Latest / Trumponomics / 38: The Quiet Epidemic That's Killing White Americans in Droves

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38: The Quiet Epidemic That's Killing White Americans in Droves · Trumponomics

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I kind of feel like we talked about a lot
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: of you know, depressing and alarming things on this show.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: We're not We're not happy of bunch, are we? They
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: called the dismal science for a reason, though I can
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: they do? They do? Hi, and welcome back to Bloomberg Benchmark,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a show about the inner workings of the global economy.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I'm Tori Stillwell and economics reporter for Bloomberg News, and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I'm recording today out of our DC newsroom, and I'm
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: joined by my co host, Akio, our Benchmark editor in
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: San Francisco. Hey Hockey, Hey Tory. How's it going Pretty good?
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Pretty good? Although I don't know today's topic is on
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the morbid side, I would say I kind of feel
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: like we talked about a lot of depressing and alarming
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: things on this show. We're not happy of bunch, are we?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: They called the dismal science for a reason, though I
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: can they do? They do? Well? You know, I promise
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: to all our listeners, I promised at the show. However
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: depressing and alarming it's going to be, It's also going
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: to be totally interesting and reveting too. Let's dig in. So,
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  Speaker 1: the National Center of Health Statistics came out with a
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  Speaker 1: report recently that looked at US suicide rates for different
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  Speaker 1: races and ages from nineteen nine to fourteen, so the
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  Speaker 1: last fifteen years or so, and all around it was
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  Speaker 1: a pretty bleak picture, right. So the report showed that
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  Speaker 1: suicide rates age adjusted in America was gosh, twenty four
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  Speaker 1: percent higher in fourteen than it was in nine. Suicides
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  Speaker 1: went up for men and for women in every single
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  Speaker 1: age group under seventy five, and during that time frame,
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  Speaker 1: the suicide rate for white females ages forty five to
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  Speaker 1: sixty four rose eight percent and was three to four
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  Speaker 1: times higher than for females in other racial and ethnic groups.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, meanwhile, here black males, actually we're the only
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  Speaker 1: racial and ethnic group of either sex to have a
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  Speaker 1: lower suicide rate in compared to nine. So what does
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  Speaker 1: this all have to do with economics? For that, we're
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: going to need an economist with us. Is in case,
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  Speaker 1: a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton. She's
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  Speaker 1: done some amazing work on the rise of both mortality
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  Speaker 1: and morbidity among white Americans in the twenty one century.
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  Speaker 1: And you actually might remember her co author on this
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  Speaker 1: work from one of our very first episodes. His name's
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  Speaker 1: Angus Deaton. He is not only the winner of the
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  Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for Economics, but is also Anne's husband. And
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  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today. That's my
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  Speaker 1: pleasure to be with you. So and we talked about
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  Speaker 1: suicides a little bit earlier in this show, but your
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  Speaker 1: work dealt with more than just that, just looking at
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  Speaker 1: morbidity and more stality broadly in midlife for white Americans.
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  Speaker 1: Could you just boiled your research down to a sentence
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  Speaker 1: or two? What was the gist of what you and
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  Speaker 1: ang Is found when we looked both at morbidity and mortality.
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  Speaker 1: The mortality increases that we saw among people in midlife
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  Speaker 1: white non Hispanics and midlife we're being driven by what
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  Speaker 1: we call deaths of despair, so drug overdose suicide, alcohol
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  Speaker 1: related liver deaths. And underneath that layer of mortality, we
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  Speaker 1: found a lot of what we call morbidity, so poor
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  Speaker 1: health among whites and middle age, poor mental health, a
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  Speaker 1: lot of pain, a lot of difficulty with activities of
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  Speaker 1: daily living, reports that they're unable to work. And so
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  Speaker 1: when you put that together, it paints a picture of
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  Speaker 1: some despair among especially working class whites in America. And
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  Speaker 1: I think what was really striking about your research was
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: that that wasn't always the case that these mortality rates,
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  Speaker 1: they were going down for white Americans until the late nineties,
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  Speaker 1: and then after that they started taking back up. That
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  Speaker 1: isn't what we saw in other advanced countries in Europe, right,
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  Speaker 1: That's exactly right that in the US, after almost a
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  Speaker 1: century of uninterrupted progress when it came to lower mortality
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  Speaker 1: rates both among people in middle age and in older ages,
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  Speaker 1: suddenly in the late nineteen nineties we saw that kind
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  Speaker 1: of progress stopped dead and for people in some age
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  Speaker 1: groups actually begin to reverse and go in the wrong
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  Speaker 1: direction altogether. Whereas in name your favorite European country, mortality
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  Speaker 1: rates in middle age continue to fall at about two
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  Speaker 1: percent a year, which is what was happening in the
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  Speaker 1: US until the late nineteen nineties. So that is really
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  Speaker 1: one of the underlying questions. Why did the US leave
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  Speaker 1: the herd? So what made us differ? And have you
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  Speaker 1: found the answer to that question. We are hard at work.
