Episode 2799 CWSA 04⧸04⧸25
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 6 minutes
Words per Minute
143.71455
Summary
In this episode of the highlight of human civilization, Scott Adams is joined by his good friend Scott Adams to discuss a variety of current events, including the Trump administration freezing $510 million from Brown University, the growing problem of anti-semitism in the US, and the future of the art industry.
Transcript
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good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization it's called
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coffee with scott adams and you've never had a better day but if you'd like to take your
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experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny shiny human brains
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all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice of stein a canteen jug or flask a vessel
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of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and now for the unparalleled pleasure
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of the dopamine at the end of the day the thing that makes everything better it's called
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that's right the simultaneous sip and it happens now
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i guess it's going to be up to me to explain tariffs and everything else because it's all
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terribly complicated but first let's see if there's any science that didn't need to be done
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oh here we go according to petapixel which sounds like a weird name matt grokut how could that be a
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poor guy matt grokut anyway uh there's a study and the study finds that if you smile in your profile
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picture more people will want to do business with you and you'll make more money now that's quite a
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surprise isn't it do you know what they could have done instead of this study they could have just asked
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me scott is it good if people smile in their profile picture yes yes it is well we were thinking
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of doing a big expensive study don't bother people like it when you smile in your profile picture
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but will they be more willing to do work with you and you know maybe buy things from you yes
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yes smiling can do all of that for you so next time just talk to scott i can save you a lot of time
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well the trump administration is freezing 510 million dollars um from brown university
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according to the daily caller reagan reese is writing and uh it's because brown university has
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been accused of not doing enough about anti-semitism and uh their dei program is a little problematic as
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well uh but more than that i think they need to change the name of their university to something
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more inclusive i mean the name of the college is brown university i mean seriously you're gonna
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have to change the name i think something like rainbow university or all the colors university
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or be they black be they white be they any other color university but you just can't call it brown
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university if dei is your problem change that name okay it's certainly named after a person named brown but
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well there's yet another day this was the millionth day in a row in which somebody has breathlessly posted on
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that some new ai app can create people who are doing what you want them to do so if you dance it makes
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it look like a celebrity that you selected as dancing and you can make them do all kinds of things you can
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make a maryland monroe and does it matter which app it is no because nobody's ever going to do anything
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useful with that how many times have you seen an ai app that promises to make oh my god with this kind of
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tool i could make my own full-length movie has anybody made a full-length ai movie nope is anybody close
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to making a full-length ai movie nope because i've tried a little bit um you know image generation stuff
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just to see what's going on i think i use brox and maybe chat gpt's and
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so i thought to myself okay i'm i'm already a visual artist kind of and so i'll tell the ai to make
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and then if it's not exactly what i want how great will this be because i can just tell to change it
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i can say change the color of that shirt and put it in a tropical setting and pretty soon with very
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little effort i'm going to have like a piece of art it took me about 10 minutes of messing around
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to say to myself i have no interest in doing this whatsoever and it never got close to what i wanted
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because it turns out that the thing in my mind uh just couldn't be reproduced by ai it was just
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always something that wasn't close and i think all of these image generation things where you think
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ah we must be five minutes away from hollywood being able to make a full-length movie with this
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technology nope nope you're not even close uh you would not get anywhere close um i'm going to double
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down and i'm predicting or triple down or quadruple down because i keep saying it that art pretty much
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all our forms are only attractive to us as consumers if we know that it was made by a human
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and it's not because we're anti-ai or something it's because it's related to our mating instinct
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so when you see an artist who does something that you can't do you say to yourself you know maybe you
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don't say it consciously but your instinct is to want to mate with the artist because the artist has
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some kind of genetic thing you don't have if you see somebody who can play the piano like beethoven
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and even write write the music like beethoven you are automatically triggered to say really if i
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mated with that maybe i'd have a child who is super skilled all right bring it on so i don't think ai
