Air Traffic Staffing Issues Cripple Flights & Solo Living Gets Pricier

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0:40Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today for the WNBA, it was the best of times. It was the worst of times. And it's just the worst of times for air travel as air traffic controller shortages lead to delays. It's Thursday, October 9th. Let's ride.

1:01Are you locked in? because Gen Z is, a viral trend known as the Great Lock-In has spread across social media in which young people challenge themselves to accomplish personal goals from September 1st through the end of the year. So over the next few months, don't be surprised to see a Gen Z creator journaling or training for a marathon or making healthy meals accompanied by inspirational quotes from Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan. The term Lock-In, meanwhile, has surged in popularity. It was voted the most useful term of 2024 by the American Dialect Society, which defined it as to enter a state of deep focus and concentration.

1:37Toby, how locked in are you these days? Neil, I've been locked in for the last 28 years. So I'm going to do the great lockout actually for the rest of the year where I forget my keys inside my apartment and have to call the locksmith. No, listen, I am someone who is very partial to a self-optimization routine. I've done 75 hard a couple of times. I've tried to run every single day in a year. I love social media trends like this. So yeah, this one is essentially adopt a pre-New Year's resolution before the year ends. Stay off your phone, make some money, get fit. Sounds like a normal Tuesday to me.

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2:49Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions may apply. If you're considering traveling via planes, trains, or automobiles this week, maybe opt for the latter two. For a third straight day, U.S. air traffic controller shortages brought on by the federal government shutdown led to some delays at major hubs. D.C., Newark, O 'Hare, and Nashville airports have been facing the most delays, so apologies if any bachelorette plans have been disrupted. In Philadelphia, which is not a great bachelorette destination, 50 out of 225 TSA officers reportedly showed up late or not at all on Monday.

3:34But even that was better than California's Hollywood Burbank Airport, which went dark for several hours on Monday when no controllers were available, a situation known as ATC-0. Remember, air traffic controllers are considered essential workers and are still expected to show up to work even though they aren't being paid while the shutdown continues. But should they start to call in sick in greater numbers, airline delays would pile up, exerting more and more pressure on lawmakers as one of the most visible and immediately felt consequences of a government shutdown. When airports grind to a halt, political pressure gets dialed up to 11.

4:08Look no further than the 2018-2019 shutdown when a coordinated controller and TSA sickouts helped break the standoff. Neil, the FAA was already dealing with air traffic controller shortages before the shutdown. Any further absences could be too much for it to handle. And it does not take a lot to send the aviation system to its knees back in 2019 during that shutdown. There were just 10 air traffic controllers who called out sick during that coordinated sick out that you mentioned. Six from northern Virginia and four from Florida. And that small work stoppage was enough to cause delays at several hubs and shut down travel completely for several hours at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

4:49You know what? The shutdown ended later that day. So it does not take a lot of these sick outs from air traffic controllers. Like you said, there's already a huge shortage. About 77 % of key air traffic control facilities are already understaffed. That's according to a 2024 DOT Inspector General report. So the longer this goes on, the more stickouts we may see because these guys and gals are not getting a paycheck. And when that comes, they're probably going to say, well, I need to feed my family. And you heard Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, say we're already seeing air traffic controllers starting to take second jobs like working for Uber and other things.

5:25to actually pay themselves and feed their families during these times. Yeah, air travel is just a massive pressure point in the entire American political and commercial apparatus. Controllers are actually prohibited from striking precisely because it's such an essential part of just the American infrastructure. Yet here they are being told to keep the system going, even though they are not being paid. So they are doing required labor, but they are doing unpaid labor at the same time. So it makes it such a uniquely volatile industry during a shutdown. So it is just putting an immense strain on a lot of people as well.

6:01These people, I mean, we've joked about 996 working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. That's basically what air traffic controllers are already doing. They're working these very long shifts six days a week to cover up from the lack of controllers in the pipeline. There's not many young people who are entering this industry. There's not a lot of trainees that are entering. So right now the system is already strained even more so right now. And what are the air traffic controller organizations saying? Like, what are they saying from their side about what's going on? Well, the organization that represents more than 20 ,000 air traffic controllers, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said that its members are already working so much.

