Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the call like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and in this episode of call it like I see it, we're going to discuss the tens of billions in federal childcare funds that just shut off in the month of October and how this is putting a downstream squeeze on everything down the road on local economies and in the aggregate, national economies with the loss of these child care funds. And also we'll touch on the role of government in for something like childcare and providing assistance or whatever with childcare. And later on, we're going to discuss masculinity being under assault and the interesting fact that it seems like people always feel like masculinity is under assault and maybe masculinity is always under assault. So we'll explore that as well.
Joining me today is a man who knows how to keep things rolling all day and all night. Tunde yoga and Lana Tunde. Are you ready to show him how you do your best work in scary hours?
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, man.
Just gotta be sure I do it in a masculine way. Right?
[00:01:19] Speaker A: That's only the only way, man. That's the only way.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Maybe we'll talk about that.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: All right. Now, recording this on October 31, 2023, and at the end of September, the last month from now, but, you know, it'll be, it's September, the end of September 2023, we saw tens of billions of dollars in federal funding for childcare expire. Now, this funding was allocated as emergency funding as part of the pandemic era America Rescue Plan act. And this loss of funding, though that's happening right now, is believed that's going to affect hundreds of thousands of child care centers and over 3 million children.
And many have speculated, worried, raised alarm, or called it a crisis with respect to not just the child, the loss of childcare and what that does to families and everything, but also the downstream effects. And, you know, if people have to work less or, you know, leave the economy, so to speak, in order to care for their own children, then that will lessen economic activity for all of us, which is not necessarily our objective in trying to grow an economy.
So, Tunde, I want to start with the exploration of the program, and then we can move on to the downstream effects and also touch on the role of government. So just to get us started, what's your thought? Just what comes to mind or what stands out to you as far as the expiration of this federal funding on childcare?
[00:02:40] Speaker B: It's interesting, something that I don't think about every day. So it's an interesting topic for us to touch on. And so when I started really thinking about preparing for the discussion, I thought, okay, what is it? What's the symbolism of something like that?
And I would say, obviously, we're going to get into the weeds a little bit more about this type of funding, why it was created recently, and like you said, the economic potential economic impacts of it dwindling, but on the 30,000 foot level, to start, I just thought, so, like, what does a budget really say about a government?
And it really spells out the priorities of said government in whichever society or country you're in. And so when I thought about, you know, I think this year, our fiscal year, the us budget this year as.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: In the one that started October 1 or.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Correct?
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so the one we did, the fiscal year we're entering right now.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Is, you know, we're looking at about a $6 trillion plus us budget.
So, you know, yeah, $39 billion in early childhood education and childcare support is already a small drop in a bucket when you look at the size of that budget.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: So what it got me thinking was just like, you know, okay. And this is what I'm saying to anyone that might look at what I'm saying negative, is I'm actually just saying this in a neutral way. It shows the priority, or lack thereof, of looking out for the early education of the future generation of Americas. That's what we think about it. In comparison to a $900 billion military budget or the budget for elderly Americans through entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, that's well over probably a trillion and a half dollars combined. So that doesn't mean that I'm detracting from our need to spend on the military or to take care of senior citizens. I'm not trying to say it's a zero sum either or in that way. What I'm just saying is that.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Just observing. Yeah, exactly.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Observing that we're not spending $200 billion on early childhood education or 500 billion. We're not. It's a drop in the bucket compared to other priorities that we have. So that's kind of what stuck out to me and then the last piece is that 93% of voters, according to the article, support some sort of early childhood education. So it seems like an imbalance between what the voters support and where we spend the money.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Well, I mean, and that's, I think the public and private aspect of this has to be looked at. And that's really, to me, that's what made me want to investigate more. So to speak. That's what I wanted to read more in, like, well, why is it necessary for the government, or why is it important, you know, not or not important? Necessary is a better word, actually, for the government to have to do this and to learn that. It's pretty well established that from an early childhood education, it's not something that the private sector, it's not something that's desirable for the private sector. It's not a profit generating exercise. If you want to charge what it actually, what you need to charge in order to make it a for profit thing where you can make money on it, then people can't afford it. So the biggest issue that we have, the core issue that we have is that in order to do it to the level it needs to be done, it's going to cost too much for people to be able to afford it. And so you have this disconnect there. And so that's why the government would step in, in that type of situation. Not, not much different than the fact that if, I mean, there's nothing saying that private companies can't build roads, you know, for themselves. Just, you