October 7, 2023 • 35 mins
We discuss the state of labor in the US, the outlook for the GOP and Democrats, Miami's potential tech boom, and genetics and AI. Columnists Betsey Stevenson, Jonathan Bernstein, Lisa Jarvis, and Jonathan Levin join. Amy Morris hosts.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. This week, we
are looking at the blockade in the Senate that hamstrung
military promotions and how that has exposed flaws in how
the Senate conducts its business. Also, is Miami the next
Silicon Valley? For a while it looked like that might
be the case, but was it all hype? And we'll
(00:36):
learn how artificial intelligence might be able to help scientists
track down the causes of diseases. But we begin with
labor activity. And while some contracts are resolved and others
are still being debated, there is more concern now that
more labor strife is coming to the US economy and
it's not cheap. Judy Ansel is the retired director of
(00:58):
the Institute for Labor Studies. She predicted the impact of
the UAW strike.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It will cause a shortage of cars, and so if
somebody wants to buy a car, it's going to be
more difficult to do that. It's going to lower.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Spending, consumer spending as people tighten their belts.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And we're pleased to welcome Betsy Stevenson to the show.
She is a Bloomberg View columnist and an associate professor
of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. Now.
She was on the President's Council of Economic Advisors and
was chief economist at the US Department of Labor, and
we are very happy to welcome her to the show.
Doctor Stevenson, thank you so much for joining us. And
(01:39):
as you explain in your column on the Bloomberg terminal
labor strikes, they are not cheap. They idle equipment. You've
got lost wages, lost shareholder profits, all of this impacting
economic growth and inflation. But we've seen so much of
this action of late. Why has this been happening if
it's so expensive.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
It is worth keeping in mind that in the United
States we actually rarely see these kind of labor actions
compared to Europe. So we're thinking, wow, we're seeing a lot,
but it's not a lot compared to other countries, but
it is a lot for us. And in fact, the
number of labor actions was up fifty percent and twenty
(02:21):
twenty two over twenty twenty one, and we're actually already
have as many labor actions in twenty twenty three as
we had in twenty twenty two, so clearly we're going
to see it up again this year. Why are American workers,
who usually are able to negotiate deals striking And I
think the reason is that we're just in a very
(02:45):
uncertain labor market right now. There's been a lot of
change over the last twenty years. Workers have lost bargaining power.
We've seen a shift in wages towards people who would
economists would call the owners of capital, the people who
own the equipment, what normal people would call things like shareholders.
(03:06):
So shareholders are getting these and CEOs are getting great pay,
but the workers pay as a share of the earnings.
It's gotten smaller and smaller. That actually turned around a
little bit during COVID, and it led to a lot
of people saying that this was a new period where
(03:27):
workers had a lot of bargaining power. And I think
that in this uncertain environment, everybody wants to test, well,
how much can we possibly get as a union unionized workforce,
and employers are a little reluctant to give because they're
not sure how much they do need to give, because
they're looking at twenty years of workers not having a
(03:49):
lot of bargaining power and wondering did they really have
a lot of bargaining power right now? I know, unemployments
really low, but you know, it seems like the labor
market slowing. So I think it's that uncertainty, no one
really knowing how much they should give up, that is
leading to all these labor actions.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Isn't it funny that some people think, oh, I know,
I don't know how much I should give up, so
I should push harder in this uncertainty, whereas there are
others who would think I can't push harder because of
the uncertainty. It seems like that would have been a
flip side of that coin.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Not necessarily. If you think that this is your one
chance to actually claw back, Let's take the UAW. They
make huge concessions in two thousand and eight, when it
looked like the American auto industry was on the verge
of collapse. This might be their only opportunity, this opportunity
to get some of those concessions back. It's not clear
(04:46):
whether they'll be able to and how much they'll be
able to. That's what I mean by uncertainty. But if
now's your best shot, you ought to make a run
at it, because otherwise you may never get those concent
shionts back.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So with that overlay, you do anticipate more labor action
coming into this year and maybe next year as well.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
The the analogy here is to think about, you know,
when somebody has been accused of a crime, when is
their lawyer going to suggest that they take a plea deal? Well,
when it's pretty obvious that they're going to be convicted,
and you know, you might as well reduce the risk
by and the cost and the expense of a long
(05:29):
trial by just coming to an agreement and negotiating a
plea deal. Similarly, when we see, you know, unions have
to negotiate their contract with their employers, if everybody sort
of understands what the outcome is going to be, why
have all the cost of a strike or a labor
action just negotiate the deal. What the problem is right now?
(05:51):
I think it's that environment where it's just not clear
that I think helps fuel makes it harder to come
to agreement. And then what we're doing with unions is
we're layering on a really pivotal time for unions. We're
hearing that Americans are supporting unions more than they have,
(06:12):
you know, in fifty years, and so that public approval
of labor unions remains near highs last seen in the
mid nineteen sixties. But at the same time, the unionization rate,
the share of workers in the US economy that are
members of unions, hid an all time low last year.
So if unions are going to play an important role
(06:36):
in the American labor market, they need some big wins
this year. They need to show that they're there playing
an important role preserving wages, setting a reasonable standard of living,
helping to set hours. They want to prove themselves in
this moment so that they can continue with that public
(06:56):
approval and then hopefully actually bring more union and members
on board. Because only six percent of private sector workers
belong to a union, that's why strikes are not part
of the everyday economy in the United States is we
just don't have that many workers who are in unions
who could potentially strike. What we're seeing is the small
(07:20):
share of American workers who belong to unions trying to
flex as much power as they can to prove their
role in the economy as well as to try to
halt some of the slide and wages for middle class
workers that's been going on for decades.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
And we are talking with Professor Betsy Stevenson, former member
of the President's Council of Economic Advisors and Chief Economists
at the Department of Labor. I want to boil this
all down to a cause, if that's possible. You were
talking about bargaining power and what workers feel like they
may be able to do and how they can push
back is part of this because of the pandemic and
(07:59):
the shutdown.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
What we saw coming out of the pandemic was just
enormous change in the labor market. The way people do
their work changed, so lots of people were all of
a sudden able to work from home. Of course, people
who work on the factory floor are not able to
work from home, So now there's a greater schism between
people who do office jobs where they can now do
(08:23):
them at least partially from home, and people who need
to do in person jobs. There was also just a
change in how American consumers buy things with a shift
towards goods and away from services. That also really changed
the demand for workers, and people's preferences for the type
of work they wanted to do were shaped by the pandemic.
