In America today, we have more income and wealth inequality than we ve ever had in the history of this country, and meanwhile, in this richest country in the world, working class people are getting decimated today. In this episode, I sit down with comedian Joe Rogan to discuss this.
00:01:07.000I'm kind of old-fashioned, and I believe in democracy.
00:01:11.000And I believe that everybody should have a good shot at living a decent life.
00:01:15.000And what I worry about right now, and this is an issue, Joe, and it's part of the problem that it just ain't talked about very much.
00:01:22.000And I applaud, by the way, you and the other podcasters who give people the time to really seriously discuss things rather than seven-second soundbites, you know.
00:01:31.000But if you take a look at where we are as a nation today, this system is not working.
00:03:41.000I attribute it to decades-old attacks on the working class of this country.
00:03:49.000I attribute it to horrific trade agreements, which have allowed corporate America to throw millions of workers out on the street and move to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries.
00:04:01.000I attribute it to a corrupt political system in which billionaires have significant control over both political parties.
00:04:09.000So that, for example, right now in Washington, the national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
00:04:15.000So you've got millions of workers today making $10, $12, $13 an hour.
00:04:20.000You tell me, how do people survive on $13 an hour?
00:04:24.000When we were kids, or at least when I was a kid, you worked for a large company.
00:04:28.000You had something called a defined benefit pension plan.
00:04:31.000That means you worked with me for 30 years.
00:04:33.000When you retire, you're going to get X hundreds of dollars a week.
00:04:39.000So you got something like half of older workers in America have nothing in the bank when they face retirement.
00:04:44.000So I think, to answer your question, I think you've got a rigged system controlled economically and politically by very, very wealthy and powerful people who could care less for working families.
00:04:58.000Now, I don't want to romanticize the old days because that would not be true.
00:05:02.000But there used to be a kind of a culture.
00:05:03.000If I was a boss and I ran a factory, I had a little bit of concern for you, right?
00:05:07.000You know, in general, I would say, I know your wife, how's the casual mom doing and all that stuff?
00:06:09.000So I add all of that up and you have, and then just look at other things.
00:06:14.000I mean, you tell me, tell me about the health care system.
00:06:16.000Does anybody in America think this health care system is working?
00:06:19.000Well, you could tell by the assassination, when the assassination of the United Healthcare guy, when that happened, there was people celebrating.
00:06:28.000When is there ever Someone gets assassinated on the streets of New York City and people celebrate.
00:07:02.000And when you're dealing with these enormous corporations, like we're talking about, this diffusion of responsibility, the people that are doing it, it's like, this is what I have to do.
00:07:25.000And it shows the impact of a corporation taking all their factories, moving them away like that with no warning, no recourse, nothing anybody can do, decimates basically all of Detroit.
00:08:42.000I mean, look, if we are, and again, gets back to what we wanted as a nation, but you had corporations saying, hey, back then, not now, I could pay workers in China 25 cents an hour.
00:08:53.000Why the hell do I want to hire you for what it was, that $5 an hour, whatever.
00:08:57.000And I'll never forget, Joe, early on when I was elected to Congress, this was when we had the NAFTA agreement, I went to the Maquiladora area.
00:09:10.000It's a special zone in northern Mexico, near the border, where the government there, this is back decades ago, allowed American and other European corporations to settle and got tax breaks there.
00:09:24.000So it attracted all these corporations.
00:09:27.000So I went there with a congressional delegation, and this is what I saw.
00:09:31.000You saw these beautiful new factories.
00:09:48.000They were living literally in cardboard boxes, making, I think at that point, now this is a long time ago, 25 cents an hour.
00:09:55.000So workers in America were thrown out on the street, and people in Mexico exploited in a horrible way in these big, shiny new factories at the time.
00:10:04.000So what you got, and I believe this strongly, you asked me, you know, how does it happen?
00:10:31.000And that's why you end up with a situation in America where, you know, the top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 93%, and millions of people struggle.
00:10:40.000It's also a corporate culture of competitiveness, right?
00:10:43.000So they're competing with all the other corporations, and you have to keep up, and there's no way other than to increase your profits every quarter.
00:11:09.000So right now in America, in virtually every sector of our economy, whether it's agriculture, transportation, financial services, whatever, you've got a handful of giant multinationals controlling that sector.
00:12:22.000And the problem I think that we face as a country is not just economic disparities and all the stuff that we're talking about, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
00:12:35.000Right now, and I doubt that there are many Americans, whether you're a progressive as I am or a right-wing Republican, I don't think people can disagree that we have a corrupt campaign finance system.
