. For six ninety nine a month.
You get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
By the way, we think our listeners are pretty attentive.
The detailed level of feedback positive and negative. We get
reveals that if you were being attentive earlier, you might
have heard a reference to a Gerald Ford comment about
women ascending to the presidency. We're going to just play
the clip for you as a little easter egg here
as naudro see you next week.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
I hope we do have a young lady at some
point become president of the United States. I can tell
you how I think it will happen, because it won't
happen in the normal course of events. Either the Republican
(39:34):
or Democrat political party will nominate a man for president
and a woman for vice president, and the woman and
man will win. So you'll end up with president a
male and a vice president a female, and in that
term of office of the president, the president will die
(39:59):
and the woman will become president under the law or constitution.
And once that barrier is broken, from then on, man
better be careful because they'll have a hard hard time
ever even getting a nomination in the future. But that's
(40:20):
the way it's going to happen, and I think it'll
probably come sometime in the next four or eight years.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So today on the show, we're going to be talking
about the DNC and what's happening with Kamala Harrison, talk
a little bit about economics and some of the economic
questions of the campaign. But Nate, we are taping this.
You are currently this is Monday, August nineteenth. You're in Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'm in Chicago kind of not for the DNC.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm here for a book tour event, which is yes, indirectly,
but yeah, I'm getting out of here in twenty four
hours basically.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
But when you were arriving to Chicago, Welcome to the
world of podcasting. You were stopped by the TSA and
they asked you about all of the audio equipment that
you were carrying with you and what you were planning
to do with it. And Nate is so embarrassing. What
did you have to tell them?
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I had this is in LaGuardia, by the way, on
the on the way out, I had to admit to
being a podcaster.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And it's a busy time of day.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
There are all these people around and now I'm openly
admitting to being a podcaster.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
The scarlet pee.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
What happened? Did they detain you immediately?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
And they were like, oh, no podcaster and a podcaster here,
all right, okay, mister being shot right on through, mister
podcast that's not quit.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
What happened.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
It was.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
A very friendly yeah woman, not like a guy.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
But yeah, if you're a podcaster, always budget an extra
fifteen minutes to get through security.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I'm just telling you then, see, this is very good
risk communication strategy. We've already talked about when you have
to arrive at the airport, but if you're a podcaster,
please add fifteen minutes. This is our public service announcement
for today. So let's move on to slightly more serious things,
even though podcasting is serious business and traveling while podcasting
(02:09):
as here, Yes, let's talk about Kamala Harris. Do you
want to give us just a quick update on what
your models have been saying, because they, you know, in
the past few times that we've spoken the past few weeks,
every single time there has been positive momentum, and the
last few model updates have been actually going slightly in
(02:30):
the other direction, if I recall correctly, do you want
to talk us through this a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yeah, so this is Monday. There are some polls from
late Sunday night we haven't entered yet, but Harris was
a fifty four forty six favorite. Look, it's a poker show,
so I think our listeners can handle fifty four to
forty six. You'd rather have the fifty four than the
forty six. But it's basically a toss up Emrie, as
(02:55):
you mentioned, she's lost a little bit of the momentum
that she had kind of a week ago, in particular Pennsylvania,
a state where you know, I would have urged her
to pick Joshapiro.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
You've seen Poles showing a tie there.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
On the other hand, these other new pathways, like she's
actually you know, a slight favorite in our forecast in Arizona,
for example, which not a huge shock. I mean, Democrats
won Arizona in twenty twenty, but that's a state where
Biden had been way behind. And you know, Nevadas a
toss up Georgia, and perhaps.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
More surprisably pronounce that state might Nevada. We no, I
use good job Nevada. It's like I get psyched out,
you know, like I used to.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Have an employee work with named Meghan, right, but like
I always know is Megan or Megan and then and
by the way, I think like people's pronunciation, like Sarah
sr a h and Sarah sa ra are different names.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
By the way, I think people shouldn't Anyway, She's.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Also actually quite close in Georgia and perhaps more surprisingly,
North Carolina. I mean, some of this is the fact
that she's doing better with voters of color, with younger
voters groups that mister Biden. Why am I saying, mister Biden,
I'm saying, mister Bidens just filed a New York Times story.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
This is the first.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, yeah, she's doing better than Biden among like young
voters of color, and those are plentiful in North Carolina
and Georgia, young black voters, young Asian voters at TETRA.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
So she, you know, maybe is less dependent on Pennsylvania
than Biden was. But yeah, look, I think people can
make the mistake of when the chart is going up,
they assume it's going to keep going up, when in
fact it's something I would call a random walk more
or less. Right, you know, clearly it seems like there
was some something that wasn't priced into Harris as pulling
(04:51):
at first, people getting used to the idea of her
being the nominee, and she kind of reverted from being
three points behind to three points ahead two and a
half points ahead, which in some ways is a typical
number for Democrats. I mean, Hillary Clinton won the popular
vote by by two points, lost the Electoral College.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Of course, Joe Biden won it by four and a
half points.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So if she's in the two and a half to
three point range, and that's pretty normal for a Democrat. However,
our model is expecting that she will continue to rise
in the polls after the DNC. That's what we call
a convention bumper convention bounce. Typically this lasts for you know,
(05:30):
the day after the convention, you've had four days of
free television advertising on every network. You tend to see
your polls rise. It's like buying a lot of free airtime.
