Once upon a time, Disney was a motion picture studio in a sea of Hollywood studios doing something nobody else was doing. Disney's business is memory making. Disney's business is tradition. But here's the thing about kingdoms. They don't last forever. To survive, Disney had to grow. But has that tremendous growth eroded what made Disney Disney? I don't know if the world cares that this is a Disney movie anymore. I'm Joe Adalien. I'm hosting Land
of the Giants, the Disney Delama, from Bolcher on the Vox Media Podcast Network. Follow Land of the Giants wherever you listen to hear new episodes every Wednesday. Hey, I'm Sean Ely. We hear the phrase constitutional crisis and awful lot these days. But what if the root cause of the crisis is the Constitution itself? The more the Supreme Court limits the meaning of the Constitution to what it was in 1787, the more desperate it is that we be able to change the Constitution by amendment.
Erwin Chemerinsky explains the Constitution's greatest flaws and what, if anything, we can do about them. This week on The Grey Area. Welcome to The Profit Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship and whatever else is on your mind. Hey, Profit. Hey, Scott and team. Hey, Scott. Hi, Profit. Hey, Profit. Hey, Profit. Hi, Profit. Hi, Profit. Hi, Profit.
Last week's Office Hours, we answered your questions surrounding Sheen's design practices, qualities to look for when hiring and how to pivot when you're a mid-career professional. Ip protection be increased. I think you could argue that the final frontier of that or the next frontier is AI. The key to being successful I think is to develop allies along the way.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good every day, three or four emails to strangers, contacts, colleagues from your alma mater who are working in investor relations, comms, video production, content strategy, and sort of get on it and just get back into the ecosystem if you will. Today, we'll answer your questions about the current pharmacy staffing shortage, whether the US college price tag is worth it and how to navigate life transitions. I'm already intimidated.
You know what? I don't know any more about this shit than you, but I don't know any less. First question. Hi, Profit. So, Galway, my name is Mann. I currently live in Washington state. I have been a fan since I listened to your interview with Beret Holmes in which you mentioned your book the four. My question to you is about the pharmacy workforce because I'm a pharmacist. The pharmacy world is dealing with the shores of technicians due to low wages. What do you think
corporate need to do to provide incentives for the pharmacy technician? I enjoy watching all your posts, enjoy all your that joke on the show. Thank you. So boss, we really need to be friends. So, at every time I see you, I can say, Hey, man, Hey, man, I love that. I love that. I say, I respond to texts from other men. I would say, Hey, man, and if I like them or I'm close to them,
I'm like, Hey, brother. Anyways, what do I think? Supposedly, and I've read something about this, there is supposedly a looming pharmacy crisis in America, specifically staffing shortage due to increasing burnout among pharmacists. I guess a lot of boomers are just sick of this shit and retiring. According to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, applications to pharmacy
schools have declined 64% from really 100,000 in 2012 to about 36,000 in 2022. Data from the Philadelphia College of osteopathic medicine revealed that there were about 61,000 job postings for pharmacists in the first recorders of 2023, but only about 13,000 pharmacists graduated in 2022. What? Why is this happening? What's going on here? Some workers have staged walkouts, including well-known protests called farmaged, that's cute. That's cute. Farmaged, which involve three days of
nationwide walkouts in CVS and Walgreens. What's being done to navigate the pharmacist shortage? National retailers, including Walgreens in CVS Health, are investing heavily in automation and micro-fifilement centers where robots handle most of the tasks, the streamline, and reduce the workload. In February of this year, Walgreens announced a partnership with pharmacy school deans at 17 universities to increase student enrollment in pharmacy schools. So, okay, what's going on here?
