Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 1: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
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Speaker 1: are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today? At breakingpoints,
Speaker 1: dot com CNN is flailing. They got to figure it out.
Speaker 1: The lowest ratings ever in modern history. So what do
Speaker 1: they do? First? They have Bill Maher reruns I guess
Speaker 1: for overtime that they're going to play Already, by the way,
Speaker 1: Bill Maher already broke the rules by cursing, and he
Speaker 1: was like, sorry, CNN, Well now they've got a new idea.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there on the screen. They are
Speaker 1: looking to hire Charles Barkley to come on CNN, and
Speaker 1: as much as I want to make fun of it,
Speaker 1: I got to say it's not a terrible idea. Charles
Speaker 1: is a compelling guy. He is fun to watch. The
Speaker 1: only question is what does he belong? Why? Would he
Speaker 1: belong on a news program for any reason whatsoever? Like,
Speaker 1: are they just going full you know, I guess with
Speaker 1: the comedian thing, even with Bill, I mean Bill has
Speaker 1: been involved in public public affairs and events, political stuff
Speaker 1: for basically his entire life. I mean, Charles is a
Speaker 1: sports commentator, a very former, very successful professional athlete, pop
Speaker 1: culture figure in his own right. But does he really
Speaker 1: have something that he wants to say five nights a
Speaker 1: week on CNN. Frankie would also be a demotion for
Speaker 1: him because far more people probably watch his NBA broadcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ever watch CNN? Yeah, I mean, Charles Barkley is hilarious.
Speaker 1: If they did actually secure a primetime news show with
Speaker 1: Charles Barkley, I would probably watch it. Yes, I actually
Speaker 1: don't think it's a terrible idea in terms of audience interest.
Speaker 1: Do I think there's any chance in hell that he
Speaker 1: would do this? No way, maybe he might though he's
Speaker 1: good on the camera. I mean, yeah, he already looked.
Speaker 1: He already has a great gig where he makes millions.
Speaker 1: Apparently they tried to lure him to be a commentator
Speaker 1: for Live Golf. I mean it was like no, So,
Speaker 1: I mean I forgot the Charles loves golf. He's got
Speaker 1: a sweet gig where he's at. So I don't see this.
Speaker 1: I don't see this one happening, but you know, as
Speaker 1: one of the better ideas they put out there, just
Speaker 1: in terms of sheer like entertainment value. Not that I
Speaker 1: think that he'd have like, I think he'd have good
Speaker 1: sort of like every man takes on politics, which is
Speaker 1: kind of what he's to the extent he's waited into
Speaker 1: politics in the past. That's kind of the vibe he's
Speaker 1: given up. Well, that's where you reminded me of this
Speaker 1: clip that we covered, which a lot of people were
Speaker 1: really interested in at the time. Charles sounding off on politics.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen. I think most white people and
Speaker 1: black people are great people. I really believe that in
Speaker 1: my heart. But I think our system is set up
Speaker 1: where our politicians, whether they are Republicans or Democrats, are
Speaker 1: designed to make us not like each other so they
Speaker 1: can keep their grasp of money and power. They divide
Speaker 1: and conquer. I truly believe in my heart most white
Speaker 1: people and black people are awesome people, but we're so
Speaker 1: stupid following our politicians, whether they are Republicans or Democrats
Speaker 1: and their only job is, Hey, let's make these people
Speaker 1: not like each other. We don't live in their neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: We all got money. Let's make the whites and blacks
Speaker 1: not light like each other. Let's make rich people and
Speaker 1: poor people not like each other. Let's let's scramble to
Speaker 1: middle class. I truly believe that in my heart, Well said,
Speaker 1: Ben true. What can I say? You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I should take this back. He has been political at
Speaker 1: some point. I remember. I think he said he wanted
Speaker 1: to run for the governor of Alabama and he had
Speaker 1: like he had to establish residency. I believe he identified
Speaker 1: as a Republican. I don't know if this identified at
Speaker 1: the time he was. He called himself a Republican, and
Speaker 1: I know he had some political aspirations at the time.
Speaker 1: This was talked about, you know, years and years ago.
