Economy is Public Health - Do We Care About People or Numbers?

The DOW is up! Over 50,000! More jobs added! GDP rising! What do these numbers mean anyway? Are they missing context? (yes) And do they matter at the end of the day? 

SO SORRY FOR THE AUDIO ISSUES T__T - MJ

-o-
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello listeners, EditingMJ here. Unfortunately, my audio file for this episode was fully screwed up. I'm not sure why. My best guess is that my recording software, for whatever reason, decided to use my webcam mic instead of my actual mic for my audio. So my sincerest apologies. I try to rescue this as best I can. Hopefully, it's not too bad. I really like the topic and the discussion of this episode, and I hope you do as well. As always, thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome back to Everything's Public Health. I'm MJ.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

And I'm Cass.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

I don't know how in touch you are with the current events. Maybe you have heard of this. Have you heard of the March for Billionaires cast?

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Do I know exactly what it was? No, but because I have friends who live on the West Coast, I got some like funny kind of tangential comments. Like it was just this past weekend, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah, it was very recent at the time of recording. What do you know about it? Uh besides the memes.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Well, I think the memes were actually pretty informative. People in California who have a crap ton of money are mad that people think some of that money should go to help pay for things and, you know, services, because despite what billionaires might claim, they didn't make their billions all by themselves. They benefited from roads and the power grid and all of the things we've talked about before. And so a group of people marched somewhere in California, like, and not a lot of people, I don't think. Like, I think there were more counter-marchers than there were actual marchers. But basically, they were like, we don't want to pay taxes. Meh, meh, meh.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

You're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

And I also will just say, like, that was entirely from the memes.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

It's accurate. Maybe some of the details. I've heard 20 people showed up, but maybe it's a little bit more than that. I've heard it wasn't San Francisco, but obviously I'll fact check this in post. When I heard about the March for Billionaires, I genuinely thought it was an onion stunt. Because it sounds like an onion stunt. I could see that.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

And then when I found out that it was not satire, I was both immediately joyous and horrified at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Why joyous? Why? Because it like was good fodder for an episode?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Because it's gonna be a circus. And it was a circus. The amount of counter protesters that showed up was what made it newsworthy. Because if it was just them, they would not have made even remotely the local news because it was literally a very small group of people who are not billionaires themselves, but are advocating for billionaires, which is mind-boggling.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Oh, see, that was a part that I did not get from the memes. I thought the billionaires were there marching, but it makes zero sense that they would show up and march. They would just call their politician friends and be like, hey, don't pass this.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah, they could just buy the election, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:44

It like fills me with such joy that there were people who are not billionaires who were advocating that the billionaires shouldn't have to pay their fair share. What a special mindset to have.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

