Latest / Trumponomics / Can't Stop, Won't Stop (Working)

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Can't Stop, Won't Stop (Working) · Trumponomics

0:04
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stephanomics, the podcast which brings the
0:07
Speaker 1: global economy to you. Do you know why the retirement
0:15
Speaker 1: age and so many countries is sixty five? And it's
0:18
Speaker 1: all thanks to Otto von Bismarck, the first German chancellor
0:21
Speaker 1: who created the world's first social security system back in
0:25
Speaker 1: eighty and he started with the retirement age of seventy.
0:29
Speaker 1: Then he brought it down to sixty five because back
0:31
Speaker 1: then almost no one survived even that long. I was
0:34
Speaker 1: reminded of that top fact by one of the investors
0:37
Speaker 1: on a panel I moderated this week at the Milk
0:40
Speaker 1: and Global Conference in Los Angeles, where billionaires and wannabe
0:44
Speaker 1: billionaires and hundreds of other people all gather to talk
0:47
Speaker 1: about investing the global economy and when they have any
0:51
Speaker 1: spare time, making the world a better place. The theme
0:54
Speaker 1: this year has been driving shared prosperity, and there's been
0:58
Speaker 1: some discussion about how to save enough are happy and
1:00
Speaker 1: secure retirement. Of course, one way a lot of people
1:04
Speaker 1: today are investing in their retirement is by working and
1:07
Speaker 1: earning well past sixty. I met someone here with a
1:11
Speaker 1: non traditional take on that. You'll hear my interview with
1:14
Speaker 1: her in a minute first. One of our Federal Reserve reporters,
1:18
Speaker 1: Matt Bosler, has this story about older workers in the
1:21
Speaker 1: US and what it means for the economy. I was
1:35
Speaker 1: getting a whole six d and eighty two dollars a
1:38
Speaker 1: month on Social Security, and I had bills, and sometimes
1:42
Speaker 1: I had to decide between groceries or medication, and sometimes
1:47
Speaker 1: I had to decide whether grocers were good this week
1:50
Speaker 1: or next week. That's Doris O'Connor. She's sixty eight years
1:56
Speaker 1: old and is part of the growing share of Americans
1:59
Speaker 1: who work well into traditional retirement years. O'Connor is a
2:04
Speaker 1: native of Brooklyn who has lived in Dallas for the
2:06
Speaker 1: past twenty years. Her story is a relatively happy one
2:10
Speaker 1: from an economic perspective. She's well enough to keep working,
2:13
Speaker 1: she finds her job fulfilling, and she's contributing to America's economy,
2:18
Speaker 1: but O'Connor doesn't have enough money to quit. Her situation
2:22
Speaker 1: is far from unique. Retirement insecurity as a position many
2:25
Speaker 1: baby boomers find themselves in that's reshaped the US labor
2:29
Speaker 1: market thanks to a new pool of workers available in
2:32
Speaker 1: an economy that's thirsty for them. At the same time,
2:37
Speaker 1: the more older workers, there are the less opportunity younger
2:40
Speaker 1: employees have to rise through the ranks, and the bigger
2:43
Speaker 1: pool of workers overall means employers have more power to
2:47
Speaker 1: pay lower wages, something that's been a puzzle in this
2:49
Speaker 1: economic expansion. About of Americans over the age of sixty five.
2:56
Speaker 1: We're working or looking for work in March, up from
2:59
Speaker 1: twelve per sent two decades ago. That's more than four
3:02
Speaker 1: million extra people, or more than the entire combined US
3:06
Speaker 1: workforces of Walmart, Amazon, Ups, and Target. For Doris O'Connor,
3:12
Speaker 1: her path back to work wasn't so simple. It was
3:15
Speaker 1: hard because every day, every day you go online and
3:17
Speaker 1: you look for jobs and you try to find something
3:21
Speaker 1: that thinks that you think fits your skill level, and
3:24
Speaker 1: you put in an application online and you never hear anything.
