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 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent
Speaker 2: coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about,
Speaker 2: it just means the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 2: Happy Tuesday.
Speaker 3: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 3: we have, chrissal.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do a lot to get to you this morning.
Speaker 1: Some really interesting economic trends, some of which point in
Speaker 1: opposite directions. We want to break all of that down
Speaker 1: for you. Quite fascinating data that is coming out. Also,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court with a unanimous ruling on corruption very
Speaker 1: much limiting what the definite of corruption even is, so
Speaker 1: that's interesting to dig into, as well as involves a
Speaker 1: former Andrew Cuomo aid, so kind of remarkable case there.
Speaker 1: We also have Trump hitting DeSantis on abortion and pro
Speaker 1: life groups hitting.
Speaker 4: Trump on abortion, So a lot going on there.
Speaker 1: In the GOP primary, we have a bit of a
Speaker 1: reckoning within the diversity and inclusion industry and a totally
Speaker 1: nonsense piece for The New York Times that we got
Speaker 1: a break down for you.
Speaker 4: That Durham Report Long.
Speaker 1: Waited is out with some pretty remarkable conclusions there and
Speaker 1: some pretty remarkable reactions from CNN. And we're also very
Speaker 1: excited because today, assuming everything works out, it's looking good,
Speaker 1: we're going to have a big sit down interview with
Speaker 1: RFK Junior right here in the studio, and we're getting
Speaker 1: a good amount of time to talk to him as well.
Speaker 2: That's right, So our FK Junior will be joining us
Speaker 2: here at the desk, the beautiful desk here in studio
Speaker 2: after the show.
Speaker 3: Here's how it's going to work.
Speaker 2: So, as we've always promised our premium subscribers, they're going
Speaker 2: to get the first crack at the interview almost immediately
Speaker 2: after Trapped. We'll have it edited and then we will
Speaker 2: send it out, publish it on the podcast, and send
Speaker 2: it out as an email to all of our premium subs.
Speaker 2: We will release a clip later today from the RFK interview,
Speaker 2: but if you want to watch the full thing first
Speaker 2: and support our work, our ability to convene, you know,
Speaker 2: things like this Breakingpoints dot Com. You can become a
Speaker 2: premium member today otherwise the full interview will be available
Speaker 2: for everyone tomorrow and promises you know and all that
Speaker 2: we're not editing anything, we're not cutting anything.
Speaker 3: It will be the full uncut. There's no you know, there's.
Speaker 2: Nothing being business effectively, no ABC News over here which
Speaker 2: will cut out whatever he said. He can say whatever
Speaker 2: he wants, whatever he says, we will publish it.
Speaker 3: By the way, YouTube that's not necessarily an endorsement.
Speaker 2: That's right, genuinely is one of the most censored people
Speaker 2: on the planet, So from where that comes from, it's
Speaker 2: not an endorsement, but we will publish it nonetheless. And
Speaker 2: if they decide to take it down, well that's their decision.
Speaker 2: We'll make sure that it lives elsewhere for everybody consumed,
Speaker 2: because we believe in democracy here non censorship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we want to treat RFK Junior
Speaker 1: just like we have other presdential can that's that we've interviewed.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of issues that you know, I haven't
Speaker 1: heard him speak to that. We want to get him
Speaker 1: on the record on and see what his thoughts are
Speaker 1: about how he would govern if he was in fact
Speaker 1: President of the United States, so big sit down interview
Speaker 1: with him. Super excited about that. We're going to schedule
Speaker 1: one with Marianne as well. She's obviously been on the
Speaker 1: show before, but we haven't done a full proper you know,
Speaker 1: let's dig into the weeds of what your agenda is.
Speaker 1: And of course, Joe Biden, you're always invited on the
Speaker 1: program as well.
Speaker 2: Listen, I would love to make it happen. We requested
Speaker 2: to the White House before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not holding my breath, but listen, we would love
Speaker 1: to do the same treatment with the current President of
Speaker 1: the United States and Trumps absolutely absolutely, one hundred percent
Speaker 1: interested in talking to all of them. All right, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and get to you some big economic news
Speaker 1: this morning New York Times with a deep dive into
Speaker 1: some pretty fascinating migration trends, which our start contrast with
Speaker 1: recent history in terms of the United States. Going and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. Coastal cities priced out
Speaker 1: low wage workers. Now college graduates are leaving two and
Speaker 1: what they're tracking here, and you can see on this
Speaker 1: first graphic, this is the San Francisco numbers. You can
Speaker 1: see those blue bars. For years you had a net
Speaker 1: influx of college grads heading to the largest metros, these
Speaker 1: superstar cities that seem to be gobbling up all the
Speaker 1: wealth and all the top graduates from all the top schools.
Speaker 4: For years and years that was the case.
Speaker 1: Well, just recently that has flipped and you now have
Speaker 1: net out migration from these top tier cities of college graduates.
Speaker 1: Let me just show you some more of the numbers
Speaker 1: here from other top cities around the country, and then
Speaker 1: we can dig into why this is happening.
Speaker 4: So these are the numbers for DC.
Speaker 1: You can see again, for years you had a net
Speaker 1: influx of college graduates. Now over the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: really post pandemic, you have net out migration. So college
Speaker 1: graduates leaving the very expensive we can attest to of Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: Let's take a look at the numbers in New York. Now,
Speaker 1: New York, this trend is longer standing. You have a
Speaker 1: lot of red here over the past decade of college
Speaker 1: graduates leaving this extraordinarily expensive city. And if we put
Speaker 1: all of this together, just put up this one last
Speaker 1: slide here, you can see they're the number of college
Speaker 1: graduates who in recent years have been leaving the twelve
Speaker 1: most expensive large metro areas, but in other large metros
Speaker 1: outside of that top twelve they are still gaining college graduates.
Speaker 1: So it really is a very select phenomenon that reflects
Speaker 1: the extraordinarily high cost of housing and cost of just
Speaker 1: living in general in these top tier most expensive cities
Speaker 1: in the whole country.
Speaker 4: And as I said.
Speaker 1: Before, this really reverses a trend that has been going
Speaker 1: on for the past several decades where those cities seem
Speaker 1: to be a magnet for nearly everything. Now with people sober,
Speaker 1: I think in particular having a kind of a you
Speaker 1: know reset during the pandemic, not in the nefarious term,
Speaker 1: yes version of the world, I mean, you know, and
Speaker 1: people being sort of forced to rethink what their priorities
Speaker 1: in life were forced out of the workplace. And now
Speaker 1: there's a positive side to this, which is a lot
Speaker 1: more workers, huge numbers of workers, having the opportunity to
Speaker 1: choose do I want to be fully remote? Do I
Speaker 1: want to be fully in the office? Do I want
Speaker 1: to have a hybrid work model that also opens up
Speaker 1: more flexibility where it's like, why am I going to
Speaker 1: live in some tiny expensive apartment in New York City
Speaker 1: When I can move to a second tier city, a
Speaker 1: Louisville or an Austin, which still has all of these
Speaker 1: urban amenities, but is much less expensive, and I'm still
Speaker 1: earning my New York City salary. So many college graduates
Speaker 1: are making that choice, and it could have huge ramifications for,
Speaker 1: you know, future economy of the whole country.
Speaker 2: I want to balance some of my thoughts here, and
Speaker 2: I've done monologues and stuff on the before, So first
Speaker 2: let's start with the good and just the interesting.
Speaker 3: The good news is, I believe in mobility, and I.
Speaker 2: Believe that ossified places place like here, Washington, d C,
Speaker 2: New York City, places where they still have these things
Speaker 2: called broker fees.
Speaker 3: If you are not from this area, google it. It's
Speaker 3: one of the most insane things that exist.
Speaker 4: Yeh innerworka apartment hunt. Oh no, it's madness, terrible.
Speaker 2: You're just getting robbed left right, So you know, to
Speaker 2: see brokers out of their fees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna smile. Okay, So that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: Washington, d C, New York City, San Francisco have family
Speaker 2: members and or friends who have probably lived in every
Speaker 2: metro area in the country in the last five years.
Speaker 2: That was the thing to do. Now, without fail, almost
Speaker 2: all of them have moved. Now why did they move?
Speaker 2: And almost entirely it's because cost of living, crime, and
Speaker 2: just the general feeling that this is not the place
Speaker 2: that I need to be anymore, especially given the fact
Speaker 2: that I can get more banged from my buck outside.
Speaker 3: And this is having dramatic changes.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the interesting part because interestingly, if just
Speaker 2: ten percent of the white collar workforce move in some
Speaker 2: way in the next let's say five years. This is
Speaker 2: from Derek Thompson at the Atlantic, it will be the
Speaker 2: largest internal migration in the United statess World War two.
Speaker 2: So this alone, you cannot underestimate how much this will
Speaker 2: change everything. Because internal migration doesn't only change the tax
Speaker 2: base of different states, it changes the political makeup of states.
Speaker 2: Arizona is going to become way more purple because of
Speaker 2: the incoming number of people both from California but across
Speaker 2: the entire US. Idaho, for example, Boise, Idaho had one
Speaker 2: of the most booming real estate markets in the United
Speaker 2: States because of its proximity to California. But let's not
Speaker 2: forget that with changing politics not only changes electoral maps.
Speaker 2: That's how Atlanta and Georgia become purple as well, but
Speaker 2: also places like Ohio with net out migration are going
Speaker 2: to become more read.
Speaker 3: Here's the issue. By and large, this is only a
Speaker 3: white collar phenomenon.
Speaker 2: And actually it's becoming worse for a lot of rural
Speaker 2: and working class people who already lived in the set areas.
Speaker 2: Can we throw up the emerging divide graphic please, the
Speaker 2: share of working Americans who moved in the previous year.
Speaker 2: But what you can see there is that in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty a massive spike occurred with those with college degrees,
Speaker 2: but the overall down trend of the share of working
Speaker 2: age Americans without a college degree has gone down dramatically
Speaker 2: after the pandemic. We are now around twelve percent, whereas
Speaker 2: above fifteen percent about fifteen years ago. The reason why
Speaker 2: that matters is that mobility for non white collar workers
Speaker 2: is incredibly important for them to also be able to
Speaker 2: take advantage of all those benefits. So I am hearing
Speaker 2: story after story of I lived in Charlotte my whole life.
Speaker 2: I was able to rent an apartment for X number
Speaker 2: of dollars. Now all of these workers from New York
Speaker 2: City are here, and I have to move forty five
Speaker 2: minutes out. I had to drive in, and I'm screwed,
Speaker 2: and now I will I'm paying the same amount of
Speaker 2: money for less house or for a longer commute, I
Speaker 2: have to pay more and gas, and I'm farther away
Speaker 2: from being able to save up from a house that
Speaker 2: was near my parents. I'm hearing this literally constantly from
Speaker 2: people who live in places like Charlotte or Boise, or
Speaker 2: Phoenix or even I mean Austin at this point is
Speaker 2: like New York City, but let's even say San Antonio, Houston, Dallas.
Speaker 2: All these places had major internal migration over the last
Speaker 2: couple of years. I did a monologue in the past
Speaker 2: of breaking down with all those exact cities. Basically, if
Speaker 2: you live in the sun Belt like Atlanta, or you know,
Speaker 2: even in elsewhere somewhere in Florida, you are going to
Speaker 2: have a real hard time if you were did not
Speaker 2: get the same wage increased. You don't have the same
Speaker 2: mobility of the person who has a white collar thing.
Speaker 2: So we both have benefits, but we also have a
Speaker 2: lot of minuses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the downside is that this creates an unincool
Speaker 1: situation where white collar workers are they have the flexibility,
Speaker 1: they have the hybrid work situation.
Speaker 4: Or full remote situation.
Speaker 1: They could move wherever they want but still earn the
Speaker 1: coastal city salaries that they were earning previously, or take
Speaker 1: you know, a relatively moderate cut off of those that's
Speaker 1: more than made up for by the cost of living
Speaker 1: going down in the places they're moving to. The downside
Speaker 1: is definitely, as you're saying Soccer, that people who already
Speaker 1: live in those places, who are seeing housing prices now
Speaker 1: go up. Now they're not matching the expense of like
Speaker 1: a San Francisco or in La or in New York,
Speaker 1: but they're seeing significant increases in terms of housing prices
Speaker 1: and other you know, other like just basic cost of
Speaker 1: living expenses.
Speaker 4: That's obviously going to be an issue for them.
Speaker 1: The other bright side, though, is that, you know, we've
Speaker 1: had this incredibly unequal economic growth across the country and
Speaker 1: it has fed a lot of you know, very divisive
Speaker 1: and polarizing politics too, where you have these couple of
Speaker 1: superstar megacities that are generating a disproportionate amount of the
Speaker 1: growth and the jobs and the economic activity, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And you know, for the working class of people or
Speaker 1: who have been living in those major metro areas. It's
Speaker 1: been a positive because the jobs are there. It's been
Speaker 1: a dramatic negative because the influx of all of those
Speaker 1: people has made the cost of living so wildly unexpensive
Speaker 1: that is just completely insane. So there are also benefits
Speaker 1: to potentially having economic growth more evenly distributed across the country.
Speaker 1: And we don't have these graphics made, but if you
Speaker 1: dig into this place, into this piece, it's not just
Speaker 1: like the next tier of cities that college educated workers
Speaker 1: are moving to. It's also small cities. It's also even
Speaker 1: rural America and small town America. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: group of workers that, for better or worse, have been
Speaker 1: really catered to and sought after. Cities have gone on
Speaker 1: of their way to try to figure out, like what
Speaker 1: if we create an arts district and attract this or
Speaker 1: that coffee shop, how do we bring in this group
Speaker 1: of people.