Then that fades over about three weeks. So we would
expect her to get to maybe four or five point
lead in national polls and be ahead in the large
majority of swing state poles, and then it resets by
(05:51):
the time we get to the second debate on September
tenth or her first debate second debate of the campaign
on September tenth in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So that's kind of the basic lay of the land,
I think.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, so there are a few things in there. One,
I do think that there is this psychological phenomenon that
has been documented everywhere. When you know, charts are going
up or down, people just expect that to continue. So
this is true like in the stock market, this is
true like pretty universally right when when things are going up,
like you just think that it's going to constantly go up.
(06:23):
And that's why it's so ridiculously difficult to like, you know,
sell the sell the top right. People usually miss that
because they just think, you know, or the housing bubble
right like, it's going to just keep keep getting better,
It's going to keep going up. This is psychologically just
very very very prevalent, and human psychology doesn't want to
(06:46):
think that the body like, oh shit, you know, it
might start going in the other direction. And so the
funny thing is, like all of the research that I've
seen and that I've done has been in just given
the fact that you know, I did my dissertation on
risky decision making but looked at stock markets. So that's
kind of the the box that I've always seen it in.
(07:07):
But it makes so much sense that with pulling it
would be it would be something similar where like you
expect those trajectories to continue, and if they don't, you're like,
oh my god, you know, oops, what happened? And it's
obviously much more important to get it right in these
particular arenas.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
No, And in poker, one thing I always say is
the chips have no memory of the previous hands, right
the other place a table might. But if you go
from twenty five K to fifty k, it's the same
as going from one hundred k taking bad be going
to fifty k, and you have to, if anything, you
might want to resist the urge. I mean, I think
there's winners tilt when you've been on a winning streak
and you start making rash decisions, and there's losers tilt
(07:44):
when you lose a big stack and then blow the
bush of it off. We talked before about the analogies
of Trump potentially being on tilt, but yeah, I mean, look,
it's still a tough campaign. If you want to make
the slightly contrarian bullish argument for Trump. Right then you'd say, Okay, well,
number one, maybe she already got her convention bounce. You
(08:05):
had very positive press coverage and the very exciting story
which you won the nomination. So maybe that was her
high water market came a week ago, and then and
then she'll stall out and it'll be close. But remember
Republicans have an advantage to the electoral college still on
our map, although it's narrower. Actually this is important. We
have an edge is being narrower than in twenty sixteen
and twenty twenty. If she wins by one and a
(08:25):
half points in the popular vote, we would have the
election then as a toss up. So it's less than
Hillary Clinton won by. We could talk about the reasons
for that maybe or not. But yeah, and you'd say, look,
and Trump has been very unfocused, but he's eventually, i mean,
a presidential election is something that's you want to win, right,
He'll eventually figure out better messaging about the economy and
the border. We're going to talk about Harrison the economy
(08:48):
in a minute. But yeah, there's still a pretty decent
case for Trump that her momentum has stalled out now
and that this should be a very strong period for her,
and she's in the lead, but not by much. And
they have a lot of ammunition that they still have
opportunities to fire.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, and so one other thing that you said, which
I think is interesting that we should should talk about
for a little bit. You had said that that initial momentum,
it seemed like maybe things weren't priced in right correctly
at the beginning where people were Kamala Harris was basically
outperforming expectations because expectations were set too low. And I
think that there are if you look at the psychology
(09:29):
literature of women who reach positions of power, right of
females in leadership, I think there are a lot of