6:38They're already under strain 10 hours a day, six days a week. And so they urged the federal government, without pointing any particular fingers, to bring a shutdown to a close so that they can continue doing this work that they're already under a lot of pressure to do. But they also added that they formally discourage these sick outs, saying that it's against their policy and also illegal to call in sick when you are not. So they kind of try to play it both sides, saying we need to bring this shutdown to an end so we can do our jobs and actually get paid for it while also not condoning what's going on.

7:09Also, the government shutdown is now rippling beyond just air travel in as it's entering its second week. More than 250 ,000 federal employees have missed their scheduled paychecks. If it extends into a third week, that number could rise above 2 million federal employees. So when you start to talk about the economy being impacted, that's when government shutdowns become especially vulnerable or damaging because 2 million people not getting their paycheck, that affects consumer spending. That will knock on GDP. All these big headline numbers that we've kind of hinted at happening if the shutdown continues, that will happen as it grows longer and longer because of just the way that paychecks are doled out in the government.

7:48They're not all doled out on the first Friday of every month. It's kind of multiple payroll providers in multiple industries are spreading out those paychecks. Third week, though, is when things really start to escalate. Moving on. How about this milestone? Renewable energy became the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of the year, overtaking coal for the first time in history. According to a report from the think tank Ember, new solar and wind capacity was enough to meet growing electricity demand around the globe, which even led to a dip in coal and gas use. But clean energy is doing better in some parts of the world than others.

8:23China is leading the charge, adding more solar and wind capacity than all other countries combined. Other developing countries like India, Pakistan, and African nations are also beefing up their renewable bona fides and pushing down coal generation in the process. The same can't be said for Europe and the United States. Here, the demand for electricity is growing faster than the clean energy to meet it. While in Europe, bad spells for hydropower and wind have also increased dependencies on fossil fuels. So, Toby, it's a split screen for renewables across the world. But taken in aggregate, this seems like a turning point for the global energy system.

8:59Yeah, it really is a big headline number here. Renewables overtaking coal. That is a big deal. It does look like a lot of the momentum is coming from emerging markets, though, who are actually building renewables out of necessity. They need more power to, you know, build out the infrastructure in their countries. The easiest and cheapest way to do that now is solar, is sometimes wind, but mostly solar, because, you know, coal power plants are actually more expensive to operate than a solar farm in many parts of the world, especially as China has kind of flooded the world with very, very cheap inputs for, you know, to build solar infrastructure.

9:36And it is interesting, too, that we're seeing some geographical nuances between what type of renewable energy certain countries are building. There's almost a sunbelt countries like, you know, India and Africa that are mostly receiving a lot of direct sunlight. And so they are building solar. And then there's wind belt economies, which are actually mostly Europe and North America. And sunbelt nations are doing a lot better than wind belt nations are right now because solar is cheaper to build than wind. Yeah, there's an astonishing stat that solar has seen prices fall 99.9 % since 1975. They're so cheap that a lot of developing economies with not a lot of money to spend can start to do that.

10:19Meanwhile, wind costs have just fallen by a third over the last decade. We've seen a lot of problems with the offshore wind industry here in the United States and also in Europe. The infrastructure costs are just so much higher than in solar. So you are seeing those geographical discrepancies between the Sunbelt countries that are deploying a lot more solar capacity compared to the more northern ones that are struggling a little bit with wind. But I think the bottom line here is that China is just leapfrogging the rest of the world. They are adding capacity at a rate that we haven't seen before, and they're dwarfing pretty much every other country when it comes to not only inputting renewable energy in their own country, but exporting it across the world.