Speaker 3: Are nice, let's not get out of hand.
Speaker 1: I'm not honest Bobby shops, all right, but you know
Speaker 1: they've gone out of their way to attract this group
Speaker 1: of people, and it will be a benefit to the
Speaker 1: country if you have more evenly distributed you know, college
Speaker 1: educated workers everywhere across the country. If you have economic
Speaker 1: activity being generated in more towns and cities across the country,
Speaker 1: and not just in these major metro urban areas. So,
Speaker 1: like you said, there's definitely there's silver linings here.
Speaker 4: There's good, there's bad.
Speaker 1: More than anything, it's just fascinating to see the way
Speaker 1: that this could remake both our politics and also our economy.
Speaker 4: Even a small shift.
Speaker 1: In where workers are going when they're coming out of college,
Speaker 1: what that looks like in terms of the national landscape,
Speaker 1: can be incredibly transformative. I also thought it was really interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, they interviewed some of the people here who
Speaker 1: had made this choice to move out of a New
Speaker 1: York city or move out of an LA, move out
Speaker 1: of a San Francisco, and they say, for these high
Speaker 1: education workers, it's not so easy to separate those who
Speaker 1: can't afford a city from those who can but leave anyway.
Speaker 1: Affordability is relative and personal. For one person, it means
Speaker 1: making rent. For another, it means making enough to also
Speaker 1: join a gym, by concert tickets and dine out regularly.
Speaker 1: Even a professional who can afford all of that in
Speaker 1: New York, they still eventually sour on the sixth floor
Speaker 1: walk up in the laundromat that comes with it. They
Speaker 1: describe things like, you know, the people that have made
Speaker 1: this move describe mention, wanting furniture that couldn't fit in
Speaker 1: a New York elevator, having a home.
Speaker 4: Office with the door that closes.
Speaker 1: Not just cheaper housing, but washing machines, walking closets, and
Speaker 1: walls to hang artwork. So very different versions of affordability
Speaker 1: depending on where you are in that classt incomes life.
Speaker 2: Well, I know people who make half a million dollars
Speaker 2: a year who said that they just couldn't live in
Speaker 2: New York, right, Well, how does that work?
Speaker 3: It's like, well you can.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What you're really saying is I want to live in
Speaker 2: a four thousand square foot house and I can't live
Speaker 2: in for it, and hey, that's fine, and I don't
Speaker 2: want to pay for you know, whatever X amount for childcare.
Speaker 2: Whereas if I live here close to my mom, I
Speaker 2: can have a house and I can live near my
Speaker 2: mom and have to pay for daycare. So my net
Speaker 2: is the quality of life is dramatically higher.
Speaker 3: Like totally.
Speaker 2: But it's like, just maybe don't say that you can't
Speaker 2: live in the right exists that you don't want to
Speaker 2: live in, right, this is like and there is actually
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with that. Big question is then you know,
Speaker 2: when X person moves home or near their house, well,
Speaker 2: who would have bought that house? And they're willing to
Speaker 2: pay cash whereas somebody else what a financed it? Well,
Speaker 2: then I can see why the people there are starting
Speaker 2: to get a little upset. And so I genuinely still
Speaker 2: think it's a net positive just because as long as
Speaker 2: we can make sure and this is literally almost like
Speaker 2: a trickle down theory, as long as we can just
Speaker 2: make sure that some of this extra money goes into
Speaker 2: the local economy, right and boosts spending and ability for
Speaker 2: local businesses and property owners and all that stuff to
Speaker 2: go up, and that the working class folks can still
Speaker 2: get some share of the pilot.
Speaker 3: I think I'm good with it.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, as we have generally seen, a lot of
Speaker 2: that doesn't end up happening.
Speaker 3: And then also even in terms of the services that
Speaker 3: pop up.
Speaker 2: I was just looking yesterday, Manhattan is completely transforming the
Speaker 2: way that its tax base is working because forty percent
Speaker 2: of workers are not back in the office.
Speaker 3: So what have they decided?
Speaker 2: They said, Manhattan needs to become a playground for the rich. Basically,
Speaker 2: they're like, we need to turn this into the ultimate
Speaker 2: party just for the people with these five hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars incomes with no kids, who just want to party
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven, the ultimate entertainment destination, which will
Speaker 2: require us rezoning the city and making it so that
Speaker 2: we can capture our tax base, because if we don't
Speaker 2: do that, we are going to lose a massive portion
Speaker 2: of the way that we fund city revenues. This is
Speaker 2: also a big problem with San Francisco, New York City.
Speaker 2: In all these places, something like one percent of the
Speaker 2: population pays almost forty or fifty percent of the tax base.
Speaker 2: That means that the services for the vast majority of
Speaker 2: the population literally relies on a few select individuals. And
Speaker 2: states are not federal governments, Like you can't escape America.
Speaker 2: Even if you leave America in your US citizen US
Speaker 2: still have to pay taxes. But if you leave New
Speaker 2: York City New York City, you don't have to pay
Speaker 2: New York City taxes anymore.
Speaker 3: And a lot of them left, a lot of them
Speaker 3: live in Florida.
Speaker 2: So even if only a thousand people leave New York City.
Speaker 2: If it's the right thousand, it can screw you. So
Speaker 2: that's another reason why keeping your tax system based on
Speaker 2: that is actually very foolish. You want to I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that those people shouldn't be taxed. I'm saying you
Speaker 2: need to make sure that you are not so heavily
Speaker 2: reliant on a.
Speaker 3: Few thousand people.
Speaker 2: Or you get the Eric Adamses of the world and
Speaker 2: the Kathy Hokals who are like, we need to go
Speaker 2: back to the office. It's like they're not saying that
Speaker 2: out of the kindness of their heart.
Speaker 3: They need the money.
Speaker 2: They can't do anything if those people don't go to
Speaker 2: the office. What if New Yorkers don't want to go
Speaker 2: to the office, maybe you should work on their behalf.
Speaker 3: But they can't because the system is so screwed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I've talked about there's a real reckoning
Speaker 1: coming in commercial real life.
Speaker 4: I hope so, because I mean.
Speaker 1: There are estimates that the value of commercial like office
Speaker 1: space real estate could decline by forty percent. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is an earthquake that is looming over the country,
Speaker 1: and half of the commercial real estate debt comes due
Speaker 1: in the next two years. This is multi trillion dollar
Speaker 1: economy that you know, this is kind of hanging over
Speaker 1: our entire situation right now. So that's a big piece
Speaker 1: of this. There was one other part that I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting, which is they interviewed this economist who is
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, part of it is how prices
Speaker 1: out of control. And by the way, we should say,
Speaker 1: like the politicians that run these cities and states, they've
Speaker 1: had horrible housing policy and this isn't like a right
Speaker 1: now phenomenon. This is like right now and over decades,
Speaker 1: and so that's part of what is pushing people out is.
Speaker 4: They're like, there's nowhere to live.
Speaker 1: It's wildly unaffordable, even on you know, quite a hefty salary.
Speaker 4: Why would I continue to do this?
Speaker 1: So it's partly these cities have had terrible policies in
Speaker 1: terms of building out their housing stock to make them
Speaker 1: affordable places where people can live.
Speaker 4: That's one piece.
Speaker 1: But this economist says, you know, some of it is
Speaker 1: that the most ex expensive places got really expensive, but
Speaker 1: also the middle tier places became more attractive. This economist
Speaker 1: has found since two thousand, college graduates have increasingly been
Speaker 1: moving toward high amenity cities and away from the highest
Speaker 1: wage ones. Consumer cities, as she puts it, are increasingly
Speaker 1: replacing producer cities as the places where college graduates want
Speaker 1: to live. Now, to me that that's obviously a trend
Speaker 1: that pre dates the pandemic, and as with a lot
Speaker 1: of the trends that we have tracked, I think the
Speaker 1: pandemic has accelerated trends that already were bubbling and already
Speaker 1: were in place.
Speaker 4: But I do think this reflects a sort of cultural.
Speaker 1: Mindset shift above and beyond the particular economics of one
Speaker 1: city or another, where people just have different values for
Speaker 1: what's most important to them and that is being reflected
Speaker 1: in their choices of where they decide to live. And
Speaker 1: then these mid tier cities, since they're trying to attract
Speaker 1: this group of people, they're building out the amenities that
Speaker 1: they would want that would make this an appealing place
Speaker 1: to live. So I thought it was interesting that it
Speaker 1: wasn't just like these places have become wildly too expensive
Speaker 1: to live and have these other problems, but also that
Speaker 1: the mid tier cities have kind of stepped up their
Speaker 1: game and made themselves more attractive to a broader cohort.
Speaker 3: The next big question is starlink.
Speaker 2: When we have apps like America wide high speed Internet
Speaker 2: no matter where you are, that's when I want to
Speaker 2: know if stuff will really change. I mean, you saw
Speaker 2: some of the with the tech workers, you know, people
Speaker 2: where starlink has been widely available and you can do
Speaker 2: like starlink for RV. Some people were making like half
Speaker 2: a million dollars a year living in an RV just
Speaker 2: driving around wherever they wanted to, literally from national parks,
Speaker 2: like outside of a lake.
Speaker 3: I mean, it sounds like a life, let's be honest. Yeah, look,
Speaker 3: ten years.
Speaker 2: From now, you know, maybe they can beam in from
Speaker 2: a studio or somewhere. I'm going to be in a
Speaker 2: compound somewhere deep in the desert. I love it out there,
Speaker 2: but you know, the technology is really still not there
Speaker 2: in terms of reliability. That said, ten years from now,
Speaker 2: I very much think that could be the case. Now
Speaker 2: that unlocks economic potential of huge swats not only of
Speaker 2: the West, but here in the East Coast, which is
Speaker 2: much more densely populated.
Speaker 3: We still have a big rural urban divide.
Speaker 2: We don't have a lot of starlink or high speed
Speaker 2: internet access as you know in rural areas, even you know,
Speaker 2: an hour and a half or so away from Washington, DC,
Speaker 2: which to me is insane but from an infrastructure perspective,
Speaker 2: but who knows what that will unlock. It also will
Speaker 2: unlock a lot of global a lot of the global
Speaker 2: workforce when you consider high speed internet no matter where
Speaker 2: you are, across the entire Eastern seaboard, not only of
Speaker 2: the United States, but of South America, which will be
Speaker 2: on the same time zone. I mean, I've heard this
Speaker 2: from friends who are doing like the.
Speaker 3: Digital nomad thing.
Speaker 2: How people in Mexico City are so angry at all
Speaker 2: of these remote American workers. But not just there Buenos Irace,
Speaker 2: like even Brazil, like any place where you can just
Speaker 2: get a tourist visa and still be on East.
Speaker 3: Coast time or Central time.
Speaker 2: Apparently there are American tech workers who are down there.
Speaker 2: And remember that's only like what one two percent of
Speaker 2: people who are even able to do that. If you
Speaker 2: just increase that to ten percent, that's ten times the
Speaker 2: number who are currently It's millions of people who have
Speaker 2: basically total freedom.
Speaker 3: Now that's not everybody.
Speaker 2: Once again, you know, plumber can't be working from Buenos Iris.
Speaker 2: So that's why you got to make sure that they're right.
Speaker 4: Wells, that's true.
Speaker 1: But I do want a couple with the fact that
Speaker 1: you know we talked about was that in the show
Speaker 1: yesterday we recorded this as an extras gound post this weekend,
Speaker 1: that job satisfaction is actually an all time high.
Speaker 4: Across the board.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could obviously do a lot better in
Speaker 1: terms of wages keeping up with inflation, but you had
Speaker 1: a lot of people who blue collar or service actor
Speaker 1: workers who shifted jobs during the pandemic, either because they
Speaker 1: wanted to or because they were unfortunately forced to, and
Speaker 1: they were able to get higher wages they were able
Speaker 1: to get, you know, in sometimes more predictable schedules and
Speaker 1: a greater sense of sort of control and autonomy over
Speaker 1: their days, which has contributed to a better landscape in
Speaker 1: terms of worker happiness. And to shift into this next piece,
Speaker 1: we wanted to just briefly show you in terms of
Speaker 1: where we are in terms with the economy, because it
Speaker 1: is a very weird and complex picture.
Speaker 4: The recent jobs data.
Speaker 1: Just came out, Come on, go ahead and put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen, and job growth actually did accelerate
Speaker 1: in April. Wage gains increase solidly. They say this points
Speaker 1: to assistant labor market strength that could compel the Federal
Speaker 1: Reserved to keep interest rates higher. It's like, oh, we
Speaker 1: can't have those good times. We've got to screwfey lives.
Speaker 1: This is always a weirdness of jobs reports during this era.
Speaker 1: It's like, this is a great jobs report, but it
Speaker 1: also is a mixed bag because it means that the
Speaker 1: Fed is going to be more determined to crush workers
Speaker 1: and screw them over and hike unemployment and kick a
Speaker 1: bunch of millions of the amount of their jobs and
Speaker 1: crush their wages, et cetera. But you know, unemployment rate
Speaker 1: fell back to a fifty three year low three point
Speaker 1: four percent. They do note data for February. In March
Speaker 1: was revised sharply lower. So important to note because these
Speaker 1: numbers could also ultimately be.
Speaker 4: Revised sharply lower.
