Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of Government and Economics at Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: and this is Trumpnomics, the podcast that looks at what's
Speaker 2: happening in the economic world of Donald Trump, what's shaping
Speaker 2: the US and global economy, and what could happen next.
Speaker 2: This week we're talking about the Great Fun Shortage. You
Speaker 2: might think it was an odd topic. I mean, the
Speaker 2: cost of living, we know is still a major issue
Speaker 2: for households on both sides of the Atlantic, and definitely
Speaker 2: for Donald Trump approaching the midterm elections. But the cost
Speaker 2: of laughing, of having fun seems to be going up
Speaker 2: even faster than other things, and there are fewer and
Speaker 2: fewer places to lay your hands on it. The FIFA
Speaker 2: World Cup, which culminates this Sunday, the nineteenth of July,
Speaker 2: is a case in point. I mean, watch parties are fun,
Speaker 2: but for those of us like me who prefer to
Speaker 2: see their sports live, it's been a disaster. Game tickets
Speaker 2: leading up to the tournament were either incredibly hard to
Speaker 2: get hold of or ruinously expensive, often both, and the
Speaker 2: cheapest official ticket for the final this Sunday will cost
Speaker 2: thirty two times more than the equivalent ticket for the
Speaker 2: European Football Championship final two years ago. Now, if you
Speaker 2: have zero interest in football, you'll be completely fed up
Speaker 2: with hearing any further word on this topic. But this
Speaker 2: phenomenon being priced out of fun is part of a
Speaker 2: broader trend spelled out in a recent Bloomberg piece that
Speaker 2: got a lot of traction online by the reporter Ben Stevenman.
Speaker 2: As he points out, Americans are spending less time socializing
Speaker 2: than they used to. Over the past twenty years, America's
Speaker 2: lost two thousand golf courses and seven thousand bars and nightclubs.
Speaker 2: We're not just talking about leisure time in general, but
Speaker 2: the shared in person kind of leisure, live shows, family trips,
Speaker 2: nights out with friends. Time Youse surveys that have been
Speaker 2: run since the early two thousands show double digit drops
Speaker 2: in the hours spent by Americans on things like that,
Speaker 2: on arts, on sports, and social events. Now, this may
Speaker 2: be a business opportunity for some industries, but for everyone
Speaker 2: else it raises a bigger question. What happens to an
Speaker 2: economy and a society when people just can't afford or
Speaker 2: don't make time to have fun. Well, I'm happy to
Speaker 2: say I'm joined by Ben who wrote that piece. He
Speaker 2: writes about money and people for Bloomberg and is based
Speaker 2: in New York. Welcome Ben, thank you, happy to be here.
Speaker 2: And an economist who spent a large part of his
Speaker 2: career thinking about what makes people happy and more importantly,
Speaker 2: why it matters. Professor Lord Richard Layard, co director of
Speaker 2: the Well Being Program at the Center for Economic Performance
Speaker 2: at the London School of Economics and also the author
Speaker 2: of several books, including the Origins of Happiness and Can
Speaker 2: We Be? Professor Leon Richard, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: taking the time.
Speaker 3: My pleasure.
Speaker 2: Conferentent Ben, How did you come to this topic the
Speaker 2: Great fun Shortage.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about happiness and community in America for years.
Speaker 1: When you look at the American Time You survey that
Speaker 1: ask people how they spend their time, you see these
Speaker 1: sort of very depressing trend in terms of how much
Speaker 1: work just socializing face to face. We're just doing it
Speaker 1: a lot less than we used to do. And it's
Speaker 1: been my hunch for years that like that is having
Speaker 1: major effects on us, on our politics, on our economy,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem like it's sustainable. But When I
Speaker 1: started the research for this particular piece, I was just
Speaker 1: really thinking about high gas prices and I was sort
Speaker 1: of like, oh, like, maybe this is making this summer
Speaker 1: a summer of scarcity, where people will be cutting back
Speaker 1: on vacations. And then I was surprised to see that
Speaker 1: people didn't really cut back that much on travel as
Speaker 1: much as you would think. People seem to really want
Speaker 1: to get out there. And I started looking at all
Speaker 1: the different ways people like to have fun, that gets
Speaker 1: them out of the house, that gets them out with
Speaker 1: their family or friends or the community, and just seeing
Speaker 1: the supply shrinking in area after area, industry after industry,
Speaker 1: And so that's why I wrote the piece.
