Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central Jam.
Speaker 2: From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central and actually
Speaker 2: five special report.
Speaker 3: The Daily Show presents Indecision twenty twenty four, the first
Speaker 3: present of the date again now with fifty percent last.
Speaker 2: Oh man, here's your host.
Speaker 3: John Stewart.
Speaker 4: Hello, Welcome to The Daily Show, minors. John Sir, the
Speaker 4: second presidential debate has just wrapped up. We are live,
Speaker 4: well technically technically, I guess this is the second president
Speaker 4: the first presidential debate of this matchup. I can't wait
Speaker 4: to see who the winner will take on next.
Speaker 1: I think we'll come to your live ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 4: The stakes couldn't be higher as we all try and
Speaker 4: figure out who will be the next president of Paul winev.
Speaker 1: MIAs Gang.
Speaker 4: It's an exciting night for citizens of that esteemed nation
Speaker 4: as the rest of us watch with great interest from
Speaker 4: the neighboring country of no.
Speaker 1: One gives a shit A stand.
Speaker 4: By the way, if you have any friends in Paul
Speaker 4: and Nevas, can you see if they can do anything
Speaker 4: about congestion pricing? All right, I forget it, but so
Speaker 4: far it seems like this presidential race is going to
Speaker 4: be a tight one.
Speaker 1: The election now a.
Speaker 5: Dead heat, separated by razor thin margins neck and.
Speaker 1: Neck, feels like a jump all race right now.
Speaker 2: For all intensive purposes, horseshoes and anger and ades.
Speaker 6: It's a it's a coin flap, the tightest race in
Speaker 6: a generation.
Speaker 7: As tight as it can get, tight as a.
Speaker 1: Tick, as tight as a two tight bathing suit and
Speaker 1: a too long car ride home from the beach that
Speaker 1: seems very tight.
Speaker 4: It's as tight as a teenage boys pants during a
Speaker 4: Sydney Sweeney film festival. Oh no, it's tighter than Sydney's
Speaker 4: Sweeney's scheduling windows, given how busy she is with projects
Speaker 4: in demand as a producer, to say nothing of the anyway,
Speaker 4: she's very talented. Of course, with an election this tight,
Speaker 4: it's important to build out a more diverse coalition, and
Speaker 4: recently Donald Trump has picked up the unexpected support of
Speaker 4: former Democrats RFK Junior and Telsea Gabbert, and might even
Speaker 4: have picked up one of Jeffrey Epstein's most esteemed former lawyers.
Speaker 1: I am no longer a Democrat. I am no longer
Speaker 1: a member of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 6: This was not my party. I just felt appalled.
Speaker 7: When I watched the Democratic National Convention.
Speaker 2: I can't associate myself with the party itself.
Speaker 8: No, wait, don't go oh, you're no longer the Democratic Party,
Speaker 8: Alan Derschwitz, who guess what?
Speaker 1: Democrats don't want you anyway because the Democratic Party has standards.
Speaker 6: Okay, wait, don'tast week.
Speaker 7: Former Vice President Dick Cheney endorsed Vice President Harris.
Speaker 1: Would you excuse me?
Speaker 4: What's I don't know what came over me anyway going
Speaker 4: into the debate, one thing was I'm sorry, you know what,
Speaker 4: Dick Cheney?
Speaker 1: Can you meet me over by camera? One?
Speaker 4: Fuck off, sharenside, fuck off? You game this close to
Speaker 4: destroying the entire world. We were this close closer than
Speaker 4: a teenage boy's pants.
Speaker 1: And no, I'm not gonna have any fun with this.
Speaker 1: And by the way, who in God's name is that endorsement? Gonna? Sway?
Speaker 4: Well, I like the Democrats policy on child tax credits,
Speaker 4: but are they bombing enough Middle Eastern countries?
Speaker 1: There's still some buildings standing. Someone should really do something.
Speaker 4: I'm fine, it's fine. Seriously though, fuck that guy now? Obviously,
Speaker 4: oh please, but an aero dye takedown. Obviously, each candidate
Speaker 4: was going to have their goals and strategies for Kamala Harris,
Speaker 4: it was going to be quite a needle to thread.
Speaker 9: She really wants to make sure that Americans know her backstory,
Speaker 9: walk away understanding her policy stances, to make sure she
Speaker 9: needles Donald Trump, gets him to lash out, expose the
Speaker 9: flaws that she sees in him, to states, calm, be ready.
Speaker 1: For all attack. She's got like two minutes. Is there
Speaker 1: anything else?
Speaker 9: There are some people who are worried that she might
Speaker 9: be over.
Speaker 4: Prepared for really after doing all that, you know, Trump
Speaker 4: was encouraged to take a simpler approach. They expect some
Speaker 4: goading remarks from Harris.
Speaker 7: They have stressed to him over and over again, do
Speaker 7: not respond if you're going to respond at all, to
Speaker 7: use facial expressions, not to actually go out there and
Speaker 7: say anything.
Speaker 1: Kamala say everything. I say nothing.
Speaker 4: But here's what you do, mister former president. If Kamala
Speaker 4: says something that surprises you, you just go. And if
Speaker 4: Kamala says something that makes you angry, you just go.
Speaker 4: And if Kamala says something that makes you feel sexy,
Speaker 4: time you go.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, So those were the goals.