know, hey, we just want to build roads, but it's not something that they would be able to charge enough typically, to make that a profit, something that they can make money on, make profit on. And so therefore, private companies are not incentivized to do it. And so if child care, if we have a situation that we observe and we all can agree on that child care is not something that private companies, by and large, can get into and make money doing, is if they're going to be able to charge what they, they would need to charge, then, yes, there's something for the government there. If we value it, to your point, if we value it, if 93% of the people think that we should have it, you know, and voters wise or whatever, then there should be something that the government's kicking in from that. And that's not to say the government's not putting anything in right now. What we're looking at now is the loss of what was considered emergency funding that was put forward during the pandemic. And so to me, just what stands out about with it expiring, it's just like, okay, like you said, we're shifting our priorities. We no longer believe we, you know, through our representative democracy, no longer believe that it's important for this to have to this emergency funding is needed, and we're willing to shoulder the consequences of that. And that's what we're gonna see now. And that's what, you know, like, there's, we'll have some stuff in the show notes, but there's a lot of people talking about all the consequences for this. And I wanna get to that with you as well. You know, like, so, you know, just the, the effects that this will have on the economy. And then if you have any other comments, just, you know, just. But I do wanna keep us moving to you. Just kinda. Where do you see as far as how this is going to affect the economy? Are you as concerned as some who, like we've heard, seen the word crisis be used? Like, oh, this is a crisis. The child care, you know, yada, yada, yada. And the lack of affordable health, or, excuse me, the lack of affordable child care is a five alarm fire issue that we just aren't paying attention, enough attention to.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the economic effects that can be felt might be more localized in some communities. I was reading a good article about how it might affect people in our backyard here in south Florida. And, you know, they were pretty specific in the article, certain parts of Miami Dade county, specifically, how much they are able to take in, how many people they can hire in these child centers, so on and so forth. So, I mean, obviously, yeah, if you pull back $39 billion of spend, we know that it's going to have some sort of effect at the ground level.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: And people that aren't being hired means people that aren't getting jobs. And so that's a direct.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's what I mean about the ramifications of the potential for economic impact. I think that'll be felt at a more local level, you know, and probably that's what I was going to say. We have a 24, $25 trillion annual kind of GDP growth in our economy. Like I said, the government spends 6 trillion plus a year. So 39 billion. Will it have an effect on the economy that we'll all feel? Probably not. But will it affect certain regions and pockets more than others? Yeah, I mean, definitely they're certain. Like I was reading, I was just curious about, okay, what's going on in our state.
We received $7 billion of that, eight. So clearly out of 39 billion. To learn that we're getting almost 20% of that tells you that out of 50 states, it's pretty lopsided where the spend is going. So it will affect maybe Florida economy a little bit more than maybe a state that's not getting anything or barely a drop in the bucket. So, yeah, in that sense, especially with.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Florida being, you know, like a state that has a lot of, like, hospitality and things like that, where you know that there's nothing going on as far as either assistance with childcare or even where people typically make enough to afford good childcare and things like that within those types of industries.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: That's where we can see the ramifications of the economic effect, like you're saying, of single moms that may not be able to work as much, or even two parent households where maybe one spouse needs to now stop their job because they can't get the, the assistance with the early childhood care. I think that's one example of that now, like the next year or two maybe, how it affects things. But I think we should also, if we're thinking about this as we're all sharing this nation together, we're all trying to move it forward together. What's the real impact long term by having a continued kind of drought in spending on education in general, on the future of american citizens. Right. So that's what I'm just saying is there's probably a greater economic impact if you just figured we're gonna have less kids that are learning early, which means less chance for those kids to be more productive when they're older in certain ways, maybe, you know, mathematics, engineering, things like that.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's actually my biggest thought on this, is the fact that we don't really know the, the larger effects, like you pointed out, the, the direct effects, like, okay, this child care center is gonna close, so, you know, there's going to be people losing jobs or whatever, or they won't expand, they won't hire. So instead of planning to hire three more people in the next six months, they're not planning to hire any. Those are the things we can measure to some reasonable certainty. But what we can't measure is all the opportunity that's lost, and that's usually one step away more downstream is, okay, well, this is the business, though. These are the businesses that didn't get started because the, like you said, it could be single parent or two parent households where one of the parents wasn't able to have the time to start a business because they weren't able to afford child care. Or to your point, these are the kids that are not getting ahead, so to speak, to then chart a trajectory to be the next innovator or something important in our society that will move us forward in the future. So it's the loss of opportunity, I think, that really stands out. But because that's hard to quantify, that's even hard to conceptualize you can understand why it becomes less of a priority.
