The U.S. is graying. What does that mean for the economy?

Make Me Smart June 23, 2023

**Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.

Kimberly Adams 

be just like adding in sings saying pissy things until the music comes on.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

I know I just get so nervous when I get that 10 seconds I’m like wahhh, wahhh, wahhh…

Kimberly Adams 

I think that’s everybody when you get that countdown. Hello everyone. I am Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart where we make today make sense. It’s Friday June the 23^rd, Kai is out today but joining me is Marketplace’s Megan McCarty Carino.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Always elegant. Yeah it’s always fun to join you guys for economics on tap on Friday. Good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Kimberly Adams 

Fantastic. I’m so glad you’re here because I want to hear all about your drink. We’ve got the YouTube live stream up and running. We’ve got the drinks as per mentioned, we’ve got the discord. We’ve got the YouTube chat going. And yeah, Megan, what are you drinking?

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Alright, I’ve been holding mine in reserve before I do the reveal.

Kimberly Adams

Ooh look at the garnish!

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Right! So it’s very pretty looking. It’s a, it’s sort of a Cocchi Americano Spritz. It’s kind of on the you know, I was looking for a spritz type aperitif drink, kind of a low alcohol situation. I thought it would be probably in my best interest for for today. It’s it’s kind of like a white Negroni, the the basics of a white Negroni, but without the gin. And with spritzer and some lemon twist. Yeah. It’s very refreshing.

Kimberly Adams 

So pretty. Hold it up a little bit higher. It’s lovely. You did a great job. Thank you. Thank you. I love that you brought the cocktail game today when I brought wine.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

No, I mean, I knew I had to.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, of course, because I’m the cocktail person. But because it’s been a hard week since I knew I was going to do wine I at least decide to do my goblet, my dragon goblet. Which yes, because if you’re going to be basic, be basic with the dragon. Anyway

Meghan McCarty Carino

It’s a vibe.

Kimberly Adams

It is the vibe. Speaking of the vibe, what is your news, Meghan?

Meghan McCarty Carino 

All right. So I was taken a look at this nugget, demographic nugget, that circulated late yesterday. And that is that the median age in the United States, not a surprise has reached a record high, median age is now 38.9 years. So Kimberly, you and I are like,

Kimberly Adams 

Both older. Or like maybe no, slightly

Meghan McCarty Carino 

No, no, I’m older than you. We’re slightly, slightly older than average. But we’re pretty you know medium, we’re pretty. Yes. Yeah, we’re right.

