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Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to vanta.com. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway. How are you, Kara? I am sheltering in place. No, I'm not.
I'm going, I'm a little bit frazzled today. I'm moving down to DC from New York. It's like a scene. Remember that Kurt Russell movie escape from New York?
That's what I'm doing. So packing is really hard right now, and it's weird. But anyway, it's just I'm just a little frazzled. I've been packing all the time and putting everything in a box that sort of gives you a weird feeling I have to say.
How are you getting down to DC? We have a moving truck. We have these Russian guys who just don't mind doing anything. Everybody, everyone's wearing gloves and staying away from each other, but it's still, you know, you think about every movie you make right now and the stuff that you were doing before, like everything, every single thing, cleaning people, people who you work with, friends, like in DC.
I can't see any of my friends. You know, Amanda's parents can't see the baby anymore. Who knows how long and stuff like that. And so it's weird.
How are you doing? I'm good. And what is either going to turn out to be a very good or a very bad idea. I am distancing in the Mya Coba.
I'm in the Riviera Maya with my family. I had a unusual situation in that is we sold our house renovating a new house, but there was a gap in between. And as luck would have it, we found ourselves living with my wife's seven-year-old parents. So I had a seven-year-old couple with a bunch of potentially asymptomatic carriers in their home.
So I had to get them out of there. Right. And so I did a kind of a series of being the strange person I am. I wrote down, I created sort of a matrix last week around heat, low density, very low virus penetration or cases within an hour of a world-class teaching hospital should get real.
You know, all the crazy things that old weird people such as myself do, and I came up with the Riviera Maya Coba. Team Mexico, is that correct? See, I'm in Mexico. Yes.
I escaped to Mexico. I'm going to do see. I'm going to like ground zero. You and I could not be more different.
You are in the least Mexico place in the world and I'm in the least DC place in the world. God, I don't even know what it's going to be like, but there I am. I'm living in DC now. Anyway, let's speak in DC.
Let's talk about the big stories. And don't forget, it's Friday, so we'll save some time at the end to talk about predictions. The Trump administration and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are proposing emergency checks that household is part of a $1 trillion stimulus package. It's still unclear exactly what that would look like, but NBC News is reporting that the Treasury Department is in the last Congress for $500 billion in direct payhouse to taxpayers.
It would consist of two rounds of direct payments, each totaling $250 billion sent out on April 6th and May 18th. It would be a tiered payment with the amount based on income level and family size, the proposal says. Both payments would be the same amount. This is unprecedented.
Absolutely unprecedented. I had Andrew Yang on my podcast yesterday. Yeah, calling Andrew Yang. Yeah, calling Andrew Yang.
I did. I got him on this. He's sheltering up in upstate New York. And we were talking about this idea during the, he was talking about it during the presidential primaries.
I spoke to him about universal basic income, which was his thing. He called it something else. It was freedom dividend on Rico Dico. And why he thinks suddenly Republicans like the idea.
Here's the tape. Someone said to me, oh, you're a socialist. I said, look, this is capitalism where income doesn't start at zero. It's actually excellent for the consumer market, for businesses, for entrepreneurship, that people have money to spend.
And having a robust middle class actually helps create economic opportunity up and down the chain in a way that squeezing more and more people out of the ability to buy things that are not essentials. It doesn't help you create businesses. And so this is actually the future of capitalism. And to me, we've always had to harness the power of markets to improve our lives and start broadening what the market rewards.
Wow, Scott, what do you think? Well, so look, I think this makes a lot of sense. And if you think about, it's really not a strange or novel concept. If you think about Social Security, we give a trillion dollars a year to take seniors, 39% of seniors who would be in poverty down to 9%.
And why wouldn't we spend $500 billion to ensure kind of, or the livelihood or to ensure that a lot of Americans, but perhaps even more, don't devolve into some sort of poverty or panic. So we have done this. We do this every month for our senior population. It seems in exceptional times.
It makes a lot of sense to do this across individuals America. The thing I do like about this is in 2008, it was all about credit and saving companies. And I don't think, in this instance, we should be thinking about protecting companies. We should be thinking about protecting people.
And so the idea of a direct payment to individuals. Right, they're getting their hands. And they're talking about treating people like adults. Like they can spend the money the right way.
They're not going to waste it. They're going to sit around and drink champagne. And that'll make ridiculous welfare moms bullshit that they had for so long. But it's really interesting.
The Republicans aren't pushing this. And including the word they don't want to use, which is bailout. They had a meeting among Republicans was Stephen Newton saying, please don't use the word bailout. It's astonishing that people that sort of rail against, they don't really don't have the socialism thing as Bernie's not running, but now this looks a little like that for them.
