What sectors will 40-60 year-olds retrain for when they lose their jobs? Tech is notorious for age discrimination and neatly avoid that by outsourcing. Governments also outsource their IT to US subsidiaries of international or re-domiciled firms like CMG, Infosys, or Accenture in order to avoid long-term pension obligations and these older IT workers end up training their replacements until their employment is terminated. What sectors will these older IT ("knowledge") workers retrain for?

Thanks to Mark and Megan for an interesting discussion. All major shocks should create power shifts and since the 2008 only strengthened the existing, by and large, it would be good to explore the relative power concentrations that will influence policy required to rebuild economies.

The problem with betting on healthcare is people aren't going to the doctor right now-- doctors that aren't actively fighting Covid, are hurting right now, with no patients. I'm in a heathcare software company that just had a big layoff because docs aren't paying their software bills...

Kind of crazy how cavalier she is about asset price inflation... (23:00) Sure, nice when you're an old wealthy chick who's already got plenty of assets... Not so much for those of us who still need to buy. Either or wages will need to go up to catch the assets that have run away from us or I guess we're screwed? No skin off her back though.

They were talking about restaurants. I went to Walmart to buy a new frying pan. All the pots and pans were sold out. People are cooking at home now. Even if restaurants open now and people are working people have learned they don’t have to go out to for food. They can cook for themselves.

America is in far more trouble than nearly anyone thinks.

What I see coming is a vicious deflationary cycle if state and local governments are not bailed out!!! I preordered your book ,"Angryenomics", and you are one of my favorite economists

i love mark's videos, but megan's way of dismissing the welfare of working people is the reason i've mostly ignored economists. would've loved some pushback on how great the US unemployment system is...

My MD friend of mine says that doctors who can't practice medicine go into public health policy. Explains the crap models being peddled. There's no inflation because they don't actual measure places where costs are going up. Like housing. Education. Child care. And "health care". They only look at imported flatscreen TV prices and GMO-laden mass-produced food crap not to mention an endless stream of "hedonic" adjustments.

Mark is absolutely brilliant at explaining in plain english why you should listen to somebody.

We must have a debt Jubilee for the people to avoid a deflationary depression.

Hello Mark, any chance you can get professor Steve Keen on the show? Would be awesome!

How about the govenment starts regulating how many jobs have to be kept in the USA and how much money had to be kept here too. Bringing back sanity to economics!

Excellent !

Brilliant show

Loved that Mark did a take from a Richard C. Koo "balance sheet recession" perspective.

Mark. A suggestion to enhance OUR enjoyment: MEGAN'S AUDIO is Crisp and Tight. Yours is a tad heavy on the REVERB (a bit like your talking LOUDY, 15 feet from the MIC. Thankful for your insights on KZfaq.

Pandemic is the best time to bet on health care: how utterly chilling

Thought provoking and thank you. I think I would/should pay a premium for a restaurant experience (for example) that keeps my risk low. Is it time to rethink how we value many low wage low skills roles?

I think it's not a matter of whether or not retail stores will come back, more a matter of reducing over-extended building. There are more U.S. retail stores per capita than in any other country in the world. Shrinking total square-footage is something that needs to happen, regardless. Of course it would be nice, also if private-equity firms were made illegal, since they've wreaked havoc on the sector for years now.

I love you guys and I hope you know that we really appreciate the service you are providing to us regular people

Can we please crowd fund proper audio equipment for these podcasts? The academic discussions are great, but I feel like they are being hampered by poor technical equipment.

CV-19, as they say if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Pandemics come and go and no one knows when the next one will break out. We don’t even know for sure where/how/what originated CV-19. This Black Swan was an « unknown unknown », the next one will be a « known unknown », globalisation as we know it can’t work at this level of uncertainty. Recovery will be long and cautious, rebuilding collapsed logistics will be the big issue.

Wait you think we don't get unemployment benefits in europe?

In a post virus world with huge automation and little employment and low demand. Could the government fund a primary industry to suck up workers? Could agriculture using regenerative methodology be the industry? Supporting workers on low productive and unproductive land to increase the productivity of the land.

23:23 well if the inflation is steady year on year ... say 10 % and you legislate to make wages keep up with it then in 10 years ....

We don't see much consumer price inflation (but we do see health care, education etc go up) because real wages did not go up. It's that simple.

Economists just accept all the basic assumptions of capitalism as tho they are the immutable laws of nature, and then just study the chaos that ensues the same way a meteorologist studies the weather. Its pathetic and amoral, but I guess it pays well

Hard for the lower classes but not a bad deal from the national debt standpoint. Then on to the next thing. No real acknowledgement that the lower class suffering might be a problem or anything. Just taken for granted as an “Oh well” type situation. I think her co-host has ceased to worry about pitchforks like he used to at least claim to. I wonder why.

21:44 or .. forgo the loans and just print it ...