Speaker 2: You just mentioned it there. There's there are two elements
Speaker 2: to this, isn't it. Sort Of there's less available and
Speaker 2: I guess often goes with this, but also just a
Speaker 2: massive increase in the cost of a lot of these
Speaker 2: events and this kind of activity. But what are you
Speaker 2: seeing driving those things.
Speaker 1: There's just the baseline of inflation generally is first of all,
Speaker 1: squeezing the sort of a fun budget. People have less
Speaker 1: money left over for discretionary purchases. That's one thing. The
Speaker 1: other thing is the fixed costs of running a hotel
Speaker 1: or a nightclub just sword. But then there's also a
Speaker 1: supply issue. We really don't build beachfront resorts in the
Speaker 1: United States anymore. We have thousands and thousands of miles
Speaker 1: of coastline and we don't build on places people can
Speaker 1: gather and have fun and then anymore. So then we've
Speaker 1: also had this inequality trend in the United States. So
Speaker 1: who ends up in those beachfront luxury resorts. It's the
Speaker 1: wealthy and the rest of us who maybe these are
Speaker 1: places you started bringing your kids to and now they're
Speaker 1: older and you really have to stop going to those
Speaker 1: beach towns and you got to find something else to do.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a combination of factors, and it's
Speaker 1: different for different kinds of fun. But I think it's
Speaker 1: a complex mix of dynamics that are really coming together
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: And demographics, I guess, is another piece of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just more people, there's just more people fighting
Speaker 1: over fewer spots.
Speaker 2: But I mean and also older people. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a chunk of people who are kind of entering retirement,
Speaker 2: who have all the money and maybe are also pushing
Speaker 2: up prices that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, baby boomer is retired and they can't stop going
Speaker 1: on trips.
Speaker 2: So they're taking all the lounges on the beach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the national parks are full of baby boomers with
Speaker 1: blots of free time, and there's just less sparts for
Speaker 1: everybody else.
Speaker 2: Richard, I thought you would be a sort of perfect
Speaker 2: person to talk about this too. You've always said happiness
Speaker 2: is what should be the ultimate yardstick of the success
Speaker 2: of an economy. I guess we're talking about fun, which
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily the same as happiness or good mental health.
Speaker 2: So how do you think about the connection between the
Speaker 2: kind of activities that Ben's talking about and the kind
Speaker 2: of happiness mental well being that you have focused on
Speaker 2: for so long.
Speaker 3: Well, all the research shows that social connections are absolutely
Speaker 3: central to people's happiness, and the social connections, of course
Speaker 3: depend on the amount of time that you spend on them,
Speaker 3: and so the time evidence that people are spending less
Speaker 3: time socializing is absolutely central to understanding the other huge fact,
Speaker 3: which is documented in the World Happiness Report that overall
Speaker 3: happiness has fallen in the US by more than in
Speaker 3: any other country other than I think fourteen out of
Speaker 3: all the countries in the world, and this is particularly
Speaker 3: affecting young people, and I think that that is a
Speaker 3: very bad omen for the future, because we know that
Speaker 3: the best predictor of a happy life is how happy
Speaker 3: you are when you're young. America has now dropped to
Speaker 3: sixty second position for happiness of young people, and I
Speaker 3: think all of this is connected with the growth of
Speaker 3: online living. So I very much agree with Jonathan Heights's
Speaker 3: line on this that the social media are having a
Speaker 3: poisoning effect on young people, and it's because young people
Speaker 3: use the more than older people that they are suffering
Speaker 3: more as a result. And we know that he showed.
Speaker 3: I thought it was extraordinary that over half of young
Speaker 3: people say they wish social media didn't exist, but they're captive.
Speaker 3: They have to go on them because everybody else is
Speaker 3: going on them. So there's a huge amount of evidence
Speaker 3: that time spent online is destructive of happiness for two reasons.
Speaker 3: I mean, one is obviously lack of social ordinary face
Speaker 3: to face social contact, which has been the way humans
Speaker 3: enjoyed themselves from the beginning of time. But also the
Speaker 3: negative side, the encouragement of social comparisons and comparing yourself
Speaker 3: with the perfect life of the influence, etc. So I
Speaker 3: think all of that is going into this diminution of
Speaker 3: and increase in unhappiness, which is particularly present in the
Speaker 3: English speaking world. People of course questioned whether social media
Speaker 3: are so important because they are prevalent in other parts
Speaker 3: of the world. I think what is so interesting is
Speaker 3: that the English speaking world has been particularly strongly affected,
Speaker 3: partly perhaps because of the way that the tech companies operate,
Speaker 3: but also that these are the societies where young people
Speaker 3: have broken away more from their families and are less
Speaker 3: controllable by their parents and parents' values seem to have
Speaker 3: kept social life going in Latin America other parts of
Speaker 3: the world in the way that they haven't in the
Speaker 3: United States and Britain.
