Real Coffee with Scott Adams - September 06, 2024


Episode 2589 CWSA 09⧸06⧸24


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 18 minutes

Words per minute

147.3706

Word count

11,571

Sentence count

809

Harmful content

Misogyny

19

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The FBI raids the offices of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's top aides, and we start to figure out what s going on. I also talk about the dangers of tanks and drones, and why the U.S. should get rid of them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, what's happening?
00:00:08.240 There we go.
00:00:18.460 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
00:00:27.520 It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and I'm pretty sure you've never had a better time.
00:00:32.440 But if you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains,
00:00:38.580 all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice, a stein, a canteen, a jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:00:45.380 Fill it with your favorite liquid.
00:00:46.680 I like coffee.
00:00:48.000 And join me now with the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
00:00:53.800 It's called the simultaneous sip.
00:00:57.040 Go.
00:00:57.520 It just gets better every time.
00:01:07.080 Well, there's a lot of news, so I'm going to run right through it.
00:01:09.780 And we're going to get to some fun economic analyses of the two candidates in ways that you will understand for the first time ever.
00:01:18.280 Economics is hard.
00:01:19.660 I will simplify it for you.
00:01:21.100 Well, the FBI has raided several homes of the aides of Mayor Adams in New York City, according to Blaze Media.
00:01:31.240 And we don't know why yet.
00:01:33.700 But if the FBI is all over the mayor and all over the top aides, there is something coming down.
00:01:41.760 And keep in mind that it's probably Democrats investigating Democrats.
00:01:47.240 So whatever it is, it must be really bad.
00:01:51.040 I wonder, does anybody even have a guess what that would be about?
00:01:55.160 I have a hypothesis.
00:01:58.460 That if the FBI wanted to jail any mayor in America, it would take about 10 minutes of investigation to find out that they've done sketchy things with taxpayers' money.
00:02:12.020 So why would they pick this particular one?
00:02:16.460 So my question is, is this the one mayor that they've got some dirt on?
00:02:21.840 Or is there something they don't like about this mayor?
00:02:24.480 Was he about to endorse Trump?
00:02:26.200 I mean, what's going on here?
00:02:27.400 There's something that we don't know on top of there's something we don't know about what the alleged crimes are.
00:02:35.200 So this story has layers is what I'm saying.
00:02:38.280 And if the only thing you find out is that there's a crime and somebody is looking into it, I feel like we're going to be missing at least a layer or two.
00:02:46.740 You know what I mean?
00:02:47.860 Because I don't think that they have a process of going after a crime because it's a crime.
00:02:54.000 And I told you to watch the there's a show on Netflix called Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy Wars.
00:03:01.260 It's based on real, real facts of the real Wyatt Earp and a war with some cowboys.
00:03:06.380 And when you learn that the country has always had a crooked Department of Justice and always had crooked politics and the news was always fake, it really blows your mind to see that nothing changed since the 1800s.
00:03:22.700 Well, Poland has an anti-tank robot.
00:03:27.340 So it's a robot that goes near a tank and then blows up.
00:03:31.780 I don't think tanks are going to be too useful for very long.
00:03:36.560 And now that we've got flying drones that look like dragons with fire breathing fire and now a robot that will blow up a tank.
00:03:48.640 I'm guessing that the cost of the robot that blows up the tank is much less than the tank itself.
00:03:54.340 So that should be the end of tanks.
00:03:55.900 I saw Tim Cook on some interview saying something that I was not aware of completely.
00:04:04.400 And it goes like this.
00:04:06.380 You think that the reason we do manufacturing in China is because the cost of labor is low.
00:04:14.120 Turns out that hasn't been true for a long time.
00:04:17.180 I'm sure the cost of labor is lower than America, but there would be other countries where it's even far lower.
00:04:25.260 So they don't go to China because the wages are low because they could get lower wages in a lot of places.
00:04:33.620 They go there because China has a massive educational advantage in how to build a factory.
00:04:41.060 Because building a factory is its special skill, especially if you're building an assembly line and you're building the robotics and the manufacturing techniques that go into the building.
00:04:53.900 It's not the building.
00:04:55.140 It's the manufacturing techniques.
00:04:57.780 So apparently the whole skill of tooling up a manufacturing site is something that there are tons of Chinese citizens who have been trained to do it.
00:05:09.880 And in America, you could put them all in one room. 0.90
00:05:13.900 So there's a skill in building manufacturing sites that we don't have and we're in trouble.
00:05:20.520 How much difference does it make?
00:05:22.240 Oh, I don't know.
00:05:23.240 Let's ask Lucky Palmer, who is a young billionaire type who's building a defense business himself with more high-tech defense stuff like drones and whatnot.
00:05:35.960 But he says the United States says if we were to get in a war, we only have three weeks of ammunition.
00:05:45.420 After three weeks of war, the United States would have to say, hey, I got an idea.
00:05:51.300 Would you guys like to stop fighting because we're out of weapons?
00:05:55.820 Yeah.
00:05:56.080 Well, we have the weapons.
00:05:57.100 We just don't have the things that go in them, you know, like rockets and, you know, we don't have any missiles and rockets and bullets left.
00:06:06.220 But you say to yourself, well, we can make more, right?
00:06:10.740 Nope.
00:06:11.140 We don't have the manufacturing capability to make more ammunition at all.
00:06:20.100 It's not like you can make the factory work harder.
00:06:23.080 There's no factory.
00:06:24.640 And if there is a factory, it depends on China for parts.
00:06:28.960 No, we can't make weapons.
00:06:31.160 If we started a war, we'd lose for sure unless we went nuclear.
00:06:35.140 So basically, the only weapons we have that work are nuclear because everything else, we just run out of them in three weeks.
00:06:45.400 Oh, well.
00:06:48.200 Here's some good news.
00:06:50.000 The NOAA, the National Organization of Atmospheric Association of A-holes or something.
00:06:57.300 I don't know, but it's the group that does the weather forecast, the climate forecasting for the federal government.
00:07:05.460 And they've ordered a new $100 million high-performance computer to help them with their predictions.
00:07:13.960 Hmm.
00:07:15.440 Let me see if I understand this story.
00:07:18.600 Their predictions are currently perfect or perfect enough that you would spend billions of dollars,
00:07:24.560 maybe trillions, to believe them and operate under the assumption that you know the climate's getting warmer
00:07:32.700 and the CO2 is causing it.
00:07:35.160 So if you know that, and you know it so certainly, that the entire American economy is based on it,
00:07:43.520 well, why do they need a new computer if they already know the answer?
00:07:48.900 Hmm.
00:07:49.840 Hmm.
00:07:50.060 It's a strange, strange, unexpected, hard-to-explain thing.
00:07:56.540 So everything is correct already, but for $100 million, we can make it correct,
00:08:03.320 although it's correct already.
00:08:06.740 And what about those elections?
00:08:09.920 Just today, I saw probably six to ten stories about something about election integrity
00:08:16.300 that somebody was looking to tighten up, to which I said to myself, what?
00:08:24.720 Why would you need to tighten up an election in so many different ways
00:08:28.840 when it's already perfectly safe and not rigged, and we can audit it from top to bottom?
00:08:37.100 It's almost like the people who are the closest to it don't think it's perfectly secure.
00:08:43.840 Huh.
00:08:45.780 I'm trying to reconcile why we need a new computer for the predictions about the climate
00:08:51.380 that we already know are right, and we've got to fix a hundred different things in the election
00:08:56.260 that we already knew was not in need of any correction.
00:09:01.220 Hmm.
00:09:01.820 It's almost like the news just makes stuff up.
00:09:04.380 Well, what about that story about those Venezuelan prisons that Trump says they're emptying the prisons
00:09:12.840 and the prisoners are coming up here, but the regular news, the fake news,
00:09:18.280 the regular fake news says there's no evidence to support that, and he doesn't offer any.
00:09:24.040 Well, let me tell you the closest thing we have to evidence like that.
00:09:27.980 In 2022, Breitbart had a story.
00:09:32.360 It was reported by Randy Clark.
00:09:35.520 And it said there was a – so this is 2022.
00:09:38.480 There was a Department of Homeland Security intelligence report
00:09:41.720 that was received by the Border Patrol,
00:09:46.480 and the report is that Breitbart, Texas, you know, the Texas office of Breitbart, got to look at it.
00:09:54.300 So this would not be a public document.
00:09:57.240 It would be a reporter for Breitbart, says they got to look at a document.
00:10:03.420 And the report indicates that the Venezuelan government under Maduro
00:10:09.200 is purposely freeing inmates.
00:10:14.600 So the report is that they would talk to Venezuelans,
00:10:18.700 and they would find out that they had, in fact, been in Venezuelan jails,
00:10:23.180 and they seem to have been released.
00:10:25.120 Now, there's a part missing.
00:10:27.640 The part that's missing is there is no indication that Venezuela is releasing prisoners
00:10:34.420 for the purpose of coming to the United States.
00:10:39.060 There seems to be evidence according to one source.
00:10:43.400 Now, that's not enough for me.
00:10:45.340 If you're saying that one source is enough,
00:10:47.680 you haven't been paying attention too much.
