The Almost True Meaning of Christmas

Speaker 1

Welcome to Happy Hour Econ, where a comedian and an economist walk into a bar. I'm Lou Perez, the comedian. We are going to serve up shots of economic reality with a chaser of sanity. And I'm Phil Magnus, The Economist.

Speaker 1

If you guys are looking for a last minute Christmas gift, I wrote a book called That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore. And my co-host, Phil, he has way more books than I do. maybe, Phil, why don't you plug some of those and also tell us all who you are. Yeah, so I'm Phil Magnus. I'm an economic historian. I'm also the David J. Thoreau Chair in Political Economy at the Independent Institute. And as Lou mentioned, I've got several books. They range from the very serious, Cracks in the Ivory Tower, which is an economic investigation of how higher ed operates and mostly fails, all the way down to some of the more irreverent side. So my most recent work, it's a book called Neoliberal Abstracts, co-edited by myself and Bob Blossom. And basically what it does is it gathers 100 of the craziest academic papers that you've ever encountered and curates them just to show the insanity that happens in higher ed. Well, I find it funny that we have a figure around Christmas time named Santa Claus, and people are like, he's so ridiculous. There's no way that a man can do any of that stuff. And meanwhile, if you dip into the book that you just described, there are things and ideas in there that are crazier than Santa Claus. I don't know if there are any that just pop to mind. Absolutely. One of the papers that really got us started on this project was about the World of Warcraft video game system, which is this online gaming platform, very famous, popular among the kids. And these academic authors claimed that neoliberal capitalism had invaded and ruined the perfect society of World of Warcraft.

Speaker 2

And it's just a Marxist discourse on why this imaginary video game world has been polluted by capitalism and greed. Well, is there anything out there that neoliberalism, quote unquote, hasn't ruined, apparently? Apparently not, and we have several abstracts in there and they range from general observations, claims about society to some really extreme and obscure, almost propagandistic. examples that run through the book. So there's everything from video games, there are claims about, there's another one that attributes pet obesity to neoliberalism. So your dog's too fat, neoliberalism somehow caused that. It just runs through the gamut. it's, you know, I often joke that there are people in academia that if their only tool is a hammer and sickle, everything looks like a proletarian revolution about to happen. Neoliberalism, it's one of those words where I don't know if there's a definition for it. I see it thrown around a lot, kind of as a catchall for anything that's not, you know, Lenin.

Speaker 2

Anything to the right of linen is probably a good definition for neoliberalism, how it's used. That was really the impetus of the project is we see this term thrown around everywhere and myself and my co-author started asking, well, what does this term even mean? And you can look very hard. It's difficult to find a coherent definition of what neoliberalism is. So we said, we're going to let the authors of all these papers about neoliberalism speak for themselves. And to do that, we just copied and pasted the text of their abstracts. And what you get is a combination of gibberish and gobbledygook to just crazy, crazy Marxist conspiracy theories. So what really comes down to is the definition of neoliberalism is anything that the author dislikes. We kind of created an assignment for those of you listening out there, you know, if your parents, and you have kids who are in college, if they're coming back for the holidays, you have a lot of questions to ask them. And if you're, if you happen to be a kid in college and this stuff is making sense to you, then maybe you should take your parents aside and explain to them, you know, what you are currently going into massive debt in order to learn or, and study. here. paying $80,000 a year for your kid to study Marxian puppetry, you might want to reconsider that investment and what's the return on it. Because, you know, are they going into the classroom to learn an ideology that has no practical skill for the real world, generates meaningless nonsensical papers that any sane normal person would look at and laugh at how absurd it is. I these things are beyond parody.

Speaker 2

in some of the instances, and yet the price tag is very real. In a way, I'm wondering, is that the meaning of Christmas? Well, one good thing that comes about from Christmas every year is the college is closed down for a couple of weeks. So the kids leave the classroom, the political indoctrination is no longer happening. It does resume about the end of January or so, but it's a respite from some of the nonsense that's taught in the classroom. And you know this idea of you the the meaning of Christmas. I do wonder what that means for so many people. I think I'm fortunate in that I'm a family guy now. the meaning of Christmas for me, and if you're not necessarily a religious person, if you're more of a secular person, I get to share this great experience with my wife and my kids. And it happens to be freezing where I am. There's snow on the ground right now. But there's kind of a Christmassy thing happening here. So for me, there's the