Speaker 2: You've partly answered the question I would have asked you,
Speaker 2: but it does feel like, you know, large parts of
Speaker 2: Europe people are extremely online, but they don't seem to
Speaker 2: have had, certainly from your world happiness, which also Ben
Speaker 2: mentions in his piece, they don't seem to have had
Speaker 2: the same fall in unhappy in happiness.
Speaker 3: Well, the old English speaking world actually includes Australia and Canada.
Speaker 3: I think that it is to do with the fact
Speaker 3: of parents having more influence on young people's social norms
Speaker 3: in the rest of Europe as compared with Britain. I
Speaker 3: think that's a very very important fact.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you mentioned Ben in your
Speaker 2: piece is the potential political consequences of some of this,
Speaker 2: and I guess we'll get onto some of the policy responses,
Speaker 2: but in terms of the many reasons that you might
Speaker 2: worry about it, you cite and there's studies that show
Speaker 2: that voters are more likely to vote for populist candidates
Speaker 2: in years after social spaces and pubs and bars have
Speaker 2: closed down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are two studies, one from France looking at
Speaker 1: bar tabas the place to buy you can get a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee, or you can place a bet, or
Speaker 1: just buy a newspaper that thousands of those in small
Speaker 1: French towns have shut down and it actually takes a while,
Speaker 1: it's not an immediate effect. But when those places closed down,
Speaker 1: according to this new study, in the next decade or two,
Speaker 1: those places become gradually more and more right wing and
Speaker 1: more more willing to vote for not just conservative parties
Speaker 1: but sort of the extreme right wing parties. And then
Speaker 1: there was another study in the UK looking at pubs
Speaker 1: and showing similar things.
Speaker 3: Could The closure of youth clubs has been an extraordinary
Speaker 3: thing in Britain. We've lost seventy three percent of a
Speaker 3: level of activity and funding for youth clubs over the
Speaker 3: last ten or fifteen years. And of course the closure
Speaker 3: rates is different in different areas, and you can see
Speaker 3: straight away that the effect on crime in the areas
Speaker 3: where youth clubs have been closed is quite dramatic. I
Speaker 3: think if we could just go back to the question
Speaker 3: of populism, I mean, the clearest fact that's been established
Speaker 3: really in almost every country is that the people who
Speaker 3: vote for populists are the discontented people, some of whom
Speaker 3: have become discontented for policy reasons and some of them
Speaker 3: for cost of living or other reasons. But discontent is
Speaker 3: driving people into extreme right wing or extreme left wing positions.
Speaker 3: And that's why one extraordinarily powerful reason why we have
Speaker 3: to try and put the contentment of the people more
Speaker 3: central to public policy if we want to preserve democracy.
Speaker 2: Ben As Richard says, part of this is about a
Speaker 2: cost of living issue, which is obviously issue number one,
Speaker 2: not just in the US but also in the UK
Speaker 2: and other places, and it doesn't just relate to this.
Speaker 2: I mean it relates to the of groceries in the
Speaker 2: price of petrol gas going up. But does the people
Speaker 2: being priced out of fun activities or hold days and
Speaker 2: over the does that have a particular resonance. How much
Speaker 2: is it politically sailing on its own or is it
Speaker 2: just being sort of pushed together and along with other things.
Speaker 2: I know just you mentioned in New York sort of
Speaker 2: having more more liquor licenses as a way to try
Speaker 2: and encourage some of the bars to come back.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that inflation in and of itself, and the
Speaker 1: price of just food that you bring home and need
Speaker 1: at home like that is something that is infuriating to
Speaker 1: people in and of itself and is sort of disconnected
Speaker 1: perhaps from this fun happiness conversation. But I think when
Speaker 1: you go to a concert and you feel like you're
Speaker 1: being squeezed into, like to actually get close enough to
Speaker 1: see the artist and not just watch a screen from
Speaker 1: the back row, when you have to pay hundreds of
Speaker 1: dollars to do that, it's really dispiriting. But when people
Speaker 1: will go out and try to do that, they're subject
Speaker 1: to these premiumization regimes where to get in and have
Speaker 1: the same experience you had a decade ago, is going
Speaker 1: to cost you four times as much, even if the
Speaker 1: official inflation rate hasn't gone up that much. For that
Speaker 1: particular activity, we've really created these tiers, whether it's on
Speaker 1: an airplane or in a concert hall.