Speaker 4: Both candidates have now entered the arena Biden and Trump
Speaker 4: did not greet each other, and Kamala, Oh wait did
Speaker 4: you go?
Speaker 1: She went for the handshake.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen, what an incredible display of the awkward
Speaker 4: tension happens when your son is dating a biracial girl
Speaker 4: and you meet her parents for the first time.
Speaker 1: Do I I love you? Credit you are.
Speaker 4: As per tradition in American politics, the first question is
Speaker 4: always asked by the most handsome person in a ten
Speaker 4: to fifteen mile radius.
Speaker 5: When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans
Speaker 5: are better off than they were four years ago?
Speaker 1: Ooh?
Speaker 10: First, Yausa, Hey, yeah, Second.
Speaker 1: Answer the question, miss Vice President.
Speaker 11: I imagine and have actually a plan to build what
Speaker 11: I call an opportunity economy. My plan is to give
Speaker 11: a fifty thousand dollars tax deduction to start up small businesses.
Speaker 11: I intend on extending a tax cut for those families
Speaker 11: of six thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, we're one question in we're all millionaires.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Donald, your.
Speaker 1: Response to the question, is the economy better now than
Speaker 1: it was four years ago?
Speaker 7: We have millions of people pouring into our country from
Speaker 7: prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. They're dangerous,
Speaker 7: they're at the highest level of criminality. They are taking
Speaker 7: over the towns, they're taking over buildings, they're going in violently.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 4: I just want to say, after surviving the PTSD of
Speaker 4: the last presidential debate, how unbelievably refreshing it is to
Speaker 4: go back to the same old Nobody's going to answer
Speaker 4: any fucking questions.
Speaker 3: This is unbelievable. We're back, America's back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's gonna question.
Speaker 3: They just turned the dime and answer whatever they want
Speaker 3: to answer.
Speaker 4: And now that we're returning to the cliches the standards
Speaker 4: of American political theater, I think it's only fair if
Speaker 4: someone would do the honors of the first baseless at hominem.
Speaker 7: She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's
Speaker 7: a Marxist professor in economics, and he taught her well.
Speaker 7: But when you look at what she's done to our country.
Speaker 4: Oh shit, she's about to be like, motherfucker, let's just
Speaker 4: do this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonnaoo. She's about cup a Marxist.
Speaker 4: She's about to open up a can of ass capital
Speaker 4: on Donald Trump. Lindsay Davis, you better change the subject
Speaker 4: before the fingers on Kamala's hand, unite.
Speaker 1: I want to turn to the issue of abortion.
Speaker 4: Oh boy, I'm not super s but this is where
Speaker 4: the wheels fell off for Biden. He was asked about abortion,
Speaker 4: then he somehow spun it into wire immigrants raping people,
Speaker 4: and he ended with the classic phrase, We'll never forget.
Speaker 4: And that's when we finally beat medicare. They're feeling it too,
Speaker 4: ladies and gentlemen. As before President Trump, you have the
Speaker 4: first crack at answering why you killed Rov Wade.
Speaker 7: We've gotten what everybody wanted. Democrats, Republicans and everybody else,
Speaker 7: and every legal scholar wanted it to be brought back
Speaker 7: into the States, and the states are voting, and I
Speaker 7: did something that nobody thought was possible.
Speaker 4: John Stewart from me, I was watching this live timespicking
Speaker 4: what you just said. Yeah, that's actually insanely false. The
Speaker 4: majority of people wanted it, you know what, Kamala Harris,
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris, can you address this with a bit more eloquence.
Speaker 11: I have talked with women around our country. You want
Speaker 11: to talk about this. This is what people wanted pregnant
Speaker 11: women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering
Speaker 11: from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room
Speaker 11: because the healthcare providers are afraid they might go to jail.
Speaker 11: And she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot.
Speaker 6: She didn't want that.
Speaker 1: Oh, she thrashed that this.
Speaker 6: Is like this is like.
Speaker 4: What this is like one of those crowdhog Day movies
Speaker 4: where you get to go back and fix the bad
Speaker 4: way that something happened earlier to the good way, and
Speaker 4: then you learn Italian and the piano, and then you
Speaker 4: get sad and then despondent, and then you learn how
Speaker 4: to love yourself.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 4: Trump will now finally have to answer to his abortion policy.
Speaker 7: You know what, it reminds me of when they said
Speaker 7: they're going to get student loans terminated and it ended
Speaker 7: up being a total catastrophe.
Speaker 4: Ah, you don't have suside student loan smoke bomb. But
Speaker 4: we're settling into a rhythm here, nice back and forth.
Speaker 4: I got to give it to Trump. He's sticking to
Speaker 4: his guns and he's not letting Kamala Harris get under
Speaker 4: his skin. I actually think she's not going to be
Speaker 4: able to need a them.
Speaker 11: I'm gonna invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies.
Speaker 11: He will talk about win Mills cause cancer. And what
Speaker 11: you will also notice is that people start leaving his
Speaker 11: rallies early, out of exhaustion and boredom.
Speaker 1: Old shit, He's just gonna start taking off his ears.
Speaker 1: I left DoD say, motherfucker, Lets go, folks. The eagle
Speaker 1: has landed.