good reasons why this would be the case, because oftentimes
the expectations are kind of people don't even realize it,
but the way that they kind of see someone. And
all of these studies, by the way, are not on
presidential candidates because there's you know, there's an end of
(09:52):
two now, but they're in you know, CEOs, CFOs kind
of women in those types of leadership roles, and you
find that over and over there are these expectations that
they're not quite gonna they're not quite going to hack it,
and their expectations are lower going in, and they're kind
of seen differently, and a lot of the same personality
(10:15):
traits and characteristics that help them get there then start
being seen in a negative light, and people start predicting
that they're not going to do as well because they
don't think that they're Oh they're not as charismatic, or
you know, you know, she's too cold, or she's to this,
or she's to that. So people aren't going to like her,
and they project that onto them, and so the kind
of the projections end up being incorrect. And I think
(10:36):
we're probably seeing that some of that had happened with
Kamala and that people didn't realize, oh wait, you know,
this might be some bias at play and not actually
how she's going to be performing.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
There's an old Gerald Ford cliff where some student asks
him do you think a woman could ever be president?
And the answers in a way that I'm sure he
thought at the time was quite progressive. Right, He's like, well,
you know, I could imagine a woman being vice president
and then something happens to the president and she takes
over and she's quite competent, right, So it wasn't quite
(11:10):
willing to, and then he said, and then maybe that
would open the door for it, right, But just kind
of in stages here. I do think that, like, you know,
maybe partly for gender and race related reasons and the
fact that you know, Biden had been losing to Trump,
and that like anything seemed you know, a thirty five
percent chance, which is what I thought she'd have before
we before we saw this polling surge is comparably better
(11:32):
than Biden's odds. So she benefited from low expectations, from
softer media coverage. And look, she's doing fine. But I
agree Maria that, like you know, if she's perceived as
the front runner, it's now her race to lose again.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
That can be tougher.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Absolutely, it's in some ways the underdog story, especially when
we're talking about the United States, has so much power.
People love the underdog, whether it's in sports teams or
or in political stories or or anything else. And you know,
you love the You love to hear it, right, you
love to see it. And if she flips and is
(12:12):
no longer the underdog for enough time, people's memory is
also short. Right at this point, we're like, oh yeah,
they're like Oh yeah, Kamala Harris is a candidate, right,
you forget that just you know, a month ago we
were talking about Biden has to step down. People's memories
are short.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
I mean, look, partly I think the media has not
covered the Joe Biden age beat. Well, they covered it
as a beat when it affected the horse race, whether
Biden or Harris someone else be the candy.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But it's also a governance story. Yeah. I look.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I these people on the left who think like the
media is biased, the mainstream media is biased against the
Democratic Party are fucking crazy. But leaving that aside for now,
I do think that, like Harris has this weird thing
where she's kind of running in some ways against the
incumbent party a little bit, right, I mean, what's it's like,
We're going forward, not back, even though she is technically
(13:08):
the incumbent parties carrenate. In fact, I made a mistake
the other day. We ran our model and I was tired,
and I just double checked the numbers before we publish, right,
and basically I conflated in my head the incumbent and
the challenger because in our model, the candidates are not
labeled Harris, Trump or even Democrat Republican and their incumbent challenger,
(13:30):
and I'm like, why is the incumbent party's numbers going up?
I thought it's just gonna be good for Harris and
Trump's numbers are going up or whatever, right when in fact,
so I somehow thought of Trump, who has the president before,
as the incumbent, and Harris, who hasn't, as the challenger.