But I do want to drill down a little bit more on the affordability piece. And this is just to connect what I was saying before as far as to do early childhood education. It appears that in order to pay the people and have the facilities, you would have to charge an amount that people can't pay. And so this affordability gap, you know, to me, we're in a time of high inflation right now, you know, relatively, you know, relative to the last 30 years or so. Right now, inflation is relatively high. And so that squeeze on. And I think it was very important that you, you noted that a lot of times when we talk about this, we're talking people in their minds automatically think about, oh, well, this is a single mom thing. And then that brings in baggage. A lot of times, people like, oh, well, you know, maybe, you know, if the single mom was, you know, either or if the dad was still there, then we, we as a society wouldn't have to step in and be providing more for them or, you know, whatever. But the way, like the, the kind of thing that a lot of people have in their minds where you have two parents and, you know, and everything like that, and the single earner thing we know is gone, you know, like that was there 50, 60 years ago, but that's gone now. You know, most, for the most part, when you have two parents in a household, both parents are working, generally speaking, you know, on, you know, kind of your median type of level. And so when you're looking at affordability, it's not just that people are having more kids that they can afford, so to speak, is that what is affordable is running away from us, you know, as a society. And so on a governmental level, the government needs to do something about that. Now, if the government doesn't want to do something about that with direct payments and say, hey, we'll write, we'll, you know, cut checks for something, then ideally, what the government would be doing is things that address the system more to try to keep inflation under control, you know, and so, and that's what we see, like you've talked about before with the Federal Reserve trying to interest, raising interest rates makes other things expensive, but it is trying to keep inflation under control. So all of the different. Meg, my point ultimately is that there's a lot of different mechanisms going on or a lot of different things going on, a lot of different mechanisms that can be used to try to turn this up or turn that down or react to this or react to that, and this is just one of them. But here it seems like whether by conscious decision or the fact that it's just, we don't have, not much is happening in Congress right now. We've made it. We made a call here, you know, enact our own mission, that this is not something that we're gonna prioritize and we're gonna basically face the costs. And if this costs us in the future, then it cost us in the future, and that's the road we're on.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Yeah, well, remember, defunding the IR's is.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Going on.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Because that'll make sure these kids don't pay taxes in the future.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: So maybe that's, if they don't earn.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: Anything more, maybe that's more important than early childhood education.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Well, but the affordability gap. But this is actually, and I did want to mention this briefly, and then we can move to the next section. But, like, this is the kind of stuff that we want Congress debating about because I don't think there is any easy solution. Like, it's not a permanent solution to just say, government. Just keep writing checks forever, increasingly amount, you know, as if we have an affordability gap on something that we, if 93% of the people think is important, then we need Congress trying to figure out how to address that. And this is the problem that we have when it's all about, you know, Congress is about playing games right now for the most part. You know, like, and it's, or if culture war stuff dominates people's imaginations and dominates their energy, and it's like, oh, we gotta ban books and we gotta do all this stuff. And it's like, well, there's actual real issues that we need the government to try to be looking at and addressing. And if everybody's too worried about critical race theory, then this is, this is the stuff. This stuff isn't that exciting. You know, like, this doesn't get people's passions going and doesn't get people, you know, like to really fire it up and wake up in the morning and can't wait to see what they say on the news the next day about it. And so this is the kind of stuff, though, that falls by the wayside when people are focused on some of these other things that, you know, that may get there, get them more excited.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's true, man.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So, but, all right, we've seen, you know, it be presented or argued even that into your point as far as the, you know, the priorities of government. But our government essentially discourages people from having kids. And we have an opinion piece. We'll put in the show notes on this. And so it's discouraging citizens from having kids, by the, by the way it orders it prior its priorities and so forth and so forth. So what do you think? Just if, and again, not necessarily. This is more so, like your own kind of opinion in this. The government's role should be in, you know, like, obviously you are a free market person by and large. I mean, you're not a, you know, everybody do what they want, no regulation, free market. But my person saying we should try to use market forces to address things if when possible. So what do you think the role of a government like ours should be with something like this, where we have this affordability gap with early childhood, child. Early childcare, and, you know, we have the, the issue of lots of kids needing it.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's a great question to put me on the spot.
It's funny, like, I rarely get asked that question directly. What's my real opinion about the role of government in these things? So you are.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: To your point, I'll filibuster for you a little bit while you think.
But a lot of times, though, what you have is people just complain about stuff and complain about stuff, and all the way it is is messed up. The way it is is messed up. But it's like, okay, well, what do you think it should be? And that's really what I want to get to is here. Okay, like, let's not talk about what's messed up, or let's not talk like. But what, what do you think is something that would be workable, so to speak.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I mean, this is a great question because therein lies the messiness of a democracy. Right. Because if I were to say, what's my personal opinion? And then I'll get a little bit outside of my own opinion.
