Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast count US Saturdays
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Speaker 2: Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion I Amy Morris. This week we
Speaker 2: look at raising or lowering the voting age? What's the
Speaker 2: better fit for a democracy? Also, employee loyalty, dedication and
Speaker 2: initiative once seen as a benefit, but employees are lately
Speaker 2: pushing back against that. What can companies do to win
Speaker 2: their most loyal workers back? And we answer the classic
Speaker 2: question paper or plastic? Which one is more environmentally sustainable?
Speaker 2: Turns out there's no easy answer, but first the choice
Speaker 2: is made by the Federal Open Market Committee. In the
Speaker 2: next few years will determine if we get inflation under control,
Speaker 2: how fast the economy grows, and what happens in financial markets.
Speaker 2: The most recent nominee to the Fed's Board of Governors,
Speaker 2: Adriann Kugler. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre made
Speaker 2: that announcement.
Speaker 3: Doctor Kugler is a highly qualified and respected economists with
Speaker 3: deep expertise in labor markets, worker mobility and youth unemployment.
Speaker 3: These nominees understand that this job is not a partisan one,
Speaker 3: but one that plays a critical role in pursuing maximum employment,
Speaker 3: maintaining price stability, and supervising many of our nation's financial institutions.
Speaker 2: But there are concerns that Wile Kugler is a great
Speaker 2: labor economist. What the country needs is someone with financial
Speaker 2: macro expertise. For more on this, we bring in Bloomberg
Speaker 2: opinion columnist to Alison Schrager. Alison, always a pleasure, thank
Speaker 2: you for taking the time with us. Just based on
Speaker 2: the column that you have on the Bloomberg terminal, is
Speaker 2: monetary policy at a critical point now?
Speaker 4: I think so. I mean we're coming off of what
Speaker 4: we called to some the Great Moderation, where we had
Speaker 4: very low inflation and low interest rates and everyone thought
Speaker 4: this would last forever. And everyone thought, well, you know,
Speaker 4: we'd figured out monetary policy that if you set an intention,
Speaker 4: which called an inflation target, it would be realized. And
Speaker 4: you know, the biggest challenge was interst rates were too low.
Speaker 4: But now it turns out that maybe inflation targeting doesn't
Speaker 4: work as well as we thought. Not only that board guidance,
Speaker 4: which has become the most powerful tool. If you tell
Speaker 4: markets what you're going to do and then you do,
Speaker 4: it might actually not work that well either. So I
Speaker 4: think in a lot of ways monetary policy is at
Speaker 4: a very critical point and maybe after we think the
Speaker 4: tools we're using, and you know, it also brings up
Speaker 4: a lot of financial stability risks moving from a load
Speaker 4: to or a high rate environment that takes really sort
Speaker 4: of thinking very carefully about how you're navigating monetary policy.
Speaker 4: And also, to add it all up on, we've also
Speaker 4: really changed the tools of monetary policy. The main policy
Speaker 4: rate used to be the FED funds rate, which was
Speaker 4: the rate banks used to lend to each other at
Speaker 4: now that starting the Great Financial Crisis with the interest
Speaker 4: rate on reserves instead, which also just changes to somebody
Speaker 4: the mechanism of how monetary policy works. And there's also
Speaker 4: of course q E, which is an enormous sort of
Speaker 4: balance sheet the fedal system manage. So, as I said,
Speaker 4: I really think we're at this critical point where we
Speaker 4: might be in a new regime of monetary policy and
Speaker 4: an intellectual regime about how we think about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what does the FED need?
Speaker 4: I think it needs someone who really understands these challenges
Speaker 4: and you know, they're you know, I think we tend
Speaker 4: to think about economists being all the same, but they
Speaker 4: have very distinct specialties. And if you're thinking about what
Speaker 4: the FED is trying to do, it's trying to sort
Speaker 4: of steer and guide the macroeconomy by working through financial markets.
Speaker 4: You know, financial markets are the one that sort of
Speaker 4: carry out all these things. They raise interest rates, that
Speaker 4: changes credit conditions, and that feeds through the macro economy.
Speaker 4: So you have this huge financial markets, you know, apparatus
Speaker 4: which actually is to carry out and implement all these policies.
Speaker 4: So I think what we really need then, and this
Speaker 4: is a very sort of distinct specialty, is economists too,
Speaker 4: specialize in macro finance, which is the macro economy and
Speaker 4: how that interacts with financial markets.
Speaker 2: Now, as you explained in your column and as you
Speaker 2: said just now, there is a range of specialties on
Speaker 2: the FED board, and it seems like that would be
Speaker 2: a good thing that you'd have that diversity and you'd
Speaker 2: have all those different brains working together for that common goal.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily, no, I think we.
