Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2: Arm Strong and get Ki and no Hee.
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Getty strong Man. Welcome to a replay of
Speaker 3: the Armstrong and Getty Show. We are on vacation, but boy,
Speaker 3: do we have some good stuff for you. Yes, indeed
Speaker 3: we do. And if you want to catch up on
Speaker 3: your ang listening during your travels, remember grabbing podcast Armstrong
Speaker 3: and Getty on demand. You ought to subscribe wherever you
Speaker 3: like to get podcasts. Now on with the infotainment. Some
Speaker 3: breaking news just.
Speaker 4: Out of our newsroom here at Fox thirteen. A man
Speaker 4: is in the hospital after being shot in the leg overnight.
Speaker 4: If the police say he was shot by his dog, seriously,
Speaker 4: I don't think that's right. This happened just before four
Speaker 4: am at a home on Whitney Avenue in Fraser Wow.
Speaker 4: Police say the man was lying in the bed with
Speaker 4: a girl with a gun on the bed. Police say
Speaker 4: his dog jumped up on the bed, got his paul
Speaker 4: stuck in the trigger and ended up hitting the trigger,
Speaker 4: shooting the man in the thigh.
Speaker 3: Wow accident.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the dog claims you pretend to throw the
Speaker 5: tennis ball, you stick it in the couch cushion one
Speaker 5: too many times?
Speaker 3: Right, And Dora, I'm supposed to be there in the
Speaker 3: bed next to you. And who's this? Huh? You cheating bastard.
Speaker 3: When's the last time I went for a walk? Can
Speaker 3: you even remember? Pow? Wow wow, bad boy, bad dog.
Speaker 5: The dog ties him to a chair like reservoir dogs.
Speaker 5: I'm not putting up with this anymore.
Speaker 3: Right, Wait, so Jack Michael, do we have that the
Speaker 3: two rappers were talking and gunshots went off? That's a
Speaker 3: candidate for clip of the year. So I like the way.
Speaker 5: Clearly this news anchor who's got a bit of a
Speaker 5: kent Brockman Will Ferrell vibe.
Speaker 3: Yes he does.
Speaker 5: Apparently was just handed this breaking news not knowing he
Speaker 5: was about to do a story about a man who
Speaker 5: was shot by a dog at four am. Yeah, so
Speaker 5: could happen. It's also possible that he was messing around
Speaker 5: with his gun, or she shot him or something. They
Speaker 5: don't want to tell anybody what actually happened, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's that's at least, although you know, it's not implausible
Speaker 3: that if you are living the lifestyle where you're lying
Speaker 3: in bed with quote unquote a girl who wrote that story?
Speaker 3: Do they need a woman? I would hope. And there's
Speaker 3: a gun laying there for some reason, you can't put
Speaker 3: it on the nightstand even Yeah, you're living the sort
Speaker 3: of lifestyle where your dog shoots. Maybe he or she
Speaker 3: likes the gun pointed at them during their romantic times. Oh,
Speaker 3: good lord, remember seeing.
Speaker 5: No I remember seeing that in the Sopranos, Remember one
Speaker 5: of them. Somebody liked having a gun to their head.
Speaker 3: Tawdry? Its way too tawdry. No, a dog just shot someone.
Speaker 3: This is time for frank talk. The pets are rising
Speaker 3: up as I predicted. Go ahead, Michael, and choices we
Speaker 3: got in life, those were your choices.
Speaker 2: Somebody got shot. Oh how good?
Speaker 3: Hold on the dirty dead? What do I want with
Speaker 3: my idea?
Speaker 2: Don't shut me?
Speaker 3: Everybody, everybody, everybody that's the sort of guy who's in
Speaker 3: bed with a girl and a dog shoots. They have
Speaker 3: a much more relaxed, lighthearted view of shootings in the room.
Speaker 3: On fire, shootings in the room. I mean, it's not
Speaker 3: even an accidental shooting at the range or outdoors or something.
Speaker 3: We're in a room with a number of people, A
Speaker 3: gun guts off. Somebody's been shot. You good, I've been shot?
Speaker 3: You good? You good? Everybody good? Okay, So as I
Speaker 3: was saying, why you've different a different lifestyle than I have?
Speaker 3: Who shot? Who?
Speaker 2: Somebody got shot?
Speaker 3: All right? Anyway, what are your plans today? You guys hungry?
Speaker 3: I'm hungry? Yeah? Crazy?
Speaker 5: Can I want to hear that other one, just the
Speaker 5: beginning part where the news anchor gets to the because
Speaker 5: I just find this funny.
