The Financial Flipside Podcast

The Financial Flipside Podcast, Episode 30B: Resignation-gate, part 2

Photo via energepic.com [https://www.pexels.com/@energepic-com-27411/] on Pexels     Although recession fears and missed earnings expectations have led to job cuts in some industries [https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108109505/job-cuts-layoffs-economy-recession], the Great Resignation is still going strong: as of the beginning of June 2022, Americans were still quitting their jobs at record rates [https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-quit-at-near-record-rate-great-resignation-forever-resignation-2022-6], and data from the a global survey by Price Waterhouse Coopers found that up to 20% of workers worldwide were planning to quit their jobs by the end of 2022 [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/the-great-resignation-is-not-over/]. Further, the Great Resignation is starting to spread to sectors like academia [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01512-6?utm_source=pocket-newtab], which have long been believed to be more stable (however far that belief is from the reality of most of the sector’s workers). With all that in mind, we are back with the second half of our Great Resignation episode. This time around we’re talking about factors that influence quitting, lying flat, labor costs, worker-management relations, and where we go from here. We hope you enjoy! Before we get to the show notes: We have a shiny new home! [https://financialflipside.com/] Come over to catch up on all of those older episodes that we’ve mentioned (like the ones about money [https://financialflipside.com/2018-5-24-financial-flipside-podcast-episode-10-the-one-about-money/] or [side] hustle culture [https://financialflipside.com/2018-9-28-the-financial-flipside-podcast-episode-14-cant-knock-the-side-hustle/]), listen to new ones as they’re released, and read articles and blog posts from the intersection of money, society, and everyday life.  Mentioned on the show   Toxic work culture and the Great Resignation [https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/toxic-culture-is-driving-the-great-resignation/] (Sloan Review; MIT) Pew Research survey [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/03/09/majority-of-workers-who-quit-a-job-in-2021-cite-low-pay-no-opportunities-for-advancement-feeling-disrespected/] on the reasons that people quit their jobs  On lying flat : Chinese millennials are opting out of a lot of the trappings of “adulthood [https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-lying-flat-took-chinas-overworked-millennials-by-storm]” (The Daily Beast) The rise of the anti-work movement ( [https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220126-the-rise-of-the-anti-work-movement]BBC Worklife) A Chinese high court has ruled that 9-9-6 culture should be illegal. What does this mean for workers? [https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/09/the-future-of-chinas-work-culture/]  (TechCrunch) Cost of labor [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cost-of-labor.asp]: what is it?  (Investopedia) The Great Resignation shows that managers need unions, too [https://newrepublic.com/article/165700/great-resignation-quits-rate-managers-need-unions] (New Republic) Bonus content   The Great Resignation is older than the pandemic, and its causes are complex [https://hbr.org/2022/03/the-great-resignation-didnt-start-with-the-pandemic] (Harvard Business Review) Why do we work too much? [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/office-space/why-do-we-work-too-much] (The New Yorker) Who is Max Weber and what is the Protestant Work Ethic? [https://youtu.be/j-0sIHDzsU4] [BBC 4 ; Video] An episode [https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-the-protestant-work-ethic-real/] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit financialflipside.substack.com [https://financialflipside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Financial Flipside Podcast Episode 30

Odds are, you know someone who has moved on from their job recently, whether a co-worker, family member, or friend. Maybe you’ve made a similar transition yourself. If so, you may be part of the Great Resignation, a socio-cultural phenomenon that is baffling researchers and reporters, and which is causing no small degree of anxiety among employers. As we explore in this episode, the reasons that people are leaving their jobs are complex and really get to the heart of why we work in the first place. Also in this episode: life updates,  an inside view of what happens when accountants fire their clients, and we’re working doing some home (read: website) renovations. It’s good to be back!   NB: This one got long, so there’s going to be a part two.  Mentioned in the show:    Flipping the News   The Trump organization gets fired [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/14/trump-tax-firm-says-documents-not-reliable.html] by its accountant, who also declared all of the financial statements it prepared for the organization “unreliable” 2 New York District Attorneys [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/nyregion/trump-ny-fraud-investigation.html] working on the Trump fraud investigation in Manhattan have resigned (from the New York Times) The Guardian’s reporting [https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/suisse-secrets] on the SwissLeaks scandal. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has created a hub [https://www.icij.org/investigations/swiss-leaks/explore-swiss-leaks-data/] collecting data pertaining to the scandal by person and country as well as reporting from the international group of organizations and journalists who worked on this story.    Main Event   Why do we work? [https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2F498951%2Fwhy-work-a-psychologist-explains-the-deeper-meaning-of-your-daily-grind%2F] (from Quartz) Meaning at work is so important that 9 out of 10 people wouldl take a pay cut  to do a job that they find fulfilling [https://hbr.org/2018/11/9-out-of-10-people-are-willing-to-earn-less-money-to-do-more-meaningful-work] (from Harvard Business Review) What is the Great Resignation? [https://today.tamu.edu/2022/02/11/the-texas-am-professor-who-predicted-the-great-resignation/] (from Texas A&M Today, contains a profile of Anthony C. Klotz and his insights into possible reasons for the Great Resignation) From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Quit rates (overall and by region and industry)  [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm] A couple of articles on long COVID and returning to work [https://time.com/6160010/long-covid-patients-back-to-work/] (or not)/ the economic distress [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/09/long-covid-work-unemployed/] faced by those struggling with long COVID [Time/The Washington Post]. Also of interest: Ed Yong’s reporting for The Atlantic on how immunocompromised and/or disabled people are being overlooked as things (including offices) open back up [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/covid-pandemic-immunocompromised-risk-vaccines/622094/]. Lack of childcare [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/08/why-havent-us-mothers-returned-work-child-care-infrastructure-they-need-is-still-missing/] and the Great Resignation (Washington Post) Research from the Columbia School of Professional Studies finds that misalignment between an employer and their employees’ personal values [https://sps.columbia.edu/news/great-resignation-perils-misaligned-employeeemployer-values] is increasingly a big deal for workers.  The Black Death and Labor Shortages [https://www.vice.com/en/article/93bqpz/the-black-death-and-labor-shortage] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit financialflipside.substack.com [https://financialflipside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Financial Flipside Podcast Episode 29