Speaker 1

obvious Christmas means family and getting together and looking back on the year and being like, wow, we're really so fortunate to have each other and to, to be where we are. but I, I imagine for, I'm just imagining, you know, the Bolsheviks, you know, coming out, coming out of the university, coming home, you know, what Christmas means to them must be quite different. I mean, you look at Christmas, it does have theological significance. It celebrates the birth of Jesus. So there's the religious component of it. But I think it has a broader cultural and ethical sense associated with it. And that is everything from the spirit of giving, the spirit of charity. It's often seen as a time of peace. And when we forgive each other, it's an end to conflicts. It's a moment to get together with family. And one of the things that I'd like to point out, if you look at societies from history that have banned Christmas. And there are several examples. They're almost all terrible places. It's the Soviet Union or it was the Puritan period in England right after the English Civil War when Cromwell takes over the government declares a Commonwealth and one of the things they do is they ban Christmas. So these periods in history are often associated with very dreary and often violent and bloody eras and yet Christmas itself is in many ways the antithesis of that. What does a band on Christmas look like? know, because in a way it's sort of like, I remember there was that period, you know, with Fox News and I don't know if they're still in it where it's like the war on Christmas. And I didn't know that historically there were actually wars on Christmas.

Speaker 2

Yes, there were historical, and you know, the Puritan one was from an ultra-religious perspective, but where that was merged into the state. You know, I think about this historically, imagine explaining to your kids or your nieces and nephews or your family members, sorry, Christmas is banned this year, you don't get gifts. You know, that might be an impetus for a revolt in itself. And I wonder how they would, you know, kind of sniff out all the people who were practicing Christmas, you know, secretly, because they would see like somebody walking with something that was wrapped up and they would know, okay, you're a hero, Exactly. So you would have to not wrap the gifts, you know, you would just have like all these bundles of toys and stuff and like, let him go. He's obviously not with the Christmas spirit. Right. Right. You know, you're in a communist society that's saying you're carrying gifts. mean, first off, everyone's in miserable poverty in that type of a society, so you can't even afford the gifts to begin with. And yet you're seen as consumerist if you are participating in this Western decadent culture of Christmas from the capitalist world. So that also gets worked into the narrative. So you've got two polar extremes. The ultra theocratic Puritan version is like we ban Christmas. There's also like the Soviet version on the other end that views this as capitalist decadence and therefore it's an importation from the West. It's also part of religion and the Soviets are very hostile to religion in general, not just Christianity but all types of religion. So there's a suppression movement against that. But again, it's really examples of societies where this has occurred are generally bad places that nobody wants to live.

Speaker 1

On the consumerist front, it is interesting that especially around the holidays, it seems like the the message against consumerism is so strong. And I guess it's obvious because, you know, people are people are buying stuff. I always wonder what you know, when someone says consumerism, when they're railing against consumerism, what are they thinking definitionally of consumerism? Because we all buy stuff, right? Really excessive consumption. This actually goes back into history itself. There's always been a strain of anti-capitalism that is just angry people that are exercising grievances against the world because they think there's just too much stuff out there, too many choices. You think of this, this is Barney Sanders complaining about the too many shampoo bottles. You only need one type of soap, although I don't think many communists use even one type of soap. But, you know, it's this notion that society has moved in an unnatural direction of consuming way too much. And as long as there are cheap and nasty items around to purchase at very low prices, it's throwaway crap. essentially. But this goes back, you know, there's this guy in the 19th century, character by the name of Thomas Carlyle, who started as a famous historian and he just became a grumpy old crank. And by the end of his life, he's writing these essays about the cheap and nasty consumerism of society has diverted our attention from what should be the romanticized version of the proper world and focused us on consumption rather than innate good that also happens to align with his personal values. So I think a lot of the anti-consumerist rhetoric we see around the holidays is just grumpy people that have an aesthetic grievance. They don't like what they see. They don't like other people enjoying themselves and being killjoys. They come up with almost an ideological justification to dress up these preferences of themselves as if it's like the societal diagnosis of an ill.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I always want to look at those people. I always want to see the receipts. I want to see the stuff that they spend. their money on and also what they spend their time on. Because I don't know, maybe I'm one of the fortunate people who I'm not jealous. I'm not envious or maybe I hide it really well. But when I hear about, you know, others who are into stuff that I'm not into, my first thought isn't, well, they shouldn't be doing that or they shouldn't have that. My first thought is like, okay, that's what they're into. That's the thing. mean, there are people that have bad taste, but it's their right to have bad taste. If you want to paint your house yellow with polka dots on it, I may look at that and say, you some very weird aesthetic preferences, but you go be you, I'll be me. But a lot of times, it's the anti-consumerism you see. In a way, it's a repudiation of just basic economics. We all have personal subjective value of things that we like. I might like a red car, you may like a green car. That doesn't mean any of us is right or wrong or that green cars should be priced differently than red cars. If there's some objective price that's built into it, no, it actually comes down to my own tastes. I buy what I want, you buy what you want. And this is one of the other interesting things of the holiday season because we have a very strong culture of gifting around Christmas. So it's almost like a mystery game to try to figure out somebody else's subjective tastes when you purchase them a gift.

