WEBVTT 00:00:00.010 --> 00:00:03.530 It's fine. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. 00:00:04.450 --> 00:00:10.190 And it's looking good. I'm gonna play the intro music and then we'll get started. Here we go. 00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:38.920 Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Friday, November 7th, 2025. 00:00:38.980 --> 00:00:42.820 It's just after 3 UTC as we are starting to record. 00:00:43.100 --> 00:00:47.860 I am Sam Minter. Yvonne Bowe is out this week, as he has mentioned for the last 00:00:47.860 --> 00:00:50.940 few weeks. He had surgery a couple days ago. 00:00:51.360 --> 00:00:55.540 He reports that he is recovering well. It was a hernia surgery. 00:00:55.540 --> 00:00:59.700 It went perfectly, exactly as the doctors would like it to go. 00:00:59.700 --> 00:01:05.120 He is recovering in a little bit of pain, but a lot less pain today than he 00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:09.540 was yesterday, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and seems to be doing fine. 00:01:09.540 --> 00:01:13.380 And we expect to have him back on the show next week if all goes well. 00:01:13.600 --> 00:01:20.560 So instead, we have Ed and Bruce here who have both been on the show before, 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:21.860 but I believe never together. 00:01:22.820 --> 00:01:25.000 Yes, hello. And yes, it's good to be back. 00:01:26.120 --> 00:01:28.100 And likewise. Hello. 00:01:28.100 --> 00:01:33.180 That was Bruce talking first, and then Ed, if you can't tell their voices apart or recognize them. 00:01:33.500 --> 00:01:38.080 So as usual, when we do one of these shows with guest hosts, 00:01:38.620 --> 00:01:41.780 I let the guests pretty much pick the topics. 00:01:42.020 --> 00:01:47.380 So the plan here is we're going to have three segments, and in each segment, 00:01:47.620 --> 00:01:52.340 Bruce will pick one topic, and Ed will pick one topic, and then we'll take a 00:01:52.340 --> 00:01:55.720 break, and then we will repeat. I'm not going to pick any topics. 00:01:56.320 --> 00:02:01.520 I'm just going to talk about whatever these guys want to talk about and go from there. 00:02:02.380 --> 00:02:04.840 So who wants to go first, Ed or Bruce? 00:02:05.580 --> 00:02:06.260 Go ahead, Bruce. 00:02:07.580 --> 00:02:12.800 Okay. So I wanted to talk about your recent job loss. 00:02:12.940 --> 00:02:17.580 Okay. And I'm sure that you've already gotten some good advice from a lot of 00:02:17.580 --> 00:02:22.920 people and some of the advice that I was thinking of giving you, you've already done. 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:29.420 But for me, I have had five different jobs in the last six years. 00:02:29.420 --> 00:02:34.400 So just real quick, for anybody who didn't listen to last week's show or see 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:39.360 any of my other announcements on social media, I did get laid off from my employer 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:42.800 two weeks ago now, something like that. 00:02:43.100 --> 00:02:50.500 Yeah, some. And it was, I was not surprised at all. I saw it coming from a mile away. 00:02:50.940 --> 00:02:57.040 I had not, I drifted apart from my employer and like my priorities were not 00:02:57.040 --> 00:03:00.320 theirs and vice versa. and it was clear I didn't belong in the group I was in, 00:03:00.460 --> 00:03:01.440 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 00:03:02.500 --> 00:03:08.960 And they gave me a nice fat severance so I don't have to panic and find something right away. 00:03:09.280 --> 00:03:13.200 At the same time, I don't have enough save to just retire right now. 00:03:13.400 --> 00:03:17.400 So I know I'm going to have to find something to make money sooner rather than 00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:21.900 later, but I don't have to be in an immediate, like, oh, crap, 00:03:21.920 --> 00:03:23.840 I got to have something by next week kind of thing. 00:03:24.100 --> 00:03:27.480 So that's the current step. So you had five jobs in how long? 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:34.580 In the last six years. That's a lot. Yeah, it's just that it's... 00:03:35.410 --> 00:03:38.950 It's a different story for every one of them, but it's not my fault. 00:03:40.110 --> 00:03:41.310 I've always done a good job. 00:03:42.250 --> 00:03:44.990 Sure you have. Yeah, that's your story. 00:03:45.170 --> 00:03:50.610 Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn't cause that door to fly out on the Boeing plane. 00:03:50.750 --> 00:03:52.550 That happened just two weeks after I started there. 00:03:55.130 --> 00:03:58.110 But the submarine thing was all your fault, right? 00:03:58.270 --> 00:04:02.590 No, not at all. In fact, I have a government report that shows that it had nothing to do with it. 00:04:03.290 --> 00:04:12.010 I'm innocent. Okay. So, yeah, I think that you're doing the right thing by doing LinkedIn Premium. 00:04:14.550 --> 00:04:19.550 You want to update your resume on there, treat your LinkedIn profile as a resume, 00:04:19.590 --> 00:04:21.030 or make it a copy of your resume. 00:04:22.090 --> 00:04:25.610 There were three job sites that I would constantly rotate through. 00:04:25.890 --> 00:04:28.950 It would be LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Indeed. 00:04:30.010 --> 00:04:33.990 And actually, to tell you the truth, Indeed is the one that I've had the most luck with. 00:04:33.990 --> 00:04:35.630 Okay, good to know. 00:04:36.310 --> 00:04:39.410 Three of the jobs I've gotten have been through Indeed. 00:04:39.830 --> 00:04:45.950 So it's a very basic site, not a very pretty site. It's difficult. 00:04:46.290 --> 00:04:50.030 It's archaic to navigate, but there's a lot of really... 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:56.400 Jobs in there. And what I would do is I would just spend a good half hour to 00:04:56.400 --> 00:04:59.800 an hour every day just looking through at all the job listings. 00:05:00.080 --> 00:05:03.960 I had searches already built up and just go and apply to everything. 00:05:04.380 --> 00:05:08.400 And then I would just work on projects for the rest of my free time. 00:05:09.080 --> 00:05:17.700 And the advice I've got is to, when there's really good, you have access to 00:05:17.700 --> 00:05:20.640 classes in LinkedIn for job searching. 00:05:21.060 --> 00:05:27.280 And there are sample interview questions on LinkedIn that are very good because, 00:05:28.040 --> 00:05:29.860 most interviews are pretty much the same. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:33.680 They ask the same basic questions. And if you know those 20 or 30 questions 00:05:33.680 --> 00:05:38.920 and you have a set answer for them, especially if you have a story for every 00:05:38.920 --> 00:05:41.020 one of those questions that they ask, 00:05:41.340 --> 00:05:47.100 then that will make your answers very memorable and it'll stand out. 00:05:47.600 --> 00:05:52.060 And also, when you're about to have, so just take, get as many interviews as 00:05:52.060 --> 00:05:58.100 you can, especially early on so you can kind of be in practice and then you'll be. 00:05:59.140 --> 00:06:04.880 So when the real jobs come that you really, really want, you'll be relaxed and 00:06:04.880 --> 00:06:08.520 well-practiced and you'll have those answers already and everything. 00:06:08.800 --> 00:06:12.920 And also, when you have an interview scheduled with somebody, 00:06:13.180 --> 00:06:19.440 look them up on LinkedIn and see if you happen to know someone who they know. 00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:24.100 Because when you go into the interview and you say, oh, I know someone that you know. 00:06:24.340 --> 00:06:27.420 Have you worked with this person before? And then that just having that, 00:06:27.520 --> 00:06:33.640 that one person separation really helps because then that's kind of like an 00:06:33.640 --> 00:06:36.400 instant reference that you can have that you can bring to somebody. 00:06:37.760 --> 00:06:41.120 So that's, there's other things I could tell you, but don't want to, 00:06:41.260 --> 00:06:43.340 we got a lot of topics to talk about. 00:06:43.340 --> 00:06:47.300 Yeah, I mean, much appreciated, all that kind of stuff. 00:06:47.480 --> 00:06:54.000 And, you know, as I said, I'm sort of, I know I can't wait too long before diving 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:57.220 full-fledged in because the market is awful right now. 00:06:57.520 --> 00:07:01.580 There are all kinds of reports about people taking over a year to find anything 00:07:01.580 --> 00:07:07.260 and doing like, having to find hundreds and hundreds of things just to get an 00:07:07.260 --> 00:07:09.780 interview and all that kind of stuff. 00:07:09.780 --> 00:07:14.780 And so I know I can't wait forever, but on the other hand, I also knew that 00:07:14.780 --> 00:07:20.600 mentally I need a little bit of a break and that also, you know, 00:07:20.960 --> 00:07:25.160 this is going to be the best opportunity I have to like actually make progress 00:07:25.160 --> 00:07:26.640 on some of those personal projects. 00:07:26.640 --> 00:07:29.200 So I better do it while I have the chance. 00:07:29.720 --> 00:07:36.120 And so like, I'm not, I'm not waiting very long before I actually start like 00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:40.180 looking at, you know, the real, okay, let's do, like you said, 00:07:40.260 --> 00:07:44.160 a half hour of searching for jobs every day and throwing out some applications. 00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:50.820 And also not even like, you know, when, when I had a job and I knew it was sort 00:07:50.820 --> 00:07:57.000 of, and I want, I wanted something else, but I wasn't like, you know, I was still there. 00:07:58.020 --> 00:08:01.920 I was, you know, when I looked at job listings, I was being pretty picky. 00:08:02.180 --> 00:08:07.500 You know, I was being like, you know, this job, could I do it? Yes. 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:12.140 But it looks like it would suck. It wouldn't be any better than where I was, where I am. 00:08:12.400 --> 00:08:16.080 And so I'm not going to like save it or apply or anything like that. 00:08:16.300 --> 00:08:20.120 Whereas I think the situation now is if it remotely makes sense, 00:08:20.220 --> 00:08:21.720 go ahead and apply. You know? 00:08:21.940 --> 00:08:25.400 Yeah. Especially early on because you can get those practice interviews in. 00:08:26.320 --> 00:08:31.500 Yeah. And, and, and, you know, I've, you know, in the past, I've done lots of 00:08:31.500 --> 00:08:35.220 interviews for the kind of position that I had. 00:08:35.740 --> 00:08:40.000 And so, but it's been a long time since I've done a lot of those. 00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:45.460 So it'll be interesting to see. But also part of what I have to figure out for 00:08:45.460 --> 00:08:51.780 myself is like the job I was doing is actually not what I want to be doing. 00:08:51.780 --> 00:08:55.460 Like you know so i have to figure out like do 00:08:55.460 --> 00:08:58.400 i apply for those kinds of jobs anyway do i 00:08:58.400 --> 00:09:02.600 search for completely different sort of things but if i search for completely 00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:06.220 different sort of things then i don't necessarily have the right experience 00:09:06.220 --> 00:09:11.180 match for them and potentially like there's you know salary implications and 00:09:11.180 --> 00:09:14.940 all that kind of stuff so i got a lot to figure out but i've got i've got some 00:09:14.940 --> 00:09:16.880 time to figure it out too so i'd. 00:09:16.880 --> 00:09:18.160 Say cast a wide net. 00:09:18.160 --> 00:09:19.400 Yeah and. 00:09:19.400 --> 00:09:24.360 Apply for everything now because it may not matter. 00:09:24.880 --> 00:09:29.140 And then when the job offers actually come, you can either, if you don't like 00:09:29.140 --> 00:09:32.880 it, you can just negotiate up to a super high salary. 00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:37.580 And that can probably make that... 00:09:37.580 --> 00:09:39.640 That can compensate for doing something you don't like. 00:09:39.640 --> 00:09:47.060 That can compensate, yes. And so, yeah, don't give up opportunities when they could be there. 00:09:48.480 --> 00:09:50.760 And you definitely want to do something you really enjoy. 00:09:52.340 --> 00:09:53.420 You got to put food on the table. 00:09:53.680 --> 00:09:57.120 Well, yeah. In the end, you have to put food on the table. You have to pay the 00:09:57.120 --> 00:09:59.380 mortgage, you know, all this kind of stuff. 00:10:00.280 --> 00:10:04.180 And, you know, as much as it's, you know, I've joked before, 00:10:04.360 --> 00:10:09.020 like, you know, I'm ready to go, like, buy a Unabomber cabin in the middle of 00:10:09.020 --> 00:10:13.280 nowhere and just sit there, you know, but plus internet. 00:10:13.700 --> 00:10:15.900 Like, Unabomber didn't have internet. I still need internet. 00:10:16.220 --> 00:10:20.260 But, like, but realistically, that, no, that won't work. 00:10:20.380 --> 00:10:23.000 You know, I've got a family. to think about. 00:10:23.140 --> 00:10:27.740 I got things going on, you know, moving isn't really an option and at least 00:10:27.740 --> 00:10:33.200 not unless it's, I mean, if we would have to be in a really desperate situation 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:37.300 to consider like picking up and moving to a lower cost of living place. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:42.600 And, you know, so yeah, I'm going to be doing all this stuff. 00:10:42.740 --> 00:10:46.880 You know, I, I don't want to think about all those things. 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:50.540 I want to think about my fun little projects. I want to think about like hanging 00:10:50.540 --> 00:10:53.940 out at home and doing some things around home, spending time with the family. 00:10:54.180 --> 00:10:57.640 Those are the things I want to think about. But I fully recognize, 00:10:57.640 --> 00:11:05.340 you know, that the amount of time of runway I have will disappear before I know it. 00:11:05.820 --> 00:11:10.760 And so, you know, so it's, it's nice to have a little bit of a runway, 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:16.980 but at the same time, that doesn't mean wait until you only have a few weeks of money left. Exactly. 00:11:17.320 --> 00:11:20.720 Yeah. Well, you know, you can also apply for an, for unemployment. 00:11:21.860 --> 00:11:26.980 Yeah, and so Yvonne's already mentioned the unemployment, several other things. 00:11:27.080 --> 00:11:29.020 He's like, he's given me a little checklist. 00:11:29.220 --> 00:11:34.340 Do these things, start this thing moving, start that thing moving, and I will. 00:11:35.450 --> 00:11:40.430 I've been adjusting, you know, you know, Yvonne's joked about like my, 00:11:40.570 --> 00:11:46.170 my systems for my to-do list before, but I've been, I've completely revamped 00:11:46.170 --> 00:11:49.370 my to-do list to reflect my current situation, 00:11:49.730 --> 00:11:55.630 to reprioritize things, to make sure like, you know, all these things are, you're checked off. 00:11:55.630 --> 00:12:00.290 Like my, you mentioned you get the resume in LinkedIn, correct? 00:12:00.670 --> 00:12:05.430 I did that like six to nine months ago, but it doesn't have the stuff from the six to nine months. 00:12:05.590 --> 00:12:09.250 So just make the appropriate little adjustments to make sure it's really up 00:12:09.250 --> 00:12:14.490 to date, both a, both a nicely formatted resume version and the LinkedIn profile. 00:12:14.490 --> 00:12:18.150 And I do, I do have the matching completely like word for word, 00:12:18.410 --> 00:12:20.470 you know, I have to do that. 00:12:20.570 --> 00:12:23.550 I have to, you know, there's all kinds of little things to do. 00:12:23.550 --> 00:12:26.210 And and yeah i want to make progress on all 00:12:26.210 --> 00:12:30.150 those personal projects too and i've got a list of those and even within the 00:12:30.150 --> 00:12:34.350 last and i've started you know i i've made more progress on a couple of them 00:12:34.350 --> 00:12:39.310 in the last week than i had in the previous couple months now that that doesn't 00:12:39.310 --> 00:12:44.030 mean like i got anything to show for it yet but it's going faster well. 00:12:44.030 --> 00:12:46.470 You did mention last week that one of the, 00:12:48.640 --> 00:12:51.360 And I don't live far from you. 00:12:51.520 --> 00:12:58.260 So if you ever need any muscle to help you with anything, I have an open offer for you. 00:12:58.420 --> 00:13:02.620 I'll be happy to head down there and help you move any stuff if you need. 00:13:02.760 --> 00:13:07.980 Well, thank you very much. Unfortunately, with a couple of exceptions, 00:13:07.980 --> 00:13:10.440 most of it's not muscle stuff. 00:13:10.640 --> 00:13:15.720 Most of it's like open up a bin full of crap and sort through it and decide 00:13:15.720 --> 00:13:18.120 which things you want to get rid of and which things you don't. 00:13:18.120 --> 00:13:21.280 That is so hard having more people doesn't 00:13:21.280 --> 00:13:24.640 actually help with that you know it's just like you 00:13:24.640 --> 00:13:27.500 have to make yourself do it and that is on my list of things 00:13:27.500 --> 00:13:32.640 to do but i'll tell you it actually came up you know i i do randomize and i 00:13:32.640 --> 00:13:38.160 came up go through a bin did come up in the last few days but then i said i 00:13:38.160 --> 00:13:43.300 picked like i've got four zones where the bins can come from and the one i picked 00:13:43.300 --> 00:13:46.400 like the bins were actually blocked by other stuff. 