In this episode of Two Drink Minimum, we have a special guest on the show to discuss universal basic income. We also have a new segment called "Wine of the Day" with special guest Penn Tellis. And of course we have our regular segments.
00:00:26.000Hello sir, my name is Steven Crowder and these here are the Mug Club Z's from Light Earth Crowder, a late night comedy of salvation to salve the soul.
00:00:33.000And we hear you might have a platform for us to upload our videos to.
00:05:32.000You ought to go back and talk to them.
00:05:36.000And by the way, that's one of the things that is a dangerous idea.
00:05:39.000You know, as these guys will tell you, I'm not always their favorite subject.
00:05:42.000It's like a Swedish pursuit with a biracial child.
00:05:46.000We actually obtained exclusive audio as intercepted by Vice President Biden's earpiece, and it seems things only got worse for the control room.
00:05:55.000I'll bet you're as bright as you're good-looking, I tell you.
00:05:57.000Okay, Vice President Biden, that's great.
00:06:22.000Okay, well, she's a little girl, let's... Joe, get off of it, get off of it, let's get off, just, no, don't, don't touch her, don't touch her, uh, don't... He's f***ing touching the kid.
00:06:31.000Okay, camera number four, get off of this, get off.
00:06:32.000I can't, I have to, this is news, it's my job, I have to cover it.
00:06:34.000Camera number four, so help me God, I will send you back to film school.
00:06:38.000Joe, don't mess up, camera number four... This is news, I have to cover it.
00:06:41.000F*** you, Joe, let go, please, get her off, Joe!
00:07:09.000Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, RBG as they call her on Netflix, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she came out the other day and said that pregnant women are not mothers.
00:07:20.000In Ginsburg's dissent on Box v. Planned Parenthood, Indiana, Kentucky, she wrote, quote, A woman who exercises her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy is not a mother.
00:07:28.000This is in response to Clarence Thomas.
00:08:45.000He admitted to grandstanding and showboating.
00:08:48.000By the way, contradicting literally everyone in the media who's defended Acosta.
00:08:53.000President-elect Trump today told CNN's Jim Acosta that his organization amounts to fake news.
00:09:00.000It is our observation that its correspondents follow journalistic standards and that neither they nor any other journalist should be subjected to belittling and delegitimizing by the president-elect of the United States.
00:18:15.000Universal basic income is a policy where every citizen in a country gets a certain amount of money to meet his or her basic needs, no questions asked.
00:18:22.000So in my plan, the Freedom Dividend, every American adult would receive $1,000 a month starting at age 18.
00:18:28.000You know you're robotic when they spruce your interview up with a xylophone.
00:19:03.000But let's go to the tale of the tape from NowThis.
00:19:07.000I believe we need a universal basic income in the United States.
00:19:10.000A universal basic income is a direct cash transfer.
00:19:12.000That is, we give people a set amount of money per month, no strings attached.
00:19:16.000People will be free to buy groceries, diapers, pay rent, save for an emergency, pay for medical care, or simply take their family to a movie.
00:21:21.000What if instead of giving people random money, like $1,000, what if you would just lower taxes in these big areas so that they would have $1,000 more at the end of the month instead of giving that money to the government?
00:21:32.000You just cut off our future, now this clip at the knees.
00:25:28.000Imagine if you could travel back, let's just go a little bit more recent, 25 years with an iPhone.
00:25:34.000You could be more productive than Bill Gates, along with the entire staff of Bill Gates.
00:25:38.000You could be more productive than all of them.
00:25:41.000It's not that you have a cell phone or a microwave, but you have access to technology that gives you more opportunities and more abilities to make efficient use of your time and advance your financial, your social, your educational status.
00:25:51.000That's the point that we're talking about here.
00:25:53.000Yeah, and all of this is built on this false premise that all work is equal, right?
00:25:57.000He's saying, oh, this work doesn't pay.
