Vibecession, AI Mania & The New Casino Economy with Kyla Scanlon

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1:30Hey, welcome to the podcast. It's John here. Now, last weekend was another spectacular Kilconomics weekend. A proper full-on jamboree of economics and comedy and actually just a bit of crack. And every year it's getting bigger and better. In actual fact, this is the biggest year yet. So in traditional style, myself and Mac kicked things off with a live podcast show. But this time, we were joined by the wonderful Kyla Scanlon. Now, who's Kyla Scanlon? Well, I'll let Mac take it from here. There is an up-and-coming economic superstar from the United States. Her book, In This Economy, is a New York Times bestseller.

2:14She is changing the way people think about economics, understand economics absorb economics she is I wouldn't say a spokesperson for but she's an interpreter for her generational as they call Gen Z we call them Gen Z it doesn't sound quite so good it's also A with a name like Scanlon her people are from Roscommon so if there are any people from up the road give it a big who for Roscommon and B it's her first time there you go they are here and it's the all two of you and it's the it's also Kyla's first time in Ireland so I want to give her a massive Kilkenny Irish welcome to one of our own who is coming back so that's a bit of a treat so would you please give a big Kilkenny welcome for Kyla Scanlon ladies and gentlemen

3:12thank you have a hand come around come around how are you I'm good, I'm good. Yes, I'm so excited to be here with everybody. It's wonderful. Before we talk economics, we've got to talk the Scanlins. Tell me, where are they from? Where are the family from? Yeah, so my grandparents were immigrants from Ireland in the 1950s. So my grandma is from Roscommon. And they actually went back when my dad was about a year old, but ended up going back to the States. So my grandma used to go back quite a bit, but I've actually never gotten the chance to come here. I graduated into the pandemic, and so it made all my post-college travel plans a bit strange.

3:51Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I'm very excited to be here, and it's really nice. It's cool. We're delighted to have you. Absolutely. Delighted to have you. I'm sure this will be the first of many visits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're that close you can get the passport. You know that. Yeah. So if America really goes to shit, you know. I'm sure you can play for Ireland as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But Kyla, I want to ask you about the way in which you came to economics, because the way you write, I want to talk to you about the book first, but tell me about how did you get into economics? How did you get to a situation where your sub stack is seen and read by hundreds of thousands?

4:34You have 750 ,000 social followers. I saw you on the Jon Stewart show. oh, you know, you're slightly going up market now when you come to Dave McQueen's podcast after that, you know, but it has been a whirlwind, you know, and you've really sort of grasped this idea of telling the story for your generation. So where did that start? Yeah, so I graduated with a degree in economics and finance. And like I said, I graduated into the pandemic. And so I grew up in Kentucky and had moved out to LA in 2019 for this like very fancy finance job. And it was very exciting. and I started the job. The pandemic happened a couple of months later and I just, I think like many people during the pandemic realized that I wanted to do something a little bit different.

5:20And I had had this experience when I was in university where I'd sold cars. So I sold Hyundais. Do you have a few? There are many used Honda salespeople. Hyundais. Oh, Hyundais. Oh, Hyundais, yeah. Honda, Hyundai. It's all over there. All kind of Asia. It's all over there. This is my Trumpian. It's all over there, Asia. So I sold the H car and, you know, people would come in and they wouldn't know what an interest rate was or they wouldn't understand the monthly payments. And for me, like I was like, why are we letting people into the world and not giving them the tools that they need to understand it?

5:59And so when I took this big, fancy job, I realized that I just had to go and focus on education. And so the way I got started is I would do skits about the economy. So I'd pretend to be Jerome Powell, who's the chair of the Federal Reserve. I would dress up like him, and I think I'm the only person who's ever done. By the way, you're made for this economics gig. It was really fun. But it was the same, I think, core mission that you all have here, where it's like economics should be fun. It should be accessible. It should be entertaining. It shouldn't be something big and scary. and so we're very aligned, I think, mission-wise.

