On this episode of The Middle we'll be asking you what you want the next President (whoever that may be) to do about the economy. We're joined by financial analyst Juli Niemann and business journalist Roben Farzad. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country. #economy #markets #inflation #prices #costofliving #Trump #Harris
Support for the Middle comes from the Tiwani Foundation, making a sustained and measurable difference for organizations that focus on enriching knowledge, improving health and wellness, and promoting scientific understanding. More information on how you can support the middle at Listen to the Middle dot com. Welcome to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson along with our house DJ Tolliver and Tolliver. I have an idea instead of talking about the economy this hour, I was thinking, let's just listen to my Spotify playlist.
Oh cool, the whole hour.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. What do you think about that?
I'm with it.
Let's get it man, ok I'm next.
Yeah, because this actually happened this week. Take a look.
So play YMCA, go ahead, Let's go nice.
And loud, Nice and loud, Nice and loud.
You know what I think of Donald Tump I think of the village view.
Okay, So we're not going to do that. We are going to talk this hour about the issue that is usually the most important issue to most voters. That would be the economy. What do you want the next president to do about it? We'll get to your calls in a moment. At eight four four four middle. Well that's eight four four four six four three three five three. But first, last week we asked you what you want done on another big issue, immigration and deportation. We got a lot of great calls. Here's some that came in after the show.
My name is Beth Ann. I'm from Denver, Colorado. I think immigration is an important I think we need a better vetting system to keep criminals out, but I think that the next president should look into making sure that people can get here legally because our economy is so based on foreign help.
Hi, this is Elizabeth and I'm calling from the Cincinnati region. I want to see controlled immigration. So immigration is a great thing for this country when it's in line with what helps the country grow.
Hi.
My name is Steve and I'm calling from Anabraam, Michigan. I believe in a secure border, as I think most Americans do. So let's naturalize these folks. Let's let them pay their taxes because they're already here and it just makes sense.
Well, thanks to everyone who called in, and you can hear that entire Ppace episode on our podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, on the iHeart app or wherever you listen to podcasts. So out of our topic this hour, what do you want the next president to do about the economy? Vice President Kamala Harris has floated numerous tax credits for working families and tax increases for corporations and high earners. Former President Trump, on the other hand, has talked about cutting taxes and putting tariffs on all foreign endpoints. When it comes to the economy right now, a lot of the indicators look good. Inflation down, consumer spending up, the unemployment rate low around four point one percent, but food prices are up about twenty five percent since the COVID pandemic, and recent data from the Pew Research Center finds fewer than a quarter of Americans currently rate the country's economy as excellent or good. So what do you want the next president to do about the economy? Tolliver, what is our number?
It's eight four four four Middle that's eight four four four six four three three five three, or you can write to us to listen to the Middle dot com. We already have so many responses, so join them.
And the calls are coming in as well. Let's meet our panel from Saint Louis Julie Neeman, financial analyst with Smith Moore and Company. Julie, great to have you back, Thanks Jeremy. And business journalist Robin Farzad, host of Full Disclosures with Us from Richmond, Virginia. Robin, welcome to you.
Thank you, Jeremy.
And before we get to the phones, let me just talk to each of you. Julie. This is from a recent CNN article. It says, quote, the job market is booming, Inflation has come back down to earth. Americans are spending like crazy whatever. Voters don't care. They still think the economy is trash. Why is that.
This out of.
Touch for the out reality has been going on for three years and boys, some of the economists we read been with them earlier that we're in a recession. We're going into a recession. It's the end of Western civilization as we know it. I think this sense of impending doom is just a result of twenty twenty. But the reality is we have been recovering very nicely. We're continuing on it and right now there's no evidence of any recession coming. So you have emotion and you have feelings ahead of facts, and that's the big problem. Nobody's connecting with the facts. It's feelings that they have.
But Robin farzaid, you do have higher prices, as we said, does how you view the economy just depend on your own personal circumstances.
I don't think you're going to have the White House run victory laps around this stock market or record housing prices, because there's so many people locked out of both. It's considered a first world privilege. But I really think it goes back to inflation. As we know. You know, I would say the majority of Americans had not experienced capital eye inflation. It's something that really visited us in the early eighties that the Paul Vulker fed had to try to arrest. And so there are all these misconceptions out there that XYZ cost four dollars at the grocery store, at the restaurant in twenty nineteen. Why is it now, you know, five dollars and seventy five cents. Why isn't it back to four dollars If we've broken the back of inflation. That's not the way inflation works. And so there's a lot of anger out there. Even if the economy is creating jobs, it's so much cold comfort if you're still feeling the sticker shock at restaurants, hospitality, fomo, car insurance. I mean, Jeremy, you've gone through all the various things that have gone up kind of parabolically.