Speaker 1

You got to keep that gift receipt because my mother, she's wonderful. Every year I know, I know a couple of things. I know I'm going to get Absolutely.

Speaker 1

some socks, I'm going to get underwear and, that's going to work that I'm like, mom, you hit me every year, you nail it. But then there's that sweater that she gets me. And I'm just like, man, mom, I'm just, it's almost like the same sweater every year. My mom, she's, she's not a knitter, you know, so it's not like she knit the sweater in which case there's no way I could. Yeah, exactly. There's no sentimental value. This is the ridiculous thing mom made. No, it's purchased at Marshall's or Ross or something. who if they're looking to sponsor the show, I'll tell my mom to buy exclusively at the fine establishment. You know what I find funny too, especially talking about kind of the humbuggers on the left, they're against consumerism, but yet at the same time they will make this argument that the very basics must be provided for. Housing must be provided, food must be provided, as if those are two things that Nobody disagrees on, like forget about whether or not, know, disagreeing on what property is, but disagrees on what kind of food they wanna eat, where they wanna live, how they wanna live their lives. Again, you look at command and control societies. What does the housing look like there? It's these Soviet style, Stalinist architecture housing blocks that are all in a perfectly designed city next to the mass transit that doesn't work.

Speaker 2

What's the food look like there? It's standing in the bread line to get a stay all piece of bread. It's being served cruel out of a giant pot that tastes terrible. There's no choice that goes into it because there's no signal being sent by the individual consumer about their preferences. And if anything, consumers want something different than is being offered through the government, you know, they're out of luck. Or you got to get in with the party elite to have access to luxuries, to have your private villa on the countryside as opposed to the apartment block in the city. So you take choice away from things and in general, just the quality of life goes down. So you hear all these people, say, yeah, these are the necessities. We need to provide food and housing. Ask the question, well, what kind of food and what kind of housing are they trying to offer? And it's generally not something that most people want. This idea too that if something is guaranteed, if something is your right, then I don't think you get too much of a choice on what that is. And I find it funny just somebody who's from New York originally. And this idea, especially for the proponents who are talking about like housing as a human right, it's like, well, if housing is a human right, then who says you have a right to live in Manhattan? You you out of the billions of people on this planet, you, a graphic designer who's taken improv classes, like you have a right to live in that amazing apartment in like Murray. Can you

Speaker 2

Columbia University that comes with that, even though there's no students that want to take a degree in Marxian interpretive poetry. You're listening to the Happy Hour Econ podcast. Make sure to sign up at happyhourecon.org so you never miss an episode. Now, let's get back to the show. just noticed and I'm on social media a lot. I'm on way too much. The internet just keeps feeding me slop that's just not making my life any better. But one thing that I noticed is that there seems to be fewer and fewer of those. Black Friday videos where years back you could guarantee on Black Friday that there would be just riots and fistfights. camping in the parking lot and lining up at 3am. once the doors open, you want this TV and there's an old lady in her eighties that somehow thought it was a good idea to be at the front of the line. And you know, you're going to punch this old lady, go get that TV. And I don't see as many of those videos as I used to. And I'm happy about that. I'm happy that people aren't that they don't seem to be as animalistic, I guess, and on grabbing this stuff. I wonder what we could chalk that up to. Yeah.

Speaker 2

as the market has found a solution to that. There was always kind of a fun element of watching those videos as long as you aren't the person being stampeded at the door to get the television. But we talk about Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. It's the official kickoff of the Christmas shopping season. But now really Black Friday is like the entire week. And it's spread out across the internet. And you don't have to stand in front of the door at three in the morning until it opens at six so you can stampede and get the TV anymore. You just go on Amazon or Walmart or Best Buy on their website and you have to be there in quick when the sale starts. And it gets delivered directly to your home. So technology, a recognition of consumer preferences, the internet all converging together to better serve what people want, what people are intending to spend their money on has created a real innovation in the way that the marketplace operates there. And it's been better also for employees of the companies. Imagine if you were a Target or a Walmart employee a couple of decades ago when those Stampede videos were common, what did that mean? You have to get up at four in the morning right after Thanksgiving. You don't get to enjoy your holiday weekend because you got to go into the store to be ready for the crowd that's banging on the door with their canes and trying to overrun the old lady with the walker at the front of the line. Now we have ways around that. It's internet purchasing, e-commerce. It's spread out what used to be this intensely concentrated event at the door of the store into an entire week. long or even multi-week set of sales handled organically and on your own pace and on your own time really through the internet.

