The Joe Rogan Experience - July 17, 2018


Joe Rogan Experience #1145 - Peter Schiff

Topics
socialism vs. capitalism fascism vs. communism trade and tariffs Huawei 5G security concerns trade deficits and economic policy Puerto Ricans women and job opportunities overtime laws minimum wage democratic socialism gold money regulations Bitcoin bubble cryptocurrencies crypto economy shift gold money Jones Act democracy vs republic socialism savings vs. spending fake prosperity Social Security Ponzi scheme automation Constitution and Supreme Court authority financial crisis prevention dollar collapse gold investments
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Peter Schiff
Mentioned
Donald Trump Will Bitcoin Peter Schiff Obama Bernie Sanders Art Laffer Hillary Minet Satoshi Nakamoto Larry Kudlow Steve Moore Billy Bush Gigolo Reagan Nixon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Thomas Jefferson Tucker Carlson Lyndon Johnson Eric Voorhees and 17 more
Joe Rogan Experience #1144 - Doug Stanhope Joe Rogan Experience #1146 - Jeff Garlin

Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 46 minutes

Words per minute

190.55

Word count

31,778

Sentence count

2,748

Harmful content

Misogyny

66

sentences flagged

Toxicity

105

sentences flagged

Hate speech

49

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Joe Rogan and I talk about the Occupy Wall Street protests and the lessons we learned about economics from them. We also talk about what it's like to be a free market capitalist, and why government intervention in the economy is a bad idea. And we talk about why the left should be directed at their regulations and their taxes and their subsidies, not at all the things that the government does to stifle economic growth and deny opportunities to people who want to work hard and get a better life. And we discuss the best way to deal with the problems that the left is trying to solve, which is to take your money and redistribute it to the people who earned it and give it to somebody who didn't earn it, but didn't work hard enough to give it back to somebody else who did earn it and didn't didn't have enough to do something about it, and that's not a good enough answer to the problems we're all trying to fix. I hope you enjoy this episode and that you enjoy it and that it makes you think about how important it is to use your money to solve the problems you're struggling with, not just to complain about them, but to actually try to solve them, so that you can improve your life and improve your situation. You don't have to wait for someone else to do it for you. You can do it yourself. - Peter Schiff, the author of the book "The Biggest scam in the world" and the host of the popular show on the show "The Little People's Guide to Money" joins us to talk about economics and economics and why it's not only works, but why you should be doing it. the best you can do what you're doing it the best, not what you should do it the most you can actually do and how you should actually do it, not how it s better than anyone else can not just complain about it why it s good to have a job you do it and what it s a good thing how to get better at doing it and how to make money, not having a better job the benefits of having a good life, not better than other people s who are better than you have it why you don t have enough money etc, etc all of this is a good idea, right? listen to the full episode, listen and tweet us what you like it!