Well, Julie, what do you think would satisfy Americans on the economy right now? What would make them feel good about it? Given that there are these many indicators I mean, short of I guess prices coming down by twenty five percent, although that might not be a good thing. If you have prices dropping that quickly, that would be deflation.
Right What we have right now is inflation definitely getting slower, but its prices are still going up and people are still digesting the higher prices. To begin with, they've got good wages now, good job, solid ability to buy, but those wages cannot possibly keep up with rates of inflation. And two key areas where everybody feels it food housing. Those are the two things that are still not being under control with inflation.
One more thing, let's get to the phones, Robin Farzad, how much power does the president have to affect the economy, Because I think back like to two thousand and eight, right before the election. If the president had all the power then George W. Bush would never have allowed a financial crisis to occur right before the election.
No, it's in the hands of the Fed. There were some extraordinary powers during the pandemic, obviously with fiscal stimulus, and if you remember, Donald Trump wanted his signature big lely on those checks and that was a part of, you know, the the circumstances that led to inflation. But as we know, it's the Federal Reserve. Maybe they waited too long to hike. Maybe they'll left too much stimulus out there. Maybe just maybe there was way too much PPP to go around and people got to double dip and triple dip and the economy took way too much stimulus and we snapped out of it. I don't think it's like, you know, the late Hugo Shaves of Venezuela has a call in show. I think it was called Hello Comandante or something, and people would complain like I can't get cement anywhere, and you could go and see it on YouTube. But he's like, send this man a donkey in five sacks. You know, that's not the way this country works.
That's well, that's what Tolliver does sometimes with our callers. Yeah, let's get to the phones and Gregory, who is calling from Lakeland, Florida. Gregory, welcome to the middle What do you think about the economy? What do you want the next president to do about it?
Hey, thank you for having me and thank you for having this conversation. What do I think about economy? I'm a business owner. I work here in the home improvement UH industry. If the economy is doing bad, I don't think people really actually know it. People say that people still buying stuff, people still getting this fix, people still getting that fixed. I want new child here new So they say that it's the economy is bad, but people still spending money like crazy. And I think the biggest thing where people actually talk about this inflation. I think the biggest problem is the Republicans have a great megaphone with Fox News, so they put this information out and Democrats megaphone is not really that good at all, and nobody really listens to that megaphone. I actually did, I have a household of man. I actually did my numbers to see actually how much more money I'm actually spending since the place is at the highest point of inflation, and it's basically I get this. I get to I have to buy what two less tendency bottles a month every two weeks. I can't go out and buy a Hennessy bottle. It's not really you know. I found about thirty dollars thirty dollars there own food, and that's what a seven person household. So like people talk about inflations, but we actually add up how much you're actually sending. It's not really that much. Now, what really is killing people is housing. Housing is crazy.
Just briefly, Gregory, what would you like the next president to do when it comes to housing? Do you have an idea of what you'd like them to do?
Oh, well, I'm out here in Florida, so living around the ten says, actually could have did something for me better than what the president could have did. He could have put it.
In rent control, rent control again.
With rent control, that would actually kept housing down and that would have actually made a big difference in people life. It's more housing that's actually killing people. Bore then, actually groceries and food because thirty forty dollars okay up there in that extra but we've been in about two times as much for renally as he was four or five years ago. That's that's a big difference. That's a big kid.
Okay, we've got it. We've got it. Thank you very much for that. On NeXT's right exactly. You can come back anytime. But Julie Neman the interesting there. Gregory says he's spending more than ever and that housing is still an issue though.
Yeah, the key thing is the housing problem is a long term problem. We've had a housing shortage for the last fifteen years and it's going to take a good ten years to get this corrected. There has been no funding since the collapse of the global financial system, and it was that in two thousand and eight and nine. There has been no significant lending on massive scales to housing development, housing sections. You know new Town's going up. None of that is happening.
Massive development, and that's what we need, you think more than that's what we need to.
Have happened and has to have funding for it. Now, where are you going to get that funding? Well, the banks are absolutely paranoid. They brought us into the mess of two thousand and eight nine and now they're afraid to do anything. They have good cause for that, because they tend to be terrible in terms of analyzing risk. So I think the government has to step in here with some kind of subsidy program or at least loan guarantees, a new Fany May, a new Freddie Mac whatever it is, to help with the development of it, because this is going to be a long term problem.
Robin, what do you think about what Gregory was saying there? It is an interesting point that he thinks people are spending more than ever before, even if they complain about it. And he brought up Fox News and sort of the megaphone of people saying the economy is bad in the media.
Yeah, you try to find a landscaper or a stonecutter, or a mason or anybody who deals with heating, HVAC people, heat pump people. Housing is still on fire. And I don't understand, Julie Tolliver. Maybe somebody can explain it too much America, You know, are we supposed to be stimulating cutting interest rates and mortgage rates into this? Is that targeting the air I mean to those who are to have lessons and the have nots when housing is already on fire. I don't see how you get older people who've been holding onto housing with the renaissance of remote living and work from home to unleash some of that inventory to hungrier, younger families. I don't see targeted policy out there.