6:36And so I've been on this path for four years now and, yeah, it's brought me many amazing places. I was just in Prague the past couple of days, never been there before. Beautiful city. It's pretty cool, yeah. Not a patch in Kilkenny, but it's got a couple of nice bridges. Yeah, yeah, and a castle. They both have castles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's been great. But, again, like you've tapped into your generation because what anybody who studied economics in school or in college, the vast majority of people, Kylie, would just say, oh, my God, it's so boring. Jesus, it's so boring. Or it's hard, or it's technical, there's too much mathematics, or all that sort of stuff.

7:15But what you're doing is you're saying to your own generation, A, this is fun, but B, it's too important not to understand. Yeah, it's life. It is, totally is. Everything you do is an economic transaction, like buying a cup of coffee, buying a house, driving somewhere, Like everything we do has some role in the economy. And I think people have been really shut out from that. And they felt like they don't have the power to understand it or they're not smart enough to understand it. And so my goal has been to like really try to bring it and level it for people. And that's the goal of the book. The book has like 60 illustrations in it.

7:51It's goofy. No, it's fantastic. It's great. I think that's like how you have to talk about this stuff. because it is sort of ridiculous that we don't have this standard of economic and financial literacy, and yet we still expect people to, like, pay rent. And, you know, if you have to deal with health care stuff, deal with that or have a family even. Like, all of that is economics. Household budgets even. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But it's interesting. I love the way you do the kind of TikTok videos and stuff. And very similar to the way Mac talks about economics, as you're saying, is that, but it's not dumbing it down.

8:27is just simplifying it, aerating it. We hope so. I mean, we hope so because it is too important. This is a country that has gone, everyone in this room knows, we went through a monumental crash largely because people didn't really apply a little more rigor to what they were actually doing in their own lives. And then, of course, you're prey to charlatans and you're prey to all sorts of people. Now you've come up with the word of two years ago, economic word you came up with was called a vibe session. And you, in the first part of the book, you explain to us what a vibe session is and why it's so crucial to understand that as distinct from a recession or what is used typically.

9:17Yeah, so it's really almost what you were saying with the Pope's children, like how can you tap into the feelings of something? And so oftentimes when we talk about economics, there's a disconnect between how people might feel about the economy and then the actual data behind the economy. So the economic data could be saying that everything's going really good. That was actually three years ago, that word, in 2022. And during that time, it was about the United States. And during that time, inflation was going down. The labor market was relatively strong. The economy was growing. But consumer sentiment was really, really low.

9:51And so for me, you know, oftentimes we'll just sort of skip over that. We'll be like, oh, it's fine that people don't feel good. You know, whatever. Who cares? Like GDP is going through the roof. And I really wanted to understand the difference between the two. And, you know, I think this has become more and more important. You know, consumer sentiment is driving more and more of how we think about the economy. And it's not a new idea like George Soros, reflexivity, canes and animal spirits. It's like, it's not entirely new that emotions are very important, but I just wanted to sort of center people in the economy because ultimately people are the economy.

10:28The decisions that people make, what they buy, what events that they choose to attend, where they choose to raise their families. And so I felt like it was important to elevate people as we're talking about how the economy is doing. And the vibe was just how people feel. Yeah. So what makes people freak out? What makes them excited? And what makes them influenced by people? Because it always intrigued me when I was learning economics, precisely this, that people do things largely because other people do things, because we're a social animal. You were just looking and saying, locate this right now in economics.

11:08Can I ask you about your home country now, the United States? if you want. Well, well.

11:19Go on, what's the, what's going on? What's going down? What's the take? I know, it's, oh, it's so tough. It's like, it's such an incredible country, you know, and it's like there was a reason that my grandparents went there and, you know, they wanted to, like, go and do something and build their family and they invested so much there. And so the way, for example, you look at economics is through the lens largely of your generation. And you've written a lot about this. So, for example, you've written extensively about how the attention economy is destroying your generation in America. And here, explain that to me.

