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Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion I Amy Morris. This week we look at raising or lowering the voting age? What's the better fit for a democracy? Also, employee loyalty, dedication and initiative once seen as a benefit, but employees are lately pushing back against that. What can companies do to win their most loyal workers back? And we answer the classic question paper or plastic? Which one is more environmentally sustainable? Turns out there's no easy answer, but first the choice
is made by the Federal Open Market Committee. In the next few years will determine if we get inflation under control, how fast the economy grows, and what happens in financial markets. The most recent nominee to the Fed's Board of Governors, Adriann Kugler. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre made that announcement.
Doctor Kugler is a highly qualified and respected economists with deep expertise in labor markets, worker mobility and youth unemployment. These nominees understand that this job is not a partisan one, but one that plays a critical role in pursuing maximum employment, maintaining price stability, and supervising many of our nation's financial institutions.
But there are concerns that Wile Kugler is a great labor economist. What the country needs is someone with financial macro expertise. For more on this, we bring in Bloomberg opinion columnist to Alison Schrager. Alison, always a pleasure, thank you for taking the time with us. Just based on the column that you have on the Bloomberg terminal, is monetary policy at a critical point now?
I think so. I mean we're coming off of what we called to some the Great Moderation, where we had very low inflation and low interest rates and everyone thought this would last forever. And everyone thought, well, you know, we'd figured out monetary policy that if you set an intention, which called an inflation target, it would be realized. And you know, the biggest challenge was interst rates were too low. But now it turns out that maybe inflation targeting doesn't
work as well as we thought. Not only that board guidance, which has become the most powerful tool. If you tell markets what you're going to do and then you do,
it might actually not work that well either. So I think in a lot of ways monetary policy is at a very critical point and maybe after we think the tools we're using, and you know, it also brings up a lot of financial stability risks moving from a load to or a high rate environment that takes really sort of thinking very carefully about how you're navigating monetary policy. And also, to add it all up on, we've also
really changed the tools of monetary policy. The main policy rate used to be the FED funds rate, which was the rate banks used to lend to each other at now that starting the Great Financial Crisis with the interest rate on reserves instead, which also just changes to somebody the mechanism of how monetary policy works. And there's also of course q E, which is an enormous sort of
balance sheet the fedal system manage. So, as I said, I really think we're at this critical point where we might be in a new regime of monetary policy and an intellectual regime about how we think about it.
Okay, so what does the FED need?
I think it needs someone who really understands these challenges and you know, they're you know, I think we tend to think about economists being all the same, but they have very distinct specialties. And if you're thinking about what the FED is trying to do, it's trying to sort of steer and guide the macroeconomy by working through financial markets. You know, financial markets are the one that sort of
carry out all these things. They raise interest rates, that changes credit conditions, and that feeds through the macro economy. So you have this huge financial markets, you know, apparatus which actually is to carry out and implement all these policies. So I think what we really need then, and this is a very sort of distinct specialty, is economists too, specialize in macro finance, which is the macro economy and how that interacts with financial markets.
Now, as you explained in your column and as you said just now, there is a range of specialties on the FED board, and it seems like that would be a good thing that you'd have that diversity and you'd have all those different brains working together for that common goal. Not necessarily, no, I think we.
Should have that diversity. The problem is we don't have anyone who does the macro finance stuck I mean, or I mean to some degree we have one. We have one, but you know he did almost that work within the FED.
And what we really needs you an outsider who's really actually a great scholar in this area to sort of lead them intellectually and traditionally, at least since the eighties, we've always had that or does some degree have that presence from the New York FED President who always gets a see on the FOMC.
And right now, I.
Mean, we have someone more macroeconomists who doesn't really work in financial markets. So we really are lacking financial expertise on the board right now. And the latest FED pick really is more labor. We already kind of have that with Lisa Cook, so I think we don't. You know, labor is useful too, that is part of the FED dual mandate. But to some degree, if I had to choose, I would choose the financial expertise more because that's actually
how it all works. The labor market is a downstream of what happens in financial markets.
Let's dig down a little bit deeper and talk about what that does bring to the table, what it is that it would add to their decision process.