So this episode is a two-parter. One is inspired by the billionaire march, the other is a tangential follow-up to the gambling addiction episode that we did a while back. Do you still remember that one?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Yes, I do remember that one. We talked a lot about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Super cool, by the way. Congratulations, Seahawks. Screw the Patriots and sorry not sorry.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yes, and speaking of sport betting, I did win some dollars on the Seahawks win because in February of 2025, I was certain the Seahawks would win the Super Bowl, and I bet five dollars in February of 2025. And look, here we are now, a year later, on a couple hundred bucks.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Please gamble responsibly, of course. But congratulations to Cass on these uh Super Bowl predictions. So we're talking about the economy today. First, we have to do the obligatory question. Why is the economy public health? This should be a pretty easy one.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Yeah, and hopefully it's pretty obvious to folks, but whether people can afford to do any of their necessary parts of life are obviously related to the economy, including inflation and pricing and ability to have savings, the kinds of jobs that are available. You know, when the economy is doing better, generally people's health and well-being improves. And when it's doing worse, you know, we see worse things happening. So yeah, the economy is tied really closely with public health.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Because we live in a society where money are exchanged for goods and services. So that's why the economy matters. We're here to address the economy in two ways. Part one. What is the economy anyway? This, like many episodes, was inspired by recent events. In an effort to deflect public scrutiny on various egregious acts by the current administration, several members of the current administration are touting great economic numbers in January. Uh 130,000 jobs added in January, GDP growth, lower unemployment rate, the DAO is up to 50,000 points. But what does that all mean? Let's put some context on these numbers.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Sure, here we go. 130,000 jobs added. Great. More than 60% of those are in healthcare, 42,000 in social assistance jobs, and a 33,000 increase in construction. However, this is a net gain. There is a 34,000 loss in government jobs and 22,000 loss in financial jobs. So sure, we added some jobs, but we also lost some very important jobs uh in our country.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Also, 60% of it being in healthcare. Maybe it's because our public health is failing and more because it's just a theory.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Absolutely. We are moving away from preemptive vaccination and more people are getting sick from vaccine-preventable diseases and then gonna have more demand for healthcare services. Gross domestic product, GDP, that's the total value of everything a country produces in goods and services over a set period. It's often divided by population, so GDP per capita. It's a crude measure of an economy, as it does not account for what types of goods and services are being produced, nor who is producing them. So, in other words, the GDP does not distinguish between the 10 biggest companies making a bunch of money and a bunch of small businesses thriving. And as we continue to see the richest of the rich people continue to make more and more and more money. So great GDP growth, but where is that growth occurring? Not where we might otherwise want it to be. Unemployment rate, this is another crude measure of the people working or looking for work. So the labor force is the denominator. How many of them are not employed in any way? It does not say anything about the type of employment people have or if they're able to make ends meet. It's a useful measure, but it's not necessarily sufficient. It also does not account for people who have given up looking for jobs because there is nothing available. So it's again, it's a pretty crude measure at times. The Dow is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the stock market index of 30 companies determined by stock prices rather than the size of the company like the S P 500. And it's another very crude measure. Yes, it's going up, but as we were just saying, it's the stock prices of 30 companies and they're making more money, their stock is worth more money, that's great. But what does that trickle down to other folks? Debatable.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

So one of my biggest gripes with some of the Econ Bros, how they look at these macro numbers and they make judgment on how we as a country are doing. And from a public health perspective, at the end of the day, what matters is people. Like, how are the people doing? This requires putting these large numbers in context and using other measures to complete the picture. This is a core concept of science and stats in general. Putting numbers in context with each other. Like a lot of times we will just take, like, oh, the DAO is doing so great, as if that somehow says anything about the rest of the world or the economy.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Also, I think when you're just looking at these macro numbers, you need to be thinking about what are the values of a society of a country. So there could be this kind of growth both in GDP and employment and low rates of unemployment in another country. And you could see people doing much, much better. Think of Scandinavian countries, for example, where they care about the collective good, not sort of individual gains. So I think our metrics that folks are touting as a distraction from some other things are being used strategically to talk about how well we may or may not be doing, but it's not everybody doing well. It's the teeny tiny folks, group of folks at the top who are continuing to make a cubicload of money while there are lots of people who can't pay rent or buy food or get their prescriptions filled or pay for electricity or any of those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

One of the most egregious things to me is using the Dow as an indicator because the DAO is 30 companies. That's it. And when people say, well, the Dow is up, I'm always like, what does that have to do with anything else? Also, with regards to unemployment rate, I want to pick your brain about this. Do you think the rise of gig work make that number less valuable? Because if you're even employed part-time, you're not considered unemployed.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Yeah, I think that has definitely skewed things. And there's been a lot of talk about the implications of the shift towards a gig economy. Sure, there's a lot of flexibility, right? And people can work when may be convenient for them. But also, is having to do 10 gig jobs to have a living wage, you know, really the kind of employment that we might want for the health and well-being of folks. So I do think that even working a little bit pulls you out of the unemployment market and I think is likely to skew the numbers.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Anyway, so that's put these numbers that the current administration is using as a distraction into context because at the end of the day, what matters is people and not like abstract, oh, you can't grow numbers.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Yeah, so a few important things to keep in mind. The current administration has retroactively revised economics multiple times. Uh just a few months ago, they admitted that the number of jobs created in 2025, so last year, is far lower than previously reported and an order of magnitude less than in 2024. So some of these numbers about the success of the economy we need to take with a grain of salt. In addition, some experts have raised eyebrows regarding these new numbers. Hiring trends in general are still sluggish. The private sector posted far fewer jobs than projected, and several high-profile mass layoffs have occurred in the last month as well. The uninsurance rate increased in 2025, and I'm sure it will increase in 2026 as health insurance has just skyrocketed because of some of the issues with the Affordable Care Act provisions. Rent prices continue to increase with really no comparable increase in real wages. Poverty rate slightly increased in 2025 compared to 2024 because of inflation and all these things. And groceries, guess what, are still expensive and getting more expensive.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

