Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast counts Saturdays at
Speaker 1: one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
Speaker 1: demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion I Amy Morris. This week we
Speaker 2: look at the population exodus from New York, what's luring
Speaker 2: people away and what that means for the tax base.
Speaker 2: We'll also dive into the latest health warning from the
Speaker 2: Surgeon General. He says social media may be hazardous to
Speaker 2: your child's health. And we'll get a behind the scenes
Speaker 2: look at how paparazzi are falling victim to modern times.
Speaker 2: But we begin with electric vehicles and the promise of
Speaker 2: a cleaner planet. President Biden's administration last fall awarded nearly
Speaker 2: three billion dollars in grants to build and expand domestic
Speaker 2: manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles in a dozen states.
Speaker 3: The United States is making funding available on of the
Speaker 3: Events Production Act to incentivize American and Canadian companies to
Speaker 3: responsibly mine and process critical minerals needed for electric vehicles
Speaker 3: and stationary storage batteries.
Speaker 2: While EV's can play a role in reducing emissions. It
Speaker 2: is just a start and not nearly enough on its own.
Speaker 2: Joining us now is a Bloomberg Opinion editor Romish ratnas
Speaker 2: are Romish slowing or maybe pausing climate change. Likely we'll
Speaker 2: take more than just switching to electric vehicles, but it
Speaker 2: would at a minimum anyway require widespread adoption of evs,
Speaker 2: and that hasn't happened yet either. So talk us through this.
Speaker 2: What has to happen for this to get any traction?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think the goal of electrifying transportation,
Speaker 4: that is, getting people out of gas powered cars and
Speaker 4: into electric vehicles, which are zero emission, carbon neutral vehicles,
Speaker 4: you know, is a goal that is necessary to achieve
Speaker 4: if the world is going to hit the climate targets
Speaker 4: that we've set out for ourselves to you know, mitigate
Speaker 4: the worst effects of climate change. And the question is
Speaker 4: really how to go about doing that in a way
Speaker 4: that's efficient, cost effective, and also also is actually going
Speaker 4: to achieve the goals that we have set out, and
Speaker 4: the way in which the US and and some other
Speaker 4: countries are going about it is is not likely to
Speaker 4: meet those targets if we continue on the course that
Speaker 4: we are on. And there a variety of reasons for that,
Speaker 4: But what we believe needs to be done is to
Speaker 4: take a look at how these policies are working out,
Speaker 4: how the policies aimed at promoting evs are working out,
Speaker 4: and what more has to happen in order for them
Speaker 4: to actually achieve what they are meant to achieve.
Speaker 2: I want to get into that a little bit. One
Speaker 2: of those policies. Is the government really juicing demand for
Speaker 2: EV's thanks to subsidies? You know this, But how sustainable
Speaker 2: is that? Those subsidies can't go on forever?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean politically they are unlikely going forever.
Speaker 4: We're already seeing, you know, significant backlash against them. If
Speaker 4: you could imagine if the Republican Party gains control of
Speaker 4: both Houses of Congress and the presidency, you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of the subsidies that are in place today may
Speaker 4: well be rolled back. Even if they're in place, they
Speaker 4: are enormously expensive and they are not necessarily doing anything
Speaker 4: to reduce carbon emissions. Because what we are seeing is
Speaker 4: that by and large, people are buying evs, but they're
Speaker 4: not necessarily replacing their existing vehicles with evs. Evs tend
Speaker 4: to be a secondary car or a tertiarch or second
Speaker 4: or third car. So people are buying evs and they're
Speaker 4: driving them on the weekends, or they're still using their
Speaker 4: gas powered cars for long trips and EV's maybe to
Speaker 4: do short errands around town. In other words, you're not
Speaker 4: removing dirty cars from the roads. You're just adding newer
Speaker 4: evs on top of the existing fleet, and so the
Speaker 4: net effect on the climate is not nearly what a
Speaker 4: lot of advocates would hope.
Speaker 2: You touched on something right there. I want to get
Speaker 2: into a little bit, a bit of a curveball, if
Speaker 2: you'll indulge me, that people often use the EV's as
Speaker 2: their second car to run errands around town and use
Speaker 2: the gas powered vehicle to do maybe a long trip.