(08:43):
So coming out of the pandemic, we had a lot
of change underway in the labor market. And one of
the other things we saw coming out of the pandemic
was demand came back faster than supply. That's the best
way to to explain why we had inflation. People wanted
to buy things before really sellers were able to fully
(09:08):
meet the supply of the things people wanted to buy.
That ended up pushing up prices. And the result of
inflation is that some people made more money and some
people didn't. And that's one of the problems with inflation.
You know, inflation is a generalized rise in prices, so
(09:29):
it means that wages are going up too, but not
everybody's wages are going up equally. And one of the
things we saw with unionized workers was that their wages
did not rise as rapidly as non unionized workers. And
as a result, there are a lot of unionized workers
for whom, you know, in terms of the stuff they
(09:50):
can buy what economists call real wages. They're earning less
today than they were in twenty nineteen, and so obviously
that's a fight worth having. A lot of unionized workers
they've been you know, particularly if you're talking about a
big union like the auto industry. You know, they're often
multi generational auto workers, so they don't really want to
(10:11):
change jobs, but they do want to make sure that
they're not getting left behind. Because the people who have
been changing jobs in this economy, their real wages have
been growing. They can buy more stuff today with their
earnings than they could buy in twenty nineteen. That's not
true for workers who haven't changed jobs. And that's why
(10:31):
if you're in a job that you've been in for
a long time, are probably going to push really hard
for a wage increase so that you're not falling behind.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Betsy Stevenson, a Bloomberg View columnist and Associate professor of
public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. It
has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking
the time with us.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
It's great talking with you.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Coming up, we're going to look at how a blockade
by a Republican senator exposed some flaws in how lawmakers negotiate.
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. After weeks
of a blockade by Senator Tommy Turboville of Alabama, the
Senate finally was able to approve some military promotions, three
very important ones, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. Now that's a victory for the Pentagon, but
the way it happened is really a defeat for the Senate.
(11:49):
Even after those promotions were approved, Senator Tommy Turberville, who
was behind those blocks, doubled down on the blocks and
the filibusters.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Oh remaining place. The Pentagon's illegal abortion policy remains in place.
If the Pentagon lifts the policy, then I will lift
my hole as easy as that.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So the Senator, they're saying that those holds will continue,
and you can bet that's going to have larger implications
let's talk about it with Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein.
He covers politics and policy and joins us. Now, Jonathan,
what does this tell us about how the Senate operates?
Speaker 6 (12:28):
Well, the nominations process really has sort of broken down.
You know, putting a hole on something that is a
senator essentially threatening to filibuster or filibustering by threatening to
filibuster is a time honored Senate tradition goes back fifty
years or so, and then other ways goes back more
than that, and it allows individual senators to really have
(12:51):
a say, which is potentially a very good thing. But
what's happening now is that there's a basically a hold
on everything. That's been true of executive branch and judicial
nominations for some time now. But at least there's only
there's enough time to get to process all of those
(13:12):
one by one. There are hundreds of these military promotions
that have to get done. They're normally all done in
one batch.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
You know.
Speaker 6 (13:23):
The chairman of the committee comes and says, you know,
I want, you know, as consent to consider on block
the following nominations, and they list the numbers they get
numbered by and they'll say, you know, eleven thirty five
through twelve seventy four, and everybody will give their consent
and that's it. It's done. Instead, Tuberville is making them
(13:48):
go one by one, and that's what they did on
these three exceptions. They it took them two days. I'll
sendate time to consider the chairman and joy to staff
and two others. You can't do hundreds of military promotions
taking you know, taking up sent a time like that.
(14:10):
So there's stopped. There's no real means for the Senate
to do it unless they change procedures.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Now, you had mentioned that this is a tried and
true sort of technique that the Senate has used before
a procedural move, and usually a member uses it to
influence policy or make a point or what have you.
But this feels different. How is it different?
Speaker 6 (14:34):
Well, it's different because there's a few things. One is
that it's that he's using military promotions that's been done before,
but very rarely and usually temporarily. Typically, you put a
hold on a nominee to you know, in this case,
you could do a civilian Department of Defense position and
(14:54):
say I'm going to put a hold on the assistant
Secretary of whatever until you consider my point. The second
thing is that usually it's bargaining for some sort of
deal that can be made. So you know, often it's
something for your home state, and you know, this national
(15:16):
policy treats my state really unfairly. Let's make a deal
to do something about it. That's a positive thing for
US democracy. In my view. It sometimes means that your senator,
you know, if you get their attention, you get special
treatment for the state. But that's not unreasonable, and then
they get a deal and they take off the whole.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
You know.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Also, it's usually something which because it's something small and
that most people don't care about, typically you can make
a deal. This is something which is a policy that
Tuberville is in the minority of. You know, we have
a democratic majority in the Senate. There's probably fifty three
(16:01):
or more senators who approve of the DoD policy on
abortion and or on military travel for to be able
to give him abortion. And so he's saying, well, I
don't care that I'm the minority on this and that
people on the other side feel as strongly as I do.
(16:22):
I'm going to just shut down this whole process because
I want because I can't. And the problem with that
is that the other side can do the same thing
and then you just nothing happens, and that's not a
healthy process.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
And as you alluded to just now, Republicans oppose the
way he is doing this and with whom he is
doing this. And what I mean is Republicans aren't usually
the ones who are going to go head to head
with the Pentagon, right, They're not usually the ones who
don't sign onto any kind of military spending, support promotions,
that sort of thing. They're usually in lockstep. So a
(16:58):
lot of them don't like a stretch, but why are
they going along with it?
Speaker 6 (17:03):
Generally? The problem is that to do anything about this,
there's two ways, you knew it. They could pressure him
within the party and perhaps make him back down, but
you know, it's not the same Republican party that we
had ten or twenty or thirty years ago. A lot
of Republicans now are perfectly happy with bashing the Pentagon.