12:00Yes. So a lot of my recent research has been, you know, how can we think about the time that we spend on things? So attention is an incredible commodity, like your eyeballs are the most expensive things that you own, like what you spend your time on is incredibly costly. And companies know that. And so that's why advertising is so popular. That's why social media companies have all of these little hacks to keep you scrolling to keep you really engaged with your phone. And so the research that I've been trying to work on is how technology like social media, like AI, is developing people's identity.

12:41So more and more so for younger people, they're developing their identity via social media, and that's impacting how they think about the economy. So there's this really tight feedback loop between technology, therefore driven by the attention economy, which drives identity, which ultimately drives the broader economy. And so I've been trying to map that out and think about, you know, what do we spend time on? Is it good for us? Is it creating, you know, value outside of just dollar signs? And is it helping people understand the world better? And like technology is ultimately a tool. There are some good aspects to social media, but it's important to understand the drawbacks too.

13:22So explain to me why you think it's destroying your generation. Because this is a fascinating thing. I think one of the interesting things I saw recently was that it isn't just young people doing this. No, it's not. It's all of us are doing this. So explain to me how the algorithm works, how the attention economy works, how it's been monetized, how your imagination has been monetized. all that stuff because this is where we're going now this is where the economy is headed yeah digital yeah i mean i think the way that you can think about your attention and the things that people are trying to get you to pay attention to it's not like economics educational content like that's not the most engaging thing it's usually somebody like lying to you or trying to rage bait you by saying something absolutely absurd and then you comment you're like that's crazy Who would ever say that?

14:13And then they get more views. And it creates this really perverse incentive where people are, and there's a study out that came out about this sort of like the power behind social media is the power within controlling people's emotions. so the things that you're viewing on social media are going to bleed out into how you interact with the physical world but that's kind of the thing with the algorithm is that it doesn't differentiate between like good views which I would consider like educational content learning content versus bad views which is people who are spewing you know things that are dividing us even more and so that's how I would think about social media is yeah the algorithm is incredibly powerful it's increasingly dictating the political environment, I think, across the world right now.

15:01You know, social media is how a lot of young people and older people get their news. And so if you think about that rage bait incentive, which is not new, like newspapers hacked into that in the early 1900s, but it's just such a scale. And so I think that's the thing that I've been spending a lot of time researching. And it's funny, if you look at the States, you know, in the last, let's say, six months, It seems, and you've written about this before and we've observed it, that the technology giants who are largely behind the social media platforms have sort of sucked all the energy out of the United States.

15:37They've sucked all the money, this AI boom that's going on. You've said that you regard the United States as one massive leveraged bet on AI. Yes. Explain that to us. What's the upside, but what's the downside? What's the downside of AI? No, no, no, of the leverage bet. Yes. Of the fact that it's kind of taken the attention. I know. It's taken all the money. It's taken so much. Yeah. So there's this chart that I can't show you, but imagine it. And it's essentially the, it has one huge bar that's really tall. And all the other bars are really small. And this really tall bar is the revenues that non-profitable companies have been making and the stock price going up for these non-profitable companies.

16:22So not their revenues. So essentially non-profitable companies, companies with no revenue, they've been the companies that have been outperforming in the S &P 500 this year. So that's, I think, one aspect of what we're seeing with the focus on technology, the focus on AI, is that some companies are making these really big bets. They're not making any money, but they're still out there and the stock market is rewarding them because the stock market is detached from pretty much any fundamentals. And so a theory that I think is important to pay attention to is that the U.S. stock market has been doing extremely well, you know, partly driven by these unprofitable companies, but then also partly driven by the AI companies.

17:07So NVIDIA, Meta, Apple, Microsoft. And because the stock market has been doing so well, the U.S. government has a lot of latitude to do the things that they've been doing. My theory is that if the stock market started to go down, the U.S. government would not get away with many of the things that they're getting up to. So you think the wealth bomb that Americans are experiencing from this boom is allowing Americans to say, well, if Trump is doing this, I mean, they're shutting the government down. These are serious things. Yeah, the airspace is getting shut down. I know, I'm flying to America next week and I'm already afraid of flying.