10:59Renewable energy exports topped$20 billion from China to the rest of the world just in August alone. And what the heck is happening in the US? It's ironic that this milestone was achieved right when the International Energy Agency slash US renewable growth forecast by 50 % over the next five years because we've seen some of these Biden-era clean energy incentives be rolled back under the Trump administration. So as the rest of the world is accelerating towards this renewable future, the U.S. is kind of taking its foot off the gas right now. So it is ironic that we are seeing these crazy headlines, renewables outpacing coal at the same time the U.S.

11:37is kind of falling behind. Moving on, game one of this year's WNBA finals was the most watched since 1997, the league's first year in existence. Four-time MVP Asia Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces are up 3-0 on the Phoenix Mercury, looking for their third title in four years. Even with Kaitlyn Clark sidelined with an injury for most of the year, ratings, attendance, and interest were all up. So why are the vibes in the league so off right now? Nafisa Collier, an all-star on the Minnesota Lynx, made headlines earlier this month when she said the WNBA has the worst leadership in the world. Her criticism was aimed directly at Commissioner Kathy Engelbert, who she claimed privately told her that Kaitlyn Clark should be grateful for the WNBA's platform, something Engelbert denied saying.

12:19While friction between player and commissioners is nothing new in pro sports, it's created a messy situation during a time that Clark declared straight up the most important moment in the league's history. Clark is referring to the surge in eyeballs and interest that is coinciding with collective bargaining negotiations between player and league. WNBA players and leadership have until October 31st to shake hands on a new CBA, with players asking for a bigger cut of the league's growing revenue. Under the current agreement, WNBA players only get 9.3 % of league revenue. That means Caitlin Clark's rookie contract was worth just$76 ,000 a year.

12:56A WNBA max contract is only worth$250 ,000 a year. WNBA leadership long justified this low pay as a result of low revenue, but now that viewership, ticket sales, brand sponsorships, and broadcast partnerships are booming. They want to renegotiate. Neil, there is a big disconnect between eyeballs and dollar signs right now. The press conference by Collier was truly jaw-dropping. She took a piece of paper that she wrote this four and a half minute speech lambasting league leadership, and no one saw this coming. And after the game, she just lit into Kathy Engelbert, the commissioner of the WNBA. She said the real threat to our league isn't money.

13:36It isn't ratings or even missed calls or even physical play. It's the lack of accountability from the league office. You saw other stars after this happened say, you know what? Collier is kind of right. We don't really like the way this the direction of the leadership of the WNBA right now. So she got a lot of support from other players. However, there is an M. Night Shyamalan level twist here in that Collier is the co-founder of a rival league to the WNBA, Unrivaled. She co-founded it with her husband, who is now the president and former New York Liberty forward Breonna Stewart, a former WNBA star.

14:12This is a three on three league and they pay players six figures to play. And it is seen as somewhat of a rival to the WNBA. So she has a financial interest in growing unrivaled. And she also may have a similar interest in seeing the WNBA lose a little bit compared to unrivaled. So some were questioning perhaps a conflict of interest here. But I think that is getting a little bit buried by the groundswell of support for Collier's comments directed against the leadership of the WNBA. It is just, as you said at the beginning of the show, the best of times or worst of times. Because, again, this was the most viewed finals game.

14:49Again, take Kaitlin Clark completely out of the equation. She's not in the finals. She hasn't been in the playoffs at all. And yet eyeballs are still tuning in to watch the league. And so as this is happening, you have the players kind of at leadership's throat because it is kind of a crux right now in negotiations. Are NBA, WNBA players going to start to receive a larger share of revenue? Again, they're not asking for NBA-level salaries. They're just asking for NBA-level amount of revenue share that that league is getting. So right now, this is a very important moment. That's why Kaitlin Clark called it the most important for a while.

15:24And it would stink if next year's season kind of gets delayed or disrupted, which is a very real possibility right now. If there's no deal by Halloween, technically, that could stretch into next year, which would, again, be a bummer because the league has so much momentum right now. But that is absolutely something we've seen happen in other men's sports leagues. It could very well happen in WNBA. We should also mention that Kathy Engelbert, the commissioner of the WNBA, who is a former CEO of Deloitte, did respond to Collier. She said that she denied that. She said that Caitlin Clark should be grateful.