00:13:21.000I think that's probably the worst decision that the Supreme Court has ever made.
00:13:25.000So what is the result of that decision?
00:13:28.000The result of that decision, let's take us to where we are today, is that Elon Musk, and I know Elon was on your show, and he's here at Austin, huh?
00:16:17.000And this guy, as I am, is opposed to this war in Iran.
00:16:22.000Just yesterday, Trump gave a long post about how they're going to primary this guy.
00:16:27.000And what bothers me is you would hope that there would be respect enough for members of Congress that you can vote your own conscience, you could represent your constituency.
00:16:38.000Every district is different than America.
00:16:40.000But right now, anybody stands up and says, well, you know, I disagree with President Trump, bam, you are finished.
00:16:50.000But let me go back to the Democrats and tell you where the problem is.
00:16:54.000This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.
00:16:56.000If you've got a skill, there's no reason you can't build a business around it.
00:17:00.000Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place.
00:17:06.000Whether you're running consultations, events, or custom experiences, you can build a site that looks professional, add videos, and even put premium content behind a paywall.
00:17:19.000And the best part, it's all in one place.
00:17:21.000From invoicing to SEO tools that help people actually find your site.
00:17:27.000Go to squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial.
00:17:32.000And when you're ready to launch, use the code Rogan to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
00:17:41.000Don't you think that there's a Streisand effect to that?
00:17:44.000Don't you think that there's a blowback for that kind of thing when people recognize that this guy should be allowed to have his own opinions and make some reasonable points and that people are going to reject this idea?
00:17:58.000And that it's not as simple as – I think the whole MAGA thing right now is very divided, particularly because one of the things that they voted for was no war.
00:18:13.000We're six months in, and that's already popped off.
00:18:16.000And then people are very concerned with now what happens to our troops overseas that are in these bases, that are in vulnerable positions, and what happens with, I mean, there's supposedly documented terror cells that got in through the open border over the last four years.
00:20:34.000You have super PACs like AIPAC spending a fortune.
00:20:39.000And they have already knocked off a number of members of Congress, good members of Congress, and they will do it again.
00:20:43.000So all I'm saying is you've got a corrupt campaign finance system on both sides, which is rejecting the will of the American people and end up supporting powerful special interests.
00:20:57.000And if we do not get a handle on that issue, I worry very much about the future of American democracy.
00:21:03.000Are you going to run for president again?
00:21:42.000And I think, interestingly enough, Joe, it's not most of the people.
00:21:45.000We know the people who come out to our rallies.
00:21:47.000You know, we have a big list of millions of people.
00:21:50.000But a lot of people are coming to our rallies that we don't know.
00:21:52.000And I think we know that some of them are Republicans and some of them are Independents and many of them are Independents.
00:21:58.000Because I think across the board, there is growing dissatisfaction with the current politics in America, both bodies.
00:22:07.000And people want a new vision for America, which is also something we don't talk a whole lot about.
00:22:14.000So, you know, the issues that we talk about is in the richest country on earth, why don't we have the best health care system in the world?
00:22:23.000Why do we have 85 million people who are uninsured or uninsured?
00:22:26.000And as you were mentioning a moment ago, I mean, he deals with the insurance companies and the drug companies.
00:22:32.000And the function of the current health care system is to make these guys very rich.
00:22:55.000So, you know, one of the fights that I hope we can win is to have the United States join every other major country on earth and guarantee health care to all people as a human right.
00:23:07.000Well, we've talked about that a lot on this show: that if you view this country as a community, the most important thing is to protect the most vulnerable members of your community, period, right?
00:23:19.000And if we spend insane amounts of money on all sorts of things that people don't agree with, and I think generally most people would agree on some sort of a national health care system.
00:24:15.000One of the first things that you'd have to do is figure out why these communities and these cities have been the exact same way for decade after decade.
00:24:22.000Back to Jim Crow and the red line laws and all these different.
00:24:25.000Why is nothing being done to fix that or to correct that problem?
00:24:30.000And it becomes this political beach ball that they just bounce around the air at a concert.
00:24:35.000And everybody, it's like there's certain things that just keep coming up that make you just go, well, how are we still talking about gay marriage?
00:25:57.000Right now, for economic reasons, when I was a kid, by the way, and this is not to shock some of your younger listeners here, there was one worker in a family could actually bring home the bacon and pay the bills.
00:26:27.000Well, something happened where they sort of devalued the woman's role as a mother by convincing them that they have to be a part of the workforce.