00:10:49.620 You should probably never take one source.
00:10:53.500 So even though there's one source that doesn't have any credibility problems that I'm aware of,
00:11:00.440 it's just a good idea to have a second source.
00:11:03.600 So it's a one source story,
00:11:05.240 and the one source story doesn't go to the second question,
00:11:08.860 whether the Venezuelans are doing it intentionally.
00:11:11.600 But does that matter?
00:11:13.320 However, once again, Trump is directionally correct,
00:11:18.220 even if he's not technically correct.
00:11:21.100 So he might not be technically correct that they're intentionally emptying the prison
00:11:25.300 so that those people can come to America and get them out of the country. 1.00
00:11:29.960 It might be correct that they had some reason to reduce the prison population
00:11:35.400 for whatever reason,
00:11:37.580 and that some of them went to America.
00:11:41.820 So I would say that Trump is correct enough
00:11:45.540 in a Trumpian, you know, directionally true statement
00:11:49.840 that there are prisoners,
00:11:51.780 people who were in jail recently for pretty bad crimes
00:11:55.560 did in fact come to America.
00:11:57.560 How many?
00:11:58.880 Well, he's probably exaggerating that.
00:12:02.240 But how many would it take
00:12:04.360 before you were pretty worried about it?
00:12:07.580 So there is more evidence
00:12:09.040 that the so-called Venezuelan gangs
00:12:12.140 conquering territory is a real thing.
00:12:15.140 We just don't know the details and the extent of it.
00:12:17.660 But it does seem that Venezuelan gangs
00:12:20.980 are conquering territory
00:12:22.880 in the United States.
00:12:25.760 Here's a story that...
00:12:27.940 I don't know what's the most outrageous story of the day.
00:12:31.500 But in Great Britain, in the UK,
00:12:34.460 they're looking to...
00:12:35.500 Since their prisons appear to be full
00:12:38.600 and they're going to be jailing a lot more people
00:12:42.580 because of their new anti-free speech laws,
00:12:46.120 they're looking to maybe rent space in Estonian jails,
00:12:51.180 which have lots of space.
00:12:53.060 So the Estonian jails are just plenty of space.
00:12:56.400 They're not full.
00:12:57.140 And they've decided that they'll ship
00:13:01.020 some of their prisoners there, maybe.
00:13:02.680 I think that's unconfirmed.
00:13:04.460 But one of the plans is they might
00:13:06.040 ship their prisoners to Estonia.
00:13:09.220 Now, what's wrong with that story?
00:13:12.600 Let me tell you what's wrong with that story.
00:13:15.880 If you heard that Estonia's prisons have lots of room,
00:13:20.600 what's the best way to play this?
00:13:23.040 What's your first thought?
00:13:24.180 Whoa, Estonian prisons have plenty of room.
00:13:27.640 We could put our prisoners in the Estonian prison.
00:13:31.240 Okay, that's the way the UK is going.
00:13:33.300 Now, I don't know if they'll do it,
00:13:34.360 but they're definitely considering it.
00:13:36.360 Here's how I would have played it.
00:13:38.700 Hey, Scott, did you know that the Estonian prisons
00:13:41.620 are largely empty?
00:13:44.080 Watch how I play this.
00:13:45.420 Why?
00:13:49.740 Why what?
00:13:51.680 Why are the Estonian prisons largely empty?
00:13:54.760 Did they overbuild their prisons?
00:13:58.320 No, no.
00:14:00.360 Well, but why are some of them empty?
00:14:02.100 Does their Department of Justice not work?
00:14:05.220 No, it works pretty well.
00:14:06.680 No, they have a pretty good system.
00:14:09.460 So what are they doing
00:14:11.860 that is not producing criminals?
00:14:14.260 Yes.
00:14:15.420 Because you should be asking
00:14:16.880 more questions about that.
00:14:19.980 So the question you should not be asking Estonia is,
00:14:23.220 can we use your empty prison space?
00:14:25.500 No, you should ask,
00:14:26.820 what did you do right
00:14:27.940 that you don't have to put your citizens in prison?
00:14:31.340 What did you do right?
00:14:33.520 Because do you know what the answer is?
00:14:35.720 Do you know what the Estonians do right?
00:14:37.420 Estonia is this weird little country that just got to be sort of a special case in the world
00:14:49.880 where for whatever reason, their leadership are all rational.
00:14:54.600 Estonia is one of the best internets, pretty low crime.
00:15:12.800 Estonia is killing it.
00:15:13.980 The only problem Estonia has is they don't want Russia to conquer them, which is always a risk.
00:15:19.520 But no, let's ask why they don't have people in the jail.
00:15:23.700 Let's not ask if we can use their jail space.
00:15:26.400 That is the loser approach.
00:15:27.980 All right, now there's stories about that school shooter
00:15:33.240 that the father bought him the rifle for Christmas
00:15:36.700 after he had been already talked to by the FBI for threatening a school shooting.
00:15:42.780 So it looks like the father might be in some legal trouble
00:15:46.380 for buying a deadly weapon for somebody who had been interviewed by the FBI
00:15:51.540 as a potential school shooter.
00:15:55.140 So, I mean, everything about this story just screams
00:16:04.020 what is wrong with this country at the moment.
00:16:08.900 Well, author Gad Saad, writing in Newsweek,
00:16:12.460 saying that Kamala Harris and her campaigner
00:16:14.520 are hoping you turn your brain off
00:16:15.920 and use your emotions to pick your candidate
00:16:19.800 because Kamala Harris doesn't have as many detailed plans. 1.00
00:16:25.140 So the thinking is that they have to sell sort of the vibe
00:16:27.780 or the feeling and Gad gives some examples of that
00:16:31.980 and he's arguing that, you know,
00:16:34.800 we should maybe use our sense of reason
00:16:36.700 and not be taken in by the emotional appeal.
00:16:42.520 To which I say, Gad, you are halfway there.
00:16:47.380 He's halfway there.
00:16:48.540 So he understands that the other side is not being reasonable.
00:16:52.900 That's halfway there.
00:16:56.060 Until you understand that no voters make decisions based on reason,
00:17:01.200 you're just going to be confused and annoyed by everything you see
00:17:05.000 because it won't make sense.
00:17:07.140 Now, nobody uses reasons to vote.
00:17:09.600 But it is true that some ideas are better than other ideas
00:17:14.900 and people will mention those things and talk about them.
00:17:17.780 But it's not why they vote.
00:17:19.860 Why they vote is some mix of how somebody makes them feel,
00:17:24.180 their charisma, whether they're the same race as you,
00:17:28.380 whether you just feel safe.
00:17:30.720 It's just the irrational stuff.
00:17:32.260 And then we rationalize it after the fact.
00:17:34.340 So why did you vote for him or her?
00:17:36.060 Or, well, I like that tax policy.
00:17:39.320 No, that's not why you voted.
00:17:41.760 It just isn't.
00:17:43.260 We all have reasons, including me.
00:17:45.660 I'll give you a reason for why I voted.
00:17:48.340 But I'm also aware that I would have voted that way
00:17:52.380 if I had to make up different reasons.
00:17:54.600 So whatever it is that drives any of our decisions is always irrational.
00:17:59.180 Once you realize that, everything makes sense.
00:18:01.840 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from winners,
00:18:05.580 I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from winners?
00:18:10.680 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00
00:18:13.400 Are those from winners?
00:18:14.900 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings?
00:18:17.340 Did she pay full price?
00:18:18.700 Or that leather tote?
00:18:19.700 Or that cashmere sweater?
00:18:20.920 Or those knee-high boots?
00:18:22.400 That dress?
00:18:23.200 That jacket?
00:18:23.860 Those shoes?
00:18:24.880 Is anyone paying full price for anything?
00:18:27.820 Stop wondering.
00:18:29.120 Start winning.
00:18:30.040 Winners.
00:18:30.620 Find fabulous for less.
00:18:32.020 Well, you know that story about Tenet Media allegedly taking money from Russia
00:18:38.480 and hiding it and hiring some conservative commentators to be under their banner,
00:18:44.500 at least just on the YouTube site.
00:18:48.700 And part of that story is that it expanded into everybody accusing everybody of being a foreign agent.
00:19:01.220 So I jokingly said yesterday on X that I was feeling bad because nobody had put me on a list of potential foreign influences.
00:19:11.280 And no sooner had I done that than I hear that there's spaces going on, talking about me being an Israeli asset or something.
00:19:22.660 And I'm thinking to myself, well, that didn't take long.
00:19:26.440 That didn't take long at all.
00:19:28.240 By the way, I'm not an Israeli asset.
00:19:31.160 I don't even support their government.
00:19:35.780 You know, they're on their own.
00:19:36.880 I just observe.
00:19:38.340 Simply observing.
00:19:40.600 And so some people say, what was Putin up to?
00:19:50.240 You know, why would Russia try to, you know, fund these people if it looks like there was no effort to change them editorially?
00:19:59.300 So there doesn't seem to be any evidence whatsoever that Tim Poole or Benny Johnson or Dave Rubin changed any of their opinions because of where their funding came from.
00:20:15.220 There's no evidence of that.