Speaker 4: She has attacked what is Donald Trump's most cherished family member,
Speaker 4: his rally crowds. Donald, Remember, the question is about why
Speaker 4: you killed the bipartisan immigration bill.
Speaker 1: You don't need to think.
Speaker 7: About you prisoner my responders to the rallies, she said,
Speaker 7: people start leaving.
Speaker 1: People don't go to her rallies, Son of the beds.
Speaker 6: People don't leave my rallies.
Speaker 7: We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in
Speaker 7: the history of politics. Our country is being lost. We're
Speaker 7: a failing nation. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs the
Speaker 7: people that came in. They're eating the cats, they're eating
Speaker 7: they're eating the pets of the people that live there.
Speaker 3: What the fuck just happened?
Speaker 1: Because these unbelievable rally eating dogs Springfield, the immigrants are eating.
Speaker 4: People's dogs, which reminds me, if I may, for just
Speaker 4: a quick moment, a quick reminder of all the pet
Speaker 4: owners out there, always remember to leash your dogs. It's
Speaker 4: an important way to keep your dogs from fighting other dogs,
Speaker 4: or being hit by a car, or being eaten by
Speaker 4: your immigrant neighbors. Oh, I'm sorry. Also, fuck off Dick Cheney,
Speaker 4: But I'm sorry you were saying.
Speaker 5: I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio,
Speaker 5: and ABCDS did reach out to the city manager there.
Speaker 5: He told us there have been no credible reports of
Speaker 5: specific the claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused
Speaker 5: by individuals within the immigrant community.
Speaker 7: All I seeing people intelligen let me just say, this
Speaker 7: is the people on television. My dog was taken and
Speaker 7: used for food. So maybe he said that, and maybe
Speaker 7: that's a good thing to say for a city manager.
Speaker 5: I'm not taking this from the people are televisions.
Speaker 7: Say dog was eaten by the people that went there.
Speaker 5: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that.
Speaker 4: Having spent some time in Springfield myself, I believe I
Speaker 4: know what's happening here. I believe Trump himself may be
Speaker 4: becoming one of Springfield's most famous residents.
Speaker 1: And I believe we have some footage.
Speaker 3: It's right and being all, no one listens to you.
Speaker 3: Someone ain't my lord.
Speaker 4: And finally, no debate with a former president would be
Speaker 4: complete without addressing the former president's closing number of the
Speaker 4: Trump Show's first term.
Speaker 5: Mister President, on January sixth, you told your supporters to
Speaker 5: march to the Capitol. You said you would be right
Speaker 5: there with them. Is there anything you regret about what
Speaker 5: you did on that day?
Speaker 7: It wasn't done by me, It was done by others.
Speaker 7: It would have never happened if Nancy Pelosi and the
Speaker 7: mayor of Washington did the jobs. I wasn't responsible for security.
Speaker 7: Nancy Pelosi was responsible. She didn't do her job. I
Speaker 7: had nothing to do with that, other than they asked
Speaker 7: me to make a speech.
Speaker 6: I showed up for a speech.
Speaker 4: You spent two months riling up your base that our
Speaker 4: country had literally been stolen from them through fraudulent means
Speaker 4: that you could never even get a whiff of in
Speaker 4: a court of law, and let and let yourself just
Speaker 4: abuse them. You pressed on, you abuse their trust. You
Speaker 4: showed up for a speech. You fucking tweeted join me
Speaker 4: on January sixth. It will be wild. But suddenly now
Speaker 4: I would use the hired magician to the baum midside.
Speaker 4: I didn't do anything. I showed up with a hat
Speaker 4: and a rabbit, and then the whole party went out
Speaker 4: of control. And this is it, ladies and gentlemen. I
Speaker 4: don't know if this debate is going to change anything.
Speaker 4: I really don't. People are awfully set in the manner
Speaker 4: that they view these proceedings. What I think is a
Speaker 4: home run answer for one candidate, someone else views as
Speaker 4: a dodge or a lie or any of those other things.
Speaker 4: In some ways, it doesn't matter what.
Speaker 1: They say anymore.
Speaker 4: But one thing will always be true, and it is
Speaker 4: the quality of the former president.
Speaker 1: I respect the least.
Speaker 4: Whenever he is cornered and forced to face even the
Speaker 4: smallest of consequences for his own mendacity and scheming, he
Speaker 4: reverts to the greatest refuge of scoundrels.
Speaker 1: As Shaggy would say, it wasn't me. I did nothing wrong.
Speaker 3: I just showed up.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who went crazy.
Speaker 4: This man who constantly professes to be your champion, who
Speaker 4: says they're gonna have to go through him to get
Speaker 4: to you. Will always when the boat is going down,
Speaker 4: be the first into the lifeboats, because in that moment
Speaker 4: he will always say the same thing.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about it.
Speaker 4: I was just told to show up for a cruise,
Speaker 4: even though everybody knows he was the fucking captain of
Speaker 4: the ship.
Speaker 1: In any other country, that lad in any other country.
Speaker 4: In any other country, that lack of accountability would be disqualifying.
Speaker 4: But in this country, it means the race is tighter
Speaker 4: than a would you excuse me for just one second,
Speaker 4: We'll be right back after this ky.
Speaker 3: Bob let's call a helly, I was decided me a
Speaker 3: what about the show?