I've been trying to get a stable job so I can just excist. i live in California, I'm willing to go anywhere that gets a stable job so I can afford to live. barely making for four-five years, it's was nearly impossible to get any extra money. unless I do non legal means to get bye. I worked at Sheraton hotel why is this b.s. keep happening, i just want a job six days a week and I'll do the rest. but no everybody greed gets in my way

Greece's former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) Time to interview again

MMT is not something that you do. MMT is rather a framework how FIAT currency system works.

What do you mean not sure which one is right?? If you value any life the choice is easy!!!!!

Unemployment punishes retraining. If I were to start taking classes right now I would no longer be eligible for unemployment.

retrain? I would like to see Megan "learning to code"....

I don't think the strategy of bribing rich stock owners to create jobs is going to work very well if demand dips. What are they going to do: distribute that money to their customers so they can get back at giving people jobs? Those jobs, high turn-over or not, are not coming back until the very same workers get paid wages again.

Excellent podcast as always, Megan Greene is sharp as a tack. Joe Sixpack might not realize that his money is being used to subsidize buddies of the admin, donors, tinder dates of the Republican Party like agribiz, fossil fuels, pharma, etc. And where's Joe's universal medical care? THERE. thx. D.A., J.D., NYC

inequality was issue before the shutdown, now the problem is getting compounded?

Is covid more deadly than a seasonal flu? The economic chaos will be alot worse than covid. Poverty leads to more deaths. I am getting sick and tired of journalists who are working telling us that it is not safe to go to work. Every business can function in some capacity even if covid is rampant.

DEBATE SAM SEDER

Sweden isn't in the Euro, and the Swedish government is against European solidarity, they don't want to pay for the countries in trouble, probably because they don't want to be criticized by the right for not prioritizing their own people. Also, the government has said that any EU help should be in form of loans, not donations. The EU is in trouble if every time there is a crisis, no matter how big it small, all the states turn inward and forget about solidarity, especially the economically stronger states. Why is it that the economically stronger states are most against European solidarity and equality?

Does anyone seriously consider US addicted capitalism is in any way sustainable ?

Where does the buck stop with THIS economic crisis? Lets say the jobs stay lost (because of recurrence of the virus, new strains, loss of interest in certain products), then surely consumption will doubly be hit, and then do the manufacturing countries get hit too? Then what?! This seems like an orouboros crash until at least the covid virus is no longer a major threat. what is the way out? is there a way out? I'm very much happy with gvt borrowing at negative rates, but would that fix the situation? even if you did that and put the money in our pockets and told us to spend - I'm not going to sit on a commercial airliner any time soon, and i'm not interested in disneyworld. How do we stimulate consumption when people value their health higher than a shopping trip...?

NO inflation ?? housing, rent, cars, health insurance. utilities - and you don't see inflation ?? WHAT ?? wage inflation? none for the lower 60% of wage earners, right? we do get 6 year car loans What about credit card interest charges - are they lower? student debt interest rates EVER go down on original loan? Just how the hell is inflation measured now days? have you economists gone insane??

How to continue selling fear.

The US economy is like a cappuccino where the chocolate sprinkled on the top is financial engineering, hedge funds etc. These guys don't produce anything. The next layer (the white froth) comprises Facebook, Instagram, WalMart, Google, Amazon etc, and when you think about it, all this wealth creation comes down to retailing. These guys don't produce anything either. The final layer, the real coffee of the economy, is now (broadly speaking) in Mexico and China. The result is that experts discussing the recovery of such an "economy" often find themselves talking about massage therapists, restaurants and all those other "low productivity", deplorable, underclass segments. All of which goes directly to the root of the post-pandemic problem for US elites. Can they continue extracting wealth from the rest of the world if the domestic house of cards is fallen? Evidently, they feel that they can pull it off because otherwise they wouldn't be doing their level best to crush the US working class at this moment of crisis.

What a complete lack of reality. No dignity either. It shocks me that he would have anything at all to do with her. Much of it was pure bs, not even a straight answer, not one, has a very clear consistent answer. It's all of a "Talkin' out her ass" tenor. Again, a shock. Our guy is typically a realist.

ya know, when you can predict 100% what opinions you're going to hear... maybe its time to turn them off

She looks nice but not very intelligent. I can understand if you get something else from her but not something relevant and sensible or smart. She is talking and talking and i don't think she has s clue. Economic free fall was before lockdown.

Sick burn on Hamilton Mark! It’s the most cringe garbage I’ve heard / seen from pop culture in a while.

I... Think I hate this women. Her flippant manner of dismissing the concerns of working class people and the poor is disgusting. She's about to get a baaaad wake up call if she thinks recovery will again happen at the cost of workers health and wealth.

these talks are very borning when it become preaching to the choir, can you guys get some decent opposition to talk to? Its just you guys patting each other on the back. How can two smart people not have any information to give. Its a depression, people laid off, open up and new infections makes economy bad ... yada yada yada. *edit* second half much better, you guys should have a 2hr talk maybe a third panelist with Mark as the moderator role