Speaker 1: But it does show even though you've had this issue
Speaker 1: of inflation which has really impacted workers and made it
Speaker 1: so that many of them are seeing their paychecks eaten
Speaker 1: away and really getting like a net pay decrease every
Speaker 1: single month, you do have this tight labor market which
Speaker 1: has made it so that workers can shift jobs and
Speaker 1: shift industries, and you know, have some choice that they
Speaker 1: haven't had in a long time. So even though you
Speaker 1: know the trends in terms of migration, that choice that
Speaker 1: the remote and hybrid work choice isn't there for blue
Speaker 1: collar and service sector workers. There are some positive parts
Speaker 1: of the labor market right now that are benefiting them
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's move on to another big trend that
Speaker 1: is being driven in part by what is going on
Speaker 1: with AI, which is a lot of white collar jobs
Speaker 1: may be going away. So put this up on the
Speaker 1: screen from the Wall Street Journal. Their headline here is
Speaker 1: the disappearing white collar job.
Speaker 4: A once in a.
Speaker 1: Generation convergence of tech and pressure to operate more efficiently
Speaker 1: has corporations saying many lost jobs may never return. So
Speaker 1: this is one of the other strange parts of our
Speaker 1: economy right now. While you have huge job demand for
Speaker 1: service sector workers blue collar workers in certain especially in
Speaker 1: like warehousing, you also have had this tech session which
Speaker 1: has really hit white collar workers, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the companies that are laying off white collar knowledge workers
Speaker 1: right now are saying, we don't have any plans to
Speaker 1: bring them back, because our plan is instead to basically
Speaker 1: replace supplement our existing workforce with AI and make it
Speaker 1: so we don't have to hire.
Speaker 4: Back any of these workers.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a dramatic turnaround from the way
Speaker 1: that the economy has been my entire lifetime, where it was,
Speaker 1: you know, the service sector workers and the blue collar
Speaker 1: workers where there weren't enough jobs and you know they're
Speaker 1: retreated as disposable, et cetera. Now you have kind of
Speaker 1: a turn about where it's a lot of white collar
Speaker 1: jobs that are being shed in this economy. In this
Speaker 1: very uneven situation. They say the jobs lost in a
Speaker 1: month's long cascade of white collar layoffs triggered by over
Speaker 1: hiring and rising interest rates might never return. Companies are
Speaker 1: rethinking the value of many white collar roles in what
Speaker 1: some experts anticipate will be permanent shift in labor demand
Speaker 1: that will disrupt the work life of millions of Americans
Speaker 1: whose jobs will be lost, diminished, or revamped through the
Speaker 1: use of artificial intelligence. A former chief digital officer at
Speaker 1: McDonald's Volvo said, we just need fewer people to do
Speaker 1: the same thing. They point in particular to Meta and IBM,
Speaker 1: among other corporations. The head of IBM said in recent weeks,
Speaker 1: he could see thirty percent of IBM's roughly twenty six
Speaker 1: thousand non customer facing roles being replaced by automation or
Speaker 1: AI over a five year period, and for the year
Speaker 1: ending in March, the number of unemployed white collar workers
Speaker 1: actually rose by roughly one hundred and fifty thousand people.
Speaker 1: So very different picture from other parts of the labor
Speaker 1: and job market.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so here's what I generally think about this is
Speaker 2: that we are normalizing away from a very stupid period
Speaker 2: between the nineteen sixties and mid that peaked in the
Speaker 2: twenty tens of the office job. Now all of the
Speaker 2: benefits of the office job had mostly gone away by
Speaker 2: after the reces Great rescission, but a lot of the
Speaker 2: professional degrees, like the idea of just going to go
Speaker 2: work for a fortune five hundred company with some generic skills,
Speaker 2: we still wasn't paying out but was still genuinely attractive.
Speaker 2: Some of that is still the case, since we see
Speaker 2: that in the Ivy League and the university, but with
Speaker 2: the market is basically showing us the employment and the
Speaker 2: job market generally is if you need to have a
Speaker 2: skill that is genuinely just going to work out for you,
Speaker 2: in the long term, because what do we learn from
Speaker 2: these you know, these more like very basic jobs, is
Speaker 2: that even you know, people thought, oh, if I just
Speaker 2: get an accounting degree, I'll be able to do well. Well,
Speaker 2: what we see from the chart is actually accounting is
Speaker 2: going down pretty dramatically. A lot of that software related
Speaker 2: also whenever it comes to real estate and back end
Speaker 2: real estate professionals not saying that that can't be a
Speaker 2: skill that you hone, and that there is of course
Speaker 2: local like market arbitrage, but as we are really seeing,
Speaker 2: we're going, I think more back to a skills based economy.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: That skill though, is not the way that people used
Speaker 2: to say that in terms of you know, like learn
Speaker 2: to code. It's be a plumber, or be a coder,
Speaker 2: or be a nurse, or be a doctor. Or even
Speaker 2: when you're a lawyer, like a niche type of lawyer,
Speaker 2: that's still a professional degree, but it's not like a
Speaker 2: generic marketing degree.
Speaker 3: The skill itself.
Speaker 2: And your ability to dominate that niche or a very
Speaker 2: basic service electrician, you know, trade So much work in
Speaker 2: the trades is paying out in the long run and
Speaker 2: is also mostly non automatable, and that is why, like
Speaker 2: you can automation proof yourself by having a skill which
Speaker 2: you can you know, doesn't take a genius to figure
Speaker 2: out what will necessarily go away and what's not. And
Speaker 2: the easiest stuff, the stuff like on the floor that
Speaker 2: you can just take away, like the ibms and the
Speaker 2: metas is AI for the most generic of marketing skills
Speaker 2: like writing copy taglines for product, and that's obviously something
Speaker 2: you can do on chatch ept today.
Speaker 3: Why would you hire anybody to do that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a lot of legal work is really
Speaker 1: sort of like cut and paste. You know, it's like okay,
Speaker 1: especially if your corporate lawyer and you got to do
Speaker 1: the same basic filing for a one hundred different companies.
Speaker 1: You take the same format, you plug in the different
Speaker 1: company name, the different dollar amounts, whatever. That's gonna be
Speaker 1: very easily automatable. Now, do you need a human being
Speaker 1: at the end of that to take a look make sure.
Speaker 4: Nothing g's screwed up? Sure?
Speaker 1: But do you need many fewer man hours to already
Speaker 1: to accomplish that same task.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: A lot of like basic bookkeeping and accounting work, same
Speaker 1: kind of deal. I'm doing my monologue today about how
Speaker 1: AI is already set to completely upend digital news just
Speaker 1: through the summaries that they're going to publish. And when
Speaker 1: you google something, instead of getting a list of links,
Speaker 1: you get a summary of news articles. Are you going
Speaker 1: to click through to the links that are down below?
Speaker 1: Many people will not, and so that just completely upends
Speaker 1: the whole business model of digital news gathering.
Speaker 4: So a lot of these changes are already here.
Speaker 1: There's another piece too, though, which is that a lot
Speaker 1: of these tech companies got way over their skis during
Speaker 1: the pandemic and they thought that the gold rush that
Speaker 1: was the pandemic for tech companies was going to last forever. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you had them staffing up in ways that ended
Speaker 1: up being you know, wildly unsustainable. It's really wrong to
Speaker 1: do to the workers. You know, they're like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: we've hired way too many people.
Speaker 4: Now you're unemployed.
Speaker 1: But you know, in case after case, so many of
Speaker 1: these tech companies really hired way too aggressively. And then
Speaker 1: when the economy you know, went back to more of
Speaker 1: a normal state and you no longer had people locked
Speaker 1: in their homes watching Netflix all day, then you had
Speaker 1: you know, a return and a real reckoning here. So
Speaker 1: that's part of what is going on here too. But
Speaker 1: as we've talked about with AI before, part of what
Speaker 1: is unique is we're used to automation hitting service sector jobs.
Speaker 1: We're used to automation threatening blue collar work.
Speaker 4: Well, now AI.
Speaker 1: Is really coming for these white collar jobs. And so
Speaker 1: so as we just laid out, some of this is
Speaker 1: not you know, in the future, ten years down the road.
Speaker 4: Some of it is already here.
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously it's a negative anytime you're eliminating
Speaker 1: the need for human beings in you know, an economy
Speaker 1: where it really depend on being able to earn a
Speaker 1: wage in order to achieve any sort of basic middle
Speaker 1: class prosperity. But the other piece of this that again
Speaker 1: this is the first time in my life that this
Speaker 1: has happened. You've actually had a reversal of inequality. You've
Speaker 1: had inequality going down for the first time in my
Speaker 1: entire life. I mean, from the neoliberal you know, starting
Speaker 1: really under Carter and then solidifying under Reagan and Clinton.
Speaker 1: During that era, you have just had more and more
Speaker 1: and more going to the top ten percent of society
Speaker 1: and this gigantic hollowing out.
Speaker 4: Of the middle.
Speaker 1: Well, now with white collar work under threat, you're having
Speaker 1: the college wage premium go down, so that also is
Speaker 1: going to force a reckoning with how much these colleges
Speaker 1: are charging right now, more people saying like this is
Speaker 1: not worth it. There's not a rainbow at the end
Speaker 1: of this. There's not a pot of gold, I guess
Speaker 1: at the end of this college rainbow, So why am
Speaker 1: I doing this? So there's going to be a reckoning there.
Speaker 1: But it's also just remarkable to see that you are
Speaker 1: having this convergence in this lessening inequality, which again is
Speaker 1: a dramatic turnaround from what we have seen in the
Speaker 1: entirety of my whole life. So that part, in a
Speaker 1: sense is positive.
Speaker 4: But I want to.
Speaker 1: See people doing better at the bottom end rather than
Speaker 1: people at the top end getting screwed, is what you
Speaker 1: would ideally like to see happening here exactly. The last
Speaker 1: piece that I want to point to in terms of
Speaker 1: a very strange and uneven economy is that even as
Speaker 1: the labor market is really tight, even as you have
Speaker 1: very low unemployment, a lot of jobs, especially in certain sectors,
Speaker 1: you also have debt levels, personal debt levels at record highs.
Speaker 4: Put this up on the screen from CNBC.
Speaker 1: Their headline is consumer debt passes seventeen trillion dollars for
Speaker 1: the first time despite slide in mortgage demand. So what
Speaker 1: they're saying there's people aren't taking out new mortgages, which
Speaker 1: means that they're not adding that debt onto whatever they
Speaker 1: already have. But in spite of that, the total for
Speaker 1: borrowing across all categories hit seventeen point oh five trillion,
Speaker 1: an increase of nearly one hundred and fifty billion, or
Speaker 1: almost one percent, during the January to March period. That
Speaker 1: took total indebtedness up about two point nine trillion from
Speaker 1: pre COVID periods ending in twenty nineteen. Delinquency rates have
Speaker 1: also increased for all debts, so people are struggling to
Speaker 1: be able to pay their credit card bill, pay their
Speaker 1: car loan, pay their mortgage, whatever it is. It's at
Speaker 1: point six percentage points for credit cards, up point two
Speaker 1: percentage points for auto loans, and total delinquency rates moved
Speaker 1: up point two percentage points to three percent. Student loan
Speaker 1: debt also edging higher, and auto loans at a nudging
Speaker 1: up as well. They say, so you have a picture
Speaker 1: of American people who are really saddled and struggling under
Speaker 1: a huge debt burden, and I would say part of
Speaker 1: that is certainly a lot of this is due to inflation,
Speaker 1: do to the fact that things have gotten so much
Speaker 1: more expensive and that it's so hard to obtain, you know,
Speaker 1: to be able to make ends meet, to be able
Speaker 1: to obtain anything approaching like a middle class stability that
Speaker 1: people are putting it on their credit cards and having
Speaker 1: to take out a lot of debt in order to
Speaker 1: be able to achieve that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So the corporate the debt part is really bad.
Speaker 2: And then in terms of corporate America, where they stand
Speaker 2: in what they say or it's exactly the same thing.
Speaker 2: So it's a very odd situation that we're in right now.
Speaker 2: Put that up there on the screen. Please about corporate America.
Speaker 2: They say that a recession is already arrived. Obviously we
Speaker 2: have the technical definition.
Speaker 3: That we already reach.
Speaker 2: But they say Wall Street's already enduring what is the
Speaker 2: most prolonged corporate profits downturn in seven years, which is
Speaker 2: a very easy kind of definition of recession. And when
Speaker 2: you can see prolonged downturn, you know, after such a
Speaker 2: long period of time twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, combined with
Speaker 2: the interest rate cycle.
Speaker 3: Just take a genius to see.
Speaker 2: Where things are going and very likely to oh for
Speaker 2: a longer period of time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's a weird situation.
Speaker 1: It's a real mixed bag out there for absolutely everyone,
Speaker 1: no matter what industry, no matter what part of the
Speaker 1: economy you're in. So we just wanted to take some
Speaker 1: time to sort through the trends as we see them
Speaker 1: now so we can keep.
Speaker 4: An eye on them going forward.
Speaker 1: Another really interesting thing that happened at the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and I would say troubling. Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So this was a unanimous decision. All nine justices tossed
Speaker 1: out the bribery conviction of a former Cuomo aid. So
Speaker 1: what happened here is this guy, Joseph Percoco, who was a.
Speaker 4: Top aid to Andrew Cuomo. This was his boy.
Speaker 1: He was in the Cuomo administration and then he was
Speaker 1: out for a brief time while Cuomo was running for reelection,
Speaker 1: with all expectation that he would end up back in
Speaker 1: the administration and he did. And during that time he
Speaker 1: basically took bribes and I mean it was pretty brazen.