Speaker 1: He hasn't talked about it in a long time, but hey,
Speaker 1: maybe he should. Here we got at it. Charles Barkley
Speaker 1: on running for Alabama government. He says he no longer
Speaker 1: has any interest, but that implies that he did. At
Speaker 1: one point. He said Democrats and Republicans are both full
Speaker 1: of crap. So I think that's a sentiment that would
Speaker 1: capture the hearts and minds of the majority of American people.
Speaker 1: At this point, he says, they do nothing for actual people.
Speaker 1: The Democrats and Republicans are both full of crap. You
Speaker 1: see now with this pandemic, they aren't doing anything for
Speaker 1: these people. So anyway, he says, I've been a Democrat
Speaker 1: all my life. I just realized now they've done an
Speaker 1: awful job taking care of poor people. They make the
Speaker 1: same boasts every four years, come to the black community
Speaker 1: and say they're going to make things better, but they
Speaker 1: don't really make things better. I'm still a Democrat, but
Speaker 1: I don't fall for stupidity. So anyway, would be interesting
Speaker 1: and be fun to watch. If it happens, We'll see, guys,
Speaker 1: another horrifying, nearly catastrophic airplane disaster that is just now
Speaker 1: coming to light. Gun and put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is terrifying. The headline here from the Daily Mail
Speaker 1: is every passenger's worst nightmare. United Airlines flight from Hawaii
Speaker 1: I Eat to San Francisco nose dived fourteen hundred feet
Speaker 1: during epic storm, came within seven hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: feet of the Pacific and terrifying forty five second ordeal. Insanely,
Speaker 1: this had not come out because this happened a little
Speaker 1: while ago, and actually I think happened on the same
Speaker 1: day that Sagar there had been that other flight where
Speaker 1: there was massive turbulence and a number of passengers were
Speaker 1: injured fairly seriously, and so the thinking here is this
Speaker 1: had to do also with the stormy conditions that were
Speaker 1: prevailing that day. The other thing that's crazy is after
Speaker 1: it landed in San Francisco, they like inspected the plane
Speaker 1: and then it flew again with that I think the
Speaker 1: same grow and whatever. So that's kind of crazy as well.
Speaker 1: It's also wild that we're only now learning about it.
Speaker 1: Nobody tweeted about it or had a video of it
Speaker 1: or whatever. But the details here are terrifying. They say
Speaker 1: that the gravitational forces, like the g forces that they
Speaker 1: were facing, were extremely so they say it was in
Speaker 1: between radio calls with the air traffic controllers and Malley
Speaker 1: throughout the forty five second dive, the climb produced forces
Speaker 1: of nearly two point seven times the force of gravity
Speaker 1: on the aircraft and its oucumants that's used to describe
Speaker 1: the acceleration of an object relative to Earth's gravity, and
Speaker 1: upwards acceleration of about five g's is enough to overwhelm
Speaker 1: the ability of your heart to pump blood to your brain.
Speaker 1: Causes oxygen starvation. You'll black out within a few seconds.
Speaker 1: But a downward or negative G force of the type
Speaker 1: that you would get in like this nose dive is
Speaker 1: even worse. The blood pools in your head, your face
Speaker 1: swells up, your lower eyelids are forced over your eyes.
Speaker 1: This is called redoubt because all you see is the
Speaker 1: light shining through your eyelid lids. At negative three G,
Speaker 1: the blood can't get back to your loves to reoxygen eight,
Speaker 1: so you pass out. So this is a crazy situation.
Speaker 1: They came within seven hundred feet of smashing into crashing
Speaker 1: into the ocean, which obviously would have been probably killed
Speaker 1: everybody on a ward. And it also comes on the
Speaker 1: heels of we've had a number of these near misses
Speaker 1: or actual catastrophes in the past number of days and weeks.
