RadixJournal - Bernie v Bloomberg

00:00:00.560 It's Tuesday, February 25th, and welcome back to the McSpencer Group.

00:00:06.900 Leaked audio reveals that we said nice things about Fidel Castro back in the 80s.

00:00:11.980 Top issue, Bernie v. Bloomberg.

00:00:15.780 Senator Bernie Sanders won Nevada and won it in a landslide.

00:00:20.460 A man who was once a curiosity in Washington is now the undisputed frontrunner

00:00:25.060 and the figurehead of a mass movement.

00:00:27.240 You guys look like revolutionaries. You're prepared to make a revolution?

00:00:33.600 MSNBC is freaking out.

00:00:35.880 Conservatives are dusting off talking points from the Brezhnev era.

00:00:39.820 And American voters don't seem to care.

00:00:43.200 Bernie's most powerful opponent is former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg,

00:00:47.340 who's spending hundreds of millions on social media and literally paying people to like him.

00:00:52.660 The billionaire class might lay claim to owning the American presidency,

00:00:56.160 but never before has a billionaire sought to buy the office for himself outright.

00:01:01.020 A social Democrat who is much more of a 20th century social Democrat than he is a woke new leftist,

00:01:09.400 I think that should be pointed out,

00:01:11.600 versus the just outright, unashamed, obvious forces of technocratic plutocracy.

00:01:22.000 And that is what is happening in the Democratic primary.

00:01:27.020 And it is extremely interesting, just as a spectator.

00:01:32.100 And I think actually, I would find certain virtues with both of those men,

00:01:39.200 both Bloomberg and Bernie.

00:01:41.920 I have a certain sympathy.

00:01:44.120 I probably have more of a sympathy with Bernie.

00:01:46.440 But I have a certain, I have a real respect, actually, for Bloomberg and what he's doing.

00:01:53.700 And I'm not going to go in on all the anti-Bloomberg stuff, you know, all right, oh, he's a Jew. 1.00

00:02:00.760 It's like, yeah, he, yes, he's clearly Jewish and he's a Zionist. 0.85

00:02:04.480 But unlike goofy people who wear masks and try to explain things, he is what he is. 0.85

00:02:12.040 He is a billionaire capitalist from Wall Street, but he is what he is.

00:02:17.400 And that honesty is, I find, absolutely refreshing.

00:02:21.560 So anyway, I kind of find the whole, I find the whole thing fascinating.

00:02:27.540 You did a video on Bloomberg, Keith.

00:02:29.560 Why don't you jump in first? 0.97

00:02:30.600 And then Ed can determine whether he's left-handed and gay. 0.93

00:02:36.720 I'm 100% on Team Bloomberg.

00:02:40.520 I mean, you know, first, it kind of started off as a joke.

00:02:43.380 It's like, you know, it's great to see someone that's so sort of unashamed about being a neoliberal technocrat.

00:02:49.140 Yeah.

00:02:50.040 But, you know, the more I thought about it, the more I thought, like,

00:02:52.960 there's actually no real downside to Bloomberg winning.

00:02:56.220 From our perspective, that would be any worse than Bernie or Trump.

00:02:59.620 Because the one thing Bloomberg, I think, could do is that if he does win, he'll have to steal the nomination from Bernie using his appeal to the non-white demographic.

00:03:10.280 And so if he wins, he's going to ride into office of this just, you know, stealing of the win by cynical use of demographics and non-whites. 0.72

00:03:19.200 And, you know, that's going to put the left in a tricky position where they're going to see that their populist movement of Bernie Sanders was stolen from them by, you know,

00:03:29.920 a Jewish neoliberal capitalist that used non-white demographics in his favor.

00:03:35.580 And I think it would also, as much as I can see the arguments for Bernie winning, I think from our perspective, it'd be bad in some ways if Bernie gets in,

00:03:44.300 because I think it'll set back political discourse in that he's not going to get any of the real socialist policies he wants done.

00:03:52.220 He's going to be stymied the whole four years.

00:03:54.760 But the right is going to revert to this.

00:03:55.580 By his own party, even.

00:03:56.860 And the right is going to revert to this sort of, you know, Paul Ryan, Venezuelan socialism, Cold War talking points.

00:04:06.280 I just don't think it would be a good direction for anyone.

