10/23/25: Amazon Replaces Workers With Robots, Yang Says To Ban Phones In School, Zohran Debate, Health Insurance Death Spiral

Krystal and Saagar discuss Amazon replaces workers with AI bots, Yang says phones should be banned in schools, Zohran decimates Cuomo in debate, health insurance death spiral.

Andrew Yang: https://blog.andrewyang.com/p/noble-mobile 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 3 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
I had to do a little bit of it.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I was like, Thursday, we have an amazing show for
everybody today.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
What do we have christ Indeed, we do.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Amazon replacing six hundred thousand workers with robots.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
That seems like a big deal.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Andrey Yang is going to join us to discuss that
and also his new cellular phone effort, very interesting project
that he's working on. He's also going to weigh in
on the big debate last night. Zorn, Curtisly and Andrew
Cuomo are taking to the stage once again. We've got
some highlights, low lights whatever from that. Also, Zorin went
on with the guys over at Flagrant. That was very
interesting as well. We've got some new, really dire information

(01:12):
about the way that healthcare costs are going up. So
we've been covering here that if you were on the
Obamacare exchanges, obviously those subsidies have been really critical. They
have not been extended, so that's been a dire situation.
Now we're taking a look at the employer that healthcare
plans as well. Those costs going up a lot too,
So not good, not good at all for.

Speaker 4 (01:31):
A lot of people out there Israel.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
A lot of updates, but in particular, there was a
big vote in the Kanesset to Annix to west Bank
while you know, while Jadie Vance was there, he had
something to say about that as well, so we'll dig
into that.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
We have another boat that was blown up.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
As we seem to be marching increasingly rapidly towards a
regime change war in Venezuela, sagar Is has some thoughts
about the White House demolition slash renvation.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Listen, Antifa, I'm ready draft.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Me a super soldier and you have a super.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Soldier, get me a blow torch, sneak. But for the record,
for the United States Secret Service, this is a joke.
It's a satire. This is okay, it's a parody, and
it is a satire. But you know, if if somebody
were to sneak me back onto the White House grounds
and give me a blowtorch and or and or be
one of those tree hugger activists that could like chain

(02:25):
myself to the original East Wing, I would be ready.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
Apparently there's nothing left to change.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
No, no, it's this weekend. The facade remains all right,
so we have a chance. By the way, this is,
I will never be more nimby than I am today.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
But I'll outline in the White House so.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
Everybody can look forward to that.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
And I am taking a look at the whole Grand
Flatner tattoo Reddit Gate situation. He got the tattoo covered up.
Everybody who got an update there. In case you haven't
seen enough of this man's shirtless body, we've got more
of that for you today.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
I never know.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
I never wanted to know the nipple shape and size
of US Senate candidate, and I remain that way.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Welcome to twenty twenty five. That is twenty twenty if
you never could have imagined, are now on the table.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, it's dark out here. Okay, all right, let's go
ahead and get to AI, shall we. Let's go and
put this up here on the screen. This is major
news from the economy. We have Amazon now planning to
replace more than half a million jobs with robots, and
it sounds like it's out of a movie, except it's
actually out of a press release. They say that the
company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon.

(03:28):
It is already I think, the second largest employer in
the entire United States, and they're now just openly saying
they have built an army of robots which they hope
to replace more than half a million jobs with. And
there's nothing really that you can do about it. There's
no legislation, there's no politicians, nobody even really particularly cares
at Amazon Automation expects the company can avoid hiring more

(03:49):
than one hundred and sixty thousand people in the United
States it would otherwise need just by twenty twenty seven.
That would save thirty cents on each item that Amazon
picks packs delivers to customers, which at scale is multiples
of billions. Executives told the Amazon board just last year,
robotic animation would allow the company to continue to avoid
adding its US workforce numbers, and they will translate to

(04:12):
more than six hundred thousand people that they do not
need to hire. Amazon right now remains not only the
second largest employer, one of the largest seasonal employers in
the United States. It's one of the easiest ways for
lower income folks out there to be able to get
some seasonal work, and many of them rely on it. Famously,
there was a movie it was a Nomadland if you remember,
you know, they showed this entire phenomenon. Now, I don't

(04:34):
think it's a good phenomenon to even have seasonal worker,
but it's better than nothing. And now they're saying even
that itself is gone. So this is dark. It's very
very dark stuff. Yeah, in terms of I as usual.
You know, when they announce this stuff on press calls
and then the stock goes up, that's when it gets
really distobing.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, because you're rewarded as a company, You're rewarded for
replacing human workers.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
That is the reality.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
And so we've covered Amazon a lot over the years
a lot, and there's a reason for that. It's because,
asocreg just said, they are the second largest employer and
a lot of ways they have completely reshaped the labor
market in the US. They have lowered the standards both
in terms of wages and safety and specifically the warehouse
and logistics industry. We've of course covered the abuses of

(05:19):
their delivery drivers. The way that they operate is they
drive their workers until they can no longer physically do
the tasks. They like to have a very high churn.
Why because they don't want you to stick around and
have to like and want higher pay or elevate to
higher levels of management.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
I got plenty of issues with Walmart as well, but
actually one of.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
The things they do is they try to recruit from
their own sales associates and elevate them up the chain.
Amazon is the exact opposite. They have very high churn
and it's by design. So what they're doing here is
rather than laying off a bunch of workers, they're just
going to let that normal churn run its course and
not rehire deadly, shrinking and shrinking and shrinking their workforce.

(06:03):
Six hundred thousand jobs. Guys, that is a lot. That
is a large percentage of their workforce here in the US.
And here's the other thing. Once they go down this path,
they are trendsetters. Not just their rivals in the space,
but all sorts of companies, especially ones that work in
any sort of warehousing and logistics, are going to be

(06:23):
looking at this and learning and trying to trying to
copy whatever it is that Amazon is doing. This moment
of AI job replacement, it is here, and it is
shocking to me how few politicians talk about it. I
heard Bernie start to talk about it, but there is
so little discussion around this. And meanwhile, a handful of
people hold all of our faiths in their hands.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
Is absolutely insane.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, absolutely, so let's stick Actually even within the AI
labs themselves.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Put this up here on the screen.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
So not only are robots coming for AI jobs, and
now appears to be coming for the AI jobs themselves.
So you can see Meta has cut some six hundred
jobs in the AI super Intelligence division. The layoffs will
quote affect legacy teams, but not the company's brand new
lab unit. The jobs will affect the company's teams focus
on artificial intelligence products, infrastructure, and long term AI research.

(07:15):
By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will
be required to make a decision, and each person will
have a more load bearing and more scope and impact.
Alexander Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, said, So most of
the affected employees will have the opportunity to quote be
redeployed at the company. But what I think it does
demonstrate to all of you is that even within the

(07:37):
AI builders themselves, they have to grapple with their betting
on replacing everybody. But in the immediate term, there's no profit.
I mean, I can't get away from chat GPT. It's
one of those where it's just so crazy when you
consider the financials and listen, Yes, I understand scale, I
understand exponential growth, etc.

Speaker 4 (07:58):
But when you scale up the netlokay, So how does
that work?

