Speaker 1: And broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the
Speaker 1: George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe.
Speaker 2: Katty Armstrong, and Kattie I know Hee Armstrong and Getty
Speaker 2: strong Man.
Speaker 3: Philadelphia Zoo announced last week that a pair of nearly
Speaker 3: one hundred year old tortoises recently welcome their first hatchlings.
Speaker 3: You may have seen the tortoises on the MTV show
Speaker 3: ninety nine and.
Speaker 2: Pregnant markets are surging.
Speaker 4: If you're listening to us live, so the bounce back
Speaker 4: has begun, and get into that later. Also, latest polling
Speaker 4: on the whole tariff thing, get into that later also.
Speaker 4: And oh and I just saw the real ID deadline
Speaker 4: is a month away.
Speaker 2: This is going to be my all time greatest.
Speaker 4: Hit screw up because it's been I've seen it coming
Speaker 4: for so long and known the entire time for years
Speaker 4: that at some point I will be at an airport
Speaker 4: ready to get on a plane someplace I need to go, yes,
Speaker 4: and they'll say, we no longer accept your driver's license,
Speaker 4: you need your real ID. Even though I knew it
Speaker 4: for years, I am that is going to happen to me.
Speaker 4: I like your high school teacher.
Speaker 5: Assigned you a book report due in twenty years and
Speaker 5: you waited until the last night and you're up all night, right,
Speaker 5: that is going to happen to me? Yeah, it's funny, Judy,
Speaker 5: And I heard that report, and I have a feeling.
Speaker 5: I spoke for many, many millions of Americans when I said,
Speaker 5: do we have real IDs?
Speaker 2: I've completely lost track? Is ours real?
Speaker 5: She looked at it and said, yeah, yes, we do.
Speaker 5: How that happened? I don't record?
Speaker 2: Well, I sure don't have one.
Speaker 4: Are you sure? I'm positive you might. When did you
Speaker 4: last for new year license? I don't know so. Uh
Speaker 4: so your driver's license? Is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh it is?
Speaker 4: Well, maybe I did have a real like the updated
Speaker 4: does it have like a hologrammy looking thing on there?
Speaker 2: Or yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe I do have it done and done, sir.
Speaker 4: That's my point. Nobody has any idea part Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, speaking of economics and that sort of thing, which
Speaker 5: a lot of people are doing these days in reference
Speaker 5: to the tariffs.
Speaker 2: But to this too shall pass, I hope eventually. Uh
Speaker 2: And and.
Speaker 5: Some of the support and lack of support are coming
Speaker 5: from some interesting areas for the tariffs, and we can
Speaker 5: talk about that more later, but I'm kind of tariffed out.
Speaker 2: We brought this up kind of briefly at the end
Speaker 2: of the show.
Speaker 4: You see, I could talk about tariffs for many more hours.
Speaker 2: Well you should feel free. How about one room over anyway?
Speaker 5: I found this so interesting, big survey of America's employers,
Speaker 5: especially manufacturers. They cannot find reliable, conscientious workers who can
Speaker 5: pass a drug test. A good worker, like a good man,
Speaker 5: can be hard to find these days. And who is
Speaker 5: this writing in? Alicia Finley, who I think is a
Speaker 5: terrific writer, But she says, blame government, which showers benefits
Speaker 5: on able bodied people who don't work well at the
Speaker 5: same time subsidizing college degrees that don't lead to productive employment,
Speaker 5: and the result is millions of idle men and millions
Speaker 5: of unfilled jobs, what an economist would call a dead
Speaker 5: weight loss to society.
Speaker 2: So failing the drug test?
Speaker 4: Is it mostly the marijuana, the Mary Jane, the lettuce,
Speaker 4: the hippie?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know. I suspect so though. Sure I
Speaker 5: think it's mostly pot. But I think that's just brilliantly.
Speaker 4: Simply put, we are showering benefits on able bodied people
Speaker 4: and subsidizing useless college degrees as as a people because
Speaker 4: the government is theoretically doing our work right, Well, I
Speaker 4: for one don't like either end of that anyway. Forty
Speaker 4: percent of small business owners and March reported job openings
Speaker 4: they could not fill. Construction companies fifty six percent said, yeah,
Speaker 4: we have unfilled jobs and we can't find anybody.
Speaker 2: Transportation, I have.
Speaker 5: A feeling that's mostly truck drivers fifty three percent manufacturing,
Speaker 5: which the President is, according to many people, admirably trying
Speaker 5: to shepherd back inside the country. More forty seven percent
Speaker 5: of manufacturers say, no, we've got openings we can't fill.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 5: So, according to the last week's National Federation of Independent
Speaker 5: Business survey, that might.
Speaker 4: Be a flaw in the president's plan that hasn't been
Speaker 4: discussed enough. He wants to bring back the fifties or
Speaker 4: seventies or whatever golden era of manufacturing that we used
Speaker 4: to have. But back then people would do those jobs.