3:29
Speaker 1: And I also had the additional problem that I didn't
3:31
Speaker 1: have any computer skills. So she went to get computer
3:35
Speaker 1: training at the Senior Source, a local nonprofit organization, and
3:39
Speaker 1: they ended up giving her a job. Her title is
3:42
Speaker 1: intake coordinator and she points people who call in for
3:46
Speaker 1: help in the right direction. The increase in working among
3:49
Speaker 1: older adults is happening for many reasons. People are healthier
3:53
Speaker 1: office jobs are less taxing than the manufacturing and farm
3:57
Speaker 1: work of decades past, But a lot of it boils
4:00
Speaker 1: down to not being financially ready to retire. People are
4:06
Speaker 1: living longer, and there's been a major shift in pension
4:09
Speaker 1: plans that moves a lot of the responsibility for saving
4:12
Speaker 1: from the employer to the employee. People aren't that good
4:17
Speaker 1: at planning for their own financial futures. As it turns out,
4:21
Speaker 1: about half of households are at risk of being unable
4:24
Speaker 1: to maintain their lifestyles into retirement. According to research from
4:27
Speaker 1: Boston College, the biggest fear of the older adult is
4:33
Speaker 1: surprisingly not death, it's running out of money. That's Steve Benton.
4:39
Speaker 1: He's a financial counselor at the Elder Financial Safety Center
4:42
Speaker 1: in Dallas, which is part of the Senior Source. He
4:45
Speaker 1: helped introduce us to Doris O'Connor and Uh, they are
4:49
Speaker 1: woefully prepared. These baby boomers are entering the retirement years
4:54
Speaker 1: and don't have enough assets. They didn't plan. As a demographic,
4:59
Speaker 1: they have been known spenders. This is the first generation
5:03
Speaker 1: to ever reach retirement and still have mortgages. Benton talks
5:07
Speaker 1: all the time to aging workers who haven't saved enough
5:10
Speaker 1: for retirement, or who are worried that in a world
5:12
Speaker 1: of high longevity, they'll outlive their retirement stores. Life expectancy
5:18
Speaker 1: in America is just shy of seventy nine years, but
5:21
Speaker 1: that average is dragged down by folks who die in
5:24
Speaker 1: middle age. Americans who live past the age of sixty
5:27
Speaker 1: five can expect to live to eighty four for men
5:31
Speaker 1: or nearly eighty seven for women. One in four sixty
5:35
Speaker 1: five year olds will live past ninety and one in
5:37
Speaker 1: ten past ninety five, based on Social Security Administration data.
5:42
Speaker 1: That's a long time to make retirement savings last, especially
5:45
Speaker 1: in a world where people are falling back on less
5:47
Speaker 1: reliable savings outlets. Alicia Mannell at Boston College has spent
5:53
Speaker 1: years researching the topic. A large swath of the population
5:57
Speaker 1: has a huge financial incentive to keep working, and working
6:02
Speaker 1: longer is really a powerful tool. Sticking around the labor
6:06
Speaker 1: market allows people to delay drawing on their Social Security
6:09
Speaker 1: and four o one case plus, it adds additional years
6:12
Speaker 1: for extra saving. Given that Manala is happy people are
6:16
Speaker 1: working longer, I think it's good news. If I had
6:19
Speaker 1: my way, if I were a queen, I would like
6:21
Speaker 1: to change the conversation in the United States, so that
6:24
Speaker 1: we established seventy as the UH sort of the national
6:29
Speaker 1: retirement age, and there are a couple of reasons for that.
6:32
Speaker 1: That's the age at which you get your highest Social
6:34
Speaker 1: Security benefit, and so it keeps that ratio constant as
6:40
Speaker 1: participation climbs for people in their older working years. It
6:43
Speaker 1: could help to delay when folks draw on their Social Security.
6:47
Speaker 1: That can make a big difference in how long that
6:49
Speaker 1: money lasts. Susan Weinstock showed us just how much using
6:53
Speaker 1: the A A r p S Retirement Calculator. She's vice
6:56
Speaker 1: president for financial Resiliency at the Group in Washington. In
7:01
Speaker 1: so it asks about you your marital status, your age,
7:04
Speaker 1: or salary um. Sometimes the numbers are staggering and can
7:09
Speaker 1: scare people, and we definitely don't want that. So if
7:11
Speaker 1: you plug in the parameters, it shoots out both how
7:14
Speaker 1: much you need to retire and maintain your lifestyle and
7:17
Speaker 1: when you will start running out of money. Say you're
7:23
Speaker 1: a single, sixty year old woman, your income is fifty
7:26
Speaker 1: thou dollars, you save five percent towards retirement each year,
7:30
Speaker 1: and you have two hundred thousand dollars in your four
7:32
Speaker 1: oh one k You'll face a short fall starting at
7:35
Speaker 1: age eighty if you retire at sixty five and want
7:38
Speaker 1: to maintain your lifestyle, But if you work until age seventy,
7:42
Speaker 1: you won't fall short until age eighty nine. Retirement insecurity
7:47
Speaker 1: is a problem that's here to stay, as younger Americans
7:50
Speaker 1: are even more likely to lack enough money to retire,
7:53
Speaker 1: according to Boston College data. That's because of the decline
7:57
Speaker 1: of traditional pension plans, as well as events such as
8:00
Speaker 1: the Great Recession, which forced some homeowners to leave their houses.
