'There's not a lot of faith in Washington' Economist says he's 'worried' about country's future

0:00Dave Roberts here. There you are surrounded by fans, sharing wings, sharing drinks, high-fiving random strangers. Everybody remembers the game. Nobody remembers the guy coughing behind you until a few days later. At 2am, you wake up with a fever and your throats on fire. Now what? Urgent care, clothes, ER, slam, telehealth, maybe, but the pharmacy's clothes. You needed a medical emergency kit. These aren't first aid kits. They contain essential prescriptions used for over 30 common conditions. Sinus and ear infection, UTIs, stomach bug, travelers diarrhea, and more. On hand before you need them. Use your doctor-developed guidebook to select the right prescription or call their telemedicine doctor standing by. It's like an urgent care and drug store at home. When you're sick, traveling, or stranded, you'll wish you ordered a medical emergency kit. Order online in minutes and it's shipped to your door and say $45 with my promo code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue. That's promo code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue.

1:01With its abundant natural beauty, charming towns and friendly people, South Carolina offers the kind of discoveries that stay with you long after you've left. Like the realization you're good at something you'd never before tried. Or your first oyster roast, and a taste you didn't expect to love. And other times, it just hits. Like the view on a wind-swept appallacid mount top. So come find the undiscovered you in South Carolina. Visit discoversouthcareline.com. We are seeing both Democrats and Republicans running against this economy. Explain. Okay, well let's get today's facts out of the way first, which is what an emotional

2:04rollercoaster this economy can be. Katie, when I talked to you about a month ago, we just got in the July numbers and I looked depressed. And today, I don't know if you can tell this is my happy face. Basically everything that felt like bad news last month, we got an equal and offsetting amount of good news this month. And the economy is going along reasonably well. That's talking about one side of it. Can people find work? The other side of it is, do people think stuff is affordable? That's the part I think you're really seeing people run against. Okay, and they find work that pays them enough to keep up with inflation. And right now, they can't. The average wage rise over the past year was 3.1%. That's the lowest that it's been in years. Almost certainly prices are rising faster than wages on average. The people who are keeping up with people who are moving from one job to another job, that's a really good way to get a wage rise. But for people who are sticking in the same job, what they're seeing is their bills are getting ahead of them. Some people are getting a bit of a

3:07cost of living adjustment, but in most cases not enough to keep up. Annie, is this a vibe session or is it something more? Yeah, I think that there are legitimate complaints that people have about the cost of food, about the brutal cost of housing and childcare, additionally about the cost of electricity. And so, no, there's very, very real complaints there. And as Justin pointed out, if your wages aren't going up as fast as your costs are, that's going to be a terrible situation for you to be in. And we've really just been stuck in the cycle for years now, where the economy looks good in terms of GDP growth and in terms of jobs. And then on top of that, I do think that the vibes are off. And I think that that probably has more to do with politics and the media that we're consuming, given that the numbers on consumer confidence are truly low now. I think beyond what one might accept, simply from the economic fundamentals. And Justin, the University of Michigan, so I'll give this to you, has the consumer sentiment index.

4:08Explain it. These aren't first aid kits. They contain essential prescriptions used for over 30 common conditions, sinus and ear infection, UTIs, stomach bug, travelers diarrhea, and more. On hand before you need them. Use your doctor-developed guidebook to select the right prescription or call their telemedicine doctor standing by. It's like an urgent care and drugstore at home. When you're sick, traveling, or stranded, you'll wish you ordered a medical emergency kit. Order online in minutes, and it's shipped to your door and say $45 with my promo code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue. That's promo code blue at urgentcarekit.com slash blue.

5:09Rubric is the security and AI operations company. Built for what happens after an attack hits, not just the moments before. AI has turned the threat landscape into quicksand, moving too fast for any human to fully predict. That's why an agentic cyber resilience platform matters. Automated recovery, clean data, a business that keeps moving no matter what hits. One platform, not a patchwork of stitched together tools and gaps. Don't wait for the next attack. Secure and accelerate your business at rubric.com. Again, rubric.com. He's numbers to me. Basically, my colleagues have been running a survey for over 70 years, and this was the point that he was just getting at, which is right now, whether it's this month or last month, doesn't make much of a difference. Right now, we are recording the lowest levels of consumer sentiment in the 70 years that they've been running that survey. That's a period that includes wars, it includes financial crises, it includes a global pandemic. So there's something going on here. What's hard to figure out is what, and that's why it's

6:12one fully you've got Annie here, but I want to give a pitch for what I fear is going on, which is things aren't great. They're certainly not perfect, but what's really difficult for folks is there's not a lot of faith in Washington. One of the other surveys on that question asks people, do you believe that economic policy is being run well or is it being run poorly? And the share that it's run poorly right now is at an all-time high. And in fact, you saw the president today fold it up. This great jobs report with some social media posting that honestly just sounds like absolutely lunatic, and makes me worry about our future, even if the economy is doing okay. Let's put that up. I mean, I'm not going to read it all because it would take me, I think, a good long while, but it's typical Trumpian uppercase declarations, better than tariffs, be patriots, blah, blah, blah, President Donald J. Trump. The economy is working, Annie, pretty well for the rich. If you look at the stock market,

7:18hit highs, hit his highs routinely, the rich are buying a whole lot of stuff. At last I checked was it the very rich that was basically fueling all the economic growth, the GDP growth that we have in this country or the consumer growth? Yeah, we continue to have really, really high inequality. And I think that this is sort of the problem is if we diverted more money to lower income workers, you would still end up with more inflation. I still think that that would be a good thing to do, but it's a really, really, you know, inflation is a really, really tough thing to solve. We have high interest rates, right? Like there's just a lot of problems. Dave Roberts here. There you are surrounded by fans, sharing wings, sharing drinks, high-fiving

8:21random strangers. Everybody remembers the game. Nobody remembers the guy coughing behind you until a few days later at 2 a.m. You wake up with the fever and your throats on fire. Now what? Urgent care, close. ER, slam, telehealth, maybe, but the pharmacy's close. You needed a medical emergency kit. These aren't first aid kits. They contain essential prescriptions used for over 30 common conditions, sinus and ear infection, UTIs, stomach bug, travelers diaria, and more. On hand before you need them. Use your doctor-developed guidebook to select the right prescription or call their telemedicine doctor standing by. It's like an urgent care and drugstore at home. When you're sick, traveling, or stranded, you'll wish you ordered a medical emergency kit. Order online in minutes and it's shipped to your door and say $45 with my promo code blue at urgentcarekitt.com slash blue. That's promo code blue at urgentcarekitt.com slash blue.