Photo by Bruno Figueiredo [https://unsplash.com/@bfigas?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText] on Unsplash [https://unsplash.com/s/photos/mind-the-gap?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText]     Taxes took center stage at the Met Gala recently, when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) attended the event wearing [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/14/aoc-defends-tax-the-rich-dress-met-gala] a white gown with “TAX THE RICH” emblazoned on the back in red. The ensuing discussion was wide ranging, covering everything from the designer’s background [https://www.cnn.com/videos/style/2021/09/14/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-met-gala-designer-dress-newday-vpx.cnn] to Ocasio-Cortez’s salary and net worth [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/03/09/fact-check-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-net-worth-not-1-m/6924378002/]  and the ethics [https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/government-verify/no-it-is-not-an-ethics-violation-for-politicians-to-attend-the-met-gala/536-fd12ed29-b908-4ca2-86ca-b95d40a29fbd] of politicians attending the Met Gala at all. There were even articles that worked the dress into a wider discussion [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tax-the-rich-democrats-plans-let-billionaires-off-the-hook-11631911209] of the Democratic party’s tax plan. Whatever you think about the dress, politicians attending museum galas in general, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez specifically, the message was clear and called attention to a real issue: the fact that the  amount of tax some of us pay relative to the money we make doesn’t seem to add up. Further driving this point home is the recent release of the Pandora papers, the largest release of offshore financial information in history [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-biggest-ever-leak-of-offshore-data-exposes-financial-secrets-of-rich-and-powerful] which shows how wealthy individuals from all over the world store their wealth and set up trusts in places like the Cayman Islands or South Dakota (yes, it turns out that South Dakota is a major tax haven [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/south-dakota-tax-haven]), where it’s less subject to what they view as “unfavorable” taxation. Speaking of taxes  and things that don’t add up, that brings us to the subject of this episode: we’re talking about the tax gap, that is the yawning void between how much tax is owed and how much tax gets paid to the IRS. Where does the tax gap come from (hint: not always where you think)? Why are some people so reluctant to pay their fair share, despite having more than enough money to do so? We also take a detour into dynastic wealth, moral millionaires, and what money does to our brains.  Mentioned on the show:  Millionaires asking billionaires to pay emergency taxes [https://www.fastcompany.com/90665399/millionaires-are-calling-for-an-emergency-tax-on-billionaires] ProPublica’s The Secret IRS Files [https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files] series of stories on the taxes of the ultra wealthy, including an article [https://www.propublica.org/article/the-inside-story-of-how-we-reported-the-secret-irs-files#1100112] about how and why they conducted their reporting.  Abigail Disney [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/abigail-disney-rich-protect-dynastic-wealth-propublica-tax/619212/] on what wealthy families teach their children about holding onto dynastic wealth. How the “famliy fund” [https://truthout.org/articles/25-richest-americans-pay-few-taxes-partly-thanks-to-the-family-fund-loophole/] loophole make its easier to avoid paying taxes Kelly Phillips Erb talks to Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Steve This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit financialflipside.substack.com [https://financialflipside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Financial Flipside Podcast Episode 28