Speaker 2: Self have been in the market for a new car
Speaker 2: and an EV just won't work because I do a
Speaker 2: lot of interstate travel, and they don't have the infrastructure
Speaker 2: that I'm looking for, and I don't know that they
Speaker 2: can take me as far as I need to go
Speaker 2: on a single tank or on a single charge. So
Speaker 2: tell me how you would reassure me and convince me
Speaker 2: to buy an EV as a primary vehicle if that
Speaker 2: infrastructure isn't there.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's I think that's hard, and I
Speaker 4: think that's why we're seeing the demand for EV's, while
Speaker 4: it has certainly increased considerably over the last few years,
Speaker 4: has not reached a point a threshold where you know,
Speaker 4: you're seeing even kind of massive numbers of people in
Speaker 4: the average car buyer saying I'm going to get rid
Speaker 4: of of my fuel efficient vehicle that I'm driving now
Speaker 4: and and traded in for an EV when, as you said,
Speaker 4: the charging infrastructure hasn't been built out in a lot
Speaker 4: of places.
Speaker 5: It's hard to do long haul trips with evs, and.
Speaker 4: So, you know, I think again the subsidies and the
Speaker 4: tax credits, which are sort of the centerpiece of the
Speaker 4: EV promotion policies that the government has been pushing, are
Speaker 4: really only one piece of the puzzle. And in order
Speaker 4: to sort of reach and hit the targets and have
Speaker 4: the climate benefits that we are aiming for a lot
Speaker 4: of other things have to be put in place, and
Speaker 4: that's a big one. The charging infrastructure has to be
Speaker 4: built out at a much bigger scale than what we've
Speaker 4: seen so far. Of Course, you know, a lot of
Speaker 4: the money and the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure
Speaker 4: bill passed by Congress aim to try to expand those
Speaker 4: that infrastructure, but that's going to take time, and again,
Speaker 4: all of these things have to go right for the
Speaker 4: kind of goals that people who rightly want to do
Speaker 4: something about climate change have in mind. I think the
Speaker 4: point is that EV's on their own and just getting
Speaker 4: more people to buy evs is not going to do
Speaker 4: the trick.
Speaker 5: A lot of other things have to happen as well.
Speaker 2: So what else is going to have to happen, What
Speaker 2: other X factors complicate that transition, and what else should
Speaker 2: be done. One of my questions for you is is
Speaker 2: gas just not expensive enough? Does that need to be taxed?
Speaker 4: That's what a lot of economists have said for many
Speaker 4: years that if you want to do this in an
Speaker 4: efficient way, if you want to actually make a dent
Speaker 4: and carbon emissions, you've got to put a tax on carbon.
Speaker 4: You have to make it expensive to choose a kind
Speaker 4: of gas guzzler over an EV And the only way
Speaker 4: to do that is to is to.
Speaker 5: Tax dirty fuels.
Speaker 4: And so you know, if you were to do that,
Speaker 4: then I think you would start to see people making
Speaker 4: different choices, and you would see the market reacting in
Speaker 4: a way that I think would over time create a
Speaker 4: bigger market for for evs and currently exists. And you know,
Speaker 4: this problem of people holding on to their their dirty
Speaker 4: gas guzzlers longer than the otherwise would have because they
Speaker 4: can't afford an EV and the automakers are no longer
Speaker 4: incentivized to produce, uh, you know, cheaper fuel efficient cars.
Speaker 4: I think that would go away if you had, you know,
Speaker 4: some sort of carbon pricing scheme, you know, short of
Speaker 4: that which you know, politically there are lots of obstacles
Speaker 4: in front of a carbon tax. You know, there are
Speaker 4: things that could be done, for instance, congestion pricing, which
Speaker 4: is something that a lot of European cities have introduced,
Speaker 4: but the US has been slow to adopt, in which
Speaker 4: you just make it more expensive for folks to drive
Speaker 4: into densely populated, dense urban areas. You know, that could
Speaker 4: be something at a local level that could make a difference.
Speaker 4: But ultimately, I think the point we're trying to drive
Speaker 4: at is that there should be.
Speaker 5: A mix of technologies. We shouldn't be putting all of
Speaker 5: our chips.
Speaker 4: On evs as the only solution of climate change and
Speaker 4: policymakers need to think about ways in which we are
Speaker 4: promoting low carbon options, but not necessarily a specific technology
Speaker 4: that gets you to that low carbon outcome. And this
Speaker 4: current system as it's set up, is putting all of
Speaker 4: our emphasis on evs, and we think that's a risky bet.