And so they're sort of pushing it as what it is, which I think I agree with Andrew Yang on this, is that income doesn't have to start at zero. And one of the things he said that's not, we didn't have the code here, but he said, you have to think of it. You think of a company as shareholders. Well, we're shareholders in the United States.
It's our money. It's our company. And so we should benefit from it when we need to. And I thought that was kind of an interesting concept.
I think the biggest risk of the program is that the term Stephen Mnuchin and stimulus are just oxymorons. It's just hard to imagine anything will stimulate anything that Stephen Mnuchin's involved in. My theory, Kara, is that Mr. Mnuchin or Secretary Mnuchin or whatever he has, has had Corona for about 20 years and it's just not quite over yet.
Don't make it too early. Some Corona, some COVID-19 humor. Is it too soon? Is it too soon?
Yes, it is. It's always too soon. But it's interesting. And now Trump, of course, is saying that he's a wartime president now and suddenly we'll get into him embracing the fact that he really thought this was difficult all along.
But it means, I think, really, it's the indication that we're going to be in a global recession. They were talking about a depression. So there was a 2008 stimulus package. I mean, nobody has a lot of data because nobody, of course, has been testing.
So nobody knows where this is going. Talk a little bit about that because that was another issue. And when I talk about it, we don't have data for any of this to understand where it's going. Yeah, well, you're absolutely right.
When we go into an economic crisis, we have metrics of the union. You can't manage what you can't measure. And we're able to measure all kinds of things when it comes to economy. I think what you're going to see here is we're going to start spending a lot of time trying to figure out contact rates.
I mean, already in China, for example, traffic to malls is at 90% of where it was pre-crisis. And these data sets and how we figure out what are the right metrics. We're in a new territory because when the economy goes into recession, we measure that. We're like, OK, two quarters of negative GDP growth equals a recession.
And we have somewhat of a playbook for what to do there. Here, we don't even know what inputs we should be registering. And what the subsequent action should be. So is this enough to get the economy moving with these infusions?
And people will be less eat presumably. But these are going to be buying. Like, there's no economic activity going. I'm not doing any economic activity going.
Like, for example, Apple announced this. Mac, I probably would have bought it. I have a really old Mac book. I'm not going to buy it.
I'm not doing a lot of things that I was doing economically. So it iterates all over the system. How do you, if there isn't, when this is going to be over issue, people just naturally just stop. The idea of stopping is really, it was so non-conceptual.
I couldn't even conceive of the idea of it. But here we are. Well, I spoke with Professor Aswatha Motoran yesterday about the markets just trying to take my mind off the stuff. I'm fascinated by the markets.
I'm curious if and when or how far they'll go down and if and when they'll come back. And you can kind of go sector by sector. And the first sector that obviously is getting hit the hardest is anything travel related. That's done.
It's hard to imagine how anything from at this point carnival to American Airlines survives without some sort of bailout. Well, you would thought about investing it, but didn't think it would get this bad. Well, and also three weeks ago on the guy that said this was more hype than horror. So let's be clear.
I made a lot of things. Now it's because Elon Musk is doing that. Keep the factories rolling. Keep the cars rolling.
Is there a crisis? Should I go into later? Is there a hospital that doesn't have enough of them? He literally tweeted that.
Yeah, no, he's a unique person. But you have the fact that with our economy, you have, okay, first the guys have got hit hardest drives to travel guys. And the second are discretionary. And that is no one is spending any discretionary.
No one is making. No one is out going out and buying that cute top right now with that little black dress. So I'm thinking, you know, I really got my eyes on that new Lexus. No one is just thinking about it.
Or computers or phones. Things like that. I think some technology people keep spending because there's some more utility. But discretionary spending has all come to a stop.
But in terms of how to get the economy going, I mean, I don't even think we should be thinking about how do we ensure people are protected? And when there are, you know, especially 40% of America are 400 bucks, only $400. So the first thing you got to do is say, okay, there's a group of Americans that just need to be protected economically, that gig workers, part time workers, people who aren't economically robust. They just need some cash to be protected.
So if they're not in state of sheer panic, and then they can actually buy the necessities. And then the economy all comes down to one thing. It all comes down to one thing. And that is how fast can we get past this?
How fast can we show that the curve is flattening? Because until then, the economy is just going to be just literally going to come to a grinding halt. Absolutely. What's related to this is getting the speaking of getting data and knowing things.
The US government is in talks with Facebook, Google, and other tech companies and health experts about how we could use location data from Americans' phones to combat COVID-19. This can include tracking whether people are keeping one other safe distance to stem the outbreak. You can also figure out who has it and follow them, which is astonishing to think about. Public health experts are interested in the possibility that private sector companies could compile the data in an anonymous aggregated form, which they could then use to map the infection spreads.