Theoretically speaking, if there's a crisis in a shortage, that would mean the market would naturally on its own. Intrinsically, need to offer greater wages, and you would see an increase in wages. Just as through the pandemic, we couldn't get any frontline workers or any staff or service workers back to people just got sick of trying to get people to put their masks on, and meanwhile, putting their own health at risk for nine bucks an hour. I was on the board of Panera Bread,
and wages went up, I think 30 or 40 percent, just in probably a six or a 12-month period. Not because we're good people, although I do think they're good people, but because we had to get to, I mean, it was just striking. I remember this one staff at the CEO was saying that usually they have a job fair, and they get 100 applicants, and they might hire 20 of them. 18 would show up day one. You know, they would say, two, just don't show up. It went down to something like 20 people would
show up at the job fair. They'd make 10 offers, and of those 10, only two or three would show up the first day of work, which is struck me as, where are people getting money? It does feel, and I think this is a good thing, that at the lower end of the wage scale, there was all this pent-up bullshed, or wages were too low, and all of a sudden, I don't even say the damn broke, but basically,
these people said, this just isn't worth it. I'm not going to work this hard and put up with this bullshed to live below the poverty line, and there was a massive, massively overdue increase in wage pressure, which led to higher wages at the lower income level, which is a wonderful thing. At the end of the day, it's applying to man, and I would think that over time, you're going to see wages rise among pharmacists, just as if you've seen wages rise among nurses. Now, if I were to
say, what is the culprit here is that an industry is too concentrated. One, I would argue, and I don't have the data here, but I would argue if I were to put forward a thesis around what's happened. It's one regulatory capture by the pharmaceutical companies and hospital networks that have essentially starched out all the margin. In the frontline workers, the doctors, and the pharmacists and the nurses have not kept anything near the pace of the increase in
healthcare costs. It has gone to insurance companies who get $45 on the dollar for admin and profits. The best argument, in my opinion, for nationalizing medicine is $45 on the dollar gets starched out of the system by insurance companies. If you pay a dollar in insurance, you get $55 in care back. There's a pretty serious concentration around the front end, and that is, I think, between CVS health and Walgreens, I would imagine that it's pretty concentrated. There's not
enough people bidding on the labor here. If there's really only two, and they themselves are struggling on the front end, they're facing some of the same pressures, I think, as frontline healthcare workers are facing, that they're not in a mood to be super generous, and quite frankly, they don't need to, because if they control the majority of the job listings around pharmacists, they kind of set the price. Again, I think it's another example of the concentration of power in industry is not
a good thing. I would argue that it's a interesting profession. I would think over the long term that the market will largely self-correct and may take longer than it should because of this regulatory capture and this concentration of power that I was talking about. There you go, man. Next question. I've got this is Florian from Zurich, Switzerland. I love your podcast. Your candor and humor are refreshing and I often find myself returning to your work when looking
for interesting content. Here's my question. I'm a father of two teenage boys about to graduate from the Swiss public school system. Their high school degrees will allow them to attend Swiss universities, where education is excellent and tuition is very affordable, between 1000 and 2000 US dollars a year. Given this, would you still consider sending your sons to a US college despite the higher tuition fees?
It's differential tuition fees warranted in your view. As a pro bono professor at NYU, I look forward to receiving your honest opinion regards Florian. Thanks Florian. First off, let's just take socket blessings. You live in Zurich, Zurich, which I think is one of the most beautiful civilized, just generally pleasant cities in the world. I think it would be wonderful to be raising boys there. The father of two teenage boys.
I'm a father of two teenage boys and I'm not exaggerating. Every day I have a moment where I think, God, I'm just so blessed. I just think about my boys and I just think, Jesus, you know, I have experienced something that just has made it all worthwhile. So anyways, back to your question. According to the college board, the average 2023, 2024 price to tuition fees, housing, and food of private nonprofit for your colleges is $56,000. I think it, I think at NYU, it's actually about
$100.00. I think tuition is 72 grand. I think it's well above 100, $210. And if for your public colleges, in state students, face an average cost of about 24,000, I think those numbers are low. But anyways, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average price of college tuition fees and room, and board is increasing 155% between 1980 and 2023. Why? Because me and my colleagues every day, look in the mirror when we wake up in the morning, we ask ourselves
one question, how can I increase my compensation while decreasing my accountability? There's this notion that somehow we're more noble than your average bearer. We're not. We're not any less noble. And there's a lot of good people in education, but be clear, we want, we want to have a home in the Hamptons and have a nice life and pay for our own kids over price college education as much as anybody else. And we have discovered the ultimate business strategy and see how they made strategy.
Let's reject so many people through artificial scarcity by constraining supply unnecessarily, such that we can position ourselves as an aspirational electric brand to raise our prices faster than inflation and then hire a bunch of administrative people, administrators who do interesting work that has absolutely no fucking impact on anything. See above DEI, sustainability, leadership, ethics, Jesus fucking Christ. I'm going to teach my son or I'm going to teach a kid at the age of 27 how
to be more ethical. Yeah, good luck with that. Anyways, where are we? Okay, so this is the bottom line and what I would do. America does a small number of things really well. We make the best weapons in the world looking to kill a bunch of people where you're, where are your retailer of choice? We make incredible software. When I say software, I mean, comes in all technology. Another thing America does really well, really well, distinct to the price is the college experience. I've spoken
at Oxford and Cambridge and spent time at the Baconey. I taught at Instituto Impressa in Madrid for a semester back in 2007, I think. But anyways, I'm pretty familiar with European universities. They're fine. They're better value. They give you the skills you need. They do not have the same brand equity, right? Michigan, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon are global brands, right? The Baconey is sort of, Essex sort of. Cambridge and Oxford definitely, but the other several
thousand universities in Europe, no one's ever heard of. Do you think it's an advantage? We live in a LinkedIn information economy and having a brand name, US University does give your kids an edge. Also, also in terms of the experience, oh my gosh, we're so good at that. College football games, fraternities and sorities. I said fraternities and sorities are a wonderful experience for people.
