00:00:48.860Tax relief advocates, real solutions for real people.
00:00:52.880It's one of the most common questions people have.
00:00:55.900If the economy is doing so well based on every official metric, then why are there so many anecdotal indicators, which we all see in our day-to-day lives, that Americans are struggling financially?
00:01:08.660If the stock market is near all-time highs, unemployment is low, everybody is extremely, one might say excessively well-fed, then to all outward appearances, we're doing pretty well as a country.
00:01:19.900So why are so many people complaining about food prices and the cost of living and the difficulty of getting a job?
00:01:26.560Has everyone gone insane? Have we become a nation of whiners unwilling to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps?
00:05:25.080and i ended up getting a max credit limit of eight thousand dollars so i could spend up to
00:05:33.740eight thousand dollars that's what that means right so i i would use it and i would take my
00:05:40.280boyfriend we would we would just started dating we would go out it's 12 500 on it now yeah well
00:05:45.880when i looked at it last yeah um me and my boyfriend me and my friends we would go out and
00:05:50.560Oh, I'll pay for everybody. I got it. Oh, I'll spend the money. Don't worry about it. It's just
00:05:55.560a credit card. So I would, I would pay and pay and pay and pay. And then I called my mom one day
00:06:00.460and I wanted her to be proud of me. So it's just like, Hey, I've got $4,000 credit on my credit
00:06:06.160card. And she's like, credit limit or credit debt. I was like, what's debt? And she's like,
00:06:12.620Oh, that's bad. I'm like, Oh really? Okay. Um, so it's $4,000 debt then she's like, that's bad.
00:06:20.240why did you do that i'm like i thought that was good and she's like no your credit limit at the
00:06:25.840time it was uh it was 8 000 so i was like okay well the credit limit's 8 000 that's good right
00:06:31.720and she's like yes but you were four thousand dollars in debt so i started paying it off
00:06:38.680maybe like for a month and my mom and dad they were like when was this last year okay and then
00:06:47.280what? And then they were like, screw it. You're not going to pay this off in time. Give it to me.
00:06:51.720So my parents took it and they're still currently paying it off right now. Now, I have to be honest,
00:06:56.860I always assumed that credit card companies had to work a little harder than this. I thought they
00:07:01.080needed to use a variety of psychological tricks to convince women to spend money they didn't have,1.00
00:07:06.460like reward points that you can only spend on an overpriced travel portal or promotional APRs that
00:07:13.500leave you with a massive interest bomb at the end, or the Super Bowl ads with Samuel Jackson
00:07:18.740that convince you it's cool to have a credit card or something. But actually, the credit card
00:07:22.580companies didn't need to do any of that. They're dealing with people who don't even understand what
00:07:26.500debt means. I mean, think about that. They're clueless about the concept of owing money to
00:07:31.860someone else. So really, all the credit card companies had to do was give women like this1.00
00:07:36.960a credit limit of $8,000, and some of them would apparently assume that they're basically getting
00:07:41.920a statement credit or a voucher worth $8,000. It's free money. She actually called her mother
00:07:48.560to brag about her credit limit without understanding that she was talking about her debt.0.99
00:07:53.540Now, it's an important reminder that no matter how many dumb people you've encountered in your0.99
00:07:57.040life, you've probably never spent any significant amount of time interacting with the dumbest0.99
00:08:02.940sorts of people. Truly, there is no bottom. I mean, there are people walking among us who are0.98
00:08:07.720willing to admit on camera that they do not understand the concept of credit or debt.
00:08:13.300And until very recently, we've been importing millions more people every year, many of whom
00:08:17.020can't speak English, who are even less informed than this. And these people are getting access
00:08:22.020to credit. They're spending it without even realizing what they're doing. And as a direct
00:08:25.720result, the prices for everything you buy are going up. Now, this is an economic concept that
00:08:32.760needs some explanation because no one ever talks about it. When everybody, even complete morons who1.00
00:08:39.200can barely dress themselves, is given access to thousands of dollars in credit, then markets0.99
00:08:44.220immediately become very distorted. No one asks themselves, can I actually afford this? Instead,
00:08:50.260they think in terms of monthly payments. Or as you just saw in that video, they don't think at all.
