Who wants to be a millennial? Generation comeback

0:00You didn't just say, how can I provide these investments? How do I holistically provide everything? How do I bring in the legal, the accounting, all this and do it at a price point? No one else is doing it.

0:08Rosie Blau: Learn more about how we approach wealth management at creativeplanning.com slash integrated. Harvard Business School Executive Education delivers a world class learning experience that energizes aspiring and established changemakers. Prepare for the next elevation for your organization and for yourself. Learn more at hbs.me slash breakthrough. That's hbs.me slash breakthrough.

0:40The Economist.

0:46Rosie Blau: Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor.

0:56Rosie Blau: Today on the show, how AI is influencing Israel's election. And should you be scraping your tongue?

1:11Rosie Blau: First up, though.

1:19Rosie Blau: For years, we've been hearing about the desperate plight of millennials. Boomers are dominating the housing market. And this sucks for us millennials. They've been knocked by their economic circumstances and then knocked for their choices. What do you think of millennials? Coddled? Entitled? Yes, I think so. Really? I do.

1:41Anshel Pfeffer: So you think that young people have now got the prospect of never owning a home? Absolutely, when you're spending$40 a day on smashed avocado and coffees and not working, of course.

1:51Rosie Blau: But things could be changing for this once beleaguered cohort. Millennials are no longer struggling as they once did. Callum Williams is our senior economics writer. Our research shows that their incomes are pretty healthy now and they increasingly are in positions of real power over business politics and culture. So has something actually changed or is it just that millennials were moaning needlessly in the first place? They weren't moaning needlessly. They definitely have gone through some legitimately tough times. In the 2010s, for example, most millennials were at some point in their 20s, and many really did struggle with finding a good, well-paying job as a result of the enormous recession that took place in 2008-9.

2:33At an extreme, you have places like Greece, where youth unemployment was north of 50 % for much of the 2010s. In Britain, you had weak wage growth, especially for people in their 20s. and then in Germany, roughly half of young people live with their parents. If you look at the politics back then, you have social movements in Spain, you have America's Occupy Wall Street, you have UK Uncut in the UK, and these were spearheaded by millennials who are protesting against a system that they thought was rigged against them. And of course, during the 2010s, there was very widespread support among millennials for left-wing leaders like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France, and Bernie Sanders in the US.

3:12Now, to be clear, many millennials would still vote for these more left-wing leaders, but increasingly our research shows that it's not in their economic interest to do so.

3:22Rosie Blau: Why isn't it in their interest? It's not in their interest because they're making pretty good money now on average. So we looked at data on millennials' incomes across about 30 rich countries, and in the vast majority of them, the millennial generation earns more in real terms today today than previous generations did at the same age. Now, to be clear, there are places where progress has slowed. That includes countries like Australia, France, and the UK. So millennials are only doing a bit better than previous generations. But there are lots of countries where intergenerational progress has actually sped up.

3:58And that includes places like the US, the Netherlands, and Poland. So I think the way to think about it is that millennials have had a bit of a slow start, but they're certainly now well on their way to making money.

4:09Rosie Blau: What changed? What triggered that shift? So there's two big things. One is the bounce back in the global economy that we saw really from the middle of the 2010s, where by the end of 2010s, you had very low unemployment. And that has helped millennials to kind of rebuild their economic lives. Take another extreme example. Greece. Today, roughly 80 percent of 35 to 44 year olds are in work. And that is probably the highest share for that age group ever in that country. So there really are making up for lost time now. Yes. And that brings us to the second point, which is demography. Again, it's linked to the recession of 2008.

4:49In the early 2010s, what happened was you had a lot of baby boomers who decided not to retire because their pension pots had been hit very hard by the financial crisis. So they had to kind of stay and work for a bit longer. And that closed doors to career advancement among millennials. But that changed in a very big way during the pandemic, because you had a lot of people in their 50s and 60s and 70s who retired. That happened in very, very large numbers. So for example, in the US, by about 2022, you had roughly 3 million more people in retirement than you would have expected had the pandemic not happened.

5:21And so what that basically means is that this opened up a bunch of roles that millennials could move into. The other demographic thing that's happening is that working age populations are now falling in a large number of rich countries. So in other words, there's relative labour scarcity and millennials are benefiting from that.