Speaker 4: We want to get you to some breaking news just
Speaker 4: out of our newsroom here at Fox thirteen. A man
Speaker 4: is in the hospital after being shot in the leg
Speaker 4: overnight if his police say he was shot his dog. Seriously,
Speaker 4: I don't think that's right. This happened just before four am.
Speaker 3: Heah, you don't know.
Speaker 4: The dog Hitney Avenue in the Fraser Wow. Police say
Speaker 4: the man was lying in the bed with a girl
Speaker 4: with a gun on the bed. Police say his dog
Speaker 4: jumped up on the bed, got his paul stuck in
Speaker 4: the trigger and ended up hitting the trigger, shooting the
Speaker 4: man in the thigh.
Speaker 3: Wow. Four in the morning. I ain't eating lambon rice anymore.
Speaker 3: Give me some real freaking food. Was it a hunting dog? Oh?
Speaker 5: Boy, so there's actual love and of course some background checks.
Speaker 5: We don't know any of those things. Gun loopholes, what
Speaker 5: went on there?
Speaker 3: Wow? Wow? Well, and if I was going to make
Speaker 3: a serious point about it, that's the very sort of
Speaker 3: person the Democratic prosecutors would never enforce gun laws against.
Speaker 3: They howl for more gun laws constantly. And then I'm confused.
Speaker 3: You know what I walked into that didn't I? Yes,
Speaker 3: you know, Perhaps it's best to just move on to
Speaker 3: other fair I don't know why I enjoy giving jiv
Speaker 3: names to features sets of stories, but I do. Jack,
Speaker 3: So you get the choice between golden state of confusion
Speaker 3: or how markets really work, I'll go much more sober
Speaker 3: just because the lack of jiviness. I'm just curious after
Speaker 3: the ridiculousness. Yeah, okay, So story number one why the
Speaker 3: US keeps losing to China in the battle over critical
Speaker 3: minerals Because everybody knows that the minerals, the rarest the
Speaker 3: metals everybody's talking about that go into so much new technology.
Speaker 3: He or they who control access to those things controls
Speaker 3: the world economy to a large extent, And the obvious
Speaker 3: issue with that is that if we continue to be
Speaker 3: highly dependent on China to come up with those materials.
Speaker 3: We're screwed as an economy the minute they decide to
Speaker 3: tweak us or bring us to our knees. So you
Speaker 3: have this story of the effort to get a big
Speaker 3: giant New America and our allies run graphite mine and
Speaker 3: the goal to challenge China's dominance over the world supply
Speaker 3: of a critical mineral used in everything from electric vehicles
Speaker 3: to submarine hubs. And so this Australia based mining company,
Speaker 3: backed by more than one hundred million dollars of US
Speaker 3: government financing, maybe a worthy goal. Kind of funny, there
Speaker 3: wasn't any discussion of this, but this is what our
Speaker 3: giant government does. Opened a mine in Mozambique and built
Speaker 3: a graphite processing plant in Louisiana, the first of its
Speaker 3: type in the US, and also signed a sales deal
Speaker 3: with Tesla, which is historically brought graph height for cars
Speaker 3: from China for the batteries specifically. But then things started
Speaker 3: to go off the rails. China, which provides more than
Speaker 3: ninety percent of the world's battery grade graph height supply,
Speaker 3: jacked up its production.
Speaker 5: How many what did the market? How many stories include
Speaker 5: China supplies ninety eight percent of this or that way
Speaker 5: too many.
Speaker 3: And whether Trump's plans bear fruit or not, and whether
Speaker 3: He's allowed to even get the plans going fully is
Speaker 3: anybody's guess. But this is the very sort of thing
Speaker 3: that he and his advisors are trying to wean us
Speaker 3: from this sort of dependence. But anyway, the gist of
Speaker 3: the story is so China, which provides more ninety percent
Speaker 3: of the world's battery grade graph height supply, jacked up
Speaker 3: its production, flooding the market and driving prices so low
Speaker 3: that this mine, this company could not mine profitably. Wow.
Speaker 3: Last May, the Biden administration delayed new rules that would
Speaker 3: have penalized US buyers from buying Chinese graphite for reasons
Speaker 3: that I don't recall, probably because they were trying to
Speaker 3: get Shijin Ping to do something. In Mozambique, farmers resettled
Speaker 3: from the mining company's mind staged protests, shutting down the mining,
Speaker 3: and the Louisiana plant, now open for a year, has
Speaker 3: yet to make its first commercial sale, and the company's
Speaker 3: stock is plunged by around ninety percent since the start
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's really interesting and once again the difficulties of
Speaker 5: a an authoritarian country where one guy can make decisions
Speaker 5: in a democracy.