00:27:34.000But getting back to this issue of education, which I think is key, if you were rationally thinking about the future of America, if you loved America, as we all do, you're going to have the best childcare system in the world so the kids will do well in school.
00:27:48.000Right now, in childcare, you have workers out there making $15 an hour.
00:27:53.000And you have families that cannot afford childcare.
00:27:56.000In my state, I don't know, it's about $20,000 a year to send your kid to childcare.
00:29:13.000Yeah, I'm not, you know, obviously it varies per person, but it is not unusual for guys, you know, people, working-class homes, go to medicals, come out $500,000 in debt.
00:29:49.000Like, imagine you hadn't gotten derailed and they hadn't conspired against you and you actually became the Democratic candidate for president and you won.
00:31:03.000You think this should be when you get a certain number, you just get a certain allotted amount of money that you could use for your campaign and everybody gets the same amount?
00:33:02.000And then I think we'd declare something like our health care system as an emergency and figure out ways that we can do what every other major country on earth does, and that is guarantee health care to all people.
00:33:16.000So one of the things you do is say, okay, we need tens of thousands of more doctors and hundreds of thousands of more nurses and dentists and so forth and so on.
00:33:24.000And we're going to move aggressively to make sure that in America, everybody in this country has health care as a human right.
00:33:56.000But I think we have to have a fair tax system which says that individuals and corporations that are making a whole lot of money start paying their fair share of taxes.
00:34:51.000I think the last 10 years have been the warmest on record.
00:34:55.000And we can create millions of good paying jobs, transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency, to solar, to wind, and other sustainable energies.
00:35:05.000This episode is brought to you by Paleo Valley, 100% grass-fed beefsticks.
00:36:13.000And then the Washington Post looked at it.
00:36:15.000What was the time period that they looked at?
00:36:18.000That essentially they found that we're in a cooling period, that the Earth over the past X amount of years, and this was like a very inconvenient discovery, but they had to report the data and kudos to them for doing that.
00:36:33.000Scientists have captured the Earth climate change over the last 485 million years.
00:36:36.000Here's a surprising place we stand now.
00:36:39.000So look at the far end of that graph, and you see we're in a cooling period.
00:37:45.000Well, this is where it gets confusing.
00:37:47.000Because scientists that are in agreement, there's all these entanglements.
00:37:53.000Whenever someone's discussing something, whether it's economics or whether it's health issues or pharmaceutical drugs, there's financial entanglements.
00:38:01.000I think we both agree with that, right?
00:38:03.000And I think this is part of the issue with this whole climate change emergency as well, because it's not just that we could all agree pollution is a major factor.
00:38:18.000I think one of the things that we have to recognize is that whenever there's an issue that everyone can agree on, you're going to have a bunch of people that capitalize on that issue and they look to gain more money.
00:38:33.000They have financial issues that they push forward in order to capitalize on this issue.
00:38:42.000These things like they're trying to institute in the UK where they have these 15-minute cities, this concept where you're not allowed to travel.
00:38:48.000They'll be able to look at your carbon footprint.
00:38:53.000The problem is giving people that are in power, these people that we've all discussed that have so much money and so much control over our societies, multinational corporations, giving them more control over citizens.
00:39:07.000And this is what's dangerous about this whole climate change emergency, because it allows these fucking creeps that have been controlling people and controlling what you do and what you say and how you spend your money with people that already live in check-to-check.
00:39:21.000And you put additional constraints on them and you make them even more scared.
00:39:24.000And then you put additional measures where you can look at their carbon footprint.
00:39:30.000You can look at the amount they travel.
00:40:07.000But we're worshiping the Almighty dollar above the money.
00:40:11.000You know, you asked me when I ran for president, one of the interests, it's something else to run for president because you get around, you meet all kinds of people, and you learn all kinds of things.
00:40:20.000And one of the things that I did, we went to a lot of, we met with a lot of Native Americans.
00:40:26.000And one of the reasons is, you know, their tradition was going from way back, respect for nature.
00:40:34.000That they understood back, way back when, that you kill off all of the buffalo, you ain't going to have nothing to eat, right?
00:41:30.000And one of the reasons they are angry is that over the last, just give you one fact here, last 52 years, you and I understand, everybody in the world understands.
00:41:43.000There's been a huge explosion in technology, correct?
00:41:46.000What we're doing today never could have happened 50 years ago.
00:41:50.000Factories far more automated, offices far more automated.
00:41:54.000I became mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981.