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  Speaker 1: We're back in the weeds right now looking for answers.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, everyone we talked to on every politician you
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: hear no see answer but what do they say it? Uh.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: It depends on who's doing the talking. So it can
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  Speaker 1: be anything from the fact that jobs that were good
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  Speaker 1: jobs in the US left the country they were sent to, say,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: to Cambodia or to Vietnam. It could be some politicians
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  Speaker 1: think that it's Obamacare backfiring on itself, although this crisis
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  Speaker 1: began way before the Obama administration. Uh. Some people think
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  Speaker 1: it's just that America is not great anymore, and that
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  Speaker 1: once America is great again, people will uh stop killing
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  Speaker 1: themselves in such large numbers, slowly with drugs and alcohol
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  Speaker 1: or quickly with a gun. So and can you walk
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  Speaker 1: us through I guess the health side of this then?
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  Speaker 1: What is leading people to, uh, I guess, use more
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  Speaker 1: drugs or to kill themselves as a mental illnesses? What
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  Speaker 1: sort of health factors I guess are behind this increase
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  Speaker 1: in mortality and morbidity with middle aged whites, well Tory.
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  Speaker 1: At this point it's really speculation. But on the morbidity side,
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  Speaker 1: when things that we can actually measure, it certainly is
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  Speaker 1: the case that people's mental health has suffered in the
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  Speaker 1: last fifteen years. So every year the National Health Interview
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  Speaker 1: Survey asks a very large nationally representative group of people
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  Speaker 1: about their mental health and UM they could. They score
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  Speaker 1: the answers, and year on year from through fourteen, the
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  Speaker 1: scores have gotten worse on average for people in whites
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  Speaker 1: and middle age. People's reports of say sciatica, of chronic
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  Speaker 1: joint pain, of neck pain, of face pain, all of
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  Speaker 1: those markers of pain have increased as well, and when
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  Speaker 1: asked about activities of daily living, a significantly higher number
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  Speaker 1: report that they have difficulties socializing with friends. Now we
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  Speaker 1: know pain and social isolation are both triggers for suicide,
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  Speaker 1: for example, and those things have risen um in tandem
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  Speaker 1: over the last fifteen years. Now, what's under that? That's
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  Speaker 1: what we're at work trying to unearth. Is it the
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  Speaker 1: case that we are just much more socially isolated and
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  Speaker 1: that puts people at risk? I mean, that might be
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  Speaker 1: something that's different between the US and say, our sister
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  Speaker 1: countries in Europe, And we don't know the role yet
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  Speaker 1: that is played by stronger social safety nets which the Europeans,
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  Speaker 1: the Canadians, the Australians have relative to the US. We
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  Speaker 1: don't know the role yet of having access universally to healthcare.
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  Speaker 1: Those are roles that those play still don't really need
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: to be investigated. And and and then a different avenue is
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: to look at what's happened to the American employment patterns,
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  Speaker 1: since this is a crisis that's really hit people with
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: a high school degree or less, and those are people
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  Speaker 1: in the US who used to be able to get
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  Speaker 1: with a high school degree, a good job, a job
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  Speaker 1: with on the job training, which may be very important,
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  Speaker 1: a job where they could move up with that training,
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  Speaker 1: and that those jobs are gone, those jobs aren't coming back.
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  Speaker 1: Those jobs would have had benefits, those jobs would have
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  Speaker 1: had healthcare. And it may not just only be the
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: loss of those jobs that have left the country, but
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  Speaker 1: when say a manufacturing center closes down, the local tax
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  Speaker 1: base implodes the local schools who can't support themselves as well.