8:05
Speaker 1: It's not just the United States. Around the world, people
8:08
Speaker 1: are working longer, and among the G seven economies, the
8:12
Speaker 1: US ranks only behind Japan in labor force participation for
8:16
Speaker 1: ages sixty five and above. If older Americans can find work,
8:21
Speaker 1: it's good for the economy because it makes for more
8:23
Speaker 1: trained and available labor. It's not always an easy transition, though.
8:28
Speaker 1: Like Doris O'Connor, older folks regularly need to build new
8:32
Speaker 1: skills in order to land jobs, and even then they're
8:35
Speaker 1: often taking on lesser roles than they're used to. Here's
8:38
Speaker 1: Steve Benton and Dallas again the jobs that they are
8:42
Speaker 1: used to and having at a certain financial level are
8:45
Speaker 1: not there anymore, and so they are having to take
8:47
Speaker 1: less and in fact it's often, uh, you almost have
8:51
Speaker 1: to dumb down their resumes because people won't hire them.
8:56
Speaker 1: They tend to accept lesser. If you ask folks who
9:04
Speaker 1: have been on the market recently, some employers might need
9:07
Speaker 1: to adjust their mindsets around older employees. Reports of age
9:11
Speaker 1: discrimination abound. Six out of ten older workers have seen
9:15
Speaker 1: or experienced age discrimination in the workplace, and of those
9:20
Speaker 1: say it is common. Based on one a a r
9:22
Speaker 1: P study research backs that up. Study of forty applications
9:29
Speaker 1: for over thirteen thousand jobs in eleven states found evidence
9:33
Speaker 1: of age discrimination older applicants. Those between the ages of
9:38
Speaker 1: sixty four and sixty six were more frequently denied job
9:41
Speaker 1: interviews than middle age applicants. That bias was especially present
9:46
Speaker 1: against older women, something O'Connor is very conscious of. Before
9:50
Speaker 1: I got this job, I had someone tell me that
9:52
Speaker 1: I was just too old and I would not never
9:56
Speaker 1: ever get a job, that I should just give up.
9:59
Speaker 1: And I think that's what's happening to some of my friends.
10:02
Speaker 1: O'Connor says she's thankful that she managed to get her
10:05
Speaker 1: current role. She makes thirty nine dollars a year, and
10:08
Speaker 1: that's helping her to pay off eight dollars in student
10:11
Speaker 1: loans from her bachelor's and master's degree, which she went
10:14
Speaker 1: back to get in two thousand five. She started a
10:17
Speaker 1: savings account, and she's even able to afford the occasional
10:21
Speaker 1: extra like a bottle of wine or some meat. Now,
10:25
Speaker 1: she hopes that the conversation around hiring older workers changes.
10:29
Speaker 1: Everything is about people needing medical help or medical aids,
10:34
Speaker 1: and you know, it seems to sound like older people
10:38
Speaker 1: aren't fit. We have lots of experience, we have lots
10:42
Speaker 1: of wisdom, we have lots of help to give. I'm
10:46
Speaker 1: Matthew Bosler with Bloomberg News in New York. Now I
11:02
Speaker 1: came across the speaker here at the Milk and Conference
11:04
Speaker 1: who spent much of her academic life thinking and writing
11:07
Speaker 1: about these issues, Professor Teresa Gilla Ducci, professor of economics
11:11
Speaker 1: of the New School for Social Research in New York.
11:14
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to say I was able to pull her
11:15
Speaker 1: into an empty meeting room to chat. Here's our interview.