According to the Wall Street Journal, tech executives spent a call Sunday discussing ways to track hospital bed availability across the country using geolocation data, also how data can be aggregated that personal information of self-unusual would not be shared, which makes you nervous. In Israel, they passed an emergency law to use phone data for tracking people infected with COVID-19, used to identify and quarantine others that would come into contact with anyone they have affected. And in a statement posted to Facebook, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on his way out. Today, we are starting to use digital technology to locate people who have been in contact with those stricken by the corona who form those people they must go into quarantine for 14 days.
In China, they helped government track and contact people who traveled through the province during the early days of the virus, and it was sent to the National Health Commission, allowing them to recreate. So on one side, there's great. This is great. It never has been more people than more track, so you can really follow up public health emergency.
At the same time, yikes. What do you think? Well, this kind of comes down to it. I think it will probably be the key issue, or when we look back on this, what will be the tension or the conflicting ideologies that really defined this outbreak, and that is personal freedoms and capitalism versus sort of a collective, more compliant violation of your freedoms to ensure that you flatten the curve.
And that is, it will be very interesting, because in Asia, and I realize I'm talking about an entire region, but in Singapore, they're just more compliant than they are in Sarasota, Florida. Yeah. And at what point do you personal rights and privacy and personal freedoms? Are those rights superseded by the need, health concerns?
And then you look at a nation like Italy, and you can imagine they're about, it's a wonderful culture that is about hugging and kissing and living for, I don't want to say living for today, but enjoying life. Yeah. And the virus loves that. And unfortunately, we're trying to figure out in the US, are we more like Italy or we more like South Korea?
And to what extent can we justify a temporary, hopefully a temporary violation of people? That's the question. Are these measures only last as long as the COVID-19? That's the thing.
Once you start doing these things, you could do it for a lot of things, like certain behaviors. There's always been this debate of how fast you're driving and sensors in your car, which you're part of me. I'm like, I'm a teen. That's not a bad idea.
You know, at the same time, it's really, you could make an excuse during anything. You know, people are eating too much. They've gone to whatever too much. And then which companies do trust with the data?
I mean, Google and Facebook, getting more data about people, including their health stuff, it just, I mean, look, who's going to benefit? It's going to be Facebook, Google, Apple, which I trust more, but in Amazon, you know, it just solidifies the strength of these companies coming out of this. And a lot of tech people have been talking about this, is that everyone else is going to get wiped out in the big companies with money. You know, this is what they're giant tranches of money or for, is they're going to, you know, look, Apple's got hundreds of billions, Facebook's got hundreds of billions.
So they'll be able to last a run out and the others will not be able to make it, which I think is probably true. Well, there's two different issues. One is the staying power and the balance sheet power of the company to survive what could be three, six, or nine months of just substantially impaired revenues. The other statement though, and you and I've talked a lot about, I think it's going to kind of a recurring theme in our show and that is privacy versus utility, or in this case privacy versus personal rights versus public safety.
And you know, my sense is care is that shit is just getting so real here that if we can justify or somehow rationalize the Patriot Act to try and figure out a way to screen out, you know, a domestic threat of terrorism, which I was quite frankly thought was overblown and inflated. To me, I do think there is real justification here to figure out how we could use GPS data and cell phone towers and the devices that we all carry around to figure out, all right, have you have individuals clustered around what is potentially a hotspot and to notify them and get them tested such that we can use artificial intelligence GPS tracking data and figure out a way to really go after this. And I think that the privacy argument here, I understand the concern, a lot of people say that if you violate people's privacy, you end up doing more damage because people end up not wanting to disclose data, but it seems to me that this is about as real a reason as we could have to justify what might be seen as, you know, I don't want to call it dangerous but concerns. I can't think of a better excuse or a better time or a better reason to put some of these concerns on hold.
And I know that will have privacy advocates up in arms, but I don't think these people are inherently evil people. I think our lawmakers need to ensure your idea. This might be exploding. I mean, Google knows your sexual fetishes and your HIV status for God's sakes, but they anonymize it, or they claim to anonymize it, and then they claim to scrub the data.
And so far, the data hasn't been hacked. I don't see why we couldn't make that type of guarantee or even pass a law that says we are going to do this. We're going to track these people. We're going to give the CDC officials.
We're going to notify them. And then once we get to a certain level of non-infection or infections dropped to a certain level, we are stopping this program and we are scrubbing all data. Gosh, that would be nice. I just think it's just one state.
You think that's not you? I think it's not you. I think these companies. First of all, I just don't think this up leaks.
And by the way, they're handling this. The government, I don't think they're very good at anything. They can't do testing. They can't do testing.