Speaker 1: If you guys watched Sopranos, but they called these bribes
Speaker 1: that they would take ZD.
Speaker 4: They were referring to it.
Speaker 1: In this situation also as ZD so brazen. Right now,
Speaker 1: they argued that, oh, well, he wasn't in government then,
Speaker 1: so he couldn't really be taking bribes because he wasn't
Speaker 1: in government. But again it's like, you know, this is
Speaker 1: Quoma's boy. You know, Quoma was likely to end up
Speaker 1: back in office and this guy is too, so you
Speaker 1: could have reasonable expectation what is going to happen here?
Speaker 1: And he did in fact deliver on you know, what
Speaker 1: he was paid to deliver on. So lower courts had
Speaker 1: found him guilty of corruption, but the justices ended up
Speaker 1: ruling nine to zero in favor of this former Quomo Aid.
Speaker 1: And what the reason why they technically ruled is they
Speaker 1: said that the jury instructions that were given were inaccurate.
Speaker 1: Put this next piece up on the screen so that
Speaker 1: this is from Scotus blog. They had a good write
Speaker 1: up of this. They say, court throws out conviction of
Speaker 1: former Quomo Aid. So he had that the jurors had
Speaker 1: been given instruct that the justices determined were not sufficient
Speaker 1: or we're not accurate, and that's what led to this
Speaker 1: unanimous ruling.
Speaker 4: But soccer when you look at this case, and.
Speaker 1: There was another Cuomo aid whose convictions they also threw out,
Speaker 1: were sort of similar circumstances. And when you consider okay,
Speaker 1: they threw out the former Virginia governor Bob McDonald, they
Speaker 1: threw out his conviction as well for bribery. They threw
Speaker 1: out New Jersey gunnor Chris Christie's former aids in the
Speaker 1: pole Bridgegate.
Speaker 4: Thing, they threw that out as well.
Speaker 1: You can see the Supreme Court really circling their wagons here.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think partly in response to the
Speaker 1: corruption allegations levied against them. This is like a little
Speaker 1: bit of ass covering for themselves personally, but more broadly,
Speaker 1: because this has been a trend going on for a
Speaker 1: long time, they're making it so that corruption is so
Speaker 1: narrowly defined you have to literally be like taking a
Speaker 1: bag of cash that says.
Speaker 4: For political corruption, and.
Speaker 1: You get caught on tape saying I am taking this
Speaker 1: money as a bribe because I am corrupt. For them
Speaker 1: to even count this as public corruption at a time
Speaker 1: when trust and institutions exactly from this type of crap
Speaker 1: is at all time lows.
Speaker 2: What's crazy to me is that the quid pro quo
Speaker 2: is not in dispute at all. They paid him thirty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars to expedite a job without union agreement.
Speaker 2: He made the call and the job was expedited, so
Speaker 2: the quid pro quo is done. He was, however, at
Speaker 2: the time, managing the reelection campaign in twenty fourteen, so
Speaker 2: apparently that makes it okay. And I think that the
Speaker 2: clear response here is if they have decided to interpret
Speaker 2: the law this way, then we just got to change
Speaker 2: the law.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's no other way around it.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have to make it so that quid
Speaker 2: pro quos of any time of any kind involving government services,
Speaker 2: regardless of whether you are in government or not, if
Speaker 2: you're using your influence to do so, we have to
Speaker 2: demand and expand it so that you can be convicted
Speaker 2: of corruption. Now here's the problem, though, Who's going to
Speaker 2: lobby against that? The government services and lobbying industry here
Speaker 2: in Washington. It would put I don't even know how
Speaker 2: many thousands of people here. Maybe honestly, the entire city,
Speaker 2: the entire city really runs on lobby cash.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if it's possible.
Speaker 2: Now I'm saying theoretically we should change the law, but listen,
Speaker 2: there's a reason that we define the law this way,
Speaker 2: and it's because what's going on around us is legalized bribery.
Speaker 2: And if we actually go after real bribery the way
Speaker 2: that it's commonly understood, not technically understood, then we would
Speaker 2: put an entire Washington industry out of business.
Speaker 1: And that's why you have a unanimous decision. Course, Conservatives, liberals,
Speaker 1: they were all one on this one and on some
Speaker 1: of the other decisions that were made as well, because
Speaker 1: it's not just the present lobbyist class K Street class,
Speaker 1: but all of these lawmakers, the public servants quote unquote,
Speaker 1: they see themselves going in cash and as lobbyists.
Speaker 4: Down the road as well.
Speaker 1: So they're looking out for their ability right now as
Speaker 1: legislators to take campaign cash or whatever whatever perks are
Speaker 1: given to them in order to do the will of
Speaker 1: these lobbyists. And they're also looking out for their future
Speaker 1: job prospects by making sure that none of the reforms
Speaker 1: that we would want to see made to make this
Speaker 1: law much more clear and expand it so that there
Speaker 1: is an actual standard of hey, you're a public servant.
Speaker 1: You're not here to take bribes and serve the interest
Speaker 1: of this lobbyist class. None of that can come to
Speaker 1: pass because of people looking out for their own pocketbook
Speaker 1: and bottom line.
Speaker 4: It really is disgusting.
Speaker 1: And to see it in such a you know, uniparty
Speaker 1: state here, every single one of these justices coming together
Speaker 1: to make sure that corruption is so narrowly defined that
Speaker 1: it basically doesn't even exist in their minds.
Speaker 4: It's pretty disgraceful to.
Speaker 3: Behold that is where it is.
Speaker 2: Just I mean, I'm untorn because technically in the way
Speaker 2: they're doing the law or evaluating the law, I guess,
Speaker 2: you know, is it their fault or is it the law?
Speaker 3: Like I think, really what it is like we have
Speaker 3: to change the law.
Speaker 2: And I think it also was passed in such a
Speaker 2: way and written in such a way to make it
Speaker 2: amenable for people like this so that it doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, their job is to simply analyze
Speaker 2: it within the bounds of like what's on the book.
Speaker 2: So that just means Congress has to do his job
Speaker 2: and pass on. Now, I'm not an idiot. I know
Speaker 2: that that won't change. But you know, new York state
Speaker 2: law could apply here, like you could definitely apply bribery conviction.
Speaker 2: You can change things on a state by state level
Speaker 2: in terms of what is technically possible. Once again, I
Speaker 2: just think that the only reason it doesn't change is
Speaker 2: that so many things are already legalized bribery that.
Speaker 3: They don't want to put them out of business. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's the I mean, that would be there.
Speaker 1: And there's just like bipartisan shame in this all around,
Speaker 1: so they have no interest in changes.
Speaker 2: What would all of the former's aids to Clarence Thomas
Speaker 2: and all of them do if this was.
Speaker 3: If we were not just Clarence, all of.
Speaker 2: Them pagan sort of, I are all these with these
Speaker 2: people are all printing money, you know, off their names.
Speaker 3: All right, let's go to the next part here.
Speaker 2: Some politics, Some really interesting stuff going on between Trump
Speaker 2: and Ron DeSantis. The open war continues, not just in
Speaker 2: terms of whether DeSantis's sanctimonious or not.
Speaker 3: But now on policy.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Trump gave a very interesting interview to a new news
Speaker 2: site called The Messenger, and he actually hit DeSantis, saying
Speaker 2: that a six week abortion limit is quote too harsh.
Speaker 2: So the fulls quote is what he said, he has
Speaker 2: to do what he has to do. Trump said when
Speaker 2: he was asked about Florida abortion rules. If you look
Speaker 2: at what DeSantis did, a lot of people don't even
Speaker 2: know if he knew what he was doing, but he
Speaker 2: signed six weeks and many people within the pro life
Speaker 2: movement feel that's too harsh.
Speaker 3: Now, first of all, I.
Speaker 2: Don't think if that's true, that they feel too harsh.
Speaker 2: But what I think is even more interesting is that
Speaker 2: when you're reading the transcript of this interview with Trump,
Speaker 2: he has, you know, and I've said this before, rambling
Speaker 2: answers on abortion. The answer that he gave here in
Speaker 2: print is even more crazy. So he asked him about
Speaker 2: the messenger is asking him about late term abortions. But
Speaker 2: he both has to brag and also bring himself back
Speaker 2: to the exceptions.
Speaker 3: That's perfect.
Speaker 2: In this answer, he says, they've been trying to get
Speaker 2: rid of Row. I was able to do it. Nobody
Speaker 2: else could have done that, but me and I was
Speaker 2: able to do it do it by nominating three justices.
Speaker 2: What it did, more than anything is give us tremendous
Speaker 2: power of negotiation, which we didn't have the pro life
Speaker 2: movement the tremendous power of negotiation. Now the pro life
Speaker 2: movement has to negotiate a deal that's acceptable for them.
Speaker 2: So then they ask him about whether the six week
Speaker 2: ban is acceptable. He says, no, I think that's too harsh.
Speaker 2: Then he says, well, what do you think? Is it
Speaker 2: too harsh for you?
Speaker 3: Quote?
Speaker 2: I am looking at all alternatives. I'm looking at many alternatives.
Speaker 2: But I was able to get us to the table.
Speaker 2: That's the most important thing that ever happened for the
Speaker 2: pro life movement. Would you sign a six week abortion
Speaker 2: ban or not? Quote, I am looking at all options.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a man who doesn't know what he thinks.
Speaker 1: He knows what he thinks, he knows he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to talk a six week abortion ban with a ten
Speaker 1: foot point.
Speaker 3: We know what he thinks. Yeah, we also know that.
Speaker 2: You know, at the very least, it shows that he
Speaker 2: is not a police idiot whenever it comes to abortion.
Speaker 2: But just to show everybody the quandary that Trump has
Speaker 2: now found himself in, put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 3: The Susan B.
Speaker 2: Anthony's List and other anti I guess pro life groups
Speaker 2: whichever terminology you want blasts Trump over federal ban comments
Speaker 2: because Trump basically said he wouldn't sign a federal abortion ban.
Speaker 3: The Susan B.
Speaker 2: Anthony Group actually put out a statement responding to the
Speaker 2: Trump campaign where they said it was unacceptable and that
Speaker 2: they would not support any White House candidate who did
Speaker 2: not support a minimum ban of a fifteen week federal
Speaker 2: abortion ban. They say the Supreme Court made its clear
Speaker 2: decision it was returning the issue to the people, and
Speaker 2: the group said that holding to a position it exclusively
Speaker 2: is up to the states is an abdication of responsibility
Speaker 2: by anyone who is elected to elected to federal office.
Speaker 2: And you know, here's the thing with the Susan B.
Speaker 2: Anthony Group and all them, at least you can command them,
Speaker 2: is their honest. They're very open about what they want,
Speaker 2: have a group, they have an agenda. They know it's unpopular,
Speaker 2: but they don't care. They want to see it and acted,
Speaker 2: and they have litmus tests. The thing is is that
Speaker 2: they are playing a very powerful role in the GOP
Speaker 2: primary because it's not just Trump that they're going after.
Speaker 2: They're basically setting the stage for Mike Pence. This just
Speaker 2: happened two days ago, which is why I wanted to
Speaker 2: note it put it up there on the screen. They
Speaker 2: also are blasting Nikki Haley for not saying that she
Speaker 2: would support a federal abortion band, because she gave an
Speaker 2: interview to Face the Nation where she said, quote, it
Speaker 2: is not realistic to have quote advanced gestational limits on
Speaker 2: abortion at the federal level. The pro life groups, as
Speaker 2: Susan B. Anthony's List said, when Nikki Haley talks about
Speaker 2: national consases, we are in agreement. She says the seventy
Speaker 2: two percent of American support abortions at least by fifteen weeks,
Speaker 2: just so everyone knows that polling has changed.
Speaker 3: It did previously say that.
Speaker 2: But they say that the pro Lacke movement must have
Speaker 2: a nominee who will we be boldly advocate for this
Speaker 2: consensus and as president, will work tirelessly to gather the
Speaker 2: votes necessary in Congress. So they're making it basically fifteen
Speaker 2: weeks or bust. And I mean, look, Crystal, when you're
Speaker 2: looking at that, they're not doing. They're just wielding their
Speaker 2: power that they know that they have. They have millions
Speaker 2: of people who belong to their group. But when you
Speaker 2: have none of the federal candidates basically except for Mike Pence,
Speaker 2: who is publicly signed on, then you're in a real quandary.
Speaker 2: And also it's great for Pence, but it also shows
Speaker 2: you that DeSantis in many ways is running to the
Speaker 2: right of Donald Trump. And this is why, Yeah, it
Speaker 2: is scrambling so many of the brains of the conservative
Speaker 2: commentariat and even of the liberal ones, because you'll Seeantis
Speaker 2: or Trump attacks DeSantis on social Security saying he wants
Speaker 2: to cut sole security and on abortion, and so then
Speaker 2: I see conservative commentators I think I saw like Matt
Speaker 2: Wallace or whatever being like, well, Trump was attacking DeSantis
Speaker 2: from the left, and I'm just like, yeah, but you know,
Speaker 2: his ideological inconsistency and quote unquote moderation is kind of
Speaker 2: why he.
Speaker 3: Won in two thousand sixteen.
Speaker 2: And also the quote very conservative voters that people always
Speaker 2: like to look at. Those people are already for DeSantis anyways,
Speaker 2: He's pulling very high with them. Those are the classic
Speaker 2: GOP voter, small business owner who will vote for anyone
Speaker 2: with an R next to their name. They love Romney,
Speaker 2: they love Paul Ryan, of course they love DeSantis. Guess
Speaker 2: what though, as Romney found out, you can't win the presidency.