11:25
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for doing this. Now, we heard
11:28
Speaker 1: quite a lot in that piece about the human side
11:31
Speaker 1: of this trend of people working later in life, and
11:35
Speaker 1: it was quite a positive story by and large that
11:37
Speaker 1: we heard. But I guess we should also be thinking
11:39
Speaker 1: about what it means for the economy and society as
11:43
Speaker 1: a whole. Is there anything that we should worry about
11:46
Speaker 1: in this trend um. There's a big chunk of the
11:50
Speaker 1: American population who are over sixty five, and that's a
11:54
Speaker 1: growing chunk of people who don't have enough income to
11:59
Speaker 1: retire and they have to keep on working. And since
12:02
Speaker 1: that group is going to grow in the tens of millions,
12:06
Speaker 1: I am focusing on that group. These are the people
12:09
Speaker 1: who have to work for money. Their fallback position is
12:13
Speaker 1: basically poverty, and therefore the employer can tell them take
12:18
Speaker 1: it or leave it. They are working on the employer's terms,
12:22
Speaker 1: not their own terms. And this means much more inequality
12:25
Speaker 1: in America in a way that is felt. But it's
12:30
Speaker 1: harder to measure than wealth, the income inequality. I mean,
12:33
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things they're worth thinking about. I
12:36
Speaker 1: guess one thing I'm struck by, you know, as an economist,
12:39
Speaker 1: and when I was first learning economics, the thing that
12:42
Speaker 1: came across again and again as is the closest thing
12:44
Speaker 1: to a free lunch in policy terms was raising the
12:47
Speaker 1: retirement age. It always made sense. It made the pension
12:50
Speaker 1: system more affordable. You figured it was probably kind of
12:54
Speaker 1: good for people to work longer, and it all, you know,
12:57
Speaker 1: it makes sure that reduced the amount out of time
13:00
Speaker 1: that people were going to be reliant on their pension income.
13:03
Speaker 1: But the worry I always had was you're treating a
13:08
Speaker 1: lot of very different people the same, and when you're
13:10
Speaker 1: sixty five or sixty you could be very different because
13:14
Speaker 1: you could have had a very different work pattern of work.
13:17
Speaker 1: So you can have and if you look at the numbers,
13:19
Speaker 1: I know you have a lot of people who have
13:22
Speaker 1: been working since they were eighteen, working in physical labor,
13:26
Speaker 1: don't get anything like the sixty. They might have dropped
13:29
Speaker 1: out by the labor force by fifty. In the UK certainly,
13:31
Speaker 1: and in the US that happens. Does that affect how
13:34
Speaker 1: we think about formally changing the retirement age, even though
13:39
Speaker 1: we encourage people to stay as long as they want to.
13:43
Speaker 1: I really like the idea that went On the surface,
13:46
Speaker 1: it sounds like a free lunch. Everybody can just work
13:48
Speaker 1: a little bit longer. I hear this from my colleagues
13:51
Speaker 1: to say, it's a plus plus for everybody to work
13:54
Speaker 1: longer um. And they want to raise the retirement age
13:58
Speaker 1: to seventy, which that people aren't guaranteed good jobs into
14:02
Speaker 1: their seventy It means that retirement benefits are cut at
14:06
Speaker 1: sixty two and sixty three and so forth. So what
14:09
Speaker 1: happens if you cut benefits for people who retire before
14:12
Speaker 1: seventy You create inequality in the United States that we
14:16
Speaker 1: never had before. What our system had done up until
14:20
Speaker 1: now has let the rich and the poor, the blue collar,
14:25
Speaker 1: pink collar, light blue collar, and white collar really have
14:28
Speaker 1: the same amount of retirement time. They educated work longer,
14:32
Speaker 1: but they started their work life, you know later. We
14:35
Speaker 1: don't count graduate school as work. Really it's it's it's effort,
14:39
Speaker 1: it's um involvement. But it's not the same as having
14:42
Speaker 1: started work when you're eighteen. And therefore about everybody had
14:47
Speaker 1: about fifteen to sixteen years of retirement time. But if
14:52
Speaker 1: you're going to cut benefits, then people who are die
14:55
Speaker 1: sooner are going to have to work longer, and you're
14:58
Speaker 1: telling them you at twelve years thirteen years, where people
15:03
Speaker 1: who have better educations do like their jobs work a
15:07
Speaker 1: little bit longer, live a lot longer. Life expectancy in
15:12
Speaker 1: the United States on average has gone up, but it's
15:15
Speaker 1: only gone up for people above the meeting income. So
15:19
Speaker 1: the top half of Americans have gotten all the longevity gains,
15:23
Speaker 1: just like the top half of all Americans got all
15:27
Speaker 1: of the wage increases. So that's just building in more
15:30
Speaker 1: inequality in terms of retirement time and satisfaction at the
15:34
Speaker 1: end of our lives um in America, and we didn't
15:37
Speaker 1: celebrate the equality that we had achieved before. So so
15:41
Speaker 1: there's definitely lots of different size to this. You know,
15:44
Speaker 1: that's there's there's some positive aspects, but also we worry
15:47
Speaker 1: about the longer term entrenching some of these inequalities. What
15:54
Speaker 1: does that mean for policy? I mean, how should governments
15:56
Speaker 1: be thinking about it? Because it's certainly true that you know,
15:59
Speaker 1: they are still all getting it around the world, getting
16:01
Speaker 1: advised to raise their retirement age. I mean in Europe
16:04
Speaker 1: that's usually like number one on the list when you
16:06
Speaker 1: say how are you going to fix Europe? You know
16:07
Speaker 1: a lot of countries it's often about raising the retirement age.