But of course, you know, she is the vice presidential
incumbent right now. So it's a little bit it's a
(13:52):
little bit confusing, I'd say.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Maria, it is.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
It is confusing, and I'm actually curious, Like from I
think it's an interesting question when it comes to kind
of the polling, the statistics, all of that, because it
is something that people don't really think about when we
talk about kind of the psychology of the underdog narrative
incumbent challenger Trump was, you know, President Trump. And it's
(14:18):
an unprecedented kind of situation where we've switched where you
had one person running. It's literally unprecedented, right, this has
never happened in the United States before, where all of
a sudden.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
At this stage, I mean, so we only have the
current primary system since nineteen sixty eight or seventy two roughly,
you know, you did have LBJ get his clock cleaned
in the New Hampshire primary or underperform expectations is the
more proper framing of that. And then withdraw and in fact,
throughout American history, I mean, Wilson Truman, these people, old
(14:50):
men are stubborn and kind of had to be like
pushed off stage. And before the party had complete power
to do that, and now it has very limited powers,
has to work through persuasion. And then if had things
had gotten messy at the convention, then we would have seen.
But yeah, I mean, I think I think she's been
lucky that, like the Trump campaign hasn't been able to
(15:13):
tie here to Biden more so far. Maybe they will
be maybe you say, look, this whole mess is her mess,
and she's responsible for it. In fact, she's to his
left and things like that. But they, like I said,
they seem to be not on their a game right now.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Trump.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, I think that's very true, and I think that
she is trying to book that narrative a little bit.
But like I said, in terms of prediction, it is
very very difficult because she's incumbent but not incumbent, and
I don't think she wants to be identified as incumbent
so so far, so you know, in her choice of walls,
(15:49):
and because if they're really trying to say, like you know,
we're we're bringing something fresh and new and we're not
responsible for a lot of the bad stuff and trying
to shed that and trying to have this nice and
shiny new image, which has been helpful so far. But
I wonder if that is if they're going to be
able to hold it, because is the Trump campaign was
(16:11):
really unprepared for this. I think that's very clear. And
we were talking about this before and so they didn't
have their shit together, and so far as it.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Comes to we've made this point before, she wanted to
underscore one more time, like, how can you not prep
for this if you have like a team, you're an
NFL team, and the team's starting quarterback is questionable and
the backups totally different style, he's like a scrambler or
something like, how do you not fucking prepare a game
plan for both eventualities? But maybe we should start to
(16:41):
move on a little bit to policy, and we don't
do a lot of policy stuff. I do want to
ask you one more question than Maria. Yeah, on the
incumbency thing. Just get your intuition or expertise or whatever.
Suppose that tomorrow Joe Biden has some medical missap. I
don't want to speculate, Okay, which it is doesn't kill him,
but he can't be president anymore. And Harris inherits the presidency,
(17:02):
do you have any sense for that would help her
or hurt her?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I think that given her story right now, and given
what she's going for, if I had to guess, and
this is pure speculation based on kind of what I
know of kind of human psychology and what we've been
talking about with momentum and that sort of thing, I
think that it might actually hurt her if she had
(17:26):
to assume the presidency for a few months, because what
happens if there has to be a very unpopular policy decision,
like what if something happens in the Middle East and
she has to make a very unpopular policy choice, and
it's one hundred percent on her because she's the acting president,
you know, I think that there's a lot of potential
downside there, and not a lot of potential upside because
(17:48):
it's not like she's going to get presidential experience that
she doesn't have now in two months, So I think
that people can then have very very specific things to
pin on her that she won't be able to talk
around or kind of shrug off. And I think it
will make it easier for the Trump campaign to get
their shit together. But who knows.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
All right, So instance, it's kind of the Kamala Show.
We're gonna also the Kamala Kamala edition. I guess I
received business Kamala.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Addition, we're going to.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Talk more about her economic policies, which walks, like me,
neoliberal economics walks think are very dubious. Uh, but we'll
talk about that more after this commercial break.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
One of the things that people have been I think
the most upset about is rising prices everywhere, especially when
you go to the store, right and you look at
your and you look at the bottom line on your check,
and you're like, holy shit, how did this happen? It
happens to me too, right when I when I go
to like Whole Foods, or to Union Market, which is
my local grocery store here in New York, or Sprouts
(19:06):
when I'm in Vegas and I look at the bottom
and I'm like wait, wait, what did I buy? You know,
and and how how did how did this happen? Like
how much did things cost? Because I don't usually look
and then and then I have sticker shock, and I
think a lot of people are seeing that, and it's
given rise to one of Kamala Harris's first proposals, you know,
(19:27):
first actual policy proposals. Nate, do you want to talk
a little bit about what the Harris campaign has proposed
when it comes to what they've termed price gouging.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, it's actually a little bit vague what they proposed,
which maybe is a reason to take it a bit
less seriously. Some states have bans on price gouging, the
federal government doesn't. They're hard to enforce in any eventuality.