Speaker 4: If half the manufacturing jobs out there you can't fill. Now,
Speaker 4: what if manufacturing did come back to the United States, who,
Speaker 4: in theory is going to do those jobs? Well?
Speaker 5: Not illegal immigrants, because thank god, the border has been
Speaker 5: closed and the statistics are astounding Biden was a scoundrel anyway.
Speaker 4: Was it going to be the woman's studies major from
Speaker 4: your local university that goes works, They're probably not. Well.
Speaker 5: It could well be the dudes who have no disability
Speaker 5: on disability who are heaved off of that system, but
Speaker 5: that would take some tough love, and that's not very
Speaker 5: popular politically speaking. I mean, if you go into one
Speaker 5: of the districts of the rust Belty places or Appalachia
Speaker 5: or whatever where you have just ludicrous levels of people
Speaker 5: on disability. Happened to read a couple things about this recently.
Speaker 5: Didn't flog you with it on the air. But if
Speaker 5: you go into those places and say we're kicking it
Speaker 5: off everybody on disability who's not like missing a limb,
Speaker 5: you will lose an election by seventy points, if that's
Speaker 5: even possible. Once people are on the dole man, once
Speaker 5: people have a benefit, whether legitimate or perhaps questionable, taking
Speaker 5: it away as political poison. As you know, Labor Department's
Speaker 5: job openings and labor turnover survey businesses tell a similar story.
Speaker 5: There are twice as many job openings in manufacturing now
Speaker 5: than in the mid two thousands as a share of
Speaker 5: employment save for the pandemic, America's workers shortage is the
Speaker 5: worst in fifty years. Decades ago, productivity, enhancing technology and yes,
Speaker 5: inexpensive imports costed men who worked on shop floors to
Speaker 5: lose their jobs and drop out of the workforce. But
Speaker 5: that generation is sailing into the sunset, and there are
Speaker 5: many fewer young Americans who want to work in factories.
Speaker 5: Listen to this now, the labor force participation rate among
Speaker 5: young among working age men is now about five percentage
Speaker 5: points lower than in the early eighties. Okay, this is
Speaker 5: not like the nineteen tens. This is the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 5: five points lower. As a result, there are about three
Speaker 5: and a half million fewer men between the ages twenty
Speaker 5: five and fifty four in the workforce, and one point
Speaker 5: three million between the ages of twenty five and thirty.
Speaker 4: Four in a significantly bigger population than we had in
Speaker 4: the eighties. Right then there would have been were it
Speaker 4: not for this decline. Labor participation among working age women,
Speaker 4: on the other hand, recently hit a record in part
Speaker 4: because they are having fewer children, and then people aren't
Speaker 4: coupling and that sort of thing. At the risk of stereotyping,
Speaker 4: women are more inclined toward helping professions such as services
Speaker 4: than those that require physical labor. Well, that's just true,
Speaker 4: it's undeniable. So I've not done a manufacturing sort of
Speaker 4: job before, so I don't know what it's like, but
Speaker 4: I certainly feel like there's a social stigma around it
Speaker 4: that doesn't help true.
Speaker 2: Why it is?
Speaker 4: Why there's not a social stigma around having a meaningless,
Speaker 4: soul deadening paper pushing job in a cubicle.
Speaker 2: I don't know why that is.
Speaker 4: I mean, maybe the other way around should be there
Speaker 4: shouldn't be any stigma around any jobs. Working for a
Speaker 4: living is considerably better than not whatever the hell you're doing.
Speaker 5: So why I at least the vestige of the twentieth
Speaker 5: century where a job where you used your brain as
Speaker 5: opposed to your back was seen as a higher status job.
Speaker 2: God, I don't know some of these jobs or you
Speaker 2: use your brain.
Speaker 4: That's barely not much, I mean, but they certainly don't
Speaker 4: seem like they'd be much more enjoyable as starter jobs.
Speaker 2: Right, Tedious is tedious.
Speaker 5: I had a sort of manufacturing job for one summer
Speaker 5: and it was pretty tedious, honestly. But I'm sure it is.
Speaker 5: You know why I go and went ahead and took
Speaker 5: it and kept it. It was because it paid pretty good.
Speaker 4: It was my best option, right, So yeah, you got
Speaker 4: and and well you should have to make a living.
Speaker 2: You got to support yourself somehow.
Speaker 4: No, you don't.
Speaker 2: What kind of monster are you listen to this? Would you?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 5: Where have all the good working men gone? Some are
Speaker 5: subsisting on government benefits, are living off their parents. About
Speaker 5: seventeen percent of working age men are on Medicaid, seventeen percent,
Speaker 5: seven and a half percent on food stamps, and six
Speaker 5: point three percent on Social Security, many claiming disability payouts.