So putting all that context is really important because, again, what does the GDP mean to you and I? What does the Dow mean to you and I? I don't work at Apple or one of the 30 companies that comprises the Dow.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

I certainly don't own stock in any of them.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Tears. And I hope it's obvious why this is a public health concern. Financial status is directly correlated with health effects because healthcare access costs money, food costs money, health in general costs money, unfortunately. To improve public health, one aspect has to be alleviating financial difficulties people face. Speaking of which, there are other economic numbers that may give more insight into how we're doing financially.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah. Really quick tangent because you were just talking about all these things that cost money. I was just watching an episode of a show, doesn't matter which show. The context was there was this company, and the guy who owned the company was hacking all of these different life skills, whatever strategies, different health things to try to live forever, try to live as long as possible. And he had this commercial about, oh, my products will help you live longer and blah, blah, blah, and whatever. Like, just look at me. Like, I use these products. And one of the people was like, I mean, if I was a millionaire and had your time and money, yeah, I could be that healthy also. Like, it's just the expectation that, oh, if you just do this one thing, you can be as healthy as these other people who have gajillions of dollars is um laughable. Anyway, some other numbers that we'll talk about that give us a little bit more context. The delinquency rate on single family residential mortgages increased from 2024. Credit card debt in 2025, a new record number of Americans are making only minimum payments on their credit card or less, so around 11%. And this is not accounting for people who are not paying off the entire card regularly. Auto loan debt, around 30% of Americans have auto loan debt. The total auto loan debt is a record high in 2024, on par with student loan debt. And the average auto loan debt is increasing as well as rates of delinquency. I will say I paid off my car early, and I'm so excited for the first time in a long time that I haven't had a car payment. And I was like, ooh, maybe my car's a little bit older. Like maybe I'll get I was like, nope, no, nope, nope. I'm really enjoying not having a car payment right now.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah. The anti-car person on the show just at this add an add a few points. When you're designed as a society where it's very difficult for people to move around without a car, a car becomes one of those things that's like a very expensive necessity. And we see that in the auto loan debt increasing. Like, I mean, I will say a part of this is probably people are just wanting to buy nice, nicer and fancy cars. That's always going to be a part of why this debt is increasing. But I could totally see that a part of why this is increasing is also people need to get places and they need a car.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

And their wages are not increasing, and the cars are becoming more expensive.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah, so they have to take out a loan. Should we just do a quick personal finance thing about the credit card? Sure. You really need to pay down as much as you can every month because the interest rate is what really gets people. Yeah. I think financial literacy is also somewhat of a problem in this country.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Absolutely. And they make it some of the ways that these are set up, it sounds a lot better than it actually is when you get the card.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