00:20:16.740 And I doubt it happened.
00:20:17.680 But Lauren Chen, one of the owners with her husband, I guess, of Tenant Media, people are reporting that she seemed to be creating some division among the conservative world.
00:20:32.620 But I would note that there tends to be at the moment a huge amount of division in the pro-Trump side of the world, more than I've ever seen maybe, probably more than I've ever seen.
00:20:44.000 And you have to ask yourself, did that happen on its own?
00:20:46.580 No.
00:20:47.680 And then Putin was asked who he prefers in the American election.
00:20:55.120 Well, let me give you some workup to this.
00:20:59.360 I saw a post yesterday from Jay Black, who's just apparently a Democrat.
00:21:06.040 And he uses this technique on his post.
00:21:09.480 You've seen it before.
00:21:10.320 Where if somebody really wants to emphasize how dumb you are, they'll put their sentence with a period after each word.
00:21:18.700 You know what I mean?
00:21:19.600 So if I said, you, period, are, period, not, period, well, period, informed.
00:21:28.340 Like, not only would I be making a statement, but I'd really be calling you an idiot with all the periods.
00:21:34.860 It's like, you are so dumb, I have to speak slowly.
00:21:37.660 So Jay Black did that.
00:21:40.280 He wanted me to know how dumb I am and maybe some of you.
00:21:44.780 So he said, and I'll say this slowly so MAGA can understand it.
00:21:51.400 So if, period, Russia, period, wants, period, your, period, candidate, period, to, period, be, period, elected, period, then he, period, shouldn't, period, be elected, period.
00:22:04.000 So the idea is that, you know, if Trump is supported by Putin, that should be enough, I mean, that should be enough by itself to tell you not to vote for Trump because of all that Putin support.
00:22:20.220 I mean, that's obvious, isn't it?
00:22:21.860 I mean, how much more obvious is it going to be?
00:22:23.580 I'm going to say it with periods.
00:22:25.100 It's period, obvious, period.
00:22:26.520 Well, a few hours after Jay said that Putin endorsed Harris, so several million people danced on the living grave of Jay Black for being the most obnoxious wrong person on the Internet.
00:22:50.280 Let me give you this advice.
00:22:53.620 We're all wrong sometimes.
00:22:56.520 And we're all a little arrogant sometimes.
00:23:00.460 Don't combine them.
00:23:02.340 Don't be arrogant and exactly terribly wrong.
00:23:06.540 You can do one or the other and probably get away with it.
00:23:10.400 Just don't combine them.
00:23:13.000 Don't combine them, Jay.
00:23:15.420 Anyway, so that happened.
00:23:20.160 I saw Jessica Tarlov on The Five say that the influencers like Tim Pool were getting $400,000 per month from Russia.
00:23:30.840 Now, I have not looked into it, but I'm going to bet a very large amount of money that they did not get paid $400,000 a month apiece.
00:23:43.020 Does anybody want to take the other side of that bet?
00:23:45.080 I hate watching the news and thinking, okay, I don't even have to research that to know that's not true.
00:23:52.220 No, it's not true that anybody paid them $400,000 a month, especially in not asking them to change their opinions whatsoever, which appears to be the case.
00:24:02.120 No, I don't think so.
00:24:06.740 Anyway.
00:24:11.760 So conservatives are divided, and I think there's lots of forces from the outside that are doing that, but I don't know if it's all Russia or it just happens on its own.
00:24:20.320 So I finally figured out, with a little help, why it is that polls that should all look the same, let's say presidential polls, if they're all done scientifically and appropriately, they should all be pretty similar.
00:24:38.660 But sometimes they're not.
00:24:40.740 And here's one reason why not.
00:24:43.960 So the pollsters can determine how to weight their results.
00:24:48.320 So, for example, they could ask a bunch of people, and then they could, you know, find out that they had accidentally talked to too many people in one party, and they could either just report it, say, well, you know, we had too many people in one party, but here's what we got.
00:25:06.060 Well, that wouldn't really tell you anything, because you expect the people in one party to vote one way, predictably.
00:25:11.960 So if you were to take that approach, that would suggest you were not interested in a real answer, but rather were interested in influencing what people thought about the situation.
00:25:24.700 So that'd be the opposite of a poll.
00:25:26.940 It would be persuasion.
00:25:28.880 Another way you could weight them is by the percentage of people who voted in the most recent election.
00:25:36.320 So you could say, well, in 2020, the total votes were this percentage Democrat and that percentage Republican.
00:25:45.620 So you could use that.
00:25:47.440 And that wouldn't be a bad assumption, would it?
00:25:50.080 That there would be roughly the same mix as there was in the most recent election.
00:25:54.820 Wouldn't change that much in a few years.
00:25:57.000 So that's a reasonable way.
00:25:59.200 Here's a, but here's another way you could do it.
00:26:01.640 You could weight it by likely voters.
00:26:06.420 So you could balance it by the correct number of Democrats to Republicans to independents.
00:26:13.060 But then you've got a problem because the independents are not really independents, are they?
00:26:17.980 So couldn't you accidentally have gotten a whole bunch of independents who really are just Democrats?
00:26:24.380 They just don't like to say they're Democrats.
00:26:26.720 So you wouldn't necessarily know that, would you?
00:26:29.060 You wouldn't know if you accidentally talked to too many Democrats.
00:26:33.360 They just happen to call themselves independents because half the country is calling themselves independents.
00:26:40.460 So that's a problem.
00:26:44.440 So you can weight it by likely voters.
00:26:48.400 You can do it by 2020 mix.
00:26:51.600 Or you could not weight them at all.
00:26:54.660 How different do you think those answers would be?
00:26:58.100 Pretty different.
00:26:59.760 Yeah, quite different.
00:27:01.540 So here's my question.
00:27:04.900 Are these polls telling you what is?
00:27:08.220 Or is their selection of what assumptions they make really the whole poll?
00:27:14.700 Was there any reason to even talk to the public?
00:27:17.960 Because once you made an assumption about what your weighting would be,
00:27:23.180 you kind of already knew how it was going to come out by the assumption.
00:27:26.680 So as a person who used to collect information for corporate bosses for many years, that was my job.
00:27:35.580 Let me tell you, it's always the assumptions that determine the result.
00:27:41.940 The public believes it's the data.
00:27:45.940 Nope.
00:27:46.340 If it were the data, everybody would get the same answer.
00:27:51.400 And if they didn't, they would know why pretty quickly.
00:27:53.680 It's like, oh, you wrote that data down wrong.
00:27:55.860 Look, here's the real data.
00:27:57.020 You got that wrong.
00:27:58.160 No, it's the assumptions.
00:27:59.140 It's the same thing with climate change.
00:28:02.620 Polling and climate change have the same problem.
00:28:04.780 The person who makes the assumptions decides what the outcome will be.
00:28:09.760 It's not the data.
00:28:10.500 All right.
00:28:15.500 Jordan Peterson is predicting that Biden is going to quit in a few weeks so that we can have, quote,
00:28:22.800 Vice President Cackling Kamala as the first US DEI Barbie president.
00:28:28.240 Well, Jordan Peterson, don't hold back.
00:28:34.080 Tell us what you're really feeling here.
00:28:36.000 I feel like you're just holding back too much.
00:28:40.120 Well, I would add to that what others have added to it, I think, by now.
00:28:43.880 That maybe the reason Hunter decided to wrap up his situation and plead guilty without saying he's actually guilty in that weird legal way,
00:28:54.380 that maybe he just wants to wrap things up so his father will have time to pardon him before he leaves from office.
00:29:01.900 And I think that is a reasonably good prediction.
00:29:07.820 I don't think it's 100 percent.
00:29:10.280 But if I had to make a small bet on it, I would bet that he will quit in time to give Kamala Harris a boost for having already been the first black woman president. 0.77
00:29:23.240 So we might get one of those kind of through the back door.
00:29:31.400 Biden was giving a little rally speech in favor of of Harris.
00:29:37.160 And he said out loud that the Inflation Reduction Act was really just a fake.
00:29:43.440 And it was really the Green New Deal bill, basically.
00:29:46.220 And it didn't it wasn't really to reduce any inflation.
00:29:51.920 So how long do we wait between the time that, you know, the Democrats make claims that the news supports to the to the point where the Democrats themselves can just say, well, you know, actually, we made all that up.
00:30:07.460 It wasn't it wasn't even about inflation reduction.
00:30:09.920 Now, it's not that we didn't figure it out.
00:30:13.420 But when I say we, I mean the people who really paid attention to the news.
00:30:18.200 But the average voter probably thought, hey, look at them reducing inflation.
00:30:24.680 Good job, Biden.
00:30:28.160 I saw Peter St.
00:30:30.240 Onge.
00:30:30.720 He's on he's on X.
00:30:32.720 He's got some videos on various topics.
00:30:35.640 PhD.
00:30:36.040 And he was noting that weak men and single women tend to vote left and not just because of abortion.
00:30:47.600 But because they do it in other countries as well, no matter what the abortion laws are. 1.00
00:30:52.760 So weak men and single women tend to vote Democratic here and left in other countries.