Speaker 2: With those people, it's really only forty something percent of
Speaker 2: the country who will basically vote are no matter what,
Speaker 2: So you have got to win at least a significant
Speaker 2: larger portion those people are not very conservative. So running
Speaker 2: from the left at least in a general election, and
Speaker 2: when I say left, I mean really more centrist, that
Speaker 2: is smart politically, and it also shows you why Trump
Speaker 2: actually could be more electable than Ron de Santis in
Speaker 2: many ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's the part that's really interesting is
Speaker 1: DeSantis pitches himself. Part of his pitch is like he's
Speaker 1: the more electable candidate. But when you stay count these
Speaker 1: you know, extreme positions on abortion, and you also stay
Speaker 1: out a position that is enough a lot of American
Speaker 1: people on social Security and medicare based on his previous comments, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes that that's going to put a hit on
Speaker 1: your electability piece. I mean, the parts that's interesting to
Speaker 1: me about the pro life movement and you know their
Speaker 1: reaction to Trump, their reaction Nikki Haley, et cetera is
Speaker 1: Trump can get away with these things more than other
Speaker 1: candidates can right for and this is why Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: in like the dead of night, felt compelled to sign
Speaker 1: this six week abortion ban. Even though he's not an idiot,
Speaker 1: he knows this is a problem for him in a
Speaker 1: general election. He knows is wildly unpopular with the overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of the American people. But you got a divide
Speaker 1: between the general election audience and the primary audience and
Speaker 1: groups that are very organized and very powerful like Susan B.
Speaker 4: Anthony List.
Speaker 1: And so that's why he signed that ban, because he's
Speaker 1: placing also this big bet on Iowa, and these groups
Speaker 1: are disproposed even more disproportionately empower in the state of Iowa.
Speaker 1: So where Trump Trump staked out this more trying to
Speaker 1: sound like a moderate position on abortion. He's been singing
Speaker 1: this tune for a while. And guess what, his polls
Speaker 1: are really high. They just keep going up. DeSantis probably
Speaker 1: couldn't weather the storm in the same way.
Speaker 4: And here's the other thing. DeSantis is trying.
Speaker 1: To appeal to an ideologically consistently conservative group that Trump
Speaker 1: frankly doesn't really need in order to win.
Speaker 4: I mean, Trump's strength is with non.
Speaker 1: College educated voters who you know, have been with him
Speaker 1: the whole time, where it's more of a visceral appeal,
Speaker 1: and he's he's got those folks wherever he stands on abortion.
Speaker 1: So DeSantis is more vulnerable on these issues because of
Speaker 1: the coalition that he is trying to stitch together. And
Speaker 1: I think all the other candidates too. And it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, you see this in politics all the time.
Speaker 1: There are just some candidates who have the charisma and
Speaker 1: skill to pull off things that other candidates can't. And
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is one of those people who can get
Speaker 1: away with things that other people just can't get away with.
Speaker 1: And I think that is laid bare by what's going
Speaker 1: on with abortion right now.
Speaker 3: Perfectly said.
Speaker 2: You know, DeSantis is held to the same standards as
Speaker 2: a normal politician, and Trump is just held to whatever
Speaker 2: the hell standards people have decided to hold Trump.
Speaker 3: That's fair, but it is what it is. Life is
Speaker 3: not fair.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, though DeSantis is playing his
Speaker 2: hand the best that he possibly can. He had a
Speaker 2: great answer yesterday when he was asked about stop the
Speaker 2: Steal at a press conference in the state of Florida.
Speaker 2: It seems like he's got a pretty good pat answer
Speaker 2: down for the campaign trail.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 1: You said to her in events in Iowa, ok Tabika
Speaker 1: that the GP needs to.
Speaker 3: Reject a culture of losing. Do you acknowledge that Trump
Speaker 3: lost and there wasn't all this.
Speaker 5: Straw that he talks about. Well, I look at the
Speaker 5: last however many elections cycles. Twenty eighteen, we lost the House,
Speaker 5: we lost the Senate. Twenty twenty, Biden becomes president or no,
Speaker 5: she's we lost a cent in twenty twenty. Biden becomes
Speaker 5: president and it's not a huge amount of damage. Very
Speaker 5: unpopular in twenty twenty two, and we were supposed to
Speaker 5: have this big red wave and other than like Florida
Speaker 5: and Iowa, I didn't see a red wave across this country.
Speaker 5: And so I think the party has developed a culture
Speaker 5: of losing. I think that there's not accountability, and I
Speaker 5: think in Florida we really showed what it takes to
Speaker 5: not just win, win big, and then deliver big. And ultimately,
Speaker 5: when you're doing all this, what results are you producing
Speaker 5: for people? That's really what matters. You can sit there
Speaker 5: and talk about cable news, social media, all these other
Speaker 5: things that people are fixated on, and for me, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: what's that true? North, you obviously got to win, otherwise
Speaker 5: you don't get a ticket to the dance. But once
Speaker 5: you do that, how are you going to be able
Speaker 5: to actually bring about big change to make people's lives
Speaker 5: better next?
Speaker 2: I think it's a great answer, and I do wish
Speaker 2: we lived in a place where, at least in a primary,
Speaker 2: where results do matter for people in general election, I
Speaker 2: do think it matters.
Speaker 3: But whenever it comes to GOP.
Speaker 2: Primary, well, current polls, I guess speak for themselves.
Speaker 3: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 2: I once again I wish that Desantas's answer would resonate.
Speaker 2: And yet Trump is actually up over last month to
Speaker 2: fifty five percent in the Republican primary. DeSantis at a
Speaker 2: whopping seventeen percent, roughly around where RFK Junior is underperforming,
Speaker 2: actually underperforming in some polls, or RFK Junior is on
Speaker 2: the Democratic side, Mike Pence form and vice president actually
Speaker 2: polling under where Mary Anne Williamson is in the Democratic primary,
Speaker 2: He's at six percent, Nikki Haley's at four, Viake Ramaswami
Speaker 2: and for Tim Scott at two, Asa Hutchinson at one.
Speaker 2: Larry Hillolder, I didn't know Larry Elder was in the race.
Speaker 3: Good for him, I knew that. I kind of forgot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got to I have a soft spot for Lario,
Speaker 2: do you I have anyway? So any what can we
Speaker 2: say from this? Well, you know, voters just love Trump.
Speaker 1: I have a little bit of a different take on
Speaker 1: the DeSantis answer. I thought it was fine for that
Speaker 1: moment whatever, when you're not going to face a follow
Speaker 1: up and you can just deliver your line and move on.
Speaker 1: But it does, it does put a little bit of
Speaker 1: blood in the water because every reporter is going to
Speaker 1: watch that answer and note that he dodged right, and
Speaker 1: now every time he's gonna get because he didn't come down,
Speaker 1: he didn't say what he thought about twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: It was a clear dodge.
Speaker 1: And so if you don't think anytime that a reporter
Speaker 1: has a chance to try to drill down and ask
Speaker 1: him and push him and try to get him, that
Speaker 1: is going to happen time and time again. And so again,
Speaker 1: it's one thing when you are in that setting and
Speaker 1: he knows he can just ignore if there's a follow
Speaker 1: up and just move on to the next question and
Speaker 1: just deliver as answer with no pushback, that's one thing.
Speaker 4: But if he submits, you know.
Speaker 1: Subjects himself to any sort of extended to sit down interview,
Speaker 1: with a real journalist. They're going to push and you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to get away with that
Speaker 1: pat answer. Or if they do end up, you know,
Speaker 1: if he does end up on a debate stage, which
Speaker 1: I think the Republican Party is planning on holding debates,
Speaker 1: I don't know if Donald Trump is going to participate
Speaker 1: in them, but those moderators are going to push all
Speaker 1: those candidates on.
Speaker 4: That as well. So I read it a little bit
Speaker 4: differently than you did.
Speaker 2: Here's the reason why I'm reading it politically. That's the
Speaker 2: best you can do, because what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: Most people who are Republicans believe the election was stolen,
Speaker 2: So you can't say, no, the election was not stolen.
Speaker 2: So what do you do? We have a culture of losing. Well,
Speaker 2: that reads a little bit differently. I don't even disagree
Speaker 2: with you. Look empirically, obviously, what does he need to do?
Speaker 2: Like the election wasn't stolen and I'm a winner, I'm
Speaker 2: a real winner, unlike you.
Speaker 3: True.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great answer, but you directionally have to
Speaker 2: be able to get there. And also again in the
Speaker 2: very unlikely scenario but still possible scenario where he's able
Speaker 2: to beat Trump, the best way possible is really what
Speaker 2: I think he's doing right now. He says we need
Speaker 2: to reject a culture of losing, and he's doing the
Speaker 2: Obama strategy. I just read this morning fifty state legislators
Speaker 2: in New Hampshire came out and endorsed Ron DeSantis. That's
Speaker 2: huge and two of them actually endorsed Trump only nineteen
Speaker 2: days ago, So not sure what happened with that.
Speaker 3: He's clearly doing the early straight strategy.
Speaker 2: He can go in, spend time on the ground, roll
Speaker 2: up and give people permission to vote for him. Iowa
Speaker 2: to New Hampshire, create a media narrative, and have a
Speaker 2: fighting chance on Super Tuesday. Do I think it's going
Speaker 2: to happen. No, I think Trump is going to win
Speaker 2: New Hampshire. I think New Hampshire loves Trump, they have
Speaker 2: literally since twenty sixteen. Certainly possible, though same with Iowa
Speaker 2: is a little bit more. If he Super Tuesday, I
Speaker 2: just really see no chance. But once again, you know
Speaker 2: it's you said yesterday, this might be your only shot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a forty four year old man. You know what's
Speaker 2: the worst case he loses? And then what he's a
Speaker 2: multi millionaire losing Florida.
Speaker 3: It's not a bad life.
Speaker 4: You can go to that lobby of earlier. He's lots
Speaker 4: of connections.
Speaker 2: He will be fine for the rest of his Life's
Speaker 2: a young man, he has a wife, he's got small kids.
Speaker 2: Like you know, yeah, maybe you should shoot your shot. Personally,
Speaker 2: I would just sail off from the sunset.
Speaker 4: I guess on that answer, I agree with you. It's
Speaker 4: the best he can do. Yeah, it's the best you
Speaker 4: can do.
Speaker 1: To me, it's just underscore that he's an impossible bind
Speaker 1: because part of the base, part of the coalition that
Speaker 1: he wants to stitch together, wants to hear him say
Speaker 1: it was rigged, it was stolen Trump one. The other
Speaker 1: part wants to hear him say this is fake news.
Speaker 1: Obviously Joe Biden won We you know, have a culture
Speaker 1: of losing.
Speaker 4: We need to get behind a winner.
Speaker 1: And so he's trying to split the difference between those
Speaker 1: two things and just trying not to say anything. And again,
Speaker 1: you can get away with it in you know, one
Speaker 1: scripted pat answer, but if you get any pushback or
Speaker 1: follow up, it kind of falls apart. So so it
Speaker 1: just to me again, it illustrates he's doing perhaps the
Speaker 1: best he can. Given the landscape within the Republican primary,
Speaker 1: it is an impossible situation and an impossible needle to
Speaker 1: try to thread. O.
Speaker 3: I think that's why I don't think it will work out. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 3: you're in agreement that play the best hand he can.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's not always the best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you hope like fate is gonna hand you,
Speaker 1: you know, hand to something you can work with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you never know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, history can roll, always rolls its dice. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: this is such a hilarious story. Flagged by Matt Brunegg.
Speaker 2: Let's run it up there on the screen. So The
Speaker 2: New York Times wrote this incredible nonsense story about quote
Speaker 2: why some companies are saying diversity and belonging instead of
Speaker 2: diversity and inclusion. He says, incredible stuff. Businesses are finding
Speaker 2: out the DEI consultants they hire are running programs that
Speaker 2: create even more identity based hostility, and are responding by
Speaker 2: hiring other DEI consultants who market themselves as not doing that.
Speaker 3: As he says, quote, all of this is fake. Now.
Speaker 2: The reason why this is hilarious is that you basically
Speaker 2: have the new religion of DEI inside of every Fortune
Speaker 2: five hundred company in America and have now basically for
Speaker 2: the last couple of years, especially ramping up after the
Speaker 2: George Floyd protest.
Speaker 3: People thought that they were doing the right thing.
Speaker 2: They said, Oh, we're going to eliminate racism by hiring
Speaker 2: D and I consultants. However, all evidence that we currently
Speaker 2: have crystal all evidence, as evidenced by this New York
Speaker 2: Times article, is that saying to quote diversity and inclusion
Speaker 2: and emphasizing the place of race quote unquote implicit bias
Speaker 2: quote quote you know, quote unquote like microaggressions or macroaggressions
Speaker 2: in some cases are actually increasing hostility in the workplace
Speaker 2: racist thoughts and are having the opposite intended effect now
Speaker 2: and also, do any of these people work.
Speaker 3: I have no idea why.
Speaker 2: Aerospace engineers are subjected to raise your hand whenever you
Speaker 2: had a racist thought literally at work.
Speaker 3: Sounds like something you should do on your own time.
Speaker 2: Now, what's fascinating to me is that the corporations are
Speaker 2: beginning to wake up to this.
Speaker 3: I personally thought that they would never.
