Real Coffee with Scott Adams - September 28, 2020


Episode 1138 Scott Adams： Trump Taxes, Mail-In Ballot Fraud Scandal, How Trump Wins Without Trying, I Explain Taxes


Episode Stats


Length

52 minutes

Words per minute

151.858

Word count

7,928

Sentence count

1

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The President has been accused of using a performance enhancing drug called Adderall, which is a controlled substance that has been around for a long time and is used to enhance performance. But is it actually a drug? Or is it something else?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 turn off my ringer get ready for work are you ready to learn something useful
00:00:16.600 you know probably there's nobody who's going to be on this periscope who doesn't already
00:00:22.300 understand what i'm going to teach you because you're smarter than average but there might be
00:00:28.380 a few people wandering in here and it'll be useful to you and at the very least you might learn
00:00:33.980 another way to explain it to other people so even if you already know about taxes and depreciation
00:00:41.320 you might pick up a little tip so hang around it's going to be worth it we'll have some laughs too
00:00:48.700 but first how do we get going you know how it's called the simultaneous sip and all you need is
00:00:56.540 a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or sign a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind
00:01:01.500 fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the
00:01:09.460 dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes everything better except taxes
00:01:14.240 it's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now go
00:01:17.940 ah
00:01:21.760 ah
00:01:23.760 i can feel my deductions increasing
00:01:27.440 well before we get into a little whiteboard lesson on taxes that will not hurt what one bit
00:01:35.480 i'm going to keep it so simple that that you won't even mind listening to it
00:01:40.560 there's some disturbing news about brad parscale you've all heard it by now i'm not really going
00:01:48.880 to talk about it except to say that we wish him well this is the sort of story that should only be
00:01:55.200 viewed as a medical issue so that's all that needs to be said there's a there seems to be a medical issue
00:02:03.760 and i hope it works out well i am loving just loving from the trash talking point of view
00:02:13.280 uh watching the you know the the president to go at her go after biden and vice versa
00:02:18.960 i am loving uh president trump challenging him to a blood test
00:02:25.120 now i would say that the odds of that happening you know where where trump and biden both take blood
00:02:34.960 tests before the uh before the debate i i think it's fair to say that the odds of that actually
00:02:41.840 happening are zero there's no chance it'll happen but because it's such an outrageous thing to to bring
00:02:49.760 up the president can bring it up there's no risk because there's no chance it's going to happen
00:02:56.800 but because he's the president you sort of have to cover it in the news because he just keeps
00:03:02.240 bringing it up and you can't really ignore a thing like that so it makes everybody ask the question and
00:03:09.040 think about it and focus on that question of how are they medicating uh biden now part of the reason
00:03:16.320 that it's sticky and it's a it's a good attack is because even if you support biden don't you think
00:03:25.360 there might be some pharmaceuticals involved a little bit because even if you support him you do
00:03:32.560 notice that he has good days and bad days you can't miss that what causes a good day versus a bad day
00:03:40.160 is it maybe medication is it maybe a natural cycle which would be disturbing as well it's a it's a
00:03:48.400 perfect attack now of course the counter-attack on the president is his critics accuse him of uh using
00:03:56.240 adderall now do you know anything about adderall i would say that it should be a rule that every
00:04:06.800 president should be on adderall even if they don't need it now adderall is a very controlled substance
00:04:15.520 because if the wrong person is using it for the wrong reason it basically acts like speed and it
00:04:21.200 could be bad for them but if somebody just hypothetically hypothetically if someone was under a doctor's care
00:04:31.360 such as a sitting president would you want them to be on adderall or to not be on adderall well here's
00:04:39.520 the thing if you know anything about it you probably want them to be on it because they're going to be
00:04:46.160 way more productive and actually smarter that's what it does i don't want to encourage anybody to
00:04:54.080 take an illegal drug if it's not uh if it's not recommended by your doctor but it is a fact that
00:05:01.680 adderall is not like cocaine or heroin or you know oxy content or anything it's just nothing like any
00:05:09.680 of those drugs it's not like alcohol or weed it's not a quaalude it's not it's not any of those it is
00:05:17.360 purely a performance enhancing drug which has plenty of you know history and science so if it turned
00:05:26.080 out and i don't think that that this is an evidence but if it turned out that the president was on adderall
00:05:34.320 that would be a plus you're just not allowed to say that in public anybody everybody here who's had a
00:05:42.480 little experience with this and has had anything in that family of chemicals you know what i'm talking
00:05:48.480 about so uh it's interesting that ignorance is the the most important part of these political attacks
00:05:59.040 is that you can make an attack as long as the public doesn't understand the topic so right now they
00:06:06.640 can say hey he's on this drug called adderall and eighty percent of the public will say i don't know