00:30:59.460 Why is that?
00:31:00.620 Well, it seems to be evolutionary.
00:31:03.160 And it seems to go like this.
00:31:07.820 If you feel personally weak.
00:31:12.100 Then you're worried about what's in your immediate environment.
00:31:15.760 Does that make sense?
00:31:17.160 That makes sense, right?
00:31:18.180 If you feel personally vulnerable.
00:31:22.200 You barely can walk outside because your environment is dangerous.
00:31:25.860 So the first thing that you'd want to fix is your environment when you walk outside.
00:31:33.240 So you'd want to make sure nobody had guns.
00:31:36.160 And you'd want to make sure all the poor people got fed so they don't need to rob you. 0.99
00:31:40.600 And you would make a bunch of assumptions that might lean left.
00:31:45.220 If you are Republican and you're either a strong man or a married woman who would feel like she has some protection, you would say, I don't need the government to protect me like on my own property because I'm married.
00:32:01.880 And, you know, I got a strong husband, I've got the protection, but I am worried about the country.
00:32:08.580 So Republicans and strong men and married women tend to be more concerned about people coming across the border.
00:32:15.420 And women seem to be more concerned about, you know, what's in their immediate environment in terms of what they should be afraid of. 0.97
00:32:24.800 So that feels to me like there's something to it.
00:32:28.880 I don't know if they got exactly the right genetic explanation, but I do feel it can't be a coincidence that people who feel weak and unprotected are looking for the government to immediately give them some protection.
00:32:44.220 Makes sense.
00:32:47.880 We got some new economic reports.
00:32:50.180 I'm seeing them described in different ways.
00:32:53.640 Julia Pollack said the jobs report is very much in line with expectations.
00:33:00.840 It's all boring.
00:33:02.000 It's, you know, everything's sort of in the general area that we thought it would be a little bit more, a little bit less.
00:33:06.640 I think there was another job report that got, the July job report, I think, got revised down again, of course.
00:33:17.560 Anyway, there's, I think I would describe the report as somewhat anemic, somewhat expected, but anemic, which means that we'll probably get a rate cut,
00:33:29.880 which would be good for the stock market, but don't make any investments because of me.
00:33:36.060 I'm not really good at investment advice.
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00:34:25.500 How many of you have heard of a historian who predicts the outcome of elections in the United States, and he's been right pretty much every time?
00:34:49.740 His name is Alan Lickman, and he's got this 13-point true or false questions that will tell you who's going to get elected.
00:34:59.700 And he says right now that 8 out of 13 go in favor of Harris, so that his thing, which has never been wrong, is saying there's a strong signal for Harris to get elected.
00:35:13.880 Do you believe it?
00:35:16.140 He's got 13 questions, it's been right every time.
00:35:20.580 8 out of 13 go for Harris, so she'll probably get elected. 1.00
00:35:24.700 Do you have any questions about that?
00:35:27.800 Maybe the questions would be, what are those 13 questions?
00:35:32.720 Have you ever heard the 13 questions?
00:35:35.860 And if I told you the 13 questions, do you think you would still be confident that this is a good prediction method?
00:35:41.680 Let's find out.
00:35:46.480 All right.
00:35:48.660 So here are the things that would be positive for the, let's call it the incumbent.
00:35:54.520 Let's call Kamala the incumbent. 1.00
00:35:57.520 If the White House Party gained seats in the House in the midterm.
00:36:02.680 All right, so that didn't happen.
00:36:05.080 So that would be negative to the White House Party in office.
00:36:11.680 The incumbent president is running.
00:36:14.960 Well, I would say that's not the case.
00:36:19.040 It was when it was Biden, but it's not the case now.
00:36:22.540 So that would be two that I would score against him.
00:36:26.240 I believe Ellen Lickman scored this for Harris.
00:36:28.860 Because she would be like the incumbent.
00:36:33.020 I say she's not the incumbent.
00:36:35.760 The polls changed immediately as soon as she got in.
00:36:38.680 Her mix of people who supported her changed.
00:36:41.480 Her policies, she says, are going to be different.
00:36:43.680 So I don't think she's the incumbent.
00:36:48.000 And beyond that, I think that Trump was a little bit of an incumbent once too.
00:36:53.240 So I don't think this one applies.
00:36:55.400 And if it does apply, it leans, in my opinion, toward Trump.
00:36:59.420 Next one is the White House Party avoided a primary.
00:37:05.260 So the reason behind this is if they avoided a primary, it's because their candidate was so strong.
00:37:12.260 Did the Democrats avoid a primary?
00:37:15.060 Yes.
00:37:15.920 Was it because their candidate is so strong?
00:37:18.800 No.
00:37:20.080 No, they gamed the system.
00:37:22.460 So you can't give this one to Harris and say she was so strong, well, we didn't even need a primary, really.
00:37:29.420 No, that didn't happen.
00:37:30.940 She went in despite being weak.
00:37:33.100 So this one doesn't count.
00:37:35.640 How about a third party candidate is running?
00:37:40.080 So that would be usually good for who was in the White House.
00:37:44.900 Except the only third party candidate with any weight just decided to join the Trump team.
00:37:53.460 So how do you weigh this?
00:37:54.560 Do you say RFK Jr. counts as a benefit for Harris when he joined the Trump team?
00:38:01.960 No, this one is completely irrelevant in this weird situation.
00:38:06.860 How about the short-term economy is strong?
00:38:10.720 Is it?
00:38:13.900 It depends who you ask.
00:38:15.980 In my opinion, it's weak.
00:38:18.340 But I know that other people, Democrats, would say, oh, it's pretty strong right now.
00:38:23.000 No, it's completely weak.
00:38:25.120 If you talk to people, they'll say that everything costs too much and it's not easy to get a job.
00:38:31.760 That sounds weak.
00:38:33.840 Things are too expensive and you can't get a job.
00:38:37.560 So that one looks like it goes for Trump's way.
00:38:40.740 How about the growth of the long-term economy has been as strong as the last two terms?
00:38:47.320 Well, again, this is a weird one because of the pandemic.
00:38:50.780 But it doesn't look like our growth is impressive.
00:38:54.400 So I don't think that works in their favor.
00:38:59.080 If the White House has enacted major national policy changes, that would go in favor of the White House.
00:39:06.160 But shouldn't you say that the major national policy changes are popular?
00:39:11.840 Because we have a national policy change on Ukraine that were balls to the wall and it's unpopular.
00:39:18.020 We have support for Israel and that's pretty mixed.
00:39:25.960 And then there's that infrastructure thing that nobody's seen anything happen from.
00:39:31.820 So I don't really think there's anything positive that was a major national policy change.
00:39:39.020 So that doesn't seem to apply.
00:39:41.460 How about there's no social unrest?
00:39:43.460 I don't know.
00:39:48.980 What do you call January 6ers being locked up and, you know, complete division in the country?
00:39:56.000 And some people are asking for reparations and some people are looking for a new country to move to.
00:40:01.780 I would say there's plenty of social unrest, but it's not on the streets because Republicans get hunted so they can't be on the streets.
00:40:09.600 So that seems not applicable.
00:40:14.320 There is no scandal in the White House.
00:40:17.620 What are you talking about?
00:40:20.300 The whole Ukraine, Hunter Biden, you know, and the whole cover up, the whole cover up of Biden's cognitive ability.
00:40:30.920 These are gigantic scandals, gigantic scandals.
00:40:34.820 And I think the historian sort of discounted it.
00:40:39.600 How about the incumbent party candidate has charisma?
00:40:46.040 Well, to his credit, the historian did say that Trump has the charisma and Kamala is not the charisma candidate.
00:40:53.620 So that one he gave to Trump.
00:40:56.880 How about the challenger is uncharismatic?
00:41:01.300 No, again, that one goes to Trump because he's charismatic.
00:41:04.740 How about the White House had foreign policy success?
00:41:08.180 What was the White House's foreign policy success?
00:41:13.300 Opening the border, war in Ukraine, or not helping Israel enough?
00:41:19.900 I don't see any big foreign policy success.
00:41:22.740 Or how about leaving Afghanistan?
00:41:25.200 How about the White House had foreign policy failure?
00:41:28.620 Well, I think they got some failures.
00:41:30.680 Here's how I read this.
00:41:31.760 There are 13 indicators in favor of Trump.
00:41:35.980 Or they're inapplicable.
00:41:38.560 They're either inapplicable or they favor Trump.
00:41:41.560 Now, do you remember what I told you about data versus assumptions?
00:41:44.700 The data is in favor of Kamala Harris, 8 and a 13.
00:41:52.140 But how did you get the data?
00:41:54.180 It's all based on assumptions.
00:41:56.340 And the assumptions are whack.
00:41:58.720 I mean, they're not any worse than any other voters' assumptions.
00:42:02.980 But it's just one person's assumptions.
00:42:04.860 And I look at it and I go, well, I'm one person.
00:42:10.780 I pay attention.
00:42:12.360 I look at the news.
00:42:14.540 I don't see any of these as being the right assumptions.
00:42:17.180 They all look like the wrong assumptions to me.
00:42:19.620 So, how could it be that I have so many questions about this,
00:42:26.200 and yet it accurately predicted who would win the White House a whole bunch of times in a row?