Speaker 2: Move on, but they're doing it in the best way possible,
Speaker 2: moving from diversity and inclusion to diversity and belonging, ditching
Speaker 2: some implicit bias training to still spend the same amount
Speaker 2: of money on quote diversity, but hiring somebody whose recommendation
Speaker 2: is stopped doing the previous training and is reverting back
Speaker 2: to do nothing. So in effect, this has all become
Speaker 2: a giant money laundering scheme. Matt Tayib had that great
Speaker 2: piece I think it was two years ago about what
Speaker 2: was there white fragility, the Broadway robins, some of these
Speaker 2: ladies who are out there making multi Ibraheim Kendy, making
Speaker 2: millions of dollars, charging these places to give them lectures
Speaker 2: and to teach their babies anti racism and all this stuff,
Speaker 2: and instead it's actually making people not only more racist,
Speaker 2: is actually no evidence A it's not changing anything on racism.
Speaker 3: So congratulations and.
Speaker 2: Be like they are basically just bilking fortune five hundred
Speaker 2: companies to check a box when they can go to
Speaker 2: Wall Street and say, see, we have all of our
Speaker 2: employees going undergoing diversity inclusion, and meanwhile you have employees.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you the amount of people I know
Speaker 2: who are subjected to these things, who it enrages them
Speaker 2: to their core. A. They're being taken away from whatever
Speaker 2: that's supposed to be doing, and b they're like I don't.
Speaker 2: They're like, I don't even agree with this, and you're
Speaker 2: basically shoving this down my throat and you're making me
Speaker 2: angrier about this problem which I didn't even think was
Speaker 2: a problem in the first place.
Speaker 1: The research has long been in that if you actually
Speaker 1: care about combating racism, which I do, this diversity and
Speaker 1: inclusion consultant grift complex is fake.
Speaker 4: It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: If anything, it makes things worse, according to a bunch
Speaker 1: of you know, data that they have in the New
Speaker 1: York Times, But you gotta love that. The solution to
Speaker 1: that is like, well, let's hire a different class of
Speaker 1: telecrifters who are going to pretend to you know, so
Speaker 1: we can still have our virtue signaling box checking exercise
Speaker 1: that we can you know, put on our website or
Speaker 1: whatever to show how wonderful and how virtuous we are,
Speaker 1: even though we have changed none of our internal structures
Speaker 1: to actually deal with like the root causes of this problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could be spending this money on giving
Speaker 1: people bonuses and races of life better.
Speaker 2: Everybody you're raised, especially the most working class people at
Speaker 2: your company. Take all of that money, give it as
Speaker 2: a bonus to all of your employees coact and the.
Speaker 3: Portion of them more minorities will now do better. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: You know, there were a couple of things that we're
Speaker 1: mentioning here that I was like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: that actually is a better idea. So, for example, one
Speaker 1: company was going to open a new location or headquarters
Speaker 1: in Denver, which is so overwhelmingly white. They're like, let's
Speaker 1: go to Atlanta and that'll just like naturally increase, you know,
Speaker 1: help us attract graduates. There's more diversity in the city
Speaker 1: of Atlanta. I was like, okay, well, that's like actually
Speaker 1: a thing that makes some kind of sense.
Speaker 4: But hiring a different group.
Speaker 1: Of fake racist, you know, racism consultants to fix the
Speaker 1: problems that the other group of grifter racism consultants created,
Speaker 1: this is just total insanity. And the part of about
Speaker 1: the New York Times article that was funny to me was,
Speaker 1: you know, they use these anecdotes of they very credulously
Speaker 1: report on the new class of consultants that Okay, this
Speaker 1: is really.
Speaker 4: Going to be the solution. Now they've got it. Now
Speaker 4: they've really got the solution.
Speaker 1: They interview like a couple of people were like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was great, we loved it, and that substitutes in
Speaker 1: for any sort of like evidence or evidence based research
Speaker 1: that the new class of consultants is going to be
Speaker 1: better than the health.
Speaker 2: Correct you know, I will say that I had a
Speaker 2: massive flag go up whenever they say that the reason
Speaker 2: they switched from Denver to Atlanta, because I also know
Speaker 2: that Brett Governor Brian Kemp and the Georgia State Legislature
Speaker 2: are throwing money at companies that are coming to Georgia.
Speaker 2: So even that, I was like, are you really going
Speaker 2: because you want more black engineering graduates? Or are you
Speaker 2: may be going because you're going to get more money
Speaker 2: by switching there. So I'm just personally suspected basically anything
Speaker 2: that these people say. I think that the best way
Speaker 2: to do it is like what we just said, you know,
Speaker 2: give people a raise and hire people based on merit,
Speaker 2: and then when we have education, make it so you
Speaker 2: have merit based admissions so that everybody knows that whoever
Speaker 2: is there is there, regardless of whatever you know, is
Speaker 2: there because they are the best person for the job.
Speaker 2: That's how we hire here, That's how most people should
Speaker 2: hire and in general, like spending your time.
Speaker 3: Your time is the most precious asset that you have.
Speaker 2: When you ask people why they want money, it's because
Speaker 2: they want to be able to control their time. So
Speaker 2: involuntarily subjecting people to things that don't work. And when
Speaker 2: we're saying this, I'm not talking, you know, out of nothing.
Speaker 2: Put this up there on the screen. This is just
Speaker 2: like one of a slew from Scientific American the problem
Speaker 2: with implicit bias training and an insane amount of evidence
Speaker 2: based research to show that implicit bias training has either
Speaker 2: no effect or the opposite effect intended when subjected to
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of people who have been forced now
Speaker 2: to go through these programs, so it has not.
Speaker 3: Had the intended effect.
Speaker 2: It is a societal problem that apparently we're trying to
Speaker 2: solve through like some corporation.
Speaker 3: It's not Microsoft. Rating is Microsoft's.
Speaker 2: Microsoft's job is to make Our job is to make
Speaker 2: sure that they pay people enough money and pay their
Speaker 2: taxes while they're doing so.
Speaker 3: The rest of.
Speaker 2: This this leave it to us, Leave it to the government,
Speaker 2: Leave it to the news, Leave it to churches or
Speaker 2: bowling leagues or you know, any of these places. Leave
Speaker 2: it to your friend group where you can sit and
Speaker 2: talk and be like, hey, what's going on with this?
Speaker 2: George Floyd the thing man be like, yeah, well I
Speaker 2: kind of disagree. What's going on in the news.
Speaker 3: I hadn't thought about that before.
Speaker 2: And the actually I was listening to the show and
Speaker 2: they said this, and I read this piece and what
Speaker 2: a national review. But I read this piece in the Nation.
Speaker 2: You sit down, you talk. That's called society. This is
Speaker 2: not the way that these problems are supposed to be worked.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, you're responsible for your corporate culture, and
Speaker 1: lord knows there is a lot of like sex and
Speaker 1: race and religion based discrimination that still exists within these
Speaker 1: companies that they are wholly responsible for rooting out. But
Speaker 1: the idea that you're going to solve a deeply entrenched
Speaker 1: problem like racism at the corporate training level is farcical.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm getting to.
Speaker 1: And when you you know, we know what has worked
Speaker 1: over time in terms of lifting closing the wealth gap,
Speaker 1: closing the wage gap, especially among Black Americans who have
Speaker 1: historically been treated as this horrifically abused underclass. And it
Speaker 1: has been universal programs that have lifted the minimum wage
Speaker 1: for all people that have helped improve the plate of
Speaker 1: all working class people. Why because in a lot of times,
Speaker 1: race is a proxy for class in America. So when
Speaker 1: you focus on lifting up, you know, the bottom of society,
Speaker 1: this is disproportionately impactful for disenfranchised and marginalized groups. That
Speaker 1: work has to happen at the nationwide level, It has
Speaker 1: to happen at the government level. It is not going
Speaker 1: to be solved by Robin DiAngelo getting paid hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands and millions of dollars for some bullshit corporate training
Speaker 1: that doesn't even work and probably makes things worse.
Speaker 2: So you're forgetting though that it makes people feel better
Speaker 2: whenever they buy a book called anti Racist Baby.
Speaker 3: That's what we're always forgetting.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go to the final part here about the
Speaker 2: Durham investigation. This came out a little bit later in
Speaker 2: the day. I had the time to read as much
Speaker 2: as I could. This thing is three hundred pages, so
Speaker 2: I read the executive and some of the key sections,
Speaker 2: and we pulled out what we thought were the most
Speaker 2: important takeaways from the Durham Report. For those who don't remember,
Speaker 2: the Durham Report was the report to oversee the Muller Report,
Speaker 2: and which was then in response to the crossfire hurricane investigation,
Speaker 2: investigate the investigator, investigating the investigators who are the investigators
Speaker 2: of the president. And I know that this can just
Speaker 2: seem absolutely maddening. Let's just start with the very basics
Speaker 2: of it all comes back to Russiagate. What was Russiagate
Speaker 2: has now become an all encompassing term. I think at
Speaker 2: its core, it was this Donald Trump and the Trump campaign.
Speaker 2: Members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government,
Speaker 2: both through monetary and political purposes, to damage the Hillary
Speaker 2: Clinton campaign. That included an allegation that they were helping
Speaker 2: coordinate WikiLeaks not true, that they were helping coordinate other
Speaker 2: leaks not true. That they were helping coordinate Facebook ads
Speaker 2: to help sway the election also not true. But that
Speaker 2: was it at its core, and it had different sub elements,
Speaker 2: like the Steel dossier, like Alpha Bank, like all of
Speaker 2: these other allegations that have since all been debuggd We
Speaker 2: know now today that not one of those things happens
Speaker 2: to be true. But the investigation as to how said
Speaker 2: investigation was even sparked by the FBI, how tens of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars of taxpayer resources were spent by the FBI,
Speaker 2: the premier law enforcement organization, to investigate and run these
Speaker 2: things down. How the American people were subjected to the
Speaker 2: story for what I would say three years, three straight
Speaker 2: years of NonStop news coverage. And it's one of the
Speaker 2: biggest screw ups by media and also by law enforcement
Speaker 2: basically since Iraq WMD. As Matt Tayibi so eloquently wrote
Speaker 2: at the time, now, the roots of this investigation go very,
Speaker 2: very deep, and that was arguably one of the biggest
Speaker 2: stories from the Durham Report.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen, please.
Speaker 2: According to the report, the plan by Hillary Clinton and
Speaker 2: the Clinton campaign to hire a law firm to fund
Speaker 2: the Steele dossier and to shop it around town to
Speaker 2: get media outlets to on it linking Trump to Russia
Speaker 2: was briefed in August of twenty and sixteen by then
Speaker 2: CIA Director John Brennan to President Obama, Vice President Biden,
Speaker 2: ag Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director Komy. Now, this particular
Speaker 2: subplot of Russia Gate, for those of the uninitiated, is
Speaker 2: actually called Obamagate. Yes, this just shows you how long
Speaker 2: we've been covering this. So this goes to the initial
Speaker 2: Trump allegation that President Obama, his lackeys in the White
Speaker 2: House and others were briefed on said dossier and did
Speaker 2: their best to do two things. A to maintain knowledge
Speaker 2: of the investigation, to make sure that the FBI actually
Speaker 2: launched an investigation into this. B they knew that it
Speaker 2: politically would have been beneficial to the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Speaker 2: And then finally, C is that they did their best
Speaker 2: crystal at the time to maintain not only the investigation
Speaker 2: but also elements and other damaging information about the Trump
Speaker 2: the incoming Trump administration. Why spread quote unquote spreading it
Speaker 2: around government so enabling it to leak when the Trump
Speaker 2: people came into office. I think that that is a
Speaker 2: tremendously significant and important point because it shows that guy
Speaker 2: going back to the by going back to the Obama
Speaker 2: white House, and the involvement of the CIA director than
Speaker 2: John Brennan, his eventual departure of the CIA to MSNBC,
Speaker 2: and also unquestionably a part of the leaks to the
Speaker 2: press around Russia Gate. He was intimately familiar with this
Speaker 2: plan from the very very beginning and very likely sparked
Speaker 2: some of the initial interests in this along with Clapper,
Speaker 2: who also was then working for CNN.
Speaker 1: So part of what this report outlines, as reflected in
Speaker 1: what we just had up on the screen, is that
Speaker 1: there were separate allegations about both of these campaigns with
Speaker 1: regards to Russia. So there was the Steele dossier Russian
Speaker 1: collusion situation with Trump. That was one infirmed allegation that
Speaker 1: was out there, and there was also an unconfirmed allegation
Speaker 1: out there about Hillary Clinton that one of her foreign
Speaker 1: policy advisors had come up with the plot which was
Speaker 1: approved by Hillary herself. Again, these were all allegations, unconfirmed,
Speaker 1: that they were going to vilify Donald Trump by stirring
Speaker 1: up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.
Speaker 1: So both of these campaigns had potential sort of like
Speaker 1: Russian plots that had been alleged against them, And part
Speaker 1: of what the Durham Report concludes is that they handled
Speaker 1: those two separate claims very differently. In the Clinton instance,
Speaker 1: they basically dismissed it and they didn't launch a major
Speaker 1: investigation into it, and in the Trump instance, they did.
Speaker 1: And what the Durham Report asserts is that some of
Speaker 1: the people who were involved in opening the crossfire Hurricane investigation,
Speaker 1: including Peter Strock and some of these other names that
Speaker 1: again go back years now that they had a bias
Speaker 1: against Trump, and that was part of why they decided
Speaker 1: to take this Steele dossier, which we all know now
Speaker 1: you know almost all of it was bullshit, especially the
Speaker 1: most saalacious claims were complete nonsense. Decided to take this
Speaker 1: uncorroborated report and use it as a basis to launch
Speaker 1: this investigation. So that was part of what was important
Speaker 1: to show here is that the two candidates were treated differently.