00:06:13.440 what that is but it doesn't sound good the way you described it and that's it that's all you have to
00:06:20.000 accomplish is that it doesn't sound good just like uh you know just like asking for biden to take a
00:06:26.800 blood test it doesn't have to happen it just has to sound sort of sketchy and damaging and that's it
00:06:34.960 it um so matt walsh tweeted uh today or yesterday trump has had financial records leaked to the press
00:06:47.920 secretly recorded conversations leaked to the press and many officials who worked inside the white house
00:06:53.760 have written tell-all books and yet through all of that no crime or actual serious scandal has been
00:07:02.080 uncovered did you expect that we would get all the way to here and this president would be i mean he's
00:07:12.080 investigated inside and out the last thing that people were waiting for was these taxes and i can
00:07:17.840 tell you that i i personally had a conversation with a uh let's say a a notable person who i will not
00:07:24.560 describe further a notable very smart person who said you just wait when the taxes come out someday
00:07:33.600 those taxes are going to come out and it's going to show all those terrible crimes well taxes are out
00:07:43.120 where's all the terrible crimes if there were any terrible crimes or even crimes you know even little
00:07:51.280 crimes that were that were in evidence in those taxes do you think we wouldn't have heard about it by now
00:07:58.800 because you don't lead with the boring stuff if the new york times had the goods they had something that
00:08:05.920 was like a you know even even something suspicious they would have told you by now don't you think so it
00:08:14.800 turns out that the president is way cleaner than anybody imagined
00:08:21.280 i have to admit you know i'm a uh you know i'm a complete supporter of the president but even i
00:08:29.760 was surprised that there's nothing there i thought you know any billionaire it wouldn't matter who it is
00:08:36.240 if you take anybody with a real complicated billionaire kind of a tax return and you say all right here here
00:08:42.480 you public go take a look at it i feel as if you would find something suspicious looking in just
00:08:50.080 about anybody's billionaire tax returns it might not be crimes and it might you know if you looked
00:08:57.120 into it it might not actually be as bad as it looks on the surface but there would be all kinds of
00:09:02.560 stuff that would be flags where you'd say i better look at this a little bit more but apparently trump
00:09:10.320 doesn't have those he apparently has a pretty clean return now the one thing that is being audited
00:09:18.240 and the president has been telling us this for years is that there is a big 72 million dollar deduction
00:09:25.040 that's being debated now is that a crime is it a crime if the irs ultimately says
00:09:33.920 this will be disallowed not really i mean there might be a penalty with it because you know there
00:09:40.400 may be some requirement for that but it is completely routine completely routine for companies to see some
00:09:48.560 gray area thing and say well might as well take a shot it's sort of a gray area we have an argument the
00:09:56.160 irs would have an argument the other way we get that but give it a shot it is not illegal to give
00:10:04.720 something a shot all right you have to understand that that that deduction could be disallowed but it
00:10:11.600 was done publicly in the sense that the irs is aware of it the irs got to look at it and they started to
00:10:18.640 question it and apparently apparently there's enough of an argument on the trump side that it
00:10:25.200 hasn't been resolved for years if it were easy to resolve as if you know let's say that there was no
00:10:32.000 argument on the trump side there's just no argument for this deduction i feel like it would have been
00:10:38.240 resolved in less than four years right it wouldn't take four years to resolve something that didn't have
00:10:46.160 an argument on the other side so even if trump ends up not winning the you know that that deduction
00:10:55.200 conversation that's not illegal it's completely legal to take your best shot if it doesn't work it
00:11:02.240 doesn't work but you knew what your risk was uh here's some of the best uh tax advice i ever heard
00:11:09.520 this came from uh my smart democratic friend coincidentally and it was from a friend of his
00:11:18.560 and he recall he recounts this story he said he said he was doing his own taxes because he's really
00:11:24.560 smart so he can he knew how to do his own taxes even the complicated stuff but he reached a point where
00:11:30.560 there are two ways to calculate something and it appeared that the irs would allow either one one of
00:11:38.640 those ways he could do it was good for him and the other way was not as good for him but they both
00:11:45.200 looked like they were allowed it was just two different ways to account for the same thing
00:11:50.960 so he asked his friend who was more of an expert on finance he goes what do i do i've got two valid
00:11:56.800 ways to do this one is good for me and the other one's not good for me what should i do
00:12:01.680 his friend gave him this advice do the one that's good for you that's it do the one that's good for
00:12:09.200 you now what if it turned out that the irs said no you know really it should have been that other
00:12:15.360 calculation it's fine you might have to pay a little extra be you know for the the the interest
00:12:22.800 or something for something that shouldn't have been a deduction but the irs doesn't put you in jail
00:12:29.120 for having for having a good argument that's an important point that people don't understand
00:12:35.200 it's not cut and dried these are legal things these are illegal things as long as your lawyers