Speaker 4: Should have that diversity. The problem is we don't have
Speaker 4: anyone who does the macro finance stuck I mean, or
Speaker 4: I mean to some degree we have one. We have one,
Speaker 4: but you know he did almost that work within the FED.
Speaker 4: And what we really needs you an outsider who's really
Speaker 4: actually a great scholar in this area to sort of
Speaker 4: lead them intellectually and traditionally, at least since the eighties,
Speaker 4: we've always had that or does some degree have that
Speaker 4: presence from the New York FED President who always gets
Speaker 4: a see on the FOMC.
Speaker 2: And right now, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, we have someone more macroeconomists who doesn't really work
Speaker 4: in financial markets. So we really are lacking financial expertise
Speaker 4: on the board right now. And the latest FED pick
Speaker 4: really is more labor. We already kind of have that
Speaker 4: with Lisa Cook, so I think we don't. You know,
Speaker 4: labor is useful too, that is part of the FED
Speaker 4: dual mandate. But to some degree, if I had to choose,
Speaker 4: I would choose the financial expertise more because that's actually
Speaker 4: how it all works. The labor market is a downstream
Speaker 4: of what happens in financial markets.
Speaker 2: Let's dig down a little bit deeper and talk about
Speaker 2: what that does bring to the table, what it is
Speaker 2: that it would add to their decision process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so when you're deciding whether or not we're going
Speaker 4: to raise or lower rates or you know, quantitative tightening
Speaker 4: or move back to quantitative easoning, which you know as
Speaker 4: you know, whatever, it's very clear we're moving into sort
Speaker 4: of some serious financial stability concerns. If you really understand
Speaker 4: how FED policy interacts with financial markets, you can know, Okay,
Speaker 4: these these are the unintended consequences that could happen. This
Speaker 4: is if we raise rates, this could up into financial markets.
Speaker 4: This is what could happen to the housing market. You know,
Speaker 4: all these things that could hapen to smaller regional things.
Speaker 4: You have that appreciation. And then later, as I said,
Speaker 4: these conditions are what affect labor markets. So it's one
Speaker 4: thing just to be like, oh wow, we're really concerned
Speaker 4: about labor markets, and you know how this affects sort
Speaker 4: of do you know this part of the labor market
Speaker 4: versus that part of the labor market. But honestly, that's
Speaker 4: sort of the second order concern of how it impacted
Speaker 4: financial markets.
Speaker 2: First, better macro view then than the granular view you're
Speaker 2: getting from all the different opinions. Exactly we are talking
Speaker 2: with Alice and Traeger, a Bloomberg opinion columnist covering economics. Alison,
Speaker 2: what do you want to see from the FED?
Speaker 4: I would like to see, as I said, some acknowledgment. Honestly,
Speaker 4: they also made a lot of policy errors in the
Speaker 4: last couple of years. And I mean I don't blame
Speaker 4: them entirely because they were following largely what had become
Speaker 4: the sort of intellectual tradition, which was a thing about
Speaker 4: poored guidance just thinking about lower for the biggest problem.
Speaker 4: So I think it would be really good to have
Speaker 4: a real intellectual leader who understands macro financial challenges on
Speaker 4: the FED to really sort of be able to also
Speaker 4: take a hard look at mistakes that we're made and think,
Speaker 4: do we need to really rethink our communication strategy and
Speaker 4: how we, you know, are thinking going forward and communicate.
Speaker 2: The FED is facing some tremendous challenges. Let's go through
Speaker 2: some of them if we could, because in your column
Speaker 2: you sort of itemize them and you talked about how
Speaker 2: they're unprecedented. This is an unusual time. It's been an
Speaker 2: unusual couple of years for all of us. Let's face it,
Speaker 2: but this is a really unusual time for the FED.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's been other unusual times, but I mean
Speaker 4: these are the times you look back on if you're
Speaker 4: a monetary historian and you're like, Wow, this is really
Speaker 4: sparks a new regime and how we do monetary policy.
Speaker 4: I would say, you know, Vulkar was another time where
Speaker 4: it was really like a big change and you think
Speaker 4: about how you think about credibility, how do you think
Speaker 4: of the role of the FED and the markets. And
Speaker 4: I think now that that sort of era is broken,
Speaker 4: with higher and and with rising race, we sort of
Speaker 4: need a new regime not only in a policy that's done,
Speaker 4: but also in intellectual philosophy.
Speaker 2: Do you mean regime not only in how they think
Speaker 2: in their policy and their philosophy, but also in their leadership.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I'm not saying we need to get
Speaker 4: rid of Jpell.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to clarify that.
Speaker 4: But I do think say, having one at least one
Speaker 4: person who has a lot of expertise in macro finance
Speaker 4: and sort of a long history of if intellectual leadership
Speaker 4: and scholarship in this area, I just say, let's have
Speaker 4: one of those people around on the board. We don't
Speaker 4: have to change everyone. Let's just add.
