Speaker 1: Ugly times, so ugly ugly times, and who better to
Speaker 1: talk to about them then the great p J O'Rourke,
Speaker 1: who is the author of many fine books through the years,
Speaker 1: including one that I read in my formative years. This
Speaker 1: is praise that makes a guy I feel old, Parliament
Speaker 1: of Horrors, which is a great eye opener about the
Speaker 1: nature of government. Pj's new book is None of My Business.
Speaker 1: PJ explains money, banking, debt, equity, assets, liabilities, and why
Speaker 1: he's not rich and neither of you here he is
Speaker 1: PJ or rock. P J. How are you, sir? I'm well,
Speaker 1: how are you terrific? Thank you? I love the description
Speaker 1: of your career as you're filing stories for Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: Atlantic Monthly weekly standard from countries and not the nice ones.
Speaker 1: My job was basically to watch people try to kill
Speaker 1: each other. Sounds like rewarding work. Oh yes, yeah, well
Speaker 1: instructive work at the very least. And uh, it's how
Speaker 1: I learned economics. I mean, some people study in college,
Speaker 1: some people learn the School of Hard Knocks, some people
Speaker 1: read it up on their own. I watched people kill
Speaker 1: each other, always for economic reasons. Interesting, What did you
Speaker 1: learn from that experience? Which would probably take in any situation,
Speaker 1: and including some of the ugly political ones you were
Speaker 1: just talking about. Who profits from this? Who profits from this?
Speaker 1: And then always remember that the profit isn't necessarily calculated
Speaker 1: in money like it is for us normal people. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's calculated in power. Sometimes it's calculated in fame. And
Speaker 1: even the good, good people, the peacemakers and the aid workers,
Speaker 1: they're piling up treasure in heaven, aren't they. Wo. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting. So do you think our culture, whether
Speaker 1: you know individuals in the country or politics, are even
Speaker 1: more focused on that than they were back when you
Speaker 1: started writing about it. Oh? Uh, They've been debased in
Speaker 1: pretty much every way. Uh. Yeah, you know, the the
Speaker 1: wonders of the Internet have really lowered the tone. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I look at this and I go, well, it
Speaker 1: was bright idea? Was it to put every idiot in
Speaker 1: the world in touch with every other idiot? Yeah, it's working.
Speaker 1: I thought that the description you credit to your daughter
Speaker 1: in the Book of the Internet and Social Media was priceless.
Speaker 1: Do you do you have that in front of you
Speaker 1: you recalling? Oh, yeah, so I'm I'm asking my millennial
Speaker 1: daughter when she's still in high school. She's like twenty
Speaker 1: nine in college, but she's still in high school. I'm saying,
Speaker 1: how do you explain all this to me? Expecting some
Speaker 1: sort of defense of of the internet. Uh, And she said, Dad,
Speaker 1: it's horrible. You don't understand how horrible social media is.
Speaker 1: It's like having a sleepover where everybody you know, whether
Speaker 1: you like him or not, comes to the sleepover and
Speaker 1: they won't go home. That's pretty good. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: the it's like the school debate team makes everybody from
Speaker 1: everywhere is on it. Sure are Yeah, and the dumbest
Speaker 1: kid is president. Yeah. Well do you think the democracy
Speaker 1: can can can withstand this? I mean, will we get better?
Speaker 1: Will the next generation be good at weeding out stuff
Speaker 1: that actually is fake news crap stories and weed out
Speaker 1: the idiots? And or won't we Oh? No, I think
Speaker 1: we will. You know, I don't know if I'll live
Speaker 1: to see it. You know, but in in all due time,
Speaker 1: I mean when when? When? When? When print? When movable
Speaker 1: print was invented and we got our first books, it
Speaker 1: set off the thirty years War, you know between uh,
Speaker 1: Bible reading Protestants and priest loving Catholics and all of
Speaker 1: Europe was torn to bits, which is worse than what's
Speaker 1: happening to us now, I think. And uh, but eventually
Speaker 1: people began to sort out, you know, what in print
Speaker 1: made some sense and what in print did not make
Speaker 1: some sense. Um, but I mean we just barely re
Speaker 1: covered from our addiction to television when along came the internet. Right.