00:26:32.000The whole premise is that if you produce something, and they're going to argue with this left and right, if you can produce something valuable with your time, then I will give you my money that I have earned to do it for me.
00:26:42.000And they go on to make that point that many Americans don't have a thousand dollars in their savings account, right?
00:26:46.000And this is evidence of work not paying.
00:26:48.000This is emblematic of the leftists at NowThis because, like many of the proposed tax plans and economic plans coming from the left, it doesn't take into account- What?
00:27:30.000We give corporations, they say, free money, but not the poor.
00:27:33.000But then why are we so reticent to give people money?
00:27:35.000Well, because in the United States, we wrongfully believe that if we help struggling people and communities, that they'll never help themselves.
00:27:41.000Instead, we give big corporations and billionaires free money because we believe their wealth creates deservedness.
00:28:43.000But I think people need to understand that a subsidy is very different from a tax break.
00:28:48.000From saying, OK, we are going to not punish you as much if you bring these jobs or you conduct this research onshore.
00:28:55.000Here, that's not the same as giving somebody money.
00:28:58.000I think we need to understand the difference.
00:29:00.000And you must deal with that all the time in business law there, Half-Asian Bill.
00:29:02.000Well, I mean, you've got to think about what is the theory of if you're going to give someone money versus you're going to, you know, let's say a tax break or something like that.
00:29:10.000It's almost as if they're saying, well, it doesn't matter what form you give it in.
00:29:13.000As long as you give it, there's no consequence, right?
00:29:15.000You just give the money and everything will be fine.
00:29:17.000But there's no, what is the empirical data to support that this money is going to go in the right place or actually change anything?
00:29:24.000To drive this point home, by the way, this killed Mitt Romney's campaign, but it was accurate.
00:29:28.000Almost half of all Americans don't pay federal income tax.
00:29:30.000And here's something even more that I wish you would have clarified.
00:29:33.000If you look at income and taxes paid, okay, and you take into account federal transfers, that's a word they used, right, like the $1 trillion in government programs that I mentioned earlier, meaning what you give to people, welfare, food stamps, the bottom 20%, what would you think the bottom 20% in the United States pay?
00:29:46.000A lot of people say, well, they should pay less.
00:29:49.000Okay, so you think they're paying too much.
00:32:28.000You acknowledge that if people have more pocket change they'll spend it, that's good for the economy, but you believe that you give people agency by taking their sh** and saying, by the way, here's a little bit of your sh** back?
00:34:22.000And by the way, the argument they often bring up, I hear this a lot as gang gang, you know, you know what I'm talking about there, half-Asian dog.
00:34:59.000And if you look at places that have done it on a larger scale, like Canada, Finland, they actually imamented, uh, implemented, get off my back!
00:35:44.000When compared to a control group who were not receiving the basic income, the test subjects, given the money, were not significantly more likely to have gotten back into employment.
00:35:56.000Also, by the way, unfortunately for them, the people at the end of the study were murdered by everyone in the control group.
00:36:53.000I mean, the argument there is to say, well, yeah, if you want to just create jobs and artificially create a market, just start destroying all computers.
00:37:03.000Candle makers, man, that industry is going to Boom.
00:37:06.000I mean, but you can artificially create that, or you can set up a system that deals with important education items, encouraging people to actually work, and to be able to have the kind of persistence going to earn them the type of money that they're interested in.
00:37:17.000And that's not to say that we can entirely eliminate poverty, but how is going to give this additional money to people who are definitively, based on the studies, not going to do anything to change their circumstance, going to change anything?
00:37:28.000And that's what's lacking in the entire field.
00:39:49.000Somebody called him four eyes in France where he was in school, and he's like, oh, they must be smart.
00:39:53.000No, that's because of their masturbatory behavioral patterns.
00:39:56.000He's like, look, genius is like this, right?
00:39:59.000They basically pushed everybody out into the rice fields to have them just make an agriculture economy that would rule the world, essentially, and it miserably failed.
00:40:08.000Millions of people died because you tried to do that.