Speaker 1: I have a quick bit of breaking news, if you'll
Speaker 1: excuse me, I just I have some breaking news. I've
Speaker 1: just been handed this bulletin breaking news.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: So we talked a little bit earlier about you know,
Speaker 1: these debates, do they even mean anything? Do they even
Speaker 1: do anything?
Speaker 4: Apparently they did move the needle enough for one undecided voter,
Speaker 4: a miss Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: Right, So that's what happened. So, uh, you know what
Speaker 1: this means. Taylor Swift and I were watching TV at
Speaker 1: the same program.
Speaker 4: Like that said, yeah, I guess tonight, my god, Tonight
Speaker 4: is the former CEO of Microsoft, He owns the Los
Speaker 4: Angeles Clippers and is the founder of USA Fax.
Speaker 1: Please welcome to the program, mister Steve Bomer. So nice
Speaker 1: to see you.
Speaker 9: Good to be here.
Speaker 1: Now, young man, I I said, so a storied career.
Speaker 4: You're one of the first employees in Microsoft, you become
Speaker 4: a CEO of Microsoft, you own the Los Angeles Clippers.
Speaker 1: You have this.
Speaker 4: Dream life that as a kid you probably never even
Speaker 4: thought those were the heights that you might be able
Speaker 4: to attain, and in that moment, you turn your attention
Speaker 4: to creating a fact website.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 2: I retire from Microsoft, and I have nothing to do, yes,
Speaker 2: except to dive deep dark into government numbers.
Speaker 1: Seriously, it feels like an anti midlife crisis.
Speaker 6: It feels like.
Speaker 1: A manner's decided, well, I'm just going to give up.
Speaker 2: Well, my wife kind of got after me to start
Speaker 2: helping with the family philanthropy, and I kept saying, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: government takes care of all those things, and they don't.
Speaker 2: And she said, you're coming with me, and I snuck
Speaker 2: in the back. It said, but I'm going to look
Speaker 2: up the numbers.
Speaker 4: And you did look up the numbers, and so what
Speaker 4: you've done is and it's a phenomenal site. And I
Speaker 4: make jokes, but it is so necessary in this world
Speaker 4: to provide the data from reputable sources. How do you
Speaker 4: even how do you decide what to put in there?
Speaker 4: How do you decide what are the sources? We have
Speaker 4: a guy here, Adam Chodakoff and childs we trust. He
Speaker 4: is a researcher extraordinary. He is the one who aligns
Speaker 4: us with That's kind of a part is insight? You
Speaker 4: might want to stay away from that. That's kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Is that how you operate it? Or is this an algorithm?
Speaker 1: How is this done?
Speaker 2: No, it's We started with the concept that said, let's
Speaker 2: look at government in its totality, because if you look
Speaker 2: at little pieces, boom, I grab a number and I
Speaker 2: can make it sound large, I can make it sound small.
Speaker 2: So let's put things in context. Let's put them in
Speaker 2: context with history. Let's only use government numbers. We go
Speaker 2: to a one hundred different government databases, and then we
Speaker 2: said what does government do who? We turned to the
Speaker 2: prologue or the cons Preamble to the Constitution. It lays
Speaker 2: out four missions. We took everything government spends money on boom,
Speaker 2: how much taxes are we raising.
Speaker 6: And other money?
Speaker 2: How much are we spending and what kind of outcomes
Speaker 2: are we getting? Because government's not like a lot, like
Speaker 2: a business, So.
Speaker 1: That to me is the crucial aspect.
Speaker 4: You know, when Democrats talk about we need to tax
Speaker 4: billionaires more, no offense, and when we need to do
Speaker 4: these things. I think the one place where it falls
Speaker 4: short is I don't think people feel that more money
Speaker 4: is necessarily the answer, but maybe efficacy. The way we're
Speaker 4: it's not like we don't spend money on anti poverty,
Speaker 4: it just the efficacy might not be there. Did you
Speaker 4: discover programs that seem to be really effective in other
Speaker 4: areas where that money seems to be squandered?
Speaker 1: What were some of the data points that you found
Speaker 1: that gave you a clear picture.
Speaker 2: Let me start with eighty six percent of all federal
Speaker 2: and talk separate about state, local ste Yes, but eighty
Speaker 2: six percent of all federal spending is in a few
Speaker 2: simple areas.
Speaker 6: Okay, let's go number one. Paying our debts, got to
Speaker 6: pay the interest on our debt?
Speaker 4: How much goes to the debt. I've seen breakdown of taxes.
Speaker 4: I've heard that the third largest or second largest portion
Speaker 4: of our tax money goes to pay down the interest
Speaker 4: on the debt.
Speaker 2: It's creeping up there. It's number five right now. Social
Speaker 2: securities number one.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: Medicare number two.
Speaker 4: Okay, So two things that we pay into but don't
Speaker 4: get till we're older.
Speaker 2: Correct, Okay, correct, that's number three. Number three is the military. Okay,
Speaker 2: Medicaid part of the four. Medicaid is four. Okay, exactly, sorry,
Speaker 2: the debt is four. Oh, Medicaid is five. Okay, Veterans benefits.
Speaker 6: Okay. Let's see if I forgot any known.
Speaker 2: So let's let's stop right there, because I stop right
Speaker 2: there because there's no inefficiency so far.