00:08:54.740They simply swipe the card and then call their mother to brag. Now, when this view becomes
00:08:59.860mainstream, and it has, then demand goes up while supply does not change. And as we know from the
00:09:06.220principle of supply and demand, the result is that prices increase. And we see this in a variety of
00:09:11.560industries from colleges to cars. The moment the federal government made it easy to obtain student
00:09:16.120loans, tuition skyrocketed. And by the same token, as banks have increased the maximum duration of
00:09:22.060auto loans up to 96 months has become common. The price of cars has also increased. And no,
00:09:28.500I'm not making that up. Dealerships are now offering 96-month auto loans, which is another
00:09:34.040way of saying eight-year loans. But they don't want to say eight years because, you know, I guess
00:09:38.460that sounds too long to most people. I mean, I think 96 months sounds longer than eight years,
00:09:42.240but maybe I'm in the minority. And not only that, dealerships are bragging about these loans on
00:09:47.140social media. Here's one example from a dealership in Houston. This was uncovered by a YouTube
00:09:52.220channel run by marissa van watch it gets worse this next clip when i came across it i almost
00:09:59.400thought it wasn't real but unfortunately it is real this is a real dealership and they are
00:10:04.660absolutely taking advantage of people every day what's going on folks it's your boy steveo got
00:10:09.140me rolling today i got the homegirl nay approved on this 22 dodge challenger nay how was your
00:10:15.260experience here today it was lovely chris got it done how much did you put down 4k 4k down how much
00:10:20.320so once you do the math on this 820 dollars times 96 months plus the 4k she put down is
00:10:43.300$82,720. The 2022 MSRP for the Dodge Challenger goes from about $30,000 from the basic trim level
00:10:52.060to about $90,000 for the top level. The one in the video looks like a pretty basic model,
00:10:57.100so I'm going to assume it's one of the ones that is under $40,000. So she is going to be paying,
00:11:01.880again, almost double the price for the car because of interest. Now, realistically,
00:11:06.460there's no way she's going to hold on to this vehicle for 96 months. Even if she wanted to,
00:11:12.100it's not going to happen. This car is going to get repoed and she is going to appear in a0.96
00:11:16.940YouTube video in a few months chasing after the tow truck. And when that happens, her equity in
00:11:22.080the vehicle, including her $4,000 down payment and any payments she's made up until that point
00:11:26.320is almost certainly wasted. And that's because when your car gets repoed and sold at an auction,
00:11:32.000it's usually sold on the cheap so that the bank can recover the money they lent you with a lot of
00:11:36.420fees tacked on. Her equity in the vehicle, assuming she has any by that point, is going to get wiped
00:11:41.580out. And this scenario plays out every day, thousands of times. That's not an exaggeration.
00:11:47.120By one estimate in 2025, more than 3 million vehicles were repossessed. That comes out to
00:11:52.980more than 8,000 vehicles a day. And those numbers, by the way, are similar to what we
00:11:57.000saw following the recession in 2009. Now, you've probably seen people like this buying a car the
00:12:03.140last time you were in a dealership. Just kind of by getting a sense of their vibe, you can tell
00:12:09.280that they're not going to be able to afford the monthly payments. The car they buy is going to
00:12:14.400go right back to the dealership. It's just a matter of time. But you can't simply ignore
00:12:19.080these people because they're indirectly making your own vehicle much more expensive in the process.
00:12:24.920The fact that you've saved up enough cash for a significant down payment and the fact that you've
00:12:29.720secured a reasonable interest rate with payments you can afford doesn't really matter. You're
00:12:34.900competing with people who have access to very large amounts of money that they have not earned
00:12:39.420in the form of credit. So if you want the car, whether you've saved for it or not, you're going
00:12:44.580to pay a lot more money. Here's one of the reasons that car MSRPs are now so high. In just the past
00:12:51.840decade, the typical MSRP for a new vehicle has increased by roughly 46%. The average MSRP is now
00:12:58.260over $50,000 compared with around $33,000 10 years ago. It's impossible today to find a new vehicle
00:13:05.480with a starting MSRP below $20,000. And after all, if you're a car manufacturer, why bother
00:13:12.600making a budget vehicle? Everybody's walking into the dealership with unlimited credit, basically.
00:13:18.680So you might as well take advantage. And they do. But before we talk any more about humiliating
00:13:24.700clips like these and what they reveal, we have to be honest about the broader economic numbers
00:13:29.580that we do have, the ones that tell a much more positive story about the economy. Now, it's not
00:13:34.340because the numbers are necessarily accurate or illuminating, but because we need to establish
00:13:38.840some kind of baseline. So let's do that. Now, it's true that the total debt currently held by U.S.