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  Speaker 1: So it may be that working class people look at
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  Speaker 1: their children and think that their children and are not
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  Speaker 1: going to have the same kind of um promising avenues
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  Speaker 1: that they themselves thought they might have. So there may
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  Speaker 1: be an intergenerational part of this as well, of people
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  Speaker 1: not knowing whether or not the future looks any brighter
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  Speaker 1: for their own children. And that's that's I mean, that's
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  Speaker 1: so fascinating one on your first point, that we could
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  Speaker 1: talk about social isolation in an age where things like
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  Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all these new things
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  Speaker 1: are supposed to be bringing us closer to people and
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  Speaker 1: helping connect us to people all over the world. And
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  Speaker 1: so I just think it's fascinating that isolation is still
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  Speaker 1: an issue. Perhaps I think it really is an issue,
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  Speaker 1: even in the age of Facebook. We know that divorce
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  Speaker 1: rates may have something to do with this. If if
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  Speaker 1: people are divorcing at higher rates than they may spend
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  Speaker 1: more time alone, that's still to be invest deicated. It's
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  Speaker 1: also possible that people may look at each other's Facebook
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  Speaker 1: pages where they see here I am on my fabulous
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  Speaker 1: vacation and my life is fabulous, whereas underneath that there
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  Speaker 1: may be all a much bigger story, not all of
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  Speaker 1: it looks as bright and sunny as is portrayed on Facebook.
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  Speaker 1: And so whether these people feel socially isolated, or whether
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  Speaker 1: they feel like they lost a sense of purpose in
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  Speaker 1: their lives um or are financially struggling because they lost
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  Speaker 1: their job, you know, the idea is that maybe they're
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  Speaker 1: turning to alcohol or drugs in their despair, and they
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  Speaker 1: end up dying a premature death right, Well, that is
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  Speaker 1: that is certainly one of the stories that one can tell.
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  Speaker 1: Now whether or not that those are really the underlying drivers.
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  Speaker 1: We we have a lot of work to do, looking
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  Speaker 1: small geographic area by small geographic area in the US
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  Speaker 1: to try to see whether or not the data are
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  Speaker 1: consistent with that story. And we should know more a
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  Speaker 1: lot more about that once we actually do the work.
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  Speaker 1: And so now we're actually in the process of doing
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  Speaker 1: the work, and that's going to take some time. Well,
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  Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break and when we
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  Speaker 1: come back, we will have much more to talk about,
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  Speaker 1: including why and this is a question I'm particularly interested in,
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  Speaker 1: why aren't we seeing similar trends in non white communities.
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  Speaker 1: So we're going to talk a little bit about that
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  Speaker 1: and hopefully more about some of these economic reasons behind
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  Speaker 1: the increases that we're seeing after this break, so maybe
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  Speaker 1: zooming out a little bit before we kind of go
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  Speaker 1: into the why and the consequences a little bit more.
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  Speaker 1: This is an amazing statistic for our listener. So if
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  Speaker 1: mortality rates for white Americans contin hinue to decline that
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  Speaker 1: way that they were up to the late nineties, half
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  Speaker 1: a million deaths could have been avoided between nine and
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  Speaker 1: two thousand and thirteen, almost five hundred thousands, So that's
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  Speaker 1: basically equivalent to the number of Americans who have died
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  Speaker 1: from AIDS. Whatever is causing this, and isn't it fair
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  Speaker 1: to call this an epidemic depends on how you want
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  Speaker 1: to use the word epidemic. It certainly is something that's
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  Speaker 1: widespread in every state in middle age. On average, people
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  Speaker 1: in whites and middle age are reporting themselves in worse
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  Speaker 1: health than they did fifteen years ago. In all census regions,
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  Speaker 1: the suicide rates are up, and all all census regions,
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  Speaker 1: the the reports of social isolation are up. So it
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  Speaker 1: is certainly happening throughout the country. So if you want
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  Speaker 1: to call it an epidemic using that as your definition,
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  Speaker 1: then it is kind of a very quiet epidemic. And
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  Speaker 1: actually the five hundred thousand number, we want to back
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: off of that a little bit because some of those
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  Speaker 1: um some of those deaths are probably due to the
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  Speaker 1: fact that it took women longer to stop smoking than
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  Speaker 1: it took men. Women took it up later and they
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  Speaker 1: stopped later. So in the US, some of those deaths
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  Speaker 1: are actually probably due to cancer and heart disease related
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: to cigarette smoking. That's still working its way out. But
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  Speaker 1: if you just some the numbers of people who died
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  Speaker 1: in this century in the New century from suicide, from
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  Speaker 1: drug overdose, from alcohol related liver mortality, if the rates
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  Speaker 1: of those deaths had stayed at what they had been,
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  Speaker 1: say in then in the period between two thousand and
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, about three hundred thousand people aged
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  Speaker 1: thirty five to fifty nine would not have died of
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  Speaker 1: the deaths of despair. So it's the same order of
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  Speaker 1: magnitude as the number of people who died and have
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  Speaker 1: died to date in the AIDS crisis in the US.