00:41:57.000There was not a computer in the building.
00:42:28.000In fact, there are studies out there that suggest in real inflation accounted for dollars, wages are actually lower now than they were 52 years ago.
00:42:36.000And during that same period, there's a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
00:42:42.000So that's what technology has done over the last 50 years.
00:42:55.000They do a poll to the American people and they say, Americans, do you think you are better off today than somebody in your situation, middle class, whatever you may be, was 40 years ago?
00:43:57.000Well, again, we'll go back to polls again because I don't necessarily believe that polls are totally accurate.
00:44:04.000But I do think that the issue with It being virtually impossible for one person to sustain the entire family these days, one worker, the father or the mother, whoever it is, to sustain the entire family.
00:46:25.000First of all, there are a lot of people that are very unhealthy, physically unhealthy.
00:46:31.000I think metabolic health is a gigantic issue in this country.
00:46:35.000There's a lot of people in this country that feel completely disenfranchised, and so they turn inward.
00:46:41.000And then technology invites them to do that.
00:46:43.000You get online, and you spend your time staring at a screen, having communications with people, arguing on Twitter all day, changing the flag in your bio from Ukraine to Palestine, and now you've got an Iranian flag.
00:46:58.000You're just like in a constant state of anxiety and chaos.
00:47:01.000You're dealing with the entire problem, the problems of the entire world.
00:47:06.000You're dealing with 8 billion people's worth of problems every day.
00:47:12.000And then that's also a function of technology because this interaction that we have is unprecedented.
00:47:19.000The interaction with the news, with each other, all this stuff we're not designed to handle.
00:47:23.000And it gives you massive anxiety, particularly for young people.
00:47:27.000Particularly, Jonathan Haight's written about this with young girls who have the biggest problem with social media comparing themselves to other people, massive increase in self-harm, suicide, suicidal ideology, depression, anxiety, all this stuff accentuated by technology and our unchecked use of it.
00:47:48.000And so I think we've got to take a deep breath and understand that we've got to figure out how we make technology work to improve human life.
00:48:17.000When it becomes a problem where you have massive automation of almost all jobs, which is something that, especially when you deal with a corporation that is entirely based around making the most amount of money possible, well, what better way when you don't have to pay them anything?
00:49:20.000First of all, we make the determination that we are not going to let a handful of CEOs make these decisions, that they are going to be made by the American people.
00:49:31.000Bottom line, it means that technology is going to work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations.
00:50:22.000And one of their demands, interestingly enough, and people thought that Sean Fane, who was the president of the union, was crazy.
00:50:28.000But Sean said, you know what, we want a 32-hour workweek because our people are producing more.
00:50:32.000People thought he was crazy, but the idea is catching on.
00:50:35.000So first thing to say is let's use technology to benefit workers.
00:50:41.000That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, you know, for education, whatever the hell you want to do.
00:50:46.000You don't have to work 40 hours a week anymore.
00:50:51.000second thing I think we have got to do is take a look, as you just said, you said it better than I said it, is what does it mean that we have so many young kids living on the internet?
00:51:21.000In Vermont, again, somebody told me that there's a teacher now who does, he demands that his students write with a pen in blue books now because he doesn't trust what they're sending in, that it's not artificial intelligence.
00:51:36.000So if I say to you, Joe, tell me what happened in the American Revolution, you go to the chat box, you give a wonderful essay that you know nothing about, right?
00:52:41.000And like you're balancing it out in one way if you are a corporation, like imagine you're an automobile manufacturing corporation, you're Ford.
00:52:55.000There's a giant issue with Ford, right?
00:52:58.000So what does Ford do if all of a sudden something comes along that allows them to be more productive, they're more profitable, these machines can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they don't need time off, and you're going to make a better product, you're going to make more money for your shareholders, the corporation succeeds, but you don't need X amount of workers anymore.
00:53:37.000Instead of thinking of them as workers, should we think of them as, look, there are people that make the decisions, there's the executives, there's the corporation itself, but without the people that worked on those assembly lines, you have nothing.
00:53:55.000You couldn't have done any of the things you've done without those people.
00:53:59.000But those people are replaceable because it's skilled labor that you could teach another person to do, and they're replaceable because there's plenty of people that want those jobs and there's a demand.
00:54:12.000So you file them in, you file them out, which is why they developed unions, right?
00:54:16.000So they developed unions to keep people from being exploited.
00:54:20.000And then the problem becomes the unions get exploited.
00:54:23.000And then the unions have a lot of money.