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will ever produce any art that anybody cares about that's what i think uh but it might be the end of
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drawing i was doing some drawing yesterday uh for you know my job and i realized that a child born today
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will never even learn to draw because it wouldn't have any utility they'll just they'll just learn to
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use ai to make images why would you learn to draw if you were a child born today no real reason i'm
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almost wondering if children born today will learn to write
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because you could just talk to the computer and write it perfectly for you at what point is it just
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useless to learn how to do it yourself i don't know we're getting close all right uh apparently according
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to zero hedge republicans the trump administration uh are looking at raising a new well creating a new
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tax bracket for those over earning over a million dollars a year uh does that sound like something that
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trump would be okay with it doesn't to me um you know i i suppose it would be popular or help him sell the tax
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package if he does it but uh not a big fan not a big fan of that if you had any idea what the tax burden is
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for people who would make over a million dollars a year and let's say they don't have any fancy ways to
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hide it they're not they're not in real estate or they don't own a you know gigantic company with lots
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of ways to hide your taxable income if you're just making a lot of money because you're a surgeon or
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something the tax burden is insane it's insane and then when you die the government takes 40 of what's left
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left there's a there's really no hope let me put it in another way if you made a if you were so good at your
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job that you made a million dollars a year every year that you worked and then you retired you would not be
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leaving your children much of anything at all because what it would cost you to live would be about the same your taxes
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would take most of it and then your estate tax would take 40 of what's left and then if you had three
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kids and you divided by three not much left so uh really the the government in its current form has made
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it kind of impossible to build wealth in a realistic way you know unless you're just killing it and then
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you can do it but but you'd have to get so lucky but people who are making a million dollars a year
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just like clearing a million dollars a year they're not they're not creating a dynasty that's just that's
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casino.com for details please play responsibly well meanwhile klaus schwab is stepping down for the world
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economic forum we knew this was coming but is it my imagination or did the people who were quite
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worried that the world economic forum was going to be like a shadow government and you really running
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the whole world and all that did we just stop thinking and talking about it because i never bought
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into that you know i was just sort of observing it from the outside but to me it just looked like
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what elon musk said once a rich people club and they had some preferences you know they wanted some
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climate change and maybe they wanted you to eat bugs and not own as many things and you know rent them
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instead but did any of it make any difference i don't know it it doesn't seem like it really did and now
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that claus is gone you wonder if all the clout the claus clout will be gone so uh but i also wonder
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did we think that the wef world economic forum was the shadow government until doge discovered that usa
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id was a shadow government at least for the united states and and for a lot of countries that affect it
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uh so maybe we just like having the idea there's a shadow government but as soon as you see that uh
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as soon as you see that what usa id was doing that looks like the real one and then the world
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economic forum again just looks like a rich person's club so claus is uh stepping down
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uh trump called the uh situation in france where marine le pen who was the front runner for the
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presidency uh got taken out by lawfare or at least that's what it looks like from you know this this
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part of the world and uh trump called it a witch hunt and so it was the same playbook that was used
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against trump to take him out now do you buy that do you buy that it it wasn't a legitimate prosecution
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maybe it wouldn't have happened to anybody else and that it was completely political and it was for the
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purpose of taking around the election i do i do now could be wrong maybe but we live in a world where
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unfortunately that would be the most obvious and routine thing that would happen because we're
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seeing in other places you know it seems to me that remember when the first time you learned that
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george soros had figured out that the best way to control the country is to control the prosecutors and
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maybe some judges because if you get the attorney generals and the prosecutors on your side
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you can kind of control the legal system and if you control the legal system you are the government
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because you can take out a candidate if you can take out a candidate like trump or you can take out
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marine le pen you're kind of the government and remember how clever that seemed we thought man this
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soros guy is so clever he figured out the least expensive way to control a country then he was