Speaker 2: One, what does the FED need to do now? And
Speaker 2: then what should they be doing in the next few years.
Speaker 2: Let's take the short look at it, and then let's
Speaker 2: go for the long ball.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I said they face a lot of
Speaker 4: trade offs right now. Mean my inclination would be they
Speaker 4: really need to get inflation under control, because if they
Speaker 4: do not, we could end up in an era like
Speaker 4: the seventies where we just have inflation coming in and
Speaker 4: then coming back, coming in, coming back, and that uncertainty
Speaker 4: can be very damaging and it can be very hard
Speaker 4: for the FED to eventually get rid of it altogether.
Speaker 4: We might it would be something very costly, like the
Speaker 4: Vulkar had to do. I'd like to hope that we
Speaker 4: avoid that and stay strong and get inflation back to
Speaker 4: I don't know if they're going back to target, but
Speaker 4: at least three percent, and that could be a lot
Speaker 4: of work, and that could also start to really start
Speaker 4: to harm the economy, might increase in unemployment, which will
Speaker 4: create all sorts of new political pressures. They're already under
Speaker 4: political pressure, and unemployment is only three and a half
Speaker 4: percent or three point four percent, so I think in
Speaker 4: the short term they have to do that, but over
Speaker 4: the next couple of years, as I said, they're going
Speaker 4: to have to balance problems in the labor market, especially
Speaker 4: potentially problems in financial markets. Is it said, because monetary
Speaker 4: policy goes through financial markets, financial stability concerns are often,
Speaker 4: you know, always lurking on the background. So they're going
Speaker 4: to have a very tough balancing act for the next
Speaker 4: couple of years going forward, if they're really serious by
Speaker 4: bringing inflation down.
Speaker 2: Is there anything in particular that you are watching for
Speaker 2: geopolitical type incidents that may impact what the FED decides
Speaker 2: to do, or are you just mainly watching for the
Speaker 2: milestone markers from the Fed?
Speaker 4: I think the big thing to watch is commercial real estate.
Speaker 4: You know, as a lot of those loans come do
Speaker 4: and they after he financed at a higher rate, there
Speaker 4: could be a lot of problems there that trickle through
Speaker 4: the financial markets and make their job a lot harder.
Speaker 4: In raising rates further will maybe cause even more damage,
Speaker 4: and yet they'll still have high inflation to deal with,
Speaker 4: and then they'll be in a really tough spot.
Speaker 2: Alison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion colonist covering economics coming up,
Speaker 2: we'll look at the talk about raising the voting age.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Jonathan Bernstein says, that's a terrible idea.
Speaker 5: The question is why do we have voting in the
Speaker 5: first place, and all the reasons that you know, and
Speaker 5: which sort of raises the question why we have democracy
Speaker 5: in the first place, And if you think through it,
Speaker 5: all of the reasons that we have voting and that
Speaker 5: we have democracy really point to having not the higher
Speaker 5: voting aids, but a lower voting age.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. The election
Speaker 2: cycle seems to get shorter every year, more hats being
Speaker 2: thrown into the ring, especially on the Republican side. Now
Speaker 2: where there are already a stable of candidates ready to
Speaker 2: viuy for the nomination for president, the election is more
Speaker 2: than a year and a half away. In a video
Speaker 2: on his Twitter page, long Shot Republican presidential candidate, the
Speaker 2: vek Ramaswami is proposing to raise the voting age from
Speaker 2: eighteen to twenty five, with some exceptions. One of the
Speaker 2: things that we don't go good enough job of in
Speaker 2: this country.
Speaker 6: He's teaching the next generation what the constitution actually says.
Speaker 2: You're right, okay, So one of the things I favor.
Speaker 2: This is controversial to some people. If you want to
Speaker 2: be eighteen years old.
Speaker 5: Graduate from high school, and cast a ballot in this
Speaker 5: country at a young age, you better.
Speaker 4: At least pass the CIVIX portion of the test.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein says that is not a
Speaker 2: good idea by any measure, and Jonathan joins us, Now,
Speaker 2: thanks for taking the time with us. Jonathan, Why is
Speaker 2: he wrong?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, the question is why do we have
Speaker 5: voting in the first place, and all the reasons that
Speaker 5: you know, and which sort of raises the question why
Speaker 5: we have democracy in the first place. And if you
Speaker 5: think through it, all of the reasons that we have
Speaker 5: voting and that we have democracy really point to having
Speaker 5: not a higher voting age, but a lower voting age.
Speaker 5: So he's thinking in exactly the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: So would it make it harder for people to vote,
Speaker 2: then you would be making a smaller pool of voters.