00:55:03.000Well, I'm sorry, Mr. GM, and I'm sorry, Mr. Ford, because this country is more than just your profits.
00:55:10.000We are human beings, and you're not going to throw people out on the street, many of whom will have a hard time getting health care, et cetera, et cetera.
00:55:17.000So let me reframe the question again, of which admittedly it is complicated.
00:55:24.000How as a nation, forget Ford, forget General Motors, how as a nation do we deal with this exploding technology so that it benefits all of us and not just Mr. Ford and Mr. General Motors?
00:57:21.000Our goal is: if we're going to create all of this wealth, that we have a healthcare system that guarantees health care to all people.
00:57:29.000And by the way, we have drug companies whose function is to come up with cures to diabetes and dementia and Alzheimer's and other terrible illnesses rather than just make huge profits for themselves.
00:58:20.000You know, back in the early 20th century, a lot of people, working class people, thought and said, you know what, we don't only want the rich kids to get a decent education.
00:58:31.000And that's how public education began, right?
00:58:34.000So it said, okay, everybody in America, you know, state by state, started in Wisconsin actually, is going to have public education from first grade or kindergarten to 12th grade.
00:58:44.000God didn't create 12th grade as the limit, right?
00:59:39.000So we've got to sit there and say, all right, all this technology.
00:59:42.000All right, we talk about health care as a human right.
00:59:44.000I think we're talking about education as a human right.
00:59:49.000I think we should be saying with all of this technology, we've got to be thinking seriously about lowering the number of hours that people work.
00:59:57.000You know how many people, zillions of people in this country don't work 40 hours a week.
01:00:33.000Our goal should be, instead of bombing Iran, our goal should be right now, Joe, our life expectancy in America is lower than it is in other major countries.
01:02:17.000You know, you would think, how hard is it to say, if you have a bottle of soda or you have a food product, tell people in English what is in the damn product, right?
01:02:28.000Do you think anyone, right now they have any grams?
01:02:31.000Do you think anybody in America knows what the hell a gram is?
01:02:35.000I mean, it just, that's how ridiculous it is.
01:02:37.000So I want parents to know that if the food that they're serving their kid could lead to obesity, which is an epidemic in America, could lead to diabetes, which is an epidemic, a terrible illness, costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.
01:03:21.000So how do you create an economy in which we, once again, put an emphasis on family-based agriculture, not corporate agriculture, family farmers who are growing good, in many cases, organic food for our kids, rather than corporate agriculture?
01:03:53.000And these are the same corporations, unfortunately, that were in charge of tobacco.
01:03:59.000You know, this is where it gets really weird.
01:04:01.000They bought out all the major processed food corporations, and they make this stuff that's unbelievably addictive because it's engineered by scientists.
01:04:10.000We've got the brightest and the best who figured out what's the best way to get these people totally addicted to whatever, you know, fill in the blanket.
01:05:29.000And this is also a function of corporate America, right?
01:05:33.000This is a function of wanting to do better in each quarter, you know, having this endless endless growth cycle where they never say, hey, we make X amount of money every year.
01:06:18.000And I think the things that Bobby Kennedy is proposing and implementing, I think, are very valuable.
01:06:24.000First of all, getting all these poisonous dyes and all these things that have been kicked out of all these other major companies, including Canada.
01:06:31.000There's the same factories that make these food products in America literally have to make a different version of it for Canada.
01:06:38.000And then they're complaining that they can't do it because economically it won't be profitable for them anymore.
01:06:52.000They don't have that bright pop to them that cancer gives you.
01:06:56.000I mean, so I think this is, you know, it almost gets back to the need to revitalize American democracy and say to large corporations, you know what, you can't poison our children.
01:07:08.000I don't think that's a terribly radical concept.
01:07:10.000You can make money, fine, make money, but don't poison our children.
01:07:14.000Say to large corporations, technology is coming, that's good, but you're not going to use it just to throw workers out on the street.
01:07:21.000Let's go to that too, because we kind of glossed over that.
01:07:25.000So automation comes, and one of the things that Andrew Yang warned us about a long time ago, and back then I kind of saw it in the distance.
01:07:32.000I was like, yeah, he's got a real good point about universal basic income.
01:07:36.000But the speed in which it's happening, I didn't anticipate.
01:07:42.000And we live in Austin, and when you go around Austin, you see these Waymos everywhere.
01:07:48.000All right, I'm going to plead ignorance.
01:08:34.000Your enemy is automation, the enemy of the human being, a human that lives in this functional society and everybody has a task and get paid for the task.