Speaker 3: That's tough. Yeah, and as always, there's a lot more
Speaker 3: detail and nuance to it, but we'll leave it here.
Speaker 3: I love, love, love, love love the free market in
Speaker 3: so many ways. It's lifted billions of people out of poverty,
Speaker 3: on lace new medicines across the globe. It has profit
Speaker 3: is the reason for charity. It's the reason charity exists.
Speaker 3: You have to have more than you need to feed
Speaker 3: yourself to to give to charity. Anyway, as we retrench
Speaker 3: from the dream of globalization, though, there are going to
Speaker 3: be some rainings in of the free market, and it's
Speaker 3: going to be stops and starts. It's going to be
Speaker 3: really difficult anyway not to get hung up on that,
Speaker 3: because you could talk about it for a year and
Speaker 3: a half and write five thousand page books on it
Speaker 3: and not cover it. I thought this was interesting, how
Speaker 3: markets really are. Jack the rise and fall of the
Speaker 3: Napa Valley of Cannabis. When Colorado became one of the
Speaker 3: first states to legalize a recreational marriage. You wanna and
Speaker 3: an enthusiastic county commissioner in Pueblo said he wanted Pueblo
Speaker 3: to become the Napa Valley of cannabis. And they talk
Speaker 3: a little bit in the Wall Street Journal about the situation.
Speaker 3: Big slaughterhouse had closed years earlier, steel mill had been
Speaker 3: shedding workers. They're really hurting for jobs and tax revenue,
Speaker 3: and a cannabis boom would do that for them. The
Speaker 3: streets were going to be paved with gold, recalled one resident.
Speaker 3: The elementary schools were going to be the great just
Speaker 3: in the country. Then they talk about, you know, the
Speaker 3: classic meme, how it started, how it's going. In the
Speaker 3: first weeks, the only two shops then licensed in the county,
Speaker 3: round rang Up combined one million dollars in sales the
Speaker 3: first month, Wow, sending fifty six thousand dollars in taxes
Speaker 3: to the county Colorado. Everybody was just thrilled and happy.
Speaker 3: Decade and high. Decade later, Pueblo's dreams have gone up
Speaker 3: in smoke. A once thriving industry of retailers, growers, and
Speaker 3: cannabis oil extractors. There were more than two hundred of
Speaker 3: these businesses in twenty seventeen in that county, more than
Speaker 3: two hundred. It's collapsed only forty five remain. State records
Speaker 3: indicate county tax revenue plunged from more than seven point
Speaker 3: one million dollars to four point eight million twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: which is still a pretty significant amount of money. And
Speaker 3: you could argue that they're just thinning the herd and
Speaker 3: the stronger surviving the way it goes in capitalism. But
Speaker 3: here's the problem. In California knows this too. It's been
Speaker 3: a huge problem because the rosy rosy promise is made
Speaker 3: to Californians in Colorado and is alike. Even after legalization,
Speaker 3: illicit growers and sellers thrived, even right in Pueblo. Last year,
Speaker 3: they accounted for seventy percent of the US market, according
Speaker 3: to research companies. The black market dealers, unlike licensed ones,
Speaker 3: face neither Texas nor red tape, so they're more efficient
Speaker 3: and they're cheaper, and it's bad for your brain. That's interesting, man.
Speaker 3: If you're counting on enough people smoking enough pot to
Speaker 3: you know, make your schools great and everything like that,
Speaker 3: that's just that's an interesting thing. It is, and it's
Speaker 3: probably not a sustainable way to run a society. Nationwide,
Speaker 3: only twenty seven percent of legal cannabis businesses are profitable,
Speaker 3: which is down two percent just three years ago. Did
Speaker 3: not know that. Yeah, investment is dried up, restructurings are rising,
Speaker 3: and in Pueblo, sentiment about legal pot is swung the
Speaker 3: other way, fueling a backlash against the county's embrace of
Speaker 3: the industry. And again, it's kind of complicated and a
Speaker 3: lot of nuance to it, but it's just it's not
Speaker 3: nearly the dream it was sold to be. So ill
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. And the one the one aspect you should
Speaker 3: understand it's kind of intuitive is that if it's legal,
Speaker 3: enforcing laws against the illegal stuff becomes so complicated because
Speaker 3: you know, half of it sixty percent of it, depending
Speaker 3: on where you are, is legal. And so what are
Speaker 3: the coups supposed to do if they see a bunch
Speaker 3: of guys smoking pot?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Arm Strong?
Speaker 2: Why listen to arms Strong and Geddy on demand?
Speaker 3: We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and
Speaker 3: tedious and depressing. It makes you angry. You don't want
Speaker 3: to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong,
Speaker 3: he's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong in Getty. We try to
Speaker 3: bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy.