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you know controlling the united states it felt like and then we learned that usa id has been doing exactly
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that to other countries massively and for decades so apparently one of the first things we do when we
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want to control another country is we look to control their courts we try to get a try to get a judge and
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you know prosecutors that we can control or bribe or you know somehow have some influence over so it does
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seem that all governments that you would call part of the democratic world they all seem fake
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because i believe that if you're if your court system has been corrupted and that certainly is the
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case in the united states seems to be the case in france probably the case in every country that usa id was
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working in i'm not sure any of the democracies are real i think that they might all be pretend and that the
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real government is whoever put in the corrupt judges you know remember joe biden and the uh the prosecutor he
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said well we won't release your billion dollars to ukraine unless you get rid of that prosecutor
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that was just this it looks like it was just another case where we couldn't control ukraine
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unless we could control you know their judges and prosecutors so it looks like that's what he was
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doing so once you learn that the governments all look fake they all look fake if you look at let's say
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an election in the united states do you think it will be determined by the candidates and the voters or
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will be determined by whatever corrupt judges decide is going to be legal today i think the judges can
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change the rules they'll decide what's in do you need voter id are you going to reapportion the district
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so that you get you know more representatives i think the courts kind of control democracy
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and so to me everything looks fake as long as the courts and the judges don't look credible and they
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don't look credible at this point so there's that so laura loomer made some news by apparently she had
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identified some uh what glenn greenwald three pro-war members of the national security council and she
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talked to trump and trump fired them immediately now how do you interpret that if you're
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an anti-trumper you say to yourself what this laura loomer conspiracy theory lady
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um is is so powerful she's she's causing policy to happen in the white house is that what's happening
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let me give you my frame on this um i've i've said this a number of times about trump one of his
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superpowers one of one of his strengths is that he's really good at listening to everybody
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you'll you'll listen to bill maher he'll listen to me when i visited he'll listen to uh kid rock
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he'll listen to laura loomer but he will also listen to scott besant and you know all the top
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economists and uh you'll listen to other world leaders and he's really good at scanning the room and
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listening now the other thing i teach you is that the person with the best ideas
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is always in charge so laura loomer must have done some research or had some information that
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trump was not aware of and she had credibility from other interactions so he was willing to
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you know give her a listen she described these people and why she thinks that they were dangerous
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to keep on because they're kind of pro-war you know maybe not as pro-trump as they could be
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okay and uh he decided because he's the decider uh that's a good point i didn't know about that
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they're gone i don't have any problem with that at all to me that all looks positive positive part
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is that trump is always scanning uh his his base to find out what they think and and listening to
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suggestions i i can't tell you how many times i've heard that somebody made a suggestion to the trump
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white house and then when it got to trump he said huh pretty good idea let's do that it's very common
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and i don't think any other president has has had the confidence or or just the vision to see what
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everybody wants and to be able to decide i like that one i don't like this one i like this one i don't like that one
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so i love the fact that loomer could come in with some some information of value because otherwise
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trump wouldn't have acted if it had no value and uh he acted on it so i i don't think that story is
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about loomer uh but she's she's doing a hell of a job of of making herself relevant in the entire
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political process so hats off to that um but this is a trump story and trump doing the thing i like
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best about him listening taking people seriously and then acting you know without any hesitation um
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so sorry uh there's a going around on x there's a video of chuck schumer in 1996
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and he's uh chuck schumer is basically sounding exactly like elon musk talking about immigration
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and uh schumer in 1996 he's arguing in the congress and he says the number one reason
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that illegals come to the u.s is so they can defraud programs like social security does that sound
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familiar it's 1996 and it's chuck schumer now today he would say exactly the opposite oh stop accusing
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those illegals uh there's nothing going on completely opposite now that's not the only person who's on video
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doing things that look sort of opposite based today according to the wall street apes account uh in 1996