00:13:44.560households as of this year is more than $18.8 trillion. And in raw dollar terms, without
00:13:50.860adjusting for inflation, wage growth, population size, or anything else, that's more debt than we've
00:13:56.440ever had at any point in this country's history, by a huge margin. Meanwhile, credit card debt also
00:14:01.540reached an all-time high of around $1.28 trillion in the last quarter of 2025. The debt then declined
00:14:08.460slightly the next quarter to $1.25 trillion, as many people paid off their Christmas shopping
00:14:13.840bills, but still it's over a trillion dollars. These are staggering numbers, truly. But in
00:14:21.340context, you can argue they're not as bad as they seem. If you go back to the early 2000s,
00:14:25.100household debt was around 70% of the American GDP. Towards the end of 2007, just before the
00:14:30.020financial crisis, household debt was approaching 100% of GDP. By contrast, right now, household
00:14:37.060debt is about 68% of GDP, which is still a lot. So as a percentage of the total U.S. gross domestic
00:14:44.760product, we're not in debt as much as we used to be, although we are still much more in debt than
00:14:50.260we should be. It'd be much worse if we were racking up bigger debt with a statement, with a
00:14:55.760stagnant economy on top of that. So it's a good sign, although of course GDP is not necessarily
00:15:01.240the most important metric either. If Amazon or Microsoft have a very good quarter, the GDP will
00:15:08.120go up. That doesn't necessarily mean that Americans will get wealthier or have more money to pay their
00:15:13.960debts. So there's another metric that gets used, which is called the household debt service ratio.
00:15:20.740And this looks at total household debt payments, including mortgage payments, car loans, credit
00:15:27.280card debts and measures them as a percentage of your total after-tax personal income, meaning
00:15:33.340money you can actually spend freely. And this ratio is much more important. And as you could
00:15:40.100see, it was much higher 20 years ago than it is today. It peaked around 16% in 2008. And now it's
00:15:47.460down to around 11%. And if you zoom out from 1980 to 2004, the average was roughly 11% as well. So
00:15:54.740we're spending less on debt payments than we were during the financial crisis, and we're spending
00:16:00.040about as much as we've been spending since 1980. Based on those numbers, there's no obvious crisis
00:16:06.320involving household debt. We're not suddenly borrowing a lot more money to pay for cars or
00:16:10.620houses that we can't afford, and we're not drowning in credit card debt, at least not to an
00:16:14.740unprecedented degree. But these figures don't account for every kind of debt. In particular,
00:16:20.240they ignore rent payments, which are obviously a very significant household obligation, although
00:16:24.680it's technically classified as an ongoing obligation, not a debt. For a while, the figure
00:16:30.160also effectively excluded some forms of student loan debt, although that has changed recently.
00:16:35.280And here's the interesting thing about student loan debt. It's ballooning out of control right
00:16:40.300now, particularly among women. It's yet another disastrous consequence of the feminist movement.1.00
00:16:45.920Because women have been told to attend college at any cost, including art colleges and beauty1.00
00:16:51.060colleges that are basically scams. Tens of millions of women are now graduating with useless degrees1.00
00:16:56.680and a mountain of debt. And on top of that, they've driven up the cost of tuition for everybody else,1.00
00:17:02.100which was already extremely high because of federally backed student loans. So as you can see,
00:17:08.220more than 60% of student loan debt belongs to women at the moment. And the average student0.90
00:17:14.960debt for women in this country now exceeds $30,000, with black women leading the pack at $40,000.