Kimberly Adams 

So we really are basic, we’re like, like definition average.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, but I’ll sit with that for a minute.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Yeah, ahead. So of course, you know, this is not a surprise to anyone who studies demographics. We have been knowing that the baby boomer generation, which was quite large as it ages kind of shifts the demographics in that direction. But it’s kind of moved more quickly than I think, you know, people had anticipated because of some other factors that have been going on. So in 2000, the median age was 35. In 1980, the median age was 30. So we’re like we’re moving fast, the median age is moving up at quite a pace. And there are a few factors that are at play here. The fertility rate has slowed, people are having fewer children and children at later ages. So you know, that’s kind of pushing things, pushing the age up. We have had less immigration has been down over the last decade. And it has recovered a bit since kind of the very, very, very lows of the pandemic. But still generally slower than a decade before. We are still younger median age than many countries in Europe, which I think is an interesting point to look at. When we think about the drop in fertility, where, you know, I think a lot of times, I covered you know, the workplace and a lot of family policies and how those have impacted families over you know, the last several years and in general in the US, but we just, we don’t have a lot of friendly fam-, family-friendly policies at baseline in the US. Childcare is very expensive, you know, like rent and housing is very, very expensive. So we have a lot of people putting off having children for a long time, putting off milestones like getting married, and these kinds of things, in part due to some of the economic trends that we have seen over recent decades. But the interesting thing, when you look at Europe is that some of the countries that do have some of the more family-supportive policies, you know, countries in Scandinavia, also have older populations. So it’s kind of not following, that that is like the one answer to the issue. And I mean, I bring this up, because it has enormous implications for society for the economy, the fact that the population is getting older, you know, I’m not saying like, this is a problem, because it’s just a problem for a population to be older, like, there are economic implications that we talked about on Marketplace all the time having to do with having a smaller workforce, you know, workforce participation, that’s something we always look at when the employment reports come out. Our workforce participation, labor force participation is naturally lower than it was before the population aged and so much of the losses that we’ve had since pre-pandemic are in those older age groups, you know, because people have aged out of the workforce, or people are not working to the same extent that they were in those age groups, but largely because people have just aged out of the workforce. And so that affects the tax base, it affects our productivity as a country or economic productivity. It’s kind of a big deal.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, and it’s so hard to talk about this without making it sound like we’re you’re engaging in generational warfare, because like, I bring up these these trends, and even when I was in Seattle a couple weeks ago, I was bringing this up in front of a group of people, the member station, someone’s like, “Oh, but you know, older people being the majority is not a bad thing, right? Because, you know, they contribute so much wisdom.” And like, I’m not saying that’s not true. But you also cannot ignore the fact that most millennials do not believe that social security is really going to be there. For us, housing is unaffordable, there are not enough people in the workforce to take care of older Americans as they age, there are simply not enough people, there is not enough housing, childcare is unaffordable. And so we have this growing economic problem, that it’s hard to talk about it because it makes it sound like totally bashing boomers and the “Ok Boomer” trend did not help with that. But there are real economic trends that are at play that if we keep ignoring them and not talking about them, it’s going to hit us like a tsunami, even though it kind of already is. And I will point out that I said earlier that we’re average, but we’re not as you said here, we’re median, as Deborah fight pointed out average is not median. Take, point taken. Alright. What’s your other news?

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Well, I just felt the need because it’s Friday and why not? We’re having some drinks to just bring up the fact that this week has felt like a cage match. And some of our luminaries from the tech world may be having a cage match. I don’t know if you’ve been following this little fun little story,

Kimberly Adams 

I’ve been actively trying to ignore it actually.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Right. I know. Because it so, it just epitomizes, I feel like the world that we live in that the two, you know, titans of social media have have challenged the…

Kimberly Adams 

It’s like revenge of the nerds with billions of dollars behind it.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

It’s really dispiriting. It’s just, yeah. So if you, you know, on the off chance that you’ve been under a rock and are not familiar, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have challenged each other to a cage match, and it may or may not be happening in Vegas. Like it, I think it might actually happen, just given the facts on the ground here, and the kind of level of maturity and the social media

Kimberly Adams 

I would think that after this week, in particular, the sort of billionaires doing reckless things with their money would be less enticing. Right, but apparently not. So. I don’t know. I got nothing to say.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

It’s been a weird week.