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pelosi was encouraging um congress to back reciprocal tariffs do you think she's doing it today
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probably not in 2008 bernie sanders wanted tariffs uh because he says jobs are going overseas
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uh actually bernie might be consistent i think he might uh i'll have to check on that but i think
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bernie might be consistent because i think he agreed with trump on some tariff stuff
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and in 2018 barack obama obama uh called for reciprocal tariffs do you think he's doing it today
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so here's my take on republicans versus democrats
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my my observation having spent a lot of time with you know both is that republicans have core beliefs
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beliefs now i know that sounds funny because you think everybody has core beliefs but i don't think
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so i think republicans have core beliefs and they don't really change um and democrats have performances
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so one has core beliefs and you could predict if you found a video of republican talking 20 years ago
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would it look that different from a republican talking today i feel like it would look essentially
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the same whereas the democrats you can always go back and find them having the opposite opinion
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the indication to me is that one group is performing and one group is acting on their actual core beliefs
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and once you see it you can't unsee it but let me give you another example here
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um according to rasmussen polling uh steven a smith you know you know uh would you call him uh
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entertainer or espn commentator let's call him steven a smith that if you throw him in the mix for
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potential candidates to be president of the democrats he actually scores pretty well
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um so let's see uh 33 of likely u.s voters view him favorably and in a hypothetical matchup
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um 31 would vote for newsom but 28 for for steven a smith and he would do about the same against aoc so he's
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not the leading person but he's also not running at all i mean i think he's been pretty clear that even
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being considered for a presidential candidate is less about him i like the way he says this by the way
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it's less about him and more about the complete lack of uh good candidates he's totally right about that
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but here's the thing steven a smith is a performer now he's a commentator but what makes him like extra
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good at his job is that he performs like he's he goes big when he comments and that makes him hard to
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look away i find him totally engaging and very skilled at doing what he does which is get your attention
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hold your attention uh my experience is if i come across a a clip of steven a smith it's hard to stop
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watching it because he's just so high energy and you know he makes sense most of the time
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um but he's a performer so that makes sense in the democrat world find a performer because it's all
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performance well there's a study by uh well cy post is writing about it um it was published in the
00:25:17.240
personality and social psychology bulletin that says that liberals show less empathy to political
00:25:24.360
opponents than conservatives do so liberals would care less if conservatives had something bad happen to
00:25:34.760
them whereas conservatives might you know deeply disagree with the liberals but wouldn't find
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pleasure in seeing something bad happen to them is that surprising nope because i'll tell you my my current
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view on democrats besides the fact that they're performing as opposed to operating in core beliefs i think
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democrats are motivated by jealousy and hate and that's why they perform imagine if your core belief
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was non-existence but your your real motivation is a revengey jealousy hatred of people who are doing
00:26:19.080
better than you you would have to perform because you couldn't say the truth you couldn't say you know
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honestly i'm just full of hate so i think i you know want want trump to lose uh not because he's doing a bad
00:26:37.320
job i'm just full of hate and uh doge even though it sounds like a good idea on paper musk is so rich and
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having so many babies and i'm not having any babies and i'm not rich so i just like to see him fail you
00:26:52.680
you couldn't really do that you can think it but you can't say it out loud so you're gonna have to
00:26:59.240
put on a performance instead you're gonna have to pretend that you have normal views and that you're
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a normal person but republicans seem motivated by um two things one is the ick factor now you've heard
00:27:15.880
this before that um conservatives seem to be more likely to be icked out by anything that's non-standard or
00:27:26.120
just icky and you know i i don't want to give you examples what that is because that because that
00:27:32.920
would cause problems but there's just some things that make conservatives go ugh ugh get that out of here i don't
00:27:40.040
want to be part of that at all but that's not the only factor i think republicans have a growth
00:27:45.800
mindset which is you know you can you can do well the country can do well we can we can create more
00:27:53.720
for everybody so if you have a growth mindset you don't really need to pretend when you're talking
00:28:02.280
about what you want i want to lower taxes i want to get rid of regulations it's just a growth mindset
00:28:09.640
and the democrats are just literally just putting on performances trying to cover up the fact that
00:28:15.240
their real motivation is just some kind of horrible hatred that's what it looks like to me well here's
00:28:23.080
something i didn't know uh according to the amuse account on x did you know that the person who at
00:28:31.160
one point had been tasked with determining whether or not dr fauci's gain of function research
00:28:37.160
was ethical or not was who do you think it was of all the people in the world who would be in charge of
00:28:46.280
determining that fauci's gain of function research in china was ethical well it turns out it was his wife
00:28:53.240
that's the first time i knew this so his wife who i guess just got fired by trump uh she was the head of
00:29:03.560
