California decides to address the economic crisis by making it worse. They raised minimum wage to $20 an hour for fast food workers, and the predictable bloodbath ensued. Also, the media settles on their latest Trump hoax. Plus, a new book explores the way that children have been rewired by smartphones. And the manager of a new fast food restaurant gets poor reviews from customers. But he knows the real reason for the bad reviews. Racism.
00:06:54.500We try, and they want double the amount of the income or triple your income for the rent and the deposit high.
00:07:05.080There's no way we can make it neither.
00:07:06.520So how does a fast food worker understand the economics of the situation better than the CNBC anchors?
00:07:13.220Why is she raising issues that California's politicians don't seem to understand?
00:07:16.940Whatever the answer is, this is getting to be a running theme in California.
00:07:19.460A couple of years ago, California sent out millions of inflation relief checks, which accomplished nothing except making inflation even worse.
00:07:27.020But there was no opposition party that could block those checks, just like there's no opposition party to block this minimum wage increase.
00:07:32.300In fact, in California, the labor unions obtained non-disclosure agreements during the negotiations for the minimum wage bill.
00:07:39.420So nobody can talk about how exactly this bill came about.
00:07:42.320There's never going to be a full explanation for why, for example, Gavin Newsom's friend and donor at Panera Bread managed to secure an exemption for fast food restaurants that make bread.
00:07:54.520Not that we really need an explanation for that.
00:07:56.540It's the kind of naked corruption that one-party states are well known for.
00:07:59.780But you don't need an insider's look into the legislative process to know how poorly conceived this law is.
00:08:05.320That's because after the bill was passed, legislators went back and added a bunch of other exemptions, including fast food locations in airports, stadiums.
00:08:14.580That's how you know you're dealing with a very well-thought-out law.
00:08:16.700The legislators just go back and redo it sort of on the fly a few weeks later.
00:08:21.320And these are the people manipulating the economy in the most populated state in the country.
00:08:24.900They're doing it as haphazardly as you would expect.
00:08:27.300Now, the truth is that raising the minimum wage by 25%, which is obviously a very sizable hike, in the midst of inflation and a struggling economy, is incredibly stupid.
00:08:37.480And there's really no other word for it.
00:08:39.140It attempts an end run around the actual problems that California is facing, except really it's worse than that because they aren't just avoiding the problems but actively making everything worse.
00:08:48.360They're trying to solve problems by creating more of the problems they're allegedly trying to solve.
00:09:26.920First, let me say, I owned and ran a small business for 11 years.
00:09:33.400I created hundreds of jobs, benefits, retirement benefits, also health care benefits.
00:09:40.560I know what worker productivity means, and that means that you have to make sure that your employees are taken care of and have a living wage.
00:09:49.400In the Bay Area, I believe it was the United Way, came out with a report that very recently, $127,000 for a family of four is just barely enough to get by.
00:10:04.440Another survey very recently, $104,000 for a family of one, barely enough to get by.
00:10:10.560Low income because of the affordability crisis.
00:10:41.540$20 an hour has already caused a bloodbath of layoffs and price hikes.
00:10:46.960$50 an hour would simply be the end of any place that they tried it in California would be the end of commerce in California, which means the end of California itself.
00:10:56.480So, on second thought, maybe her plan has some benefits, you might say.
00:11:00.860But you notice what Lee said in the clip there.
00:11:03.580She said that a family of four needs a six-figure income just to get by.
00:11:13.220You know, when I had a family of four, we got by on significantly less than $100,000 a year.
00:11:18.720But think about how that applies here.
00:11:22.360You know, she's saying that minimum wage workers need a massive mandatory raise because that's what's necessary for families of four to survive, according to her.
00:11:34.680And this obviously implies that there are a lot of single-income households of four where the breadwinner makes minimum wage.
00:11:44.240And this is really perhaps the most important point here.
00:11:46.320Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be careers in the first place.
00:11:51.080These are supposed to be jobs for teenagers working part-time while they finish high school.
00:11:55.700These aren't jobs that grown adults with kids and mortgages are supposed to be doing for years on end.
00:12:00.900So, if you've been working at a job, you know, for five years, ten years, whatever, and you still make minimum wage, there's obviously a serious problem, and it's not one that a minimum wage hike can solve.
00:12:13.740Now, personally, I want every minimum wage worker to get a hefty raise.
00:12:17.860But that can be achieved and should be achieved by earning a raise or by getting some work experience under your belt and then going out and finding a better job somewhere else.
00:12:25.580Minimum wage is supposed to be a stepping stone, not a foundation to build your life on.
00:12:29.740You know, it's a bit like if lawmakers passed a law declaring that all tent manufacturers must make their tents big enough and sturdy enough that, you know, they can be lived in for six months at a time.
00:12:42.200But that's not what tents are supposed to be used for.
00:13:14.060It's a temporary structure that you're not supposed to stay in very long.
