WEBVTT - Justin Wolfers & Ian Bremmer 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:04.160 Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.120 where we discussed the top political headlines with some of 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:10.680 today's best minds and Donald Trump is pulling worse on 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:12.200 the economy than any reason. 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:12.640 President. 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:15.360 We have such a great show for you today, Think 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:19.880 like an economist. Podcast host Justin Wolfers steps by to 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:23.640 talk about the fuzzy math of DOGE savings for the 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:27.240 American people. Then we'll talk to the Eurasia groups Ian 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:31.840 Bremer about the new global alignment in Trump two point zero. 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:33.080 But first the. 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:37.879 News Smiley, It's beginning to look a lot like Germany 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:42.040 in some people's hand gestures these days. There's quite a 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.280 lot of Boback. After Steve Bennon, who seems to hate 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.160 Elon Musk, did a similar gesture to him. 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:51.239 Personally, I don't want to make any hand gesture that 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:56.000 can be interpreted anyway that starts with an end and 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:58.800 ends with an eye. I just think stay away from 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.240 all of these hand gestures. French far right leader Jordan 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:07.280 Bardella canceled planned remarks at Seapack after ex Trump advisor 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:11.319 Steve Bannon made a gesture referring to Nazi ideology. That's 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:14.360 a direct quote, according to a statement. This is the 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.840 far right leader from France who's saying that it is 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.880 too close to Nazi ideology for him. Let's take a 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:25.520 moment to think about that for a second. The far 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:29.399 right leader from France, not the left wing leader, but 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.679 the far right leader from France is saying that that's 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.840 worth thinking about for a minute. It is probably the 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:39.119 strongest rebuke yet of Bannon, but it's worth pointing out 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.039 how far afield we have gotten in the United States 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:46.560 of America that this kind of rebuke must come from 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:50.680 someone on the far right from France. You're welcome. I 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:51.560 can't take it. 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:52.320 It's so bad. 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:55.960 Yeah, it's really a shape if the reports that we're 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.680 there's not going to be any more seapas anymore come true, 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:00.320 because then they'll just never have an up or you 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:03.080 to go there and do all these interesting hand motions. 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.840 It's also worth just pausing for a moment and remembering 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:09.280 that we have this seapack and yet we don't have 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.200 a democratic version of it. We don't even have a 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:16.000 centrist version of it. We just have this one thing. 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:18.760 You know, if you are a listener this podcast, perhaps 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:23.320 you would like to have something that is like seapack, 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:26.160 but not as zealatus. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:28.600 Not as awful. 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:34.079 So this is the interesting new development is the staff 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:37.440 at multiple government agencies have been instructed not to speak 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:38.079 to Congress. 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:43.000 Yes, Congress, which is supposed to be running this whole thing, 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:45.720 is getting less and less and less power, and we're 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:50.400 seeing it happen in real time. Here's a Democratic congress person. 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:55.440 She sent several letters to different federal agencies and the 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.320 employees were said that they were not able to speak 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:01.360 to her. The Committee on approbates as a long standing 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:05.480 relationship with agency career staff, Well not anymore. Are This 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.360 is the transparency that is doge. 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:10.679 Yeah, it's almost like, you know, there's supposed to be 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.720 these checks and balances in the government and we're deciding 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:17.040 that feels real irrelevant. The founding fathers didn't want that. 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:20.040 Yeah, no, I mean, this is a takeover of the 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:24.320 United States government at the highest level, and that's what 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.720 we're watching in real time. And you know, Congress has 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.239 given up what little power they had and they gave 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:33.760 it up to Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and now 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.880 Elon Musk is cutting away at the government despite the 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:38.560 fact that that is not how any of this is 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:39.480 supposed to work. 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:43.760 With those drastic overreaches and sledgehambers to oversight trump claims 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:45.720 power to fire administrative law judges. 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:48.840 That will Yeah, so again, Look, there are a couple 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:51.240 things that Trump wor is doing with the courts. 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:51.640 That are bad. 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:56.880 One is that they are really like either they haven't 0:03:56.960 --> 0:03:59.720 quite yet done it, but they are priming themselves to 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.800 a judicial rulings, which, by the way, will tip us 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.400 into a constitutional crisis. I don't know that it's quite 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.280 happened yet, but there's a lot of kind of voodoo 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:15.119 math going on when it comes to unfreezing these funds. 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:17.240 A lot of them are being unfrozen or a lot 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:19.360 of them aren't being unfrozen as the way the federal 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:20.720 judiciary is instructed. 