If it's happening, it's kind of very local level.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
The classic economist response is to say that price gouging
is they shouldn't be called price gouging. It's an economically
rational response to limited supply, and that charging higher prices
encourages suppliers to produce or goods. That if you don't
have price couching, then all that actually happens is you
have more queuing people. Wait, in line for longer to
(20:18):
purchase these items that they want. So yeah, the economist
braining part of me really thinks this is kind of icky.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Just to say, the reason that I was talking about
being in grocery stores is Kamala Harris is talking specifically
about price gouging when it comes to groceries, so not
not price grouching more broadly.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, I mean, and you hear it, and I mean
you don't hear about price gouging of like medical services
as much. Right, it's the things where you literally see
literal sticker shock right in the grocery store and gas
prices of the two where it's most often becomes an issue.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And at the World Series this is not technically price gouging.
But I have to ask you, Nate, can you so
I had to buy a banana during the World Series
of Poker. You did not have to buy a banana
at the World Series of Poker as far as I know,
did you.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I'm not really into bananas.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, okay, So well, bananas are really good food for
eating at the poker table because you know, it's it's
really like, it's healthy, nice energy, so you don't have
to touch it. You don't have to touch it.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
The banana lobby is not gotten to me, Maria, like
they have to you, I know the hyghe potassium, all.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Right, all right, So I had to buy a banana.
Do you want to guess how much my banana cost?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Nine bucks?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
It's a really, really good guess. It cost eight dollars.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Because you set me up to think it's some absurdly
high number. But really, they charged eight dollars for banana.
I thought it was going to say they charged no.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
No, they charged eight dollars for a banana, which is
heartbreaking and it makes me want to just throw the
banana in their face. But I had to pay because
I really wanted that damn banana and they knew it.
So once again, technically, I know this is not price gouging.
This is very different. They have a monopoly. They're the
only vendors who are allowed to to kind of sell
at the World Series of Poker. But to me, like,
that's that's what I think about, and I think that
(22:04):
a lot of people are going to make faulty leafs
like that, right, And to say, oh, like, yeah, I'm
anti price gouge, so yeah, I don't want to pay
eight dollars for a banana, And I think that that's
sort of miss miss comprehension, misco miss, Yeah, what's what's
the word I'm looking for?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Misunderstanding can conflate that monopoly situation right in the situation
where you have one seller who's also the only supplier
of goods, there's no illegal banana.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Market outside the horseshoe or whatever, then.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
It purely is you have. You know, it's just a
matter of how much profit they're taking. Right You're gonna
sell one hundred bananas. You can either sell them at
nine bucks or at eight bucks or at three bucks
to make a profit either way, and it's just money
coming out of of you know, the world series Pokers
pockets versus poker players prockets pockets. But this is now
a monopoly situation, and you know, you know, there are
(22:56):
multiple suppliers of every good that you buy at Sprouts
or Whole Foods, whichever other, whichever other's store were giving
free advertising to you right now.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, absolutely, But but I do think it's it's interesting that,
you know, brains do conflate things like that all the time.
The policies themselves are vague. This area is vague. There's
a lot of kind of lack of understanding around this,
and I think that politicians tend to take advantage of
that by creating policies that seem to pander to kind
(23:23):
of this general feeling of malaise and oh my god,
you know, banana shouldn't cost that much, and look at
my grocery bill and blah blah blah, and create policies
that might not be optimal, but that satisfy people at
least in the moment. And by the way, when we're
looking at the election cycle and we're not actually enacting
(23:44):
these policies and these policies are very vague, it's not
a bad strategy, right, you want to tell people nice things.
I've talked about Donald Trump as a con artist. I
don't think that the Democratic Party is a con artist.
I don't think that Republican Party is a con artist.
I think he's one very specific con artist. But that's
a that's a con artist strategy, right, Promise people can
(24:04):
give them what they want and then you don't actually
have to deliver. That's where con artistry and politics crossover.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
It's pandering, for sure. She's proposed another category is not
taxing tipped.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, this is this is this is something that both
the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign have proposed that
if you're a worker who receives a lot of your
compensation and tips, then your tips will not be taxed.