00:13:46.540 --> 00:13:54.060 And I'm like, okay, I can't actually go through a bin until I do some real cleaning in this area too. 00:13:54.580 --> 00:14:00.000 And so like, I'm, I'm refactoring how I do that, but yeah, that definitely is a goal. 00:14:00.200 --> 00:14:04.260 And specifically, I think it's a goal for the earlier part of this timeframe, 00:14:04.260 --> 00:14:10.300 like for part of my decompression will be like doing stuff like that. 00:14:10.460 --> 00:14:16.340 Just pick out bins, go through them, sort them, take, take what is currently 00:14:16.340 --> 00:14:21.800 in 20 bins and try to find the three bins worth of stuff I want to keep and 00:14:21.800 --> 00:14:23.720 throw the rest away, you know? So, 00:14:24.310 --> 00:14:28.190 Anyway, that's going to happen. Any thoughts on all this, Ed? 00:14:28.590 --> 00:14:30.890 You've been retired for a while. 00:14:31.830 --> 00:14:36.010 I've been retired almost as long as I worked. Wow. 00:14:37.130 --> 00:14:43.690 The only time I had any significant job hunting was when I retired from the Army. 00:14:44.150 --> 00:14:48.530 I had a job ready and waiting. I had written a place, and they said, yes, please. 00:14:48.870 --> 00:14:53.470 And so there wasn't much of an application process. but then after two years 00:14:53.470 --> 00:14:57.830 that was with Humana and after two years I was fed up with them so I started 00:14:57.830 --> 00:15:03.110 hunting and I I actually applied several places had a couple interviews and 00:15:03.110 --> 00:15:08.590 and what didn't seem to be getting anywhere and then I decided I was I re-looked at my recommendation, 00:15:09.510 --> 00:15:14.070 list and I said you know I've got people I've worked with and and they're nice 00:15:14.070 --> 00:15:18.230 people but no one knows them so I said rather than that at this time around 00:15:18.230 --> 00:15:23.110 I'm going to put some prominent names and I'd check with them to make sure they'd be all right with it. 00:15:23.350 --> 00:15:27.870 So one of them was the guy, the three-star general I worked for in Europe, 00:15:29.030 --> 00:15:32.390 and another one was almost as high a ranking. 00:15:32.610 --> 00:15:39.490 But anyway, I got a call back very quickly from a lady who was looking for several people, apparently. 00:15:39.790 --> 00:15:43.010 And she said, I wasn't going to really pay much attention to you, 00:15:43.030 --> 00:15:46.890 but then I saw that you had a general, I can't remember his name, 00:15:46.930 --> 00:15:50.730 it doesn't matter, the general. and I worked with him once and he was incredible. 00:15:50.910 --> 00:15:53.890 I decided anyone he would recommend, I would want to hire. 00:15:55.710 --> 00:15:58.910 I probably would have gone. I think she was going to offer me something, 00:15:58.910 --> 00:16:03.210 but then I got an offer for a job that I really wanted. And so I went there instead. 00:16:04.130 --> 00:16:08.470 So think about putting somebody real famous if you have them on your recommendation 00:16:08.470 --> 00:16:10.390 list. Make sure they want it. 00:16:11.310 --> 00:16:18.350 Yeah, no, I've got people of various levels of prominence in different areas, 00:16:18.590 --> 00:16:24.530 but I don't think I've got anybody who would qualify as famous in my list. 00:16:24.790 --> 00:16:26.590 You know, I've got... 00:16:26.920 --> 00:16:31.060 If you do degrees of connection, you go a couple people out, 00:16:31.280 --> 00:16:32.940 okay, there can be famous people there. 00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:36.300 But I'm not sure that would work because they don't know me. 00:16:36.420 --> 00:16:37.960 They know somebody I know. 00:16:38.900 --> 00:16:44.120 And that's not the same thing. And of my list directly, 00:16:44.440 --> 00:16:50.340 the people who would sort of be most prominent in their areas are quite likely 00:16:50.340 --> 00:16:54.880 not in areas that would actually be directly helpful for jobs I could actually get. 00:16:54.880 --> 00:17:00.720 You know, but and then, well, yeah, and then I want to have the conversation. 00:17:00.940 --> 00:17:04.440 You mentioned, Bruce, like spread the wide net. 00:17:04.760 --> 00:17:09.640 And part of that is I do want to contemplate things that are completely different 00:17:09.640 --> 00:17:11.520 from anything I've ever done before. 00:17:12.240 --> 00:17:15.360 But, you know, there's so many problems with that, you know, 00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:17.620 because your experience doesn't lead up to it. 00:17:17.880 --> 00:17:23.100 You're going to be starting at a more junior area and there's compensation things 00:17:23.100 --> 00:17:30.620 for that. And also the areas of that I find like most interesting are probably low paying anyway. 00:17:31.240 --> 00:17:36.640 You know, and so I, you know, but I feel like, okay, explore, 00:17:36.700 --> 00:17:40.520 you know, and I also want to explore a little bit brainstorming. 00:17:40.640 --> 00:17:45.680 Hey, can I, can I do things to make money that don't involve actually having an employer? 00:17:46.080 --> 00:17:49.920 It would be awesome. I don't know that I can, but it would be all, 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:53.940 but I should, I feel like I should at least brainstorm on that without just 00:17:53.940 --> 00:17:59.020 discounting the possibility from the beginning you know if you. 00:17:59.020 --> 00:18:05.180 Look on YouTube for side gigs there's an endless list of things you can do there, 00:18:05.950 --> 00:18:11.590 My oldest brother, he just recently started selling stuff on TikTok, 00:18:12.010 --> 00:18:13.730 actually multivitamins on TikTok. 00:18:14.610 --> 00:18:19.470 And I'm like, how is he ever going to make money off that? But it takes time, 00:18:19.610 --> 00:18:21.730 but he's gradually building up. You never know. 00:18:22.070 --> 00:18:27.070 You never know. And it's like some of those kinds of side gigs I know I don't 00:18:27.070 --> 00:18:28.170 have the right mindset for. 00:18:28.430 --> 00:18:31.610 It just wouldn't work. I just could not do that. 00:18:32.210 --> 00:18:34.650 But you never know. you're. 00:18:34.650 --> 00:18:38.430 You're a little limited geographically too aren't you because your wife's on the. 00:18:38.430 --> 00:18:41.250 Yeah no moving is not an option 00:18:41.250 --> 00:18:45.970 for me right now for for any number of reasons that being one of them like that 00:18:45.970 --> 00:18:51.990 my my wife's job is geographically constrained like we can't move more than 00:18:51.990 --> 00:18:58.010 a few miles away from where we are really like you know but you know the other 00:18:58.010 --> 00:19:00.730 thing i'll put out is like I was surprised. 00:19:00.790 --> 00:19:07.170 I did a post on Facebook and a post on LinkedIn, identical text, 00:19:07.390 --> 00:19:12.570 just sort of saying, hey, I was included in this, and here's what I'm thinking about it, whatever. 00:19:13.150 --> 00:19:19.850 And I got all the usual likes from people I knew in high school and stuff on Facebook. 00:19:20.190 --> 00:19:24.110 But LinkedIn, Like I was surprised by the reach. 00:19:24.230 --> 00:19:30.390 I'm looking at my stats, 150,000 impressions on that damn post, 00:19:30.610 --> 00:19:34.230 uh, with a hundred thousand members reached. 00:19:34.230 --> 00:19:45.310 I had over almost 6,200 profile views from the post. I gained 193 people following me. 00:19:45.590 --> 00:19:52.930 Um, 1,800 people reacted to my post. I don't know 1,800 people on LinkedIn. 00:19:53.150 --> 00:19:58.190 I had like a few, because I had been fairly religiously like. 00:19:59.540 --> 00:20:03.280 If I actually worked with somebody, I would connect with them on LinkedIn. 00:20:04.040 --> 00:20:08.540 But, you know, I wouldn't like if I got random LinkedIn requests from people, 00:20:08.600 --> 00:20:10.120 I had no idea. I would reject them. 00:20:12.020 --> 00:20:15.680 But like here, I started getting all kinds of invites and people wanting to 00:20:15.680 --> 00:20:16.760 connect. I'm like, what the hell? 00:20:17.200 --> 00:20:23.160 I'll agree to all of them, you know. And so I have a whole bunch of new connections 00:20:23.160 --> 00:20:25.880 on LinkedIn of people I've never met. 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:30.240 I have no idea who they are. I probably wouldn't reach out blindly to any of 00:20:30.240 --> 00:20:33.620 them, but I guess this means if I actually do, 00:20:34.520 --> 00:20:38.420 do something interesting with one of my personal projects and want to announce 00:20:38.420 --> 00:20:41.960 it, more people will see it, you know, so might as well. 00:20:42.280 --> 00:20:48.680 You know, I had 40 comments, six reposts of my thing, like some of, 00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:53.900 some of which from people I didn't know at all, you know, 51 people saved it, 00:20:54.060 --> 00:20:56.180 43 people sent it on to other people. 00:20:56.340 --> 00:20:59.280 I'm like, really? Like, i i mean i. 00:20:59.280 --> 00:21:02.240 Expected the end well because linkedin is 00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:07.060 like a it's a big it's a big empty room there's a whole bunch of people well 00:21:07.060 --> 00:21:10.660 it's a well it's actually a bit it's a very full room but it's very quiet not 00:21:10.660 --> 00:21:16.600 many people talk so or post so uh so when you post i got i yeah so when you 00:21:16.600 --> 00:21:19.620 post it gets a lot of a lot of attention because yeah. 00:21:19.620 --> 00:21:24.240 I was surprised i mean i expected to like hear from you know people i'd worked 00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:28.800 for worked with or for 25 years ago that i hadn't talked to in a decade, 00:21:29.460 --> 00:21:33.960 but I wasn't expecting it to just be in front of all kinds of people I'd never 00:21:33.960 --> 00:21:36.180 heard of. I'm like, okay, that's fine. 00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:42.820 It's perfect timing for that. I mean, I guess I want to get that kind of attention 00:21:42.820 --> 00:21:47.320 again when I'm actually full-fledged into, okay, now I'm seriously looking for 00:21:47.320 --> 00:21:49.920 a job, but it can't hurt now either. 00:21:50.440 --> 00:21:55.020 And a number of people reached out and were like, hey, we'd love to talk to 00:21:55.020 --> 00:21:56.540 you. Can I help? Blah, blah, blah. 00:21:57.220 --> 00:22:02.040 And I made an initial response to all of them and have on my to-do list to follow 00:22:02.040 --> 00:22:05.900 up in more depth with all of them over the next week or so, week or two to, 00:22:06.260 --> 00:22:08.740 you know, okay, yeah, I'll get on the phone with you. I'll catch up. 00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:12.820 I'll talk to you about like what's going on, what I'm interested in, what I'm not. 00:22:13.140 --> 00:22:17.140 You know, there are a few people who are like, look, you know, 00:22:17.340 --> 00:22:18.960 check the job listings at my company. 00:22:19.160 --> 00:22:22.520 If there's anything that's good. I'll put in a good word for you, that kind of stuff. 00:22:23.040 --> 00:22:26.000 And like the first couple I've looked at, there wasn't anything there, 00:22:26.040 --> 00:22:30.540 but you know, I still appreciate the sentiment, you know, so I don't know. 00:22:30.700 --> 00:22:32.920 We'll, we'll, we'll see. We'll see. Fun stuff. 00:22:33.990 --> 00:22:37.930 Like I said last week, too, fun stuff right now. 00:22:38.270 --> 00:22:44.110 If in six months I have no money-making prospects, I will feel very different. 00:22:45.770 --> 00:22:52.250 But, you know, we do have ways to make it work past six months. 00:22:52.250 --> 00:22:57.590 But the further out we go, the more serious the situation becomes. 00:22:58.790 --> 00:23:04.030 Okay, so enough about my job situation. Ed, what's your topic for this first segment? 00:23:04.650 --> 00:23:08.290 Well, we're going to look at current things. How about we talk a little bit 00:23:08.290 --> 00:23:09.890 about Marjorie Taylor Greene? 00:23:10.770 --> 00:23:11.730 Okay, yes. 00:23:13.630 --> 00:23:17.130 Beginning a few weeks ago, she suddenly seemed like a new person. 00:23:17.810 --> 00:23:21.770 The first thought was maybe somebody had kidnapped her and put in a body double. 00:23:23.050 --> 00:23:26.630 But she's done a lot of stuff that people don't expect. 00:23:26.810 --> 00:23:29.890 And a lot of folks, I mean, there's some who are speculating that 00:23:29.890 --> 00:23:32.970 she had to come to Jesus moment or a road to namascus 00:23:32.970 --> 00:23:36.330 type moment there's an article in today's times 00:23:36.330 --> 00:23:41.890 no it wasn't it was in the atlantic today okay talking speculating that actually 00:23:41.890 --> 00:23:46.790 it may be a lot more sinister because she probably still is every bit as much 00:23:46.790 --> 00:23:53.310 mega as ever however if she looks at the the results of the current polls and 00:23:53.310 --> 00:23:56.310 the results of the elections from yesterday and these sorts of things. 00:23:56.550 --> 00:23:59.890 She has to be thinking that somewhere in the next year or two, 00:24:00.050 --> 00:24:04.210 there's going to be a new head leader, if you will, for MAGA. 00:24:04.530 --> 00:24:08.750 And because Trump's days may be over the way things are going right now. 00:24:09.170 --> 00:24:14.290 And if that's the case, she may be positioning herself to be the new MAGA leader. 00:24:15.530 --> 00:24:19.570 This thing gave me nightmares that are likely to keep me awake all night. 00:24:20.390 --> 00:24:25.150 But what do you think? Do you think she's that smart, number one? 00:24:25.150 --> 00:24:25.970 And number two... 00:24:27.220 --> 00:24:35.040 There are a few things I've heard. First of all, there are several aspects of 00:24:35.040 --> 00:24:36.280 this that might be in play. 00:24:36.660 --> 00:24:41.580 One, when she was flipping on the health care thing and flipping on Epstein. 00:24:42.340 --> 00:24:49.140 It seems like on Epstein, this was something that she had been talking about 00:24:49.140 --> 00:24:51.440 prior to the last election, etc. 00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:55.760 And she's just holding a consistent opinion from where she was before. 00:24:56.320 --> 00:25:02.560 On health care, this was a situation where suddenly her direct family members were impacted. 00:25:02.800 --> 00:25:05.140 And so she saw the effect of it herself. 00:25:05.460 --> 00:25:09.480 And so there's the notion, you know, Yvonne and I have talked about before, 00:25:09.640 --> 00:25:14.600 like for a lot of these folks, problems don't exist until or unless they affect 00:25:14.600 --> 00:25:17.060 you or your family directly. And it sort of hit that. 00:25:17.300 --> 00:25:21.220 And so maybe that changed her opinion of that. But then also people pointed out. 00:25:21.440 --> 00:25:27.120 And this is sort of report from a person who knew a person who knew it's one 00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:31.240 of these things where it's not like MTG was saying it directly herself. 00:25:31.740 --> 00:25:38.640 But rumor has it that her intention was to run for Senate in Georgia. 00:25:39.280 --> 00:25:44.720 And Donald Trump basically said he would not support her in that endeavor. 00:25:45.220 --> 00:25:52.940 And so she was pissed at that. and so was acting out a bit in terms of being 00:25:52.940 --> 00:25:59.060 more willing to do things that did not match up with the Trump agenda than she 00:25:59.060 --> 00:26:00.860 has been at various times before. 00:26:01.380 --> 00:26:08.140 But remember, she was one of the ones who was trying to vacate the Speaker when 00:26:08.140 --> 00:26:11.000 nobody else, including Donald Trump, was supporting that before. 00:26:11.220 --> 00:26:12.640 So she's got a record of that. 00:26:13.080 --> 00:26:17.840 And then also, yes, the rumor is that she's interested in running for president. 00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:24.260 Now, I'm not sure that of the various people in MAGA world that could potentially 00:26:24.260 --> 00:26:28.100 do that, she's the frontrunner, but she's reportedly interested. 00:26:28.420 --> 00:26:33.100 Well, I'm not familiar with what has happened in the last few days, 00:26:33.100 --> 00:26:36.240 but I do know that she's been virulently America first. 00:26:36.560 --> 00:26:43.260 And Trump has definitely drifted away from the America first label that he originally. 00:26:43.260 --> 00:26:46.560 Uh well just as an example bruce today 00:26:46.560 --> 00:26:49.500 she was talking to you know when nancy pelosi announced that 00:26:49.500 --> 00:26:52.540 she wasn't going to run for re-election marjorie taylor 00:26:52.540 --> 00:26:56.260 green was on the view saying all kinds of good things about about uh pelosi 00:26:56.260 --> 00:27:00.280 and how like great a leader she was and how she was great for her party that's 00:27:00.280 --> 00:27:06.960 called being she was just very nice yes which is something that's rare but a 00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:10.080 few months ago i don't think she would have been saying that same stuff. 00:27:10.960 --> 00:27:14.940 When she was talking about running for senator, she was going to be against 00:27:14.940 --> 00:27:18.480 Ossoff. Is that how he says his name, Ossoff, or whatever? 00:27:18.920 --> 00:27:22.880 And supposedly, from what the Atlantic thing, she was somewhere in the range 00:27:22.880 --> 00:27:24.880 of 15 to 20 points behind. 