00:04:09.380 But if Bloomberg wins, I mean, there's no longer going to be the middleman of someone like Trump that still sort of represents populist nationalist sentiment.

00:04:18.800 It's just going to be this, you know, again, unashamed plutocrat, technocrat.

00:04:22.860 And he'll be he'll be a perfect representation of what the United States is.

00:04:27.700 And, you know, finally, we can have a proper political discussion and people can see can see what the U.S. is and what it represents.

00:04:34.420 And they'll see that, you know, the head of the snake is neoliberalism, is, you know, social liberalism and multiculturalism.

00:04:41.960 And Bloomberg represents all of that perfectly.

00:04:44.440 And it is funny, actually, when you're talking about, you know, the story of Bernie versus versus Bloomberg.

00:04:50.020 You know, when you compare Bloomberg to Trump, like in many ways, Bloomberg captures that sort of Republican vision of America a lot better than Trump.

00:04:59.480 Like Trump inherited his fortune and benefited from the biggest tax break in New York state history.

00:05:05.660 And Bloomberg genuinely did like toil his way up to success.

00:05:09.080 So that's that's kind of a funny comparison as well.

00:05:11.840 He's the son of a bookkeeper.

00:05:13.940 Bookkeeper.

00:05:14.640 I discussed this last week.

00:05:15.760 Yeah, we talked a little about it, who, you know, I think he did go to Harvard Business School, but I presume he got in using his merit.

00:05:24.200 He offered a service to Wall Street and became a multibillionaire.

00:05:28.780 I mean, he again, he is what he is.

00:05:32.160 And I think all aspects of him, you know, they do reveal the real nature of reality.

00:05:39.160 He's, you know, he's a pro Wall Street neoliberal who wants to maintain the system.

00:05:43.920 And in a kind of funny way, he needs to call upon, you could say kind of, you could say racism in order to maintain it.

00:05:55.300 So he will maintain the system.

00:05:58.000 He will throw 600,000 people up against the wall in order to make sure that the trains run on time in New York City and that neoliberalism can continue.

00:06:09.280 Like, if Trump had lost in 2016, we'd probably be sitting here now saying, you know, if only Trump had won, can you imagine there'd be a massive wall on the border?

00:06:17.620 All the illegals would be deported. 0.99

00:06:19.800 You know, he'd be running it as this, like, quasi-fascistic state.

00:06:23.680 But after four years, you know, you know what the reality is.

00:06:26.500 And what's going to come of another four years of Trump?

00:06:29.500 Like, it's going to be four more years of Charlie Kirk token points.

00:06:32.460 It's going to be four more years of people just silently being displaced, losing their country.

00:06:36.820 And, you know, it's just four more years of slow crushing defeat.

00:06:42.220 You know, let's just go one way or the other, you know.

00:06:45.080 Why sit around for another four years and just wait for more of this?

00:06:48.220 Yeah. And before Ed jumps in, I mean, there's this interesting discussion, you know, in our circles and in really any circles that are marginalized of accelerationism.

00:06:59.700 And it goes back to an apocryphal quote, the worse, the better, from Lennon or someone.

00:07:06.460 I'm not sure he actually said that.

00:07:07.820 But so, you know, we kind of flip between, oh, we're going to get our guy in there and he's going to bring about a utopia for us.

00:07:15.840 And then we flip over to the other side of that coin, which is we should just have the worst possible person in there who just makes everything totally nuts and the system collapses and then we take over.

00:07:26.400 Both of those are fantasies, actually, and none of them are really that productive.

00:07:31.840 I don't think Bernie is an accelerationist candidate at all.

00:07:35.380 I think he's going to have a lot.

00:07:36.500 First off, I think he's going to have a hard time enacting his agenda because of the Supreme Court, because of opposition, his own party, and just the wheels turn slowly in Washington.

00:07:47.360 But even if he were able to enact it, I don't think it would be radically accelerationist.

00:07:54.000 He is a 20th century social Democrat.

00:07:56.220 That is his M.O.

00:07:57.480 Even when he talks about the race issue, it's all about, oh, these other people want to separate us on the basis of race, but we're going to all come together on the basis of Medicare for all.

00:08:07.780 It's that type of thing.