Yeah, so when you're deciding whether or not we're going to raise or lower rates or you know, quantitative tightening or move back to quantitative easoning, which you know as you know, whatever, it's very clear we're moving into sort of some serious financial stability concerns. If you really understand how FED policy interacts with financial markets, you can know, Okay,
these these are the unintended consequences that could happen. This is if we raise rates, this could up into financial markets. This is what could happen to the housing market. You know, all these things that could hapen to smaller regional things. You have that appreciation. And then later, as I said,
these conditions are what affect labor markets. So it's one thing just to be like, oh wow, we're really concerned about labor markets, and you know how this affects sort of do you know this part of the labor market versus that part of the labor market. But honestly, that's sort of the second order concern of how it impacted financial markets.
First, better macro view then than the granular view you're getting from all the different opinions. Exactly we are talking with Alice and Traeger, a Bloomberg opinion columnist covering economics. Alison, what do you want to see from the FED?
I would like to see, as I said, some acknowledgment. Honestly, they also made a lot of policy errors in the last couple of years. And I mean I don't blame them entirely because they were following largely what had become the sort of intellectual tradition, which was a thing about poored guidance just thinking about lower for the biggest problem.
So I think it would be really good to have a real intellectual leader who understands macro financial challenges on the FED to really sort of be able to also take a hard look at mistakes that we're made and think, do we need to really rethink our communication strategy and how we, you know, are thinking going forward and communicate.
The FED is facing some tremendous challenges. Let's go through some of them if we could, because in your column you sort of itemize them and you talked about how they're unprecedented. This is an unusual time. It's been an unusual couple of years for all of us. Let's face it, but this is a really unusual time for the FED. It is.
I mean, there's been other unusual times, but I mean these are the times you look back on if you're a monetary historian and you're like, Wow, this is really sparks a new regime and how we do monetary policy. I would say, you know, Vulkar was another time where it was really like a big change and you think about how you think about credibility, how do you think
of the role of the FED and the markets. And I think now that that sort of era is broken, with higher and and with rising race, we sort of need a new regime not only in a policy that's done, but also in intellectual philosophy.
Do you mean regime not only in how they think in their policy and their philosophy, but also in their leadership.
Well, I mean, I'm not saying we need to get rid of Jpell.
I just wanted to clarify that.
But I do think say, having one at least one person who has a lot of expertise in macro finance and sort of a long history of if intellectual leadership and scholarship in this area, I just say, let's have one of those people around on the board. We don't have to change everyone. Let's just add.
One, what does the FED need to do now? And then what should they be doing in the next few years. Let's take the short look at it, and then let's go for the long ball.
Well, I mean, I said they face a lot of trade offs right now. Mean my inclination would be they really need to get inflation under control, because if they do not, we could end up in an era like the seventies where we just have inflation coming in and then coming back, coming in, coming back, and that uncertainty can be very damaging and it can be very hard for the FED to eventually get rid of it altogether. We might it would be something very costly, like the
Vulkar had to do. I'd like to hope that we avoid that and stay strong and get inflation back to I don't know if they're going back to target, but at least three percent, and that could be a lot of work, and that could also start to really start to harm the economy, might increase in unemployment, which will
create all sorts of new political pressures. They're already under political pressure, and unemployment is only three and a half percent or three point four percent, so I think in the short term they have to do that, but over the next couple of years, as I said, they're going to have to balance problems in the labor market, especially potentially problems in financial markets. Is it said, because monetary policy goes through financial markets, financial stability concerns are often,
you know, always lurking on the background. So they're going to have a very tough balancing act for the next couple of years going forward, if they're really serious by bringing inflation down.
Is there anything in particular that you are watching for geopolitical type incidents that may impact what the FED decides to do, or are you just mainly watching for the milestone markers from the Fed?
I think the big thing to watch is commercial real estate. You know, as a lot of those loans come do and they after he financed at a higher rate, there could be a lot of problems there that trickle through the financial markets and make their job a lot harder. In raising rates further will maybe cause even more damage, and yet they'll still have high inflation to deal with, and then they'll be in a really tough spot.
Alison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion colonist covering economics coming up, we'll look at the talk about raising the voting age. Bloomberg's Jonathan Bernstein says, that's a terrible idea.
The question is why do we have voting in the first place, and all the reasons that you know, and which sort of raises the question why we have democracy in the first place, And if you think through it, all of the reasons that we have voting and that we have democracy really point to having not the higher voting aids, but a lower voting age.