Speaker 6: So I would disagree with you, Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 4: If I'm thinking about this country, and I'm looking out
Speaker 4: into the audience, and I'm saying, so, what is the
Speaker 4: tension in their lives? And I don't necessarily know that
Speaker 4: because we've only worked together as an audience once before.
Speaker 1: But I would say it's the squeeze.
Speaker 4: It's people that had some college debt, but now they're
Speaker 4: in their forties or fifties, and just as they're clearing
Speaker 4: out all those things and getting into a decent earning place,
Speaker 4: their kids are getting ready to go to college, and
Speaker 4: the costs of that have exploded. And just as that's happening,
Speaker 4: their parents, who they thought were going to be fine
Speaker 4: with their social Security and their medicare and all those
Speaker 4: other things, are now needing real elder care and assisted
Speaker 4: living care. So now all the equity that they have
Speaker 4: built up over that time is now dissipating between.
Speaker 1: Those two groups.
Speaker 4: So childcare, health care, elder care, all those things, the
Speaker 4: first six tranches of where our tax money goes doesn't
Speaker 4: seem like it's spent efficiently on relieving that pressure on families.
Speaker 1: Now, that might be the wrong way to look at it.
Speaker 2: Let me, let me push back, pleat me, push back.
Speaker 2: I give you, not you you can give me. I'm
Speaker 2: sixty eight. You give me a social Security check.
Speaker 1: I take money from you.
Speaker 6: You take money from me as just my premise.
Speaker 2: Okay, fine, probably good one, you're probably a good premise,
Speaker 2: is fine, totally good press.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Anyway, a family gets a social Security check, right, that's
Speaker 2: going to help that senior who may need care, may
Speaker 2: need this may call that may need something else.
Speaker 4: But designed mostly by the government because they thought we
Speaker 4: would all be dead by sixty five. Like we've all
Speaker 4: out we've lived much longer than the government thought we would.
Speaker 2: The promise, Yeah, the promise of FDR days, we've outlived it.
Speaker 2: Nobody's quite sure what to do about it. We do
Speaker 2: know that people are doing less of their own elder care.
Speaker 2: More that's getting paid for in the by the government.
Speaker 2: In the market, right, you.
Speaker 4: Do see a lot of people who their elder care
Speaker 4: is paid for by whatever equity they had left, so
Speaker 4: they can't leave anything to their kids. They mortgage their house,
Speaker 4: or they go through those things where they converted into
Speaker 4: liquidity and they use that money hopefully and it's there
Speaker 4: till they pass.
Speaker 6: It's a little bit of whack a mole though.
Speaker 2: Yes, we can increase taxes, we can borrow more money, right,
Speaker 2: or we can live with the kind of spending profile
Speaker 2: we have today. I mean something gives in that equation,
Speaker 2: and me personally, I will confess non partisan view for
Speaker 2: USA facts. We just give you the data. You make
Speaker 2: up your own mind. I'm a businessman. Balancing the budget
Speaker 2: seems good to me, and so I look at it
Speaker 2: and said, simple, we probably need some more taxes, probably,
Speaker 2: and we probably need less spending.
Speaker 4: Probably less spending or more efficient spending. Is it a
Speaker 4: question of are we using? For instance, so Mark Cuban
Speaker 4: was on and you, guys, I'm sure go to the
Speaker 4: billionaire's brunch, which, by the way, I never understood.
Speaker 1: Why do they do that at waffle house? It feels
Speaker 1: like you could get a better We'll forget it.
Speaker 2: It's billionaire's basketball lunch. In that case, you are that
Speaker 2: billionaire's basketball lunch.
Speaker 4: So he finds out that these pharmaceutical benefit managers are
Speaker 4: jacking up and hiking all these pharmaceutical prices. The government
Speaker 4: is not really allowed to negotiate with him, so he
Speaker 4: creates this business in which he does that is too
Speaker 4: much of our money that we spend on poverty programs
Speaker 4: or elder programs going through these middlemen that are enriching themselves.
Speaker 1: Even the ACA.
Speaker 4: Right, you think about Obamacare, what it really is is
Speaker 4: a boon for insurance companies to jump into another marketplace
Speaker 4: where the government says, well, we'll keep this same inefficient
Speaker 4: system where you get to deny care when you want to,
Speaker 4: and the pricing isn't transparent, and it's not really a
Speaker 4: free market system because healthcare is in a free market system,
Speaker 4: and we're just going to subsidize that insurance policy. It
Speaker 4: doesn't really change the dynamic of how healthcare is given.
Speaker 4: Isn't that inefficient?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 2: And you put on a bit yeah, son of a bitch,
Speaker 2: you put in it a little bit of context.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's inefficient.
Speaker 2: But if I tell you it's less than one percent
Speaker 2: of total health care spending in the US, less than
Speaker 2: one percent, you can say it's inefficient. I won't disagree
Speaker 2: with you. I can say it's one percent. And so
Speaker 2: even if we crushed the issue you're talking about down
Speaker 2: to nothing, down to absolute nothing, we still have a
Speaker 2: problem with health care spending.
Speaker 6: We still are the need to deliver health care.
Speaker 4: But isn't some of the problem we have with health
Speaker 4: care spending because the largest tranch of customers are unable
Speaker 4: to really negotiate effectively because it's not we have a
Speaker 4: for profit health care system. When you can't comparison shop
Speaker 4: for heart attack doctors, you basically get driven to wherever
Speaker 4: is closest.