the nih office of bioethics so he was actually being evaluated by his wife
00:29:10.840
her wife for whether or not he was acting ethical or not what just happened did my light just go out hold on
00:29:19.800
well that's weird that's the uh second independent light in my uh studio that just went out on its own
00:29:33.640
while the other lights didn't go out i'm pretty sure i'm affecting my lights today
00:29:41.640
i do that sometimes well according to abc news um robert f kennedy has cut more jobs at the uh
00:29:51.560
health and human services than he wanted to so some people will be hired back
00:29:56.040
and those would have been called mistakes now how would you report this if you were abc news would
00:30:03.720
you report it as that dumb ass he should have used a scalpel instead of a hammer and now he's made this
00:30:14.520
terrible mistake and now he's going to have to correct it well let's hope he's smarter next time
00:30:21.000
well i would call that the low experience take uh here's what an experienced person would say about
00:30:30.040
that situation where big cuts were needed big cuts were made but then it went a little too far so they
00:30:36.440
have to back up and correct a few things um i would say that the the view that he should have done it
00:30:44.920
perfectly the first time is what very inexperienced people say about things you know um i i'm no expert
00:30:56.120
but uh i think you should do everything perfectly every time
00:31:02.120
what that that's what the democrats with not much experience say you know we've never been in business
00:31:10.360
never done anything important that's not a thing you can't do something of that size and scale and
00:31:16.600
do it perfectly on the first try nobody could do that so don't even imagine that if he tried harder
00:31:25.160
used his scalpel that he could have gotten it exactly right the first try and gotten it done on time
00:31:33.000
if you add infinite time you still couldn't do it because if you have infinite time then forces working
00:31:39.960
against you will have time to organize and thwart you and get in the way so the best way to do this
00:31:47.240
stuff is take your best cut at it make some mistakes and then correct them as you need to
00:31:54.760
that's a perfect job inexperienced people say well you had a choice of just doing it perfectly in the
00:32:02.520
first place why didn't you just measure twice or thrice before you cut i mean there there's a little
00:32:09.160
thing that even says says what you should do measure twice cut once have you never heard that
00:32:15.000
i mean if you've heard it then i guess you would never make any mistakes but it's a good thing that
00:32:20.120
i'm cleverly telling you now with all my lack of experience how things work in the real world yeah do it
00:32:26.600
without mistakes i'm going to add that to my other thing that only inexperienced people say which is you
00:32:36.280
should have done it sooner do you know what else you should have done sooner everything everything
00:32:45.000
that was worthwhile you should have done it sooner what about doge should have done it sooner what about
00:32:52.520
tariffs sooner what about tax cuts sooner everything should have been done sooner and perfectly it should
00:33:03.000
have been done sooner and perfectly that's what all the dumb people will tell you
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00:33:14.840
learn more at scotia bank.com slash banking packages conditions apply scotia bank you're
00:33:21.000
richer than you think anyway so i was looking at uh so pj media victoria taft is writing about this
00:33:28.600
that congresswoman Jayapal Pramila Jayapal and some harvard professor are behind the training of
00:33:42.680
people to resist um doge and and tesla so they're they're actually doing resistance training to get
00:33:52.520
more people on the streets resistance training now here's the fun part i happen to be watching
00:34:01.240
Jayapal getting interviewed live the other day and she said that this resistance training that
00:34:09.640
they were giving was part of capacity building now do you know where i'm going with this
00:34:18.200
if those of you have listened to mike benz he talks about the cia and often working with usaid in the
00:34:29.960
past where they would do capacity building as part of the plot to overthrow other countries
00:34:38.440
now capacity building would be things like making sure that you had co-opted the media or or maybe
00:34:46.440
introduced a new form of media that was going to say the right things or you had uh trained people
00:34:54.360
to resist on the streets which is exactly what Jayapal is working on and i said to myself
00:35:03.720
what are the odds that she would use that phrase have you ever heard any just member of congress
00:35:10.760
talk about capacity building have you ever heard anybody anybody in any context use the phrase capacity
00:35:19.880
building the only place i've ever heard it is from mike benz and he didn't make it up he's training us
00:35:28.520
to understand that that's a cia phrase so do you think that Jayapal accidentally admitted that she's cia
00:35:38.920
influenced i do now i don't have proof but that was a pretty big signal that she's had some kind of training
00:35:53.640
that's either adjacent to or because of the cia and that would explain so much that i didn't understand
00:36:02.600
about her so much so i can't say for sure but if you see any anybody who's training people to resist on
00:36:11.560
the streets and they refer to their own work as capacity building
00:36:18.760
it's probably means exactly what you think it means and if i'd never heard mike benz talk about it at
00:36:25.320
length i wouldn't have caught it but that little by the way this is a it's a hypnotist thing hypnotists
00:36:32.760
will tell you that people tell you exactly what their hidden thoughts are they just don't know they're
00:36:38.040
doing it so i'm always looking for the hidden thoughts based on their choice of words this one
00:36:43.640
just jumped right out so that was interesting all right let me give you an update on tariffs
00:36:54.280
now as if you're brand new to my live stream uh you don't know that i've uh um completely disgusting
00:37:03.800
because i often mention that i have a degree in economics and um an mba from a top school
00:37:10.440
so a person like me should certainly understand tariffs i mean with all of my sophisticated
00:37:19.320
education background of course i understand everything about tariffs and i'm going to explain
00:37:25.400
it to you now in the simplest possible way and then you'll be as smart as i am about tariffs
00:37:31.560
wouldn't that be great don't you want to be as smart as i am um well no the the real story is
00:37:40.040
economics is not even real but we'll get to that so when you see people complaining that these stocks
00:37:50.760
went down and and they lost money that's not real nobody lost any money unless it stays down and never
00:37:59.880
goes back up which has never happened to the stock market in the history of the stock market there's
00:38:05.880
never been a time when it went down and just kept going down now if we ever do see that that will be
00:38:12.360
you know the end of the united states but in all likelihood there's a temporary uncertainty
00:38:19.880
and that you know things are likely to adjust so i was watching um i was watching somebody it doesn't
00:38:29.000
matter who just saying well you know and i lost all this money in the stock market no you didn't not
00:38:34.840
only did you not lose it but your percentage of ownership of the country stayed about the same
00:38:41.480
meaning that if you owned this you know tiny bit of stock you owned a tiny bit of the country
00:38:49.480