Speaker 1 (08:01):
This is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
So chat GPT has a revenue of thirteen billion dollars.
That's a lot of money. That's great, actually awesome, awesome job,
especially for a company that just launches flagship product in
twenty twenty two. But they have one trillion dollars in
outlays over the next decade. Now, those one trillion dollars
in outlays. Are not traditional cash finance deals. We talked

(08:25):
about this with David Dan. They're either called round tripping
or vendor finance. I prefer vendor finance is a long term.
It's a long standing term that I think a lot
of people can relate to, especially with the dot com bubble,
and it effectively relates to They're like, hey, we're gonna
buy x amount of chips from Nvidia, and Vidia is like, okay,

(08:46):
and that's why, will either grant you stock or you
get some portion of our company, and then the two
stocks simultaneously go up at the exact same time. But
the problem with that is that the future revenue that's
booked for Nvidia is based on a promise chat GPT,
but no money has actually exchanged hands. But it's just
based on the craze and on the expectation itself of

(09:06):
value that both continue to rise. So there's no money
that actually happened, but hundreds of billions of dollars in
value have been created. This is not just in video,
this is every major chip manufacturer in the world. Open
Ai has done five or six different of these types
of deal, adding several billions built in several I think
almost a trillion dollars in market cap to many of
these different companies, again off of a thirteen billion dollar valuation.

(09:29):
The problem with that is that if the growth stops
even a little bit and you have a fifty percent cut.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Down, then that's the entire S and P.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
Five hundred and eighty percent of the stocks gains in
twenty twenty five so far are from AI stocks. Forty
percent come from this expected value data center construction. So
again it's to think about the housing how much it
was part of the GDP back in two thousand and
six and two thousand and seven, home building alone was like.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
A huge portion.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Well then with the Great Recession hit and people stop
building home boom, you know, massive hit not only to
the housing stock but also construction labor materials, and there
are all kinds of you know, Nevada remember had a
horrible crisis in terms of housing and a shortage that
took almost a decade to recover from.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
That's the stuff that I worry about the most. We
have the job angle.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
You have the fact that profit's not there, that's why
Meta is cutting some of these jobs. And then you
have basically Sam Altman, who is like this master deal maker.
The Wall Street Journal now officially describes him as too
big to fail, meaning if this comes down, we have
to bail out. If we don't bail out, the entire
economy will go down.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
We don't have a choice, and so we can see it.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
All our eggs in this back.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Literally all of our eggs in the basket. And what
concerns me is it's kind of like housing. Nobody in
Washington ever made a decision that we're going all in
on AI. They kind of just let it happen. They
were like, yeah, okay, you know, with tax incentives, and
now it's just like subprime. You get to the point where, yeah,
I mean, bailing out AIG is horrible. Not bailing out
AIG is also horrible.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
So we don't know what to do. By the way,
we all know which way.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
I actually do think that this administration decided made affirmative
choice to go all in on AI. I mean, you
remember the big announcement on inaugurator the day after Inauguration Day, say, oh,
we're gonna, you know, have all of this investment in AI.
And that was, you know, part of why some of
these tech guys flipped to Trump is because listen, the
Biden administration wasn't doing a lot in terms of AI regulation,

(11:19):
but they were doing.

Speaker 4 (11:19):
A little bit.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
There was a little bit more of like a mindset
towards all right, let's let's have some safety.

Speaker 4 (11:25):
Let's have some guardrails in here.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Again, I'm not trying to I'm not trying to bump
them up, because it was also not sufficient.

Speaker 4 (11:31):
But the Trump administration.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Has basically said, all right, off to the races. You know,
we're in a race with China. You guys are at
a race with each other, and everybody is just throwing
billions and billions of dollars at this thing, hoping that
they're going to be the one that achieves agi fastest
and achieves the market position fastest. So that is an
affirmative decision that was made. I don't think it's the

(11:54):
one that most of you all voted for. I don't
think that was like featured heavily in the campaign trail.
I don't think there was a lot of focus on
that at BAY. I don't think there's been any sort
of like a national, small de democratic conversation about it.
But there are a lot of elites here and specifically
these tech oligarchs who've decided that this is the path
that they want to go on, and so you know,
you've got Their goal is to remake the social contract,

(12:16):
to make you and your labor completely irrelevant, to free
themselves from the burden of having to deal with annoying
human workers and their needs to like, you know, go
to the bathroom or take a day off for their
kid's birthday or school play or whatever. They want to
free themselves from all of those constraints. And so you
have that threat, which in many ways is here, and
you also have the incredible financial concentration, which I think,

(12:41):
I mean, I don't know how you can look at
this and not think it's a bubble at this point.
And by the way, Mark Zuckerberg thinks it's a bubble.
Jeff Bezos thinks it's a bubble. They've been talking about
this openly now they have various cope around it. Zuckerberg
says basically like, yeah, but you know that bubbles happen,
and then there's still a lot of innovation that comes
down of it, So still a net pod positive thing.
Like that's the way that they're talking about it. But

(13:03):
with the Nvidia things specifically, you know, if the demand
for these chips is really so high and so extraordinary,
why do they need to round trip these funds? Why
do they need to subsidize the purchase of their own chips?
That alone should make you question some of the storytelling
that is coming out of this industry. So, I don't know,
there are many different potential parols here and very hard

(13:27):
for me to see how we get out of this
thing without it without some very ugly consequences.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
Yeah, let's go ahead and put this next one, please
up on the screen. I thought it was really interesting.
A summary of Andre Carpathi, who is you know, he
was a previously the director of AI over at Tesla
and he now has appeared on a podcast and this
was a summary of some of the points that he makes.
He says, quote, lms don't work yet, they don't have
enough intelligence. They're not multimodal enough too. When you boot

(13:54):
them up, they start from zero. They have no distillation phrase,
there's no process where that happens get analyzed written back
into weights three when it's stored in their weights, it's
only a hazy collection of the Internet. Go to the
next part please, just so we can continue to read
some of these. What you really see, broadly from a
lot of the points that they make is that they're
too good at imitation, they're terrible at going off of

(14:14):
the data. They have too much memory and not enough reasoning.
They've recreated quote cortical tissue pattern learning in general, but
still missing the rest of the brain. There's no hippocampus,
there's no amigdala, there's no emotions. They memorize perfectly, but
generalized poorly. Anything truly new code that has never written before,
ideas that have no template.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
They stumble.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
So even the promises of some of this are not
really materializing yet, and they're being sold as some great,
great innovation. That's why I thought that Sam Altman's announcement
that chat ChiPT will be porn that was like the
biggest signal to me. I'm like, AGI is not coming, guys,
like the real AGI. It's not happening. Really, what it
is is they recreated the internet, chatchept started its new browser.

(14:53):
I don't know if you saw this yesterday where you
can download what do you think you do that for?