17:45And I don't like the idea of... There's no one in control. Exactly. This does my head in. I can write lots of books, but I can't. I can't fly a plane. So you're saying that there's a sort of a dream-like quality to what's going on in America. Tease that out a wee bit. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the stock market is often used as a barometer of success. And so that's kind of now that we don't have any data for the government. And people look at the stock market and it's like, well, if the stock market is going up, like surely these policies can't be that bad. Like surely tariffs aren't harming that many people.

18:24And so I think it's just creating this falsified reality where everything is A-OK, but really it's just AI companies. Is there too much focus on stock market data? Oh gosh, yeah. You know, just focusing on the wrong stuff. Well, I mean, I think it's like, well, what else would you focus on, especially right now where we don't have the data that we need to understand the government because the government is shut down. So we don't have the data. But like, you know, going back to the point about the stock market, like being driven primarily by AI, 75 % of S &P 500, so the top 500 companies that I was referencing earlier, 75 % of their earnings are driven by AI.

19:02And so I think if you just think about that relationship, like the power of the AI industry, how quickly it's grown, how much it's supporting the stock market, and how much the strength of the stock market because of the AI is perhaps allowing the government to do certain things. Like, I think there's some sort of relationship there. But I do think, you know, the U.S. is an extremely financialized country. And so I think we really heavily weight the stock market as a barometer of how people are feeling when really I don't think it's accurate to point back to the earlier discussion about consumer sentiment.

19:38Well, it's interesting because it kind of plays no role here at all. I mean, if you ask people, say, the ISAC 100 index went up. We're like, you? What? What, just go get two more pints and a bag of crisps. Who scored? Yeah, who scored? Yeah, yeah. It was an extra time. Can't believe it. It was well off-site. No, but I do want to ask you about the relationship between the stock market and one of your other recent theories, which I find fascinating. You said the United States is becoming a casino economy. Explain that to me, as opposed to a work economy. Yes. Explain that to me. Yeah, so I sometimes write for the New York Times opinion section, and I wrote this piece for the New York Times about this idea of the casino economy.

20:21And so I think you can kind of think about the things that we're seeing in the U.S. You know, the tariffs are a massive bet. There's a Supreme Court case that might undo all of them that they're deciding on this week. So it's just it's a massive bet. I think that other countries will want to continue to trade with the U.S., that other countries will want to put up with that sort of behavior that the U.S. dollar can withstand. And this all sounds very pessimistic, but that's kind of how you talk in terms of gambling. Like it is just a bet. Like it could all go really, really bad. And then I think if you think about the stock market, if you think about the way that we, you know, the social safety net in the U.S., which I'm sure has been talked about a lot on these stages here, we just don't have one.

21:01And so 43 % of our boomers have no retirement savings, which is just a huge gamble on the workforce and the stability of younger people to continue to, you know, provide and support older people into retirement. And so I think if you think about the way that young people are thinking about investing, when I was in Prague and I was talking to somebody there about, you know, what she's seeing. And she says that a lot of people and a lot of young people in Prague are betting on private companies. Like that's a new accessible way for them to try and make a quick buck. And you see that in the U.S. at a major scale as well, where you have prediction markets where you can bet on like if a hurricane is going to wreck a town or who's going to win a mayoral election.

21:46You see it in options trading. You see it in sports betting. I was listening to a radio show in the cab on the way here. And the radio show was talking about how, you know, it feels like there's not a lot of hope. been I think in some parts of I don't know what country they were talking about like not a lot of hope in one part of this country and I think that's what you see in the US like people are you know leaning into the casino economy leaning into gambling because there is an element of financial nihilism not believing in the future and so people are taking monetary matters into their own hands so that was like a very circuitous way of describing but hopefully that made sense I was going to ask you just on that.

22:28I've been watching lots of your stuff of late. It's great. But you talked about the barbell here. Oh, yes, yes. Could you explain? Because that taps into, you know, these digital gamblers and the safety secret. Could you explain that to us? Yeah. So one phenomenon that, so I've also, for context, I've spent the last like year and a half on the road. So I've been to like over 25 college campuses and I've actually been on the road for 30 days. as of today, which is a really long time. It is, but we're going to look after you. Don't worry. We're going to look after you. There are loads and loads of people you're probably related to in this room.