00:12:40.800 can go in there and say look this is the reasoning we used here here's your own rules your rules say this
00:12:49.360 we read those rules and we did this how's that wrong and if the irs says well it is wrong and here's
00:12:56.480 why nobody goes to jail for that all right it's very routine all right so um let's talk more about
00:13:06.560 trump's taxes you should not trust anybody who who makes this comparison if you see this on twitter and
00:13:15.920 you're all you're seeing it this morning all over the place people are going to say this a typical
00:13:21.920 uh middle class taxpayer might pay several thousand dollars whatever per year trump only paid seven
00:13:31.760 hundred and fifty dollars in 2017 so therefore it's totally unfair right no anybody who gives you that
00:13:42.560 comparison and tries to convince you that you've learned something because you compared trump's total taxes
00:13:50.000 to an average citizen they are lying to you or they don't know a freaking thing about taxes those are
00:13:59.040 the only two possibilities anybody who makes that comparison is a flat-out liar or they don't understand
00:14:07.040 the field whatsoever there there's no way that that comparison makes sense it's comparing a peanut to
00:14:16.000 an elephant they have they just are different things and i'll explain why all right let me explain for
00:14:23.520 anybody who doesn't follow finance doesn't do their own taxes a little simple situation i'm not claiming that
00:14:31.520 this uh equals trump's taxes it's a generic situation right so suppose you've got a company in one year any any
00:14:40.320 a year that makes two billion dollars in money coming in so that's what they've earned from people paying
00:14:47.040 them for their services or products and they've got an expense of a billion dollars a year that is actual
00:14:53.200 checks and money that they've given out that would leave them since they brought in two billion and
00:14:59.760 only put out a billion in expenses that's a billion dollars left over to spend on stuff
00:15:06.880 but if they also bought a lot of assets let's say they bought buildings or computers or vehicles you
00:15:14.720 can do a thing called depreciation depreciation is instead of taking the cost of that thing and acting
00:15:22.560 like you you spent all your money the year that you bought it so let's say you bought up you bought a
00:15:27.680 building and it was a million dollars you don't write off the whole million as an expense the year that you
00:15:35.280 bought it the tax law says that you write off a little bit every year based on what the tax law
00:15:42.080 says if it's a building maybe it's 15 years for example you just spread it out as if it's an expense
00:15:49.680 so if you had a billion of these paper artificial expenses and a billion of real ones the two of them
00:15:57.200 would equal two billion and that's all the money that you had coming in so even though you've made
00:16:02.480 a half a billion dollars in cash that's yours to keep you made a half a billion dollars it's yours to
00:16:10.080 keep you've got a half a billion dollars in cash on paper you made nothing and you don't have to pay
00:16:16.720 taxes federal income taxes if you made nothing now is that a bad situation is that unfair is that the rich
00:16:26.000 people take an advantage of a tax loophole nope nope this law about how to how to deal with depreciation
00:16:37.280 and indeed uh depreciation won't be the whole story with trump's taxes there will be other um loopholes
00:16:44.800 and things built into the law that he took advantage of but everything that's in the tax law is there
00:16:52.480 because both democrats and republicans in all likelihood thought it was a good idea that all
00:17:00.000 the smart people thought it was a good idea now there are people who argue you should change the tax to
00:17:07.120 a flat tax etc so there is always room for debate but the point is this this idea of how to treat taxes
00:17:16.560 even for rich people is not really controversial in in the mainstream of people who understand finance
00:17:24.720 find me a cpa somebody who is an expert on taxes who thinks that this is bad for society 0.98
00:17:32.160 you won't find any there's nobody who understands this field who thinks that this is bad or should
00:17:38.560 be changed now when i say nobody you can always find some somebody who will say anything but the
00:17:44.240 mainstream democrat mainstream republican they're all in favor of this there's no there's nobody on the
00:17:51.440 other side of this now the other thing you need to know is that when they say he didn't pay taxes
00:17:57.600 they're usually talking about federal income taxes it doesn't mean that no taxes were paid indeed
00:18:04.720 he paid a bunch of salaries and everybody who earned a salary paid taxes so instead of the taxes coming
00:18:12.320 out of here it went to the people the people had an income they paid taxes and that goes to the
00:18:19.200 federal government they they also probably paid payroll taxes and social security and you know and other
00:18:26.560 related things that all goes to some government either local or or federal what about property taxes
00:18:34.800 every big company especially if you're a real estate company have have enormous property taxes
00:18:39.840 what about uh suppliers he's buying stuff from suppliers they make a profit they use that once they get
00:18:48.240 that profit they pay taxes right none of this happens none of this unless this happens so why is it that the
00:18:57.360 government and the irs thinks it's a good idea to have a situation where sometimes big companies pay
00:19:03.920 nothing it's a good idea because you really really want this other stuff you want jobs because if
00:19:11.360 somebody has this job the government doesn't have to support them that's a big win you want all these