00:13:19.460Now, the advantage of working a minimum wage job is that the bar is pretty low because it is an entry level job and because you are working with, you know, again, a lot of teenagers, 16 year olds get paid minimum wage.
00:13:32.040And the advantage is that that sets the bar pretty low.
00:14:28.220Now I've been extremely clear and I've spoken in my stance that abortion is undoubtedly evil and should be illegal in all circumstances.
00:14:33.980I'm also aware of the indoctrination and pro-abortion propaganda pushed by public schools and other liberal institutions.
00:14:39.720You all have heard their lies that a baby in the womb is just a clump of cells or that a woman's reproductive rights include termination of pregnancy if the baby's life is an inconvenience to her.
00:14:48.280And then there's the quality of life argument that abortion is somehow justified because the mother doesn't have the means to take care of her baby.
00:14:55.040I don't think these people actually know what they're saying.
00:14:57.400Our society needs a massive overhaul when it comes to helping young women understand the inherent value of life and the duty and joy of motherhood.
00:15:04.460That's why an organization like Preborn is so critical.
00:15:06.980Preborn covers all the bases for soon-to-be mothers, particularly ones considering abortion.
00:15:11.000Preborn meets women with compassion, encouragement, and understanding.
00:15:14.060They provide women with the tools they need to choose life for their babies.
00:15:17.800Not only do they introduce women to their children through ultrasound, but they also provide education about pregnancy as well as two years of financial support for women who choose life.
00:15:25.140And they do all this at no cost to the mother.
00:15:27.860Help make a difference in the fight against abortion by supporting organizations like Preborn.
00:15:31.820Donate $28 at the cost of one ultrasound and help save a life today.
00:15:35.540To donate, securely dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby.
00:15:44.540Now, before we get to the headlines or to the lesser headlines, I need to start with the big news of the day, of the week, the month, arguably the century.
00:15:52.360You know, a couple days ago I posted a picture on Twitter of myself in a judge's robe sitting at a judge's bench.
00:16:00.600And I said that I was finally fulfilling my life's calling to be a judge.
00:16:04.760And many people, basically everyone, I mean basically everyone thought that I was joking.
00:16:08.020Because we did, it was on April Fool's, you know, in fairness.
00:16:11.740But now I can reveal to you officially that I was not joking.
00:17:59.940Why would anyone come to me with an actual real dispute, a legal dispute they're having?
00:18:04.800Well, that's easy because they recognize that I am uniquely equipped to handle any of these disputes as a person who is, as you know, always right about everything.
00:18:12.740I've never been wrong about a single thing ever.
00:18:15.640And I was also right about something else that I wanted to mention that, you know, I've been missing shows.
00:18:21.600If you watch the show, you know I have been missing episodes seemingly at random for the past year.
00:18:27.080And many in the audience were upset, even accusing me of being lazy and unreliable and saying many other unimaginable things to a man of my stature, to a judge like myself.
00:18:38.240And I said that I was working on some major projects and that these absences will be worth it.
00:21:08.340Now, if you're a very sensitive soul, you might still take issue with that.
00:21:14.080You might say that all human beings are human and we shouldn't use dehumanizing language about any of them, no matter what terrible things they've done.
00:21:22.480Now, I personally don't mind the dehumanizing language.
00:21:42.080And the difference is that these criminal scumbags, their own behavior, their own decisions, their own choice to be scumbag killers is what dehumanizes them.
00:21:57.020So they have done the dehumanizing of themselves.
00:21:59.140They have dehumanized themselves by behaving in a way that is subhuman, that is barbaric.
00:22:06.160That is, that's beneath the dignity of a human being.
00:22:18.100But the problem is that, you know, the Biden campaign and the media, but I repeat myself, of course, are not being honest, obviously, because they're godforsaken liars and they lie about everything.
00:22:28.580So they're not out there arguing that, hey, you know, we should use humane language, even when we talk about the worst kinds of people.
00:22:35.140I think that that would just be better.
00:22:46.640That's in your cartoon version of the world, you know, where Trump and all conservatives are cartoon villains and they go around talking about how all immigrants are animals.
00:23:20.500Well, yeah, if it's an innocent person, it's dehumanizing.
00:23:24.080But if you have chosen to act like an animal, then we as a society are forced to treat you like an animal.
00:23:30.460Like we have to put you away in a cage.
00:23:32.440We have to put you in a cage because like we do animals, because that's how you are acting and we have no choice.
00:23:42.900And I think we should be, there's no reason that we can't be honest about that in our language.
00:23:47.780All right, Daily Wire has this report.
00:23:48.840Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU Stern, said in an interview this week that smartphones and social media have led to numerous problems for Gen Z.
00:23:55.640Haidt made the remarks while speaking to Firing Line with host Margaret Hoover about his new book,
00:23:59.260The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
00:24:05.360He explained that the great rewiring refers to a five-year period between 2010 and 2015 when society fundamentally changed for adolescence with the emergence of smartphones and social media.