00:27:24.940 --> 00:27:29.460 So it wasn't just Trump who told her she wasn't going to do very well. 00:27:30.740 --> 00:27:36.580 Well, she is in her place because she is in a district that is very aligned, 00:27:36.800 --> 00:27:42.400 is very red, very aligned with her kind of, it's a perfectly formed district for where she is. 00:27:42.700 --> 00:27:47.860 The broader a universe she goes out to, the harder it's going to be for her 00:27:47.860 --> 00:27:49.660 to appeal, even within Republicans. 00:27:50.020 --> 00:27:54.460 Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I just thought that was sort of a little interesting 00:27:54.460 --> 00:27:57.460 thing that we'll be finding out over the next couple of years, 00:27:57.600 --> 00:28:02.040 but I'm still going to have nightmares imagining her being the next president. 00:28:02.860 --> 00:28:04.340 Yeah. So go ahead, Bruce. You had more. 00:28:04.340 --> 00:28:10.300 Well, as far as she's concerned, she's recently, well, the last several months, 00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:14.260 she's been virulently anti-Israel and especially pointing out over and over 00:28:14.260 --> 00:28:16.640 that Israel is a nuclear power. 00:28:17.100 --> 00:28:21.680 And we're always referring to the nuclear power Israel, the nuclear power Israel. 00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:28.040 It's just getting the word out there that Israel is being very evil, 00:28:28.080 --> 00:28:42.600 and it's becoming the irony of history that the Jews who were persecuted in the Holocaust—, 00:28:43.340 --> 00:28:48.440 persecuting the Palestinians to the same degree. And that sense, 00:28:48.820 --> 00:28:53.980 well, in the last couple of years of the Gaza war, it's amazing how that Overton 00:28:53.980 --> 00:28:59.500 window has shifted against Israel and public opinion has shifted significantly. 00:28:59.500 --> 00:29:03.520 And she's been part of that shift, especially on the right. 00:29:03.800 --> 00:29:07.700 I mean, you can argue the same degree part of what you said, 00:29:07.820 --> 00:29:15.340 but there's certainly, They've been doing things that are beyond the pale for a while now, 00:29:15.580 --> 00:29:21.960 and not just since the incident where Hamas went against them, 00:29:22.120 --> 00:29:24.860 but even looking back a few decades, 00:29:25.140 --> 00:29:29.800 it's gotten increasingly worse, the treatment of the Palestinians. 00:29:30.440 --> 00:29:35.520 And, yeah, the rest of the world was already there. 00:29:36.160 --> 00:29:40.300 But, you know, the U.S. is catching up. 00:29:40.680 --> 00:29:47.040 Europe is catching up. Europe was there before we were. And public opinion has 00:29:47.040 --> 00:29:54.660 shifted dramatically in the last year within both parties, frankly. 00:29:55.100 --> 00:30:03.960 And I think the sort of politicians who've been in place a long time are slow to catch up with this. 00:30:04.120 --> 00:30:09.320 Yeah, and this is typically the case in American politics where the politicians 00:30:09.320 --> 00:30:10.880 are lagging behind public opinion. 00:30:10.880 --> 00:30:15.600 And so as time goes forward, 00:30:15.800 --> 00:30:20.160 we'll see that shift be reflected in the electorate, and then the days will 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:26.040 be numbered for Israel's unchecked support by U.S. government. 00:30:26.760 --> 00:30:31.080 Yeah, I think you're right. That's just a matter of time. 00:30:31.280 --> 00:30:36.460 That doesn't mean no support, by the way, but I think it does mean the U.S. 00:30:36.600 --> 00:30:42.580 Being more willing to exert its influence to try to change Israeli behavior 00:30:42.580 --> 00:30:47.300 than they have been in the past and be more aggressive with what they're willing 00:30:47.300 --> 00:30:53.140 to put conditions on additional military support or whatever. 00:30:53.140 --> 00:30:57.860 You know, now, of course, the risk of all that and the reason people like Joe 00:30:57.860 --> 00:31:05.760 Biden and other sort of long term traditional folks are is the worry, 00:31:05.840 --> 00:31:07.020 of course, is if you do that, 00:31:07.180 --> 00:31:10.100 you drive them straight into the arms of adversaries. 00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:15.160 You know, OK, U.S. isn't going to support Israel anymore. 00:31:15.360 --> 00:31:19.380 Well, Russia will, you know. And what do we do about that? Do we care? 00:31:19.680 --> 00:31:24.620 You know, how do we react? And that's part of why people are concerned and go 00:31:24.620 --> 00:31:26.260 slow and all of that kind of stuff. 00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:28.500 So back to MTG. 00:31:31.120 --> 00:31:35.600 I feel like she may be interested in exploring all these things, 00:31:35.600 --> 00:31:42.060 but I seriously question the likelihood of her success. 00:31:42.060 --> 00:31:47.980 I think even if you're talking within the world of, oh, okay, 00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:53.820 Trump is eventually gone, whether it's naturally at the end of his term or something 00:31:53.820 --> 00:31:59.360 else, there are a number of candidates who may want to pick up that baton. 00:31:59.620 --> 00:32:02.560 I don't see MTG winning that race. 00:32:02.560 --> 00:32:09.220 So then I guess that brings the question, who is going to take on the same persona? 00:32:09.220 --> 00:32:11.980 Who's going to fill that Trump? 00:32:12.240 --> 00:32:17.820 I mean, no one's ever going to be able to fill Trump's shoes completely as far 00:32:17.820 --> 00:32:21.500 as his personality, but that brashness. 00:32:23.930 --> 00:32:29.450 Rudeness, overbearing ruler, who on the Republican Party is going to fill that? 00:32:30.270 --> 00:32:33.570 MTG maybe might be able to do that. I mean, when you look at her on a stage 00:32:33.570 --> 00:32:37.590 on a debate, she might be the one who's like insulting the others. 00:32:37.930 --> 00:32:43.850 From that attitude perspective, she's closer. I mean, people always talk about 00:32:43.850 --> 00:32:45.850 J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance can't do that. 00:32:46.430 --> 00:32:49.030 J.D. Vance can do other things, but he can't. 00:32:50.010 --> 00:32:57.250 This is not what he is. He is not a swap-in replacement for Donald Trump's personality, right? 00:32:57.450 --> 00:33:04.070 And I think also, I'm not sure that anyone, I'm not sure that the person who 00:33:04.070 --> 00:33:10.770 succeeds in taking over this movement will succeed by trying to be a clone of Donald Trump. 00:33:11.210 --> 00:33:15.650 You know, it's going to have to be somebody else's different twist on this. 00:33:15.810 --> 00:33:16.810 Someone's going to try. 00:33:17.410 --> 00:33:22.970 Someone will probably try. Someone will try to, like, imitate that style. 00:33:23.230 --> 00:33:28.810 And look, there certainly are people out there who try to do that. 00:33:28.810 --> 00:33:33.270 And most of them aren't existing politicians. It's more like the, 00:33:33.270 --> 00:33:36.370 you know, the podcast circuit. 00:33:36.830 --> 00:33:42.610 Well, Vivek Ramaswamy is probably pretty close to that. He's got a silver tongue. 00:33:43.090 --> 00:33:47.110 He kind of tried to do that and completely flamed out last time around. 00:33:47.110 --> 00:33:50.310 I mean, of course, he was going against Trump, which is a different scenario. 00:33:50.650 --> 00:33:56.450 But, you know, I don't think, you know, I don't know. I don't know there. 00:33:56.670 --> 00:34:04.270 I have to start like, you know, sorting through like who are who are the real 00:34:04.270 --> 00:34:07.630 candidates on the Republican side who might want to do this. 00:34:07.790 --> 00:34:11.510 I mean, of course, they keep talking about, well, Trump's going to go for a third term, et cetera. 00:34:11.510 --> 00:34:17.790 Y'all were talking about that a couple weeks ago And I was thinking I will take a bet, 00:34:18.470 --> 00:34:19.610 from any of you all. 00:34:19.890 --> 00:34:21.110 And he's not going to do it. 00:34:21.250 --> 00:34:27.030 He's not going to try. He likes to have that open, but he's never going to actually try. 00:34:27.270 --> 00:34:34.970 I think it is more about he enjoys the noise that comes from him saying it than 00:34:34.970 --> 00:34:37.710 it is that he actually wants to do it. He didn't want this. 00:34:38.030 --> 00:34:42.350 The only reason he did this second term is it got him out of all of his legal 00:34:42.350 --> 00:34:44.650 problems. He didn't really want to be president again. 00:34:45.770 --> 00:34:50.870 You know and of course he wanted to show that you know just get revenge for 00:34:50.870 --> 00:34:53.090 having lost last time but like. 00:34:53.090 --> 00:34:58.550 Yeah i think the i think the federalist society wanted him to be president because 00:34:58.550 --> 00:35:04.990 he with this brashness and nastiness that he has he keeps the the spotlight 00:35:04.990 --> 00:35:09.530 on him all the time and people keep running after the the bullshit stuff that 00:35:09.530 --> 00:35:11.910 he spouts out more heritage in the meantime, 00:35:12.370 --> 00:35:18.210 In the meantime, Vogt and the others are wanting a government. 00:35:19.050 --> 00:35:22.510 Yeah. I mean, like I said, more heritage than federalist society. 00:35:22.510 --> 00:35:24.650 I'm sorry. Yeah, I meant the heritage. Yeah, I'm sorry. 00:35:25.190 --> 00:35:29.550 But yeah, and there may be something to that, but, you know, 00:35:29.670 --> 00:35:32.630 it's always, yeah, I don't know. 00:35:32.830 --> 00:35:37.570 I think the, but I think, Bruce, you're right. He doesn't want a third term. 00:35:37.730 --> 00:35:43.050 He's going to be old. He knows how old he's going to be. He knows he already 00:35:43.050 --> 00:35:45.710 feels old. He's bored with the job. 00:35:47.710 --> 00:35:52.130 He delegates almost everything except, like, you know, knocking down the East 00:35:52.130 --> 00:35:55.270 Wing, you know? Those are the things he cares about. 00:35:55.470 --> 00:35:56.530 He cares about his legacy. 00:35:57.680 --> 00:36:01.560 And, uh, yeah, he wants to build a few monuments to himself and this kind of stuff. 00:36:01.780 --> 00:36:03.220 That's what the East wing basically is. 00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:04.440 Yeah. 00:36:04.640 --> 00:36:06.840 No one's going to tear it down again. 00:36:07.300 --> 00:36:12.160 He wants to do that arch too. That, uh, the, the Arc de Trump for whatever. 00:36:12.760 --> 00:36:13.800 Oh, I hadn't heard about that. 00:36:13.980 --> 00:36:16.300 He may have a harder time getting that through. 00:36:16.960 --> 00:36:21.960 He wants to build an arch near the Potomac river across from like the Jefferson. 00:36:21.960 --> 00:36:26.220 Memorial or something that's like based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. 00:36:26.660 --> 00:36:28.800 Oh no. but named after him instead. 00:36:29.060 --> 00:36:35.780 Brendan Burgey, the Arc de Triomphella. I think he'll have a harder time getting that through. 00:36:35.960 --> 00:36:41.740 I mean, the East Wing thing, he just sort of, you know, clearly broke a whole 00:36:41.740 --> 00:36:43.640 bunch of laws and just tore it down. 00:36:44.100 --> 00:36:51.740 Well, the actual building of the new thing is always harder than the tearing 00:36:51.740 --> 00:36:54.500 down of the old thing. Yeah, so we'll see. 00:36:54.500 --> 00:36:59.100 They could be in litigation over, you know, if they can prove that there was 00:36:59.100 --> 00:37:02.020 asbestos, I can't imagine a building didn't have a lot of it. 00:37:02.140 --> 00:37:07.260 If they prove that, then that becomes a real huge issue because asbestos is 00:37:07.260 --> 00:37:11.440 a dangerous substance they have blowing around in the wind and the dust. 00:37:12.380 --> 00:37:14.100 Yeah, well, you know. 00:37:15.190 --> 00:37:18.510 Knock down first, think about those kinds of things later. That's the whole 00:37:18.510 --> 00:37:20.310 philosophy of this administration. 00:37:21.130 --> 00:37:26.210 But yeah, anyway, I don't know. I have to start thinking more seriously about 00:37:26.210 --> 00:37:29.030 who are the Republican contenders. 00:37:29.570 --> 00:37:33.910 Because, you know, again, the talk of it being Trump, I think that's all just 00:37:33.910 --> 00:37:38.930 bluster. So we have everything from Trump Jr. 00:37:39.290 --> 00:37:43.210 To MTG to Vance to a variety of 00:37:43.210 --> 00:37:46.510 other senators who will undoubtedly throw themselves into the ring again. 00:37:46.670 --> 00:37:52.490 We've got various people from the commentary world that might jump in. 00:37:52.670 --> 00:37:57.610 There are a bunch of folks. It'll be, you know, whenever you have an open seat 00:37:57.610 --> 00:38:04.750 primary like that, it's always a very dynamic situation. And I don't think this will be any exception. 00:38:05.170 --> 00:38:09.330 And in the meantime, every one of them will be trying to get Trump's endorsement. 00:38:10.950 --> 00:38:11.530 Yes. 00:38:11.910 --> 00:38:13.990 And Trump will try to exploit that too. 00:38:14.350 --> 00:38:17.710 His endorsements are not working out all that well lately. 00:38:18.450 --> 00:38:22.630 Yeah, well, they're going to want to get it anyway. 00:38:23.230 --> 00:38:28.230 Yes, they will. And, of course, the dynamics change entirely. 00:38:29.730 --> 00:38:35.130 If Trump dies and Vance actually is president, that changes everything. 00:38:36.330 --> 00:38:38.590 But, you know, we got hard. 00:38:38.590 --> 00:38:43.470 Oh, he's the healthiest person. Ever. Yes, yes. So that ain't going to happen. 00:38:44.030 --> 00:38:50.030 In New Jersey, Mikey Sherrill was the one who kept talking about Trump endorsing Ciccarelli. 00:38:50.850 --> 00:38:54.490 Ciccarelli didn't mention Trump much, but almost every time she talked, 00:38:54.630 --> 00:38:57.750 she kept saying Ciccarelli is Trump's chosen guy. 00:38:57.890 --> 00:39:02.750 Well, you know, but that's a general election. And so there's an entirely different 00:39:02.750 --> 00:39:09.190 set of things playing out for trying to win a nomination within the Republican 00:39:09.190 --> 00:39:12.570 Party versus winning a general election. 00:39:12.570 --> 00:39:15.810 But even within the Republican Party, 00:39:16.050 --> 00:39:25.990 I think the power of a Trump endorsement is declining the further we get into 00:39:25.990 --> 00:39:27.830 the lame duck situation. 00:39:27.830 --> 00:39:30.650 You know and the more stuff 00:39:30.650 --> 00:39:33.770 he does that's unpopular because he's losing support 00:39:33.770 --> 00:39:36.650 even within republicans i mean you know 00:39:36.650 --> 00:39:41.650 his support is still high within republicans but it's less than it was as people 00:39:41.650 --> 00:39:47.750 get dissatisfied with the actual results they see as opposed to the idea of 00:39:47.750 --> 00:39:51.390 what might happen that they projected onto the scenario before he came back 00:39:51.390 --> 00:39:55.650 so okay with all of that said. 00:39:55.890 --> 00:39:57.810 Let's take another break, and 00:39:57.810 --> 00:40:00.910 then it'll be time for, well, not another break. This is the first break. 00:40:01.050 --> 00:40:07.970 We'll take a break, and then it'll be time for another topic from Bruce back after this. 00:41:51.590 --> 00:41:52.530 Okay, we're back. 00:41:53.310 --> 00:42:00.510 Hey, I'm just looking out the window here. I think my son has got a campfire going on right now. 00:42:01.510 --> 00:42:05.510 And it's like, this is a weird night to be doing a campfire out there. But, oh, wow. 00:42:05.690 --> 00:42:07.530 Has the rain at least stopped? 00:42:07.870 --> 00:42:10.250 Yeah, I think the rain has stopped, but it's really windy out there. 00:42:10.530 --> 00:42:15.770 So he's going to be sending ashes up to the neighbors to set their houses on fire. 00:42:16.270 --> 00:42:21.570 Yeah, I hope not. And I might need to call him or something to make sure that 00:42:21.570 --> 00:42:22.170 everything's like that. 00:42:22.250 --> 00:42:26.810 He's 29 years old, so he's— So he should know what he's doing. 00:42:26.990 --> 00:42:27.790 Yeah, he knows what he's doing. 00:42:30.750 --> 00:42:34.490 Yeah, a little bit different than if you're like a 12-year-old was out there doing it. 00:42:34.570 --> 00:42:35.010 Yeah, yeah. 00:42:36.610 --> 00:42:39.810 Okay, so Bruce, the next topic is yours. 00:42:39.890 --> 00:42:46.430 So let's talk about the government shutdown. So it's been going on over a month now, supposedly. 00:42:47.330 --> 00:42:51.050 I keep hearing in the news that it's like now the longest government shutdown. 00:42:52.490 --> 00:42:56.090 And so from a libertarian perspective, libertarian to me is like, 00:42:56.170 --> 00:42:59.990 yeah, this is great. This is like a holiday every day. The government's shut down. 00:43:00.190 --> 00:43:06.770 But it's disorderly and there's a lot of problems with it, of course. But there's the. 00:43:06.770 --> 00:43:09.430 Main— I hear you're flying somewhere in a few days. 00:43:09.550 --> 00:43:10.110 That's right. 00:43:10.170 --> 00:43:13.050 What you're thinking about—how's it affecting you then? 00:43:13.050 --> 00:43:17.610 Well, my point of view is, as it's always been, that it doesn't make sense for 00:43:17.610 --> 00:43:23.410 the TSA, for the federal government to be running airport security. 00:43:23.790 --> 00:43:26.890 The federal government doesn't run security at the mall. 00:43:27.210 --> 00:43:30.950 Why would they be doing it at the airport? Same thing with the inter-traffic controllers. 00:43:31.170 --> 00:43:34.250 That should be privatized just like it is in Canada. 