Speaker 6: Modern world about something about a comedic tone.
Speaker 3: We have a one er. Yes, listen to Armstrong You
Speaker 3: Getty on demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
Speaker 3: wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3: We had a conversation last week that I was very
Speaker 3: uncomfortable with, and I felt very guilty about it because
Speaker 3: I concealed a truth during the conversation, confession being good
Speaker 3: for the soul. I am here to confess it. But
Speaker 3: like all good confessions, they work best in a multiple
Speaker 3: choice format. And so I'm going to give you multiple choices,
Speaker 3: but to up the ante, each of the choices will
Speaker 3: get successively more evil. Oh boy, and you have to
Speaker 3: choose which one I am actually guilty of. I'm so
Speaker 3: uncomfortable right now. A I, Joe Getty have a second
Speaker 3: wife across town, with whom I have two children. She
Speaker 3: is in a legal alien and I keep her in
Speaker 3: line by threatening her with deportation. Well, what's what's okay?
Speaker 5: What's striking about this is you clearly didn't do that,
Speaker 5: but you're going up the landing at worse.
Speaker 3: They're going to get worse. Yes, yes, okay, anybody want
Speaker 3: to go for a or you want to go on,
Speaker 3: you want to roll the dice anybody, Michael, Clearly that's
Speaker 3: not true. Okay, all right, b I am now and
Speaker 3: have been for thirty years an active member of the
Speaker 3: American Communist Party, and have been working to subvert the
Speaker 3: Constitution with every ounce of my energy up to and
Speaker 3: including acts of violence and sabotage.
Speaker 5: So I think I think you've laid a really good
Speaker 5: premise here because you've given two very bad choices obviously
Speaker 5: not true.
Speaker 3: Whatever something? What are hell did you do that? Right?
Speaker 6: Am I going to want to associate with you after this?
Speaker 3: I don't know, Comrade. Perhaps again from a conversation last
Speaker 3: week in which I can seal the truth or possibility, say,
Speaker 3: I had never seen Gladiator until this weekend. Oh wow, WHOA,
Speaker 3: you saw the movie Gladiator? My secret shame? Gladiator one?
Speaker 3: You were noted along with every conversation? Are you not entertained?
Speaker 3: Ha ha ha? I assume grow. I assume you went
Speaker 3: along with the factors because I watched it with my
Speaker 3: son Henry a couple of weeks back before we went
Speaker 3: to Gladiator two. He loved it and it reminded me
Speaker 3: how much great it was. But I said it might
Speaker 3: be in my top three movies of all time, and
Speaker 3: I did not at that moment reveal you know, I've
Speaker 3: never seen that Moe. Wow, that was good because I
Speaker 3: knew the derision that would rain down upon Were you
Speaker 3: probably okay twenty years ago?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you were in the middle of raising kids. So no,
Speaker 5: of course you didn't see that movie because I am
Speaker 5: a house full of babies, including a one year old. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I didn't see anything between I don't know whatever years
Speaker 5: twenty ten and like a year ago.
Speaker 6: I am impressed, Joe, because you carried on a full
Speaker 6: blown conversation about that movie as if you it was
Speaker 6: one of your favorites.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I read a lot, so I pick
Speaker 3: up clues from the you know, contexts and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: But you know, Jack, you make a good point. I
Speaker 3: remember roughly when the movie came out. Hey, dude, you
Speaker 3: got to see this is great. It's an unbelievable movie,
Speaker 3: great guy and villain. It's like two and a half
Speaker 3: hours long, and I'm my responss chance or if I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have a couple two three hours, I'm gonna spend
Speaker 3: it silently staring at a screen when you could hang
Speaker 3: out with your wife or doing something. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: not gonna happen. It was fun. Nobody could do what
Speaker 3: Russell Crow did. I don't know what magic he had there,
Speaker 3: but can you tell me you like Gladiator movies, Armstrong.
Speaker 2: And the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 7: Wall Street suffering it's worst day of the year, the
Speaker 7: Dow closing nearly nine hundred points down after the President
Speaker 7: refused to rule out that the US could be heading
Speaker 7: into a recession.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, a lot of negative headlines about Wall Street yesterday.
Speaker 5: I'm always interested in that. In that a lot, a lot,
Speaker 5: a lot of Americans aren't in the stock market, and
Speaker 5: it's I'd like to know what percentage of the audience
Speaker 5: that watches mainstream evening news is in the stock market,
Speaker 5: other than.
Speaker 3: Are you including four one ks in that m Maybe
Speaker 3: maybe not.
Speaker 5: I don't know investments, but certainly the average person watching
Speaker 5: the evening news is not into the daily ups and
Speaker 5: downs of.