Speaker 2: Everyone's forgotten that now because the World Cup's been quite
Speaker 2: popular in the US, but then the lead up to it,
Speaker 2: it was that very intensive tiering by FIFA that I
Speaker 2: think had sort of have brought that home. And Richard,
Speaker 2: I can't help thinking, I mean, many many years ago,
Speaker 2: you know, you were the person who had really contributed
Speaker 2: to the people focusing on relative inequality and how that
Speaker 2: was related to people's happiness. And we're seeing that now
Speaker 2: with the way that the sort of aggressive rent seeking
Speaker 2: and segmenting of the market into more and more upper
Speaker 2: tiers seems like a very there's a very close connection
Speaker 2: between that and people's general sense of well being, even
Speaker 2: if it's a somewhat trivial example sitting in a.
Speaker 3: Com Yes, so one mustn't exaggerate the influence of economic
Speaker 3: factors in the production of discontent. I mean, if you're
Speaker 3: try and explain who are the most discontented people. In
Speaker 3: most advanced countries, the number one factor is going to
Speaker 3: be mental health and loneliness. These factors are coming through
Speaker 3: at least as strongly as as simple living standards. I
Speaker 3: was very impressed by the US Surgeon General Vivek Murti
Speaker 3: when he went on his first tour as surch in General.
Speaker 3: What were the greatest problems of health as he thought
Speaker 3: facing people? They said, loneliness. That was what people reported
Speaker 3: to him. And that's behind the death of despair and
Speaker 3: all the rest of it. And it is behind populism
Speaker 3: because people join these populist parties because it gives them
Speaker 3: a sense of identity that they feel they belonging to
Speaker 3: something that actually means something. It turns over their insids.
Speaker 3: So it really is crucial that we deal with this discontent,
Speaker 3: and it really is important for politicians to understand that
Speaker 3: the factors that will determine this is studies of both
Speaker 3: European elections and US presidential election the fact that which
Speaker 3: will determine whether a government goes through elected are more
Speaker 3: to do with non economic factors affecting their happiness than
Speaker 3: economic factors. And we need much more attention to things
Speaker 3: that generate the social interactions which we started as than
Speaker 3: just the cost of living.
Speaker 2: We have potentially a moment of opportunity in the UK,
Speaker 2: despite their not being electioned and arrival of a new government,
Speaker 2: a new Prime minister anyway in the coming days. And
Speaker 2: E seems to be quite open to some of these ideas.
Speaker 2: And I know we've also heard and Ben mentioned in
Speaker 2: his piece. You clearly have Democrat politicians on the ground
Speaker 2: in the US also trying to address some of these
Speaker 2: sources of discontent. But when you look at the sort
Speaker 2: of cost effectiveness of different interventions to improve happiness, but
Speaker 2: how do you rank something like more spending on counseling
Speaker 2: and direct efforts to address high levels of depression, for example,
Speaker 2: against having more parks and more sort of social infrastructure
Speaker 2: ways of getting people together, or youth clubs for that matter.
Speaker 3: Well, as you say, we have been looking right across
Speaker 3: the board at the cost effectiveness of different types of
Speaker 3: public spending. And the most extraordinarily effective is you call
Speaker 3: it counseling. I would call it psychological therapy, which is
Speaker 3: basically paying for itself within a couple of years, both
Speaker 3: when it's done for adults and when it's done for
Speaker 3: young people.
Speaker 2: Paying for itself in what way are they returns in
Speaker 2: terms of people working or returns in terms of people
Speaker 2: feeling better.
Speaker 3: Of course, the real, really important return is people feeling better.
Speaker 3: But from the government's point of view, it's of great
Speaker 3: interest that it won't cost them anything because they get
Speaker 3: the money back within a couple of years.
Speaker 2: From people work, from tax revenues or from reduced health costs.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to work out what the saving would.
Speaker 3: Be when you're talking about adult anxiety and depression, which
Speaker 3: is the biggest single set of problems. It's just people
Speaker 3: getting back to work and coming off benefits. The savings
Speaker 3: there are so immediate. When you're talking about addicts, you're
Speaker 3: talking about healthcare costs as well being saved, people not
Speaker 3: turning up any not turning up in patient facilities and
Speaker 3: so on. But you mentioned parks. They are also good value.