Speaker 5: Well yeah, I mean, you know, one of the questions
Speaker 5: is what's the goal here? And if the goal of
Speaker 5: democracy is self government, well that includes all of us. Right,
Speaker 5: So if part of the goal is to you know,
Speaker 5: represent everyone's interests in the democracy, well, you know he's
Speaker 5: trying to find well, who are the people who are
Speaker 5: qualified to vote? Who are going to be the good voters?
Speaker 5: And that's the wrong way of thinking about democracy. The
Speaker 5: way of thinking about it if you're thinking about sort
Speaker 5: of politicans about who gets what and dividing up stuff, right,
Speaker 5: is that everybody has interest In fact, the truth is
Speaker 5: that if you really are sort of a strict lock
Speaker 5: in you know, if you go back to political philosophy democrat,
Speaker 5: the idea that you want a liberal democracy with everybody's
Speaker 5: interest getting represented. The truth is what we really should
Speaker 5: have if you think in that sense, is vote from birth,
Speaker 5: with parents taking care of the vote until kids are
Speaker 5: old enought to vote for themselves, because everybody has interests,
Speaker 5: including the very youngest.
Speaker 2: Okay, so just so I understand what you're saying, there's
Speaker 2: that theory that to get the best out of democracy,
Speaker 2: voting should be restricted to just the best of us.
Speaker 2: And in that way they would have to raise the
Speaker 2: voting age to the older, more mature, they've been seasoned,
Speaker 2: they've seen some things, kind of voter. But that, you say,
Speaker 2: would be a false premise because then not everybody would
Speaker 2: be represented.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, if your goal in democracy, if your goal
Speaker 5: is somehow to have the best people voting, problem with
Speaker 5: that is it's really a slippery slope because well, the
Speaker 5: restricting is twenty five is one thing, but it turns
Speaker 5: out that lots of people who are over twenty five
Speaker 5: don't know anything about public affairs, don't pay attention, so
Speaker 5: maybe they shouldn't vote either. And then if you have,
Speaker 5: you know, if you call that, then you're gonna have
Speaker 5: another call after that for the people who really pay
Speaker 5: attention and really are the best voters in somebody's conception.
Speaker 5: But that sort of raises a bunch of questions, including
Speaker 5: who's going to be the one who makes that decision
Speaker 5: of who's you know, and it raises the question of
Speaker 5: why do you have democracy in the first place, Because
Speaker 5: if your goal is to get the best people deciding, well,
Speaker 5: democracy may not be the right way to go then,
Speaker 5: because there's no particular reason that you need the democracy
Speaker 5: to you know that democracy will yield the best decision.
Speaker 5: What it's very good for doing is yielding the decisions
Speaker 5: that everybody participates in.
Speaker 6: Do you find this as a partisan tendency, Well, if
Speaker 6: you want to sort of look at it in practical
Speaker 6: political terms right now, yeah, I mean, there's one of
Speaker 6: the things that's been going on in our politics in
Speaker 6: the last several years is Republicans dealing with electoral losses.
Speaker 5: And don't forget, Republicans have lost the popular vote for
Speaker 5: president every time except for one, beginning in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 5: And the way that they've dealt with that is not
Speaker 5: by trying to find ideas that appeal to more people
Speaker 5: or trying to find new people who will support them,
Speaker 5: but to try to restrict the franchise by making it
Speaker 5: more difficult to vote. So, yeah, this would make it
Speaker 5: impossible to vote for many people because they would no
Speaker 5: longer be qualified. Right now, young people vote for Democrats
Speaker 5: more than they vote for Republicans. That hasn't always been true,
Speaker 5: by the way, It's not like an automatic thing, but
Speaker 5: this is the kind of sort of short term, Hey,
Speaker 5: these people oppose us, let's keep them from voting. Thing
Speaker 5: that's very popular, unfortunately among a lot of Republicans.
Speaker 2: And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein
Speaker 2: about the question of lowering the voting age. Jonathan, what
Speaker 2: would the benefit of lowering the voting age be besides
Speaker 2: increasing that voting pool.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, like I said, one of the things
Speaker 5: is that sort of just in a theoretical sense, young people,
Speaker 5: teenagers even younger than that, have interests and should be
Speaker 5: represented in the democracy, if you think of it that way.
Speaker 5: But there's also a question about the particular voting age
Speaker 5: that we have at eighteen. It turns out that it
Speaker 5: probably is in practical terms, allows the idea because people
Speaker 5: who are eighteen years old are often in a life transition.