00:42:31.940 How do you explain that?
00:42:34.520 Well, I have a hypothesis.
00:42:38.020 Do you remember when James Carville told the Clinton campaign,
00:42:42.820 the Bill Clinton campaign, it's the economy, stupid?
00:42:46.440 He said, basically, just ignore everything else.
00:42:49.000 People are going to vote on the economy.
00:42:50.820 And then it was true.
00:42:52.620 That was the most important part.
00:42:54.860 Well, one of his 13 things is that the short-term economy looks good.
00:42:58.900 It could be that the person who wins is the one who has the best argument about the economy,
00:43:05.220 and that's the whole game.
00:43:07.220 It might be that you didn't need 13.
00:43:09.740 You just needed one.
00:43:11.960 And you didn't need the historian.
00:43:13.660 You just needed James Carville to say, it's the economy, stupid.
00:43:18.340 Well, well, well, but what about the social unrest, the scandal, and the charisma?
00:43:23.780 Well, no, it's the economy, stupid.
00:43:25.760 Well, well, well, what about the who had a primary contest?
00:43:29.280 What about a third-party candidate running?
00:43:31.880 What about the...
00:43:33.300 No, it's the economy, stupid.
00:43:36.760 It's the economy, stupid.
00:43:39.900 So I'm going to take Carville over the historian.
00:43:46.440 Kamala Harris said out loud yesterday that she will sign a reparation bill. 0.97
00:43:51.360 This fills me with deep hatred.
00:43:56.120 Deep hatred.
00:43:57.820 There are other things that I say, oh, that would be a problem.
00:44:03.000 You know, this might not work out for me.
00:44:05.600 You know, I don't like higher taxes, for example.
00:44:07.900 But this one fills me with hate.
00:44:11.100 I just hate her fucking guts. 0.78
00:44:13.860 And I hate anybody who would be in favor of this.
00:44:17.620 Why?
00:44:18.860 Because your problems are not magic and special.
00:44:22.320 Is there any legacy of slavery that has impacted current black Americans?
00:44:27.740 Yes.
00:44:29.020 Absolutely.
00:44:30.240 Systemic racism?
00:44:32.200 Completely real.
00:44:33.960 But I don't care.
00:44:36.040 Because I've got problems, too.
00:44:38.640 Everybody I know has problems.
00:44:40.920 Some have health problems.
00:44:42.480 Some were abused as children.
00:44:43.820 And some had parents who were addicts.
00:44:47.440 Some just were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
00:44:51.780 Some were born in bad parts of the world.
00:44:55.920 Your problems are not special and magical.
00:44:58.500 They're real.
00:45:00.080 They're real.
00:45:01.420 And if you want to say the government caused it, I'd say, sure.
00:45:04.720 I just don't care.
00:45:06.780 And that is not an argument that I need to fucking pay for it.
00:45:10.280 You can make your little, you know, academic argument that connects all the dots.
00:45:17.240 And I can look at it on a piece of paper and I'll say, yes, I get that.
00:45:20.560 That dot, yep, that does connect.
00:45:23.300 Those dots are all connected.
00:45:24.760 You've made your point.
00:45:26.240 But I don't care.
00:45:28.260 And there's no reason I should care.
00:45:30.760 Because nobody has magic fucking special problems.
00:45:34.360 We all got problems.
00:45:36.120 I would take having the legacy of slavery if the trade-off was that I got free college and I was six foot four and looked good.
00:45:47.120 You know, handsome, healthy, six foot four, free college.
00:45:50.880 I'll take that.
00:45:52.300 Thank you very much.
00:45:53.860 Yeah, I'll take that.
00:45:54.740 And we don't see a lot of people pretending to be white to get into college, do we?
00:46:02.420 No, we don't.
00:46:03.900 And do you think that the Asian Americans should be paying some fucking reparations when the only impact that black people have had on their lives, 0.91
00:46:11.660 since, you know, they came in after slavery was a done deal,
00:46:15.300 the only impact that had on their lives is that they got fewer jobs and they were victims of crime.
00:46:20.820 And now they're going to pay the black Americans for something they had no connection to.
00:46:27.340 And indeed, it should be paid the other direction.
00:46:30.560 No.
00:46:32.200 No, this is dumb, divisive, terrible, illogical, evil.
00:46:39.560 And I fucking hate you if you're looking at this as a reason to take my money that I worked for under a system
00:46:49.000 that I was told that if I did all the right things, I'd get to keep my money.
00:46:55.040 And now Harris is making it very clear that if I do all the right things, I still have to give the money to people who didn't.
00:47:01.940 Now, there are other reasons people don't succeed, but I'm not buying into this at all.
00:47:07.340 No, you cannot make me think that one group of people had special magical problems
00:47:12.780 and therefore I have to give them my money.
00:47:15.020 Nope.
00:47:15.680 There's no argument that connects that dot.
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00:47:33.420 88 corporate leaders just backed Kamala Harris, including James Murdoch, the former CEO of 21st Century Fox,
00:47:45.380 and an heir to the Murdoch family media empire.
00:47:48.020 Hmm.
00:47:49.600 So that would mean that everybody on the left-leaning side of the news is in favor of Kamala Harris, 0.69
00:47:57.920 but also the primary major entity that would be potentially on the other side is in favor of Kamala Harris, 0.97
00:48:08.980 at least in terms of ownership of the Fox network.
00:48:14.280 There would be plenty of individual opinions that will vary, of course.
00:48:19.120 That's not good.
00:48:20.020 Now, here's the question.
00:48:22.280 If you were a stockholder of any of these 88 corporations,
00:48:27.240 would you be happy that they just volunteered you to make less money?
00:48:33.800 Because they decided to back the one who's going to tax them the most.
00:48:39.540 You fucking idiots.
00:48:40.920 Here's my advice for company leaders.
00:48:50.180 You got two choices that don't make you look like the biggest idiot in the world.
00:48:55.160 One, stay completely out of it.
00:48:58.280 I would use as my example Jeff Bezos.
00:49:02.260 I imagine Jeff Bezos has strong opinions about things political.
00:49:06.980 I'm quite impressed at the degree to which he's managed to stay out of it.
00:49:12.600 Now, of course, Amazon, like every company, is going to have some wokeness and DEI and stuff.
00:49:17.920 It's somewhat unavoidable in the corporate world at the moment.
00:49:21.160 But I'm not even sure I could tell you what Jeff Bezos' personal opinion is.
00:49:26.840 And Zuckerberg also told me he was going to stay out of it this time.
00:49:32.500 What do I think about those two leaders?
00:49:35.440 Excellent.
00:49:35.880 I only need you to make money so my stocks go up and the country does well and your employees get paid and then they can buy things from me.
00:49:44.180 That's all I need.
00:49:45.940 I don't need you advocating for you to pay more taxes.
00:49:50.560 I don't need the fiduciary leader of the thing I invested in to be saying in public, you know what?
00:49:57.360 I'd like to give some of my money away.
00:50:00.460 Not for any particular reason.
00:50:02.700 It's just, I don't know, I just thought I should back this candidate who's going to take more of my money and therefore your money.
00:50:10.040 I can't even believe that these idiots would sign up for the, we're going to back the one who wants to take more of our money.
00:50:18.520 Now, I get that, you know, the argument is more than just taxes.
00:50:24.560 But if you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, I feel like you should pay attention to the taxes and maybe not the other issues.
00:50:34.960 That would be my advice.
00:50:36.760 Otherwise, you were in the wrong jobs, my friends.
00:50:39.320 You should all be, you should all be removed.
00:50:40.860 Honestly, the boards of each of these companies should remove them.
00:50:47.580 Imagine that you were a leader of one of these ADA companies and you just endorsed Harris.
00:50:54.020 And you didn't need to.
00:50:55.840 It was optional.
00:50:56.980 You could have just said, we're staying out of it.
00:50:58.740 Don't you think that that automatically costs them business?
00:51:03.940 Because the Republicans would say, all right, if I have a choice, I will no longer buy from your company because I wanted you just to make money.
00:51:12.200 But now you're, if I give you money, you're going to be using it to destroy the country as I see it.
00:51:20.120 So if I were the board, I would remove all 88 of them and I would do it right away.
00:51:25.800 I mean, I wouldn't even wait till the end of the day.
00:51:27.400 I would say, look, you are absolutely free to endorse anybody you want as long as you're not working here.
00:51:33.960 Because if you're working here, you're just crushing our, our revenue potential forever, by the way.
00:51:41.240 Bud Light is not catching up.
00:51:43.500 So, yeah, that's 88 boards that should be meeting today and should be removing every one of these people.
00:51:50.460 I just don't think people in corporations should be backing, backing any candidate.
00:51:55.440 Now, I'm, this is going to sound inconsistent, but if they'd backed the candidate who wanted to lower their taxes, I would back off.
00:52:06.600 Because I would say, okay, that, that does feel like you're getting into politics, but not really.
00:52:11.960 Because you're really into just lowering your own taxes and that's your job.
00:52:16.300 You're supposed to be trying to lower your taxes.