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  Speaker 1: A little a little bit lower, but same order of magnitude.
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  Speaker 1: Although the AIDS crisis got a lot of attention, whereas
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  Speaker 1: this really has been a very quiet, if you want
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: to call it epidemic, a very quiet epidemic. And so
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: far our discussion has been about white, middle aged Americans.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Why aren't we seeing um I guess problems or increases
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: in mortality and morbidity at the same magnitude for other races.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: That is a terrific question. Happily, the mortality rates for
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: African Americans in middle age is falling even quicker than
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: it is in among our European counterparts. And mortality rates
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: for Hispanics is falling at exactly the same rate as
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: our European counterparts. So it's about two point six percent
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  Speaker 1: per yor for blacks and about two percent a year
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: for Hispanics. And why is it the case that this
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: big cloud has not landed on their heads? So we
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: we can again, we can speculate at this point, we
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: don't have any firm answers. Part of the drug overdoses
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: come from the availability of prescription opioids, which started in
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the mid nine nineties and gain speed and gained speed
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: with the introduction of drugs like oxy cotton. And there's
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: a small literature that suggests that African Americans were discriminated
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: against if they presented with the same level of pain,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: doctors were less likely to prescribe them heavy duty opioids
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: than they would be if a white presented with the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: same level of pain. So so while that kind of discrimination,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: there's no room for the kind of discrimination. But at
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the same time, that may be one of the explanations
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: for why the opioid part of this did not land
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: on the heads of African Americans. It's also the case
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: that pharmacies in the inner cities UH, some of them
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: don't want to actually stock opioids because it makes them
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: a target for people to come and steal the opioids,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: which in some communities have actually become a currency of
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: sorts that you can actually trade things for drugs as
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: if the drugs were money. We think of the opioids,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: we think we hear being angesty and my co author
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: and I as being one of the proximate causes for
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: this epidemic. But it's just approximate cause, like what causes
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: people to reach for those drugs? They're available, but they're
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: available in Canada as well. Why is it that in
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: the US it's really become such a killer, and why
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: has it become such a killer for whites? We don't
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: really have an answer. So African Americans and Hispanics, are
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: they reporting the I guess the same amount of pain
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: or the similar increases in pain or is that different
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: as well? So there's been no decrease, no decline in
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: UH self reported health among African Americans. There has been
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: a small increase in reports of pain, UH not as
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: large as seen in the UM white non Hispanic community.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: But no, but but certainly there has been an increase,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: but they're the deaths of despair for African Americans, meaning drugs, suicide,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: alcohol have been falling for people in their thirties. It's
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: been constant for people in their forties into their early fifties,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: So that we don't see the same dramatic increase that
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: we've been seeing from age thirty to age fifty nine
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: in the white community. And and if I understand that,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: if I understood the data are correctly in your in
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: your study, Hispanic and Black Americans actually are less likely
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: to die at middle age and white people are at
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: this point. Is that right? No? No, So the mortality
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: rates for African Americans is still higher than UM it
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: is for white non Hispanics. Hispanics actually have lower mortality
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: rates than UM than much wealthier white non Hispanics. UM.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: That's another puzzle for demographers. Why it is that it's
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: called the Hispanic paradox. Why it is that Hispanics actually
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: do have much better reported health and have lower mortality
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: rates and higher life expectancy rates than whites. But among
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: African Americans, while there's been real progress. Uh, there is
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: still a gap between black and white mortality, with blacks
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: having higher mortality than whites. It's but it has been
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: falling and the gap has been closing. Unfortunately, part of
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: the gap closing has come from the fact that white
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: mortality rights have increased. I mean, you want everybody to
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: get to the frontier. You don't want it the gap
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: to close because you know, whites are are doing worse
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: than they had been doing. You want to see everybody
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: doing better. Right you know, Let's let's say, come November,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: whoever becomes the president, she or he calls you up
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and says, look, I've seen your paper. There's a clear
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: crisis among middle age white Americans right now. What should
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: I do? What would your policy advice be? That is such?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: That is such a multilayered question, and until we really