00:08:08.880 It's not a kind of divisiveness.

00:08:11.000 And I think, if anything, he's an anti-accelerationist.

00:08:13.840 It's the wrong kind of divisiveness.

00:08:15.760 There will be divisiveness if Bernie gets in, but it will be the divisiveness of Bernie's supporters will be blaming, you know, the patriarchal white male Republican Party for stymieing this populist uprising.

00:08:30.660 And, you know, people on the right will be, again, these, like, nonsensical talking points about Venezuela and socialism.

00:08:36.600 All the wrong things are going to be discussed.

00:08:38.600 Right.

00:08:39.280 It's going to further entrench this sort of false binary between, like, you know, the sort of open borders, like woke capital socialism of the Bernie bros.

00:08:49.560 And then, like, I don't know what you call, like, boomer Republicanism, like neoliberal talking points.

00:08:53.540 It's just going to reinforce that.

00:08:55.120 It would double down on the problems of Trump.

00:09:00.300 Just to stick with this real quick on the Bernie side, and then we'll talk about Bloomberg.

00:09:04.040 It would accelerate the whole problem of Trump, which is that in January 2017, and actually a little bit before that, he adopted conservatism.

00:09:15.120 So, Trump did a few things, like the Muslim ban, which isn't an actual Muslim ban, and all this kind of stuff.

00:09:23.740 But his agenda has been Paul Ryan's agenda.

00:09:27.860 And the people stalking his administration are conservatives.

00:09:32.840 They're some Tea Party people, some old line Republicans.

00:09:36.180 And the conservative movement has embraced him, and he has embraced the conservative movement.

00:09:40.040 And that was not the dynamic in 2015 and for most of 2016, which was he couldn't show up to CPAC because they were going to attack him as a nationalist socialist or something like that.

00:09:53.500 Now he shows up to CPAC, and he's a superstar.

00:09:57.880 But it's not like they've really changed.

00:10:00.380 His nationalism was so vague that it could just be kind of funneled into, you know, black unemployment's down, the stock market's up, you know, billionaires are getting tax cuts, Apple has higher profits this quarter.

00:10:15.540 That's what it is.

00:10:16.800 And so, with Bernie in there, all of the right would just be just Charlie Kirk on steroids.

00:10:24.320 It would be utterly awful.

00:10:25.540 Whereas, if Bloomberg's in there, and I know this is a bit fantastical, and it's a bit of a meme, but if Bloomberg's in there, that thing that Zizek called for, and that thing that I've called for, and so on, of getting away from conservatism,

00:10:43.960 and there being a kind of neither left nor right or maybe both left and right unity against the system, a kind of the periphery against the system.

00:10:55.760 I know how, like, I know how this is a long shot, and I know it's hard, but that is actually an interesting dynamic where the Bernie bro types, serious alt-right people,

00:11:08.540 not your, like, you know, I'm a conservative Trump supporter, and I'm racist on weekends or something.

00:11:15.640 Those kinds of people, they could get lost for all I care.

00:11:19.120 But serious people who want to change the world can start finding a lot more in common through Mike Bloomberg,

00:11:27.280 because there wouldn't be any pretense in the sense of, you know, in the sense of, like, oh, well, Trump's populist, and he's appealing to the people and evangelicals or whatever.

00:11:38.600 It would be like, no, we have a literal oligarch, like, through fascistic means instituting oligarchy. 0.69

00:11:47.920 You know, there's no pretense, there's no illusions, there's no, you know, bullshit rhetoric from Pete Buttigieg about America coming together and feeling loving each other and feeling unified.

00:12:01.420 We just get rid of it all, and we deal directly with the problem.

00:12:07.180 And in that sense, I think Bloomberg deserves to be president of this country, and I think it would actually be a great thing.

00:12:15.800 It would introduce a new dynamic, it would introduce change, and from our perspective, change is good.

00:12:22.460 And Trump, four years of Trump, we're just going to be fighting these same battles over and over again, you know, and people are going to continue to be deluded.

00:12:32.440 And I think in terms of what Trump might do in a second term, most second-term presidents, they have a little bit of a window of political capital, and then they spend three years just farting around, basically.