00:24:15.520He said the very concept of social media, posting things that make you stand out because you're desperately fighting for attention,
00:24:20.260has been detrimental to adolescents because they're learning these behaviors during puberty.
00:24:24.980We have a quick clip of this, I believe.
00:24:29.260So there's very important older research by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler where they looked at, they had gigantic health data sets, the Framingham Heart Study.
00:24:40.620And they were able to see that, you know, if one person takes up smoking, their friends are more likely to take up smoking.
00:24:45.400But actually, so are their friends' friends.
00:24:53.680Now, it turns out, when you're looking at emotions, girls and women, when they study women, when a woman is depressed, that spreads out to her network.
00:25:02.880Whereas when a man is depressed, it doesn't.
00:25:25.980But, boy, is it a terrible idea to valorize it, to tell young people, you know what, the more you have this, the more popular you'll be, the more support you'll get.
00:25:35.780And so you get this explosion, not just of anxiety, it's in part, I think, spread sociogenically, it's called, from social causes, not from internal causes.
00:25:44.100But we get it for dissociative identity disorder, and it seems to be the case for gender dysphoria as well.
00:25:48.840And you think that the data demonstrates that it is above and beyond just the phenomenon of coming out and increased awareness.
00:25:55.180Yes, because it happens in clusters of girls.
00:25:58.360It happens in clusters of girls who had no previous gender dysphoria when they were young.
00:26:03.240So this is obviously not the first time we've heard this, but the more it's talked about, the better.
00:26:07.860I mean, we need to be talking about it a lot more than we are.
00:26:11.540Now, we need to do more than talking, but it starts with talking, with acknowledgement of the problem.
00:26:17.320And the problem is, as the title of Haidt's book says, that generations of children are being fundamentally rewired.
00:26:22.780The epidemic of gender dysphoria, the dramatic historic rise in depression, anxiety, and everything else, all of those things are symptoms.
00:26:30.960They're very bad, very troubling symptoms of the underlying issue.
00:26:34.000And the underlying issue is that we have completely changed what childhood is and who children are by giving them these little screens to orient their entire lives and identities around.
00:26:45.420You know, I talk about the orientation, you know, when it comes to children, the orientation.
00:26:57.860How are they orienting themselves in the world?
00:27:00.780And where are they picking up their cues and getting direction?
00:27:05.040Sort of like, what's their compass that they're looking at?
00:27:08.820Not only to navigate the world, but also to develop a sense of their own identity, a sense of themselves, of their place, you know, in reality.
00:27:16.680And for most of human history, children look to adults, the adults in their lives.
00:27:23.140They look to the elders, whether it's their parents, grandparents, village elders, you know.
00:27:59.040And this is where you started to see things like extended adolescence, where you've got, you know, 27-year-olds who are still acting like they're 13 and these sorts of things.
00:28:06.520And that began with kids in public school who spend most of their time around each other, like a giant Lord of the Flies experiment.
00:28:17.200And they're basically raising each other, and they're learning about the world by looking at each other.
00:28:21.660But none of them know what the hell's going on, so they're just chasing each other.
00:28:25.140They're going around in circles, right?
00:28:29.500But now it's gotten so much worse, because now they look to each other, to their peers, through their phones.
00:28:36.280They are orienting themselves to the world based on their peers as they were before, but they are accessing their peers through the filter of their phone screens.
00:28:45.660And even this, even this aspect of the problem is just an aspect of the problem.
00:28:51.940The problem itself, again, the fact that kids are spending every waking moment of their lives on these things, the problem itself is so vast.
00:28:59.980It is so all-encompassing that it's almost impossible to talk about it without breaking it down into smaller pieces.
00:29:05.980And the fact is that we are completely changing who our kids are, how they act, how they interact with the world, you know, everything with phones.
00:29:15.820And maybe it's hard to appreciate this entirely until you see the contrast.
00:29:22.720Now, you can think back to your own childhood and say, well, you know, geez, when I was a kid, this isn't what childhood was like.
00:29:29.220But that kind of contrast, you know, you're looking back with rose-tinted glasses, right?
00:29:32.640And you have nostalgia, and so it's hard to draw that comparison.
00:29:36.560But you can notice the contrast, you know, in the present day.
00:29:40.460And this is something my wife and I notice all the time, because as you know, none of our kids have phones.
00:29:45.200They have spent zero minutes of their lives on social media.
00:29:48.160They don't even know what social media is.
00:29:50.420You know about all this, because I rant about it all the time.
00:29:52.800But the point is that when my kids are around their friends whose parents have the same policy,
00:30:00.440and who, you know, they don't do the phones, they don't do any of that,
00:30:03.980then in those cases, everything seems normal, as it should be.
00:30:08.980And, you know, they're out running around in the woods.
00:30:12.360They're just being kids, like we were when we were kids.