Tolliver. The line, it's the economy stupid, which sort of works for the show that we're doing right now, came from an advisor to former President Bill Clinton, James Carville.
Yeah, and listen here to a key moment from the nineteen ninety two presidential debate, when then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton talks about having his finger on the pulse of the state's economy.
I've been governor of a small state for twelve years. I'll tell you it's affected me. Every year Congress and the President's signed laws that make us do more things, it gives us less money to do it with. I see people in my state, middle class people. Their taxes have gone up in Washington and their services have gone down, while the wealthy have gotten tax cuts. I have seen what's happened in this last four years. When in my state, when people lose their jobs, there's a good.
Chance I'll know them by their names. I don't know if that's really true. I find that kind of hard to believe, but it's still a big state even you know, in.
The nineties Man of the nineties.
Yeah, it was, but I will say that the unemployment rate at that time was seven point one percent when he said that, and now it's four point one percent. We'll be right back with more of your calls on the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning, in the Middle is a national call in show. We're focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically, and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet in the middle. This hour, we're asking you, what do you want the next president to do about the economy? Tolliver, what is the number to call in?
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four four six four three three five three. You can also write to us that listen to the Middle dot com or on social media. I'm checking them all.
And I'm joined by business journalist Robin Farzad and financial analyst Julie Nieman, and the phone lines are lighting up. So let's go to Phil and Ate seen Wisconsin. Phil, what do you want the next president to do about the economy?
Well, I would let this is Phil Schultz and the scene I would like to see the very rich golden fleece, golden fleece to pay down to pay off the national debt.
That's what you'd like to say, Tax the rich and pay off the debt.
Yeah, no, the golden give them the golden fleece. Give them the golden fleece, and so we can get money to pay down the national debt.
Okay, Julie neven the golden fleece.
That's a rage against the very rich who are paying almost nothing in terms of taxes. Exxon has tax rate of seven percent. Some of the richest people in the United States quote owe money but haven't paid it in centuries because they have the money to keep appealing and dodging all around with it. We want to see fairness in the tax just because the rest of us are paying our taxes.
So what do you do?
There is one simple solution that has been around for years. Forbes was the first one to come out with it, and that is a flat tax, no deductions. Everybody pay fifteen percent. The only people would have some exemptions from that rate would be the poor, but everybody else, including corporations, pays fifteen percent with no deductions. It's the deductions that give you all the tax dodging and those are all the goodies that congressmen hand out well.
And by the way, the presidential candidates are proposing more deductions that Kamala Harris wants, a new deduction for starting a business, a new deduction for buying a home, and things like that. Let's get to another call. Abby is in Chicago. Abby, what do you think the next p resident should do about the economy?
I think, hey, thanks for having me on the call, and it's a great panel to have to discuss about the you know, the economy stupid. But uh, in terms of the next president, the policy should be in line with trying to obviously get their national debt down. And I know the national debt doesn't work in similar lines to a person debt, but at the same time, being physically responsible always, you know, is better for the country. Also, to be honest, you know, it's not from a from talking point of other people on the on the calls today, it's more the corporations being greedy and you know, I would go to the extent of saying it's the greedy stupid and it's not necessarily the economy where co operations and the greed that they display.
But so so I'll be just just to drill down on something you said there. So are you more interested as a voter in the debt, the national debt coming down versus more, let's say, goodies for you or for other people in this country, but more more money coming to people.
So there's two ways of doing that.
So there is one ways to get goodies, but at the same time there's a cost benefit ratio analysis, so that as a benefit of getting a goody.
I don't think it should be done. There should be find fine understanding of policy to take steps towards giving goodies while at the same time not necessarily putting at risk the debt in that sense.
Okay, I'll be thank you very much. You know, it's interesting, Robin Farzad that these last two colors have brought up the debt.
Yeah, it sounds almost you know, Uh, drink your milk, stay in school, be a good kid. Eat who's out there, you know, who's out there carrying the torch for against fiscal profligacy? I mean, clearly not. It's it's not the Maga GOP. I mean, you know, the kind of Rockefeller Republicans the Chamber of Commerce, class and everything. That's all like, you know, you talk about Julie, you talk about Steve Force. I mean that's totally forgotten. That's so nineteen ninety six vintage. And especially over the past five years, we've been putting so much on the tab. But I think we've not been punished for that profligacy. It's not like borrowing costs of sword. The United States has an exceptionalism where you know, things go wrong and people pile into our debt, and our borrowing costs are still relatively low. I mean, if they were runaway and Congress had to get its act together and really cut a lot of that fat out, that'd be one thing. And if you saw real crowding out of private investment. But you have thriving capital markets right now. You have people kind of saying, what meat worry even though if you see it on a chart, the amount of debt increase, you know, since the last recession, since the last huge slowdown is staggering.