00:17:21.980Meanwhile, the median female graduate earns around $66,000 a year after graduation,
00:17:27.760meaning half of female graduates make less than that. And here's the kicker,
00:17:32.400the average student debt repayment among women every month is just $307. So they'll be in debt0.93
00:17:39.480for at least a decade, assuming they make every payment on time, which is obviously a pretty big
00:17:44.940and not very safe assumption. Pew recently found that 37% of female borrowers reported defaulting
00:17:51.700on their loans compared to just 30% of male borrowers. So the best case scenario for these1.00
00:17:56.920women is that they'll be in debt for a decade. That's the best case. More realistic scenario1.00
00:18:02.060is that they're never going to pay it off, and instead they're going to demand that you pay the
00:18:06.400bill. Americans have been conditioned to believe that cell phone service is supposed to be
00:18:12.080expensive. You walk into a store, someone explains 17 different plans to you, starts talking about
00:18:17.200credits and upgrades and activation fees. Eventually, you'll lose the will to live and
00:18:21.080just kind of hand them your credit card. It's apparently been our system for decades. Pure
00:18:25.360Talk, thankfully, has a much simpler proposition. If you think you're paying too much for subpar
00:18:30.240service, you should really switch to Pure Talk. In a recent industry survey, Pure Talk was the
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00:18:41.300and data. Stop overpaying for subpar service. Join Pure Talk. Just go to puretalk.com slash
00:18:47.900Walsh. You'll save 50% off your first month. Make the switch today. And with unlimited high-speed
00:18:53.740data for just $34.99 a month, you're going to save a fortune. Take it from me or from over
00:18:59.780120,000 wireless customers. Again, that's puretalk.com slash Walsh to save 50% off your
00:19:07.120first month. puretalk.com slash Walsh. Welcome to Pure Talk. There's an increasingly difficult
00:19:13.740question for men, which is what you're supposed to wear when you want to look like you made an
00:19:19.280effort, but you don't want to look like you're attending a wedding. Apparently our choices now
00:19:23.920are gym clothes or a suit. This is one reason I become a fan of Tecova's. I've talked about my
00:19:29.360Earl boots, and they're basically the perfect middle ground. Simple, understated leather boots
00:19:33.760that look great with jeans, but you can easily dress them up when you need to, and they're
00:19:38.280genuinely comfortable. Decova's makes their boots by hand in more than 200 steps, but somehow they've
00:19:44.140managed to do this without requiring the traditional initiation ceremony, you know, where new leather
00:19:48.500boots destroy your feet for two weeks. It's not the case at all. They feel broken in right out of
00:19:52.780the box. Very comfortable. Tecovas also makes shoes, denim, shirts, belts, and I own a belt
00:19:59.500and a couple of shirts and wallets. I also have a Tecovas wallet and plenty of other things if you
00:20:04.220want to complete the look without dressing like you're headed to a rodeo. Right now, get 10% off
00:20:09.620at tecovas.com slash Matt when you sign up for email and text. That's 10% off at tecovas.com
00:20:17.560slash Matt, Tecovas.com slash Matt. See side for details. Tecovas, point your toes west.
00:20:24.880Now, if you look at mainstream coverage of this issue without exception,0.99
00:20:29.000they'll portray women as the victims in this scenario. Here's Time Magazine, for example.
00:20:34.440Quote, Sahara Artiga, 30 years old, originally took out $29,000 in student loans to go toward0.99
00:20:40.420an education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She started paying off her loans in 2014
00:20:45.380after she graduated, while she's been making monthly payments towards her loans, even during
00:20:49.480the payment pause, she still owes some $27,000. Women still face barriers to paying off their1.00
00:20:55.020loans due to the gender wage gap, a lack of generational wealth, and gender norms placed on0.86
00:21:00.280women. Black women are particularly affected by student loan debt. If you're coming from a space0.94
00:21:04.920where you have fewer resources available, that means that you're going to take longer to pay
00:21:09.280your loans off. So there's the completely fake gender pay gap making an appearance, along with
00:21:16.500the typical language that absolves women, especially black women, of all personal responsibility.
00:21:21.620What nobody wants to say is that if you're a woman who took out $29,000 to go to the Massachusetts1.00
00:21:26.620College of Art and Design, you're an idiot who really doesn't deserve our pity. The typical1.00
00:21:34.620starting salary for a studio art graduate of this school is $35,000, which is right in line with
00:21:42.200what Applebee's will pay you to serve reheated food from the back of a Cisco truck. It's much
00:21:48.420less than a decent bartender takes home. And the job at Applebee's or the bar doesn't require a
00:21:54.060four-year degree that costs tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, not counting housing costs.1.00
00:21:59.540The problem here is not that women are discriminated against. It's actually the1.00
00:22:03.700opposite. They're getting hired at rates that are clearly unjustifiable. This is an article from
00:22:08.100CNBC this week. I saw this floating around on social media and couldn't even believe it was
00:22:13.440real at first, but indeed it is legitimate. It says, quote, women accounted for almost all0.99
00:22:19.600of job gains in August. Women accounted for 158,000 or around 98% of the 162,000 jobs added
00:22:28.700in the month, according to a CNBC analysis of data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor
00:22:33.460Statistics. Men represented the remaining 4,000 net positions added, meaning the contribution
00:22:37.880to overall payroll growth was nearly 40 times smaller. With Friday's report, the gap between
00:22:44.860the number of jobs held by women compared with men climbed to levels never before seen,
00:22:49.700according to Laura Ulrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab.