The other piece of it is that to change you
(17:24):
could just change of procedures. You could say, well, we're
going to make it a rule or a procedure that
without asking for consent, you can consider all of these
all these promotions together. But the problem with that is
that it means that individual senators would be would be
voting to take away their future rights. And senators don't
like taking away their individual rights. They're very proud of
(17:48):
there and jealous of their status as US senators. It's
possible that we're going to move to a place where
the Senate just can't work that way anymore. That seems
to be what's happened with nominations, and you know they're
losing something if they do it. I know people think, well,
those individual centers should be able to block things like this,
(18:09):
but there really is a good reason for it if
it works, but the Senate, individual senators have to show
some restraint, and that's just not happening.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
And we're talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein about
how the Pentagon and this blocking process has exposed some
flaws and how the Senate conducts its business. A shifting
gear is just a little bit from one side to
the other. You make the point in your column that
the whole point of the confirmation process not the ability
to fill a buster or put a hold on something,
(18:37):
but the confirmation process itself is to restrict the authority
of the president and empower the Senate, and this tactic,
when not used the way it was intended, may undermine that.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
How So, yeah, you know one of the things, well, okay,
so we have these hundreds of promotions, you can't do
them individually on the Senate floor. You have to do
them in bulked. If that can't work because individual senators
won't do it, then what's going to happen is eventually
that's going to go away, and and you know, you'll
(19:09):
there'll be a rule that you'll have to have the
promotions done. It's it's happens all the time, or suggests
I'll have for executive branch nominations, especially. You know, we
have way more political people in our executive branch agencies
and departments than comparable democracies do. And it's a real
(19:33):
democratic strength in my view, because it means that the
executive branch isn't just the tool of the presidency, and
it's also not just permanent bureaucracy. Congress has a role
in it too. But if Congress can't do the the job,
then what you're going to get is calls for fewer
and fewer Senate confirmed people which is either going to
(19:55):
mean the president appoints them or that they'll be part
of the permanent bureacracy themselves. And neither of those is
really good for US democracy, because instead of Congress and
the President and the bureaucracy all constraining each other, Congress
will be cut out of it to a larger extent.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
The already is Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein, and coming
up we'll learn how Miami could have been the next
silicon valley. In fact, it may still hold some promise
for becoming the next big tech sector. Don't forget. We're
available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite
podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Can't just Saturdays
at one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
This is Bloomberg Opinion. I may need more. Where As
the Miami area has always been prone to hype cycles,
and the great tech boom of recent years is the
latest example. Now, for months, you may recall there was
this popular narrative that the region could become a viable
alternative to say Silicon Valley. That's mostly fizzled, but there
appears to be some lingering promise. Let's talk about it now.
(21:20):
Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Levin has served as the Miami
bureau gy for Bloomberg in the past, and he joins
us now. He knows the area quite well. Jonathan, was
all of that talk about replacing or at least supplementing
Silicon Valley puffery? Or was there something there?
Speaker 7 (21:37):
Yeah? Kind of sort of. So all of this is
started during the COVID nineteen pandemic when City of Miami
Mayor Francis Suarez got on social media and started talking
about how you venture capitalists, tech entrepreneurs should move from
San Francisco to Miami, you know. And I think part
of it was always a little bit political, quite Frankly,
(22:01):
Francis is a Republican. Of course, he ran for the
Republican and nomination for president very briefly, and there was this,
you know, pervasive narrative that they were all trying to
push like kind of come to the Free State of Florida.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
You know.
Speaker 7 (22:17):
San Francisco is such a disaster. So there was a
lot of politics, and they tried to convince us that
it was also an economic narrative. But all that was
happening and then suddenly the number the VC investment numbers
in South Florida actually start to go up a lot,
and so you said, wait a minute, maybe is there
(22:38):
actually something to this. Right, So the magnitude I'm talking
about is like South Florida has always been like a
third tier VC market, So on a trailing twelve month
basis before the pandemic, they were doing something on the
order of like two billion dollars for twelve month period
in terms of VC capital injected. It jumped all the
(23:02):
way up. At the peak this is sort of early
to mid twenty twenty two to eight billion dollars, so quadrupling.
So you say, maybe there was actually something going on there.
But you take a step back and you realize that
some of the development officials and politicians were maybe playing
(23:26):
with the numbers a little bit to their advantage. So
part of the story is VC boomed everywhere, right, and
tons of cities were beneficiars of this. At the same
time the VC was booming everywhere, you also had the
COVID work from anywhere phenomenon which made beneficiaries of a
(23:47):
lot of cities, not just Miami, but also some cities
that I think you would say are quite counter narrative
to this. You know, liberal cities are a mess. Come
to the free State of Florida narrative. Chicago, for instance,
big boom during that period. You can also look at
(24:08):
like Boulder, Colorado, Philly, Seattle.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
You know.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
So this was happening in a lot of places, and
part of it, I don't want to totally dismiss it,
but part of it was Miami was the best at
just seizing the narrative. We are a place that is
great at hype cycles.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
If there is something behind the hype cycle. Often you
find a hype cycle that has a kernel of reality,
some sort of solid molten core of truth, surrounded by
the dance right, surrounded by the hype. And I'm just
wondering if the VC's bought into that, or if they
found that kernel of truth that made it viable and
(24:53):
made it worth their while in investing.
Speaker 7 (24:56):
Yeah, so as I look into the data, I think
what is what is encouraging is again there are there
are big macro trends that that sort of you know,
rising tides lift all boats, So you want to step
back and really focus on something like market share. Right,
So when I look at market share for Miami on
(25:19):
a dollars basis, market share sort of shot up during
that pandemic period and it's basically it's come back down
a lot. A more encouraging way to look at it
is number of deals, which takes sort of ticket size
out of the equation, right, And by number of deals,
(25:41):
Miami's market share in the VC space shot up during
this pandemic era, and it's come back down a little bit,
but it's holding on to a lot of those games.
And so I actually find that pretty encouraging, and I
think that that might sort of spell out a path
for for this market. I think it was always a
(26:03):
little bit hyperbolic, I mean a lot bit hyperbolic to
say that Miami was going to replace San Francisco and
Silicon Valley. I mean, come on, but it is objectively
still a less expensive place to live than a lot
of those West Coast cities and New York City. So
(26:25):
maybe there's a space for us in early stage startup.
Maybe this is a place and we've seen some examples
of this. Maybe this is a place, you know, where young,
smart entrepreneurial people come and they get their idea started,
they get their idea funded because there is a lot
of capital here. There are a lot of rich people
(26:45):
in South Florida. They get the ball rolling, and maybe
they move on and they do those late stage rounds
out in the West Coast, they take their company public.