You know what I mean? Is there someone they're really paying attention to data protection at the government right now? They can't hardly, you know, they can't clap their hands. That's my thing.
And I think the question is, especially with Trump pulling these wartime powers act, I mean, like never has more power, but in the hands of someone so incompetent to the task. And that's worrisome. And, you know, it's just worrisome on a lot of things. And so, in normal times, sure, the Patriot Act is looking back on it.
What an error in lots of ways. And something. Who knows what was saved, right? Who knows?
It's really way overreaction to a very emotional and disturbing time. And it's the same thing we do as we overextend during these times. And I'm sure nobody's going to win the privacy fight here. And the question is, how do we not get these companies in more of a position of power?
They're going to come out of this stronger than ever. Oh, 100%. And so, that's really, I think the issue. Let me finish.
I don't know what to do. It's one of the things, like, of course, it makes sense to track people who are using it. You know, you look at these stories. Like, there was a devastating story in the New York Times today or yesterday about this one family who was, you know, my grandmother was a big Italian family.
She had 11 kids. And they had parties all the time. They just got together. We were like that when my grandmother was living.
And she just died of it. And she didn't know two of her kids had died of it. Two of her 11 kids and half a dozen other relatives in that group are very sick and critical condition. And so, because they were at their Sunday dinner.
Like, they were just all together all the time. And they just passed the one, apparently one event, got them all sick. And so, you know, this was their family. It just happened to be a big family meeting.
And it was just devastating over this illness. So I think in those cases, you're like, yeah, like track them, figure it out. You know, they're sort of a case as we can see. They were together.
But it's really, you do sort of give up some of your principles when you're in an emergency. I think people do. But if you think about what's happened so far, and I've been on, in the last five days, I've been on 11 board calls. And my general viewpoint is as a father, as a son, as a director on boards, as a manager, an entrepreneur, a friend.
And what I would also say as a citizen and as government officials, our errors here have largely been a function of our underreaction, not our overreaction. And it seems to me that it is time for us to be the, you know, the daughter and the co-worker and the police accused of overreacting. And I feel like the same thing is true, even of our government. And I'm willing to take that risk right now.
And if there are some actions that are seen as an overreaction, I think that downside there is probably less than what has been the mother of all underreactions by the government to date. Yeah. Well, let's hope. I still, you know, the fact that Trump is running this is just disturbing on every aspect of it.
Like, it's incredible. It's like the nightmare scenario. What's interesting that you were just talking about, are we Italy or China or Korea? Italy to extend lockdown is death toll mounts.
And China reports no new locally transmitted diseases today. I mean, like, look at that. Very much different. So this is very, this is very able to be handled properly, just depends on how far you're willing to go.
Speaking of which, Amazon is now accepting essential items from third-party sellers, only essential items due to their party sellers at the beginning of April. Amazon says it will, quote, temporarily be prioritizing households, staples, medical supplies, and other high demand products coming to our fulfillment centers so that we can move quickly to receive restock and deliver those products to customers, most of the products that are still accepting from third-party sellers and wholesal vendors fall into six categories, baby products, health and household, beauty and personal care grows for you, just your own scientific impets, supplies. So people who were selling on this platform don't offer products or in a major bind. Many small retailers rely on Amazon to sell their products.
And it hit the sales has caused some deferral or layoff employees to soften the blow. So this shows how strong and how important this, again, Amazon will emerge in this stronger than ever as a retailer, I think. But it puts a lot of smaller businesses. It takes just wipes out the small businesses.
Yeah, I think actually, I think a lot of small businesses, I mean, granted a lot of them can't handle it, but I think it's, I think the biggest toll, if you will, the greatest mortality in terms of impact will be bigger businesses that have a lot of employees that have weak balance sheets. So this is apps, a Senna and Taylor Loft, Chico's, those companies are going to go away. And it's not even a chapter 11 where someone comes in with a stocking horse bid, wipes out equity, injects cash and keeps the wheels turning. These companies will be chapter seven and that is someone will show up and put a padlock on the doors and they just will go away and those jobs will be gone potentially with no severance.
And I think it's what I call the weaker, medium and kind of large companies that have very weak balance sheets that are going to probably create the most damage from an economics standpoint. I think a lot of smaller businesses are more agile and more nimble and can variableize their cost structure and take it down. I mean, it's really two things here. It's your balance sheet, how much capital do you have to just survive this.
And then two, your ability to variableize down your cost structure. So in the case of an Uber or Lyft, they have been just destroyed, right? Socks off 70, 80% because it's another category of vulnerable companies. It's one where face-to-face interaction or service is really the core component, like a restaurant is face-to-face interaction, Uber and Lyft are face-to-face interaction.