5:39Rosie Blau: What about housing, which was probably the thing that millennials moaned about most? Yes, and they moaned about it for good reason in some ways. When millennials were in their 20s and early 30s, they were well behind previous generations at the same age. But now that is changing. So if you look at the older millennials, people in their late 30s, early 40s, they now have home ownership rates that are comparable to people in Gen X. This is partly to do with the economy as well. It's made it easier to save for a deposit. Millennials have also paid down the student debt that they had accumulated that may have prevented them from saving for a deposit.

6:20And also governments in different ways have loosened mortgage requirements such that it's become a little bit easier for first-time buyers to get on the housing ladder. But there's something else going on here which isn't to do with the economy. And this is just to do with the life choices that millennials have made and are still making. And I think the most important of those is that millennials are getting married later than previous generations. And there's a lot of research which really shows that the decision on whether or not to buy a house is very strongly linked to whether or not you're married.

6:49And so if you're getting married later, it follows that you're likely to be buying a house later.

6:54Rosie Blau: Millennials are a very big cohort, spans a lot of years. Is there one part of this group that's doing better than the other part? What you can see in the data quite clearly is that the younger millennials are doing much better than the older ones. Now, that is not that surprising to think about it because the older millennials were in their 20s during the very worst of the financial crisis, whereas the younger millennials were in their 20s when the economy was much, much stronger. And what you can see also is that's filtering through to Gen Z, who are doing really quite well. And that's because all of them have actually grown up during a fairly strong economic time.

7:29So, yes, it's better to be a younger millennial than an older millennial.

7:31Rosie Blau: As we look to the future, it's not clear what the work landscape or the global economy will be like. How are millennials fixed in terms of facing the AI economy in the future? Fairly well, at least relative to Gen Z, because basically when there's a big economic shock, the people who get hit hardest are young workers. So young workers today are not millennials anymore. They are people in cohorts below that. in fact millennials are going to be the people who are buying the technology that will put younger workers out of work so in that sense millennials are relatively well protected and then the other big thing that's going on that gets less attention than it should is the question of inheritance there's going to be a lot of very wealthy baby boomers who are going to pass away and they are going to pass on their wealth to generations below them millennials stand to gain enormously from this big wealth shift, and in fact, more so than any other generation.

8:26So in that sense, millennials' future prospects, despite it being a slightly morbid topic, do look pretty good.

8:33Rosie Blau: Callum, thank you very much. Thanks, Rosie.

8:47Because you didn't just say, how can I provide these investments? How do I holistically provide everything? How do I bring in the legal, the accounting, all this? And do it at a price point and no one else is doing it.

8:56Rosie Blau: Learn more about how we approach wealth management at creativeplanning.com slash integrated. Harvard Business School Executive Education delivers breakthrough learning for leaders, stimulating classes led by faculty at the forefront of their fields. Topics that will define the future of business, discussions that transform perspectives and ways of thinking, and access to the brightest business minds on the planet. Learn more at hbs.me slash breakthrough. That's hbs.me slash breakthrough.

9:39Rosie Blau: With Israel's parliamentary election just days away, the two blocks are still neck and neck in the polls. This could be one of the most consequential elections in the country's history. But the outcome is far from the only important development in this campaign.

9:56Anshel Pfeffer: So the deep fakes and the videos are just the tip of the iceberg. And what's really concerning is what's beneath the surface.

10:04Rosie Blau: Anshul Pfeffer is our Israel correspondent.

10:07Anshel Pfeffer: What watchdogs and data scientists and party insiders are telling me is that the levels of data collection on the voters is without precedence. Parties on all sides are using advanced AI to monitor voters, to work out their preferences, whether they're going to vote or not vote for them, to generate personalised messages for them, and to channel online discourse in the directions which are convenient for them.

10:40Rosie Blau: Are you saying then that fake videos and images aren't showing up in this campaign?

10:44Anshel Pfeffer: We are seeing a lot of fake videos and images being used by the campaigns. But I think the most common examples in recent weeks have been AI videos prepared by Likud, the ruling party, showing the leaders of the opposition sitting around a table or hugging the leaders of the Arab parties hinting that they are planning to form a coalition with them despite their denials. There have been videos prepared by the opposition party showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sleeping and hinting at the fact that he wasn't aware or wasn't quick to respond to the threats to Israel on October 7, three years ago.