Speaker 5: According to the Census Bureau. Many spend their days playing
Speaker 5: video games and day trading, well, day trading hilarious, speculating
Speaker 5: on meme stocks, or you tell somebody your day trading.
Speaker 5: I don't know how often you're actually trading and making
Speaker 5: any money, because you don't want to say I just
Speaker 5: play video games and live in my parents' basement, So
Speaker 5: you say you're your day trader. So I don't remember
Speaker 5: our a good friend, Craig the healthcare Genius's statistics. But
Speaker 5: if I remember correctly, originally Medicaid was only supposed to
Speaker 5: cover like a tiny percent people period.
Speaker 2: Now it's covering.
Speaker 4: Now it's covering, And that would have been like the
Speaker 4: old and you know people that I got all kinds
Speaker 4: of physical or mental problems.
Speaker 2: Now it's seventeen percent of.
Speaker 4: Working age men, not not like senior citizens.
Speaker 2: That's nice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a couple more stats. Other missing men are taking
Speaker 4: longer to finish college or pursuing graduate degrees. Only about
Speaker 4: forty one percent amen complete a bachelor's degree in four years,
Speaker 4: even though study after study shows they don't teach, you
Speaker 4: don't have to work.
Speaker 2: There's great inflation. It's dopey.
Speaker 4: Only forty one percent and a quarter take more than
Speaker 4: six years.
Speaker 2: Wow, because you're in no hurry to get out of college.
Speaker 4: My dad used to comment about perpetual college students, and
Speaker 4: I never really understood what he was talking about. And
Speaker 4: I'm sure it was a small number of people back
Speaker 4: when he was in college, but now it is a lot.
Speaker 2: Apparently. I'll just stay in college.
Speaker 4: I'll just keep borrowing money and because I'm too young
Speaker 4: or unwise to understand what I'm doing, and I'll just
Speaker 4: keep this game going. Of I get to sit around
Speaker 4: with my friends and discuss the world without ever having to.
Speaker 5: Engage in it. Yeah, and I have disability. My thumb
Speaker 5: hurts on Thursdays. Final stat then I will I will stop.
Speaker 5: We're just we are a fat, lazy, comfortable society. We're
Speaker 5: headed to front denial, right, we are headed straight toward France.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The unemployment rate Jack considered this among recent college grads
Speaker 5: with a sociology degree is about seven percent, and their
Speaker 5: medium wage, if they do have a gig, is forty
Speaker 5: five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: According to the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 5: Bank, Social grads can earn twice as much working on
Speaker 5: an auto assembly line, which pays an average hundred thousand
Speaker 5: dollars a year. Good gig, but not many want it.
Speaker 5: The reality is that masses a young people, writes Alicia Finley,
Speaker 5: who again as a genius, has been taught that capitalism
Speaker 5: is exploitive. They don't want to work in factories. They'd
Speaker 5: rather mooch off taxpayers or their parents. How CHORL Marx
Speaker 5: is that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Some of it is that, I'm sure, But I just
Speaker 4: I think a lot of it is just the cultural
Speaker 4: that would be embarrassing for your parents and for you
Speaker 4: if you worked over it the whatever factory. Yeah. More
Speaker 4: embarrassing in our current society than if you just live
Speaker 4: at home and you know you say you're a day trader.
Speaker 4: It's more embarrassing to have a job at a plant
Speaker 4: than to live with your parents.
Speaker 2: But I think it is.
Speaker 5: Or having taken six years to get an undergrad degree
Speaker 5: in gender studies, you're now getting a master's degree in
Speaker 5: the theoretical decolonialization of art, or whatever the s.
Speaker 4: They sometimes think for soft people. Man, there is no
Speaker 4: more iron law of humanity than that.
Speaker 6: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty the Armstrong and Getty show.
Speaker 1: Thank You.
Speaker 4: In Los Angeles, jury has awarded a man fifty million
Speaker 4: dollars after he was seriously burned by a Starbucks drink. Now,
Speaker 4: the person got burnt pretty good, but I had to
Speaker 4: on his junk, on his junk and says he can't
Speaker 4: have sex anymore. Although you would make that argument if
Speaker 4: you're trying to get fifty million dollars. So whether that's
Speaker 4: accurate or not, I do not know. But and I'm
Speaker 4: not a lawyer, but I don't know how you work
Speaker 4: this out in society. On one hand, I'm going through
Speaker 4: the drive through at Starbucks. I don't deserve to be
Speaker 4: maimed for life.
Speaker 2: No, certainly not in my privets.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, it's an impossible expectation that nothing
Speaker 4: ever goes wrong ever, And you know, nailing down whether
Speaker 4: it was the employee's fault or the person in the
Speaker 4: car's fault is difficult. I mean, if you ever go
Speaker 4: to Starbucks and you get more than one drink, they
Speaker 4: give you that cardboard holder that the drinks fit in,
Speaker 4: and this person claimed that they didn't secure the tea in.