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You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. The election cycle seems to get shorter every year, more hats being thrown into the ring, especially on the Republican side. Now where there are already a stable of candidates ready to viuy for the nomination for president, the election is more than a year and a half away. In a video on his Twitter page, long Shot Republican presidential candidate, the vek Ramaswami is proposing to raise the voting age from
eighteen to twenty five, with some exceptions. One of the things that we don't go good enough job of in this country.
He's teaching the next generation what the constitution actually says.
You're right, okay, So one of the things I favor. This is controversial to some people. If you want to be eighteen years old.
Graduate from high school, and cast a ballot in this country at a young age, you better.
At least pass the CIVIX portion of the test.
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein says that is not a good idea by any measure, and Jonathan joins us, Now, thanks for taking the time with us. Jonathan, Why is he wrong?
Well, you know, the question is why do we have voting in the first place, and all the reasons that you know, and which sort of raises the question why we have democracy in the first place. And if you think through it, all of the reasons that we have voting and that we have democracy really point to having not a higher voting age, but a lower voting age. So he's thinking in exactly the wrong direction.
So would it make it harder for people to vote, then you would be making a smaller pool of voters.
Well yeah, I mean, you know, one of the questions is what's the goal here? And if the goal of democracy is self government, well that includes all of us. Right, So if part of the goal is to you know, represent everyone's interests in the democracy, well, you know he's trying to find well, who are the people who are qualified to vote? Who are going to be the good voters?
And that's the wrong way of thinking about democracy. The way of thinking about it if you're thinking about sort of politicans about who gets what and dividing up stuff, right, is that everybody has interest In fact, the truth is that if you really are sort of a strict lock in you know, if you go back to political philosophy democrat, the idea that you want a liberal democracy with everybody's
interest getting represented. The truth is what we really should have if you think in that sense, is vote from birth, with parents taking care of the vote until kids are old enought to vote for themselves, because everybody has interests, including the very youngest.
Okay, so just so I understand what you're saying, there's that theory that to get the best out of democracy, voting should be restricted to just the best of us. And in that way they would have to raise the voting age to the older, more mature, they've been seasoned, they've seen some things, kind of voter. But that, you say, would be a false premise because then not everybody would be represented.
Right, Well, if your goal in democracy, if your goal is somehow to have the best people voting, problem with that is it's really a slippery slope because well, the restricting is twenty five is one thing, but it turns out that lots of people who are over twenty five don't know anything about public affairs, don't pay attention, so
maybe they shouldn't vote either. And then if you have, you know, if you call that, then you're gonna have another call after that for the people who really pay attention and really are the best voters in somebody's conception.
But that sort of raises a bunch of questions, including who's going to be the one who makes that decision of who's you know, and it raises the question of why do you have democracy in the first place, Because if your goal is to get the best people deciding, well, democracy may not be the right way to go then, because there's no particular reason that you need the democracy to you know that democracy will yield the best decision.
What it's very good for doing is yielding the decisions that everybody participates in.
Do you find this as a partisan tendency, Well, if you want to sort of look at it in practical political terms right now, yeah, I mean, there's one of the things that's been going on in our politics in the last several years is Republicans dealing with electoral losses.
And don't forget, Republicans have lost the popular vote for president every time except for one, beginning in nineteen ninety two. And the way that they've dealt with that is not by trying to find ideas that appeal to more people or trying to find new people who will support them, but to try to restrict the franchise by making it more difficult to vote. So, yeah, this would make it impossible to vote for many people because they would no
longer be qualified. Right now, young people vote for Democrats more than they vote for Republicans. That hasn't always been true, by the way, It's not like an automatic thing, but this is the kind of sort of short term, Hey, these people oppose us, let's keep them from voting. Thing that's very popular, unfortunately among a lot of Republicans.
And we are talking with Bloomberg opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein about the question of lowering the voting age. Jonathan, what would the benefit of lowering the voting age be besides increasing that voting pool.
Well, you know, like I said, one of the things is that sort of just in a theoretical sense, young people, teenagers even younger than that, have interests and should be represented in the democracy, if you think of it that way. But there's also a question about the particular voting age that we have at eighteen. It turns out that it probably is in practical terms, allows the idea because people who are eighteen years old are often in a life transition.