Speaker 3: The stock market. True, they're in the long you know,
Speaker 3: the law game.
Speaker 5: And and very little context ever around any of this
Speaker 5: stuff anytime. And I'm not just like now just always
Speaker 5: there's almost no context. Biggest point drop whatever. Sometimes they
Speaker 5: use points because it's more dramatic. Sometimes the percentage whatever,
Speaker 5: and they go back and forth, and it's all very
Speaker 5: it's it's designed to make it sound as great or
Speaker 5: as awful as possible, to make it more exciting. But anyway,
Speaker 5: New York christ and known this has been a big
Speaker 5: down for the last week and a half or whatever
Speaker 5: since the Tarif announcement. No doubt about that. New York
Speaker 5: Post headline today, Buckle up NASGA. Dax suffers biggest loss
Speaker 5: in three years. Dow falls eight ninety after Trump recession
Speaker 5: dodge after Trump didn't absolutely just flat out say.
Speaker 3: No to the recession question.
Speaker 5: It's amazing how much news that made that one answer.
Speaker 5: And he knew that, Like I said yesterday, he's aware
Speaker 5: of that. He he double down on air Force one.
Speaker 3: Essentially, the significance of it is he didn't say we
Speaker 3: will do everything we need to to avoid a recession.
Speaker 5: That's why that's significant, right, which gets to what we
Speaker 5: were saying last hour. I wish he would give some
Speaker 5: sort of speech where he explains what his long game
Speaker 5: in is and why I think he can get more
Speaker 5: people on board or calmed down.
Speaker 3: I think that is so obviously a great idea. It
Speaker 3: is shocking to me. It hasn't happened yet. Drudge hates Trump,
Speaker 3: but his headlines economy cracks, stocks lose four trillion dollars. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's one of the things about the news reporting.
Speaker 5: I feel like it's for people who don't understand that
Speaker 5: that money didn't actually disappear never to come back. It's
Speaker 5: the stock is down and yet adds up to four trillion.
Speaker 5: But unless you sold yesterday, you didn't actually lose the money,
Speaker 5: and it could be back up in two weeks and
Speaker 5: nothing happened.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, and you quote unquote lost the money
Speaker 3: from if you would have sold it three weeks ago.
Speaker 3: So it's all imaginary. It's not even on paper, it's
Speaker 3: in the ether.
Speaker 5: So getting to Mark Alprin's newsletter today, who I think
Speaker 5: he is a fair arbiter of these sorts of things,
Speaker 5: and he gets a lot of He has a lot
Speaker 5: of connections in left and right, Republican and Democrat. He
Speaker 5: wrote this Monday, when job boning by all Trump economic
Speaker 5: advisors could not stop a market selloff or deter business leaders,
Speaker 5: economic analysts, analysts, Paul's and Trump supporters from calling, texting,
Speaker 5: and emailing me to say the sky is falling, and
Speaker 5: it is in their collective view explicitly and unambiguously Trump's fault.
Speaker 5: In my career, I don't recall anything quite like Munday
Speaker 5: as Whoosh, Team Trump lost the confidence of a bunch
Speaker 5: of key actors in one fell swoop. I thought that
Speaker 5: was interesting that behind the scenes a lot of people
Speaker 5: that normally really really big on Trump recalling Mark Auperton
Speaker 5: and saying, what the hell is he doing?
Speaker 3: The business world, the American business world, was absolutely confident
Speaker 3: that Trump would slash regulations and make permanent tax cuts
Speaker 3: and that would be his main thrust. This whole call
Speaker 3: it protectionism, you know, seeking a new global norm for trade,
Speaker 3: whatever you want to call it, is surprising to them
Speaker 3: and it's led to a great deal of uncertainty. Business
Speaker 3: hates uncertainty, right. And then got to get to what
Speaker 3: I was talking about yesterday, which I fully fully believe.
Speaker 3: I mean, don't feel like the Wall Street journal crowd
Speaker 3: has your best interest in mind. They have the best
Speaker 3: interest of like what's gonna make the Dow close higher
Speaker 3: today for a lot of the crowd who actually does
Speaker 3: day trade or certainly this quarter, not what's best for
Speaker 3: America long term, and you know, fortunately or unfortunately, I guess,
Speaker 3: and Ryan would say, that's the way it's supposed to work.
Speaker 5: You know, they're looking out for themselves. That's what drives
Speaker 5: the whole thing. But yeah, I would.
Speaker 3: Say, as a guy who reads practically cover to cover
Speaker 3: the journal every single day, they have a wide range
Speaker 3: of opinions and writers there. Not all of them are
Speaker 3: merely chasing quarterly profits.