Ben is joining us from Saint Petersburg, Florida, just after Milton. Ben, what do you think, what's what's what does it look like from your end in terms of the economy.
Hi, Jeremy, thank you so much taking my call. I'm on a It's like a micros spectrum of of what you guys have been talking about. We just had Hurricane Milton come through and it was this is the first I've lived in Florida for seven years, and this is the storm. This storm came through like nothing else. Luckily, myself, my girlfriend, and my dog evacuated, but our roof was torn off and I can't live in my home. But more anything that I wanted to do, I wanted to come back home last Friday and go back and support my local businesses. I have a bakery two blocks from my house that I want to go back, and I wanted to buy a loaf of bread, and it just in my thoughts. There's so many local small businesses in Saint Petersburg. You know, everyone says Tampa. Tampa is a big place. Saint Petersburg. We're on the other side of the Bay and we're a community of neighborhoods and there are so many small businesses that they're they're posting on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. If you have it that that they can't survive past this. If no one comes back.
So but are you getting as a small business though, Are you getting the help that you need right now from FEMA or do you feel like just in the long term it's going to be a bigger issue.
I can't move in my house until sometime next year probably, And they're small businesses. They've gutted everything, and they're no, I I applied, I can't, okay.
So so obviously, Ben, Ben, you're you're dealing with an immediate problem. Just to bring us back on topic for this program, is there something bigger about what you would want the president to do economically right now? Or is it just about helping Saint Peter's the places that were hit by the hurricanes.
Wasn't the SBA unfunded as of two days ago? That was announced right? The Small Business Assistants they said they ran out of money.
Julie Neiman, you're you're nodding there.
Yes, they did. They're asking for a special grant from Congress to refund them to get more in their low likelihood they will right they're depleted.
And and our congress people, Jeremy, our congress people aren't going to be back in office for a month. Next session of Congress doesn't start until the sixteenth, and I and and and we have rond de Santis, I call them Ronnie d but and you laugh.
I laugh.
And I love the state of Florida. This is such a beautiful, beautiful state, and especially the Tampa Bay area. I mean, if anyone, if any anyone in the country, if you're listening right now, please in a couple of months, come back down Fort Tampa Bay to Fort Saint Petersburg.
It's such a beautiful.
We okay, Ben, we've got we've got We've got it. And thank you for that commercial for Florida. And you know it'll be very nice in the next few months. But they thank you very much for that call. You know, I do want to ask you, Robin Farzad, about that because there are people, there are so many big issues that have big you know, events that happen like the hurricanes, that have huge economic impacts. And while we sort of you hear Ben talking about that, you think, oh, this is a specific problem to people who are living in this place. So many places have had climate disasters over the last year or natural disasters and are in the same situation where they need the government to step in at moments like that with money.
Yeah, but also think about you know, I grew up in Miami. I'm to think about the idiosyncratic problem AFT in the wake of the Surfside condo collapse, where all of these older people right now stuck with special assessments. And I don't want to be very provincial and parochial about Florida. They're experiencing kind of a huge capital call right now. Many financial crisis older Americans, people in older condos who either have to sell it at a huge markdown or pay up for a big special assessment in order to make code. This economy's success is not really visiting them. If you're stuck with you know, you've seen these articles on the Wall Street Journal. It's happening in Tampa, it's happening in Fort Laerdale in Miami. You're stuck with one hundred and fifty thousand dollars assessment. You thought that would be money that you'd have for retirement. You have to have a lot of coordination with I don't know whatever it is these people are essentially looking for a bailout. Who's at fault? Was it the condo boards? Was it climate preparedness? I mean, you know, we were kind of punting on this for decades, and then this is a lot specific to kind of coastal America and a lot of people on the inside, and you cover the middle, I mean may not experience things like this. So I mean when I talked to my mom, when I talked to my friends and their friends' parents in Florida, these are the things that are front and center right now. Not necessarily, you know, one hundred thousand jobs created last month or the month before, Tolliver.
Some notes coming in on Listen to the Middle dot com.
Absolutely, Tom and Detroit gets straight to the point. He says, raise taxes on everyone making over three hundred thousand a year, Jim and Champagne. Jeremy, I think he's right over your shoulder, right, he says, I would like I'd like to tackle the issue of minimum wage as an unfunded mandate. I believe in a minimum wage. More than that, I consider the minimum wage to be important enough to be backed by the full government. Jeremy, I'll tell you the candidate that will get my vote is the one that brings me a giant publisher's clearinghouse check.
I'm voting for them all right.
