Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, with an emphasis on poverty and social welfare policy, health care, and Social Security and entitlement reform.

His most recent book, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor, looks at the ways government contributes to poverty in the United States and suggests reforms that will enable the poor to more fully participate in a growing economy. 

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I saw a couple of

things recently related to podcasts, or at least that might resonate with

podcast listeners. One was

a YouTube video that compared the market valuation of WeWork, the company that offers

hotdesking to remote workers, to Regus, a similar but much more established

company, now owned by the IWG

group. WeWork has a valuation

of $47 billion. WeWork have been advertising heavily on some podcasts.

Hell, if they have that much money, I should be tapping them for ads on

Challenging Opinions. Regus has a valuation of $4 billion and, get this, Regus

is does almost ten times the business. Almost ten times bigger, but less than

one tenth of the valuation.

What’s going on? Well,

for one, WeWork has a far snazzier brand image; they’re doing everything to

appeal to the Millennials, but seriously, $47 billion? Does a hip graphic designer

doing your website, along with serving moco-frappa-chappa-lattes to your

workers justify a one-hundred fold increase on your valuation? I don’t think

so. The other difference is that WeWork has big money venture capital from Softbank

and others. That

$47 billion dollar valuation is based on an investment of $2billion from them.