Speaker 2: Are they doing that because that's where the money is.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's an actual hunger and a drive, no
Speaker 2: pun intended for evs at this point. People are actually
Speaker 2: wanting to buy them, even if they are as a
Speaker 2: second car. Could that be why? Maybe it's low hanging fruit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there are a number of reasons. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think the auto industry has seen it as an opportunity,
Speaker 4: especially the US auto industry has seen it as an
Speaker 4: opportunity to gain market share that they've lost to some
Speaker 4: of the foreign competitors.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: Again, I think evs are going to be a significant
Speaker 4: part of the mix going forward. And I think the
Speaker 4: goal should be for wider adoption of electric vehicles, and
Speaker 4: I think the question is sort of, you know, how
Speaker 4: to get there, how quickly we have to move? We
Speaker 4: should be moving toward that goal, and whether they're in
Speaker 4: the In the meantime, there are ways in which policymakers
Speaker 4: and the government can continue to encourage and incentivize more
Speaker 4: climate conscious choices, but not take the risk of betting
Speaker 4: on evs which may or may not ultimately, you know,
Speaker 4: achieve the goals that.
Speaker 5: We want them to.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion editor Romesh Retinas are and coming up, We're
Speaker 2: going to take a look at the population exodus in
Speaker 2: New York and what most of them have in common.
Speaker 2: You are listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast Contest Saturdays at
Speaker 1: one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
Speaker 1: demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. New York
Speaker 2: has been losing people to other states for quite some time,
Speaker 2: but something new happened during the pandemic. Those who had
Speaker 2: left had higher incomes than those who stayed behind, a
Speaker 2: lot higher. Let's welcome in Justin Fox, a Bloomberg Opinion
Speaker 2: columnist covering business. He's going to set us straight on this. Justin.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about this exodus of the wealthy what's luring
Speaker 2: them away?
Speaker 6: I mean during the pandemic, like in twenty twenty, it
Speaker 6: wasn't so much what was luring the way is what
Speaker 6: was going on in New York. New York City was
Speaker 6: the epicenter of the pandemic, and the you know, for
Speaker 6: good reason maybe maybe was overdone. But the sort of
Speaker 6: reaction to it as the pandemic eased was things were
Speaker 6: much stricter here in other places, and I think that
Speaker 6: was initially the main thing people driving away, But also
Speaker 6: the fact that all the big businesses in New York
Speaker 6: went remote was like, Wow, I'm sick of living in
Speaker 6: this tiny apartment with laundry in the basement. Maybe I
Speaker 6: should go try somewhere else. And so there was a
Speaker 6: lot that a lot of that going on, but a.
Speaker 2: Lot happened pretty much all at once. What's the outcome
Speaker 2: as New York continues to lose that population, Well, I.
Speaker 6: Mean what you can see so the really detailed tax
Speaker 6: data that says who left and what their incomes were
Speaker 6: the most recent numbers we have for that date from
Speaker 6: twenty twenty one. So it's still you know, that was
Speaker 6: still when we were kind of in pandemic mode here
Speaker 6: and looking at the census population estimate. Since then, there's
Speaker 6: actually been this return of people to Manhattan, but continuing
Speaker 6: loss in the outer borrows and the suburbs, which is
Speaker 6: sort of an indication at least in Manhattan is the
Speaker 6: most affluent of the five boroughs of New York City,
Speaker 6: so the people coming back were probably getting some affluent
Speaker 6: people coming back. But the thing I decided to look
Speaker 6: at because I had actually written about what's happened with
Speaker 6: federal income taxes a few weeks ago, and basically over
Speaker 6: the course of the pandemic, when the stock markets were
Speaker 6: going crazy and house prices were going crazy, so was
Speaker 6: income tax revenue bringing in tons of it, because that's
Speaker 6: just the way a progressive income tax system works, where
Speaker 6: if people with very high incomes are having their incomes
Speaker 6: jump up even more, which is what happens when you
Speaker 6: have an asset price boom, then that brings in more
Speaker 6: taxes than anybody really had penciled in. And so we
Speaker 6: had these huge gains in income tax revenue nationally, but
Speaker 6: even in New York, even though other statistics since then
Speaker 6: I've shown that a lot of affluent people were leaving,
Speaker 6: so many people made so much money that it didn't
Speaker 6: make any difference. What's happened over the past year is
Speaker 6: federal income tax revenue has dropped a bunch, but I
Speaker 6: was looking at the New York state income tax revenue
Speaker 6: and it has dropped a lot more. So it's sort
Speaker 6: of like the tide has gone out now and you
Speaker 6: can kind of see the real effect of who left
Speaker 6: and what impact that's going to have on the state's
Speaker 6: ability to pay for things.