Speaker 1: You have planes that are almost running into other planes
Speaker 1: on takeoff. You had a plane actually hit a passenger
Speaker 1: bus that was there on the tarmac. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. Soccer I don't know either. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's pretty scary. You know, they were only at two
Speaker 1: two hundred feet before they dove, and they say it
Speaker 1: was at eighty six hundred feet per minute, which is terrifying.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean the aviation industry. Actually, what concerns
Speaker 1: me is that the flight then lands in San Francisco
Speaker 1: and then it takes off two hours later, and United
Speaker 1: said that they had closely coordinated with the FAA and
Speaker 1: inspected the plane, you know, right before takeoff. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I'm not you know, I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: want to go and find if you even known that
Speaker 1: had just happened. No, And look, the other actually even
Speaker 1: scarier thing is that there was nothing wrong with the
Speaker 1: plane and it was pilot error, which is even more terrifying, right,
Speaker 1: which you know I've read. I have a weird fascination
Speaker 1: with plane crashes, studied a lot on that Air France
Speaker 1: crash that people will remember that that one was nuts
Speaker 1: because it was also in bad weather and it was
Speaker 1: pure pilot error where they crashed right into the ocean.
Speaker 1: I think it was like a Brazil to Paris flight,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent pilot error and it's one that people
Speaker 1: study a lot in terms of getting dragged away from
Speaker 1: your sensors or fixating too much on some things. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean from reading on this, the
Speaker 1: fact is is that if the plane did take off
Speaker 1: and it was cleared from a safety inspection, then that's
Speaker 1: even scarier because that means that there was a human
Speaker 1: situation involved. And I just want to know what's going
Speaker 1: on with those pilots right now today. Yeah, well, so
Speaker 1: you had the you have this, which seven hundred feet
Speaker 1: in the ocean is not a lot of feet, guys.
Speaker 1: I mean this was a close close call. You had
Speaker 1: the near miss at JFK of two planes almost colliding.
Speaker 1: You had near miss at Austin actually the very day
Speaker 1: that we were flying out Awsome that morning, but no
Speaker 1: it us I flew off and I took off an
Speaker 1: hour later. Yeah, there was a near miss. Go ahead
Speaker 1: and throw out this this graphic. You could see. This
Speaker 1: is what the flight trajectory of this one with the
Speaker 1: nosedive looked like. Where they came within eight hundred feet,
Speaker 1: so steep, steep descent rate and then a steep after
Speaker 1: that climb rate and coming within seven hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: five feet of the ocean. They talked to an aviation expert,
Speaker 1: a pilot by the name of Juan Brown. He said,
Speaker 1: these sorts of incidents are increasing at an alarming rate.
Speaker 1: He talks about there's a huge turnover in the industry,
Speaker 1: not only among pilots, but also amongst air traffic controllers, mechanics, mats.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is, rampers, and with the
Speaker 1: state of hiring practices and training today, in the relentless
Speaker 1: effort to do things faster, cheaper, and more efficiently, we're
Speaker 1: just one radio call away from having the biggest aviation
Speaker 1: disaster in history. And apparently both the JFK and the
Speaker 1: Austin incidents experts have said directions that were issued by
Speaker 1: air traffic controllers appear to have been an issue. So
Speaker 1: you've got pilot issues here, you've got air traffic control issues,
Speaker 1: and you have the overlying element of like you know,
Speaker 1: corporate greed, probably push people too hard, and massive industry turnovers.
Speaker 1: So scary, scary, scary situation. It certainly is some major
Speaker 1: news out of Twitter, not actually major, just more amusing.
Speaker 1: Let's get this up there on the screen. Apparently Elon
Speaker 1: Musk has designed a special system, according to Twitter insiders,
Speaker 1: that will actually boost his tweets first, after Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: Super Bowl post got more engagement than his. This comes
Speaker 1: after some reported discontent by Elon from inside the company,
Speaker 1: who was worrying about why his impressions had gone down
Speaker 1: after an engineer actually told him that it was because
Speaker 1: organic interest in Elon sweets went down. He fired one
Speaker 1: of the engineers who told him that, and has created
Speaker 1: now a special system. So, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Chris Well, I guess we could all sympathize with If
Speaker 1: you're going to own a platform, you might as well
Speaker 1: boost your own message, right if I owned you too.