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:03.000 The countdown.
00:00:05.000 Three, two, one.
00:00:08.000 Hello, Peter Schiff.
00:00:09.000 Hello, Joe.
00:00:10.000 So you just what?
00:00:11.000 Were you going to ask?
00:00:12.000 No, you just did a whole other show before this one.
00:00:14.000 Yeah, I did.
00:00:15.000 Three hours?
00:00:16.000 No, two hours.
00:00:17.000 Oh, all right.
00:00:18.000 Wasn't that hard?
00:00:18.000 Oh, okay.
00:00:19.000 Those are the comedian.
00:00:20.000 Those are the easy ones.
00:00:21.000 Oh, all right.
00:00:21.000 It's just basically talking to a friend.
00:00:23.000 Okay, well, I'm a friend.
00:00:24.000 You are a friend.
00:00:25.000 That's right.
00:00:26.000 Yeah.
00:00:27.000 I remember when I first saw you, when you were doing that...
00:00:29.000 Is Occupy Wall Street a thing anymore?
00:00:31.000 Did they give up?
00:00:32.000 Did they stop occupying?
00:00:33.000 Yeah, they did.
00:00:34.000 But, you know, we just...
00:00:34.000 Maybe you saw that on my YouTube channel.
00:00:37.000 I know we just reposted the Occupy Wall Street video.
00:00:40.000 I never actually had it on my channel.
00:00:42.000 Oh, really?
00:00:43.000 Because it was originally done by Reason.
00:00:44.000 And this was about five years ago or so, five, six years ago.
00:00:47.000 And so Reason TV did it, and so I let them promote it on their site.
00:00:52.000 I didn't copy it.
00:00:53.000 And they got millions and millions of views, and there were some other sites that went with it.
00:00:58.000 It was Ask a One Percenter, right?
00:01:00.000 Wasn't that what you called it?
00:01:01.000 Well, I went down there with a sign that said, I am the 1%, let's talk.
00:01:06.000 And I went into Zuccotti Park, and the only reason I stopped, the long one, the long version is just under two hours, which is on my YouTube channel now.
00:01:16.000 But the only reason we stopped is because we ran out of batteries.
00:01:21.000 Batteries and the camera.
00:01:22.000 The camera died.
00:01:23.000 But I could have kept talking, and we were losing the light.
00:01:26.000 You can see by the end, it's getting darker.
00:01:28.000 Just watching them get frustrated with you, but not having the words nor the knowledge to compete with what you were saying was very entertaining.
00:01:36.000 Agree with you or disagree with you, it was just hilarious watching someone so completely outmatched, or a group of people so completely outmatched, trying to debate economics with you and trying to understand the way business works.
00:01:47.000 Except they didn't even realize they were outmatched.
00:01:49.000 No.
00:02:10.000 On the internet.
00:02:11.000 And I still get emails, even now, at least, I don't think a week goes by where somebody from somewhere in the world doesn't send me an email about that.
00:02:20.000 And I know another website, I forget the name of it, reposted it about a year ago, and they got a couple of million views on it, just posting it again.
00:02:28.000 So a lot of people have watched it, and I get comments from people saying, this is what changed me.
00:02:34.000 I was a socialist, Very left-wing.
00:02:37.000 I watched this, and that was the epiphany.
00:02:39.000 That was the moment.
00:02:40.000 And then I did more research, and I learned more.
00:02:42.000 And now, thanks to you, I'm a total libertarian or a free-market capitalist.
00:02:46.000 And so it served its purpose.
00:02:49.000 Yeah, well, it was enlightening.
00:02:50.000 It's good to see people that are so involved in something that they'll go and they'll protest, they'll hang out in the park, but they really can't articulate their feelings or their thoughts in a well-reasoned debate.
00:03:03.000 They really don't have the facts, but yet they're dedicating their entire life to protesting something.
00:03:08.000 It's really interesting that people will spend so much energy and effort on something that they're really not even educated in.
00:03:13.000 Yeah, and it's a lot easier just to talk about something just emotionally instead of actually taking the time to learn about economics and to understand the source of the problems because anybody could just blame it on some rich person who's hoarding money and discriminating against them.
00:03:33.000 People love that.
00:03:33.000 They love doing that.
00:03:34.000 And then just say, oh, the solution.
00:03:36.000 See, if you blame the problems on some rich person, well, the solution is easy.
00:03:40.000 Just take his money, right?
00:03:41.000 Have the government come in and redistribute the wealth, which is another word for steal.
00:03:46.000 Take money from somebody who earned it and give it to somebody who didn't.
00:03:50.000 But if you actually take a little bit of time and use your head instead of your heart, your feelings, you'll learn that the source of the problems is government interference in the economy.
00:04:04.000 And that the protests should be directed at government, at their regulations and their subsidies and their taxes and all the things that government does to stifle economic growth and deny opportunities to people.
00:04:17.000 I think it would be a really funny documentary if you could do like a documentary on the last occupier.
00:04:24.000 Like the last person to occupy Wall Street, because they had to be like stragglers, right? 0.99
00:04:29.000 Eventually, it must have gotten to the point where there was like 30 people left, 20 people left, then one guy, no, fuck these people, man! 0.97
00:04:36.000 Well, you know, they started occupying different areas, right? 0.99
00:04:39.000 Because it caught on, and it was all over the world.
00:04:41.000 They were occupying here and occupying there.
00:04:44.000 And they were setting up camps, right?
00:04:45.000 They were essentially living there.
00:04:46.000 Yeah!
00:04:47.000 Yeah.
00:04:47.000 And who knows what else they were doing there.
00:04:49.000 But now the Occupy Movement kind of morphed into the Bernie Sanders movement, right?
00:04:55.000 Because that's where all those guys are now.
00:04:56.000 They were volunteering for the Sanders campaign.
00:04:59.000 And socialism is really kind of going mainstream now because they put the word Democrat in front of it.
00:05:04.000 Yes.
00:05:05.000 As if somehow that changes the meaning, right?
00:05:07.000 I'm not a socialist.
00:05:08.000 I'm a democratic socialist, meaning I want to vote for socialism as opposed to just have, you know, an armed revolution.
00:05:14.000 But the end is still the same, right?
00:05:16.000 It's still socialism, and it doesn't work.
00:05:18.000 Yeah, I was watching an interview with Tucker Carlson and some guy who's a professor at Harvard, and he said, I'll give you the last word.
00:05:25.000 The guy said, socialism's going to win.
00:05:27.000 He made the piece.
00:05:28.000 I'm like, what is that?
00:05:29.000 What does that even mean?
00:05:30.000 Like, socialism is going to win.
00:05:32.000 What does that mean and what is socialism?
00:05:35.000 Well, it could win at the polls.
00:05:37.000 That's the problem.
00:05:38.000 It's very intoxicating to people who don't know any better.
00:05:41.000 Right.
00:05:41.000 Because rich people, they have too much money.
00:05:44.000 The interesting thing about socialism is that no matter how many times it fails, people expect it to succeed, right?
00:05:50.000 That's the definition of insanity, right?
00:05:52.000 Doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.
00:05:55.000 Well, the socialists always expect a different result from doing something that has never succeeded in the past.
00:06:01.000 So socialism by definition is one thing, but the emotional reaction that people have is kind of another thing.
00:06:07.000 The emotional reaction is, there's rich people that are a real problem, they're hoarding, they're greedy.
00:06:13.000 I'm not concerned with money.
00:06:15.000 I'm concerned with people and community and feelings and health and welfare and education.
00:06:22.000 And all that money, we should take it from those rich people. 0.73
00:06:25.000 And we should funnel it into education and community and We're good to go.
00:06:50.000 They don't hoard money.
00:06:51.000 I mean, the way you get rich is not by hoarding.
00:06:54.000 The way you get rich is by trying to figure out what problems people have that you can solve, right?
00:06:59.000 Whether it's inventing something that makes their lives better or providing a service that makes their lives better because the customers are in charge, individuals.
00:07:08.000 That's what's going to allocate wealth.
00:07:11.000 If somebody is better than somebody else at satisfying the desires that people have, right?
00:07:18.000 If I can come up with something that you like, that you want to buy, that's cheaper and better than what somebody else has come up with, then you're going to buy from me.
00:07:26.000 And so the person who ends up with the most money is the person who's satisfied the most desires, the most needs, in the most efficient way possible.
00:07:35.000 And that's what's benefiting society.
00:07:37.000 I mean, it's great to have charity, and I'm all for private charity, but if you look at the wealthiest men in history, even though they've been incredible philanthropists and they've given away a lot of money, they helped a lot more people amassing their fortunes than gifting away wealth.
00:07:51.000 What they made.
00:07:52.000 It was the businesses that they created, the products that they invented, the services that they provided, and the employment, right, that was all a function of their creating their wealth.
00:08:04.000 That's what did a lot more to help society than simply giving away some of the money that they earned.
00:08:09.000 Have you ever had a debate with a democratic socialist?
00:08:12.000 Well, I mean, most Democrats are socialists.
00:08:15.000 They just don't know it, or they don't want to admit it.
00:08:17.000 And a lot of people don't even understand what socialism is, because, you know, you'll have the left, they'll always consider somebody, like even Donald Trump, they'll say, oh, he's a fascist, right?
00:08:26.000 They don't even realize that fascism is...
00:08:28.000 Is part of socialism.
00:08:30.000 Socialism is a broad concept that includes things like communism and fascism.
00:08:36.000 So if you're a communist, you are a socialist.
00:08:38.000 But it doesn't mean that if you're a socialist, you're a communist because you could be a fascist.
00:08:43.000 You could be for a lot of things.
00:08:44.000 But fascism is a form of socialism where the government doesn't just steal all the property.
00:08:51.000 Like the communists want to nationalize everything and take – Legal ownership of the means of production, right?
00:08:57.000 The government just owns all the capital.
00:08:59.000 Under fascism, the government is a little bit smarter.
00:09:03.000 They realize that people will work harder if they think they're working for themselves.
00:09:07.000 So the fascist doesn't want to nationalize businesses.
00:09:10.000 They just want to control it through regulation and taxes.
00:09:14.000 And that's pretty much what the Democrats want to do.
00:09:16.000 They want to control everything by taxing it heavily and regulating it.
00:09:20.000 And that's an important aspect of fascism.
00:09:23.000 I mean, a lot of people associate fascism with racism just because the Nazis were racist.
00:09:28.000 But you don't have to be racist.
00:09:30.000 I mean, fascism started in Italy.
00:09:32.000 And there wasn't any racism there.
00:09:34.000 And if you go back to...
00:09:36.000 The Nazi Party.
00:09:37.000 It's the National Socialist Party of Germany.
00:09:40.000 That's what the Nazis are. 0.81
00:09:41.000 It's socialists.
00:09:42.000 So fascism is a form of socialism.
00:09:44.000 That's why the communists and the fascists, you know, argue so much because they're really, they're fighting over the same turf.
00:09:51.000 It's which brand of socialism is better, fascism or communism.
00:09:55.000 But they're not at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
00:09:58.000 They're on the same end.
00:09:59.000 So do you think that people are frustrated with the current system and so they see someone like Bernie Sanders come along that offers this radical change of pace.
00:10:06.000 He's saying, you know, we need to end income inequality and redistribute wealth and all these different things and it just sparks an emotional reaction in people that they know that the current system, the way it's in place, especially the way it was under Obama, they didn't like how things were,
00:10:22.000 they didn't like how things were under Bush.
00:10:24.000 They think we need someone who's not a career politician or someone who has got a radical new approach Oh, look at this Bernie Sanders guy.
00:10:31.000 He wants to do some stuff with money.
00:10:32.000 Let's vote for him.
00:10:33.000 Yeah.
00:10:34.000 Look, people, you know, are grasping for straws when they're looking for a solution.
00:10:38.000 That's why Trump is president.
00:10:40.000 I mean, a lot of people think that Trump's election maybe shows that the U.S. electorate has moved right, right?
00:10:47.000 That we're more Republican or more free market.
00:10:50.000 But that's not what that election was about.
00:10:53.000 It was about the fact that we had a lousy economy and Trump was honest.
00:11:06.000 We're good to go.
00:11:20.000 The real unemployment number is much, much higher.
00:11:22.000 And Trump talked about that.
00:11:24.000 And he called out, you know, all the politicians from both sides, right?
00:11:27.000 Not just the Democrats, the Republicans.
00:11:29.000 And he said, look, I'm going to clean house.
00:11:31.000 I'm not a politician.
00:11:33.000 Vote for me, right?
00:11:34.000 I'm going to make America great again.
00:11:35.000 I'm going to drain the swamp.
00:11:37.000 You know, and he appealed to people's, you know, their fears about immigrants.
00:11:41.000 I'm going to build this wall as if the reason that things are bad is because we have too many immigrants taking away the jobs. 1.00
00:11:47.000 And so people decided, you know what?
00:11:49.000 What the hell?
00:11:50.000 Let me give this guy a trance because things are bad. 0.98
00:11:53.000 The media's lying to me.
00:11:54.000 Wall Street's lying to me.
00:11:56.000 And so, you know, Trump won.
00:11:58.000 But unfortunately, now Trump is part of the establishment, and now all of a sudden the fake economic numbers are legit.
00:12:06.000 Now every time there's an unemployment number out, he tweets about how it's the lowest it's ever been.
00:12:10.000 So I think that when We get this next recession, which is going to happen while Trump is president during this first term, which I think will be the only term.
00:12:22.000 Really?
00:12:22.000 Why do you think those two things?
00:12:24.000 Well, because I think the economy is going to fall into a severe recession.
00:12:28.000 What makes you say that?
00:12:29.000 Well, A, we're overdue, right?
00:12:32.000 I mean, you don't normally have an expansion that lasts as long as this one.
00:12:35.000 I think we're the second longest in history.
00:12:37.000 And if we go for another year, it'll be the longest expansion in history.
00:12:42.000 2008 is when it started to turn around?
00:12:44.000 2009. Yeah, kind of the end of 2009. So we're nine years in now?
00:12:48.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:12:49.000 And what is a usual expansion in compression?
00:12:51.000 I don't know, five, six years.
00:12:52.000 So this one is long.
00:12:54.000 But also, this one required...
00:12:56.000 More government stimulus than any other recovery.
00:13:01.000 And I don't think we actually recovered.
00:13:03.000 I think the government simply injected a bunch of cheap money into the economy and exacerbated the real problems, but reflated the bubbles in the stock market and the housing market.
00:13:14.000 But, you know, everybody talks about how the economy is doing so great, but it's really not much better than it was under Obama, if it's any better at all.
00:13:21.000 GDP growth for Trump's first year in office last year was 2.3%.
00:13:25.000 I mean, nothing great.
00:13:27.000 First quarter was 2%.
00:13:29.000 This quarter might be better than three.
00:13:31.000 Maybe, maybe not.
00:13:31.000 But, I mean, I think it's going to be the second quarter will probably be the best quarter of the year.
00:13:36.000 Maybe we're probably going to go downhill.
00:13:37.000 But, you know, last year was, I think, the weakest year of job growth since 2011. So people want to talk about how great everything is.
00:13:45.000 We're good to go.
00:14:16.000 The left and even the Fed is going to be able to blame it on Trump because Trump has come in and claimed credit for this great economy that he believes we have, and he's claimed credit for the records in the stock market.
00:14:29.000 But he's basically put his name on a bubble.
00:14:31.000 And when it pops, it's going to be hard for him to try to blame the next recession on Obama when he's already said, hey, this is my economy.
00:14:38.000 I created it.
00:14:40.000 And so people are going to be disappointed, and they're going to vote, I think, for another person whose promises change.
00:14:47.000 And unfortunately, that's going to come from the left.
00:14:50.000 So you think this is going to happen within the next three years?
00:14:54.000 Well, yeah.
00:14:55.000 What is the bubble?
00:14:56.000 What do you think is going to cause it to crash?
00:14:58.000 Commercial real estate?
00:14:59.000 Is it credit?
00:15:00.000 What is it?
00:15:00.000 Well, I mean, commercial real estate is expensive.
00:15:03.000 I mean, it's in a bubble, but that's not going to cause it.
00:15:06.000 I mean, air is going to come out of the bubble.
00:15:07.000 I think we would already be in a pretty severe recession now had it not been for Trump winning.
00:15:13.000 Had Hillary won, I think we would already be there.
00:15:16.000 What makes you say that?
00:15:18.000 Well, we got a We're paid for with debt.
00:15:36.000 We didn't shrink government.
00:15:38.000 If you make government smaller, that's great.
00:15:41.000 Then you can cut taxes, because now government doesn't need as much money, and you can relieve the taxpayer of the burden of paying for it, and that's great.
00:15:49.000 But if you just cut taxes, but you don't cut government spending, and of course what the Trump administration did was even worse.
00:15:56.000 They increased government spending.
00:15:58.000 We increased welfare spending.
00:15:59.000 We increased warfare spending.
00:16:01.000 And so spending is more, but they reduce their tax revenue.
00:16:05.000 So the deficits are just exploding out of control.
00:16:08.000 And those deficits are going to do more damage to the economy than the tax cuts were benefit, except you get the benefit first, maybe for the first year, and then you start to deal with the pain after that.
00:16:19.000 And so I think that's going to set in, you know, long before the end of Trump's term.
00:16:23.000 So you think that this is what is causing the economy to be in a really, at least to look like it's in a really healthy state right now?
00:16:32.000 Well, some of the numbers, right?
00:16:34.000 Some of the numbers look better.
00:16:36.000 But beneath the surface, again, it's not improving, just like it wasn't improving under Obama.
00:16:42.000 That's what laid the foundation for Trump's victory was because Obama and everybody kept talking about how great the recovery was.
00:16:49.000 But the average voter knew that that was all a bunch of nonsense because he wasn't living in that reality.
00:16:55.000 So if you were the financial adviser to the president, What would you tell him?
00:17:01.000 What would you do to try to keep the economy moving in the same direction?
00:17:06.000 Is it possible to ward off any kind of a crash right now?
00:17:09.000 Well, we don't want to keep it moving in the same direction.
00:17:11.000 I mean, it's in the same direction it was going in before Trump came in, and that's towards the edge of a cliff.
00:17:17.000 I mean, so what we do, we need is an about face.
00:17:20.000 And Trump is not doing that.
00:17:22.000 For the people that are listening to this that don't understand, they're saying, okay, the economy's supposed to be doing well.
00:17:30.000 Black unemployment's the lowest it's ever been.
00:17:32.000 Unemployment is down.
00:17:34.000 All these jobs have been created.
00:17:37.000 Yeah.
00:17:37.000 Well, remember, again, the unemployment rate is mainly down because so many people that are unemployed are no longer counted as part of the statistics.
00:17:45.000 So, you know, that's if you look at the labor force participation rate near a record low, I mean, certainly for men, it's the lowest it's been in the history of the republic.
00:17:54.000 But – and look at the workers to population.
00:17:57.000 So fewer and fewer people are actually working, and more and more of the people who aren't working are not included in the unemployment statistics.
00:18:05.000 So if you backed all those people in, right, able-bodied people who don't have jobs but should be working, then the unemployment rate is much, much higher.
00:18:13.000 So that doesn't really paint a good picture.
00:18:16.000 And then you look at the fact that so many Americans are unqualified.
00:18:20.000 There's a lot of jobs out there that go unfilled because American workers aren't qualified to fill those positions because, you know, we take a lot of our kids and we keep them in high school until they're 18, 19 years old.
00:18:34.000 Many of these kids should drop out of high school and learn a trade.
00:18:38.000 I mean, a lot of people, you know, they don't have the aptitude for, you know, academics.
00:18:42.000 There's no point in just being in high school.
00:18:44.000 A lot of times they're glorified daycare centers.
00:18:47.000 I think?
00:19:05.000 So they spend four, five, six years in college learning nothing of any real value in the market.
00:19:10.000 They accumulate a massive amount of debt in the process.
00:19:14.000 And so we have a labor force that's highly educated in that they've got a bunch of degrees.
00:19:19.000 Maybe they didn't learn anything, but they got a piece of paper.
00:19:21.000 But then what they have is a lot of debt.
00:19:23.000 And so we don't have a lot of people qualified to do a lot of things that need to be done. 0.98
00:19:27.000 So what would you tell the president if he said, look, Peter Schiff, I don't know shit about the economy. 0.97
00:19:34.000 You obviously do. 0.99
00:19:35.000 Help me out.
00:19:36.000 How do we stop this bubble?
00:19:38.000 Well, first of all, you can't stop it.
00:19:40.000 You've got to let it deflate.
00:19:41.000 But the question is, how does it deflate?
00:19:43.000 And then what do you propose as the solution?
00:19:45.000 See, the problem that Trump already made was when he first got elected, he should not have changed His perspective.
00:19:53.000 He shouldn't have said, hey, everything is great.
00:19:55.000 Now, he's planning on running his next campaign as Keep America Great.
00:19:59.000 When Trump ran for office, he said America was an economic wasteland, that it was a disaster.
00:20:05.000 He's been president for a little over a year.
00:20:07.000 All of a sudden, it's the greatest economy in the history of the country.
00:20:10.000 Which is not even close to being true.
00:20:12.000 But if he's going to try to run for reelection on, I've already made America great and now we just want to keep it great, that's not going to resonate.
00:20:20.000 So what he should have done from day one is leveled with the American public.
00:20:24.000 Again, this is how bad the problem is and this is what it's going to take to solve it.
00:20:29.000 Because there's a lot of, you know, pain, short-term pain that we're going to need to go through in order to come to the other side, in order to get rid of all these problems.
00:20:39.000 Like right now, look at the trade, right?
00:20:41.000 Trump is making a big deal about the trade deficits and he's launching tariffs.
00:20:46.000 He's going to have this trade war that he's convinced that we could win.
00:20:49.000 And this is very misguided.
00:20:52.000 The trade deficits are We're good to go.
00:21:11.000 We don't save enough.
00:21:12.000 We don't make the right capital investment.
00:21:14.000 That's because interest rates have been kept too low.
00:21:17.000 Our tax code favors debt.
00:21:20.000 And we have a lot of regulations that make American businesses less competitive.
00:21:26.000 And so the result is that we import a lot of products rather than making them ourselves.
00:21:30.000 And it's not because the other countries aren't fair or because they have tariffs.
00:21:36.000 Are very low around the world.
00:21:38.000 I mean, tariffs are not the problem.
00:21:40.000 And so if Trump is simply going to erect tariffs, all that's going to do is tax the American public, because the American public has to pay the tariffs whenever they buy imported products.
00:21:50.000 So this is not going to turn the economy around.
00:21:54.000 And Trump is right.
00:21:55.000 He points out that, well, at one point in time, America ran on tariffs, which is true.
00:22:02.000 During the 19th century, the government raised money primarily by tariffs, but we didn't have an income tax.
00:22:09.000 And so this is the irony of it.
00:22:11.000 The reason we have an income tax today is because the populist politicians of the day told the American voter, if we can tax the rich with an income tax, Then we can get rid of tariffs that the average person is paying.
00:22:27.000 So the average person understood that tariffs cost them money.
00:22:31.000 And the politicians said, let's get rid of these tariffs and let's just tax the rich. 1.00
00:22:35.000 And the income tax that was originally proposed really was a tax on the very rich.
00:22:40.000 I mean, even doctors and lawyers didn't pay it.
00:22:42.000 I mean, you had to be super rich before you pay the tax.
00:22:46.000 And then it was like, you know, 1% to 4%.
00:22:48.000 So it was a small tax.
00:22:50.000 And it wasn't taken from your paycheck.
00:22:52.000 I mean, first of all, if you got a paycheck, you didn't pay the tax.
00:22:55.000 But we didn't have withholding until 1943. That was part of the victory tax to pay for the Second World War.
00:23:01.000 But Americans were told, let's tax the rich and you won't have to pay tariffs anymore.
00:23:08.000 Well, the minute the government got the nose under the tent, all of a sudden now the income tax affects everybody.
00:23:15.000 People pay a lot more in income taxes today than they used to pay in tariffs.
00:23:19.000 But now, now the president wants to bring the tariffs back on top of the income tax.
00:23:25.000 I mean, if Trump wants to repeal the income tax and get rid of it entirely, and then have some tariffs, I'd be okay with that.
00:23:31.000 But you can't do that unless you dramatically shrink the size of government, which is the most important thing that Trump needs to do, but what he's not doing.
00:23:39.000 He has to make the military smaller, not bigger.
00:23:42.000 I mean, he's talking about a Space Force.
00:23:44.000 I mean, we can't even afford the Air Force, Navy, Marines that we got now.
00:23:47.000 We don't have enough money for a Space Force, but we have to cut everything.
00:23:51.000 We've got to cut entitlements.
00:23:53.000 Don't you think we should be the first people to have a Space Force?
00:23:55.000 What if the Russians come up with a Space Force? 0.86
00:23:57.000 No one's going to come up with a Space Force.
00:23:58.000 We're out of luck.
00:23:59.000 What are they going to do with a Space Force? 0.97
00:24:00.000 Who are we going to fight in space?
00:24:02.000 Maybe we fight the Russians in space. 0.92
00:24:04.000 Why would we fight them in space?
00:24:06.000 They're down on Earth.
00:24:07.000 Well, maybe they want to fight in space.
00:24:08.000 It's more novel.
00:24:09.000 Yeah, I don't think anybody wants to fight, right?
00:24:13.000 No, but they want to be protected, right?
00:24:15.000 Yeah, I think we got that covered.
00:24:16.000 I think we've got a pretty good-sized military.
00:24:19.000 I don't think anyone's going to mess with us.
00:24:21.000 The problem is our economy.
00:24:22.000 So when you say let the bubble crash, like what would that entail?
00:24:27.000 Well, basically, look, the problem – the basic problems with the US economy, and this is because of monetary policy, fiscal policy, is we don't save anything, right?
00:24:35.000 And because we don't save enough, we don't invest enough, we don't produce enough, we don't make enough real things, right?
00:24:40.000 I mean when Trump wants to say that foreigners are taking advantage of us by running these huge trade surpluses, he's got it backwards.
00:24:47.000 We're taking advantage of them.
00:24:49.000 Like the Chinese are sending us all these products that they worked hard to produce.
00:24:53.000 And they had to use real resources, land, labor, capital to make these products.
00:24:58.000 And they send them here. 0.68
00:24:59.000 And what do we give them?
00:25:01.000 We give them IOUs.