But what the advantage they do have, and I never like to be supportive of these companies, but I will be, is they can variableize their cost structure. And that is, if Uber revenues go to zero, they can take their cost down probably 60 or 80%, whereas if the revenue for Boeing goes down 80%, they can take their cost down 5%, but that's about it unless they stop paying people. I mean, there are just certain businesses that have fixed costs that just don't go away. So it's cash position and your ability to variableize your costs down.
But I think small businesses, I don't want to say, I think individuals need to be protected, but I think we're going to find out a lot of small businesses are pretty agile or scrappy and a lot of them will survive. It's the medium and large-sized companies that we're in a weak position. I mean, this virus is going to do economically what it's doing biologically. It's going to clear out the weak and the old, and unfortunately, to your point, we are going to see an increased, absolutely extrapolation in the cadence or the velocity around a concentration of power among the two or three strongest companies in every category.
How on earth does Amazon not come out of this with another two or three points of market share in our consumer economy and our 12 trillion dollar consumer economy? How do they not come out of this stronger? Yeah, I think all of them do come out of this. Or Walmart.
Walmart's going to come out of this stronger. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the issue. And then the question is, will there be any, if they have helped, and they will have helped, by the way.
I think they're vulnerable, which has been a lot of stories like Amazon, and I think this iterates throughout this, and they just happen to be the biggest, is people getting sick in these warehouses and this sort of pushes the thing of robotic warehouses, which is, you know, they've been working on and so many of them. But they have the technology, the sophistication, the capital, they can send their employees home, they can find new ones. You know, I mean, we always talk about Amazon and Walmart because they're in the news every day and we're doing what CNBC does and that is we decided that we're just going to talk about these companies this morning and tonight. You know who also gets stronger?
Exxon. Oil fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. And Exxon has the balance sheet to survive this. A bunch of shale companies, a bunch of small oil producers, a bunch of small energy producers, a bunch of small alternative energy companies are all going to get swept off the face of the planet.
And there's going to be Exxon, where there's multi-billion dollar balance sheet and staying power and infrastructure and they'll come back, they'll come back stronger. Now oil is way down, but you are going to need energy to rebuild and start, you know, fire up the economy again. It's just every company, if you take the two or three strongest balance sheets in every category, there is going to be, again, there's going to be an aggregation or more concentration of power. The DOJ and the FTC are going to be more important coming out of this.
And I did an interview yesterday with The New York Times, and I said, well, if Amazon comes out of this stronger, is that a bad thing? And it was an interesting point because they're delivering me toilet paper right now and nobody else is. Yeah, that's right. And he said, well, I shouldn't it be stronger?
And the answer is, well, you know what? The part of the problem with any species or any sector is if you're not robust, if you don't have a robust ecosystem, when you face scenarios where you have one or two companies, viruses can hit them. You can have something bad happen to Amazon, you can have a hack, and it puts the economy at risk because that one company became too dependent upon is now your point of vulnerability. So a robust ecosystem is absolutely something we need to be thinking about once we come out the other end here, and we will come out the other end.
We're just going to come out the other end with fewer players. Yep, 100%. Well, we are friggin' bummer, Scott Galloway. This is a moment.
Well, you're back and you're moving. It's not an RNA virus. It's got you down. It's moving.
Anybody wants to kill themselves when they're moving? I'm feeling very Marie Kondo right now. So I get rid of all these things and run. You do realize some of the stuff you have.
Anyway, I don't like it. I move a lot, Scott, and I'm done with it. I'm curious. I'm probing a little bit here.
Why are you moving? Aren't you actually moving? Well, I have children in DC, and I have a baby here, and you need a babysitter, although we may not have a baby. You know, that's an issue, but we have to be in one place.
I've got to be in one place. So that's really it. I can't have three different places I'm going to. And now I don't know when I'm gonna get back to San Francisco.
A lot of people have been stuck wherever they are, but I don't like this many places. Actually, I feel better because of them finances are better. Anyway, Scott, time for a quick break. We'll be right back with listener mail.
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Let's go to the table. All right. You've got to keep the leaf. I'm going to be a mailman.
You've got mail. Hi, Scott. Hi, Cara. This is Mike Eshleman and Los Angeles.
What if this forced work-from-home experiment worked so well for companies that many abandoned the traditional office setup for a remote workforce permanently? It could change the business landscape dramatically. Aside from what has already been said regarding Peloton and Zoom doing so well and winning, who is most at risk of losing big and big thought here? What if those vacant office spaces were converted into residential space?
Could this potentially solve our housing shortage issue? Thanks. Wow. That's it.
Wow. That sounds dreamy. I want to move to DC with him. Like Eshleman and Los Angeles.