00:19:16.560 taxes this is exactly what you want now if this lasted forever would that be good what what if a big company
00:19:25.840 just never paid taxes they just always found loopholes and just never paid taxes would that be good well it
00:19:33.600 actually would be pretty good for the reasons i just told you tons of taxes get paid but it's a second
00:19:40.400 order effect now remember these these suppliers who uh who made money because they sold stuff to the company
00:19:49.840 once they make their money they go spend it again that's called the multiplier effect in economics
00:19:56.720 so these dollars that are generated by this business it's not one dollar this dollar goes to the supplier
00:20:03.360 the supplier buys his own his own supplies that dollar goes to the next person that dollar goes to the next
00:20:09.360 person and the next person every time that dollar changed hands somebody paid taxes maybe sales tax
00:20:17.520 probably income tax if there was a profit there so there's an enormous economic benefit from a company
00:20:25.360 that pays no taxes that's why it's allowed because it's really really good for the world it's not a coincidence
00:20:33.680 that amazon has this situation it's not a coincidence that there are lots of companies that have this situation here's
00:20:42.720 what you need to know for your further lesson in economics with my awkward whiteboard
00:20:52.720 here's the situation which might be somewhat typical for a company that's not paying federal income taxes
00:21:00.160 if you're if you're a growing business meaning that you're you're plowing money into your business
00:21:06.240 continually it could be that your expenses are going up because let's say you're you're buying a new
00:21:11.920 building you're investing in some infrastructure you're just putting all kinds of money into that
00:21:17.280 now this could be real money expenses or depreciation but it could be going up like crazy
00:21:23.280 at the same time though it's fine your bank will give you loans because your revenue is going up like crazy
00:21:29.920 too and the hope is that someday you'll get to the point where you don't have to put in as much every
00:21:36.800 year and you can just start harvesting the benefits a good example this is your cable company the the
00:21:44.880 company that that is digging ditches and putting cable in the ground and connecting one neighborhood after
00:21:51.200 another every time they connect a neighborhood they make money from that neighborhood
00:21:56.640 so that so that neighborhood that the cable company connected is now profitable but the company
00:22:02.160 itself is not profitable only that neighborhood because they have already put in two new neighborhoods
00:22:07.680 that are not yet profitable as those new ones become profitable now you've got three profitable ones yay
00:22:15.040 if you stopped there you could immediately get your expenses going down while your income goes up
00:22:21.520 hey you're making money and you're paying taxes but why would you you didn't start a
00:22:26.240 company you didn't start a company to get to some point and then just level off you started a
00:22:32.160 company to grow forever and the best way to grow forever is to keep getting bank loans to keep
00:22:38.000 getting financing private financing etc as long as your revenue is going up and it looks like it could
00:22:44.800 cross over in the future the banks will give you all the money you want people will buy all the stock
00:22:51.200 that you want you can give financing easily and cheaply now i don't know if president trump's situation is
00:23:00.080 like the one i described but what's important is neither do you we don't know now maybe if i looked at the
00:23:08.560 details of his tax returns i could i could deduce this i'm not sure i could but um if the if the news has not
00:23:18.240 described to you if this is a normal situation of a growing company is he is he plowing his money back
00:23:26.160 into assets that are creating jobs and creating other kinds of taxes that's the best situation you
00:23:33.200 could possibly have now it turns out that as an attack on the president it's really really effective
00:23:40.480 because how many people how many people understand this little lesson that i just gave you if you were
00:23:48.480 to guess what percentage of the general public understands that you can't compare an average wage
00:23:56.640 earners taxes to a big company and that there are good reasons you can't compare them what percentage
00:24:03.440 of the company do you think of the of the country do you think knows that i would say 20 percent tops
00:24:13.680 yeah somebody's guessing 20 and somebody says five percent ten percent it's somewhere in that range
00:24:19.760 it's definitely not more than 20 but it's probably in the five to twenty percent range now having explained
00:24:27.440 it to you we're good now right everybody who sees an explanation like this you know they didn't used to
00:24:34.000 know but now they've seen the explanation oh good i guess that problem is solved we used to be ignorant
00:24:41.200 but now we've been informed so i guess i guess we're all good no it doesn't work like that
00:24:48.240 it's not just that 20 of the country are the only ones who understand this
00:24:52.400 it is that 20 of the country might be the only ones capable of understanding it which is a horrible
00:25:00.960 thing to think but it's true something like i would guess this is true something like maybe 20 of the
00:25:09.280 public has the raw intellect and the enough you know context and background and enough of a talent stack
00:25:17.760 to even understand what i just said it's kind of complicated i would guess that there are a
00:25:24.400 whole bunch of people who watch this saw this maybe for the first time some of you and are saying to