00:41:27.000So if you were to make this argument, and I've heard conservatives, I think even if you go back, I think Friedman might have talked about this or Hayek.
00:41:35.000If you were to say, let's do away with all welfare programs, all social safety, let's do away with EBT, let's do away with Social Security, let's do away with Medicare, Medicaid, let's do away with welfare, let's do away with all of it and just put a thousand dollars into every American's pocket regardless of income, I understand the appeal because at that point it would save us money and you wouldn't have the kind of government incentives that create baby mamas.
00:41:55.000At that point, you actually have a government incentive to have a joint household.
00:42:09.000They're just saying, we want to give people money, and by the way, if they're getting more in benefits already, we're going to let them keep those benefits.
00:42:16.000Yeah, nobody's going to make that change.
00:42:17.000And by the way, this program would cost, you would have to raise, right, additional $3 trillion per year if everybody over 18 received $1,000 a month, no matter their income level.
00:42:45.000I just assumed that this plan wouldn't be so stupid as to say, we're going to take $1,200 from a bunch of people, and then we're just going to give them $1,200 back.
00:42:54.000Like, I'm pretty sure that's just like a check floating scheme.
00:42:59.000All we're doing is just keeping the interest along the way.
00:43:14.000So you have to say that I'm going to increase by this kind of single or maybe low double-digit change, and that's what's going to make a big difference.
00:43:21.000And you just don't see the evidence for it.
00:43:54.000Let me ask, what do you think the result of having policy is where those who work and contribute have their money taken from them and it's given to those who don't?
00:44:02.000How would that not eventually start a civil war?
00:44:09.000Also, because they're the ones who have the guns, you would assume, not only because they can afford them, but they're the kinds of people who would purchase guns.
00:47:56.000It's the equivalent to Steve Martin's cork on his fork in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
00:48:02.000The first thing you do with a girl when you first meet a girl and start going out with her is hand her various pistols that you have and ask her to rack it.
00:48:10.000The one she can't rack is the one you carry around with you.
00:48:14.000That's also why, by the way, everyone needs to avoid the Walther CCP.
00:48:18.000That was one of its design patents, because it's a gas-delayed blowback.
00:48:44.000But I decided to try a new place out on Long Island, and I get the cut, and yes, I do get it colored, but usually at John's Sahag they're a little more subtle about it.
00:48:55.000This one was, she just gave me the 1977 Tony Manero.
00:49:02.000So, you know, after a little while, it starts growing.
00:49:05.000I get a few Paulie Walnut wings going here from the Sopranos.
00:49:08.000Well, that's not bad if it was between that and the Rich Little.
00:49:11.000By the way, how's your Reagan impression?
00:49:13.000Yes, well, I... Mommy, I had to have my hair done.
00:49:17.000It's... well... That's actually better than Rich Little and not as sad.
00:49:25.000We, uh, me and Jim Norton, uh, call, uh, Liam Neeson dyes his hair for all of his Taken movies, and it looks like he literally just dipped his head in soy sauce.
00:49:36.000That's definitely what I got this time around, was the soy sauce.
00:49:40.000Well, it looks good, and it's, you know, it's high, not high and tight, but tight.
00:49:43.000But I knew a guy at church one time who, he had fully gray hair and then came in and it was bright blonde.
00:49:49.000And the weird thing is, you know he had a decision to make at some point where he's going, I'm just gonna have to cross over and hope no one will notice.
00:49:55.000Because he wasn't going just for mening and then, no, it was just gray, blonde.
00:49:59.000And we had to act as though we didn't notice.
00:50:02.000Yeah, that's like Elton John did with his wig.
00:50:05.000He was bald, and then one day he just put this rat on his head, and he's had it ever since.
00:50:22.000And it also changes based on what ethnicity he's claiming that day.
00:50:25.000So like when he's saying, I'm Native American, you know, he gets the widow's peak, then he's like, I used to hang out with the blacks in Brooklyn.