00:25:02.000 We give them a piece of paper and they buy our treasury bonds.
00:25:05.000 So in the short run...
00:25:07.000 Americans are just putting everything on a credit card, right? 0.97
00:25:09.000 We're living a higher standard of living because we can consume what we didn't make.
00:25:13.000 But when you do that, you become poorer.
00:25:16.000 See, America used to be the richest creditor nation in the world, right?
00:25:19.000 The world owed us a lot of money.
00:25:21.000 Today, we're the world's biggest debtor nation.
00:25:23.000 How did we go from being the biggest creditor to the biggest debtor?
00:25:26.000 It was trade deficits.
00:25:27.000 Every year, we keep borrowing money to consume.
00:25:30.000 And what this has done is this has turned a rich nation into a poor nation.
00:25:34.000 But we just don't live like a poor nation yet because we're still borrowing.
00:25:38.000 Yeah, and you could be a rich individual yet maintain a rich lifestyle on debt.
00:25:44.000 But eventually, you know, that's going to catch up with you and then your lifestyle is going to come crashing down.
00:25:49.000 And this is what's going to happen.
00:25:51.000 But what we should do instead of having a crisis imposed on us Globally, with a crisis in the dollar and a crisis in our bond market, we should do it ourselves.
00:26:01.000 We should set these forces in motion ourselves.
00:26:04.000 So what we have to do is shrink government, right?
00:26:06.000 We have to cut a lot of government spending, get rid of a lot of government agencies and departments to get government out of the way so we can lower taxes legitimately.
00:26:15.000 And then we have to allow the Federal Reserve to let the market set interest rates.
00:26:18.000 Interest rates have to be much higher than they are now, right?
00:26:21.000 Because that's going to encourage people to save.
00:26:23.000 If interest rates are high, you'll put your money in the bank to earn that high rate of interest.
00:26:27.000 When money goes into a bank, it can get loaned out to businesses.
00:26:30.000 Right now all that money is going to government or it's in the corporate bond market.
00:26:35.000 We're good to go.
00:26:53.000 You buy something if you have the money to pay for it.
00:26:56.000 You don't just put it on a credit card.
00:26:58.000 And if credit card interest rates went up and if credit was contracted so that credit card companies were not giving out as much credit, they're giving out a lot of credit now because the government is misdirecting it.
00:27:09.000 But if we slow down our consumption, we increase our savings and investment, then the economy can actually grow.
00:27:15.000 But if interest rates go up, Asset prices have to come down.
00:27:19.000 The stock market has to come down a lot.
00:27:21.000 Real estate prices have to come down a lot.
00:27:23.000 Now, that means people are going to lose money.
00:27:25.000 They're not going to be happy about that.
00:27:26.000 Yeah, this sounds counterintuitive to everything that I've always heard about how to boost up the economy.
00:27:30.000 The idea would be that spending and people buying things is great for the economy.
00:27:34.000 We need more of that.
00:27:35.000 No, that's putting the cart before the horse. 0.93
00:27:37.000 You can't buy something that doesn't exist.
00:27:40.000 Something has to be produced before it can be consumed.
00:27:43.000 So it's the production that drives the economic train, not consumption.
00:27:47.000 See, right now we're just consuming what the Chinese produce. 0.99
00:27:50.000 But the consumption doesn't mean anything unless you produce something first.
00:27:54.000 So you drive an economy by creating supply.
00:27:57.000 It's supply that creates demand.
00:28:00.000 If you just try to create demand without the supply, it's just inflation.
00:28:03.000 It's weird, too, that we keep hearing things about Chinese telecommunications companies like Huawei in particular.
00:28:10.000 They're always telling you to not buy their stuff.
00:28:12.000 There was something in the paper today about Huawei.
00:28:16.000 It was about, I think, another country saying no to these.
00:28:22.000 I guess Huawei in particular is the third largest cell phone manufacturer in the world, and they have a close tie with the communist government.
00:28:30.000 They believe there might be some shenanigans going on with their electronics.
00:28:35.000 I don't know.
00:28:36.000 I mean, I'm not familiar with that.
00:28:38.000 I mean, I know that there's constant talk about trying to, oh, you know, just don't buy certain products.
00:28:46.000 Well, Huawei, they were actually, the State Department told people to stop buying them.
00:28:51.000 A national security threat or something?
00:28:53.000 Something along the lines of third-party spying.
00:28:58.000 What does it say here?
00:29:00.000 Australia to ban Huawei from 5G rollout amid security concerns.
00:29:05.000 But U.S. had an issue, and I think the U.S. issue was slightly different.
00:29:09.000 U.S. was the State Department that was saying for security concerns to not...
00:29:15.000 I don't know.
00:29:16.000 But, you know, whenever they talk, look, they're talking about the auto tariffs, and they say it's national security, as if somehow my buying a foreign car is somehow jeopardizing national security.
00:29:26.000 What is that?
00:29:27.000 I don't know.
00:29:27.000 I mean, the Canadians have called Trump out on it.
00:29:30.000 So what do you mean?
00:29:31.000 We fought as allies in every single war.
00:29:34.000 How are you saying that you have to put tariffs on Canadian products?
00:29:38.000 So why is Trump doing this?
00:29:40.000 Look, again, he's going after the symptom.
00:29:43.000 Trade deficits are the consequence of a problem.
00:29:46.000 Most politicians ignore the trade deficits, right?
00:29:49.000 At least Donald Trump is putting them on the spotlight and saying, look, this is a problem.
00:29:54.000 It is a problem, but not for the reason that Trump believes.
00:29:56.000 In the short run, in the here and now, the trade deficits benefit America because Because the world is subsidizing our standard of living.
00:30:05.000 We're getting to buy things that we otherwise wouldn't be able to have.
00:30:08.000 I mean, without these trade deficits, we wouldn't have all these consumer goods on all these shelves.
00:30:12.000 I mean, people would not be able to buy stuff.
00:30:13.000 Prices would be much higher if we had to make stuff ourselves.
00:30:17.000 By having the Chinese make it, you know, it's a lot cheaper. 1.00
00:30:21.000 Plus, you know, it's great for our environment because, you know, we don't have to pollute our own air because the factories are over there.
00:30:28.000 So he's right that it's a problem, but in that...
00:30:31.000 It's a reflection of the fact that the economy is inefficient, and that's what needs to be addressed.
00:30:38.000 It's like, you know, we have cancer, but you just can't put Band-Aids on the blemishes or something to cover it up.
00:30:43.000 You got to actually get to the source of those blemishes, which is the Federal Reserve and their bad monetary policy and our government policy, our fiscal policy, our regulatory policy.
00:30:54.000 We need to have that type of change, and then the trade deficits will go away.
00:30:59.000 But if we simply try to Put tariffs on.
00:31:02.000 It's just going to make our own problems worse.
00:31:03.000 All that's going to do is make prices higher. 0.92
00:31:06.000 It's just going to mean that Americans are going to have to spend more money buying stuff.
00:31:09.000 And it also actually undermines a lot of American businesses that export into countries that are retaliating.
00:31:15.000 And also, a lot of U.S. businesses import components, and then they assemble the components here, but now those imported parts are going to be more expensive, and so their net exports are more expensive, and so they become less efficient.
00:31:27.000 The people that are supporting Trump, the people that are happy with the way things are going, have said that him lowering taxes for corporations encourages growth, and it gets more jobs, and there's more economic activity.
00:31:42.000 Does that make sense?
00:31:44.000 If we eliminate taxes, yeah, that'd be great.
00:31:47.000 I mean, the lower taxes are, the better it's going to be, but not if you borrow the money to pay for the tax cuts.
00:31:52.000 So the idea is if the government now has to go into the market and borrow money that it no longer collects in taxes, that's going to have an impact on the economy.
00:32:03.000 That's going to further deplete our savings pool. 0.93
00:32:06.000 That's going to put real upward pressure on interest rates, and obviously the Fed is trying to counteract that.
00:32:12.000 But, you know, what They did with the tax code, though.
00:32:15.000 They dramatically complicated it.
00:32:17.000 I mean, there's a lot more complexity in the code now than there was before, not like it wasn't complex before.
00:32:23.000 So initially, they talked about simplifying the code.
00:32:25.000 They didn't do that.
00:32:26.000 They made the code a lot more complex.
00:32:30.000 And they certainly, you know, they raised lower taxes for some people, but they raised taxes for other people.
00:32:37.000 I mean, depending on what state you're in, there are a lot of people now that are going to pay higher taxes.
00:32:41.000 What people are doing?
00:32:42.000 Well, people in California.
00:32:43.000 You got a 13% income tax in California that's no longer deductible on your federal income tax.
00:32:50.000 So that's a new thing?
00:32:52.000 Well, yeah.
00:32:52.000 I mean, up until this year, you could deduct your state income tax from your federal income tax.
00:32:57.000 So the effective tax rate was maybe 40% less.
00:33:02.000 Because it was just money you would have sent to Washington, so instead you sent it to Sacramento.
00:33:06.000 But basically, the state tax rates are almost double now what they were last year in the way it impacts the payer.
00:33:15.000 So there's a big increase in state tax.
00:33:17.000 This is for individuals.
00:33:18.000 You didn't know that?
00:33:19.000 No.
00:33:20.000 Yeah, you know, you ought to move to Puerto Rico with me.
00:33:23.000 I know, but I hear you guys don't have any power.
00:33:25.000 Well, we got power now.
00:33:26.000 Now?
00:33:27.000 How many months did it take?
00:33:28.000 Well, I have a generator.
00:33:30.000 Yeah, but you're the only one.
00:33:31.000 You're like Mad Max out there.
00:33:33.000 Do you have armed guards standing outside making sure nobody steals your water?
00:33:36.000 No, it's not.
00:33:38.000 In fact, we're laughing about it, but I was on your show a year ago.
00:33:43.000 We talked a lot about Puerto Rico.
00:33:45.000 It was post-Trump.
00:33:46.000 Right.
00:33:47.000 Trump had already won.
00:33:48.000 Trump had won, but it was before Maria.
00:33:51.000 Right.
00:33:52.000 And so I was on the show, and we were talking about Puerto Rico.
00:33:55.000 Yeah.
00:33:56.000 And we also talked about cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin and stuff like that.
00:34:00.000 But since then, hundreds and hundreds of crypto guys...
00:34:07.000 Have moved to Puerto Rico.
00:34:08.000 I mean, some of my neighbors now are these crypto millionaires.
00:34:11.000 I see them now on the beach.
00:34:13.000 They weren't there a year ago.
00:34:15.000 They're there now.
00:34:16.000 They call it Portopia.
00:34:19.000 They all want to come there because there's no capital gains tax.
00:34:22.000 But I got to kind of credit you because I think a lot of these guys didn't know about it until they heard about it on this podcast.
00:34:28.000 And they said, wait a minute.
00:34:29.000 There's no taxes down there in Puerto Rico.
00:34:31.000 And now they're all there.
00:34:33.000 And they moved there just in time for the hurricane.
00:34:35.000 No, they moved after the hurricane.
00:34:37.000 I moved before the hurricane.
00:34:39.000 Is moving after the hurricane a better move financially?
00:34:41.000 It's probably cheaper land.
00:34:43.000 Can you buy easier?
00:34:46.000 I can't even tell.
00:34:47.000 Some of the real estate has actually gone up.
00:34:50.000 Really?
00:34:51.000 Yeah, and the real estate that was untouched.
00:34:53.000 My community weathered a storm pretty well, so maybe it made it more desirable.
00:34:58.000 Really?
00:34:58.000 Why did your community do so well?
00:35:02.000 Even though I'm on the beach, the elevation is very high, so we didn't get any flooding.
00:35:07.000 And I guess the construction is much better there.
00:35:10.000 The houses are built better, so they didn't withstand the damage.
00:35:14.000 And the community got up and running a lot quicker.
00:35:17.000 How long were you without power?
00:35:19.000 Oh, there was, well, officially there was probably no power for a couple of months.
00:35:22.000 But I have a, you know, my condo has power just as a big generator.
00:35:25.000 And so we had condo power there right away.
00:35:28.000 But the house that I, I ended up buying a house there too, right before the hurricane.
00:35:32.000 And I didn't have the generator put in yet.
00:35:34.000 So the house didn't have power for months and months, which just exacerbated.
00:35:37.000 I had some damage to the house.
00:35:39.000 And then the fact that there was no power made it worse because it got very humid in there.
00:35:43.000 But I've since purchased a generator and I've got it all installed.
00:35:50.000 I think?
00:36:10.000 And they all moved out to Puerto Rico because I moved my business there.
00:36:14.000 This was in 2013. I moved my asset management company, Europe Pacific Asset Management, moved it to Puerto Rico.
00:36:21.000 And so these guys moved out.
00:36:23.000 They're single guys.
00:36:23.000 And I mentioned that they were having a good time there.
00:36:25.000 There's a lot of very beautiful women in Puerto Rico. 1.00
00:36:29.000 I mentioned, I think, five Miss Universes have been from Puerto Rico, which is a lot for a small place.
00:36:35.000 And I said that they have a good time there because the labor force participation rate in Puerto Rico is terrible.
00:36:41.000 I mean, hardly anybody has a job.
00:36:43.000 Maybe a third of the people who should be working are working.
00:36:47.000 And that's, again, because of the socialism down there, the welfare state that's there.
00:36:52.000 And the minimum wage in Puerto Rico is effectively like, you know, it's the medium wage.
00:36:56.000 It's like having a $15, $17 an hour minimum wage year.
00:36:59.000 So it destroys a lot of employment opportunity on the island.
00:37:02.000 So I mentioned that, you know, they have a good time down there because there's a lot of women. 1.00
00:37:07.000 And if you're a guy and you got a job, I mean, you know, you could write your own ticket.
00:37:10.000 That's a big plus to have a job because women want to date guys with jobs. 1.00
00:37:15.000 That was controversial?
00:37:17.000 You know, you wouldn't think it would be, but all of a sudden, all these big guys down there in Puerto Rico, they'll probably say something again because obviously they watch your podcast, but a couple of really big guys were calling me out saying that I'm insulting Puerto Rican women,
00:37:33.000 like, you know, I'm calling them whores or something because I said that they want to date guys with jobs. 1.00
00:37:37.000 Well, doesn't every woman want to date a guy with a job? 0.99
00:37:41.000 Yes, it's not just Puerto Rican.
00:37:43.000 What women are running around going, I don't want a guy with a job? 1.00
00:37:45.000 No, exactly.
00:37:46.000 Of course a girl wants a guy that has a job. 1.00
00:37:49.000 Every girl.
00:37:50.000 Yeah, I mean, probably one of the main reasons we get jobs is to get girls. 1.00
00:37:54.000 Oh, yeah.
00:37:55.000 I mean, generally, the more attractive the woman, the better your job's going to have to be to attract her. 0.97
00:38:02.000 Yeah, there's a term for that, right?
00:38:05.000 Hypergamy? 0.64
00:38:05.000 Like, women tend to gravitate towards men with higher social status and higher incomes. 0.64
00:38:11.000 Well, first of all, if you want a guy to take you out on a date, if he doesn't have a job, where's he going to take you?
00:38:15.000 There you go.
00:38:17.000 I didn't think it was a controversial statement.
00:38:19.000 I don't think it is.
00:38:20.000 I think people are just making much ado out of nothing these days.
00:38:22.000 And they can write a blog and then you talk about what they wrote because you were upset that them being upset at you.
00:38:27.000 So you come out on the podcast and talk about it again.
00:38:29.000 So you're feeding it.
00:38:30.000 No, but I'm correcting it.
00:38:31.000 I just want to say that there's nothing wrong with a woman wanting a guy that has a good job. 0.79
00:38:38.000 Not only that, it's favorable.
00:38:40.000 Well, yeah.
00:38:41.000 Well, it's not only just because he can take her on a date.
00:38:43.000 I mean, when a woman is on a date with a guy, I mean, everybody is a potential husband, and you've got to bring something to the table.
00:38:49.000 You've got to have ambition.
00:38:51.000 You've got to be a go-getter.
00:38:53.000 You just can't be living in your parents' basement.
00:38:57.000 I mean, you've got to get a job to get the money.
00:39:00.000 And then when you get the money, you get the power to get the women. 0.85
00:39:02.000 What were they saying?
00:39:03.000 What was the protest?
00:39:04.000 That I was insulting Puerto Rican women.
00:39:06.000 By saying they want a man with a job? 0.60
00:39:08.000 Yeah, like they're just all gold diggers or something.
00:39:10.000 I didn't say the guy, you know, it was just they only wanted money.
00:39:15.000 But look, I mean, having a job is a key thing.
00:39:18.000 I mean, we don't care.
00:39:19.000 The guys don't care as much what the woman does. 1.00
00:39:21.000 But women, I mean, that's a big thing. 1.00
00:39:23.000 Almost nothing.
00:39:24.000 They don't care at all.
00:39:25.000 If she's hot, the guy makes a lot of money, and the girl's hot, we don't care. 1.00
00:39:29.000 She's hot and nice. 1.00
00:39:30.000 She knows how to read.
00:39:31.000 If a guy was going to set up a guy, right?
00:39:34.000 With a friend.
00:39:35.000 The first thing the guy is going to ask is, what does she look like? 0.60
00:39:38.000 That's the first question.
00:39:39.000 Is she hot? 1.00
00:39:39.000 Is she nice? 1.00
00:39:39.000 Is she hot? 1.00
00:39:40.000 Right.
00:39:41.000 If a woman is going to tell a girlfriend about a guy, what's the first question? 0.86
00:39:46.000 Probably what he looks like first.
00:39:47.000 No.
00:39:48.000 What does he do?
00:39:49.000 First.
00:39:49.000 I guarantee it's what does he do.
00:39:50.000 Really?
00:39:50.000 What does he do for a living?
00:39:51.000 I think first it's what he looks like.
00:39:53.000 Second is what is he doing?
00:39:55.000 No, no.
00:39:55.000 I think what he looks like is lower down on...
00:39:57.000 I think it's what does he do for a living?
00:39:59.000 Does he have a nice personality?
00:40:00.000 Does he have a good sense of humor?
00:40:02.000 I think how does he look is a little bit lower down on a woman's totem pole of...
00:40:06.000 Depends on how hot she is. 1.00
00:40:09.000 Well, maybe.
00:40:11.000 Yeah, it depends on how good she's doing in the marketplace. 1.00
00:40:13.000 Yeah.
00:40:14.000 But I mean, but all this, I mean, it was almost part of the whole political correctness thing of it, like, or the Me Too, like, you can't say something.
00:40:24.000 Anything that you say is going to be spun, like, this is against women, because I'm stating something that's very obvious.
00:40:31.000 Right.
00:40:33.000 You can't state obvious anymore.
00:40:35.000 No!
00:40:36.000 No!
00:40:36.000 I mean, it's all...
00:40:38.000 But you can, because I think these outrage peddlers that make these articles and write these blogs, who the fuck is agreeing with them? 0.99
00:40:45.000 I just don't buy it. 0.91
00:40:47.000 I think what they're doing is they're striking a chord and a few malcontents go along with it, but you read those things and you think, like, wow, there's some validity to this because it's in, you know, X publication.
00:40:59.000 And so I got a comment on this.
00:41:01.000 They're misrepresenting what I said.
00:41:03.000 But they're outrage merchants. 0.98
00:41:05.000 Yeah, and everybody wants to act like you can't say something that's offensive to anybody.
00:41:10.000 Like, if somebody gets offended, then, you know, like, you know, this, what was this, you know, this, one of these contestants, I read this story, but one of the contestants on The Bachelorette, Apparently, on his Instagram page, he liked some jokes that,
00:41:28.000 you know, maybe off-color, a little bit offensive jokes, that right-wing, somebody on the right had posted on their Instagram page.
00:41:35.000 And it was like a big deal.
00:41:36.000 He had to take down his whole Instagram page.
00:41:39.000 I mean, it's obviously jokes.
00:41:41.000 They're jokes.
00:41:42.000 Jokes are offensive.
00:41:44.000 That's part of what makes them funny.
00:41:45.000 I mean, almost all the jokes offend somebody.
00:41:48.000 But now you can't even have a sense of humor.
00:41:51.000 Everything has to be, you know, you can't offend anybody, which you don't have a right not to be offended.
00:41:57.000 That's the whole part of freedom of speech.
00:41:59.000 People are going to say things and do things that you might be offended by, and you just got to deal with it.
00:42:05.000 You can't be looking like, you know, I got to have a law against that, or But these offense merchants, these people that get offended, that's their currency.
00:42:16.000 They trade in being offended.
00:42:19.000 And then once they find something that's in any way offensive, they just start writing blogs about it and making videos about it.
00:42:26.000 And that's their in.
00:42:28.000 Their in is finding something Peter Schiff said about Puerto Rican women.
00:42:32.000 Just saying Puerto Rican women's offensive. 1.00
00:42:35.000 Why?
00:42:35.000 Just saying it.
00:42:36.000 Because this is the world we live in. 1.00
00:42:38.000 A white guy like you, wealthy guy, you're going to talk about Puerto Rican women, you fucking piece of shit. 1.00
00:42:44.000 Yeah, well, I mean, they're white. 1.00
00:42:46.000 I mean, they're a little darker skin than most Caucasians.
00:42:49.000 Yeah, but you can't say that.
00:42:50.000 In this day and age, they're people of color.
00:42:52.000 They're Latino.
00:42:52.000 They're people of color.
00:42:53.000 Well, what color am I? I got a little color to me.
00:42:57.000 That's an interesting conversation I just had with a friend of mine who claimed she's black.
00:43:01.000 I'm darker than you.
00:43:02.000 How are you black?
00:43:03.000 Yeah.
00:43:03.000 But it's all – look, it's this whole mentality that people have now about not being offended is about feeling that they have a right to something or not being entitled.
00:43:12.000 Are people confusing a privilege with a right?
00:43:17.000 Right.
00:43:17.000 Right?
00:43:17.000 So like you have all these groups that demand women's rights or gay rights.
00:43:22.000 Women or gays, they don't have rights because they're women. 1.00
00:43:26.000 Right?
00:43:27.000 We all have individual rights.
00:43:29.000 Right?
00:43:29.000 And so men and women have rights because they're individuals.
00:43:32.000 They don't get a separate right because they fit into a group.
00:43:36.000 All that is about privilege.
00:43:38.000 And you don't have special privileges granted to you by the Constitution.
00:43:42.000 We all have rights.
00:43:44.000 When people try to pretend that a privilege or a group privilege and try to give that the status of a right, I know you talked about it on your podcast.
00:43:54.000 We had the Supreme Court ruling recently regarding the gay couple that wanted a wedding cake.
00:44:01.000 And they sued because the baker wouldn't make a wedding cake with a couple of guys on the top and decorate it in a way that it was obviously for a gay wedding.
00:44:15.000 There's a lot of misunderstanding about that, and I read something recently that not only did they not do that, but they weren't making custom cakes.
00:44:23.000 So they didn't make custom cakes for weddings.
00:44:26.000 So when the gay couple came in and said they wanted a custom cake, they said, no, we don't make that. 1.00
00:44:31.000 That was also part of the problem.
00:44:33.000 That's not something they even do.
00:44:34.000 They would have sold them a cake they already had, but they didn't have one with two dudes holding hands.
00:44:39.000 Well, the bigger problem is, first of all, They – it's not like you have this gay couple that just went into a bakery and then they were denied the ability to buy a cake.
00:44:50.000 They probably went to 100 bakeries to find the one that wouldn't bake them a cake. 0.96
00:44:55.000 They did specifically do that.
00:44:56.000 That was part of the story was that they wanted someone to deny them.
00:44:59.000 Yes.
00:45:00.000 So they had a story.
00:45:01.000 Right.
00:45:01.000 And of course, you know, if you're a baker, right, I don't know what the margins are on wedding cakes, but wedding cakes are probably like the holy grail of cakes, right?
00:45:09.000 I mean, if you're sitting there in the small bakery shop, you're waiting for somebody to call for a wedding cake, because those are the biggest cakes you could make, very expensive cakes.
00:45:18.000 So everybody wants to do a wedding cake.
00:45:20.000 Nobody cares whether there's two guys or a guy and a girl on the top of it.
00:45:24.000 You just want to make the money that you're going to get from baking a wedding cake.
00:45:27.000 Now, you come across a guy...
00:45:28.000 Who just has a strong religious conviction. 0.87
00:45:31.000 He just, you know, doesn't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding. 1.00
00:45:36.000 Okay. 0.63
00:45:37.000 I mean, he's the one that's losing.
00:45:38.000 He's losing out on the commission to bake the cake.
00:45:42.000 I mean, the gay couple isn't hurt by that.
00:45:46.000 There's so many bakeries that would bake him that cake.
00:45:49.000 But were they denied because of religious reasons?
00:45:53.000 Is that why the people said they wouldn't make the cake?
00:45:55.000 Yes, they said it was religious reasons, and that's what the Supreme Court, I think, went on religious freedom.
00:46:00.000 But as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter what their religion is.
00:46:04.000 Nobody is required to perform a service for somebody else if they don't want to.
00:46:09.000 That's slavery, right?
00:46:11.000 What if it was a black couple?
00:46:12.000 Yes. 0.96
00:46:13.000 And what if these people are racist? 0.98
00:46:14.000 And what if they said, we don't want to bake a cake for a black couple? 0.99
00:46:17.000 Well, then the black couple can go find a bakery that will bake them a cake. 0.91
00:46:21.000 I mean, what's the odds of there being a racist baker?
00:46:27.000 In today's day and age, it's less than ever before.
00:46:30.000 But still possible, right?
00:46:32.000 I'm Jewish, right?
00:46:34.000 Let's say there's an anti-Semite baker, right? 0.89
00:46:38.000 If I go in there and the guy says, you know, oh, I don't want to bake cake for Jews, fine. 1.00
00:46:44.000 You know, because let's assume that he knows I'm Jewish, he hates Jews, and he spits in the cake. 0.96
00:46:49.000 I mean, I'd like to know, like right up front, that this guy who's about to bake my cake hates Jews. 0.94
00:46:55.000 So then I'll go and buy my cake from somebody who doesn't hate Jews because I don't want to worry about what I'm going to be putting in my mouth.
00:47:01.000 I mean, why would you want to even force somebody to bake a cake for you that you've got to eat?
00:47:06.000 If you're forcing him to do it.
00:47:08.000 Or, you know, this is all nonsense.
00:47:10.000 But, you know, the idea that you can't discriminate, that you can't make choices, right?
00:47:15.000 I have a right as an individual to, you know, to do things that I want to do, but I can't force somebody else.
00:47:23.000 Rights are about – the government can – you can't rob from me and you can't steal from me.
00:47:28.000 So you can't take away from me something that I have.
00:47:30.000 But I can't force you to give me something I don't have.
00:47:33.000 And just because I feel a certain way – like if you go back to the gay couple to say, okay, you can't discriminate.
00:47:40.000 How did the Supreme Court rule on that, by the way?
00:47:42.000 Well, they upheld the right of this individual, but it wasn't like a...
00:47:46.000 The right of the individual to not sell the cake?
00:47:48.000 To not bake the cake.
00:47:48.000 But I think it had to do with some esoteric state law.
00:47:52.000 It wasn't a definitive ruling that says that you have a right to discriminate, which I believe you do. 0.94
00:47:58.000 I don't think the government should be discriminating, but private individuals.
00:48:01.000 But the point I was about to make is for gay. 0.72
00:48:05.000 So let's say that you, Joe Rogan, were... 0.98