Infrastructure touches every aspect of our lives, from the roads we drive on to the water we drink to the electricity powering the laptop I’m using to type these show notes. Because of this, it’s also one of the areas in which the connection between money and everyday life is the clearest: if part of our country’s (or city’s or state’s) infrastructure falls apart, we often end up paying for it in ways both big and small. Building and maintaining a national infrastructure is also really expensive, which raises questions about who pays for it and what’s worth paying for that have led to a lot of political wrangling and debate (To wit, at one point, there were eight infrastructure bills [https://prospect.org/politics/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-infrastructure-bills/] circulating in Congress). In short, infrastructure is the perfect mix of everything we love talking about on the Financial Flipside (taxes, money, everyday life, citizenship, politics), so it seemed ripe for an episode. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed recording it (NB: LaTarsha was having audio problems this episode, so you may hear a echo or some background noise.).    Also in this episode: a brief discussion of super-wealthy people avoiding taxes--if you want to hear more about tax avoidance and where wealthy people and corporations put their money instead of paying taxes, you’re in luck. We’ll be talking a lot more about it on our upcoming episode, which we’re recording this week (questions? Email us at info@financialflipside.com [info@financialflipside.com] or send us a DM; were @financeflipside everywhere). Mentioned on the show:      Flipping the News * ProPublica’s “The Secret IRS Files” article [https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax] on tax avoidance among the ultra-wealthy * From Truthout: How family funds are used to squirrel away tax-free money [https://truthout.org/articles/25-richest-americans-pay-few-taxes-partly-thanks-to-the-family-fund-loophole/]   The Main Event   * The Week’s satirical ranking [https://theweek.com/articles/839005/all-infrastructure-weeks-ranked] of all of the Trump administration’s Infrastructure Weeks * The American Society of Civil Engineer’s 2021 Infrastructure Report Card [https://infrastructurereportcard.org/] * Dueling infrastructure definitions, from Investopedia [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/infrastructure.asp] and from the Boston Review: What is Infrastructure, Anyway? [https://bostonreview.net/politics-law-justice/david-alff-what-infrastructure-anyway]  * Why the definition of infrastructure depends on who you ask [https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/is-transit-infrastructure-the-urban-rural-left-right-infrastructure-divide] * From the Washington Post: The lingering effects of the Hernando de Soto bridge collapse [https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2021/06/03/memphis-bridge-mississippi-river/] * David Alff on The Hidden Stakes of the Infrastructure Debate [https://bostonreview.net/politics-law-justice/david-alff-hidden-stakes-infrastructure-wars] * Darkness and chaos [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313/] and This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit financialflipside.substack.com [https://financialflipside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Financial Flipside Podcast Episode 27

Photo by Lisa Fotios [https://www.pexels.com/@fotios-photos?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels] from Pexels [https://www.pexels.com/photo/shopping-cart-beside-brick-wall-3477853/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pexels]   Scarcity was with us long before images of empty store shelves and news stories offering explanations for the absence of yeast [https://slate.com/business/2020/04/yeast-shortage-supermarkets-coronavirus.html] or Lysol [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-11-19/lysol-is-making-more-sanitizer-than-ever-in-pandemic-america-it-s-not-enough] or Mason jars [https://www.marketplace.org/2020/12/07/why-demand-for-mason-jars-surges-in-times-of-uncertainty/]. In fact, the idea of scarcity has been baked into economics and society to such a degree and for so long (at least in the US; your mileage may vary--L) that we think of everything from toilet paper to money to political power as finite resources to be acquired and closely guarded. On this episode of the Financial Flipside Podcast, we’re talking about scarcity, both the economic concept and how it plays out in our daily lives. Along the way, we’ll discuss sneaker drops, free markets, living wages, human nature, and moments when instinct takes over. We also dedicate our Flipping the News segment to examining the financial aftermath of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.  As always, we want to hear from you: how have your shopping habits changed over the past year? How about your idea of what it means to have enough? Join the conversation in the pinned post on our Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/financeflipside] or by replying to our pinned tweet (@financeflipside [https://twitter.com/financeflipside]). Let us know if you’d be comfortable with our reading your comments on our next episode (we won’t use your name unless you indicate that it’s okay to do so).  Mentioned on the show:    Flipping the News   The Guardian investigates [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/15/trump-republicans-election-defeat-club-for-growth] The Club for Growth, billionaire Republican lobbying group that has taken a turn into funding challenges to the 2020 presidential election.  Also from the Guardian: My Pillow meets martial law [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/15/mike-lindell-mypillow-trump-white-house-martial-law?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1610754997]. From Bloomberg: Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan pause their political spending [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-11/wall-streets-cuts-campaign-spending-to-condemn-u-s-politicians] in the wake of the attempted coup at the Capitol.  From Axios: Facebook takes a quarter-long break [https://www.axios.com/scoop-facebook-freezing-political-spending-after-capitol-attack-aae93e2c-0050-4e6e-aa85-6752cf8bee3d.html] from political donations as well.   The Main Event   The IMF explains supply and demand [https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/basics/suppdem.htm]. From Investopedia: Understanding the scarcity principle [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scarcity-principle.asp].  From Marketwatch.com [http://marketwatch.com]: Examining pandemic-induced gaps in the supply chain [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-pandemic-shows-the-us-food-supply-chain-is-due-for-an-upgrade-experts-say-2020-04-17].  This article from Medium’s Marker blog explains what most reporting gets wr [https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit financialflipside.substack.com [https://financialflipside.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]