Mike, I agree with you. I think it's interesting because I work from home and so do you really. Both of us have sort of had businesses where we sort of go in and sort of we don't. It's been a very easy thing.
But I think you do people businesses. If they can get it working, I've had like a dozen really useful meetings this week using Zoom or other things. And I think a lot of the people who are typically at work kind of like it a little bit, which is interesting. I don't know.
One of my role models, one of my role models, business role models is Peter Drucker. And Peter Drucker wrote in the 70s that office buildings would be like the pyramids. And that is we would come marvel at them, but they would serve no functional purpose. I'm serious.
He said that the idea of going to a square building that goes 2500 feet into the sky with separate floors and elevator shafts was recirculated air and windows that didn't open. The people wouldn't want to work there. The technology would ultimately get work distributed. I actually as an entrepreneur and someone who's been in charge of small companies, I don't like work from home cultures.
I've always demanded that people come into the office. I've always thought that ideas need to have sex and people need to be around each other and they need to hold each other accountable. And there's a certain electricity and chemistry that happens in person. Now, I wonder if the technology has caught up to the point where we could in fact take a lot more of our workforce and put it at home.
But what I was immediately go to will who wins and who loses economically. I can't imagine the office reads are doing very well right now. I know that Simon, the real estate or the high end mall read is off 70 or 80% literally just in the last 10 trading days. But you can also see the winners here.
If they survive a restoration hardware, people are going to think more about how they make their homes nicer. They're going to say, you're probably going to say, well, if I'm going to spend another 10, 20% of my waking hours at home, I'm going to get that cashmere throw in that really nice and you'll pillow in that great couch. I'm going to invest in Sonos. I think you're going to see a transition of capital, if you will.
It just makes sense with human and financial capital from traditional office spaces to work at home spaces. And it just makes sense that people are going to become more comfortable and more agile. Even if it's not just totally switching to home, there's just going to be a lot more people that decide to work at home on Fridays. And what might be nice about this is that if you really think about the cohort that is, in my viewpoint, the cohort that is more discriminated against in any cohort in the U.
I don't think it's people of color. I think it's women and specifically women who have children. They want women under the age of 30 who don't have kids have close to pay gap. Once they have kids, they go 77 cents on the dollar relative to their male counterparts.
And part of our ability to create the same sort of career trajectory for women who have kids is to create more options and more flexibility around where they work from. So this could be, to Mike's point, to dreamy Mike's point, this could be a really wonderful thing in terms of liberating people who are more space constrained. Also, it's expensive to live near work. Almost all companies, including Google, are moving into urban centers because that's where young millennials want to hang out.
So a lot of people want to start collecting dogs and kids that can't live in Chelsea. And so the ability to come in maybe once or twice a week or three times a week instead of five times a week and work from their home, there are people at NYU care at the commute from Princeton, New Jersey. They commute an hour and a half, an hour and 45 minutes on a train every day. Do you know I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey?
I did not know that. You grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. Yes. Wow.
That's a fun fact. Anyways, you can go so many layers deep around. This is a no doubt about it. This is a seminal tectonic shift.
And I always think about we are distributing so much here. We are going to start distributing healthcare away from doctors, offices and hospitals. A key component of flattening the curve here is distributing healthcare away from the hospital where we only have the most serious cases, right? We need to keep people away from the hospital telemedicine.
So we are distributing healthcare. We are going to start distributing education away from these space constrained places called campuses that have been these terrible excuses for people like myself and administrators that position themselves as luxury brands and prey on the hopes and dreams of adults and charged and ridiculously onerous fees. We are going to distribute education away from these campuses. It does not mean campuses will go away but they will just be less crowded.
And then we are going to do the same thing with work in general. I think it is. I think about the campus. I think about the campus.
A friend of mine was calling her daughter. This is her first year at NYU. They went up to get her stuff. And I think turning the NYU dorms into hospital beds to treat people or put to people or quarantine people.
And then I think my son is going to college this year. I wonder if he will have a college. You know what I mean? Eventually he will.
Sure he will. But I do think there is a benefit to gathering. I do. I guess someone who doesn't gather and who is really I am sort of the original social distance around work.
So there is some element of getting together that does matter. And I think it is just a question. I think a lot of people will rethink a lot of things. Especially this lasts for more than a few months.
They will make the cope with things and they will suddenly be very comfortable with certain things and want to get back to other things. But it will be interesting to see what sticks of all these things. A lot of people use online delivery services more. That was trending in that direction.
It will just be the thing now. Will everybody work from home? Will everybody spend more time with your family? One of the things with Los Angeles Times reporter was reporting on the air levels in Los Angeles.