Speaker 4: It was sitting at an angle and then it spilled.
Speaker 4: Oh maybe it was or maybe you hit it on
Speaker 4: the window or with youurob or whatever. I don't know,
Speaker 4: but anyway, you can't get everything perfect all the time.
Speaker 2: Fifty million dollars.
Speaker 4: The problem with this, to me is what it's what
Speaker 4: drives so many of the things that make us nuts
Speaker 4: in life. The fact that the school won't let your
Speaker 4: kid play if it's rained the last two days, you
Speaker 4: have to stay inside for reassss because they might slip,
Speaker 4: and some jury will award one hundred million dollars. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just it's an unworkable situation for society. So I
Speaker 4: don't and you know you wouldn't want Starbucks to be
Speaker 4: able to like, here comes my girlfriend's ex boyfriend. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna throw hot tea in his face at the drive through,
Speaker 4: and there'd be no penalty for that.
Speaker 2: I mean, so there's gotta be a ligne somewhere obviously.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I just think we've gotten so far off tracks a society,
Speaker 5: because it's very different than virtually any other legal system
Speaker 5: on Earth. You're not going to get a fifty million
Speaker 5: dollar reward like this in Argentina or or probably Britain.
Speaker 5: I don't think, but I don't think we as people
Speaker 5: understand how far off we've gotten.
Speaker 4: And a big reason for that. What is the number
Speaker 4: one profession among legislators.
Speaker 2: It's not even close. You know, it's an attorney, right,
Speaker 2: And the whole jury thing where this is one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that we regularly say, you know, don't make
Speaker 2: those jokes about how to get out of jury duty.
Speaker 2: Show up on the jury so you could say, so
Speaker 2: you could be there as a smart person, say fifty
Speaker 2: fifty million dollars is insane, Yes, because you got to.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing you got a jury fro of peoples of
Speaker 2: Starbucks is rich, they can afford it. I don't like
Speaker 2: them anyway, you know that sort of thing, right, Yeah, yeah, boy.
Speaker 5: If there's one technology mankind has not perfected, it's the
Speaker 5: getting the cup lid to click on the cup thing
Speaker 5: in the world of coffee. And you know, granted, I'm
Speaker 5: an older fellow now, and I've learned the hard lessons
Speaker 5: of life, sometimes more than once, usually more than once
Speaker 5: before I absorb them. Boy, anybody who has boiling hot
Speaker 5: coffee and assumes that lid is on their right, you
Speaker 5: are a bold man and a foolish one.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I just when I heard that, I just thought,
Speaker 4: oh crap, this is going to lead to even more Sorry,
Speaker 4: we can't allow you to do this stuff, or you
Speaker 4: get like room temperature coffee, right, coffee can't ever be
Speaker 4: That might be the reaction from Starbucks, no more hot coffee.
Speaker 4: I know lots of people order stuff extra hot, because
Speaker 4: I've known Barista's order stuff extra hot. It's already so
Speaker 4: hot you can't drink it. But it's the idea that
Speaker 4: it'll be it's so hot that by the time you
Speaker 4: get to work on your fifteen minute commute, it'll still
Speaker 4: be hot. Well, I'll bet that goes out the window
Speaker 4: after this settlement.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I shouldn't say this, but everybody's thinking about it,
Speaker 5: so I will. So, this guy got fifty million dollars
Speaker 5: because he could never have sex again?
Speaker 2: Was he any good at it? I mean, does that
Speaker 2: factor into the juries?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean you think they should interview previous lovers
Speaker 4: and say, so, how much of a loss is this
Speaker 4: for humanity? Well?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean because it's obviously lost to him, no
Speaker 5: matter his skills, but to humanity, because shouldn't that be
Speaker 5: a fifty to fifty thing on asco Consortium, et cetera
Speaker 5: on a scale of me to wow?
Speaker 2: Where was he exactly?
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm asking these questions. I don't have the answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God dang it.
Speaker 1: Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and.
Speaker 6: Getty Show, The arm Strong and Getdy Show.
Speaker 4: So I mentioned this last week and we never got
Speaker 4: around to it. I'm glad we are now, and I'm
Speaker 4: looking forward to Joe's reaction to this. So this is
Speaker 4: Ezra Cline of The New York Times on Lex Friedman's
Speaker 4: podcast from a couple of weeks ago. And Lex Friedman's
Speaker 4: an interesting guy if you've never heard his podcast. First
Speaker 4: of all, they're all two to four hours. And I
Speaker 4: don't know who listens to those whole things, but he
Speaker 4: has people on of all different kinds of political stripes
Speaker 4: and worldviews and stuff like that, and he just wants
Speaker 4: to hear what they think. And he opened with this
Speaker 4: great question for Ezra Kline of the New York Times, who,
Speaker 4: if you don't know his act, he is a columnist, writer, liberal, progressive,
Speaker 4: not a bomb chucker though that's just his I mean,
Speaker 4: he's a really smart, he's an intellectual, but he's a progressive.