00:48:10.000 Working as a gigolo.
00:48:12.000 That was your job. 1.00
00:48:13.000 You just had sex with women and you charge them money. 1.00
00:48:16.000 Nice. 1.00
00:48:16.000 Yeah, that's your job. 1.00
00:48:18.000 Now, what if a dude comes up to you and wants to partake in your services? 0.99
00:48:22.000 Do you have to serve him?
00:48:24.000 That's not the job, sir.
00:48:26.000 The job is women. 1.00
00:48:27.000 No, no, you can't discriminate.
00:48:28.000 What?
00:48:29.000 Right?
00:48:30.000 That's my point.
00:48:30.000 I can't discriminate in terms of having sex with men?
00:48:33.000 Well, not if you're doing it for a business, not if it's your business. 0.99
00:48:36.000 Well, what the hell?
00:48:36.000 My job is gigolo.
00:48:38.000 Gigolo is a guy who has sex with women. 1.00
00:48:39.000 No, no. 1.00
00:48:40.000 That's the job.
00:48:40.000 It's like you're asking a firefighter to dig a hole for a pool.
00:48:43.000 No, no, no. 1.00
00:48:43.000 Gigolo is a guy that has sex for money. 1.00
00:48:45.000 Doesn't matter whether he's a guy or a girl. 1.00
00:48:47.000 No, no, no. 1.00
00:48:47.000 Sex with women, bro. 1.00
00:48:49.000 Look, I got a business card. 1.00
00:48:51.000 But then you're discriminating against men. 0.99
00:48:52.000 How could you deny a man the opportunity to have sex with you? 0.99
00:48:57.000 Interesting. 0.97
00:48:58.000 See, it's the same thing.
00:48:58.000 You can't look, and you can say, what if it's not sex?
00:49:01.000 Okay, what if it's just massages?
00:49:04.000 What if you're a masseuse, but for some reason you just don't want to massage guys.
00:49:08.000 You just only want to massage girls. 1.00
00:49:09.000 Shouldn't you be able to do that? 0.96
00:49:13.000 Yes.
00:49:13.000 Because it's touching people.
00:49:18.000 If you want your business to be limited, all I do is massage chicks, bro. 1.00
00:49:22.000 I don't touch dudes. 0.99
00:49:23.000 It's gross.
00:49:24.000 But you should have a right to do that.
00:49:26.000 But then once you extrapolate it, you just make a decision.
00:49:29.000 Now, you could make more money if you massage girls and guys because you have a bigger market. 0.99
00:49:34.000 But if you want to limit your business opportunity to just women, well, that hurts you.
00:49:40.000 It's your right to do that.
00:49:41.000 Yeah, like a massage therapist that doesn't want to massage guys, you never hear about those. 1.00
00:49:46.000 And you don't get offended.
00:49:48.000 Men don't get offended by that. 0.97
00:49:49.000 Like, what?
00:49:50.000 You won't massage me? 0.92
00:49:51.000 What, do you hate men? 0.94
00:49:52.000 Well, but you could do it as a customer. 0.96
00:49:55.000 I mean, let's just say I want a massage, and I can say, look, I prefer to get a massage by a woman. 1.00
00:50:01.000 Yes.
00:50:01.000 I mean, most guys would probably prefer to get a massage by a woman.
00:50:04.000 Yeah.
00:50:04.000 Well, that's totally legal.
00:50:06.000 They always let the customer.
00:50:08.000 The customer can discriminate.
00:50:09.000 The employee can discriminate. 0.97
00:50:11.000 Nobody would say, hey, let's say I happen to be black and I want to work for a black boss. 0.62
00:50:18.000 Nobody would say that was wrong. 0.93
00:50:20.000 I could go to a white boss and I could say, I'm sorry, I don't want to take the job because I want to work for someone black. 0.97
00:50:26.000 You can't sue me for not taking the job. 0.99
00:50:29.000 Actively seeking out a black boss, which is the difference between that and being approached by a bunch of white people and saying, no, I hate white people. 0.99
00:50:36.000 No, no, no. 0.99
00:50:36.000 I don't want to work for you. 0.99
00:50:37.000 No, the point is, if a white person or even a black person was seeking out a job applicant of a particular, they would say that's illegal.
00:50:45.000 You can't discriminate. 0.75
00:50:46.000 But the employer can do it all.
00:50:48.000 The employee can do it all he wants.
00:50:50.000 Right.
00:50:50.000 Customers, right?
00:50:51.000 If I was a gay couple...
00:50:55.000 Wanted to have a cake baked.
00:50:57.000 And they went into a bakery and they said, yes, we'd like to have a cake baked. 0.96
00:51:01.000 Are you straight or gay? 0.99
00:51:03.000 Because we want our cake to be baked by a gay baker. 1.00
00:51:06.000 And the straight guy said, no, I'm straight. 0.99
00:51:08.000 Sorry.
00:51:09.000 Fine. 0.97
00:51:09.000 They can keep searching until they found a gay baker. 0.97
00:51:12.000 And no one would care.
00:51:14.000 And I'm not saying that we should make that illegal.
00:51:16.000 I'm just saying the law should be consistent.
00:51:18.000 Yeah, that is interesting that the customer can basically go wherever they like. 0.97
00:51:24.000 And no one says, you didn't go into this restaurant because you don't like gay people because gay people run this restaurant. 0.70
00:51:30.000 Nobody ever says that.
00:51:31.000 Right, and they can't force you to eat there if you don't want to.
00:51:34.000 But the other way, they can.
00:51:37.000 We're good to go.
00:51:39.000 We're good to go.
00:52:03.000 I believe people have a right to discriminate because the bigger problem is when the government becomes the thought police because the minute you make it illegal to discriminate, now you have to get into people's minds, right?
00:52:14.000 If somebody doesn't promote somebody or fire somebody and they happen to be black or a woman or too old or handicapped. 1.00
00:52:23.000 You assume their motive. 0.99
00:52:24.000 But now you're going to say, oh, you fired that person because he's black. 0.88
00:52:29.000 Well, what if that had nothing to do with it? 0.88
00:52:30.000 Right.
00:52:30.000 You're assuming the motive for firing people.
00:52:32.000 And now I got to prove that I didn't do something for what I was thinking when I did something.
00:52:36.000 I mean, none of that, you know, all of that, too, makes it so much harder for employers.
00:52:42.000 I mean, look at what just happened.
00:52:43.000 This isn't race, but it's part of it.
00:52:44.000 Do you see that story the other day about Trump's driver is suing him?
00:52:50.000 For overtime?
00:52:51.000 Yes, I did see that.
00:52:52.000 Yeah, so this guy worked for the Trump Organization for like 25 years.
00:52:57.000 He was a personal driver for Donald Trump.
00:53:00.000 And he's now suing him because he claims that he worked more than 40 hours a week, and so he wants more money.
00:53:07.000 Right.
00:53:07.000 Now, of course, he worked for 25 years.
00:53:09.000 Why didn't he ask for a raise, like, during those 25 years, right?
00:53:12.000 But apparently, his job, he had to be on call for maybe, I don't know, 10 hours a day, right?
00:53:19.000 Right.
00:53:20.000 And on call doesn't mean he was actually driving.
00:53:22.000 He just had to be available to Trump if Trump needed him.
00:53:25.000 But he could be on the internet.
00:53:27.000 He could be watching a movie.
00:53:29.000 He could be reading the books, sending emails, trading stocks, whatever he wants to do.
00:53:33.000 So it's not like he was really working, but he had to be available.
00:53:37.000 So he couldn't go out of town, right?
00:53:40.000 But he's going back and he says that, well, I had to be available for more than 40 hours a week.
00:53:44.000 Maybe it was 50 hours a week or 55 hours a week.
00:53:47.000 And now he wants back pay time and a half, right?
00:53:50.000 Because overtime laws say you got to get time and a half.
00:53:52.000 But first of all, he wasn't even an hourly worker.
00:53:55.000 The guy collected a salary, something like, I don't know, $65,000, $70,000 a year was his salary.
00:54:01.000 And, you know, he knew what the salary was when he took the job.
00:54:05.000 He knew what the hours were.
00:54:07.000 If he didn't like it, he could have said something to Trump.
00:54:09.000 He could have demanded higher pay, or he could have quit, right?
00:54:12.000 But instead, he works without complaint, and then 25 years later, files a big lawsuit.
00:54:19.000 So he's out of work.
00:54:20.000 No, he's still working there.
00:54:21.000 He's still working there.
00:54:22.000 He is.
00:54:23.000 Yeah.
00:54:23.000 And he's suing while he's working there?
00:54:53.000 That they try to hire people that they think are less likely to sue them.
00:54:57.000 And then it ends up backfiring because it works against all the people who are protected classes who are now able to sue you.
00:55:04.000 But I also wanted to point out on the overtime laws because so many people think, oh, this is terrible, right?
00:55:10.000 I mean, you should pay overtime.
00:55:11.000 Overtime is – those laws are probably some of the worst laws out there because they don't protect workers, right?
00:55:19.000 Because what happens is let's say you got a job.
00:55:22.000 And you're working 40 hours a week, and you're an hourly worker.
00:55:25.000 And you want more hours.
00:55:27.000 You want more money.
00:55:29.000 Maybe you're trying to attract a higher caliber of girls, so you're trying to get more money. 1.00
00:55:34.000 You want to work more hours.
00:55:36.000 Sexist.
00:55:36.000 That's sexist, what you just said.
00:55:38.000 I'm writing a blog.
00:55:39.000 So you tell your boss, hey, can I work an extra 10 hours a week?
00:55:44.000 I want to make some more money.
00:55:48.000 Well, your boss says, well, I'm sorry, I'd like to let you work an extra 10 hours, but I have to pay you time and a half, right?
00:55:54.000 And the guy says, well, I don't need time and a half.
00:55:56.000 I'll just work 10 hours for the same pay.
00:55:58.000 That's illegal.
00:55:59.000 Sorry, I'd like to do it, but I can't.
00:56:02.000 And if that boss needs extra workers, he has to go bring on a part-time worker.
00:56:07.000 So now, let's say if I want to get an extra 10 hours work, I got to find another job someplace else where I can work part-time where the time and a half...
00:56:17.000 Law doesn't apply.
00:56:19.000 But now I've got to get from my full-time job to my part-time job.
00:56:23.000 How long does that take me?
00:56:24.000 How common is this, though, that people are denying people extra work even though they need it because they don't want to pay the time in half?
00:56:31.000 Oh, it happens all the time.
00:56:32.000 I mean that's where moonlighting came from.
00:56:34.000 That's the whole – I mean obviously people – you're going to have people that work for two employers – And then other people working, and they're going back and forth between the same companies.
00:56:43.000 So what you're saying is it's weird if someone has to work extra hours, why are you paying them double the money?
00:56:49.000 Or time and a half.
00:56:51.000 Time and a half.
00:56:51.000 Why are you paying them the extra money?
00:56:53.000 Because they're doing just because they're working more than eight hours a day?
00:56:57.000 Well, but the thing is, the employer doesn't want to pay the extra, and he doesn't have to if he can hire somebody part-time.
00:57:03.000 But the point is that all of these, the details of employment should be negotiated by the employer and the employee.
00:57:13.000 The government should stay out of it.
00:57:15.000 And the time and a half is a government law?
00:57:17.000 Yes.
00:57:18.000 Is it nationwide?
00:57:19.000 Well, different states could have different rules, and federally they have different rules over what constitutes – how much pay do you have to earn before the overtime rules apply?
00:57:28.000 Also, isn't it pretty arbitrary, like this decision that's 40 hours a week?
00:57:32.000 Yeah.
00:57:32.000 Well, look, everything the government does is arbitrary.
00:57:34.000 That's what laws are.
00:57:35.000 They have to come up with a number.
00:57:37.000 But all of this should be – Free for discussion.
00:57:41.000 It's interesting because you have the liberals believe that, hey, two people should be able to have a relationship without the government interfering.
00:57:51.000 They can have a sexual relationship.
00:57:54.000 It's none of the government's business who you're sleeping with.
00:57:58.000 Well, why don't they have the same – believe in the same freedom when it comes to economic relationships?
00:58:04.000 If an employee and an employer are having a relationship, why doesn't the government just butt out and let the employer and the employee negotiate the relationship and the terms of the relationship that they think is best for them?
00:58:16.000 Because there are a lot of workers that, oh, I don't need the overtime, but maybe there's another benefit that I would prefer to have that I could get, but I can't because some government laws are requiring things that I don't want.
00:58:28.000 So you're against minimum wage.
00:58:29.000 You're against essentially all these government regulations in terms of what people get paid.
00:58:34.000 Yeah. 0.98
00:58:34.000 I mean, the minimum wage is probably the dumbest law. 0.98
00:58:36.000 I think we talked about that on the last podcast, but it's probably the dumbest law that you can come up with because All it does is hurt the very people that you are intending to help. 0.97
00:58:49.000 You're hurting the least skilled people.
00:58:52.000 You're preventing people from getting jobs in the first place.
00:58:55.000 And you're creating extra incentives for employers to eliminate jobs, to try to use capital instead of labor, to try to outsource.
00:59:05.000 I mean, nobody is going to hire somebody If they're losing money, right?
00:59:09.000 People have a certain amount of productivity that they can bring to the table.
00:59:14.000 And when an employer makes a decision on who to hire, they have to hire somebody that brings them at least enough productivity to cover the wages.
00:59:23.000 And so what happens is when you have a minimum wage, let's say the minimum wage is $8 an hour.
00:59:29.000 And I'm an unskilled worker.
00:59:31.000 And I have to convince an employer to pay me $8 an hour.
00:59:34.000 I have to also convince him that I can deliver more than $8 an hour of productivity to his organization.
00:59:41.000 And if I can't do that, I can't get a job.
00:59:44.000 Now, what if I can only bring $5 of productivity?
00:59:47.000 Well, that means you can't get hired.
00:59:49.000 Well, I mean, if I only have $5 an hour worth of skills and I can't get a job to improve my skills, I'm stuck in unemployment forever.
00:59:58.000 I mean, the worst thing you can do to a guy with minimal skills is prevent them from getting a job because it's the job that's going to enable them to increase their skills so they can earn more money in the future.
01:00:09.000 I know what you're saying, but the idea is that if you have a minimum amount that you allow people to pay, then at least the people that are working for that company will have a real income where they can pay their bills and feed themselves.
01:00:20.000 And that this company, because they have all the power, they have all the money, and a poor worker who's stepping into the market for the first time or just hasn't been able to acquire job skills that would allow them to make much more money per hour, that they would be taken advantage of by this larger corporation.
01:00:38.000 Well, you know, the corporations don't have all the power because they're not the only employer.
01:00:43.000 I mean, all employers compete with one another for labor, and they bid up wages.
01:00:48.000 I mean, you can't pay people less than the market value of their labor because somebody else will hire them.
01:00:56.000 So you could talk about, oh, wouldn't it be great if everybody could earn more money?
01:01:01.000 Has there ever been a proven example of this where they've had no minimum wage and it's been a financial boom?
01:01:07.000 Oh, absolutely.
01:01:08.000 Well, first of all, we didn't always have a minimum wage in the United States.
01:01:11.000 I mean, it happened really in the 1930s.
01:01:13.000 But you can look at situations of countries that have no minimum wage and they have very low levels of unemployment.
01:01:19.000 And you can look at areas where the government...
01:01:23.000 Well, I mean, you know, they don't have a minimum wage in Singapore.
01:01:27.000 And, you know, and there are countries that...
01:01:28.000 Isn't Singapore an interesting example, though?
01:01:30.000 It's an extremely wealthy country, right?
01:01:32.000 Well, that's one of the reasons.
01:01:33.000 Is that what?
01:01:34.000 Yeah, they don't.
01:01:35.000 It's very easy to do business.
01:01:36.000 But you can look at examples where the United States has imposed a minimum wage on other countries.
01:01:43.000 I mean, the minimum wage did a lot of damage in Puerto Rico.
01:01:45.000 But, you know, look at another American territory, American Samoa.
01:01:49.000 American Samoa, we basically destroyed American Samoa with our minimum wage.
01:01:53.000 I mean the Samoans are furious about it.
01:01:56.000 This happened years ago actually.
01:01:58.000 And the reason I even found out about it, I was watching 60 Minutes and they were doing a report about I think football players in Samoa.
01:02:07.000 And during their report, they mentioned that there was like a depression going on in Samoa.
01:02:11.000 And it was like there was 30% unemployment and really high inflation.
01:02:15.000 I was like, what the hell is going on in Samoa?
01:02:16.000 So I wanted to research that on my own.
01:02:18.000 And I found out that we imposed the minimum wage on Samoa and we destroyed all their jobs. 0.99
01:02:23.000 Their two biggest employers were Chicken of the Sea and Starkist.
01:02:27.000 They were canning tuna and then they were shipping the tuna back to the mainland.
01:02:31.000 But the minute they raised the minimum wage, they made the production...
01:02:39.000 Yeah.
01:02:59.000 So you could look at examples of how minimum wage destroys jobs right there. 0.98
01:03:05.000 Yet they continue to advocate for these higher wages because it sounds good.
01:03:09.000 Oh, everybody should earn a decent living.
01:03:12.000 Well, not if you don't have any skills.
01:03:13.000 You can't.
01:03:16.000 A lot of kids, you know, they're 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. I mean, people live with their parents still.
01:03:21.000 The most important thing is getting a job so you can acquire the skills to get a better job, to move up the ladder in an organization, to enhance your value to employers in general.
01:03:34.000 What's the argument against this?
01:03:36.000 Against what?
01:03:37.000 Against what you're saying about minimum wage, against all these ideas that you're just proposing.
01:03:42.000 Do you get a lot of pushback?
01:03:44.000 I mean, I'm sure what you're saying, this free market capitalism approach, there's a lot of people that oppose it.
01:03:51.000 Of course.
01:03:52.000 I mean there's a lot of people that don't think it out.
01:03:54.000 They think with their mind or their heart rather.
01:03:57.000 And they don't even get – the origin of the minimum wage was racism.
01:04:02.000 I mean the first minimum wage is here.
01:04:03.000 It was designed to keep employers from hiring the Chinese or from hiring blacks because they – that's where the minimum wage came from, to try to prevent employers from hiring certain people.
01:04:15.000 So they said, well, let's have a minimum wage and that will reduce hiring of people who have less skills.
01:04:20.000 And so – and the labor unions, the biggest supporters of the minimum wage are the labor unions.
01:04:26.000 And none of the labor unions' workers earn the minimum wage.
01:04:30.000 So you might think why are they – do they so care about the minimum wage if they don't – if they get paid a lot higher than the minimum wage?
01:04:35.000 And it's because you always have a competition between skilled laborers.
01:04:40.000 And unskilled labor, right?
01:04:41.000 So let's say a businessman has the option of hiring a skilled person to do something, and let's say the skilled person is going to charge $20 an hour, or an unskilled person.
01:04:53.000 And let's say I can hire three unskilled people for $5 an hour, and that equals 15. Well, hey, I'd rather hire the unskilled worker. 0.92
01:05:01.000 I can pay $3, $5 an hour to do the same job of one skilled worker.
01:05:06.000 But now if the skilled worker could lobby for a $7 minimum wage, now if I have to hire three unskilled people, it costs $21.
01:05:13.000 Aha! 0.94
01:05:14.000 Now all of a sudden I hire the guy with skills.
01:05:16.000 So the labor unions benefit by keeping unskilled people unemployed because they have more skills and therefore they can get more work.
01:05:27.000 That sounds like a complicated mess to me.
01:05:30.000 It is a mess for the people that get priced out of a job.
01:05:34.000 Yeah.
01:05:35.000 Now, democratic socialism is the thing right now.
01:05:37.000 You're hearing it all the time.
01:05:39.000 You're hearing it constantly in the news.
01:05:40.000 To what do you attribute that?
01:05:41.000 Do you think it's a frustration with lifelong politicians?
01:05:46.000 What do you think it is that's causing this uprise and upswing?
01:05:50.000 The woman, what is her name, that won in New York? 0.98
01:05:53.000 Yeah, you know, she's actually half Puerto Rican, one of my countrymen.
01:05:58.000 But yeah, I forget her name.
01:05:59.000 One of our countrymen.
01:06:00.000 Isn't Puerto Rico the United States?
01:06:01.000 No, actually, you know, I found this out as I'm traveling now.
01:06:05.000 You know, I still have an American passport.
01:06:07.000 But when I mention what country I'm from and I look where you live, I always have to select Puerto Rico as a country.
01:06:13.000 Even though it's part of America, it's still considered its own country, even though you still are American citizens when you live there and you travel on a U.S. passport.
01:06:23.000 It's listed as a separate country from the United States.
01:06:27.000 Yeah, I was just going to read her name from a tweet.
01:06:29.000 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28 years old.
01:06:33.000 Yeah, well, she beat a 10-term incumbent. 0.99
01:06:37.000 And, of course, he was a white guy.
01:06:38.000 That's a negative for him.
01:06:40.000 She's a woman of color.
01:06:42.000 Yeah, you know.
01:06:43.000 Latina.
01:06:44.000 Nice-looking woman, too, actually.
01:06:45.000 Beautiful.
01:06:45.000 Yeah.
01:06:46.000 But the thing is, people, I think, in that community are just voting out of frustration.
01:06:52.000 In fact, I looked at her commercial, and it's a very powerful commercial, kind of like about – Women like me are not supposed to run for office. 0.99
01:07:01.000 We're not supposed to...
01:07:02.000 I mean, that's all a bunch of nonsense, but it's a story that I think resonated with a lot of people, like, hey, let's stick it to the man, right?
01:07:10.000 And that's what they did.
01:07:12.000 But I think that this wave is going to be bigger than people think.
01:07:17.000 I think people are underestimating.
01:07:19.000 They're saying, oh, this is unique because she's in a heavily minority community, and so that message worked better.
01:07:27.000 But look...
01:07:28.000 Bernie Sanders.
01:07:29.000 Read this here that Jamie just pulled up.
01:07:31.000 She won in a district where she didn't even run. 0.99
01:07:34.000 Progressive candidate also won a primary in her neighboring district in the Bronx as a write-in for the Reform Party.
01:07:41.000 Oh, well, that's...
01:07:42.000 But she won?
01:07:43.000 She won?
01:07:44.000 Yeah.
01:07:46.000 I don't think you could have two house seats simultaneously.
01:07:49.000 This is crazy.
01:07:51.000 But if you look at Bernie Sanders' appeal, it wasn't just poor people and minorities that were attracted to the Sanders message.
01:08:03.000 And what was that message that was attracted to them?
01:08:05.000 It was the corporations.
01:08:07.000 We've got to tax the rich. 0.93
01:08:09.000 We've got to tax the corporations. 0.97
01:08:10.000 Redistribution of wealth.
01:08:11.000 And it's all about getting stuff for free, right?
01:08:14.000 It's all about free healthcare, free education, guaranteed jobs.
01:08:20.000 I mean, they want the government to guarantee everybody a job.
01:08:24.000 Well, that was one of the things that Bernie said, that he could guarantee people jobs, everyone in the country.
01:08:29.000 How's the government going to guarantee each other?
01:08:30.000 First of all, where's the government going to get the money?
01:08:32.000 They did that in the Soviet Union.
01:08:34.000 Yeah, everybody has a job, but nobody makes anything, and so everybody is poor.
01:08:38.000 I mean, you can't – they want to guarantee a $15-an-hour job plus benefits plus vacation plus health care to do what?
01:08:46.000 And, of course, what's the – the government's going to assign jobs to everybody?
01:08:49.000 What are they all going to do?
01:08:50.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:08:50.000 I mean, people forget that we don't want jobs.
01:08:53.000 We want the productivity that results from the job.
01:08:57.000 So it's about productive employment, not make work, right?
01:09:00.000 We don't want the government digging holes and filling them.
01:09:03.000 We want real jobs.
01:09:04.000 And how does the private sector know what jobs are needed?
01:09:09.000 It's demand.
01:09:10.000 It's individuals that want something.
01:09:13.000 They're guided by a profit motive.
01:09:15.000 You know, the government doesn't make a profit.
01:09:17.000 There's nothing to guide them to efficiently allocate.
01:09:21.000 And how is the government going to just figure out what people should do and just assign them, okay, this is the job you're going to do.
01:09:27.000 It would destroy employment in this country if you did that.
01:09:32.000 Well, it just doesn't even make sense that you could offer everyone a job.
01:09:35.000 You don't have those jobs, first of all.
01:09:38.000 And the idea that, well, what are we going to do?
01:09:40.000 We're going to create X amount of construction jobs and X amount of dishwashing jobs and X amount of car wash jobs?
01:09:46.000 You're not going to.
01:09:47.000 And where's the money going to come from to pay for it?
01:09:49.000 They're going to have to take the money from the private sector that would have created efficient jobs, and they're going to give it to the government to create inefficient jobs. 0.88
01:09:57.000 It's a disaster.
01:09:58.000 But the problem that I mentioned earlier is the economy is in bad shape because of all the government.
01:10:05.000 That's what went back to the Occupy Wall Street is that the people are protesting because there's serious problems in the country.
01:10:14.000 They don't realize that it's not capitalism that is creating those problems.
01:10:17.000 Capitalism would solve those problems.
01:10:19.000 It's government interference that is causing the problems that they're protesting.
01:10:24.000 And so the same thing with these socialists.
01:10:26.000 They understand that their standard of living is falling.
01:10:29.000 One of the things they want to do is they want to give free education.
01:10:33.000 I guess the liberals are all complaining about the fact that college is so expensive and that students have so much debt.
01:10:40.000 That's because of government.
01:10:41.000 Before the government got involved, college was cheap.
01:10:44.000 I mean government drove up the cost of college by guaranteeing student loans.
01:10:50.000 I mean that's how the government got the votes of students.
01:10:53.000 They promised the students something for nothing.
01:10:54.000 They said, hey, vote for me and I'll guarantee – I'll make it easier for you to get a loan to go to college, right?
01:11:01.000 Well, the minute colleges knew that people could get these loans, they started jacking up the tuition.
01:11:07.000 So they could benefit from all this government money.
01:11:09.000 So the colleges benefited.
01:11:11.000 The banking system benefited by making riskless loans that the taxpayer was on the hook for.
01:11:16.000 But the byproduct of all this cheap money being funneled at the colleges was that the colleges kept raising their tuition higher and higher and higher.
01:11:23.000 And then the politicians kept increasing the amount of loans they would subsidize.
01:11:27.000 And so all of this is the fault of government.
01:11:30.000 The government created the problem that they're now complaining about.
01:11:33.000 But the students don't understand that that's why college is so expensive.
01:11:37.000 Well, no one sees a clear way out.
01:11:40.000 That's part of the problem, and that's one of the reasons why socialism is so compelling.
01:11:44.000 It's like, this seems like it's an alternative to what we're currently experiencing.
01:11:48.000 So people look at that and go, maybe that's the solution.
01:11:51.000 Yeah, look, people want something different.
01:11:53.000 I said that's why Trump was able to claim that he was going to shake things up and make America great again, because I'm different.
01:11:59.000 Because what's working, what we have now is not working.
01:12:02.000 That's why I'm so afraid that when people who voted for Trump You know, end up being disillusioned because nothing changes.