But maybe we really carve out a niche for ourselves
in that early stage space.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Okay, well let me get into that a little bit.
What does Miami offer? You mentioned less expensive, You mentioned
lots of capital. The first thing I think is, you know,
you're never going to shovel snow in Miami. You never
have to worry about that. But that's probably less important
to the tech industry. What is else do they have
to offer?
Speaker 7 (27:22):
Yeah, so I basically think of several pillars. So we
talked about deep pockets. You can you can find and
meet with a lot of a lot of investors here,
favorable quality of life, less expensive than the maybe of
the many of the dominant tech and finance centers. Although
(27:46):
I should know that if you're talking like the urban
core in Miami, that spread has been closing a little bit,
so we'll have to watch that. But the sort of
fourth pillar is our connection to Latin America, which is
really something totally unique and kind of extraordinary about South Florida.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Right.
Speaker 7 (28:05):
You have this huge cultural connection, something like, you know,
two thirds of households speak a language other than English
at home to some extent. Oftentimes we're talking about Spanish,
but Portuguese is widely spoken here Haitian creole. So there's
a cultural connection to Latin America. There's a deep pool
(28:31):
of Latin America wealth. You can get direct flights to
anywhere in Latin America, and it's kind of just the
perfect place. If you wanted to create a Capital of
Latin America VC, I think this is where you would
put it. These are cultures and economies that are kind
of siloed in their own way, especially like Brazil and
(28:52):
the rest of Latin So if you wanted to create
this pan Latin American VC hub, I think, and there's
some evidence to this, there really is no better place
than Miami.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Climate change does that factor in at all. You know, Miami,
low lying area South Florida, lots of beaches, lots of
potential for issues with hurricanes, severe weather flooding in the future.
How does that or does it factor into this?
Speaker 7 (29:20):
I think it absolutely factors into it. You know, you
have Miami Dade County already negotiating with the Army Corps
of Engineers in terms of are they going to do
a sea wall? Are they going to use natural barriers
to protect this area for the long haul. I think
it's absolutely going to be a challenge. You already see
(29:41):
rising property insurance rates cutting into some of the affordability
that we talked about earlier, and so it's something it's
something to look at. I think, in a weird way,
South Florida is going to continue to lure wealth for
a long time, and wealthy people are going to continue
(30:04):
to put thirty million dollar mansions right in some of
the most vulnerable real estate and barrier barrier island communities
on the beach. But what we often forget is those
transactions go through because those people can afford to lose that.
And I think that that's really the core of it.
And you're absolutely right. As we look ten twenty thirty
(30:28):
years into the future, there's no talking about economic development
without first talking about sustainable solutions to the climate issue.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Jonathan Levin is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering markets, finance,
and M and A. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion, I,
Ami Morris. Scientists are only just scratching the surface of
what artificial intelligence can teach us about human biology and disease.
Let's dig into this now. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis
covers biotech, healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industry and joins us Now, Lisa,
(31:02):
when I first read your column on the Bloomberg terminal,
my first thought was, Oh, no, my doctor is going
to be a robot. That is not what this is about.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
No, No robot doctors yet, not yet.
Speaker 7 (31:15):
No.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
This is basically about the idea that scientists are learning
how to take our genetic code, you know, this very
long string of letters and turn it into information that's
useful in a way that they haven't been able to
do before.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
You've been following this, what are you seeing? Any examples are?
For instance, last.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Year, basically there was a to me kind of mind
blowing breakthrough where they could take the string of letters
that apply to a particular protein and a computer could
turn that into an image. This is something scientists have
been trying to do for years, figure out how to
go from you know, that sort of two dimensional code
(31:57):
into a three dimensional picture that is close to what
we know is the reality. It's super useful because they
use that to help develop drugs to understand disease better.
And you know they did this Google deep Mind, the
artificial intelligence unit of alphabet was able to do that
(32:17):
for every protein in existence, two hundred and fourteen million
of them. So it's that it sounds so wonky, but
it's actually a really big deal to be able to
do that. They're not perfect, it's a prediction, but a
lot of them are close enough that it's really helpful.
And now there's this kind of next phase, which I'm
happy to talk about too.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yes, please do what's the next phase?
Speaker 3 (32:38):
So we're learning about all the different things that one
could use that information for. But what DeepMind did was
shift to a different project where they used kind of
the foundation of this program called Alpha fold that predicts
the structures of proteins, and they gave it a different
problem to solve. They taught it how to solve a
different problem, which is, how do we know which of
(33:00):
the thousands of tiny mutations each of us carry are
actually harmful, and so which one and which ones are
benign because there's a lot of All of us have
all these mutations in our body, but they don't kill us, right,
they don't even all cause disease, and we don't necessarily
have a good way to distinguish between those two. Experiment
has taught us that, and so they've created this long list,
(33:23):
exhaustive list basically predicting which things might be a problem
and which not. Which is Again, it sounds so wonky,
but it could be very helpful filter for doctors who
are trying to understand why someone is sick like it
has a very rare genetic disease. They get back their
gene sequencing results and they look through all of them,
and they don't necessarily know what the problem is, which
(33:46):
one is the cause. Deepbine was really careful and stressing
that this isn't a diagnostic tool. You know, you want
to layer that onto other information that we've spent years accumulated,
decades accumulating. I think the obviously are going to be
other areas of healthcare where I think there could be
some problems with AI or just tendency. Some of that
(34:07):
is around patient privacy, you know. Some of it again
is around thinking that the computer might know better than
a doctor's you know, intuition and years of seeing patients,
and instead of integrating those two things together for something better,
relying on one.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Or the other.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
So those are the things that I would be worried
about when it comes. But on balance, I have been
a little skeptical of AI when it comes to drug
discovery and diagnosis. I'm pretty excited about the things that
Deep Mind is doing. I think none of our proteins
live in isolation. There have partners. They, you know, interact
(34:45):
with each other inside our body. And trying to get
to a point where we understand what those interactions and
predict what those interactions look like would be so important
when it comes to trying to stop disease. So that
to me is like a much tougher problem that could
be the next frontier. I would hope that someone someday
can solve that.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
All right, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis, And that does
it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced by
Eric Molow, and you can find all of these columns
on the Bloomberg Terminal. We're also available as a podcast
on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us.