They get out of high school, many of them moved to a new jurisdiction, even within a city. If they move out of their parents' house across town and then you know, get a job and all that, they may have a different member of the city council. If across town means across the city border, they may have a
new mayor. They may even vote on different things. Some of them might go away to college and that's, you know, sets up another thing where they're living someplaces not permanent, and the moment when they need to get the habit of voting is a more disruptive life thing for the time for them. So bringing it to a lower age of sixteen, say, or even a little lower than that, would allow them to get that habit of voting started, because it turns out voting is an habitual thing. If
you start voting, you're more likely to keep voting. So it would mean that people would start voting at a time where they had a little more stability in their lives and perhaps would get into the habit earlier.
Is there a way to determine what the best age would be to vote that younger would be better than older to develop those habits.
Yeah, I don't think that there's a particular, you know, hard and fast rule. If you think of democracy in a different way, if you think of it in terms of not so much of politics as who gets what, but politics is a way for people to meaningfully control their own fate collectively with other people. That's lost on somebody who's three years old or five years old, but you can start getting it as young as young teenagers. And you know, if it were up to me, if
I could wave a magic wand a's gonna happen. But I would probably set it around thirteen or fourteen, because that's when people can start getting the understanding of it. And the truth is, you know, if you look around at interest groups at campaigns, there's plenty of teenagers who get involved at those ages. And nobody says you shouldn't be allowed to participate in politics when you're twelve or
thirteen or fourteen. You shouldn't be allowed to, you know, go door to door or stuff envelopes or write a letter here, member of Congress or something like that. It's voting that is the sticking point. And the truth is, voting is sort of the training wheels part of democracy, if you think of it that way. It's the gateway
to more meaningful involvement. And so I would let you, well, I would I would start with, you know, young teenagers and let them get used to the idea of being personally involved in politics themselves, and them as they got older, they might be able to add more, you know, more involvement in their community, more involvement in self government.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. Coming up, what has stemied employee initiative and how can that initiative be reignited. Don't forget We're available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. This is Bloomberg Opinion.
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This is Bloomberg Opinion. I Mamy Morris. Four years many of us have operated with the understanding that deep employee commitment is a benefit. An employee who takes initiative is seen as a favorable trade by employers, and most highly valued workers were happy to oblige. But things have changed since the pandemic. Let's take a look with Bloomberg Opinion editor Sarah Green Carmichael. How have we seen employees push back?
I think we've seen employees push back in a number of ways that at first may not seem all related to the same cause, but I think they are So, for example, over the last couple of years, we really have seen a rise in employee activism, employees protesting certain corporate policies or political stances, or advocating for their employers to take a stronger political stand. We have also seen
employees agitating for higher wages or more benefits. And we've also seen employees saying in some cases, you know, I'm happy with this job, but I don't want to work these weekends and evenings anymore, or you know, when I am working you know, forty or fifty hours during the week already. So I think all of those kind of seem like disparate trends, but in my opinion, they all are linked to a reevaluation by committed employees of what work is really about.
Have you seen that lead then to a pushback from CEOs, I mean the upper echelons of the office.
Yes, I think CEOs are a little taken aback in some cases. I think CEOs, especially who tried to really lead in a humane way during the pandemic, feel like where's the gratitude, Like I, you know, really worked hard to avoid layoffs, I try to pay a fair wage to make this a great company, and like, why don't you just say thank you? Why are you trying to unionize?
Why are you pushing me? And so I think in some cases, you know, we see like the you know, Howard Schultz for example, the you know who's such an influential leader for many years Starbucks really seems to take it as a personal affront that those workers want to unionize, and I think he's not alone and sort of having a little bit of sort of a startled feeling like
wait a minute, this is a great company. And I think that in other ways, we've seen CEOs pushback by saying employees have to come back to the office more frequently than maybe employees would want to. So that's like another sort of thing that I think a lot of workplaces are dealing with right now.
And I wonder where that puts middle managers literally caught in the middle. Do you see them siding with one side or the other? Are they having to walk this tightrope? Do they feel that sort of empathy with the workers because they're kind of worker bees too in the middle.
It's such a hard time to be a middle manager. The way I think of it, as you know, if you're driving a car, you are in the mindset of a driver, and if you are a pedestrian, you are in the mindset of a pedestrian. And I think we can all think of times, you know, when as a driver we think, God, these people are just walking in the middle of the road, and then as a pedestrian
you think, oh, that car came out of nowhere. And middle managers are constantly toggling between very different perspectives sort of like that. So, yes, they are employees and they are trying to, you know, do what their own bosses want, and then at the same time they have to then turn right around and maybe push some of their own director reports to do things that maybe they don't even
believe in. So I think it's an incredibly difficult time to be juggling these two roles that sort of cohabit in the same person of a middle manager.