Speaker 2: There are three people basically who ensure almost everybody. Ninety
Speaker 2: two percent of Americans are not sure, But let's just
Speaker 2: talk about who are the three Okay, medicare where they
Speaker 2: can negotiate some things but not others, for example, prescription
Speaker 2: benefits except for the new caveats Medicaid where government negotiates.
Speaker 6: Really hard, really hard.
Speaker 2: I'm really impressed by what the government negotiates on behalf
Speaker 2: of the Medicaid page. And then private insurance for private
Speaker 2: insurance companies and their grinders. Baby, you know, they're delivering
Speaker 2: healthcare six thousand dollars a person. Now they're younger, Medicaid
Speaker 2: the most vulnerable people in our population ten thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a person, harder to take care of, and then senior
Speaker 2: sixteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Medical satisfied with their care. And those three tranches. Private insurance,
Speaker 1: no question, private insurance own.
Speaker 2: I mean again, I don't have data from the US government,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to guess private insurance.
Speaker 4: Is there any quomp in your mind of you know,
Speaker 4: they say that the biggest reason people go bankrupt is
Speaker 4: medical bankruptcy. Is is there any reason in your mind
Speaker 4: that a country like ours would the wealth that we have,
Speaker 4: should ever have a situation where people who are sick
Speaker 4: so they might be more satisfied, But is it at
Speaker 4: the cost of the percentage of them that will go
Speaker 4: bankrupt because there's no government backstop on it?
Speaker 2: Well, do I think it's a good thing. No, I
Speaker 2: don't think anybody should go bankrupt for their health. I
Speaker 2: don't now how do we get from where we are
Speaker 2: to their Yes, is important, it is important. I have
Speaker 2: no prescription for that, but me personally and emotionally I
Speaker 2: agree with you one thousand percent. But to solve that problem,
Speaker 2: what other changes are we going to make? What are
Speaker 2: the things that we're going to give up, What are
Speaker 2: the things that we're going to get It seems like
Speaker 2: a much smaller fix to fix that problem than to
Speaker 2: try to reinvent the healthcare system. Again when healthcare, Look,
Speaker 2: we have problems in our healthcare system, but the inefficiency
Speaker 2: I think right now tends to be if you just
Speaker 2: compare us to Europe, we do about twice as many
Speaker 2: procedures as they do in Europe, and our medical professionals
Speaker 2: get paid about twice as much as European medical professionals.
Speaker 1: So doesn't that sound like it's a system incentivized to that?
Speaker 4: It is, and it is, and it is, and we
Speaker 4: accept medicaid, right, So they don't do twice as many.
Speaker 2: Accept medicaid because medicaid is essentially it's on an HMO model, right,
Speaker 2: and things get negotiated differently.
Speaker 4: Do you think that a public option, you know, the
Speaker 4: one that everybody shouts is the death of it all,
Speaker 4: is the thing that blows up the system, Because in
Speaker 4: some ways I always look at it, like, what do
Speaker 4: I think government's purposes? Like I love the fact that
Speaker 4: we're a checks and balances system, right, And it seems
Speaker 4: like within the government there is okay, judicial, congressional, executive,
Speaker 4: and they're all pushing and pulling. They weren't expecting the
Speaker 4: kind of partisan battles that we get, but we get them.
Speaker 1: But it does seem like.
Speaker 4: Corporate power, transnational multinational corporate power also needs a check
Speaker 4: and a balance because capitalism is at its heart destructive.
Speaker 1: There's collateral, it generates wealth, but it's destructive.
Speaker 4: Why do we fight so hard against the government being
Speaker 4: a proper check on that, against that exploitation, whether it
Speaker 4: be in the medical field or in the college education field,
Speaker 4: or any of the other things. It seems like in
Speaker 4: European countries, I'm not saying it's a panacea. They pay
Speaker 4: more money, but they seem to get the services that
Speaker 4: connect more directly with their lives. Sort Of back to
Speaker 4: the earlier conversation that we were having. I think if
Speaker 4: you read these changes out to a European social democrat, whatever,
Speaker 4: they would think, well, that's crazy. You haven't gotten anything.
Speaker 4: You haven't gotten any childcare, you haven't gotten any of
Speaker 4: the things. You haven't gotten free education. Why is it
Speaker 4: that we have so much trouble? We generate so much wealth,
Speaker 4: Why do we distribute it so inefficiently?
Speaker 2: It would seem well, let me give a perspective, please.
Speaker 2: I think the twin towers of the or democracy and capitalism. Okay,
Speaker 2: I really believe that wholeheartedly.
Speaker 1: I don't want to tell you how that story ends,
Speaker 1: but go ahead.
Speaker 6: Good point.
Speaker 2: But so.
Speaker 6: You're killing me here, you're killing me here.
Speaker 3: It's tomorrow for Fox saying Jesus, what are you doing
Speaker 3: away New York Walk? I didn't, I'm sorry, I apologize.
Speaker 1: What do you think I'm doing all day tomorrow? All right?
Speaker 3: God?
Speaker 6: Two killers about pillars?
Speaker 5: Thank you?
Speaker 1: Much better.
Speaker 6: Capitalism is the predictable one.