00:50:30.000And then he gets a perm, and you're like, Steven, I guess people have gotten the hair plugs or transplants or whatever you want to call it early on because they go bald earlier in their life and then everything else falls out except for where they put the plugs in.
00:50:47.000Like, if you're in your 40s or something, and you're thinning and want to get it taken care of, that's not a problem.
00:50:53.000If you're that guy that in high school started going bald, just accept it.
00:51:34.000Speaking of which, now we have to get back on track.
00:51:37.000What do you make of Mueller's press conference here this week?
00:51:40.000I know you've been talking about that quite a bit.
00:51:41.000This guy, we all had this amazing kind of preconceived notion about him, that he was the man behind the curtain, the intelligent man in the cave on the hill or something.
00:51:55.000Because we didn't hear- Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second.
00:51:57.000Where do you come from that intelligent men live in caves on hills?
00:52:18.000But yeah, we thought he was this guy of wisdom, because he didn't say anything during the entire investigation.
00:52:23.000You didn't see an interview with him, nothing.
00:52:25.000And then he comes out and you're like, oh no, he's just another one of these idiots like you see in Congress and paraded in front of us to give these interviews.
00:52:34.000And he's like, all right, here's what it was all about.
00:53:16.000But yesterday he had to pump out a little bit of crap in his speech about Trump and the fact that he wasn't exonerated, which means nothing in our legal system.
00:53:27.000But to try to tell liberals what the legal system is about is a whole other thing.
00:53:35.000Yeah, they don't even understand the most basic of rights that we have in this country.
00:53:39.000Never mind understanding prosecutorial ethics and rules, whatever you're supposed to do.
00:53:49.000And then my favorite part of this whole thing is watching the Clowns, the candidates for the Democratic nomination that are saying, well...
00:53:58.000It's clear as day that he was saying that Congress now needs to pick up the ball and immediately start impeachment proceedings.
00:54:43.000If they try to impeach him, it could end up being worse.
00:54:45.000I know there are different theories on that, but I do wonder, like you said, we really didn't hear from Mueller a whole lot, and so he sort of became this kind of He's kind of a Rorschach test.
00:54:53.000He sort of became this empty tablet that everyone just kind of copy pasted onto him what they wanted.
00:54:57.000Well, he hasn't said anything, therefore there's clearly evidence.
00:54:59.000And like you said, when he came out, it wasn't clear, but 30-something million dollars later, how many subpoenas, hundreds of subpoenas and witnesses?
00:55:06.000Do you think he didn't say anything during that time because he was just at his desk going, oh, s**t, oh, s**t. That's what I feel like.
00:55:12.000And then he's like, I have a press conference to do.
00:55:16.000It's like you wake up, you haven't studied for the test and it's the day of.
00:55:20.000And if you go to over two years with an investigation and you put out this report that is supposedly concise and has everything in it that they got as far as evidence and interviews and testimony, everything, why would he have to give the Democrats this little, hey, by the way, guys, I really mean impeach him.
00:56:36.000Well, it's kind of like the great... You know, I don't expect everyone to read 400-something pages with the report, but the Green New Deal is a great example of that.
00:56:42.000Everyone was talking about it in the media.
00:57:02.000All right, speaking of laughable, let me ask you this.
00:57:04.000Howard Stern has been talking about this recently, and I want to get to him in a second, because he's been on some interpreted as an apology tour.
00:57:10.000But he did sort of lament the change in the media landscape today, from radio, what it used to be with having only callers, and now today with social media, how there's more sort of scrutiny.
00:57:36.000When I first got into radio, they would sit you down, the GM, the general manager, the PD, program director, they would sit you down and say, here are the FCC rules.
00:59:53.000You know, the last time I got in trouble with the FCC, it wasn't really the FCC, but this was a terrestrially syndicated, when it was a podcast, to, I don't know, like 20 something stations.
01:00:15.000And we got an email, and someone from the station said, yeah, they're not sure.