00:25:30.800 yourself i think i kind of follow that but i'm a little hazy on the depreciation part i kind of need to see
00:25:38.160 that explained a few more times which would be perfectly normal trust me if you if you go to school for
00:25:45.600 you know economics or accounting or something like that the first time you're introduced to the idea
00:25:53.200 of cash flow being different from income and depreciation being this invisible expense the first
00:26:00.720 time you see this stuff it doesn't really stick you kind of need to you know be introduced to it over
00:26:07.920 and over again before it sticks so as a political attack it's just brilliant but it is completely
00:26:14.640 um disreputable disreputable it is uh it is not good behavior it let's just say this the attack
00:26:27.440 on trump's taxes if they were honest players this is what it would look like if the critics were honest
00:26:34.640 okay we thought we would find a whole bunch of criminal activity here we didn't find any okay that would be
00:26:42.960 the first honest thing they would say because unless they're hiding something you know waiting for
00:26:47.840 later and it seems unlikely they found nothing so the first thing they should say is all those things
00:26:54.480 that we thought were going to be big problems we didn't find any that would that would be an honest
00:27:00.000 statement but instead they've suggested that there are problems when it is not demonstrated that there is
00:27:08.000 here is another example if you look at cnn the way they're covering it they say stuff like this
00:27:16.000 president trump has a 300 million dollar loan personally guaranteed that's coming due so you say to
00:27:24.720 yourself whoa that that's that's bad right 300 million dollar loan coming due sounds bad and then you
00:27:33.600 say what would you say to yourself cnn would say and what would you do if you needed 300 million
00:27:40.480 dollars and you're the president and let's say let's say russia might be a future place that you think you
00:27:48.400 might get some money what would you do would you be a little nice to russia because it might help your
00:27:54.960 financing later in your own personal life that's the cnn uh the cnn uh take let me explain to you what
00:28:06.080 they don't know or are lying about i don't know they either don't know or they're lying a large company
00:28:12.960 with a large loan coming due how how should you value that what what should your brain do when you hear
00:28:20.000 that there's a big company with a 300 million dollar loan coming due here is the correct way to analyze
00:28:26.400 that so that's it that's the entire analysis there's a big loan coming due in a big company so
00:28:36.240 that is the most routine thing in the world do companies pay off their gigantic loans
00:28:42.800 before they're due sometimes sometimes they just refinance the only thing that matters is if the
00:28:51.760 company is producing enough cash to pay the loan if you're a bank and and the loan is coming due but
00:29:00.080 the you know the borrower is making plenty of cash that's all you care about you don't care about his
00:29:06.880 income statement you don't care that on paper it looks like he's not making money you
00:29:12.640 care that his bank account is producing cash because you don't get paid with uh conceptual
00:29:19.680 money you're the bank you want actual money if the company is producing actual money and it's enough
00:29:28.480 to service the loan the bank loves you the bank will fight over you the bank will compete for your
00:29:35.280 business they love to give you money so which is this situation is this a situation where there's not
00:29:42.320 enough cash flow and the president's really in trouble well they've kind of suggested that haven't
00:29:48.720 they they've kind of suggested that's the case but they haven't demonstrated it they've they've produced
00:29:56.480 no evidence to suggest that it's even a little bit of a problem might it be a problem sure sure it might
00:30:05.520 be a problem but in most cases it would not be if they don't tell you does he have enough cash flow
00:30:13.600 to service the loan they have told you nothing the amount of the loan irrelevant the fact that it's
00:30:21.440 coming due irrelevant if you have cash flow that's all that matters what you tell me how much reporting
00:30:30.960 there will be on cash flow there won't be any right there won't be any reporting on cash flow because
00:30:37.520 cash flow is the story that probably makes trump look good when trump talked about his balance sheet
00:30:43.040 before these taxes came out when he was talking about him do you did you ever notice the way he
00:30:48.800 talked he talked about having a strong balance sheet and good cash flow he did not say on paper i have a
00:30:56.960 big income because that would be dumb what you want is the biggest cash flow and the smallest paper
00:31:05.600 profit did he do that don't know because the reporting is silent on his cash flow so far so in other
00:31:13.760 words the people who understand to have a look at this would say wait a minute i don't care about any
00:31:18.160 of that stuff there's nothing on the taxes that's really that important what matters is the cash and where's
00:31:26.480 that reporting where's all the reporting on the cash also known as the only thing that matters
00:31:33.600 all right when you see somebody says next explain the EBITDA we won't be explaining that today
00:31:43.280 keep it easy all right um the trump lawyers have said that the quote the new york times story is little
00:31:51.440 riddled with gross inaccuracies now what does that mean when trump's lawyers say that the story is
00:32:00.640 riddled with gross inaccuracies does that mean that they don't actually have the actual taxes