23:09You might end up in your cousins having tea before you know it's at the end of the night and being looked after. Yes, that's very great. Oh, fuck.

23:25to the barbell. Anyway, so yes, I've been on the road, not meeting my cousins, but maybe tonight. And I've been to all of these, you know, it's been like 11 states in the past 30 days in the US. And I've been talking to a lot of young people about, these people are in college, about like how they're thinking about their futures. Because that's my primary area of research is like young people in the labor market. And for a lot of young people, some of them are going back into jobs like plumbers and welders, which became a little bit unpopular in the United States. And we have a massive shortage because we've massively underinvested.

24:00So the Wall Street Journal has a piece called Gen Z is the tool belt generation, talking about the number of young people that are taking a more risk averse path. And so I went back to my alma mater of WKU, Western Kentucky University. I spoke to a student there and he said, it's too risky for me to go to university. I'm just going to go back to the factory. So like you see some young people taking that path and trying to minimize risk. And then you see other young people. If you go on social media, you'll see a lot of these people who are making massive bets, using options, you know, doing all sorts of sports gambling, doing the prediction markets.

24:37Bitcoin and crypto and all that. Yeah. Tesla of stock all of it and so i think you just see these two very extreme responses to risk partly like some people are like yeah bring it on i'm gonna make a bunch of money and take a ton of risk and then you see other people who are like i'm just gonna minimize my losses here and take you know an important but perhaps less risky path yeah see my bet is on the the safety seekers because they're the the guys who are going to do the apprenticeship build the houses and then solve the employment and housing problem in one go. Yes, I hope so. I hope so too.

25:13I think that makes no sense. By the way, I've never seen him with a toolbox, by the way. Have you seen any of my shelves? Your big bet is on other people. Over there, there's a bloke who can do this sort of stuff. You'll cheer them on. You'll be like, good job. Bring them a cup of tea. Exactly, a cup of tea and a biscuit. Exactly, Marietta biscuits. But what you're talking about is something that... Gen Z feel here in Ireland, which is a precarious state of, we were laughing about, you know, me writing this book in my 30s, but, you know, my 20s and a lot of people of our generation in Ireland, there was kind of, there was a pathway, right?

25:54It might not have been very exciting, but you were rewarded for doing certain things the right way. You had a job that allowed you move out from your parents you could move in with your mates and or a partner and you could begin the process Kyla of becoming an adult right by the time you're 25 26 right or maybe a wee bit a wee bit later now in Ireland that has gone our kids cannot do this they cannot do this it's the same in the United States what do you think it's doing to that generation I mean I think uh I heard this in Prague too. It's just housing. Like it's just housing is so expensive. And the way that I think you can sort of think about it is that if you think about a ladder, like every rung of that economic ladder, and this has happened for every generation, but it's especially, I think, painful now post-pandemic with inflation, with AI perhaps taking some jobs, with just political turmoil across the world, where if you think about like getting an entry-level job that's a little bit more difficult.

26:57In the US, the college wage premium has actually shrunk. So people who are graduating from college expect to make a little bit more than people who don't. And that is not the case anymore. So people are spending in the US a lot of money on a degree that isn't necessarily returning what they thought it would. We're also seeing a lot of issues with mates and like marriage and dating. And that's like another rung of the ladder that's looking a little shaky. and then housing, like housing in the United States has gone up 25 % over the past five years and wages have not up 25%. And so I think that's just the problem is people are trying to climb this economic ladder and it just, it feels like every time you step on the rung, it's a little shaky.

27:43So my son, who's 23 and in great Irish fashion, has finished university in Ireland, did a very good degree, got a very good degree and he's now a barman in Manhattan. Old school story, right? It's like, you think I'm getting a proper job, Dad? No way. This is a proper job. But he has asked me, this is the why. He said, okay, Dad. He said, you and mom could do things when you were younger and you could move out and you could move in together and begin the process. He said, I can't. Why? This is why is this something that has crept up on us over the last two decades and is now fact? So in the States, why do you think we have arrived at this situation where the younger generation is paying for the former sins of a generation that is now middle-aged?