Speaker 4: And Lex had him on to say the first question
Speaker 4: was basically lay out the progressive point of view or
Speaker 4: the democrat point of view of the worldview. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 4: this is fantastic. I'm going to hear this from a
Speaker 4: smart guy. And I thought, I am going to listen
Speaker 4: to this podcast in my earbuds as I was like
Speaker 4: doing laundry or something like that, and I thought, I
Speaker 4: am going to, like in a relax manner, listen to this,
Speaker 4: see if I can find any common ground, like fully
Speaker 4: understand you know where they're coming from, right, not the
Speaker 4: cable news version, but like the intellectual version of how
Speaker 4: they see the world. And I didn't make it more
Speaker 4: than like thirty seconds before.
Speaker 2: I said out loud in my bedroom. Oh, you've got
Speaker 2: to be effing kidding me. So this is how it went.
Speaker 7: You can define the left in different ways. I think
Speaker 7: the left has a couple fundamental views. One is that
Speaker 7: life is unfair. We are born with different talents, We
Speaker 7: are born into different nations. Right, the luck of being
Speaker 7: born into America is very different than the luck of
Speaker 7: being born into Venezuela. We are born into different families.
Speaker 7: We have luck operating as an ominive presence across our
Speaker 7: entire lives, and as such, the people for whom it
Speaker 7: works out, well, we don't deserve all of that.
Speaker 4: We got lucky.
Speaker 7: I mean, we also worked hard, and we also had talent,
Speaker 7: and we also applied that talent. But at a very
Speaker 7: fundamental level, that we are sitting here is unfair, and
Speaker 7: that so many other people are in conditions that are
Speaker 7: much worse, much more precarious, much more exploited, is unfair.
Speaker 7: And one of the fundamental roles of government should not
Speaker 7: necessarily to turn that unfairness into perfect equality, but to
Speaker 7: rectify that unfairness into a kind of universal dignity. Right,
Speaker 7: So people can have lives of flourishing. So I'd say
Speaker 7: that's one thing. He has a very low voice for
Speaker 7: a child. Yeah, I'll hold back for now.
Speaker 2: I see what you mean. Though my eyes were wide.
Speaker 2: You don't deserve that.
Speaker 4: That's when I said in my bedroom, Oh, you gotta
Speaker 4: be effing king.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: Well, and I want to hear the next part, obviously,
Speaker 5: but he kind of denied his own purpose there at
Speaker 5: the end.
Speaker 4: We're not trying to come up with some perfect equality.
Speaker 7: But yeah, let's hear a little more and then we
Speaker 7: can discuss The left is fundamentally more skeptical of capitalism
Speaker 7: and part of the unchecked forms of capitalism than the right.
Speaker 7: I was like, this is hard to talk about because
Speaker 7: what we call unchecked capitalism is nevertheless very much supported
Speaker 7: by government. So I think in a way you have both,
Speaker 7: Like markets are things that are enforced by government. Whether
Speaker 7: they are you know, how you set the rules of
Speaker 7: them is what ends up different between the left and
Speaker 7: the right. But the left tends to be more worried
Speaker 7: about the fact that you could get rich building coal
Speaker 7: fired power plants belching pollution into the air, and you
Speaker 7: can get rich laying down solar panels. And the market
Speaker 7: doesn't know the difference between the two. And so there's
Speaker 7: a set of goals about regulating the unchecked potential of
Speaker 7: capitalism that also.
Speaker 4: Relates to sort of exploitation of workers.
Speaker 7: There's very fundamental questions about how much people get paid,
Speaker 7: how much power they have. Again, the rectification of economic
Speaker 7: and other forms of power is very fundamental to the left.
Speaker 2: Okay, So.
Speaker 4: It reminded me, of course, when Obama said, you didn't
Speaker 4: build that, that attitude, and I thought, okay, Aszra Klein
Speaker 4: just laying that out a little more clearly.
Speaker 2: I heard a.
Speaker 4: Podcast with this guy. He's got the most famous economics
Speaker 4: podcast in America. I can't remember what his name is,
Speaker 4: but anyway, and he's he leans left, but he his uh,
Speaker 4: his take on the whole. Okay, even if you've got
Speaker 4: a situation where where you like, in the most blatant example,
Speaker 4: it's not fair that this person, you know, they're born
Speaker 4: with a better brain, their parents got him a tutor,
Speaker 4: they had connections to get him into a better school.