01:12:11.000 Their lives don't get better.
01:12:12.000 And you're completely convinced it is going to be a crash coming in the next three years.
01:12:16.000 I mean, look, there's going to be a big recession, right?
01:12:18.000 I think it's going to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis.
01:12:21.000 I mean, that – because the government was able to bail everybody out that time.
01:12:25.000 They were able to print a bunch of money and go deeper into debt.
01:12:28.000 And the financial crisis, if you didn't have money in the stock market and you didn't lose your job, it wasn't that bad, right?
01:12:34.000 I mean, you were fine.
01:12:37.000 But this next crisis – Even if you don't lose your job, you're going to be affected by inflation.
01:12:42.000 Prices are going to go way up because I think this is going to be a dollar crisis.
01:12:46.000 This is going to be a sovereign debt crisis.
01:12:48.000 And investors were bailed out.
01:12:50.000 The government was able to bail out investors last time with quantitative easing and TARP and all that.
01:12:56.000 But the next time, investors are not going to get bailed out.
01:12:59.000 They're going to go down for the count.
01:13:01.000 Because if they try, and I believe they will try, to reflate the bubbles again by printing even more money, doing another round of quantitative easing, It's going to destroy the dollar.
01:13:11.000 So they're not going to reflate the bubble in stocks.
01:13:14.000 They're going to prick the bubble in the dollar.
01:13:16.000 And so when the dollar loses value and prices go up and you have stagflation, you have a combination of a recession and inflation at the same time.
01:13:26.000 And then, of course, what is the Fed going to do in that circumstance?
01:13:30.000 Because their playbook is if you have recession, you ease.
01:13:35.000 If you have inflation, you tighten.
01:13:38.000 Well, what if you have them both together?
01:13:39.000 You know, they just did these stress tests.
01:13:41.000 You hear these bank stress tests?
01:13:43.000 And the Federal Reserve came out and they said that all the banks passed.
01:13:48.000 You know, well, what a shocker, right?
01:13:49.000 The Fed came up with a test that everybody passed.
01:13:51.000 But if you look at the assumptions that they made about the economy, under the worst case scenario that they assumed...
01:14:01.000 Interest rates, 10-year rates, go no higher than 3%.
01:14:04.000 They don't go down, they just don't go up.
01:14:07.000 And they assume that inflation stays below 2% under the worst-case scenario, and they assume that the Fed is able to lower interest rates to zero again to stimulate the economy.
01:14:18.000 Now, I mean, what happens if inflation doesn't go down?
01:14:21.000 What if it goes up?
01:14:22.000 What if it goes up to 5%, 8%?
01:14:24.000 You know, what if interest rates go up to 5% or 8%, 10%?
01:14:28.000 What happens then, right?
01:14:30.000 All the banks collapse.
01:14:31.000 Because what happens if we have a recession?
01:14:33.000 Where the Fed can't stimulate because they have to fight inflation?
01:14:37.000 Or what happens if we have a recession and the government has to raise taxes during the recession because the budget deficit is exploding and they don't have the money to pay the interest on the debt?
01:14:47.000 What does happen?
01:14:48.000 Well, I think that the politics are going to come into play and that the Fed is going to err on allowing inflation to run out of control.
01:14:59.000 They're going to do what they can to try to prop up the economy and they're going to sacrifice the dollar.
01:15:04.000 They're going to say, well, inflation is the lesser of the two evils.
01:15:08.000 But it's actually going to end up being the greater evil.
01:15:11.000 And remember, when Nixon imposed wage and price controls, which was a very misguided effort, it's kind of like what Trump is doing with tariffs, trying to cure the trade deficit.
01:15:21.000 Rising prices are the result of inflation.
01:15:24.000 It's not the cause.
01:15:25.000 And so price controls don't work.
01:15:27.000 They simply try to mask the problem while it gets worse.
01:15:32.000 But I think they're going to let inflation get a lot worse.
01:15:36.000 And what that's going to mean is that people need to prepare for that.
01:15:41.000 I mean, people need to do something.
01:15:43.000 We talked about that when I was on your show before about buying gold.
01:15:46.000 We talked about cryptocurrencies.
01:15:47.000 I talked about gold money.
01:15:49.000 And by the way, this is...
01:15:51.000 We talked about Gold Money on your show before, and so many people – this just shows you how many people listen to this podcast.
01:15:59.000 So many people tried to open up accounts at Gold Money because of our conversation that the regulators actually shut them down.
01:16:06.000 They actually stopped them from onboarding new customers because there was too many people coming onto the platform.
01:16:13.000 And the reason, look, this is the system that we're in now because when you have a gold money account, right, it's not like just buying gold.
01:16:20.000 You have gold that you can actually transact in.
01:16:25.000 I can take my gold and I can send it to anybody I want anywhere in the world who has an account for free.
01:16:30.000 So it's like a money transfer.
01:16:32.000 So gold has to be actually stored somewhere.
01:16:34.000 There's actually some real gold that backs it.
01:16:36.000 Exactly.
01:16:36.000 There's gold stored in a Brinks vault, and they have vaults all around the world, but I can transfer my ownership of that gold to you or anybody else.
01:16:44.000 But because I can do that, now all of a sudden the regulations are there because they're worried about terrorists, they're worried about money laundering, and so everybody who has an account, there has to be a lot of scrutiny.
01:16:56.000 About those accounts and those transactions, just like it was a bank.
01:16:59.000 And a lot of people got frustrated.
01:17:02.000 I got a lot of emails from people who were frustrated.
01:17:04.000 They tried to open up accounts, and they didn't realize that it was the regulators.
01:17:08.000 They get mad at gold money because they're not opening up their account or approving their account, but it's the regulations that are the cog in the machine.
01:17:16.000 But the good news is I think they've satisfied the regulators recently.
01:17:21.000 They've come up with some new systems.
01:17:22.000 So the process is a lot more efficient now.
01:17:33.000 Oh, yeah?
01:17:49.000 Yeah, I showed you this card that I have.
01:17:50.000 That's what I have to do.
01:17:50.000 I have to send them some money.
01:17:52.000 I'm not sure if they're going to preload your account.
01:17:55.000 I brought this card through the security today.
01:17:59.000 And of course, every time I go through security with this card, it rings.
01:18:02.000 So I always have to take my wallet out and put it in a little bin.
01:18:07.000 And it freaked out.
01:18:08.000 They can never figure out what's going on because they see this thing of metal.
01:18:11.000 They have no idea what it is.
01:18:12.000 So it's always like...
01:18:13.000 It stops me.
01:18:14.000 But it's a conversation piece.
01:18:16.000 I had about three or four different TSA guys who were all looking at this card.
01:18:20.000 Is that gold plated?
01:18:21.000 Well, no, no.
01:18:21.000 This is pure gold.
01:18:22.000 It's actual gold.
01:18:23.000 Yeah, this is 24-karat gold.
01:18:25.000 Which is gold mixed with metal, right?
01:18:28.000 Mixed with steel?
01:18:28.000 No, it's not mixed with anything.
01:18:30.000 But isn't 24-karat gold like gold that's also mixed with something else?
01:18:33.000 No, it's pure gold.
01:18:34.000 Not as malleable?
01:18:34.000 Yeah, no, that's like that.
01:18:35.000 If you go buy gold jewelry, right?
01:18:37.000 You're getting an 18-karat gold or 14-karat gold.
01:18:40.000 So how much is this card worth?
01:18:41.000 It's kind of...
01:18:42.000 Yeah, like $1,400.
01:18:43.000 This would be annoying to carry it in your pocket.
01:18:46.000 It's heavy.
01:18:46.000 Yeah, but I mean, compared to other cards.
01:18:48.000 But you know, gold money, another way that people can buy gold.
01:18:52.000 Pimp slap, something like this.
01:18:53.000 Yeah.
01:18:54.000 They launched a company called Minet, right?
01:18:57.000 The website pulled up.
01:18:58.000 It's M-E-N-E dot com. 1.00
01:19:01.000 And this is a great way for average people to own gold, but also kill two birds with one stone.
01:19:07.000 Because when you go out and buy jewelry, right, and you buy typical jewelry, maybe it's, you know, 14 karat gold, 18 karat gold.
01:19:14.000 The Mene jewelry is 24 karat gold, and they sell it by the weight of gold.
01:19:19.000 So let's say you went to a department store and you spent $1,000 on a gold necklace, right?
01:19:25.000 Maybe you'd have $100 worth of gold.
01:19:27.000 Maybe, right?
01:19:28.000 If you spent $1,000 at Minet, you're going to get $800 worth of gold.
01:19:32.000 And Minet will buy that...
01:19:35.000 That necklace back from you at any point in time in the future, two years from now, five years from now, ten years from now, at whatever the gold value of the necklace is.
01:19:44.000 So let's say gold goes up by 30% from the time you buy the necklace.
01:19:48.000 You can actually sell it back to Monet for more than you paid for it.
01:19:52.000 Whereas if, you know, if you have used jewelry that you buy at a department store, what's it worth on the secondhand market?
01:19:57.000 You know, 10 cents on the dollar, right?
01:19:59.000 20, maybe?
01:20:00.000 So this allows people to have nice jewelry but also own real gold at the same time.
01:20:05.000 I mean, you're going to pay a higher premium to buy a gold necklace.
01:20:08.000 I have a pair of gold cufflinks that I wear.
01:20:11.000 My wife wears this Binet jewelry all the time. 0.87
01:20:14.000 She wears it every day.
01:20:15.000 And so, you know, you can buy it instead of buying other jewelry.
01:20:20.000 But you're not throwing your money away.
01:20:23.000 You're actually getting gold.
01:20:24.000 But the point is that people need to protect themselves from the inflation that's coming because that is where we're headed.
01:20:32.000 The government is going to continue to print money to try to prop everything up, to try to delay the day of reckoning for as long as they can.
01:20:40.000 And we've had a rally in the dollar recently because people think, oh, the trade war is good for the dollar.
01:20:46.000 They're wrong.
01:20:47.000 It's a disaster for the dollar.
01:20:48.000 America can't win the trade war.
01:20:50.000 I mean, we benefit from the trade deficit right now.
01:20:53.000 All we can do is lose in the short run if we lose access to all those goods that we're not having to pay for with exports.
01:20:59.000 You know, they're actually trying to say that the budget deficit's going up.
01:21:02.000 Is good for the dollar when it's not.
01:21:06.000 I mean, big budget deficits are always bad for the dollar because it means the government is creating more debt.
01:21:11.000 They're selling more bonds around the world.
01:21:14.000 The supply of dollars also includes the supply of treasuries.
01:21:18.000 And so if you're flooding the world with treasuries, you've got a surplus of dollars.
01:21:22.000 The dollar is going to lose value.
01:21:23.000 And so people have to find a way to protect themselves.
01:21:26.000 And the average guy, I mean, gold is the easiest way to do that.
01:21:29.000 And with the gold money account, you could do it very inexpensively.
01:21:33.000 Of course, if you want to buy bigger amounts of gold, if someone wants to put $50,000, $100,000 worth of gold, I wouldn't spend it on jewelry.
01:21:40.000 You could just buy regular gold.
01:21:42.000 I've got a company, Shift Gold, where I sell maple leaves, cougarands, U.S. coins.
01:21:49.000 So you feel like buying gold jewelry should be an addition to, not a primary investment?
01:21:53.000 Well, because of the higher markup, right?
01:21:55.000 When I sell gold bullion to people, coins, we mark it up, you know, 1-2%.
01:22:00.000 It's a small markup.
01:22:01.000 The markup on jewelry is higher because we had to pay to make the jewelry.
01:22:04.000 It's more expensive to make a gold necklace or a gold bracelet or a gold ring than to make a gold coin.
01:22:10.000 So you wouldn't want to have all your gold in jewelry.
01:22:14.000 But to the extent that you're going to buy jewelry anyway, you might as well buy real gold because now you actually have some savings that has value in addition to having something you can wear.
01:22:24.000 I mean, I don't get a lot of value day-to-day by having gold in a safe.
01:22:29.000 But if you're wearing it, right?
01:22:31.000 I mean, so then now you're getting an extra benefit from the fact that you have gold because now you get to enjoy it on a daily basis if you're wearing it.
01:22:41.000 And obviously, too, if you don't have that much money, if someone's not going to buy any gold, if someone has a couple thousand dollars, they were going to spend it on jewelry?
01:22:49.000 All right, we'll spend it on gold jewelry, because at least you still have the money.
01:22:52.000 At least 80% of what you spent, you still have.
01:22:55.000 Well, it makes sense to me, and I don't know much about gold.
01:23:00.000 But it's weird that gold is one of those things that's universally been thought of as valuable, like forever.
01:23:07.000 Yeah, well, that's why it's money.
01:23:09.000 I mean, gold has always been a...
01:23:10.000 Is there anything else like that?
01:23:12.000 Well, I mean, there are other metals that have been used as money.
01:23:14.000 I mean, silver has been used as money.
01:23:17.000 But, I mean, gold has been the choice.
01:23:21.000 I mean, look, central banks own a lot of gold.
01:23:23.000 I mean, not as much as they used to, not as much as they should.
01:23:26.000 But central banks own it.
01:23:27.000 Gold's a monetary metal.
01:23:29.000 Gold is used in a lot of things.
01:23:31.000 I mean, it's in cell phones, in computers.
01:23:33.000 It's used in medicine, in dentistry.
01:23:38.000 I mean, so there are a lot of uses for it because gold has properties that other metals don't have that gives it value, not just its physical beauty, but also the things that you can do with it.
01:23:48.000 You can do things with gold that you can't do with other metals.
01:23:52.000 And gold is not going to tarnish.
01:23:54.000 It's not rust.
01:23:56.000 So you can make something out of it and it's not going anywhere.
01:23:59.000 Yeah, you can also plate things with it, right?
01:24:00.000 Like you could take a very small piece of gold, you could plate this entire table with it.
01:24:03.000 Exactly, yeah.
01:24:04.000 I've never seen that happen, but I've had it explained to me.
01:24:07.000 It seems very strange.
01:24:08.000 Yeah, the properties that it has, you know, no other metal can replicate.
01:24:12.000 And that's one of the reasons that it's been so desirable for so many years.
01:24:16.000 But it also makes it, you know, ideally suited to be money.
01:24:20.000 And that's, you know, one of the things that, you know, Bitcoin...
01:24:23.000 Bitcoin is trying to digitally replicate the properties of gold.
01:24:27.000 I mean, that's the whole selling point of Bitcoin.
01:24:29.000 They say it's digital gold.
01:24:30.000 And it does have a lot of gold's properties that helped it succeed as money, but it doesn't have any of gold's physical properties that gave it so much value in the first place.
01:24:42.000 And so you can't separate the intrinsic value of money from money.
01:24:46.000 Money has to be a commodity.
01:24:47.000 It has to have value.
01:24:49.000 And that's where Bitcoin fails.
01:24:51.000 You know, I just had a debate in New York, in Soho, I think last week on Bitcoin.
01:24:59.000 You know, whether it was going to succeed and replace fiat currencies.
01:25:04.000 And basically, you know, technically I lost the debate, but I think it was rigged.
01:25:10.000 Why is it right?
01:25:11.000 Well, because the way they decide the winner is before the debate, they have a poll, and they ask everybody where they stand.
01:25:21.000 And then after the debate, they ask them where they stand now to see if people change their opinion.
01:25:27.000 And since everybody in there was a whole Bitcoin audience, and I had it confirmed to me from several sources that basically everybody was saying, hey, make sure you vote...
01:25:38.000 This way before the debate so you can change your mind after the debate so that the pro-Bitcoin guy is going to win.
01:25:45.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:25:46.000 So did they initially vote neutral or anti-Bitcoin beforehand?
01:25:49.000 No, no.
01:25:50.000 So the proposition is...
01:25:54.000 Will Bitcoin replace the dollar or other fiat currencies in the future?
01:25:59.000 But they wanted to propose it initially before the debate, get your thoughts, but they rigged it by having these people have contrary thoughts before the debate.
01:26:08.000 So as if Bitcoin was evangelized to them, like, oh, now I get it.
01:26:12.000 Okay.
01:26:13.000 The idea is like a bunch of people were in this debate that didn't believe Bitcoin was the future.
01:26:19.000 But now, after this hour debate, they were convinced by my opponent that it was the future.
01:26:25.000 Because then, you know, when I read all the stories, and if you go online, you read the stories about the debate, it's always like Peter Schiff lost, Peter gets bested, Schiff loses.
01:26:33.000 So it's almost like I got caught up in the Bitcoin propaganda.
01:26:37.000 Yeah.
01:26:37.000 But there's so much, like, you want to talk about tribalism.
01:26:41.000 Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, those people are all in.
01:26:44.000 Oh yeah, as I said- There's a giant group of them that are just all in.
01:26:47.000 Yeah, I said they're all in Puerto Rico now, so I'm hanging around more of the crypto guys than I used to.
01:26:54.000 And what is your take?
01:26:55.000 Look, you know, I feel badly in that—well, first of all, some of them got very rich, so I don't feel bad for these guys that got rich, that put a few thousand dollars in and now have millions of dollars.
01:27:07.000 I mean, obviously, I missed out on that myself, right?
01:27:10.000 I mean, that—I mean— There's a lot of bubbles that I missed out on.
01:27:14.000 I didn't make anything on the dot-com bubble.
01:27:16.000 I made money when it came down.
01:27:18.000 I didn't make any money on the housing bubble until it went down.
01:27:22.000 And I missed out on the Bitcoin bubble.
01:27:23.000 But this bubble was tailor-made for me.
01:27:26.000 If there was ever a bubble that I should have been part of, it was this one.
01:27:29.000 It was all for the libertarians, right?
01:27:31.000 Free market guys, anti-fiat currency.
01:27:34.000 So, you know, I knew about it early on.
01:27:36.000 I mean, not at the very beginning when it was like pennies, but I knew about it before it was $10.
01:27:41.000 I knew about it when it was pretty low.
01:27:42.000 How much do you have invested in Bitcoin?
01:27:44.000 Oh, zero.
01:27:44.000 Zero.
01:27:45.000 Yeah.
01:27:45.000 I mean, you know, actually, you know what?
01:27:47.000 I got 50 bucks worth because- Oh, big spender.
01:27:50.000 Well, you know, what happened is, you know, after the debate, I went out to dinner with Eric Voorhees, who is my opponent, his wife.
01:27:59.000 My wife was there.
01:27:59.000 We had a group of people.
01:28:00.000 And so they gave me, to show me how it works, they gave me $100 worth of Bitcoin.
01:28:04.000 And then I gave somebody back $50.
01:28:06.000 But I kept $50 of it.
01:28:07.000 Just in case.
01:28:08.000 Yeah, although now it's only worth $48 because it's gone down.
01:28:11.000 It moves all over the place.
01:28:12.000 Yeah.
01:28:13.000 Yeah, but, you know, so, I mean, I don't feel badly that, you know, some of these guys lucked into having a lot of money or, you know, it's luck or they took a shot and it paid off, right?
01:28:21.000 They got in and, you know, and the market exploded and they have an opportunity to cash out on a profit.
01:28:27.000 But a lot of them are not cashing out.
01:28:28.000 They're going to – I think they're going to go down with the ship.
01:28:30.000 But – When you say that, you think it's going down.
01:28:34.000 Oh, yeah.
01:28:35.000 Look, it's not going to succeed as money.
01:28:37.000 It's not going to work.
01:28:38.000 It's just a highly speculative asset.
01:28:40.000 And the last time I did your show, I mean, a lot of people are, you know, what Peter Schiff got wrong on Joe Rogan about Bitcoin.
01:28:47.000 I mean, everybody thinks I don't understand it, and that's why I don't believe in it.
01:28:50.000 It's because I do understand it that I don't believe it.
01:28:53.000 The people who think it's going to work, they may understand the technology, but they don't understand money.
01:28:59.000 And so – but when I talk to these people, to me, it's very much like a cult.
01:29:05.000 I mean they believe so strongly in this.
01:29:10.000 They're so caught up in the hype and the hysteria and maybe they're blinded by the money they think they're going to make when these things are a million dollars apiece or wherever they believe they're going.
01:29:20.000 Yeah, that's what they think it's going to.
01:29:22.000 They think it's going to go a million dollars.
01:29:23.000 Well, there was an article last week.
01:29:25.000 Some guy was saying 100 million.
01:29:27.000 A hundred million of Bitcoin!
01:29:28.000 You know, that's why nobody wants to sell, right?
01:29:31.000 But the smart people are selling.
01:29:33.000 The people that got in earlier are trying to con people into holding on so that they can get out.
01:29:37.000 A hundred million?
01:29:38.000 They're talking about a hundred million?
01:29:39.000 It's basically some numbers on...
01:29:41.000 Did they ever figure out who that Satoshi Ishii guy is?
01:29:44.000 No, no.
01:29:45.000 Satoshi Nakamura.
01:29:47.000 Satoshi Nakamura.
01:29:48.000 Yeah, I don't know.
01:29:49.000 I mean, I don't know why the guy hasn't come forward, if it's a guy at all.
01:29:54.000 Someone said that they think it's Elon Musk.
01:29:57.000 I don't know.
01:29:57.000 Whoever it is, you figure they've got a lot of Bitcoin.
01:30:00.000 If they're a real person.
01:30:01.000 It might have been a group of people.
01:30:03.000 But, of course, now it's not just Bitcoin, right?
01:30:05.000 There's 1,500 to 2,000 of these other cryptocurrencies.
01:30:09.000 Well, not just that.
01:30:09.000 There's a bunch of different ones, right?
01:30:11.000 There's different variants.
01:30:13.000 Yeah, and that's part of the problem.
01:30:14.000 Because they think, oh, there's 21 million Bitcoin.
01:30:18.000 And they think that that means they're scarce.
01:30:20.000 Well, they're not scarce.
01:30:20.000 There's so many other currencies out there.
01:30:22.000 And it's only scarce because it's coded to be scarce.
01:30:26.000 Gold is scarce because it really is scarce.
01:30:28.000 Bitcoin is scarce because they decided to make it scarce, but it's not scarce in that there's nothing that any other cryptocurrency can't do that Bitcoin is doing.
01:30:38.000 But they're looking at it as an alternative not to gold, but to the currency that we currently use.
01:30:43.000 Well, they look at it as an alternative to both, I think, a lot of them.
01:30:47.000 Although some people think it's maybe a complement of gold, but it doesn't have any actual value.
01:30:51.000 And that's where I get into a lot of arguments with these crypto guys, because they say, well, gold doesn't have any actual value either, which is laughable, because of course gold has actual value.
01:31:00.000 There are lots of things that I can do with gold, and that shows that it has value.
01:31:05.000 There's nothing that I can do with Bitcoin other than give it to somebody else.
01:31:08.000 I mean, that's the whole purpose of it, is to give it to somebody else and Right, but our whole economy is kind of screwy.
01:31:12.000 It's entirely possible that it could shift over to a crypto coin-based economy.
01:31:17.000 Don't you think?
01:31:17.000 A cryptocurrency-based economy?
01:31:20.000 Governments could certainly issue crypto fiat currency the same way they issue paper fiat currency.
01:31:25.000 In fact, most of our paper currency transactions are digital anyway.
01:31:29.000 I mean, how much cash do you use on a daily basis?
01:31:32.000 You use your credit card and And so banks are transferring – they're not shipping bills back and forth mostly.
01:31:38.000 It's just numbers on a computer.
01:31:41.000 So the government can certainly do that, and that would probably give them even more control over the economy, which is a negative thing.
01:31:48.000 Because at least if you have cash, I can give you $100, and the government doesn't see that transaction.
01:31:54.000 They're not spying on us.
01:31:55.000 But if they eliminated all cash and all transactions were digital, then they would know everything I did.
01:32:00.000 Right.
01:32:01.000 The dollar I spent would be recorded on some government computer.
01:32:05.000 And that's something that I don't want.
01:32:07.000 And I think libertarians certainly don't want that, which is one way cryptocurrencies could backfire is if the governments end up monopolizing cryptocurrency and issue cryptocurrency alongside or instead of the paper currencies that they issue now.
01:32:24.000 Part of the biggest damage that's ultimately going to come from it is when the cryptocurrencies collapse and people lose a lot of money, which is going to happen.
01:32:33.000 The government's going to be able to say, you see, we told you the free enterprise capitalism is no good.
01:32:37.000 I mean, look what happens when you trust...
01:32:39.000 You know, Bitcoin, it's going to help make the dollar and the euro and the yen look good by comparison.
01:32:47.000 Even though these are fatally fraud currencies, they're still going to look better than the cryptocurrencies, the people who have lost a lot of money.
01:32:54.000 See, right now, people, there are a lot of people that like Bitcoin because they bought it real cheap.
01:32:58.000 And even though it's gone down, you know, 70% from its high, it got up to 20,000, and now it's about 6,400.
01:33:05.000 There's a lot of people that bought it and still have big profits.
01:33:08.000 But what about the people that bought it at $20,000, $18,000, $15,000, $10,000?
01:33:13.000 They're losing money.
01:33:14.000 And if it keeps falling and it goes down to $1,000 or lower where I think it's going, you have a lot of people that have lost a lot of money.
01:33:21.000 And so that's going to create a lot of problems.
01:33:24.000 And I think the government's going to come in with all sorts of new rules and new regulations on transactions to try to protect us from ourselves.
01:33:32.000 And again, it's just going to, you know, try to make government look good and the free market look bad.
01:33:37.000 People get caught up in frenzies all the time.
01:33:40.000 It doesn't mean that the free market needs to be shut down just because every once in a while people get greedy and get nuts.
01:33:46.000 And it's not a reason to expand the power of government because government will do much more damage to an economy than small bubbles will do when you have a boom and a bust because you have a mania.
01:33:59.000 Do you think that there's any cryptocurrencies that are compelling?
01:34:02.000 Is there any one other than Bitcoin that you go, well, this one has a different set of parameters, a different set of rules?
01:34:08.000 No, because to me, you just can't have a digital token that you just create.
01:34:17.000 That's going to have – going to be a store of value.
01:34:19.000 I mean money has to be a store of value.
01:34:22.000 It has to be a medium of deferred payment.
01:34:24.000 So what that means is I have to be able to take my money and save it for a year, five years, ten years.
01:34:29.000 I have to be able to make a loan.
01:34:31.000 Like I can loan you money.
01:34:33.000 I can't loan you a Bitcoin and you say I'll pay the Bitcoin back in ten years because none of us know what the Bitcoin is going to be worth.
01:34:39.000 So how do you know what kind of interest rate to charge?
01:34:42.000 You need to have stable money.
01:34:44.000 And I don't think any of these cryptocurrencies can ever be stable because there's no real value to stabilize.
01:34:50.000 People say it's a store of value, but there's no value to store.
01:34:52.000 So the only cryptocurrencies that would work would be cryptocurrencies that were backed by a real commodity like gold, and that can work.
01:35:00.000 But, you know, what gold money does is actually something better because you don't have to have a cryptocurrency.
01:35:06.000 You just have actual gold.
01:35:08.000 See, the reason that Currency existed in the first place because currency was always backed by real money.
01:35:13.000 So let's say I had gold that I was storing at a blacksmith.