Speaker 1: Actually, really, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: You you give capitalism set of rules people are going
Speaker 2: to compete. They're going to try to make as much
Speaker 2: money as they can, and that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 6: It's predictable, but you.
Speaker 4: Don't think it's it's by its nature exploitative though, like
Speaker 4: the monopoly.
Speaker 1: The rigging of this is that seems all built into.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get to the second I'm sorry democracy.
Speaker 2: So the fact that capitalism is predictable is actually a
Speaker 2: great tool for government.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Government needs to then train this highly predictable tool to
Speaker 2: do what society wants it to do. That's the role
Speaker 2: of democracy is to not it is a role of
Speaker 2: democracy is to inform where you want to point this
Speaker 2: highly predictable capitalist motive and look, if the world needs
Speaker 2: more regulations, put them in.
Speaker 4: But you're going to get I don't know, but it
Speaker 4: certainly needs to be something that helps protect us against
Speaker 4: capitalism's baser instinct.
Speaker 1: In some respect.
Speaker 6: Just let me give it a base instinct. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 6: let's say my base instinct is to.
Speaker 2: I want to destroy the habitat of a set of
Speaker 2: birds by building a windmill.
Speaker 6: Okay, let's says that's the topic.
Speaker 1: Can I just say something very quickly, you bastard. Why
Speaker 1: you son of a bitch.
Speaker 2: Okay, mister democracy, let's take it on no birds. Yes,
Speaker 2: the capitalist is going to try to get that windmill built. Sure,
Speaker 2: if you want it built, capitalists still get it built.
Speaker 2: If you want to protect the birds, the capitalists will
Speaker 2: stop trying to build that windmill. I talk to guys
Speaker 2: who's actually trying to build one of the largest wind
Speaker 2: farms in the world.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a different example.
Speaker 6: Give me a different example.
Speaker 4: Capital lists want to find the cheapest labor they can
Speaker 4: possibly find, so they offshore all the jobs in manufacturing
Speaker 4: and all these other things to Vietnam and Bangladesh and
Speaker 4: India and China and places where worker protections don't exist,
Speaker 4: undercutting American workers, and the democratic system fails its own
Speaker 4: workers and not only allows it encourages it, and then decides, well,
Speaker 4: you're doing so well on labor costs, why don't we
Speaker 4: cut your taxes as well.
Speaker 1: So that's in my mind, I view it.
Speaker 4: As the pendulum has swung completely and we are at
Speaker 4: the mercy of those instincts, and democracy is failing in
Speaker 4: whatever it's directive is. It doesn't sound to me like
Speaker 4: democracy points capitalism it sounds to me like capitalism points democracy.
Speaker 6: I'll speak, I would think I'll speak now as a
Speaker 6: former CEO.
Speaker 2: Capitalism responds. Maybe, Look, people are generally good people. They'll
Speaker 2: respond to. You give us an incentive, we'll go do it.
Speaker 2: You give us a regulation, We're going to obey it.
Speaker 6: That's what that's what. No, it's what happens. It really
Speaker 6: is all right to the ninety nine per se.
Speaker 9: You want to get anywhere here.
Speaker 1: I give you two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: But no, so saying is if somebody, let's take your
Speaker 2: labor labor class issue, perfectly good issue. Yes, businesses are
Speaker 2: going to try to reduce labor class. If you don't
Speaker 2: want those jobs to move, then government needs to put
Speaker 2: a tax or an incentive. They're sort of kissing cousins
Speaker 2: if you will to keep the jobs on shore. But
Speaker 2: what about and take the consequences.
Speaker 1: But then we're competing for their love? What about this?
Speaker 4: They get the benefit of our stability, of our capital,
Speaker 4: of all the things that make us a free market,
Speaker 4: stable democracy, and they have no responsibility. They get all
Speaker 4: of the infrastructure and none of the toll And that's
Speaker 4: the part that I don't understand. You know, we have
Speaker 4: states competing with each other for who can fuck over
Speaker 4: workers the best. You know, when everybody talks about globalization,
Speaker 4: and you know Mexico and India are stealing our jobs. Well,
Speaker 4: South Carolina is stealing them from New York. So they're
Speaker 4: all competing to see who can give the sweetest deal.
Speaker 4: And that feels like where the balance is off, where
Speaker 4: the pendulum has to swing.
Speaker 2: I personally have no problem with government providing more direction
Speaker 2: to capitalism. I don't, but then there sometimes are untoward consequences.
Speaker 2: Let's just take the offshoring. Sure, short Okay, let's just
Speaker 2: say whatever the policy is, it gets more jobs on
Speaker 2: short at higher wages, Prices will go up.
Speaker 6: Prices will go up.
Speaker 2: And as long as that trade off is the tradeoff
Speaker 2: that people want less buying power but more people have
Speaker 2: higher paying jobs, how that actually shakes out.
Speaker 6: For the America.
Speaker 2: And I'm not an economist, I'm not going to make predictions,
Speaker 2: but there is a trade off on most of.
Speaker 4: Them's decision ability though that there's a renegotiation of what
Speaker 4: normal is in terms of profit margin, and in terms
Speaker 4: of capitalization, and in terms of corporatization, and in terms
Speaker 4: of tax is there is there a new normal that
Speaker 4: can be achieved? You know, we saw it in the pandemic,
Speaker 4: where of course there were supply chain you know, crunches,
Speaker 4: and that drove up prices. But there's no question that
Speaker 4: a lot of companies took advantage of a difficult moment
Speaker 4: to set a new bar of expectation for people. And
Speaker 4: now that the supply chain has eased, that expectation still exists.