That's I think a lot of people probably feel that way. Maria is with us from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Maria, welcome to the middle.
Go ahead, thank you.
I would like the next president to raise the minimum wage and to protect the middle class, and to continue investing in our infrastructure and in train people for the jobs of the future. I am in education and I can't tell you how much we need jobs job training, so that is a huge thing in North Carolina. I also think a voting rights act that makes elections fair would help our economy because our state is carrymindered and has a legislature that does not represent the people. It's legislates against the interests of the working class. And if we could vote in real three elections in North Carolina, we could elect true representatives that would help our states make much more progress instead of having these legislatures that are engaging in cultural war and a creating divisions. So in North Carolina, we need an active president who will solve some of the big problems.
Maria, thank you very much. Julie Neeman, Maria brings up for the first time in this hour, training people for the jobs of the future. Are you hearing that from the presidential candidates, I haven't heard very much talk about training for the jobs of the future or artificial intelligence and what to do about jobs that are going to go away Because of that.
Probably the biggest answer is that there's no answer for that. You know, that is really something that's pie in the sky at this point. What are the jobs of the future? Figuring it out? That's what those futurists all come up with. What's going to get you voted in right now is what are you going to do for me right now? Which this lady is saying is that we need better education. Absolutely, do we need job or training. Every time an industry is shut down, you have to retrain. We've had so many companies go away here in Saint Louis, airlines go down. Everybody had to retrain and they did, but it was painful. It's just the process you have to go through, is retraining.
Hmmm.
Let's go to Max Susan Wellington, Colorado. Max, what do you think the next president should do about the economy?
Boy, there's no shortage. I apologize if I'm getting the name incorrect, but is there a guest name Julian Julie?
Yeah, Julie.
Sorry, I want Julie to be president.
Same Yeah, well okay, but okay.
I'd like to if you'd indulge me. I'd like to start with a quick joke.
Knock knock, who's there there?
Economist?
Yeah, economists too.
Economists the last down turn. But I'll try to do better next time. Anyway, it goes without saying that you my.
Dad joke repertoire, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Max, I'm gonna let you go because I want to just find out what people think we should have the next president do about the economy. But thank you for those jokes, and let's just get another call in here. Yolanda in Kansas City is with us. Yolanda, what do you want the next president to do about the economy?
Well, I would like them to have some vision for a future that is built on growth and supporting people's needs and not on destruction. We are spending, just in one country alone, eighteen billion dollars on the Israeli military. We are now short on FEMA funding and it needs you know, we need to stop funding militarism. We need to stop funding construction. We need to basically fund healthcare, We need to fund education. We need to fund retraining. Industries that are basically benefiting from all alone need to be retrained so that they basically can do things that are good for people. And it can be done, but you have to have the vision to do it.
Let me just briefly ask you. Let me just briefly ask you, how would you rate the economy right now?
How would I rate the economy? Well, as far as I would say that, we have a lot of a long way to go. Okay, we do not take care of people's needs. There's no funding for child care for people who make minimum wage, there's no you know, education needs better funding. Healthcare I'm a physician. Healthcare is horrible.
You know.
People say, oh, you have safety and at clinics, Yeah, we have safety and clinics fund just closed in Kansas City, Kansas, where I practice. Three thousand people have been with no insurance, are left sort of stumbling trying to figure out how they're going to get their medications in there and their healthcare because they don't have And then the insurance industry that they created it is totally horrible. I think they need to be taken out of the mix totally, to be honest, because why do you think people like me who I'm now Medicare eligible get eighteen calls a day during open enrollment so that I joined. They're a damage plan to this plant because they are making billions from US, okay, and that money should be going into providing healthcare and we providing a safety net for people that are having to retrain. They're retraining.
Jilanda, thank you very much for that stuff they do. They've got a lot to say tonight, Robin Farzad, though your your thoughts there, I mean, she does bring up an interesting point which we do here when we do shows like this, that people don't want the US spending money on wars, way too much money on defense.
Some people think, yeah, I mean, I'll say in a mercenary sense that money is overwhelmingly going to you know, US arms makers who've been flush, who've been in clover because of that, and there's a whole military industrial complex whose outlays are really not questioned, whether you're talking Ukraine or various things going to the Middle East or other allies. The caller does make a really important part. There's a there's a bit of a financial crisis going on with rural health care providers, Jeremy, and we will hospitals going out of business, er units OBG y ns and there's a real disparity, and.
We'll get to that. But Taliver, I have to say, the economy is such a consequential issue that it can actually bring entire presidential care campaigns to a halt.
That's right in the wake of the two thousand and eight financial crisis, Republican Senator John McCain's that spitted his campaign to focus on passing legislation to repair the nation's fractured economy, all with less than a month to election day.
Tomorrow morning, I'll suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I've spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision, and I've asked him to join me.
I'm calling on the.