Speaker 1 (14:57):
It's like Google hoover.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Up all the data, make sure that you replace and
then what you make sure you spend as much time
on the goddamn platform as possible so we can sell
you advertising, so we can have you addicted to pornography,
and we can run your entire life from gcal to everything.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
It's just an ad supportive business. That's not the same thing.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
That was sold to the public about we're going to create,
you know, a new brain that's going to cure cancer.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
It's like, no, you're just you just have porn.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
Okay, I mean that's that's exactly what happened with the
original Internet.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
So I'm feeling very bleak this morning.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
I do think the job replacement could come the robot stuff,
because that's about roat labor and automation. But the real
promises of oh we're going to do that, We're going
to create all these amazing new products.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
I don't see it. I don't see it on the horizon.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
I hope it fails. Personally, I do. I hope it fails,
because I mean I'm very concerned. Listen, like Soccer said,
even with the where they've gotten now, we're already seeing
job replacement. But it could be worse. It could be
a lot worse. And so there's there's that aspect, there's
the water and energy aspect, and then there's the potential
like most dystopian scenarios, of which yeah, I am genuinely

(16:01):
concerned about, and by the way, the guys who are
involved in this stuff are concerned about. They've just decided like, well,
maybe if I'm the one that develops it, I can
do it in a safe way, and my competitors are
doing it anyway, so it's not like me staying out
of the race. And I'm thinking specifically of Elon Musk,
who really had a lot of safety concerns to start with,

(16:22):
and then realize like, well, I guess everybody else is
doing it, so I'm just going to get in there
and make mine anti woke, and I guess that'll fix
everything they are concerned about, like the most dire scenarios
as well. So I think the best case scenario is
that they never achieve agi that it ends up just
being sort of like a glorified Google search the way

(16:42):
it is, and an ability for you to make your
own personalized, customized porn or whatever, and that that's where
it stops. To me, that is the most hopeful possible
scenario and is still not a great one.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
See it only is hopeful because that just means AI
centered at degenerate activity already on the Internet and fying
it and making it.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
I'm not saying it's good soger, Okay, I'm saying I
don't want it to go further that it already has.

Speaker 3 (17:07):
We have Andrew Yang standing by a two way in
og friend of the show.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Let's get to it.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
We just talked a lot about AI, but now we're
going to talk about smartphones. And Andrew Yang a great friend,
maybe the foundational friend of the show, true is going
to join us.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
Bed Rock bed Rock Friend of the show.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Andrew Yang, you have a new project out that you're advertising.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
It's great to see you, my friend.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
But first let's play your announcement and then we're gonna
get your reaction.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 5 (17:35):
Our phones are amazing, but they're taking something from us,
our time, our focus, the moments that matter most. I
have a great day.

Speaker 6 (17:44):
Serious, what's your phone down? That's where you're going? Look up?

Speaker 7 (17:48):
Hey, guys, just left the West Village and I'm on
the highlight.

Speaker 6 (17:55):
Put your phone down.

Speaker 5 (18:00):
Here to scroll at a ball and Noble We don't
want you addicted to your phone.

Speaker 6 (18:05):
We want you to live more. That's why we'll pay
you to use your phone less.

Speaker 5 (18:08):
So, for heaven's sake, please do yourself a favor and
put your phone.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Down, all right, Andrew, So what is this project about, Saga.

Speaker 5 (18:18):
I've noticed that Americans are miserable, and we're miserable for
a couple of big reasons. Number one, we're not saving
enough money. We're paying Verizon AT and T twice as
much as people in other countries pay for their wireless services.
I was paying Rizon one hundred and forty a month,
now I'm down to about.

Speaker 6 (18:34):
Forty six a month.

Speaker 5 (18:35):
And then the second is that we're being bombarded by
these negative emotions through what Hassan Minhaj calls our rectangles
of sadness our cell phones. And so I thought, well, geez,
if we can solve those two problems, we'd go a
very long way. And folks who follow me know that
I'm deeply concerned about polarization, and that's a lot of

(18:59):
it through social media and our smartphone. So Noble Mobile
the first carrier that will actually pay you if you
use your phone a little bit less.

Speaker 6 (19:06):
It's fifty dollars for unlimited, but if you use a
little bit less data, we'll give you.

Speaker 5 (19:10):
Up to twenty bucks cash back every month and then
pay five and a half percent interest on any savings.
So your phone plan becomes your friendly angel nudging you
to doom scroll a little bit less.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
All right, kind of like it?

Speaker 6 (19:23):
I like it.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
So this comes at a moment when there's obviously heated
debate over screen time and cell phones and schools. There's
actually a little bit of new research out that I
wanted to get your reaction to with regard to the
school cell phone bands, which my kids public schools just
implemented last year. So this is the second year where
we've had a cell phone ban. They're very opposed. I'm
very supportive. Can put this up on the screen. So
schools bands phone saw surprising results beyond fewer distractions, And

(19:48):
what they found is that initially there was an adjustment period.
Disciplinary issues spiked because kids were getting in trouble for
having their phones and using their phones when they weren't
supposed to be. But they said by second year, suspension
rates return to normal and test scores actually rose significantly.
According to the researchers student scores in the school district
notably increased by about two to three percentiles in the

(20:10):
second year of the band compared to the year before
the ban. So what do you make of the study
and do those sorts of results surprise.

Speaker 5 (20:17):
You, Crystal, I'm so glad that you're trying to get
smartphones out of your your kids middle school or junior high.
I'm friends with Jonathan Height, who obviously has made history
with the actious generation, and any parent knows, I'm a parent.

Speaker 6 (20:32):
We used to think that the internet and these phones.

Speaker 5 (20:35):
Would help your kids learn, but the truth is it's
shortening their attention span. It's making it harder to retain
new information because they just think they can get it
from the internet at all times. So if you circumscribe
smartphone use, your kid reads more, get smarter. Not surprised
at all, and thrilled that so many schools are making
this move. They're finding astounding results, generally within one or

(20:59):
two years.

Speaker 6 (21:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
One of the things that we looked at, not only
with the studies, is that there has been a bifurcation
in my opinion, Andrew, which I'm a little worried about.
I think higher income. Parents are pretty aware of this dynamic.
People who are a little bit more neurotic. Private schools
and others are taking charge. But I haven't yet seen it.
You know, in terms of the statistics, it does look
like it's still widespread use of iPad smartphone as well

(21:24):
at the lower levels end of ages. So what is
the way societally to attack this problem? Is state regulation
the only answer, as some states are currently saying saying
they're banning it statewide in all schools.

Speaker 5 (21:35):
What's fun saga is that someone called this the last
bipartisan issue because parents that are conservative and parents that
are liberal are both freaked out about what these devices
are doing to our kids' brains. Thirty nine states, red
and blue have moved to get smartphones out of schools,
and I think it's going to keep going up. I mean,

(21:55):
you might get to all fifty and imagine that in
this day and age where you have literally a shutdown
Congress and the states are just making this happen because
so many families can see it every day. I'm a
parent and we all feel outgunned by these screens.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Andrew, I wanted to get a little bit of your
reaction to you to the discussion we were just having
on AI, because I mean, these are separate but obviously
incredibly related issues, And I just want to know your
sense of where things are heading and what the solution is,
because on the one hand, you have Amazon announcing they're
going to replace six hundred thousand workers with robots, which, hey,

(22:31):
is something you've been sounding the alarm about for a
few years now.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
At this point. On the other hand, you see.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Some people coming out and say, you know what, AI
is not really living up to the promise. It's certainly
not living up to it's you know, financial like expectations.
At this point, these lms still really clunky, even you know,
I've played around with SOUS still has a lot of limitations.
So what do you think of this tech, where it's going,
and how we should be thinking of it as society, Crystal.