Speaker 4: And then one other piece.
Speaker 1: Just before you go onto some of the other revelations
Speaker 1: here that I think it's really important to keep in
Speaker 1: mind as we're going through all of this and why
Speaker 1: this still matters, unfortunately so many years later, is this
Speaker 1: has screwed.
Speaker 4: Up our whole view of Russia.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is still reverberating in terms of the
Speaker 1: Ukraine War and how we're approaching and how Americans are
Speaker 1: thinking about all of these things. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: never ends in terms of the impact that this all
Speaker 1: had on the American public. And if you're a faithful
Speaker 1: MSNBC viewer, like if you heard the way we were
Speaker 1: talking about this and that this was all debunked. Your
Speaker 1: mind would be blown because you've never heard that on
Speaker 1: their airwaves, even though they spend more than any other
Speaker 1: network years and years and years building this sound and
Speaker 1: milking it for ratings night after night after night, led
Speaker 1: by their top performer in talent, Rachel Maddow. So the
Speaker 1: other piece of this of why this still matters is,
Speaker 1: unlike I Rock WMD, which eventually the media all admitted like, ah,
Speaker 1: oops are bad, we got it wrong, and there's a
Speaker 1: general public acceptance and acknowledgment of that, they are vast
Speaker 1: loss of mainstream media viewers and audience and readers who
Speaker 1: have no idea how wrong these outlets got things.
Speaker 2: Compare Obama's response to Crimea to Joe Biden's response to Ukraine,
Speaker 2: and I'm not.
Speaker 3: Saying those are one to one, but there is no
Speaker 3: way that.
Speaker 2: Some of the madness going on in terms of US
Speaker 2: support for Ukraine happens today without Russia Gate. It has
Speaker 2: massive And when the historians go back one hundred years
Speaker 2: from now, it's like going back and looking at war
Speaker 2: fever in nineteen twelve in Britain and in Germany, being like,
Speaker 2: it's obvious something's about to go down, and at that
Speaker 2: time they didn't really know it.
Speaker 3: It seemed normal. It was like in the air.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to call it in the living through
Speaker 2: the time that this unquestionably had a massive impact on
Speaker 2: US history, on the war in Ukraine and how the
Speaker 2: US public viewed Russia.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the next part here, This is very important.
Speaker 2: From the German investigation, they conclude that the Steele Dossier,
Speaker 2: the infamous quote pe tape claim which was in the
Speaker 2: dossier was not only an obvious lie, but whose provenance
Speaker 2: was nonsense and fabricated in its entirety by a Northern
Speaker 2: Virginia Democratic operative named Charles Dolan who had ties to
Speaker 2: Russian businesses and lobbying organizations, who levied said ties by
Speaker 2: planting it in the Steele dossier before then peddling it
Speaker 2: to media outlets before and after the Trump victory in
Speaker 2: twenty and sixteen, and then finally, actually probably most importantly
Speaker 2: from a national security perspective, put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen, showed that the Steele Dossier was included in
Speaker 2: the illegal Carter page FISA warrant that the report shows
Speaker 2: the PISA applications included items from the unproven Steel dossier
Speaker 2: were included directly in said FIZA application, where they took
Speaker 2: unverified information pedled by the Clinton campaign and used it
Speaker 2: as a pretext to spy on an American citizen. So
Speaker 2: you put all this together and what you find is
Speaker 2: an incredibly damaging.
Speaker 3: Report for the FBI.
Speaker 2: I was actually a little bit miffed by the Durham
Speaker 2: report because in his executive summary he damns the FBI.
Speaker 2: He says that they opened this investigation with no evidence
Speaker 2: whatsoever that any of it was true. They spent so
Speaker 2: many resources and all the running down these bs claims,
Speaker 2: obviously for political purposes. But in it he doesn't have
Speaker 2: any recommendations for new procedures. In the summary, he just goes,
Speaker 2: I have no recommendations, just simply.
Speaker 3: Follow the law.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, clearly the law is not working. Because
Speaker 2: Peter Struck is a hero. Andrew McCabe is on CNN
Speaker 2: who's literally fired for not doing his job properly. The
Speaker 2: other guy went to go work for Twitter and got
Speaker 2: fired by Elon to cover up because he was covering
Speaker 2: up his own Twitter files. Nonsense, Not what James Comey's
Speaker 2: a multimillionaire living here in northern Virginia.
Speaker 3: What's happening.
Speaker 2: Clearly, you can't just have law enforcement officials who don't
Speaker 2: properly enforce the law or do investigations correctly and suffer
Speaker 2: no consequences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I'm losing my mind reading this report.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean most of the prosecutions that there were
Speaker 1: three separate attempted prosecutions that came out of this, only
Speaker 1: one of them resulted in a conviction. The other two
Speaker 1: resulted in acquittals. So the prosecutions that came out of
Speaker 1: this ended up, you know, not going very far themselves.
Speaker 1: And I found that part to a little perplexing, frankly,
Speaker 1: because you have this whole report that lays.
Speaker 4: Out you know, I think pages if anyone would have.
Speaker 1: To look at this and say, okay, this illustrates some
Speaker 1: real problems within the FBI, and it's like all right,
Speaker 1: so what do we do about? And see it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just do better next time.
Speaker 2: It's like that's not gonna happening.
Speaker 3: Is broken?
Speaker 4: What is the root cause?
Speaker 1: Like, how do we get to this place? What's the
Speaker 1: root cause? How do you change that? And he had
Speaker 1: nothing for you on that front, So it is it
Speaker 1: was disappointing in that regard for sure, because what you
Speaker 1: would like to see is some sort of reform that's
Speaker 1: going to give people confidence that you know, the next
Speaker 1: time there's this big investigation, big incredibly politically charged investigation
Speaker 1: which the FBI has now bungled a few of these,
Speaker 1: that things are going to unfold differently, and instead it's
Speaker 1: just like, just do a little better.
Speaker 4: Next time, guys. We got confidence, so it's going to
Speaker 4: be all good.
Speaker 3: It's so dumb, let's go the next part.
Speaker 2: This is so funny, so ccen as Jake Tapper decided
Speaker 2: to just tell the basic conclusions that are quite obvious
Speaker 2: from the Duram report that they are very damaging for
Speaker 2: the FBI and they do vindicate in part many of
Speaker 2: Trump's acusations against the law enforcement agency and CNN view
Speaker 2: are not so happy about it. Here's what he had
Speaker 2: to say, and we'll tell you about the reaction.
Speaker 6: President Trump appeared so confident of what Durham would find
Speaker 6: he openly pressured the special counsel to release his findings
Speaker 6: before the twenty twenty election. Regardless, the report is now here,
Speaker 6: it has dropped, and it might not have produced everything
Speaker 6: of what some Republicans hod for it is regardless devastating
Speaker 6: to the FBI, and to a degree it does exonerate
Speaker 6: Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: So the reaction here at Crystal is so funny.
Speaker 2: Media Matters absolutely losing it, they say, to be clear,
Speaker 2: this is not devastating for the FBI does not do
Speaker 2: in any degree exonerate Donald Trump. What in the world
Speaker 2: are you talking about? They say, is misleading commentary. My
Speaker 2: personal favorite I just scrolled past is good God. They
Speaker 2: are now pimping out Jake Tapper for MAGA viewers hashtag
Speaker 2: propaganda for ratings, just so people know it's not working
Speaker 2: if that's the case. Because Chris Wallace just lost in
Speaker 2: primetime to Newsmax that actually just came out yesterday. They
Speaker 2: got a total of three hundred thousand viewers.
Speaker 4: Matter how much they pay in that dude, yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly, probably ten million dollars a year to be last
Speaker 2: on the air to freaking Newsmax, which fairly existed five
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 3: Humiliating, absolutely humiliating.
Speaker 2: But it just shows same problems with the freakout post
Speaker 2: CNN town Hall. They cannot handle any semblance of fairness
Speaker 2: whenever it comes to describing yeah, basic facts, Well.
Speaker 1: I think I think Ryan, because I watched a little
Speaker 1: of you and Ryan's coverage to this while I was
Speaker 1: on my honeymoon. I think Ryan pointed this out that
Speaker 1: you know, something we talk about in independent media is
Speaker 1: this problem of audience capture, where you know, you start
Speaker 1: feeding audience a certain narrative and then that attracts a
Speaker 1: certain audience and all they want to hear is this
Speaker 1: one certain narrative, and then if you veer off of
Speaker 1: that track, you lose a whole bunch of people. And
Speaker 1: so people don't veer off the track. They find reasons
Speaker 1: to stay on the track. Major problem in independent media.
Speaker 1: But it appears CNN has the same issue because they've
Speaker 1: spent years cultivating a certain worldview and a certain audience.
Speaker 1: And so you know, in a sense, I you know,
Speaker 1: Tapper is saying things that are just accurate based on
Speaker 1: what's reflected in the report, But you don't get to
Speaker 1: avoid complicity for over years and years and years hiding
Speaker 1: any of the evidence that what was being spun in
Speaker 1: terms of rushigate was false. And so you can't be
Speaker 1: surprised then when there's a frecount, when you host a
Speaker 1: Trump town hall, you can't be surprised when there's a
Speaker 1: frecount when you just cover the contents of this report.
Speaker 1: If they are genuinely trying to, you know, cultivate a
Speaker 1: different audience, Yeah, it's going to be painful for a while.
Speaker 4: They're going to lose some of the people.
Speaker 1: That they have been bringing along with them for years
Speaker 1: because they haven't painted an accurate picture of the world
Speaker 1: for them. So then when you come in and puncture
Speaker 1: their bubble, they're going to say. You know, they're going
Speaker 1: to be confused, They're going to be upset, They're going
Speaker 1: to be enrage.
Speaker 4: There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what do we learn I guess from
Speaker 2: all this. I just think that you can see audience capture.
Speaker 2: But more importantly, the problem for them is they don't
Speaker 2: even care as much about their audience. They care more
Speaker 2: about pleasing each other. And you just know that it
Speaker 2: drives Jake Tapper insane to see criticism from media matter,
Speaker 2: you know, from people who they would consider social friends,
Speaker 2: allies in many respects.
Speaker 4: And I feel like Tapper is a little bit of
Speaker 4: a contrarian.
Speaker 3: Yes and no.
Speaker 4: He likes to fight.
Speaker 3: He does. He's a dm W, he is a warrior, experience.
Speaker 1: He's he definitely one thing we can say for sure,
Speaker 1: every comment about this.
Speaker 2: He yeah, tweet this video at him, one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: will watch it. I guarantee you if I say one
Speaker 2: negative word, I'll hear about it for the rest of
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 3: The problem that I think is that and this isn't
Speaker 3: about Tapper necessarily.
Speaker 2: This is really just CNN and the way that the
Speaker 2: internal response is look at the freak out from the
Speaker 2: town hall, and you can just guarantee that if you
Speaker 2: say something like this factual but potential to help Trump
Speaker 2: in any way, there's going to be a cringe on.
Speaker 3: The other local No, no, no, it didn't vindicate everything they said.
Speaker 2: That's not what he said. He said to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: he said, it's damaging for the FBI. The FBI is
Speaker 2: not We don't have to religiously pray to the FBI.
Speaker 2: It's just an organization. It's it's supposed to be neutral.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 4: Obviously, deeply it has a lot of problems. Y.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's deeply problematic, and I think that there are
Speaker 2: a lot of reasons to be skeptical of it. What's
Speaker 2: wrong with that? Last time I checked, we were in
Speaker 2: the news business. We should be skeptical of anything law
Speaker 2: enforcement tells us. My default assumption is I don't believe
Speaker 2: you prove it, you know, show us the evidence, and
Speaker 2: that's why it should be. That's why it should be
Speaker 2: for a lot of people in media. But they religiously
Speaker 2: had to defend the FBI during the Russigate years, which
Speaker 2: now means that if they screw up, they.
Speaker 3: Can barely say they screwed up without pissing off a.
Speaker 1: Whole bunch of yeah, because they've made them into infallible heroes,
Speaker 1: which they never deserved. Yeah, all right, Sager, what are
Speaker 1: you looking at?
Speaker 2: Almost everyone in America can agree our economic system is
Speaker 2: not fair. Now where we diverge is how do we
Speaker 2: address that. The wolks have the quality of outcome where
Speaker 2: we basically predetermine what the outcome for the average person
Speaker 2: should be, and then we rig all racial groups to make.
Speaker 3: Sure that's where they end up.
Speaker 2: The democratic socialists have visions of egalitarian futures with limited
Speaker 2: equality of opportunity but a very very high floor for
Speaker 2: the average individual. The economic libertarians believe that the free
Speaker 2: market itself will produce fairness, so we should double down Eventually,
Speaker 2: that we'll get there emerging branch of conservative populists who
Speaker 2: want something in between each of those groups. In my opinion,
Speaker 2: they have a point, But I think it's always important
Speaker 2: to start with the data. What does it tell us
Speaker 2: where are we exactly before we even evaluate solutions. Luckily,
Speaker 2: my friend talman Joseph Smith over at the New York
Speaker 2: Times actually did a fantastic new analysis on an upcoming
Speaker 2: largest wealth transfer in American history?
Speaker 3: What does it reveal about our future politics?