Kimberly Adams

Hasn’t it though? Alright. Okay. Well, mine is, back to the news. Real news. Mine is very Washington based. Well, actually, no, it’s not. It’s nationwide base. So Supreme Court news this week, was Supreme Court knocked down a challenge by Texas and Louisiana to the Biden administration’s immigration rules. Basically, the Biden administration was doing what most presidential administrations do, which is to decide that since there were so many people crossing the border illegally, they were going to prioritize deporting people who were involved in terrorism, who were involved in other crimes, who were you know just doing stuff that we really are worried about, and not necessarily focus on tracking down and deporting people who are just here, keeping their heads down, trying to work make a living for their families, right. Texas and Louisiana, said that the US government basically shouldn’t be able to make that decision, they should be going after everybody. And the Supreme Court said that Texas and Louisiana did not have the standing. If people want to look it up, there’s a link in the show notes to Amy Howe’s, wonderful blog, that always gets into this stuff. And this case is called United States versus Texas. And the so I’m going to read from this, “Texas and Louisiana went to federal court in Texas to challenge the policy. U.S. district judge agreed the policy violates federal law and vacated it nationwide. The Biden administration then came to the Supreme Court, which agreed to take up the case without waiting for the federal appeals court to weigh in – but left the ruling striking down the policy policy in place.” Okay. So in the end, the justices reached only the first question, because there were two questions: whether Texas and Louisiana had standing to bring the lawsuit. And they said no, for a bunch of reasons that I’ll let y’all get into later. But what they didn’t do was get into whether or not the policy was unconstitutional. And we’ve been seeing a lot of this was with the Supreme Court, where they’re ruling on these very narrow things that make them not take up the rest of the case, to kind of punt things back to Congress, or punt things down the road for a later case, where even if the court, and I’m talking about the supermajority of the court, even if the supermajority of the court would like to lean in a certain direction, they seem to be kind of waiting on cases that are rock solid, that will allow them to rule in one direction or another, these cases that have standing problems, these cases that have technicalities, like you said, Meghan, on the issues, they’re just like we’re gonna rule on the technicality and not deal with the rest of it. We are still waiting on the student loan case, is also another question of standing and policy. And it will be very interesting to see if they rule on the standing whether or not these states, and I think it’s two students who have filed this case, these cases, whether the states and the students have standing versus whether the policy is a problem. So this is all very interesting, particularly from the nuances because: nerd and I’m interested. So please read Amy Howe’s work on this and pay attention to what’s going on in the Supreme Court, it matters for all of us.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Yeah, very different feeling this summer in the rulings that we’re talking about here, compared to a year ago where we did have this blockbuster reversal of precedent and I wonder if the two are related.

Kimberly Adams 

Very broadly and that’s a very good point. That’s an excellent point because you had a super broad ruling that they said was very narrow because if you looked at the, what do you call them, the writings? There’s too much wine, I can’t remember. When you look at the decision, they said they were ruling on a very narrow basis but it had wide reaching effects. Here, they’re ruling on the technicalities to avoid these wide-reaching decisions. Yeah. All right. That’s it for the news. We’re going to take a quick break and then when we come back, we’re going to play a round of Half full half empty.

Kimberly Adams 

All right so now it’s time for a game Half full half empty hosted by Drew Jostad. He’s going to give us some topics from this week’s news and we’ll let you know how we are feeling about them, half full being more positive and half empty being more negative. Take it away Drew!

Drew Jostad

All right, from Carhartt beanies down to Timberland boots are you half full or half empty on workwear becoming fashionable?

Kimberly Adams 

Megan, what about you?

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Hmmm, I’m half full on the fashion for sure. I like Carhartt products. I like to pick pick them up when I’m you know, shopping for my faucets and whatnot at Ace Hardware, but I don’t know maybe there’s maybe there’s some negatives for people who actually need to wear those clothing for their work in the form of you know, inflation with increased demand so I mean, I’m still gonna stick with half full those are you know, hearty products. They’re well-made products and I think they should be fashionable.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, and Cindy from, Cindy from Texas in the Discord was making the same point as you as long as the workwear doesn’t get more expensive. Look, I’m all for people getting like you said, clothes that last for a while from a sustainability perspective. So I’m gonna go half full. This is Kristin Schwab’s story from earlier this week, you should go back and listen to it. It was super fun. But this idea that sort of the hipsters are taking over these these ideas. We’ve been doing this ever since Timberlands you know, became popular and remember, never forget Beyonce in her Timberland, Timberland heels that were so amazing. But look, office workers who had the opportunity to work remotely during the pandemic got to move into sweats and be comfy, and I don’t think people are ever going back. And since we still can’t quite wear sweats to work. I think people are going to the next stage.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Speak for yourself! We’re pretty casual here.

Kimberly Adams 

Okay, I still live in Washington D.C. I think LA is a different vibe. Yeah, I can’t really move through DC maybe fancy sweats on the street?

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Maybe fancy sweats

Kimberly Adams

No, no, no. Leggings, perhaps. Perhaps.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

We do the athleisure.

Kimberly Adams

Yeah. No, no, Washington still isn’t there. But anyway, I’m half full. What’s the next one Drew?