Speaker 1: If I owned you too, would sweet to us. I
Speaker 1: would definitely boost breaking points friends over here. I guess
Speaker 1: I have some sympathy with that. But I think it
Speaker 1: just does show you, you know, some of the more
Speaker 1: capriciousness that continues, because I mean, even the whole way
Speaker 1: that this went down. At two thirty six on Monday morning,
Speaker 1: James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers, we
Speaker 1: are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform. This
Speaker 1: is the cousin of Elon. He says, any people who
Speaker 1: can make dashboards and write software police helps oflf thise
Speaker 1: problems higher urgency bleary eyed engineers. If we log onto
Speaker 1: their laptops, the emergency becomes clear. Elon's tweet about Super
Speaker 1: Bowl got less engagement than Biden's, so in the wake
Speaker 1: of these losses, the CFO actually got people who are
Speaker 1: inside of the company to boost and change the Twitter
Speaker 1: algorithm to boost more of his tweets and include them
Speaker 1: on the for you page for everyone. So I personally
Speaker 1: just find it very amusing. It is, I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole thing is amusing. The first piece that broke was
Speaker 1: like how upset he was that his tweets weren't getting
Speaker 1: as much engagement, and he thought like, oh, there must
Speaker 1: be a problem very deep in the algorithm. That's like
Speaker 1: suppressing my tweets. And when an engineer broke it to him,
Speaker 1: that just looked You're just not as hot as you
Speaker 1: used to be, which is normal, and that like there
Speaker 1: was a whole whole news cycle Elon newscycle where people
Speaker 1: were hanging on as every word and all kinds of
Speaker 1: news stories were written about every little thing that he
Speaker 1: uttered on Twitter, like Okay, that moment has passed. That
Speaker 1: is a natural ebb and flow, But I mean outrageously
Speaker 1: he fires the engineer who told him the truth, which
Speaker 1: is no way ready to run any place, and you
Speaker 1: just end up surrounded by a bunch of yes men
Speaker 1: who are going to tell you whatever you want to hear.
Speaker 1: That's number one, But number two, I mean it is
Speaker 1: kind of hilarious that he then made it a top
Speaker 1: priority for them to rig the algorithms promote his stuff
Speaker 1: at two in the morning. Yes, that's also a crisis
Speaker 1: for me. Listen, if you weren't presenting your leadership of
Speaker 1: Twitter as like some free speech you know, beacon of
Speaker 1: free speech and free speech safe art. Because using the
Speaker 1: algorithm to rig the results and promote certain people over
Speaker 1: other people, it's consistent with what he said about freedom
Speaker 1: of speech, not freedom of reach. But it is equally
Speaker 1: as gamed and manipulated as active like censorship and active
Speaker 1: banning and blocking. In some way, it's more nefarious because
Speaker 1: it's harder. There's no transparency around it, Like you can
Speaker 1: tell if you've been kicked off the platform, and you
Speaker 1: can say something about it, and you can try to
Speaker 1: call awareness to it, but there's no way to know
Speaker 1: who's being pumped and who's being suppressed, and everybody ends
Speaker 1: up just with their own little like conspiracy theories about
Speaker 1: what exactly is going on with the algorithm. So the
Speaker 1: best way to handle this would be to have it
Speaker 1: go back to being a neutral platform where it's just
Speaker 1: like here's your timeline and the tweets come up in order,
Speaker 1: or at the very least, which I think is something.
Speaker 1: Didn't he saga promise that there will be transparency around
Speaker 1: the way the algorithm word, at the very least, have
Speaker 1: it really clear and public how these things are ultimately operating.
Speaker 1: But those are not promises that he has followed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: follow through on today, I certainly hope. So all right,
Speaker 1: all right, Marpy yell later. So we got an interesting
Speaker 1: little lesson, I would say, in the art and impact
Speaker 1: of actual governance. Let's just go ahead and put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. So Bernie Sanders threatened to have
Speaker 1: the CEO of Maderna forced to come and testify. Bernie
Speaker 1: is now chair of the Health Labor Pension Education Labor
Speaker 1: Pension Committee, and so as part of his chairmanship, he
Speaker 1: has been calling a number of corporate CEOs on the
Speaker 1: carpet and calling them to come testify. Well, lo and behold.
Speaker 1: Just after he does this, Maderna is now saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to keep our COVID vaccine free after all.
Speaker 1: Previously they said they were going to jack up the
Speaker 1: price by four hundred percent. Let's go and put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen what they were saying previously. Maderna
Speaker 1: may raise COVID nineteen vaccine prices up to one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty dollars. That is roughly four hundred percent increase.