Speaker 5: But I wanted to get to this and I didn't
Speaker 5: know this. So Mark Alpernan has a bunch of links
Speaker 5: to a whole bunch of different newspaper articles talking about
Speaker 5: the how much damage has been done, whether it's temporary,
Speaker 5: long term, blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: Than this team.
Speaker 5: Trump came in with the theory of the case that
Speaker 5: they could rebalance the economy by shifting economic activity back
Speaker 5: to the private sector from the public sector. It's part
Speaker 5: of the whole doge thing and tariffs together. Trump advisors
Speaker 5: have said they think the government is now twenty five
Speaker 5: percent of the economy. Mark Alprin said, in reality, it's
Speaker 5: way higher, maybe closer to fifty percent. Wow, what fifty
Speaker 5: percent of the economy is the government? With Medicare and medicaid.
Speaker 5: No one wants to admit it, but to a large extent,
Speaker 5: the US economy has really just become the US government
Speaker 5: spending in transfers. This is evidenced by the fact that
Speaker 5: we've been running huge fiscal deficits during strong economic times.
Speaker 5: And the new Terresury Secretary is proposed fixing this by
Speaker 5: cutting government spending with musk combined with tariffs to rebounce trade,
Speaker 5: to rebuild American manufacturing.
Speaker 3: But to bring it home, he gets into, we live
Speaker 3: in a wah blah blah blah blah blah. The top
Speaker 3: ten percent. Studies have shown there's a very high correlation
Speaker 3: between their propensity to spend with spending being you know,
Speaker 3: two thirds of our economies people going out and spending money,
Speaker 3: and where the stock prices are. For whatever reason, when
Speaker 3: the top ten percent are feeling wealthy, they buy stuff.
Speaker 3: But if they're not feeling wealthy, they don't. And this
Speaker 3: especially is true now, and this could get us into
Speaker 3: a real doom loop of tariffs, negative feelings, stock market
Speaker 3: going down, people pulling back, et cetera, et cetera, cutting
Speaker 3: the government, which is half the economy. You see, there's
Speaker 3: the spiral.
Speaker 5: If doge is laying off people and cutting the government,
Speaker 5: and it's fifty percent of the economy that automatically is
Speaker 5: going to drop the economy, which makes the rich ten
Speaker 5: percent spend less, which drops the economy.
Speaker 3: And it's just that, you see, it's a cycle that
Speaker 3: could catch on. Yeah. My My only objection to that
Speaker 3: theory or a question I have about it, is that
Speaker 3: what doge is doing is nibbling around the edges of
Speaker 3: the actual fiscal pie. True. I don't appreciate it because
Speaker 3: I like the edges of the pie. Oh fiscal piebius uh.
Speaker 3: And it's funny because you have conservatives saying they're they're
Speaker 3: they're not attacking entitlements and that's most of the budget
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah blah. But at the same time
Speaker 3: it might cause a doom loop. I just I don't
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Well, nobody ever knows on any of this stuff, as
Speaker 5: we've said for years, because if you were the old thing,
Speaker 5: if you ask you know, ten economists, you'll get eleven opinions.
Speaker 5: Or there's only two people that understand, uh, the global
Speaker 5: and they don't agree you know, any of those sayings.
Speaker 5: And but you know, if you could predict this stuff, well,
Speaker 5: you'd be the richest person on planet Earth, you know, immediately.
Speaker 5: So you know, there's a lot of moving pieces and
Speaker 5: theory and everything like that. But I do find that
Speaker 5: very troubling. Yeah, all of it's troubling.
Speaker 3: I find myself imagining if Trump were to craft the
Speaker 3: sort of message you've suggested, explaining exactly what his goals are,
Speaker 3: why it's going to be worth enduring a bit of
Speaker 3: pain or upheaval for a while, be it two years
Speaker 3: or more likely five or ten or fifteen or twenty years,
Speaker 3: because that would get the popular support. Doing something difficult
Speaker 3: would require, because there's one thing democracies are terrible at.
Speaker 3: That's doing what is difficult. Like in your family, you
Speaker 3: could say, hey, we are going to severely restrict spending
Speaker 3: for this year to get a down payment together to
Speaker 3: buy the house, or make the investment or open the
Speaker 3: business we've long dreamed of.