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:22.520 So we're going to see more of this. 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.560 We're going to eventually, hopefully not, but I think there's 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:30.200 a very likely scenario where the courts are ignored, where 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:33.599 these members of the federal government in Trump world, under 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:38.080 the instruction a Musk and Trump barrel through the guardrails 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:42.799 and continue to have their way with the federal government. Now, 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.599 the one piece I think of good news here is 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:49.839 that we're starting to see real pushback, and we're starting 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:54.400 to see it from both the right and the left, 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.200 because you're seeing these town halls of these people who 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:01.599 are suddenly understanding just what's stake in these town halls. 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:04.400 And I think we're going to see more and more 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:09.200 of that, And I think that we are absolutely one 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:13.599 hundred percent at the beginning of a real ground level 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.920 pushback that I think is going to be really important 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:17.360 and good. 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:19.200 So I would say. 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:21.680 That, I mean, I think there's a very interesting theory 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:23.760 of the case that a lot of people live their 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.919 life not being really affected by Trump's first term and 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.320 didn't see tangible changes to their life. They just didn't 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.200 like what was happening. But here we're seeing it all 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.000 the time, and there's even more evidence of it where 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:35.880 that could happen right here, Which is our next subject, 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.440 which is Trump fires federal workers who help fight forest 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:41.640 fires weeks after historic LA blazes. 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.599 Yeah, I mean, and the FDA and the cuts. You 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:46.880 know today they were talking about how they're going to 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:50.920 cut the FAI. I mean, these are things that if 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:54.480 they are cut, we're going to see real tangible results 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:57.320 right away. And TSA, for example, they're going to cut 0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:00.400 the DSA that's going to mean longer lines and airs. 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:02.839 I mean, these things are going to affect. 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:03.640 Every part of our lives. 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:07.480 And I think it's really important to remind people that 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:12.880 this is not happening because the federal government is in 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.200 trouble now. I mean, certainly we run a big deficit. 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:19.599 This is happening because Republicans do not want to let 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.839 these tax cuts for corporations and millionaires expire. 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:25.719 That is what's happening here. 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:28.680 Yeah, And they have a theory of the case that 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.680 none of these people's work is necessary, that the private 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:33.839 sector will just pick it up and then they won't 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:36.280 have to pay for it anymore, and that theory of 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:37.560 the case is very dumb. 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:41.719 Yeah. 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.159 Justin Wolfers is the host of the Think Like an 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.159 Economist podcast and a professor at the University of Michigan. 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:54.440 Welcome back to Fast Politics. Justin wolf You, Molly Sancy 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:58.480 academic here to explain to us all the money that 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:02.840 don't or some members of the United States Senate call 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:07.479 it doggie, is saving the American people lots of money. 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:08.599 So explain. 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:11.960 Could you just stop by telling me who calls it doggie? 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:14.120 We had a senator call it doggy. The other day. 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.480 And actually there are some members of Congress who are 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:20.680 calling it doggie, and you know what, for power to them, 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.360 they are not wrong. Oh actually, Jesse said, everyone calls 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:24.920 it doggie. 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:31.280 I love seeing Christian Conservatives becoming comfortable with themselves, their sexuality, 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:33.240 their bodies, and what we can do with them. 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.840 All right, so let's focus on the money they're saving. 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.360 It strikes me that they're not saving that much money. Discuss. 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:43.520 Yeah, So I'm going to start with the math, and 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:46.760 I'm not going to apologize to your listeners because actually 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:49.840 the math is the whole story. So there's a website 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:53.080 Elon says he's super transparent in which he lists every 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:55.600 one of his savings. So I went on that website 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:58.480 last night and I mapped it up. I imported all 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:00.880 the dater into a spreadsheet, and I added up all 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:03.280 the savings and it adds up to seven point three 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:05.840 billion dollars. Sounds like a low, right, Like you and 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:07.560 I could have a terrific night hour. 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:12.480 It feels like a lot. I good, Yeah, summer house everything. 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:12.800 Now. 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.520 So here's the thing. There are three hundred and forty 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:19.760 million Americans. So we're going to do long division seven 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.200 point three billion divided by three hundred and forty million. 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:25.200 What's that? That's about twenty dollars, isn't it. 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:27.360 Yeah, that doesn't seem like that much. 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.600 It's twenty one dollars and forty seven cents per American. 