00:22:53.380We're in the midst of a shift. It's changing right before our eyes.
00:22:59.960These are truly astonishing numbers, which validate everything we've said in the past about the feminization of the workforce.0.71
00:23:09.200This is cataclysmic. Deserves itself a longer discussion, which I think we'll do soon.0.92
00:23:16.100But the point is, you're not imagining it.
00:23:18.000White male workers are being pushed out, being discriminated against at a level that had never been seen before in favor of women who have flooded into the job market, who make up 100% of the net growth in the last month.
00:23:35.960And guess where these women are working?
00:23:38.700I mean, do you think they're getting hired by SpaceX or something like that to design new rockets that will add trillions of dollars in value to the economy?1.00
00:23:44.820No, they're getting fake jobs, many of them, particularly jobs in the local government and education sector, which means they're drawing taxpayer money, your money, to indoctrinate children.0.98
00:23:56.200Women take more than 75% of those jobs.0.84
00:23:58.800They're also dominating the healthcare field, taking more than 80% of the jobs there, mostly in roles like medical support.0.95
00:24:05.260Quote, compared with 12 months ago, the BLS found that the level of employed women has grown by more than 870,000 in a seasonally adjusted basis.
00:24:16.420The male gender has lost nearly 1.5 million employed workers over the same time frame.
00:24:23.040Part of the recent outperformance among women could stem from what sectors are driving labor force expansion.
00:24:29.540Healthcare, considered the engine of labor market growth for more than a year, continued adding positions in August.
00:24:35.260Upwards of four out of every five workers in the industry are women.
00:24:39.060The local government education sector roared back to life in August, accounting for 42,000 jobs.
00:24:44.100Women hold close to three quarters of positions related to education, training, and libraries.
00:24:51.460Now, it's impossible to overstate the significance of these numbers.0.99
00:24:54.520We have become a country where instead of aspiring to raise families,1.00
00:24:59.820women aspire to fake jobs that don't meaningfully contribute to a society or to the economy or1.00
00:25:05.960anything else? Is there anyone alive who's looked at the state or of their local government or1.00
00:25:11.880schools and decided that the solution is to artificially inflate the number of women who0.76
00:25:17.360are hired even more? Is there anyone who believes that it's more fulfilling for a woman to take one0.99
00:25:23.180of these jobs instead of raising a family or more useful to society and to the fate of civilization?0.99
00:25:29.820and you might ask what exactly are women doing with this money if they're not raising kids
00:25:35.400well here's a window into what that world looks like but uh fair warning it's pretty grim stuff
00:25:41.780watch why are you so much credit card debt i i get a lot of tattoos
00:25:47.300and i've spent a lot of money on these tattoos i've put about 10 000 on tattoos in the past year
00:26:13.640Now, the easy access to credit and student loans, along with meaningless employment in
00:26:17.660the form of fake government jobs, has led us directly to this point.
00:26:21.34030 years ago, people like this weren't able to use Klarna or Affirm or PayPal's Buy Now,
00:26:27.680Pay Later system. They couldn't obtain thousands of dollars in easy credit from 20 different
00:26:32.780credit card companies. In fact, until the mid-1970s, they couldn't get credit cards by
00:26:37.340themselves at all. Now they have near infinite access to credit, which they're using to drive
00:26:42.280up the cost for the rest of us, precisely the moment that they're squeezing the job market.
00:26:46.360Apparently, sleep tourism is now a growing trend.
00:26:49.720People are spending thousands of bucks to travel to hotels and wellness retreats designed almost entirely around getting a good night's sleep.
00:26:57.120So instead of visiting historical landmarks, exploring a new city, or doing anything remotely memorable, you fly across the country and remain unconscious for most of the trip.
00:27:19.620I don't need to travel to a hotel to do it.
00:27:21.580There's a noticeable difference between beginning your morning refreshed and spending the first few hours of the day trying to recover from the night before.
00:27:28.880Helix's quick sleep quiz matches you with one of more than 20 mattress models based on your sleep position, firmness preferences, and support needs.