Speaker 2: So that then is why the loss of the affluent
Speaker 2: taxpayer didn't really create problems during the height of the
Speaker 2: pandemic per se. Correct, Are we still seeing that loss?
Speaker 2: Is there still, if not a hemorrhage, a trickle of
Speaker 2: a loss of that level of taxpayer.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I mean the one lie, I just don't know. This
Speaker 6: could because we could just be mostly seeing a reflection
Speaker 6: of what happened.
Speaker 2: See but sort of lacking.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But I mean there is this long standing lots
Speaker 6: of people leave New York, and some of it is
Speaker 6: this perfectly healthy thing where, especially with the city, people
Speaker 6: come in when they're you know, either young professionals getting
Speaker 6: some ipaying job or immigrants coming from overseas off and
Speaker 6: cramming into some tiny apartment with a bunch of other people,
Speaker 6: and they succeed and do better, and some decide they
Speaker 6: want to stick around and some leave. And also you
Speaker 6: have single people moving in and then moving out when
Speaker 6: they have kids. So some level of that is not terrible,
Speaker 6: and the city can sustain it. It's just sort of
Speaker 6: this question of whether it's reached this less sustainable point.
Speaker 6: And I think that right now, I don't know, Like
Speaker 6: the New York City. I made the mistake of going
Speaker 6: shopping in Soho and it's insane. There are so many people.
Speaker 6: And the issue in New York is actually there's there's
Speaker 6: just about as much activity of every sort except people
Speaker 6: coming into the office, and there's less of that.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Justin Fox, a Bloomberg opinion columnist,
Speaker 2: about the exodus of affluent tax payers from New York. Now, Justin,
Speaker 2: in your column on the Bloomberg Terminal, you link this
Speaker 2: exodus to the debt ceiling showdown on Capitol Hill. Help
Speaker 2: us connect the dots there.
Speaker 6: Well, just it's the fact that federal tax revenue fell
Speaker 6: so quickly that kind of sped up the reckoning and
Speaker 6: forced them to have to deal with this. Now, whereas
Speaker 6: I think last year that people were predicting and it
Speaker 6: wouldn't be till fall or so that they would run,
Speaker 6: that they would run out of money, and federal income
Speaker 6: tax revenue fell so fast that the moment where Janet
Speaker 6: Yellen said she couldn't pay the bills moved up. And
Speaker 6: I mean in New York New York State. I don't
Speaker 6: know exactly what's going to happen now, but clearly the
Speaker 6: revenue is coming in way below projected and at the
Speaker 6: state level, income taxes are sort of what pays the bills.
Speaker 6: For New York City, it's less of an issue taxes
Speaker 6: only maybe a quarter of revenue or less. It's more
Speaker 6: property taxes, which is a more slow moving thing and
Speaker 6: at least so far vary issues with commercial real estate,
Speaker 6: but residential real estate in New York City seems to
Speaker 6: be as in demand as ever.
Speaker 2: Are we seeing this on a smaller scale in different areas?
Speaker 2: Are we able to even gauge that because New York
Speaker 2: is such an enormous part of the economy.
Speaker 6: There's a professor at Stanford Business School, Joshua Row, who's
Speaker 6: been looking at what happens in California at a really
Speaker 6: detailed level when there have been various things that have
Speaker 6: happened over the past few years. There was a referendum
Speaker 6: pass that raised taxes on people with very high incomes.
Speaker 6: Then there was the twenty seventeen federal tax bill, which
Speaker 6: actually lowered almost everybody's taxes, but people in California and
Speaker 6: New York on average, who are making more than a
Speaker 6: million dollars a year, it raised their federal taxes. That
Speaker 6: created another incentive to leave, and then the pandemic created another.