00:52:19.080 So if, so if a, if a CEO or CFO says, we like the one who's going to lower our taxes, fine.
00:52:27.100 That's like not even political.
00:52:29.000 That's just your taxes.
00:52:30.100 Because I wouldn't even think about not shopping there for that reason.
00:52:36.100 Maybe Democrats would, but I, I doubt that too.
00:52:39.760 According to the zero hedge, this, the jobs that people are getting are mostly going to foreign born workers.
00:52:46.180 So the foreign born workers were up 635,000 in jobs in August.
00:52:51.620 While native born were down 1.3 million.
00:52:54.300 Now, you're going to say to yourself, that's terrible because the foreign born people are getting all the jobs. 1.00
00:53:04.160 But I would hedge it this way.
00:53:08.140 Why did they get the jobs?
00:53:11.120 Remember, it's foreign born. 0.95
00:53:12.940 It's not just undocumented.
00:53:14.900 We're not talking about the people who walked across the border with the clothes on their back.
00:53:18.720 Foreign born quite often means that you're a technical expert or a doctor or a scientist and you came to America because it's a better opportunity. 0.99
00:53:32.020 Well, of course they're employed because they're here because they have those skills that are in high demand.
00:53:38.360 So without knowing if the, quote, foreign born workers are mostly people who walked across the border with nothing, including an education and English ability,
00:53:49.860 or people who were fluent in two or three languages and had a skill stack like you can't believe,
00:53:56.780 and they would just rather work in America, to which I say, come on in, more the better.
00:54:03.020 So it's not really clear that they're taking American jobs.
00:54:06.540 It might have been there weren't Americans for those jobs.
00:54:10.120 We don't know.
00:54:11.400 So I say that could be good and it could be bad, and we can't tell.
00:54:15.820 So, well, Trump was asked about child care at an event, I think, the other day, and some say his answer was incoherent.
00:54:23.940 I would agree with that.
00:54:25.840 I think he's got some idea, like, you know, using tariffs to pay for it or something.
00:54:33.940 I don't know.
00:54:34.260 But it doesn't sound like a real plan, so I'm not going to bullshit you and say, oh, he's got the good plan.
00:54:40.360 I don't think he's got a plan.
00:54:44.140 But here's my way I would approach it.
00:54:48.060 I would approach health care the way I would approach a number of other topics, like transportation, for example, insurance.
00:54:54.760 If you were to design a city from scratch with the understanding that only the federal government would have any regulatory or law authority over it, this would be similar to Trump's idea of using federal land to build some cities.
00:55:10.600 If you built a city from scratch, one of the things you could do is you could design away the cost of child care.
00:55:19.640 Now, I'm going to give you the bad version of how to do that, just so you can kind of understand it conceptually.
00:55:25.420 But don't argue too much about the details.
00:55:29.840 I'm just trying to sell you on the idea that you could design away a lot of expense.
00:55:34.980 All right.
00:55:35.420 So suppose you had a new community and a facility that is owned by the public in which you could drop off your kid or your pet.
00:55:45.500 You could drop your dog off.
00:55:48.700 And there would be somebody there to watch it, but they'd be mostly volunteers.
00:55:52.780 So if you're lonely and retired or unemployed at the moment or you're single and it's your day off and you just want to be around people in a productive way, you could go there and you could help out.
00:56:06.720 Or you could just work out on some gym equipment that's there, but maybe they want to keep the males away from the kids. 1.00
00:56:12.540 But you'd have video everywhere.
00:56:15.060 There would be no dark corners, no closets that anybody could go into no matter what.
00:56:19.680 So that if anybody tried anything that was inappropriate with a child, it would be like any public space.
00:56:24.880 If you saw somebody doing something inappropriate with a child in, let's say, a restaurant, you would immediately intervene.
00:56:31.480 So it doesn't happen there.
00:56:32.520 So if you create a situation where there are a few paid employees and somebody at the door to make sure that nobody gets in unless they're vetted somehow, you could create a situation where there's just a natural collection of people who are meeting each other, sometimes bonding even.
00:56:49.840 And they could create a social life, they could get some oxytocin, they'd have purpose, they'd have a place to go, they'd have a schedule, things that people are really, really going to need, especially as the robots start taking our productive work.
00:57:04.500 So you may say to yourself, but Scott, I have this or that complaint about that situation, to which I say, don't worry about the details.
00:57:14.860 The only point is we're not organized in a way that we could lower that cost, but we could.
00:57:21.660 It seems very doable.
00:57:23.360 Now let's take rent. 1.00
00:57:25.380 How can you lower the cost of rent?
00:57:27.120 Well, one way would be there are a lot of seniors who have extra rooms, empty nests, spouses died, and there should be far more of an effort to get them a college-age roommate who can't pay for rent.
00:57:42.360 But they might be able to help out with some chores, and if you fall down and die, they'll call the 911.
00:57:49.180 So there's just a whole bunch of ways you could organize that would take away expenses.
00:57:54.100 What about the expense of transportation?
00:57:55.960 Well, if you design your city so that you get the self-driving taxis if you need them, but mostly you can walk everywhere you want,
00:58:03.940 if you had bicycle paths from every house to every school, you could completely eliminate driving kids to school and buses.
00:58:13.660 They could just take their electric skateboard or bicycle and just park it at the school and come back.
00:58:19.380 So you can think of a hundred different ways that you could just drive the cost of living down to practically nothing, and your quality of living would be through the roof.
00:58:32.020 I always use my college experience as my example.
00:58:36.100 My college experience was, on paper, the worst living condition.
00:58:40.120 I was in this tiny little room with a roommate for the first couple of years, and you had to share a bathroom, and there's no kitchen there.
00:58:51.260 You've got to walk through the snow to get food.
00:58:54.240 On paper, it's the worst place.
00:58:57.020 But because it was designed to give me everything I needed, and it surrounded me with people I wanted to associate with,
00:59:04.480 it was the best experience I've ever had.
00:59:07.480 There's nothing in my life that will ever come close to that.
00:59:10.640 But I think we could do that for adults.
00:59:12.920 I think you could create a situation where you just met a bunch of awesome people without any effort at all,
00:59:17.980 because they were just there, and you were doing something in common.
00:59:23.120 All right, so I think nobody's got a good plan for childcare.
00:59:28.540 Let's talk about the Trump economic plan.
00:59:30.780 I asked Grok to summarize it, so I may have missed a few things.
00:59:36.340 So he wants to reduce the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%.
00:59:40.780 Kamala Harris wants to raise it.
00:59:45.200 But Trump also wants to put a tariff, a lot of stuff coming into the country.
00:59:52.040 Now, how many of you think you understand tariffs?
00:59:54.780 How many of you think an economist can tell you if a tariff is a good idea or a bad idea?
01:00:02.300 How many of you think that it sort of depends, you know, you could see it could be a good idea in some cases, bad in others,
01:00:09.260 but that we could do the math and we could know that?
01:00:12.840 How many think you can know it?
01:00:15.840 Well, here's what you need to know.
01:00:18.360 There are two reasons for a tariff.
01:00:20.360 The good reason for a tariff is that there's some country that's trying to destroy an entire industry in your country.
01:00:29.460 So because the country is behind it, not just the companies selling goods, the country is behind it, like China. 0.87
01:00:35.380 They could subsidize the product until nobody would ever buy an American car because they seemed too expensive.
01:00:43.000 So we'd all have Chinese cars and then we would have no car industry.
01:00:48.760 And then China would slowly start raising the prices because it's the only place you can buy a car from China.
01:00:55.660 So in that case, tariffs are not about what you paid extra for the car, although it might end up in your price for your car.
01:01:04.060 What it is, is a way to keep your entire industry from being destroyed.
01:01:08.800 Now, when people talk about tariffs, what is the dumbass thing they say?
01:01:15.460 I'm going to do it with a stupid face.
01:01:19.720 So the next time you hear it, you can remember my stupid face.
01:01:23.380 It goes like this.
01:01:25.220 A tariff is a tax on the consumer.
01:01:29.380 A tariff is a tax on the consumer.
01:01:32.400 Is it?
01:01:34.920 What do you think?
01:01:36.080 Is it a tax on the consumer?
01:01:37.500 It can be in the sense that if you raise the, if you raise the cost on a foreign producer, they might say, well, you're still going to have to buy it because you can't get it anywhere else.
01:01:51.580 So I guess we'll just raise the price.
01:01:54.180 So it depends whether you have a choice.
01:01:57.640 So let me give you an example.
01:01:59.000 If China was trying to sell table salt in the United States at 10% of what Americans make table salt for, if America makes it, I don't know, just making this up, then we should put a tariff on them. 0.62
01:02:16.280 But would you pay more for salt?
01:02:20.100 No, you wouldn't.
01:02:21.480 No, because the tariff would take the foreign price up to about the domestic price or maybe higher.
01:02:27.220 If it's higher than the domestic price, you just say, oh, well, I'll just buy the more salt like I always did.
01:02:34.220 There's no difference in your price.
01:02:35.720 Now, you do lose the opportunity to get the lower price, but there's nothing to be passed on to you.
01:02:42.960 You're simply not buying Chinese salt because why would you?