00:12:43.640 But if Trump re-elected and feeling like he has major political capital, I could see war with Iran, I could see a lot of just really awful stuff that conservatives would support. 0.86

00:12:56.920 And with Bloomberg, it's like the face of oligarchy, that he looks like his policies, that oligarchy is literally ruling, and that is good.

00:13:07.420 That is real accelerationism, and then it makes things clear.

00:13:10.860 Yeah, could I make a point about this?

00:13:13.920 No, you may not.

00:13:15.760 So I basically would be inclined to agree.

00:13:18.700 As far as I'm concerned, Trump has done nothing.

00:13:21.740 He hasn't done what he said he'd do.

00:13:23.480 He hasn't done it.

00:13:24.560 So that's a waste of time.

00:13:26.760 So what did Trump getting in actually achieve?

00:13:29.780 What it achieved was the left going mad, going bonkers, and a big crackdown on the right and on alternative media and on YouTube and whatever.

00:13:37.660 So essentially, from our perspective, the dissident people on the right, it's been quite bad. 0.95

00:13:42.520 And the good stuff that he said he'd do, stop immigration, build a wall, there's been minor things in that direction.

00:13:48.960 But he essentially hasn't done what he said he'd do.

00:13:51.140 Secondly, it strikes me that a fundamental problem with the American system since Roosevelt is that you have two-term presidents, and the second term, he's a lame-duck president for the whole time.

00:14:02.320 If there could be a third term, a fourth term, and a fifth term, well, interesting things.

00:14:05.520 But essentially, if you're re-elected, great.

00:14:07.620 You're a successful president like Eisenhower or Clinton or anybody else that's been elected twice.

00:14:13.300 But you're a lame-duck immediately, and people are therefore speculating on who's going to replace you.

00:14:17.640 So he won't achieve anything.

00:14:18.920 He won't do it.

00:14:19.480 He won't be able to do anything.

00:14:21.040 And it'll just be four more years of the left being terribly upset.

00:14:23.980 I like the false sense of security that the left might get out of a Democrat whim.

00:14:28.180 I quite like that.

00:14:29.340 When that person's not really a Democrat, not really, not in any ideological sense, he's simply a rich man who wants to be president of a country, exactly like Trump.

00:14:38.600 And let's not forget that in the 90s, I believe Trump was a Democrat, or he was toying with Democratic politics or something.

00:14:44.000 Yeah, and Bloomberg was a Republican as well when he ran for mayor of New York.

00:14:47.800 Was he? How fascinating.

00:14:48.960 So basically, they're just wealthy men that want to buy the presidency of a country, go on the dollar, basically.

00:14:56.320 So I like the idea of, as you say, of it being an overt, clear, no messing about, there is an oligarch who has purchased the presidency of America.

00:15:03.880 I love the idea of a debate between them as well, like just two New York loudmouths that are just the worst of everything.

00:15:12.600 And they're having a debate about how best to serve Israel's interests and who's the bigger Zionist. 0.62

00:15:18.140 He won't achieve anything.

00:15:21.100 He won't do anything other than purchase eight years in power or four years in power, whichever it happens to be.

00:15:27.760 So, and then often, of course, when there is more left-wing influence, then, of course, that's when the right, in terms of this acceleration, that's when the right regroup and actually do things because they're under pressure.

00:15:37.580 As you say, there is a false sense of security, perhaps, in America to having a Republican president and a president who says, oh, build a wall and talks the talk.

00:15:45.900 There's a false sense of security.

00:15:47.040 Let's get rid of that false sense of security.

00:15:49.060 The only thing I can think that he achieved, really, for Trump, is YouTube bans for interesting people.

00:15:55.160 I can't, and some other, some other things in economics, let's not subtract, you know, he's done some things.

00:16:00.860 I mean, the economy apparently is doing a little bit better in America than it has been doing or, or the immigration is a little bit down or something like that.

00:16:06.860 But I don't think it justifies the full consequences.

00:16:09.500 So, no, it would be quite...

00:16:10.240 Corporations have taken on debt and bought their own stock, running up the price of their own stock because debt is so cheap. 0.99

00:16:17.720 Like, it's, it's all a fucking game. 0.97

00:16:21.500 Like, you know, it's just a joke. 0.98

00:16:24.360 And, you know, yeah, maybe some middle-class people, their 401k went up.

00:16:29.520 Who cares?