28:40Why do you think this is happening? Let's talk about the economics of it. What is driving this? I mean, I don't think it's anybody's fault in particular. I think it's just like systemic in a way. And there's just, as you said, like, there's just a lot of problems that are coming home to roost. The pandemic, I think, made it more difficult to paper over certain things. Like you could really see weaknesses in certain industries, weaknesses in the government. and I think it's like a couple of things like there's public wealth and then there's private wealth right and so public wealth is investment in civic infrastructure it's sort of that collective idea that we're all in this together and like we have to invest in one another we have to pay our taxes we have to build good transit we have to make sure that our young people are getting a good education so therefore I'm going to pay some form of taxes and in the U.S.

29:34there's a lot of resistance to that, to that idea of public wealth. And so there's been a really big focus on private wealth. So if you look at like a figure like Elon Musk, who's built a lot of companies, he now has a trillion dollar pay package. And that's ridiculous. Yeah. Which you won't pay tax on either. I can't even fathom. What do you do with a trillion dollars? Buy the world or elections? Maybe both. And so I think - Yeah, you buy the president first and then you work down from there. Yeah, Citizens United was a major mistake. That was the law that allowed very rich people to really influence U.S.

30:11elections. But I think that's kind of the issue is that it is a very individualistic mindset in the United States. It's always been kind of like that, like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. But like the bootstraps kind of don't exist in a major way right now. And there's like a lot of ignoring the issues that we might have with public wealth. Like I did an interview with the deputy secretary or the former deputy secretary of the treasury. So the person who is underneath Janet Yellen of the Treasury Department in the U.S., his name is Wally Adeyemo. And we talked about this problem. You know, why are people just so frustrated by the economy?

30:47And I think it is kind of that ladder that we were talking about, like where every single point is very painful. And then it creates even more issues because for him, like he was trying to encourage the United States to build more housing. So housing costs would go down, you know, over 50 % of U.S. renters are cost burdened by that. And it just every time you turn around, there's some sort of red tape. It becomes there's some sort of bureaucracy that you're going to have to navigate. It's just very difficult to build. Like I think when the U.S. first started, and I think this is true for a lot of developed nations, it had a builder mindset.

31:23Like there was a lot of dynamism. I think this is a panel that you all actually have, like the dynamism of the U.S. or of the world at large. And it's gotten a little bit trapped in layers of bureaucracy. And so I think that's what a lot of young people are feeling.

31:43But again, what is fascinating... This is Nick and Jack from The Best One Yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart business. Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing. Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment. Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need.

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33:23this last couple of days has been the election of somebody in New York City, Mandami, who has been elected by younger people. Yes, overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly, by people who never thought, never expected to vote for what they call a democratic socialist. We call them members of Feeney Gale here, but that's a totally, totally different thing. But exactly, they are a democratic. But the Muslim thing was also an important element of that too, which was surprising. And again, I've been sent by the richest man in our family, my bartender, all sorts of memes or whatever. But explain to me, he is by a country mile.

34:07He's making about 400 bucks a night. He's like, come on, pay the rent. See all that shit we pay for in your stupid private school. We want it back now. What do you think, before we go, So, Alana, let's tease this out a bit. The election of Zoran Ndami says how significant it is. Is it? What's he tapping into? And the solutions he may proffer. And how fertile would you suspect the ground is in the United States outside of New York City for this message? So I think there's two things. So Trump won a lot of young men. And the reason that young men voted for Trump was because of the economy. So that's what we see in the polling data is that people are like, I just want somebody to make things a little less expensive.