Today's top stories and global business headlines are just ahead.
I'm Mammy Morris, and this is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. This week, we
are looking at the blockade in the Senate that hamstrung
military promotions and how that has exposed flaws in how
the Senate conducts its business. Also, is Miami the next
Silicon Valley? For a while it looked like that might
be the case, but was it all hype? And we'll
(00:36):
learn how artificial intelligence might be able to help scientists
track down the causes of diseases. But we begin with
labor activity. And while some contracts are resolved and others
are still being debated, there is more concern now that
more labor strife is coming to the US economy and
it's not cheap. Judy Ansel is the retired director of
(00:58):
the Institute for Labor Studies. She predicted the impact of
the UAW strike.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It will cause a shortage of cars, and so if
somebody wants to buy a car, it's going to be
more difficult to do that. It's going to lower.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Spending, consumer spending as people tighten their belts.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
And we're pleased to welcome Betsy Stevenson to the show.
She is a Bloomberg View columnist and an associate professor
of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. Now.
She was on the President's Council of Economic Advisors and
was chief economist at the US Department of Labor, and
we are very happy to welcome her to the show.
Doctor Stevenson, thank you so much for joining us. And
(01:39):
as you explain in your column on the Bloomberg terminal
labor strikes, they are not cheap. They idle equipment. You've
got lost wages, lost shareholder profits, all of this impacting
economic growth and inflation. But we've seen so much of
this action of late. Why has this been happening if
it's so expensive.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
It is worth keeping in mind that in the United
States we actually rarely see these kind of labor actions
compared to Europe. So we're thinking, wow, we're seeing a lot,
but it's not a lot compared to other countries, but
it is a lot for us. And in fact, the
number of labor actions was up fifty percent and twenty
(02:21):
twenty two over twenty twenty one, and we're actually already
have as many labor actions in twenty twenty three as
we had in twenty twenty two, so clearly we're going
to see it up again this year. Why are American workers,
who usually are able to negotiate deals striking And I
think the reason is that we're just in a very
(02:45):
uncertain labor market right now. There's been a lot of
change over the last twenty years. Workers have lost bargaining power.
We've seen a shift in wages towards people who would
economists would call the owners of capital, the people who
own the equipment, what normal people would call things like shareholders.
(03:06):
So shareholders are getting these and CEOs are getting great pay,
but the workers pay as a share of the earnings.
It's gotten smaller and smaller. That actually turned around a
little bit during COVID, and it led to a lot
of people saying that this was a new period where
(03:27):
workers had a lot of bargaining power. And I think
that in this uncertain environment, everybody wants to test, well,
how much can we possibly get as a union unionized workforce,
and employers are a little reluctant to give because they're
not sure how much they do need to give, because
they're looking at twenty years of workers not having a
(03:49):
lot of bargaining power and wondering did they really have
a lot of bargaining power right now? I know, unemployments
really low, but you know, it seems like the labor
market slowing. So I think it's that uncertainty, no one
really knowing how much they should give up, that is
leading to all these labor actions.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Isn't it funny that some people think, oh, I know,
I don't know how much I should give up, so
I should push harder in this uncertainty, whereas there are
others who would think I can't push harder because of
the uncertainty. It seems like that would have been a
flip side of that coin.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Not necessarily. If you think that this is your one
chance to actually claw back, Let's take the UAW. They
make huge concessions in two thousand and eight, when it
looked like the American auto industry was on the verge
of collapse. This might be their only opportunity, this opportunity
to get some of those concessions back. It's not clear
(04:46):
whether they'll be able to and how much they'll be
able to. That's what I mean by uncertainty. But if
now's your best shot, you ought to make a run
at it, because otherwise you may never get those concent
shionts back.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So with that overlay, you do anticipate more labor action
coming into this year and maybe next year as well.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
The the analogy here is to think about, you know,
when somebody has been accused of a crime, when is
their lawyer going to suggest that they take a plea deal? Well,
when it's pretty obvious that they're going to be convicted,
and you know, you might as well reduce the risk
by and the cost and the expense of a long
(05:29):
trial by just coming to an agreement and negotiating a
plea deal. Similarly, when we see, you know, unions have
to negotiate their contract with their employers, if everybody sort
of understands what the outcome is going to be, why
have all the cost of a strike or a labor
action just negotiate the deal. What the problem is right now?
(05:51):
I think it's that environment where it's just not clear
that I think helps fuel makes it harder to come
to agreement. And then what we're doing with unions is
we're layering on a really pivotal time for unions. We're
hearing that Americans are supporting unions more than they have,
(06:12):
you know, in fifty years, and so that public approval
of labor unions remains near highs last seen in the
mid nineteen sixties. But at the same time, the unionization rate,
the share of workers in the US economy that are
members of unions, hid an all time low last year.
So if unions are going to play an important role
(06:36):
in the American labor market, they need some big wins
this year. They need to show that they're there playing
an important role preserving wages, setting a reasonable standard of living,
helping to set hours. They want to prove themselves in
this moment so that they can continue with that public
(06:56):
approval and then hopefully actually bring more union and members
on board. Because only six percent of private sector workers
belong to a union, that's why strikes are not part
of the everyday economy in the United States is we
just don't have that many workers who are in unions
who could potentially strike. What we're seeing is the small
(07:20):
share of American workers who belong to unions trying to
flex as much power as they can to prove their
role in the economy as well as to try to
halt some of the slide and wages for middle class
workers that's been going on for decades.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
And we are talking with Professor Betsy Stevenson, former member
of the President's Council of Economic Advisors and Chief Economists
at the Department of Labor. I want to boil this
all down to a cause, if that's possible. You were
talking about bargaining power and what workers feel like they
may be able to do and how they can push
back is part of this because of the pandemic and
(07:59):
the shutdown.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
What we saw coming out of the pandemic was just
enormous change in the labor market. The way people do
their work changed, so lots of people were all of
a sudden able to work from home. Of course, people
who work on the factory floor are not able to
work from home, So now there's a greater schism between
people who do office jobs where they can now do
(08:23):
them at least partially from home, and people who need
to do in person jobs. There was also just a
change in how American consumers buy things with a shift
towards goods and away from services. That also really changed
the demand for workers, and people's preferences for the type
of work they wanted to do were shaped by the pandemic.