President to convene a leadership meeting from both houses of Congress, including Center Obama and myself. It's time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.
Yeah, I remember then Senator Obama said I can do two things at once. I can campaign and legislat.
Right, right, and then and then he won. We'll be right back with you more of your calls coming up on the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. This hour, we're asking you what do you want the next president to do about the economy? You can call us at eight four four for Middle. That's eight four four four six four three three five three where you can reach out and listen to the Middle dot com. I'm joined by financial analyst Julie Neeman and business journalist Robin Farzad. And while we have a break from knock Knock jokes, Robin Farzad, let me just ask you. Donald Trump has talked about a ten percent tariff on everything across the board, and up to one thousand percent tariffs on specific things. What kind of an effect would that have?
You know, it was a great Wall Street journal piece on the potential for tariffs to approach what we saw in the Great Depression, and holly smoot, these things have unintended consequences. You're you're sometimes playing with fire. I don't know how it how it plays in the grand scheme of things. How does it hit you back at Walmart where you know, what would they say is Walmart is one of the largest trading partners in the country. If it was a country onto itself, who cries uncle first, we China, Germany, the various other players you saw, it had unintended consequences with with agriculture. It sure sounds great, you know, stick it to the foreigners taking our jobs, the foreign companies and the scheming globalists. But in practice I think it ends up we end up paying for it. I'm not sure.
Julie Nima and Kamala Harris has talked about tax credits for childcare, for starting a small business, for first time home buyers, raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Do you think that if she were to win, that those policies would actually happen, would be able to get through Congress?
I doubt it, simply because in almost every single elections, promises are made, promises are made, and usually nothing is done about it. There'll be a token attempt to get something through, and especially if you have a divide in Congress, which looks increasingly probable, nothing gets through. And so we've become appreciative when you have a locked situation. At least no mischief can go through when it's locked, But you would have to have completely one way or the other all Republican, are all Democrat? Get through what your wish list.
Was, although in the last two presidential elections, we did end up with a situation where the president and his party had both Houses of Congress, at least in the beginning. Let's go to Marcus, who is in Duluth, Minnesota. Marcus, welcome to the middle Go ahead.
Thank you, fortekting my call. We were talking about the economy, and I think one thing that could be potentially very helpful for many Americans is regulating interest rates, in particular on things like student loans government student loans. I myself am a teacher in a university, and in order to get promotion, I had to get a terminal degree. So I've gone back to school and have now acquired an additional one hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt, and the interest rate on my most recent government student loans is three times higher than it was when I graduated. With my master's I'll be paying student loans with Social Security checks hopefully.
Wow.
So I think something that could certainly help many Americans in my situation is just regulation that interest rates.
Let me ask Robin Farzad about that. Very good point. Marcus, thank you very much, Robin Farzad, Is there a way because the money does cost something, So if the cost of you know, school is this high, is there a way for the government to bring down the prices the interest rates on these loans further than they already do.
There are federally subsidized loans and grant systems, as you know from the college and grad school process, but the courts and Capitol Hill can very indeed thwart presidential fiat as you saw with the Biden administration and trying to wipe away you serious student loans. You know that that was a ten thousand dollars idea or various other back channels they tried to take for barons putting it off during the pandemic. It's much easier said than done, and you don't really it's not something that the executive branch onto itself can do unilaterally. I will say, as you know, Jeremy, that there's a big rethink right now about debt in general. That if they're jobs that are available that you could take with one or two year apprenticeships in lieu of college, if you can go into trade school, if you can learn kind of evy repair, get into solar and other things. The payoff, the risk reward is just much better than a four year liberal arts degree for the time being. So that's really a diminishing return.
Oh I could jump in, Yeah, please, Julie.
Nobody's entitled to go to Harvard or to Vanderbilt or onto the big eastern colleges. If you choose to go somewhere where you're going to get on two hundred thousand dollars worth of debt to get a degree, you might want to think about this. I do believe in public education, and the significance of tuition in public universities is so much different than that. You're not going to graduate with a staggering amount of debt. Who ever thought that you would have to be entitled to go to these elite universities.
I will say, though, Julie, I taught a class today at the University of Illinois and I asked the students how much they're paying. And the in state tuition is like thirty thousand dollars now, even for the big state school. So it's gone up a lot. I mean, it really has gone up a lot. Let's go to Colby, who's in Houston. Colby, Welcome to the middle. Go ahead.
Hey, So when I tuned in, y'all were talking about housing and food and it got me thinking, I live in Texas and we have an abortion ban, and I believe this is going to cause a ripple effect. It's going to cause a huge increase, well not a huge, but a significant increase in the demand for goods and services and housing, and we might not be able to keep up with it.
You know, Explain what do you mean by that? How did the how would the abortion ban cause a ripple effect like that?