Speaker 6: And what he showed is, you know, it's not very
Speaker 6: many people, but a much higher percentage of very very
Speaker 6: high income people left right at those moments. So clearly
Speaker 6: there are some issues with you know, taxes driving people
Speaker 6: out as well and anything. When something happens like the
Speaker 6: move to remote work, it just lowers one of the
Speaker 6: barriers that's there. And that's got to be an issue
Speaker 6: for New York too. I haven't seen that level of
Speaker 6: really detailed research, and New York's income tax revenue, income
Speaker 6: tax rates don't go up quite as high as California's
Speaker 6: at the highest incomes. But yeah, that's one of the
Speaker 6: things that's going on.
Speaker 2: We're not talking about people then so much as we're
Speaker 2: talking about money, number one. Yeah, and number two because
Speaker 2: of the sort of residual hangover side effects of the pandemic,
Speaker 2: like remote work. It sounds like this is not something
Speaker 2: that's just going to resolve itself magically like getting over
Speaker 2: the flu. This is maybe a different way of looking
Speaker 2: at things, a different way of being able to manage
Speaker 2: or check the tax revenue based on what census says
Speaker 2: is happening. As far as the the exodus and and
Speaker 2: people coming into the city.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think in New York is going
Speaker 6: to have to be creative and at some level actually
Speaker 6: recognized that having the highest taxes in the country. I mean,
Speaker 6: maybe New York City can manage it because New York
Speaker 6: City is unique and social, but for elsewhere in the state,
Speaker 6: it's not maybe the best policy. I mean, New York
Speaker 6: State has high level of services and that's good, but
Speaker 6: they're not always delivered super efficiently. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 6: and it's not just New York. I think DC is
Speaker 6: having some of these issues as well. And it's hard
Speaker 6: to say because I think early in the pandemic there
Speaker 6: was this, oh, the cities are over, everyone's going to leave,
Speaker 6: and that's clearly not what's happening. But it's not like
Speaker 6: they're roaring not like every bit of them is roaring back.
Speaker 6: What seems to be happening is residential neighborhoods in most
Speaker 6: big cities are doing pretty well, but commercial districts are
Speaker 6: still struggling.
Speaker 2: Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business and
Speaker 2: coming up on Bloomberg Opinion. The Surgeon General says social
Speaker 2: media could be bad for your kid's health. Much more
Speaker 2: on that, just ahead, and don't forget. We're available as
Speaker 2: a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast Countess Saturdays at
Speaker 1: one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on
Speaker 1: demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris, the US Surgeon
Speaker 2: General of the ve Murthy has issued a warning social
Speaker 2: media could be bad for your kids.
Speaker 7: My worry is that for many kids, not for all kids,
Speaker 7: but for many kids, social media is chipping away at
Speaker 7: their self esteem. It's taking time away from activities. That
Speaker 7: are critical for help and development, like sleep, but also
Speaker 7: in person interaction and physical activity. But it's also exposing
Speaker 7: them to harmful content.
Speaker 2: Surch in general Vivek Murphy social media advisory serving as
Speaker 2: a roadmap for how to better understand the impact of
Speaker 2: platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat on developing brains of adolescents.
Speaker 2: For more, let's talk with Bloomberg opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis,
Speaker 2: who covers healthcare, biotech, and the pharmaceutical industry. I'm a
Speaker 2: bit surprised this warning hasn't been issued before, if not
Speaker 2: from the Surgeon General, from some healthcare professionals.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, Amy, it actually was. I did a
Speaker 8: column a few weeks ago in the American Psychological Association
Speaker 8: put out their own social media advisory, and of course
Speaker 8: Surgeon General Levec Murphy has said that he feels that
Speaker 8: kids under the age of thirteen shouldn't be using social
Speaker 8: media at all. But yeah, I think all of us
Speaker 8: are like, duh, this was needed, and it were surprised
Speaker 8: it didn't happen earlier. I think what they have done
Speaker 8: here is really compile a list of recommendations and in
Speaker 8: a way open questions that we want answered about social media,
Speaker 8: and maybe that's what the hold up was, was just
Speaker 8: defining what we do and don't know and need to know.
Speaker 2: That's vast though what we don't know, is it not?
Speaker 8: It's so vast, and I think that's really the concern, right,
Speaker 8: is that there is a lot of conflicting information Where
Speaker 8: we talk about social media in our harms for kids,
Speaker 8: a lot of it we're talking about correlation.
Speaker 9: Not causation.