(08:43):
So coming out of the pandemic, we had a lot
of change underway in the labor market. And one of
the other things we saw coming out of the pandemic
was demand came back faster than supply. That's the best
way to to explain why we had inflation. People wanted
to buy things before really sellers were able to fully
(09:08):
meet the supply of the things people wanted to buy.
That ended up pushing up prices. And the result of
inflation is that some people made more money and some
people didn't. And that's one of the problems with inflation.
You know, inflation is a generalized rise in prices, so
(09:29):
it means that wages are going up too, but not
everybody's wages are going up equally. And one of the
things we saw with unionized workers was that their wages
did not rise as rapidly as non unionized workers. And
as a result, there are a lot of unionized workers
for whom, you know, in terms of the stuff they
(09:50):
can buy what economists call real wages. They're earning less
today than they were in twenty nineteen, and so obviously
that's a fight worth having. A lot of unionized workers
they've been you know, particularly if you're talking about a
big union like the auto industry. You know, they're often
multi generational auto workers, so they don't really want to
(10:11):
change jobs, but they do want to make sure that
they're not getting left behind. Because the people who have
been changing jobs in this economy, their real wages have
been growing. They can buy more stuff today with their
earnings than they could buy in twenty nineteen. That's not
true for workers who haven't changed jobs. And that's why
(10:31):
if you're in a job that you've been in for
a long time, are probably going to push really hard
for a wage increase so that you're not falling behind.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Betsy Stevenson, a Bloomberg View columnist and Associate professor of
public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. It
has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking
the time with us.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
It's great talking with you.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Coming up, we're going to look at how a blockade
by a Republican senator exposed some flaws in how lawmakers negotiate.
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. After weeks
of a blockade by Senator Tommy Turboville of Alabama, the
Senate finally was able to approve some military promotions, three
very important ones, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. Now that's a victory for the Pentagon, but
the way it happened is really a defeat for the Senate.
(11:49):
Even after those promotions were approved, Senator Tommy Turberville, who
was behind those blocks, doubled down on the blocks and
the filibusters.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Oh remaining place. The Pentagon's illegal abortion policy remains in place.
If the Pentagon lifts the policy, then I will lift
my hole as easy as that.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So the Senator, they're saying that those holds will continue,
and you can bet that's going to have larger implications
let's talk about it with Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein.
He covers politics and policy and joins us. Now, Jonathan,
what does this tell us about how the Senate operates?
Speaker 6 (12:28):
Well, the nominations process really has sort of broken down.
You know, putting a hole on something that is a
senator essentially threatening to filibuster or filibustering by threatening to
filibuster is a time honored Senate tradition goes back fifty
years or so, and then other ways goes back more
than that, and it allows individual senators to really have
(12:51):
a say, which is potentially a very good thing. But
what's happening now is that there's a basically a hold
on everything. That's been true of executive branch and judicial
nominations for some time now. But at least there's only
there's enough time to get to process all of those
(13:12):
one by one. There are hundreds of these military promotions
that have to get done. They're normally all done in
one batch.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
You know.
Speaker 6 (13:23):
The chairman of the committee comes and says, you know,
I want, you know, as consent to consider on block
the following nominations, and they list the numbers they get
numbered by and they'll say, you know, eleven thirty five
through twelve seventy four, and everybody will give their consent
and that's it. It's done. Instead, Tuberville is making them
(13:48):
go one by one, and that's what they did on
these three exceptions. They it took them two days. I'll
sendate time to consider the chairman and joy to staff
and two others. You can't do hundreds of military promotions
taking you know, taking up sent a time like that.
(14:10):
So there's stopped. There's no real means for the Senate
to do it unless they change procedures.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Now, you had mentioned that this is a tried and
true sort of technique that the Senate has used before
a procedural move, and usually a member uses it to
influence policy or make a point or what have you.
But this feels different. How is it different?
Speaker 6 (14:34):
Well, it's different because there's a few things. One is
that it's that he's using military promotions that's been done before,
but very rarely and usually temporarily. Typically, you put a
hold on a nominee to you know, in this case,
you could do a civilian Department of Defense position and
(14:54):
say I'm going to put a hold on the assistant
Secretary of whatever until you consider my point. The second
thing is that usually it's bargaining for some sort of
deal that can be made. So you know, often it's
something for your home state, and you know, this national
(15:16):
policy treats my state really unfairly. Let's make a deal
to do something about it. That's a positive thing for
US democracy. In my view. It sometimes means that your senator,
you know, if you get their attention, you get special
treatment for the state. But that's not unreasonable, and then
they get a deal and they take off the whole.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
You know.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
Also, it's usually something which because it's something small and
that most people don't care about, typically you can make
a deal. This is something which is a policy that
Tuberville is in the minority of. You know, we have
a democratic majority in the Senate. There's probably fifty three
(16:01):
or more senators who approve of the DoD policy on
abortion and or on military travel for to be able
to give him abortion. And so he's saying, well, I
don't care that I'm the minority on this and that
people on the other side feel as strongly as I do.
(16:22):
I'm going to just shut down this whole process because
I want because I can't. And the problem with that
is that the other side can do the same thing
and then you just nothing happens, and that's not a
healthy process.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
And as you alluded to just now, Republicans oppose the
way he is doing this and with whom he is
doing this. And what I mean is Republicans aren't usually
the ones who are going to go head to head
with the Pentagon, right, They're not usually the ones who
don't sign onto any kind of military spending, support promotions,
that sort of thing. They're usually in lockstep. So a
(16:58):
lot of them don't like a stretch, but why are
they going along with it?
Speaker 6 (17:03):
Generally? The problem is that to do anything about this,
there's two ways, you knew it. They could pressure him
within the party and perhaps make him back down, but
you know, it's not the same Republican party that we
had ten or twenty or thirty years ago. A lot
of Republicans now are perfectly happy with bashing the Pentagon.