34:57And that was the platform that Momdani ran on was affordability. You know, how can we make housing more accessible? Can we make buses free? Can we do city run grocery stores? Can we just think about things a little bit differently? And to your point about, you know, is this happening in places outside of New York? we saw a blue wave across the United States where Georgia turned blue in their local elections. Virginia elected a Democrat governor. New Jersey elected a Democrat governor. Like all of these places that were leaning red that had voted for Donald Trump, you saw this massive, huge pendulum swing to the other side.

35:33And it was a massive civic. A lot of people came out and voted like a tremendous number of people. And so I do think, you know, in every election, the pendulum tends to swing. We saw that across the world that incumbents were pretty punished in 2024, including President Biden in the United States. But I think we are seeing people really want across the world, again, some element of affordability and politicians that run on that message are probably going to have better luck than those who don't. But in terms of Mandami breaking, because what strikes me is he's done two things. First, he has attacked the Democratic Center and won.

36:17And second, he's attacked MAGA and won. So how resonant is this in the United States? Yeah, I mean, I think people are sick of the status quo for sure. And what Mamdani did is he went where people are, which is social media. He made incredible social media videos. But then he also went out into New York and went to the boroughs and talked to people and really asked them like what they needed and what they wanted. And so I think like he was I don't even know if he was attacking us so much as he was like, it can be different. Right. And I think there's a lot of power in that. It's like, OK, so we know these guys might be a little goofy.

36:58They're right now fighting about whether or not the U.S. government should reopen. And so can we think about things a little bit differently over here and message differently and bring people who normally wouldn't be in the conversation about the economy or about politics into it in a way that makes them feel like they have something to vote for? Like that was one thing we really saw in the polling data is that oftentimes, I think in most elections, people feel like they're voting against the lesser of two evils. It's like both of these people are terrible. I had to pick one of them. But I think for a lot of people, it felt like, okay, this guy is somebody I actually want to invest in.

37:33And I feel like it's going to invest in me. And that, I think, drove a lot of the outcome that we saw. Do you think that's going to be, is that the start of a bigger wave? I mean, we'll see. We'll see if it is the start of a bigger wave. I think so. I think so. I mean, the U.S. has a lot of barriers in its own way, just structurally. like the fact that a government can shut down, like how it is. For us, it sounds, there are many people in Ireland who quite like our government to shut down. But only for about a few hours, just for the crack. Well, it's been the longest ever. Yeah, how long is it going on for now?

38:10It's over five weeks, yeah. Yeah, so B2018's shut down. And just the end, is the Democratic Party, in your opinion, given what you've said about the youth, given what you've said about the alienation, given what you said about people's difficulty having a grasp. Do you think the Democratic Party has to move left in order to get back into power? Oh, I mean, I think I'm going to like half answer, sorry. But I think the way... It's half is... It's all fine. Go for a half. I mean, so I don't love like party politics. Like, I think that the way that I think about politics, because I always analyze things from the lens of the economy, is like affordability.

38:58How can we message about affordability? That's usually what people want under the government. They kind of want the government to stay out of their personal lives more or less. But they want the government to make sure that their taxes are being used properly, that they have some sort of training for the job that they want, that they have some sort of social safety net if something goes wrong. And so I think, I don't know if that means that they're going to go more left, but I think people who do focus on this message of like, hey, how can we make the economy work for people who ultimately are the economy are going to win?

39:27And I think there's lessons from both sides that you can take from that. But I think ultimately that messaging of affordability is the most important thing, again, across all developed economies right now. Is it kind of a problem of language and labels of left and right? Are they kind of redundant now? Oh, I mean, jeez, there's so many factions. Yeah, well, you have like the MAGA Republicans who are their own subset of Republicans. And then you have conservatives, you have never-Trumpers, so conservatives who don't like Trump. And then, yeah, you have leftists and you have liberals. And I don't know.

40:04The terminology, I don't know if it's always so useful. So I'm a bit grumpy about all that. I think it's a perfect, perfect way to end an evening. I'm a bit grumpy about that too. The alphabet soup of politics. Oh, it's crazy. No, but absolutely fascinating. We've run well over time. Ladies and gentlemen, Tyler Scanlon! Thank you so much. Thank you.

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