Speaker 8: There's I mean, in a way because it's so new,
Speaker 8: we don't have enough out there and we don't have
Speaker 8: enough data, and so I think a lot of what
Speaker 8: this report is asking for is to set out a
Speaker 8: research agenda to make sure that we understand how this
Speaker 8: is affecting kids' brains, and to really ask companies to
Speaker 8: participate in that in a way that they haven't been.
Speaker 2: Now when the Surgeon General makes these sorts of suggestions
Speaker 2: issues these warnings like part of this, he wants companies
Speaker 2: to add some scientific advisory boards to learn more about
Speaker 2: the impact of social media on kids' brains. How binding
Speaker 2: is that.
Speaker 8: You know, his recommendations aren't binding, but he does include
Speaker 8: a list of recommendations to policy makers about how to
Speaker 8: you know, essentially enforce some of that with the social
Speaker 8: media companies. We'll see where we go. To me, that's
Speaker 8: a better middle ground than saying we're going to ban TikTok,
Speaker 8: which probably isn't going to happen, right, that's probably unconstitutional,
Speaker 8: as some of my one of my colleagues has written.
Speaker 8: So I think trying to put some very realistic and maybe,
Speaker 8: you know, like I said, middle ground recommendations would be
Speaker 8: a better way to try to get this information out
Speaker 8: of them.
Speaker 2: Remember when we were growing up and there was always
Speaker 2: some uproar over a suggestive lyrics and a song, or
Speaker 2: a racy scene in a movie, or violence on TV.
Speaker 2: How is social media different?
Speaker 8: No, that's such a good question. And I think about
Speaker 8: that all the time, I said in my column, And
Speaker 8: I feel this deeply, like am I having a tip
Speaker 8: or gore moment, my going overboard a bright my worries
Speaker 8: about this? You know, to me, it's different because it is.
Speaker 8: It just permeates every part of our day. You know,
Speaker 8: kids have their phones on. They're not supposed to necessarily
Speaker 8: have them at school, but they do. They're spending many
Speaker 8: hours a day interacting. It's changing how they communicate with
Speaker 8: one another, and it's changing their social really their social
Speaker 8: fabric and their connectivity. That's different than sort of passively
Speaker 8: sitting in front of a TV and worrying like, oh,
Speaker 8: they saw something violent, are they going to be violent now?
Speaker 8: I think to me, that strikes me as a very
Speaker 8: different situation.
Speaker 2: We are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis about
Speaker 2: the Surgeon General's health warning about social media and its impact,
Speaker 2: especially on children and adolescents. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about where these warnings and suggestions go from here. You
Speaker 2: would mention that they're not necessarily binding, but if they
Speaker 2: can get the attention of lawmakers, maybe they can make
Speaker 2: some sort of rule or regulation that would be binding.
Speaker 2: How what's the process and what sort of timeline are
Speaker 2: we looking at?
Speaker 8: Probably slower than most of us who are parents would like.
Speaker 8: You know, I have an eleven year old who still
Speaker 8: doesn't have a phone. I wish this had already happened.
Speaker 8: I guess my hope is that maybe we circumvent some
Speaker 8: of that and the companies decide they're going to participate.
Speaker 8: You know, we know they're collecting data on how kids
Speaker 8: use the apps. I spoke with a researcher who studies
Speaker 8: social media and adolescence who's from the University of North
Speaker 8: Carolina and you know their social media. These are hiring
Speaker 8: people out of his lab to likely study this internally,
Speaker 8: and so if they could be compelled without needing to
Speaker 8: pass laws, to at least share some of that data,
Speaker 8: maybe we don't have to go that route.
Speaker 5: That's my hope.
Speaker 8: Maybe that's probably over overly optimistic, but you know, it
Speaker 8: does feel like the potential to pass laws that at
Speaker 8: least would say, here are some guardrails on some of
Speaker 8: the way a younger person uses an app, not allowing
Speaker 8: them to infinitely scroll, not having things like the light
Speaker 8: like button for someone who's under a certain age, because
Speaker 8: we know that that kind of reward system affects their
Speaker 8: brains differently than it does for adults. Those type of
Speaker 8: guardrails seem like things that they could get on board
Speaker 8: with and then they can transition that user into adulthood.