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders calls it outrageous and zaccher. This is something
Speaker 1: we've been talking about for a while. One of the
Speaker 1: greatest powers of the Senate chairmanships of the President of
Speaker 1: the United States is the power of a good public shaming.
Speaker 1: You know, when these corporations, as they continue to do
Speaker 1: jack up prices and contribute to inflation and give themselves
Speaker 1: and their shareholders these big bonuses and pay them out
Speaker 1: and screw over their workers. One thing that you can
Speaker 1: do outside of regulation is force them, subpoena them and
Speaker 1: force them to come and faced questions. They don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, and so oftentimes just the threat of
Speaker 1: any sort of like public accountability and shaming can force
Speaker 1: some sort of action on them. We saw this when
Speaker 1: Joe Biden very briefly, remember when he went after the
Speaker 1: meat packers for jacking up prices. He made comments about it,
Speaker 1: issued a White House statement about it, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: right after that, meat prices went down a bit. Just
Speaker 1: this power to call CEOs on the corporate on the
Speaker 1: carpet and force them to answer for their crimes and
Speaker 1: their outrageous behavior sometimes can be as powerful as anything else. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To the thing I have never understood on this is
Speaker 1: like who is still taking the COVID vaccine? Like who
Speaker 1: do you even charge for it? Is it the government?
Speaker 1: Like in terms of keeping it freeze like future boosters
Speaker 1: because they're already free as I understand it, That was
Speaker 1: one part where I'm not entirely clear on, like why
Speaker 1: this is even a skin Well, I think wants it
Speaker 1: at this point If you're not going to take it,
Speaker 1: you're clearly not going to take it. Yeah, Well, I
Speaker 1: think the government funding for this for to continue to
Speaker 1: be free is about to run out, and so they
Speaker 1: were going to be charging either health insurance or individuals
Speaker 1: this like outrageously jacked up price. So okay, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: It's a perfect example though. I mean, it's just insane
Speaker 1: greed from these companies who have already made so much
Speaker 1: money off of these vaccines guaranteed backstop by the US government,
Speaker 1: off of research that we developed, off of a process
Speaker 1: and operation warp Speed, which was a great success under
Speaker 1: President Trump. I mean, the way they moved heaven a
Speaker 1: nerd to get these things developed and out to the public.
Speaker 1: But you know a lot of government resources went into this,
Speaker 1: and they just want to continue to try to milk
Speaker 1: this thing for everything it's worth. Yeah, I mean, really
Speaker 1: what needs to be done is that they shouldn't even
Speaker 1: have patent or any of this stuff on it, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it should be much more open to
Speaker 1: absolutely research and all of that. That's the biggest problem, yes,
Speaker 1: I have with this. Okay, all right, we'll keep it
Speaker 1: free for everybody who wants it. I don't really know
Speaker 1: he's still taking it, but go for it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Bernie has also I know he wants Starbucks
Speaker 1: CEO Howard Schultz to testify because Starbucks has been engaged
Speaker 1: in this just like utterly lawless behavior with regards to
Speaker 1: union busting, with the grassroots union drive that has swept
Speaker 1: across the country at Starbucks stores, and you know, those
Speaker 1: sorts of things that they can be very they can
Speaker 1: be a very powerful tool. And I'm certainly looking forward
Speaker 1: to see some of these people have to answer for
Speaker 1: what they've been up to. Definitely, all right, y'all, more
Speaker 1: for you guys later. The New York Times this week
Speaker 1: dug into a universal basic income program playing out outside
Speaker 1: of Chicago, in which they're giving five hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: month to residents to test what that does for economic security,
Speaker 1: for satisfaction, for quality of life, et cetera. Shockingly, they're
Speaker 1: finding people like it. Emily, what is your general take
Speaker 1: on on UBI and how is there a faction of
Speaker 1: the right that is, like, you know what, maybe there,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe there is a place for this. It
Speaker 1: has its origins as as I'm sure you know, kind
Speaker 1: of in the kind of Alan Greenspan world so it
Speaker 1: or Milton Friedman, you know, as there was this kind
Speaker 1: of libertarian right that believed if you give everybody a
Speaker 1: very basic level of income, that that would allow a
Speaker 1: lot more human flourishing. But where is that now when
Speaker 1: it comes to the right. Yeah, you know, a great
Speaker 1: example or a great illustration of the arc is when
Speaker 1: Senator Romney introduced the Child Allowance Bill that was basically
Speaker 1: cash payments to the extent that I mean, there were
Speaker 1: very very generous cash payments to parents from the womb
Speaker 1: all the way up to eighteen years of age, depending
Speaker 1: on your number of children, and that immediately got sort
Speaker 1: of yanked. It was criticized by Marco Rubio tech Cruz
Speaker 1: and others because it didn't have a work requirement. So
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney reintroduced something that had a ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: annual work requirement. And so I think the right, even
Speaker 1: the New Right, you know, as illustrated by the arc
Speaker 1: of the Romney Bill, is very wary of anything that
Speaker 1: doesn't include a work requirement or that doesn't sort of
Speaker 1: and I know there are ways to do ubi that
Speaker 1: might get around that job training and other things like that.