Speaker 2: Since the start of the pandemic, yep CPI price index
Speaker 2: is up about nineteen percent, right, Okay, we still have inflation.
Speaker 2: Those prices are not going to come back down, They're
Speaker 2: just going to grow more slowly. Wages were up twenty
Speaker 2: one percent, right. Wages were actually up more than prices,
Speaker 2: you know. And so if you take a look at it,
Speaker 2: the buying power it's not much, but the buying power
Speaker 2: of Americans increcreased slightly slightly. So nobody likes inflation. It's
Speaker 2: too disorienting, et cetera. But it wasn't a net negative trade.
Speaker 2: It feels bad, people feel bad, I know that.
Speaker 4: Do you think though, that as complex as inflation is
Speaker 4: and all the different avenues that go into it, do
Speaker 4: you think a portion of it at least because I
Speaker 4: listened to some of those earnings calls in the pandemic
Speaker 4: and people are.
Speaker 1: Like, we're kimning it.
Speaker 4: Our profits have never been higher, and everybody's like, yay,
Speaker 4: so isn't isn't that a part of it?
Speaker 2: Then I would say if I was to make a suggestion,
Speaker 2: go increase corporate income taxes, just increase corporate income taxes.
Speaker 6: That reduces profit, I just don't know. I mean, that's you.
Speaker 1: I just don't know if it's it's.
Speaker 2: You want to lot the business regulating individual decisions just
Speaker 2: is my point of view?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: Bad do you want it? You want to take my profits?
Speaker 6: As there a company.
Speaker 4: I think there is a transaction to be had between
Speaker 4: government and corporate leaders where they come to an understanding
Speaker 4: that it's a more symbiotic relationship and not an exploitative relationship.
Speaker 2: The invisible hand, so to speak of Adam Smith. Yes,
Speaker 2: there is no master planning. You can't say, be nice.
Speaker 1: But we're not freemark. There is though there's subsidies that
Speaker 1: they get.
Speaker 2: There is no subsidies, and there's regulations. There are rules,
Speaker 2: and I love that, right, I love Look, there's some
Speaker 2: regulations if I'm running a company I might like or not,
Speaker 2: like we just built an arena for our basketball team.
Speaker 3: Why we had to have our own homes?
Speaker 6: Just kidding so we can beat the Knicks when they
Speaker 6: come to town.
Speaker 1: Let me just explain very quickly that was but chat, No,
Speaker 1: it makes sense.
Speaker 4: Listen, man, It's an incredibly complex conversation, and I really
Speaker 4: do appreciate your patience with me on it and all that.
Speaker 4: It's just I think the frustrations have been with what
Speaker 4: I love about your site, and let's bring it back
Speaker 4: to that is that you've brought together all the data
Speaker 4: and context necessary to have these conversations, because these conversations
Speaker 4: feel like they don't occur. All that occurs on the
Speaker 4: news is how do you think that's going to play
Speaker 4: in Wisconsin? Like nobody seems to want to get into
Speaker 4: the weeds on what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what we're trying to do. We have very
Speaker 2: conscious nonpartisan here's the data. We're going to make it
Speaker 2: digestible for you. We're not going to try to tell
Speaker 2: funny stories. We're not going to make forecasts about the future.
Speaker 2: There's a quote that's very motivating to me as we
Speaker 2: started this thing from James Madison's you go all the
Speaker 2: way back to the signing of the country Ahead. No,
Speaker 2: I'm just he said something like a popular government without
Speaker 2: popular information or the means of acquiring it is a
Speaker 2: prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
Speaker 2: And as I sit here and I observe lots in
Speaker 2: American politics, I believe that. And our site is trying
Speaker 2: to combat that by making popular information available to our populace.
Speaker 6: We make videos.
Speaker 4: Who's the start of the videos, Steve Bond. I'm just
Speaker 4: going to say, unreal play not for nothing. You live
Speaker 4: in Los Angeles. You couldn't grab hanks. Come on, you know,
Speaker 4: come on, throw them out there to give some facts.
Speaker 4: It's a fabulous site and you're doing great work there
Speaker 4: and I so appreciate you coming on and giving us
Speaker 4: such interesting perspective on business and government and regulation and
Speaker 4: all those different things.
Speaker 1: It's really helpful. So thank you for doing that.
Speaker 4: Take out you up study facts dot Org, mister Steve
Speaker 4: Bodam And you're not gonna beat our knicks.
Speaker 6: Let me heard, I got Let me tell us home?
Speaker 1: Are you not going to be.
Speaker 6: Hello?
Speaker 3: Everybody? That is our show for tonight.
Speaker 4: Thanks June tomorrow night Jordan's clock, our returns by the rest.
Speaker 1: Of the week. Here it is, your moment is on.
Speaker 7: If we can come up with a plan that's going
Speaker 7: to cost our people, our population less money and be
Speaker 7: better healthcare than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it.
Speaker 7: But until then I'd run it as good as it
Speaker 7: can be run.
Speaker 1: So just yes or no. You still do not have
Speaker 1: a plan. I have concepts of a plan.
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