Speaker 5: They get out of high school, many of them moved
Speaker 5: to a new jurisdiction, even within a city. If they
Speaker 5: move out of their parents' house across town and then
Speaker 5: you know, get a job and all that, they may
Speaker 5: have a different member of the city council. If across
Speaker 5: town means across the city border, they may have a
Speaker 5: new mayor. They may even vote on different things. Some
Speaker 5: of them might go away to college and that's, you know,
Speaker 5: sets up another thing where they're living someplaces not permanent,
Speaker 5: and the moment when they need to get the habit
Speaker 5: of voting is a more disruptive life thing for the
Speaker 5: time for them. So bringing it to a lower age
Speaker 5: of sixteen, say, or even a little lower than that,
Speaker 5: would allow them to get that habit of voting started,
Speaker 5: because it turns out voting is an habitual thing. If
Speaker 5: you start voting, you're more likely to keep voting. So
Speaker 5: it would mean that people would start voting at a
Speaker 5: time where they had a little more stability in their
Speaker 5: lives and perhaps would get into the habit earlier.
Speaker 2: Is there a way to determine what the best age
Speaker 2: would be to vote that younger would be better than
Speaker 2: older to develop those habits.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't think that there's a particular, you know,
Speaker 5: hard and fast rule. If you think of democracy in
Speaker 5: a different way, if you think of it in terms
Speaker 5: of not so much of politics as who gets what,
Speaker 5: but politics is a way for people to meaningfully control
Speaker 5: their own fate collectively with other people. That's lost on
Speaker 5: somebody who's three years old or five years old, but
Speaker 5: you can start getting it as young as young teenagers.
Speaker 5: And you know, if it were up to me, if
Speaker 5: I could wave a magic wand a's gonna happen. But
Speaker 5: I would probably set it around thirteen or fourteen, because
Speaker 5: that's when people can start getting the understanding of it.
Speaker 5: And the truth is, you know, if you look around
Speaker 5: at interest groups at campaigns, there's plenty of teenagers who
Speaker 5: get involved at those ages. And nobody says you shouldn't
Speaker 5: be allowed to participate in politics when you're twelve or
Speaker 5: thirteen or fourteen. You shouldn't be allowed to, you know,
Speaker 5: go door to door or stuff envelopes or write a
Speaker 5: letter here, member of Congress or something like that. It's
Speaker 5: voting that is the sticking point. And the truth is,
Speaker 5: voting is sort of the training wheels part of democracy,
Speaker 5: if you think of it that way. It's the gateway
Speaker 5: to more meaningful involvement. And so I would let you, well,
Speaker 5: I would I would start with, you know, young teenagers
Speaker 5: and let them get used to the idea of being
Speaker 5: personally involved in politics themselves, and them as they got older,
Speaker 5: they might be able to add more, you know, more
Speaker 5: involvement in their community, more involvement in self government.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy.
Speaker 2: Coming up, what has stemied employee initiative and how can
Speaker 2: that initiative be reignited. Don't forget We're available as a
Speaker 2: podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. This
Speaker 2: is Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays
Speaker 1: at one in seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
Speaker 1: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Opinion. I Mamy Morris. Four years many
Speaker 2: of us have operated with the understanding that deep employee
Speaker 2: commitment is a benefit. An employee who takes initiative is
Speaker 2: seen as a favorable trade by employers, and most highly
Speaker 2: valued workers were happy to oblige. But things have changed
Speaker 2: since the pandemic. Let's take a look with Bloomberg Opinion
Speaker 2: editor Sarah Green Carmichael. How have we seen employees push back?
Speaker 7: I think we've seen employees push back in a number
Speaker 7: of ways that at first may not seem all related
Speaker 7: to the same cause, but I think they are So,
Speaker 7: for example, over the last couple of years, we really
Speaker 7: have seen a rise in employee activism, employees protesting certain
Speaker 7: corporate policies or political stances, or advocating for their employers
Speaker 7: to take a stronger political stand. We have also seen
Speaker 7: employees agitating for higher wages or more benefits. And we've
Speaker 7: also seen employees saying in some cases, you know, I'm
Speaker 7: happy with this job, but I don't want to work
Speaker 7: these weekends and evenings anymore, or you know, when I
Speaker 7: am working you know, forty or fifty hours during the
Speaker 7: week already. So I think all of those kind of
Speaker 7: seem like disparate trends, but in my opinion, they all
Speaker 7: are linked to a reevaluation by committed employees of what
Speaker 7: work is really about.
Speaker 2: Have you seen that lead then to a pushback from CEOs,
Speaker 2: I mean the upper echelons of the office.
Speaker 7: Yes, I think CEOs are a little taken aback in
Speaker 7: some cases. I think CEOs, especially who tried to really
Speaker 7: lead in a humane way during the pandemic, feel like
Speaker 7: where's the gratitude, Like I, you know, really worked hard
Speaker 7: to avoid layoffs, I try to pay a fair wage
Speaker 7: to make this a great company, and like, why don't
Speaker 7: you just say thank you? Why are you trying to unionize?