11:25Anshel Pfeffer: It's pretty crude, to be honest. From all the experts I've been speaking to, that doesn't seem to be the biggest concern, mainly because the public has very quickly become aware of this technology and the fact that what they're seeing is very often artificially generated. We have to thank, I think, Donald Trump for this in the last year or two, using so much of this on his social media accounts that we've really become so aware of it. There's also legislation which came in just a couple of months ago in Israel that the parties have to clearly label any content which has been created digitally.

12:04Anshel Pfeffer: So while this is something that is happening, it's not the biggest AI concern for the integrity of the election.

12:11Rosie Blau: What are the other ways then?

12:13Anshel Pfeffer: Here we have different types of networks, bots and more sophisticated avatars being used by different parties to shift the discourse on social media They can be used to answer online polls, and they're also more advanced avatars. They can get through the security of closed groups on WhatsApp and networks like that and actually engage much more convincingly like human users. The idea is to try and optimize AI agents or AI assistants that people are using and consulting with on what would I vote to push them towards a certain conclusion. Now, it's important to say that the main AI agents that we all know, like ChatGPT or Claude, actually do have in their algorithms a rule that they won't tell someone what to vote.

13:05Anshel Pfeffer: So if you ask ChatGPT, for example, what should I be voting on October 27 in the election in Israel? The answer will be, I can't tell you what to vote. But then you start asking questions about specific policies and your own preferences. and there ultimately you are in an uncharted territory where the agent has got to know you and the agent goes to look at certain types of information. And what we're seeing is different parties and different organisations and think tanks putting stuff online, including old content, to try and create an information landscape which is more favourable to their message.

13:45Rosie Blau: So that's what's happening during the campaign. What might we see on election day itself?

13:52Anshel Pfeffer: So election day is the key event here because something that happens on election day, the impact in just a few minutes or an hour or two on election day can be massive on voting patterns. So there's an even more devious, you could say, or deep fear of trying to suppress or cajole voters by targeting them with specific news of violence or disturbances near polling stations. I've even heard of, from at least two researchers looking at a couple of the companies involved, that they're fearing that you'll suddenly be bombarded with offers for discounts and entertainment somewhere in the country, but not that close to your polling station.

14:35Anshel Pfeffer: That maybe that will divert voters away from voting. Now, how do the various parties know who to send these messages to? On the one hand, they want their potential voters to come and vote. On the other hand, they want to try and discourage those who won't be voting for them from going to the polling station. And this is where what AI can do in generating personalized messages also blurs into the issue of privacy and data protection. And I think we have to understand that what we're seeing now in the use of AI for election manipulation is a threat to both. On the one hand, you're being targeted with disinformation, with fake news and slanted information.

15:16Anshel Pfeffer: And on the other hand, they're hoovering up all the data they have about you. so they can work out, are you a potential voter? What kind of message to send to you? And if you're not one of their potential voters, then what kind of message can they send you to try and discourage you from voting? And I mean, we all know this by now. We all are very surprised that we've had a chat yesterday with our friend or relative about something that we're interested in buying. And then a few hours later on our phone, suddenly pops an ad for exactly that item. That kind of tech is being used now for elections as well.

15:50Anshel Pfeffer: All these networks which are busy learning our patterns, our preferences, what we like to spend our leisure time and even where we are, the geolocating of our devices is all being used in these large models to create a profile of us which can be used by parties to target us.

16:10Rosie Blau: Israel surely isn't an outlier here, is it? We've seen AI used in other election campaigns.

16:15Anshel Pfeffer: Well, we mentioned obviously Donald Trump, who uses it in his permanent campaign. There are many reports in Indonesia recently, President Sobianto had an avatar sort of softening his image, engaging with citizens online. There's reports of personalized robocalls to voters in India. So this is not exclusive to Israel. I think the reason why Israel is an interesting case is that, first of all, as we know, the tech industry here is very advanced. There are many companies involved in developing artificial intelligence applications. Israel has, for the last three years, the government and also private groups who have been engaged in various types of psychological warfare online against Israel's enemies in Iran and other countries, and also trying to win over public opinion in the West.

17:07Anshel Pfeffer: So this has all been used externally. Now it's being directed inwards. Now, in that sense, it's almost like a lab of how elections take place in the artificial intelligence age.