16:11
Speaker 1: How should we think about it? Well, first of all,
16:14
Speaker 1: let's look at UM the G seven the rich large
16:18
Speaker 1: countries in Europe and in Japan and the United States.
16:22
Speaker 1: UM longevity for people in the United States is the shortest,
16:26
Speaker 1: so people who reach sixty five and the G seven,
16:30
Speaker 1: the Americans live the shortest. Look at the retirement age,
16:34
Speaker 1: it's actually the Americans and the Japanese who work a
16:37
Speaker 1: lot longer. So it did make sense for the Italian
16:41
Speaker 1: to UM martial their policies to make sure that the
16:45
Speaker 1: labor market was open to Italians who wanted to work
16:48
Speaker 1: past the age of fifty five. That makes perfect sense,
16:51
Speaker 1: but that broad brush does not work for the United States.
16:56
Speaker 1: To have United States workers work even longer would mean
17:00
Speaker 1: that they're working more hours per week, more weeks per year,
17:05
Speaker 1: and more years per lifetime than most other countries, especially
17:10
Speaker 1: rich countries, were really are outliers. It also doesn't make
17:14
Speaker 1: sense for the economy to force older people UM to
17:18
Speaker 1: work longer without an enormous effort for training, UM and
17:23
Speaker 1: for and and to eliminate age discrimination, because what we're
17:27
Speaker 1: doing in the United States is asking ten thousand people
17:31
Speaker 1: who reach sixty every day to stay in the labor
17:34
Speaker 1: market UM when they don't have a good fallback position.
17:39
Speaker 1: So we are asking um older people to go to
17:43
Speaker 1: Amazon warehouses, to go behind the counters of drug stores,
17:47
Speaker 1: of CBS, to wipe tables at McDonald's um without protection.
17:52
Speaker 1: That is actually a big enough number, with ten thousand
17:57
Speaker 1: a day to affect the entire labor market. So our
18:00
Speaker 1: biggest occupation, no growth is happening probably in the UK too,
18:05
Speaker 1: and personal care and hope health care. And you have
18:08
Speaker 1: two kinds of people working in that job. You have
18:11
Speaker 1: minority younger women who are mothers, and you have older
18:15
Speaker 1: white women. It's all it's older women increasingly taking care
18:19
Speaker 1: of even older women. Those are the worst jobs available
18:23
Speaker 1: that it's back breaking work. It there is evidence that
18:28
Speaker 1: work for people over sixty five of certain occupations actually
18:33
Speaker 1: brings on morbidity and foreshortens their life. So it isn't
18:38
Speaker 1: that's really the dark side. And these are the costs
18:42
Speaker 1: um and unattended consequences of this cheery policy for people
18:47
Speaker 1: to work longer. In terms of policy, we need to
18:50
Speaker 1: make sure that everybody reaches sixty two sixty five, after
18:54
Speaker 1: forty five years of of a work life, with enough
18:58
Speaker 1: money to walk away from a job if they want to.