because the country is mostly you know corporate wealth and if everything went down you probably own
00:38:56.600
just about the same percentage of the country as you owned before so it's not as bad as as it could
00:39:03.240
be um i haven't sold any stocks you know i'm just gonna write it out i'm not not terribly worried uh
00:39:12.200
i don't know i don't have a estimate of when it will bounce back could be sudden uh could be any time
00:39:19.400
i don't know it could be months could be longer but uh what what do you think about the people in the news
00:39:27.160
business i think the people in the news business uh are not waiting for manufacturing jobs to come
00:39:34.600
back so they can get one but they definitely have some money in the stock market if you're in the news
00:39:40.440
business you're well paid and you probably got a 401k so the people in the news are going to obsess
00:39:47.080
about the stock market because that's what affects them they're not going to say well thank goodness
00:39:54.200
you know we have a plan in place to bring back those good manufacturing jobs so i can get one of
00:39:59.880
those and stop being on msnbc no they're only going to be worried about the stock because that's what
00:40:07.160
affects them and it's also what they understand what they think to do so first thing you need to know is
00:40:14.280
that jim kramer thinks these tariffs are a terrible idea now if you spend any time on the internet you
00:40:21.240
know that jim kramer is famous for being a contraindication of what's going to happen
00:40:28.280
so if he thinks it's a bad idea it might be the best idea ever we'll see apparently general
00:40:35.480
motors says they're going to dramatically increase car production in the u.s and that's directly because
00:40:41.720
of the tariffs because it'll make foreign cars more expensive so gm is thinking oh good we're going to sell
00:40:50.200
more uh likewise uh ford is not likewise but in addition ford is rolling out uh what they call
00:40:58.520
employee pricing so they're going to allow anybody to buy a ford for what would have been the same
00:41:06.360
price that their employees could get them i don't know how good a deal that is or not but it doesn't
00:41:11.800
doesn't count with some of their best cars uh doesn't count like the raptor or the mustang or the bronco
00:41:18.680
or the expedition or the navigator or the super duty trucks so it's not the best offer in the world
00:41:26.040
but it'd be great if you're looking for an ordinary ford car you just want a good price but i think the
00:41:33.560
low-hanging fruit here is u.s companies that will benefit from the tariff and already have facilities
00:41:40.920
so all they have to do is you know increase production at the existing facilities so when you see that
00:41:47.720
kicking in that's probably a good sign um here's a this is so predictable so republican uh chuck grassley
00:42:00.280
is working with a far left democrat uh maria can't well can't well that sounds like the the worst name
00:42:09.480
for somebody who's trying to get something done can you do this well can't well anyway uh the two of
00:42:18.280
them are working together in a bipartisan way to try to wrestle control from trump about tariff decisions
00:42:25.800
and make sure it's in the uh it's in the congress so they want to make some new legislation that basically
00:42:35.720
you know codifies the fact that congress is the one who can raise taxes
00:42:41.560
and decide on tariffs so this would be game over now now i don't know what the odds are that this
00:42:48.200
gets passed i think low probably pretty low odds that it gets passed but this would be terrible
00:42:56.520
it would be basically neutering trump's ability to negotiate to do anything useful with tariffs but uh
00:43:03.560
there we are chuck grassley trying to take control of that for the congress which as you know is worthless
00:43:11.560
according to the economist magazine all right here we go now the economist magazine
00:43:19.480
would be written by people who really understand economics so whatever their take on this would be the
00:43:26.200
the smart take right so they put out a magazine uh oh and did i mention that they're called the
00:43:34.680
economist and they think that magazines are still a good business model
00:43:40.920
that's sort of disqualifying for being an economist uh what's your business model well we've got a
00:43:51.240
magazine okay but what they say is that uh uh this is right on the cover of their new magazine that
00:44:00.440
donald trump has committed the most profound harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern
00:44:06.440
era almost everything he said on history economics and the technicalities of trade was utterly deluded
00:44:20.040
uh olin pod and uh entrepreneur jamoth the pella hapatia um commented on that and he called them a
00:44:29.800
mouthpiece of globalist rhetoric that is literally always wrong
00:44:33.800
so jamoth was uh kind of commenting that the more the economist hates it
00:44:44.040
the more likely it's a good idea i don't think he's wrong
00:44:47.720
you may have heard that trump's getting some pushback because russia and north korea and cuba and belarus
00:44:58.760
are not on the tariff list you might say to yourself wait a minute is it because he's
00:45:04.920
putin's secret lover that he doesn't want to put him on there but anyway the white house clarified
00:45:12.440
that those countries in russia in particular are so uh they're already so uh restricted so they've got
00:45:21.400
high tariffs already and all kinds of sanctions and so there's not any meaningful trade with those
00:45:27.400
countries i think there are some things like potash or something that we trade with russia but nothing
00:45:33.880
meaningful that uh would be worthy of derailing any peace talks so makes sense they left them off
00:45:42.280
when i found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from winners i started wondering is
00:45:48.120
every fabulous item i see from winners like that woman over there with the designer jeans are those
00:45:54.120
from winners ooh or those beautiful gold earrings did she pay full price or that leather tote or that
00:46:00.120
cashmere sweater or those knee-high boots that dress that jacket those shoes is anyone paying full
00:46:06.520
price for anything stop wondering start winning winners find fabulous for less uh china has responded to the
00:46:15.400
tariffs on them with a reciprocal tariff so they matched it with a 34 percent tariff uh on imports of all
00:46:23.560
u.s products beginning april 10th so that matches the the u.s um is that the beginning of
00:46:33.320
negotiations maybe we'll see um new york post is saying that uh your iphone could get a lot more
00:46:43.240
expensive because of the tariffs if they stayed in place especially the china stuff because it would make
00:46:49.800
your your iphone be over two thousand dollars they think would it i don't know and if it were
00:47:01.240
maybe apple would work hard to bring into the united states i don't know if they could make it cheap
00:47:06.040
enough in the united states but maybe that'll happen then the new york post is talking about the cost of
00:47:11.880
your buying your your air jordans um shoes that are made in vietnam which is also getting a big tariff
00:47:21.720
and that your air jordans and used to cost 180 dollars might cost 18 more
00:47:31.000
you know the the a lot of things that are optional purchases i'm not terribly worried about an optional
00:47:37.960
purchase expensive sneaker seems like you could live without one
00:47:45.480
the other thing trump said which was interesting you remember i told you that china is unlikely to
00:47:52.760
agree to a tick tock sale because i think they'd want to see trump fail and it would be worth a few