It's a good question. I mean, I think the way you framed it earlier, actually, is the way I would look at a lot of these discussions about the role of government and the quasi socialistic side of things versus the pure capitalism side of things. So, for example, like you said, it would be cost prohibitive for most people in the citizenry and not profitable for a business. Meaning the two couldn't meet for it to work successfully.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Yeah, meaning for the market.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: Extensive early childhood. Correct. The early childhood education on mass to make sure most american kids get a decent education so we can all live in a country with people that are relatively educated in the future, so on and so forth. Right. Well, if it's. If businesses can't make enough money where they may have to be subsidized anyway, meaning taxpayer dollars got to be spent to subsidize for profit corporations and or if a private sector was allowed to do it in order to be profitable, the rank and file american couldn't afford it, then. Yeah, to me there we have.
There's room for that conversation. And that's why I would say I'd compare it to the fire station, police general, public school, the military. Right. Things that as individuals, we may not be able to afford on our own, but that are important in either keeping us protected or keeping us safe, whether from invasion from foreign countries or home and law enforcement on our streets, keeping fires from burning down neighborhoods. Right. Like, these are all things that we've decided are in the public interest to be of shared cost and of shared expense. So that just because two or three people can't afford it in said neighborhood or group doesn't mean the whole neighborhood's at risk, because now the services can't be provided. And I think that's what I go back to. And then my first answer from today's show, which is, you know, what are our priorities as a nation? So that's where I think you're right. The role of government.
How does government enter this conversation? I think that's where then, going back to the idea we have a democracy. Like you said, the deliberative body we're supposed to debate these things is Congress, which doesn't appear to be spending its time debating these things, is debating other things and behaving in ways that are just different. Right.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Things that you and I might consider trivial in many respects, you know?
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And the last piece I'll say, and then I'll hand it back, is you mentioned things like critical race theory. And that got me thinking about the attacks we've had from just our regular ecosystem and media on our school system specifically in recent years, just the last three, four years, I think, have made a lot of Americans apathetic and is also about our school system and educating kids, meaning you and I are parents.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: We collective educating. Let's all.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. You and I are.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: I mean, you could say apathetic or you could say hostile.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: And that's what I'm getting at, is, as individuals, you and I care deeply about the education of our own kids, and everyone does. That's what I'm saying. I don't want someone sitting here watching us saying, oh, man, I care about my kids. What are you talking about? Of course, each individual watching this with children cares about their children. But that goes back to what I'm saying is the danger of this type of rhetoric in our society now about education and the misinformation about, you know, kids are going to be learning, taking the drag shows on their field trips, for example. And that scares people into wanting to fund public education and support teachers, so on and so forth. So I think there's a lot of just kind of muddiness out there on the topic, and I think that, you know, well, like I said, that's that's kind of what a democracy looks like. We need to retake control of the narrative of what does it mean to educate the future of american kids.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah, because what you're pointing out is that what that kind of hostility makes people want to kind of retreat to their own corners and not engage in more of a collective, like, hey, let's. Let's bring about the next generation. Let's do this together. You know?
[00:22:16] Speaker B: And, well, you know, it's kind of.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: An important thing when you're putting a nation together or trying to build a nation, is that there is some level of collectivism, like, we have to be in it together to some degree. And so the more people that kind of eject from the togetherness and say, hey, we'll just do it on our own, you know, the harder it becomes to maintain a nation with shared interests and shared goals and so forth. So. But that's a conversation for another day. You're. What were you gonna say?
[00:22:41] Speaker B: But let me. Yeah, because it's interesting you say that, because, number one, there's a lot of Americans that find, I think, in their mind, they look at certain european countries, and I'll name, like, Germany or Hungary, countries like that, and they look at them as models for how we should have our country set up. And one of the things that those countries do is they do heavy investments into early childhood education. And even Germany, I understand, has standardized tests when a kid's a teenager, like 15 or 16. And that kind of will put them in a path for a certain type of career. Like, it'll be better to be a plumber or an electrician. You'll be better to be an engineer. You'll be better how you answered this test to be a medical doctor. And so my point is that that's the interesting thing with us in America is the tension we have with central power, central authority of a government, or at least many Americans say they do until their side gets power.