01:00:19.000They know it's illegal if you do it on air and radio, but you only inserted this into the podcast portion.
01:00:24.000But they want to see if they need to treat it like another syndicating network.
01:00:28.000And then I never heard back from them.
01:00:31.000So that was my first and only experience with them.
01:00:34.000Yeah, they get upset with the emergency announcements, and I think that's what the FCC's only handling now, what they were initially supposed to handle.
01:00:44.000Are you broadcasting on the right frequency?
01:00:46.000Is it the right power coming out of the transmitter?
01:00:49.000Because they don't care about content anymore.
01:00:51.000And I think that has to do with traditional terrestrial radio stations.
01:00:55.000Don't put jocks on anymore that do anything that could get them in trouble.
01:00:59.000They're so petrified of personality-driven radio now that they just say, shut up, read the liners, play the music, and that's it.
01:01:08.000So you're not getting that kind of controversial radio anymore.
01:01:11.000Yeah, I auditioned once for a national morning radio show.
01:01:47.000Do you think it's a natural evolution of a guy who's no longer 28?
01:01:51.000Or do you think it's really more so based on acquiescing to what's needed to survive, like you were just talking about?
01:01:57.000There is absolutely a growing phase that you go through, and I think when you hit your 50s, I guess, you really start thinking, well, everything I did is fine, but if I did it now, it would be pretty creepy.
01:02:13.000He did a lot of sexual stuff, and he was mean to a lot of celebrities, but it was hilarious for the listeners.
01:02:19.000But I understand growing out of that and wanting to change your show maybe and personality or whatever, but you can't disavow what you did.
01:02:28.000And you can't take people like Gilbert Gottfried who were amazing on your show and kind of built you up.
01:02:34.000He had a lot of cast of a lot of players that Built him up to be the Howard Stern he became.
01:02:40.000And then to just say, well, no, we'll never have them on again.
01:02:46.000He was on The View the other day, and it was hilarious just that he's on The View.
01:02:50.000And one of the one of the Yentas sitting next to him said something to the effect of, can you believe Howard Trump rates women from 1 to 10?
01:02:59.000And Howard's sitting there, I'm watching, going, have you watched his show over the course of the year?
01:03:04.000Where he took a laser pen and had a nude woman standing in front of him, put it on her hip and went, well, you're a little fat here, honey.
01:05:31.000A place Allah referred to simply as home.
01:05:34.000A place that tells you to slow down, remember your prayers, and to cover up your neck, head, and upper and lower torso.
01:05:41.000A place where Sharia law ensures that all men are men, girls are girls who can't drive, and a c*** is all but a distant, vanished memory.
01:05:49.000A place, somewhere over the sunset above the Red Sea, we hear the laughter of young boys, the lamentations of infidels, In the Bleeding of Goats, it's a place where the number of public beheadings is surpassed only by the funding of global terrorism and gross abuse of basic human rights.
01:08:45.000So this is one that's kind of, uh, I'll get a little personal later on here, which is always tough.
01:08:49.000It's always tough to be kind of vulnerable in these segments because, you know, it's the internet, like we just talked about with Kumia, and, uh, uh, most of you are terrible.
01:08:57.000So, we've been talking about this, we had Daniel Cormier on the show, who's the heavyweight champion in the world, and we've had a lot of, you've heard me talk about this, we have a lot of people who are excellent in their field on this show.
01:09:05.000And we do the Life Advice segments, the Tough Love segments, for those who are Mug Club members, for those who aren't, you know, it's a little bit of a longer show where we just take some of your emails and try and help people out.
01:10:16.000Successful people are successful because they get up and they do it anyway in spite of that.
01:10:23.000And again, I've had the luxury of interviewing the best of the best.
01:10:25.000Daniel Kremit, heavyweight champion of the world, right?
01:10:27.000Brian Shaw, four times world's strongest man.
01:10:29.000Thomas Sowell, I don't know how many books he's read.