01:08:46.000Automation is going to take all that away.
01:08:48.000So if you do say this, okay, we're going to lower your work week, what if there's no job left for the human being to do?
01:08:55.000If the entire assembly line, we talked about this about China and some of their coal factories.
01:09:01.000There was this video that I watched of this coal factory in China, which is entirely automated every step of the way.
01:10:02.000Like, if you don't have that, people go hungry.
01:10:05.000Like, again, if we're going to support The community.
01:10:08.000We want people to be able to survive and be able to work their way out of that.
01:10:13.000My family did work their way out of that.
01:10:15.000So it was cool for me as a child to see my parents struggling, but then succeed and get out of it.
01:10:23.000What worries me is that if all the jobs are gone and everything gets automated, even if people have universal basic income, they don't have meaning.
01:11:32.000But always we have to be thinking how it benefits not just the bottom line of a corporation, but the happiness and well-being of human beings.
01:11:43.000So if what you're saying is that in years to come, a significant part of work is going to be done by machinery or by computers, whatever.
01:12:02.000And it's not sitting around watching TV 24 hours a day.
01:12:06.000So I think you raised the quite, I would say the simple answer, and then you've got to go a lot further than that, is to say that under those circumstances, of that kind of technology, everybody has at least a decent standard of living.
01:12:22.000That people don't have to worry about survival.
01:12:27.000Increase profitability of this corporation.
01:12:29.000Provide a fund that's a universal basic income fund.
01:12:33.000If you're going to replace all these people with robots and you're going to be even more profitable, share some of that profit, then you'll be more profitable than if these people just stayed working doing nothing, right?
01:12:44.000Well, whether you will be or not be, I think.
01:12:46.000Once the machines are running everything, they're going to be running 24 hours a day and you're not going to have to pay the machines.
01:13:34.000So they use that wealth fund to provide probably the highest standard of living in the world for people, free healthcare, education, all that stuff.
01:13:44.000But that's what we've got to be talking about here.
01:13:46.000Use the profits that come, the wealth that's created by this technology to improve life for all people.
01:13:52.000But it doesn't answer the question that you raised.
01:14:39.000I think people, you know, one of the sad things that's happened, you know, we talked a little while ago about the decline of, we mentioned Detroit and other communities where people worked hard, they were proud of what they produced, right?
01:15:52.000You know, it's fantastic to see the world.
01:15:54.000And, you know, when we talk about, you know, one of the things that I, you know, we didn't talk about Trump much, but it bothers me is trying to divide us up.
01:16:03.000You know, we've got to bring, for so many reasons, whether it's all of these issues that we're talking about and everything else, pandemics, you know what?
01:16:11.000We've got to bring the world together.
01:17:45.000But you're going to have to bring the entire world together.
01:17:48.000You know, it is – but I think, you know, we have – That's right.
01:17:56.000And by the way, and I've been kind of negative, but take a deep breath, and we have made some progress in this country in recent years.
01:18:05.000If you think about racial relations, it wasn't that many decades ago that some black kid couldn't go to a movie theater in Mississippi, right?
01:18:15.000By the way, I want to tell you that when people say, like, why were you a fan of Bernie Sanders?
01:18:20.000I point to a photo of you getting arrested at a civil rights protest in, I think it was 63. Sounds right, in Chicago.
01:18:36.000You know, and people always try to accuse you of that, especially because you've made some money off your books.
01:18:41.000But you haven't changed your positions through the entirety of your career.
01:18:46.000I think that's very admirable because there's not a lot of people that serve in Congress for as long as you have and become a very prominent public figure that don't just cash in.
01:18:58.000You know, when you have people that are public servants that are making $170,000 a year and yet they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars through some magical way that no one can explain, and you haven't done that.
01:19:11.000And I think you should be applauded for that.
01:19:14.000And I remember, I mean, it's just, you know, you talk about education and so forth.
01:20:21.000And then just as this was happening, within a few minutes of this picture, some genius on the sideline throws a brick, hits a cop on the head.
01:21:55.000And, you know, so there's a lot as a nation that we should be proud of in terms of the progress that we've made in terms of fighting bigotry.
01:22:41.000But we're making gays are taking over the school system, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:22:45.000So it's, you know, we've made progress.
01:22:48.000But what we've been talking about is if you create a society where you have massive technology that can produce all of this wealth, how do we live, right?
01:23:31.000I think this is something the entire country could agree to.