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: find our way back out of the weeds and have
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: a better sense of how much of this is about
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: job loss, how much of this is about social connection,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: It's it would be hard for me, and of course
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: I'm an academic, so it's hard for me to say
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I have the answer and this is what it is,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and this is what your policy should look like, but
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I think economists in general are true believers in education.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that happened but between the
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies and today is that the premium and
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the labor market forgetting a college degree went from about
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: higher pay for people with a college degree to something
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: like above what people with a high school degree could earn.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: So part of these people in middle age now came
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: of age in the late nineteen seventies and we're making
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: decisions about the course of their lives before they had
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: any reason to understand that there was going to be
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: this wedge that was going to be driven between their
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: earnings and the earnings of people who went on to
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: get more education. So I I think also watching the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: quality of public schools a road is very bad for UH,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the morale of people and throughout the country, and so
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I think actually shoring up our schools would be a
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: long run approach to this problem. A short run answer
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: is going to be as much as there's pushback against it.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I'm with the c d C and in saying that
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: doctors should probably have to have some education UH specific
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: to prescribing these really heavy duty opioids. The A M
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: A is against it, but I think that given that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: we are currently prescribing enough prescription painkillers to medicate every
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: adult America kind of around the clock for a month,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: we are prescribing enough that we probably need to make
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: sure we know what we're doing. Yeah, it's it's amazing
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: to hear you talk about this because it sounds like
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: these economic factors that are increasing white middle aged mortality
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: and morbidity are are the same ones that are fueling
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of the rhetoric that we're seeing in this
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: election season. So, um, it's I think this is a
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: really important trend to keep an eye on in terms
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: of for for I guess that and momentum there as well. Yeah,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: there was a really interesting article in the Washington Post, uh,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and during this primary season where they took states and
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: broke the states down into their counties and looked at
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: the primary results and saw really clear pattern that in
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the counties where the death rates in middle age were higher,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the Trump votes were much stronger. So I thought that was, um,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: quite quite interesting. I think both on the on the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: right with Donald Trump and on the left with Bernie Sanders, Uh,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: there is a real sense of community that feels like
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: they haven't been heard for a very long time, and
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: part of that comes out in these data on how
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: they're reporting their health and on mortality. Wow, that's a
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: lot to think about, um, And maybe to avoid ending
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: on such a dark note, UM, maybe I can ask
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: a lighter question to wrap this all up. What's it?
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of economists, I think, who where
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the wife and the husband worked together on research. What's
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: it like to do research with your husband? It's it's terrific.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's not that we don't have enough to
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: talk about without talking about work, but it's really nice
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: to to work with someone who shares the same kind
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of passion for the work that I have. So I'm
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: just I'm lucky enough also to be married to someone
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: who just won the Nobel Prize, which has had the
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: effect of sprinkling fairy dust on our lives. And um,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: that has been a really terrific experience. So, UM, I
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: it's not for everybody. I think for some people it's
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: really nice to be able to leave things at the office.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: We never leave things at the office, which certainly, you
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: know you can you can imagine the downsides of that,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: but it's also incredibly exciting to just always feel like
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: they're we have At any point, we could be saying, oh,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: I have this idea about what this might be, and
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: then share it and then you know, uh, I think
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: about ways to dig into it. Yeah, that's terrific. Well,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: and thank you so much for joining us today. It was.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: It was great speaking with you, really my pleasure. Thanks
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: a lot, and thanks to you all for listening. Benchmark
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: will be back next week and until then, you can
• 25:08
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• 25:11
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• 25:15
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• 25:17
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• 25:21
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• 25:22
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• 25:26
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• 25:34
  Speaker 1: m c c a b e at Bloomberg dot net.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: See you next week