01:35:18.000 I had a bar of gold, and I had a piece of paper that said, you know, pay to the bear on demand, you know, this bar of gold, right?
01:35:26.000 And it was written from a reputable blacksmith.
01:35:28.000 I could negotiate that piece of paper.
01:35:31.000 I can give you that piece of paper and say, hey, I own some gold at this blacksmith.
01:35:35.000 Take this piece of paper, and now you own the gold, right?
01:35:38.000 And so that piece of paper is functioning as a money substitute, as currency, but the real money is in a vault.
01:35:43.000 It's gold.
01:35:46.000 It's hard for me to – I can't break up that bar.
01:35:48.000 I can't just give you a small portion of it.
01:35:51.000 But what gold money is doing is taking that old blacksmith concept and bringing it into the modern era because I can store my gold in a vault at Brinks through gold money.
01:36:02.000 And now I can transfer any portion.
01:36:05.000 I can give you a gram of my gold, a tiny amount of gold.
01:36:08.000 I can just send it to you for free.
01:36:10.000 And now you own that gold because now the ownership register is going to be changed.
01:36:15.000 And instead of being in Peter Schiff's name, it's going to be in Joe Rogan's name.
01:36:19.000 And so once you can do that, once I can take a bar of gold...
01:36:23.000 And turn it into liquid money that can be used to buy a cup of coffee.
01:36:27.000 And you're doing all this without having physical control of the gold.
01:36:32.000 You're not physically holding it in your hands.
01:36:33.000 It's in a vault somewhere.
01:36:34.000 Yeah, well, somebody has to have physical control.
01:36:36.000 And that's what a lot of the Bitcoin advocates don't like about something like a gold money.
01:36:42.000 They say, well, you have to trust a third party to store your gold.
01:36:44.000 Yes.
01:36:45.000 You do.
01:36:46.000 I mean, but people have been trusting third parties with gold for thousands of years.
01:36:50.000 And, you know, you have reliable third parties that can hold on to something of real value because you have to have stability.
01:36:57.000 I mean, that's the big problem that we have in the world today is we have no real money.
01:37:01.000 We just have these fiat currencies that governments create out of thin air.
01:37:05.000 And there's no real stability in the monetary system.
01:37:08.000 If we had real money, if we were on a gold standard, which I believe we will be on again eventually, because that is the norm throughout history, is to be on a gold standard.
01:37:17.000 All these experiments with fiat currency, they don't work.
01:37:20.000 But we haven't been on a gold standard since, when, the 70s?
01:37:22.000 Yeah, well, we went off it in 1971. Of course, we were on a pure gold standard in the 19th century and certainly the latter part of it.
01:37:32.000 Do you think we're going to go back to that?
01:37:34.000 I think so, because that's what works.
01:37:36.000 I mean, what we have now works for government, but it doesn't work for the people.
01:37:40.000 It doesn't work for prosperity.
01:37:42.000 You know, when Trump is out there trying to say we have the greatest economy in history— I mean, it isn't even close.
01:37:49.000 I mean, forget about the fact that it's not even better than it was when Obama was president, and he said that was an economic wasteland.
01:37:54.000 But you go back to the period of time, let's say 1870 through 1910 or in there.
01:38:02.000 I mean, that was the golden age.
01:38:05.000 I mean, that is what created the middle class.
01:38:08.000 The middle class was a byproduct of the economic growth that took place in America. 0.59
01:38:14.000 I mean, we basically had tremendous economic growth.
01:38:19.000 We absorbed tens of millions of immigrants that were coming from all over the world, and they weren't coming here for welfare and food stamps because they didn't exist.
01:38:28.000 There was no minimum wage.
01:38:30.000 You know, there was just freedom here.
01:38:32.000 I think we're good to go.
01:38:52.000 During that period.
01:38:53.000 And that was tremendous growth.
01:38:55.000 And I think, you know, we could have great growth again, you know, to the extent that we, you know, substantially diminish the size of government.
01:39:04.000 But part of that would be to return to sound money.
01:39:06.000 And that would be gold.
01:39:08.000 But the cult of personality, you know, it's one of those things – man, I don't know.
01:39:13.000 This is such a fascinating conversation because I would love to have a person who's equally educated on this stuff that opposes your viewpoint.
01:39:23.000 And I'd love to see – Yeah, well, there are certainly people that oppose my viewpoint.
01:39:28.000 There's no shortage of them.
01:39:29.000 Right.
01:39:29.000 But, you know, I'd be happy to come on the show.
01:39:32.000 But you don't think they're correct.
01:39:33.000 No, no, they're not correct at all.
01:39:35.000 Oh, you know, before I forget, too, I forgot to bring this up because you mentioned it on the other podcast, and you're like, I wish somebody would come in and talk to me about it.
01:39:43.000 I was like, yeah, I got to talk about it, which is the Act 2022 in Puerto Rico and whether or not Puerto Rico is in trouble because you have a bunch of rich people who are there who are not paying taxes.
01:39:53.000 Yeah.
01:39:54.000 Yeah, that was the charge, right?
01:39:55.000 The reason why it was so difficult to rebuild the infrastructure post-Maria was that all you rich guys had come there and you soaked off the economy and that's why you're there because you weren't paying any taxes.
01:40:08.000 Yeah, and so first of all, the tax breaks didn't start until 2012. So before that, what was going on and what changed?
01:40:17.000 Well, if you were rich in Puerto Rico, you paid the same 30% tax as everybody else.
01:40:23.000 Now, nobody in Puerto Rico has to pay federal income taxes.
01:40:26.000 That is one of the big benefits that Puerto Rico has.
01:40:29.000 You don't have to pay the federal income tax if you live there and you're working there on the money you earn.
01:40:34.000 So if I had moved to Puerto Rico in 2010 or 2011, which I did not do, but had I moved there then, I would have had to pay the same high Puerto Rican income tax that everybody else in Puerto Rico is paying.
01:40:47.000 But what enticed a lot of people to move to Puerto Rico was the fact that they reduced the taxes.
01:40:53.000 Now, the taxes aren't zero, right?
01:40:55.000 If you come there, you're still going to pay taxes on some of the money that you earn.
01:41:02.000 My business pays a 4% corporate tax, so it's not zero.
01:41:06.000 I pay 4%.
01:41:07.000 I can give myself a dividend that's tax-free, but the corporations are required to pay out a certain amount of taxable salary to the owners.
01:41:15.000 So some of my salary is taxed.
01:41:18.000 I think?
01:41:37.000 We're good to go.
01:41:54.000 The people who moved there brought significant tax revenue that Puerto Rico never was going to get.
01:41:59.000 Because remember, if they were taxing people at 30%, people from California wouldn't have moved there.
01:42:04.000 People from New York, people from New Jersey wouldn't have moved there.
01:42:07.000 It was the low taxes that brought all these people to Puerto Rico who never would have been there. 0.82
01:42:14.000 We're good to go.
01:42:28.000 The people who have moved there, myself included, we donated a lot of money to the relief efforts.
01:42:33.000 I mean, as soon as that hurricane was over, a lot of the Act 2022 people, which is what they'd be called because they went there to participate, they were raising money, they were helping out.
01:42:44.000 I mean, so there's a lot of charity that came to Puerto Rico that a lot of these people, they wouldn't have thought of it if they didn't already live there.
01:42:50.000 But by bringing a lot of wealthy people down there to Puerto Rico and they're there living it, They're more inclined to help out their neighbors than when they were still living in the U.S. So Puerto Rico has derived significant benefit from an influx of wealthy entrepreneurs.
01:43:07.000 So this idea that you're taking advantage of them and that you moving in there and just exploiting that place by getting paid in low taxes and that it's a bad thing for the people that live there.
01:43:18.000 That's a false statement.
01:43:19.000 No, it's a great thing for the people that live there because people are coming to the island bringing capital, bringing businesses, bringing employment opportunities, paying taxes that they never would have paid.
01:43:30.000 Let me ask you, did you ever anticipate?
01:43:34.000 Is Puerto Rico as big as any state?
01:43:36.000 Like, is it as big as Rhode Island?
01:43:37.000 Like, how big is it?
01:43:38.000 No, it's small.
01:43:39.000 I mean, geographically, it may be about the size.
01:43:41.000 I think it's like 30 miles, maybe.
01:43:43.000 And that's the length.
01:43:44.000 It's skinnier than that.
01:43:46.000 So it's a small place, but relative to the Caribbean, I mean, if you compare it to other Caribbean islands, it's pretty big.
01:43:53.000 How long is the flight from, like, New York to Puerto Rico?
01:43:55.000 Actually, in the air, it's about three hours.
01:43:57.000 But I think the airlines, they leave about four, if you look at the flight time.
01:44:01.000 But actually, from wheels up to wheels down, it's about a three-hour flight.
01:44:05.000 So it's not far.
01:44:07.000 And there are a lot of places that you can fly direct.
01:44:10.000 To go to the West Coast, no, you've got to change planes.
01:44:13.000 Now, would there be a way that all these people coming in, they could somehow or another fix the whole electrical system that they have there, their power grid?
01:44:24.000 Yeah.
01:44:24.000 Yeah, look, the power grid, this just shows you all the people that think socialism is so great.
01:44:29.000 Look at Puerto Rico.
01:44:31.000 That's why they're broke, right?
01:44:33.000 The socialists destroyed Puerto Rico.
01:44:36.000 The socialists in Puerto Rico and, of course, the ones that we have in Washington because all their problems aren't self-inflicted.
01:44:42.000 But we created a problem for Puerto Rico a number of ways, right?
01:44:47.000 First of all, right, we have the minimum wage.
01:44:49.000 That, you know, the average income in Puerto Rico is half of the poorest state in the United States, which I forget which is the poorest state.
01:44:58.000 It's like Kentucky.
01:44:59.000 Kentucky, maybe.
01:44:59.000 But it's half of that.
01:45:01.000 Half of that.
01:45:02.000 Right.
01:45:02.000 But now you've got a minimum wage that's the same as Kentucky.
01:45:05.000 So it's basically keeping a lot more people unemployed.
01:45:09.000 But then you still have welfare.
01:45:11.000 You still have food stamps.
01:45:12.000 So you have all these people now that are not working because they're getting paid by the government.
01:45:16.000 But then you have the Puerto Rican government, which is a major employer of people who work for the government.
01:45:22.000 And a lot of them...
01:45:24.000 I mean, there's so many people that are working for the government.
01:45:28.000 They're not productive, but they're draining resources from the Puerto Rican economy. 0.98
01:45:32.000 I mean, part of it was a power company.
01:45:34.000 I mean, it's a disaster, but the government is running everything there, and so everything is inefficient.
01:45:40.000 And meanwhile, a lot of the productive people, people who want jobs, have left the island.
01:45:45.000 Like if you think a high minimum wage is great, all the people who are leaving Puerto Rico to go to Florida are effectively, even though it's the same minimum wage, they're actually going to a state that has a much lower minimum wage relative to the medium wage because they can get jobs in Florida.
01:46:00.000 They can't get them in Puerto Rico.
01:46:03.000 So you have that situation where very few people are actually employed, so you don't have a real tax base.
01:46:09.000 And then what America did, what really screwed them over, was we made all their bonds triple tax-free.
01:46:17.000 We said if you live in New York and you buy Puerto Rican government bonds, you're not going to pay any local income taxes.
01:46:25.000 You're not going to pay any federal income taxes.
01:46:28.000 It's all tax-free.
01:46:30.000 If you loan money to a Puerto Rican company, right, if you loan money to a private business in Puerto Rico, you've got to pay taxes on whatever they pay you in interest.
01:46:38.000 But if you loan money to the Puerto Rican government, the interest is tax-free.
01:46:42.000 So America subsidized loaning money to the government in Puerto Rico, but not to the private sector.
01:46:49.000 And so they made it very easy for Puerto Rican politicians to go into debt because all these muni bond funds all over the country needed Puerto Rican paper to increase the yield on their fund.
01:47:00.000 So you have everybody wants Puerto Rican government bonds.
01:47:02.000 So the Puerto Rican government is creating these bonds and they can now buy votes.
01:47:06.000 They can promise all sorts of goodies to people who vote for them.
01:47:09.000 They can overpay government workers, give them all sorts of holidays, lots of time off, and they can keep borrowing money.
01:47:15.000 So they got deeper and deeper into debt because we created an incentive for them to do that.
01:47:21.000 And now they have a debt crisis because all of a sudden Puerto Ricans bondholders realize that Puerto Rico is never going to pay back their money.
01:47:29.000 And then the other thing that we did to them, and I talked about I think on the show, is the Jones Act, which, if you remember, Trump suspended it for like a week or two after Maria.
01:47:39.000 But the Jones Act should be completely repealed, and especially if Donald Trump's going to be talking about Paris.
01:47:45.000 What's the Jones Act again?
01:47:51.000 Is that the Jones Act says that if you want to transport goods from one U.S. port to another U.S. port, it has to be an American ship.
01:48:03.000 So Trump is out there talking about free trade.
01:48:06.000 We need free trade.
01:48:07.000 The Jones Act is the opposite of free trade.
01:48:09.000 It's complete protectionism.
01:48:11.000 It's saying that if you want to take something from Florida...
01:48:17.000 If you want to take something between the US and Puerto Rico, you've got to use a US ship.
01:48:23.000 You can't use a foreign ship, right? 0.99
01:48:25.000 So there's no competition.
01:48:26.000 But what this has done is this has dramatically increased the cost of living.
01:48:31.000 So even though the average person in Puerto Rico earns half of what the average person in Kentucky earns, groceries in Puerto Rico are more expensive than groceries in Kentucky.
01:48:40.000 So you have lower income but a higher cost of living.
01:48:43.000 That's thanks to the Jones Act.
01:48:44.000 And if they repealed the Jones Act, the cost of living in Puerto Rico would plunge.
01:48:49.000 And that's one of the reasons, too, that the tourism industry...
01:48:51.000 Puerto Rico is a beautiful island.
01:48:53.000 I mean, if you haven't been there, you should come.
01:48:55.000 It's a magnificent island.
01:48:57.000 And what's also great about it is it has a real culture.
01:48:59.000 It has a real vibe to it.
01:49:00.000 It's a city.
01:49:01.000 It's like it's a Latin American city on an island.
01:49:04.000 It's not just like a remote little island.
01:49:06.000 So it's a really nice place to be, and it's one of the only places that I think you can really live in the Caribbean and not feel like you're just on Gilligan's Island or not – but just like on vacation all the time.
01:49:17.000 It's a real city with real stuff going on, and I've been there now long enough that – You know, I would go there, you know, even without the tax breaks, I like being there, right?
01:49:27.000 I look forward to going back.
01:49:29.000 What about crime and poverty?
01:49:30.000 Yeah, I mean, look, there's crime there in the big city in San Juan and certain areas, just like there are in New York, and just like all major U.S. cities, you've got crime problems, and again, there's a lot of reasons for that.
01:49:42.000 Again, it has to do with government, it has to do with the drug laws and all the other things, although they've got miracle marijuana.
01:49:48.000 They do?
01:49:49.000 In Puerto Rico.
01:49:50.000 I think eventually they'll probably have recreational, but at least they have medical.
01:49:54.000 But what was I – I just lost my train of thought.
01:49:58.000 What was I doing?
01:49:59.000 What were we talking about?
01:50:00.000 Oh, the Jones Act.
01:50:01.000 Jones Act.
01:50:02.000 Right.
01:50:03.000 And so – oh, yeah.
01:50:03.000 So how it hurts the tourism industry.
01:50:05.000 So the Jones Act makes Puerto Rican hotels unable to compete on the low end with hotels in other Caribbean islands because – Everything is so expensive because of the Jones Act and because they have the U.S. minimum wage.
01:50:21.000 What specifically is the Jones Act?
01:50:22.000 What does it say?
01:50:23.000 It's on the shipping.
01:50:25.000 Imports, right? 0.97
01:50:25.000 So all the food in Puerto Rico is more expensive. 0.97
01:50:28.000 All the supplies.
01:50:29.000 So hotels have a lot of things, right?
01:50:31.000 You go to a hotel.
01:50:32.000 There's all kinds of products.
01:50:34.000 You got bath products in there.
01:50:35.000 All that stuff has to be shipped.
01:50:36.000 And all the food that you eat, all the drinks, all the stuff is shipped in, and to bring it to Puerto Rico is a lot more expensive than to bring it to the Bahamas or bring it to Barbados or someplace else.
01:50:47.000 So all these other Caribbean islands can get a lot of American tourists to go there for bargain vacations, but Puerto Rico can't compete on the low end.
01:50:57.000 On the real high end, they can compete because people are not as concerned about the cost.
01:51:02.000 But on the lower end, the budget traveler, a lot more people would be going to Puerto Rico if it wasn't for the Jones Act because the hotels would be able to cater to a lower price point because they could hire the chamber mage for less money.
01:51:17.000 They could have lower prices at the restaurant.
01:51:20.000 So this is really destroying the tourism industry.
01:51:25.000 In Puerto Rico, which could be thriving but for the Jones Act, but also it is diminishing the standard of living of Puerto Ricans who are forced to pay higher prices.
01:51:36.000 I mean, what happens is, let's say there's a big ship coming in from China with all sorts of goods, and it's headed for a U.S. port.
01:51:46.000 If it could stop off at Puerto Rico, drop a few things off, and then continue on its destination, that would be great.
01:51:54.000 It would be inexpensive.
01:51:55.000 But they can't.
01:51:56.000 What it has to do is it has to bring all the stuff that's going to Puerto Rico to the U.S., unload it, and then load it back on a U.S. flagship, and then send it back to Puerto Rico, which costs a fortune.
01:52:07.000 And then the same thing with Puerto Rican exports.
01:52:09.000 So the whole Puerto Rican international commerce is being limited.
01:52:16.000 By the Jones Act.
01:52:17.000 Now, this also affects Hawaii.
01:52:18.000 Hawaii suffers from the Jones Act, too.
01:52:20.000 But Hawaii is much richer than Puerto Rico.
01:52:22.000 They have a much higher average income.
01:52:24.000 And so even though it affects them, it's not as big a deal.
01:52:30.000 It's the same thing with Hawaii, even though Hawaii is a state?
01:52:33.000 Yeah, because Hawaii is a U.S. port.
01:52:36.000 So, you know, Hawaii has to have all these Jones Act ships as well. 0.97
01:52:40.000 So if something gets delivered to Hawaii, it has to get delivered to somewhere else first and then shipped to Hawaii, like to go to California first?
01:52:48.000 Yes.
01:52:48.000 Most stuff that's going to Hawaii that's coming, like, from the Pacific...
01:52:52.000 They don't stop off at Hawaii.
01:52:54.000 That seems so crazy if Hawaii is actually a state.
01:52:57.000 Like, Puerto Rico is a strange thing.
01:53:00.000 It's a territory, right?
01:53:01.000 Right.
01:53:02.000 That's the best thing that Puerto Rico's got going for.
01:53:04.000 If it was a state, they'd have to pay the state income tax.
01:53:18.000 Right, I understand.
01:53:24.000 It's a domestic port.
01:53:26.000 Hawaii, of course, is domestic because Hawaii is a state.
01:53:29.000 And so Hawaii, things are very expensive in Hawaii for the same reason that they're expensive in Puerto Rico.
01:53:34.000 But Hawaiians can afford it more because Hawaiians, on average, have more money.
01:53:40.000 And so if your average income is higher, then your food budget is not as important to you.
01:53:47.000 I think we're good to go.
01:54:06.000 The welfare checks will get bigger to people in Puerto Rico.
01:54:09.000 But that's the last thing they need is more welfare. 0.55
01:54:12.000 They need more freedom.
01:54:13.000 They need more opportunity.
01:54:14.000 They need more free enterprise.
01:54:16.000 And all that will go away if they become a state.
01:54:19.000 Because if you imagine all the problems that Puerto Rican has now, imagine leveling the income tax on top of that. 0.98
01:54:25.000 Imagine sending the IRS to Puerto Rico.
01:54:27.000 They're not even down there now.
01:54:29.000 Imagine having IRS agents in Puerto Rico.
01:54:31.000 With the support for socialism, is there any place where socialism has worked?
01:54:35.000 Where there's some extreme benefits to the people that live there where they can show.
01:54:40.000 Because the guys like you, the free market capitalist guys, you're always saying, this is the solution.
01:54:47.000 Capitalism is a solution.
01:54:48.000 Give people freedom is a solution.
01:54:50.000 Deregulation, that's the solution.
01:54:52.000 Let businesses thrive.
01:54:53.000 More people make money.
01:54:55.000 Businesses will grow.
01:54:56.000 People have more opportunity.
01:54:57.000 Yeah, you know, people think it's worked in Scandinavia.
01:55:00.000 You know, they always want to talk about Sweden, right, as an example of where socialism works.
01:55:05.000 Well, talk to a Swede, right? 0.99
01:55:07.000 And they'll tell you that it doesn't work.
01:55:09.000 But if you want to look at the history of Swedish socialism, Sweden became a very wealthy country today.
01:55:15.000 Before they had that socialism, right?
01:55:17.000 They were very much of a free market economy and it was the freedom that produced all the wealth.
01:55:23.000 But then whenever you have wealth and you have freedom, you're always going to have inequality, right?
01:55:27.000 Because people are smarter than other people, more ambitious, harder working.
01:55:31.000 So whenever you have freedom, you're not going to have equality in outcome.
01:55:35.000 Even if everybody has...
01:55:37.000 An equal opportunity.
01:55:38.000 And of course, even that's not true.
01:55:40.000 Everybody is equal in the eyes of the law, but there's always going to be some people that will have an advantage.
01:55:45.000 Maybe they have better connections.
01:55:47.000 They were born to parents that have more money and they can give them a leg up.
01:55:53.000 So you're always going to have unequal outcomes.
01:55:56.000 Some people are going to be rich relative to other people.
01:55:58.000 But the beauty of capitalism is that everybody is better off.
01:56:02.000 When you end up with socialism, you equalize everybody, but you equalize them at a lower level.
01:56:08.000 You redistribute the poverty.
01:56:09.000 The people who end up wealthy are the people who have political connections.
01:56:13.000 So the wealthy people in socialist countries are the people who have political connections.
01:56:17.000 Well, what happened with Sweden?
01:56:18.000 Yeah, I'm going to go back to Sweden.
01:56:20.000 So Sweden was very rich.
01:56:21.000 And then, of course, you have the demagogues, the politicians, who will get votes by appealing to envy.
01:56:28.000 Hey, this guy has more than you.
01:56:30.000 It's not fair.
01:56:32.000 And, of course, politicians always promise something for nothing.
01:56:36.000 Vote for me and I'll give you this that you don't have to work for.
01:56:39.000 I mean, that is the problem with a democracy.
01:56:42.000 I mean, people vote for crazy things.
01:56:44.000 That's why...
01:56:45.000 The founding fathers, when they created America, they created a republic, right?
01:56:49.000 People don't understand the distinction, but we're not supposed to be a democracy.
01:56:53.000 The word democracy does not appear in the Constitution.
01:56:56.000 It does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, you know, just the Pledge of Allegiance, right?
01:57:02.000 I pledge allegiance to the flag in the United States of America and to the republic, right?
01:57:05.000 So we're a republic.
01:57:06.000 We're not a democracy because the founding fathers knew that The dangers of democracy.
01:57:11.000 Well, democracy is what brought socialism into Sweden.
01:57:14.000 And it screwed them up, right?
01:57:17.000 It screwed the economy up so much that in the last 10 years, they've gone the other way.
01:57:22.000 They've lowered income taxes.
01:57:24.000 They've abolished the inheritance tax in Sweden.
01:57:27.000 I mean, you know, does that sound socialist?
01:57:30.000 So the last 10 years.
01:57:31.000 So previous to that, socialism had a stronghold.
01:57:33.000 Yeah, it was getting bigger and bigger, probably going from the 70s, 80s, the Swedish mixed economy, just like it bankrupted New Zealand. 1.00
01:57:42.000 I mean, New Zealand used to be the poster boy for mixed economy socialism until they got bankrupt.
01:57:48.000 So Sweden is the only successful...
01:57:51.000 No, no, they're not successful.
01:57:51.000 And it's not.
01:57:52.000 But I was just going to say that.
01:57:53.000 It's the only example that someone can cite, and that's not a successful example.
01:57:57.000 They'll cite Norway, a lot of the Scandinavian countries, Denmark.
01:58:01.000 But you have to look at how successful they were before they became socialist.
01:58:05.000 And then you also have to look at what the government is doing there because the taxes on business are not – You know, extreme.
01:58:14.000 The taxes are on the average guy.
01:58:16.000 They have, I think in Sweden, I think the VAT is about 30% sales tax that you have to pay.
01:58:22.000 I mean, this is a high sales tax.
01:58:24.000 I mean, and then the income taxes impact average people.
01:58:28.000 So, because they know, the Swedes know if they really jack up taxes on businesses, the businesses will just leave.
01:58:36.000 We're good to go.
01:58:54.000 It's a byproduct of freedom and capitalism.
01:58:57.000 And since they moved in that direction, they have slowed down that progress.
01:59:01.000 But the Swedish people have recognized that.
01:59:04.000 And that's why the reforms that have been made over the last decade or two have been to turn back the clock, to move away from those socialist policies and to try to dismantle.
01:59:15.000 Now, they haven't gone completely the other way, just like New Zealand.
01:59:19.000 I mean, New Zealand went so far.
01:59:20.000 They went from like...
01:59:23.000 A totally socialist-type economy, one that was like – this was the example.
01:59:28.000 If you believed in socialism, you would point to New Zealand as, see, this shows you, right?
01:59:33.000 And then they went bankrupt.
01:59:34.000 They went through a huge economic crisis in the 80s.
01:59:38.000 Previous to being socialist, were they successful with capitalism?
01:59:41.000 Of course.
01:59:41.000 Yeah, of course.
01:59:42.000 That's how it always works.
01:59:43.000 Because if you're always socialist, then you never have any wealth to redistribute.
01:59:47.000 It's capitalism that creates the wealth that the socialists want to redistribute.
01:59:51.000 So let me ask you this, though, because we're going to keep going around in circles with this.
01:59:56.000 You're going to study this for a long period of time.
01:59:59.000 What is it about socialism that's so appealing to people if there's no examples of it being effective?
02:00:05.000 Why does it keep coming up?
02:00:07.000 Is it a lack of education or a lack of understanding of economics?
02:00:12.000 Like what is it about it that keeps, like when this woman who just won and she seems like a very nice person, when she talks about being a democratic socialist and everybody gets fired up, is it ignorance?
02:00:24.000 Yeah, look, certainly it's a lack of understanding of economics.
02:00:28.000 Most people don't understand it.
02:00:30.000 But look, I mean, there are a lot of reasons that socialism is appealing to people, especially when they're young, right?
02:00:36.000 There's an old saying that if you're not a socialist or if you're not a liberal, by the time you're 21, you don't have a heart.
02:00:44.000 If you're not a conservative, by the time you're 28, you don't have a head.
02:00:47.000 So liberals are just people that never grew up, right?
02:00:51.000 It's like they still believe in Santa Claus.
02:00:54.000 That's what it is.