15:57She just said that that never happened. She was supposed to meet with Collier a few days after this press conference happened. But after denying that those comments happened, they broke off that meeting. So it looks like that relationship still remains icy. She said that it's clear that I'm not very well liked among the players right now, and I'm working to restore that trust. But she also, and along with the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, said that they are confident that they are going to reach a CBA deal, perhaps not by the end of the month, but at some point. Meanwhile, the Aces up 3-0 and kind of rolling to the third championship in four years.

16:32All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers. Tobey and I don't work in accounting, so we're shielded from handling company ledgers, bank transactions, and financial reports. But for the pros who do deal with all that, Fispan can help make your job easier. It embeds your bank right into your accounting software, so siloed data is centralized, and you can get more done and gain better visibility into daily cash positions. Imagine payments and remittances being sent directly from your accounting software. Reconciliations that are completed in minutes, not hours And financial reports that are consistently accurate and on time You can do more than imagine all that Head to FISPAN.com to transform how your firm manages money That's FISPAN.com Toby, the modern workplace is a digital mess Is my laptop dusty again?

17:27Yes, but that's not what I'm talking about Teams are scattered across locations using a chaotic mix of apps and devices It's a logistical nightmare that creates security risks and eats up valuable time. Well, it's a good thing there's JumpCloud and Aaron Akan for that matter. JumpCloud is a unified IT management platform that securely manages all employee identities and devices from a single place, cutting through the chaos. By consolidating IT tools, JumpCloud helps businesses save money and avoid the complexity of managing multiple systems. Its AI-powered platform helps you protect, manage, and monitor your entire workforce so you can stay one step ahead.

18:03This isn't just about making IT easier. It's about giving your business a strategic advantage. JumpCloud frees you up to be more productive, flexible, and innovative, allowing you to work smarter and grow faster. Toby, you should really keep some screen wipes around. As for the rest of us, clean up the digital mess. Learn more at jumpcloud.com slash brew. That's jumpcloud.com slash brew. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will wake you up faster than a Celsius. My first number is for all of you aspiring Carrie Bradshaw's. The Economist ranked America's top 100 cities by affordability for people who want to live alone, which it calls the Carrie Bradshaw Index after the Sex and the City character who lived her best solo Manhattan life dubiously.

18:49Without further ado, the most affordable city for living alone is Wichita, Kansas, where median wages are 75 % higher than what is needed to afford the average studio apartment. Other super affordable cities for solos include Lincoln, Nebraska and Tulsa, Oklahoma, which make up for in cheap what they lack in excitement. On the other end of the spectrum, New York was once again the most affordable city for living by yourself, which is why very few people do it here outside of TV shows. The median monthly rent for a studio apartment is about$3 ,800, meaning you must earn over$151 ,000 a year to live there without spending more than 30 % of your gross income on rent, a common measure of affordability.

19:33Toby, the economist, uses the character of Carrie Bradshaw to reveal a deeper truth. Quote, if you dream of affording a place to yourself, what town you live in is as important as what you earn because rents vary across cities far more than wages do. How is she affording all those shoes on a columnist salary? That's what I want to know. There are certain towns and cities where their star is rising in terms of affordability and certain towns and cities that are falling in terms of affordability. One of the biggest two that I want to call it are Houston and Dallas, which were comfortably affordable last year.

20:06But now this year, they've both fallen into the unaffordable zone as rents have drastically outpaced wages. Austin saw rents jump 25 % year over year. The city's median wage is$10 ,000 less. So that gives it a Bradshaw score of 0.8. Again, above one is what you're looking for. Below one means you're unaffordable. So it is fascinating to see how certain Sunbelt states have just risen and fallen in affordability too. Memphis actually had one of the biggest slides too. They became a lot more unaffordable from just residual COVID migrations as well. So interesting to see which parts of the country are becoming more unaffordable and which like Wichita are just like a bastion of affordability.