What happens is, like you're saying it very astutely is, well, we need some sort of collective agreement and a shared vision on how to deal, especially with things like childhood education. I mean, it's one thing to have the government involved in businesses and all that kind of stuff, but when you're talking about, like I said, military, firefighter, police and education, those are things generally we've accepted that the greater society, you know, has, has a say in, because of the collective need for the funding. Right.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: And collective desire for things to go well for all of us in the future. Like, yeah, we kind of are making things better in the future.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: And that's what I was going to say as we see this happen. And again, the importance of teaching ourselves history in our own country, usually we see these attacks on public education and how to deal with kids when there's these tensions in our culture when they're, you know, demographic shifts and all that. So I'm thinking of a couple periods. First was maybe the brown versus board of education period of the mid, late fifties into the early sixties when you started seeing the attacks on integrating schools. And that's when you started seeing en masse private schools started to come up in the country because now that one couldn't segregate in the public system anymore, a lot of parents felt that, hey, if I let my kid go to an integrated school, you know, in this case, white parents on that side of the argument, then they will have a diminished education and they'll have a diminished chance for their future. So I'm going to take them out of the system and put them in a private school. And then I think we saw it a decade later with the response to busing. It even heightened that kind of fear and those wedges even more so.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, just to get back to the kind of the thought, like, I wanted to give myself view on this as well, as far as what I think. And to me, I mean, the question or kind of the issue that we're looking at, the problem is, I think, pretty straightforward. As you pointed out and I talked about earlier, in order to do it, you have to charge x amount. If you charge x amount, people can't afford it. So therefore you can't do it because people can't pay you and then you can't make money. You know, you can't be a profitable business. So private sector is going to come up short in addressing this need. So what do we do in our society when the private sector comes up short? Well, some of that depends on, there's another question involved there. Well, how important is it to us? And so because there's many situations where either the private sector either cannot adequately take care of it or in some cases just doesn't want to take care of it, you know, like, and I look at, you know, like when societies or, you know, cities or counties or whatever decide to build, you know, multi billion dollar stadiums for sports teams, that's the time. A lot of times the private sector may have the means to do it, but is decided, hey, we're not going to build this stadium or we want you guys to put in half of the money if we're going to do, you being the citizenry, you know, the local government and the state governments to put in half of the money if we're going to do this and so forth. So there are many examples and unless kind of that one's kind of a toxic, or at least to some people, kind of a toxic view of it, you know, where we're building, where we're putting in the hundreds of millions or billion dollars into funding a playground for a billionaire, but a less loaded one would just be, you know, like when, when you're building a high rise downtown, you know, or something like that, a lot of times there is city or county or state participation in that where, you know, the, the, to incentivize the, the state sees, and I'm going to say the state generally, meaning all of the, the kind of city, local municipality, county, whatever, but the state sees that there are downstream, well, there are immediate, there are direct benefits to the state in terms of being able to hire more. There'll be people being hired to build it, and then there'll be people that conceivably they'll work there. They're direct benefits for the local and, you know, regional economy. And so they say, yeah, we want this high rise built and then there are downstream benefits. If we have more economic activity going on there, then there'll be economic activity around. And this applies to the stadiums, too, at least how they're sold. Like, hey, if you put this stadium, you know, eight times a year, all these 60,000 people will show up here and all these other businesses can sprout up around there. So looking at the, the ancillary benefits, the downstream benefits in addition to the direct benefits, and the state says, hey, this is, this is a worthwhile investment for us as the state. And so to me, that mindset, you can apply that same logic to the early childhood and say, okay, well, there's going to be, if we put this money in here, there's a direct benefit in terms of the people that are going to be hired and also the people who are able to then go work because they're not taking care of their kids. And then there's the downstream effect as well. So to me, that's the argument as to why the government should be doing something now, the level they should be doing. It is difficult because that, that's where you do need, you know, economists and all that to be looking at the numbers and so forth. But the idea that the government should be in, I think, is something that based on all the other things the government does, is something that you can make a compelling case for. If it was me, yes. I think that things that produce more downstream benefit, produce direct and downstream benefits are things, those are the kinds of, quote unquote, investments that people in the private, you know, kind of privately look at and say, hey, where can I put my money, where I can get more money in the future or more benefit in the future? I look at this as one of those as well, from a public standpoint. So, yes, in my mind, the investment should be made in stuff like this because this is the type of stuff that pays us back. For that reason alone. You can look at it selfishly, I can look at it altruistically and be like, oh, you know, no child deserves to be, you know, that not being given these opportunities, you can look at it like that as well. But I think there is actual concrete benefit to us as a society. You know, if you're still invested in an us, you know, if you're invested in us, then this is something that is, would be something that's easy to get behind.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the shame is that, you know, divide and conquer has been a real theme in american politics.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: And so I could say in earth politics.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. But if you look at what I mentioned about certain european countries and even asian countries, you know, like China, you know, we kind of look at some of these countries, China and India, and revere them for having all these, you know, pumping out half a million engineers every year out of the university, whatever the numbers are. But they don't do that by accident is because to your point, they have a collective vision for their own future of their country and of their system. And that involves teaching the kids from an early age.