17:20Rosie Blau: Can anything be done to address that then?

17:23Anshel Pfeffer: So there are no perfect solutions. Legislation is a slow process. It very rarely, if ever, keeps pace with technological development. As I said, there are laws now on labeling AI content, but the privacy laws, data protection laws are still very much out of date and aren't really geared up dealing with this. Now, the various government agencies that could deal with this also aren't the perfect solution. intelligence services are usually focused on facing these kind of attacks coming from external actors, but you don't really want your spy agencies dealing with your own citizens. So they're not a great agency for dealing with this.

18:04Anshel Pfeffer: Police are usually under-resourced and under-informed about how to deal with this. The Central Election Commission in Israel has been, I think, quite proactive on this. But once again, the Election Commission's main job is just making sure that the elections function and work and that there's a clear result at the end. They don't have the resources you need really to deal with this. The tech companies obviously should be there providing these guardrails. But as we've seen in recent years, their attitudes towards protecting information and preventing disinformation haven't always been the best.

18:37Anshel Pfeffer: So I think what the most we can expect from them at this point is that they'll be responsive to complaints. And that does seem to be the case here, but that's not enough. And I think really, we need to be much more aware of the type of threat that civilians in countries where elections are taking place. We're much more aware, I think, nowadays of how we need to guard our information when it comes to our financial affairs over the last few years. And we've all, I think, adopted much more careful practices. And the thing ultimately is true also of how we go about exercising our democratic rights.

19:13Rosie Blau: Ansham, thank you very much

19:14Anshel Pfeffer: Thanks for having me, Rosie

19:31Rosie Blau: Influencers love to suggest that they found the new revolutionary secret to the good life I will use a tongue scraper, brush my teeth, oil pulling. That's kind of like my morning ritual that I do. And that if you aren't part of it, everyone's going to suffer. If you're not using Hayley Bieber's morning routine, it's probably why your breath still smells like hot dog water after you brush. But are tongue scrapers really essential? Or is it all just lip service? I've been chewing that over with Bella King, a news editor at The Economist. It's pretty obvious that the mouth is home to lots of bacteria.

20:12We eat, we speak with our mouths, we kiss. It's home to about 700 different species of bacteria, fungi, viruses. But if we don't properly clean our mouths, this bacteria can become a problem.

20:30Rosie Blau: Bella, I obviously clean my teeth quite often. I've never scraped my tongue. And that's what we're here to discuss. Should I? So the tongue, it's covered in small crevices. These crevices help us grip food. They help us speak. But they also trap things like food, dead cells and lots of bad bacteria, anaerobic bacteria, love to sit in these crevices and basically they thrive there. If we don't properly clean our mouths, if we have a bad diet, we're not eating enough hard, rough food, bacteria can grow, bad bacteria can predominate and that can lead to things like gum disease. So now I'm feeling quite self-conscious, stuck in a studio with you.

21:15Rosie Blau: I should be scraping my tongue in some form. How would I do that? Well, you shouldn't necessarily be scraping your tongue. I think it's a good idea to always look at your tongue in the mirror when you're brushing your teeth. If it's pink and rosy, it's healthy. If you can see that there's a coating, it's called a biofilm. It could be white, it could be yellow. Sometimes these coatings turn black. If it's black, you should probably go to the doctors. But if it's yellow or white, then you should probably start paying a bit more attention to your tongue. And what kind of implement are we talking about here?

21:46So people have been using various tools to clean their tongues with for centuries. Marie Antoinette had one, George Washington carried one around with him. These are usually bits of material that are bent in a curve. And the idea is to start at the back of your mouth and mechanically remove anything that's sitting on the surface of your tongue. Some studies have found that mechanically removing a tongue coating, if there is one, can reduce bad things like gum disease and bad breath. But these studies have also found that it doesn't really matter what tool you're using. It could be a scraper, it could be the back of your toothbrush, it could be the front of your toothbrush.

22:30As long as you're mechanically removing the substance on the top of your tongue, then it has similar results. if you go online you can see hundreds of different types of tongue scrapers for sale some are made of copper some are made of silver the wellness industry is marketing lots of different products but actually the research shows that you can use something very simple you can use the toothbrush that you already own and it does the job just as well bella thank you very much thanks for having me

23:07Thank you.

23:57Thank you.