Speaker 1: You know that's both reassuring and horrifying. I mean reassuring
Speaker 1: that we'll sort it out and horrifying that we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to go through a really ugly period, which we're
Speaker 1: doing apparently before we get that. Say so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I just consider staring into those screens to be
Speaker 1: looking at the light coming out the devils behind. Wow. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a phrase worth memorizing. P J. O'Rourke is on
Speaker 1: the line the new book is none of my business
Speaker 1: about money, banking, debt, etcetera. Hey listen, and we've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about money banking, debt, the real estate crash,
Speaker 1: the Robert Baron's Wall Street, etcetera. Not to come off
Speaker 1: as you know, Robin Hood, but um, what's your view
Speaker 1: ten years down the line of all that ugliness back
Speaker 1: in those seven or eight o nine, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: We should have let the darn thing just crash, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean when when when when the Hindenburg catches fire,
Speaker 1: you don't stand around pumping hydrogen into it, you know,
Speaker 1: you get out of the way. It would have been unpleasant,
Speaker 1: but it would have been brief. And one nice thing
Speaker 1: actually about the two thousand and eight crash was at
Speaker 1: least there were real assets were involved. Now, the houses
Speaker 1: may have been wildly overvalue, the loans may have been worthless,
Speaker 1: but there was a house. When the when the this
Speaker 1: internet thing crashes, what will there be I mean, if
Speaker 1: if Amazon crash today, what what would what? What would
Speaker 1: there be left? You know, a list of phone numbers
Speaker 1: for ups men. Well in a lot of inventory, I guess,
Speaker 1: But but the whole you know. But I mean the
Speaker 1: real trick to bezos is a real trick is not
Speaker 1: to keep any inventory. Uh. I mean that is to
Speaker 1: move so fast, and it's not really It's not like
Speaker 1: Sears and Roebuck that I had warehouses and warehouses for
Speaker 1: all this stuff. It goes pretty much from the people
Speaker 1: who make this h or somewhere overseas, you know, to
Speaker 1: the ups man flirting with my wife. Uh, you're the
Speaker 1: subtitle of your book is why You're not rich? Neither
Speaker 1: of my theg why aren't you rich? Well, stupidity and
Speaker 1: sloth would be Wow, we can hang out aside. It's
Speaker 1: just incredible if we can all riches in a very
Speaker 1: modest way and say what we really all want is
Speaker 1: to have the nice middle class life that say, I
Speaker 1: grew up with in the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: when my old man made twelve thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: And when you look at what it costs to replicate
Speaker 1: that uh, four bedroom, to bath, to car, a week
Speaker 1: at the lake, UH, good schools, safe neighborhoods. When you
Speaker 1: look at what it costs inflation and justed dollars for
Speaker 1: UH to to replicate that life today, you've got to
Speaker 1: be rich. And all the more so if you insist
Speaker 1: on having double that life. That is to say, you
Speaker 1: get divorced and so you've got two families that you're
Speaker 1: trying to provide this lifestyle for the cost is phenomenal,
Speaker 1: way beyond the means of most of us. Yeah. P J.
Speaker 1: Rourke is on the line of the new book is
Speaker 1: is none of my business. At the same time, though
Speaker 1: you know, I I grew up in a house that's
Speaker 1: quite a bit smaller than the one I live in now,
Speaker 1: and and are typical in a lot of neighborhoods, and
Speaker 1: we seem to be quite happy. And I think we
Speaker 1: we had one car for most of my youth and
Speaker 1: then finally two and one was a pilot crap. But
Speaker 1: I just think, well, you know, while it's simultaneously true
Speaker 1: that the rich have a higher percentage of income than
Speaker 1: they've had in many, many moons, um at the same time,
Speaker 1: the poor are much more wealthy than the poor have
Speaker 1: been in human history. Oh that's the truth. I mean,
Speaker 1: objectively considered American poverty UH is laughable by world historical standards.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but the poverty level, the official
Speaker 1: government poverty level, is equal to the median middle class income.
Speaker 1: And if you adjusted for inflation in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: just in the nineteen twenties, you were middle class if
Speaker 1: you were at what's now the poverty level. But it's
Speaker 1: all perception. People don't people don't mind perceiving that the
Speaker 1: that the economic system is difficult, but they do mind
Speaker 1: when they feel that it's grossly unfair. And when you
Speaker 1: sort when you look at the Zuckerberg billions, it's very
Speaker 1: hard to keep You know that the Zuckerberg's billions don't
Speaker 1: affect your come I mean, he's not taking it from you,
Speaker 1: and yet there is his feeling, an angry feeling. You
Speaker 1: realize he's the Antichrist, right, Well, yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: can tell by the way he dresses. Come on, ne tie,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. P J. L. Rourke, I've been reading his
Speaker 1: books for years, as as Jack, guarantee you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 1: You'll probably learn something accidentally. The book is none of
Speaker 1: my isn't this? PJ explains money, banking, debt, equity, assets, liabilities,
Speaker 1: and why he's not rich and neither of you. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's great to talk. I hope we can do it
Speaker 1: again soon. Good luck with the book. All right, it's
Speaker 1: been a pleasure. Got two l O L s out
Speaker 1: of me. I'll tell you the reason he's not rich.
Speaker 1: Stupidity and slop. That's a good one, and the internet
Speaker 1: being whose idea was it to connect all the dumb
Speaker 1: people together? Yeah? So you know Parliament of Horse, which
Speaker 1: was my favorite PG orrock book and was number one
Speaker 1: on the New York Best Times bestseller list for a
Speaker 1: long time. It's still worth reading. The names have changed,
Speaker 1: some of the names have changed, except in the Senate UM.
Speaker 1: But it reminds me it's it's a much funnier version
Speaker 1: of UM Rules for Dictators. Oh, the Dictator's Handbook, which
Speaker 1: is a book I've been talking about for for a
Speaker 1: long time now, UM. And and This Town by Mark Leibovitch.
Speaker 1: It kind of those are like my troika of Oh,
Speaker 1: that's what politics is, okay and absolutely worth reading. You know,
Speaker 1: several people, including Jonah Goldberg and his recent book, have
Speaker 1: made that reference to the Thirty Years War, that that
Speaker 1: that occurred right after the printing press just all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, this dissemination of information, but we weren't people
Speaker 1: weren't equipped to handle it. I can't believe this is happening. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not happening. Just because it's printed on paper doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's happening. Well now, just because it's on the
Speaker 1: Internet doesn't mean it's happening. But it could take a
Speaker 1: while to shake out, and it can be very ugly
Speaker 1: in the meantime. In fact, you might need thirty years
Speaker 1: wards about them right amount of time. You need a
Speaker 1: couple of generations to have lived, to live with that
Speaker 1: their entire lives, to figure out how to deal with it,