Speaker 3: Small parks being close to green space turns out to
Speaker 3: be very cost effective. Actually, things like the police turn
Speaker 3: out to be are the cost effective. They actually encourage
Speaker 3: people the theme we are on mixing freely because they
Speaker 3: feel safe. Things which are much less cost effective are
Speaker 3: extra new roads, new railways. We spend an extraordinary amount
Speaker 3: on these in a way that's not really questioned, and
Speaker 3: I think that we need to subject all public expenditure
Speaker 3: to this test. What does it ultimately do for the
Speaker 3: quality of life as people experience it.
Speaker 2: Ben You obviously spend your time dipping in out of
Speaker 2: lots of different topics, but I know that you're particularly
Speaker 2: interested in the sort of dynamics of wealth and how
Speaker 2: it affects society and affects people. And you've obviously demonstrated
Speaker 2: that in this piece. And there's been a lot of
Speaker 2: talk about wealth taxes. But do you think with all
Speaker 2: this discussion that maybe we'll get into talking about high
Speaker 2: end consumption taxes.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting In terms of policy interventions, I was
Speaker 1: thinking a little bit more about creating new or more
Speaker 1: fun infrastructure. This seems like an opportunity for local politicians
Speaker 1: to bring a little life back to communities, whether that's
Speaker 1: a free concert or a dance party on a Friday
Speaker 1: night on a block this shut to traffic. But the
Speaker 1: tax issue, I've looked into these taxes on wealthy people
Speaker 1: and people's attitudes about billionaires and trillionaires, and in the
Speaker 1: United States, for a long time, there was a sense
Speaker 1: that people didn't really resent billionaires that much when you
Speaker 1: pull them. But that's starting to change, and there's less
Speaker 1: admiration for the wealthy than there used to be. And
Speaker 1: I do wonder whether one of the factors there is
Speaker 1: that there is this sense that the experience is the
Speaker 1: cool places and the cool experiences that were once available
Speaker 1: to a broad middle class population, you know, are becoming
Speaker 1: these premium, expensive, rare luxuries.
Speaker 2: When you were saying that, I was thinking, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: I guess the billionaires in the past were a bit
Speaker 2: more low key about spending their billions. But of course,
Speaker 2: as Richard points out, it's that we see it all on.
Speaker 2: If we don't see it when we're trying to go
Speaker 2: to these events, we see it all online in their
Speaker 2: perfect lives, and it's all it's very much in front
Speaker 2: of our faces.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of the Yeah, like billionaires posting from
Speaker 1: their yachts during COVID when we were all stuck at home.
Speaker 1: That they're similar dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not particularly good, pr Richard. People who regularly
Speaker 2: listen to this show will find this a curious topic perhaps,
Speaker 2: or an unusual topic for us to have gone into,
Speaker 2: because we haven't been talking only about economics, but I
Speaker 2: guess that's that's part of the point you're making.
Speaker 3: I'm a member of something called Action but Happiness, that
Speaker 3: is promoting a way of life where you pledge to
Speaker 3: try and create as much happiness as you can in
Speaker 3: the world. That's putting that as a principle for yourself
Speaker 3: how you should live. But of course it's also a
Speaker 3: principle for what the government should be doing. But coming
Speaker 3: back to your original theme, Stephanie, I do think that
Speaker 3: this decline of face to face contact is a massive problem.
Speaker 3: And we know that people they don't go to meetings.
Speaker 3: I mean they don't get You can't get people to
Speaker 3: go to things because they are spending so much time online.
Speaker 3: And even if they're together, like for example, in the
Speaker 3: big space in the university, you'll see one hundreds of
Speaker 3: people sitting around and there's no noise anymore. It's quite
Speaker 3: They're all texting each other. They're even texting people who
Speaker 3: are in the same room. This is a fundamental cultural
Speaker 3: change which I think is not for the better. And
Speaker 3: I'm hoping, you know, we can get a reform school
Speaker 3: education where people are taught better life skills I understand
Speaker 3: that measurements have been made which showed children can't make
Speaker 3: eye contact in the same way that they used to.
Speaker 3: We need to restore the basic practice of social living
Speaker 3: as central to people's enjoyment of life.
Speaker 2: Richard Layard, Ben Stephenman, thank you so much, Thank.
Speaker 4: You, thank you, thanks for listening to Trumponomics from Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: It was hosted by me Stephanie Flanders. I was joined
Speaker 2: by Bloomberg News reporter Ben Stevenman and the economist and
Speaker 2: LC professor Lord Richard Layard. Toponomics was produced by Moss
Speaker 2: Andam and Summer Sadi with help from a Keen, and
Speaker 2: sound design was by Blake Maples and Kelly Garrett. And
Speaker 2: to help others find this brilliant show, please rate and
Speaker 2: review its tide wherever you listen