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:32.920 Now the President is so excited by how much money 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.080 that Doze is saving us that he's recommended that perhaps 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.439 we should have a Doge dividend that he sends out 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.840 dividend checks where one fifth of the Doze savings goes 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:46.360 out to us as Doge dividends or stimulus checks, and 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:48.320 the other four fifths, of course girded tax cuts for 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:50.559 the rich. That one fifth then adds up to four 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.040 dollars and twenty nine cents per american. Now, it turns 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:54.960 out a cart and of eggs costs more than that, 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:59.880 So so far Doze will yield savings. 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:01.840 Of nine e nine eggs. 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:04.240 Nine eggs. You can have many way you want them. 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:05.440 You have to cook them yourself. 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:08.120 Do they sell them in nine tacks? I thought they 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:09.720 didn't sell them a nine facs. 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.000 Yeah, Well, what you can do is buy a six 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:15.840 pack and then split another six pack with the neighbor. Okay, 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.120 and that's your dividend check. Don't spend it all at once? 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:21.240 Can I teach the listeners some economics? 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:22.840 Please? And teach me too. 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:26.320 Okay, so the amazing thing, right, the bottom line is 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.040 the dose savings are trivial. They're tiny. You're getting four 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:32.040 dollars and twenty nine cents, and in return, it's going 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:33.880 to be hard to get into the national parks. The 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.720 analysts who determine whether the Department of Transport invests in 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:38.680 good stuff or bad stuff got laid off, so we 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.199 might spend hundreds of billions of dollars on bad stuff. 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:43.960 That all sorts of services are getting cut across the 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.560 federal government. So you got your four dollars twenty nine 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:48.600 cents on the one side, and you've got a less 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:52.040 effective government on the outher. Okay, here's the most important 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:55.880 thing and the most difficult thing to understand about physcal policy, 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:59.439 and it's simply this. Our minds, our human minds, are 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:03.440 not very good at thinking about big numbers. So millions 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.920 sounds like a lot of money, billions sounds like heapes, 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:10.720 and trillions sounds magnificent, And that's roughly right. But the 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.320 thing to realize is these words sound the same, but 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.480 they mean very very very very different things. And so 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.160 when someone says I have generated savings of say seven 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:25.040 billion dollars, don't get impressed. The first thing you have 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.920 to do is take any number and reduce it to 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.560 a human scale, a scale that your mind understands. And 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:33.040 in this case, what I did is i'd made it 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.040 per person. Now I realize Elon is saving twenty one 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:39.319 dollars and forty seven cents per person, and that's a 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:42.560 scale I can understanding. All of a sudden, these impressive numbers. 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.640 We realize that Elon's looking in the wrong place, is 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:46.680 doing the wrong things. 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:50.360 Isn't there an eight billion dollars savings that's actually eight 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:51.400 million dollars? 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:54.520 Yes? Okay, So first of all, everything I just said 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:56.920 is taking Eilon at his word, saying I went to 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.480 the website, I counted his savings as he counts them, 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:01.400 and so on. Now it turns out there's a bunch 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:05.000 of Salutes who've gone into the Doze data where they 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:08.120 list Doze as savings, and they've said, hey, is this 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.440 really a saving? Now? The most prominent of these was 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:13.960 a case where those claim to have saved eight billion 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.080 dollars on a very small project that couldn't possibly be 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:19.840 worth eight billion, right, And this again is the problem. 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:22.480 So some idiot wrote down eight billion without realizing that 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:24.840 was completely out of scale for the sort of project 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.120 that I think about. Since that the project was eight million, 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:29.800 so Doze had to go back and say, well, actually 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:33.120 we are exaggerated by seven point ninety nine to two billion, 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:36.600 but don't worry, we staved you eight million. 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:38.760 I'm not an economist. 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:41.160 You're not an economist, mind, but it's less. That's what 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:41.800 you're going to tell me. 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:43.960 Right, I'm not an economist, but I feel like there's 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.319 a lot of difference between a billion and a million. 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:51.959 That's really, really really important to be literal. A billion 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.760 is a thousand million, and a trillion is one thousand billion. 