00:43:34.250 --> 00:43:40.990 And so I think as people are waiting in long lines and having their flights delayed or cancelled, 00:43:41.110 --> 00:43:45.310 they should be looking at it that way rather than saying, ah, 00:43:45.410 --> 00:43:48.990 the government should be getting this open again because this really doesn't 00:43:48.990 --> 00:43:50.330 make sense for the government to be running that. 00:43:50.950 --> 00:43:52.730 So, yeah, I think that, 00:43:53.480 --> 00:43:58.540 I would think that once you have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people 00:43:58.540 --> 00:44:04.100 really mad about their flights getting delayed or canceled, that's going to 00:44:04.100 --> 00:44:06.100 really push the government to get this thing resolved. 00:44:07.120 --> 00:44:11.940 I think what's always happened in these is that, well, not always, 00:44:12.060 --> 00:44:13.960 I shouldn't say always, but, 00:44:15.270 --> 00:44:21.450 There's always, I keep saying always, always is a bad word. Never use the word always. 00:44:21.730 --> 00:44:31.670 But one of the ways you can get out of these kinds of scenarios is simply it 00:44:31.670 --> 00:44:38.330 becomes so painful that people start desperately wanting to get out of it. 00:44:38.330 --> 00:44:45.250 And options that seem to be off the table for both sides start suddenly being 00:44:45.250 --> 00:44:54.150 palatable because you're having to deal with a situation that real people are feeling the pain, 00:44:54.150 --> 00:44:56.710 your constituents are feeling the pain, 00:44:57.190 --> 00:44:59.690 oftentimes you yourself are feeling the pain. 00:44:59.690 --> 00:45:06.730 I think I read that at one of these previous shutdowns, a turning point was 00:45:06.730 --> 00:45:10.310 when a national airport in Washington, 00:45:10.450 --> 00:45:15.370 D.C., that many Congress people used themselves to go back and forth from D.C., 00:45:15.370 --> 00:45:18.130 started being seriously affected. And all of a sudden, they're like, 00:45:18.190 --> 00:45:19.050 well, we can't have that. 00:45:19.550 --> 00:45:24.670 Yeah. Well, actually, we should probably step back and say, why are we here? 00:45:24.670 --> 00:45:31.670 And it boils down to the fact that, first of all, Congress has not been able 00:45:31.670 --> 00:45:37.010 to pass, what is it, 13 appropriations bills or 12 appropriations bills? 00:45:37.470 --> 00:45:37.750 Yeah, yeah. 00:45:37.750 --> 00:45:42.710 They have not been able to do that in October 1st, like in the last long, 00:45:42.830 --> 00:45:44.650 long time, probably not 20 or 30 years. 00:45:46.090 --> 00:45:50.350 And so, and on the other hand, you got the minority party, the Democrats, 00:45:50.650 --> 00:45:57.050 well, right now it's Democrats, that are trying to use the necessity of passing 00:45:57.050 --> 00:46:01.050 a budget or at least a continuing resolution to... 00:46:02.470 --> 00:46:08.090 To continue a subsidy that has been going on for, what, like the last five years? 00:46:08.270 --> 00:46:11.390 It's got the Obamacare subsidies. 00:46:12.090 --> 00:46:17.010 And specifically, the big, beautiful bill is ending the subsidy, 00:46:17.010 --> 00:46:18.590 and so they actually want to reverse 00:46:18.590 --> 00:46:22.110 something that was just passed a few months ago to have it continue. 00:46:22.710 --> 00:46:27.150 And so one of the things that is brought up in the whole back and forth about, 00:46:27.290 --> 00:46:30.690 like, well, who's at fault, blah, blah, blah, is –, 00:46:32.460 --> 00:46:36.320 continuing the status quo would be to let this thing expire. 00:46:36.440 --> 00:46:40.440 If you just continue existing law, you would just do this. 00:46:40.560 --> 00:46:47.720 So the Democrats aren't agreeing to just turn it back on for a few months and 00:46:47.720 --> 00:46:51.520 then we'll punt it a few months and we'll deal with it again in a few months, 00:46:51.560 --> 00:46:53.600 but we'll just leave things where we are. 00:46:53.760 --> 00:47:00.960 They are trying to use this leverage because this is the only leverage they have to try to, 00:47:01.160 --> 00:47:06.840 and they picked sort of the one policy issue that they thought they could make 00:47:06.840 --> 00:47:14.240 the biggest case about and try to use that as the leverage. And that's where they are. 00:47:14.480 --> 00:47:18.800 Well, it's because it's a benefit that has gone to the middle class. 00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:23.780 It's a benefit for people who are well, actually, it's a benefit for people 00:47:23.780 --> 00:47:29.840 who are over 400% of the poverty level that are getting this benefit. 00:47:30.260 --> 00:47:32.340 It ends up being something on 00:47:32.340 --> 00:47:37.580 the order of, I think it's like $350 billion over the course of 10 years. 00:47:37.720 --> 00:47:41.280 That's the cost of continuing that subsidy. 00:47:41.420 --> 00:47:45.840 Well, and when you look at individual pieces, people in individual cases, 00:47:46.140 --> 00:47:51.760 it makes a huge, It's a huge percentage difference for the individuals who are affected as well. 00:47:52.060 --> 00:47:56.700 It's not just like 5% here or there. Like in some cases, the amount they're 00:47:56.700 --> 00:47:58.280 going to have to pay out of pocket doubles. 00:47:58.640 --> 00:48:05.940 It's thousands of dollars a year. But it's a benefit going to people who are making good income. 00:48:06.540 --> 00:48:11.860 So there's really not much justification to be giving this benefit to people 00:48:11.860 --> 00:48:13.180 who pay for it for themselves. 00:48:13.760 --> 00:48:19.680 I'd say it's going to people who have decent income. It also does go down the 00:48:19.680 --> 00:48:21.400 scale as well. It's just less so. 00:48:21.600 --> 00:48:26.160 But the thing is that the numbers are so big that even for people with those 00:48:26.160 --> 00:48:28.160 incomes, it's not a trivial amount of money. 00:48:28.380 --> 00:48:34.920 It's a significant chunk of change. And the notion behind all this is that, 00:48:34.920 --> 00:48:40.320 you know, without this, the total numbers are just too big overall, 00:48:40.320 --> 00:48:42.820 and you're wanting to bring the price down for everybody. 00:48:42.940 --> 00:48:48.560 And it was brought in as a COVID thing initially, but as with most things, 00:48:48.620 --> 00:48:52.920 if it doesn't go away, people become used to it and et cetera. 00:48:52.920 --> 00:48:56.400 And then you just also have, I mean... 00:48:57.320 --> 00:49:02.140 The whole health care thing is out of control anyway, in terms of how much it 00:49:02.140 --> 00:49:04.660 costs, the pricing, all of this kind of stuff. 00:49:06.140 --> 00:49:10.620 But you can see where they come in. The bottom line and the reason they picked 00:49:10.620 --> 00:49:16.440 this issue out of all issues is it's health care, and it's a direct pocketbook 00:49:16.440 --> 00:49:20.380 issue, and it's substantial amounts, like you said, for the middle class. 00:49:20.540 --> 00:49:25.520 So this isn't like some small group here or there, and it's not some marginalized 00:49:25.520 --> 00:49:31.180 group. This is affecting lots of people, and it's affecting them in a serious 00:49:31.180 --> 00:49:33.980 way, and so you can try to make the case out of it. 00:49:34.100 --> 00:49:38.340 Now, it's still difficult in some cases because you're still talking future. 00:49:38.660 --> 00:49:43.760 You're still talking an impact that hasn't happened yet, and you're trying to 00:49:43.760 --> 00:49:49.100 avoid an impact in the future, and that's sometimes a hard case to make because 00:49:49.100 --> 00:49:53.520 people just aren't recognizing it, aren't paying attention, aren't whatever. 00:49:53.520 --> 00:50:01.340 And so, but so far, if you look at the polling on how people are thinking about 00:50:01.340 --> 00:50:04.020 this, nobody likes anybody involved. 00:50:04.380 --> 00:50:09.120 Like everybody, all of the numbers, like the Republicans, the Democrats, 00:50:09.320 --> 00:50:14.360 the president, they all get horrible ratings on this. Nobody likes anybody. 00:50:14.760 --> 00:50:21.780 But it seems like right now the Democrats are coming off the least worst in those polls. 00:50:22.120 --> 00:50:26.760 That may continue to change over time. I feel like that's all very dynamic based 00:50:26.760 --> 00:50:29.460 on how things are going this week. Yeah. 00:50:29.940 --> 00:50:36.860 And then another major thing that's been affected by the shutdown is the SNAP benefits. 00:50:37.100 --> 00:50:41.080 That affects, I think, something like 42 million people in the country, 00:50:41.220 --> 00:50:44.680 which is more than 10% of the population. Yeah. 00:50:46.020 --> 00:50:49.960 And in some states, the percentage is significantly higher as well. 00:50:49.980 --> 00:50:54.040 Yeah, I can imagine. It's very regional. I saw a headline that said that the 00:50:54.040 --> 00:50:57.160 courts have said that Trump has to fully fund it. 00:50:57.720 --> 00:51:00.600 Trump and the administration has said, though, they can only partially fund 00:51:00.600 --> 00:51:05.280 it out of reserve funds. And so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. 00:51:07.900 --> 00:51:12.100 But hopefully the people who need it the most will be getting some and... 00:51:13.410 --> 00:51:20.030 But I think, for me, I'm in favor of giving help to the poorest of the poor. 00:51:20.150 --> 00:51:24.510 But when it starts reaching up into the middle class, it doesn't make sense. 00:51:24.710 --> 00:51:30.430 So I think SNAP, I'm not sure exactly what the criteria is for getting into that. 00:51:30.610 --> 00:51:34.230 But I believe that's still, of course, the poor. But is it really more than 00:51:34.230 --> 00:51:37.770 10% of the country that really goes or dies on that? 00:51:38.090 --> 00:51:42.910 No, I think the national number is actually slightly under 10%. 00:51:42.910 --> 00:51:48.130 There are some states, particularly in the South, where it's significantly higher. 00:51:48.410 --> 00:51:53.330 I think I read that the, I forget which state it is, but I think the state with 00:51:53.330 --> 00:51:55.770 the highest penetration is like a third. 00:51:57.130 --> 00:52:02.890 And so, you know, and of course those are red states, which is also one of the dynamics at play here. 00:52:03.190 --> 00:52:08.570 Yeah. So that's what it's, which doesn't, I really have a hard time believing 00:52:08.570 --> 00:52:13.930 that there's really that many people who would starve to death. 00:52:14.270 --> 00:52:16.590 Well, I mean, that's like, well, that's a little exaggeration, 00:52:16.970 --> 00:52:21.070 are really, really in desperate need of food aid. 00:52:21.070 --> 00:52:28.790 Well, I mean, unfortunately, I think those numbers are about on par. 00:52:29.150 --> 00:52:37.690 I mean, and honestly, if there's, my attitude towards it is I would rather give 00:52:37.690 --> 00:52:43.150 the aid to some people that don't need it than miss people who do need it. 00:52:44.010 --> 00:52:48.290 But I think that, you know, the numbers are high. 00:52:48.570 --> 00:52:56.130 There are quite a few folks that can't make ends meet without additional supports like this. 00:52:56.290 --> 00:53:00.690 And it's not a trivial number. 00:53:01.170 --> 00:53:05.370 And, you know, they're going to start to be affected. 00:53:06.660 --> 00:53:10.180 So another aspect of this government shutdown is the filibuster. 00:53:11.320 --> 00:53:11.420 Yes. 00:53:11.420 --> 00:53:15.700 So this could have really big repercussions. 00:53:16.460 --> 00:53:24.860 If the filibuster really is removed, then that will dramatically change the 00:53:24.860 --> 00:53:28.100 dynamic of the way the Congress operates. Yes. 00:53:28.440 --> 00:53:32.720 And so— I think for the better. I've said this on the show for years. 00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:34.920 Oh, just a second now. 00:53:34.920 --> 00:53:39.880 So, yeah, I think in my mind, I think the filibuster is a good thing, 00:53:39.900 --> 00:53:42.420 but I'm interested to hear what Ed has to say. 00:53:42.560 --> 00:53:48.880 Well, if a party has a 51 to 49 majority in the Senate and you don't have a 00:53:48.880 --> 00:53:53.340 filibuster, the minority party might as well go home because they will not get 00:53:53.340 --> 00:53:55.640 to do or accomplish virtually anything. 00:53:57.640 --> 00:54:04.100 And it used to be just to go back historically the Supreme Court justices, 00:54:04.940 --> 00:54:09.620 could not survive a filibuster if it was someone who was unacceptable, 00:54:10.420 --> 00:54:15.160 they would filibuster it and you had to come up with a new nominee basically 00:54:15.160 --> 00:54:19.480 because they were keeping it limbo once we said no we're not going to do that 00:54:19.480 --> 00:54:23.060 it's 51% we get justices who are, 00:54:24.000 --> 00:54:29.860 radical both directions because whoever's got control of the Senate can do what 00:54:29.860 --> 00:54:37.040 they want and ride rush out, and the minority vote no longer matters because the majority vote. 00:54:38.160 --> 00:54:43.780 You're absolutely right. One of the things that changed over the last 50 years 00:54:43.780 --> 00:54:47.920 is the willingness to use the filibuster for everything. 00:54:48.360 --> 00:54:55.100 It used to be going back 50, 70, 80 years, The filibuster existed, 00:54:55.400 --> 00:54:59.440 but it was reserved for sort of, 00:55:00.560 --> 00:55:05.460 critical, rare issues, like most things passed with 50 votes. 00:55:05.660 --> 00:55:09.820 But see, part of that was, they've made it very easy to filibuster now. 00:55:10.020 --> 00:55:10.940 Yeah, that's part of it. 00:55:10.940 --> 00:55:14.980 Hey, I want a filibuster, and they take a vote. And if you don't get 60 votes, yeah. 00:55:15.160 --> 00:55:16.180 Absolutely. That's bullshit. 00:55:16.340 --> 00:55:19.920 If you want a filibuster, you need to stand on your feet and talk for three days. 00:55:19.940 --> 00:55:21.940 I mean, one of the- And cross your legs while you're doing it. 00:55:22.200 --> 00:55:28.060 One of the proposed filibuster reforms is just make them do it the old-fashioned way. 00:55:28.480 --> 00:55:28.560 Yeah. 00:55:28.560 --> 00:55:33.420 May essentially make it so you can use a filibuster to delay, but not to stop. 00:55:34.800 --> 00:55:39.340 But my argument, and then Bruce, you can do yours, and I've said this on the 00:55:39.340 --> 00:55:43.140 show before, but fundamentally the existence of the filibuster, 00:55:43.140 --> 00:55:48.060 I feel, ends up distorting democracy in both directions. 00:55:48.340 --> 00:55:53.080 Because what happens is people vote in the party that they're for, 00:55:53.420 --> 00:55:56.940 whichever party it is, because they're going to do X, Y, Z, Q. 00:55:57.460 --> 00:56:02.900 And then they get in and they can't do it because of the filibuster, 00:56:03.140 --> 00:56:04.760 because of other institutional things. 00:56:04.940 --> 00:56:09.240 And then they get blamed for not doing what they promised, even though they 00:56:09.240 --> 00:56:11.560 tried to do it, but they were stopped by the other side. 00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:17.580 And so then you get this cycle of throw the bums out, throw the bums out, 00:56:17.760 --> 00:56:23.120 throw the bums out, throw the bums out, where everybody's just always disappointed 00:56:23.120 --> 00:56:26.600 that whoever they brought in couldn't do what they said. 00:56:26.740 --> 00:56:30.780 And so they're a bunch of liars, and they're ineffective, and they're whatever. 00:56:31.060 --> 00:56:41.440 And you can't properly give credit and blame for the parties implementing their stated policies. 00:56:42.520 --> 00:56:47.620 As long as there are, of course, some exceptions where if you, 00:56:47.860 --> 00:56:53.200 let's say, the majority party decides to eliminate all elections forever, that changes things. 00:56:53.360 --> 00:56:58.480 But as long as you are continuing to have elections, I feel like letting the 00:56:58.480 --> 00:57:05.520 party who wins actually implement their agenda means that next time around, 00:57:05.860 --> 00:57:08.280 the voting public can give a proper, 00:57:08.680 --> 00:57:12.340 you know, do they like what they got or not? If they like it, 00:57:12.520 --> 00:57:13.380 they'll keep the people. 00:57:13.560 --> 00:57:15.680 If they don't like it, they'll get rid of the people. 00:57:15.860 --> 00:57:19.620 But they can make that judgment properly based on what's actually happened. 00:57:20.040 --> 00:57:25.440 Whereas right now, people are just judging it based on they said they were going 00:57:25.440 --> 00:57:28.160 to do acts and they didn't on both sides. 00:57:28.700 --> 00:57:33.740 There's another option, which is that you negotiate rather than the majority 00:57:33.740 --> 00:57:35.660 party saying this is the way it's going to be. 00:57:36.180 --> 00:57:40.360 You sit down and say, well, we need to negotiate until we reach some sort of 00:57:40.360 --> 00:57:42.840 thing that at least two-thirds of the Senate agrees with. 00:57:43.020 --> 00:57:45.140 I don't think that's a bad thing. 00:57:45.420 --> 00:57:50.220 You're right. That would be a great thing. It hasn't existed in 30, 40 years at least. 00:57:50.400 --> 00:57:54.080 Well, they are negotiating to some degree. It's just it's behind closed doors, 00:57:54.100 --> 00:57:57.000 like even now, for the government shutdown. 00:57:57.120 --> 00:58:01.900 Well, there's always uncontroversial things that pass through the Congress that 00:58:01.900 --> 00:58:03.480 aren't partisan in nature. 00:58:03.660 --> 00:58:07.840 And those are the things that get no attention whatsoever because everybody agrees. 00:58:08.420 --> 00:58:10.460 And those do still continue to happen. 00:58:11.470 --> 00:58:20.550 Yeah, well, even now, because when there's an impasse, you end up with a group of centrist senators, 00:58:20.970 --> 00:58:26.910 some Republicans and Democrats, who get together and they can control the vote 00:58:26.910 --> 00:58:29.510 because they can sway it one way or another. 