00:16:30.680 You know, it's not like we're...

00:16:32.360 And actually, I think it's kind of interesting, actually, because I was watching this video on the, this company called Theranos, this total con job that went from 9 billion to zero.

00:16:44.680 A woman went from being a billionaire to being zero. 1.00

00:16:47.500 She was just an absolute con artist and sociopath in so many levels.

00:16:52.220 But I think that, that was a kind of representation, I think, a lot of the, the end of this kind of magical thinking that we had in the 2000s of, you know, with Steve Jobs being an icon of it, that, you know, it does, none of this really matters because there's going to be some outside the box, quirky college dropout genius who's going to just invent some new thing and change the world and we'll all get rich.

00:17:15.980 I think actually that, that mythos was, you know, Steve Jobs kind of died at, his death was symbolic.

00:17:24.060 I mean, he died at the peak of it and 10 years later, it's over.

00:17:28.100 And, um, I, I don't think people think, they, they, they, they just don't buy into that false dream anymore.

00:17:36.100 And, um, I, I, I, I think that is ultimately a good thing because that, that we, we get out of that illusion and we start working together in order to change the system.

00:17:46.860 And we're going to have to change the alt, the, the alt-right, dissident right, whatever you want to call us, we, we're going to have to change.

00:17:53.320 We can't be doing this own the libs, we're right-wing conservatives, whatever offends the libs is good.

00:18:00.940 We're, we're just, we're, we're super conservative, tough guys or whatever.

00:18:03.960 That, that kind of stuff just really needs to go.

00:18:07.420 And I, I think we can start to, again, create a serious radical movement, uh, that is actually attracting people on the left.

00:18:17.760 It's attracting serious people.

00:18:19.500 Uh, it's attracting people who don't even know who they are right now because they're, they're alienated from the system.

00:18:25.640 And that, those are the types of people that we want to attract to have a serious movement where we can start really changing the discourses, the discourse and interesting, inserting new language into the, the way people think.

00:18:39.920 I think these are all good things and it's what we need to do going forward.

00:18:43.640 And this is the thing you echoed a lot of my sentiments there, but I think the way you should be looking at it is not where will the U.S. be in 2020, but where will it be in 2024?

00:18:52.160 And, you know, with, with, uh, with the Bloomberg presidency, you know, I said in my video, just to kind of trigger people a little bit, that Bloomberg is like an ideal third position, but he's like, he's like a third positionist of all the worst elements.

00:19:06.760 Yeah.

00:19:07.080 Like whether you're attacking him from the right or the left, you have to attack him on something kind of substantive.

00:19:12.620 Like, it's not going to be the Sean Hannity critique of him that wins out.

00:19:15.940 It's not going to be about that.

00:19:17.000 He's, you know, like when Obama was in office, he's a secret communist or whatever.

00:19:20.460 And this is like a plot to take over the U S he's just a, he's an unashamed capitalist.

00:19:24.920 That's the only way to attack him.

00:19:26.400 And, you know, some people say, Oh, it's so, it's so naive.

00:19:30.280 It's, you know, Wignat saying that they can win over Bernie bros.

00:19:33.780 I mean, they want to throw you in gulags, but there is, it's not about winning them all over or red pill in the mall.

00:19:38.600 But I think, I definitely think that there's a large contingent of, of Bernie bros or, you know, people that are looking at the system sort of structurally that if they see Bloomberg just blatantly playing demographics to steal the nomination and to destroy this, this populist movement.

00:19:53.080 And I do, I do think, you know, there'll be serious black pill in there and, you know, there will be scope for sort of the best of, of those people coming over and maybe something else forming by, by 2024.

00:20:03.420 But that's really what it's about is where's the discourse going?

00:20:06.100 Because I mean, with another four years of Trump, what's it going to be in 2024?

00:20:09.680 Every right-winger will be off the internet.

00:20:13.020 It'll just, you know, it'll be just, again, this slow sort of burn.

00:20:15.980 The demographic trends will continue.

00:20:18.080 And all that's going to happen under Bloomberg as well.

00:20:20.180 But the difference is there will be some kind of, you know, symbolic center that people can unite around with Bloomberg out of office.

00:20:26.320 You know, whatever the antithesis of Bloomberg is, like whatever the antithesis of Bloomberg is, that's what I'm for.