00:47:58.600
billion dollars to do it um trump hinted that uh without actually committing to it he just said it was an
00:48:07.320
example but he was clearly hinting that china might want to negotiate a better tariff situation
00:48:16.360
in return for saying yes to a sale of tick tock to a you know u.s buyer or a buyer a team of buyers
00:48:24.440
so clearly trump knows that china is saying yes to any kind of a tick tock sale is going to be a hard sell
00:48:33.480
and that if you didn't bring in a completely unrelated piece of business which is the tariffs you probably
00:48:40.120
couldn't get it done so i think he he understands that china is probably a hard no even if they lose
00:48:47.560
billions of dollars i think that they would let that go i think they'd spend billions to embarrass trump and
00:48:53.880
make sure he didn't get their crown jewel social lab um we'll see but it's interesting that trump did
00:49:03.400
set that up as a bargaining chip kind of situation
00:49:09.400
well i saw one theory that trump's real play with the tariffs is the lower interest rates and the way that
00:49:19.160
would go is that the the tariffs would scare the stock market and then people who took their money
00:49:25.400
out of the stock market wouldn't want it to be idle so they would put it in bonds and if a lot of people
00:49:31.880
buy bonds that would lower the interest rate on bonds because supply and demand and then if interest
00:49:39.160
rates come down then the fed might lower interest rates and then suddenly when we go to
00:49:46.360
um go to get our debt refinanced we would be doing a much friendlier interest rate which could be
00:49:55.640
tremendously useful to the country i don't know that that's the plan it's just something that might
00:50:02.680
happen so the reason that no economist knows what's going to go on is there are way too many moving parts
00:50:10.840
so you got your interest rates and you got well here's other stuff uh the wall street journal yeah
00:50:17.000
the wall street journal is talking about the impact on the value of the dollar right so you got the
00:50:23.480
interest rate issue that's hard to predict and on top of that there's the value of the dollar that's
00:50:30.840
hard to predict and there's not even an agreement about whether a strong dollar is good for the country
00:50:37.400
or a weak dollar is good for the country so economists can't even decide do we like a strong dollar or a weak dollar
00:50:47.880
but it is likely that the dollar will weaken if the tariffs stay in place and it continues to rile the market
00:50:55.960
so that's another thing um then i saw a according to spectator index on x the price of oil went down four percent
00:51:12.120
also probably because the tariffs but i'm not sure so if oil goes down that should trickle into all the
00:51:21.560
other costs so you've got the uncertainty of whether a strong or weak dollar is good or bad
00:51:29.400
you've got the interest rate effect that's unpredictable you've got the energy cost
00:51:36.760
that should lower prices but would it be enough to compensate for the rise in prices you've got the
00:51:43.320
question of who's going to absorb various tariffs will it always be the the importing company or in
00:51:51.800
some cases will the exporter absorb some of it then you've got the how long will it take
00:52:00.360
how long will it take to get manufacturing coming back to the united states how many how many adjustments
00:52:08.680
can industry make quickly we don't really know so the number of unknowns involved in this are just through
00:52:16.120
the roof um but one thing's for sure the people who know the least about economics are very certain
00:52:24.280
that they know a lot about economics i think the more you know about economics the less confidence you
00:52:33.880
would have on which way things are going to go because if it turns out that it's just a good negotiation
00:52:40.680
that's going to be great you would just get better deals if it turns out
00:52:47.560
you know it's going to go some way that nobody could predict well anything could happen we'll see
00:52:53.960
but here's what you need to know economics is more art than science
00:52:59.240
all right you you think economics is more it feels like you it feels like it's some kind of a hard
00:53:06.760
science it's not it's more of an art the second thing you need to know is that art is bullshit
00:53:14.920
so let's see if you can follow this economics is more art than science and art is bullshit economics is
00:53:24.520
largely bullshit yeah nobody really knows in a situation like this what's going to happen we just
00:53:32.120
really don't know um but we'll act like we do so here's here's something that uh i saw some of the
00:53:42.520
non-economists talking about um i saw somebody saying that the reason they're mad at uh at uh musk
00:53:52.840
is that that he and trump don't pay federal income taxes what do you think of that
00:54:00.520
that musk and trump don't pay federal income taxes therefore they're they're sort of parasites on the
00:54:06.840
system well here's what you need to know first of all i think it's not true i think musk has actually
00:54:15.240
paid more federal income taxes than any living human it's just that it depends on the year
00:54:22.120
so he's had one or two years or he had enormous payments because of the financial situation
00:54:29.400
and then some years where it was zero uh trump of course as as we all know has found ways to avoid
00:54:36.920
taxes wherever he can because he's in the building you know construction real estate business
00:54:42.600
and the tax law is sort of designed to encourage that kind of a business so here's what i would say
00:54:52.600
the reason that anybody can avoid taxes be it musk in some cases and trump in some cases is that the
00:55:02.280
government wants this situation they would rather promote the growth and the success of a gigantic
00:55:10.760
business then they need specific taxes from that business as it's young now think about all of the
00:55:20.840
the federal income taxes that are created by having a gigantic company with lots of employees
00:55:27.160
all the employees are paying federal taxes the the businesses themselves probably have enormous
00:55:33.880
uh property tax burden on them which is a state state tax but still it's part of you know the productive
00:55:42.440
taxation of the citizens um they create things that have sales tax associated again it's not federal but
00:55:50.280
it's you know adding to the system and if you add together all the all the sales tax property tax employee
00:55:58.520
taxes and then the employment itself and the fact that if people are employed the government doesn't have
00:56:05.480
to take care of them the benefit that anybody with a large business that's successful is adding to the
00:56:13.480
country is so great that the government is okay with you not paying federal income tax every single year
00:56:22.680
if you're investing money into your company and that's that's why you're not paying taxes so
00:56:29.480
the people who know the least just say oh they're not paying federal income tax so that's unfair
00:56:36.760
the billionaires are taking their money that's not really what's happening
00:56:42.040
all right so here's my big worry about the tariffs
00:56:44.680
do we have enough of a runway that we'll know if they're working before midterms because if the
00:57:01.080
the republicans are going to get wiped out in the midterms and there's not really much time between
00:57:08.840
now in the midterms for tariffs to do their magic you know not a lot of people are going to be
00:57:14.840
reshoring their manufacturing so i feel like trump is is risky at all
00:57:25.880