So what does this then do to the workplace dynamic as a whole. I think that the.
Workplace dynamic is playing out in different companies in different ways. I think it's a time of tension. I think it's
a time of reevaluating. I think one of the things that makes it challenging is that a lot of the conversations that we're having, you know, maybe at home with our partners about work and the nature of work, we're not having in the office because it feels it can feel alarming and unacceptable and like you are risking your livelihood to go to your boss and say, like I'm having some thoughts about the role work plays in my life. Like that's not, you know, something that's really welcomed in
most workplaces. So I think that there's a lot of these tensions running some cases under the surface, and in other cases they are spilling out into the open, as we're seeing with some of these strikes and pickets and protests.
Is that what's driving this the pandemic. Is this where it all sort of bubbled to the surface, or have we seen hints of this even back in twenty nineteen.
Yes, I think we've been seeing it coming to the fore for a long time. And I think there's a few different reasons why it's culminating now. One is just an increase in political polarization in our society. You know, if everything is political now, you know, so is the workplace. But I think in some ways the pandemic did bring things to the fore. It forced a reevaluation of work
in people's lives. The other thing that I think often goes without saying, but needs to go with saying, is that the pandemic saw a tremendous loss of life and a tremendous amount of suffering, and you know, people being hospitalized. If you look at surveys, by the end of the omicron wave, eighty percent of Americans knew someone personally who
had been hospitalized or had died from COVID. That is a lot of brushes with death, and that really I think, changes how people, you know, think about what they do with the bulk of their time, which is work.
It changes your attitude automatically when you are faced with a crisis, whether it's a health crisis or otherwise, and it puts a different perspective on how important work is. Of course, it's important. You need the health care, you need the benefits, you need to pay rent. But at the same time, there's got to be a balance there, and it sounds almost like the balance is shifting.
I think the balance is shifting a little bit, and it's a little bit I think. You know, there's the old joke about a fish. You ask a fish, how's the water, and the fish says.
What's water?
And I think a lot of younger workers especially have grown up in this time where the primary way that employees are managed and motivated is by saying, like, this work is so many meaningful. You can bring your whole self to work, you can feel passion for what you do. You should feel passion. You should act like an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur.
You know.
There's all this idea of like building an ownership culture and having this really engaged workforce, and that can be a good thing. It feels good to in many cases be that deeply committed to your job. But I think there's a little bit of a reevaluation now of some employees saying, wait a minute, am I actually being paid enough for all of the effort I'm putting in? Is it okay that I am devoting so much of myself to work and leaving so little in some cases for
family or friends or community. And I think there's a little bit of a sense now from bosses about being like, wait a minute, why do all these employees have so many opinions on how we do things around here? It's like, well, you told them to think like owners, right, owners have opinion.
Do you find that money's the primary motivator? I remember before the pandemic there was all of this talk about the three day weekend, you know, a four day work week. Ooh, and then the pandemic just threw the chessboard out the window and gave everybody just work from home opportunity. And now the four day week, the three day weekend, while they don't seem to be talking about it as much, is still right there, you know, the possibility of changing
how the work week is broken down. And I asked this just to figure out what the motivation is at this point. Is it money? Is it time off? Is it benefits? Is it a more responsibility? What's the big primary motivator?
I mean, it probably depends on who you ask, right, Human beings are incredibly diverse. I find the four day week very interesting, especially because it is still a big conversation happening in Europe where there's a lot of experimentation going on. As someone who writes a lot and thinks a lot about workplace issues, I guess what I'd like to see now is just more experimentation, because there are going to be some people motivated by money. There are
going to be some people motivated by benefits. There's one of the biggest benefits you know, employees can get is flex time, and that doesn't really cost comeies anything. So I would love to see the experimentation on how work gets done that we saw of necessity during the COVID pandemic continue. I think that there there could be more experimentation around a four day week or around shifts and hours.
You know.