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00:27:48.700Go to helixsleep.com slash Walsh for 27% off site-wide for the Labor Day Best of Web sale.
00:27:55.120You shouldn't have to take a vacation just to recover from sleeping at home.
00:27:58.600That's helixsleep.com slash Walsh for 27% off site-wide.
00:28:02.400Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixsleep.com slash Walsh.0.98
00:28:08.100Now, note, of course, that the problem is much bigger than the morons that appear on these kinds of shows.
00:28:14.200Some of the most powerful institutions in this country have spent years developing products that are designed to trap their customers in debt, which they can't possibly escape from.0.84
00:28:23.500This is a quote from a lawsuit that was just filed against Robinhood in Georgia.
00:29:01.180Robinhood insufficiently warns consumers that speculative trading against margin may expose core investment holdings and long-term stock portfolios to substantial and accelerated losses and even significant debt.
00:29:12.820In its fiscal year ending December 31st, 2025, Robinhood collected $302 million in other transaction-based revenue, a 260% increase from the previous year, which was primarily driven by increased user activities in prediction markets and instant withdrawals.
00:29:31.180So in other words, Robinhood is a brokerage. It's mainly used for buying stocks, but they also allow you to use your equity to gamble on sports and politics and everything else. And on top of that, if you don't want to liquidate your stocks, they'll loan you money to gamble with your stock portfolio as collateral.
00:29:50.240So as a hypothetical, let's say you have $20,000 in a brokerage account. Robinhood might lend you,
00:29:56.700say, $10,000 to gamble on their prediction markets. And if you lose that $10,000, they have
00:30:02.700the right to force you to sell your stocks at whatever price they're currently worth
00:30:06.080to settle the debt. That's how people are losing their life savings.
00:30:10.700We have gambling apps embedded within brokerages now. Now, to be clear, I'm not actually
00:30:17.460entirely blaming Robin Hood for this. As far as I could tell, this lawsuit has
00:30:22.960very little merit. Federal law, Trump's state law and federal law allows these kinds of markets
00:30:28.780right now, for better or worse, and it is for worse. What happened here is that this guy made
00:30:35.440a series of disastrous bets, and now he's trying to claw his money back. But the fact remains that
00:30:42.14020 years ago, he would have had to book a plane ticket to Vegas to do anything like this.
00:30:46.340And now he can do it on his phone 24-7. And that is a temptation and an ease of access
00:30:53.340that for many people is proving very difficult to resist. And that's one of the reasons we
00:31:01.540stopped doing gambling ads on this show. It's destroying lives. I mean, that's just an objective
00:31:05.420fact. A lot of lives. But we can't talk about debt, whether it's margin debt or credit card
00:31:13.200debt or any other kind of debt without talking about some of the potential benefits. Obviously,
00:31:18.440not all personal debt is bad. Not every margin loan ends in catastrophe, although it's generally
00:31:22.740a very bad idea. And yes, availability of cheap credit has been excellent for economic growth.
00:31:29.160Having the world's reserve currency made the US a superpower, allowing us to spend whatever we
00:31:33.020want without massive inflation. It's radically expanded our soft power. To the extent people
00:31:38.280use credit to purchase assets that appreciate or allow them to live, that could be a good
00:31:43.260thing. Mortgages in particular, obviously a net positive, even if housing prices are
00:31:48.300way too high now. But the concept itself is a net positive in many different ways. And
00:31:52.920it's also good that if you ever need to make a large emergency expense, you can do so with
00:31:57.320a credit card instantly without having to liquidate any of your assets. And if you're
00:32:02.260responsible about all these things, then it'll be fine. But the extent to which credit
00:32:06.720is available today is unprecedented. I mean, this is from a recent article in Consumer Reports,
00:32:12.500for example, quote, on a recent weekday, too tired to cook, my wife and I ordered takeout from
00:32:17.620Chipotle. The food came fast, but the tab will be taking its time. Thanks to a small loan through
00:32:23.660fintech startup Zip, I don't have to pay for the two burritos plus sodas and sides for the next
00:32:28.36042 days. Buy now, pay later, lenders generally set a minimum amount you must spend in order to
00:32:34.100receive financing. To order Chipotle through Zip, for example, I had to spend at least $35. The
00:32:38.660company, like most lenders, requires users to pay 25% up front and then pay down the remaining
00:32:44.020balance over four equal bi-weekly installments. In the case of Zip, a $1 fee is assessed per
00:32:50.200installment, meaning my installment worked out to $9.75 each. At $10, Klarna, at least for now,
00:32:56.420appears to set the lowest loan threshold. In cleaning up after our Chipotle feast, my wife
00:33:00.600and I realized we were out of paper towels, so I signed up for Klarna and within minutes had
00:33:04.840ordered $10 worth of paper towels from Target on a payment plan. My four installments worked out to
00:33:09.820about $2.60 each. Now, people are doing this all the time now. I mean, they're addicted to buying
00:33:16.840an expensive item now, or not so expensive, and paying for it over time, even when it's a burrito
00:33:22.620or a bottle of body wash. It works out very well for the lenders since around 35% of customers who
00:33:31.080use these loans ultimately fall behind on their payments. And when they do that, fees hit,
00:33:35.280interest comes due, payments explode. Now, this is totally indefensible for obvious reasons.