00:20:32.300 So, you know, if Bloomberg's in office, more people can unite around that.

00:20:37.780 Absolutely.

00:20:39.680 And, you know, and it's worth saying, just to add here, in terms of, you know, actually caring about white people who are suffering right now, which if it is a, and this is certainly possible, if it is a Bernie versus Trump campaign, and you ask yourself, who is going to directly alleviate the suffering of white people?

00:21:08.140 I think the answer is clearly Bernie and not Trump.

00:21:12.220 And you can make some, you can talk about his comments on illegal immigrants or illegal immigrants.

00:21:17.640 They use the system anyway.

00:21:20.220 They're going to emergency rooms.

00:21:21.800 They're, you know, they're, you know.

00:21:24.260 But I think in terms of who would do more for average white people, and particularly blue-collar whites who are suffering, I think it's clearly Bernie.

00:21:34.660 And it just, that just is what it is.

00:21:37.620 It's not, I, if I were to vote for Bernie, it wouldn't be an accelerationist vote.

00:21:42.420 It would be like, this guy's actually has some programs that could help people, and Trump is just going to be more of the same.

00:21:49.240 You know, the Bloomberg factor would be very different, because it would be, you know, again, two neoliberals battling it out over who's the most scientist or something.

00:22:00.100 It is, it is, it is the one, the one, the one thing, the one time I've become kind of left-wing is when I'm in America, and I see these toothless people who are toothless because they can't afford to go and see a dentist.

00:22:11.280 Or who have, you know, bits of them chopped off because they haven't wanted to go and see a proper doctor or whatever.

00:22:17.620 It's really, it's like England before the health service was brought in.

00:22:19.960 In the UK, you had cases of women who had had hernias and held these hernias in with a bit of cloth tied up, and been like that for months and months or more.

00:22:31.320 And then they finally get to go to a doctor without paying what they can't afford to pay, and then it gets fixed.

00:22:35.440 I mean, it was absolutely dreadful before the health service was introduced.

00:22:38.100 I don't understand why people should have to pay to see a doctor.

00:22:41.820 In Finland, it's a problem.

00:22:42.620 You have to pay €20 to see a doctor, to see a state doctor, a rubbish doctor where you have an agency.

00:22:47.500 You have to pay something like €70 for a 15-minute consultation with a private doctor.

00:22:52.760 And it means that people have to think about, and they shouldn't have to, because thinking about, should I go to a doctor or not, when you've got a lump, is this important enough to go and see a doctor, is it not?

00:23:02.080 That could be the difference between not dying.

00:23:03.940 Or if you've got coronavirus, and you decide not to go to a doctor because you can't afford it, and you infect another 20 people.

00:23:11.980 Yeah.

00:23:13.080 Yes.

00:23:13.520 I don't know what the health care system is like in Italy, but perhaps that is relevant, because I get the impression that the people in northern Italy, or wherever it is, near the Austrian border, wherever it is, have died.

00:23:23.880 If you've gone to the US, it's going to be very relevant, isn't it?

00:23:26.040 They were quite poor.

00:23:26.960 They were quite poor.

00:23:28.760 So maybe you do have to pay to see a doctor in Italy, and maybe the guy didn't, and he died.

00:23:33.040 An old guy of 79.

00:23:34.680 I don't know.

00:23:35.020 It's five that have died now.

00:23:36.320 I'm not sure how many of them have died now in Italy.

00:23:38.340 So, yeah, that's a very good reason, containment of viruses, why you shouldn't have to pay to see a doctor.

00:23:45.500 Right.

00:23:45.760 And in America, if it comes to America, think of all these people that, oh, I've got the flu.

00:23:51.620 Should I go to the doctor?

00:23:52.660 No.

00:23:53.540 You know, it'll cost me however much it costs to go and see a doctor.

00:23:56.000 I don't have health insurance, so it'll cost me whatever.

00:23:59.660 You know, how much does it cost?

00:24:00.740 You know, how much does it cost if you haven't got health insurance to go and see a doctor?

00:24:03.800 It's just, it's pure bankruptcy almost immediately.

00:24:08.100 I mean, the cost of health care, if something is serious, like, if you're battling cancer or really serious surgery, you're just simply going to go bankrupt.