01:02:47.420 Same price as the Morton salt and it's Chinese and, well, you might as well give it to America. 0.98
01:02:53.420 Now, let's say it's a different situation.
01:02:55.680 It's not something like salt that you can get anywhere.
01:02:57.900 Let's say it's a specific component or material that if you didn't get it from China, you couldn't even build the thing you want to build with their material.
01:03:10.000 Well, in that case, if you put a tariff on it, you're just paying for it because they're going to say, all right, where else are you going to get this?
01:03:19.020 And you'd say, ah, okay, good point.
01:03:21.820 There's literally nowhere else I can get it.
01:03:24.180 So how about you pay whatever we charge you?
01:03:26.340 Well, I guess I have to.
01:03:29.880 So, Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament. 0.95
01:03:33.260 I've been visualizing my match all week.
01:03:35.800 She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her backhand side.
01:03:41.820 Good thing Claudia's with Intact, the insurer with the largest network of auto service centers in the country.
01:03:47.500 Everything was taken care of under one roof and she was on her way in a rental car in no time.
01:03:51.940 I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.
01:03:55.140 But you got there on time.
01:03:57.320 Intact Insurance, your auto service ace.
01:03:59.900 Certain conditions apply.
01:04:00.820 The first thing you need to know is that it completely depends on what product it is.
01:04:07.720 If you're saying in general it's good or in general it's bad, well, you're just stupid.
01:04:13.140 All right?
01:04:13.700 It's not in general good or in general bad.
01:04:16.500 It depends entirely upon the specific thing that's being tariffed.
01:04:21.820 So, remember this.
01:04:23.640 The first thing you need to know is it depends if you had options.
01:04:27.460 If you have plenty of options, then your price doesn't go up at all.
01:04:31.220 It's just that that company doesn't do business in the United States.
01:04:34.240 It's too expensive.
01:04:35.340 If you have to buy it, then the government shouldn't put the tariff on it.
01:04:41.300 Does that make sense?
01:04:42.340 If we do it right, there wouldn't be any tariff on something that you had to buy.
01:04:47.640 So, there would be no cost to pass on.
01:04:50.540 Did you already understand that?
01:04:52.280 How many of you already understood that before I explained it?
01:04:55.520 Because tariffs are kind of wonky and confusing.
01:04:59.100 And then you get to a tariff to defend an industry.
01:05:02.820 Here's what they never calculate.
01:05:06.100 When the people tell you, so they'll just pass along the price.
01:05:09.940 It's just like a tax on the consumer.
01:05:11.660 It's just going to pass along the price.
01:05:14.040 Did they calculate what it costs the United States to get rid of the car industry?
01:05:22.200 Because that's kind of big.
01:05:23.940 If you lose the entire automobile industry,
01:05:27.700 and the only way you could have kept it was with some tariffs,
01:05:31.060 did they include the cost of losing the entire automobile industry,
01:05:35.820 and all that pay, and all the things that those people would have bought,
01:05:39.280 and they might have bought more things from you,
01:05:41.440 whatever it is that you're selling.
01:05:43.240 No, they don't.
01:05:44.980 No, they don't.
01:05:46.040 And that cost is enormous,
01:05:47.660 and they just sort of act like that's not part of the question.
01:05:51.700 No, losing an entire industry is the question.
01:05:56.720 It's not the, oh, it was a little tax.
01:05:59.040 It was a, the tariff was a little tax that got passed on to the consumer.
01:06:03.100 No, that's the dumb view, right?
01:06:05.900 The sophisticated view is you're protecting an entire industry,
01:06:09.580 in some cases, because the value of the industry is critical to America.
01:06:15.140 In that case, even if you paid a little more, it'd be worth it.
01:06:18.780 So if you put a, if you put it on something that you have to get,
01:06:23.220 it's a bad idea.
01:06:24.140 If you put it on something that you could get at the same price from America,
01:06:27.380 it's a great idea.
01:06:28.660 If you put a tariff on something that would destroy an entire industry in America,
01:06:32.220 if you don't do it, it's a great idea.
01:06:34.380 So on balance, are tariffs good ideas or bad ideas?
01:06:38.940 Well, in the political realm,
01:06:40.860 we deal with tariffs the way we deal with people, stupidly. 0.72
01:06:46.100 So let me give you an example.
01:06:49.620 There was a Democrat once who did some bad things,
01:06:53.200 and therefore all Democrats are bad.
01:06:56.640 That's how we look at tariffs.
01:06:59.720 That, well, there's one situation I can think of where a tariff would be bad,
01:07:04.240 which would be a tariff on a good that we couldn't get anywhere else,
01:07:07.700 and so the price is passed on to us.
01:07:10.520 Yeah, don't do that one.
01:07:12.180 Don't do that one.
01:07:14.260 This is not hard.
01:07:15.800 You just don't do that one.
01:07:18.500 So I'm in favor of tariffs because a country has to have them
01:07:21.960 to protect itself from, protect its important industries.
01:07:27.440 All right.
01:07:30.100 Let's see.
01:07:31.120 What else?
01:07:33.600 Trump wants to do an emergency declaration
01:07:36.280 to drastically increase nuclear energy production.
01:07:40.920 So he would get rid of some regulations
01:07:43.200 and be faster about approving new things, et cetera,
01:07:47.180 but also approving new drilling.
01:07:48.820 So he'd be an emergency declaration
01:07:52.380 to get the government organized
01:07:54.000 and just very quickly getting our energy production up.
01:07:57.520 That is exactly right.
01:07:59.660 That is 100% economically, logically, geopolitically,
01:08:05.100 correct, all good.
01:08:08.300 So he wants to eliminate 10 regulations for every new one.
01:08:12.880 He wants to get Elon Musk working on efficiency of the government.
01:08:16.260 That could be amazing.
01:08:17.320 Just copy Estonia. 0.68
01:08:19.220 And let's see.
01:08:22.860 Sovereign wealth fund.
01:08:24.480 So Trump wants to use the tariffs.
01:08:27.600 He wants to use the money he gets from the tariffs
01:08:30.400 to create a sovereign wealth fund.
01:08:32.880 Now, what that is, is a fund that's managed by a country.
01:08:37.380 So that's the sovereign part.
01:08:39.000 So other countries have these.
01:08:42.620 And it can be used for infrastructure
01:08:45.680 and other national projects.
01:08:47.580 I mean, it would depend on what the other projects are, I guess.
01:08:53.200 But in concept, that sounds OK.
01:08:57.520 Trump wants to spur the economic growth, of course,
01:09:01.180 and make the borders secure and lower the crime.
01:09:04.720 And he wants to put a bunch into R&D,
01:09:08.680 offering 100% bonus depreciation
01:09:11.340 for new manufacturing investment.
01:09:12.920 So these are good things.
01:09:15.840 Now, by the way, Harris has some good things, too.
01:09:18.500 So it's not all good things compared to bad things.
01:09:21.440 They've both got some things.
01:09:25.000 But here's my problem with analyzing economic plans.
01:09:30.120 If part of your plan is growth
01:09:32.200 and part of your plan is tax changes,
01:09:37.220 which of those two things can somebody measure easily?
01:09:40.740 Well, maybe not easily.
01:09:43.840 But if you're an analyst,
01:09:45.220 you could look at the change in taxes
01:09:47.480 and you could make some assumptions about revenue.
01:09:50.900 And then you could say, OK,
01:09:52.600 Trump's plan will do this to the deficit
01:09:55.200 and Kamala Harris's will do this to the deficit. 0.98
01:09:58.480 Do you think somebody did that?
01:09:59.880 Yes, they did.
01:10:01.840 I'm not going to name names,
01:10:03.480 but if you see somebody say
01:10:04.960 the Trump plan will increase the deficit
01:10:09.260 by $4 trillion or something,
01:10:11.800 and the Harris plan will increase the deficit
01:10:13.960 by one point something trillion,
01:10:16.240 are we done?
01:10:17.820 Oh, no.
01:10:18.780 One of them increases the debt more than the other.
01:10:21.920 So we're done, right?
01:10:22.920 You don't want the one that increases the debt.
01:10:25.760 Or do you?
01:10:28.040 Here's something I learned in corporate America.
01:10:30.120 You only manage to the things you can measure.
01:10:34.560 You can measure, predict,
01:10:38.040 what the tax income will be
01:10:40.280 if you just make assumptions
01:10:41.500 that everything else will be the same.
01:10:43.460 If everything else is the same
01:10:45.080 and the only thing you did is change the taxes,
01:10:47.980 you could kind of calculate
01:10:49.520 what the tax gains would be.
01:10:53.200 But here's what you can't calculate.
01:10:55.420 The offsetting benefit is the growth.
01:10:57.700 So if you cut your taxes more aggressively
01:11:01.000 to get more growth,
01:11:02.460 where's that?
01:11:04.260 They don't even calculate it.
01:11:06.460 So if you see somebody say
01:11:07.860 that Trump would add to the deficit
01:11:09.900 more than Kamala Harris,
01:11:11.440 they're only looking at half of the equation.
01:11:14.740 They're just looking at a direct tax cut.
01:11:17.720 How much would you collect?