Speaker 4: Whatever it is versus someone else, how is the government
Speaker 4: going to weigh in to fix it? He said, Even
Speaker 4: if I buy all the lack of fairness. In what
Speaker 4: sense could you structure a government that's gonna even that out,
Speaker 4: that doesn't do more harm than good? Well, exactly that
Speaker 4: the phrases the key one.
Speaker 5: And it is interesting to me to hear somebody who's
Speaker 5: obviously fairly intelligent, like Ezra Kleine, be so narrow in
Speaker 5: his vision, so incredibly unwise to not recognize that if
Speaker 5: you empower somebody, I was going to summarize his creed
Speaker 5: with as the following, I'm so smart, I and people
Speaker 5: like me should be in charge of everything because.
Speaker 2: We will make it good.
Speaker 5: But a guy who is reasonably intelligent to lack the
Speaker 5: wisdom to see that a government empowered to right all
Speaker 5: of these pick a un wrongs or equalize somehow or other,
Speaker 5: even if not a perfect equality, but like getting us
Speaker 5: halfway there, that government would be so awesome and not
Speaker 5: in the modern word like causing awe and horror, so
Speaker 5: powerful and monumentally huge.
Speaker 2: It would be terrifying. How do you miss that?
Speaker 4: As, oh, no, we would just do the good thing,
Speaker 4: not the bad stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, right, And then.
Speaker 4: The problem being that where you draw the line between
Speaker 4: unfair advantages that people didn't earn and choices that you
Speaker 4: make because lots of people make really really bad choices
Speaker 4: in life. I've made bad choices in life that damaged
Speaker 4: me a lot, and some people keep doing them. I
Speaker 4: don't dismiss the ideas. I haven't told my story about
Speaker 4: the uber driver I had the other day. Maybe I'll
Speaker 4: do that for the podcast today. But I was thinking
Speaker 4: in that trip, which was really sketchy, that this poor
Speaker 4: guy is never going to be able to do very
Speaker 4: well in life. So I got a better brain than
Speaker 4: he did. That is unfair, that's not his fault, it's
Speaker 4: not my credit. But then he got all the life
Speaker 4: choices that people make. And I've seen so many smart
Speaker 4: people make horrible life choices. What is the government gonna
Speaker 4: do to even out results there?
Speaker 5: And I've known the proverbial c student, Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 5: and I'm not gonna go with the old trope that
Speaker 5: but they're very straight smart and blah blah blah.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 5: I've known some people who aren't very bright, but they
Speaker 5: make good, sound moral decision after decision, and it benefited
Speaker 5: quite nicely from those decisions.
Speaker 2: Anyway, what makes.
Speaker 4: A person though again in the morning and want to
Speaker 4: pursue the idea of that person has more than that person.
Speaker 2: We need to get them closer together.
Speaker 5: What is that well, and the means that they use
Speaker 5: to pursue that goal or are often horrible from my
Speaker 5: point of view. I mean, if you have a charitable
Speaker 5: view of the world and you think I ought to
Speaker 5: do something to help those people, you have my full
Speaker 5: blessing until it becomes And what I am going to
Speaker 5: do is, at the point of the government's gun, take
Speaker 5: money from people and compel them to do these things,
Speaker 5: because that's the opposite of generosity, that's, you know, totalitarianism.
Speaker 5: I hate to even use the word fairness any context
Speaker 5: in this because it's become such a cliche, rhetorical cliche
Speaker 5: of the left, because people have an instinctive view of
Speaker 5: what fairness is from childhood on.
Speaker 2: That is, everything should be fair. That's at least the ideal.
Speaker 4: Whereas you know, being born with a better brain or
Speaker 4: a worse brain, or a taller, good looking or talented
Speaker 4: or whatever, that the difference.
Speaker 5: Among people is one hundred percent fair. It's a very
Speaker 5: definition of fairness. Nothing has been done by anybody to
Speaker 5: pervert the natural unfolding of it. Nobody cheated anybody.
Speaker 4: Right The Jefferson idea of just you go as far
Speaker 4: as your talent and effort will take you right exactly
Speaker 4: that it's there could be nothing more fair than you
Speaker 4: get dealt a.
Speaker 2: Hand in life.
Speaker 5: And then you've got to go from there with you know,
Speaker 5: the help of the people around you, and the people
Speaker 5: care about you, and the government protecting your rights. That's
Speaker 5: why the government exists, and off you go. Read Harrison
Speaker 5: Berger on the Great Kurt Vanna Gets Short Story. If
Speaker 5: you don't have a lot of time, read Thomas Soul's
Speaker 5: Conflict Divisions if you have more about this sort of thing.
Speaker 5: But I hate and it breaks my heart that my
Speaker 5: daughter is autistic and life will always be extremely difficult
Speaker 5: for her.
Speaker 2: I hate that. I adore her, but I wouldn't use
Speaker 2: the word unfair to describe that.