Speaker 5: You can do here on the wall of a house
Speaker 5: with a pool and say this is why we're doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, I've always been a fan of the
Speaker 3: like the thermometer thing where you actually track your savings,
Speaker 3: because it gives you enthusiasm for it. Judy and I
Speaker 3: used to do that when we were young. Anyway, as
Speaker 3: a family, you can do that. But democracies are famously
Speaker 3: horrible at saying all right, we're all going to endure
Speaker 3: some pain for a while, an austerity plan. It happens.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's hard to get going. I don't
Speaker 3: think we're grown up enough for this. I think we're
Speaker 3: too used to easy sailing, smooth saling. But even if
Speaker 3: Trump were to do that, though, Wall Street would probably
Speaker 3: freak out for a while, and then people would see it,
Speaker 3: would check their four one ks and freak out. And
Speaker 3: I just I don't know if we have the right
Speaker 3: stuff to institute what Trump's talking about before it's a
Speaker 3: horrible emergency.
Speaker 5: Well, imagine if Trump or somebody representing Trump came out
Speaker 5: and gave a speech says, look, half the economy is
Speaker 5: the government. Do you know that half the economy is
Speaker 5: the government? And that can't be that's not sustainable. And
Speaker 5: our debt is this, and our deficit is this, and
Speaker 5: you know our payments are this, and blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: And if that wasn't go ahead, sorry there's more.
Speaker 3: No, that's fine, I was gonna say. And if if
Speaker 3: that wasn't bad enough. Folks, here's the chunk of the
Speaker 3: economy that would collapse and you would starve if China
Speaker 3: decides to jump ugly. So A, we got to reign
Speaker 3: in the government. B. We've got to wean ourselves from
Speaker 3: being China junkies. Their economic heroin is is they're gonna
Speaker 3: pull it back on us, and we're gonna be on
Speaker 3: our hands and knees, and our economy is gonna be
Speaker 3: puking and turning green and pooping on itself. Wow, because
Speaker 3: they're gonna pull it out cold turkey. Do you want that?
Speaker 3: Do you want that? Huh? Okay, We're gonna restructure the economy.
Speaker 3: You would be a disgusting economics teacher. Yeah, but compelling.
Speaker 3: M Uh. There's no way this works because we have
Speaker 3: an election every two year. Years.
Speaker 5: Were already like a year away from constantly talking about
Speaker 5: the mid terms and uh, and and the Democrats are
Speaker 5: gonna run on He says, we can't blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: We say you you we can lose with me. Everybody says, yeah,
Speaker 3: I want everything for nothing, and and there you go.
Speaker 3: So to summarize, we're toomed.
Speaker 5: I'm moving along, aren't you glad you tuned in. Oh boy, Well,
Speaker 5: but everybody should me and everyone we should realize that
Speaker 5: we're not retiring today. What the stock market does today,
Speaker 5: unless you are retiring today. Somebody listening somewhere, if you.
Speaker 3: Would have restructured your your investments.
Speaker 5: If somebody somewhere on our seventy stations is listening, is
Speaker 5: retiring today or yesterday?
Speaker 3: He retired yesterday. I understand while you're upset.
Speaker 1: Sorry, sorry, Jack Armstrong and Joe Armstrong and Getty Show,
Speaker 1: The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3: So, speaking of generations, I thought this was both amusing
Speaker 3: and slightly annoying. But it's an article about how evidently
Speaker 3: some demographer social researcher by the name of Mark McCrindle
Speaker 3: has become the go to guy for naming generations. Never
Speaker 3: heard of this guy, and the just of the article
Speaker 3: is that he believes the whole like coming up with
Speaker 3: a groovy name for the generation and seeing if it
Speaker 3: catches on is kind of dumb.
Speaker 5: Well, I gotta believe that he or whoever was in charge,
Speaker 5: they came up with gen X way back in the day.
Speaker 3: I mean, this was the eighties when they started talking
Speaker 3: gen X and far cool list generation name by the way,
Speaker 3: not just because of my year of birth.
Speaker 5: And then at the meeting where they came up with
Speaker 5: jen Y, somebody should have raised their hand and say, hey,
Speaker 5: I see like a problem coming down the road we
Speaker 5: might want to get ahead of with this whole lettering fing.
Speaker 3: We're running out of letters in the ouphant, what are
Speaker 3: we gonna do? Well, you got this silent generation, who
Speaker 3: weren't silent at all at the old hodown. And then
Speaker 3: you got the Greatest generation, a fine generation, thanks for
Speaker 3: winning World War Two.
Speaker 2: But you know, some good somepod.
Speaker 3: Then you got the baby Boomers. There are a bunch
Speaker 3: of babies that once and now I'm a boomer, the
Speaker 3: most selfish generation that had ruined everything. Oh there's that
Speaker 3: is fair criticism. Hippies and yeah, damn hippies. And then
Speaker 3: then you got Generation X, again by far the coolest name.