01:23:37.000The question of meaning, like giving meaning to people, like just and then my fear is also the same fear that I had when I'm talking about climate change, that it's going to be exploited.
01:23:47.000Once people are entirely dependent upon the state for universal basic income, then it becomes the question of like now your entire life, like all the money that you get being from the government.
01:24:01.000The problem is if you step outside the lines, if you do anything that the government doesn't like, if there's a new administration comes in and says, you know what, this is unprofitable.
01:24:15.000These people have to figure it out for themselves.
01:24:17.000The United States is really $37 trillion in debt.
01:25:11.000So if you have what Andrew Yang was talking about, this giant epidemic of automation in this country, and the solution being universal basic income, but that's not the solution for meaning.
01:25:23.000And how do we convince all of these people that they have to not just take this money from the government, but also take action to give themselves meaning in their lives?
01:25:37.000What you're talking about here is a revolution in human existence.
01:25:43.000So throughout history, people have worked so hard just to stay alive, right?
01:28:14.000If all you're doing is just getting a check and you can just stay at home and stare at the TV and the money keeps coming and then you eat processed food all day and it's all subsidized, what is life?
01:28:26.000Like, how do you re-educate a giant percentage of our population to find meaning, external meaning?
01:29:06.000And to me, I have some answers for that one, and that is that you ain't going to throw millions of truck drivers and taxicab drivers and Uber drivers just out on the street.
01:29:33.000There's an awful lot of people that do things that they think are very valuable that are going to be worthless to have a human being do it.
01:29:50.000But right now, I mean, for a start, I think getting back to the, I think you tell those workers you are going to have health care as a human right, you are going to have education as a human right, you are going to have a decent income as a human right, and we are going to lower, substantially lower, the work week.
01:30:06.000So we'll have in this process, we're going to have everybody working.
01:30:11.000If you're working 20 hours a week, you're working 20 hours a week.
01:30:14.000What happens later when even more work is eliminated and what the purpose of human life becomes, that is a very profound question.
01:31:40.000And I think we're foot on the gas, full steam ahead with AI, with no consideration of this.
01:31:47.000And then there's the same thing that you're dealing with in terms of corporations constantly trying to achieve higher and higher and higher numbers.
01:31:54.000They're just always trying to make more money.
01:31:58.000You've got this exact same issue when applied to meaning for all these human beings.
01:32:04.000Like if you have 100 million plus people that what do they do now?
01:32:10.000They just sit at home and become depressed and they just make enough money to what?
01:32:28.000So what do these hyper-ambitious people do?
01:32:31.000What does everybody who's displaced by this very impersonal thing, this impersonal thing that you need because you can't compete with China?
01:32:41.000I agree with everything you're saying except there is something else that's going on in this.
01:32:47.000While all this is going on, while all this technology is throwing people out on the street, something else is happening.
01:32:52.000The people who own that technology and the corporations who utilize that technology are becoming phenomenally richer.
01:32:59.000Which gets back to things like tax reform, like making sure that in America we do not have the massive levels of income and wealth inequality that we currently have.
01:33:11.000But the problem with that is the taxes go to what?
01:34:34.000Because I think it ties into everything else that we're talking about.
01:34:37.000You know why I believe in democracy and why I believe among what we didn't talk about is we brought in some money to Vermont and elsewhere, I think, for helping workers own their own companies.
01:35:18.000So I think as a nation, we should be talking about moving toward allowing workers more power.
01:35:26.000But getting back to government itself.
01:35:30.000The corruption is, in my view, that government is very far removed from the needs of ordinary people because it is largely controlled by billionaires in both political parties who have their agenda.
01:35:47.000One of the things that I do, what my campaigns, Sir President, were about, what I'm doing right now, we're doing what we call the fighting oligarchy towards Swan and Texas, is to try to say to people out there who are mostly working class people, you've got to get involved.
01:36:02.000I know it's hard, people work in long hours.
01:36:04.000You got to get involved in the political process.
01:36:06.000You've got to make demands on government that it serves you, not just the very wealthy.
01:36:13.000So to answer your question, I think one of the goals, not only we've talked about how you deal with the exploding technology and how people gain purpose, the other thing is I want people to be able to take control over their own government.
01:36:29.000We can argue What the government should or should not do.
01:36:32.000But I don't think we can allow a handful of people, handful of people, with incredible wealth to control both parties.
01:37:15.000And they wrote that having just fought a war and won a war against the most powerful despot on earth, the King of England, right?
01:37:23.000And I think in the back of their minds were saying, all right, we just beat the King of England, absolute power.