Speaker 1: It just is.
Speaker 4: I got kicked off of a jury before I made it,
Speaker 4: the only time I've ever made it this far to
Speaker 4: like actually get into the courtroom and they started the
Speaker 4: lawyer start asking me questions, And the question that got
Speaker 4: me kicked out was looking back to the starting point
Speaker 4: of your life where you've end up now, is it
Speaker 4: more or uh, the circumstance you were born into or
Speaker 4: your life's choices, and I went with life's choices and
Speaker 4: that got me kicked off jury that I think life's
Speaker 4: choice is unfair, unfair good vlun fair good good vocal
Speaker 4: fry from Ezra Klein. I don't know why, uh, socialism
Speaker 4: goes with vocal fry. I don't know why those two
Speaker 4: things go together. But I still think life choices have
Speaker 4: more to do with it than where you were born,
Speaker 4: who you were born to in brain power you have
Speaker 4: in terms of where you're gonna end ultimately end up.
Speaker 2: And he obviously does not believe that. Uh yeah.
Speaker 4: And then even if you agree with Azra Kleine, you're
Speaker 4: still at the point.
Speaker 2: Of how could the government fix that? Anyway?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 2: Right, And my response to all of it would be
Speaker 2: so what, So now what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: That is always the question at every moment of your life. Okay,
Speaker 2: so now what are you going to do?
Speaker 6: The Armstrong and Getty Show, Yeah, Borgia Orgio podcasts and
Speaker 6: Our Hot Lakes, the Armstrong.
Speaker 2: And Getty Show.
Speaker 5: So speaking of policy, and this is so incredibly important,
Speaker 5: Jack is afraid it will vanish into the dustbin of history,
Speaker 5: and I think he's probably right. But now even for instance,
Speaker 5: the New York Times is admitting keeping the schools closed
Speaker 5: was a horrific idea and utterly unnecessary.
Speaker 2: I called it a disaster before.
Speaker 5: No Mount Krakatoah, covering your village in Lava is a disaster.
Speaker 5: This was a crime, a partisan political crime, and the
Speaker 5: victims were children in society as a whole.
Speaker 4: And one of the worst things our government has ever done. Yes,
Speaker 4: I would agree absolutely. It was like the internment of
Speaker 4: the Japanese or whatever. You could even make a case
Speaker 4: for that. The scientific case for keeping the little kids
Speaker 4: out of school was null and void. Within a few
Speaker 4: months of the beginning of COVID.
Speaker 5: Anyway, New York Times writing paying the price, school children
Speaker 5: in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are still about a half
Speaker 5: year behind tip pre COVID reading levels. In Florida and Michigan,
Speaker 5: the gap is about three quarters of a year. In Maine,
Speaker 5: Oregon and Vermont, for instance, it's close to a full year.
Speaker 5: This morning, Group academic researchers released their latest report card
Speaker 5: on pandemic learning loss and it shows a disappointingly slow
Speaker 5: recovery in almost every state.
Speaker 4: And maybe closures, yes, and maybe you're going to get
Speaker 4: into this, or they get into this. But that's just
Speaker 4: measuring the learning without measuring the disruption to classes.
Speaker 2: We've heard from lots of teachers of kids are different now.
Speaker 4: They missed a couple of years of having to sit
Speaker 4: there and pay attention and get homework done, and they
Speaker 4: just they're not You can't get them back in the group.
Speaker 2: They don't really get into that.
Speaker 5: And I'm really glad you brought that up, because the
Speaker 5: socio psychological damage to kids, hell, that might make the
Speaker 5: reading scores look like you know, Irish school closures during
Speaker 5: COVID set children back in most districts have not been
Speaker 5: able to make up the lost ground, obviously, partly because kids,
Speaker 5: when they're that young, they absorb information in a way
Speaker 5: that I envy with every fiber of me. And you
Speaker 5: can't just have them not do that for a while
Speaker 5: and say, all right, now we're going to do it
Speaker 5: even more than usual. It's not the way kids work. Yeah,
Speaker 5: does everybody not know that or whatever?
Speaker 4: But anyway, up until about age eight, your brain runs
Speaker 4: about a thousand times faster and does after that. You
Speaker 4: take a kid out of school for two years before
Speaker 4: age eight, oh my god, you've done damage.
Speaker 2: To them, Yes, that's a horrifying yeah.
Speaker 5: So and here we get into a couple of the
Speaker 5: more interesting specific aspects of this other A reason for
Speaker 5: the lack of, you know, catching up progress is school absences.
Speaker 5: The huge rise has continued long after COVID, says Thomas Kane,
Speaker 5: Harvard Economists, member of the research team that we're going
Speaker 5: to talk about a little bit, said, the pandemic may
Speaker 5: have been the earthquake, but heightened absenteeism is that tsunami.