00:24:19.880 I mean, it's going to be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.

00:24:22.720 I mean, you just can't do it.

00:24:24.700 And, again, it's like the cost of health insurance, I think the average cost is something like $25,000 a year for a family of four.

00:24:34.040 And, you know, you can kind of work it.

00:24:37.280 But, yeah, yeah, it's a huge thing.

00:24:40.680 It's the highest in the world per capita.

00:24:42.860 Unbelievable.

00:24:43.780 I was watching, I watched some of the Sticks Hexenhammer video there for my sins, and he was making the libertarian argument for this, which is that American health care is so expensive because it's not private enough.

00:24:56.460 So, you know, all these Western countries that have per capita costs that are a quarter of the United States, you know, you could just go socialize and go to, you know, something around that.

00:25:05.600 But, no, you should take a gamble, go more privatized, and you might actually get it cheaper than them.

00:25:09.760 Yeah, I mean, there's a kernel of truth to that in the sense that we have, like, the worst of all possible systems in the sense that it's kind of socialized in the wrong way and then privatized in the wrong way.

00:25:24.880 I mean, I could go with a libertarian argument that if we had just a pure free market, that there would be, like, a McDonald's of health care and things like that.

00:25:35.820 I can kind of work my way there.

00:25:39.080 But we're just not – people aren't willing to accept that.

00:25:42.840 Conservatives are not willing to accept that.

00:25:44.480 Like, the idea of taking away Medicare of conservatives, they will – if the boomers would, you know, actually riot over something, it might be that.

00:25:54.120 And so we're in this system, and we need to find a way out of it.

00:25:58.760 But where it is now is just utterly unbearable.

00:26:03.400 And also, the insurance, what we've done, what we did with Obamacare – and Obamacare was originally, in the late 80s and early 90s, it was actually a Heritage Foundation project.

00:26:12.600 So it was a conservative project, and then it was first implemented by Mitt Romney.

00:26:17.300 And then Obama did it as this grand compromise, basically.

00:26:20.640 And then conservatives called it socialism, even though they invented it.

00:26:24.020 And what it basically does is, you know, we're afraid to be a socialist country.

00:26:30.240 So we don't want to have a national health service where doctors are literally employees of the state, or we don't want to have a single-payer system.

00:26:38.720 We want to have this system where we're kind of subsidizing the insurance industry and forcing people into it.

00:26:45.640 And so it creates insurance that isn't insurance.

00:26:48.820 Because insurance is something that you don't want to use and don't actually plan on using.

00:26:55.120 You buy insurance on your house catching flame.

00:26:59.000 Or, you know, insurance originated historically as merchants who would have ships going across the ocean.

00:27:05.280 And they obviously did not want this to happen, and they didn't plan on it happening.

00:27:10.420 But, like, compulsory health insurance is not insurance because you know you're going to use it.

00:27:17.140 And you, in a way, want to use it.

00:27:19.600 You're prepaying for your medical care.

00:27:23.220 It's just the worst thing.

00:27:25.200 No, no, no, no.

00:27:26.140 It is.

00:27:26.600 You don't want to get ill.

00:27:28.040 You don't plan on getting ill.

00:27:29.120 Of course not.

00:27:30.100 But everyone, yeah.

00:27:32.980 But it's, but you don't, like, it's not like there's some catastrophe that you take care of.

00:27:38.500 Everyone has to visit the doctor.

00:27:40.740 Yes.

00:27:41.340 I mean, it's not, you're not even unhealthy.

00:27:44.120 I mean, it's just, this is the world we live in right now.

00:27:46.740 And so it's a kind of prepayment system.

00:27:49.360 And then also, with your employment, so with your employer offering it to you, it's connecting you to this corporation.

00:27:59.460 And, you know, obviously employers, employers love that.

00:28:03.080 You know, a lot of people aren't quite willing to leave employment or search for another job or do something else, start a new business or whatever, because they don't want to lose their health plan.

00:28:15.120 And I understand.

00:28:15.860 So, anyway, we've socialized the insurance industry and they're profiting from it.

00:28:22.760 It's just, it's privatizing profits.