They are fantastic. A lot of clean and Venice. Did you see that? So human activity causes a lot of problems at the same time.
It is a huge opportunity to rethink to forget everything you know and start with a clean sheet of paper. The moment I have had, I thought I wouldn't have had that moment had this not happened was we are in the mya coba. And my kids are doing their classes remotely now. One is in third grade and one is in sixth grade.
I always had this impression of them sitting at a desk upright with someone who is a nun who who would come and hit their knuckles with a ruler if they ever set anything out of line. And they are in this class of 15 other 12 year olds talking about math and history. And it is a food fight. I mean they are talking over each other.
They are interrupting Mr. Smith and I am like is that what school is like now in sixth grade? But they are all really polite to each other. They were helping the teacher get his camera working right because the 12 year olds understand technology better than their teacher.
It is more chaotic the way I thought about versus when I was in sixth grade. It is more chaotic but it is more respectful and it is more benign. We were quiet but then we were like passing around notes saying what an idiot he was or whatever. These guys are just much nicer.
I haven't seen my kids doing the school thing yet but they are all be interested to watch us coming to stay with me. I will be interested to see how the homeschooling thing goes. I think it will be good out of the other one. I would like to find a thought that makes me feel much better in the behavior modification.
It is a what if thought. This disease is very ageist and it goes after the elderly in the week. What if this was a similar path to the pandemic? We have had them in the past.
If the age toxicity or aggression here had been flipped I think we would have chaos. I would not. The real point is solace if you have kids. It is a real point of comfort.
It is so far kids under the age of 21. There has been lots of articles coming out. Although there was a video that went viral of these kids from Spring Break. That is a different issue.
I am talking about kids. I agree with you. Let me just be clear. If you get this, you will get this.
There is a lot of statistics showing a lot of young people. There is a child that has a really young child. It will damage your lungs for the rest of your life. This is not something if you get in a bad way.
It is not like I am fine. You will not be a good thing to get for anybody including young people. I agree with you. I agree with you.
I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree with you. If that was the case.
In any case we will see how we do live with this. The after part will be the most interesting part. One more break Scott. We will be back for predictions and some moments of optimism.
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Your dreams come to come. You put imagination to work at conva.com. Okay, Scott. Clearly everything is in full-ups and that makes predictions much harder now.
What are you looking at expecting in the days? Is there any predictions you'd like to take back like Carnival? Give me a good prediction for yourself. Well, if I have the opportunity to take predictions back, we're going to need a longer show.
I wouldn't say it's a prediction, but something I'm watching very closely is that there's a lot of good news coming out of Asia. Singapore was able to basically cauterize this thing right away. South Korea demonstrated real competence and what I would call a comity of man that was real cooperation there. China, I think China comes to Chinese brand.
I mean, to a certain extent, despite the fact that Trump is calling it the China virus, I think China's brand, if you will, actually comes out of this stronger because I think they have dealt with the situation in a very aggressive effect of means. And it looks like China is kind of almost returning to a certain level of normalcy. The data I'm tracking and I think it's going to have real implications on the marketplace, especially the Dow, if you will, is I'm tracking the curve and new infections in Italy. Because Italy is, right now, I'm almost sorry, you're kind of ground zero of the things that are wonderful about Western society, but are dangerous as it relates to the spread.
And that's personal freedom, personal rights, lack of unwillingness, unwillingness to refusal to socially distance. And I think if and when that curve begins to flatten in Italy, we're going to have a tremendous surge of optimism and relief, or if it doesn't, and it continues to get worse, it's also going to really take a toll on our psyche. So the data I'm watching right now, to a certain extent, kind of leads to the front here of what might happen in Western nations that value personal freedoms over, you know, are just more, just have a different approach, capitalist personal freedoms, a little bit more expectant, a little bit more narcissistic, frankly, when you see those kids who are referencing it for a lot of day, they seem to be quite expectant and narcissistic thinking about, okay, it's not going to happen to me and it only affects older people. There's a certain lack of empathy.
So I'm watching the data in Italy. I think that's going to be very important. If you want a great visualization, then your times has one called, you know, which country is flatten the curve for coronavirus and it shows Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan doing that, and then they have a long thing at the end. What country is on the curve?
And it is insane that the ones that go up and the ones that go down, again, mark has gone down. Certain countries have, but Japan is up and down. But all those countries you're talking about are going up, that you'd have much looser behavior patterns, I guess, Italy being the worst of them right now. But it's really interesting how they're going up and down and up and down.
And of course, there's going to be a second range, and from what my brother tells me, there is always a second thing, but it's different and as more of the country becomes more immune to it or develops immunities. Anyway, it's really, it's true. Optimism will come back if these numbers improve, that all of course depends on us. So before we go, we asked listeners to send in some of the ways that you're staying positive during this time.