00:32:07.520 it could you could interpret it that way but it could it could mean that they have exactly the right
00:32:13.840 taxes but the way they're interpreting them is so selective that it's grossly misleading
00:32:20.160 so the lawyers have very cleverly worded it so it allows two interpretations one they don't have
00:32:27.040 actual taxes it's more of a you know a fake news thing or two they do but they're explaining it all
00:32:34.320 wrong to confuse you i would say the second part is unambiguously true as i just explained but we don't
00:32:42.400 know if they have the real taxes given that the southern district of new york presumably has those taxes
00:32:48.240 and they hate the president it probably got leaked from the southern district of new york which would
00:32:54.080 be a very big crime it's a felony so there's somebody who committed a felony and then and that might
00:33:01.760 actually include the new york times there's some i'm not a lawyer so i can't speak to this but there are
00:33:07.120 some people who seem to suggest that the new york times broke the law by printing it i doubt that they
00:33:15.840 would be in legal trouble i feel as though they would claim that there's enough of a
00:33:21.360 need to know in the public that that it was okay we'll see all right the thing that makes this
00:33:30.160 argument so devastating is that the entire protests and you know the the way that the democrats feel is
00:33:37.200 is they have this sense of unfairness a sense of unfairness and the sense of unfairness is not based
00:33:45.280 on anything uh objective or smart it's just how you feel so if you have um you know if you have a
00:33:52.960 million dollars and there's somebody who has a hundred billion dollars you find you kind of hate them
00:33:58.480 because you're unfortunately uh we're we're sort of built that way we're built we're built to envy and
00:34:06.880 maybe think poorly of somebody who is doing better so because this fits so perfectly into the the democrat
00:34:14.320 worldview that there's something you know with uh unfairness in the world it's really good it really
00:34:20.960 fits their their message pretty well and indeed uh rasmussen is teasing that the president's approval rating
00:34:28.800 took a steep dive last night i think or recently so the president's approval did recently take a steep
00:34:37.920 dive these are just the overnights so they might not be you know a long-term effect um
00:34:47.200 joshua gans who's an economist uh i mention him uh often uh he had this tweet which i thought was funny
00:34:55.360 uh this will be the sort of thing that when you hear it you're going to say why didn't anybody else
00:35:01.680 think of that you know one of those where you go that's true here it is he says the thing about the
00:35:08.240 new york tax new york times tax story is that trump doesn't have to release all of his tax returns to
00:35:15.520 show it's fake news just one page of one submitted return would get it done so in other words he could
00:35:23.760 just say hey new york times if you think you have my actual tax returns release one page i will allow
00:35:31.680 you to release one page maybe pick one of the pages that doesn't have much on it that's you know
00:35:36.720 controversial and say just just show us page 23 you know about this let's see if it matches mine
00:35:48.960 somebody says read trump tweets does he have some fresh ones that are fun
00:35:54.480 maybe if i have time i'll do that all right so joshua is correct it would be easy for trump
00:36:01.120 to prove that they don't have the real tax returns but i'm not expecting that to happen
00:36:06.960 because my expectation is that they do have the real tax returns uh but that they're telling a
00:36:13.120 misleading story about them all right um i wonder this is another one of those cases where all the people
00:36:22.480 who believe that there would be all kinds of crimes in his taxes those people now have to go back and
00:36:29.360 say all right i was wrong about something i was totally positive would be true so i believe that
00:36:36.320 there would not be indications of crimes in his taxes but there would be you know people would imagine
00:36:42.080 they saw them um so i think my estimate of where this was going to end up was pretty close if yours was not
00:36:50.560 reassess how good your predictions are um
00:36:54.320 um all right so um
00:37:03.280 financial illiteracy is is sweeping the country of course so everybody's going to be talking about
00:37:08.240 depreciation and explaining it to other people but none of it's really going to matter because we're in
00:37:14.400 a world where it goes without saying at this point do you remember in in 2016 when i said that facts don't
00:37:21.600 matter and that people don't make up their mind based on facts do you remember that all right people are
00:37:28.640 begging me to read trump's tweet so there's got to be something going on here that's that's good
00:37:36.080 well let's see what trump's up to
00:37:40.160 uh
00:37:42.240 he z joe biden announced that he won't agree to a drug test
00:37:47.360 uh bringing up my taxes all the time bad intentions is there something here that's
00:37:55.600 especially good uh
00:38:01.040 proper shows that i'm only president
00:38:05.520 i have very little debt compared to the value of assets
00:38:10.320 there we go he has very little debt compared to his assets now that's that's the finance
00:38:17.200 way of saying that he's not going to have trouble getting bank loans you know
00:38:24.320 okay i have no idea why you needed me to look at that
00:38:28.560 because i don't think that told me anything all right the other big story
00:38:32.800 we'll get to let's see if i said anything i want to say about this
00:38:36.000 oh so cnn's take is that he will be desperate for money and he the only reason he's president is