Well, for one, on the on the micro level, someone who can't afford to have a child is now in a position where they have no choice. And on a larger level, well, you're going to have an uptick in.
Birth rates.
And when you have people who aren't moving out of their houses. You got empty nesters who've got five bedroom houses and it's just them sitting there. You know, this is going to cause an increase in demand and they're wont And also in food and other services across the board, school overcrowding things like this, and especially in Texas where teachers and obg y ns are leaving the state.
Kolby Thank you very much. I'm glad you I'm glad you brought that up, because Julie Neman, this is an issue that I think is kind of still under the radar in this election. This is going to be the first presidential election since the Dobbs decision, and Kobe brings up something that that there's an economic impact to what's happened with abortion in this country in the last two years.
The amount of outrage over this is pretty breathtaking. But it's not just exactly with the elected officials. You know, it goes much deeper than that, especially with the courts. At this point, the only thing that's going to get change anything is going to be at the at the election, you know, at the at the ballot box. From an economic standpoint, it's going to be an economic cost to the people who are suffering from it, namely the women who can't get proper medical care. How do you measure that, Well, it's amounts hospitals can keep record.
Let's go to David, who's in Woodstock, Illinois. David, welcome to the middle. What do you think the next president should do?
Hi?
Yeah, Hi, thanks for the program. Yeah, there's so many different approaches I've changed my thoughts well time hearing all these other people. First of all, I think the economy is in good shape. I understand the high cost, but graduates need to realize that back in nineteen seventy nine, inflation was over fifteen percent. Gas went from thirty cents to a buck twenty in no time. Things were tough tougher. So my key points is there's so many ways to go, but I disagree with the flat tax. A progressive tax needs to be put in place. The rich half the money, you know, go where the money is. I also think that there needs to be a regulation on excess profits and corporate corporate couging. And lastly, though there's many more issues. I've talked to several people who are in the thirties and forties, and yeah, housing is a big, big issue. But housing over the last fifty years has gone from three hundred square foot per person to nine hundred square foot per person. Families are smaller.
Houses are bigger.
We have to incentivize builders and local zoning to reduce the size of houses and make it more affordable. People can start, yeah, they can add on when they need to, but you know, somebody trying to buy their first house twenty five hundred square feet and it's four hundred fifty dollars.
That's crazy, Okay, David, thank you very much.
Robin Howiver, Jeremy, may I share a recollection because you shared that McCain audio. Do you remember the feeling? I mean, Jeremy, I think you were a marketplace back then. I forget, but the feeling of free fall and sixty minutes was covering all sorts of homeowners who were just mailing the keys back to the bank. You had all these excerpts that were cored out. There were some places in Arizona outside of Tucson where bobcats and coyotes were taking over homes. Literally, they're ripping out copper pipes. Wall Street had these toxic assets on their book that was just fifteen years ago. And people today would never believe you if you tell a twenty something that you know you could not give away homes back then. There's always inevitably a cyclicality to this. People age out, people die out, they can't live on the second floor. You know, younger families take hold. I mean, cyclicality is cyclicality, and yes, we are supply constrained from the time being, but things can and do fall apart.
By the way, I stand corrected. I did say that the undergraduate tuition at the University of Illinois was thirty thousand in state, it's thirty three thousand. For the out of state, it's about sixteen thousand.
Did you get an angry tex.
It's still a lot.
No.
I just I thought to myself, is that really right? And I looked it up. Okay, let's get to another caller here and Eric, who is in Boise, Idaho. Eric, welcome to the middle Go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. I am interested in a carbon fee and dividend, also known as carbon tax.
But this is a.
Would be a brave move that would tax polluters, return the money to taxpayers immediately, and would also incorporate a carbon tariff on imports. And I think this would supercharge America's economy transition towards green tech, clean energy and make America a leader in the field.
And are you hearing that from either of the candidates, Eric, No, Unfortunately.
I think I think this is even a non partisan supported proposal. Most economists think that it's the best way to transition and the long term will be the best way to move the economy. I think I think there's there's not the bravery of our current politicians to stand up and actually put it out there. And I think it's waiting for a popular rise.
Okay, Eric, thank you very much, a carbon tax. And let me go to Diana, who's in Denver, Colorado. Diana, welcome to the middle. What do you think the next president should do?
Can you hear me?
I can hear you.
I think I think the president should establish a national infrastructure bank, as Amald sander Hammill can get in the days of the country becoming independent and is magmin Alanar Roosevelt used as the reaching our instruction finance thing to help us get out of the recession and e're up for fighting World War two. There's a proposal currently before Congress, in a bill four five to two to establish such a public bank, which would not which would get money by not getting it off the budget. It would require no budget financing, and would be independent, and would The infrastructure in this country is so far behind the rest of the world, the rest of the developed world, that.
We are losing.