And we, because of, we treat ourselves as Americans like crabs in a bucket. Like literally we pull each other down when we see others getting ahead and all that because we've been conditioned in our country, through the culture of racism and all that, to have a zero sum mentality. Like, if, if money's going to those people over there, that somehow is taken away from me.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: And that's how a lot of Americans just think about their fellow Americans. So until we get rid of that thought process and say we're all in it together, which sounds hokey, but it's true, then we're going to be, that's.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Kind of the definition of a nation, you know, if we're all going to be a part of the nation. I mean, so, but to your, I've, I've read a lot about this and observed a lot about this. Just America. Like, one of the things when you're looking at the european countries, for example, is a lot of times there are people talk about the scandinavian countries and the quality of life being so high and education, you know, being so high, healthcare being so, you know, like things like that. And what some have observed is that it's easier a lot of times to get people to see their fellow citizenry as all on the same page because they all, they are more similar ethnically and everything like that, religiously more similar, like in a nation like the United States, which brings people from all over the world and people who, with all types of people, with all types of ethnicities, religions, we created the concept of race. You know, things like that. Well, not America's necessarily, but, you know, like this concept of race, which is a relatively new concept, but it's another way to divide people. To your point, America is uniquely, or at least it's substantially easy to divide relative to some other places in the world, at least in terms of the citizenry. So that's something at play, and that's a challenge that Americans would have to overcome if they want to build up the nation. If they want to build up the nation, then if you can be turned against your fellow American very easily, then it's going to be difficult to build up the nation. And that goes, that's not looking at, you know, just one thing that's saying, look, if we all can't agree that we're trying to build this thing up, then it's really, if some people are trying to take it apart while others are trying to build it, then you can imagine how that would work out. So. But I do want to get to our second topic today. Second topic we wanted to discuss today. It was a really interesting article in Esquire, and it talked about masculinity being under assault but it actually went back to, like, the first Esquire that was ever magazine, you know, the first publication that they had had, which was decades ago, which was one of the themes talked about. There was masculinity being under assault, and it really kind of discussed how there's this perpetual. This is like an evergreen thing to talk about in societies, and they're looking at american society in particular. But in general, it seems like this is evergreen, that you can always get out there and say that masculinity is under assault, and you can always be able to point to examples and things like that. You know, people have a limited lifespan and so forth and living memory. So all of our perspectives are always going to be limited to what has been happening over the last 1020, whatever, years at best. And so. But so what was, you know, what was your reaction to reading this and kind of just seeing Americans over the decades always worried about masculinity and it being about to fall off of a cliff?
[00:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah, this is great.
It's just funny because the article did a good job at the beginning because it says, nobody younger than me wants to work. This isn't real music. You know, kind of everything older generations always say about younger generations. Like, I gotta hear from my friends and clients now about how bad millennials are and Gen Z and how they don't want to work. And it's the same thing we heard, you know, in the nineties when we were kids coming up and everyone calling us lazy and listening to gangsta rap was gonna turn our brain to mush. And it's all the same stuff. So I guess masculinity has the same type of shelf life where it's only good for that generation.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: And everyone else behind is some kind of sissy now. Not a real man. So the best one was almost certainly one of our founding fathers told his son, don't leave this house without your wig, stockings, and frock coat. I didn't raise a sissy.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: Cause I'm seeing in my head a guy with a long wig and long stockings.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Or, no, the guy that said, put on the wig. And the guy being like, what do you mean? You gotta put on. Are you a real man? Put on that wig.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I didn't raise a sissy. Put on a wig and stockings. So that's what got me thinking about, because I wrote down, because it's funny that, I mean, I printed the article here not for the audience to see, but it's more to show the picture that I think that's twisted sister on the front, the lead singer. I see Mister T, who, looking at him now, 40 years later, is an interesting depiction of a man with his little mini mohawk thing and all the gold chains, and he's a tough guy. And then I thought about just in our lifetime, right? Remember Dennis Rodman 25 years ago, the way he was behaving, marrying himself in a dress in Times Square. I thought about people like little Richard Prince. Even Tupac had a little bit of femininity in how he was kind of moving sometimes. And that just made me think, though, and not to make fun of people, it just made me think that, yeah, like, my whole life I've been surrounded in our culture. Not me personally, but just in the pop culture. Like I say about Prince or little Richard, there's always been men that have been on the spectrum of being a little bit on the feminine side and wondering what's going on. And then when we were kids, we had Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone as kind of the macho guys, right? So I think this idea of men trying to figure themselves out, and because we're, in the end, there's a part of us that is a bit of the pack animal trying to follow the alpha. And who's the alpha in the culture? What are they doing and who sets the tone? I think that's real. And it's just probably something that every generation deals with it.