02:00:55.000 You just never… Socialists in particular, not necessarily liberals.
02:00:58.000 Well, even people believing in big government because usually what happens is when you're a kid and when you're in high school, you've never had a job and all this stuff sounds great until you're out in the real world paying taxes.
02:01:10.000 That's why it was a mistake to lower the voting age down to 18. I mean I don't even think 21. It should be higher.
02:01:17.000 If you think about the original voting age when it was 21, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, think about a guy who was 21 back in, you know, 1850. Different person.
02:01:28.000 I mean, think about...
02:01:29.000 I mean, the guy probably got out of school when he was 10. Probably already had kids.
02:01:32.000 He's been working.
02:01:32.000 He's got a family.
02:01:33.000 He's in the real world.
02:01:34.000 And I know people are going to say, look, women weren't voting. 1.00
02:01:37.000 Fine.
02:01:37.000 You know, whatever.
02:01:38.000 I don't think that...
02:01:39.000 How old do you think it should be?
02:01:40.000 I think maybe 28, 30. I mean, I... Look...
02:01:47.000 Look.
02:01:48.000 Let's make it 50. Fuck it. 1.00
02:01:51.000 30 years old. 1.00
02:01:54.000 Imagine being 28. You're not old enough, son.
02:01:57.000 You know, the reason they raised the voting age was because of Vietnam, because of the draft, right?
02:02:02.000 They were saying old enough to fight, old enough to vote, which was a bunch of nonsense.
02:02:06.000 You mean lower the voting age.
02:02:08.000 No, they lowered it, right, because you could get drafted when you were 18. And they were saying, look, if you're going to draft, look, I don't believe in the draft.
02:02:15.000 I would rather get rid of the draft and leave. 0.99
02:02:18.000 I agree with you that 21 sounds better.
02:02:21.000 I would say 25, because that's the age that your frontal cortex develops.
02:02:25.000 But no, what's important about voting is not voting.
02:02:28.000 Look, when I moved to Puerto Rico, I gave up my right to vote, right?
02:02:31.000 That's one of the things I can't do.
02:02:32.000 You don't vote at all?
02:02:33.000 For president?
02:02:33.000 For anything?
02:02:34.000 No, I can't vote for Congress because they don't have a Congress.
02:02:36.000 But it's still a state, right?
02:02:39.000 No, it's not a state.
02:02:39.000 It's a territory?
02:02:40.000 It's a territory.
02:02:41.000 So if you live in Puerto Rico and you move to Florida, now you can vote for a congressman in your district.
02:02:46.000 You can vote for a Florida senator.
02:02:48.000 How much time do you have to spend in...
02:02:50.000 You wouldn't want Florida to be officially living there if you kept your place in Puerto Rico.
02:02:55.000 Well, I wouldn't want to do that, but if you're in – it's 183 days is the cutoff for where your residence is going to be.
02:03:05.000 But the important thing about voting is not that you get to vote.
02:03:09.000 The important thing is to have good government.
02:03:12.000 And what is good government?
02:03:13.000 Good government is government that respects – We're good to go.
02:03:33.000 Government is here to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
02:03:37.000 Government is here to protect our rights.
02:03:39.000 It's not here to give us free stuff.
02:03:41.000 It's not here to take stuff from other people and give it to us.
02:03:44.000 It's there to protect us, right?
02:03:46.000 It's there protecting life, liberty, property.
02:03:48.000 And so the goal of government or the goal of an election is to have good government.
02:03:53.000 Now, as far as I'm concerned, I would rather have good government where I don't vote.
02:03:57.000 Than bad government where I do vote, right?
02:03:59.000 Because, you know, one of the things people said, oh, you're going to move to Puerto Rico, you can't vote.
02:04:03.000 Who cares? 0.65
02:04:04.000 I vote for the loser in every election. 1.00
02:04:06.000 What difference does it make when some idiots are going to outvote me? 1.00
02:04:10.000 And that's basically who's voting in America. 1.00
02:04:12.000 I mean, if you think about it, the elections are decided by the TV commercials, right?
02:04:18.000 Because most people, you know, they know who they're going to vote for.
02:04:21.000 Can you imagine the person who decides who's going to vote for based on a TV commercial? 1.00
02:04:25.000 I mean, these guys are morons. 1.00
02:04:27.000 So the swing. 1.00
02:04:27.000 Yeah, the swing voters are determining the outcome of these elections, and we end up with horrible government. 1.00
02:04:33.000 I mean, democracy almost guarantees horrible government.
02:04:36.000 But one of the things you want to do if you're going to have democracy is, okay, let's have responsible people voting.
02:04:42.000 I mean,
02:05:04.000 right.
02:05:05.000 And people say, you know, oh, it's unfair.
02:05:08.000 Look, if we could have good government without 18-year-olds voting, that's fine. 1.00
02:05:12.000 You know, but the left wants the young people voting because they're stupid enough to vote for them. 0.99
02:05:17.000 They're idealistic. 1.00
02:05:17.000 Yeah, and you said, why is socialism appealing to somebody who's young? 1.00
02:05:21.000 Because they don't know any better.
02:05:23.000 They haven't lived.
02:05:24.000 And it sounds good, right?
02:05:26.000 Right.
02:05:26.000 Oh, you know, I care about people.
02:05:29.000 That's why liberals think conservatives are mean. 0.96
02:05:34.000 Right.
02:05:34.000 Right.
02:05:35.000 Conservatives don't think liberals are mean.
02:05:37.000 They just think they don't understand.
02:05:38.000 They're misinformed.
02:05:40.000 They don't get it.
02:05:42.000 Well, that's sort of shifting.
02:05:44.000 It seems like there's more people that are thinking that liberals are mean now than ever before because of the way they're attacking things.
02:05:51.000 Yeah, because liberals are now so intolerant, which is the craziest part.
02:05:54.000 They like to pretend that they're so tolerant, but they're the most intolerant people out there.
02:05:58.000 They're only tolerant if you agree with them.
02:06:00.000 Yes.
02:06:01.000 To be tolerant, you have to tolerate intolerance, right?
02:06:06.000 See, we talked earlier about discrimination.
02:06:08.000 Look, if somebody is a racist, I'm going to tolerate that.
02:06:11.000 Fine.
02:06:12.000 You can have your own opinion.
02:06:13.000 I can disagree with your opinion.
02:06:15.000 But fine.
02:06:16.000 Live and let live.
02:06:16.000 I live in a free country.
02:06:18.000 People can do things I don't like.
02:06:19.000 But to a liberal, if you don't think exactly the way they think...
02:06:23.000 Then, oh, yeah, they harass you.
02:06:26.000 So they're becoming evil and mean. 1.00
02:06:29.000 So they used to just be ignorant. 1.00
02:06:31.000 Now they're ignorant and mean. 1.00
02:06:34.000 Well, not just mean but harassing, like people encouraging people to harass people that have separate political views and opinions. 0.99
02:06:41.000 Yes, it's very militant.
02:06:43.000 It's very strange.
02:06:44.000 Like anybody who supports the Trump administration or is even a part of it, they're encouraging these people to get harassed at restaurants.
02:06:52.000 Yeah.
02:06:52.000 Yeah, and I wish I could be a bigger supporter of Trump.
02:06:55.000 I mean, I voted for him.
02:06:57.000 I really like Trump as a candidate because he was saying a lot of the same things I was saying when he was a candidate.
02:07:03.000 It's just that the minute he won— Well, about the phony economy and how we have to—the numbers are not right and we have to shrink government.
02:07:11.000 So for you, economically, it made more sense than Hillary— Well, I mean, Hillary would be, I mean, certainly a disaster.
02:07:18.000 But the irony of it is— Why would she be a disaster?
02:07:20.000 Because she was just, you know, more big government. 0.98
02:07:22.000 I mean, you know, and I think she would have, you know, continued the failed policies.
02:07:25.000 But unfortunately, Trump has continued those policies as well.
02:07:29.000 And he could end up being a bigger disaster if he is the catalyst to put a Bernie Sanders type into the White House in 2020. In response to him.
02:07:38.000 In response to how much worse the economy gets, and he takes the blame for it.
02:07:43.000 So this is all predicated on your initial view that the economy is going to crash inside the next three years.
02:07:49.000 If it doesn't, and it does really well, it stays in this state that it's – is it doing well now?
02:07:55.000 It's just a bubble.
02:07:56.000 It's a bubble.
02:07:57.000 It's no different than it was when Obama was president.
02:08:01.000 There's just some more optimism that things are going to change.
02:08:03.000 Well, when you were talking about this before it happened, and I remember you going on these different talk shows saying, this is going to crash, and people weren't listening to you.
02:08:11.000 And they were like, oh, Peter Schiff doesn't know what he's talking about.
02:08:13.000 And then it did crash, and then they listened to you.
02:08:17.000 You're the only one that's saying it's going to crash again.
02:08:19.000 Well, they never really listened to me.
02:08:21.000 They kind of tolerated me.
02:08:22.000 Well, they had to because you were right.
02:08:24.000 Well, here's the irony of it all, because leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, and if you go to my YouTube channel, you can see my introductory video is a little montage that I actually shot as part of my Senate campaign when I ran for Senate in 2010. But it's a bunch of people mocking me,
02:08:44.000 and then a lot of the shows that I went on where they said, hey, you were right.
02:08:46.000 You were the one guy that called it.
02:08:48.000 So I used to be on...
02:08:50.000 I was on television a lot on Fox, CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, probably once a week for three or four years I was on something.
02:08:57.000 And then I used to get – the Washington Post used to call me, the New York Times.
02:09:02.000 People – magazine articles were written about me.
02:09:04.000 When I was this lone kind of crazy guy talking about a housing bubble, talking about a financial crisis that was coming – They at least, you know, gave me a platform to air my views, even though they mocked them and laughed at them.
02:09:17.000 I was still there.
02:09:18.000 I was like the gloom and doom guy, Dr. Doom.
02:09:22.000 I think Time Magazine did an article with me.
02:09:24.000 I had a sickle in my hand.
02:09:26.000 I was the grim reaper.
02:09:28.000 But anyway, so then we get to financial crisis.
02:09:31.000 And all of a sudden, I get a little bit of notoriety.
02:09:34.000 You're Nostradamus.
02:09:35.000 Yeah, Peter Schiff was right.
02:09:36.000 But over the last few years, nobody will talk to me.
02:09:41.000 I'm not on any television shows.
02:09:43.000 Why?
02:09:44.000 Well, I think that at this point, people just think, look, you know, I've been saying, talking about this problem for so long.
02:09:51.000 They look, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
02:09:53.000 They forget that I was warning about the problems in the housing market for four or five years.
02:09:57.000 You know, as the prices kept going up, you know, it's not like the things that I see happen immediately.
02:10:03.000 But I think, you know, at this point, maybe in the past they thought maybe there was a chance I could be right, even though it was a slim chance.
02:10:09.000 Now they probably think it's impossible that I could be right, so why even give me any airtime?
02:10:14.000 So, I mean, I come on shows like yours and people actually get to hear the truth.
02:10:17.000 But if you go back to what I was actually predicting...
02:10:21.000 2008, that financial crisis was the beginning of the end, not the end.
02:10:27.000 What I was predicting, and I wrote a book about it, Crash Proof, had a profit from the coming economic collapse that came out in February of 2007. I said we have this huge bubble.
02:10:36.000 We have this housing bubble that the Federal Reserve created, right?
02:10:39.000 Not the private enterprise.
02:10:41.000 It was created by government.
02:10:43.000 And in fact, after the financial crisis happened, Congress had a...
02:10:48.000 A hearing to try to determine why we had a financial crisis.
02:10:51.000 And I tried my best to get invited to testify and they refused to let me be there because they didn't have anybody there that predicted it because they wanted to basically come to a conclusion that they had already arrived at was that it was caused by a lack of regulation and we need more government, right?
02:11:06.000 So they didn't want me there to say it was caused by government and we needed less government.
02:11:10.000 Although, by the way, I have testified at Congress twice since then.
02:11:13.000 And both of my testimonies are on YouTube.
02:11:17.000 And you've got to watch them.
02:11:18.000 It's incredible stuff.
02:11:19.000 And in fact, after I was on the first time, I was convinced they would never invite me back.
02:11:23.000 Because I don't treat these guys with the type of respect that they normally get.
02:11:27.000 So I thought they would never invite me back.
02:11:28.000 And they actually invited me back.
02:11:30.000 And then the guy that invited me back got fired.
02:11:33.000 For inviting you back?
02:11:34.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:11:35.000 There's no way that they're going to bring me on again.
02:11:38.000 You're so much better suited for those talk shows they bring you on.
02:11:42.000 You're so much better suited to doing your own videos or doing something like this where you could just go on and on and on.
02:11:48.000 These are complex issues.
02:11:51.000 Yeah, now I have my own platform.
02:11:52.000 I have a lot more people who listen to my podcast than I did back then.
02:11:57.000 But the point that I wanted to make about the crisis is I wrote back then that we had this bubble and we were going to have this crash.
02:12:04.000 But the economic crisis was not going to be that.
02:12:08.000 It was that the collapse that I saw coming in 08 was the beginning.
02:12:14.000 I said that we have this disease that the Fed has created and it's manifested itself in this housing bubble and it's going to pop and we're going to have the worst recession since the Great Depression.
02:12:24.000 We're going to have double digit unemployment.
02:12:25.000 We're going to have trillion dollar deficits.
02:12:28.000 But I said, that's not what's going to kill us.
02:12:30.000 I said, we're not going to die of that disease.
02:12:32.000 That disease is survivable.
02:12:34.000 I said, what's going to kill us is the government's cure.
02:12:37.000 They're going to print so much money, they're going to try to reflate these bubbles, and that's going to cause a dollar crisis and a bond crisis, and that was what was going to destroy the economy.
02:12:47.000 And that's not happened yet.
02:12:49.000 Now, what I did not know at the time, and I didn't put a date on it, I didn't know it would take so long.
02:12:54.000 I mean, here we are 10 years later almost, and that hasn't happened yet.
02:12:58.000 But you think it's got to happen.
02:13:00.000 It's got to happen.
02:13:00.000 And what I got wrong, I said the government was going to try to reflate the bubbles.
02:13:06.000 I assumed they would fail.
02:13:08.000 They succeeded.
02:13:10.000 The bubbles now are bigger than the ones that popped in 08. And what's the difference between bubbles and an actual functioning economy that's sustainable?
02:13:19.000 If it's doing well right now, you agree it's doing well right now?
02:13:22.000 No, it's not doing well.
02:13:23.000 It's a bubble.
02:13:23.000 So the difference between a real economy – a real economy grows from production and savings.
02:13:29.000 In a real economy, we're making stuff and consuming.
02:13:34.000 Like if you look right now at the savings rate, the savings rate is near a record low.
02:13:38.000 And the politicians try to say, oh, this is because the economy is so good.
02:13:42.000 Everybody is out there spending.
02:13:44.000 That's a bunch of nonsense.
02:13:45.000 If the economy was good, people would have more savings.
02:13:48.000 If you ran into a friend of yours that you hadn't seen in a while and you asked him, hey, how you doing?
02:13:54.000 And he said, oh, well, I've maxed out all my credit cards.
02:13:57.000 I took out a second mortgage on my house.
02:13:59.000 I blew through my retirement account.
02:14:03.000 You wouldn't say, oh, you're doing great.
02:14:04.000 Where Whereas if another friend said, how are you doing?
02:14:08.000 Oh, I just fully funded my pension.
02:14:10.000 I got massive savings.
02:14:11.000 I got, you know, I mean, I paid off all my credit cards.
02:14:14.000 I own my house free and clear.
02:14:16.000 That's the guy that's doing well, right?
02:14:18.000 When you're doing well, you get out of debt.
02:14:20.000 So we're not doing that.
02:14:22.000 We're all living based on a bubble, based on cheap money being sped out into the economy.
02:14:28.000 Why is the stock market going up?
02:14:30.000 Because of buybacks.
02:14:31.000 Why are people spending?
02:14:32.000 Because they're going deeper into debt.
02:14:34.000 We have record student loans, record credit card debt, record auto debt.
02:14:39.000 Everybody is loaded up with debt.
02:14:40.000 They just had a survey out, I think, that less than half the people could come up with like 400 bucks.
02:14:46.000 If they had an emergency, I mean, that's nothing.
02:14:49.000 People have nothing.
02:14:51.000 They're living paycheck to paycheck, and even that, they need credit cards.
02:14:55.000 We have huge budget deficits.
02:14:57.000 We have huge trade deficits.
02:14:58.000 We've got record numbers of older people that are working because they can't afford to retire.
02:15:04.000 Meanwhile, the young people can't get jobs because they have no skills. 1.00
02:15:07.000 So the economy is not real, right?
02:15:09.000 It's all this illusion, just like it was what was going on before 2008. People were living off their home equity.
02:15:18.000 Out here in California, homes were going up.
02:15:21.000 People were taking out home equity lines of credit.
02:15:23.000 They were taking vacations.
02:15:25.000 They were buying new cars.
02:15:26.000 They were remodeling their houses.
02:15:28.000 All that prosperity was phony.
02:15:30.000 It wasn't real wealth.
02:15:31.000 They were borrowing upon fake wealth.
02:15:32.000 Yes, and then the wealth came down, and I talked about that for years.
02:15:36.000 Well, we have even faker prosperity now, but it's even less prosperous.
02:15:41.000 Even fewer people are feeling the benefits than before.
02:15:45.000 So the real economy is getting sicker and sicker as it takes more and more air to inflate the bubble, because in order to keep the bubbles from popping, the government and the central bank has to keep misdirecting resources out of the real economy to sustain the bubbles.
02:16:00.000 All right.
02:16:01.000 Through two things.
02:16:02.000 One, what is going to happen that's going to cause this big collapse you predicted way back in 2007 that hasn't actually hit yet?
02:16:10.000 What's going to cause that?
02:16:11.000 How's it going to go down? 0.59
02:16:12.000 And what can the average person like me that knows jack shit about economics, what can we do to protect ourselves? 0.81
02:16:18.000 Well, first of all, you probably know more about economics than the average guy with an economics degree from an American university. 0.96
02:16:24.000 Probably from talking to you.
02:16:24.000 Or just from having common sense.
02:16:26.000 I mean, when you go to U.S. college and you study economics, they basically beat all the common sense out of you. 1.00
02:16:31.000 And by the time you graduate, you're a complete moron when it comes to economics. 0.99
02:16:34.000 How do they do that? 1.00
02:16:35.000 Well, but they teach them all this Keynesian nonsense. 1.00
02:16:39.000 And that's why all the big economists in academia, on Wall Street and government, they're all a bunch of idiots when it comes to economics. 1.00
02:16:46.000 So you know a lot more than they do. 1.00
02:16:48.000 Not that you're an idiot, but, I mean, you just have to have common sense because they lack common sense. 1.00
02:16:54.000 But to get back to your question, this is how... 1.00
02:16:56.000 Okay, the bubble.
02:16:56.000 How's it going to go down?
02:16:57.000 This is how I think it's going to go down.
02:17:01.000 That the Fed's policy of quantitative easing and 0% interest rates, everybody believes it was a success.
02:17:10.000 They believe the Fed revived the economy, that they put out the fire.
02:17:13.000 That's the narrative.
02:17:14.000 Right.
02:17:14.000 They still don't realize that the Fed lit the fire, and they didn't really put it out.
02:17:18.000 It's just kind of—it's simmering, and people don't notice it.
02:17:21.000 But what's going to happen is— The Fed never was able to normalize interest rates.
02:17:27.000 Rates are still 2%.
02:17:29.000 That's still really, really low.
02:17:30.000 And for all the talk about shrinking their balance sheet, it really hasn't shrunk.
02:17:34.000 It's still enormous.
02:17:36.000 And I think that the economy is going to slip into recession.
02:17:40.000 And when it does, the Fed never got interest rates back to 5% or 6% where they normally bring them.
02:17:47.000 They never shrank the balance sheet.
02:17:49.000 So now all of a sudden, we go into this recession, but it's going to be a stagflation because inflation is now really starting to pick up.
02:17:57.000 Prices rise with a lag.
02:17:59.000 The inflation is the expansion of the money supply.
02:18:02.000 That's what the word inflate means.
02:18:03.000 It's to expand, right?
02:18:05.000 You can't expand prices.
02:18:06.000 Prices can go up and they go down.
02:18:08.000 They don't expand.
02:18:09.000 What expands is the supply of money.
02:18:11.000 And so the supply of money expanded, and a lot of that Went into financial assets.
02:18:16.000 So inflation caused stock prices to go up.
02:18:18.000 It caused real estate prices to go up.
02:18:20.000 It caused bond prices to go up.
02:18:22.000 It caused the price of rare art to go up.
02:18:24.000 And all sorts of things went up because of inflation.
02:18:28.000 Ultimately, a lot of that inflation, though, is going to end up in the supermarket, right, you know, at the gas station.
02:18:34.000 And so you're going to have that at the same time that we have the recession.
02:18:38.000 Now the Fed is going to have to go back to the only thing it knows how to do.
02:18:42.000 We're going to do QE4 and we're going to cut rates back to zero.
02:18:46.000 But now the markets are going to see this and they're going to, wait a minute.
02:18:51.000 You never normalized interest rates.
02:18:53.000 You never shrunk your balance sheet.
02:18:55.000 And now you're going to expand it again?
02:18:57.000 Now you're going back to zero?
02:18:59.000 Wait a minute, wait a minute.
02:19:01.000 If you couldn't normalize interest rates following, you know, this last recession, how are you going to do it in the future?
02:19:08.000 I mean, if you couldn't shrink a $4.5 trillion balance sheet, how are you going to shrink a $6 or a $7 trillion balance sheet?
02:19:14.000 If you couldn't raise interest rates back to normal with the national debt, you know, our national debt's now $21 trillion.
02:19:21.000 What if it goes up to 25 trillion, 30 trillion?
02:19:24.000 I mean, one of the reasons the Fed can't raise rates is because we have too much debt.
02:19:27.000 Nobody can afford to pay the higher rates.
02:19:30.000 You know, when inflation was running out of control in the 1970s, and it's going to be a lot worse now, right?
02:19:36.000 The inflation that we had in the 1970s.
02:19:38.000 It was created in the 1960s by Lyndon Johnson, by the Great Society, the War on Poverty, the Vietnam War, going to the moon.
02:19:47.000 We borrowed all sorts of money.
02:19:49.000 We ran big deficits.
02:19:50.000 And the consequence was the dollar crashed in the 70s.
02:19:54.000 Gold went through the roof.
02:19:56.000 Oil went through the roof.
02:19:57.000 And finally, you know, we had to do something about it at the end of the 70s because when Nixon came in and Ford came in, they just continued the same policies.
02:20:07.000 They were, you know, very liberal Republicans, Rockefeller Republicans.
02:20:11.000 And we didn't do anything about inflation until Reagan came in and Volcker was there.
02:20:16.000 And so how did they stop the inflation from running out of control?
02:20:19.000 Volcker jacked interest rates up to 20 percent.
02:20:22.000 Twenty percent!
02:20:23.000 And we had a recession where the Fed was raising interest rates.
02:20:27.000 But that saved the dollar, and it broke the inflationary cycle that was in the economy.
02:20:32.000 By raising the interest rates.
02:20:34.000 Yes.
02:20:34.000 Well, they had to stop the inflation.
02:20:36.000 Right.
02:20:37.000 And of course, Reagan did some other tax reform and things like that.
02:20:41.000 But the Fed really finally got out in front of the inflation curve, and they brought it down.
02:20:48.000 I think?
02:21:08.000 The national debt was financed with long-term bonds, like 10-year, 30-year bonds.
02:21:15.000 So when interest rates went up to 20%, that didn't affect the majority of the debt that was out there.
02:21:22.000 That only increased the cost to the government of the new debt that came out, right, the new borrowing.
02:21:28.000 But today, the $21 trillion national debt is predominantly Treasury bills, stuff that matures in a year or less.
02:21:37.000 And so if interest rates had to go up to, let's say, 10%, the government would have to pay 10% within a few years on the entire national debt.
02:21:45.000 So where would the government get all that money?
02:21:48.000 And it's not this.
02:21:49.000 The government, corporations have never been this levered up.
02:21:52.000 Individuals have never been this levered up.
02:21:54.000 They didn't have adjustable rate mortgages back then.
02:21:56.000 Now you still have a lot of people that have arms, where their mortgage debt would go up.
02:22:02.000 At this point, the Fed can't really fight inflation because it doesn't have the tools because we have so much debt.
02:22:09.000 If they raised interest rates to fight that inflation, the collapse would be so much worse than 2008. All the banks that they bailed out would fail again, but they couldn't bail them out a second time because they can't bail them out and fight inflation at the same time because you can't ease and tighten simultaneously.
02:22:26.000 It's one or the other.
02:22:27.000 So I think when the markets see That we're going back to QE. That we're going back to zero.
02:22:34.000 They're going to realize that this is not temporary.
02:22:36.000 That this is permanent.
02:22:38.000 That the Fed can never normalize interest rates.
02:22:41.000 That the balance sheet is never going to shrink.
02:22:43.000 That we're a banana republic.
02:22:44.000 That we are monetizing our debt.
02:22:46.000 That the Fed has no ability to drain that liquidity.
02:22:50.000 And no ability to fight inflation.
02:22:52.000 That means the dollar is a bottomless pit.
02:22:54.000 That means the dollar is going to keep falling.
02:22:56.000 That means nobody is going to want to own it.
02:22:57.000 And everybody is going to want to get out of dollars.
02:22:59.000 Everybody's going to want to get out of any bond that is denominated in dollars.
02:23:03.000 And then the Federal Reserve, in order to keep interest rates from rising, they might have to start buying muni bonds.
02:23:08.000 They might have to start buying corporate bonds.
02:23:10.000 Otherwise, interest rates are going to skyrocket, and that just fuels the inflationary fire.
02:23:15.000 And then we get a currency crisis.
02:23:17.000 Right?
02:23:17.000 Where the dollar is plunging.
02:23:19.000 Prices are skyrocketing.
02:23:21.000 That is real pain.
02:23:22.000 And who knows what they're going to do?
02:23:24.000 Maybe they're going to have price controls, which are just going to backfire.
02:23:28.000 Then we're going to have shortages.
02:23:29.000 We're going to have rationing.
02:23:30.000 We're going to have civil unrest.
02:23:32.000 I mean, this is going to be ugly when it hits the fan.
02:23:35.000 And, you know, it's dangerous to do this in a backdrop where so many people are inclined To vote for socialists, because that's going to be the type of economic environment where socialism can thrive, because socialists always want to look for a scapegoat.
02:23:49.000 Who can we blame this on?
02:23:51.000 And it's very easy to blame it on the rich or the businesses or the corporations or the Republicans.
02:23:56.000 And I think that's what's going to happen if this happens, you know, sometime over the next few years.
02:24:00.000 But if it doesn't happen in Trump's first term, there's no way he finishes the second term without this happening.
02:24:06.000 No way.