Speaker 5 (22:57):
You're totally right. I was sounding the alarm back in
Iowa in twenty nineteen. Imagine standing at the truck stop
saying AI is coming back. Then folks weren't, let's say,
embracing that reality.

Speaker 6 (23:10):
But now it is real. I wrote in a WEIMO
a number of.

Speaker 5 (23:15):
Weeks ago, and it was a trip the first time
you get in, but then the second or third time,
and I did use in multiple times, you start to
get used to it. So the AI tools definitely have
their problems and limitations, but they're also getting better all
the time, and they are going to replace tons of
warehouse workers, customer service workers, analysts, lawyers. Unfortunately, I have

(23:40):
friends who are partners at law firms who say they're
going to hire fewer associates.

Speaker 6 (23:45):
So both things are true.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
I'd say that these tools have problems, but that they're
finding commercial applications that are going to do a number
on unfortunately millions of American workers. And when I ran
for president, I said, look, we need to start putting
money into people's hands.

Speaker 6 (24:02):
I mean, it's one reason I started Noble Mobiles.

Speaker 5 (24:04):
Like I can't get a thousand bucks a month into
your hands, but I can save you about a thousand
bucks a year and get you looking up more. And
that seemed like a direct approach to try and solve
this problem while I'm not president, obviously, I mean, if
I were president, then you guys would be I suppose,
I don't know what.

Speaker 6 (24:21):
I don't know what. The arival.

Speaker 5 (24:23):
Yeah, it was saying like, yeah, you might be Press
Secretary Crystal and then Saga you could do whatever you wanted,
but yes.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
I'll take that role.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Yeah, at a minister at large under the Yang administration. Andrew,
I do think while we have you, though, we would
love to get your reaction, since you did run for
mayor of New York to the current mayoral race before
we get you to react to some of the clips.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
What's your general assessment of the race here so far?

Speaker 5 (24:52):
Now I see the same things you all see. Zoron
is on track to win. To me, the question really
is whether he gets a majority against both Cuomo and Sliwah,
which I think would be very helpful for him to
have a mandate to head up to Albany and say, look, guys,
I'm the new mayor.

Speaker 6 (25:10):
Let's get some stuff done.

Speaker 5 (25:11):
If he gets less than fifty point one percent in
the November election, then it's going to be easier for
folks to push back and say that he doesn't have
as broad support. So to me, he's going to be
the next mayor, and the question is the margin of victory.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
So let's take a.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Look a little bit at They had a debate last night,
So on stage you had Zoron you had Cuomo, and
you had Saliwa as well and Zoron.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
Let's start with this one.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Zoran having a good moment here knocking Cuomo for his
former leadership of the state of New York.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 6 (25:43):
Shame on you.

Speaker 7 (25:45):
It is always a pleasure to hear Andrew Cuomo create
his own facts at every debate stage. We just had
a former governor say in his own words that the
city has been getting screwed by the state.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Who was leading the state it was screwing these.

Speaker 5 (26:13):
Four years four years.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
I mean, there's a few things to say about it.
First of all, he's just really good at this right.
Second of all, he's using the fact that this guy,
you know, had lots of experience as a weapon against him,
like the idea that, oh, you come in with all
of this pedigree and all this resume, and that's going
to set you up, which is clearly what Cuomo thought.
I mean, he thought this was a shoe and he
thought he'd barely have to show up and they would
just coordinate him as the next mayor of New York City.

(26:39):
That dynamic has flipped on his head. So I wonder
what you made of that. Moment and some of those
dynamics in.

Speaker 5 (26:44):
General, it is fascinating, Crystal because Cuomo has sky high
name ID, but not all of it's positive. I mean,
if you look at the numbers, uh there there's a
very deep ambivalence about Cuomo's time as governor, and so
when he runs on that experience and it is something
of a double edged sword that Zoron can use against him,

(27:04):
as we saw on that clip. It is interesting to
me as someone who is on that particular debate stage.
I mean sometimes physically where there was a time when
you're you kind of know people are going to come
after you. You know, you know attacks are coming, and
then you literally talk to the folks on your team say, Okay,

(27:27):
if they come at me with this, like what am
I going to respond with? But Zoron clearly both has that,
and he also has spontaneity. I mean some of the
stuff he's coming up with in the moment.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
One of the things I'm curious for your view Andrew
having run in the race is that he ran in
the Democratic primery. The Democratic primary base seems much more
open to an outsider. Then Let's say at the time
that you ran what happened. Why do you think that
that is?

Speaker 6 (27:53):
No.

Speaker 5 (27:53):
I think these last four years have not been kind
to establishment candidates or a sense that things are going
well and that there's a constant recipe for someone who
might represent a turning of the page. That's a stronger
argument now than it was a number of years ago.

Speaker 6 (28:10):
And I will say.

Speaker 5 (28:11):
I walked the streets of New York obviously I live here,
and people are very enthusiastic about Zoron, and people also
talk to me about, you know, like there seems to
be like, you know, a pro outsider sentiment in the air,
and that does not bode well for Andrew Cuomo, who
seems like the consummate insider because of his you know,

(28:31):
his ubiquity over the last.

Speaker 6 (28:33):
Number of years.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
So another issue that was significant at the debate was
how they.

Speaker 4 (28:37):
Would approach Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
And we've got a bit of a mash up here
Clomo talking about that and soor On talking about it
as well as sick Listen, Donald Trump, I believe wance
Mondamie that is his dream because he will use him
politically all across the country and he will take over
New York City.

Speaker 6 (28:54):
Look.

Speaker 7 (28:54):
Donald Trump ran on three promises. He ran on creating
the single largest deportation force in American history. He ran
on going after his political enemies, and he ran on
lowering the cost of living. If he wants to talk
to me about the third piece of that agenda, I
will always be ready and willing. But if he wants
to talk about how to pursue the first and second
piece of that agenda at the expense of New Yorkers,
I will fight him every single step of the way.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
So, Andrew, We've already had some big Trump admin shows
of force. There's a big immigration rate on Canal Street.
Trump is threatening to pull any sort of funding that
goes to New York City if Zoron is elected mayor
of New York, which you very likely is going to be,
you know, as not only a.

Speaker 4 (29:32):
Former mayor o Canab as a New Yorker.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
What are some of your concerns about this, you know,
almost inevitable clash I think that's coming between Zoran and Trump.

Speaker 5 (29:40):
Yeah, it's not good, Crystal, because the reality is that
there are a lot of relationships and resources that you
actually could use if you are the mayor of New
York and you don't want to be on the other
side of a battle line or with the head of
the federal government. But I think this is one of

(30:00):
the potential hazards of not just this era, but also
of and the truth is Andrew Cuomo is going to
present himself also as like a Trump foil or antagonist.
So I'm not sure if this is a negative case
or Zoron in particular, but the Democratic base is not
going to want you to work with Trump or his

(30:22):
administration in any way, shape or form. And I do
think that Trump is going to enjoy trying to stick
it to whoever the mayor is if the mayor is
not bending the knee. And obviously if you bend the
need to Trump in this city, then your political life
as a Democrat is going to be short lived.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, totally agree.