00:33:42.460Nobody should be financing a burrito. It's true that if you're starving, you should,
00:33:47.720in that case, sure, go into debt for food, but in America, no one is starving. There are massive
00:33:54.140programs and billions of dollars of charities, school lunch programs, etc., etc., etc., that feed
00:34:01.040poor people. The vast majority of food stamp recipients are obese. So the people using Klarna
00:34:07.000to buy stuff like burritos or shampoo are, without any doubt, being irresponsible. It shouldn't need
00:34:13.020to be said at any other point in our history, it wouldn't need to be said, but if you spend any
00:34:17.580amount of time on social media, you'll find that, indeed, people are actually doing this.
00:34:21.420My friends, times are hard, but times don't have to be too hard when we have our Buy Now
00:34:25.740Pay Lator app. I used to be so stressed out until I was introduced to these Buy Now Pay Lator apps.
00:34:31.020Some of y'all might look at them as debt. Some of y'all might say, oh, if I can't afford that,
00:34:35.520I'm not finna buy it. Baby, me, give me an app and give me some personal power and I'm gonna show
00:34:40.480you what to do with it. When I feel like I can't pay my car note, if I feel like I can't pay my
00:34:44.700insurance if i don't use my credit card for the whole month and i don't know how i'm gonna pay it
00:34:49.000back even if i need to buy some groceries for my house i'm gonna go to walmart with my buy now
00:34:53.580pay letter card and i'm gonna give me a money order and i feel like i love the buy now pay
00:34:58.140letter apps and loans because you don't have to worry about all the interest you got to pay back
00:35:03.040so if i select to pay this loan back in six months i have six months to pay it off if i pay it off
00:35:08.520early i don't have to pay all the interest i don't know about child but i would rather borrow from
00:35:12.440my app. I would rather pay my light bill, gas bill, car note, insurance, whatever, and some six payments
00:35:17.780or three. Didn't be sitting up in here looking crazy without no license, no car to drive.
00:35:22.860Now, if I deciphered that correctly, she's putting everything on buy now, pay later plans from gas1.00
00:35:28.180to groceries. And this is not an aberration. A subset of the population has become dependent on
00:35:34.320this kind of spending, which completely removes personal responsibility and planning from the
00:35:39.960equation. And that's a big problem. You know, for most of its history, the United States was built
00:35:45.840on notions of personal responsibility and work ethic and frugality. That's all gone now. And in
00:35:54.080losing that, we lost a fundamental feature of American life and American identity. We've also
00:36:01.320driven up costs for everyone else in ways that aren't even fully apparent right now. And with
00:36:06.520just a few weeks to go until some very important elections in this country, that's important to
00:36:13.320keep in mind. The bill for all of this excessive, wasteful spending is eventually going to come due.
00:36:21.400These people certainly don't think they're going to pay it. Call it whatever you want,
00:36:26.320democratic socialism, racial equity, whatever. At some point, they're going to demand a bailout
00:36:32.060at gunpoint. And when that happens, it won't matter what the GDP is or the unemployment rate
00:36:37.700or anything else. At that point, which is rapidly approaching, all that will matter
00:36:43.720is whether we've kept these people, these kinds of people who only know how to consume everything
00:36:49.640in their sight, as far away from power as we possibly can. That'll do the show today. Thanks
00:36:57.580for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.
00:37:02.060Every significant movement in history has started with protesting.1.00