Speaker 3: They go through a couple more letters, and then they
Speaker 3: having a run out of letters, they go with Millennials,
Speaker 3: and then then what's the next one? It doesn't matter anyway,
Speaker 3: So this guy says, oh, we got to quit screwing around.
Speaker 3: We'll just use Greek letters. Okay. So Generation Alpha just
Speaker 3: happened a while back, But now it's generation beta. When
Speaker 3: did alpha thing? Because I never even heard generation alpha?
Speaker 3: I know, I know, but apparently those who talk about
Speaker 3: this crap have. But anyway, the point is now it's
Speaker 3: generation beta, and of course beta is an insult in
Speaker 3: the modern world, right, it means, for instance, a weak
Speaker 3: and passive man or something. And so there are parents
Speaker 3: evidently who are offended now that their children are being
Speaker 3: What can we stop naming generations completely? What is a generation? Even?
Speaker 3: I mean Generation X fans for like twenty three years
Speaker 3: or something. This is crazy. Well, there's a number of
Speaker 3: problems with it that are fairly obvious. But at least
Speaker 3: back in the day, you know how much changed between
Speaker 3: you know, this decade and that decade, not a ton,
Speaker 3: Whereas now, holy crap, if you're growing up in the
Speaker 3: smartphone world, it's completely different than the pre smartphone world.
Speaker 3: It just is, right, So let's go with more descriptive
Speaker 3: names like the smartphonies or or all digital weirdos or
Speaker 3: I don't yeah, I'm just spitballing here, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: The change has been so massive so quickly you might
Speaker 3: have to go like every five and a half years, right,
Speaker 3: have a new quote unquote generation if you're cause you know,
Speaker 3: mostly I think it's useless. But if I'm a boss,
Speaker 3: and you can say, all right, this next person we've
Speaker 3: known or we've hired is a beta zoomer, and you
Speaker 3: look it up and you see, oh, beta zoomers are
Speaker 3: extremely insecure and need to be coddled like little kittens.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, they're rebellious and blah blah. It
Speaker 3: might be a tool to help you deal with them.
Speaker 5: Right, It seems like giant world changing events would be
Speaker 5: better than just picking years like every so many years,
Speaker 5: Like I mentioned, smartphones. COVID would be a good marker
Speaker 5: if you were, you know, in if you're in grade
Speaker 5: school during COVID, you, I know, teachers say those are
Speaker 5: different kinds of kids.
Speaker 3: How did jen X get its name? I mean, what
Speaker 3: a what a what does that even mean? How about
Speaker 3: Watergate and Vietnam made us very cynical? Plus half of
Speaker 3: our parents got divorced. I mean it's kind of long,
Speaker 3: but yeah, the latch Key generation anyway, Yeah, don't call
Speaker 3: them generation Beta. It's hurtful, so so dumb. Did you
Speaker 3: know that seventy percent of TikTok's revenue comes from live
Speaker 3: streaming gifts. When people are doing live streamy stuff, do
Speaker 3: you gifts or gifts gifts like presents. Yes, you can
Speaker 3: give people these little things that are called what are
Speaker 3: they called their like little tokens that they can redeem
Speaker 3: into real money. It's huge into sex live streaming. We
Speaker 3: need someone younger than us, Katie. Well, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: explain it to you, you old man. I need somebody
Speaker 3: who's done it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's you.
Speaker 6: Just go on and they have different dollar amounts, so
Speaker 6: you can send from fifty cents up to one thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: I think to tip them digitally exactly. That was at
Speaker 3: digital tips.
Speaker 5: Why did this catch on? Is it just easier or
Speaker 5: more fun or well as opposed to and mowing them
Speaker 5: or sending them a car.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's immeasurably easier. You have an account, you click click,
Speaker 3: they get a dollar your money, and then they can
Speaker 3: show you their blankety blank or whatever. And TikTok allegedly
Speaker 3: has filters for this, but they're super easy to get around.
Speaker 3: You just use slang terms, including local slang terms. Because
Speaker 3: it's global app and so there's an enormous child porn
Speaker 3: market on Hiktok, These underage girls from all over the world,
Speaker 3: who will you know, perform various acts or show off
Speaker 3: or whatever and uh and and TikTok gets a cut
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, I'll show you whatever part you
Speaker 5: want to see for a five spot.
Speaker 3: If there's any demand, give you a ten not to
Speaker 3: that's what I'll do. I'll start a bigging war and
Speaker 3: that's what I'll make my money. And they please don't.
Speaker 3: We'll win out, but I'll be the benefit. It's not temptation,
Speaker 3: it's extortion. I'll give you unny. It's a thread the Armstrong.
Speaker 2: And Getty Show. Yeah, more Jack, more shoe podcasts, and
Speaker 2: our hot links.