19:01
Speaker 1: And we have to protect every adult in a civilized
19:04
Speaker 1: society a job if they wanted Asia, discrimination should be
19:08
Speaker 1: illegal and effectively a non existent everywhere. Um. But having
19:14
Speaker 1: an affirmative policy to make work attractive to older workers
19:19
Speaker 1: is very different than the policies we have in America,
19:22
Speaker 1: which is basically forcing people to work or else they'll
19:25
Speaker 1: be poor. I guess one final point is you've mentioned
19:29
Speaker 1: it implicitly, but if we're going to have people around
19:32
Speaker 1: the world potentially working longer for a mixture of reasons,
19:36
Speaker 1: it maybe I think in the in the US, maybe
19:39
Speaker 1: some of the disproportionate amount of the growth is coming
19:42
Speaker 1: in these more worrying segments that you've talked about. But
19:45
Speaker 1: it's also true around the world that there's plenty of
19:49
Speaker 1: quote unquote is kind of good late work happening. Do
19:52
Speaker 1: we think in general that's going to have an impact
19:55
Speaker 1: on productivity growth? Because that's obviously the worry when we
19:57
Speaker 1: already have quite low productivity growth, You know, should we
20:00
Speaker 1: expect demographics to keep productivity low? Um, you're an economist,
20:05
Speaker 1: and um, and I think everyone can intuitively understand the
20:08
Speaker 1: economic lessons. If employers can get workers cheap, there is
20:13
Speaker 1: no incentive for an employers to improve productivity, to improve
20:18
Speaker 1: the way they do things, to add more UM and
20:20
Speaker 1: better machines to the worker. You don't add any more capital.
20:24
Speaker 1: If you can get a lot of workers cheap, then
20:26
Speaker 1: productivity UM is going to drop. So I'm afraid that
20:30
Speaker 1: if you just have lots of people who would rather
20:33
Speaker 1: not work still have to work, that that will lower
20:37
Speaker 1: average productivity. Employers have to be in a situation where
20:41
Speaker 1: they have to draw people into their jobs to make
20:43
Speaker 1: it attractive, and that's often um higher pay and probably
20:49
Speaker 1: a lot more productivity. So I see this big push
20:52
Speaker 1: for huge increases in labor supply to be productivity diminishing,
20:57
Speaker 1: not enhancing. Professor going to thank you very much. It's
21:00
Speaker 1: a it's a definitely a different kind of take and
21:03
Speaker 1: a slightly more mix take on this phenomenon we see
21:08
Speaker 1: everywhere of older people working. Thank you very much. Finally,
21:19
Speaker 1: because I'm in l A, of course, I have to
21:21
Speaker 1: talk about the movies. Now, twenty years ago, it took
21:24
Speaker 1: the film Titanic more than three months to become the
21:27
Speaker 1: first film to take one billion dollars at the box
21:30
Speaker 1: office worldwide. Now, billion dollar global blockbusters are to a
21:34
Speaker 1: penny almost and the final episode of the Disney owned
21:37
Speaker 1: Marvel Avengers series. Endgame has already taken more than a
21:41
Speaker 1: billion after just one record breaking opening weekend. I can't
21:45
Speaker 1: help thinking this tells us something about the world today,
21:48
Speaker 1: other than the fact that we all like a good superhero.
21:51
Speaker 1: I took a break from Milkin to go to the
21:53
Speaker 1: Bloomberg l A Bureau to get more from our entertainment
21:56
Speaker 1: reporter Anusia SAKUI now Inusia, for the four people left
22:00
Speaker 1: in the world who don't already know about it, just
22:02
Speaker 1: talked me through those record breaking numbers for Avengers Endgame. Well,
22:07
Speaker 1: there are so many stuffing. I mean, it's broken a
22:10
Speaker 1: huge raft of records. It's the fastest to a billion dollars,
22:15
Speaker 1: it's the biggest opening weekend domestically and globally. It's really
22:21
Speaker 1: ready the tenth highest grossing globally of all time, and
22:25
Speaker 1: just after six days globally already it's earned something like
22:28
Speaker 1: one point through billion dollars, which is you know what
22:31
Speaker 1: you'd hope after a long run, even for a very
22:34
Speaker 1: successful film. So that gives you an idea. Even just
22:38
Speaker 1: after the first weekend, we haven't even got into the
22:40
Speaker 1: second weekend, and I see it had a pretty healthy
22:42
Speaker 1: effect on the Disney share price as well. But what
22:45
Speaker 1: does it tell us about the industry that the numbers
22:48
Speaker 1: now can get so big so quickly. I feel like
22:52
Speaker 1: it's a combination of two factors. One is a trend
22:57
Speaker 1: of globalization in the movies, which is droven mainly by
23:01
Speaker 1: the opening of China. Over the past you know, decade
23:04
Speaker 1: or more, um, your Hollywood studios have been able to
23:07
Speaker 1: import their films into China with restrictions, you know, and
23:11
Speaker 1: with the current talks between the US and China, there
23:13
Speaker 1: is hope that that might open up even further. So
23:17
Speaker 1: China is the second biggest movie market globally and is expected,
23:22
Speaker 1: has been expected for a little while, to overtake the
23:24
Speaker 1: US at some point. M So that's a really important
23:28
Speaker 1: driver in terms of the numbers. The other thing is
23:31
Speaker 1: a trend in content where we've seen the strategy of
23:36
Speaker 1: studios shift from one where you'd have what Warner Brothers
23:41
Speaker 1: still does now, which is says do something like, you know,
23:44
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty movies a year, which can vary in
23:46
Speaker 1: size from the big blockbuster that might cost a couple
23:49
Speaker 1: of hundred million dollars two smaller films you know, maybe
23:53
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars and cater to a range of audiences.