Speaker 1: But I'm really curious about these experiments because they're happening
Speaker 1: all over the country. I think there's one happening in
Speaker 1: Arlington or Alexandria. Right outside of DC. There are cities
Speaker 1: municipalities that are experimenting with this, and I am genuinely
Speaker 1: curious about the results. Although I also think they suffer
Speaker 1: from a problem that over the COVID period when there
Speaker 1: was a very generous cash allowance for parents as well,
Speaker 1: that we talked about a couple of times, Ryan that
Speaker 1: found it. It It basically immediately alleviated chob poverty. It had
Speaker 1: a huge fact on quality of life, Like right out
Speaker 1: of the gate. I get worried about sort of not
Speaker 1: being able to measure possible long term ramifications of that
Speaker 1: in the way that you and I would probably disagree
Speaker 1: over some great society programs. It sort of did well
Speaker 1: and then or seemed like they were doing well, and
Speaker 1: then over time we've had maybe a different perspective on them.
Speaker 1: So that's one of these are some of the limitations
Speaker 1: I see when looking at these experiments. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm completely open minded to the results. And I started
Speaker 1: out saying outside of Chicago. For some stupid reason, it's
Speaker 1: it's in Chicago. I don't know, I don't know why
Speaker 1: I said that. I wanted to read one one quote
Speaker 1: quote from this guy, Christopher Ellington from the New York
Speaker 1: Times story. He said, talk about shock, and this goes
Speaker 1: to one of the things you were saying. It was
Speaker 1: like he said, it was, Hey, the government is doing this.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I don't have to you know, report
Speaker 1: this and report that. You don't have to go through
Speaker 1: all of my business, and I don't have to watch
Speaker 1: what I say. I was like, this is how it
Speaker 1: should be. And so it does go back to this
Speaker 1: thing where people people are now just a tuned or
Speaker 1: accustomed to the fact that if they're going to get
Speaker 1: anything from the government, which our government, the thing that
Speaker 1: we all kick into and which is which is ours democratically,
Speaker 1: that they expect they're going to be harassed and humiliated
Speaker 1: and controlled. If they're going to try to control what
Speaker 1: you can say, you're gonna have to piss in a cup.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to you know, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: go through all through all kinds of hoops, you know,
Speaker 1: open up your bank account to them. And you mentioned
Speaker 1: the train. But so often the job training stuff just
Speaker 1: becomes like this ridiculous kind of pencil pushing exercise where
Speaker 1: you have to show up at this place and there's
Speaker 1: somebody who doesn't want to be there, you know, telling
Speaker 1: you how to use Google, and everybody's just doing skills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody's just doing it because they've been told that they
Speaker 1: have to do it because politicians believe that it's better
Speaker 1: if they, you know, attach this this work requirement to it,
Speaker 1: but you know if but anyway, so uh, I also worry,
Speaker 1: uh to go back to what you were saying, saying
Speaker 1: post pandemic about the fate of UBI, not just for
Speaker 1: the reasons that you mentioned, but because of the linkage
Speaker 1: in the public's mind and in politicians' minds between the
Speaker 1: money and inflation. Now, I think, and I think the
Speaker 1: economic data is bearing out that that something like half
Speaker 1: of it fifty It almost looks like fifty sixty percent
Speaker 1: was corporate was kind of structured corporate greed in other words,
Speaker 1: like they saw that there was an opportunity for them
Speaker 1: to start raising prices and not get blowback either politicians
Speaker 1: or from consumers, and they went for those price increases.