Speaker 4 (30:40):
One more for you, Andrew.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Let's take a look Zoron was on with the guys
over at flagrant I had a fun moment. I don't
know if you were aware of the whole bench press
situation with Zoron looked like he what was the amount
of way that he was trying to be the bench
press on thirty five. I guess it didn't work out
all that well in any case, they were joking around
about it on the podcast.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
Let's take a look at that.

Speaker 6 (30:59):
Jelly, bring the bench press because he has.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Year a year.

Speaker 7 (31:05):
I'm gonna do one pound more next summer one thirty six.

Speaker 6 (31:09):
Let's walk that you. Let me tell you I've done it.

Speaker 7 (31:15):
I knew I fucked up.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
When I said.

Speaker 6 (31:20):
I you think I thought I was going to kill it.
I knew it was a problem.

Speaker 7 (31:25):
And this guy's like, you gotta do it.

Speaker 6 (31:28):
You gotta know. It's like, I really don't.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
You should have put the big ten pound weights on,
you know, the big ten.

Speaker 7 (31:37):
Next year one thirty six.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
Okay, watch proms is like you keep Let's you.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
Didn't keep one thirty five.

Speaker 7 (31:49):
To get there that from the.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
End of problem thirty six, then challenge.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
I mean, I think there's there's a lot to you
that's interesting about this, but I mean it's crazy to me. Andrew, like,
the dream is always to change the electorate and bring
out more young people and be able to appeal now
the conversational, how do we appeal to young men? And
here you have a candidate who does it right. He's charismatic.
He built this grassroots movement started at one percent in
the polls, skyrockets and destroys. Andrew Cuomo is able to

(32:16):
go on these podcasts that there's all this handling. Oh
my god, Democrats can't go on these podcasts anymore. Is
able to do it, make fun of himself, be very charming, etc.
And you still have Hakim Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and
others who refuse to endorse this man who is the
Democratic nominee. It is probably the most interesting and charismatic

(32:37):
figure that you have in the entire party. Like, is
this self savage? What is going on here? How is
this in any way sensible?

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Huh?

Speaker 6 (32:46):
I have to admit I was fascinated by the entire
bench press thing.

Speaker 5 (32:51):
And I'm thirdly out of sa as a humor about it,
because when you're a candidate, people are constantly putting pressure
on you to do things, and sometimes you're just like,
oh no, I really don't want to do this. But
it's almost impossible to say I don't want to do this,
because then you seem like a dud. And so I
used to joke with my team that it's like the

(33:13):
presidential Olympics, where you know, you just do whatever the
event is, whether it's like corn dog eating or uh,
you know, or like feats.

Speaker 6 (33:23):
Of strength or whatever the heck it is.

Speaker 5 (33:25):
And so when Zarn was in that situation, I was like,
oh my god, I've been there, Like I've been in
front of that bench figuratively speaking. I mean, Heck, when
I ran for mayor, they were like I was at
a gym and then they like challenged me to do
pull ups and then you can't not do them because
you're like, oh God, like you know, I don't want
to see you, and that's the questions ire And I

(33:46):
was like, how many effing pull ups am I going
to be able to do?

Speaker 6 (33:49):
Because I don't need to do one right now?

Speaker 5 (33:52):
I don't know, and so that, but then you also
get adrenaline in you because they're filming it right. So
so I felt Doron's pain deeply. And bench benching is
something that like you either are experienced in doing or
you're not. It's like if you're like a normal person
who is not bench pressed a lot, then it's gonna

(34:14):
be really hard to bench press, like you know, want
thirty five And people will make like, oh want thirty five,
blah blah blah blah blah. It's like anyway, I mean, Sager,
you probably can relate to this. But it's like when
the first time you go to the gym, you can't
bench press anything, nothing, and then eventually if you do
it for a while, they're pretty much guys who benching,
guys who don't bench, and asking a guy who doesn't
bench to bench is very very.

Speaker 6 (34:33):
Bad, bad look for that guy.

Speaker 5 (34:35):
So I felt Zoron's pain because it's like, oh my god,
like he had no choice but to say yes and
then but I'm just thrilled that he has a sense
of humor about it and that he can joke about it.

Speaker 6 (34:43):
To your point, Crystal, it's like that's what people want.
You know.

Speaker 5 (34:46):
The word that gets bandied around a lot is authenticity,
and the disease is like you literally have consultants being like,
how do we get authenticity? So if you have a
candidate who has it, then you have a candidate who
has it, and and you know, to your point, that's
very very powerful.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
In twenty twenty five, it's very powerful.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
And it's again insane that Democratic leadership wants to stand
back this guy and refuses to endorse again the Democratic nominee.
And as I guess, you know, a low key holding
out for the guy who was accused of sexual assault
by thirteen different women and had to resign and disgrace
and killed old people in nursing homes, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (35:24):
You know, I mean it is the party primary. You
guys know that I'm for opening up the primaries, but
to me, this means that they're really like flavors of
Dems in New York. And so the pitch I'd make
is like, look like that your problem is that you
probably should be different parties, is what you know. But

(35:44):
totally agree with the fact that, look, you know, like
that this guy is super talented and before this primary
and this season you would have been trying to dream
up someone like him.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
There you go. Thank you very much, Andrew. We appreciate
your nowsismam great to see Andrew.

Speaker 6 (36:00):
Seeing you guys. Let me check out Noble Mobile for
the two of you.

Speaker 5 (36:04):
I don't know who you're using right now, but we
could definitely save you some money and make your.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Wi Fi on an airplane. It's game over, broke a right,
See you later, hi, guys.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Turning now to healthcare, there's been a lot on the horizon.
Let's talk about Obamacare subsidies that are expiring. That's part
of why the government is shut down right now, at
least the democratic justification. But behind the picture is not
just Obamacare. It's a genuine healthcare crisis in the US.
It's going to put us up here on the screen.
The average cost of a family health insurance plan is

(36:39):
now twenty seven thousand dollars. So you can watch here
that employer and worker contribution has dramatically gone up from
some ten thousand dollars back in twenty ten to twenty
seven thousand today.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
In addition to an increased.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Worker contribution and employer contribution, this is hurting the businesses,
the smaller businesses and particular that have to increase the
amount that they give in, and as well as the
workers who are paying large parts of these premiums. So
let me just read here. This is from the Kaiser
Family Foundation survey. A six percent increase in healthcare just
from the year before, outpacing inflation. Builds on two prior

(37:15):
years of seven percent gains, so we have seven, seven
and six. The cost is rising faster than inflation, and
they say it will bite into employment and wage growth.
That's pretty obvious statement. If healthcare costs go up faster
than the economy in general. That means there's no money
left over to go to wages, which is exactly what's happening.
They are facing in some cases a fifteen percent health

(37:35):
insurance increased, a year over year increase. They say that
from their survey of their detailed snapshot, that the family
premium has gone up six percent, worker earnings has gone
up four overall inflation has gone up two point seven percent. Now,
the actual this is what I was talking to Matt
Stoler about this because how is this possible? And because