01:37:29.000How do you create a new country which has checks and balance so that nobody ever has that power?
01:37:37.000And I got to say, I mean, one of the things, and there's a lot of arguments about Trump, that worries me very, very much is this movement toward authoritarianism and going after media, suing media, taking away the authority that Congress has.
01:37:55.000When you say suing media, are you talking about the CBS laws?
01:38:03.000You don't think that there's a real issue in editing conversations to give someone an answer that's different than what they really answered?
01:38:10.000Joe, I've been on 8 zillion shows in my life.
01:38:31.000He is suing the Des Moines Register because of a poll that came out during the campaign that he didn't like.
01:38:38.000He is suing CBS for this Kamala Harris interview.
01:38:41.000So do I think how many, I cannot tell you the number of stories done about me that were based, that were not good stories, that were dishonest stories.
01:38:55.000You do something, I'm not going to sue you, Joe.
01:38:57.000Right, but it's not that simple, right?
01:38:59.000Like, let's imagine, let's not talk about Trump, but let's talk about another candidate.
01:39:03.000Let's just imagine there's someone on the right and someone on the left, and there's a concerted effort to promote this person that's on the right.
01:39:12.000And so the polls are rigged, or these are funded polls, that make it look like this person on the right is winning by a substantial margin.
01:39:25.000And what this does is decreases the motivation that people have to come out and vote against them.
01:41:03.000There are honest pollsters who make mistakes.
01:41:06.000But what about the other lawsuit with the conversation that they had with Kamala Harris, where they edited the answers that she had to make it look more precise?
01:41:17.00060 Minutes, they were suing 60 Minutes is, to my mind, historically, even around for a very long time.
01:41:36.000But that's not investigative journalism if you change someone's answers.
01:41:40.000If you ask her a question and she comes with a rambling answer that doesn't make sense and you edit that out and insert another answer to a different question that seems more coaching.
01:41:51.000Joe, then you're walking down, it's a really, you're walking down a dangerous path.
01:41:58.000Suing media has the impact of intimidating media.
01:42:02.000All right, if somebody sues you, all right, let me finish.
01:44:26.000Well, my concern is when you have media organizations that are purported to be objective, and then they say things that are defamatory and factually incorrect, and they should know that before they say it, what other course does a person have other than a lawsuit?
01:44:45.000And isn't it important that you shine the light on what is a political bias from an organization that you would hope would be objective?
01:44:56.000Needless to say, I get attacked all the time by right-wing media, right?
01:45:23.000The problem is, the more people do stuff like that, if you don't have any consequences to what you're doing, you're going to continue that path.
01:45:35.000Like if you're a left-wing-leaning media organization and you print something that's factually incorrect or you say something on television that's factually incorrect, your viewers who are left-leaning are most likely not going to see Trump's rebuttal in some speech that he does in the middle of Pennsylvania.
01:45:53.000But that's another problem, and that is our media is becoming very divided.
01:46:02.000But all I would say is— I don't think that it is appropriate for the President of the United States to be, in my view, intimidating media.
01:46:18.000Again, I get attacked, I'll be attacked tomorrow for probably things I said on the show get attacked.
01:49:37.000I mean, I appreciate your positions on all these different things.
01:49:41.000And I appreciate, by the way, one of the, you know, we talked about media and the bifurcation of media, you know, right-wing people talk to right-wing people, left-wing people talk to left-wing people.
01:49:50.000I happen to think that the development of podcasts is a really positive step.
01:49:55.000Because I can tell you, I've been on a million TV shows.
01:49:58.000All right, Bernie, literally you've got seven seconds to explain the issue.
01:50:05.000And the fact that you give people a couple of hours to sit here and have a good discussion and be a good host and trade ideas, I think that improves life in America and helps people think about things.
01:50:17.000And I think that one of the things this conversation highlights is that there's a lot of issues that all Americans agree on.
01:50:25.000And this ridiculous position that we find ourselves in, where you have to be ideologically opposed to one thing because your side supports the other thing, it's just terrible for all of us.
01:50:37.000And if we looked at the issues that really face our country and our citizens and our human beings that live here as a community, we agree on almost all of them.
01:50:47.000We agree that you should have a better life, that you should have healthier people, we should have health care and education, we should have safer streets, we should have a community that lets people do what they want to do as long as they're not harming other people.
01:51:02.000And I think the divide that we have in this country accentuates the farthest ends of each end of the political spectrum, not recognize that most of us exist in the middle.