Drew Jostad

All right, this year’s Wimbledon tennis tournament will feature AI generated commentary and captions on its website and app are you half full or half empty?

Kimberly Adams 

Oh gosh. Half empty. A: I want the well-trained interpreters who are doing American Sign Language to be making their money and remaining in their jobs. But also, it’s still so not necessarily accurate at this point that I don’t trust it. Half empty.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Yeah um, I, I feel like I don’t want to reveal too much here just because I cover AI so so often.

Kimberly Adams

Because your host of Marketplace Tech.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

I am half empty on the this kind of use-case. Yeah, for many of the same reasons, you know, like, is it better than what a human offers in any way other than, like saving money? And is that what we’re, you know, every single like, equation is just going to boil down to. Like, there are things why do we need AI to do that? Like, is it better in a way? I think is a question to to always ask every time we’re like AI could do that. But like, is it actually better? And I think in many cases, with large language models, and you know, with generating commentary of these nature, it’s often not better than what a highly skilled person would do, which I’m assuming, yeah, at Wimbledon, that’s the top of the top so like…

Kimberly Adams 

Well, and particularly in high profile events like this, when you can afford it, and you can get it, use it. Use people that are the best at it, I get it, maybe you have a smaller event and a smaller budget, and you want to provide some level of accessibility that you would not otherwise be able to provide. Sure, use AI and hope for the best. But it’s sort of like that it’s creating an opportunity for more accessibility, where previously there would have been none versus downgrading accessibility in a place where there previously was. That’s my take. All right, Drew, what’s next?

Drew Jostad

All right, are you half full or half empty on a product from a French firm, that is a talking credit card for use by blind and visually impaired consumers?

Kimberly Adams 

You’re the tech person, Megan, you go first.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Um, yeah, I have to say when I heard of this, which we, we ran a story on the show about this credit card in France, when I initially heard about it, it sounded like a privacy nightmare, right? I mean, a talking credit card that sort of reads out your transactions in public. But the, you know, the kind of reason for it, and the problem that it solves, is actually a good thing, I guess, you know, there is a fair amount of fraud that happens with visually impaired people shopping and having like the amounts transacted changed or altered in some way. And so what the talking credit card can do is, you know, provide some some feedback to make sure that people are not getting ripped off. It is, it is a little weird, I will give it that, but I’m gonna say half full on this.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m sorry, I wasn’t chuckling at what you were saying L and S Royspan in the chat on YouTube was mimicking what the card might say. And it was, quote, “are you sure you can afford that?”

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Yeah, exactly. Which would definitely be a good thing for it to say to me.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s like, I saw it Tik Tok the other day where somebody was trying to order something on Amazon. And then I guess that Amazon has integrated some sort of AI. And they were like, “people like you usually order a size up.” They were really upset. So I am gonna say half full on this accessibility feature for the visually impaired. I think what we’ve learned from most accessibility features in tech is that it tends to create opportunities that we didn’t even expect, like curb cuts for people who are physically disabled have made life a lot easier for parents with strollers or people who are elderly with mobility issues. So I’m gonna go half full. All right, Drew, what’s next?

Drew Jostad

We got a poll on the last one?

Kimberly Adams 

Yes let’s do the poll. All right, those of you who are watching us live on YouTube, which I hope everybody is because it’s the best way to watch the show, you are going to have the opportunity to weigh in on our poll. So Drew, take it away.

Drew Jostad

Are you half full or half empty on brain implants?

Kimberly Adams 

So we have to wait for a minute. Meghan don’t answer because we have to let people weigh in without our influence. So you’re, you’ve been covering this as well on tech. So do you want to talk about the issue generally?

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Right. So we covered this recently because Neuralink, the brain implant company, founded by Elon Musk recently got FDA clearance to begin human trials on their brain implants. This has been kind of a field that has been rapidly developing. There are a few front runners incidentally, most of them are in, based in Austin, Texas. Um, there’s another another company that has also been cleared for human trials and is now doing, you know, raising funds to start those human trials. I think like, there have been, there have been human trials and some complications have have come up in those, which we’ll, we’ll get into once the once we…

Kimberly Adams 

Can you talk a little bit about why at least what the use case is as it’s been promoted?