00:58:30.070 --> 00:58:31.830 And so that's when you do get the 00:58:31.830 --> 00:58:35.090 negotiations. Yes, it's not to the same level as we've had in the past. 00:58:35.090 --> 00:58:41.410 No, I like even that, like the scenario you've described has not actually resulted 00:58:41.410 --> 00:58:43.970 in legislation in probably at least 20 years. 00:58:45.230 --> 00:58:47.070 Yeah, I don't have the examples on the top of my head. 00:58:47.910 --> 00:58:54.870 I get the viewpoint of like, hey, maybe government should only ever be able 00:58:54.870 --> 00:58:57.350 to do things that a super majority supports. 00:58:58.750 --> 00:59:02.110 You can make that argument, and I'm sure you would, Bruce. 00:59:03.330 --> 00:59:10.610 Needing two-thirds limits how much can get done, and it can only get done what everybody agrees on. 00:59:11.070 --> 00:59:15.110 The problem is we're so divided right now, there are very few things that everybody agrees on. 00:59:15.230 --> 00:59:16.110 Yeah. 00:59:16.990 --> 00:59:24.070 So. So anyway, yeah, look, the one thing that is clear is that eliminating the 00:59:24.070 --> 00:59:29.570 filibuster would completely change what our politics look like now, 00:59:29.730 --> 00:59:34.810 because of that and because of the worries that you're talking about, Bruce and and Ed. 00:59:36.350 --> 00:59:39.850 Donald Trump is pushing for it right now. He talked to senators, 00:59:40.170 --> 00:59:42.310 but I don't think he's going to get it. 00:59:42.790 --> 00:59:47.090 Which is quite notable because typically Republicans have been the one to be 00:59:47.090 --> 00:59:49.070 in favor of keeping the filibuster. 00:59:49.230 --> 00:59:53.850 But of course, Trump has no long-term thinking. 00:59:54.370 --> 00:59:59.450 All he cares about is what he can get done right now, future be dead. 00:59:59.450 --> 01:00:04.270 And senators from both sides, you know, when the Democrats were thinking about 01:00:04.270 --> 01:00:08.110 potentially getting rid of it, Manchin and Sinema famously blocked it. 01:00:08.330 --> 01:00:13.350 But the reports were there were probably five or six other senators who weren't 01:00:13.350 --> 01:00:15.990 going to go for it. They just didn't want to go on the record at the moment. 01:00:16.390 --> 01:00:21.610 And I think you probably have at least five to 10 Republican senators who won't 01:00:21.610 --> 01:00:28.330 go along with this now. and it's because the recognition that. 01:00:29.110 --> 01:00:33.390 Yes, we could get a bunch of stuff with this done right now, 01:00:33.490 --> 01:00:38.550 but as soon as the Democrats take power again, and we assume at some point they 01:00:38.550 --> 01:00:42.250 will, there's a whole bunch of stuff they're going to do, too. 01:00:42.630 --> 01:00:46.610 And one of the arguments against is, you know, I said, like, 01:00:46.810 --> 01:00:52.030 OK, you get the policy you ask for, but that also potentially brings up a world 01:00:52.030 --> 01:00:54.950 where the policy swings wildly every few years. 01:00:55.350 --> 01:01:00.830 And that's not exactly stable either. And it also brings up like when Donald 01:01:00.830 --> 01:01:05.270 Trump listed the kinds of things he wants to do with it, there's a lot of voter 01:01:05.270 --> 01:01:08.890 suppression kind of stuff in there. There's a lot of making voter voting harder. 01:01:09.350 --> 01:01:13.230 There's a lot of locking in things that he's wanted to do. 01:01:13.350 --> 01:01:17.550 And of course, when I talk about things I would want the Democrats to do, 01:01:17.730 --> 01:01:19.410 it's exactly the same kind of thing. 01:01:19.410 --> 01:01:25.910 Expand the Supreme Court, add more states, lock in nonpartisan redistricting 01:01:25.910 --> 01:01:32.850 and expansive voter rights, make mail-in voting nationwide, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 01:01:32.850 --> 01:01:39.650 You know, and so both sides are going to want to do things that advantage them long term. 01:01:40.130 --> 01:01:47.610 And if if either one of them succeeds in the right set of policies that make 01:01:47.610 --> 01:01:52.170 it really hard for the other to ever win, you are potentially causing all kinds 01:01:52.170 --> 01:01:53.270 of long term damage as well. 01:01:53.450 --> 01:02:00.470 And of course, the because of that, the number one priority is to make the changes that, 01:02:01.200 --> 01:02:08.580 Not to fix our national problems, but to fix the election system in such a way 01:02:08.580 --> 01:02:12.320 that locks in their majority through gerrymandering, 01:02:12.680 --> 01:02:20.940 voting laws, and such to either restrict or cause different outcomes in the elections. 01:02:21.540 --> 01:02:29.040 And you'd hope in an ideal world you would construct all of that in a way that's quote unquote fair. 01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:35.540 But of course, the reality is either side is going to be sorely tempted to just 01:02:35.540 --> 01:02:38.220 do something that locks in their advantages. 01:02:38.500 --> 01:02:42.880 Yes. And that's why it's the number one priority when it comes to when they 01:02:42.880 --> 01:02:46.900 get into power, whereas the actual real problems in the country have nothing 01:02:46.900 --> 01:02:48.920 to do with how we're doing elections. 01:02:48.920 --> 01:02:54.400 Although I will say, although, you know, we have the situation with California 01:02:54.400 --> 01:02:58.320 undoing it right now, for 15, 20 years now, 01:02:59.020 --> 01:03:05.640 Democrats have been pushing these nonpartisan redistricting things that try to be fair. 01:03:05.960 --> 01:03:09.620 You know, they haven't been locking in their majorities. Instead, 01:03:09.900 --> 01:03:12.100 they've been locking in. In some states. 01:03:12.920 --> 01:03:17.580 No, no, no. In some states, absolutely, there are a handful of states, 01:03:17.740 --> 01:03:21.720 like Illinois is an example, Massachusetts is an example, that have gone the 01:03:21.720 --> 01:03:27.740 other direction, but the vast majority of states where they have... 01:03:28.630 --> 01:03:34.190 Put together something have actually there was a trend that was going for a 01:03:34.190 --> 01:03:39.090 long time of more and more states instituting these non-partisan. 01:03:39.090 --> 01:03:43.530 Well the way we do it here in washington is a very good way i i i like the way 01:03:43.530 --> 01:03:48.650 it is done it's there's no controversy uh there's it's not a there it's like 01:03:48.650 --> 01:03:53.290 it just they do they do the redistricting note they do the redistricting and 01:03:53.290 --> 01:03:57.310 there's no fight in the legislature about it right we. 01:03:57.310 --> 01:04:01.150 Almost got it done in pennsylvania but the republicans scuttled 01:04:01.150 --> 01:04:04.710 it and they scuttled it by two things 01:04:04.710 --> 01:04:09.310 number one the speaker of the house tried to keep it from ever coming to the 01:04:09.310 --> 01:04:13.570 to the legislature to get even getting to the floor then when it finally got 01:04:13.570 --> 01:04:17.970 to the floor the republicans introduced something a hundred amendments of each 01:04:17.970 --> 01:04:23.690 one had to be debated and they reached uh when the term was over and it never, 01:04:24.250 --> 01:04:26.130 And then for some reason, it hasn't come back. 01:04:26.230 --> 01:04:32.550 Well, it hasn't come back up again because we got redistricted in 2020 and we're 01:04:32.550 --> 01:04:33.750 not going to get it into it. 01:04:33.910 --> 01:04:36.170 So it's not a problem now. What the hell would we ignore it? 01:04:36.170 --> 01:04:43.130 Anyway, I feel like for these kinds of reasons, we're not yet at the breaking 01:04:43.130 --> 01:04:45.210 point where the filibuster will go away. 01:04:45.410 --> 01:04:53.030 I've said for a decade or more that I think all it will take is the right important 01:04:53.030 --> 01:04:58.730 issue that you have more than 50 but less than 60 votes in favor. 01:04:59.030 --> 01:05:04.850 And it's something really crucial to the party that is in that zone. 01:05:05.330 --> 01:05:08.770 And the other thing you've had, though, which I think is very interesting, 01:05:08.770 --> 01:05:12.550 is that you have had the eating away at it. 01:05:13.050 --> 01:05:17.090 And just within the last couple of months, 01:05:17.430 --> 01:05:26.390 the Republicans twice had an override of the filibuster where they had the parliamentarians 01:05:26.390 --> 01:05:31.290 say, no, this requires 50 votes, and then them say, eh, never mind that. 01:05:31.290 --> 01:05:38.110 We'll do it with 50 on particular individual bills where they haven't changed 01:05:38.110 --> 01:05:43.550 the rule permanently, but instead they've said, you know what, on this one vote, 01:05:43.770 --> 01:05:48.770 let's say we need 50 instead of 60 and just plow right through it. 01:05:48.770 --> 01:05:55.850 And I think that may be the way that this ends up happening is not through a 01:05:55.850 --> 01:05:59.030 one and done, we're going to change the rules and we're going to eliminate the 01:05:59.030 --> 01:06:03.170 filibuster, or even we're going to eliminate the filibuster in a certain category. 01:06:03.670 --> 01:06:08.490 It's just going to be more decisions on one-off votes that says, 01:06:08.610 --> 01:06:11.090 okay, this time we'll do it. We're not saying forever. 01:06:11.330 --> 01:06:17.130 We're just saying this time we won't require the 60 votes. And that'll just 01:06:17.130 --> 01:06:18.250 happen more and more often. 01:06:18.770 --> 01:06:22.330 That's sort of what California has done with the redistricting. 01:06:22.790 --> 01:06:28.530 It's, you know, it's a one-time redistrict, and then after the elections go back, supposedly. 01:06:28.850 --> 01:06:32.090 Well, after the next census, actually. So it goes until then. 01:06:32.090 --> 01:06:35.270 It goes until then. Okay, I wasn't sure. I knew it was to be temporary, 01:06:35.410 --> 01:06:37.690 not permanent filibuster. Yeah. 01:06:38.500 --> 01:06:43.060 Okay, that was all starting on the government shutdown and transitioned into 01:06:43.060 --> 01:06:44.720 the filibuster because it's been talked about. 01:06:44.920 --> 01:06:49.060 But basically, the reason our government keeps shutting down is it's so dysfunctional. 01:06:51.800 --> 01:06:52.320 Okay. 01:06:53.320 --> 01:06:55.920 So, Ed, your turn. Pick a topic. 01:06:56.260 --> 01:06:56.820 Oh, crap. 01:06:58.340 --> 01:06:59.720 Caught you by surprise. 01:07:00.960 --> 01:07:06.320 Yeah. Okay. You know, I said something out earlier today that I thought might 01:07:06.320 --> 01:07:08.920 be a little interesting to talk about. a little bit. 01:07:09.160 --> 01:07:14.240 And that has to do with the income inequality, which gets to the heart of a 01:07:14.240 --> 01:07:16.540 lot of things that are going on. 01:07:16.700 --> 01:07:22.180 What triggered it off was a podcast I listened to actually this morning with 01:07:22.180 --> 01:07:25.600 a guy by the name of Branko Milanovic, 01:07:26.260 --> 01:07:30.740 who has currently, he's done a lot of research on income inequalities, 01:07:31.400 --> 01:07:38.100 and specifically has talked about in China and in Russia and in the United States 01:07:38.100 --> 01:07:42.220 and other places where there are such major income inequalities. 01:07:42.600 --> 01:07:46.640 The podcast itself was one of the University of Chicago ones. 01:07:46.760 --> 01:07:53.160 It's called Capitalism slash Capitalism, And just thought of an interesting way. 01:07:53.360 --> 01:07:58.480 The guy who runs it, his name is Luigi Zincalas. 01:07:58.600 --> 01:08:02.640 He's from Italy originally, and he's an economist professor at Chicago. 01:08:03.040 --> 01:08:09.480 And then a lady, Bethany McLean, who's a journalist that writes on economic issues. 01:08:10.200 --> 01:08:13.900 It's a worthwhile podcast. If you've never listened to it, it's kind of fun 01:08:13.900 --> 01:08:16.360 to listen to because they do interesting good things. 01:08:16.360 --> 01:08:25.160 What this came down to Is talking about Is if and can equality A big problem 01:08:25.160 --> 01:08:30.100 And if it is Why is it there And it's been present throughout. 01:08:30.870 --> 01:08:38.050 You know, the dictatorships, socialist, communist countries. 01:08:39.170 --> 01:08:44.230 Free countries, the United States, it's always there. 01:08:44.450 --> 01:08:49.510 And in France, it's what led to the French Revolution in 1789, 01:08:49.510 --> 01:08:55.850 basically, was the massive inequality, people starving to death and others living in great luxury. 01:08:56.570 --> 01:09:03.030 I don't know what we do about it Because for one thing, it's probably not right 01:09:03.030 --> 01:09:08.250 to just say Well, we'll take 10% of the wealthy people's money and give it to the poor. 01:09:09.090 --> 01:09:12.590 That's not such a good idea That's what Ayn Rand called that, 01:09:12.850 --> 01:09:19.470 looting On the other hand, it's probably not appropriate for corporations To 01:09:19.470 --> 01:09:27.810 pay $50 million to the CEO a year and have people working on the line making the products at $5, 01:09:27.930 --> 01:09:33.670 $10, $15 an hour and not being able to pay their rent and food and needing to 01:09:33.670 --> 01:09:36.350 rely on the rest of us to buy SNAP budgets for. 01:09:36.570 --> 01:09:39.710 Fully employed people should not need to need SNAP. 01:09:40.410 --> 01:09:44.910 So, you know, some things I don't think would be appropriate at all. 01:09:45.050 --> 01:09:50.130 They talked about a tax on capital, retained capital value. or we should tax 01:09:50.130 --> 01:09:52.710 that maybe charge 2% or 3% only of it. 01:09:52.790 --> 01:09:58.490 But that doesn't work because if a guy's got all of it, like Warren Buffett 01:09:58.490 --> 01:10:03.350 has billions of dollars tied up in the stock, if he had, say, 01:10:03.490 --> 01:10:05.450 a 2% tax on his $100 billion, 01:10:05.670 --> 01:10:09.710 that would come out to, what, something like $200 million a year that they would 01:10:09.710 --> 01:10:11.830 have to pay to pay that tax. 01:10:13.900 --> 01:10:17.860 No one has $220 or even $200 million, either one, sitting around. 01:10:18.040 --> 01:10:21.460 So in order to generate the money to pay that tax, they've got to sell their 01:10:21.460 --> 01:10:25.140 stock, which immediately hits the stock. The price goes down. 01:10:25.340 --> 01:10:30.220 It dilutes the capital control that the capitalist has of his company. 01:10:32.220 --> 01:10:34.360 I don't see how that could possibly work. 01:10:35.320 --> 01:10:40.980 I'm getting lost a little bit, Ed. So what was the main thesis that these guys 01:10:40.980 --> 01:10:44.700 were sort of advocating that you want to talk about a little bit? 01:10:45.020 --> 01:10:51.800 Well, I think they were primarily just discussing, is inkling equality an issue? 01:10:51.960 --> 01:10:56.720 And if so, they didn't really get into saying what to do about stopping it, 01:10:56.740 --> 01:11:00.240 just mostly describing that it's present throughout the world. 01:11:00.240 --> 01:11:07.780 Yeah, I mean, from my understanding of things I've read about this in the past, 01:11:08.300 --> 01:11:14.440 increasing inequality, measured in a variety of different ways, 01:11:14.660 --> 01:11:21.940 has very often presaged significant societal turmoil. Let's just put it that way. 01:11:22.400 --> 01:11:30.100 As one of the warning signs. Now, I think you can argue, does that necessarily 01:11:30.100 --> 01:11:34.720 mean every time that gets too big, something bad's going to happen? 01:11:34.940 --> 01:11:37.360 Does it mean it's bad in and of itself? 01:11:37.700 --> 01:11:42.680 I think you have a lot of arguments there, but I think it's definitely... 01:11:43.650 --> 01:11:51.290 There's a strong correlation of when income inequality gets too high, 01:11:51.290 --> 01:11:56.070 there's a high chance of turmoil. 01:11:56.890 --> 01:12:02.490 Now, what if anything you do about that or whether that's just a natural cycle 01:12:02.490 --> 01:12:05.070 that's going to occur, I think you can argue. 01:12:05.430 --> 01:12:10.510 I don't know, Bruce, this seems like one of those areas where I imagine your 01:12:10.510 --> 01:12:12.970 take would be laissez-faire. Whatever happens, happens. 01:12:12.970 --> 01:12:23.090 Yeah, absolutely. I would say, is the goal a higher average income or do you 01:12:23.090 --> 01:12:27.110 want a more equally distributed income? That's not the same thing. 01:12:27.770 --> 01:12:35.810 I just brought up the list of income inequality of all the countries on the world. 01:12:36.530 --> 01:12:40.450 And we're looking for the United States to see where we are in our ranking. 01:12:40.870 --> 01:12:46.010 I think we're kind of like in the middle. Like the country with the highest 01:12:46.010 --> 01:12:53.330 income equality is Slovakia, Slovenia, Belarus. Wow, Belarus, India. 01:12:53.330 --> 01:12:54.170 The highest inequality. 01:12:54.670 --> 01:12:56.610 The highest, no, highest equality. 01:12:56.930 --> 01:13:00.930 Oh, highest equality. Yeah, I think so. I was expecting the inequality would 01:13:00.930 --> 01:13:03.770 be, you know, actually fairly poor countries. 01:13:03.870 --> 01:13:08.610 I may be wrong. It just has it sorted by Gini coefficient. So remind me again 01:13:08.610 --> 01:13:11.370 what the Gini, is a high Gini coefficient good or bad? 01:13:12.800 --> 01:13:19.420 Oh, let me look it up. I know that's a measure of exactly that, 01:13:19.560 --> 01:13:26.260 but let me, I think a Gini coefficient of, and I'm not going to talk before I look at it. 01:13:26.860 --> 01:13:31.000 Oh, zero is perfect equality, one is perfect inequality. 01:13:31.300 --> 01:13:37.140 Okay, so the countries with the highest equality. 01:13:37.580 --> 01:13:39.360 So lowest Gini coefficient. 