(37:58):
there's a cell here about health insurance and even with
Obamacare and all of that in the system, is that
when you consider where the costs are going, you should say, well,
it should make sense with healthcare prices, with hospitals. Now,
what I talked to Stoler about was that if you
look at drug prices, hospital prices and others, there has

(38:19):
not been that dramatic of an increase. So why is
it so dramatic? And what he calls it is, let
me get the exact term, because I really liked the
way that.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
He phrased it. He said, it's corporate sludge.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
And so for example, he talks about how private equity
and others who have taken over hospital billing departments, and
they will scrap for a one thousand dollars increase in
services because their billing fee is some ten dollars, but
at scale that's billions and billions of dollars. The one
thousand dollars in cost is passed along to you the consumer.
It's also passed along to the health insurance company just

(38:53):
passes it on obviously to everybody else, but it's just
so that these people can make a profit. The other
thing that they flag in there, which I thought was
fascinating is gop one drugs. So the cost of these
of semi glue tide drugs is very high. Obviously because
these are very profitable drug companies. Everybody wants them, so
health insurance is covering them or they're finding different ways

(39:15):
doctors and others to negotiate. Ironically, there was a theory
that all of these gop one drugs reduced the amount
of health care services in the long run because people
will be less obese, but in the immediate term it's
actually driving up the price dramatically of overall health services.
I also also as people know, I never let the
doctors off the hook here, because what they talk about
is that healthcare providers are now negotiating higher wages for

(39:38):
themselves through the hospitals, and the hospitals are passing that
on to the insurance.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Now, it's not the doctor's fault. I get it.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
You guys one hundreds of thousand dollars in debt, it's
not necessarily on you. But that financing structure, the American
Medical Association and the Cartel of Residency, which they've created
artificial scarcity and so that they can all get paid
more to pay off their enormous debt, is also being
It's just like when you put it all together, from
the drugs to GLP one to hospital services.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
This can't last.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Like, twenty seven thousand dollars is crazy. The average family
income is less than one hundred thousand dollars per year.
So after tax income, Yeah, I understand, you know, employer
contribution and all of that.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
Et cetera.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
But you know, it's twenty seven k worker for the
workers for a family premium in addition to a two
to three thousand dollars deductible, which is the normal amount
that people have in savings. For a rainy day, which
means you're dead, right, and then you and I are
on Obamacare. I've shared this family of three Obamacare. I
think it's like nine to ten thousand dollars per year,

(40:39):
about fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars deductible.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Like you're dead if you ever get hit with something
like that.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah, childbirth boom, right, that one hurts in particular, and
then think about that for all of these other people
who are out there. So this is just more of
a value neutral thing of like this can't go on,
Like somebody has to do something about this, and Obamacare
is not the answer, as we are all learning, because
the healthcare subsidies that are expiring are making it dramatically

(41:06):
unaffordable for every person who's actually on the plant. The
only reason it worked is because they started throwing money
at the plans during COVID, But before that, the reason there.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Wasn't uptick is because it was crazy expensive.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
I think what's going to happen is a vast number
of people will just go on insured, like we talked
about talking about with this Ryan, there was a couple.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Who was sixty years old. They make eighty k.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Their premiums are going to go up eighteen thousand. I'm like, yeah,
you know, if you're relatively healthy, I'm rolling the dice
till Medicare. Yeah for five year. That's not a good
place to be, right. If you get hit by a bus,
it's not going to be good. But it's twenty five
thousand dollars a year, and disaster insurance really worth it?

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Not really?

Speaker 3 (41:39):
Ask people in San Francisco own homes. A lot of
them don't pay for earthquake insurance for this exact exact reason.
It's crazy high. This is what happens.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
It's insane, and that's a really bad outcome. I don't
know if you remember back during the Obamacare debates, but
we talked all about this like death spiral potential, and
like the scenario you're sketching out is what leads to
that death spiral. Because what happens is people who are
younger and healthier, they say like Ziger's are like, I'm
not paying for this, this doesn't make sense. And so

(42:08):
the younger, healthier participants get out of the pool. You're
left with more like older people with more chronic illnesses
who are much more expensive. And guess what, that means
everybody's premiums go up. And then when those premiums go up,
then the next layer of people who are like you know,
some relatively healthy and relatively young, are like, you know what,
I'm not doing this either, and then the premiums go

(42:30):
up again. So we are facing that sort of a
death spiral situation. And let's keep in mind like we're
covering the people who have employer they get health insurance
through their employers, like those are the lucky ones. And
still it's unaffordable and unsustainable. And so you know, I listen,
I'm long been in Medicare for all gal. Back when

(42:52):
the Obamacare debate was happening, I was very much pushing
for a public option. Like our healthcare system at every
level is so fucked. I mean, like you said, even
just starting from the way that doctors will share all
the expense and the debt that they have to take on.
We have a shortage of doctors too, by the way,
you know, go and try to get an appointment at
any kind of specialists or even a general practitioner, go
to the hospital and try to get care, You're going

(43:13):
to be facing a long line. We are all these
rural hospitals are going to be closing because of the
big beautiful bill quote unquote. You have these subsidies that
are going away that are going to make all of
this hit home very aggressively.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
I was just looking at some polling.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
You've got four and ten Americans who say they are
deeply concerned about being able to afford health insurance care
and the prescriptions that they need. And what happens too
when people go with how does it work? When people
go without insurance? What that means is that they don't
go to the doctor. So any conditions that come up,
they're waiting until they are, you know, in a dire circumstance,

(43:49):
and then they go to the emergency room and then
that is the most expensive.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
Care that you could possibly get. So that's how we
end up.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
That's one of the reasons why we end up with
a system where we spend more than any other country
on healthcare and we get worse results than virtually any
other developed nation because every aspect of this for profit
system is broken. So, you know, the trajectory that we
are on is fundamentally unsustainable. Someone is going to have

(44:19):
to actually address They're going to have to confront the insurers,
they have to confront private actory equity, they have to
confront the hospital system, like, they're going to have to
radically transform this system if we're going to get out
of this death spirral.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
I totally agree.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
And you know before we you don't even have to.
I know you're a medical for medicare for all persons. Yeah,
there are many countries even with universal Ish healthcare stolar
again enlightening me. In Japan, apparently they have tons of
private insurance if you want them, but the government has
a literal list. This is how much a treatment costs, right,
MRI flat rate.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
You can be in Kyoto, you can be in Hokkaido,
wherever you are.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
This is how much the AMUT So there's no pharmacy.
What is the PBMs and all these middle menage controls. Yeah,
there's literally price control where you're like, this is how
much it costs.