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: That's what it is. That's exactly, that was what my takeaway from this is that the who, the alpha, so to speak, societally, kind of sets the tone for what the other men think, you know, look at for masculinity. And there could be more than one alpha. Obviously, in terms of large societies, we're not talking about if it's, you know, a village of 150 people, it might just be one alpha, but talking large societies, and then with mass media, how that's broadcast. And so that sets the tone for what's masculine, so to speak. And from there, then it filters down. But then the next generation doesn't get that tone. They're getting tone, the tone set by another, a next generation of who's setting that tone. And so it's. It's kind of like just a kind of a perpetual disconnect between the different generations. And so the older generations, yeah, there are always going to be paranoid about what they view as masculinity falling to the wayside, because literally the next generation is going to have a either slightly or wildly different view of masculinity. And so to me, that's what we see here is that it's just what masculinity is. I think mass media contributes to this. The more, you know, like the more different messages you see, the more it's going to scramble you up. But even in, if you put it in a village context, you know, the, if there's the alpha and then there's a generation where they behave a certain way, and then the next generation is going to come up and they may behave 99% or 95% in the same way from a masculinity standpoint, but they may have some differences. And just the way the humans work, those differences, people, that's where everybody's going to focus on is a, yeah, see, the way you guys are doing that, that makes you guys sissies and, you know, whatever. So, but the idea that it's a, it's a cycle, that it's a perpetual cycle that people, men are constantly worried about this, you know, their masculinity, the masculinity of the next generation and so forth is just fascinating, you know, like, and it just, that it's something that clearly is very important to men, you know, which, hey, that's great, you know, but it's very important to men. But there's just the nature of the way that we, we tend to lack perspective because of the nature of our lifespans and, you know, and living memory and so forth. It's just, it's this constant fight that's always hot, you know, this is like.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: No, I know. And it probably actually, you're right. And the, the conundrum there and the irony that'll never be settled is probably because of, because of men, right? How we're wired.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: You know, we're competitive where we want to be at the top. You know, it. And that's what I mean. Like, all men serve certain traits. And that's the thing is that, you know, we don't want to conform to something of the past, especially when you're a young man, right? You want to rebel. Like we talked about on a recent discussion on totally separate topic, but we talked about like, the civil rights era, right? There was, there was the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam. Then there's Martin Luther King. And, you know, Martin Luther King was a tortoise. And the other two groups were like, the hair, they look a little more appealing to young men and all that. And, but, and more masculine.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: And more masculine. And more masculine. Tough with guns with, you know, like just a more aggressive posture.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: But to actually be effective, it was a different type of masculinity that it took to see, to see the goals through. And so I think that's the, that's the, also the kind of the tension, I think, with men. Right? Like, you're right, that especially when we're younger, there's a ten. A tendency to feel that kinetic strikes, that type of energy and physicality is really what makes you a man. And I remember showing my son just.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: Real quick, let me, let me. Because there's something about that, though, just generational in the sense that when the young man comes up, there is a certain point where the young man is, tries to, and is almost supposed to overtake the older man, so to speak, you know, like. And so, I mean, you and I say this in our mid forties, like, you know, hold up, you know, that is a part of it, is that, you know, so the young man naturally is going to want to break out of that cage, so to speak, you know. And the way to break out, you know, implies, you know, that kind of kinetic kind of energy, you know, like where you're trying to break out.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: You're right.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: And the thing about, so to speak, that your earlier generation put on you.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And we were those young guys once. And like you're saying now we're the middle aged guys looking at the young guys coming up saying, well, what do you mean? I'm here, like, I'm here doing this and I did it for so long. And you trying to tell me now how to be a man or how are you gonna. And that might not be like a literal conversation, right? That might be the way that our generation now looks down at Gen Z or the millennials and saying, oh, that's exactly what's happening.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And, and that's exactly the cycle that happened with us. And, you know, like, it's what, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a perpetual cycle.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: And that's what I mean is, and that's where I was going, actually, with, with the fact that as men, you know, and males, there's that tension and that actually, there's never going to be solving that until, like, humanity evolves out of that, which, you know, we're not going to be around to see that and into something else. Right? And who knows if that'll even is necessary or if it'll happen. Because clearly we've survived this long evolutionary. Because it must have worked having men this way.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: I mean, recycling threat.