20:47And we should put some respect on Wichita's name because, yeah, maybe we said it's not that exciting. But there are some few interesting things about Wichita. First of all, some of the best fast food in the country started there. Pizza Hut was launched on May 31st, 1958 by two brothers who went to Wichita State University. University. White Castle is another great chain that started in Wichita. It's also known as the air capital of the world. I'm sure they gave themselves that moniker. But Cessna, there's a guy named Clyde Cessna who started Cessna there. It's become a huge supplier of aircraft parts for Boeing and Airbus.

21:24And then finally, we got to talk about the DeBruce Grain Elevator that is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the world's largest grain elevator by capacity as a storage capacity, get this, of over 20 million bushels of wheat. It's a massive structure, stretching 2 ,700 feet, about a half a mile. We got to talk about the grain elevator. And we have to have another Sex and the City reboot with Kerry heading to Wichita. I mean, something good is going to happen between that. So HBO, if you're listening, Kerry and Wichita, I think that's magic there. All right. For my second number, Cristiano Ronaldo is a billionaire.

22:01Not terribly shocking, I know, but for the first time, Bloomberg clocked the soccer star's net worth at$1.4 billion, making him the sports only billionaire. Ronaldo's come a long way from his upbringing in poverty on the Portuguese island of Madeira, where the airport is now literally called Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport. His soccer career began in his native country, then at mega clubs across Europe like Manchester United and Real Madrid. To complement his substantial salary for prolific goal scoring on the pitch, Ronaldo signed more endorsement deals than Sidney Sweeney, earning untold millions from brands like Nike and Armani.

22:36We don't know how much he gets paid per sponsored post, but it's probably more than anyone else on this earth because Ronaldo is the most popular person on Instagram with over 660 million followers. But all that didn't add up to a billion dollars until Ronaldo made one of the most decisive and controversial moves of his career, leaving Europe to sign with the Saudi Arabian team Al Nasser. To lure Ronaldo, Saudi Arabia offered him more than Mark Zuckerberg offers AI engineers, and his recent deal with the team, worth more than $400 million, vaulted him into the three-coma club. Toby, Ronaldo is a unique sports billionaire in that most of his money comes from actual income from playing the sport, not equity in an adjacent business.

23:16Roger Federer's billionaire status primarily stems from his stake in the shoe brand on running while Michael Jordans comes from his long running deal with Nike and his ownership of the Charlotte Hornets. Ronaldo has just played for a really long time as one of the best players in the sport and moved to teams that paid him gobs of money. Pretty simple formula. You should try it. He's just a W2 guy, you know, collecting a paycheck, becoming a billionaire. His paycheck just looks a little bigger than yours or mine. It is fascinating though. David Beckham, who was the, I call him Cristiano Ronaldo before Cristiano Ronaldo, just in terms of global recognizability.

23:50He retired with$100 million in total lifetime earnings. Ronaldo is creeping up on$600 million in his salary. So it just shows the amount of money. But this Al Nassar contract is just a total outlier in global sports. No one is even clearing close to the amount of money that Ronaldo is bringing in. He also got equity in the team as well. So you said that he's mostly making the money off of salary. But in the future, he says he wants to own multiple soccer clubs. He already owns a stake in the very club he's playing for now so i could see this number start to compound over time as well and here is a very interesting piece of ronaldo lore he was named in honor of his dad's favorite movie actor who was ronald reagan i genuinely i mean i've played soccer my whole life i've been a ronaldo fan for a long time literally never knew that until researching this story ronald reagan are you serious that is one of the craziest piece of barge trivia that you'll have in your back pocket now.

24:46Ronaldo was named after Ronald Reagan, and now he's a billionaire. Okay, my final number is 150, which is how many people on average are in your social circle. The number comes from British psychologist Robin Dunbar, who studied more than 30 primate species to come up with a fascinating relationship. The size of the neocortexes in these species' brains was directly correlated to the size of their stable social groups. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the neocortex of the brain is responsible for things like language, problem solving and self-awareness, all skills that translate to fostering social relationships that for primates improve survival rates.