Speaker 4 (45:08):
Figure it out.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
I'm even willing to give you cost of living inflation,
so it can be higher in New York City than
it can be in Wichita.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
I'm even fine with that.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
But that right now, the price of a drug itself
is not even set. It's negotiated between the health insurance people,
the farm of people, the drug people, and that's how
people get priced out of you know, their cap on
the amount of prescription drug care. This is another reason
why I know this is long winded, but on the
Medicare point, right, this is why I'm like, I'm not
willing to sign up for any First of all, put

(45:37):
the cultural questions aside, like illegal immigration, trans I'm saying,
even in the current way that we are right now
about Medicare, we cannot live in the system where we
allow these people to builk the federal government. So for example,
I've talked about dialysis. One percent of all US federal
spending is dialysis.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
That people do not understand.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on dialysis and end
stage renal disease. That is astronomical. It is a huge
percentage of all Medicare spending. Now, a big part of
that is people are fat. Another part of that is
that a lot of people are poor because a lot
of people are also irresponsible. They don't take their insulin
for some reason, but at the end of the day,

(46:19):
we end up paying for it. There's also cardiac what
is it failure like heart failure alone. One of the
most expensive phases of health care could be you know,
deal dealt with through could be dealt with through preventive care,
which obviously I support, but at the very least, like
why does nobody come in you know, this is the
whole point about Medicare negotiating prices and like, yo, if

(46:39):
we're going to pay one percent of dialysis spending, like
we're setting some prices here if that's going to be
one percent of the US federal but that's more than
we spend on like the national weathersone stuff that you
know does a lot of things. They're actually good for
the country, right, So that's why I'm like, I mean
the cartels, they need to be broken to the ground.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Yes, like support support that comment. I will say Medicare
and Medicaid do negotiate on the price of care. They
do not negotiate by large, on the drugs, which is
outrageous and Biden they pass like okay, we have a
list of ten drugs, where now going to negotiate on
which is so characteristic of them, Like we'll make some progress,
but not nearly, you know, do what is required. But yes,

(47:18):
that's one of that would be one of the benefits
of moving to a Medicare for all system. And I
don't have like a total philosophical objection to having the
ability to, you know, if you don't want to be
on Medicare, to purchase a private plan or whatever for
wealthy people want to do that. You just want to
make sure that the pool is large enough so that
the government can benefit from having healthier people in the pool,
so you can benefit from those economies. And also the

(47:41):
exactly what you're saying, if you have a large Medicare pool,
it makes it so you have so much more pricing
control and power in terms of controlling costs at every
single level. So but yeah, it's I don't know. It's
funny because this, you know, healthcare was really back burner
during the last presidential election, and nobody will remember Trump
got asked about he said he had a concept of

(48:02):
a plan.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
We have great healthcare.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
Yeah, and I think, I.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Don't know, I guess it's I guess it's because there
were so many other things going on. Kamala Harrison really
make it a focus or an issue because she kind
of was left in no man's land. You guys will
recall in twenty twenty when she thought it was the
thing to do, she signed on as a co sponsor
to Bernie's Medicare for All.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
Then when she got.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Pushed back from rich donors, then she ran away from that.
It became a real weakness for her in terms of
the Democratic primary. You have a Biden administration that didn't
he ran on a public option. Of course, they didn't
even try, Like as soon as he got the nomination,
he just stopped.

Speaker 4 (48:35):
Talking about healthcare altogether.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
It was clear he never cared about doing anything with
regard to, you know, any sort of significant transformation of
the system. So she really didn't raise it as an issue,
and it just went unresolved. And now you can see
what an incredible mess it is and how something dramatic
does have to be done here at some point.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yeah, well I hope.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
So I don't know, because everyone says that every year,
and you know, there's content things will just get.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
You know, get worse, become just like a luxury for
the ultra wretch.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
Well, let's stick with that, because I can't tell you
how much this bothered me. Let's go and put this
up here on the screen. And this is, by the way,
if you're a Democrat. This is why you should be mad.
So Amy Klobachar put out her example of rising Obamacare premiums.
She says, early retirees like Bill and Shelley will see
their health insurance premiums increase nearly three hundred percent from

(49:22):
four hundred and forty two dollars to seventeen hundred dollars
per month if Congress refuses to extend the exhanced tax credits.
That's an extra fifteen K year families cannot afford. Put
the article up because this is why it's so perfect.
Could you not find literally anybody else than two early
retirees who are those are gen xers in their fifties

(49:42):
who apparently are early retired earning a six figure pension income. Now,
I want to be clear, I don't begrudge anybody for
early retirement, but you're not exactly a sympathetic test case
for why we should be paying more in ACA premium.
So this is the current messaging I saw by the
same thing actually from Jeff Merkley, where they find some

(50:03):
boomers who are like right on the edge around Medicare
and they're like, oh, these poor people are going to
have to pay more for healthcare. I'm like, yeah, you know,
get a fucking job, like at a certain like, I'm sorry,
I don't feel sorry for you whenever that family health
insurance premium is going up to some twenty seven thousand
dollars per year.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
And actually the least sympathetic people in.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
The world are early retirees who presumably, if you're willing
to retire at some fifty years old, you have one
hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year pension income, you're
sitting on some serious assets, not only your homes and
your stocks. This is the issue that I find with
a lot of the current messaging is that they have
found like these least sympathetic test cases of elderly folks
when even people who are not on Obamacare, let's say

(50:44):
the average family of four making one hundred and ten
thousand less than the pension income of these early retirees,
their premium is up twenty is some twenty seven thousand
dollars for a family. So that's just my personal thing, Like,
and she was getting dunked on quite a bit for this,
but like, I'm sorry, I don't want to hear about
the plight of the early retired middle class opera middle

(51:05):
class rich Like that is not the sympathetic test case
for who we should.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Be thinking about.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Fair could have chosen a better example. You believe it,
and this is but like what you're describing is actually
not to go to like deeper PHILSOPVL or overthink it
or whatever. But this is actually the core problem with neoliberalism.
It's like, when you have this this piecemeal system where
some people benefit and some people don't benefit and it's

(51:30):
not universal, then yeah, you could create a lot of
resentment against Bill and Shelley who retired early and want
to be able to travel more and are about to
get hit very hard with high premiums and their lifestyle
is going to be curtailed.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
People are like, well, fuck.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
Them, I don't want to have to subsidize their lifestyle.
The idea of a universal program, and why social security
is so popular, why Medicare is so popular, is because
everyone by and large benefits. Everyone feels like they pay in,
everyone feels like they benefit, and so it doesn't create
these like weird resentments which allow people to you know,
divide and conquer, because that then gets used to say,

(52:06):
well then we shouldn't we shouldn't extend the subsidence for everyone. Well,
you're mostly going to be not hurting Bill and Shelly,
They're actually going to be Okay, You're mostly going to
be hurting a lot of other people who are just
going to be kicked off of health insurance because they
cannot afford it, who are going to end up with
some catastrophic situation in the emergency room. And by the way,
it's pennywise, I'm howm foolish, because we're gonna end up
paying at the end of the day just for care

(52:27):
that's wildly more expensive than it would be if they
had just been in.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
The insurance system.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
So that's why we need to support universal programs and
not this like piecemeal nonsense of like you know, Obamacare
is a good example of like a neoliberal solution, which,
by the way, Obamacare, which is a disaster, is still
better than what we had before, you know, in key ways,
it is significantly better than what we had before, but