Speaker 7: Why are you pushing me? And so I think in
Speaker 7: some cases, you know, we see like the you know,
Speaker 7: Howard Schultz for example, the you know who's such an
Speaker 7: influential leader for many years Starbucks really seems to take
Speaker 7: it as a personal affront that those workers want to unionize,
Speaker 7: and I think he's not alone and sort of having
Speaker 7: a little bit of sort of a startled feeling like
Speaker 7: wait a minute, this is a great company. And I
Speaker 7: think that in other ways, we've seen CEOs pushback by
Speaker 7: saying employees have to come back to the office more
Speaker 7: frequently than maybe employees would want to. So that's like
Speaker 7: another sort of thing that I think a lot of
Speaker 7: workplaces are dealing with right now.
Speaker 2: And I wonder where that puts middle managers literally caught
Speaker 2: in the middle. Do you see them siding with one
Speaker 2: side or the other? Are they having to walk this tightrope?
Speaker 2: Do they feel that sort of empathy with the workers
Speaker 2: because they're kind of worker bees too in the middle.
Speaker 7: It's such a hard time to be a middle manager.
Speaker 7: The way I think of it, as you know, if
Speaker 7: you're driving a car, you are in the mindset of
Speaker 7: a driver, and if you are a pedestrian, you are
Speaker 7: in the mindset of a pedestrian. And I think we
Speaker 7: can all think of times, you know, when as a
Speaker 7: driver we think, God, these people are just walking in
Speaker 7: the middle of the road, and then as a pedestrian
Speaker 7: you think, oh, that car came out of nowhere. And
Speaker 7: middle managers are constantly toggling between very different perspectives sort
Speaker 7: of like that. So, yes, they are employees and they
Speaker 7: are trying to, you know, do what their own bosses want,
Speaker 7: and then at the same time they have to then
Speaker 7: turn right around and maybe push some of their own
Speaker 7: director reports to do things that maybe they don't even
Speaker 7: believe in. So I think it's an incredibly difficult time
Speaker 7: to be juggling these two roles that sort of cohabit
Speaker 7: in the same person of a middle manager.
Speaker 2: So what does this then do to the workplace dynamic
Speaker 2: as a whole. I think that the.
Speaker 7: Workplace dynamic is playing out in different companies in different ways.
Speaker 7: I think it's a time of tension. I think it's
Speaker 7: a time of reevaluating. I think one of the things
Speaker 7: that makes it challenging is that a lot of the
Speaker 7: conversations that we're having, you know, maybe at home with
Speaker 7: our partners about work and the nature of work, we're
Speaker 7: not having in the office because it feels it can
Speaker 7: feel alarming and unacceptable and like you are risking your
Speaker 7: livelihood to go to your boss and say, like I'm
Speaker 7: having some thoughts about the role work plays in my life.
Speaker 7: Like that's not, you know, something that's really welcomed in
Speaker 7: most workplaces. So I think that there's a lot of
Speaker 7: these tensions running some cases under the surface, and in
Speaker 7: other cases they are spilling out into the open, as
Speaker 7: we're seeing with some of these strikes and pickets and protests.
Speaker 2: Is that what's driving this the pandemic. Is this where
Speaker 2: it all sort of bubbled to the surface, or have
Speaker 2: we seen hints of this even back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 7: Yes, I think we've been seeing it coming to the
Speaker 7: fore for a long time. And I think there's a
Speaker 7: few different reasons why it's culminating now. One is just
Speaker 7: an increase in political polarization in our society. You know,
Speaker 7: if everything is political now, you know, so is the workplace.
Speaker 7: But I think in some ways the pandemic did bring
Speaker 7: things to the fore. It forced a reevaluation of work
Speaker 7: in people's lives. The other thing that I think often
Speaker 7: goes without saying, but needs to go with saying, is
Speaker 7: that the pandemic saw a tremendous loss of life and
Speaker 7: a tremendous amount of suffering, and you know, people being hospitalized.
Speaker 7: If you look at surveys, by the end of the
Speaker 7: omicron wave, eighty percent of Americans knew someone personally who
Speaker 7: had been hospitalized or had died from COVID. That is
Speaker 7: a lot of brushes with death, and that really I think,
Speaker 7: changes how people, you know, think about what they do
Speaker 7: with the bulk of their time, which is work.
Speaker 2: It changes your attitude automatically when you are faced with
Speaker 2: a crisis, whether it's a health crisis or otherwise, and
Speaker 2: it puts a different perspective on how important work is.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's important. You need the health care, you
Speaker 2: need the benefits, you need to pay rent. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, there's got to be a balance there,
Speaker 2: and it sounds almost like the balance is shifting.
Speaker 7: I think the balance is shifting a little bit, and
Speaker 7: it's a little bit I think. You know, there's the
Speaker 7: old joke about a fish. You ask a fish, how's
Speaker 7: the water, and the fish says.
Speaker 2: What's water?