We got this from Bruce and Jelly. His daughter Izzy is at home from school in Washington, D.C. right now. Oh, good.
He plays the guitar. And she's saying. This is hard. I can be cold.
Great little crowd. Wow. Okay. I just have one question.
Yeah. What the fuck was that? Have we done totally PBS? What's next?
A woman who macrame is for blind people. I mean, for God's sake. We got it back to the ugly world. We told him that.
We have people playing guitar. We turned it to public television. What's going on? That's not how we roll.
Let's talk about you all Samberg being the worst thing to happen in the world. What's going on here? Where are we? We've been infected by melanoma.
We are going to bring people up. Sensitivity. Do you have a story about them? I have a story about them.
Can I just tell you when this is over? We are going to lay waste to people. Don't worry. Don't worry.
We'll get back to our normal way. Dad is laying waste a lot of tequila right now. Which, by the way, makes me feel a lot better. Makes me feel a lot better.
Oh, my gosh. Hello, magic firewatt. I never do anything. Don't stop on the table.
Wherever the fucking tequila is. Says the big dog. Oh, my gosh. I'm thinking you're trying to drink a rage tweet.
I think that's my goal for this week. Rage tweet. I would enjoy that. I love to rage.
One last thing is how people respond to it. Jennifer senior from the New York Times did a good column about her husband. She reads everything and is worried about everything. Her husband is like, I don't want to hear any more of it.
I'm going to drink and just stare at the wall. I don't want to hear any more. They have this relationship where why are you telling me this? What's happening in Singapore?
Wherever in Italy. It's a terrible death. Literally. Let me tell you the latest statistics from the CDC.
I'm like, no. No. I'm going to go over here and rage tweet with George Conway. Oh, my God.
I have a group of fraternity brothers. I think of themselves as alpha males. We started a group text. They're such a bunch of little bitches.
They cannot stop sending each other more and more horrific stories and panicking. I'm like, Jesus Christ, man, the fuck up. I've stopped listening to it. Do you have a moment of optimism?
Do you have one? Go ahead. Go ahead. You have to say what we want people to do.
What's your moment of optimism? I've had the opportunity. I can't wait for the tweets around my white privilege here. But where I'm staying, I've met two of my heroes.
The first is Brian Cranston, who won best actor three years in a row for what is arguably the greatest original script in television in history, Breaking Bad. But I also got to meet one of my heroes, a guy named Troy Aikman, who played football at UCLA. That was Cowboys, right? That's right.
He and I graduated from UCLA the same year. He was literally the best athlete at UCLA. And I was literally the worst arts athlete. I was the worst person on the crew team, which is kind of the least prestigious sport.
So he was the best athlete at UCLA. I was the worst athlete. And you know what, Cara? We both ended up at the same place and it made me feel good.
And I was thinking, I was thinking, I was thinking, okay, by the way, this guy, I saw this guy. He's exactly my age. He looks like he's a different species. He has all this beautiful blonde hair and he's in amazing shape.
I'm like, how can we be the same species? Anyways, but I was thinking that if you are right now, wherever you are, if you're not dependent upon a government check coming to you, if you're surrounded by people who love you and who you are able to take care of and make feel better. If you're in a place where you feel somewhat safe and you're unlike your grandparents, you're not being called to war, you're being called to sit on your couch. And again, most importantly, if you're in a position to express affection, whether it's digitally, you're on the same beach as Joy Eggman.
I mean, we are all of us are fortunate. Even if you're healthy, if you don't have underlying health conditions and if you're surrounded by your family, you're on the same beach as Joy Eggman. Yeah. Okay.
You're not Joy Eggman. You're still not. I could have been. I could have been.
No. No. Mr. D.
I'm not sure where the I'm going to be going back to the church. I might've been a lot bigger issue than what it says, especially when I was a kid when it was in the church. Oh, you're only around. I don't know.
What are you doing? You can't, you can't identify yourself. You've been a kid. You can't identify yourself.
No. I'm a kid. You're good. Don't.
I'm a kid. You're a kid. Hey. I know what you're doing?
I know. whatever. They're doing it to cause racial resentment. And she was saying, why would you think by race as I married to someone who's Asian?
And then proceeded to say, my, her husband, George Conway, clearly has just wrote a piece that devastating piece about how Trump's still the same giant asshole. And clearly there's something awry in their marriage. She was saying, because she was, she can't hate Asians, because she's married to them, which is kind of... George Conway is Asian?
Well, he's Filipino. He's half Filipino. And so he said this, which I thought was just, so I tweeted something that said, some of my best husbands are Asian. I enjoyed that.