And this is obviously very popular. It got the culinary
union in Las Vegas, which is the biggest union, absolutely
huge to get their support, but they threw it behind
(24:40):
the Democrats, which is important because Nevada is a swing state.
But that was right off the back of her saying
that tipped workers will not be taxed.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So what if instead of having a subscription to my
sub stack, I offer people to let me leave, to
leave a tip for me, which is then not tax
the roughly fifty five percent marginal rates I pay in
New York City as a high income taxpayer. Right, Like,
what I mean is that that's the problem too, is
that like this can easily be exploited or manipulated if
(25:11):
the policy isn't designed very well. But it's you know,
it's considered pretty inefficient to have things that can be
exploited in that way.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yes, And in other economic news, you know, we have
Donald Trump who's proposing ten to twenty percent tariffs on goods.
So let's talk about tariffs for a second.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, this is another one where people's intuitions go away
against I mean, you know, the teriffs basically become a
tax on consumers that you know, and by the way,
people like I like going to the little market and
being able to get whatever goods I can from whichever
country produces them. I mean, it's one of the most
amazing things about the global economy. And if I want
(25:49):
my little you know, German wafer cookies or something like that,
or avocados from Mexico, where avocados from Peru somewhere.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
In there are some from Mexico. Yeah, there are some
from California and Florida. There are avocados from lots of places,
but yes, Mexico is our is our friend when it
comes to avocado.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Imports my Fiji water, right, Like, I don't fucking tell
me what I have to pay more so, Yeah, So
tariffs are considered to be a dead weight loss, right,
They just make everything more expensive. I guess it is
a way to raise revenues, but a way to raise
revenues that destimulates the economy and is harmful for consumers
and but like, you know, both parties have moved a
(26:26):
little bit more toward protectionism and like another category two.
I mean, you know, subsidizing housing. Purchasing of housing is
also considered maybe not the best. Like housing does not
appreciate to the same extent that investment in the stock
market does, and people have this fetish I think sometimes
for home ownership that the government encourages. And maybe it's understandable.
(26:50):
I mean, but like, so you have a whole sweetened by
the way one last one. That's why I'm on my
little It's not really rant. It's pretty pretty low key mood.
The student loan relief policy that the Biden administration passed
was struck down by the courts, and they've tried to
piecemeal some of it back. I mean, that's pretty dubious
policy too. That creates moral hazard where now you spend
(27:10):
more because you think your debt might be forgiven later on. Right,
you know, why should why should college students? By the way,
most people who have student debt are like actually it's
often in graduate school, so it's often not poor college
students with people who are going to expensive medical schools,
law schools and are pretty well off. So why they
do it. Well, the answer is that most colleges can
people are Democrats. They're giving a solid to their party.
(27:33):
But like, that's another in the suite of policies that
are not considered economically optimal but are politically convenient or smart. Right, So,
how do you feel about all this stuff? Because you
are the one, Maria, the two of us, you openly
root for Democrats. I am planning of voting for Kamala Harris, right,
but I'm I'm you know, I would say not call
myself a partisan. But what do you think? Are you
(27:53):
okay with this? As someone who's both like a policy
and now, I.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Mean, I think that a lot of these policies are
actually quite bad. So let's just give a little bit
of you know, personal background in the sense that my
family grew up in the Soviet Union so many many generations,
and you know, I have an allergic reaction to a
lot of things that involve central planning, price controls, trying
(28:18):
to kind of create something where you say, this is
how much these things need to you know, how much
these things need to cost?
Speaker 4 (28:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Where there was the end result was there was nothing.
You had to wait in horrible lines to get that nothing.
There was a huge black market. People who had like
ends with the party or with someone could get goods
that other people couldn't get. There was a lot of
trying to kind of skirt around it, and a lot
of people were just hungry and died of hunger. Right,
(28:51):
So it doesn't central planning in no way works well.
And I know I've gone to like an extreme right.
That's not what we were talking about, but I just
wanted to set the stage with kind of why I'm
allergic to some policies that smell of that in any
in any way we're talking about price controls.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
I do think the fading of the memory of the
Soviet Union, right.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I mean, I'm forty six, so I can still remember
the Cold War, right, although it's a long time ago.