The other piece of it is that to change you
(17:24):
could just change of procedures. You could say, well, we're
going to make it a rule or a procedure that
without asking for consent, you can consider all of these
all these promotions together. But the problem with that is
that it means that individual senators would be would be
voting to take away their future rights. And senators don't
like taking away their individual rights. They're very proud of
(17:48):
there and jealous of their status as US senators. It's
possible that we're going to move to a place where
the Senate just can't work that way anymore. That seems
to be what's happened with nominations, and you know they're
losing something if they do it. I know people think, well,
those individual centers should be able to block things like this,
(18:09):
but there really is a good reason for it if
it works, but the Senate, individual senators have to show
some restraint, and that's just not happening.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
And we're talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein about
how the Pentagon and this blocking process has exposed some
flaws and how the Senate conducts its business. A shifting
gear is just a little bit from one side to
the other. You make the point in your column that
the whole point of the confirmation process not the ability
to fill a buster or put a hold on something,
(18:37):
but the confirmation process itself is to restrict the authority
of the president and empower the Senate, and this tactic,
when not used the way it was intended, may undermine that.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
How So, yeah, you know one of the things, well, okay,
so we have these hundreds of promotions, you can't do
them individually on the Senate floor. You have to do
them in bulked. If that can't work because individual senators
won't do it, then what's going to happen is eventually
that's going to go away, and and you know, you'll
(19:09):
there'll be a rule that you'll have to have the
promotions done. It's it's happens all the time, or suggests
I'll have for executive branch nominations, especially. You know, we
have way more political people in our executive branch agencies
and departments than comparable democracies do. And it's a real
(19:33):
democratic strength in my view, because it means that the
executive branch isn't just the tool of the presidency, and
it's also not just permanent bureaucracy. Congress has a role
in it too. But if Congress can't do the the job,
then what you're going to get is calls for fewer
and fewer Senate confirmed people which is either going to
(19:55):
mean the president appoints them or that they'll be part
of the permanent bureacracy themselves. And neither of those is
really good for US democracy, because instead of Congress and
the President and the bureaucracy all constraining each other, Congress
will be cut out of it to a larger extent.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
The already is Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein, and coming
up we'll learn how Miami could have been the next
silicon valley. In fact, it may still hold some promise
for becoming the next big tech sector. Don't forget. We're
available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite
podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Can't just Saturdays
at one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
This is Bloomberg Opinion. I may need more. Where As
the Miami area has always been prone to hype cycles,
and the great tech boom of recent years is the
latest example. Now, for months, you may recall there was
this popular narrative that the region could become a viable
alternative to say Silicon Valley. That's mostly fizzled, but there
appears to be some lingering promise. Let's talk about it now.
(21:20):
Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Levin has served as the Miami
bureau gy for Bloomberg in the past, and he joins
us now. He knows the area quite well. Jonathan, was
all of that talk about replacing or at least supplementing
Silicon Valley puffery? Or was there something there?
Speaker 7 (21:37):
Yeah? Kind of sort of. So all of this is
started during the COVID nineteen pandemic when City of Miami
Mayor Francis Suarez got on social media and started talking
about how you venture capitalists, tech entrepreneurs should move from
San Francisco to Miami, you know. And I think part
of it was always a little bit political, quite Frankly,
(22:01):
Francis is a Republican. Of course, he ran for the
Republican and nomination for president very briefly, and there was this,
you know, pervasive narrative that they were all trying to
push like kind of come to the Free State of Florida.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
You know.
Speaker 7 (22:17):
San Francisco is such a disaster. So there was a
lot of politics, and they tried to convince us that
it was also an economic narrative. But all that was
happening and then suddenly the number the VC investment numbers
in South Florida actually start to go up a lot,
and so you said, wait a minute, maybe is there
(22:38):
actually something to this. Right, So the magnitude I'm talking
about is like South Florida has always been like a
third tier VC market, So on a trailing twelve month
basis before the pandemic, they were doing something on the
order of like two billion dollars for twelve month period
in terms of VC capital injected. It jumped all the
(23:02):
way up. At the peak this is sort of early
to mid twenty twenty two to eight billion dollars, so quadrupling.
So you say, maybe there was actually something going on there.
But you take a step back and you realize that
some of the development officials and politicians were maybe playing
(23:26):
with the numbers a little bit to their advantage. So
part of the story is VC boomed everywhere, right, and
tons of cities were beneficiars of this. At the same
time the VC was booming everywhere, you also had the
COVID work from anywhere phenomenon which made beneficiaries of a
(23:47):
lot of cities, not just Miami, but also some cities
that I think you would say are quite counter narrative
to this. You know, liberal cities are a mess. Come
to the free State of Florida narrative. Chicago, for instance,
big boom during that period. You can also look at
(24:08):
like Boulder, Colorado, Philly, Seattle.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
You know.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
So this was happening in a lot of places, and
part of it, I don't want to totally dismiss it,
but part of it was Miami was the best at
just seizing the narrative. We are a place that is
great at hype cycles.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
If there is something behind the hype cycle. Often you
find a hype cycle that has a kernel of reality,
some sort of solid molten core of truth, surrounded by
the dance right, surrounded by the hype. And I'm just
wondering if the VC's bought into that, or if they
found that kernel of truth that made it viable and
(24:53):
made it worth their while in investing.
Speaker 7 (24:56):
Yeah, so as I look into the data, I think
what is what is encouraging is again there are there
are big macro trends that that sort of you know,
rising tides lift all boats, So you want to step
back and really focus on something like market share. Right,
So when I look at market share for Miami on
(25:19):
a dollars basis, market share sort of shot up during
that pandemic period and it's basically it's come back down
a lot. A more encouraging way to look at it
is number of deals, which takes sort of ticket size
out of the equation, right, And by number of deals,
(25:41):
Miami's market share in the VC space shot up during
this pandemic era, and it's come back down a little bit,
but it's holding on to a lot of those games.
And so I actually find that pretty encouraging, and I
think that that might sort of spell out a path
for for this market. I think it was always a
(26:03):
little bit hyperbolic, I mean a lot bit hyperbolic to
say that Miami was going to replace San Francisco and
Silicon Valley. I mean, come on, but it is objectively
still a less expensive place to live than a lot
of those West Coast cities and New York City. So
(26:25):
maybe there's a space for us in early stage startup.
Maybe this is a place and we've seen some examples
of this. Maybe this is a place, you know, where young,
smart entrepreneurial people come and they get their idea started,
they get their idea funded because there is a lot
of capital here. There are a lot of rich people
(26:45):
in South Florida. They get the ball rolling, and maybe
they move on and they do those late stage rounds
out in the West Coast, they take their company public.
But maybe we really carve out a niche for ourselves
in that early stage space.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Okay, well let me get into that a little bit.