Speaker 1

There's just so many like Walmart and Target fighters that just had to go into retirement. Exactly. Like there's nothing to fight for anymore. You know, with the growth of options and choices that people have when it comes to, you know, being consumers, something that I've noticed is, especially with having kids, is that they have so many toys now, just an insane amount of toys and some of them are really cool toys, but they're so cheap to make now that every single toy that like my kid has seems to be just like one step away from the garbage at all at all times. And to a point where, mean, there's sometimes like I'll go into their, we have in the basement, we have like their playroom like set up. And sometimes I feel like just going in there with just a trash can. I just want to get rid of all this stuff. And I wouldn't even like, I'm not even like, blinking an eye. Like I could do it without even without even saying like, no, there's no way I'm getting rid of that or that. So I wonder if there's like sort of this balance between, we, we have all of this abundance, but then sort of like losing kind of that sentimentality with a lot of this stuff. You know, you mentioned this, was right after, think, President Trump made a speech the other day where he was responding to critics of his tariff policies. And one of things he said is, well, your kid doesn't need $27. They can get away with just one or two of them. It's like, take the choice out of this. And I think that's the completely wrongheaded way to think about this. Yes, there's cheap stuff going all around. You can get it with abundance, but you know, there are also more options, more choices to fulfill your preferences or fulfill your kids' preferences. I think choice in general is welfare enhancing. It gives people more opportunities to seek out what they like or when it gets to gifting.

Speaker 2

There's an interesting economic theory at play here. Why do we do this institution called gifting? And if you think about it, gifting has been around for millennia. It predates recorded history. And almost every society on Earth has this practice of gifting. And yet, in the strict and narrow sense, it really doesn't make sense to us. Like, why would I take the time to seek out a gift to try to guess your preferences if I want to send something to you that there's a good chance you may not like what I give to you and vice versa. Where's the reciprocity in that? And this has been kind of a conundrum that economists have thought about is like, why is gifting so prevalent when it seems like at least in the immediate short term, it has a lot of waste associated with it. And I have to search for a gift. You have to search for a gift. If my gift is not seen as of equal value to your gift, does that mean that one of us feels excluded from the exchange there or as if we've gotten the the short end of the deal. If you spend $25 on something but I only spend 10, where's the reciprocity in that? And we've all had that friend that gives cheap gifts. Or they may be the, there's something, what you can do with the sweater that you don't like that you get every year. You give it away to another friend as a cheap gift and they're like, well, thanks. Really? I didn't really want that. And yet at the same time, there are other people that invest a lot of time in picking out the perfect gift for, you know, a family member or a friend or a sibling. And What the economists that have studied this have done, and I refer to a paper, my friend Tony Gill and Michael Thomas have looked into this in the economics of gifting. They say in the reciprocity of that exchange, there's also a social mechanism of building trust with each other.

Speaker 2

And that's part of the game of figuring out what you want and you figuring out what I want, figuring out what a different family member wants in terms of picking a gift. The shortcut is you buy them a Starbucks gift card for $20. And everyone has one of those. And there's no real thought put into it. It's like, right, you might as well just be handing me a $20 bill. But you're saying, no, you have to use it at Starbucks. So better than nothing. But on the other hand, if you really put the time into figuring out what I want and trying to discern my preferences and vice versa, that builds trust between us as a relationship. And that's one of the arguments of why people incur the cost of trying to figure out what other people want as a gift is that value, that longer term social trust that emerges from it. So in a way, it's a type of exchange that encourages cooperation and peace in society. And every bit is economic, as if I were to just hand you money. But it has that longer term investment that I'm making in trying to discern your preferences when I give you a gift of something that you'd appreciate. And as hard as it is to, you know, find the perfect gift for somebody who you know so well. mean, just think about how hard it is to have a business, a service or a product that you want to sell to people who have no idea who you are or you're out there testing the waters and saying like, maybe like there's a lot of pizza out there, but there's something about my pizza that I think is going to hit. Well, you're looking for signs from your consumer base. Just as like if I give something to one of my siblings and they absolutely love it, that's a signal sent to me. If I market a new type of pizza with some weird topping on it that nobody likes, that's a signal back to the restaurant. I look at the different options I've offered and adjust my business decisions based on it.