00:28:24.580 This is what, this is what fears me about, this is what fears me about Bernie getting the nomination is I'm already seeing people that were so on board with the MAGA movement in 2015 that were, like, borderline national socialists are now, like, attacking Bernie on, like, oh, he's going to, he's going to increase the deficit.

00:28:42.340 And how is he going to pay for this spending plan?

00:28:44.340 And it's, like, the libertarian alt-right pipeline is, like, suddenly going in reverse now.

00:28:49.360 And there's, like, conversion on, like, Paul Ryan talking points.

00:28:52.360 It's just awful.

00:28:53.060 So, they can't, they can't, they don't, they can pay for anything.

00:28:56.120 The United States has never had a failed bond auction.

00:28:59.620 So, like, you can print debt, effectively.

00:29:03.460 They're not really printing money.

00:29:05.040 I think that's kind of a wrong way of saying it.

00:29:06.920 But they are basically printing debt in an unlimited fashion.

00:29:11.220 And they can do this because of politics, because we are a dominant global power, and people don't want to mess with us.

00:29:18.960 And so, that's what it is.

00:29:20.700 There is no problem with paying for any of this.

00:29:22.900 And all the stuff that conservatives want is equally massively in debt, like, rebuilding the military or whatever.

00:29:30.960 All of that is debt finance.

00:29:32.540 It's all a bunch of debt.

00:29:34.620 And at one point, this whole game is going to break down.

00:29:39.160 And it's going to be, it might happen fast, it might happen slow, but it's going to be a catastrophe.

00:29:42.680 But we're not there yet.

00:29:44.920 So, stop talking about how are you going to pay for it.

00:29:47.980 It's not like the government is, like, a checking account where you put money in, and then you take it out, and you pay for it.

00:29:56.620 It's like, oh, we can't pay for the military this week.

00:29:58.880 You know, we better take on a second job or something.

00:30:01.120 It does not work like that at all.

00:30:02.580 It's this idea.

00:30:03.420 It started with Thatcher, that you run the government budget like a household budget or like a small shop.

00:30:11.400 Right.

00:30:11.540 Like, you always see kind of, you always see people that are, you know, like low-info people that, like, love to use this analogy for everything.

00:30:19.080 But, you know, it's really limiting.

00:30:20.340 For a country like the United States, I mean, you know, the facts just say otherwise.

00:30:23.760 And this is like the false dialectic it creates as well, because then when a Democrat is in office, you know, the Republicans just stifle him on spending.

00:30:32.080 And he doesn't get any of the economic reforms done, but he gets all his terrible social reforms done.

00:30:37.920 Yeah.

00:30:37.980 And then, you know, a Republican comes into office and, you know, look at the debt after Reagan was in office.

00:30:42.240 Look at it now with Trump.

00:30:43.180 And the deficit goes up, the debt piles on.

00:30:45.460 But it's just this money that's sent straight to the elite rather than to things that would benefit the working class.

00:30:51.000 So, you know, it is a terrible dialectic in American politics.

00:30:54.640 Absolutely.

00:30:55.000 So, let's get Bloomberg in there.

00:30:57.460 Yes.

00:30:57.680 And just...

00:30:59.060 The McSpencer Group, America's favorite socialist podcast.

00:31:09.880 I'm still waiting for my Bloombergs from Bloomberg.

00:31:13.860 If you were smart, he would do it.

00:31:15.600 I managed to get hold of one of these MAGA hats, one of these Make America Great Again hats.

00:31:20.980 So, there's the Bloomberg merchandise that perhaps I could get hold of.

00:31:23.800 What is it, Mike will get it done?

00:31:25.260 I think that's his...

00:31:26.140 I like Mike.

00:31:29.040 I like, yeah.

00:31:29.960 I'm with Mike.

00:31:30.760 Yeah.

00:31:31.100 We are willing to accept...

00:31:32.300 We will make this argument, so we're not, like, selling out.

00:31:35.300 We actually believe this, but we are fully willing to accept bundles of cash.

00:31:42.040 I think he's only interested in people that appeal to, like, non-whites. 0.88

00:31:46.220 Well, that's us.

00:31:51.160 The Irish can't vote, though.

00:31:55.160 That's true.

00:31:56.740 We'll see.

00:31:58.060 But if you were smart, he would do it.

RadixJournal - February 25, 2020

Bernie v Bloomberg

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