01:13:39.360 --> 01:13:43.500 With the lowest Gini coefficient are Slovakia, Slovenia, Belarus, India. 01:13:44.480 --> 01:13:44.720 India. 01:13:45.180 --> 01:13:50.100 Wow. Ukraine. Those are the top five. 01:13:51.240 --> 01:13:52.520 What are the bottom five? 01:13:53.800 --> 01:13:58.080 Well, the bottom five, yeah, as far as... But top five as far as equality. 01:13:58.760 --> 01:13:59.280 Oh, right, right. 01:13:59.280 --> 01:14:04.040 You would think that Denmark would be like, oh, because they got a very... 01:14:04.600 --> 01:14:08.080 A Western European country. They're like... 01:14:09.240 --> 01:14:13.680 30 out of how many countries are there here? I don't know. About 100 countries here. 01:14:15.400 --> 01:14:19.620 But anyway, I think there's multiple things you want to go for. 01:14:19.840 --> 01:14:24.200 Do you want income equality? Or do you want... 01:14:24.200 --> 01:14:28.080 Wait, I still want the answer to my question. Those were the ones with the most 01:14:28.080 --> 01:14:30.600 equality. What are the five with the most inequality? 01:14:30.980 --> 01:14:36.880 South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Eswatini, and Colombia. 01:14:37.260 --> 01:14:37.720 Okay. 01:14:38.080 --> 01:14:40.920 Brazil. So it's like... 01:14:40.920 --> 01:14:41.920 And we're somewhere in the middle. 01:14:43.080 --> 01:14:48.740 Let me actually get a control F here. Oh, is it USA? 01:14:49.180 --> 01:14:54.200 What I've heard while he's looking that up is that our present level of inequality 01:14:54.200 --> 01:14:59.060 is approaching that of France before the revolution in 1789. 01:14:59.520 --> 01:15:04.040 Right. Well, and that's the example that's always brought up is sort of, 01:15:04.220 --> 01:15:12.840 you know, when the inequality gets high enough, the chances of sort of violent revolution increase. 01:15:13.200 --> 01:15:17.320 Well, I'd say that income inequality probably has very little to do with politics 01:15:17.320 --> 01:15:19.920 because the United States is like right in the middle. 01:15:20.480 --> 01:15:26.460 And also that this is this is one where probably wealth inequality matters more 01:15:26.460 --> 01:15:29.040 than than income inequality. 01:15:29.620 --> 01:15:32.680 There are all kinds of things you could measure and and to answer your question 01:15:32.680 --> 01:15:38.780 in terms of what do you want to sort of optimize for I don't think I don't think 01:15:38.780 --> 01:15:43.980 it would be valuable to equalize everything at all that would cause all kinds of its own problems, 01:15:44.200 --> 01:15:49.440 but I think the notion that you want to look at. 01:15:50.330 --> 01:15:53.790 I want to say look at medians instead of averages at the very least, 01:15:53.790 --> 01:15:57.170 but really you have to look at like deciles or something. 01:15:57.350 --> 01:16:02.110 You look at all 10 deciles and how they're behaving, and you do probably, 01:16:02.470 --> 01:16:08.850 to be in a healthy state, the difference between your lowest decile and your 01:16:08.850 --> 01:16:11.910 highest decile probably can't get too great. 01:16:12.190 --> 01:16:16.070 If it gets too great, you're probably causing problems. 01:16:16.430 --> 01:16:21.410 Now, what do you do about that? Now, I know Bruce is going to disagree violently, 01:16:21.410 --> 01:16:27.210 but I actually think one of the proper roles of government is to act as a pump 01:16:27.210 --> 01:16:31.210 to take things off the top and shove them down to the bottom, 01:16:32.730 --> 01:16:42.370 you know, to sort of to to make that cycle work more effectively because trickle down does not work. 01:16:42.370 --> 01:16:48.130 So to some degree, you want to help trickle down along. 01:16:48.330 --> 01:16:54.290 Well, I agree that it would be good to have the rich help the poor, 01:16:54.370 --> 01:16:56.690 but I just don't want force involved. 01:16:57.680 --> 01:17:04.740 There used to be, before we had a welfare state, people would group themselves 01:17:04.740 --> 01:17:09.060 together into societies, mutual help societies, mutual aid societies. 01:17:09.280 --> 01:17:13.160 And those all basically went away after the government kind of took over that 01:17:13.160 --> 01:17:16.600 whole industry or that whole operation of society. 01:17:17.140 --> 01:17:20.900 Those never did all that well. You know, 01:17:21.520 --> 01:17:30.860 they had limited success in limited areas, but they never had the oomph to actually 01:17:30.860 --> 01:17:32.600 have the effect that you would want them to have. 01:17:32.700 --> 01:17:36.680 Yes, they went away, but they were replaced by something that actually was more effective. 01:17:37.220 --> 01:17:43.820 Well, I think the effectiveness of private industry is going to be better than 01:17:43.820 --> 01:17:46.980 anything that the government can do. Look at the Walmart. 01:17:46.980 --> 01:17:50.920 Only if the incentives align for private industry to even do the thing. 01:17:51.260 --> 01:17:53.120 If the incentives don't align, then. 01:17:53.420 --> 01:18:01.380 Of course the incentives align because the corporations want to serve larger 01:18:01.380 --> 01:18:04.920 and larger groups of people and they want to serve the masses. 01:18:05.360 --> 01:18:10.800 Look at Walmart. Walmart has done much more to help the poor than any government program ever. 01:18:12.180 --> 01:18:14.400 Just by providing cheap products that they can buy. 01:18:14.700 --> 01:18:19.720 Right? Yes, exactly. And finding the efficiencies in the supply chain and pushing 01:18:19.720 --> 01:18:21.360 those savings towards the consumers. 01:18:21.800 --> 01:18:24.180 Or even Amazon will be included in that, too. 01:18:24.440 --> 01:18:27.340 Yeah, part of this is long-term versus short-term, too. 01:18:27.520 --> 01:18:35.680 The problem with how companies like Walmart are currently structured is they're 01:18:35.680 --> 01:18:39.940 very short time horizons. And sometimes you need to be thinking about a larger 01:18:39.940 --> 01:18:42.400 time horizon to even deal with these things. 01:18:42.600 --> 01:18:47.100 But I think the question, though, about what works and what doesn't, 01:18:47.260 --> 01:18:49.540 I fundamentally think it's an empirical question. 01:18:49.940 --> 01:18:56.480 Try it and find out. Like the difficulty is I don't have, like you do, 01:18:57.060 --> 01:19:01.480 sort of the inherent, well, certain things are off the table because, 01:19:01.480 --> 01:19:06.020 you know, we don't want to force the billionaire to pay more taxes, 01:19:06.020 --> 01:19:08.140 you know? I'm like, that's fine. 01:19:08.300 --> 01:19:11.600 It's because the billionaire will always get away with it. The billionaire has 01:19:11.600 --> 01:19:16.480 ways of not paying any taxes at all by, by instead of, instead of by, 01:19:16.580 --> 01:19:19.020 by accumulating assets and never selling, 01:19:19.200 --> 01:19:24.660 they just borrow against their assets and you can't tax your borrowings. And so it's. 01:19:24.760 --> 01:19:32.320 Well, you could, they're all, they're all, you know, there's, what is the law now? 01:19:32.500 --> 01:19:36.520 What could it be in a, in a world where you throw all options on the table? 01:19:36.520 --> 01:19:37.940 There are all kinds of things you could do. 01:19:38.160 --> 01:19:44.700 You could have an instantaneous and automatic transaction tax on all transactions no matter what. 01:19:45.280 --> 01:19:47.740 And, you know, there are all kinds of things you could do. 01:19:48.640 --> 01:19:53.840 You could require everybody to deposit all of their money in government-controlled 01:19:53.840 --> 01:19:56.820 bank accounts that a certain percentage is taken out of every hour. 01:19:58.000 --> 01:19:59.700 There are all kinds of things you could do. 01:19:59.860 --> 01:20:00.080 Yeah. 01:20:00.300 --> 01:20:00.560 You know. 01:20:00.940 --> 01:20:07.000 You could. Yeah. Well, one of the things I've wondered why we don't do is right 01:20:07.000 --> 01:20:12.540 now the top five employees in many of the corporations in the United States 01:20:12.540 --> 01:20:18.140 earn exorbitant salaries in the tens of millions up to 50, 60, 01:20:18.500 --> 01:20:20.960 you know, as a regular. 01:20:21.280 --> 01:20:25.480 Basically, that's salary and stock options and other such stuff. 01:20:25.480 --> 01:20:30.060 It strikes me, and the corporation is encouraged to do that because that's all 01:20:30.060 --> 01:20:32.300 tax deductible against the corporate profits. 01:20:32.480 --> 01:20:36.480 So why not put a salary cap that's deductible? 01:20:37.160 --> 01:20:40.640 And then if the corporation wants to pay more, that's fine, but they don't get 01:20:40.640 --> 01:20:44.960 to deduct it off of their costs. So, you know, let's say you save $10 million. 01:20:45.380 --> 01:20:49.680 After $10 million, you pay the guy $50 million. That other $40 million is taxed 01:20:49.680 --> 01:20:52.260 for the corporation as well as giving it to us. 01:20:52.260 --> 01:20:55.600 That would encourage, I don't know if it would encourage them or not, 01:20:55.780 --> 01:20:59.680 but theoretically that could encourage them to either build more factories or 01:20:59.680 --> 01:21:04.520 invest in their capital or maybe increase the salaries of the workers on the floor. 01:21:04.960 --> 01:21:08.740 Right now, many of the corporations are, I don't know the current, 01:21:09.020 --> 01:21:14.720 one of the two to 300 times as much as the average worker is getting, the CEOs get. 01:21:15.480 --> 01:21:17.680 There's something wrong with that. That's not. 01:21:17.680 --> 01:21:24.360 I also like, I mean, I would be reluctant even myself to like actually put rules on that. 01:21:24.580 --> 01:21:29.500 Like I wouldn't want to be like, okay, you, we're going to put rules on how 01:21:29.500 --> 01:21:30.740 much you can pay your employees. 01:21:31.020 --> 01:21:35.820 I think that's one place where, you know, there's a good reason for market. 01:21:35.940 --> 01:21:38.260 I didn't say we should tell them they can't pay them 50 million. 01:21:38.540 --> 01:21:38.880 I know. 01:21:39.120 --> 01:21:41.440 I'm just saying that 40 million, that would still be taxed. Yeah. 01:21:41.620 --> 01:21:45.020 No, I know. I know. I know. I just, I feel like there's. 01:21:45.580 --> 01:21:50.800 There's some fundamental sort of structural things you can do that we should 01:21:50.800 --> 01:21:53.280 perhaps think about, experiment with, whatever. 01:21:53.540 --> 01:21:58.640 But I feel like when you get micro about it, where you're trying to make very 01:21:58.640 --> 01:22:02.840 specific rules about specific things, that's where it always gets screwed up. 01:22:03.020 --> 01:22:05.620 It never works out the way people want it to. 01:22:05.860 --> 01:22:09.760 Like you come in with all kinds of good intentions and you set up some system 01:22:09.760 --> 01:22:12.780 and it breaks down immediately. 01:22:12.900 --> 01:22:18.840 It has results you didn't want. and people find ways around it in the first microsecond. 01:22:21.280 --> 01:22:26.160 But having said that, I still think that the fundamental thesis, 01:22:26.340 --> 01:22:31.520 and then let's take a break and move on, that when there is a high degree of 01:22:31.520 --> 01:22:38.520 income inequality, you are at risk, I think has historically proven to be true. 01:22:38.520 --> 01:22:41.920 And so like you either 01:22:41.920 --> 01:22:45.220 accept that risk and at some point it collapses and 01:22:45.220 --> 01:22:49.900 you just say that's a natural cycle of things no worries or you know you try 01:22:49.900 --> 01:22:56.760 to figure out something to encourage that that curve to not be quite as dramatic 01:22:56.760 --> 01:23:02.440 not to be flat flat would also be bad i think but not to be quite as dramatic yeah. 01:23:02.440 --> 01:23:07.560 I i don't know if income inequality or at least the genie coefficient which 01:23:07.560 --> 01:23:12.380 which is a representation of that, is anything that you want to even use as a guide. 01:23:12.420 --> 01:23:16.760 Because if you look at this list, there's no rhyme or reason behind any of it. 01:23:16.940 --> 01:23:22.020 It's like you look at the countries at the top of the list and the ones at the bottom of the list, 01:23:22.790 --> 01:23:27.330 There's no desirability on either end of that spectrum. 01:23:28.350 --> 01:23:31.550 Yeah, I think I found the list you're looking at. 01:23:32.750 --> 01:23:36.970 And the one thing I would say right off the bat is the list I found is by income. 01:23:36.970 --> 01:23:40.210 I really would be interested to see what it looks like by wealth instead. 01:23:41.510 --> 01:23:44.850 But yeah, this, yeah. 01:23:45.190 --> 01:23:49.430 So another measure that I would want to use instead, or if you're going to use 01:23:49.430 --> 01:23:54.330 a measure, would be, well, at least you want to look at it. is social mobility. 01:23:55.070 --> 01:23:56.570 Yes, that's a good one. 01:23:56.890 --> 01:24:03.490 So how likely is it that someone who is poor can move up and become wealthy? 01:24:04.090 --> 01:24:07.630 And that is another, I don't have a measure of that in front of me. 01:24:07.730 --> 01:24:12.050 By the way, I think, were you looking at the list of countries by income inequality on Wikipedia? 01:24:12.310 --> 01:24:17.090 I'm looking at the World Population Review. It's countries sorted by Gini coefficient. 01:24:17.590 --> 01:24:22.410 Okay, I think they matched up, so it's probably the same source. 01:24:23.530 --> 01:24:29.830 But no, I have heard that the social mobility index kind of thing that you're 01:24:29.830 --> 01:24:35.210 talking about has also been declining over the last few decades in this country, 01:24:35.210 --> 01:24:39.090 where if you look, you know, 50, 01:24:39.450 --> 01:24:44.290 60, 70 years ago, there was more mobility than there is today. 01:24:45.010 --> 01:24:49.010 Now, when does that become a crisis? When does it not? I don't know. 01:24:49.010 --> 01:24:52.690 And now that I think of it, just off the top of my head, I think social mobility 01:24:52.690 --> 01:24:59.090 has a lot to do with just mobility in actual physical location. 01:24:59.510 --> 01:25:03.530 And people are moving less. That I've seen recently in the news where people 01:25:03.530 --> 01:25:07.270 are actually staying put less than they have in the past. 01:25:07.550 --> 01:25:08.270 More than they have. 01:25:08.270 --> 01:25:10.430 Or more than they have in the past. They're moving around less than they have 01:25:10.430 --> 01:25:13.210 in the past. And part of that has to do with, 01:25:14.660 --> 01:25:22.660 the cost of living in the most successful cities has gone so high that it's 01:25:22.660 --> 01:25:27.620 not possible to live where the best jobs are. It used to be that. 01:25:27.620 --> 01:25:30.020 Someone- Unless you already have one of those best jobs. 01:25:30.220 --> 01:25:34.100 Yes. Like, yeah, I like the, when somebody who wanted to make it big, 01:25:34.220 --> 01:25:37.660 they'd move to LA and they'd make it big or move to San Francisco. 01:25:37.840 --> 01:25:38.860 Well, you can't do that anymore. 01:25:39.960 --> 01:25:41.380 That's because it's just too expensive. 01:25:41.800 --> 01:25:46.300 Well, and on the other hand, if you're looking to go to where the cost of living 01:25:46.300 --> 01:25:47.960 is less, there are no jobs there. 01:25:48.340 --> 01:25:48.620 Exactly. 01:25:49.280 --> 01:25:49.940 You know? 01:25:50.260 --> 01:25:56.340 So it's, and that gets into things like zoning laws, which is a totally different 01:25:56.340 --> 01:26:00.500 area, but that I have a little bit of expertise that I've gained by being in 01:26:00.500 --> 01:26:03.340 the planning commission at my city of Alabama. Right. 01:26:04.160 --> 01:26:09.220 Okay. Let's take another break and then two more quick topics and we'll be done 01:26:09.220 --> 01:26:16.560 and i mean quick topics because we're we've been going a while already so so here we go another break, 01:27:06.380 --> 01:27:10.020 Okay, we're back. And Bruce, what's your last topic of the night? 01:27:10.680 --> 01:27:15.200 Oof. Dang, I should have been looking. Oh, let's see. Let's see. 01:27:16.360 --> 01:27:19.500 Let's talk about Venezuela. 01:27:19.980 --> 01:27:20.540 Okay. 01:27:21.460 --> 01:27:32.840 Yeah. So this is nuts that we seem to be on the verge of a hot war with Venezuela. 01:27:32.840 --> 01:27:36.720 I'm certainly hoping that this is just gumbo diplomacy, 01:27:36.720 --> 01:27:48.260 but it's just infuriating and very disappointing that the military-industrial 01:27:48.260 --> 01:27:55.020 complex seems to be winning again as far as getting a war started here. 01:27:55.260 --> 01:28:00.520 So this just doesn't make sense. I don't know if you saw the interview on 60 01:28:00.520 --> 01:28:02.080 Minutes or the extended interview. 01:28:03.420 --> 01:28:07.240 I read little bits and pieces of this, but I did not watch the whole thing, 01:28:07.300 --> 01:28:10.640 and I did not see the Venezuela relevant part. So tell me. 01:28:11.980 --> 01:28:13.140 Well, the whole interview. 01:28:13.400 --> 01:28:16.520 Oh, the we're just going to kill people quote? Was that from that interview? 01:28:16.520 --> 01:28:21.740 Yeah, that's part of it. Well, I mean, it's totally fact-free. 01:28:21.980 --> 01:28:24.720 Everything he's saying is just totally untrue. 01:28:24.860 --> 01:28:25.960 And by he, you mean Donald Trump. 01:28:26.100 --> 01:28:29.000 Donald Trump, yes. and i was i 01:28:29.000 --> 01:28:31.740 listened to the extended interview and i was thinking wow you know 01:28:31.740 --> 01:28:34.820 if there was any way to torture yvonne 01:28:34.820 --> 01:28:39.400 this would be the way to do it make him actually listen to it it'd be like you 01:28:39.400 --> 01:28:43.040 know clockwork orange you know you'd be sitting strapped down in a chair forcing 01:28:43.040 --> 01:28:50.980 to listen to this it was it's just it's it's it's so infuriating that he has 01:28:50.980 --> 01:28:53.760 no understanding just as an example. 