Productivity every day because we can't transport things quickly and so forth. And if you look at the National Infrastructure Bank Coalition website, there's details in it that are make a lot of sense to me.
Okay, well, thank you very much for that, Diana appreciate it. And Julie Neman a national Infrastructure Bank. Of course, the Biden administration did pass this big infrastructure bill, which is still you know, it's going to take many years for that money to be spent on the infrastructure there. But what about that?
Well, and for presidents earlier all tried to do the same thing, even Trump did too, but Congress Duggets Eels did so. Now we're underway and the process is continuing on. But this is a whole nation of buy now, pay later, has been for everything, and we're going to continue to do that. When you have something as a discipline, as an infrastructure bank, it's an institution, and you start reserving for it, and people stop yamering about it. You do it whether they like it or not. That takes care of that buy now, pay later.
Problem.
But Robert Farza, Diana does bring up a good point, which is that without the infrastructure investments, the economy has slowed down. If we didn't have the railroads that we have you.
By the way you cover Passager, I love anyone, and I thought of you. The other week, Amtrak was trumpeting a new Miami to Chicago route and I'm thinking to myself, nobody asked for this. I mean, everybody's asking for Northeast quarridor.
For it because it would take like thirty six hours on.
Take thirty six hours and like seven hundred dollars. And it's not a Golden Age of travel type thing. Literally, no one is asking for it. And you know, we've had Pete Boudage edge on the show and others, and we ask him, why must these stations look like they're out of nineteen seventy two East Germany? Because you know, it's it's put together to a really Balkanized political consensus. You're never gonna let the Northeast quarridor just be the Northeast quarridor I mean Superstorm Sandy was in twenty twelve. Right, that tunnel problem is still problematic, It still has damage. They still haven't fixed the problems. I was in Manhattan. The entire west side of Manhattan has developed, I mean unbelievable development west of Penn Station. Penn Station is still a catastrophe. And I'm just talking about Manhattan. I mean, think about La think about the issues with Tampa, think about infrastructure preparedness in the Virginia co and climate change and sea level rise. I mean, these are big honking issues, and they tend to be kind of left to the states to kind of deal with on an ad hoc basis.
Don't come for my assela line man, Yeah, northeast bangs.
Let's sneak one more call in here. Dana is in Rock Island, Illinois. Does that have to be brief, Dana? But go ahead?
Hey?
Yeah.
My big concern is the housing market, and the housing market is sick. It got sick in two thousand and eight. Prior to two thousand and eight, there were about two thousand housing starts filed every year in this country by builders. At two thousand and eight, it dropped to under five hundred, and it stayed five hundred, four hundred, four hundred, six hundred for the next five or six years. And these are permits for new houses.
Right it starts, and that from that point on it started to climb, and I think this year we're about maybe maybe fifteen hundred. But my point is the building industry really got sick in two thousand and eight. Small builders went out of business, big builders got cut down, and the support trains that were around those.
Areas, those guys drifted off to other things.
So we have a shortage, shortage of housing, shortage of housing. Yeah, and I want to thank you very much for that call, data, Julie Neman. That is not the first call that we've heard about housings. And I just briefly, I mean, is that surprising to you that that's the issue many people are bringing up.
No, because it directly I packs everything. The rents are going up as a result of this, and any kind of housing cost, your housing, regardless of what it is, those are the biggest costs that you're facing right now. Food is actually coming down, rents are not anything. So that's the issue and why they're worried about it. Unfortunately, it has no early resolution to it.
Before we let you go, I have a quiz for both of you, and here it is which state right now has the lowest average gas price? And the hint is it is a swing state, Georgia. Julie, your guests, Pennsylvania. It's Georgia. Good job, Robin, You're welcome back. Actually you're both welcome back, Julie Nave and Financial landas with Smith Morren, Company and business journalists and host of Full Disclosure, Robin Farzad. Wonderful to have you both on.
Thank you so much, my pleasure.
And by the way, this Sunday, The Middle has a live cross border election special Canadian and American callers from across the continent answering the question what's at stake for you in this election? You can tune in on many stations for America votes a cross border conversation this Sunday. If you want to be on the show, go to CBC dot c slash air Check and next week I will be at KNPR in Las Vegas asking you whether or not you trust the polls. Are you freaking out about them? Do you think they're right? Tlerow?
Can they reach us all in at eight four four four Middle that's eight four four four six four three three five three, or you can reach out at Listen to the Middle dot com, where you can also sign up for our free weekly newsletter.
The Middle is brought to you by Longnok Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois and produced by Harrison Patino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmas, Dawes, and John Barth. Our intern is Anikadeshler. Our technical director is Jason Croft. Thanks to our podcast audience and the more than four hundred and twenty public radio stations that are making it possible for people across the country to listen to the Middle, I'm Jeremy Hobson and I will talk to you on Sunday,