Meghan McCarty Carino 

What they do. Right. Well, the interesting thing is actually, like, Neuralink has proposed some different types of use cases, but the, you know, the most intuitive one is that, for people who have mobility issues, you know, that it could read brain impulses and, and use that to control machines, you know, or computers. And so, very, very helpful for people with disabilities, you know, that make it difficult to do things physically on a computer, or, you know, to to operate prostheses or, and things like that, that you could actually do it with your brain impulse with a brain implant that you could control those things…has also proposed sort of, you know, using this as to augment human capabilities in general, like we would be, you know, like, people could be connected constantly. Connected brains connected to the matrix or whatever, which is disconcerting.

Kimberly Adams 

I mean, I was, look, I’m not gonna lie when I saw that scene where they downloaded judo, and to Keanu Reeves’ brain, I was like, “I would not say no to that.” But anyway, no, it wasn’t Judo was jujitsu. That’s right. But anyway, all right. So let’s close the poll. We’ve got 136 votes, which is not the best turnout, but I will take it. And let’s see how we ended up. Drumroll please be sure. Okay, half empty: 63%, half full 36%. Hmmm.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Wow our audience are skeptics.

Kimberly Adams 

Everybody was telling me it was Kung Fu, not even jujitsu or judo. I know nothing about the Matrix, clearly. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate it. All right. So I’m gonna go half empty on this. Because at this point, I trust nothing that Elon Musk does?

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Well, I think that’s the key point to me is that being I think in the realm of, you know, academic research, or, you know, maybe even…

Kimberly Adams 

I’m sorry, I’m going to stop you, Meghan, somebody in the chat said, If I had a brain implant, it would have remembered that for me about the Matrix.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

I mean, that’s one thing, you know, I would definitely be a lot better on these shows. If I could just download. Right, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go with half empty as well, just because of the, like, economic incentive. Complications that come with it becoming a giant business, for-profit business, and, you know, all of the complications that that come about in in the tech world with wanting to make things that don’t have a lot of negative externalities. So I would say the track record has been poor on that front.

Kimberly Adams 

So in the YouTube chat, JCCats4111 asks a really good question. Asks the question of whether or not we’d be half full or half empty without Elon Musk. It raises a good point, because we’re on the way to this anyway. So if you’re talking about the technology of brain implants, for the purpose, again, of accessibility, and for helping people have more ability to move through the world in a way that feels comfortable to them, I’m gonna go half full. Yeah, in this particular environment in this particular company, half empty.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

I mean, I guess like the fact that Elon Musk has helming it and put, you know, a lot of his money into it has sort of spurred the race. It has really spurred things along just in general in the industry, I think probably a lot of people would say has had a very galvanizing and positive effect on the industry interest in, in investment in it in general, that will probably have a lot of positive effects in what we’re talking about. So.

Kimberly Adams

I guess we’ll find out pretty soon.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

Yeah we’ll find out.

Kimberly Adams

Thank you so much Drew, that is it for us today. Kai and I will be back on Monday, until then, as you know we’re switching up the show a little bit, trying out lots of new segments. So if you have an idea for a segment or something you’d like to see us do on the show, please let us know even if it’s a game or whatever. We’re at 508-U-B-SMART and makemesmart@marketplace.org. You gotta do the dance Meghan.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

They didn’t tell me there was gonna be a dance. I only brought a cocktail that wasn’t big enough for dancing. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s episode was engineered by Charlton Thorp. Drew Jostad wrote the theme music for our Friday game. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams

The team behind our Friday game is Emily Macune and Antoinette Brock. Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. And Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and On-Demand. It’s in the scrip this time I swear. Thanks Meghan. I love that you’ve changed up your pantry, I don’t see the tomatoes so close anymore.

Meghan McCarty Carino 

I’ve done some revamping to the pantry. It’s much more official now.

Kimberly Adams

I love it. I love it.