Speaker 2: So then maybe the response, since it's not a legally
Speaker 2: binding issue, that if companies run a foul of this,
Speaker 2: or if it is, it becomes obvious that there are
Speaker 2: issues maybe with a company and kids who are using
Speaker 2: their product then maybe it would be more of a
Speaker 2: social response, for lack of a better word, I was
Speaker 2: trying not to say social, but maybe more more of
Speaker 2: a community response to it, you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean I think we as parents have to
Speaker 8: demand that companies do more to adapt the design of
Speaker 8: their products to be safer for kids, you know. And
Speaker 8: you know, I would be more willing to let my
Speaker 8: child have TikTok if I knew that it was a
Speaker 8: safer environment for her to be scrolling, you know. So
Speaker 8: I do think that there has to be push from
Speaker 8: all sides. But you know, and I think the research
Speaker 8: will help to because if we have clear evidence that
Speaker 8: it's causing harm, which right now there's signs of that,
Speaker 8: like scraps of data, but not you know, sort of
Speaker 8: overwhelming data that says this causes harm, I think that
Speaker 8: would push the policy side. If the companies don't do
Speaker 8: it themselves.
Speaker 2: What are we learning. What are researchers find about social
Speaker 2: media companies, the experts they hire, the data they gather,
Speaker 2: what are they figuring out from that?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, they're not sharing it with us. But
Speaker 8: I can say that this researcher at the University of
Speaker 8: North Carolina, who I spoke to came out with a
Speaker 8: study in January where he showed that twelve year olds
Speaker 8: who habitually check social media have different distinct brain patterns
Speaker 8: from twelve year olds who don't. Now that's not a
Speaker 8: judgment good or bad. We don't know kind of what
Speaker 8: that how that translates into who they become later, but
Speaker 8: it does show us that something's happening at this very
Speaker 8: vulnerable point of brain development. We also know there is
Speaker 8: some certainly a lot of anecdotes and starting to be
Speaker 8: some data around eating disorders and girls who are on
Speaker 8: social media because the algorithm just keeps feeding them the
Speaker 8: same messages, you know, and reinforcing those messages when they're
Speaker 8: looking at it. And then I think the other area
Speaker 8: is just kind of general mental health and suicidality. You know,
Speaker 8: one of our colleagues and news had a very really
Speaker 8: striking and scary report about the way that social media
Speaker 8: can feed stories of suicide to kids who are already
Speaker 8: experiencing some you know, mental health issues and.
Speaker 2: The surge in general. Also called for more transparency from
Speaker 2: those companies. What does he mean by that and how
Speaker 2: did that resonate?
Speaker 8: I think, you know, transparency about who their users are,
Speaker 8: about what their data, what data they're collecting, because we
Speaker 8: just don't know, you know, right now, what data they're collecting.
Speaker 8: More transparency about you know, what are the experiments they're running,
Speaker 8: because they probably are, about how to direct different users
Speaker 8: in different directions. I think all of that is important,
Speaker 8: important information as we think about, you know, what is
Speaker 8: and is not appropriate for kids and social media.
Speaker 2: So what happens now? What does this good?
Speaker 8: I mean, I hope that, you know, I think that's
Speaker 8: the that's the question, right. There's always this like, well,
Speaker 8: this report came out, had a list of recommendations. I
Speaker 8: think there needs to be pressure from all sides, you know, parents,
Speaker 8: kids themselves. You know, I think kids themselves should be
Speaker 8: especially kids who may have aged up and experienced social
Speaker 8: media and now have hindsight to sort of ask questions
Speaker 8: about whether that was good or bad. I think, you know,
Speaker 8: policymakers should be looking at this and saying, Okay, maybe
Speaker 8: this is a more appropriate roadmap than saying we're going
Speaker 8: to try to ban TikTok in our state. You know,
Speaker 8: I think we all just have to keep applying pressure.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis covers healthcare, biotech, and the
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical industry. Celebrity photographers papa razzi are a victim of
Speaker 2: our modern times. And we've all heard about the car
Speaker 2: chase through the streets of Manhattan, how Brinds, Harry and
Speaker 2: Megan tried to get away from photographers one evening while
Speaker 2: in New York City. But the incident isn't really as
Speaker 2: much about history repeating itself as it is a harbinger
Speaker 2: of how technology maybe changing the nature of our job,
Speaker 2: all our jobs, even the paparazzi here to explain, as
Speaker 2: Bloomberg opinion columnist covering economics, Alison Schrager, Alison, welcome back,
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us. How has technology
Speaker 2: essentially destroyed the economics of celebrity pictures? And those are
Speaker 2: your words, not mine.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, when this all happened, everyone thought back to
Speaker 9: obviously the Princess Die tragedy, but mark for celebrity pictures
Speaker 9: has really changed since then. So when I wrote my book,
Speaker 9: I ended up spending a couple of weeks hanging out
Speaker 9: with the New York paparazzi and going with them on
Speaker 9: sort of stakouts. And so they were telling me that
Speaker 9: pretty much around the Diana era pretty much until about
Speaker 9: maybe two thousand and eight, which is what they call
Speaker 9: the gold Rush era. That's actually their words, not mine.