00:38:42.320 to make money because he needs money to to save his struggling businesses now i don't think that's the
00:38:48.080 case
00:38:51.120 um i don't think that's the case but let me ask you this
00:38:55.440 what president would not want a billion dollars right or what president would not
00:39:04.160 want to get rich do do we produce presidents who don't have any
00:39:09.520 any personal ambition or cannot be bribed it seems to me that any president who wasn't already rich
00:39:17.840 is a risk for bribery right wouldn't that be true of every president if you had a president who
00:39:25.680 you know let's say he needed some money to pay off a loan is that really a big difference
00:39:31.120 with somebody who just might appreciate a hundred million dollars after leaving office i i feel like
00:39:37.440 they all have a bribery risk um yeah i don't know that you could really say that one is worse than the
00:39:43.840 other because the the dollar amounts would be so big um all right project veritas uh as you know
00:39:51.920 project veritas uh just came up with an expose of uh mail-in vote fraud and it looks like a good one
00:40:02.720 meaning that they have uh on video somebody who says that he personally was part of a larger operation
00:40:10.720 in elan omar's territory in minneapolis to collect the the ballots whether they're filled out or empty
00:40:18.880 from let's say senior citizens and other people and to fill them out themselves i guess so massive
00:40:26.880 vote fraud appears to be demonstrated and it appears to be demonstrated um in a massive way and it appears
00:40:35.760 to be maybe even decisive meaning that it may be the only reason that elan omar can stay in office
00:40:42.560 is by ringing the vote every time so uh that should it should change the story right now in a rational
00:40:54.960 world where one side is claimed there's no such thing as widespread voter fraud with mail-in ballots
00:41:02.800 that's the claim they're there they've continued to push that claim nope there's no evidence can't find
00:41:10.080 any widespread voter problems and then you show it to them what what should happen in a rational world
00:41:20.000 it should look like this oh my goodness i sure am surprised my old opinion has to be revised now that
00:41:28.640 we can clearly see that in this one location it was so easy to do we should assume that even though this is
00:41:36.800 the the the place that it was spotted we should probably assume it's happened in other places
00:41:43.440 because look how easy it was moronically easy to cheat in this one place minneapolis wouldn't you expect
00:41:52.880 that somebody else in the country has figured this out and if such activity were to happen in tight races
00:41:59.760 well it could be the difference so we should expect that by this afternoon everyone who's been making
00:42:06.880 the claim that widespread mail-in voting uh doesn't have issues every one of them including um the fbi
00:42:16.080 and everybody who's looked into it every one of them will be uh apologizing to the public right
00:42:21.600 what don't you think i mean obviously they found out they were wrong on something that's terribly terribly
00:42:30.160 important and we really really need to know what is true and what isn't and they misled us so now
00:42:37.440 they'll all be apologizing today right that's that's how it works right no no we're we've reached a point
00:42:46.880 where you can just say it didn't happen the the the democrats will simply just act like it didn't
00:42:53.920 happen that's it and do you know how they're doing that they're saying project veritas well you know
00:43:00.560 they're they're not credible that's it that's all they have to do they have they have primed their
00:43:07.200 viewers and supporters to the point where they can just tell them anything it doesn't matter what they
00:43:12.320 say they can just say um let's pick a dumbass excuse from the list uh randomly uh oh we'll just
00:43:19.840 we'll just say the source is bad that's it goes away now because they control so much of the the news
00:43:29.520 business all they have to do is just ignore it that's it and it just goes away it should be one of
00:43:38.160 the biggest stories of the year and they're just going to make it move go away and they're going
00:43:43.520 to do it right in front of you and it'll be incredible all right um and of course every story
00:43:52.240 is something about trump being beholden to putin i guess i guess that's what i guess every story has
00:43:58.160 to have that connection to it um farid zakaria did a really good job of explaining what could happen
00:44:06.160 that would get trump elected without him doing anything devious even if he didn't win
00:44:15.760 so i i'd never seen it framed this way so you know and i recommend farid zakaria's show
00:44:23.280 um because i find he's just unusually good at explaining things and he's unusually good with his
00:44:30.000 guests so even if you don't agree with him on politics it's worth watching if you want to make
00:44:36.400 sure you've you've seen the whole field he's a real good watch um but he explained it this way and i'll
00:44:43.040 see if i can do as good a job there is a scenario in which uh because the mail-in votes are coming in
00:44:51.360 late and there's disagreement among the electoral college uh the people who are in the electoral college
00:44:58.000 if you get to the point where the states just can't agree it goes to a vote of the states and
00:45:05.200 every vote every state gets one vote and there are more there are more republican states so even though
00:45:12.160 by population the democrats have more people because of this old constitutional rule that just says well
00:45:21.040 if we can't figure it out the normal way if if our attempt to have a fair vote and electoral college and