Speaker 7: And I think a lot of younger workers especially have
Speaker 7: grown up in this time where the primary way that
Speaker 7: employees are managed and motivated is by saying, like, this
Speaker 7: work is so many meaningful. You can bring your whole
Speaker 7: self to work, you can feel passion for what you do.
Speaker 7: You should feel passion. You should act like an entrepreneur
Speaker 7: or an entrepreneur.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: There's all this idea of like building an ownership culture
Speaker 7: and having this really engaged workforce, and that can be
Speaker 7: a good thing. It feels good to in many cases
Speaker 7: be that deeply committed to your job. But I think
Speaker 7: there's a little bit of a reevaluation now of some
Speaker 7: employees saying, wait a minute, am I actually being paid
Speaker 7: enough for all of the effort I'm putting in? Is
Speaker 7: it okay that I am devoting so much of myself
Speaker 7: to work and leaving so little in some cases for
Speaker 7: family or friends or community. And I think there's a
Speaker 7: little bit of a sense now from bosses about being like,
Speaker 7: wait a minute, why do all these employees have so
Speaker 7: many opinions on how we do things around here? It's like, well,
Speaker 7: you told them to think like owners, right, owners have opinion.
Speaker 2: Do you find that money's the primary motivator? I remember
Speaker 2: before the pandemic there was all of this talk about
Speaker 2: the three day weekend, you know, a four day work week. Ooh,
Speaker 2: and then the pandemic just threw the chessboard out the
Speaker 2: window and gave everybody just work from home opportunity. And
Speaker 2: now the four day week, the three day weekend, while
Speaker 2: they don't seem to be talking about it as much,
Speaker 2: is still right there, you know, the possibility of changing
Speaker 2: how the work week is broken down. And I asked
Speaker 2: this just to figure out what the motivation is at
Speaker 2: this point. Is it money? Is it time off? Is
Speaker 2: it benefits? Is it a more responsibility? What's the big
Speaker 2: primary motivator?
Speaker 7: I mean, it probably depends on who you ask, right,
Speaker 7: Human beings are incredibly diverse. I find the four day
Speaker 7: week very interesting, especially because it is still a big
Speaker 7: conversation happening in Europe where there's a lot of experimentation
Speaker 7: going on. As someone who writes a lot and thinks
Speaker 7: a lot about workplace issues, I guess what I'd like
Speaker 7: to see now is just more experimentation, because there are
Speaker 7: going to be some people motivated by money. There are
Speaker 7: going to be some people motivated by benefits. There's one
Speaker 7: of the biggest benefits you know, employees can get is
Speaker 7: flex time, and that doesn't really cost comeies anything. So
Speaker 7: I would love to see the experimentation on how work
Speaker 7: gets done that we saw of necessity during the COVID
Speaker 7: pandemic continue. I think that there there could be more
Speaker 7: experimentation around a four day week or around shifts and hours.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: One of the people I interviewed recently was the CEO
Speaker 7: of Motherly, which is a publication for mothers that also
Speaker 7: gathers a life data on mothers, and she said their
Speaker 7: work day is organized around this idea of core hours
Speaker 7: that between ten and four, for example, people are online,
Speaker 7: but when you put in the other you know, hours
Speaker 7: is up to you. So you could put it in
Speaker 7: in the morning before your kids are awake, or you know,
Speaker 7: maybe after they go to bed. And I like to
Speaker 7: see companies doing that kind of experimenting because this whole
Speaker 7: idea of like a solid you know, nine to five
Speaker 7: or eight to six block of time where you just
Speaker 7: don't stand up from your computer just seems unrealistic, especially
Speaker 7: given that so many of those workers are doing email
Speaker 7: and work on evenings and weekends also.
Speaker 2: And especially since so many of those workers showed that
Speaker 2: it can be done another way, as you said, out
Speaker 2: of necessity during the pandemic exactly.
Speaker 7: And I think, to me, what would be sad is
Speaker 7: if we just tried to go back to quote unquote
Speaker 7: how things were before, which was a paradigm that didn't
Speaker 7: work for a lot of people. To me, it's almost like,
Speaker 7: what if we had an amazing workplace experimentation and then.
Speaker 2: Just forgot about it.
Speaker 7: You know, let's not forget about it. Let's take these
Speaker 7: lessons and keep going. Let's use it to inform how
Speaker 7: we work going forward.
Speaker 2: Sarah Green Carmichael is a Bloomberg Opinion editor. And if
Speaker 2: you're of a certain age, you've been asked the classic
Speaker 2: question paper or plastic, usually a question about how you'd
Speaker 2: like to have your groceries bagged or how you'd like
Speaker 2: to pay for those groceries. And usually the environmentally conscious
Speaker 2: would say paper, because paper is so much more sustainable
Speaker 2: than plastic, at least that's the conventional wisdom. Bloomberg Opinion
Speaker 2: columnist Adam Mentor joins us now to talk about it. Okay,
Speaker 2: set us straight. Paper more natural, right.