now i think he had to because the current situation was on you know was untenable so it's the right thing
00:57:34.680
for the country that he's taking this risk i think um you know we don't know how it's going to turn
00:57:41.400
out but i think it's the right kind of risk at exactly the right time to do it but if it doesn't
00:57:49.000
make the public think it's working by the midterms republicans are going to get destroyed
00:57:55.720
and then it's all gone you're going to lose everything uh politically you lose everything
00:58:01.560
and then it could get worse because if this was the only thing that was going to allow us to
00:58:08.120
balance the budget and have some kind of a you know strong economy going forward and the democrats
00:58:14.200
take it away which they will because they're not going to just let it ride um
00:58:26.760
but again i would rather that he takes the real risk to really help the country
00:58:34.440
than to do something that would be purely political which is you know paper over it and
00:58:39.320
pretend it's not a problem that things aren't going right anyway
00:58:46.760
so worry about the midterms claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament i've been visualizing my
00:58:51.480
match all week she was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car
00:58:56.760
on her backhand side good thing claudia's with intact the insurer with the largest network of
00:59:02.680
auto service centers in the country everything was taken care of under one roof and she was on her
00:59:07.320
way in a rental car in no time i made it to my tournament and lost in the first round but you
00:59:13.160
got there on time intact insurance your auto service ace certain conditions apply matt taibbi journalist
00:59:20.120
matt taibbi is suing a democratic lawmaker for 10 million dollars um because she made the mistake
00:59:29.560
of saying something on social media that she had said in the context of her job if she said something
00:59:36.040
in the context of her job apparently you can't sue her but she made the mistake of putting it on social
00:59:42.920
media and i guess that opened the door for him to sue and she made allegations
00:59:50.280
that apparently are thoroughly debunked i'm not even going to mention them because you know i don't
00:59:55.400
want to put it in your head but go taibbi yeah i mean he he was unfairly accused of something that
01:00:03.560
didn't pan out whatsoever and in the past and this uh democratic californian representative sydney kim
01:00:11.400
legger dove uh just decided to you know empty the barrel is that a thing um and just totally trash
01:00:22.680
him in in a public way including on social media so yes she needs to be completely put out of business
01:00:30.040
i hope he succeeds uh i saw in a mario an awful recap of the news that the hoodies have shot down
01:00:38.120
a number of drones now and our drones cost 30 million dollars apiece the good ones the reaper drones
01:00:44.840
and they've shot down three of them uh two recently just this week so we've lost 17 of them over time
01:00:53.160
and each one cost 30 million dollars so they've managed to cost us 500 million dollars worth of
01:01:02.600
just drones they shot down in the last six months now here's my question what kind of technology do
01:01:09.960
the hoodies have that they can so successfully shoot down our drones i mean you know maybe they
01:01:16.840
miss nine at a time times i don't know but they must have some pretty serious equipment over there
01:01:23.160
that they can spot it and then get to it so i don't know how long it's going to take for us to
01:01:29.960
suppress the hoodies but it looks like it could be a while all right i'm going to claim um i'm going to
01:01:37.560
claim the best predictor of what's happening in gaza now those of you who've been watching me for a while
01:01:45.800
you have to either back me or disagree with me on this i'll tell you the current news and then you tell me
01:01:53.240
was i the best predictor of what would happen with israel and gaza now if you're new to me
01:02:01.640
uh i need to clarify that i do not support israel i observe it and i observe that they seem to have
01:02:10.120
the power and they're using it if the if the other side had the power they would be using it
01:02:15.960
so i'm not putting an ethical or moral label on any of this and i'm not saying what they should
01:02:24.280
do or what they shouldn't do i'm just telling you what they're doing and one of the things i
01:02:29.880
predicted was they were never going to let the um gazans move back into gaza and that they would
01:02:36.920
have to depopulate it and just move people somewhere else or keep them in camps or something
01:02:44.360
and it looks like that's exactly what's happening so the biggest mass displacement of the war so far
01:02:50.680
israel is calling it creating security zones but one assumes the security zones will you know grow to
01:02:57.080
the entire thing and they plan to be more aggressive for a year but hamas apparently has offered to
01:03:03.640
release all the remaining hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire which suggests that hamas knows
01:03:12.600
that israel's real aim is to depopulate the area kill every member of hamas even if it costs them their
01:03:20.840
hostages now i don't think that israel is going to stop just because they have a chance to get the
01:03:27.640
hostages back they might keep negotiating but they're done with hamas hamas will be trapped and
01:03:36.200
destroyed in their tunnels and i don't think there's any way around it and eventually gaza will be just
01:03:43.480
you know owned and owned and operated by israel and i believe i'm the only person who told you that from
01:03:51.080
the jump can you confirm or deny that that's true i saw no other commentator say from from the very first
01:04:01.640
the palestinians are not going to be living in gaza when this is done now part of it is that israel
01:04:07.320
used the term total victory and you know they said things like uh it would never be the same
01:04:16.200
now when you hear total victory and here it will never be the same there what did you think was
01:04:23.400
going to happen because if all they did was fight for a while and then say all right let's try living
01:04:31.160
together again would that be total victory no no that wouldn't even be anything um if
01:04:38.840
yeah if they had uh negotiated for the hostages and then said all right we we promised we'd get
01:04:47.240
our hostages back so now you can keep on living and hamas you can keep on running gaza that's not
01:04:54.600
really total victory is it it's not even close it's more like losing so yes there's really no chance
01:05:02.920
that the palestinians will be going back to gaza and living there now again if you knew i'm not saying
01:05:09.960
that's good or bad or moral or ethical or not that's up to you make up your own decisions i'm just
01:05:16.360
predicting and i'm saying that if you were in that situation what would you do if the situation were
01:05:24.360
reversed what would hamas do this they would do this everybody in this situation would end up
01:05:32.680
defaulting to this because everything else doesn't make sense at all and uh you know the united
01:05:39.000
states is kind of distracted at the moment so if we had an impulse to try to stop israel from doing
01:05:44.760
what it's doing i don't think this would be the time we'd use it so that looks like what's going
01:05:51.400
to happen and that ladies and gentlemen are my comments for today i'm going to make a few comments
01:05:59.080
privately to the locals subscribers but for the rest of you uh thanks for joining on youtube and x and
01:06:09.000
rumble and i'll see you again tomorrow same time same place and locals coming at you