So anyway, we talked about these things because debt is a very good indicator for how people are doing in general. Debt does not always mean reckless spending. Obviously, some people are in debt because they're reckless. Those people always exist. But some people go into credit card debt because that is how they afford groceries and pay their bills. An overall increase in debt could mean more people are having difficulties meeting basic needs.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Absolutely. And we I mentioned student loan debt earlier. Like one thing that just continues to infuriate me is okay, I took out loans to pay for school. Great. I have no problem paying back the money that I borrowed and maybe some small service fee, right? Like obviously it takes money to facilitate the loans, et cetera, et cetera. But the loans that I had, the federal government, and this was like well before COVID. I was, this is 12, 13 years ago. They were charging me 9% interest on my student loans to pay them back, like plus all the interest I had accrued while I was in school. And I'm like, why do you need to make money off of me? Like, I'm now paying taxes. I'm like contributing to society in so many other ways. That's one of those things where, as a young college student, sure, this sounds like a great idea. I'll pay this money back that I've borrowed after I'm done with school. Didn't know I was going to go to school for as long as I did, which maybe it was part of the problem. But you know, it's like we've created a situation where if you do want to go to college, often you have to take out loans, but then paying them back becomes this immense burden because of the money that the government is then making off of you in addition to all the taxes you pay with your fancy new job. So anyway, that's my soapbox. I'm gonna get off of it now.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

100% agree. I think a loan for education should be seen as a societal investment. And yes, obviously you can't charge no interest because of inflation. So yeah, charge, charge some interest to cover that and charge some interest to cover service fee. But at the end of the day, it should be seen as I'm investing in you as a citizen to be more productive in the future. Why are you a loan shark about this? Exactly. I'm paying taxes now. I'm in a higher income bracket because of this education, right? You should see that as a win. Anyway, that's my soapbox. Yep. Just keep that in mind when they bring up like these macro numbers. They are very, very crude measures of the economy, and they don't actually tell us how the average person is doing. The second part of this episode about the economy is inspired by a worrying trend. Remember how sports betting and gambling was on the rise? Well, it has breach containment. We are seeing the gambling behavior outside of sports at the online casinos. Have you heard of prediction market cast?

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Literally was just having this conversation on Monday after the Super Bowl, having conversations with people about all of the idiotic things that people were betting on during the Super Bowl. Like, are they gonna show a grown man crying during the national anthem? What is Bad Bunny's first song? What's gonna happen with blah, blah, blah? Like, not about the game, but like just these totally random things. And this, this like bothers me so deeply. Like, how many things that you can bet on now?

SPEAKER_01 16:58

And it's a problem.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

There are people who can bet and they can bet responsibly. They set a budget and they do it. The number of people I saw posting on social media in the lead up to the Super Bowl, I just bet my life savings on you know the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl, which I was like, yay, go Seahawks, but like why would you bet all of your money on that? That's terrifying. So, like, that's alarming enough. But then to have people betting these large sums of money on these things that are just like so entirely bonkers, like it hurts my head to think about it.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Unfortunately, I'm gonna hurt your brain a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

No.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

It's an increasing trend, and it's gone completely outside of sports because they found a loophole to justify this. And also, the current administration is not really cracking down on these things. It's basically gambling, except on non-sports outcome. You're now gambling on real-world outcome. You can now bet on everything, even things as mundane as well, Mr. Beast released a new video this week. That is a thing that you can bet on in one of these prediction market platforms. This worrying trend shares all the same concerns that we laid out in the gambling episode. So please listen to that if you want all the details. There is an explosion of betting on these prediction markets, as well as increasing number of people doing day trading, which, in my opinion, is betting on the stocks market, another form of outcomes gambling. And it's worrying, I guess, to say the least. Let's talk about why it's worrying.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

Yeah, I mean, well, the most perhaps top-line piece is that statistics show on average people lose money on these prediction markets. In just one of the prediction market platforms, they boast a trading volume of$2.5 billion a month, billion with a B. Only about 1% of unique wallets have positive revenue. Everyone else, on average, has lost money. I mean, hello, it's gambling, right? Like if you break even, you're lucky, right? Like maybe you'll win big, but the whole point is like don't lose too much. There are several high profile cases of quote unquote insider trading or market manipulation being documented on these prediction market bets. Since many of the outcomes are in the real world, the outcome has the potential to be affected. I was talking about the Super Bowl halftime show and Bad Bunny, right? There was what's this first song gonna be? But like there are lots of people who know that. There are dancers and producers and all that, like that information can leak out, and then you can get insider trading. Regarding day trading, only 1% of all day traders make consistent positive returns. And as a reminder, you're not playing against another person, you're playing against everyone else. So it's not one-on-one, it's one versus everybody. And the math on average says, you're gonna lose your money.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