(52:51):
it's still wildly insufficient and still creates, you know, these
insane incentives and at bottom is a for profit system
that is completely changing.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
When people say that, what they mean is in the aggregate.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
So yeah, it's better that more people are insured, but
then everybody else's prices are higher, and that's the issue,
you know, broadly why people get mad. I take your
point about universalism, but having seen how politics progresses, Bill
and Shelley get everything they want. Okay, Bill and Shelley
are getting their property to their governor of the state
of Florida is comparing property tax to buying a television

(53:23):
and renting it from Best Buy. That is the level
of intellectual analysis that we have on their behalf. They
get tax breaks in every state in the country, and
all their Social Security now they literally get Social Security
tax free, which is crazy. So it's like, you get
tax free social Security, get free health care from the
government when they eventually become sixty four bottoms of the
limited pocket are unlimited pockets when it comes to dialysis,

(53:45):
end of life care, cardiac health insurance. If you are
a family of four with two children, you're paying twenty
seven thousand dollars. In theory, would be nice if we
had some sort of universal coverage, But in practicality, what
it always comes back to is Bill and Shelley and Chilly.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Are you arguing then that the SUBSTA shouldn't be extended, Like,
what are you actually art, what's the point you're making.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
To be honest in the interim from the data that
I have seen, while there are families that will benefit
from it, a huge portion of the benefit pool actually
are boomers, Like they're boomer retirees, people exactly like this,
and I do really philosophically, I'm like, man, I don't
want to be subsidizing it.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
I'm thinking about it.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
You're talking about fifteen million people who will lose their.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Heart, but that's in the aggregate, so that that's what's
going to aggregate.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
But I look at the data for a lot of
these early retiree types who, to be honest, again, probably
paid off health care, probably paid off house, probably have
decent number of stock portfolio. Yeah, it's hard to stop
whenever they're when people who are families, but twenty seven
thirty thousand dollars in healthcare.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
But again the fact that like, like, it's all a mess, right,
so you just want them to suffer more so that
we all suffer.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Like, well, I think that should have to make the thing.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
We're ignoring too though, is let's say that you know
the fifteen million that that cannot afford health insurance because
the premiums hike. And it's not just boomers that, it's
not just you know, people who are not particularly sympathetic.
You're talking about families, You're talking about small this is
what you're talking about a lot of people right talking
about you and your family. You know, those people get
out of the system. Prices are going to go up

(55:16):
for everyone, for everyone, including the people you find sympathetic,
And like I said, you're not saving money because ultimately
they're going to end up in the emergency room. You're
receiving the most expensive care. So that's what I'm saying,
is like they picked a poor example. Sure, but this
is a problem that has to be dealt with and
in the interim the best thing we can do at

(55:37):
the moment is extend the subsidies so that we don't
have this, you know, mass sort of casualty event.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
And it doesn't look like that's happening.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
It looks like the premiums are going to go up
in an astronomical way. I think it's going to be
Democrats are betting that it's going to be politically disastrous
for Republicans. It may be, I don't know, I don't know.
How politics works anymore. We'll see, but you know, there's
there's no doubt that it's going to create pain, like
across the board, not just for the people that you like,
hate and have contempt for.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Yeah, it's not that I have contempt, it's that they owe. Well, okay,
maybe I do. Yeah, I mean, I.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Just I continue to watch people who I know who
are my age, unaffordable health care, unaffordable housing, and then
I see these people take to the cnbcs and the
MSNBC's of the world, lobbying for no property tax, lobbying
for more free health care, lobbying for free dialysis, And
I'm like, man, this is making me angry because they
get every single thing that they want, and a lot
of the people I see struggling don't really get it.

(56:31):
And it just seems that the system is designed for
the people who are old.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I would also, and it just makes me mad.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
I would also say, though, that the precariousness is creeping
up and up, like with education being so with healthcare
being so expensive, with housing being so expensive. You're right,
boomers who were able to establish themselves in their career
go to college at the time when it was wildly
less expensive and get a house when it was much
less expensive, Like they are doing better than younger generations.

(56:59):
But that for caarity, with the cost of food, with
the cost of energy going up, that is really creeping up,
not just ages, but in terms of also income levels,
you know, and so you have more and more people
who you would look at their income and be like, oh,
they should be fine, who are struggling because the cost
of everything that Now, are they the most sympathetic case. No,

(57:19):
But in a lot of ways they're not in such
a different boat than you know, a lot of people
that you know, people would find to be more compelling. Again,
which is why I think we need universal programs so
that you don't have the ability to pit different more
or less sympathetic groups against each other in order to
block any sort of a beneficial solution for everyone.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
Because if the subsidies go.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Away, it's going to be bad for almost everyone. The
ultra which of course they're going to be completely fine,
but for people across the income spectrum, it's going to
be a real problem for them, and you know, another
big blow to our healthcare system.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
I don't dispute it. You're right, it's going to be
bad for the healthcare system.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
I just I'm more thinking broadly, Like to be honest,
I think that these people should have to pay the most.
I think that if early retirees, people who are in
the sixties and all, they should pay more than people
who are families. I think that though, especially if you
are already have your kids out of the house, paid
off out and the casualty or whatever is coming from
your ability to travel.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
I'm like, ohoo, man, I do not want to hear that.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
When I could see people who are twenty five, twenty
eight can't buy a house, not able to afford anything.
I'm like, somebody eventually does have to pay for something.
It can't all just be kumbaya where they're okay, and
you know, these people down at the bottom are all
supposedly exactly the same at the end of the day. Like,
if we want to talk about who the subsidies should
come from, right now, it's bottom up quite literally from

(58:42):
a generational level, and I think it should be ful
howly against it.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
How About we reverse all of the tax cuts to
the ridge from the one big beautiful bill and we
use it to pay for healthcare subsidies so that everybody
can work.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Well, here's the irony. Who's the rich in this country,
it's old people.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
They're the ones who are going to there are ones
are going to lobby against it the most, their overall
net worth everything.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
That's why it's more important to have a class analysis
than of age based analysis, because.

Speaker 4 (59:08):
Who are struggling as well.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
I'm not you know, in terms of accuracy, just in
terms of like understanding the structure of society and who
we should actually be positioning ourselves against and what sort
of divides we should be striking. I don't think it's
a generational war. It's a class war. Now, You're right,
Boomers tend to have more, you know, more wealth accumulated,
certainly the billionaire class. It's not even like I'm not

(59:34):
even sure I could say the billion our class is
disproportionately boomer probably, but in any case, it's I'm thinking
and Zuckerberg and whatever. But you know, that's the people
who get their way, especially with this administration, are the oligarchs.
That's who actually has the power, and so those are
the people that we need to be taxing more of.

(59:55):
Those are the people whose power we need to be constraining.
This goes back to the AI conversation as well.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Yeah, I think that's true, but a little bit limited
because it's not all going to come from them. And
it's like I said, I mean, you have this entire
state LA who is run by a cartel of the
elderly who do everything in their power to builk the
federal government for health care, for bailouts every time they
get hit by a hurricane, and doing everything their power
on the state level to make sure that families visiting

(01:00:21):
Disney have to subsidize their entire way of life and
they don't have to pay a dime in property tax,
in school tax, in nothing. As long as those people
are also included in this day.

Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
You want to hit on Florida, I will join you
in that crusade.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Okay, good, all right, all right, let's get to Israel.