And if you're like thirty six, maybe you don't or younger,
you know that fading may increase support for certain types
of left wing economic policies. Oh again here it's like
not so much left wing, it's just inefficiently designed policies.
I'm actually I'm actually more forgiving as the nonpartisan pundit right,
(29:41):
in part because like I don't actually think that Democrats would.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Do very much of this stuff. Right.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Sure, they might have pretty narrow majorities, if they have
majorities at all in Congress. And you know, as much
as I can be skeptical of the expert class, sometimes
I do think that there's generally a higher caliber of
like policy wonks in the Democratic Party than the GUP.
Although again, you know, the Biden administration did do some
things that were you know, the student loan thing, I
think in certain ways is pretty and they did that,
(30:10):
and they spent a lot of money, more money than
some economists thought they should spend. Trump stood a lot
of money too, by the way, So it's kind of
bipartisan blame for inflation. So maybe I'm talking to myself
into being more worried about it. Maybe I think that
actually too many Democrats drink the kool aid and actually
could do some dumb stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
But at the.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Same time, like from a strictly campaigning decision, like I
don't think the annoyed huff huff calls from like neoliberal
economists is going to hurt her electorally speaking all that much. Right,
And you're you're trying Trump does lots of things that
are pandering. Also, I mean, who knows what Trump actually
believes deep down, so I'm not that bothered by it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I guess what about the no tips no tip tax,
because you know, I actually think that you made a
very good point where it does create an opportunity to
classify a lot of things as tips, especially for people
like you and me who are freelancers, right who piece
together are income from you know, speaking and writing and
(31:17):
you know and substack and podcasting and all of these things.
You know, what if we reclassify some of that as
you know, well, my real fee for giving a talk
is you know, one hundred dollars and then I take
you know, a thousand dollars tip on that, right.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
I literally used to work in tax law. I was
a consultant for KPMG in something primarily called the transfer
pricing UH protocol or not protocol, the transfer prising practice.
Transfer pricing is extremely boring. Is what happens when the
company has like multiple worldwide entities like Motorola is manufacturing
(31:57):
cell phones and Singapore and they get semiconductor chips from Taiwan.
How do you divide the profit up between Taiwan and Singapore?
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Basically extremely boring.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
That's why I was deadly bored and starf playing poker
and lots of other things that weren't as healthy as poker.
And but like you know, if you create eccentricities in
the tax code, then you'll have billions of dollars in
industry trying to figure out how to exploit those loopholes.
Maybe you get away for a year or so without it,
but like every loophole will be exploited. And believe me,
(32:29):
if there is some way to structure my incomes that
I pay less taxes by calling substack subscriptions a tip,
then I will do it. I have no moral qualms about,
you know, working my way around a badly designed policy.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Sure, and sometimes when you have rules, they they actually
just end up reinforcing things that already you know people basically,
the people who know how to get around them are
the people who are going to profit the most. Because
if you think about even tips right now, how many
service workers report one of their cash tips and then
(33:02):
pay taxes on them already right in the current status quo.
So so just think about that, right and then and
then think about kind of what we do by creating
these new potential loopholes where now you have more people
who are willing to skirt them in different ways. I'll
be curious to see what ends up happening with these
policies in reality, if Kamala Harris does get elected, We're.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Going to take another short break and then have a
quick wrap up about what we're looking for at the DNC.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Any personal updates in terms of in terms of what
you're doing right now. I'm about to leave for Spain,
where I have a many vacation, and then we'll be
playing in the European Poker Tour, so we're going to
have some more some more poker related possibilities. I hope
that I will run better in Spain than I did
(34:05):
at the World Series.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
We haven't.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
We never actually presented our listeners with the full results
of our bet. But I did not run well as
we as we all.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I don't remember well out of Maria.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
I think I'm a little overconfident in that I don't
know I and yeah, by the end, it was just
campaign crush, right, I was kind of all on a
Google document somewhere. Well, I don't know, we'll figure out.
We'll reconcile it at some point, Yeah, we will. I'm
here in Chicago now, By the way, there are concerns
about are you going to have you know, pro Palestine
or other protests or things like that. There's a big
(34:41):
police presence here. I mean I was walking around last
night and you see like squads of like six police officer.