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:58.240 So let's try and create our own scale here. May 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.800 Musk wants to save two trillion, and if he does, 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:04.240 that will balance the budget, which is the deficits around 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:06.360 about one point eight trillion. Right now, Okay, so he's 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:10.280 after two trillion, So if he saves two billion, that's 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:13.480 zero point one percent of the way there. Another way 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:15.640 of saying this is if he saves twenty billion, think 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:17.360 about how far he's got to run as being one 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:20.120 football field. A football field is one hundred yards. If 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:23.120 he gets to twenty billion, then he's moved the ball 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.800 forward one yard. Okay, he's moved it forward seven point 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.360 three billion, so he's moved the ball from his goal 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:33.559 line one foot. And I really want listeners to think 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:37.920 about that. Realize that on this fiscal football field, each 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:41.840 yard is twenty billion. So whenever you hear a word 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:46.640 that begins with M million, realize it's doing no work whatsoever. Right, 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:48.920 it's moving you forward like a quarter of an inch. 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.880 It's tiny, it's infinitesimal, like it matters for people in 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:55.360 their lives, but it's not. If what you think you're 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:59.160 going to do is fundamentally transform our government's finances, you 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.600 can't even stuff that begins with a letter M from million. 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.040 You've got to start with billion. And in fact, if 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.360 you want a yard, you want twenty billion. And he's 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:08.959 not even at one yard yet. 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:11.480 Right, I want you to sort of top line because 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:14.480 what Republicans have done have said like we are cutting 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.719 waste and fraud, which again fraud seems to me, and 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:22.199 according to elon things he doesn't agree with, discuss wonderful. 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.120 So here's another economic principle for the listeners, and it's 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.640 one I tell my students. You're never allowed to use 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.559 the word cost without the word benefit. Right. You could 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:34.440 say I saved two thousand dollars worth of costs. Why 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:37.120 is that? Well, I stopped paying my mortgage. Right, that's 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:39.280 not a benefit to stop paying your mortgage. It's going 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.000 to come back and by you on the bum. So 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.600 the one exception to that rule that you can use 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:47.160 the word cost without benefits because if there's a cost cut, 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:49.599 there's a benefit cut is if you're eliminating waste for 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.679 auDA abuse. Because waste fordam abuse is all cost, no benefit. 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.880 And so that's sort of the idea behind Doze or 0:13:55.880 --> 0:14:00.760 the animating politics or the animating narrative. The thing there's 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.560 not that much waste fraud and abuse. More than that, 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:06.840 Doge isn't finding it. Here's how you know something's waste, 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:09.840 fraud and abuse. When they discover it, people are arrested, 0:14:10.040 --> 0:14:14.080 right that onto it. So far Doze is at zero arrests. 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.720 What they've done instead is they've discovered some things Elon 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.280 doesn't like. Elon doesn't like it when usaid, which is 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.200 basically how the US government helps other countries foreign aid. 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.920 It's less than one percent of our federal budget. It 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:28.760 gives us soft power, and it makes the world a 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:31.880 safer place. Elon doesn't like that, so he eliminates it. 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:34.880 But it's not waste fraud and abuse. That's a value judgment. 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:39.360 We had a whole circus last week where Elon discovered 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:42.160 that there were lots of Social Security numbers for people 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:44.520 who were not recorded as having been dead. 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:46.320 Yeah, as please talk about that. 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:49.360 He literally goes on to claim, as the White House did. 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.040 Trump doubled down, as did his press secretary, that tens 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:54.920 of millions of people are receiving Social Security who shouldn't 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.360 be receiving it. That would be waste, fraud and abuse. 0:14:57.400 --> 0:14:59.200 So you can see this is like a really important 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.840 thing from a retire perspective, because this is how doze 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:05.960 becomes a technocratic apparatus rather than a political one. Now, 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:09.120 the reality is that there were not tens of millions 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:12.160 of people receiving Social Security. He shouldn't. What happens is 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.920 there's one data based table. God, I'm so boring right now. 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:17.200 I'm going to bore everyone. 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.920 No, it's not boring. It's a coding error. 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:24.440 Right, it's actually even more boring. There's one database table 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:26.920 at Social Security where they list all the social Security 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:29.280 numbers that have ever been issued, and then you want 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:31.320 to have another column in that table. Think of like 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:34.200 a big Excel spreadsheet, which says, is this person dead? 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.240 And it turns out if you just take all the 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:39.160 people who are not recorded as being dead, there's tens 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:42.040 of millions of people or social security numbers that were 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.320 issued to people born over one hundred years ago. Now 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.880 that doesn't mean those people are receiving social Security. In fact, 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:50.840 almost all of those records were people who died more 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:53.920 than fifty years ago before we had electronic death records, 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:56.080 and as a result, there was no easy way to 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:58.400 update this table to show that they were dead. But 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:00.800 if you go through those social scurity numbers, no one's 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:03.320 drawing a check from them, because social Security is a 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:08.160 remarkably more sophisticated operation than Musk and his coders. And 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:11.040 so it turns out that in reality, there are about 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:14.720 