Speaker 1: And they've been able to measure that it's like a
Speaker 1: huge portion of it was that. But and that was
Speaker 1: related to the supply chain problems and also related to
Speaker 1: the distortion in spending. So yes, it's true that people
Speaker 1: had more money because of the child tax credit, because
Speaker 1: of the kind of stimulus checks that were given out,
Speaker 1: but because people weren't going out, because people were locked
Speaker 1: in their homes. They were spending their money on Amazon
Speaker 1: and on other goods, on other goods rather than on services,
Speaker 1: and so the amount of goods that purchase clogged up
Speaker 1: the supply chains, and so then you did have inflation
Speaker 1: as a result of that. So I worry that that
Speaker 1: UBI has been set back, you know, badly as a
Speaker 1: result of that, because the next next time people come forward,
Speaker 1: they say, well, look what happened last time we had
Speaker 1: We had inflation as a result of it. Are you
Speaker 1: seeing on the right people who try to advance kind
Speaker 1: of these types of kind of family credits or child
Speaker 1: child tax credits. Are they confronting that that obstacle in
Speaker 1: a way that they weren't before. That's a really good question,
Speaker 1: and I think it gets to what you were talking
Speaker 1: about originally. How strange it is that a very libertarian proposal,
Speaker 1: truly a very libertarian proposal came to be kind of
Speaker 1: owned right now by either the corporate descender center or
Speaker 1: the like very progressive left because one of the things
Speaker 1: that would happen if UBI were to be implemented, and
Speaker 1: I don't like our system right now of just sort
Speaker 1: of band aids put on to patch up holes in
Speaker 1: our safety net. I hate that. I think it's in
Speaker 1: humane and I don't think it's been helpful. But those
Speaker 1: band aids go away with UBI, and you end up
Speaker 1: with a system where there are programs people are maybe
Speaker 1: dependent on, and a lot of that goes away. And
Speaker 1: so this question of inflation and overheating the economy, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera is an interesting one because then you do
Speaker 1: get really big discretionary spending cuts, and you might even
Speaker 1: get this as an excuse to slash entitlements. You would
Speaker 1: certainly get this as an excuse for very serious proposals
Speaker 1: to slash entitlements if there were a federal UBI program.
Speaker 1: State basis is different, although on a state level those
Speaker 1: entitlements would certainly be in danger too, And so kind
Speaker 1: of using these as a laboratory for what would happen economically,
Speaker 1: all of the hypotheticals if a UBI were to be
Speaker 1: implemented on a large scale. It is really difficult, but
Speaker 1: I think some of those to alleviate the economic concerns
Speaker 1: that you were just talking about, a lot of those
Speaker 1: safety nets would just be snipped right away, I think,
Speaker 1: And I also think with just how much power employers
Speaker 1: have in this country that with a labor shortage, there's
Speaker 1: just no way they're going anywhere near this. And I
Speaker 1: think I think in Texas, correct me if I'm Wronger,
Speaker 1: I heard that they're either either past legislation or they're
Speaker 1: moving the past legislation. The Texas Republicans are to say
Speaker 1: that no, no municipalities can try ubi like that's like,
Speaker 1: that's how that's how hostile they are to it, that
Speaker 1: they don't even they don't even want towns like Chicago,
Speaker 1: you know, experimenting with it, because they've got this you know,
Speaker 1: May there. They've got bosses who are saying, look, we've
Speaker 1: got this labor shortage, and what the labor shortage is
Speaker 1: driving up wages what they call wage inflation, what other
Speaker 1: people call a raise, and they and they don't want
Speaker 1: to encourage any more kind of worker militants because the
Speaker 1: other thing you get when people feel comfortable in their
Speaker 1: job is that they start airing their grievances and they
Speaker 1: start talking to their coworkers about how they can address
Speaker 1: those grievances. Sometimes that leads to them forming into a union.