They're friendly and they don't like menacing or anything like that. Right,
But but you know, it's a democratic run city in
a democratic run state, and Democrats want to put out
a good show. And you know, unlike in twenty I
don't think you have as much kind of police tension
(35:03):
as you had with the old mayor Lloyd Lightfoot in Chicago.
So I would be mildly surprised if there are protests
that get two out of hand. Of course, Chicago has
a reputation for violence at the convention, you know. I
so Harris's speech is on Thursday night after you're here. This,
by the way, the fact they're putting Biden and Hillary
(35:25):
Clinton and Kathy hokel. You know, the game like Chinese poker.
They're basically various poker games where you're dealt some large
number of cards, like eleven cards or thirteen cards, and
you have to divide them into two or three hands, Right, Yeah,
basically Chinese poker, sometimes you have to take all your
shit and put it in one hand and guarantee that
hand will lose to maximize.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
Your chances of winning the other hands.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Right, They've got to taking all their fucking shit. Kathy Okele,
thirty eight percent of people riding Joe Biden, Hillary fucking
Clinton putting it on Monday night, they probably hope there's
gonna be some giant internet outage or something on Monday,
and then having three pretty good nights for the convention. Murray,
Actually you're having we're both having internet issues. That might
be the slow burned Democrat strategy to make sure that
(36:07):
nobody watches Joe Biden's speech to night or whatever. But
they will have compelling days of programming Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
You know, I think Harris has to resist the temptation
to be to be too cautious and too triangulating. I think,
you know, if she acts like she has an eighty
percent chance of winning instead of fifty three percent or whatever,
that might be a mistake. And by the way, we
haven't talked about it much in this program recently. But
(36:29):
of course Trump overperformed his polls in twenty sixteen and
twenty twenty, so I think she is a better candate
when she's running like she's three points down and not
three points ahead.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
So I'll be I'll be watching that. What are you
gonna be like, are you gonna be watching? I might?
Speaker 3 (36:43):
I mean I'm doing some book tour event in Seattle
or something, so I'm not sure I'm actually gonna be
watching it live, but I will have a little bit
of plenty of rescue business and silver bulletin content.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Absolutely absolutely I will try to watch live. I'm gonna
be in Europe, so the timing might be difficult for
me to watch live, but I plan on catching up.
And I actually also think it's very funny when you
don't see some of these things live to see what
the reaction is, because I sure I'm going to see
it on my Twitter feed when I opened my phone
before before I actually watch it, So it'll be it'll
(37:16):
be interesting to see what those what those moments are, right,
what those me moments are, what those kind of little
nuggets that get that get exerted look like, as opposed
to the impression of watching the real thing. Because it's
funny when we when we were talking about the debates,
right that that first absolutely train wreck of a debate
(37:38):
with Biden and Trump. The impressions were very different from
people who watched the whole thing versus people who'd just
seen clips, versus people who turned it on and off
at different times. And I think that that's actually that
that tells you something very interesting too, And I'll be
curious to see that.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
We both have a busy day ahead, so I think
we're going to leave it at that. Thank you for listening,
and tune in next time, and.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Good luck with the rest of your book.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Tourning Risky Business is hosted by me Nate Silber and
me Maria Kanakova. The show was a co production of
(38:22):
Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter.
Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Cheen. Our engineer is
Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
If you want to listen to an ad free version,
sign up for Pushkin Plus. For six ninety nine a month.
You get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
By the way, we think our listeners are pretty attentive.
The detailed level of feedback positive and negative. We get
reveals that if you were being attentive earlier, you might
have heard a reference to a Gerald Ford comment about
women ascending to the presidency. We're going to just play
the clip for you as a little easter egg here
as naudro see you next week.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
I hope we do have a young lady at some
point become president of the United States. I can tell
you how I think it will happen, because it won't
happen in the normal course of events. Either the Republican
(39:34):
or Democrat political party will nominate a man for president
and a woman for vice president, and the woman and
man will win. So you'll end up with president a
male and a vice president a female, and in that
term of office of the president, the president will die
(39:59):
and the woman will become president under the law or constitution.
And once that barrier is broken, from then on, man
better be careful because they'll have a hard hard time
ever even getting a nomination in the future. But that's
(40:20):
the way it's going to happen, and I think it'll
probably come sometime in the next four or eight years.
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