What does Miami offer? You mentioned less expensive, You mentioned
lots of capital. The first thing I think is, you know,
you're never going to shovel snow in Miami. You never
have to worry about that. But that's probably less important
to the tech industry. What is else do they have
to offer?
Speaker 7 (27:22):
Yeah, so I basically think of several pillars. So we
talked about deep pockets. You can you can find and
meet with a lot of a lot of investors here,
favorable quality of life, less expensive than the maybe of
the many of the dominant tech and finance centers. Although
(27:46):
I should know that if you're talking like the urban
core in Miami, that spread has been closing a little bit,
so we'll have to watch that. But the sort of
fourth pillar is our connection to Latin America, which is
really something totally unique and kind of extraordinary about South Florida.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Right.
Speaker 7 (28:05):
You have this huge cultural connection, something like, you know,
two thirds of households speak a language other than English
at home to some extent. Oftentimes we're talking about Spanish,
but Portuguese is widely spoken here Haitian creole. So there's
a cultural connection to Latin America. There's a deep pool
(28:31):
of Latin America wealth. You can get direct flights to
anywhere in Latin America, and it's kind of just the
perfect place. If you wanted to create a Capital of
Latin America VC, I think this is where you would
put it. These are cultures and economies that are kind
of siloed in their own way, especially like Brazil and
(28:52):
the rest of Latin So if you wanted to create
this pan Latin American VC hub, I think, and there's
some evidence to this, there really is no better place
than Miami.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Climate change does that factor in at all. You know, Miami,
low lying area South Florida, lots of beaches, lots of
potential for issues with hurricanes, severe weather flooding in the future.
How does that or does it factor into this?
Speaker 7 (29:20):
I think it absolutely factors into it. You know, you
have Miami Dade County already negotiating with the Army Corps
of Engineers in terms of are they going to do
a sea wall? Are they going to use natural barriers
to protect this area for the long haul. I think
it's absolutely going to be a challenge. You already see
(29:41):
rising property insurance rates cutting into some of the affordability
that we talked about earlier, and so it's something it's
something to look at. I think, in a weird way,
South Florida is going to continue to lure wealth for
a long time, and wealthy people are going to continue
(30:04):
to put thirty million dollar mansions right in some of
the most vulnerable real estate and barrier barrier island communities
on the beach. But what we often forget is those
transactions go through because those people can afford to lose that.
And I think that that's really the core of it.
And you're absolutely right. As we look ten twenty thirty
(30:28):
years into the future, there's no talking about economic development
without first talking about sustainable solutions to the climate issue.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Jonathan Levin is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering markets, finance,
and M and A. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion, I,
Ami Morris. Scientists are only just scratching the surface of
what artificial intelligence can teach us about human biology and disease.
Let's dig into this now. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis
covers biotech, healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industry and joins us Now, Lisa,
(31:02):
when I first read your column on the Bloomberg terminal,
my first thought was, Oh, no, my doctor is going
to be a robot. That is not what this is about.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
No, No robot doctors yet, not yet.
Speaker 7 (31:15):
No.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
This is basically about the idea that scientists are learning
how to take our genetic code, you know, this very
long string of letters and turn it into information that's
useful in a way that they haven't been able to
do before.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
You've been following this, what are you seeing? Any examples are?
For instance, last.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Year, basically there was a to me kind of mind
blowing breakthrough where they could take the string of letters
that apply to a particular protein and a computer could
turn that into an image. This is something scientists have
been trying to do for years, figure out how to
go from you know, that sort of two dimensional code
(31:57):
into a three dimensional picture that is close to what
we know is the reality. It's super useful because they
use that to help develop drugs to understand disease better.
And you know they did this Google deep Mind, the
artificial intelligence unit of alphabet was able to do that
(32:17):
for every protein in existence, two hundred and fourteen million
of them. So it's that it sounds so wonky, but
it's actually a really big deal to be able to
do that. They're not perfect, it's a prediction, but a
lot of them are close enough that it's really helpful.
And now there's this kind of next phase, which I'm
happy to talk about too.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yes, please do what's the next phase?
Speaker 3 (32:38):
So we're learning about all the different things that one
could use that information for. But what DeepMind did was
shift to a different project where they used kind of
the foundation of this program called Alpha fold that predicts
the structures of proteins, and they gave it a different
problem to solve. They taught it how to solve a
different problem, which is, how do we know which of
(33:00):
the thousands of tiny mutations each of us carry are
actually harmful, and so which one and which ones are
benign because there's a lot of All of us have
all these mutations in our body, but they don't kill us, right,
they don't even all cause disease, and we don't necessarily
have a good way to distinguish between those two. Experiment
has taught us that, and so they've created this long list,
(33:23):
exhaustive list basically predicting which things might be a problem
and which not. Which is Again, it sounds so wonky,
but it could be very helpful filter for doctors who
are trying to understand why someone is sick like it
has a very rare genetic disease. They get back their
gene sequencing results and they look through all of them,
and they don't necessarily know what the problem is, which
(33:46):
one is the cause. Deepbine was really careful and stressing
that this isn't a diagnostic tool. You know, you want
to layer that onto other information that we've spent years accumulated,
decades accumulating. I think the obviously are going to be
other areas of healthcare where I think there could be
some problems with AI or just tendency. Some of that
(34:07):
is around patient privacy, you know. Some of it again
is around thinking that the computer might know better than
a doctor's you know, intuition and years of seeing patients,
and instead of integrating those two things together for something better,
relying on one.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Or the other.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
So those are the things that I would be worried
about when it comes. But on balance, I have been
a little skeptical of AI when it comes to drug
discovery and diagnosis. I'm pretty excited about the things that
Deep Mind is doing. I think none of our proteins
live in isolation. There have partners. They, you know, interact
(34:45):
with each other inside our body. And trying to get
to a point where we understand what those interactions and
predict what those interactions look like would be so important
when it comes to trying to stop disease. So that
to me is like a much tougher problem that could
be the next frontier. I would hope that someone someday
can solve that.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
All right, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis, And that does
it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced by
Eric Molow, and you can find all of these columns
on the Bloomberg Terminal. We're also available as a podcast
on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us.
Today's top stories and global business headlines are just ahead.
I'm Mammy Morris, and this is Bloomberg.
Host
Vonnie Quinn
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