And I will echo the point that I made in the gambling episode, which is it is not in the bookkeepers, or in this case, the prediction market, for someone to consistently make money. Like their entire operation is founded on average people losing money because that's how they make money. If you found a way to beat the system, chances are you might get banned because they will flag your account for like suspicious activities or something. Very concerning. I don't want to sound like gambling is a sin, right? I don't want to do that because I get it, but also come on, people, there's a line. I don't know where that line is, but we've crossed it.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

I mean, I I think this comes back to like there are a lot of really great things that we can do now for the good of society and individuals with the expansion of the internet and digital access on phones and all these kinds of things. But all of that also means there's lots of really things that we can do, like betting on everything all the time, which reminds me of another episode of a show where somebody went to an alternative universe and everybody had their phones all the time and they were constantly like raiding the interactions they had with people. If you were rude, then like you would drop down or whatever. Because they had no idea they'd never been there before. Everybody took all their points away and they were being chased around and they were gonna get murdered or whatever. But like I worry, honestly, that either AI is gonna murder us all because now they have their own chat platform that we just found out about where they're all talking about eliminating the human race, or you know, we're gonna be um downvoting everyone so much that we're gonna, it's just gonna be a terrible society. So all right, I'm gonna stop talking about that now.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Anyway, the ultimate message that I want to end on is this the reason why the economy is important is because the economy is people and ultimately we care about people.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

We care about people.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

That's what public health is.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

People are public health. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Yes. Micro goods time. Uh, I don't know how we can come back from this, but uh, I'd say uh my microgood is try not to use these prediction market platforms. There are other safer ways, the more responsible ways to enjoy the thrill of gambling without using these platforms. Um, we don't even touch on what their CEO said and the stuff going behind the scenes. Like there's a lot of really problematic things. I don't think anyone should be on these platforms. So that's my micro good. What about you?

SPEAKER_02 21:49

So I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I do micro lending. There's a platform that I use where I can loan people between five and you know how. However much, but usually on average, like a$25 loan that helps somebody buy supplies for their store or to buy food for their livestock or whatever it is. And then they pay it back, you know, a dollar or something at a time over a few months. There's no interest or anything. And so they just pay back exactly what they borrow. The money comes back to me, and then I can loan it back to somebody else. And it's just a really great way to take a small amount of money and feel like I'm helping a ton of people. I think I've made like a hundred loans with just a few hundred dollars because I just keep loaning the money over and over again. So that's a nice micro good. Do some micro lending.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Obviously, donation is also good. Donate to mutual aid funds, especially to places affected by the current ice rates. Keep contacting your reps. It does make a difference. I know that sometimes social media makes it seem like you're absolutely powerless. No, we're seeing some reps crack under pressure. It does matter. So keep contacting them, email them, call them. You will never talk to a real human being. It's always a machine. So don't have to worry about people-to-people interactions. Keep putting pressure on them. It does matter. You have to believe that it matters. You know, one must imagine Sysophist happy.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

It does matter. I mean, I talk with policymakers and their staff all the time, and they talk about the number of calls that they get on a particular issue. And they're aware that for every phone call, there are many more constituents who feel exactly the same way. So the more phone calls they get, then the more likely they are to move in a particular direction. So it definitely matters. Whatever you care about, reach out to your electeds at all levels to let them know.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Thank you for listening to Everything is Public Health. New episodes every other week. If you like the show, please tell everyone you know about the show. That helps us immensely. Commenting, subscribing, and leaving us a review helps us out a bunch as well.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

If you have any questions or think we missed an important perspective, you can reach out to us at everythingispublichealth at gmail.com. Follow our website, everything is public health.com for all show updates and bonus material. And remember, everything is public health.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Everything is public health.