Speaker 1: Whereas if there's more caarity, if you get fired, then
Speaker 1: you're going to get evicted and you're totally screwed. Then
Speaker 1: the idea of coming together and trying to form a union,
Speaker 1: which is arduous and often gets beaten back, is less
Speaker 1: appealing to people, and I think a lot of bosses
Speaker 1: would like to get back to a place where that's
Speaker 1: less appealing. Yeah, and you know, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: the right would be increasingly hostile to something like this
Speaker 1: after the pandemic, I think is illustrated really well by
Speaker 1: a story one of my colleagues, Droy Pullman, wrote, which
Speaker 1: is that these strings that are attached were used, for instance,
Speaker 1: in the case of school lunches, to implement new bathroom policies,
Speaker 1: and basically the federal government held school lunch subsidies hostage
Speaker 1: to bathroom policy implementation, and so conservatives are now very wary,
Speaker 1: myself included, like in the state of Texas, that any
Speaker 1: of these subsidies people accept are going to start coming with,
Speaker 1: for instance, an emergency vaccine requirement and something that people
Speaker 1: are on a large scale uncomfortable with from the federal government.
Speaker 1: And so the pandemic definitely created those concerns. And again,
Speaker 1: of course we've covered it many times here. We're vaccinated.
Speaker 1: We hope our loved ones are vaccinated, but conservatives are
Speaker 1: very very wary of that. Now. Yeah, I remember when
Speaker 1: the federal government basically used highway funding to push the
Speaker 1: drinking age from yes because I'm from Wisconsin, they did
Speaker 1: it to us. Were the victims? Were you the last holdouts?
Speaker 1: We were the last holdous drinking Germans in Wisconsin. We're
Speaker 1: just yeah German. I had a friend once who got
Speaker 1: got pulled over in the officer askemi, if you been drinking,
Speaker 1: and he said, just beer. But and he was serious,
Speaker 1: like he just beer, that it's basically water. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the guy that belongs belongs in Wisconsin. But yes,
Speaker 1: I mean that that is a thing. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: with our with our federal system, with these states pulling
Speaker 1: apart from each other on these on these cultural issues,
Speaker 1: it does show that like doing this, doing this stuff
Speaker 1: on a federal level is going to be that much
Speaker 1: more difficult. This overlap of cultural and and and fiscal issues,
Speaker 1: with maybe the Obamacare Medicaid expansion being being the first
Speaker 1: example of this. In our new era where John Roberts
Speaker 1: you know wanted you know, every he wanted him to
Speaker 1: overturn all the Republicans wanted to overturn the A c A,
Speaker 1: and he didn't. As his little compromise, he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well Medicaid, you cannot you cannot force states to accept
Speaker 1: and expanded medicaid. And so then for political reasons, all
Speaker 1: the states started saying, well, we don't want you to
Speaker 1: keep keep your dirty Medicaid money. You know, we're happy
Speaker 1: being you know, forty ninth and fiftieth in medical care
Speaker 1: down here. Which again it will become another flashpoint because
Speaker 1: it's a dysantas issue. This comes to disantas, and it
Speaker 1: will be another flashpoint in a primary in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four where you have cultural populism then mixing with economic populism,
Speaker 1: more people being forced to make those arguments or confront them.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, in the meantime, looking forward to
Speaker 1: seeing the final results from from this experiment, it's good.
Speaker 1: That good that people are trying. I was. I was
Speaker 1: skeptical of UBI and remain so to some degree because
Speaker 1: to me it seemed like it was coming out of
Speaker 1: some Silicon Valley tech utopianism, where yes, you had a
Speaker 1: bunch of tech bros who were like, don't worry we're
Speaker 1: going to put everybody out of work, but then we're
Speaker 1: going to give everybody credits that they can spend with us,
Speaker 1: you know, And that just felt felt something about it
Speaker 1: felt dystopian, So don't. I don't think it's an open
Speaker 1: and shut, obvious, obvious thing. But I also think that
Speaker 1: that people do, like deserve just a basic sense of
Speaker 1: dignity and economic security, and if this gets them there,
Speaker 1: then then then we should pursue that. So I'm glad
Speaker 1: that Chicago's doing it. Hey, and if it was a
Speaker 1: Freedman proposal originally, what better place to experiment with it
Speaker 1: in Chicago Chicago School. There you go.