Speaker 9: You would get so much money for just even a
Speaker 9: shot of a celebrity, you know, getting coffee. That was
Speaker 9: like the just like US US weekly time, and that
Speaker 9: was when you'd get this huge premium. And this is
Speaker 9: when you also had all those car chases. You heard
Speaker 9: about them all the time. But then you know, like
Speaker 9: what happened in a lot of industries, there were two forces. One,
Speaker 9: we had the Great Recession, so people stopped buying glossies,
Speaker 9: and also online, like they just had way more websites
Speaker 9: pushing celebrity pictures, and these websites just needed a higher
Speaker 9: volume of pictures, which you think would be good for
Speaker 9: the photographers, but it wasn't because they don't sell directly
Speaker 9: to the media websites. They have these intermediaries. They're photo
Speaker 9: agents who and they sell to the they are the
Speaker 9: ones of their relationships and sell to the magazines. So
Speaker 9: that industry, that middle tier consolidated into just a few players,
Speaker 9: so they had a lot more market power over the paparazzi.
Speaker 9: In the meantime, they're the buyers of the pictures, wanted
Speaker 9: a higher volume, so they switched to a subscription model
Speaker 9: rather than paying per photo, which meant that the poparazzi
Speaker 9: now just get a fraction of the money from the subscription.
Speaker 9: And I was curious how they managed their risk, And
Speaker 9: one of their primary way is that they formed teams
Speaker 9: and where they share tips and they sort of stay
Speaker 9: out celebrities together to ensure they get the shot, and
Speaker 9: then they share the money. Well, of course, getting an
Speaker 9: exclusive is a very has a very high premium, so
Speaker 9: there's always an incentive to cheat on your alliance. So
Speaker 9: they like have all this bad blood. So it's a
Speaker 9: very sort of contentious sort of environment because they all
Speaker 9: have these like long histories of cheating on each other.
Speaker 9: And I think what people don't get is, particularly when
Speaker 9: celebrities are climbing that their food chain, you're getting famous,
Speaker 9: getting attention is really important. Often they tip off these photographers,
Speaker 9: particularly when they're young and up and coming. These guys
Speaker 9: are poor immigrants barely making not even making minimum wage,
Speaker 9: largely make these celebrities and then somehow get vilified in
Speaker 9: the whole process.
Speaker 2: So then where does it go from here? We were
Speaker 2: talking earlier about how the automation process and the consolidation
Speaker 2: of that middle tier has really cramped their style, so
Speaker 2: to speak, and cramp their industry. What happens now, are
Speaker 2: we going to see them go extinct?
Speaker 9: So what I found interesting is they said I talked
Speaker 9: about the risk they managed by forming alliances. That is
Speaker 9: obviously like kind of like diversification, but like systematic risk
Speaker 9: in any industry, the only way get so much harder
Speaker 9: risk to marinage, and that's what they're facing. So a
Speaker 9: lot of them are actually having to leave the industry altogether.
Speaker 9: You always have new upstarts because it's fun, and you know,
Speaker 9: there are these random, big paydays where you do get
Speaker 9: a good shot, but there's certainly a fewer of them.
Speaker 9: And that's why this car chase was so unusual. For
Speaker 9: you know, a picture of a celebrity back then you
Speaker 9: could maybe get ten twenty thousand dollars. Now you'll maybe
Speaker 9: get five. So I think there's just going to be
Speaker 9: fewer otherm We're probably going to just see more celebrity
Speaker 9: photos be more curated the way they want, like you know,
Speaker 9: released on Instagram, and it'll probably just be less interesting,
Speaker 9: all right.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Alison. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Alison Trigger and that
Speaker 2: does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced
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