They shrink a big university down to a small number of people. By the way, fun fact that I used to tell people when I was the Interferent Attorney Council President at UCLA, no joke, that's right. I was king of the jar heads. Was it the moment a kid joins a fraternity or sorority to become much more likely to graduate? It's important to immediately find a group of people or a tribe or whatever to create that connective tissue. Anyways, the university experience, the US
university experience, land grant schools, it is singular. It is singular. So what should you do? One, if your kids are up for it, apply to several US colleges. Hopefully, hopefully this is what happens. Your son or your daughter get into three or four, actually you set sons, teenage boys, plural, get into three or four universities and then this is what you do. You play them off against each other because the interesting thing about the university admissions process is we
all want to get in, right? We're desperate to get in. But once we get in, they all want your kid because they have something called yield rates that has a huge impact on their rankings. And that is if someone gets into Duke and UVA, they will announce or they will publish what the yield is. What do I mean by that? The yield between Columbia and NYU, that is people that got them to both schools used to be like 90-10. Everyone went for the big grand prestige of Columbia. And then
Ross and Rachel friends basically and William Grace, everyone wanted to be in Soho. And so now our yield, I think is like 55-60 to 45-40. In other words, Columbia still gets a higher yield than us, but we're within striking distance of being a parody. Through no fault of our own, the faculty and administrators will take credit for the amazing work we've done at NYU. Some of that is true, but it's mostly because we live in the coolest neighborhood in the world. I'm stick to that. I think
Soho is an amazing neighborhood. Anyways, ideally, ideally and one, best laid plans and then your teenage boys will tell you what they are doing. I like to think it's so funny with parents. We think that we have so much influence over our kids and realities. They kind of come doing the makeup of their own mind. And if it is affordable and it's all else being equal, a by all means, and again, it's up to them. The US University experience is singular. I would recommend it to anyone globally.
It's an amazing experience. Something that would treasure the rest of their lives. Thanks for the question. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us. Support for this podcast comes from Grammarly. Your team spends half their time writing and not productive writing and knowing writing, clarifying writing, just following up writing. And we all know how that happens. When confusing email turns into 12 confused replies and a meeting to get a line,
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Plus, Grammarly integrates seamlessly across a half a million apps and sites, no cutting or pacing of context switching. Personalized on-brand writing help is built into your docs, messages, emails, everything. So why not join Grammarly to work faster, hate your goals while keeping your data secure? Learn more at Grammarly.com. Support for Procty comes from Fundrise. Artificial intelligence is poised to be one of the
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can be found in the Innovation Fund's perspective at Fundrise.com slash innovation. This is a paid advertisement. Support for this podcast comes from Huntress. Keeping your data safe is important, however, for a small business owner, then protecting the information of yourself, your company, and your workers is vital. In comes Huntress. Huntress is where fully managed cybersecurity meets human expertise. They offer a revolutionary approach to manage security that isn't all about tech.
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in Quebec to a new city. Montreal. This move allowed me to transfer to my company HQ, work on more interesting projects, and experience new and exciting things as I approach my mid-20s. I'm here with my girlfriend and will live in a nice apartment downtown. It's great. However, I want to hide the fact that it's a significant change to absorb. I am particularly stressed about maintaining my close relationships from my distance and creating bonds with new people in Montreal.
Since you have moved to multiple cities throughout your life and strongly advise young people like me move to a city, step out of their comfort zones and seek new experiences. What advice would you have for someone like me who's in the middle of a life transition? Thanks so much for your help. Love the new book. So first up Thomas, one of the pieces of advice I get to young people about how to create the atmosphere, extro-success is simple and that has moved to a city and you've done that.
You can be good in Montreal and get much further faster than if you were great in your hometown in Quebec. So moving to Montreal, moving to the big city if you will is an investment in yourself and is going to better leverage your skill set. Also the fact that you move there with your girlfriend, you're in a relationship, you know there's only one out of three men under the age of 30, has a girlfriend, two out of three women under the age of 30 have a boyfriend. That's, you think, well,
that's not mathematically impossible. It's not because women are dating older as they're pursuing more economically and emotionally viable men. Another talk show. So boss, I just have one word of advice for how to integrate and develop that kind of social capital you're looking for as a young man in a new city. Yes. Say yes to everything for a while. Say yes to drinks with co-workers, a coffee, ask people out, get, you know, your girlfriend's friends, invite other couples out, whatever it might
be. Do a dinner party. Just kind of say yes to everything and you're so fortunate to kind of hit the ground running there with a partner. That just makes things so much easier and you're not going to get as lonely. But just my brother, you're obviously a shit-to-getter guy and you've got a partner in crime here. Just go out, be friendly, introduce yourself, get involved maybe in if you play sports in a local league. I don't know if you're a tender church or a temple or a mosque
but get involved in the local chapter. What have you? And you kind of work through to get your sort of your squad, if you will. But the key is getting out of the house saying yes to everything. Try to resist the temptation to just hang out with your girlfriend and watch Netflix all the time after our hard days were get out, do stuff, join groups. But my brother, let's finish where we started. You're living in Montreal with your girlfriend after getting a job. It is good to be
you Thomas. Congratulations and thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursaproftumedia.com. Again, that's officehoursaproftumedia.com. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Jew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the ProvG pod from the Vox
Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercenomales as read by George Han. And please follow our ProvG Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday. Daddy was a tall, drink-aluminate right there. Hello. Give me a little bit more sky.