02:24:07.000 I can't see it.
02:24:08.000 So let me ask you this.
02:24:09.000 If he calls you up and says, Peter Schiff, heard you on the Joe Rogan podcast.
02:24:12.000 It was huge.
02:24:13.000 You were amazing.
02:24:14.000 What do I do?
02:24:15.000 What do you tell him to do?
02:24:16.000 I think he has people that were listening to me on the campaign trail.
02:24:20.000 I would say things on my podcast or tweet something, and the next day he'd say something pretty similar.
02:24:26.000 I'm sure.
02:24:27.000 Because my rhetoric, he had to appeal to certain voters.
02:24:31.000 And so he was throwing them this type of red meat.
02:24:33.000 But look, I know some of the guys that are close to him, like Larry Kudlow, like Steve Moore.
02:24:41.000 I mean, I know Steve Moore pretty well because we speak at a lot of the same things.
02:24:45.000 I used to be on Larry's show a lot back in the day when he used to have his show on CNBC. So I know some of these guys.
02:24:52.000 I don't know Art Laffer as well.
02:24:54.000 But, you know, Art Laffer, right?
02:24:55.000 Go look at the debate I did with Art Laffer in 2006 when he said everything was great and, you know, there's no recession coming.
02:25:03.000 And then he bet me a penny and welched on it.
02:25:05.000 I mean, if you can't even – Yeah, he bet me a penny that everything was great and there was nothing to worry about and we weren't going to have a major decline.
02:25:14.000 And then he wouldn't even pay up.
02:25:16.000 But let me ask you this.
02:25:17.000 If he calls you up and says, what do I do?
02:25:19.000 What does he do?
02:25:20.000 Well, at this point, look, it would have been better, as I said, had he come clean right away.
02:25:25.000 That's nice, but what does he do now?
02:25:27.000 You know, now he's got to have to come back and say, look, I just listened to the Joe Rogan podcast.
02:25:31.000 I listened to Peter Schiff.
02:25:33.000 Genius.
02:25:34.000 Guys are genius.
02:25:35.000 Financial genius.
02:25:36.000 I'm not a genius.
02:25:36.000 He's huge.
02:25:37.000 I'm not a genius.
02:25:38.000 I just have common sense.
02:25:41.000 It's these other guys that are just – their judgment is so clouded by the bubble.
02:25:47.000 That's when you get a lot of people that can see things.
02:25:49.000 The reason I saw the crisis coming, the housing bubble, it wasn't that I was so smart.
02:25:54.000 I was just thinking clearly.
02:25:56.000 Everybody else is so delusional.
02:25:58.000 What does he do though?
02:25:59.000 Yeah.
02:25:59.000 I mean, so what he's got to do is basically he's got to come clean now and tell the truth about how screwed up this country is after years of big government and after years of a central bank that has inflated bubble after bubble and say, look, this is what we need to do.
02:26:14.000 What?
02:26:15.000 We're going to have to shrink government.
02:26:17.000 I know I said I wasn't going to cut entitlements, but we got to do that.
02:26:20.000 We can't afford to make these commitments.
02:26:22.000 We can't pay all the Social Security benefits that have been promised, because if we try, we're going to destroy the dollar, right?
02:26:28.000 Because if the government tries to give everybody a Social Security check, They can't do it without destroying the dollar.
02:26:34.000 So we've got to shrink the program.
02:26:36.000 We've got to means test the program.
02:26:38.000 We've got to make it a lot smaller.
02:26:39.000 We've got to end it for the future.
02:26:40.000 We can't have this intergenerational Ponzi scheme that it was a mistake to create it.
02:26:47.000 Nobody wants to admit that Social Security was a mistake, that Medicare was a mistake.
02:26:51.000 One of the things about Social Security that's been harped on and on is that one day it's not going to work.
02:26:56.000 Well, it doesn't work now.
02:26:57.000 It's never worked.
02:26:58.000 But the idea is that you're paying into it now.
02:27:00.000 If you're a 30-year-old person paying into it now, there's strong odds you're not going to get it when you're 65. But you're not paying into anything.
02:27:06.000 I mean, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
02:27:08.000 It's not a legitimately funded retirement program.
02:27:10.000 It's not like your Social Security money is putting a real trust fund somewhere and invested, and when you retire, you're going to get payments out of this trust fund.
02:27:19.000 No, your money is going to the people that are spending it right now.
02:27:21.000 Yeah.
02:27:22.000 And so when it first started, Social Security started a long time ago, the first woman that got a check was Ima Fuller or something was her name.
02:27:28.000 And she lived to be 100 years old.
02:27:30.000 And for her, Social Security was a windfall because she paid into it for a couple of years.
02:27:36.000 She collected for like 40 years.
02:27:38.000 And when Social Security started, it was a 1% tax on payroll.
02:27:42.000 And it was only a small amount.
02:27:43.000 And then the employer paid 1%, which of course comes from the employee.
02:27:46.000 That's part of the fraud, right?
02:27:48.000 I mean the employee pays the whole thing.
02:27:49.000 It doesn't matter if it's considered the employer.
02:27:52.000 But it didn't – self-employed people weren't even included.
02:27:56.000 I think we didn't include the self-employed until like the 50s.
02:27:59.000 Because the government figured if you're smart enough to run your own business, well, then you're smart enough to save for your own retirement.
02:28:05.000 But the government tried to say, look, some Americans are not smart enough to save, which I think was a mistake because the government didn't save anything.
02:28:11.000 Because what the government did is the minute they got the money, they spent it.
02:28:15.000 But before they spend it, they write themselves an IOU and they call it a trust fund.
02:28:19.000 See, what happens is the government collects the Social Security money.
02:28:24.000 And then they spend the money on the current employees.
02:28:28.000 But what they don't spend, they put into the so-called trust fund.
02:28:32.000 But then they borrow it right out and they write themselves an IOU called the government bond.
02:28:36.000 But if the government owns its own bond, that's not an asset.
02:28:40.000 Because they keep saying, oh, the trust funds are going to be solvent.
02:28:44.000 We're good to go.
02:28:54.000 We're good to go.
02:29:07.000 Right.
02:29:23.000 That makes sense.
02:29:23.000 It's a liability.
02:29:24.000 So the trust funds have been a fiction from day one.
02:29:29.000 I mean, Roosevelt sold this to the American public.
02:29:31.000 It was a con.
02:29:32.000 That's why they call it Social Security contributions.
02:29:35.000 They call it you're paying premiums.
02:29:37.000 It's a trust.
02:29:38.000 They tried to make it sound like legitimate insurance, but it was never legitimate insurance because that would have actually been unconstitutional.
02:29:44.000 The reason that the Supreme Court said Social Security was constitutional was because it wasn't legitimate.
02:29:50.000 They said it was just like any other welfare program.
02:29:52.000 Okay.
02:29:53.000 I want you to bring back, though, because we're getting off track.
02:29:56.000 I really want you to say, what would you tell them to do?
02:29:59.000 So Social Security, limit entitlements, or eliminate them?
02:30:02.000 We've got to start eliminating lots of government agencies and departments, whether it's education, energy.
02:30:10.000 There are all sorts of government departments that we need to abolish.
02:30:13.000 We need to cut back on government spending.
02:30:15.000 We need to economize.
02:30:16.000 We need to make government as lean as possible because we're broke.
02:30:20.000 Government is like – it's like if you're trying to run a marathon and you've got a 50-pound sack on your back, you're not going to run very fast.
02:30:27.000 The secret is to take some of that weight out of the pack.
02:30:31.000 So you think that limiting government and getting rid of all the spending is going to allow the economy to be more powerful?
02:30:39.000 Yes, but initially, it's like if you're going to train somebody to come into your gym and they come in and they're real fat and they're out of weight, they're overweight, they have a lousy diet, right?
02:30:52.000 And you say, okay, I've got a plan for you that's going to get you into shape.
02:30:56.000 We're good to go.
02:31:16.000 We are going to have to go through a recession, a very bad one, in order to reallocate resources to where they need to be, to let the free market reallocate them.
02:31:25.000 So when the government gets out of the way and starts shrinking, a lot of people who are getting government checks are not going to get those checks.
02:31:33.000 A lot of people who had government jobs are not going to have jobs.
02:31:36.000 They're going to have to get productive jobs in the private sector.
02:31:39.000 So there's going to be some transition there.
02:31:40.000 We're going to also have to get rid of a lot of regulations that make it so difficult and expensive to hire people and train people.
02:31:47.000 So we have to downsize government.
02:31:49.000 And again, as I said, we have to let interest rates go up so that people will save, so that entrepreneurs can get the capital they need to make the investments, to make the tools that their workers need to be more productive.
02:31:59.000 But then we have to let asset prices fall.
02:32:02.000 We have to stop trying to create this phony wealth effect.
02:32:05.000 See, the central bank thinks what we need is to make the stock market go up, and then people will think they're rich and go out and spend money.
02:32:12.000 Stock price appreciation is not supposed to be the source of wealth.
02:32:17.000 It's companies becoming more valuable because they're earning more and producing more.
02:32:21.000 That's supposed to make the price go up.
02:32:23.000 They're trying to put the cart before the horse.
02:32:25.000 They think that just making the stock market go up is going to make us richer. 0.76
02:32:28.000 Okay, so in your opinion, deregulation, smaller business, all these things are going to help letting people know that we are fucked and that this whole the economy is doing great thing is a ruse.
02:32:40.000 Yeah, and a lot of people who are not working have to start working.
02:32:43.000 They've got to start doing stuff.
02:32:44.000 We've got to get people off of the dole and start – they're riding in the wagon.
02:32:50.000 They've got to start pulling it like everybody else.
02:32:52.000 And you think smaller government and less regulation is going to enhance that?
02:32:56.000 Of course.
02:32:56.000 Well, that's what's keeping them from getting jobs in the first place.
02:32:58.000 I mean, they make it hard for you to get a job with rules and regulations and taxes.
02:33:03.000 And then they reward you for not working with all sorts of subsidies and programs.
02:33:08.000 And then there's also a fear of automation.
02:33:11.000 Automation is going to eliminate a large amount of jobs, including driving jobs.
02:33:16.000 Yeah, but that's all going to make us richer.
02:33:18.000 I mean, we've had automation since the Industrial Revolution, but even before that, there was automation.
02:33:24.000 I mean, look at people on the farms.
02:33:26.000 Look at how many people don't work on farms now because we have machines.
02:33:29.000 Right, but people are worried about universal basic income, that this is the only solution for automation.
02:33:33.000 It's not the only solution.
02:33:35.000 Automation makes us wealthier as a society because it eliminates work.
02:33:41.000 Work is not an ends in and of itself.
02:33:43.000 Work is a means to an ends.
02:33:45.000 Nobody wants to work.
02:33:46.000 They want the fruits of the labor.
02:33:48.000 And so to the extent that we can have a machine do the work for us, That frees us up to do other things.
02:33:53.000 So, you know, if we have autonomous cars and I don't have to drive anymore, you know, A, Trump won't have that problem being sued for overtime by his ex-driver because he won't need somebody to drive.
02:34:04.000 But imagine if everybody had a self-driving car.
02:34:08.000 Think of all the free time now that you have.
02:34:10.000 You could work while you're in your car or you can watch a movie while you're in the car.
02:34:14.000 I mean, you won't be dreading a long trip because you'll be able to be productive while you're in that car.
02:34:20.000 And so there's a lot of things that will happen.
02:34:22.000 Yes, we'll eliminate truck driver jobs, but we'll have safer streets and it'll be less expensive to transport goods.
02:34:29.000 But that frees up that worker to do something else with their time now that they don't have to drive that truck. 0.78
02:34:36.000 So the idea that universal basic income is the only solution to that isn't appealing to you because you think that they really – the real solution is not to give them free money.
02:34:45.000 The real solution is for them to find something else to do.
02:34:48.000 The appeal of universal basic income is almost like two wrongs make a right.
02:34:54.000 I mean the problem is the welfare state discourages people from working.
02:34:58.000 See, the highest marginal tax rate that anybody pays is going from welfare to work because not only do you pay the taxes on what you earn but you lose all the benefits because you now have a job.
02:35:10.000 So welfare and the welfare state creates a huge incentive for people not to work.
02:35:16.000 So at least the argument with universal income is, look, we're not going to take away your welfare if you get a job.
02:35:21.000 So if you improve your lot in life, if you go out there and you become productive, we're not going to punish you by taking away your welfare.
02:35:29.000 Well, the better answer is let's not punish you for working.
02:35:33.000 Let's get rid of the income tax.
02:35:35.000 Let's not tax labor.
02:35:36.000 Let's get rid of the payroll tax to make it – Did you ever foresee getting rid of the income tax in this country?
02:35:42.000 Yeah, we didn't have one.
02:35:44.000 But since the 19, what, 1930s, 40s?
02:35:47.000 It was introduced in 1913, but nobody really paid it until 1943 when we had the withholding tax.
02:35:55.000 But we could get rid of the income tax.
02:35:57.000 Do you really think that that would ever fly in this country?
02:35:59.000 I hope so.
02:36:00.000 But people are so addicted to that money.
02:36:02.000 Well, but people don't like paying the income tax, but we can't get rid of the income tax unless we shrink government. 0.85
02:36:08.000 I mean, back in 1900, government was only like 5% of the GNP, all levels, state, federal, and local.
02:36:14.000 Now it's like 40%.
02:36:15.000 So we can't have no income tax and no payroll tax if we want to have all this government.
02:36:21.000 But if we're willing to do without the government, then we don't need the taxes.
02:36:24.000 And you think most of this government is ineffective?
02:36:26.000 Of course!
02:36:28.000 I mean, government, you know, it's always inefficient.
02:36:30.000 I mean, it's a necessary evil, but that's why you want to minimize...
02:36:34.000 So what would you want to keep?
02:36:37.000 Power?
02:36:38.000 Maintaining streets?
02:36:41.000 Maintenance?
02:36:41.000 Utilities?
02:36:42.000 On a federal level...
02:36:44.000 Education?
02:36:45.000 Well, the federal government should not be involved in education at all.
02:36:48.000 At all.
02:36:48.000 And in fact, if you look at the Constitution, again, the word education is not mentioned.
02:36:51.000 The word school is not mentioned.
02:36:53.000 They all had buggies back then, and they were writing with feathers.
02:36:56.000 But they had schools.
02:36:57.000 They knew what they were.
02:36:58.000 So how do you fund education?
02:37:00.000 And the Department of Education didn't even exist until, was it in the 60s?
02:37:05.000 I forget when they started it.
02:37:06.000 But look, the federal government should be involved primarily with external matters.
02:37:12.000 So we should have a national defense.
02:37:14.000 I think it should be much smaller.
02:37:15.000 I think that we spend more money than we need on the military.
02:37:18.000 I think we could have a defensive military for a fraction of what we currently pay.
02:37:23.000 But I think the federal government should be predominantly focused on external matters.
02:37:30.000 To the extent that we're going to have public education or government spending money on the schools, let them do it on a state level or a local level.
02:37:36.000 I mean, it should not be done at the federal level.
02:37:39.000 You know, those are issues that can be, you know...
02:37:42.000 Managed by states with state tax money.
02:37:44.000 Yes.
02:37:44.000 And, you know, what happens now is everybody sends all this money to the federal government and then they beg to get some of it back, right?
02:37:50.000 They have state aid where you send money out and you try to get some of it back.
02:37:53.000 Just don't send it to Washington in the first place.
02:37:56.000 I mean, look at the five richest counties in America.
02:37:58.000 They all surround Washington, D.C. It's all the lobby.
02:38:01.000 It's where all the power is.
02:38:02.000 I mean, we've got to get rid of that.
02:38:04.000 I mean, the federal government is like a cancer.
02:38:06.000 Now we're talking about we've got a new nominee for the Supreme Court.
02:38:10.000 But nobody really talks about the role of the Constitution.
02:38:14.000 Everybody's like, oh, are we going to repeal Roe v.
02:38:17.000 Wade, as if the most important thing is whether or not there's this federal abortion. 0.98
02:38:23.000 The important part of the Constitution is that it is the law that applies to the government.
02:38:28.000 It limits the power of government.
02:38:31.000 Thomas Jefferson said that we will bind up the government in the chains of the Constitution.
02:38:36.000 But at this point, the government does whatever it wants.
02:38:39.000 The government is not abiding by the law.
02:38:42.000 I mean, they try to pretend that we're interpreting the Constitution.
02:38:45.000 It's not up for interpretation.
02:38:47.000 The Constitution is not written in Chinese.
02:38:49.000 You don't have to interpret it, but the government likes to talk about interpreting the Constitution because they want to ignore it.
02:38:55.000 They want to do all sorts of things that are not authorized by the Constitution.
02:38:59.000 The Constitution only authorizes a few powers to the federal government.
02:39:03.000 They're enumerated there in the Constitution.
02:39:05.000 And if the Constitution doesn't say the government can do it, it can't do it.
02:39:08.000 And almost everything the government does today is unconstitutional, is doing stuff that it has no constant authority to do.
02:39:15.000 And that's what we need a Supreme Court for. 0.99
02:39:17.000 I mean, a lot of people don't like Congress, very low opinion of Congress.
02:39:21.000 A lot of people don't necessarily like the president, but everybody loves the judiciary, right?
02:39:24.000 We have three branches of government, the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary.
02:39:29.000 And everybody likes the judiciary, but I think it's the judiciary that has sold us out the most because they have let the government get away with murder.
02:39:35.000 They are not enforcing the law on the government and making the government abide by the law.
02:39:42.000 I mean, the laws that apply to me and you aren't up for interpretation.
02:39:46.000 You know, they mean what they say.
02:39:48.000 But somehow, the laws that apply to the government, well, they can be interpreted, which means they can be ignored.
02:39:53.000 They want to say, oh, the Constitution is a living, breathing document so that it can change with the times, is a way of saying it means nothing.
02:40:00.000 So we need to reclaim the republic by actually enforcing the government to live by the Constitution.
02:40:07.000 That's one of the things Trump can do, is say, look, we are going to restore constitutional government to this republic.
02:40:13.000 We are going to make sure the government only does what it's authorized to do in the Constitution.
02:40:18.000 And the smaller you make government, the freer you make people, right?
02:40:22.000 That's what it's all about.
02:40:23.000 I said earlier in the podcast about this whole idea about group privilege.
02:40:26.000 The more privileges that you give groups, the fewer rights that you have for individuals.
02:40:31.000 And the more government you have, the less free we are.
02:40:34.000 So that's actually the real definition of freedom, is freedom from government.
02:40:39.000 And so the smaller your government, the less they regulate your activity, and the less money they take from you, the more freedom you have.
02:40:46.000 And the more free we are, the more freely we can interact with one another, the more prosperous we're going to be.
02:40:52.000 Now, second step, what does a person like me do to stop or to mitigate the effects of this bubble that's going to crash?
02:40:59.000 Well, I mean, the only thing you can do...
02:41:02.000 Personally, because politically, there's really very little we can do.
02:41:04.000 I mean, it's going to hit the fan, right?
02:41:06.000 I mean, there's nothing we can do about that.
02:41:07.000 I mean, because Trump's not going to call me down to the White House.
02:41:10.000 Maybe he will.
02:41:11.000 After this. 0.99
02:41:12.000 Peter, I loved you on the Joe Rogan podcast, even though sometimes you talk shit about me, that little weasel. 0.96
02:41:18.000 You know, I was his biggest defender after the Access Hollywood stuff. 0.95
02:41:22.000 I was on podcasts.
02:41:24.000 I defended him when nobody would defend him for that.
02:41:27.000 Because I understood those comments and what he was doing, and I called everybody out. 1.00
02:41:31.000 He was talking shit. 0.99
02:41:31.000 Yeah, look, he was just being a guy with other guys. 0.99
02:41:34.000 I mean, he didn't know he was being...
02:41:36.000 He wasn't saying that for public consumption.
02:41:37.000 He was saying something funny.
02:41:39.000 My friends have said horrible things to me and I've laughed.
02:41:42.000 Yes, of course.
02:41:43.000 And the thing that Billy Bush got in trouble for sitting next to him and laughing, he wasn't like taking a stand. 0.80
02:41:49.000 He's on a broadcast next to a guy who's a crazy person who is literally known for being a crazy person saying outrageous stuff. 0.80
02:41:56.000 His tagline is, you're fired.
02:41:58.000 You know some of the stuff that women say about guys when they're just together? 0.99
02:42:02.000 Women chatting? 0.69
02:42:04.000 I forgot your question.
02:42:06.000 How does a person like me prevent the damage?
02:42:10.000 We're not going to prevent it.
02:42:12.000 What I am hoping is people like you and people like me, after it collapses, That if we can at least come out there with an alternative version of what happened.
02:42:22.000 Like after the financial crisis happened and I was one of the few people saying it's not – it wasn't the banks.
02:42:29.000 It wasn't greed.
02:42:30.000 It was government.
02:42:31.000 It was the Federal Reserve.
02:42:32.000 It was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
02:42:33.000 They were the problem, right?
02:42:35.000 But the government got away with blaming capitalism and making government bigger.
02:42:39.000 What we need to do and what you can do with your audience, which is much bigger than mine, Is when it hits the fan again to put the blame where it belongs on government and say government did this to us.
02:42:51.000 It's not an accident that we have all this government and we have all these problems.
02:42:55.000 And, you know, it's government interference in capitalism that's the problem, not capitalism itself.
02:43:00.000 If the government stayed out, it would be working beautifully.
02:43:02.000 So we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
02:43:04.000 We want to preserve the baby.
02:43:06.000 The government's the bathwater.
02:43:08.000 So what you can do with your, you know, soapbox is get people to understand the real source.
02:43:13.000 Now, what you can do now, what your audience can do now to protect themselves so they don't go broke, and I think that to the extent that you don't go broke, you're in a better position to help the economy and help the country if you have resources.
02:43:27.000 I said if a ship is going to sink and I can get you off the ship onto a lifeboat, then when the ship goes down, you might be able to help some of the people out of the water if you're not drowning yourself.
02:43:37.000 So what you can do is protect your finances.
02:43:41.000 If you've got a large portfolio, right, what I do with my own money and what I, you know, I advise people I manage money at Europe Pacific Asset Management, I'm a broker-dealer at Europe Pacific Capital, is I invest in countries that, you know, I think are in relatively better shape, whether it's Switzerland or Singapore,
02:43:58.000 you know, or, you know, New Zealand.
02:44:03.000 You know, their economy is strong enough that I think they can withstand it.
02:44:07.000 They've made enough progress.
02:44:08.000 You know, so there are countries out there that are not nearly as screwed up.
02:44:12.000 Nobody is perfect, right? 0.86
02:44:13.000 Nobody is as good as America used to be.
02:44:15.000 But there are a lot of countries that are much better than we are now.
02:44:18.000 And they have assets that you can own that are not in bubbles.
02:44:21.000 You can get good dividends.
02:44:22.000 You can protect yourself from this coming stock market crash, dollar crash, bond market crash.
02:44:27.000 So you can preserve your wealth.
02:44:28.000 And as the dollar goes down – so if you went through the 1970s and you had your portfolio – because in the 1970s, the stock market went way down.
02:44:36.000 But the dollar went down even more.
02:44:37.000 The dollar lost two-thirds of its value.
02:44:39.000 The reason oil prices went up tenfold in the 70s, the reason gold went from $35 an ounce to $850 was because the dollar collapsed.
02:44:48.000 Well, the dollar is going to have a bigger collapse this time than it did last time, right?
02:44:52.000 This time, I think the dollar is going to lose its status as the reserve currency.
02:44:56.000 Last time, it didn't lose the status.
02:44:57.000 It just got marked down because we went off the gold standard, but it didn't get knocked out.
02:45:02.000 I think the next one is going to be a knockout.
02:45:03.000 So you got to invest your money outside the U.S. to preserve your wealth when everybody else is going broke.
02:45:09.000 And you got to own real money.
02:45:11.000 You got to own gold.
02:45:12.000 You own physical gold.
02:45:13.000 Right?
02:45:14.000 Which you can buy, you know, larger quantities of gold through Shift Gold.
02:45:18.000 You know, I got, you know, very low prices.
02:45:20.000 You got to be careful out there.
02:45:21.000 There are a lot of companies that will try to, you know, bait and switch you into collectible coins, rare coins with these huge markups, 20%, 30%, 40% markups, sometimes 100% markups.
02:45:30.000 Stay away from that.
02:45:32.000 You know, you just want to buy bullion and you want to buy it as cheap as you can over spot.
02:45:36.000 The only time you'd want to pay a little bit more is to get some jewelry because you want to wear it.
02:45:40.000 Then it's probably worth it to pay a little extra if you want to Buy something that you can wear.
02:45:46.000 So you can do that.
02:45:47.000 I think the stocks that are going to go up the most, if you really want to potentially make a lot of money on this crisis, it'll be gold stocks.
02:45:55.000 Gold bullion is not about getting rich.
02:45:58.000 It's about staying rich.
02:45:59.000 It's about not getting poor.
02:46:01.000 Buying physical gold is about preserving the wealth that you have.
02:46:04.000 But I think that these gold mining companies, when the price of gold goes up, I think some of these stocks can go up 10, 20 times or more.
02:46:11.000 So if you can tolerate the risk, because if I'm wrong, these stocks can go way down.
02:46:15.000 But if I'm right, they're going to go way up.
02:46:17.000 So a way that you can really profit from what's going to happen is by having some money investing in these gold mining companies.
02:46:23.000 And then when we have a dollar crisis and the price of gold goes way up, these stocks can go ballistic.
02:46:29.000 The voice of doom and the voice of reason, all in one man.
02:46:32.000 Peter Schiff, ladies and gentlemen.
02:46:34.000 That was awesome, man.
02:46:35.000 Hey, how long we been talking?
02:46:36.000 Three hours.
02:46:37.000 Three hours already?
02:46:39.000 Yeah.
02:46:39.000 How crazy is that?
02:46:40.000 See, time flies.
02:46:40.000 Just flies by.
02:46:41.000 Joe Rogan's studio.
02:46:43.000 Thank you, brother.
02:46:43.000 Always good to see you.
02:46:44.000 My pleasure.
02:46:45.000 Thanks for everything.
02:46:46.000 Peter Schiff, folks.