00:45:28.320 and a credible result if it just doesn't work our our fallback position is every state gets one vote and
00:45:35.280 and there we go so trump simply needs to create enough uh doubt about the outcome because of mail-in votes or
00:45:45.200 anything else as long as there's doubt about the income he personally doesn't have to do anything
00:45:51.360 because it's the states that would just do their thing without any involvement from the federal
00:45:57.440 government he would just sit back and say you know um it's not up to me i'll just follow the rules
00:46:04.960 wherever they lead i'm just saying that this vote did not look credible to me do what you need to do with
00:46:13.280 that now if enough of the states agree and say you know you got a point we we found this irregularity
00:46:21.600 here and there was an irregularity here and there's still votes coming in and we tried the best we could
00:46:28.080 we really thought this would work but in the end we have to admit if you're just being objective it didn't
00:46:35.680 work it's very very likely i'm going to say somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 percent
00:46:45.200 chance that that's how we'll feel after the vote even after a few weeks after the vote we're going to
00:46:51.760 feel like we're not quite sure we believe the outcome don't you think probably a 70 chance you're
00:46:58.960 not going to believe the outcome whichever way it goes you're still not you know even if your team
00:47:04.000 wins you're still privately going to be thinking i'm glad i won but i'm not sure i believe it you
00:47:10.320 know that's that's what the count was but i'm not sure i believe it if that happens trump gets reelected
00:47:19.120 and and there's nothing he needs to do he doesn't need to be a dictator he doesn't need to invoke the
00:47:26.320 military he doesn't need to refuse to leave the white house he just needs to follow the rules that
00:47:32.640 the states the states will perform for him it was good to know a good um good addition by for reed to
00:47:41.280 our understanding um i understand that in the uh debate tomorrow uh that chris wallace will not be
00:47:50.560 doing any fact checking would you want the debate moderator to do fact checking i have to think that
00:47:58.480 while you think to yourself yeah you know that would be useful if he did some fact checking in
00:48:04.000 real time while it's happening that could be useful but i don't think it is because first of all nobody
00:48:11.120 would feel it was fair if he did a little more fact checking for one than the other everybody would
00:48:16.400 complain so as soon as he starts fact checking it becomes this whole new thing to complain about
00:48:21.200 and everybody would say well you fact checked it but you fact checked it wrong so you really can't win
00:48:26.640 with the fact checking so if you don't have fact checking and especially because there's a time limit
00:48:33.120 you would use up all your time with the fact checking if you did it what good are the debates
00:48:37.680 are they any good at all now these debates are are unique because the biggest question is whether
00:48:47.360 biden can get through it without having some kind of a mental collapse right so really the only thing
00:48:54.800 we're looking for is joe biden's mental collapse we're not looking for facts or you know we're not really
00:49:01.920 going to learn too much about policies that we didn't already know we're just looking to see if
00:49:07.920 he can stand up there for 90 minutes and not become a blithering idiot now if i had to put odds on it 0.77
00:49:15.520 i would say that the odds are probably better than 50 and probably a lot better than 50 that biden will
00:49:24.720 have a good night meaning that he'll just blather his biden stuff and he'll just do you know from
00:49:31.280 memory he'll just say what he needs to say and he'll probably have angry biden moments where he
00:49:38.560 gets that furrowed brow and and and acts like he's indignant and angry about everything
00:49:46.400 but probably won't go so far that he just has a complete meltdown i think there's a solid up i'll put
00:49:52.880 some odds on it i think there's a 30 chance that biden will have a meltdown that everybody sees
00:50:01.280 and and everybody agrees oh that doesn't look good probably a 30 chance of that 70 chance he
00:50:09.040 actually has a good night and and you know he rests up and he's sharp and who knows if they shoot him
00:50:16.080 up with chemicals i think maybe they do maybe they do possibly uh i i don't know what the odds of that
00:50:24.400 are but at least at least at least 50 chance i'd say he gets a little shot in the ass or something 0.54
00:50:31.680 um so i think he'll probably be fine uh i will be watching the debates with christina i don't think
00:50:40.000 we're gonna live stream but i might be uh i might be texting while it's on um
00:50:46.160 uh he's done debate prep half the month yeah he disappears a lot have we heard yet if uh biden has
00:50:55.600 put the lid on is lid on yet oh there's a really good uh bingo um bingo board from uh oh my god what's
00:51:07.760 the name of uh john show there uh adam curry john dvorak's show uh somebody tell me in the comments
00:51:15.920 the name of their it's a no no agenda so if you look for the no agenda podcast or it must be a website
00:51:24.160 or something they have a bingo card of things that biden says and it's pretty hilarious and actually it would
00:51:29.840 be fun uh to literally play at a home so look for that the no agenda uh bingo card for biden just google
00:51:38.160 it it'll probably pop up um reporters say he should get mad but they describe him as the nice one
00:51:49.120 yeah we don't know if there's a lid yet
00:51:50.880 all right so i think we've done what we need to do today that's my lesson on finance and we will talk
00:52:02.400 to you tomorrow