01:28:54.360 --> 01:28:59.360 So a couple of weeks ago, Putin and Russia announced that they have a, 01:29:01.420 --> 01:29:05.540 nuclear-powered cruise missile. And so what does Trump announce? 01:29:05.900 --> 01:29:07.940 We're going to start testing nuclear weapons. 01:29:09.020 --> 01:29:16.840 And no, that's not a nuclear weapon. It's a nuclear-powered weapon that Russia has. 01:29:17.040 --> 01:29:21.200 And Russia and the other nuclear powers are like, we haven't been testing. 01:29:21.360 --> 01:29:24.820 And so now that Trump has said that they're going to start testing, 01:29:25.120 --> 01:29:28.880 now Russia is saying, or Putin has said, all right well i guess we're gonna 01:29:28.880 --> 01:29:29.820 have to start testing too. 01:29:29.820 --> 01:29:30.840 And it's. 01:29:30.840 --> 01:29:34.040 Like it's like this total idiocy because he just. 01:29:34.040 --> 01:29:36.580 Doesn't understand what does not understand. 01:29:36.580 --> 01:29:37.900 The most basic things. 01:29:37.900 --> 01:29:43.320 Well and this goes back to over and over again like i i still have not seen 01:29:43.320 --> 01:29:49.360 counter evidence that he understands what seeking asylum means that it's not 01:29:49.360 --> 01:29:54.480 people from mental asylums yeah you know Well. 01:29:54.800 --> 01:29:58.580 The question with Trump always is, does he really understand, 01:29:58.580 --> 01:30:01.220 but he knows that a lot of people don't. 01:30:01.340 --> 01:30:07.280 And he says these things to create fear, antagonism, excitement, 01:30:07.580 --> 01:30:10.380 and all the sorts of things that drive demagogues. 01:30:10.800 --> 01:30:17.060 I think I would give him that benefit of doubt, like, at the beginning of his 01:30:17.060 --> 01:30:23.320 first term, maybe sometimes. Sometimes this way, no, I think he actually just 01:30:23.320 --> 01:30:25.220 has no idea. He has no idea. 01:30:25.520 --> 01:30:31.920 So just to step back, the situation going on in Venezuela is that Trump and 01:30:31.920 --> 01:30:34.340 the administration believe that, 01:30:36.710 --> 01:30:45.810 not Chavez, it's Maduro, is sending drugs and immigrants and criminals into 01:30:45.810 --> 01:30:48.430 Venezuela, and he's somehow going to stop that. 01:30:48.930 --> 01:30:53.750 No evidence, especially for the boats that are being shot in the water. There's no evidence. 01:30:54.290 --> 01:30:59.510 And even if they were drug boats, there's no way they could reach the United States. 01:31:00.690 --> 01:31:05.950 Well, and even if they were drug boats, not that anybody cares about legality. 01:31:05.950 --> 01:31:12.550 But even if there were drug boats, the legal thing to do is intercept the drug 01:31:12.550 --> 01:31:13.750 boats and arrest the people. 01:31:14.010 --> 01:31:18.190 Yeah, and even the law that they think that they're supposedly breaking is not 01:31:18.190 --> 01:31:20.290 a criminal, it's not a capital offense. 01:31:20.510 --> 01:31:20.830 Right. 01:31:20.830 --> 01:31:30.830 So well then however murder is a capital offense and one of the war crimes capital 01:31:30.830 --> 01:31:36.190 offense is whether or not the guy is a combatant if they are defenseless and 01:31:36.190 --> 01:31:40.450 you kill them that is a capital crime in these, 01:31:40.910 --> 01:31:45.170 boats are being shot with weaponry that they have no defense against they are 01:31:45.170 --> 01:31:50.830 defenseless even if they're guilty of carrying drugs this is crimes And the 01:31:50.830 --> 01:31:55.110 guys pulling the triggers at some point may be tried for murder. 01:31:55.490 --> 01:32:00.130 Yeah. And it's key, you know, the Supreme Court gave Donald Trump immunity against 01:32:00.130 --> 01:32:03.130 this kind of stuff, but not the people under him who are executing. 01:32:03.390 --> 01:32:06.450 Well, the presidents are never found guilty of having. 01:32:06.670 --> 01:32:12.310 I mean, how much did the Bush get punished for authorizing torture? 01:32:12.930 --> 01:32:13.210 Right. 01:32:13.290 --> 01:32:16.490 But several of the guys who did the torture are, I don't know if they're still 01:32:16.490 --> 01:32:19.210 in prison or not, but certainly their careers were destroyed. 01:32:19.210 --> 01:32:20.590 And they were severely punished. 01:32:20.830 --> 01:32:23.510 I don't think that was the case. I think the people who revealed the torture 01:32:23.510 --> 01:32:27.290 are the ones whose careers got ruined. The actual torturers never got punished. 01:32:27.290 --> 01:32:31.570 The actual torturers, several of them were... A handful of them. 01:32:31.570 --> 01:32:33.210 The whistleblowers also got destroyed. 01:32:34.840 --> 01:32:42.360 So supposedly there's a big chunk of our Navy is right off the coast of Venezuela, ready to fire. 01:32:42.540 --> 01:32:46.680 But something that I saw in the news today that's very heartening was, 01:32:46.680 --> 01:32:48.520 let me see if I can find the headline. 01:32:48.520 --> 01:32:51.900 It says that, I don't have it right now, but it's something along the lines 01:32:51.900 --> 01:32:56.840 of that there is no legal justification. 01:32:56.840 --> 01:32:59.840 Uh like the the white house lawyers have 01:32:59.840 --> 01:33:06.760 uh told the administration that there's no legal justification for doing a land 01:33:06.760 --> 01:33:12.900 attack or land invasion of venezuela so if we can believe that trump would actually 01:33:12.900 --> 01:33:16.940 obey what his lawyers are telling him he's gonna do. 01:33:16.940 --> 01:33:18.140 What he wants to do regardless. 01:33:18.140 --> 01:33:19.220 Like yeah exactly if. 01:33:19.220 --> 01:33:23.480 He decides he doesn't want to because he doesn't want to or because he thinks 01:33:23.480 --> 01:33:25.960 he'll lose or whatever, then he won't. 01:33:26.080 --> 01:33:29.900 But what the lawyer says is not going to influence him in the slightest. 01:33:30.300 --> 01:33:35.920 And the, now the Russians have actually landed there in Venezuela lately. 01:33:35.920 --> 01:33:38.920 And we don't know, of course, what they were, what they brought to Venezuela, 01:33:38.920 --> 01:33:44.780 but they, but there is some concern that maybe they brought in some S 400 anti-aircraft, 01:33:45.240 --> 01:33:51.780 anti-missile batteries there and so what may what what uh the u.s military may 01:33:51.780 --> 01:33:58.600 think it would be a really easy attack may not be so easy and well the. 01:33:58.600 --> 01:34:02.680 Thing you know these things are always seem to be underestimated. 01:34:02.680 --> 01:34:07.880 Yeah you know this may if he actually goes in there and attacks this may be trump's bay of pigs. 01:34:08.720 --> 01:34:09.700 It could be. 01:34:09.940 --> 01:34:10.240 Or worse. 01:34:10.380 --> 01:34:14.720 I mean, of course. But of course, his gamble is like, hey, we attacked Iran. 01:34:15.240 --> 01:34:17.200 We were fine. Nothing happened. 01:34:17.900 --> 01:34:21.540 They politely asked if they could retaliate against one of our bases. 01:34:21.780 --> 01:34:23.080 And we said, yeah, go ahead. 01:34:23.860 --> 01:34:24.080 Yeah. 01:34:24.480 --> 01:34:25.600 And no one was hurt. 01:34:25.700 --> 01:34:29.620 And already Maduro has actually offered everything. It's like Trump even admitted 01:34:29.620 --> 01:34:37.500 that Maduro has offered him anything as far as even allowing American companies 01:34:37.500 --> 01:34:38.500 to do the oil extraction. 01:34:39.080 --> 01:34:42.240 And which, of course, is the real reason behind all this, I think, 01:34:42.440 --> 01:34:47.820 is that it's a resource-rich nation and Trump sees it and he wants to get some of it. 01:34:47.820 --> 01:34:56.040 So, well, I think Trump in general likes to, and this goes for all the tariffs as well. 01:34:56.280 --> 01:35:01.900 He likes to threaten something in the hopes that the other folks will capitulate 01:35:01.900 --> 01:35:03.060 and give him what he wants. 01:35:03.200 --> 01:35:09.740 At the very least, get a, something he can claim as a win, whether or not it actually like is real. 01:35:09.740 --> 01:35:12.580 But ideally he also gets some stuff 01:35:12.580 --> 01:35:15.480 out of it ideally not just for the country but for himself 01:35:15.480 --> 01:35:18.380 personally and then once he's gotten what he wants 01:35:18.380 --> 01:35:21.480 then he'll back off whatever he said originally and hopefully it 01:35:21.480 --> 01:35:26.620 never happens the problem is these are always the games of chicken at some point 01:35:26.620 --> 01:35:34.640 you're going to hit one of these where you end up stumbling into a real war 01:35:34.640 --> 01:35:38.680 or you end up stumbling into real negative consequences of other sorts. 01:35:39.060 --> 01:35:43.900 Or maybe you could end up being defeated. Kind of like, look what is it? Yemen. 01:35:44.220 --> 01:35:47.160 Yemen basically forced the U.S. to retreat. 01:35:48.110 --> 01:35:53.150 I mean, look, I don't know the specifics about Yemen or what the battle would 01:35:53.150 --> 01:36:01.070 look like, but the key is there's Donald Trump likes to play risky games. 01:36:01.670 --> 01:36:07.650 And a lot of the times when he plays the risky games, you end up coming out on top. 01:36:07.790 --> 01:36:12.710 You end up winning the exchange. And again, at least like being able to claim 01:36:12.710 --> 01:36:16.470 the win, even if objectively the facts on the ground, you're, 01:36:16.610 --> 01:36:18.430 you only got back to where you were. 01:36:18.630 --> 01:36:22.450 Like in many of these tariff situations, he hasn't actually won anything, 01:36:22.450 --> 01:36:26.590 but he's gotten the other country to say, oh yes, Mr. 01:36:26.730 --> 01:36:29.730 Trump, we're giving you this, this, and this. And he's like, great, I won. 01:36:29.930 --> 01:36:34.070 Well, it turns out they were doing those things anyway, but whatever, you get to claim the win. 01:36:34.070 --> 01:36:36.910 But at some point in one of 01:36:36.910 --> 01:36:39.510 these you're going to go a little too far you're going 01:36:39.510 --> 01:36:43.210 to stumble you're going to get in trouble something bad will 01:36:43.210 --> 01:36:50.250 happen and some of the potential negative consequences are really bad and you 01:36:50.250 --> 01:36:55.730 know and every time trump manages to do one of these gambles and play russian 01:36:55.730 --> 01:37:01.010 roulette and not shoot himself in the head people are like oh wow look he's winning. What a genius. 01:37:02.170 --> 01:37:08.610 I got to think at one of these points, one of these things is actually going to like go badly for him. 01:37:08.870 --> 01:37:14.950 And it's just like, unfortunately, he's not the only one who gets hurt in that situation. 01:37:15.170 --> 01:37:20.410 I mean, arguably, you know, COVID response was one of those where he mishandled 01:37:20.410 --> 01:37:23.410 a bunch of it and, and things went badly. 01:37:23.810 --> 01:37:29.550 And that's probably the main reason why he lost re-election to Joe Biden. 01:37:29.930 --> 01:37:33.610 If there hadn't been for COVID, he probably would have been re-elected. No problem. 01:37:34.130 --> 01:37:35.830 You know, he shouldn't have shut everything down. 01:37:38.110 --> 01:37:41.350 Well let's not i don't 01:37:41.350 --> 01:37:44.110 think that's the thing he did wrong i think there's other things he 01:37:44.110 --> 01:37:47.210 did wrong yeah we'll disagree more down damn 01:37:47.210 --> 01:37:56.230 it but no but uh uh but yeah like i i just we've been lucky so far most of his 01:37:56.230 --> 01:38:02.850 gambles have not had as horrible even when they've had bad results they They 01:38:02.850 --> 01:38:04.490 haven't been the worst case scenario. 01:38:05.430 --> 01:38:08.310 And yeah, I don't know if we'll continue to be lucky. We'll see. 01:38:08.490 --> 01:38:12.730 So it's, it's kind of crazy because next week I'm going on a cruise to the Caribbean. 01:38:13.510 --> 01:38:17.710 And it's, if you look on the map, it's not that close, but, but in a couple 01:38:17.710 --> 01:38:21.530 of months, my mom is going on another cruise and she's going down to the, 01:38:21.650 --> 01:38:24.470 to the ABC islands, which are right off the coast of Venezuela. 01:38:24.470 --> 01:38:26.830 You can literally see Venezuela from Aruba. 01:38:27.190 --> 01:38:31.250 She's going to be down there. And so it's like, are they really going to have 01:38:31.250 --> 01:38:34.530 a war with, With these, with these ships. 01:38:37.910 --> 01:38:40.290 You could sit there on the deck and watch the fireworks. 01:38:42.350 --> 01:38:47.350 Oh, man. You know, people did that in the Civil War. They went out and picnic 01:38:47.350 --> 01:38:49.590 and watched the battles and stuff like that. 01:38:49.970 --> 01:38:51.070 Yeah, very true. 01:38:52.150 --> 01:38:57.630 But, yeah, I mean, cruise ship better not get in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know? Yeah. 01:38:58.990 --> 01:39:01.770 Okay. Moving on, Ed, your last topic. 01:39:02.990 --> 01:39:07.330 But real quickly, the Supreme Court heard the tariff issue today, 01:39:07.550 --> 01:39:13.030 and the speculation seems to be that they may say Trump could not enact those tariffs. 01:39:13.670 --> 01:39:16.810 What happens if indeed they do that? 01:39:17.030 --> 01:39:22.290 Now we've collected something in the range of $50 to $80 billion in tariff money. 01:39:22.530 --> 01:39:26.690 That will have to presumably be returned to the people who paid it, 01:39:26.790 --> 01:39:29.590 which is mostly United States corporations, I understand. 01:39:30.770 --> 01:39:33.870 What sort of an impact is that going to have on anything? 01:39:34.210 --> 01:39:40.790 It'd be a stimulus It could be a stimulus, yeah Those CEOs will get a billion dollar salary, huh? 01:39:41.850 --> 01:39:47.050 Yeah, first one thing It'll be a while yet I think, Bruce, you had shared something 01:39:47.050 --> 01:39:51.610 under CurveGence Corner Slack Where there might be a result before the end of 01:39:51.610 --> 01:39:55.270 the year Most people I'm hearing are saying they're probably not until June, actually, 01:39:57.470 --> 01:40:03.470 Now, maybe they'll surprise people and do it early, but most of the chatter 01:40:03.470 --> 01:40:09.350 seems to be that they will probably release their decision on this at the end of their term in June. 01:40:10.950 --> 01:40:13.330 That's another couple hundred billion in tariffs. 01:40:13.910 --> 01:40:19.650 But this was a case that was fast-tracked, so they need to give a response because 01:40:19.650 --> 01:40:20.570 the taxes are being collected. 01:40:20.570 --> 01:40:24.230 They don't need to do anything. They fast tracked it in terms of when they set 01:40:24.230 --> 01:40:30.410 the hearing, whether or not they are quick in terms of giving their decision 01:40:30.410 --> 01:40:34.490 or not is entirely up to them. They can release it whenever they want. 01:40:34.630 --> 01:40:38.690 Now, and here's the thing. Here's why I think most people are thinking they 01:40:38.690 --> 01:40:44.390 did seem like in the oral arguments, it seemed like there were probably five, 01:40:44.610 --> 01:40:49.710 maybe six votes to say that Donald Trump couldn't do this. 01:40:49.710 --> 01:40:52.870 Critically, it's not that he can't do this at all. 01:40:53.110 --> 01:40:57.610 It's that he couldn't do it under the authority of the specific law that he 01:40:57.610 --> 01:40:59.370 claimed under the executive order. 01:40:59.630 --> 01:41:02.510 And he has many other laws that he can reinterpret. 01:41:02.510 --> 01:41:06.490 And that came up in the arguments. They specifically were like, 01:41:07.190 --> 01:41:11.070 one of the conservative justices actually asked, 01:41:11.270 --> 01:41:17.050 if we only look at this one particular narrow thing, what's to stop Donald Trump 01:41:17.050 --> 01:41:24.410 from turning around 10 minutes later and reissuing the same tariff under a different authority, 01:41:24.670 --> 01:41:27.350 under a different legal authority, and what would we do then? 01:41:27.350 --> 01:41:31.690 And Neil Keitel, who was arguing the case of the people who think the tariffs 01:41:31.690 --> 01:41:34.330 are illegal, said, well— 01:41:34.710 --> 01:41:38.930 then we would sue under that one and we would do this all again. 01:41:39.810 --> 01:41:42.790 And the justice was sort of like, really? 01:41:43.090 --> 01:41:48.510 You would want us to like spend another two years going through all the levels 01:41:48.510 --> 01:41:52.190 of the courts and getting back to the Supreme Court on, you know, 01:41:52.330 --> 01:41:57.430 okay, now we've said he can't use law A to do this, but now he's trying it under law B. 01:41:57.670 --> 01:42:01.690 Don't you want us to look at the bigger question? And he was like, no. Oh, really? 01:42:01.690 --> 01:42:05.570 I would think that he would want them to have a broader view, but I don't know. 01:42:06.570 --> 01:42:10.290 Well, because they didn't argue the broader thing. They didn't argue all of 01:42:10.290 --> 01:42:11.730 those other cases, right? 01:42:12.370 --> 01:42:16.490 And so it's been—now, I don't know what the court will do specifically, 01:42:16.650 --> 01:42:23.610 but what I would speculate is this SCOTUS has, 01:42:23.850 --> 01:42:32.290 even in cases where they disagree with Donald Trump, has tried really hard to 01:42:32.290 --> 01:42:35.910 minimize the impact of their disagreement with Donald Trump. 01:42:36.950 --> 01:42:39.470 So, first of all, that will lean towards... 01:42:40.440 --> 01:42:44.460 If they were going to say, actually, Donald Trump has the authority to do this, 01:42:44.600 --> 01:42:48.200 they would probably do that quickly and come back with that result quickly. 