Speaker 8: Like plastic, it's an industrial product as well. It's made
Speaker 8: in paper mills. And if you've ever spent any time
Speaker 8: or driven past or inhaled the air around a paper mill,
Speaker 8: you'll know that it's not necessarily a natural process. There's
Speaker 8: a lot of chemicals, a lot of energy, a lot
Speaker 8: of water taken in. So no, it's not a natural product.
Speaker 8: It's a product made from natural materials in a sense,
Speaker 8: just as plastic is.
Speaker 2: Then what's the difference between being sustainable and being natural?
Speaker 2: Is there a lot of room there?
Speaker 8: There is a lot of room there. And one of
Speaker 8: the problems I think we have in talking about these
Speaker 8: materials is we haven't done a very good job of
Speaker 8: defining what sustainable in particular means, because for different communities
Speaker 8: it means different things. For example, lately, when we talk
Speaker 8: about plastic, sustainability has to do with end of life
Speaker 8: where it gets tossed. But that's not the only basis
Speaker 8: upon which we think about sustainability. Increasingly we think about
Speaker 8: sustainability in terms of greenhouse gases and what kind of
Speaker 8: carbon emissions are associated with a product or packaging, And
Speaker 8: in many cases you will actually find that there are
Speaker 8: less carbon emissions associated with the manufacture and transport of
Speaker 8: plastic products than of paper products for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the packaging, because you know, we've all
Speaker 2: seen the unbleached brown paper packaging. It looks more organic,
Speaker 2: it looks healthier and I'm using little air bunny quotes here,
Speaker 2: So it looks like it would be better for the environment.
Speaker 2: We would think it would be.
Speaker 8: Is it not always? I mean, for example, you know
Speaker 8: it can be heavier, and you know we think, well,
Speaker 8: why should we care about heavier packaging. Well, when you're
Speaker 8: a consumer goods manufacturer and you're transporting millions of packages
Speaker 8: of something, weight really adds up, and again it becomes
Speaker 8: an issue of fuel. It becomes an issue of how
Speaker 8: much fuel maybe goes into manufacturing that product in addition
Speaker 8: to transporting. So you have to think in terms of
Speaker 8: the total life cycle of that packaging or that product.
Speaker 8: And it's not just packaging. I mean, I think we
Speaker 8: tend to think in terms of packaging and sustainability, but
Speaker 8: there are other objects that we use in our daily
Speaker 8: life where we can actually say from a climate perspective,
Speaker 8: plastic is better. One is furniture. There's been recent study
Speaker 8: from McKinsey, and I've just got the data. I'm looking
Speaker 8: at it right here. An equal piece of furniture made
Speaker 8: from polypropylene plastic. We all know what, you know, sort
Speaker 8: of our back porch furniture looks like versus the same
Speaker 8: piece of furniture were made from wood. You're actually going
Speaker 8: to have a fifty percent of greenhouse gas savings on
Speaker 8: the polypropylene piece of furniture. It's lighter weight, you know,
Speaker 8: it doesn't. It's not when you know wood furniture, you
Speaker 8: cut down a tree, you no longer have the ability
Speaker 8: to suck in the carbon that a tree fulfilled. So
Speaker 8: you know, these are very hard decisions, and it makes
Speaker 8: definitions of sustainability very difficult too.
Speaker 2: So it sounds as though paper may not be the
Speaker 2: environmentally friendly alternative that we thought it was. But also
Speaker 2: maybe plastic isn't the nasty enemy with the fangs and
Speaker 2: the teeth that we've come to believe it.
Speaker 8: Is exactly And again, I'm certainly not here to apologize
Speaker 8: for the problems.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, I mean.
Speaker 8: We all know what they are. But I think you know,
Speaker 8: when we talk about materials and the materials, the industrial
Speaker 8: materials that we use in our daily life. I think
Speaker 8: we really need to be more nuanced in how we
Speaker 8: look at these things. There are different ways of evaluating sustainability,
Speaker 8: and I don't think we're serving consumers in particular well
Speaker 8: by creating a pariah material, which is what we've you know,
Speaker 8: classified all plastics, considering them evil in some ways. I
Speaker 8: think there's more nuance to that, and I think if
Speaker 8: we're going to achieve sustainability, we're going to have to
Speaker 8: have that more nuanced look at these various products.
Speaker 2: Adam Mentor is at Bloomberg Opinion colonists covering technology and
Speaker 2: the environment, and that does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 2: We are produced by Eric Mullow, and you can find
Speaker 2: all of these columns on the Bloomberg Terminal. We're available
Speaker 2: as a p podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite
Speaker 2: podcast platform. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global
Speaker 2: business headlines are coming up. I'm Ammy Morris. This is
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