01:11:19.360 But that's not the game.
01:11:20.860 The game is that the taxes should be modified
01:11:23.600 to get you the optimum growth number.
01:11:26.700 So if you're not looking at the total benefits
01:11:29.620 of the growth over time,
01:11:31.780 you know, looking at like a 10-year period,
01:11:34.340 then you haven't even done the math yet.
01:11:37.820 If the only thing you're looking at
01:11:39.400 is the direct tax change,
01:11:42.860 you're looking at a publication
01:11:44.300 that's either selling you propaganda
01:11:46.180 or they don't know how to do their job.
01:11:49.740 Because the growth part's the important part.
01:11:52.180 You just leave that out.
01:11:53.140 Trump isn't saying cut your taxes
01:11:56.220 just to make them last.
01:11:58.640 He's saying cut them
01:11:59.780 so you spur the economy
01:12:01.380 in all these variety of ways.
01:12:03.180 You've got to measure the spurred economy.
01:12:05.740 Now, if you say it won't move at all,
01:12:09.240 I mean, I'd have to hear that argument.
01:12:11.220 But if you think it wouldn't change
01:12:13.180 the economy at all,
01:12:14.960 I mean, that's hard to believe.
01:12:16.020 But if you believe that,
01:12:17.140 I suppose you should state that.
01:12:18.700 All right, Harris has a plan
01:12:22.160 of some kind of price gouging control
01:12:25.640 on food and maybe meds.
01:12:28.180 And of course, nobody thinks
01:12:30.200 that the price gouging thing is a good idea.
01:12:34.580 Now, well, let me modify that.
01:12:38.980 If there's real price gouging,
01:12:41.920 then I think we'd all be in favor
01:12:44.440 of doing something about it.
01:12:45.680 But I don't think they're going to find evidence
01:12:47.820 of that in the food business.
01:12:49.940 You might find that there was a little bit
01:12:51.480 during the pandemic,
01:12:52.240 but I think the free market
01:12:55.520 keeps their margins
01:12:57.340 to a relatively reasonable level.
01:13:01.800 She wants to do stuff for housing, 1.00
01:13:03.620 giving $25,000 in down payment assistance
01:13:06.240 and blah, blah for starter homes.
01:13:08.320 That might be good.
01:13:09.320 Again, there's a tendency
01:13:12.540 to just look what it costs
01:13:14.180 and not a tendency to look
01:13:15.760 at the economic benefit of it.
01:13:19.320 She wants to put a cap on insulin prices. 0.97
01:13:21.560 That's probably not too different
01:13:22.520 than what Trump was doing.
01:13:24.520 Childcare credits,
01:13:25.700 she wants to improve those. 1.00
01:13:26.980 So it makes it look like
01:13:27.860 she wants to do more for childcare. 1.00
01:13:32.220 I mean, at the very least,
01:13:33.320 she'd increase the tax credits.
01:13:35.160 Tax policies,
01:13:38.360 increase the corporate tax
01:13:39.840 to 28 from 21.
01:13:41.380 That would make your stock market
01:13:43.320 fall in value,
01:13:44.820 which would make you feel less wealthy,
01:13:47.020 which would make you spend less.
01:13:49.480 So you got to calculate that,
01:13:51.700 which they don't, of course.
01:13:54.800 Then some kind of a tax deduction
01:13:56.580 for startup businesses,
01:13:58.660 so they'd get a $50,000
01:14:00.080 right off
01:14:01.720 as long as they made money eventually.
01:14:05.160 I like it in concept.
01:14:08.340 I don't know if a lot of people
01:14:11.380 would change their behavior
01:14:12.500 because of it.
01:14:13.980 But you know my philosophy
01:14:16.760 is if you need to solve a problem,
01:14:20.900 and we do,
01:14:21.920 you know how to grow faster,
01:14:23.920 if you've got an idea
01:14:26.180 that could work,
01:14:27.940 well, let's try it.
01:14:29.640 The downside isn't death,
01:14:32.000 so maybe this would make a difference.
01:14:36.740 So I'd be willing to try it.
01:14:38.920 You know,
01:14:39.120 it wouldn't matter who suggested it.
01:14:40.680 If it doesn't work,
01:14:42.500 pull it back.
01:14:44.360 You know,
01:14:44.840 you'll know in a year.
01:14:46.240 Is it worth a year of this?
01:14:48.120 Probably.
01:14:49.220 It might be worth a year.
01:14:50.300 There's going to be,
01:14:51.000 you know,
01:14:51.300 cheating and graft
01:14:53.100 and all that stuff,
01:14:54.020 corruption,
01:14:54.760 but you'll know in a year.
01:14:55.720 And then she's,
01:15:01.660 then Harris has to figure out
01:15:02.900 how to be different from Biden.
01:15:04.920 I guess that's important.
01:15:06.800 All right,
01:15:07.340 ladies and gentlemen,
01:15:08.500 the most important thing
01:15:11.280 you need to know is
01:15:12.260 if you get the Dilbert 2025 calendar,
01:15:15.800 the desk calendar,
01:15:16.680 which is available now,
01:15:18.640 there would be no tariff
01:15:19.620 because it's made in the United States.
01:15:21.780 Yeah,
01:15:22.040 no tariff made in the United States.
01:15:24.500 But for the first time,
01:15:25.720 and because it's more expensive
01:15:28.160 to make it in the United States,
01:15:29.880 I had to cut out the publisher
01:15:31.460 and cut out amazon.com
01:15:33.220 and cut out the bookstores.
01:15:34.600 Now you can only get it
01:15:35.440 from one website.
01:15:37.920 And if you go to Dilbert.com,
01:15:39.620 you can find the link to buy.
01:15:41.520 It's right at the top.
01:15:43.400 And we're not going to make
01:15:45.540 a wall calendar this year.
01:15:47.840 There wasn't as much demand for those.
01:15:49.780 I know some of you will miss it,
01:15:50.940 but it will just be the daily.
01:15:53.060 And to make it even better,
01:15:54.680 there are comics
01:15:56.560 on both sides of each day.
01:15:59.220 Double the comics
01:16:00.240 you've ever seen
01:16:01.100 in a Dilbert comic.
01:16:02.600 And if you pay a little more
01:16:04.180 for shipping,
01:16:05.200 maybe that should take
01:16:06.580 the sting out of it.
01:16:07.560 And I say,
01:16:08.140 if you're going to buy
01:16:08.580 more than one,
01:16:09.920 it'll make your shipping costs
01:16:11.100 look a lot more affordable.
01:16:13.780 So that's happening.
01:16:17.140 That's all I got for you today.
01:16:18.500 And I'm going to talk
01:16:22.320 to the locals' people privately.
01:16:25.060 I hope you learned something.
01:16:26.420 Did anybody learn anything
01:16:27.240 about economics today?
01:16:28.980 Let me ask you this question
01:16:30.280 before I go.
01:16:31.560 Was there anything I said
01:16:32.640 about their tariffs
01:16:35.120 or anything else
01:16:35.960 that you said,
01:16:37.720 oh, I never saw it that way before?
01:16:41.780 Salt mines in the USA.
01:16:43.580 I don't know.
01:16:44.360 Do we have any salt mines
01:16:45.460 in the USA?
01:16:46.020 We might not.
01:16:53.400 Why are they buying
01:16:54.400 our farmland?
01:16:56.360 Well, if I had to guess,
01:16:57.980 it's for food.
01:17:03.020 Here's the thing with China. 0.99
01:17:06.540 If we got in a war with China,
01:17:08.460 we wouldn't have ammunition
01:17:09.880 in three weeks,
01:17:11.020 but they wouldn't have food
01:17:12.600 in three weeks.
01:17:14.100 We're really not going
01:17:15.140 to get in a war
01:17:15.740 with China.
01:17:17.840 Yeah, I feel like China
01:17:19.360 is the pretend adversary.
01:17:22.060 Like we're pretending
01:17:23.160 that war is an option.
01:17:24.200 It's not an option.
01:17:26.060 War with China 0.62
01:17:27.000 is not an option.
01:17:28.500 It's just not an option.
01:17:31.800 We've got to stop pretending
01:17:33.160 like it might happen.
01:17:34.860 No.
01:17:35.920 No.
01:17:36.120 One of the sides
01:17:37.540 would have to want it
01:17:38.520 at least a little bit
01:17:39.620 before you could consider it.
01:17:42.060 Neither side wants it
01:17:42.980 even a little bit
01:17:43.740 under any situation,
01:17:45.120 under any scenario
01:17:46.160 at all.
01:17:48.800 It's zero and zero.
01:17:51.100 You don't get a war 0.76
01:17:51.780 in that case.
01:17:55.120 So I'm not worried
01:17:56.120 about war with China.
01:17:57.140 It's the lowest risk
01:17:58.420 we have, period.
01:18:01.760 All right.
01:18:02.420 Well, I'm going to go talk
01:18:03.260 to the locals, people.
01:18:04.200 Thanks for joining on X
01:18:05.520 and YouTube and Rumble.
01:18:07.760 You're all awesome.
01:18:08.660 I'll see you tomorrow.
01:18:09.360 We'll be right back.