Speaker 1

Yeah, when it comes to the gifting thing, it's funny, me and my brothers, basically, when it comes to our nieces and nephews, there's about $50 that's just been trading hands because nobody wants more toys for their kids. So it's like, yeah, just send us money. So it's this $50 bill that just runs itself through. So it's not gaining any interest. It's not being invested. It's just going from one hand to another. It's going around in a circle. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. I always try to, so my brother's kids, I try to buy them the noisiest toy that the kids will love. But then the parents, you know. So it's a little fun prank to play on them. So they always get drums and whistles and noise makers and the kids love them. So how do you tell a kid, sorry, this toy you don't like that Uncle Phil gave you, it's making too much noise. Phil, this might be the last episode that we do because you just stepped on, my God, you just threw the biggest grenade at me because one of the things that I wanted to talk about, because this show, we're talking about economics, we're having a few laughs, but I think it's also about giving advice. I was going to advise every grandparent out there not to give toys that make noise to their grandkids. my God. So not to do exactly what I did. How did your brother respond to you doing that?

Speaker 2

You know, kind of will roll the eyes to some degree, but then sees that the kids like it, so at least they're happy. And then it's, you know, part of the reciprocal exchange is that we have fun. My parents are so lucky in that they're both kind of hard of hearing. My dad's a little worse than my mom. So when we're at their place with my kids, they have no... it's almost like they live on a different planet where there's no concept of the loud noises. hearing aid. Exactly. Me, I'm super like, I think it's, I might have something going on with my brain because I've become so sensitive to sounds over the years. And for me, it's just, it's just so much, so much pain. So we'll see what Christmas morning is like and the boxes that they start, they start opening up. You know, obviously Christmas time, you know, we're talking about talking about gifting. Another important aspect of Christmas is charity. And one of the questions I think people are wondering, and by people I mean this guy sitting in the chair that I am, is are people more charitable at Christmas? And a friend of ours asks, or does it just so happen to coincide with year-end tax planning?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think they do coincide for a reason, but it's not really like one causes the other because Christmas itself, it long predates the modern income tax code. And there are instances of charity. I mean, it's always been associated with the holiday. It's a time to think about those that are less fortunate than you, think about those that are in need. So that's why you see toy drives. That's why you see the Salvation Army sitting up in front of the grocery store. It's a reminder that this as a time of year culturally and for religious reasons and for any number of things that are associated with Christmas, that yes, we give to those that are less fortunate than ourselves. Even very small amounts, even your pocket change at the grocery store. It could be as simple as that. And yet, yeah, there is this component where you get your charitable giving deduction at the end of the year. And I've worked in the nonprofit space for over a decade. Every organization we know does this. They send out their email blasts right around the holidays reminding people, hey, it's Christmas season. It's the holiday season. Also, January 1st is around the corner. And if you want to claim charitable giving on your income tax return for the next year, you have until midnight on New Year's Eve to get your, to write your check to sustain our operations. So it does go hand in hand with that. think the income tax code evolved in that way that at the end of the year is a good cutoff point for charitable giving. So it's not anything that's one's causing the other. They do tend to coincide in that way. But I don't think it cheapens the act of charitable giving. It's just a it's like a friendly cultural reminder that hey you can do this at this time of year.

Speaker 1

think a lot of people think that you can give all this money and it's all a write-off. And that's just not the case. There's certain limits on how much you can actually write off. Exactly. And the tax code changes from time to time. In fact, we're getting a revision of the tax code in 2026 that was just passed. And it alters what you can deduct. And it alters how you structure your giving. The way I kind of look at it is the marginal tax dollar is better spent in the private sector than it is if you send it to the government where they're going to dump it into some port barrel project of a politician or a war or one of these many horrible things that tends to do, if not outright waste, they may lose it for all we know, I would rather that go to a private sector charity. So in that sense, deductions from your taxes is taking dollars that would probably be spent on wasteful or harmful things by the government and redirecting them into civil society, into the private sector, where there's at least a chance that they'll do something good. productive. We're definitely going to something that you directly agree with. care about. Right, right. It's voting with your feet, voting with your dollar. If you care about, you know, feeding the hungry or ending homelessness, that's your choice. You can give to many charities out there that will do that. You give it to the government and it might go to support like a Marxist poetry department at an Ivy League university.

Speaker 1

Again, parents, it's Christmas time. Talk to your loved ones about Marxist poetry. It's closing time. You don't have to go home, but you can stay here. Make sure to sign up at happyhourecon.org so you never miss an episode. This is Happy Hour Econ. Exactly.