01:42:48.460 --> 01:42:53.760 If they're actually going to go against Donald Trump, they will delay their 01:42:53.760 --> 01:42:56.640 decision as long as they possibly can. 01:42:57.060 --> 01:43:02.000 And then they're going to jump through hoops to try to make it as narrow as 01:43:02.000 --> 01:43:09.800 possible to give Donald other things that he can do and make it very specific to this scenario. 01:43:10.440 --> 01:43:16.720 So that they go against him, but with as little pain to Donald Trump as possible in this scenario. 01:43:17.100 --> 01:43:22.480 And so you probably will get the thing where the next day Donald Trump reissues 01:43:22.480 --> 01:43:23.840 the tariffs under something else. 01:43:24.040 --> 01:43:28.540 They also were really worried about the unwinding and the refunds and all that. 01:43:28.700 --> 01:43:35.580 Because one of the things is they had the option to pause all the tariffs until 01:43:35.580 --> 01:43:37.020 this went through all the courts. 01:43:37.440 --> 01:43:42.500 They did not do that. They let the tariffs stay in place, and now they're worried 01:43:42.500 --> 01:43:46.100 that the longer they go, the more has to be unwound. 01:43:46.220 --> 01:43:49.940 So they are worried a little bit about the mechanism of that. 01:43:50.500 --> 01:43:55.740 And Neil Keitel didn't quite say this, but it was obvious that, 01:43:55.740 --> 01:43:59.720 like, the implication was, well, if you're worried about that, 01:43:59.940 --> 01:44:05.080 you shouldn't have let these stay in effect while this goes through the process. 01:44:05.260 --> 01:44:05.720 That's true. 01:44:05.900 --> 01:44:07.720 You know, yeah. 01:44:08.420 --> 01:44:13.240 Yeah, and this whole idea of the president having this singular authority to 01:44:13.240 --> 01:44:19.800 impose tariffs at will just goes completely against the whole idea of the Constitution, 01:44:20.160 --> 01:44:21.720 of the separation of powers. 01:44:21.960 --> 01:44:29.220 And now it's true that Congress has given up much of its powers by enacting these laws. 01:44:29.220 --> 01:44:35.360 Well, then what really needs to—I'm sure what the SCOTUS would really like to 01:44:35.360 --> 01:44:38.860 do is to push it back on Congress and say, hey, you made this mess. 01:44:38.980 --> 01:44:44.180 You need to pass laws to actually pull back that power, which they can certainly do. 01:44:44.180 --> 01:44:50.740 In this particular case, the argument is that the specific law that Donald Trump 01:44:50.740 --> 01:44:54.420 cited talks about all kinds of things, but not tariffs. 01:44:54.680 --> 01:45:01.440 And that it's a stretch of the language to include tariffs within this particular law. 01:45:03.360 --> 01:45:09.900 But, yeah, I mean, Congress has shown no appetite to pull anything back from Donald Trump. 01:45:09.900 --> 01:45:13.480 And that's why I'm so worried that when President Newsom comes along, 01:45:13.700 --> 01:45:21.000 he's not going to be in favor of removing or removing any of the powers that 01:45:21.000 --> 01:45:30.200 Trump and Biden and Obama and Clinton and Bush have all pushed and gained through the presidencies. 01:45:30.200 --> 01:45:35.860 One of the specific examples that one of the conservative justices asked of 01:45:35.860 --> 01:45:38.580 the representative of the Trump administration is, 01:45:38.740 --> 01:45:45.500 so what you're saying is if a future Democratic president decided that we need 01:45:45.500 --> 01:45:49.400 100% tariff on all imported gas cars, that would be fine. 01:45:49.520 --> 01:45:53.060 He could just do that without any congressional authority, without anything, 01:45:53.060 --> 01:45:57.700 because that's equivalent to what you're claiming here that Donald Trump is 01:45:57.700 --> 01:46:01.800 doing just on a different issue for a different reason. And in fact here, and you, 01:46:02.700 --> 01:46:06.540 I mean, the whole thing with Donald Trump is he's not even having reasons. 01:46:06.860 --> 01:46:09.820 It's almost just his whim on a day-to-day basis. 01:46:09.880 --> 01:46:15.520 He's using it as a negotiating tactic. So, yeah, it's really horrible. 01:46:15.620 --> 01:46:22.880 And so it's kind of a flaw in our system in that every president gains new and 01:46:22.880 --> 01:46:25.920 new authorities by pushing back on norms. 01:46:26.240 --> 01:46:31.080 And these norms are never actually enacted into law. And so when it's actually 01:46:31.080 --> 01:46:32.400 challenged, the Supreme Court says, 01:46:33.460 --> 01:46:39.720 They can do it because there's no law against it. And so when President Newsom 01:46:39.720 --> 01:46:45.840 comes in, he's not going to say, oh, I need to remove these powers because he's 01:46:45.840 --> 01:46:48.200 going to want those same powers for the things that he wants to do. 01:46:48.680 --> 01:46:56.800 And so I really have no hope that this will ever be reversed, these authorities. 01:46:57.080 --> 01:47:01.000 No one who's willing to run for the presidency is going to be willing to give 01:47:01.000 --> 01:47:04.140 up power unless it's taken from him. You're absolutely right. 01:47:05.500 --> 01:47:11.500 It's a rare exception. I mean, it has happened, but it's very rare and it takes just, 01:47:11.760 --> 01:47:17.220 you know, I mentioned, I think on last week's show or the week before, I forget, 01:47:17.460 --> 01:47:23.980 that there was somebody who had done an analysis of democratic countries who 01:47:23.980 --> 01:47:29.160 had slid into authoritarianism and worked their way back towards democracy. 01:47:29.160 --> 01:47:32.480 And in the most common 01:47:32.480 --> 01:47:35.520 outcome by far was that 01:47:35.520 --> 01:47:39.840 you you you move back a little bit but yes the new governments retained many 01:47:39.840 --> 01:47:47.840 of the powers that were added on during that phase and only gave up stuff around 01:47:47.840 --> 01:47:55.140 the edges it was the the rarest outcome the best outcome but by far the rarest outcome. 01:47:55.420 --> 01:47:58.900 Was when they actually ended the authoritarian 01:47:58.900 --> 01:48:06.020 interlude with a complete revamping of the country's constitution and everything 01:48:06.020 --> 01:48:13.220 else to directly make illegal the abuses that had happened that led towards 01:48:13.220 --> 01:48:15.440 the authoritarian regime in the first place. 01:48:15.620 --> 01:48:22.800 And that's very rare And because what it requires for it to happen is a unified 01:48:22.800 --> 01:48:31.960 opposition that is unified around the principles of process and democracy that, you know, 01:48:32.080 --> 01:48:35.300 this is the right way as opposed to specific policy outcomes. 01:48:36.090 --> 01:48:43.310 That they are willing to enact a system that they think is fair, 01:48:43.310 --> 01:48:48.710 even if they know that their policy outcomes will sometimes lose. 01:48:49.310 --> 01:48:55.850 And that's very rare and very difficult because people have to put sort of these 01:48:55.850 --> 01:49:02.170 thoughts about long-term stability and fairness over short-term policy goals. 01:49:02.170 --> 01:49:06.570 Yeah. And so we will continue to live under an elected king, 01:49:06.570 --> 01:49:11.670 which ends up getting switched back and forth every four to eight years. 01:49:11.970 --> 01:49:16.290 And what has been a seesaw will become more like a whipsaw, 01:49:16.570 --> 01:49:24.830 where the first day of Newsom's presidency is he's going to have 500 executive 01:49:24.830 --> 01:49:28.830 orders that he's going to sign, just to reverse all the executive orders that Trump was saying. 01:49:28.830 --> 01:49:33.530 Assuming neither side at any point puts in the kinds of changes that make it 01:49:33.530 --> 01:49:35.210 impossible for the other side to win again. 01:49:35.410 --> 01:49:37.110 I certainly hope that that's the case. 01:49:37.110 --> 01:49:41.150 In which case you have like 40, 50 years before you break that. 01:49:41.630 --> 01:49:42.370 Yeah. Yeah. 01:49:42.610 --> 01:49:46.810 So, yay! Yay! Ha ha ha ha! 01:49:48.450 --> 01:49:50.890 Okay, on that, I think we should wrap it up, folks. 01:49:51.250 --> 01:49:52.010 Sounds like a winner. 01:49:52.190 --> 01:49:52.270 That's great. 01:49:53.050 --> 01:49:57.650 So thank you. Let me give this stuff at the end. I'll thank you all at the very end. 01:49:59.230 --> 01:50:03.730 So you guys know curmudgeons-corner.com. You can see our archives. 01:50:03.990 --> 01:50:06.970 You can see all the ways to contact us. You can see all our social media, 01:50:06.970 --> 01:50:10.930 all of that fun stuff, old transcripts, old shows. 01:50:11.670 --> 01:50:15.750 And you can now buy a mug. You can now buy a mug. Both of you have mugs already. 01:50:15.750 --> 01:50:20.590 But you can, other people who don't have mugs, you can now buy a mug directly from the website. 01:50:21.490 --> 01:50:25.410 So go buy mugs, go buy curmudgeon's corner mugs. They're wonderful mugs. 01:50:25.570 --> 01:50:30.930 They're wonderful mugs. I just gave mugs to Emily, who was on the show a couple 01:50:30.930 --> 01:50:34.150 of weeks ago, and her um, sir, co-host, Sammy. 01:50:34.390 --> 01:50:39.930 I gave them both mugs yesterday when, by the way, I was a guest on their podcast, 01:50:40.070 --> 01:50:42.870 which will be out the one. 01:50:43.010 --> 01:50:46.510 I actually recorded two episodes with them. The next two weeks of their shows, 01:50:46.630 --> 01:50:47.950 I think their shows come out on Wednesday. 01:50:48.450 --> 01:50:51.350 Anyway, the next two weeks of their shows, I will be on as a guest. 01:50:52.230 --> 01:50:57.810 And so enjoy that. And of course, we have a link to our Patreon where you can 01:50:57.810 --> 01:50:59.730 give us money at various levels. 01:50:59.850 --> 01:51:03.390 You will get one of those mugs. You will get a postcard. You will be mentioned on the show. 01:51:03.790 --> 01:51:06.950 All of that kind of fun stuff at $2 a month or more. 01:51:07.190 --> 01:51:12.050 Or if you just ask nicely, we will invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack 01:51:12.050 --> 01:51:20.410 where Yvonne and I and Ed and Bruce and others are chatting throughout the week 01:51:20.410 --> 01:51:22.430 and sharing all kinds of stuff. 01:51:22.510 --> 01:51:25.550 Do either of you have ones that anything you want to share or shall I? 01:51:25.770 --> 01:51:30.710 Yes, I do have one and I really have a question about it. You just plopped in today. 01:51:31.150 --> 01:51:34.930 Oh, just in case anybody needs a full body view of my skeleton, enjoy. 01:51:34.930 --> 01:51:41.470 So there's an in, there's a picture of Sam's full skeleton, which I, 01:51:41.650 --> 01:51:49.010 which is, I don't understand why you would, how you have that in the first place. Did you just like. 01:51:49.370 --> 01:51:52.250 It's got nothing to do in his hernia, I'm sure. 01:51:53.230 --> 01:51:56.990 No, no, that's Yvonne. This is me. No, I'll tell you. 01:51:57.790 --> 01:52:03.410 I got myself enrolled in like a one-year clinical trial of something. 01:52:03.790 --> 01:52:09.650 And part of it was at the beginning, middle, and end, they do a full-body scan of me. 01:52:09.650 --> 01:52:12.650 And they they said that they're not allowed 01:52:12.650 --> 01:52:15.890 to actually like give me the data 01:52:15.890 --> 01:52:20.430 from these scans however they were allowed to show me and i was just sitting 01:52:20.430 --> 01:52:26.370 there snapping pictures uh with my phone and so yes it was it was actually this 01:52:26.370 --> 01:52:33.970 morning i went in and had my middle of the one year period full body scan is that is that. 01:52:33.970 --> 01:52:35.730 A ct or mri scan. 01:52:35.730 --> 01:52:45.170 It's it's what was the name of the stupid device uh it's actually just an x-ray i think but uh that's. 01:52:45.170 --> 01:52:46.730 A lot of radiation exposure. 01:52:46.730 --> 01:52:53.230 No it's not it's not your standard one it's it's like this it it's a little 01:52:53.230 --> 01:52:57.730 bar that slides over you from your head down to your toe over a seven minute 01:52:57.730 --> 01:53:00.050 period um well that's less than you. 01:53:00.050 --> 01:53:00.950 Have a ct. 01:53:00.950 --> 01:53:03.830 It has a specific name that i 01:53:03.830 --> 01:53:06.790 i forget but anyway and there's 01:53:06.790 --> 01:53:09.790 a there's a second piece that has uh that 01:53:09.790 --> 01:53:12.610 shows some of my organs and stuff too which is fun as well 01:53:12.610 --> 01:53:15.690 but i shared the skeleton because it was uh it 01:53:15.690 --> 01:53:18.790 was it seemed a little cooler and and 01:53:18.790 --> 01:53:22.030 for some reason the skeleton seemed a little bit less invasive than 01:53:22.030 --> 01:53:27.230 the one showing my organs i don't know but but yeah no it is it's sort of so 01:53:27.230 --> 01:53:31.030 yeah i i had one at the beginning this one is middle and they'll scan me one 01:53:31.030 --> 01:53:36.390 more time in another six months and yeah like they're they're measuring like 01:53:36.390 --> 01:53:39.990 does this effect, X, Y, Z, Q and whatever. 01:53:40.390 --> 01:53:43.790 And it was just fun. I saw the picture and I'm like, I'm, I'm taking that picture. 01:53:44.070 --> 01:53:48.370 And, and yeah, I thought I'd share my skeleton. So yes, if you were on the curmudgeon's 01:53:48.370 --> 01:53:53.310 corner slack, you can see the full body scan of my skeleton. 01:53:54.070 --> 01:54:01.270 I should get a 3D model, a 3D printed model built and put up in the yard at Halloween. 01:54:01.530 --> 01:54:04.710 Or just put it behind you. It's a little plastic skeleton? No, it's actually mine. 01:54:05.250 --> 01:54:05.630 Mine. 01:54:06.350 --> 01:54:12.450 Not just any skeleton. It's my skeleton. So, okay. Ed, do you have one to highlight? 01:54:12.710 --> 01:54:17.570 The only one I noticed is that you posted yesterday that apparently Australia 01:54:17.570 --> 01:54:23.570 is now generating so much solar electricity that they're starting to give it away and exporting it. 01:54:24.730 --> 01:54:25.290 Yep. 01:54:25.650 --> 01:54:27.910 We're not going to have that problem here, I don't think. 01:54:27.910 --> 01:54:32.830 It's not so much exporting it directly. They were going to make electricity 01:54:32.830 --> 01:54:38.590 free for the peak midday hours where they were generating more solar energy 01:54:38.590 --> 01:54:41.690 than either was being used or they could store in batteries. 01:54:42.050 --> 01:54:45.750 So they were generating in excess. So during the hours that they are generating 01:54:45.750 --> 01:54:48.070 in excess, they were just going to give it away for free. 01:54:48.070 --> 01:54:50.270 Sounds like a good place to set up a Bitcoin mine. 01:54:51.350 --> 01:54:56.650 I'm sure people have. So I will add mine as well. 01:54:56.950 --> 01:55:03.350 There's a chart in the Financial Times that they published on the potential 01:55:03.350 --> 01:55:08.090 effect of artificial intelligence on GDP per capita. 01:55:08.590 --> 01:55:12.010 And they presented a range of options. 01:55:12.010 --> 01:55:20.530 Their range of options went from, on the one end, AI could end scarcity, 01:55:21.010 --> 01:55:25.510 in which they have the GDP line rapidly increasing to infinity. 01:55:25.810 --> 01:55:28.310 It had been going up to $500,000. 01:55:29.410 --> 01:55:30.070 Per person. 01:55:30.350 --> 01:55:34.330 Yeah, well, that's the top of the chart. That was after just a couple years, 01:55:34.350 --> 01:55:35.950 and it continues to go up from there. 01:55:36.010 --> 01:55:36.370 Yeah, true. 01:55:36.710 --> 01:55:42.450 At a very steep angle. The other extreme was AI ends humanity. 01:55:42.910 --> 01:55:49.730 And in that scenario, the line goes down slowly at first and then more and more rapidly. 01:55:50.010 --> 01:55:54.330 And then again, it's a log scale, so it stops at 1,000, but presumably goes 01:55:54.330 --> 01:56:00.430 down even further beyond that as humanity goes extinct. And the entire range of options in between. 01:56:01.730 --> 01:56:04.990 Interestingly, they're both labeled tech singularity. 01:56:05.890 --> 01:56:12.230 Yes. Tech singularity, end of scarcity, versus tech singularity, human extinction. 01:56:12.570 --> 01:56:14.530 And anything in between. 01:56:15.290 --> 01:56:19.050 And I said under Curbudge and Coruscant, people used to make fun of me. 01:56:19.170 --> 01:56:21.690 Bruce used to make fun of me. Yvonne used to make fun of me. 01:56:21.690 --> 01:56:27.290 For the wide ranges of my annual predictions of the Dow and the price of Bitcoin 01:56:27.290 --> 01:56:28.350 and all this kind of stuff. 01:56:28.830 --> 01:56:34.030 That pales in comparison to this range of possibilities that they outlined here. 01:56:35.110 --> 01:56:39.490 All righty. Okay. So now, thank you, Ed. 01:56:39.670 --> 01:56:44.410 Thank you, Bruce, for joining us yet again. It's always fun to have you guys. 01:56:44.510 --> 01:56:48.370 And it was fun to have you guys together, which we have not done before. 01:56:48.850 --> 01:56:53.510 Hopefully we can do something like this again. but also hopefully Yvonne finishes 01:56:53.510 --> 01:56:59.990 his recovery and we'll be back next week and we'll have a normal show next week 01:56:59.990 --> 01:57:03.030 but thank you all goodbye goodbye. 01:57:03.030 --> 01:57:04.670 What did we. 01:57:04.670 --> 01:57:10.610 Okay one at a time let's do this I will go first then Bruce then Ed goodbye 01:57:10.610 --> 01:57:16.050 goodbye goodbye here here comes the outro, 01:57:47.110 --> 01:57:56.010 Okay. Thanks again, everybody. So have a great night, everybody. See you. See you later. 01:57:56.550 --> 01:57:57.070 Okay. Good night. 01:57:57.450 --> 01:57:57.830 Good night. 01:57:58.350 --> 01:57:58.630 Bye. 01:57:58.950 --> 01:58:00.650 Here comes, I'm hitting stop.