01:10:31.000After the first several dozen, I lose track.
01:10:34.000And when I've asked any of them what separates them from the pack, invariably they all answer, and it might surprise you, it might not, work ethic.
01:12:07.000Once you've weeded everybody out, and you're down to the top 1% of 1%, and that's usually what we're referring to when we mean elite, there's still a gap.
01:12:17.000There are still the NBA All-Stars, for example, the Dream Team, and then there's Michael Jordan.
01:12:23.000There are still top-ranked heavyweight fighters in the world who could beat anybody else on the planet, and then there's Daniel Cormier who throws them around like a child.
01:12:30.000There's still world's strongest men, for example, second through 10th place, and then Brian Shaw winning four years in a row.
01:12:38.000And the widening of the gap, once you get past that bell curve, is no longer due to talent.
01:12:46.000And I've only realized this recently in having enough of a sample size of interviewing the elite of the elite.
01:12:52.000And I would say not only work ethic, but work intellect, working smarter, not just harder.
01:12:55.000So many people, this is something, we get so many emails like this, you know about this in life advice, they're looking for the skies to part, the light to shine down, God to show you your purpose, or that moment of inspiration, motivation to hit you.
01:13:53.000I'm not saying that it's more of a burden or less of a burden than other people.
01:13:56.000And, you know, I've talked about sort of the fibromyalgia thing.
01:13:58.000They go hand in hand with the chronic pain.
01:14:00.000But I tell you this for two reasons, okay?
01:14:02.000People only bring up, number one, depression or mental health when a celebrity offs themselves or when it's politically expedient to discuss mental health care and needing to de-stigmatize it, which ironically, to me, makes it more stigmatized.
01:14:17.000And by the way, to a degree it should, in that it's not a good thing.
01:14:21.000It's not a good thing to struggle with depression.
01:14:31.000Well let me ask you this, when things aren't bad, when there isn't some famous celebrity who was taken too seriously, when are you talking about it?
01:14:38.000Because that makes it seem abnormal to people.
01:14:42.000People need help, they don't need to be coddled.
01:14:44.000The second reason I bring this up, not because I'm elite or trying to say, you could be me too!
01:14:49.000But you know what, in the spirit of objectivity, we do a lot of content here at this show.
01:14:53.000And I guess by definition, being the top conservative channel ever makes us elite, but that's only because of the dearth of talent on the right.
01:15:00.000It's certainly nothing compared to people like John Oliver or Jimmy Fallon.
01:15:04.000We're grateful for everyone who tunes in.
01:15:06.000If I can toot the horn of the team, that intro that you saw today required days of working on the song.
01:15:11.000Just writing the lyrics, days of recording the song, mixing it, then performing it with a lip sync on a green screen with a scratch track, hours of wardrobe makeup, then days of editing, comping.
01:15:21.000All the while, I've still had to host, and we've had to work on a show four days a week, and then some for the last several weeks.
01:15:28.000And this week we were taping until midnight, out in the middle of the field, covered in blood, corn syrup, with mosquitoes around us, to a Goodfellas parody that you'll see next week, and then the workload starts again.
01:15:39.000But I'm at least as accomplished as the next guy.
01:15:41.000And I will say the team here of people, as a unit, I would say they're elite.
01:15:45.000And that's why the clinical depression is something I've been struggling with for a long time.
01:15:48.000So I bring it up to show you that, even though I'm nothing necessarily special, what you see is a lot of work, and I've been doing it anyway.
01:15:57.000So I want you to know, when you wake up and you don't feel like it, understand that's most people.
01:16:06.000Get out of bed, get out of your head, and the reasons that you're hearing through that noggin telling you why not, why you can't, and just do.
01:16:14.000Otherwise, you will have to live with, for the rest of your life, knowing that while you were scrolling through Pinterest looking for a motivating quote in posters with kittens that say, hang in there, there was that person out there who was doing it in spite of having no motivation at all.