Well, hold on. The threat to this would seem to be something like AI, you know, some other type of thing that we create that's gonna then, you know, be a threat to us. You know, like, it's. But as long as humans keep cycling through, it seems like this is the cycle. I mean, and you can. This is something that's millions of years. Like, if you look at it from a primate standpoint, like, they have their kind of rituals and the kind of. The cyclical way that the dominance and or, like, the interaction between the males act go in their groups, you know, like different primates, you know, in the way that, you know, whether it be the. The apes, you know, or whatever, you know, like, they are like the gorillas or, you know, chimpanzees or the orangutans and different kind of things that go on with them. And so this is stuff that's hardwired, you know, when you look at it, you know, from the great ape standpoint, it's not just with humans where you have this kind of friction with masculine. We call it masculinity, but just in terms of the. The males, you know, like, in the type of soul. And that's not to say that there's nothing with females or there's not, but we just. This is something that's very apparent with the males that we see, you know, and it seems to have something to do with the. The manhood aspect of it, you know? So the male aspect.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: And I think culture is important. And to your point, I mean, even.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: As this stuff would be ingrained in the development of the culture also, though.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying is if you think about. I mean, whether it's, you know, in the jewish culture of bar mitzvah at age 13, that's a kind of rite of passage. You know, the maasai tribe in the Serengeti in Kenya, for example, at a certain age, a young man has to actually kill a lion with his spear. Like, go. Go and hunt a lion. And if he fails, he doesn't come home. He succeeds. He's a man. Right.
And, you know, we could even say our own little rituals in our culture. I'm thinking about, like, driving a car at 16, going away to college, you know, going away or drinking at 21 or when it was 18. The lot of drinking, there's all these milestones that say, hey, now you're. If you get to this point and you can pass it, you're a bigger person, right? Or you're. You're an adult, or you're a man.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: I think that more responsibility because of that, as well, like you, you pass these milestones and then you're supposed to have more responsibility or, you know, and so forth.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, but during times, like, again, and if we look at even just, you know, just picking up the idea that when there's times of tension in a culture from even the first conversation to this one, we see sometimes these desire for certain changes. And I think that right now you made a good point because of the fracturing of our information through the Internet and the media, social media and ecosystems in general just in this last 15 years, it's kind of new for all of us. Now you've got people jockeying for, you know, a lot of attention and a lot of different silos of information. But one of them is, you know, masculinity. And I think, you know, I wrote down a few names just like I mentioned. Some of the artists maybe we grew up with that were all over the spectrum and different types of, whether theyre very macho masculine guys like Schwarzenegger and Stallone, or theyre more feminine guys like a little Richard or prince.
Now, I thought of some guys in todays culture and those who try and espouse masculinity and theyre different people, I thought about Jordan Peterson, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, whos obviously since he bought Twitter has had a lot of opining on the subject, Andrew Tate. And then I thought about, you know, that's maybe our version of a certain form of male masculinity, masculine energy that's trying to get out and say, hey, you know, we're the ones who are going to tell you how to be a man. And then I thought of around the world, right, there's other cultures that take it to an even more extreme level. So we talked about education on kids, made me think of the Taliban and how they're so extreme that we, you know, we just learned this year, right, they banned all girls from going to school at any age. So it's not even like, well, you can learn to read and all that up until 6th grade or 12th grade like some cultures do. But we just don't want you going to college and all that. Well, they're like, we don't want you learning anything.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: Well, before we get dominated, before you get too far away, before you get too far away, I wanted to comment on like what you said, like with current people who kind of part of their brand is I'll show you how to be a man, or I'm about defending what it is to be a man and so forth. And the interesting thing about that is it's almost an inverse, in a sense, it's a further evolution. But the, where you pointed out with, like, a Schwarzenegger or something like that, that was like, because at that time, it was a mass media environment. He was the, you know, he was a broadcast to, you know, across the board. Like, people would know about who he was no matter where you were, you know, Terminator. I'll be back. You know, all that kind of stuff like that was something that everybody knew but the names you just mentioned. In many respects, there are many people who don't really either don't know who those people are or who, you know, aren't really familiar with their work. And the reason for that is that while we have a mass media distribution system, information is much more siloed. So now what we are, what's evolving now is instead of society wide, a lot of times, quote unquote alphas, that set the tone for what masculinity can be. What we're seeing now a lot of times is siloed so that you have certain people that are like, this is what. Like, they got incels in one respects. Like, yeah, yeah, this is what masculinity is. And on the other hand, you'll see other people that look at masculinity as something totally different. And so it's. It's more, in a sense, village sense, but, you know, it's all happening in this same. Through this same conduit, which is the Internet, where you just have all these silos popping up with all these different ideas of masculinity. And that's a new thing, so to speak. You know, that we're going to see how that unfolds and what. What effects that has. So. But, I mean, this is something, like I said, it's a perpetual conversation. And so, I mean, it's not something that will end at any point, but it's interesting to observe, you know, in the sense that you can need males and that interaction between males. And I thought you used a good word when you said communal and just kind of like, there is a definite communal feedback going on with males that is distinct and observable that, you know, it, there's interesting stuff going on in the cyclical nature of it makes it even more interesting. So.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: But, yeah, maybe I'll go get a kilt and start playing a bagpipe in a dress and we'll see how.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Do what you got to do, man. You got to express your masculinity how you can. All right, so but. Nah, but we can get out of here from there, man. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Ogamana.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