One of the people I interviewed recently was the CEO of Motherly, which is a publication for mothers that also gathers a life data on mothers, and she said their work day is organized around this idea of core hours that between ten and four, for example, people are online, but when you put in the other you know, hours is up to you. So you could put it in in the morning before your kids are awake, or you know,
maybe after they go to bed. And I like to see companies doing that kind of experimenting because this whole idea of like a solid you know, nine to five or eight to six block of time where you just don't stand up from your computer just seems unrealistic, especially given that so many of those workers are doing email and work on evenings and weekends also.
And especially since so many of those workers showed that it can be done another way, as you said, out of necessity during the pandemic exactly.
And I think, to me, what would be sad is if we just tried to go back to quote unquote how things were before, which was a paradigm that didn't work for a lot of people. To me, it's almost like, what if we had an amazing workplace experimentation and then.
Just forgot about it.
You know, let's not forget about it. Let's take these lessons and keep going. Let's use it to inform how we work going forward.
Sarah Green Carmichael is a Bloomberg Opinion editor. And if you're of a certain age, you've been asked the classic question paper or plastic, usually a question about how you'd like to have your groceries bagged or how you'd like to pay for those groceries. And usually the environmentally conscious would say paper, because paper is so much more sustainable than plastic, at least that's the conventional wisdom. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Adam Mentor joins us now to talk about it. Okay,
set us straight. Paper more natural, right.
Like plastic, it's an industrial product as well. It's made in paper mills. And if you've ever spent any time or driven past or inhaled the air around a paper mill, you'll know that it's not necessarily a natural process. There's a lot of chemicals, a lot of energy, a lot of water taken in. So no, it's not a natural product. It's a product made from natural materials in a sense, just as plastic is.
Then what's the difference between being sustainable and being natural? Is there a lot of room there?
There is a lot of room there. And one of the problems I think we have in talking about these materials is we haven't done a very good job of defining what sustainable in particular means, because for different communities it means different things. For example, lately, when we talk about plastic, sustainability has to do with end of life where it gets tossed. But that's not the only basis
upon which we think about sustainability. Increasingly we think about sustainability in terms of greenhouse gases and what kind of carbon emissions are associated with a product or packaging, And in many cases you will actually find that there are less carbon emissions associated with the manufacture and transport of plastic products than of paper products for a lot of reasons.
Let's talk about the packaging, because you know, we've all seen the unbleached brown paper packaging. It looks more organic, it looks healthier and I'm using little air bunny quotes here, So it looks like it would be better for the environment. We would think it would be.
Is it not always? I mean, for example, you know it can be heavier, and you know we think, well, why should we care about heavier packaging. Well, when you're a consumer goods manufacturer and you're transporting millions of packages of something, weight really adds up, and again it becomes an issue of fuel. It becomes an issue of how much fuel maybe goes into manufacturing that product in addition
to transporting. So you have to think in terms of the total life cycle of that packaging or that product. And it's not just packaging. I mean, I think we tend to think in terms of packaging and sustainability, but there are other objects that we use in our daily life where we can actually say from a climate perspective, plastic is better. One is furniture. There's been recent study from McKinsey, and I've just got the data. I'm looking at it right here. An equal piece of furniture made
from polypropylene plastic. We all know what, you know, sort of our back porch furniture looks like versus the same piece of furniture were made from wood. You're actually going to have a fifty percent of greenhouse gas savings on the polypropylene piece of furniture. It's lighter weight, you know, it doesn't. It's not when you know wood furniture, you cut down a tree, you no longer have the ability
to suck in the carbon that a tree fulfilled. So you know, these are very hard decisions, and it makes definitions of sustainability very difficult too.
So it sounds as though paper may not be the environmentally friendly alternative that we thought it was. But also maybe plastic isn't the nasty enemy with the fangs and the teeth that we've come to believe it.
Is exactly And again, I'm certainly not here to apologize for the problems.
Sure, sure, I mean.
We all know what they are. But I think you know, when we talk about materials and the materials, the industrial materials that we use in our daily life. I think we really need to be more nuanced in how we look at these things. There are different ways of evaluating sustainability, and I don't think we're serving consumers in particular well by creating a pariah material, which is what we've you know,
classified all plastics, considering them evil in some ways. I think there's more nuance to that, and I think if we're going to achieve sustainability, we're going to have to have that more nuanced look at these various products.
Adam Mentor is at Bloomberg Opinion colonists covering technology and the environment, and that does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced by Eric Mullow, and you can find all of these columns on the Bloomberg Terminal. We're available as a p podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up. I'm Ammy Morris. This is Bloomberg