Speaker 2: Let's dive in first and foremost, what generational wealth transfer
Speaker 2: is he talking about? The basics are this, the boomers
Speaker 2: are getting fully into retirement age. With that comes the
Speaker 2: reality that many are beginning to die. With death comes inheritance.
Speaker 2: The boomers due to the enormous economic growth that occurred
Speaker 2: during their lifetimes.
Speaker 3: I've amassed trillions.
Speaker 2: Of dollars of wealth with relative ease given cheap tuition,
Speaker 2: cheap and abundant housing, ballooning wages, ballooning stock portfolios, and frankly,
Speaker 2: just the longevity of the effect of compound interest over time.
Speaker 2: A new analysis finds that the eighty four trillion dollars
Speaker 2: projected to be passed down from older Americans to their
Speaker 2: millennial and Gen X airs, roughly sixteen trillion will transfer
Speaker 2: it just in the next decade.
Speaker 3: As you can see.
Speaker 2: From the graphic before you, the amount of wealth that
Speaker 2: the boomers hold is astounding, some seventy eight trillion of
Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty trillion in existence, with the rest
Speaker 2: divided up between Gen X, silent gen and millennials holding
Speaker 2: the smallest share despite making up a massive share of
Speaker 2: the population. But what is really crazy is not the
Speaker 2: generational differences, it's who within generations is about to inherit
Speaker 2: a whole lot of money. Currently in the United States,
Speaker 2: the wealthiest ten percent of households are the ones who
Speaker 2: will be giving and getting the vast majority of riches.
Speaker 2: As you can see before you for context, the top
Speaker 2: one percent of American households hold as much wealth as
Speaker 2: the bottom ninety percent combined. They will dictate alone most
Speaker 2: of the money flow. The bottom fifty, by contrast, account
Speaker 2: for only eight percent of all future transfers. What makes
Speaker 2: this particular situation and well transfer so unique is the
Speaker 2: nature of the wealth and how it was attained. The
Speaker 2: absolute vast majority is held in booming stock portfolios invested
Speaker 2: since early working years and in real estate values by
Speaker 2: longer held properties. The twin pillars of Boomer wealth thus
Speaker 2: not only represent a large portion of what will pass down,
Speaker 2: but the nature of how it will do so. And
Speaker 2: this is where the tax code comes in. As he notes,
Speaker 2: under US law, the top one point five percent of
Speaker 2: American household wealth will be allowed for transfer to errors
Speaker 2: with virtually very little inheritance tax or income tax. The
Speaker 2: IRS estimates it will capture about four point two four
Speaker 2: point two trillion dollars off of thirty trillion dollar in
Speaker 2: the transfer. That's a rate of approximately fourteen percent. So
Speaker 2: a massive wealth transfer is about to occur. Most of
Speaker 2: it will occur within the top ten percent of American
Speaker 2: household income, and especially amongst the top one percent.
Speaker 3: This has severe social ramifications.
Speaker 2: Number one changes the fundamental makeup of the relative rich
Speaker 2: in America. As I've mentioned here before, I've actually been
Speaker 2: on a bit of a Dave Ramsey kick. Actually read
Speaker 2: his most recent book, Baby Steps Millionaires, a great book.
Speaker 3: I recommend it. The book includes a large.
Speaker 2: White paper study on North American millionaires and found the
Speaker 2: vast majority did not inherit their wealth and got it
Speaker 2: by slow and steady planning over the years with retirement
Speaker 2: savings and paid off houses. That's actually an inspiring story.
Speaker 2: The relative middle class and financial discipline can leave one
Speaker 2: pretty well off through the laws of compound interests. And
Speaker 2: to be clear, that's still really good advice. Most people
Speaker 2: would be better off if they did listen to him.
Speaker 2: But the question arises what share of those people will
Speaker 2: be rich in the future. Because the children of said
Speaker 2: baby steps millionaires can inherit real estate effectively tax free.
Speaker 2: The step up basis segments of our real estate laws
Speaker 2: and saying whenever it comes to stock purchases, the capital
Speaker 2: gains taxes going only on the appreciation within the period
Speaker 2: after inheritance, not from the portion when it was held
Speaker 2: by the original owner.
Speaker 3: In other words, absolutely gigantic.
Speaker 2: Gifts are turning over to children basically without taxes, the
Speaker 2: potential to not only widen income gaps, but gift wealth
Speaker 2: to millions who didn't work for it nearly in the
Speaker 2: same way that their parents did, not saying they don't
Speaker 2: deserve it. But if larger shares of the upper middle
Speaker 2: class attain status through inheritance, it significantly changes accelerating trends
Speaker 2: which make it much much harder to become middle class
Speaker 2: today than it was thirty years ago.
Speaker 3: Inherited wealth.
Speaker 2: Not only do they do what they have inherited wealthy
Speaker 2: have done since time immemorial. They're just going to use
Speaker 2: the government and fight tooth and nail to preserve wealth
Speaker 2: and lobby for tax codes that gives the control over
Speaker 2: their estates and lets them give their money to their
Speaker 2: kids tax free.
Speaker 3: The problem, though, is.
Speaker 2: We still live in a democracy, and in times of
Speaker 2: great great inheritance, like the Gilded Age before us or
Speaker 2: the Industrial Revolution in the UK, if you want to
Speaker 2: keep a relatively free market system, you are going to
Speaker 2: have to significantly change stuff and make some compromises. Becoming
Speaker 2: age of those compromises could very much change American society forever.
Speaker 2: We have not had a period like this really since
Speaker 2: the end of the Great Depression, when the initial system
Speaker 2: broke completely. Before that, we had the Progressive era. Both
Speaker 2: changed everything in the way our society was ordered, how
Speaker 2: we do taxes, the way the economy interacts with politics.
Speaker 2: Now I do not know what the solution is, as
Speaker 2: obviously many people have very different proposals, but expect this
Speaker 2: to be one of the central fights of our time,
Speaker 2: I thought it was astounding sixteen trillion.
Speaker 1: Dollars and if you want to hear my reaction to
Speaker 1: Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot.
Speaker 2: Com, Crystal, what are you taking a look at?
Speaker 1: Well, guys, this has been an astonishing year already of
Speaker 1: change across the media landscape. Twenty ten's juggernaut BuzzFeed News,
Speaker 1: they just shuddered. Vox was forced to raise and half
Speaker 1: of their previous valuation just to stay afloat, and now
Speaker 1: in a stunning fall, Vice Media has filed for Chapter
Speaker 1: eleven bankruptcy protection.
Speaker 4: Not so long ago that company was valued at.
Speaker 1: Five point seven billion dollars. They are now hoping to
Speaker 1: fetch two hundred and twenty five million in a fire sale.
Speaker 1: All of these companies were eaten alive by their bets
Speaker 1: that social media trends and clicks would amount to vast
Speaker 1: revenue streams. To justify their multi billion dollar valuations investors,
Speaker 1: they poured in hundreds of millions of dollars in cash,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, each of these
Speaker 1: companies fatal flaw was reliance on major tech platforms to
Speaker 1: share in a sufficient slice slice of the wealth of
Speaker 1: digital ad dollars to justify their gigantic overheads. When ad
Speaker 1: revenues dipped this year as part of the Tech Session,
Speaker 1: it was the straw that broke a whole herd of
Speaker 1: camel's backs. But this is far from the end of
Speaker 1: the story. In fact, in a lot of ways, the
Speaker 1: story of widespread media devastation might just be beginning, because
Speaker 1: now AI has arrived that is all ready capable of
Speaker 1: cutting the legs out from under even financially solid media companies.
Speaker 4: Just take a look at this.
Speaker 1: Courtesy of futurism, Google unveils plan to demolish the journalism
Speaker 1: industry using AI now. In the article, they write the
Speaker 1: Google has just unveiled their new AI integrated search. A
Speaker 1: key component is what they call snapshots. Whatever question you
Speaker 1: ask their large language model AI will generate a summary
Speaker 1: meant to answer your query, which appears above all of
Speaker 1: the linked results, and so in a lot of instances,
Speaker 1: it's likely to be the only thing that the user
Speaker 1: actually pays attention to. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to
Speaker 1: figure out what this means for the news business. When
Speaker 1: users ask questions about news stories, Let's say it was
Speaker 1: Trump found guilty of sexual assault? What are the latest
Speaker 1: Democratic primary poll results? Why did DeSantis make that weird
Speaker 1: face in Iowa?
Speaker 4: Anything?
Speaker 1: They'll no longer be presented first and foremost with this
Speaker 1: list of links to news websites where you can read
Speaker 1: about said topic. Instead, they'll most likely content themselves with
Speaker 1: that AI snapshot and just move on now.
Speaker 4: This will result in far fewer visits to sites, which.
Speaker 1: Will generate far fewer ad impressions, and which will circumvent
Speaker 1: all paywalls, and which will prevent news sites from getting you.
Speaker 4: To pay for a subscription.
Speaker 1: These are all primary critical sources of news business revenue,
Speaker 1: and every one of them gets cut off at the
Speaker 1: knees by the innovation of AI snapshots. As RPG site
Speaker 1: owner Alex Donaldson puts it, quote, if this actually works
Speaker 1: and is implemented in a firm way, this is literally
Speaker 1: the end of the business model for vast swaths of
Speaker 1: digital media.
Speaker 4: Lol. Will publishers be paid.
Speaker 1: For providing this grisk for the AI mill doesn't really
Speaker 1: look like it, A Google spokesperson told Futurism, quote, we
Speaker 1: don't have plans to share on this, but will continue
Speaker 1: to work within the broader ecosystem.
Speaker 4: Whatever that means. So what is this all going to
Speaker 4: look like?
Speaker 1: Well, if you are not a behemoth like The Times,
Speaker 1: The Post, or the Wall Street Journal, you're probably screwed.
Speaker 1: Twenty tens digital media plays were taken out by betting
Speaker 1: on social media. Now a lot of other outlets are
Speaker 1: going to be taken out by their reliance on search platforms,
Speaker 1: squeezing an already struggling industry.
Speaker 4: Google, after all.
Speaker 1: Accounts for ninety one percent of all search traffic, and
Speaker 1: other search platforms like Bing they're gonna have their own
Speaker 1: AI bots as well. In the news industry, they're already
Speaker 1: in a world of hurt after all. Even large outlets
Speaker 1: places like NBC News Washington Posts they've announced layoffs to
Speaker 1: cope with that downturn in ad revenue. So what is
Speaker 1: going to survive Outside of the giants? You can kind
Speaker 1: of still make business models work that either have very
Speaker 1: low overhead or and or some sort of dedicated audience
Speaker 1: willing to pay. That means a lot more hot takes
Speaker 1: than on the ground reporting or investigative journalism, both of
Speaker 1: which are comparatively expensive. It means more playing to a
Speaker 1: dedicated niche, either an ideological or personality based one, because
Speaker 1: a fervent audience willing to pay is more important than
Speaker 1: a large general audience with lower commitment. It means a
Speaker 1: lot more insider tip sheets that lobbyists and corporate interests
Speaker 1: find valuable to help their bottom line one way or another,
Speaker 1: you'd better keep it small and provide something, whether it's
Speaker 1: genuine insight or ideological sucker or insider gossip, that people
Speaker 1: find genuinely worth paying for. Now, frankly for any of this,
Speaker 1: because I think it amounts to an accelerated hollowing out
Speaker 1: of the media industry giants that will all be forced
Speaker 1: to rely on for news breaking and a sea of
Speaker 1: small creators to sift through it all and analyze it.
Speaker 1: In an analogy to the disappearance of the middle class
Speaker 1: in our broader economy, the whole middle tier publishers, they're
Speaker 1: likely to be pushed down an acceleration again of a
Speaker 1: process that has already been playing out over years. What
Speaker 1: other industries is AI set to casually upend and send
Speaker 1: careening off a cliff Well, we covered earlier how a
Speaker 1: lot of white collar jobs lost to the tech session.
Speaker 1: They're gone forever as tech companies plan to replace humans
Speaker 1: with AI, we're only beginning to wrap our heads around
Speaker 1: what this all may look like in a new era.
Speaker 1: Lucky for us, however, Daily Mail recently asked AI to
Speaker 1: predict how it's all going.
Speaker 4: To turn out.
Speaker 1: They asked what ten different American cities might look like
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, and according to AI image generator mid Journey,
Speaker 1: it's all going to work out. Great, guys, here's a
Speaker 1: rendering of San Diego. Another of Washington, DC looks lush,
Speaker 1: green clean. Finally get those long promise flying cars. Apparently,
Speaker 1: perhaps AI is right, and powerful AI models wielded by
Speaker 1: a bunch of soulless corporations will actually.
Speaker 4: Lead us to the promised land.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps it we'll just accelerate all of the worst
Speaker 1: trends which are already eating away at our society and
Speaker 1: our economy. I'd wager the reality of the doom news
Speaker 1: business is probably a better predictor than the AI's futuristic
Speaker 1: utopian hallucinations. This is the piece that was always the
Speaker 1: most clear to me.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Okay, guys,
Speaker 2: we really appreciate you guys watching. As we said, we've
Speaker 2: got the RFK interview coming. It'll be later today for
Speaker 2: our premium subscribers. For everybody else, it will be up tomorrow,
Speaker 2: so if you want to watch it early, if you
Speaker 2: want to help support our work stuff like this breakingpoints
Speaker 2: dot com. Otherwise, we'll have a great Counterpoints show also
Speaker 2: for everybody tomorrow, and we will see you all on Thursday.