eighty thousand Americans age ninety nine or older who are 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.600 receiving Social Security, not sixty million. And actually eighty thousand 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:20.480 is about the right number because we actually do have 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.480 some old people in America who are receiving Social Security, 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:26.240 and a reasonable estimate is not that there were sixty 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:30.040 million people receiving social Security who shouldn't be, but rather 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:34.640 perhaps it's sixty and so the millions of people he found, 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:38.120 and therefore the billions of dollars he saved, was literally 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:42.480 a misinterpretation from a guy who was too busy to 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.520 be bothered to go to Google to say, why are 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.080 there so many Social Security numbers that are not yet 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:50.200 marked as dead? If he'd done that, he would have 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:52.920 discovered there was a twenty twenty three Inspector General report 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:58.000 that explains literally every line of this inexcruciatingly boring detail. 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:01.840 There's no problem with the Social Security database. The only 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:04.359 problem is when a naive person misinterprets it. 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:06.800 Part of the thinking behind this, I think, on the 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:09.800 part of a lot of conservatives, was that dought sort 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.880 of technology that the rest of us didn't know existed, right, 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:15.680 that they were going to be able to look at 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:18.840 things in ways that the rest of us couldn't, and 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:20.720 that they were going to be able. And I think 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.840 of it as like sort of the revenge of the buzzword. 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:27.000 Like there have been you know, for example, like two 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.200 years ago, everyone was going to put everything on the blockchain, right, 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:32.520 and then you know, the blockchain is. 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:34.720 Good, but the world is not running on blockchain. 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:38.240 And this is a sort of similar thing, right, everything's AI, 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:41.480 the AI, this the AI that, And I do think 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:43.840 to a certain extent, a lot of these bureaucrats thought 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:46.000 that AI was going to be able to rip through 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:49.760 the federal government and figure out everything, and we're seeing 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:52.720 in fact that they're just sort of haphazardly cutting things 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:53.760 Elon doesn't like. 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.919 Yes, So that's I think extraordinarily insightful. So if the 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.000 argument is that the government should run on modern technology, 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.240 I'm completely in favor. In which case I'm really very 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:06.520 disappointed that the first thing the Republicans want to do 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:09.800 is strip the technology modernization money out of the irs. 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:12.760 Yeah, that doesn't seem to square with the theory. 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.480 Right. Look, I can give listeners two answers. One, it's 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:18.280 not going to work. You can walk away and just 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:20.400 believe me because my first name is professor. But that's 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:22.280 a shitty way of thinking. What I want to do 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:24.960 is give you a really deep understanding of why it's 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.840 not going to work. So many of us have in 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:30.760 our minds the sense that government is bloated and inefficient. 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:32.520 I know that last time I went to get my 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:35.800 driver's license renewed, it was the most infuriating and frustrating 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:37.480 thing in the world. I know I've waited in the 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.200 long line at the post office. I know that sometimes 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:42.800 my kids that this local schools are not well run, 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:45.159 and so on. The first thing to understand is that 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:48.720 most government services a state and local government. They're not federal. 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.399 The best business analogy for the federal government it's a 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.720 company called ADP. ADP is a private sector company that 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:58.520 does payroll processing. Basically, a lot of companies send ADP 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:02.080 their bank account detail and it's probably true for you money. 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:04.200 It's how you get paid. They send your bank account 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.680 details and an amount of money and ADP will send 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:09.200 out the check. Many of your listeners will receive their 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:12.399 checks yo ad So basically, what is ADP. It's a 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:15.000 bunch of nerds with computers and basically a really big 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:17.399 check printer. Why do I bring them up? What is 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:21.520 the federal government? So it's not the DMV, and it's 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.200 not the local hospital, and it's not the local schools. 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:26.959 That's the state government. Most of what the federal government 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.240 does is takes in money through taxes and sends it 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:32.160 back out. It's basically there to take money in when 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:34.080 you're doing well and then give it back to you 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.040 when you need it. That's what social security is, that's 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.520 what unemployment insurance is, and so on. So it turns 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.200 out that yes, the federal government spends lots of money, 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:42.640 but it spends a lot of money in the same 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.280 way adp quote spends a lot of money. It's just 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:46.800 writing a lot of checks. It's writing a lot of 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:49.200 checks folks who also send them in money. So if 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:52.199 you want to save money, it's not really going to 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.280