23:56
Speaker 1: Disney has become the far and away massive leader in
24:01
Speaker 1: this industry by focusing on known branded content, if you like,
24:07
Speaker 1: known intellectual property Marvel, Star Wars, pixar Um, and its
24:13
Speaker 1: own classics to release maybe ten films a year, and
24:17
Speaker 1: each of those are just very big. So they do
24:18
Speaker 1: a smaller number of very big bets and they've cornered
24:21
Speaker 1: the market. I mean, they have something like you know
24:25
Speaker 1: of the box office, and that's before they bought twentieth
24:27
Speaker 1: Century Fox last year. I mean from thinking about it
24:30
Speaker 1: as an economist, and actually some of the things we've
24:32
Speaker 1: talked about already on Stephonomics is the nature of globalization
24:37
Speaker 1: and what it does to the corporate sector, the nature
24:40
Speaker 1: of companies, but also what it does to distribution of
24:43
Speaker 1: incomes worldwide. I mean, just on the company side, the
24:47
Speaker 1: fact that we now have a world and I guess
24:49
Speaker 1: technology has been part of this, but technology combined with
24:52
Speaker 1: globalization produces these companies that are just bigger and more
24:56
Speaker 1: globally dominant than any we've had in history. And you know,
25:00
Speaker 1: we see that play out with this film and just
25:03
Speaker 1: the numbers that you described with Disney. I mean, it
25:05
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible, a new suspect um fifty years ago,
25:09
Speaker 1: for a single company to have that kind of dominance worldwide. Well, no,
25:12
Speaker 1: and what's happening is that there is consolidation in Hollywood
25:16
Speaker 1: driven by a number of factors, you know, streaming, and
25:19
Speaker 1: that technology has meant that people now can stay home
25:22
Speaker 1: and have an equally riveting time at the movies. Another
25:26
Speaker 1: thing that's happened is rising ticket prices. Theaters are charging
25:30
Speaker 1: more for supposedly a better experience, um, you know, reclining
25:35
Speaker 1: seats and bigger screens. That's that's how they're managing to,
25:39
Speaker 1: especially in the US, get to record breaking box office
25:43
Speaker 1: figures that they have done in the past couple of years.
25:46
Speaker 1: Because actually attendance has been stagnating in the US. It's
25:49
Speaker 1: only in China and in the Asia region where we're
25:52
Speaker 1: seeing growth in movie going. Thank you very much, my pleasure.
26:08
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Stephanomics. Come back next week for
26:11
Speaker 1: more on the ground insights into the global economy. In
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Speaker 1: more listeners. For more news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics,
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26:30
Speaker 1: me on at my Stephanomics. The story in this episode
26:34
Speaker 1: was reported by Genus Malik and narrated by Matthew Bosler.
26:38
Speaker 1: Was produced by Magnus Hendrickson and edited by Scott Lamman,
26:41
Speaker 1: who is also the executive producer of Stephanomics. Special thanks
26:46
Speaker 1: this week to Professor Teresa Gilla Ducci and the Nusha Sekuli.
26:50
Speaker 1: Francesca Levy is the head of Bloomberg Podcast