Speaker 4: And it's still rolling through school, right, that part, not
Speaker 4: just not showing up to school, is still a problem.
Speaker 5: And as I've said many times, when the New York
Speaker 5: Times isn't being just unforgivably idiotically biased, they actually do
Speaker 5: some pretty good deep dive reporting and they look into
Speaker 5: the state variations. According to a new report from scholars
Speaker 5: at your big name universities comparing performances across states.
Speaker 4: I hope you're not going to tell me that blue
Speaker 4: cities and states even got poorer performance than red I
Speaker 4: hope you're not gonna come.
Speaker 2: I'm going to need you to sit down, need you
Speaker 2: to brace yourself.
Speaker 5: Michael Jack's about to need a big hug, all right,
Speaker 5: and you know how he loves that from other males.
Speaker 5: So today's report shows a wide variety of outcomes. In
Speaker 5: the states that have made up the most ground, they're
Speaker 5: getting close to how they were doing five years ago,
Speaker 5: but the overall picture is not good. And I will
Speaker 5: skip some of the specific stats and get to what
Speaker 5: they call the Blue Red divide. Political leaders in red
Speaker 5: and blue America made different decisions during the pandemic.
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom, I'm.
Speaker 5: Looking at you, you lying monster, Chris Ker, child grooming
Speaker 5: scumback because.
Speaker 4: Red death Santus and people like that wanted kids to
Speaker 4: die for some reason. They enjoy stacks of dead children
Speaker 4: at their schools right exactly.
Speaker 5: Many schools in heavily democratic area stayed closed for almost
Speaker 5: a year from the spring of twenty twenty to the
Speaker 5: spring of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4: Or long.
Speaker 2: It was longer than that around here were cal Unicornia.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: In some Republican areas, by contrast, schools remain closed only
Speaker 5: for the spring of twenty twenty and opened right up.
Speaker 5: And this helps explain a partisan gap in learning loss.
Speaker 2: How you get in the specific status.
Speaker 4: I can't believe this wasn't more fairly reported on or
Speaker 4: discussed or whatever.
Speaker 2: I use this example all the time because I got
Speaker 2: it in my own life.
Speaker 4: I got two schools seven miles apart, the public school
Speaker 4: and the private school. My son's now in. The private
Speaker 4: school barely shut down at all. The public schools closed
Speaker 4: for like two years. And there were not I was joking,
Speaker 4: there were not stacks of dead children everywhere. Teachers, our teachers.
Speaker 2: The private school was fine.
Speaker 4: Now, how do you explain that, teachers union public schools.
Speaker 4: How do you explain that that school's open over there,
Speaker 4: and it's not like they got tons extra money for
Speaker 4: some sort of special ventilation or something like that.
Speaker 2: What a joke.
Speaker 5: Randy Weingarten, the head of the Big teachers Union, who
Speaker 5: is a demon from hell sent to punish us for
Speaker 5: our sins, used it like other unions did, as leverage.
Speaker 5: You want the kids back in. I can tell you
Speaker 5: really really want the kids back in. You got to
Speaker 5: give us more money. You got to give us more
Speaker 5: of this, You got to give us more of that.
Speaker 5: No than the kids stay home.
Speaker 4: I fully believe she was doing that and knew that,
Speaker 4: And I honestly don't know how she sleeps at night.
Speaker 2: I don't because she has no conscience.
Speaker 4: She's a monster.
Speaker 2: You are a monster.
Speaker 4: You certainly don't care about children. I mean, you're beyond
Speaker 4: not caring about them. You're fine with them having awful
Speaker 4: lives if you can have more power. You're a disgusting
Speaker 4: human being.
Speaker 5: But you know what she's like, ya ya Sinwar of
Speaker 5: Hamas she cares in children insomuch as they are leverage,
Speaker 5: just like Cinar and Homoski's about Palestinian citizens.
Speaker 2: Deaths are leverage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I put it in that category, but I know
Speaker 4: plenty of teachers that that's not what their angle was.
Speaker 4: They believed the whole it was too dangerous to have
Speaker 4: schools open thing for summer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because Trump said it was good to open them.
Speaker 4: The left went crazy explaining how incredibly unwise that would
Speaker 4: be and if there needed to be more horrifying irony
Speaker 4: for the political left.
Speaker 5: All kids were hurt pretty badly. Poor kids were just decimated.
Speaker 4: To Armstrong and Geddy on demand, we're not boring.
Speaker 2: A lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing.
Speaker 4: It makes you angry. You don't want to live your
Speaker 4: life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong, he's Joe Getty.
Speaker 4: We're Armstrong in Getty. We try to bring you the
Speaker 4: truth and help you figure out this crazy modern world.
Speaker 4: About something about a comedic tone.
Speaker 2: We have a winner. Yes, listen to Armstrong.
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